by Various
They all wanted to be my boys, but I wasn’t really serious about leading a gang. It was a means to an end for me. I was doing what I thought would make me like Gaz. He got out of this shit hole, see, and he went to university. I thought it was a better path to follow. Cos no one’s gonna take the piss out of a hard nut, even if he does well at school, well enough to get out, and I needed to get out. I dunno where Gaz is now, but I’m guessing he doesn’t think about us anymore. I think about him. About how it’d be to escape. I don’t like to think how close I was to getting away before I put my feet wrong. It makes me angry, and too fucking sad.
Sometimes you don’t get any warning that you’re going the wrong way.
We got older, as you do, and we lost interest in The Romney, in kid’s stuff. In the last two years of senior school and through college, we spent our time down the skate park, drinking, and shagging our girlfriends in the underpass. Then college was over, just like that, and my results gave me what I wanted. A way out. So I was off to Bristol, on the other fucking side of England. I was the only one going out of our whole gang, and no one understood it. Except maybe Jude, cos he knew what things was like for me at home.
When I was in second year junior school, my mum and dad got divorced. My dad moved into another house on the estate, and me, my sister and my little brother would play musical houses. It was sorta fun, in a way, but only until I was twelve. My mum married this total prick she’d been seeing then, called Alan, and my dad got a new girlfriend, the second one he’d had since the divorce. She was only five years older than my sister and she felt weird when we came round, meaning he didn’t want us over so much. Which was kinda tough, cos me and Alan didn’t get on.
Dunno why he took against me, but it got bad real fucking quick as I got bigger. I’d go toe to toe with him and we’d have these massive arguments that made my mum cry. I’d have to go over to Jude’s then, sometimes for a few days, cos I couldn’t stand breathing the same air as Alan, or her. She never once stood up for me, and after a few years of that shit I’d decided I was getting the hell out. Like Gaz. I didn’t realise until it was too late how lucky I was having that arsehole in my face all the time, making me want to escape. Then I wished he’d pushed harder, or I’d run sooner. Anything.
That summer after the last year of college, when I knew I had my place at Bristol, felt both fucking amazing, and sorta weird. Jude wasn’t leaving, you see, so it sorta felt like our last summer. We tried to make it large. Getting slaughtered, having a laugh, all that good shit. But one day, halfway through August, Jude and me was on our way back from a mate’s house, a bit off our tits after six hours of bongs and booze and playing Res Evil, when we missed our bus home, and decided to walk through the stretch of scrubland.
It was midnight, and there were no lights, but The Romney wanted to be seen that night, to be remembered. It stood there clear as anything, dark and quiet, like a fucking shrine. A big ugly old pile of empty flats with Ollie’s name scrawled on a balcony twenty stories up. Jude was rattling on about some movie or other, but he shut up the second we saw it and I knew from his face that he was remembering, too. The stories, climbing the walls, watching those six other buildings collapse to dust, half off our tits on vodka and bravado. All good times, but those memories didn’t feel good to me, they felt gone.
It was like The Romney wanted me to think them few years was all I had of good times and there was nothing more to come. Not for me. I felt like shit and I knew Jude was feeling as bad, cos he tried to hide it by laughing at how stupid we was back then, being so scared of a bloody block of flats. But he was still scared, I saw that in him, too, and I think he knew it, because he shut up. I had nothing to say. In the shadow of The Romney that night, I didn’t feel like I was growing up or moving on to better things. I felt like I was losing, like that’s all I could do.
We walked the rest of the way without talking and every step seemed to take me further away from everything I wanted. It left this hole inside of me. Big and black, and too empty. I felt it, and wondered how I ever let it get there. What was wrong with me that I was so fucking empty? It wasn’t till I got home and fell face down on my bed that I got angry about it. Lying there half foggy and filled with hollows, I hated that stupid building for making me feel that way. I wanted to make it pay. It was just a building, after all. And that’s when it came to me, what I could do to remind myself of that. I could climb the fucker and tag my name on the top, just like Ollie did. Make it display my name all across fucking town, from wherever anyone could see it. Make me unforgettable.
I went to sleep thinking the idea would probably be gone by the morning with whatever buzz I was still hanging on to, but it was like an infection. Once I started thinking about it, I couldn’t stop. It felt like a thing I had to do, like I had no choice, because my future was going to happen somewhere far away from this shit hole. I was certain of it before and I needed to be certain of it again. I drove Jude mad banging on about the idea, because I wanted him to spray his name next to mine. There was no good reason for it. The truth is, I was scared of going alone.
‘Come on, Jude. We’ll just go in and tag our names right up there in black and red, like you wanted to do when we was kids. Leave our fucking mark. Show this fucking dump what we’re made of.’
Jude made a face. ‘Nah, man. No way. That’s fucking mental. I ain’t doin’ that. I ain’t a kid no more, I’ve got nothing to prove.’
He said the same thing every time I brought it up, but I thought I could get him to change his mind. Because it weren’t fear stopping him, it was his girlfriend, Trace. She gave him grief if he so much as stuck a toe out of line. I mean, shit, he was only eighteen and he was acting like his dad, Frank. Frank barely spoke a word. Every time I went round Jude’s, Frank’d come in from work just in time for tea, and he’d go straight to wash and change, never speaking the entire time. He’d nod to us if Estelle was in the kitchen, but otherwise he’d go off, quiet as a lamb and come down clean for supper.
It took me years to realise it was fear kept his mouth shut, not what my dad said. He said Frank was tolerating her. But he didn’t. His face set like a fucking bucket of concrete every time she opened her mouth. He wanted to talk back. Fuck, he wanted to land a right hook on her jaw, and it was only fear that kept him from doing it. Fear of what she’d do, what she’d say. See, it weren’t just that she had a vicious tongue, sharper than all the women I grew up around and that’s saying something, she was pure fucking mean. If he spoke out of turn, sometimes if he spoke at all, it’d be like opening up this huge vat of pus inside of her, and she’d just pour it out all over him.
She never once raised her voice, but you could see him shrink under it, like it was acid and you had the feeling that if he did ever snap, if his anger got the better of his fear, she’d fucking kill him. It was this look in her. Like she was just waiting for the chance to go for him. Like a mad dog. Anyway, you grow up around that shit it stands to reason you might end up under the thumb of something like Trace. Hard mouthed, hard hearted bitch that she was, I wasn’t about to let her fuck this up, no way. So I kept on at him. I knew if I did, he’d give in. He always did.
It took a lot longer than I thought it would, though. A week and a half later in fact. Four days till I was gone for everything but holidays. We was at the bus depot, walking toward our stop after dropping Trace off for her bus. We’d missed ours because hers was late, and she wouldn’t let Ju go until she was gone. So we had an hour to wait for the next bus or we could take the walk home through the scrub land.
Usually I’d be OK to wait for the bus, but I had this fucking infection going on about that tower block and I couldn’t leave until I made it carry my name, even though I wanted to leave so bad I was already long gone in my head. Remember that. Remember that I wanted to leave. But The Romney had tried to steal something important from me, and it still hurt. It hurt like fucking hell and I knew it’d hurt until I got my own back.
My childhood, a
ll those memories, was like a huge rotten cut in my head, oozing blood and I was at the point where I was getting afraid to go. I’d been pushed all these years by needing to get away from Alan, but now I wasn’t sure. I was full of fear that I’d never make it like Gaz did, that I didn’t have what it took and I’d end up back here, married to some pus-mouthed cow who ground me down harder every day. End up going to work fourteen hours in some shitty warehouse only to come home to silence and cold shoulders. So more than anything, I guess, that stupid building made me scared I was born to fail. Funny what fear does, and sometimes… not funny at all.
‘Let’s just walk,’ I said to Jude. ‘It’s only forty minutes and I ain’t up for standing in the cold any more. It’s a fucking joke. I’m freezing my nuts off.’
‘I can’t, man. Trace’ll text. She’ll want to know I’m waiting for the bus,’ Jude said, but he didn’t look so sure.
It was freezing for late August, some bullshit early cold snap, and he was as cold as me, and fed up. As the day I was due to leave got closer, he was getting more aggravated. It was too fancy, and too far, and Mates don’t do that. Do they? They don’t desert. But, like I said, I had plans that didn’t include ending back on the estate with a wife and two kids and my balls in a fucking bag, and I didn’t want to join him at the local poly-turned-uni. It was all business and childcare, none of it remotely my thing. But he didn’t get that. He got needing to get away, but he thought us sharing a house would be enough and I couldn’t explain why it wasn’t to his satisfaction.
‘Aw, nah, c’mon Ju. She wouldn’t stand about freezing her tits off for anyone, not even you. Why you gotta do it for her?’
‘She likes to know where I am.’
‘What? Come the fuck on, Ju. Seriously? You think that’s it?’
He shrugged. ‘Nah. But I love her, innit.’
There weren’t nothing I could say that wasn’t rude in reply to that, so I shoved him with my shoulder. ‘We used to walk this fuck loads as kids, what’s different? We used to tell our mums we was at each other’s houses and come to town to get pissed up behind the co-op. Remember that time I threw up on Mrs. Davidson’s terrier and it licked it all off and couldn’t walk straight?’ Jude tried not to smile, but I almost had him, I could see it. So I pushed. ‘It won’t take long, and I’m dying. My stomach’s gonna eat my spine. Text you’re on the bloody bus or still waiting or some shit. I’ll swear black and fucking blue you’re telling the truth if she asks.’
Jude sighed and that was it. I knew him and I knew he’d given in. I felt this odd trickle in my guts. Like victory, but sort of scary, too, as if black ice water was being poured into me.
‘Come on, then. But you promise you’ll back me up?’
‘Course I fucking will, man.’ And I was pushing him along, wanting to get going. Get to The Romney.
He was banging on about Trace the entire walk but I didn’t hear a word of it. I was busy trying to work out how to get him to come and tag his name next to mine. It wouldn’t be easy, he was dead set against doing it, and he could be stubborn. Then there was Trace. He’d be scared to go up there in case she found out he’d been somewhere and not told her. But I had to persuade him. It was important.
I was out of ideas and beginning to panic a bit as we got near, but I shouldn’t have. The Romney presented the way in itself, like it had been waiting for us. It didn’t look quiet and empty this time, instead it took over the sunset like a fucking god, massive and alive. It looked like it was sucking in the sun and breathing out darkness. It had soul that night and it spoke to the pair of us, all them memories rising like puke after a night on the booze. Jude went quiet again when he saw it, and then after a moment or so as we walked toward it, the sound of our feet in the grass loud as bricks collapsing, he said:
‘Remember what you was saying, about us going up there and tagging our names?’
‘Course I do.’
‘Why’d you say that?’
That was my cue and I knew it, and just like that I also knew what it was I had to say to persuade him. The truth. He was always too soft. ‘It made me feel like a fucking loser, like all I’m worth is the same life my dad, my dad’s dad, and all the poor chumps before him was given. A great fucking lump of shit. I want to show it that it’s wrong. I want that bastard fucking building to carry my name until it crumbles, and everyone will see who got the better of who.’
He rolled that over in his head for a minute or two. Then he nodded. ‘All right, seeing as how you go in a few days, I’ll do this with you,’ he said. ‘You got any cans?’
I grinned. I did. Right from the morning I’d woken up knowing I had to go in The Romney I’d kept some in my bag. Black and red. Just like he’d said. ‘As a matter of fact, Ju, I do.’
‘Then let’s do this.’
I boosted him up the wall and gave it a run up. It was easier than when we was kids, not just because I was taller either. It’s like we was expected. Welcomed. The razor wire was all rusted up solid, but we got over it easy. We looked at each other, and I could see Ju thinking the same as me, but it didn’t stop us. We jumped down the other side into waist high grass and the kind of quiet that hits after a massive argument, when you’re all in shock from it getting so out of hand. Outside there’d been wind and the distant rumble of cars, the crows making a racket in the trees on the edge of the scrubland, but I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t even hear myself breathing. Couldn’t hear my heart beat.
‘Fuck, man, it’s quiet.’
Ju was talking in what my nan would’ve called a church whisper. He looked embarrassed to be caught speaking. I wanted to reply but I couldn’t, all I could see was The Romney. It swallowed my sight. I tugged at his arm and said as loud as I could without shouting, to show it at least one of us weren’t scared of it, ‘Come on, let’s go do this shit.’
He nodded at me, but he didn’t look certain, so I dragged him to the doors, pushing through the grass. The council hadn’t bolted grilles over the windows or doors. They probably wanted to, but no one would come up and do it. As it happened, they weren’t needed. When Ju and me shoved open the door and held up our phones to light up the inside, The Romney looked the same as it must have done when the last tenants left. It was clean, and quiet. And warm. I had to undo my jacket.
There was nowhere safe to go out and write our names. The only way to do it was to break into one of the flats at the twentieth floor, go out onto the balcony and either climb to tag our names on the balcony above, or hang over the side. I was good at that kind of shit. Fearless. The day I fell the wrong side of the wall I decided that fearless was my only option if I wanted to be like Gaz. So I lived it. Jude ain’t like that. He’s quiet and nervous. That’s his mum’s doing. I looked at him, then the elevators.
‘Reckon they still work?’
He looked at me like I was nuts. ‘No, and I ain’t going up in one even if they do. Stairs, man, or I’m outta here.’
I shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
The Romney, like the six they demolished, was built in the shape of a cross. Ollie’s dad told mine that’s why they burnt so well. I’d never been in any of them before, I’d never made a friend out of a shitlander. Not to say there weren’t some nice kids out of these when I was at Junior school, there was. Some of ‘em was all right, but none of us wanted the hassle we’d get from making friends with them, so they was left to hang out with each other.
Thing is, though, it meant I didn’t have a clue how to find the stairs in the dark with only my phone as a light, but as it happens they was easy to find. Behind these bland, windowless doors right next to the elevators. Even though there weren’t no lights, we could see right up them with just our phones. It looked like miles from the bottom. Miles and miles of cold, white stairs. Like a twisted backbone. We walked up them slow at first, but every step we took echoed like there was an army of us running up them risers and we ended up pelting for it, breathless and half scared, laughing so we looked tougher than we felt
.
The higher we got, the hotter it got, until we’d both taken off our jackets and stuffed them in my backpack. At the twentieth floor we bust out onto the landing, still laughing a bit. But we soon shut up. Fuck, but it was boiling hot, and there was this funny looking condensation on the walls from where trapped heat had made ‘em sweat. It looked and smelt like candle wax, but it was yellow as piss. I wanted to touch it but Jude grabbed my arm. His eyes was massive. All whites. His pupils shrunk down to pinholes, like Ollie’s did when he shot up.
‘What the fuck are you thinking, Micky! Let’s just break into one of these and get this over and done with.’
I yanked my arm away and nodded. The flats facing the scrubland was across the hall, so I charged at the first door I saw. They must have been cheap as shit hollow doors because, as I hit it, the door bust almost in two. The noise of it was huge, and me and Jude both froze. The place was empty, but we both expected that noise to bring someone running. It was just natural guilt I guess. Being used to getting a cuff upside the head when we done wrong. Even if we hadn’t done nothing. After a minute I got hold of my wits again, and punched Jude in the arm.
‘C’mon,’ I said to him. ‘Let’s find the balcony.’
He followed me down the short corridor. That greasy, waxy sweat covered the wallpaper. It looked like lemon curd this close, thickly spread, but it smelt fucking awful and I noticed Jude was walking the same as me, right in the middle, as far from each side as possible.
‘We goin’ up or down?’ he asked, and I heard how uncertain he was. I felt guilty, but now we was there I knew I couldn’t go until I was done.
