by Cj Flood
‘Got chucked out his last school for battering someone, you know.’
I relaxed. ‘Oh, I know about that.’
‘He put them in hospital.’
‘It wasn’t his fault.’
Sam didn’t say anything, but I could tell what he was thinking: that I was a little idiot.
The clock ticked between us and the tap dripped.
‘You won’t say anything though, will you?’ I said.
He looked at his knuckles, which were swollen and raw, for so long I thought he’d forgotten I’d asked him a question.
‘Course I won’t,’ he said, and the way he said it made me feel bad for asking.
His skinhead was growing out, and it was at that fluffy stage, like a kitten’s fur, or a scuffed-up tennis ball, not the look he was going for at all.
‘Your head looks like an old tennis ball.’
‘You can talk. Do you even know you’ve got a stick in your hair?’
I glared at him, but his eyes were teasing.
‘Gypo,’ he said, and I threw the stick at his face.
‘They’re not even gypsies. You don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘Pikeys, then. Tinkers. Whatever.’
I rolled my eyes.
‘Whatever they are, they’d best be clearing off soon.’
He screwed his face up as he talked, all sign of teasing gone, and with his left eye almost shut and his lip swollen he looked like a stranger. He kept touching his face, as if it was unfamiliar to him as well, and I felt like asking him who he was and what he was doing in our kitchen.
But I didn’t. Instead, I asked him again what had happened.
He looked at me, considering.
‘Hardly gonna tell, am I?’ I said.
He was nervous, but I could tell he was desperate to talk about it, so I just waited, like Trick would.
‘Promise you’ll keep your mouth shut, Eye. I mean it.’
‘When have I ever not kept my mouth shut?’
‘Yeah, but this is bad,’ he said.
His voice was the lowest whisper, and I leaned forward to hear him, pushing my hair behind my ears as if that would make a difference.
‘Punky cut someone,’ he said. ‘I knew summat was up soon as he came out. He didn’t even say hello, just had his head between his knees making a spit puddle. He gets like that sometimes. He wouldn’t even talk to Leanne. She was sitting right next to him, kissing him and that, but he just ignored her.
‘Then the bus came and these lads got off, all dressed up from town, and he was like, “Nice shirts! You go shopping for them together?” Calling them gay and that, and they just ignored him, but he wouldn’t leave it. He started calling them rude for not answering, and one of them near the back turned around, and Punky just headbutted him.’
I nodded my head for him to go on. His left foot juddered against the floor as he talked.
‘He’d only been out ten minutes and there was a rumble. It was five against three. People came out of the chippy, shouting that we’d best stop, that they’d called the police, but nobody actually did owt. I got a couple of good hits in, but then another one started on me, and I ended up on the floor taking a right battering.
‘I couldn’t do anything, just had to lie there protecting my head. I thought I was never gonna get up, and I was so winded, I couldn’t get a breath, and I’d left my inhaler at home, and then it finishes. Just like that. And I look up, through my fingers, thinking it’s the pigs, but it’s just Punky. He’s standing over me, and the townies are silent because in his hand he’s got a knife.’
He looked at me, and I made my face blank because I didn’t want him to stop talking.
‘It was only a Stanley knife, but with the blade yoiked up it looked bad, and the townies start moving backwards. The people outside the chippy were still shouting about the police, but Punky didn’t care.
‘He was grinning at them, daring them to kick me now, and I was on my feet. They couldn’t speak! And then for some reason, God knows why, the one who got headbutted in the first place just lurched at the knife, and Punky lunged too, and it cut right through that bit of skin.’
He pulled at the bit of skin between his thumb and forefinger, and I shivered. I couldn’t help it.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second.
‘Oh my God.’
‘I know. The weird thing was, the towny didn’t even shout. His face went green, and blood spurted out all over his chinos.’
There was a long silence where we looked at each other.
‘And you’re telling me to be careful?’ I said.
Sam tried to laugh, but he looked frightened. He looked excited too. His eyes flashed in the lamplight. ‘He’s never done it before. He couldn’t believe it. That’s all he kept saying at the rec. “I cut someone. I can’t believe I actually cut someone.”’
We sat at the table for a long time after that, and Sam made us both Horlicks, but it wasn’t comforting at all.
Twenty
Dad’s friend Fraz arrived on his pushbike Thursday evening. I didn’t want to talk to him, but I couldn’t help staring. He looked so different. He had a big red beard now, but you could still see his scars, creeping from the fuzz of it, reaching for his eye.
‘Blasted thing,’ Fraz said, getting off his bike. He kicked it so hard it flipped into the ditch.
Whenever I saw him I thought of his ex-wife, Mandy. He’d brought her round to meet Mum and Dad the day after he’d married her. She wore tight jeans under her biker leathers, and her head wobbled when she talked. Mum made spaghetti bolognese for tea, and interrogated Mandy. The four of them were at the kitchen table drinking when me and Sam had to go to bed.
I woke to hear the living room being pulled apart. When we got to the kitchen, Fraz was pulling Mandy out the door by her hair. Dad was trying to get him off her. Mum screamed at us to get back to bed. She shut the kitchen door on us, but we stayed on the stairs, listening. They managed to lock Fraz outside, and he shouted abuse at them until the police came and took him to the cells.
Mandy was still there at breakfast, make-up round her eyes. Her head wobbled as she stared at her scrambled eggs, and Mum tried to talk through her options.
We never really found out what happened, and we never saw Mandy again, but the day after, Fraz crashed his motorbike. Everyone said he was lucky to be alive. The motorway ripped the skin from his right hand to his right ear, and his leg was shattered.
Dad wanted to visit him in hospital, but Mum was angry. Why did he want to go and see that wife-beater? Why did he even have friends like that? Dad said he’d known Fraz since the first day of school, and that meant something, but Mum didn’t care. She said Fraz wasn’t allowed in the house any more.
In the end, Dad visited. He was the only person not family to make the effort. Fraz went on about it every time he came round afterwards.
‘My truest friend,’ he’d bellow, squeezing Dad around his neck so hard he dipped his head. Mum would bang around upstairs until him and Dad went out, fishing or to the pub.
Fraz hadn’t been able to get back on his motorbike since. His hands shook so much he couldn’t squeeze the handlebars. Now he went everywhere on this battered pushbike. He left it upside down in the ditch while he came into the house.
I made cups of tea and threw the ball for Fiasco. I wanted to know what Fraz was doing here. He kept Dad’s glass topped up with whisky, and they changed the subject every time I walked in, but it was obvious they were on about the travellers. I hated Dad for not trusting me, until I realised he had a point. Because what was I spying on him for anyway?
Fraz took a joint from behind his good ear, and lit it while Dad talked about Sam. He hadn’t fallen for his story about getting jumped outside the chippy – especially since Poll had rung up with a quite different version of events – and when he’d demanded the truth, Sam had threatened to move out.
‘“Please,” I said, “try it,”’ Dad said. ‘ “It’d
save me a fortune in crisps.”’
Fraz laughed his smoked-out laugh, and you could just make out his red, shiny lips between his moustache and beard.
I was surprised to hear Dad joking about the fight with Sam. I’d gone to see what all the racket was about this morning and found them arguing in the kitchen, Fiasco barking at their feet. Sam had said he hated living here, that he’d rather live anywhere else. He’d said it was a shithole, and I’d thought Dad was going to grab him, or throw something, but he just stood there, breathing very slowly. He closed his eyes.
It had confused Sam so much that he’d actually shut up. He slipped past me, upstairs to his room. He didn’t even turn his music on.
‘It’ll end in tears,’ Dad said now, smoke in his words.
Fraz left long after midnight, after Dad had fallen asleep at the table. Fag ends floated in whisky, and the whole kitchen stank. I emptied them out, and opened the windows. I got Dad a pint of water.
‘Sorry, Eye,’ he mumbled, as he walked unsteadily to his room.
I lay on my bed and stared at the picture Sam had drawn on my wall for a long time. It was his best yet. The sky was cloudy and dark, and the landscape looked mean. The rabbit’s entrails dripped onto the hills.
Twenty-one
The next night I snuck out to see Trick, but I couldn’t relax. I kept thinking about Sam’s bruises, and Punky’s knife. It was raining for the first time in ages and we sat underneath the cricket pavilion, listening to it, and leaning against each other for warmth. We’d started off at the cinema seats, but rain had created a drip system through the leaves, and seeing as we were getting almost as wet as if we were lying on the ground, we decided to find shelter.
The white paint on the posts was flaking, and I picked out the shape of a heart, then turned it into a balloon with a long string before Trick noticed. The rain let up, and we talked about moving, but stayed huddled where we were. Seagulls circled, pale against the navy sky, and clouds like bandages moved slowly across the fat moon. Somewhere nearby a can rattled across the ground.
My fingernails had grown long without me noticing, and I bit an edge, thinking about Sam and Dad, and Fraz with all his scars. Trick was telling me about something that had happened on their scrap rounds, and I knew from his tone that it was meant to be funny, so I laughed.
‘You all right?’ he said, and he sounded doubtful, so I nodded enthusiastically.
He narrowed his eyes at me. His hair was damp from the rain and it clumped together on his forehead.
‘Not seen you gnawing at your claws like that before.’
‘I used to bite them really bad. My hands looked like an alien’s.’
I peeled off the top of my thumbnail, leaving a raggedy edge. I spat it out.
‘Kinda gross actually,’ he said.
The tin can moved again nearby, scraping itself across the wet ground, and I wondered what Trick would say if I told him about my brother, and Punky’s knife, and then there was a whizzing sound, and a rocket shot into the sky.
We watched it explode. The green light turned to smoke and we heard laughing. Sam and a boy I’d never seen before bowled through the gate to the cricket pitch and started sticking fireworks into the lawn. Leanne and Punky were behind them, arms around each other, smoking. All the boys’ heads were shaved. The one I hadn’t seen before wore a black wool hat.
They stopped to watch the fireworks, their faces shifting around in the flare of them. They laughed at how they tore out of the grass, leaving a messy skid mark. The smell of gunpowder mixed with the rain.
I felt Trick tense beside me.
The pit bull noticed us first. It growled and began to bark, its hind legs lifting with the force of it. Its teeth flashed as it opened its enormous head, and the group looked our way.
‘Eh up, kiddies,’ Punky called.
Leanne giggled. ‘Hiya, girls!’
Both of them wore tracky bottoms with black jumpers. White T-shirts poked out the middle like a frill.
‘Hell you doing out here?’ Sam said, walking towards us. I couldn’t tell if he was scared or angry.
‘Don’t be nasty to your little sister!’
‘Shut up, Punky,’ Sam said.
Trick had moved away, so our knees were no longer touching, and I missed the warmth. I wished Sam would stop staring at him the way he was.
‘What did I say to you?’ he said, and I was about to answer that he hadn’t said anything to me when I realised he was talking to Trick.
Trick looked like he hated my brother. I didn’t even know they’d spoken to each other. It hadn’t crossed my mind. He eased himself to a standing position, and I stood next to him, back straight to get my full height though it wasn’t much. Trick’s arms hung at his sides, and I wished he would wrap one around me, like Punky did Leanne.
Sam’s knuckles were clenched.
‘Iris, what you doing out here with him? It’s the middle of the night.’
I stared at him, annoyed by the way he was talking to me, like he was my boss or something and I had to do whatever he said. As if he always talked to me like this.
‘We were just going,’ Trick said, holding his palms out.
‘I’m talking to my sister,’ Sam said, not looking at Trick.
‘Hear that, Pikelet? He wasn’t talking to you.’ Punky spoke with a perfect Irish accent, one much cleaner than Trick’s. He took a step towards us, smirking, and spat on the floor.
‘You don’t scare me, fella,’ Trick said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
The boy with the wool hat spoke lazily. ‘Scare you if he sliced you up a bit?’
He looked like he didn’t care what happened to him or anyone, like if you asked him what he was doing out here he wouldn’t even know.
‘Now that would be unnecessary,’ Trick said. ‘Seeing as how we were just leaving, peaceful, and of our own accord.’
Sam was acting really strange. He kept looking in my direction with this odd expression, and he couldn’t keep still. His nostrils curled like we smelled bad to him, and I stared and stared at him, but he wouldn’t look at me properly. He looked wrong out here with his shaved head. He wasn’t like Punky. He wasn’t even like Trick. He was faking, and he knew that I could tell. He hated it.
Punky moved closer, and I could smell his deodorant and sweat, and the faint smell of dog under the fag smoke and beer.
‘Your brother don’t like your mate, Iris,’ Punky said. ‘He wants your mate to get his scrounging arse out of here.’
‘He will soon,’ Sam laughed. ‘My dad’s gonna use a tractor to tow his mum and sisters away.’
Trick shot a glance at me, and my heart exploded.
‘Try it,’ he said. ‘Find out what you’re dealing with. Come on, Iris.’
He started walking off, and I followed, desperate to get out of there.
‘What d’you bring her out here for anyway?’ Punky called after us. ‘Want to have a go on her in private, did you?’
I couldn’t help looking back, but Trick kept on walking.
‘Ah, just shut up, would yer?’ he called over his shoulder.
‘She’s not even fourteen, Punky,’ I heard Sam say. ‘Jesus.’
The whole time we walked from the cricket ground I expected footsteps to charge at us, or a can to smack us on the back of the head, but I marched beside Trick anyway, and I didn’t look back again, and with every step I saw how easy it was to get used to acting like you weren’t scared of anything.
‘Gypos not welcome,’ Punky bellowed, far behind us now, and there was Leanne’s laugh, high-pitched and fun-sounding, like a kid’s party, and a rocket fizzed into the sky.
‘Nice mates, your brother’s got,’ Trick said when we were back on Memorial Lane.
I thought of Benjy with his floppy hair, sitting with Sam by the brook, threading maggots onto a fishing hook.
‘They’re not his mates . . .’
Trick laughed out his nose.
‘They’
re not.’
I stopped walking, but Trick didn’t.
‘He isn’t really like this . . .’ I said, and I wondered if I was telling Trick or myself.
‘He isn’t. Wait!’
Trick slowed down then. He let me catch up.
‘It’s since Mum left. He won’t talk about it. He gets so angry. He’s just . . . He isn’t really like this.’
The way Trick was looking at me made me shut up. His eyes were soft, and his head was tilted, and I didn’t understand.
I looked ahead, towards the house. The kitchen light was on, and I felt like crying. I was remembering how Mum had tried to hold Sam but he hadn’t let her, and how she’d just said, ‘Okay,’ because that was her big thing: respecting our feelings, giving them room, and I was thinking how maybe that was a pretty stupid idea. I was thinking too that maybe I shouldn’t be making excuses for my brother.
I walked right past my house, and I didn’t even watch to make sure Dad didn’t see. I didn’t care. Everything felt different, and I didn’t want to leave Trick. I didn’t want things to change.
We got to the entrance to the paddock and stopped.
‘What are you doing, Iris?’ Trick said.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t go any further; the trailers were right there, but I couldn’t go home either, and I knew I was talking to the wrong person, but I couldn’t stop.
‘I’m worried about him, Trick. That wasn’t him out there. And Punky . . .’
I couldn’t get the words out.
‘Punky cut someone,’ I said, and Trick shook his head while I told him what had happened outside the chippy.
‘I promised not to say anything.’
Trick was so angry I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
‘Christ! They’ll end up in prison. Probably for murdering me. That Punky’s bad enough without a knife. And your brother’ll do anything he says.’
‘He wouldn’t. You don’t know anything about him.’
Trick’s body was in shadow, but his face was patterned with the moonlight that shone through the branches nearby.
