by David Wood
It was most likely to be me. I harboured no illusions on that score, either. My grip on the good old reliability of reality's terra firma was already beyond tenuous. One good firm push from behind and
'Show me,' Aimee said, out of the blue. She twisted me around, forcing me to look at her. 'Take me to these places. I need to see them.'
Four
She can be as stubborn as a mule when she sets her mind to it. I have seen her dig her heels in over the most ridiculous issues; our argument of car over crutches was one of those times. It didn't matter that rain was slowly liquidifying the air around us, nor that I was suffering. I could hardly stand after a long day of turmoil and irrationalities, but she wanted to walk and there was no other way she would have it. So we walked.
There was no touching; no familiarity of body against body, skin on skin. Aimee walked patiently at my side, the rain spilling down her face as her eyes swept left and right scouring the gathering dusk for whatever secrets it held. Conversation was as sparse a commodity as contact, the few words passing between us little more than colour for the commentary of the streets. Oddly though, it wasn't an uncomfortable walk. We seemed to have settled into a comfortable trudge. I pointed out the few necessary landmarks where something had happened during my drive from the Jazz Club on Fourth Street. The somethings in question were pretty much non-entities really; where I thought about jumping the lights; where I switched radio for tape; I virtually provided Aimee with a guided tour to the accident and all of its by-blows.
I'm sure Carroll would have had something to say about my excessive exercise on my first day out from under his nose. If I had been him I know I would have had plenty to say about it, but cursing my own stupidity wasn't likely to help so it was pointless offering it free-time when I had so much else to think about. My ribcage stung; it felt almost exactly as if someone had rubbed a tubeful of Fiery Jack into the skin and then abandoned me in an ice box, the contrasting burns were so acute.
We had walked maybe three-quarters of a mile when I had to stop. I should have stopped earlier but stubborn pride and a wide streak of obstinacy kept me going well into my strength's dwindling reserve. The benches outside St Columba's proved too tempting, however, even for my pig-headed pride. I slumped into the seat glad of the respite it offered, however temporary. Aimee didn't sit. She placed her hands firmly on the bench's backrest and began hunkering and standing alternatively, going through what I assumed to be impatient limbering up exercises. Even if I had been of a mind to, I don't think I could have moved. Right then, sitting in the rain, wet and warm as it was, felt wonderful.
The second hand on St Columba's ancient clock juddered through an arc of sixty seconds, marking off another minute of my life with its jerky motion.
Bill stickers pasted across the window of the burnt out pub across the street advertised inconsequential bands with names like Verbatim and Melodeon Cross. Intricately shaded graffiti obscured the faces and the logos beneath an explosion of colour that clashed painfully with the down-at-heel appearance of the old watering hole.
Spanning the water, the TyneBridge's lofty vault of fluted girders and serpentine railings was suffused with the amber afterglow of the spotlights and streetlights made misty by the steady downpour. From this sort of distance the bridge seemed to retain an element of its daytime bustle. Headlights came and went in a staccato. It felt like one of the most lonely places on God's earth, crammed with a constant stream of people who queue up to ignore you while they chased their own form of white line.
I think I understood why Aimee needed to walk back over my route. It wasn't that she wanted to see me hurting; there wasn't a hateful bone in her body. No, I think she was hoping there would be something out there she might feel. Something tangible she could pick up on. An essence on the street. Maybe it was there. Maybe it was there and I couldn't smell it. Maybe non-believers were somehow denied the tang of its special aroma? Who was I to say?
I forced myself to stand, determined to shuffle-walk as far as the bridge despite my body's protests. Rather like one of those elaborate illusions that regularly enthralled me as a boy, the bridge refused to appear any closer than it had from the seat. It was like some iron siren leading me on. I looked down at the sodden path and crutched on with my head down, hoping to sneak up on the construction by surprise.
His back propped up against the concrete facing of the bridge's plinth, a boy huddled clutching a "Help Me" card. You'll have seen the sort, "I'm homeless and hungry, please help me." His head was slumped, as if he were sleeping. He must have had about fifty or sixty pence in copper and small silver in the polystyrene burger box on his lap.
I crutched over to where he was, ignoring Aimee's hand as it reached out to hold me back. His head came up, his skin a beautiful rich ebony and his eyes a peculiar blue. I read his card: "I'm Matthew. I'm Seventeen. I'm cold and I'm hungry. Please help me if you can."
For a second there I didn't know what to think, but I didn't need to think. There was nothing sinister about a boy obviously far from home and finding it hard on today's meaner than ever streets. Rummaging in my pocket, I pulled out a handful of change. There must have been six or seven pounds there. I held out my hand, offering what little I could to Matthew.
His face lit up. The smile that materialised on his lips was nothing shy of brilliant. I don't think I have ever seen such a look of raw, pure gratitude in my life. Matthew cupped his hands to collect the coins as I let them spill between my fingers. The poor lad had tears in his eyes but I could see he didn't want to cry, not in front ofcomplete strangers.
Aimee gave me a look as if to say: You daft sod and I felt good, my own smile a match for Matthew's any day of the week. I shrugged out of my crutches and struggled around awkwardly until I was sitting beside him with my back propped uncomfortably against a lattice of metal.
'It's all right,' I said. I didn't know what else to say.
Aimee hunkered down at Matthew's other side, stretching her arm around his shoulders and huddling in as close as he would allow so he could share a fraction of her body's warmth.
Matthew sniffed, wiping the back of his hand across his wet nose. He put the burger box on the floor and drew his legs up. The movement was instinctively protective.
I felt around in my jacket pockets for my tobacco tin and lighter and rolled all three of us cigarettes to smoke in the rain.
The shared cigarettes were a hand of friendship Matthew had no idea how to deal with. Certainly, it was more than my offering him the change had been. You didn't have to care to put your hand in your pocket – shame made you do that willingly enough – but sitting down, sharing time, well that was sharing wasn't it. It wasn't a burden or a duty, it was something I wanted to do.
'What are you doing out here, son?' I have never been tactful, but I couldn't believe just how much I was starting to sound like my father. He would have come out with something like that, but he would have followed it with some sort of ultimatum. That was one mistake I wasn't about to let myself make. Matthew had his reasons for sliding gracelessly out of society's clutches but it was no-one's place to judge but his own. That was one of the fundamental differences between the last two generations of Sheas: neither Ciaran nor I felt the need to judge. Mind you, neither one of us was in a position to.
I thought he wasn't going to answer me. He appeared to be mumbling quietly to himself, making the same or very similar lip movements over and over again. He took a long drag on the skinny rollup and exhaled a heavy sigh that suggested to me at least that he had seen more ugly things in his brief time on the streets than either of us had during our accumulated fifty years of comfortable houses and comfortable lives. He spat a thick wad of phlegm on to the ground between his feet. He looked me straight in the eye with those startlingly blue eyes of his and said:
'It's not your problem, friend, and I don't particularly want to share it with you. Okay?' There was a surprising lack of hostility in Matthew's voice when he spoke, just a cagey re
ticence that was all too understandable.
'I can respect that,' I conceded easily, looking out and down the river to Scotswood and the abandoned berths in the distance. A baleful foghorn sounded from somewhere down the Tyne, too far away and around too many meanders for me to discern its source.
I was gathering my crutches, ready to lever myself back to my feet when Matthew surprised me by saying:
'Don't go. I want to talk. Really I do. But I haven't talked to anyone for so long. I don't know what to say.'
'That's okay,' Aimee reassured him before I could. I could see her slipping casually, and easily, back into her persona of refuge worker. 'What do you want to talk about? We're both good listeners.' She made a gesture that encompassed all three of us. This was the first time I had seen her in her element, so to speak. I had always known her as idealistic and dangerously undiplomatic, but maybe I had been too hasty to judge her against an outdated gender stereotype because Matthew seemed to take to her naturally. I settled back down and proceeded to roll another round of smokes while Aimee talked very naturally about nothing and Matthew listened and let his guard down inch by precious inch.
I used the redirection of attention as an opportunity to look at Matthew without being seen to do so. He looked surprisingly well when I started making allowances for the effects of a few hours sat out in the rain. Okay, his clothes were ripped and grubby enough to suggest he had been sleeping in them for a while, but otherwise he was in pretty reasonable shape. No obvious signs that he had been forced to go without food for very long, but then again I couldn't even begin to guess at the number of tramps I had seen eating out of dustbins and the like. To that extent it depended almost solely on the level he had sunk to, and that again only he could say.
I didn't notice that Aimee had stopped talking, I was too tied up with trying to make sense of the brittle defences she was artfully dismantling. Matthew's existence seemed so bleak. He came from Leeds. He wanted to go to University; everyone told him he had a real talent for art but he had no education to speak of. He had drawn pictures all of his life. Pictures were how he escaped. His mum died when he was eleven, with pserosis of the liver. His father had driven her to drink with his constant beatings, so either way you looked at it, he had killed her. They had a fight at the funeral and his father gave him a black eye and a good beating. The beatings continued for as long as Matthew stayed at home, then one day Matthew struck out and hurt his old man. The he ran, and he had been running ever since.
The pavement beneath my buttocks was uncomfortably hard and unyielding, its chill seeming to seep up through my bones. By some curious form of osmosis I was left feeling colder on the inside than I did on the outside.
Five
We stayed with Matthew for a good portion of the night, but neither one of us could be there to hold his hand forever. Not that he would have wanted us there anyway.
Aimee gave him an address in Prudhoe Street where he could get food if things got too bad, and a gentle kiss on the cheek that said we were both sorry it had come to this. I took his hand in mine, then rather self-consciously pulled him into an embrace. He felt like nothing in my arms, more skin and bone than anything else and not a great deal of those if the truth be told. Layers of baggy woollen jumpers hid his condition well. Letting go, I reached into my back pocket for my wallet and pulled out one twenty and a three tens and pressed them into his hand, figuring he needed them a damned sight more than I did.
'I don't want your money, man. Keep it. I got money, see.' He pointed down at the burger box as though it contained all the riches any one man could own.
'So now you've got more money,' I answered, closing my hand around his, intending the gesture to be unarguable.
'Man. . . Oh, man. . . I don't want your money,' Matthew insisted. There were real tears building in his eyes this time, not artful ones summoned for an audience. I felt like a first class bastard for making an issue out of the money, but I wasn't letting him go until I knew he had enough to see him through. What he did with it was up to him, but fifty quid ought to have been enough to pay for a room in a hostel for a couple of weeks and that was what I had in mind.
'Get yourself a room somewhere,' I said, my grip on Matthew's hand tightening. 'Get some hot food inside you and see what the world looks like tomorrow. It isn't always such a bad place.'
'Oh, man. . .'
'Do it for yourself. You can pay me back someday by writing me a letter when you're at University. Okay?' We both knew that that would never happen, but neither one of us felt the necessity to deflate any dreams. There was a reassuring sense of perfection to what I had said, allowing Matthew to retain some of his self-respect. Where he was going self-respect was both his sword and his shield; disarmed he would be nothing; nothing, he would be as good as dead.
I felt his hand form a fist around the money.
'You're doing the right thing,' I assured him as I loosened my own grip.
Matthew seemed to be considering something. He seemed torn, uncertain. 'I want to give you something,' he said eventually, reaching in under the collar of his sweaters to feed out a tarnished silver necklace on a leather tie. 'My mum gave it to me. Look after it until I come back with the money.' He slipped it over his head and around my neck.
'I can't-' I started, and stopped, understanding that this was something Matthew had to do for himself. I felt Aimee's arms curl around my waist reassuringly, the first physical contact we had shared since the hospital. 'Thank you, Matthew. I'll keep it safe, I promise.'
'I know you will,' he said quietly, and turned to gather his few belongings, spray cans and coins, together. 'You're too nice not to.'
Six
I didn't look at Matthew's gift until we had crossed the bridge.
I felt guilty for letting him part with it when it was probably the only thing he had left to remind him of the good times. For silver, it was surprisingly heavy and so deeply tarnished I doubted any amount of polishing could ever recover that familiar gleam. One side of the necklace seemed to be the body of a bird, a crow or a raven, its wings spread into the fan of flight formed a very precise vee. The detailing was exquisite, the intricacies and the minutiae immaculate and compelling. The traceries that were the feathers seemed to divide into a maze too complex for my eyes to solve.
The paths I picked strayed over the boundaries of one avenue into the next. On closer inspection these avenues formed the outline of a figure, arms outstretched as if in crucifixion or perhaps proprietary benediction. I got the dreadful impression that it was wearing the long coats of a tramp, and just the faintest glimmer of a smile, though how my eyes picked a smile out of the confusion of features, I couldn't tell you.
I had found the answer to one riddle, or at least a fraction of that riddle. How Matthew had accomplished his tower block art, well… that was as much a mystery as ever. Looking back to see the empty expanse of the bridge behind me I reluctantly conceded it would probably remain that way for as long as Matthew had my money. The other riddle, well, there I felt lost, and not for the first time, alone. The sum of my wisdom the few places I had seen my tramp before. Not nearly enough, not when I needed so desperately to convince Aimee, but all had nonetheless.
I turned my attention back to Matthew's necklace and the shadow it cast on my open palm. To the best of my memory it was a perfect replica of the eighty foot mural. It was an attractive piece of jewellery. I weighed it in my hand, turned it over.
There was an inscription on the reverse. I thought it might have been a message from Matthew's mother, something personal like that. I very nearly didn't read it and I almost wish I hadn't. Next to the ornateness of the other side, the inscription was peculiarly plain:
'Even The Laughing Boys Cry When The City Dies.'
It meant nothing to me. It felt like one of those truisms mothers always come out with. A half caught glimpse of some incredible philosophy.
I shrugged and slipped the necklace inside my clothing, feeling it fall naturall
y into the declivity between my pectorals.
The birdman felt curiously warm, almost clammy, against my skin.
Aimee took the place of my left crutch, slipping under my shoulder to support my weight whenever I needed her to, and together we walked awhile, quite happy to ignore the rain.
Under The Bridge
One
Declan,' Aimee hissed, her fingers digging sharply into my side. I did well not to scream as they dug in beneath my damaged ribs.
'I know,' I whispered back, my lips barely moving. I was aching hurting all over from the twisting and jerking I had put my body through since checking out of the Royal Victoria. I couldn't help but wish I had stayed there, closeted from the lunacy of the real world. At least there, black was black and white was white and grey was a subtle shade of in between.
We had looped around from the TyneBridge, walking halfway down Grey Street (or as the dirt smeared sign still said, Grey tree) before taking the right-hand turn heading towards the nether regions of the Bigg Market. All of the good feeling I had drawn from meeting Matthew had slowly evaporated with the steam rising off my scalp. People around us seemed to be trying very hard to have a good time. Phantoms. Drinking and shouting, full of boisterous Joie de vivre. Very few of them, I felt suddenly sure, believed they were having a good time. Most were simply drawn to this part of the city because they had nowhere else to go. Here was where they chased after their preconceptions of what a good time really was. For each winner there were fifty casualties that fell along the way.
I kept Aimee walking. We headed back down towards St. Nick's and, eventually, the river.
