by Helen Mort
She woke up and she was gripping the door of the police car, breathing hard. Christ. It must have been something on the radio. A testimony from one of the ambulance drivers at Hillsborough, something she’d caught early this morning as well. But why did it always feel like a memory? The stadium was in her, somehow. Poisoning her. It had got into her blood.
She didn’t go back to sleep. Dave had a newspaper supplement in the back and she read about the seven things that happy people never do. Happy people do not complain. Happy people do not compare themselves to other people. Happy people do not live in the past. She read until she felt like there must be a great Tribe of the Happy that existed somewhere, an exclusive club that wouldn’t admit anyone she knew. Happy people do not avoid mirrors. Happy people don’t stand on rooftops until the afternoon’s not the afternoon. Happy people don’t always have the same nightmares.
When Dave came back, he had brought her a coffee and a doughnut, balanced on top of it so the glaze had almost melted. She smiled at him. She said Thank you, and meant it.
Alport Castles
I’d like to reach out to them, but I can’t. I send a breeze across the grass in front of them instead and it shivers slightly, not like a person would shiver but like ice juddering when it enters a glass: shudder, pause, blink and you miss it. They’re sitting close together, but not quite against one another. The tall one says the other woman’s name a lot, Caron, and it always sounds like a question. If Caron touched her now, I don’t know what she’d do. Touch like a jumper with static electricity in it. Touch like a cold plate that you thought was warm. Sometimes, they say my name, too, and Caron asks Why is it called a castle? I don’t know, either. Some of my rocks are shaped like battlements, but others are just hunched, unremarkable. They are easy to read, these two, as easy as weather from the north-west, the patterned movements of the sheep. They both love the city, but they have to get out of it, again and again, drawn to places where no one asks questions. They both wake up at 3.17 a.m. with the urge to keep driving, past the all-night garages and service stations, dark lay-bys with emergency phones. Not silent places, just places without words, without people who want to describe them back. My trees twitch. A rabbit scuttles for cover. After a while, they run out of things to say to each other. They pick at the grass, only one of them seems unhappy. They sit together all afternoon until dusk.
Leigh
Leigh waited for Tom in the dark outside Pete’s birthday party. She never thought he’d say yes, never thought he’d come. Perhaps it would be easier if he didn’t turn up. The barn was on a hill above Hathersage, down a track that you could miss if you weren’t local or if you were too pissed. By day, there was a sign that advertised ice creams from the farm in improbably bright colours. The door to the barn was open and she could hear Motown music and whoops. Pete’s voice, which had a way of carrying through any room.
They’d pinned a sign to the railings outside, along with some half-arsed bunting. It said BRING BEER OR FUCK OFF. There were other signs, some saying 60 TODAY and some saying 21 TODAY, along with a balloon that read CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR NEW BABY. Nobody really knew Pete’s age.
She saw Tom’s car pull up in the car park. Her heart skipped.
‘What, did you think I was joking? Where’s the party at?’
He unloaded a box of Carling from the boot, took one out and threw it at her. She grinned despite herself, despite everything.
‘I hope you’re ready to barn dance.’
‘Always.’
She opened the ring pull and fizzy beer volcanoed down her arm and on to her jeans.
Inside, Pete was by the food table, eating a sausage roll. He nodded at them, gave Leigh a wink and kept his distance. Some lads were trying to climb up the beams of the barn roof. One had taken his shirt off. They were monkeying across the room, using just their arms and the occasional heel hook.
‘Who invited Tarzan?’ Tom was too close to her, she could feel her body responding to his. She pulled away.
‘God knows. Pete probably got bored in the shop this afternoon and started asking everyone to come.’
‘So when do I get to meet the birthday boy? It’s weird, I’ve heard so much about him.’
‘He’ll be around. Soon.’
The room was divided. There was the usual clutch of climbers, a patchwork of blokes from Pete’s younger days with beer guts and knackered hands, but some of them lithe and quick, still in the game, still climbing harder than men half their age. There was a small table in the corner with some of Pete’s relatives from Wakefield, a tall woman in navy stilettos and a fur throw around her shoulders who might be his sister and who looked like the walk up the track had killed her. Then there was a bunched group of men whom she couldn’t place, about Pete’s age, sharing a carry-out of Hobgoblin. Their lumpy brown jumpers and tucked-in shirts gave nothing away. She looked for someone she recognised, for Stretcher and the boy who wasn’t his son, for some of the staff from work, but there was nobody. She was a corner of Pete’s world, on her own. Except Tom was beside her. His hand hovering on the small of her back.
‘Can I get you some food?’
She had never introduced Tom to her friends. She was used to bars where they made themselves an island, or anonymous, busy places away from Sheffield. They’d never been for dinner. She wondered, with a start, if he’d ever even seen her eat. She shook her head. She couldn’t bear his reassuring smile, the firmness of his touch, the new certainty of it.
He disappeared and she stood on her own for a moment, feeling self-conscious in her short-sleeved T-shirt and denim. She hugged herself, but that only made her wiry arms stand out more, the thin muscles that ridged them. She caught her own reflection in the window and it shocked her, pale. Skinnier than she believed. Leigh didn’t keep full-length mirrors. Never had. She could feel Pete’s relatives looking at her, the stare of the women prickling over her from her wrong-angled hair to her dirty UGG boots. For the first time in years, she wished she’d made more of an effort. Lip gloss. Eyeliner. That thing you could do with it at the corner of your eyes, like a trick. She could hear her mum whispering For Christ’s sake, Leigh-Ann, you could try to look like a woman. Feel her fingers gripping her arm.
She started. It wasn’t her mother. It was Tom, cradling her elbow and handing her a whisky.
‘It’s Laphroaig. I got it from one of the cupboards. Don’t think I was meant to find it.’
They touched glasses.
‘Sláinte.’ Tom always said it. At first, she’d thought he was saying slang.
‘What does that even mean?’
‘Cheers. Good health. My uncle taught it me. I’m half-Scottish you know.’
‘I bet your uncle was having a laugh. I bet it means dickhead or something.’
They laughed, and the laugh turned into a kiss, him holding the back of her head, gently, his other hand on her hip. One of those kisses that feels like a dance. She breathed him in.
Sometimes she knew that this was what she wanted. To be half of someone else’s life. To be in a spotlight she could duck out of. Having someone and not having them. When Tom talked about leaving his girlfriend, she got a stab of fear in her stomach. She didn’t want the beam to be turned on her. Not all of it. Or she wanted it and she was afraid. Dazzled. It was easier, having a part-time heart. She thought about Caron, what it must be like to put your trust in so many people. Tell the world you loved each of them. Pledge your honesty, not once, but time and again. Whenever she thought about it, she was filled with something like admiration. Then she remembered that Caron had secrets, Caron was always ducking out of something, too.
Everyone was drunker now. There was some kind of ceilidh dance going on, rhythms stamped through the barn floor. People were being chucked around. Leigh and Tom stood on the fringe of it, tapping their feet and nodding in time, until a fat balding bloke in a leather jacket that would have suited him twenty years ago grabbed her and pulled her into the throng. The music was terrible
. It sounded like ‘Cotton-Eye Joe’. The man looped his arm through hers and skipped her round the room.
‘Are you his niece?’ he yelled.
‘Who?’
‘Gobshite’s.’ He nodded towards Pete, who had both his hands in the air and was wearing someone else’s straw hat.
‘God, no.’
‘Good for you. You don’t want to end up looking like that ugly bastard.’ He erupted at his own joke.
‘How do you know him?’
‘We worked together. Police.’
Leigh tried to mask her surprise.
‘South Yorkshire?’
‘Yeah.’ He was panting for breath now and they limped to the edge of the dance floor. Something in his face had darkened. He put his hands on Leigh’s shoulders. ‘You mean he’s never mentioned his sexy ex-colleague?’
She shook her head, slowly.
‘Good for him.’
A new tune started up. Before she had time to find Tom, Pete loomed over her shoulder and scooped her up, started boogying round the room with her. Everything she wanted to say got dropped along the way. He lifted her feet off the floor.
‘Let me go, you daft bastard.’
‘Light as a feather!’
‘Happy birthday, Pete.’
‘I’m glad you came,’ he was shouting in her ear as he carried her. She could feel his grip slipping a bit. ‘And I’m glad you brought him as well. He looks all right.’
They’d done a full circuit of the dance floor, he set her down at Tom’s feet with a thump.
‘Special delivery, sir.’
‘You must be Pete. I’m Tom.’
‘Hey, look after this one, won’t you, Tom. She’s a diamond.’ He had his serious face on. He turned to Leigh. ‘Good looking lad, eh? He’ll do. You know, I always thought you swung the other way. Had you down for one of my daughter’s lot.’
She was going to say What?, but her mouth didn’t get the chance.
The door swung open and bounced off the wall. It was the lad from Stanage. The one with bile-coloured trousers. He shuffled in, poured himself a whisky and sat in the corner. Flushed and tipsy, she felt a sudden rush of compassion towards him, hunched over in his soft shell jacket. She remembered him shaking up there on The Right Unconquerable, trying to keep a lid on it. In a crowd, he looked even more like a child. Tom was laughing with some of Pete’s relatives. The policeman was dancing furiously with a woman with a vertiginous perm, pivoting her round on one arm while she yelled Behave yourself! Leigh went over to the lad and pulled up a chair opposite him.
‘All right?’ she said and he nodded. ‘Come from the crag?’
‘Been soloing,’ he muttered. ‘Higgar Tor. Not long back from France, bouldering – can’t get used to the rock here.’
‘I prefer Burbage. Less midgy.’ She tried to raise her glass to his. She realised she still didn’t know his name. ‘Cheers, anyhow. What have you done with Stretch?’
The lad turned his glass around in his hands. ‘Stretch can’t make it tonight.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Leigh. ‘Still in the Alps?’
The lad wouldn’t look at her. ‘He’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘Call came through today. His brother. Must have gi’d him my number when we were in Chamonix, his own phone never worked. When I left he was planning something on the Aiguille du Dru.’
He said it as if he was describing the start of a climbing route, or explaining new damage to his car.
She swore under her breath, then she glanced over at Pete. ‘Does he know?’
The lad shook his head and shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say.’
Leigh remembered her last glimpse of Pete and Stretch at Stanage, leaning towards each other, wonky and familiar, like someone holding a lighter to a cigarette. She couldn’t hate the boy for his coolness. There was a strange, half-logic to it, a survival mechanism. Move on or go under. Pete was at the buffet table, clinking pint glasses with Tom. She moved towards him and gently put her hand on his back.
Kinder
I can’t tell you which way to go. In the mist, everything is featureless. You could run close to the edge and step straight off. Only the Woolpacks let you know where you are, lumps and curves, surrounded by boggy ground. They’re unmistakable, but only when the fog lifts enough for you to spot them. When it snows, even the shape of Jacob’s Ladder is hidden, disguised under a cold, glittering canopy. In winter, ice-climbers test themselves against frozen waterfalls on the west side and some of them shear off, axe placements failing. The ground and the sky are indistinguishable. There’s a gathering darkness, a huge bulk to the north that might be a plateau, but might be the rusting body of an aircraft, sinking into the hillside, a flight that went off course in the night, decades ago. There’s a man alone with a wiry sheepdog, holding a map. The dog is nervy and alert. On the approach from Hayfield, past the reservoir, there’s another man in a coat too light for the weather. He has no map, no compass and no rucksack. He walks slowly, leaning in to the hill. The path vanishes and then he does – no footprints on the spine of the ridge, no proof, no breath in the air.
Alexa
Alexa was tired. Her eyes felt like marbles in her head. She was trying to make herself small in the staffroom, but she was heavy. Sue tapped her on the shoulder.
‘Didn’t you hear that? You’re with me today, I’m afraid. We’re on my beat.’
‘Parson Cross?’
‘Yeah. I’m kidnapping you. I’m at full stretch. With the Section 30 on Page Hall, they’re running riot up there. Kids. I need all the help I can get. Come on, quick. Before Masterplan Apsley sees us.’
In the car, Sue turned the radio up. It was ABBA. Alexa stared out of the window at mothers pushing prams and women shouting into mobile phones and men with their hoods hiding their faces. She wished she had a hood today. As they turned off towards Parson Cross everything felt a bit greener and emptier, but it was a bleak kind of greenness, not the peace you associated with villages and rural places. Sue spoke only to complain about the Section 30.
‘I mean, it’s great for Page Hall and that, but what’s going to happen when it gets lifted?’
‘It’s not great. Not really. Now we’ve got a Section 30 there, they’re expecting miracles from us. The Asian community, especially. They think it means we can sort stuff out.’
‘I’ll tell you what it means. It means no one on patrol in Parson Cross. Just me, on me tod.’
The Section 30 was Inspector Apsley’s latest scheme to calm things down in Page Hall. He’d got it approved by the District Commander last week. It gave them the power to break up groups who might commit anti-social behaviour and place a curfew on teenagers. But only for six months. Alexa had been charged with putting the signs up all around the area, fixing them to lamp posts with black wire. Nobody read them. Or if they did, nobody understood. They just walked past her and said things like We want our streets back. Some of the Roma couldn’t read them at all.
They went past the huge, vacant pub and the small park. Sue swung the car towards a clutch of shops. Outside, a group of lads not much older than fifteen or sixteen were buzzing, listening to tinny music on a phone. Some of them were wearing baseball caps and some of them were wearing baggy jumpers and they were all in the same trainers. When they saw the police car, they started jeering. One of them pumped his fist in the air. Another threw a can at the windscreen. Sue’s face tightened, as if someone was pulling her backwards by her hair.
Parson Cross was white. Working class. Parson Cross was full of boredom.
Sue got out of the car and slammed the door and Alexa followed her. The lads howled with laughter.
‘It’s PC Slag! Who’s your friend?’
‘We didn’t think you’d got friends.’
‘Your friend’s fit.’
‘I’d do her.’
One of them started making sex noises as his mate humped the air.
‘Move!’ yelled Sue. ‘Now.
’
‘Where to?’ The boy’s face was still round with puppy fat, but his eyes were sharp. His breath smelled cidery.
‘Anywhere but here. You’re not supposed to be here.’
‘What you going to do about it?’ said a thin voice from the back of the group. ‘You can’t do fuck all. There’s no Section 30 now.’
They all whooped and hollered at this.
‘We’ve had complaints about you from the shop owners.’ Sue sounded like she was trying to keep a lid on her voice. Her words were coming out strangled. ‘You’ve been intimidating the customers. You’re not supposed to be hanging round the shops. Come on, lads, don’t make this difficult.’
‘Where are we meant to go?’ the fat boy said again. ‘There’s fuck all to do round here.’
‘Try looking for a job.’
‘Will your mate give me a job? Bet she’s reet good at them.’
Alexa could feel her cheeks colouring and she hated herself for it. She hated herself for just standing there, rooted to the spot, while Sue spoke for her, standing there like a neon fucking bollard or a statue that people piss up. She folded her arms. As if that would help.
The fat boy leaned towards Sue. He was all sourness now. ‘Yeah, you think it’s funny, don’t you? When’s the last time you saw any work? Round here? It’s a joke.’
