by David Almond
“Aye?” said Jakey.
“Aye.”
“You m-mean it?”
“Aye!”
“I seen a tightrope walker once,” said Norman. “Years ago.”
“The circus on the playing fields!” I said.
“Aye, that one. You were there an aal?”
“Aye,” I said. “I loved it.”
“And me. I liked the clowns. Liked the donkeys. And was there a strongman, I think I remember.”
“Aye,” I said. “Rudolfo.”
“See?” said Norman to the others. “He even remembers the names.”
He pondered the darkness at his feet.
“Thought them like you would want to be an office worker. Or a teacher or something.”
“Naah,” I said. “Far too boring.”
He lowered his eyes.
“I remember your books. I remember aal the ticks on your sums and how you could write and write and read and read. Bit different from me.”
“Ye could be a wr-writer, then,” said Jakey.
“Aye!” said Silversleeve. “And write aboot us!”
“Now that would be a f-fascinatin tale!”
“One day they went d-doon in the tank, they crawled in the muck, that neet they come b-back oot again, they done the same for many years and then they died. The End.”
Blister’s voice: “Get on with it! Get on with it!”
“You used to help us sometimes,” said Norman. “You remember that?”
He laughed gently.
“Ye showed us how to hold the pen. ‘Stay on the line, Norman,’ you whispered.”
“GET ON WITH IT!”
“Who’d’ve thought we’d meet again doon here?”
“Who’d’ve thought it, eh?” I said.
We smiled at each other. The others looked away.
“GET BLIDDY ON WITH IT!”
We got on with it. Silversleeve went to the top and passed down a rope with a hook on the end of it. We started at one edge of the tank and worked across. We tied the bigger objects to the rope and Silversleeve hauled them up. The rope kept coming down and going up.
We moved across the floor of the tank, clambering over the struts. The oldest deep-down waste was slimy. We swept it into buckets, tied the buckets to the rope. I kept tightening my mask against the intensifying stench. Norman laughed.
“Be glad,” he said, “they give us dirty rates for this.”
“D-double bottoms are even b-better,” said Jakey.
“Aye,” laughed Norman, “confined space as well as filth.”
“If y-you’re up to it,” said Jakey. “If you don’t pass out like Silversleeve that b-bliddy day.”
We lifted, hauled, yanked, pulled, pushed, swept, bucketed, yelled, groaned and laughed and retched. The afternoon wore on. Jakey sighed to find a nest of mice within an ancient battered cloth cap.
“Oh, b-babies!” he said in amazement.
We all looked down to see the tiny naked creatures squirming there.
“They grow from filth,” said Norman. “That’s one good thing about the filth. New life.”
I laughed.
“They can’t!” I said. “It can’t happen like that.”
“Well, how else do they get here, Boff?” said Norman.
“Aye. H-how else?” said Jakey.
He smiled.
“Look at the th-things. The gorgeous beautiful tender b-bairns.”
Norman stubbed out his cigarette.
“We find them everywhere we gan,” he said. “It’s doon to me to dae the deed. Forgive me, mice. You come into a wrong and very bliddy rotten world.”
And stamped three times with his steel-capped boots and dragged a boot-length of waste across the mess.
“Now g-gan back to the Lord,” said Jakey. There were tears in his eyes. He made the sign of the cross above the scene of death. “Be b-born again in a b-better world.”
We worked on.
I reeled at the ugliness, but felt a weird joy in it, a weird joy in being with these others so unlike myself but so like myself, a weird joy to be down in the depths with that shaft of light falling so beautifully from far above, a weird joy to be lost in work, to be becoming lost in memories and thoughts, a weird joy in just being a being on the floor of a tank on the bank of the river at the foot of the hill at the foot of the town.
And then came the moment when Jakey screamed.
“B-body!” he yelled. “B-bliddy body!”
Everything stopped. Even the din of the caulkers seemed to stop.
Then I climbed with Norman through the litter to where Jakey stood in shock.
The corpse lay in a spotlight’s glare, with the hatched shadow of the net across it. It lay face-downward in the shadows between two struts.
“B-body!” Jakey screamed again.
The voice of Blister fell from high above.
“WHAT’S THE BLIDDY HOLDUP, YOU LOT?”
“B-body,” Jakey screamed back at him. “F-faller! J-jumper! S-suicide!”
“WHAT?” yelled Blister.
No one answered.
“W-what’s to be done?” gasped Jakey.
I went closer. Climbed over one strut into the space that held the body. Dared to reach out towards the body. Touched. And the body flinched. It moved. It twisted on the steel floor and turned its face and laughed.
“Gotcha!” it said.
I screamed. It was more shocking than a death.
“McAlinden!” said Norman.
“Aye, McAlinden,” said the body. “Vincent McAlinden, brung back to life by this lad’s tender touch.”
It laughed again, slid down from the strut, shook itself, reached out a hand to me.
“How you doin, Dominic?”
I clambered away.
“Thanks for bringin us back from the dead, Dominic!”
The others were edging away from him.
“You’ve got a good lad here,” he told them. “And yes, he has a very tender touch. What’s up, J-jakey? Did I s-scare you?”
“You b-bugger, McAlinden.”
McAlinden’s eyes grew cold.
“Take care, lad.”
Jakey looked away, shut up.
“I heard you were visitin,” McAlinden said to me. “I heard you were ganna grace us with your presence. Thought I’d come doon and say hello. It’s a funny place for a brainbox and a bliddy tightrope walker. A funny place to tek your holidays.”
“Piss off,” I told him.
“Oh, Dominic! And here’s these lads thinkin they’ve got a little angel come down among them. Oh, the things I could tell you bonny lads about this bonny lad. Should I tell them about ye, bonny lad? Mebbe not, eh?”
“Gan on,” said Norman. “Bugger off.”
Vincent swiped his fist across his face. His eyes glittered in the descending light. He grinned. He came in close. I smelt the familiar breath of him. Set my shoulders, clenched my fists, prepared to fight.
“Course this is yer holiday, ain’t it, Dominic? A week or so in the yard with the lads. Nae need to get to fuckin hate it. Nae need to think ye’ll never get bliddy oot of it. Just enough to get a bit scared and a bit pissed off and then get oot again. Ain’t that reet? And then ye’ll remember it forevermore and tell yer bonny bairns aboot the days spent in the yard when ye were hardly more’n a bairn yerself.”
“Piss off,” I said again.
He came in even closer. Suddenly he came at me, took me by the throat.
“Fight back,” he growled. “Gan on. I trained ye, didn’t I? I trained ye to fight and to learn how to beat a McAlinden. It’s true, lads. I did. He beat me, many times. You got your knife with you? You got your knife, eh, Dominic?”
The others came at him. He let me go, he threw them off.
“Oh, lads, don’t scare me. You’re all too bliddy hard.”
Then he held me in his arms and kissed me hard on the cheek.
“Not here, Dominic,” he softly said. “Not here, not now.�
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And he turned, and climbed away, up the ladder, through the net.
“Back from the dead!” he called.
He kept on climbing upwards through the falling shaft of light.
“Naebody knaas what the hell he does,” said Norman. “It’s like they’re scared of him, even Blister.”
“It won’t last l-lang,” said Jakey. “He’ll g-get slung oot.”
We watched him clamber through the distant hatch.
“There was taalk,” said Norman, “after Windy Miller.”
“K-keep away,” said Jakey.
Blister’s yell: “GET BLIDDY ON WITH IT!”
We got on. We cleared the depths. I had to keep pausing, had to stop myself trembling. Late afternoon, we climbed away towards the light. I fell, before we’d even reached the net, just a few rungs, just a few feet, but far enough to break my leg, to be annihilated for an hour.
My memory is of being fastened to a stretcher, of being raised. I’m horizontal, rising through the middle of the tank towards the light. I recall the birds. I recall the dust. I recall the light falling on me as I rise. I can’t fit through the gap. I’m being tilted. There’s a fear that I’ll slide right off and fall the full way. Someone grips my shoulders. Norman, whispering comfort, guiding me out.
“Come on, Dom,” he murmurs. “I won’t let ye faal again.”
Then I’m hauled out, tipped down onto the deck.
“Who the hell put him doon there?” is asked.
I was young. I came round fast. I was in hospital for just a few hours. They put on a plaster and took me home. They soon had to take the plaster off again, for the wound in the flesh was oozing pus.
“Nae wonder,” said Dad, “considering the place the faal occurred.”
He muttered about compensation, but it only made him laugh.
“Compensation? For a temporary worker? For a lad on his first damn day? Not a hope in bliddy Hell. It’s hard enough to get it for the folks of them like Windy Miller. And Blister? He’s spreading the tale that you were messin aboot like kids doon there. He’s askin, what was I diyin sending a lad like you to work like that? He’s yelling, what did I think would bliddy happen?”
He wanted to know if I blamed him. Should he not have sent me down? Was this all his stupid fault?
I told him I was pleased I’d gone into the tank, that I’d felt weirdly at home.
“You could have died,” he said.
“It was just a few feet.”
“That’s aal it teks.”
He kissed me and I felt his tears on my skin.
“We didn’t even get that pint in the Iona Club,” he said.
The damage was slight. I had to rest the leg. I lay on the sofa, kept up with reading, prepared for A levels. Chaucer, Herrick, Milton, Donne. I chanted the words to learn them. I read them in my own voice, and in the voice of Norman Dobson, in Jakey’s stammer, in McAlinden’s snarl.
Dr. Molly visited each week, bringing in the familiar smell of dog with her. Dad cared for me, cooked for me. He left me lunch when he went out to work each morning. He sat with me at evening time. He changed the dressings on my leg.
“How did it come to happen?” he asked one night.
“Eh?”
“All the ways you’ve turned out not like me.”
“But look at us. Two peas in a pod.”
“But it’s the inside things. The things you knaa, the things you think, the things you want. The things I haven’t got a clue aboot.”
Coals cracked and shifted in the grate.
“Born at different times,” I said, “I’d have been exactly you and you’d’ve been exactly me.”
“Can that be reet?”
“And born at different times I’d be your dad and he’d be me.”
“And who would I be?”
“His dad, or his dad’s dad.”
“Or your son, or your son’s son.”
I laughed. He laughed.
“Can that be true?”
“I divent knaa.”
“And nor do I. I divent knaa.”
“It’s aal a mystery, eh?”
“Aye, aal a mystifyin mystery.”
“Let’s have a drink.”
“Aal reet.”
Holly came, of course. We made love on the sofa and on my bed as the autumn winds strengthened outside, as rain pattered on the windowpanes, as autumn sunshine shone through the thin curtains.
“Me leg!” I’d gasp.
She’d laugh, and touch me gently, and breathe into my ear, “Relax, me poor bairn. It’s not a broken wing.”
Dad came home one evening with his eyes glittering.
“McAlinden,” he said. “He’s a goner.”
“A goner?”
“Got the push. He went for that lad Norman with a hammer. Reet in front of everybody.”
“But why?”
“Why d’ye think? Nae reason at aal, except the stupidness of him, except for Norman being a canny lad, and him being the stupid bliddy beast he’s aalways been.”
“Is Norman OK?”
“Oh aye. He swerved oot the way like a dancer. And his mates were with him, and they went for McAlinden aal together and got him doon. Who’d’ve thought them capable of such a thing?”
“Wonderful!” I said.
“Aye. Reet oot on the open deck. Even Blister couldn’t turn his face from that.”
“So they sacked him straight away?”
“Aye. Give him his cards reet there and then and sent him oot the gates.”
I smiled at the image of it.
“I’m amazed he’s lasted this lang,” said Dad. “But how’s the poor mother ganna manage now?”
I closed my eyes. Imagined McAlinden walking through the gates, leaving the river and the yard behind, climbing homeward towards the pebbledashed estate, seething with rage.
I tottered on crutches and got back to school. In the depths of a deep, dark sleety winter we read about the universities that we might go to.
Creel called us both to his office one day. Joyce was with him. They were smiling.
“We thought that perhaps you should try for Oxford, Holly,” said Creel.
“Not out of the question for you, too, Dominic,” said Joyce.
“It would be quite a triumph for the school,” said Creel. “And for yourselves and your families, of course.”
I thought of how awkward Dad had been on his visits to the grammar school. What would he be like in Oxford, in any university? I thought of my own awkwardness, my self-doubt. I thought of my thieving, my killing, my lying, my mask.
Holly was already shaking her head.
“No. Thank you. But I want to go to a modern place, a newly built place. And I think you do, too, Dom.” She turned and looked at me. “Don’t you?”
“I do,” I said.
“We’ll be the first of our families ever to go to university,” she continued. “We don’t want to live our lives according to ancient expectations.” She started to grin. “We don’t want to lose our northern souls!”
She paused. The teachers smiled.
“Go on, Holly,” Creel said.
“We don’t want to be chucked into some lovely stony place and steeped in years of history. Don’t want to wander through ancient courtyards, dine under portraits of ancient graduates, start an English course with Beowulf and end at Yeats. We don’t want to be seen as disadvantaged. We want to embrace our disadvantages and turn them into privileges.”
Creel laughed now. He beamed at her.
“Don’t we, Dom?” she said.
“Yes.”
“We are the children of our time,” she said. She laughed and spread her arms wide. “We want to be free to dance the dance of ourselves, to sing the song of ourselves, to be northern and flamboyant and touched with northern grace.”
We all laughed with her.
“We’ll pebbledash the world!” I said.
“Yes! We’ll fill it with the call of larks a
nd din of the yards and the bitter coldness of the sea, with the poetry and music of the North! Won’t we, Dominic? Won’t we!”
“Yes!” I answered. “Yes!”
“Yes,” said both the teachers.
We both put University of East Anglia as our first choice.
I laid out the application forms on the kitchen table and told Dad where he had to sign.
“You really want to gan, son?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“And you really think you’ll get there?”
“Yes, Dad. I really will.”
He took the pen from me and made his clumsy, hardly-ever-practised signature.
“That’s that, then,” he said.
He cracked a can of beer, lit a cigarette.
“I’ll keep on coming back,” I said.
“Will you?”
“Yes, Dad. I really will.”
We heard the battle in the McAlinden house: yelling voices and howling dogs and screaming kids and breaking glass. Bill and Dad went down. Vincent strode out of the door as they entered the gate.
“What you buggers after?” he snarled.
Bill looked towards the door. Mrs. McAlinden came out.
“You all right, love?” said Bill.
“Aye,” she gasped.
She watched Vincent muscle through the gate.
“Divent worry,” he said to her. “I’ll not be back.”
He slung a sack across his back and moved off down the rocky path.
“Better if ye’d died in me womb,” his mother sobbed. “Better if ye’d not been born.”
“You’re reet!” yelled Vincent as he walked away. “That’s the truth of it. I should’ve never been here. And now I’m off to bliddy Hell at last!”
He became a thing of rumour. There were tales of him carrying a soldier’s knapsack, dressed in a massive ripped greatcoat with dangling sergeant’s stripes on the shoulders. He led his sick dog on a rope. His hair grew long, matted, tangled. A scrawny beard grew. He was seen to sift through the rubbish in the town’s bins. There was talk of him drinking meths. When he was heard to speak, the sounds seemed formless, as if he was losing the power to form words at all.
In the estate, I’d hear children chanting beneath a streetlight as darkness fell, chanting their dread of Vincent just as we had once chanted our dread of his father: