by Cj Flood
‘And you’re pretty,’ he added, really quickly, and I almost laughed out loud with the joy of it.
I wished there were some way Matty could have witnessed this.
When the energy shooting around my bloodstream had calmed down, I asked what he was going to do.
‘What can I do? Hole up here for a bit, then go face him.’
Babyish ideas entered my head, like You could hide in the chicken coop, or Camp in the cornfields, or We could run away together, but I managed to keep them inside.
Trick said he was on driving duties, for lying, which meant he wouldn’t be able to get out for a while, and I tried not to look shocked that his dad would let him drive a car about before he was even fifteen. We arranged to meet in a few days’ time, on Wednesday, at nine p.m. If he wasn’t there by ten, it meant he couldn’t get out.
‘I’ll just come back the next night,’ I said.
And the night after that.
And the night after that.
Trick couldn’t relax, but he didn’t want to go home, and so we headed to the brook to cool our feet.
At the ancient oak, I heard something.
‘Wait,’ I said, raising a finger.
We cocked our heads.
‘There,’ I said, and he nodded.
‘You’re not wrong.’
It was Dad. And he was shouting my name.
Seven
Clearing the pig farmer’s gate, I heard Dad shout again. I kicked up dust as I ran down the lane. Through the wispy branches of the poplars surrounding our yard, I could see him, fingers at his mouth, about to whistle. I shouted, and he stalked to meet me on the drive.
‘Where the bleeding hell have you been?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Nowhere? I’ve been shouting all morning.’
My pulse throbbed at my temple.
‘Austin’s out looking for you.’
‘Why?’ I asked in a small voice, thinking of Sam and Mum and rubber skid marks across busy roads.
‘Some stuff from the shed’s gone missing,’ he said, heading for the house. ‘I need you to wait in, in case the coppers call back.’
‘Wait in?’ I followed behind him. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Blasted chainsaw’s banjaxed again. Austin’s driving me into town. Haven’t got time to waste, waiting around for the bloody phone to ring.’
‘Have you spoken to Sam? Maybe he borrowed something?’
‘Course I flaming have,’ he said. ‘Though God knows what he’d want with a monkey wrench, he can’t even wash his bleeding football kit. Anyway, the window’s smashed at the back.’
I shut up. I didn’t know what there was to say anyway, I just wanted to slow things down.
‘I told you this would happen, didn’t I?’ he went on, in the kitchen now. ‘I said so. They wouldn’t bloody listen.’
‘Who?’
‘Who d’you think? Bloody coppers! What did they expect?’
I sat at the kitchen table while he hunted around the kitchen for the pick-up keys. They hung off a bundle of keyrings Sam and me had brought him back from different school trips, but he still managed to lose them every day.
‘Iris!’ he shouted, out of nowhere. ‘That bloody foot . . .’
I stood up and stared at him. My eyes prickled as if there were little stags behind them, charging. I wasn’t upset, I was angry, and I wanted him to notice me for once, but he was focused on the phone, like that would solve all his problems.
I stamped upstairs, dragging my finger through the dust on the banister. He hadn’t even tried to keep things nice. I sank into the armchair in his room, not caring that he was in and might catch me. I wanted to see what Trick’s mum and his little sisters were doing in the paddock.
I didn’t expect to see Trick. He must have decided to come out from the cornfield straight away, because he was slumped by the fire with his mum and little sisters, eating something. They looked just like a family on a camping holiday.
I was angry because stuff got nicked all the time. Just because it hadn’t happened to us before didn’t mean it was never going to. It could’ve been anyone. But Dad would make out I was stupid if I even suggested something like that. He thought I was so gullible.
Trick’s mum was handing some drinks out. She moved like Trick, swift and precise. He was nothing like his dad at all. The way he hunched over to lace his boots, ignoring everybody, his thick neck sloping to meet his shoulders. My stomach dropped when I thought of him. Trick smiled at something his mum said and I just knew it, I felt it. He wouldn’t steal from us.
Beyond the travellers, on the Ashbourne Estate, the maize flowers rippled prettily. I pictured the corn den, empty, and wished we were back there, just the two of us, without all this.
Trick’s mum chucked him an apple and he bit into it, looking tense as he waited for his dad to get home. I wanted to warn him about what was happening. I wanted him to be prepared.
‘Eye?’
Dad’s voice made me jump, and I pretended to be rooting through the washing pile on the armchair. He held out a cup of tea, and I took it without saying thanks.
‘Look at all that rubbish,’ he tutted, coming to stand beside me.
Black sacks and some tied-up carrier bags were piled at the back of each caravan, and one of the dogs, or a fox, had ripped out the insides. Food cartons and nappies were strewn about the paddock. There were piles of old tyres and sheets of corrugated iron and an empty gas canister by the fire.
‘You didn’t answer me before,’ he said.
Neither of us looked at the other, and I listened for clues in his voice about whether or not I was in trouble.
‘Where were you? When I shouted.’
I blew on my tea, making the surface move: Ashbourne Lake in the breeze.
‘Iris?’
‘Pig farmer’s field,’ I lied.
‘Then why didn’t you hear me?’
‘Must’ve fallen asleep.’
He looked worried, which meant he’d decided to talk to me about something, and I crossed my fingers so hard my knuckle joints hurt that it wasn’t anything that would stop me from seeing Trick.
He shifted his weight from left to right hip then tidied up the towers of five pences he was collecting on the windowsill.
‘Look. I know I’ve been letting you run wild lately, but it’s only because I trust you. I don’t worry about you like I do your brother. I know you’re sensible.’
I picked a cat hair from my tea.
‘Leave that alone a sec, I want to talk to you. About the gypsies . . .’
Irish travellers, I corrected secretly.
I braced myself for him to say he knew about my friendship with Trick, and that I wasn’t allowed out by myself any more because I couldn’t be trusted, because I was as bad as my blasted brother, and worse than my mum, but he only said, ‘I know what you’re like, Eye, you see the best in people, and it’s a lovely thing, but . . .’ He turned away from me, nodded towards the paddock. ‘I’ve been in the world a long time, and those people down there, you can’t trust them. And I know you think I’m being unfair, or prejudiced,’ he said, as though prejudiced wasn’t a real word, ‘and I know you feel sorry for them – I’ve seen you watching – but they’re not like us. They’re parasites, Eye. It’s what they do.’
I uncrossed my fingers then because it was obvious that he didn’t know a thing, and I realised that even if I did tell him the truth – that Trick was my friend, and that he’d never steal from us, that I knew him – he wouldn’t take my word for it. He couldn’t.
‘I was wrong to let it stand for so long,’ he said. ‘They bite the hand that feeds them, I think everyone agrees about that. Come here.’
He opened his arms out for a cuddle, and I stepped inside, inhaling his warm smell of wool and sweat and grass.
‘Don’t like you thinking I’m a pig, Eye,’ he said, and his voice was gruff again like it always was when he admitted something, and I told h
im that I didn’t think he was a pig, which surprised both of us, because he was prejudiced, and he thought I was too silly to decide anything for myself, but I meant it.
Eight
The police stuck to their word. By nine-thirty a.m. on Monday two officers – WPC Baker and PC Todd – were standing in the kitchen looking as though they couldn’t quite believe they’d come all the way down this potholed lane for not much missing from a tree surgeon’s shed.
It turned out that as well as the window at the back being smashed, and Dad’s monkey wrench having gone, a claw hammer was missing, and a stretch of thick chain. I wondered if Trick had heard anything, but I saw him on Saturday. He would have said.
Dad gave the police cups of his finest cabbage water. He loved giving officials weak tea; he put a single tea bag in the pot, and filled it right to the top so that when you added milk it turned grey. Once he did it to Nanny Ferris, and Mum noticed and went mental.
PC Todd read Dad’s statement back to him, and when he reached the bit where Dad finds the tools missing, he looked up, as if to check Dad’s reaction. Dad looked straight back, the heel of his work boot resting against the Aga. Between me and Dad, Fiasco’s tail twitched.
PC Todd was getting to the end of the statement when the door opened and Sam walked in. I stared at his head. All his brown curls had gone. I could smell his shower gel and deodorant as he walked past, and I watched for Dad’s reaction to his shaved head. PC Todd nodded an acknowledgement, but Sam just took a seat on the bench by the phone, straightening out his Adidas Stripes. His face was blotchy from having the shower on too hot.
WPC Baker was furthest away. She hadn’t said anything since she’d introduced herself and plonked her bum on the edge of the table. Now she watched Sam. He looked bored. He was rubbing his little finger across the full moon scar he had on his forehead. It had been there since he was a toddler: a decapitated chicken pock. He used to fiddle with it at the same time as he sucked his thumb, until Mum started covering his nail in this ointment that tasted like earwax.
PC Todd took a pen from behind his ear, and clicked it open against his clipboard.
‘And you’re certain that when you locked the shed nothing was missing?’
‘Nothing missing. Nothing smashed,’ Dad said.
PC Todd’s trousers were a half-shiny navy blue, like Sam’s school trousers. It didn’t seem right they should be so similar.
‘And how about the children? Were you two around that night? You didn’t hear anything, see anything?’ he said.
Dad looked at us. He’d been at the Stag. Friday was always a late one.
I shook my head. ‘I was in, but I didn’t notice anything.’
‘I was at my friend’s house,’ Sam said.
Todd wrote our answers down.
‘It’s like I said on the phone. There’re gypsies down the paddock. A whole load of them. A lad, two men—’
‘We’re not here to talk about the eviction, Mr Dancy,’ Baker interrupted. ‘Far as we’re concerned, this is an entirely separate case.’
Dad made a scoffing sound. ‘We’ll see about that,’ he said. He threw an amused look at Fiasco, who seemed to grin back.
WPC Baker looked annoyed.
‘Will you need statements off them?’ Dad asked, meaning me and Sam.
I held WPC Baker’s gaze, though my throat was tight at the thought of her watching me with those grave blue eyes.
‘That depends on whether either of them have any information,’ Baker said, and her voice was devoid of expression as she looked at each of us. I stroked Fiasco and tried to look sweet.
Silence filled the room, and I got that feeling, like when you’re watching a play and you’re not sure who’s meant to speak next, that the pause was for dramatic effect, or because someone had forgotten their lines.
I nudged Fiasco with my foot to set her tail wagging again. Sam stroked his little moon absently. His head gleamed. He looked like a different person. I hated it.
‘Could we have a word, Mr Dancy?’ Baker said finally.
Without being told, me and Sam left the kitchen. I walked to my bedroom then crept back to listen at the kitchen door, expecting Sam to do the same, but his heavy footsteps up to his room hadn’t been for show.
‘There’s been a period of over . . .’ Todd paused. Paper flicked. ‘Three weeks, with the gypsies present, and no criminal activity—’
‘Except for the illegal squatting,’ Dad interrupted. ‘And the fly-tipping. And God knows how much of my wood they’re chucking on the fire.’
Baker intervened, ‘As I said earlier, we aren’t here to discuss your plans to evict today, Mr Dancy.’
She had a weird way of talking, emphasising the wrong words, as if she’d got bored of saying the same things all the time. ‘We’re here to talk about the break-in to your shed.’
‘I think you’ll find the two are quite closely related,’ Dad said.
‘We’ll be the judge of that.’
‘And you say this is the first time anything like this has happened down here?’ Todd said.
‘In fifteen years,’ Dad said, and there was another silence, a longer one this time, until Baker spoke again.
‘You know, the last time we ran into you, Mr Dancy, you were hiding, half-cut, in the back of your car. We had to take you in to do a little blood test. Are you managing to get to work okay?’
She was talking about when Dad got done for drunk driving. It wasn’t long after Mum left, and I didn’t know what had happened, just that Dad wasn’t allowed to drive any more. That was why Austin had gone from part-time helper to full-time apprentice, so he could drive the pick-up as well.
The kitchen tap dripped, and I wondered what Dad’s face was doing.
‘The fact is, without any evidence, this break-in may not strengthen your case with the council at all,’ Baker said.
‘Couldn’t bloody weaken it.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure, Mr Dancy. This could be construed as sabotage.’
Dad made a strangled noise.
‘All we’re saying is, there’re proper channels for dealing with these situations,’ Todd put in.
‘Oh don’t get me started on your flaming channels,’ Dad said. He stopped himself, and when he spoke again his voice had changed completely.
‘Righty-ho then. I know where I stand.’ The back door creaked open.
‘Wish we could be of more help, Mr Dancy, but the fact is—’ Baker sing-songed.
‘Don’t worry, love. Got it. Loud and clear.’
There was some shuffling as the police left, and Fiasco jumped onto the table to bark at them as they walked to the shed.
That afternoon, I found Dad sitting in the living room, watching telly with the sound off. He never watched telly in the daytime, except for at Christmas.
The living room curtains were closed, but there was a gap in the middle where they didn’t quite meet. Mum had talked about replacing them ever since she shrank them in the wash last year. I promised that as soon as I had some money, I would do it myself.
Sunlight pierced through the gap, turning bits of dust to glitter. Fiasco lay on Dad’s feet with her head on her paws. I sat in the chair next to them. Her tail thumped the floor in greeting.
‘You all right, Dad?’
‘Not really, Eye. I’m fed up.’
I scrunched my mouth over to one side, trying to think of something to say.
The walls in the living room were exactly like rice pudding except for being a pale green. I reached out to touch them, feeling the familiar lumps. Stuck to the ceiling above Dad’s seat was a dollop of tomato sauce of which all three of us had denied knowledge. I looked up at it.
‘I’ll clean that tomorrow,’ I said.
Dad blew air out his nose.
The remote control had fallen from the arm of Dad’s chair, and lay on the floor with its batteries nearby. I leaned down and picked them up.
‘What you watching?’ I said.
&nbs
p; ‘Sharks.’
‘Cool,’ I said.
I looped the elastic band that secured the back around the remote and handed it to him. He tapped his finger on the buttons.
‘That was the pig who took my licence,’ he said, and I did my best That’s News To Me face. ‘Sow, I should say. Got it in for me.’
Sunlight came bright through the gap in the curtains to rest on the telly, and for a second the dust on the screen glowed as a great white shark swaggered out of the dark towards us.
‘Don’t be a copper, Eye, whatever you do.’
‘As if.’
He settled back to watch telly and I did the same, but I was thinking about Trick and his family out there in the paddock.
Nine
Mum still rang every Monday night at seven o’clock on the dot and Sam still refused to answer or even be in the house at that time. There was always this awkward bit at the start of our conversation where Mum would say, ‘Is Sam—?’ And I would cut her off as cheerfully as I could, and rush on to a different subject. At first it made me feel bad, like the consolation prize kid, but after a while I stopped noticing.
Dad made sure he was in the Stag when she called, so I got used to settling down in his armchair in the living room and talking about things that nobody else wanted to hear about: mainly Trick Delaney.
It was funny, because when Mum actually lived here she could never listen to me. She pretended to, and thought she was pretty good at it, but I could tell when she was faking. I’d run little tests to find out, throw in funny-sounding words that I’d learned, like scrotum and vestibule, and she would nod away.
On the phone it was different. She loved hearing about the travellers, especially Trick’s mum, and I told her everything I could notice. Like that all of Trick’s little sisters had their ears pierced, even Ileen, the tiniest, and that sometimes in the morning before the babies were awake his mum did press-ups outside the trailer.
Matty said she wouldn’t be able to take her mum leaving, but sometimes, after just a few minutes at her house with her mum, I got the urge to walk out and lie down in a field full of mud or take a swing and chuck it over the high bar in the playground so the chain twisted and nobody could play with it.
