The Tightrope Walkers

by David Almond

Martins swept over us, screaming.

  We went to Dr. Molly.

  The two dogs watched us from below the desk.

  “I could sign the papers,” she said. “You’d go to the clinic in Durham and it could all be over within the week.”

  She rested her chin on the arch of her fingers.

  She pondered. She reached down to stroke her dogs.

  “The things that are absent in the world,” she said, “are often as potent as the things that are here. The dead, of course. Your mother, for instance, Dominic. All those young lives lost in Burma or in France. My brother Robert killed at Monte Cassino at eighteen years old. They linger endlessly, the dead. You could be free of this mess. You could go forward with your life and go to university. You could have many children later. Balance this against the thought that you might be forever haunted by the dreams of how this child might have been, how its face might be, how its voice might sound. But maybe that’s the price to pay. There are no answers, Holly. That’s the only answer. And it’s your body, your child. You are the one who has to choose.”

  She smiled.

  “And I could help to arrange adoption, too.”

  She looked down at the dogs at her feet.

  “What do you two think?” she asked.

  They growled fondly.

  “Ah,” she told them. “How very wise.”

  We lay on the sofa in her living room.

  “How strange. I’ve been dreaming of university, of New York, California, and I find that the undiscovered world is right inside myself. Hello, my little one. Not yet born and you’re already changing the world!”

  She laughed.

  “How could I abandon you?” she said.

  I put my ear to her womb, and heard gurglings and groanings and the endless din of running blood.

  “Hello, little’n,” I whispered.

  “Jesus Christ,” Holly whispered. “I’m really going to do this, aren’t I?”

  “Seems so.”

  She put her hands across her belly. She closed her eyes.

  “Can you hear, little one?” she said. “I promise I won’t let you go.”

  Holly and I held hands as we walked into the examination room. Her belly was already as taut and smooth and beautiful as the curved shell of an egg. Creel greeted us. He guided Holly to her desk, then stood at the front of the room before the time to start.

  “Work hard,” he told us. “Work hopefully. Be modest but aim high. We are proud of you all. Remember that you carry the aspirations of those who have gone before and that you create the world for those yet to come. You may begin.”

  We were both accepted by UEA.

  “You could go,” said Holly. “You should go.”

  Dad said the same.

  I imagined striding away alone along the wire, turning back to see where Holly was, but knew it shouldn’t be me, it couldn’t be done.

  We wrote with our explanation. We said we’d love to come later if we could. Later? we asked each other. When the baby was at school? When we were old? When we were retired?

  A response came back. They were sorry to hear about this. Yes, they’d consider another application in the future, perhaps in a few years’ time. There was a leaflet with information about a small number of rooms for families on the campus: normally for postgraduates, but one or two exceptions had been made.

  “What’s it now, then?” sighed Dad. “Wedding bells?”

  It’s how things were usually done. A quick wedding, a night’s honeymoon at Whitley Bay, a narrow bed and a hand-me-down cot in the spare room of a pebbledash house, then two skinny kids pushing another kid in a worn-out Silver Cross.

  “Shall we marry?” I asked her, as her mother wailed upstairs and Bruce Forsyth pranced on the TV. Bill and Dad were at the Three Tuns, exclaiming in their different ways at the weirdness of the world.

  We talked of marrying on the hill, beside the heavenly rock, with Jack Law as silent minister and skylarks as the choir. Or on Beadnell Beach between dunes and surf, with moon above, bonfire blazing, lighthouse turning, the songs of Joni Mitchell. Or we’d wait until the baby came and have her christened at the moment we were wed.

  We did it in Gateshead Register Office on a rainy Wednesday morning. Holly was five months gone. She wore a white Laura Ashley smock. We both wore silver rings and strings of dyed sunflower seeds around our necks. Our dads were there, and Dr. Molly, Creel, Joyce, Tash McGuire, Tonto Flynn and Bella Carr. Afterwards, in the office lobby, Bella sang “Morning Has Broken” in a high and lovely voice.

  We had chicken in the basket and bottles of Valpolicella at the Springfield Hotel on Durham Road. We all got tipsy. Bill and Dad put their arms around each other’s shoulders, told Geordie jokes, sang Northumbrian songs.

  “Keep your feet still, Geordie hinny,

  Let’s be happy through the neet

  For we may not be sae happy though the day . . .”

  They left arm-in-arm and took a taxi back across the hill to the Iona Club.

  Holly and I stayed in the hotel that night, in a soft, warm bed in a room with red velvet curtains and red flock walls. We drank a little bottle of champagne. We made love carefully, tenderly, the first time we’d been together in a bed like this, the first time we’d been properly three.

  Next day we went to the council offices, filled in an application for a flat in Buckingham House 1, one of the almost-completed tower blocks that rose in the eastern sky.

  A new start. A bed from the Shephards of Gateshead. An electric cooker from Swan’s Used Gold. An ancient leather sofa and cracked Victorian desk from Howie’s Yard. Blankets from my house. Pillows from Holly’s. A pine table and a pair of stools made in the back garden by Bill Stroud. A bookcase made by Dad. Kettle, pans, a medley of crockery and cutlery.

  Bill talked of hiring a Transit, but the roads weren’t finished yet. And there wasn’t much, and it wasn’t to be carried far. We strapped it to our backs, balanced it between us, spent a whole day tramping back and forth like refugees: away from our houses, through the estate, across the lower wasteland, past the Queen’s Head, across the top of the square, past Buckingham House 2 and Buckingham House 3, past the bulldozers and kerb layers and road layers and cranes, across the field of rubble leading to the wired-glass entrance. Through the wide door and into the lift. Press 11. The lift shuddered as it rose, jerked as it stopped, creaked as it opened. Number 116. Three large rectangular magnolia rooms and a kitchen opening to a balcony right on the corner of the building.

  When the moving was done, I went back for Holly and asked her to accompany me into the sky.

  We arranged our books on the shelves. We Blu-tacked our A-level certificates on the wall alongside posters of City Lights bookstore, Dylan, 2001, and Holly’s paintings and drawings of us all.

  We hung thin net curtains across the wide windows. We put Pink Floyd on the record player, we laughed and sang and danced and swayed through the rooms to Ummagumma. Stood on the balcony. The other blocks were fifty yards or so away. We saw the great grey cement sheets that formed each one, the lines of black tar in between, the steel rods, straight steel girders, the multitude of windows. There were people on other balconies, unknowable faces at other windows. We gazed at each other across the gulfs between. Beyond the great bulk of the blocks, beyond their sharp vertical edges, we could see the ring of pebbledash in which we’d grown and the playing fields and wastelands all around.

  “Welcome to your new home,” we whispered to the hidden child at the heart of everything.

  We felt it kick. We laughed.

  Workmen dangled in a cage from a crane on the roof and pressed loud pneumatic hammers at great rivets or bolts in the walls. A cockerel called from a balcony close by. The wind rose and spun through the canyon between the blocks, and the whole of our building shivered in response.

  “You’re back?” said Blister.

  “You’re back?” said Norman Dobson.

  “You’re bliddy b-back?” said Jak
ey.

  “The word is it might not even be yours!” said Silversleeve.

  “Get a move-on!” shouted Blister.

  “And ye married her?” said Silversleeve.

  “We’re trainin up the new lad!” yelled Norman.

  “Is that r-reet?” said Jakey.

  “NOW!” yelled Blister.

  “Aye,” I said.

  “B-bugger me,” said Jakey.

  “The word is it might be Vincent McAlinden’s!” said Silversleeve.

  “Aye,” I said.

  “Here’s your mask,” said Norman. “Here’s your brush.”

  “B-bugger me!” said Jakey.

  “And there’s your shovel,” said Norman.

  “Ye married her?” said Silversleeve.

  “Aye.”

  “NOW!” yelled Blister.

  “AAL REET!” yelled Norman.

  “NOW!”

  “WE’RE COMIN! LOOK! WE’RE BLIDDY OOT!”

  “Bugger me,” sighed Silversleeve.

  “B-bugger m-me,” sighed Jakey.

  “And I thought ye were Einstein,” sighed Norman.

  “More like Coco the Clown,” said Silversleeve.

  “Bliddy Coco,” said Norman.

  He sighed.

  “So much for the eleven-plus!”

  Out we went. Up onto the ship we went. Stopped on a ledge of scaffolding halfway up.

  “In we gan,” said Norman, clambering through a hole in the steel.

  “You’re in luck,” said Silversleeve.

  “Luck?”

  “Confined space and f-filth allowance,” said Jakey.

  “So tek it slow,” said Norman.

  We slithered in.

  “If ye find ye cannot breathe, give us a yell,” said Norman.

  We laughed.

  “At least ye cannot f-faal,” said Jakey.

  We slithered down through the double hull, clambered past welders and riveters, through the din and stench, slid on our backs through another narrow gap into the double bottom.

  “Ee,” said Silversleeve. “It’s just like bein back inside your mam.”

  “ARE YEZ IN?” yelled Blister from somewhere far away.

  “Get brushin, lads,” said Norman. “But not too fast.”

  “Ye married her?” said Silversleeve.

  “ARE YEZ IN?”

  “NO!” yelled Norman. “WE’RE ON THE BLIDDY BEACH!”

  I fell easily into the rhythm of it, as if I’d been born for it. Wake early, kiss Holly, murmur greetings to the invisible child, make tea and a bacon sandwich, make bait, leave home, descend in the wobbly lift, walk down through the streets towards the river, down towards the gates, the huge half-built ship. Carry a notebook always, scribble lines in it, scribble notes about the sights and sounds. Write that a new world is dawning as the baby grows.

  These were end times on the Tyne. Falling orders, closing yards, men laid off. Ships being built more quickly and efficiently in Korea, Japan, Taiwan. It didn’t seem to matter to the cleaning gang.

  “There’s always a place,” said Norman Dobson, “for them that’s happy to deal in dirt.”

  The year declined. Mornings darkened. Wind whipped along the Tyne and rain and sleet began to fall. On dark days the shipyard sparkled with welding rods, oxyacetylene burners, braziers, arc lights, torches, with the strip lights that illuminated the wide windows of the drawing office. Foghorns and river bells sounded. I wore layers of pullovers beneath my boiler suit, woollen hat, thick gloves. I crawled through filth, through fallen birds, nests of mice. I grew closer to my companions. At break times we huddled around braziers or inadequate electric fires in draughty sheds.

  I scribbled in my book.

  “He’s putting us in a b-book,” said Jakey.

  “Or he’s a gaffer’s bliddy spy,” said Silversleeve.

  “No,” said Norman. “He always was a good lad. He’ll always be against the gaffers and the teachers.”

  He leaned close, shyly, afraid to be intrusive.

  “Are you trying to copy, boy?” I whispered.

  “Hell’s teeth,” he answered. “I remember that.”

  I touched his arm, pointed to his name, then showed him Jakey’s and Silversleeve’s. They shuffled closer, looked as well.

  “T-telt ye,” said Jakey.

  “ARE YEZ OOT?”

  “Bugger off!” I muttered.

  I copied his words in capitals.

  ARE YEZ OOT?

  They watched.

  “Keep on the lines,” whispered Norman.

  “I will.” I smiled.

  “AA SAID ARE YEZ OOT?”

  I wrote his words again. They watched.

  “Bugger off,” I muttered.

  “Tell him proper, man,” said Silversleeve.

  “BUGGER OFF, BLISTER!” I yelled.

  I wrote it as I yelled.

  “BUGGER OFF, BLISTER!”

  We giggled as we stood up to go back into the cold.

  “That’s better, Coco,” said Silversleeve. “You’re gettin the lingo reet at last.”

  “See what diligence and care and attention can do,” said Norman.

  We went out.

  “ARE YEZ OOT?”

  “ARE YE BLIND?”

  At shift’s end we’d line up at the gates till they creaked open at last. Sometimes I’d meet Dad in the Iona Club, where the bar would be lined with freshly drawn pints as the men poured in.

  “This isn’t it, is it?” he said one dusk as hailstones clattered against the windowpanes.

  I swigged the beer, felt its lovely bite as it fizzed past the sediments in my throat.

  “It?”

  He lit a cigarette. He glared at it.

  “I’ll get the better of these buggers yet,” he said.

  He inhaled, breathed out, sighed in satisfaction and frustration. I swiped my lips and drank again.

  “For you,” he said. “Is this it for you?”

  “Course it’s not. Just till the baby comes. Just till we’re on our feet.”

  “Ye could gan to the ministry. Start at the bottom, work your way up. Even gan to the shipping office in the yard. Or some bliddy other office somewhere bliddy else. Somethin that’s not cleanin the tanks like yer grandfather did.”

  I shrugged.

  “Don’t want to work in an office, Dad.”

  “So ye gan reet back to the bliddy start?”

  “It feels right, Dad, for now.”

  “Life slips by, ye knaa.”

  “We’ll still go on. It’s just we’ll have a bairn to take with us.”

  He grunted. He stubbed out the cigarette.

  “And what kind of a burden will that turn out to be?”

  “The same burden I have been to you.”

  He shook his head. He admired his glass against the strip light in the ceiling.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured.

  Then tipped the beer to his mouth and drank.

  “I sometimes think you’ve got a bliddy death wish, lad,” he said.

  “I knaa. Let’s have another pint.”

  Ice floes on the river, ice on the decks, ice on the rungs of the ladders. Frozen filth in the tanks and in the double hulls. Frozen sandwiches, frozen half-eaten pies, frozen scarves, newspapers, cigarette butts. Bodies of birds like feathered rocks. Mouse babies turned to stone within minutes of their birth. All of it frozen, coagulated and congealed. We wore gloves, hats, balaclavas, scarves. We put newspaper into our boots. We carried hammers, chisels, crowbars to break the ice and wrench it away. We were scoffed at by the other workers as we went down into the depths to perform our filthy tasks and as we came out again. But we were grinned at as well. We were the tank lads, the double-bottom lads, the dirty lads, the scum. Often it seemed that the colder and filthier it became, the happier we were. We grunted and screamed like wild things, we wielded our tools like ancient weapons. We clapped each other’s cheeks to bring back the warmth and to chastise and to play and in amon
g it all to dare display affection. We giggled as we called each other love and petal and dickhead and hinny and cunt. We cursed our fellow workers. We yelled that they were a bunch of bliddy wasters, that they had the life of bliddy Riley, that they were the bosses’ spawn, the gaffers’ pets. They didn’t have a c-clue what what proper g-graft was. We made obscene gestures and threw curses towards the windows of the drawing office and the barred windows of the owners and managers higher up. We told Blister to get lost, to go to hell.

  Fairy lights shone from the jibs of cranes. Scrap-metal Christmas trees stood on the decks. Baubles and tinsel dangled and swayed. We swigged from hip flasks of cheap whisky and brandy to bring the illusion of warmth and to toast each other and to filthily start our Christmas celebrations. It was Christmas Eve morning and I was curled up in the depths of the hull when the message came. How had it got to me? I never knew. The message came from the outside, was passed across the yard, onto the ship, down through welders and caulkers, down through the confined spaces, the tangle of men and cables and oxygen tanks and filth.

  Is Coco doon there?

  Coco Hall?

  Aye, him!

  He’s doon there somewhere with the dirt monkeys.

  Tell him his lass has gone in!

  Eh?

  His lass! She’s gone in!

  Coco! COCO! COCO HALL!

  I clambered out. Out towards the hole in the ship’s side, out through the hole, down the ladder. I heard Blister yelling something after me but I didn’t turn. Hurried across the yard towards the locked gates, went to the gatekeeper’s hatch.

  “I’ve got to gan,” I said.

  “Oh, aye?”

  “Me baby’s on the way.”

  “Oh, aye?”

  “I’ve got to be there.”

  “Oh, aye?”

  “Let me oot.”

  He pointed to his clock.

  “Wait twenty minutes, son, and ye won’t get docked.”

  “Let me oot.”

  “I cannot. Not without a . . .”

  I turned away. I climbed the gates. He came out after me, yelled after me, cursed me. I dropped down on the other side and ran.

  Ran uphill towards the town. There was ice on the pavements, slush thrown from the roadway. Dark clouds hung heavy and low over everything. All sound was muted. Lights dimly shone. The summit of the town and the summits of Buckingham House 1, 2 and 3 were lost in the sky. The hospital was nothing but a bulky shadow in the gloom. Sleet started to fall. Kids and drunks were singing carols. I passed a priest who called out, “Blessings upon you, Dominic!” Someone else called something to me but I couldn’t turn. I hurried towards the towering hospital past an ambulance with its amber light spinning and with a body on a stretcher illuminated inside. Through the door.