The Narrows

by James Brogden

  ‘Let them be opened!’ came the chorus, ragged and fervent.

  The needleman leaned in again. ‘This, though,’ he whispered, ‘this is the real thing. I’m genuinely indebted to you. It’s been an honour.’

  They opened Dodd then, seven times, emptying his blood onto the inscribed stone at his feet, and beyond the physical torment there was a sensation of voiding, of being hollowed, which was almost orgasmic, as though his soul were ejaculating itself into darkness.

  He touched water briefly one last time, skipped, and never came back down.

  When it was done they lowered him reverently into the pit and waited for the empty vessel of his body to be filled.

  4 Moon Grove

  Bex awoke to the smell of baking bread and was immediately, ravenously hungry.

  Moon Grove’s large dormitory room – nicknamed ‘Butlins’ because of the chaotic jumble of bunk-beds, hammocks, and random mattresses on the floor – was warm with a drifting mid-afternoon silence.

  Everybody would be out scavenging what they could in these last few hectic weeks before Laying Up, except for Ceridwen – known to all as Kerrie the Kook – and her kitchen tarts, who were no doubt baking enough to feed a besieged army, and for much the same reason. The scavengers would be back before night fell and took the temperature with it. Some old faces wouldn’t return, and some new ones would appear to take their places – the population of Butlins would replenish itself completely within the weeks as people found other places to stay, moved on, returned, or discovered the Grove for the first time.

  Bex thought she had gotten used to this, having been here for six months, but she never imagined that she’d outstay any of the more permanent residents like Dodd. There was a lot about the last twenty-four hours that she hadn’t imagined.

  As the Moon Grove equivalent of an old-timer, she’d earned a place high up on the third tier of bunks, close enough to the ceiling that her shoulders brushed it every time she rolled over. Last night should have seen her fully accepted as one of the Narrowfolk proper, rather than just another itinerant scavenger, and she’d have earned her own room upstairs, but now everything was messed up all over again.

  Memories crowded into the forefront of her mind (doubling back on herself all across the city to throw off pursuit; collapsing over the threshold of the Grove in the early hours of the morning; exhausted explanations; tears, accusations) and she tried to shove them back under the golden silence, but every time she closed her eyes, they jumped at her again.

  At a loss for any other way to distract herself, she went in search of breakfast.

  She started to shrug some clothes on and discovered that everything everywhere hurt. Overstretched muscles and twisted ligaments complained. Bandages and elastoplast patched her in a dozen places, especially all over her hands – her knuckles and fingertips had been shredded with scrambling over bricks and rubble. Lucky to be alive, she reminded herself.

  She couldn’t believe that they weren’t even going to look for him.

  Moon Grove was not so much the name of the building but more properly the short cul-de-sac in which it was situated, but over the decades the neighbouring houses had gradually slipped into decrepitude until the name of the road became synonymous with that of the one house which remained inhabited. It had begun its existence as a large townhouse typical of so many built for the wealthy Victorian middle-class, and so was fairly expansive to begin with, but in the century and a half which followed – during which it was subdivided, partially demolished, and extended numerous times, often without planning permission or indeed much by way of planning at all – it had become a sprawling labyrinth of annexes, porches, attics and wings like a shabby-genteel old fart reclining after the port and cigars.

  The kitchen was large enough that she could sneak in without being noticed. Christmas pop music squawked scratchily from an ancient radio as two of the kitchen tart crew were pummelling various incarnations of dough and the third (a man, though he seemed to fit in as one of the girls well enough) was bent down with Kerrie, both of them peering suspiciously into one of the ovens. There was a perpetual haze in the high-ceilinged room – usually of flour, though often as not it was smoke.

  The pressure to feed a houseful of thirty or so people each day with the random and often bizarre combinations of ingredients which they scavenged – according to no overall plan or, god forbid, actual menu – attracted a particular sort of volunteer for whom actual cooking skills were much less important than an active imagination and the ability to withstand violent criticism, sometimes of the physical variety. All Bex wanted was some toast. She found half a loaf of bread on one of the wide, cluttered counters, and hacked off a large chunk.

  ‘Oh, so you’ve finally surfaced, have you?’ Kerrie was standing close behind, fists planted on her wide hips, eyes glaring not unkindly below a stormcloud of frizzy ginger hair which was held back in a loose bunch, seemingly by its owner’s ferocious willpower alone. ‘Should have guessed you’d be helping yourself sooner or later. What do you think this place is – a hotel? The time you come crawling in, looking like death itself.’ And she gathered Bex in an iron lung of a hug. ‘Are y’alright my love?’

  Bex nodded, only slightly crushed. She held herself stiffly; she somehow couldn’t bring herself to return the hug. ‘Been better, but I’ll live.’

  ‘Ah well, you’re a strong girl, that’s for sure.’ Kerrie scrunched floury fingers through Bex’s stubby dreads. ‘We all loved him. Maybe not so much as you though, eh?’

  Bex released herself and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘Thanks.’

  Kerrie suddenly became aware that they had an audience. ‘And what do you lot think you’re gawping at?’ she bellowed at the others. ‘Get back to work, ye shiftless sods! You think I can’t run this place without you? I know people, you know! One phone call – that’s all – one phone call!’ They sauntered back to their chores with grins and a notable lack of urgency. She swung back to face Bex. ‘And for pity’s sake, put some jam on that thing. Who do you think you are, Oliver Twist? You’ll shame me, you will.’

  As Bex was limping away, munching her breakfast, Kerrie added: ‘By the way, darling, Walter was asking after you earlier.’

  ‘Was he now?’ she grunted and left.

  She went back to her bunk and rooted around at the foot of it to find Dodd’s jacket, then headed upstairs to the wide first floor landing where his room sat.

  Like everywhere else in Moon Grove, the landing was cluttered with the accumulated debris of uncounted years: jumbled piles of boxes and furniture and junk which might potentially have a use and so couldn’t possibly be thrown out. The rooms on this floor and the one above were the bedsits belonging to those fully-fledged Narrowfolk who had made Moon Grove their permanent home and who had, more importantly, demonstrated their value to the place through having some particular skill or knowledge.

  The topmost floor belonged solely to Walter. It wasn’t forbidden or exclusive – had no locks, bars or guards – it was just somewhere you didn’t go. It defied easy labelling, like the man himself, who anywhere else would be described as their leader, except that he conspicuously didn’t lead. He gave no orders, issued no decrees, pronounced no judgements, but somehow everybody knew what was expected of them. They knew that if you lived in Butlins you earned your bed each day in whatever way you could, and those that couldn’t – or wouldn’t – left the Grove very quickly.

  It was equally clear that no form of crime was tolerated – no hard drugs, violence, or prostitution. From time to time a hardcase would turn up and try to make it his own little empire, or a bunch of junkies would try to scrounge off them, and all Walter would seem to do was have a quiet word with them – maybe while strolling through the allotments behind the house, or by the fireplace in one of the big day-rooms – and the next day they and all their belongings woul
d simply be gone.

  Rumour whispered everything from him being a retired stage hypnotist to a serial killer with an underground complex of torture rooms, but Dodd had believed that he just had a knack of convincing some people that this wasn’t a place where they wanted to be. It wasn’t to say that he was in any way a bad man, just that he seemed to be running the place according to an unspoken law which sympathised with the weaknesses of others but had no place for them.

  Rummaging through the pockets of Dodd’s leather jacket as she approached the door of his room, she found half a pack of Trebor Extra Strong Mints, no fags at all (despite looking twice and cursing his non-smoking hide), his battered A-to-Z of Birmingham and the West Midlands, and (jackpot!) his keys.

  She stopped. The padlock hung open on its hasp, and the door was ajar.

  Cautiously, she pushed it open. It looked like most of Dodd’s things – with the exception of his narrow bed, a Baby Belling stove and some empty MFI shelves – had been packed into boxes and stacked up against one wall. In the middle of the bare floor a tall man was leafing through one of Dodd’s books.

  ‘Hello Rebecca,’ said Walter, looking up. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’d feel a lot better if I knew what you were doing with Dodd’s stuff,’ she retorted.

  He smiled. ‘Sense of youthful indignation still very healthy, I see.’

  Inasmuch as it was possible to chew bread with attitude, that was what she did, and glared at him. She realised that she had no idea of his age – he was clean-shaven and dressed simply in jeans and a hoody, but deep lines etched themselves down either side of his mouth when he smiled, and his short thatch of unruly hair was entirely grey. His eyes were very bright, and she was uncomfortably aware of being the sole focus of his full attention. Bex began to wish she hadn’t started on him so aggressively. But he was in Dodd’s room, pawing at his things.

  ‘You’ve got a point though,’ he continued, as if reading her mind. ‘I imagine we’re both here for much the same reasons.’ He glanced pointedly at the keys which were still in her hand.

  She dropped them back in the pocket of Dodd’s – correction, her – jacket and continued to chew at him. ‘Someone’s got to take care of his stuff.’

  ‘Absolutely they do. And of course it has to be you.’

  She bridled at that. ‘Well, why bloody not? I knew him as well as anyone else. Better, probably.’

  Walter threw his hands up in apology. ‘Whey, hold up. You misunderstand me. I wasn’t being sarcastic. I meant it: of course, it does have to be you.’ His tone was conciliatory, but she felt foolish at how easily he’d got a rise out of her. Had he really been mocking her? Her head was still fuzzy and she was almost certainly not thinking straight. ‘For what it’s worth, he was my friend too.’

  ‘Then why aren’t we doing anything?’

  Walter’s tone was gentle as he sat on the corner of Dodd’s bed and laid the book to one side. ‘What would you have us do?’

  ‘Send people to go out there and look for him, what do you think?’

  ‘Send people. What an interesting notion. Let us assume for the moment that I am in any way capable of sending anyone to do anything, and just consider a few questions: even if the skavags have left anything of him to find, how are you going to get him back? Who are you going to convince to help you carry a corpse halfway across the city, especially so close to Laying Up? And what would you do when you got him back here? Bury him? How many square feet of ground desperately needed to feed the living will you sacrifice for the dead? Or, if you’re thinking of cremating him, how much fuel will you take from the furnace?’

  ‘We should at least tell the police; he must have next of kin. His family deserve to know, surely.’

  ‘And who are they? Do you know? Because I certainly don’t.’

  ‘Somebody around here must!’

  ‘Why? What’s your real name? Forgive me if this sounds a bit harsh but I’ll bet my thermal longjohns it isn’t Rebecca. Who was she, anyway? A big sister? School friend? Character from your favourite book? Someone as strong as you’d like to be instead of the weak and shameful creature you actually think you are.’

  Bex could hardly believe what she was hearing. A bit harsh? No question about whether he was trying to get a reaction out of her now, but she found it impossible not to take the bait. ‘What’s that got to do with anything? Yes, it’s my real name, not that it’s any of your business!’

  ‘Then why make Dodd yours? He made his decision when he became Narrowfolk, just like you have. Why not let him die as anonymously as he wanted to live?’

  ‘Are you seriously trying to suggest that this is what he would have wanted?’

  ‘No, of course not. What I’m suggesting is this: you’ve got that look in your eye like somebody has to pay for what happened to you and Dodd last night, but you need to keep in mind a few cold truths. One, you’re never going to find any trace of him; skavags never abandon a hunt, and they never leave anything behind. You know this. Two, you will never find anybody to blame for what happened, and you can’t blame yourself in the absence of that. All other things aside, you did actually manage to complete your Walk – you made it across the city without passing under the light of a single streetlamp…’

  ‘Walk?!’ She was incredulous. ‘What fucking Walk? There was no Walk! Not once we were running for our fucking lives! And there was somebody there! I saw them!’

  ‘Whatever you saw, or thought you saw, as far as I and the others are concerned, you are Narrowfolk now, and none could be more deservedly so. You’ve got a place, and a place has become vacant. It’s not pretty, but that’s how it goes. You said so yourself: somebody has got to take care of his stuff. Well, this is all yours now. Honour his memory by not letting his stuff go to waste – and most importantly, don’t waste your own life throwing it away on something you’re never going to find. You’re more useful to us here and alive than charging off around the city getting yourself killed. I don’t know what he would have wanted, but I’ll bet he wouldn’t have wanted that.’

  Bex looked around at the nearly bare room: the narrow, iron-framed foldaway bed, the small bookcase, and the low stack of boxes against the wall. Not much. She wondered how much he’d left from his life before Moon Grove – and then, on the heels of that, what remained of herself. Would her old things still be where she’d left them, or would they too have been packed up into boxes, to be scrapped or sold or given to charity shops? ‘Mine, you say?’

  Walter nodded.

  ‘Do us a favour, then?’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Get out of my room.’

  ***

  The Games Barn was in as plum a position as any manager could hope for when it came to Christmas shopping. The Pallasades Shopping Centre was directly above New Street Station, and even though it had been superceded by that flash upstart of a Bullring Centre, with its light and space and actual architecture, the Pallasades still caught rail travellers from all over the country while they waited for their connections and escalated them up to the waiting shops like a pitcher plant in reverse.

  One of the problems with actually working there, as far as Andy was concerned, was that in winter, it led to a virtually nocturnal existence. It would be dark when he set off at the start and returned at the end of each day, the hours in between being spent entirely indoors, even in his lunch hour (what there was of it). After a few weeks of this, he’d begun to feel like some kind of vampire and jumped at any chance to get outside.

  No Missions this time, though. No arcane culinary ingredients, and definitely no shortcuts. Just post-its and envelopes.

  He was just outside the shopping centre’s entrance, on his way down the wide concrete ramp of pavement that descended to New Street, when he saw a young homeless man sitting huddled in a grubby sleeping bag
against the wall between McDonalds and the HSBC bank, with two styrofoam cups in front of him.

  Predictably, he was being ignored – especially by the businessman who was striding along blithely in the opposite direction, chatting loudly with someone on his hands-free. The only reason Andy noticed him at all was because of the irony: a well-dressed man having a conversation with thin air, waving his arms around and looking more like a street-crazy than the destitute human being right beside him, who he obviously hadn’t seen, because he was about to step right on top of him.

  A gleaming Italian-leather shoe connected with one of the styrofoam cups, and a brown slop of coffee spilled out of it. Handsfree jerked sideways with a cry of ‘Jeezus!’ His trouser cuff was dripping. Andy couldn’t help smiling.

  Handsfree stared in disgust at his ruined shoe and then at the homeless man, whose palms were upraised in the universal gesture of ‘Hey man, don’t look at me.’ He turned back to his invisible friend and said, ‘Sorry, Toby, can you hang on a moment?’ and took a couple of paces backward. Andy’s smile turned sour as he realised that the man was taking a run-up – an actual run-up, like he was in some kind of deranged penalty shoot-out.

  ‘Merry fucking Christmas,’ said Handsfree with perfect, cut-glass diction, and booted the other white cup as hard as he could.

  Coins ricocheted off glass and concrete, spinning and rolling in all directions for yards around. The homeless man leapt up with a cry of outrage and started scrabbling for his change.

  ‘Toby?’ continued the other man as if nothing had happened. ‘Oh nothing. Just stepped in some shit, that’s all,’ and carried on straight towards Andy.