by David Wood
I kicked aside a burger box, half expecting the boy to bolt again at the sound of it skittering after him, but he didn't. Out of the alley he settled down to sit on the muddy embankment of the River Tyne, looking out on to Gateshead and along to Scotswood, a clear view for yards one way, miles another.
Crumbling whitewashed walls were all that was left of an old storage warehouse. Crude bodies silhouetted in crucifixion had been daubed on the white in splashes of black, the paint running like stigmata from open wounds. The images were reminiscent of Matthew's towerblock bird.
A baleful foghorn sounded, miles away.
Without hurrying I made up the distance between us.
'Mind if I join you?' I asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a complete stranger to say to a thirteen year old boy in a strange city.
The boy turned to study me, those white eyes penetrating. I got the distinct impression he was reading me, looking for the threat my presence implied. 'Free country,' he said, grudgingly deciding I was harmless. Suddenly he found his hands very interesting.
I hid a smile, remembering what I'd been like at his age. 'Pretty impressive back there,' I said, trying to sound friendly as I hunkered down beside him, careful not to sit in the mud.
'I didn't do nothing.'
'Even so, it took guts,' I insisted, picking up a twig from the dirt at my feet. I started to scratch out a circle. 'But I guess running away took guts, too.'
His expression didn't change, but everything seemed to skip a beat. It was the tension in his voice that betrayed him.
'Who says I ran away?'
'Just a guess. Your rucksack looks full, there was no one to meet you on the platform and you’re not going anywhere now. Tell me I'm wrong and I'll leave you alone.'
'You guess a lot, don't you, mister?'
'I'm usually pretty good,' I nodded. 'I reckon you've got all of your favourite things in that sack. Things that remind you of home. Something of your mum’s, maybe. Pretty soon you'll have to sell them for food money, you know, because there's no one and nothing to protect you around here. You'll get hungry and end up selling your watch for the price of a pasty.
'On the streets you're on your own. You're in the unknown. No money and living among some desperate people. Violent people. Give it a week and you're going to wish you were back at home because nothing's worse than living in the gutter with the street people, believe me.
'You're at risk every minute of every day. You'll come up against guys like that porter, but with these guys if you fight back you'll find them knifing you for the coppers they've spilled across the floor. It isn't romantic lad, living rough.
'Out here people won't give a damn about you, you're just another loser. There's nowhere to run to because you've already run.If you can go home, go home. There's no kind of life waiting for you here.'
It sounded like a sermon and I knew it. I joined the circumference of my circle and planted the twig like a flagpole claiming this undisputed territory on the banks of the Tyne.
'I can't,' he said simply. He didn't offer up his life story. Perhaps he knew I didn't want to hear it, or then again maybe he didn't have the strength in him to rake over fresh wounds so soon. The details of Matthew's story flooded back. Here I was, sitting with another lad who was being forced to grow up too quickly. How many other kids got themselves into such a state they thought this was the only answer they had?
A lame looking mongrel, all skin and stuck-out bones, was rooting around through the newspapers in the shadow of the alley's mouth, disinterested in everything except sniffing out its next meal. I let my mind run laterally.
'You hungry?'
He answered me with a question of his own: 'How do you know all this stuff?'
'I live here.' I shrugged, not knowing a better way to explain it. 'I see it every day. Kids standing on street corners with polystyrene cups begging for loose change. People doing their best to pretend they're not there, crossing over the road to spare themselves a moment of embarrassment when the kid asks for the price of a cuppa and they shake their head and hurry on. I've seen kids your age foraging in dustbins for leftover food. Sleeping in doorways. Freezing to death because people really don't care.'
A pause, then:
'So why do you care?'
I looked back at the wailing wall and its crucified silhouettes. Why did I care what happened to one more runaway? This little crusade was hardly going to stem the tide of Crohak's vendetta. Sending home runaways one at a time seemed like such a futile gesture when I stopped long enough to think about it . 'I met a kid from Leeds,' I said. 'He was an artist. Could draw like a dream. His existence had become pretty bleak by the time I met him. He told me he wanted to go to university but he couldn't get off the streets because he had no money and nowhere to go to. His mum had died when he was eleven and his old man had beat him ever since the funeral. One day it got too much, he hit back and he'd been running ever since. It hurt me to see his life thrown away.'
There was no romance in Matthew's abbreviated story, but it served as a good reminder of what kind of a life this kid was letting himself in for if he stayed here on his own. It didn't answer his question, but it promised an answer of sorts.
'You're not so bad,' the boy said. 'Did he paint those people over there?'
I shrugged. I didn’t know for sure. 'He painted a black bird across the entire side of a tower block.'
'No shit?'
'No shit,' I agreed. 'Do you want to tell me why you can't go home?'
I didn't think he was going to answer, but then he said: 'I ain't got a home to go to's why.' There wasn't a trace of self pity in his voice. It was plain. Matter of fact. 'I've been in and out of foster homes since I was six. The last place, I used to fight all the time. The kids hated me. They used to wait for me outside the school gates and chase me all the way home. Some days no one would be in and the bastards would kick the living shit out of me on my own doorstep. The family I'd been placed with didn't care. They'd dust me down and tell me to run faster next time like it was some big fucking joke.' He looked at me. 'I go back there now and I swear to God they'll lock me up.'
What sort of existence was that for a kid? No wonder he thought he'd strike out for the big city. It couldn't have been any worse than the place he called home. I couldn't understand how a caring society could let a young life go so terribly wrong. I put my arm around his shoulder. 'They won't lock you up for being scared,' I said.
'They'll lock me up because I burned down the school,' he said flatly. 'I blocked off the fire escapes because I didn't want them to get out.'
I had visions of faces pressed up against glass as the fire took hold. Jesus. I don't know what I expected. Angry parents, abuse. Not this, that was for sure. It sounded so calculated. I tried not to let the shock show in my voice. 'You burned down the school?'
He didn't answer me. Instead, he picked up a rough edged stone and threw it at the scruffing mongrel, missing by enough to suggest he never meant to hit.
Nine
His name was Chaz and we had something in common. We both hailed from Liverpool, his accent as diluted as mine.
Foster home to foster home, he'd gradually left the city of his birth far behind.
He had run from Wakefield of all places.
Chaz had been born on an estate I knew well enough to give a wide berth, Cantril Farm. The plan had been to build a slice of paradise to shelter the poorer element of The Pool. It hadn't worked because the people rehoused there hadn't wanted it to. Now the identical rows of grey pebble dash looked as tired as the faceless people they housed, people plagued by heart attacks and emphysema, and the straight roads lined by low picket fences and patches of lawn had been given over to a new life as graveyards for shopping trolleys and wire baskets.
The landscape was as bleak as any I could think of, but Chaz clung on to a few unreasonably rosy memories of the place. He was an intelligent lad though; he hadn't ventured back that way because he kne
w enough to realise that life wouldn't be anything like the fantasy he had built up around himself before the circuit of foster homes. Going back to Cantril Farm would mean another bitter reality supplanting the memories inside his head, robbing him of the warmth of good feelings when he had precious little to make him feel warm as it was.
He asked me about my eye. I brushed it off as nothing. He seemed unconvinced but left it at that for a while.
We ate burgers and over-salted chips on plastic seats outside a Greek takeaway, watching pigeons fighting over spilled red cabbage and chilli sauce. We managed to put distance between the school fire in Wakefield and where we were now by talking about the Liver Birds, StanleyPark and Match Saturdays. He was a Liverpool fan and delighted in rattling off the players’ name as if they were old friends. Between bites he raced excitedly through a catalogue of results that had the Reds running riot the length and breadth of the Premiership and had me wishing the players had half of his energy. He was a typical teenager with so much enthusiasm burning him up inside. Hard to imagine what had driven him into my path on platform nine.
I ate quietly, letting him talk.
He HehhhhhhhHis father had worked on the Albert Docks, where they had built that floating map for the weather forecasts on the television. Letting me into a secret, he whispered that they had lived near one of the original girls from Brookside. I couldn't see anyone from Brookside living near Cantril Farm unless there had been some drastic changes during the time I'd been away, but I kept that thought to myself.
'What were you planning on doing after you arrived here?' I asked, easing the conversation back into a direction it needed to head.
'I hadn't thought that far ahead,' Chaz admitted. 'I bought a ticket to the first place I could see on the board. I thought I'd find somewhere to crash, a squat, something like that. I can't afford a hostel. I figured I'd use the soup kitchens at night for food when I ran out of money. Give myself time to get things sorted out in my head and find some sort of casual work.'
The films made it sound so easy, drifters picking up casual work washing dishes or doing odd jobs for cash. They were an enticement in themselves.
'And now?' I asked, expecting him to say pretty much the same thing.
'I don't know, I guess I'm still looking for a squat because I need somewhere to crash. I've still got a few quid left from the money I nicked from the old bag's bill money jar, but it ain't gonna go that far. Why, have you got something in mind? Let me guess, this where you pitch me some religious bullshit about the shelter your church runs, right? Have I just sold my soul for the price of a lousy fucking burger?' Chaz rolled his eyes and slapped his forehead in an exaggerated gesture of despair that had me laughing like an idiot.
I couldn't resist saying: 'You betcha,' before coming clean with the truth. 'Actually, I had hoped to convince you to get on the first train back to wherever you came from, but I don't suppose that's likely to happen, is it.'
The people walking past our table were the usual assortment of white skinned sun worshippers in lurid shorts and tee-shirts. Come the first sniff of sunshine they were out in their multitude, anaemic and lardy flesh bared shamelessly for fear that the summer would be over before it began.
Other diners ate and read the local broadsheet, grease dripping through their newsprint-smeared fingers to obliterate the stories they feigned interest in.
I took my wallet out of my pocket and counted through the folded notes. Eighty five pounds in a mix of twenties, tens, and fives. I took out a ten to pay the bill, and another twenty that I proceeded to fold as I wrestled with the moral dilemma I faced. Chaz couldn't go home; he had made that plain enough even for me.I folded the twenty in half and then in half again so the Queen's head was divided by the crease. He couldn't go home, but did that give me carte blanche to use him as a way to get into Crohak's world of street people? I folded the Queen again, making a neat concertina out of the note. I wrote Ciaran's phone number across Her Majesty's cheek and put it on the table between us, watching it expand as it tried to return to its natural state. The note opened as air filtered between the leaves, appearing to swell like an arthritic Jack-In-The-Box.
'Take it,' I said to Chaz. 'I want you to promise to call that number if you need help.'
'What do I have to do in return?' he asked, cynically. He was already snatching the twenty off the tabletop. Obviously he didn't care. I imagined him down the line, confronted by the same scenario, a stranger offering money for something in return, his hand snatching without asking. His naiveté made me want to bang his head off a brick wall. He acted all streetwise, streetsmart, but that didn't make his innocence any less painful. He would learn the hard way, I knew, and I think deep down he did, too.
'I want you to be my eyes and ears on the street. I want you to play the runaway and ingratiate yourself with the street culture. Find a squat, get to know the beggars. Live their life. I want you to tell me what you see, what's happening, but most of all I want you to help me convince kids who can to go home.'
He looked at me like I'd gone mad. 'What's to say I don't just take your money and piss off?'
I returned his look openly. It was a gamble. I was gambling with more than just a few pounds though, and that was what he didn't know. I was gambling with his life. Sending him where I couldn't go. Sending him after Crohak and his Oz Parasites.
'Nothing. Nothing at all.'
Paradise Isn't Forever
One
Moving flats was a nightmare all of its own making.
Organizing it took a week. Moving took another two days of sheer madness.
The logistics involved in getting everything from A (in Gateshead) to B (in Newcastle) should have been a simple matter of packing and unpacking a few boxes.At least that was how I remembered moving in the past. The grand adventure.
Experience soon put me straight; a lot of sweat and a lot of carrying, more like, was my adult reassessment of the fiasco.
Cups of coffee and tea for the removal men, and then the big puzzle – how to get the Bechstein into the Gods at the TheatreVillage without turning it into firewood in the process.
It was reminiscent of a scene from the old Harold Lloyd movies: one of the plate windows removed, me harnessed and teetering on a ledge too high above the street, trying to use a masonry drill to secure a winch to haul the baby grand one hundred feet straight up. It was an absolute nightmare, with the harness tied around the washing machine in an attempt to put me at ease. No chance.
Drilling out the third and final hole a pigeon settled beside me, interested in the brick dust I was creating. My imagination had it labelled as one of Crohak's cohorts from the cyclone at the Monument, a short step then to it pecking at my ankles, vengefully trying to get me off the ledge it had decided to call home. The Stephen King fan in me taking a hold of the imaginative reins. The ledge was actually slightly wider than a foot across, room a plenty for both of us, it was the vertigo inspiring drop that made it seem like a balance beam and paranoia that put that twinkle in the bird's eye.
I came off the ledge shaking like a leaf and vowing never again; rather like the first morning after I remember suffering. One wit suggested an impromptu bungee jump to test out the winch. I let him know exactly what I thought of his idea and offered him the harness. Not surprisingly, he declined.
Arranging the furniture was similar to working with a blank canvas, painting the images and the likes that we wanted to see exactly as we wanted to see them. Between us we stamped our personalities on the high rise flat with far more ease than might have been afforded by a similar move into a crowded mid-terrace with all of the landlord's clutter. Our pictures went up on the walls, my Hugh Syme original of a featureless head looking out across a sea of ice the first one to claim a space for its own. Aimee's Brian Talbot photographs went up next… blue, blue whales and red, red sunsets. Plants, pot pouri and throwovers to take off the sharp edges Nathan had left behind. Incense burners and joss sticks to sweeten the air. Celtic
knots, suns and moons a recurring motif. A gossamer fine curtain pinned up to shroud the bed, making a bedroom of sorts. More curtains and tie-dyed scarves pinned to the ceiling in soft arcs to further the impression of softness. Wind chimes were hung at the long windows, more suns and moons, and slivers of blue that were supposed to be ice. Candlesticks. A wizened face carved out of the stump of an old tree. Aimee's Steiff monkey riding my porcelain elephant bareback. Pewter castles and dragons. A pale green demon of music complete with horns and conductor's baton. My Alice In Wonderland chess set on its marble plinth. And the pick of the pieces, another one of Aimee's; a tower of souls, hand-carved from a single piece of bone, bodies climbing on the backs of bodies in an Escher style tower that told the story of evolution from the birth of the world right until its end.
Like I said, we had accumulated a lot of junk between us, but what happened when it came together, this meeting of tastes, was uniquely ours. Its familiarity was comforting, though the relative ease with which we had transplanted our lives was not.
I sat behind the piano and rested my fingers on the smooth ivories. It was a ritual, playing that first song to set the mood for the new house. It was also the first time I had thought about actually playing music since the crash. Suddenly faced with another blank canvas, this one inside my head, I froze, my fingers poised tantalizingly above the first note.
I couldn't do it.
There was no music in me. No music to come out through my fingers. No magic.
I felt so utterly empty.
I didn't want to think what sort of omen it boded for our new start.
Aimee settled down on a beanbag beside me, resting her head on my thigh. She had Jonesy, a stuffed cat she had rescued from a jumble sale in Hexham, sat on her lap and she looked so totally content to be just where she was. Who says paradise isn't forever, I thought, looking at her and knowing then what the first song should be.
