by Ross Raisin
I tucked a bottle of water in the band of my kecks, and I was about done, ready to make off out the shop, when another thought stole into my brain–most the sarnies I’d took were prawn mayonnaise, but what if she wasn’t partial? There wasn’t sense in it, course, if I’d used a bit of gumption I’d have said to myself, how do you know she likes cheese and pickle, how do you know what sarnies she likes, except for pork and apple? But my gumption wasn’t strong enough to wrestle the thought out, and I started searching for anything different. Behind the counter was empty, they were still other side the shop, so I started fingering through the ones at the back. There were a couple of ham, and I pulled them from the shelf, but as I did it I knocked another packet off and it broke open on the floor, spilling shreds of lettuce on to the spanking clean tiles. Poor bald sod, he kept the place so tidy normaltimes, and I’d gone and made a muck-hole of it, but no matter–here he was coming round the aisle corner, ready to clean it up. He marked the sarnies sticking out my pockets and he clocked right away what was going on, shouting, oi, you thievin’ tyke! but he wasn’t so sure of himself to do anything on me, he just stood dithering, his bald slap gleaming beneath the light. I kicked the fallen sarnie at him and scarpered.
She was stood outdoors. Her eyes were hid from me by the lettering on the window but her mouth was open in a small circle, saying something, I couldn’t hear what. She looked like she was blowing out a candle. All I could hear was the bald sod behind going, oi, you, oi! I didn’t know what he thought he’d do if he caught me. I darted out the shop, snatching a tin of beans off a shelf as I ran out the door.
She was stood on the pavement still. Come on, quick, I told her, and I took hold her hand. Come on! I shouted, pulling her along with me–not that there was chance he’d catch us up, but I wanted to run away like we had the day before, laughing like half-brains. Greengrass! I shouted, get back here, you old devil, then I turned round and smashed the tin of beans through the shop window. We slowed a moment and watched as the window caved in like it was being sucked by a whirlpool, and shards of glass shattered on to the floor and into the boxes of onions and potatoes. Poor bald sod, he was holding his hands on his head, he thought he’d get scratches all over it.
We had to make a sprint for it then, folk would be popping their heads out of windows any moment–what’s all this racket? I’m drinking myself ill in here, you know, I can’t be doing with all this kerfuffle.
Come on! We ran down the street back the way we’d come. We kept on at a fair crack and I had to ease off time to time when I realised she couldn’t keep up so well and I was tugging at her arm. Greengrass! I shouted once, but when I looked across at her she wasn’t laughing, her face was fixed straight ahead. She needn’t have worried, no one was going to catch us now, we’d reached the oilseed fields, and when I glegged behind there wasn’t anybody in sight.
The path through the fields was too narrow for us to go side by side, so I had to let go her hand. We slowed to a walk, and I marked that my blood was pounding and my head spun a little when I looked about at the sea of yellow quivering all round. Then I noticed she’d stopped. She was twenty yards back, she must’ve flagged out after the running. I walked back toward her, tickling my palms along the tops of the oilseed, and I thought, maybe I’ll show her now what happens when you split the flowers open and the seeds spill out, but when I got closer I saw it wasn’t the time for that. She was bluthering.
You hurt me, she said, her cheeks slippery with tears. You broke my bracelet.
20
We returned to the wood, and rested out the afternoon, owing to it started raining. She hadn’t been too keen to stay there, but I told her it was sense to wait while the rain stopped, eat us sarnies, before we moved on. She must’ve understood finally that was the best way for it, because she didn’t fratchen with me, she followed as I led her into the more sheltered part the wood, where we seated up in a thicket of ash trees, using our bags as buffits. She was tetchy, though, I could tell. One point, she said we should go back, and I had to tell her she wasn’t being sensible. She kept herself lipped up then and whenever I spoke something to her, like–are you dry enough? Or, did you see him with his hands on his head?–she’d say, I’m fine, or else she wouldn’t say anything at all, just look in front at the soggy ground with a yonderly face on her.
We sat munching us sarnies in quiet, the rain pattering on to the leaves overhead. I needn’t have fussed about getting the wrong choice, I saw now, because she scranned down the prawn mayonnaise fair sharpish. I wished then that I’d took more, smuggled some in my bag as well, for we only had six between us and that wouldn’t last beyond tonight. She didn’t mawnge about it, though, just kept up her silence. I didn’t know what she was so bothered about. It was only a bracelet. It could probably be fixed and all. After we’d got back to the wood, I’d watched her as she unfastened the clasp and held it in front of her an age, fondling it round with her fingers to study where it was dented, demonstrating what a cruel bastard I was for mangling it. Then she’d opened up her bag and placed the bracelet on top for safe keeping. Once she’d done that she had nothing to show me what a bastard I was, so since then she’d spent the afternoon touching her wrist instead, finger-stroking where it had marked a band of red.
Who ever heard of a bracelet being so special as all that, was what I wanted to know? It looked cheap anyhow. Thin and tinny, faded, it was probably a present from the Cyclist. Then it hit me. It was him gave it to her. That was why she was so heart-sluffened I’d bent it. I watched her rubbing the wrist. She was only making it worse–it hadn’t been so red, firstly, it just needed leaving be was all, then the mark would quiet down. I stared at her, but she wouldn’t look over. She was lost with her thoughts. What’s Marsdyke ever given me, anyway? A prawn sandwich, anything else? No, that’s about the lot.
I’ll fix it for you, the bracelet, I said. I’ll take it in a shop, Whitby or someplace, have it fixed.
She carried on gawping ahead.
I don’t care about the bracelet.
Right you are, I thought, so why’ve you got a slapped arse of a face on you, then?
No, I’ll fix it, I told her. In Whitby or somewhere. We’re not too far away. I’ll show you when the rain stops, you can probably see it from one of the high parts, up on the Moors there.
We shut up a while, listening to the rain sile down. It’d be a time yet, before we got out the wood and I could show her that.
It’s only bent a little anyhow, I said.
I don’t care about the bracelet, I told you. It was from a Christmas cracker or something.
The set of her face didn’t even change when she said it, I marked, though she kept her gaze away from me. Christmas cracker, was it? What breed of nimrod did she think I was?
She fell asleep toward the end the afternoon. All she’d had to eat was a couple of prawn sarnies and a palmful of nettle flowers, so I wasn’t much capped she was drained already. She lay on top her bag with her eyes open a while, glazed over staring at the roof of the wood, until she drowsied away. Her head was drooped backward, with nothing to prop up on, her neck stretched taut and white, tendons running lines under the skin. What did it matter I hadn’t gave her a bracelet myself? It was a band-end gift, probably cost him less than a pound, and anyhow, she’d not done a great lot to earn it off me, was the way I should’ve been thinking, it wasn’t me spending them afternoons by the fire with her.
I didn’t much feel like sleeping, so I went for a walk round the outside the wood, never mind it was teeming still. Maybe clean some of the muck off me. I took the empty water bottle to fill up, and soon as I stepped in the open, I was drenched with warm, claggy rain, and I wondered if maybe we were in for a thunderstorm. We’d be holed up in that wood for a while longer if one came, and I was itching to get on, specially now as she had a munk on. She’d be right, once we were going again, I knew. I strayed a way off from the wood toward a higher point from where I could view down across the plain, not fu
ssing about the wet.
I reached the perch of land and scanned through the hagmist of rain, picking out what was visible below. Not Whitby, certain, or even the sea, the sky was that thick–mostly what I could see was the oilseed fields, not so bright and sparkly as earlier, dulled now, bleary, hugged around Garside, which was no doubting empty, all the folk retreated indoors with their beer bottles. Poor bald sod. He’d be mopping up floodwater until Christmas unless he’d got that window boarded up already.
A tiny drop of water was hanging off my eyelash. I blinked it off, trailing my view along the bank of hillside bordering the plain, and I marked a great sandy block sat halfway up, not far past the village–Garside Manor House. That was somewhere I’d not be taking her. I couldn’t even if I’d wanted, mind, for they didn’t let people in any more. When I was a sprog it used to be open for the public, they gave guided tours of the grounds and some of the rooms–herds of tourists gawking at tea sets and chandeliers with a hundred lights, and ropes stretched out to keep you from mucking the walls. Which poor bugger was it, had to replace the light bulbs each time they bust, was what I wanted to know? Not the family who owned the place, certain. They were too busy sat fuddled up in the private rooms, a giant coal-cob fire blazing as they blathered about the Glorious Twelfth and how much land they owned. Are you sure we don’t own the village? Are you really? Not even a part of it? How awful.
Before they stopped the tours, the family used to bunker up in them rooms while the goggle-eyes shuffled along other side the wall, staring at gold-framed paintings of the ancestors–a row of red-cheeked old bloaches with hair perms and grouse strung over their shoulders. All these stern faces sneering down. Well really, one of them is saying, his eyebrows snarled into crows’ nests, I certainly don’t approve of this–tourists trampling through the manor house. Quite so, pipes up Lord Lancaster the Second, from a painting further down the row, and have you seen? Chinese, some of them. Chinese, of all things.
Of all things, says Eyebrows.
It’s indecent, says Lord Lancaster.
You know, goes another bloach in the middle of the row, we did own the village once, back in the day. Eyebrows and Lord Lancaster lean in for a listen. Yes, he carries on, there was a time when you could look out from one of the south-facing windows, and as far as the eye would reach belonged to us.
The good old days, says Eyebrows.
The good old days, says Lord Lancaster.
I turned back toward the wood to go dry off, the whole my body slathered with rainwater. They got their good old days returned, them bloaches. A government subsidy, not long back–Maintenance of Sites with Historic or Special Interest, it’d said in the newspaper, and they closed the place up afterward. The bloaches were fain pleased, that day. Father wasn’t. Where the fuck’s t’ sense in that, giving all that brass to them fuckers? Tha can’t eat a manor, eh?
She was sat up, awake, when I got back. Just been off on a wander, I told her, and it seemed she wasn’t mardy any more, for she gave a quick laugh when I said that, probably owing as I looked a champion sight, sogged through as a newborn lamb. You’d have to be proper daft to go on a wander while it was siling down like this. She was right, it was funny, I had to laugh and all. I sat down on my bag-buffit and shuftied myself comfortable, spying over when she wasn’t looking, tracing an eye over the shape of her. She had her chin rested on her palm, and I could see that the red swell on her wrist had near died away. I knew it wasn’t so bad as all that. It’d only seemed so bad because she’d pestered at it.
We ate the rest the sarnies, her looking up into the dusk above the trees. It’d stopped raining, I marked. I hadn’t noticed until then because there were still raindrops sputtering down aside us, but that was just water caught in the trees, gathering on the leaf-ends, dripping off.
We settled for the night soon after, ready for an early start. I lay down, churning over my plans for the morning. Food–that was first thing on the list, I had to work out how we’d get enough to eat without too much palaver about it. We were less than a day’s walk from Whitby, and there’d be a vast of chances to sneak food there. We could even earn us some brass if we stayed long enough, kippering fish or something, so we’d be able to buy our food. I could get her bracelet fixed then and all.
Inside my head was too aflunters to sleep straight away, there was so much to get framed up. My brain cogged away with ideas, most of them daft–we could stay in a bed and breakfast, get fish and chips from that famous cafe, go on the Dracula tour. We’d rent a house, someplace small, the both of us could get jobs, go out to work daytime and have the nights to usselves, alone next the fire. I started to tire soon enough, the ideas that’d come in such a rush at first starting to ease off, the cogs slowing down to a halt. I dropped off, my thoughts lying scattered around my mind, and the smell of wild garlic drufting into my nostrils from some part the wood, woken up by the rain.
21
I got up early, feeling bruff, fit for anything. I could see outdoors the wood it was a gradely day. The rain clouds had buggered off west over the Moors to go piss on the Dales and it was belting bright and warm, perfect suited for us to get moving. Good morning, I told her, but she didn’t stir. I knew she was half awake, though, one portion of her brain left switched on same as a duck or a chicken roosting, always alert for Mr Fox or some other bastard might come along and catch her unawares. There wasn’t time to let her snoozing, though, I had to rouse her up, tell her the plan.
She jerked awake when I tigged her on the shoulder–don’t worry, I told her, it’s not Mr Fox, you stay lay down a while if you like. I’m going to fetch us breakfast. She looked at me, wary. Bloody marvellous, she was thinking, he’s going to bring back some nettle flowers, is he, or a handful of garlic? I put her straight, though. You wait here while I tread over to the next village, Ugglebarnby. I can’t likely go back to Garside–they’ll have the shop fixed up with barbed wire all round by now. I’ll bring us back some more sarnies, enough for a couple of days this time. She sat up, a patch of pink one side her forehead where she’d been laid. Her arm hurt, she said. I want to go back. Not now, I told her, but I didn’t say it sharp–I smiled at her, friendly–it’s too late for that, after what we’ve done. Then I told her my plans. About Whitby, and the Dracula Tour, and renting a place to stay, and I must’ve got het up explaining it all because she was tensed stiff, froze looking at me like a caught animal. It’ll be fine, I said, we just need to keep careful a while first, is all. Okay, she said. If you say so. When she said that, I filled my boots so swell I could’ve bust the leather.
Just you wait while I fetch breakfast, I said, grabbing up my bag. I was minded to run the whole way there and back, only she’d think I was even more touched than she already did, if she saw me bolting off.
I cracked on over the moorland, keeping high along the hillside brim of the plain, other side from the manor house, until I passed Garside below and I could see further on toward the coast. The landscape that direction was broken up with population as the valley lowered and flattened for Whitby, veined with the dark-green slits of tree-lined ghylls joining into the Esk. Not far off, down the hillside, was Ugglebarnby, and more on I could see other villages dotting a line eastward, sucking off the river as it wound to the sea.
Someplace lower down a cuckoo was calling, the sound lulling through the still. Cuck-coo, cuck-coo, a fair bonny noise it was, but that just got me thinking–how was it such a sweet-sounding creature could be such a miserly tyke, always looking for some other poor sod bird to dump its eggs on? It capped reason, that. And why didn’t the other birds have a bit more gumption, getting tricked so easy? You’d think they might mark one of the eggs was twice the size the others. Or, when they hatched, that there was one chick looked mighty different from the rest. Ee, he’s a big ugly bugger, that one, must take after your side the family.
It was quiet about when I got into the village, but not so quiet as it was in Garside. There were some locals around. Two old wo
men were resting up on a bench outdoors the pub, and a school-lad stood at the end of a garden path, his satchel by his feet. He was examining a bug crawling along the top the garden gate, nudging at it with his finger. I gave him the wink as I came past, but he was occupied with the bug and he ignored me. There was a shop, I saw now, up on the right, not far past the pub. I didn’t look on the old girls as I went by the bench, I kept my sight straight ahead, but they weren’t paying any heed to me anyhow, they were too busy nattering.
I hear tell he’s hired out t’ village hall for it.
Has he now?
He has. And he’s getting a mobile bar in.
By! Is he indeed? What’s that, then, mobile bar?
I don’t know. But clogs’ll be sparking that night, tha can be certain.
Their conversation trailed off as I reached the shop. All I’d do, once I was in there, I’d grab up a bagful of food and scarper. Let them chase me. I’d run them knackered, if I had to.
It took a couple of laps round the aisles before I was certain–it was empty. Shopkeeper had popped out, so I took my chance to stock up–sarnies, crisps, pork pie, scotch eggs, sausage rolls, apples, and two big bottles of water. I checked about, but there was no one coming still and I thought maybe I’d pile in some more, keep us going for a week, but then it started fixing in my head that maybe one of the old girls owned the shop, or the both of them did, and part of me didn’t feel right taking too much, so I fastened my bag and made off. And I saw her face. I knew it was her, immediate, I wasn’t dreaming it up. I bent down for a closer look, and the first thing I thought, before my head got befuddled all these other questions trying to cram inside same time, was how happy she looked. The photograph wasn’t took long ago, from the looks of her, but she was wearing a different school uniform, so I knew straight off it was took in London. She had a smile on her I hadn’t seen before and it jabbed at me sudden that she’d never looked like that with me. I shelved it, mind, when I glegged the headline.
