by Ally Kennen
He walks down through the undergrowth where I’ve just been and he stares at the gap in the thorn hedge.
I find myself a vantage point in some dead bracken behind a tree and watch. I hug Malackie tightly to me. I can hardly breathe.
Does this man know?
The man takes a paper out of his pocket, unfolds it and studies it. He’s looking for something. To my alarm, he pushes himself through the thorns.
I ought to run off now, but I can’t. I have to see this. I have to follow.
“Ah,” says the Dam Man. He’s seen the overgrown cage.
He walks round the cage and tugs at one of the bars. I can’t hear any sound from the water. If he finds my little pet, he’ll remember me and think I’m involved. Oh God! He’s climbing up the bank. He’s going to see him. It’s all over. I crush Malackie’s ear in my fingers before realizing what I am doing and he lets out a little whimper. The Dam Man stops and looks hard in our direction. I freeze and hold Malackie tightly. I slowly let out my breath as the man moves again.
“Sorry boy,” I whisper, unable to take my eyes away from the cage.
He puts a foot on the concrete ledge, reaches up and grips the highest bar. He looks like he is trying to pull himself up on to the roof. No, he’s changed his mind. He jumps down and looks around as if he knows I am watching. He eyes up the bramble and bracken on the bank. He’s wondering if he can get up that way. I know he can. It’s how I do it. He goes for it, piling through the undergrowth and scrambling up the bank.
He looks at the cage, testing all the bars on the roof with his foot. He finds the damaged ones and balances along the metal bars to examine the hatch. I hear him muttering to himself. I hope he doesn’t attract my boy’s attention. Oh no! He’s noticed something. He’s looking right down into the cage.
“What?” says the man.
There’s a fluttering noise as a pair of wings bash against the bars.
“How did you get in here?” The Dam Man lifts the padlock. “I haven’t got a key, mate, you’ll have to get out the same way you got in.”
Don’t look down.
I picture the floating eyes staring up at the bloke’s meaty body.
Look, he’s coming down. I can’t believe it. He hasn’t seen him. He stands on the grass, leaning on the cage, stretches his arms over his head and lets out a loud belch. I imagine a dark shape looming up behind him and a jaw pushing through the bars and teeth puncturing his jacket. But there’s no roar, no splashing, it’s as if there is nothing in the cage except an old pigeon and a pit of water. The bloke starts walking towards me and I turn and run, dragging Malackie after me by the collar.
Malackie is pleased to see the car (which is a surprise because it nearly killed him yesterday) and he jumps into the passenger seat, wagging his tail. I stroke his head and he thumps his tail. I switch on the ignition and we drive off.
But I’m not going to the factory, and I’m not going back to the Reynolds’s. Not yet. It’s only the middle of the day. I’ve got to sort things out. I’m off on my mission impossible.
After about five miles the landscape changes. We climb up to the moors and the trees are all stunted by the wind and heather grows by the side of the road. We pass a load of little ponies who carry on munching even as we burn by. I turn off down a tiny lane and it is all potholed and rough with grass growing down it like a Mohican haircut.
I take my rucksack and Malackie and leave my car pulled up on the verge. I climb over a gate and follow a stony path up to a trig point. It’s cold and I pull my hat low over my head. I can see for miles. I look down at a forest ahead; staring at the tops of the trees till my eyes are watering and I wonder if this is going to be a waste of time. Malackie pulls at his rope and barks at the wind.
“Good boy,” I say and he gives me a dog-grin. I’m glad he’s too thick to realize I tried to kill him. We follow a path down towards a forest. I can’t stop thinking about what happened this morning. I can’t understand how the Dam Man didn’t see anything. Maybe it’s because he smells different to me, so the Beast stayed quiet. Or maybe my boy was there all along, lying on the bottom and the Dam Man never noticed him. He expected there to be nothing there, so there wasn’t. And the water is probably murky after the pig and the badger, so maybe you can’t see the bottom. I’ve had a lucky escape. If the Dam Man had discovered my Beast, the place would be crawling with police and newspapers. They’d all want to know how he got there. The Dam Man would remember me and that would be it. I’d be famous. It might be quite good. I might make some money out of it. But life is not like that. They’d either kill my boy or put him in a manky zoo and throw me in the nick for owning a dangerous animal without a licence.
I push away the brambles and step into a clearing. Several large trees lie uprooted and grasses and reeds grow to my waist. This is mad. I’m probably coming out all this way on a wild goose chase. Something squeals in the trees and the branches sway. I glimpse a hairy tail and bright, rodent eyes. It is a squirrel and Malackie wants to chase it. I should let him off the lead but he might never come back. Geese fly over the tree tops. I look at the leader, flying at the apex of the V. Somebody told me that the one that flies in front has to work hardest and when it gets tired it falls back and another takes its place. Responsibility for navigation is shared amongst the strongest birds, and the older and weaker they become, the further back in the V they fly. Sorry, I find stuff like this interesting.
I find a rabbit with dusty eyes lying dead in a snare. The fur is dewy and a trickle of blood drips out of its nostrils. This is a good sign. Maybe I’ll be in luck after all. I take the wire off the rabbit’s neck and pick up the floppy body. I put it in my rucksack. It will be handy later. I should get an award for most imaginative ways to feed your pet, shouldn’t I? No one can say I don’t try.
I climb a steep bank, pulling myself up on the trees. My trainers are stuck with pine needles. Every so often a tree is marked with a dab of orange paint. I think this means it is going to be sawn down. Someone has been here recently. I see a Coke can and a faded crisp packet. An empty biscuit tube lies half buried in needles. The ground is soft and I wonder if I can smell smoke. I stop. Strung between two trees is a dark, sagging hammock and a plume of smoke comes towards me over the leaves. It crosses my mind that I should turn and quietly walk away.
But the bundle in the hammock stirs, sensing my presence. I see a mop of hair and a brown hand with broken, dirty crusted nails.
“Dad,” I say.
S e v e n
Six years ago, when I was just eleven, me and Selby climbed up on to the roofs in the high street. It was really early in the morning, about seven o’clock. Selby took me over all these roofs until we came to a wall that looked down on the prison gates. We were nearly level with the high prison wall and there was a big clock like Big Ben striking out the hour. Selby pointed at a wooden door in the red brick wall and a man came out. He looked a bit dazed. It was a bright morning and we had the sun behind us, but I was worried he would see us and I ducked behind the wall but Selby told me not to be so soft. All the same, when I looked again, I could only bring myself to look at his shadow at first. It was long and slanted and carried a big bag.
The man paused and looked around him, like he was seeing everything for the first time. Even from a distance I could see that the suit didn’t fit him properly and his shoes were black and shiny.
“That’s never him, Selb,” I whispered.
Selby jabbed me in the ribs. “Course it is. Look at him.” He fished a pair of binoculars out of his pocket, he’d nicked them from the market, adjusted the eye pieces and handed them to me. I looked through and followed the red bricks down till I reached the man.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling weird. “It’s him.” He had dark hair, like mine, and pale skin. His shoulders were the same shape as Selby’s.
It was our dad all right. He’d been in
the nick for three whole years. And I hadn’t seen him once. He got done for violent burglary. Selby said it must have been pretty bad to get three years without parole.
“Give me them.” Selby snatched the bins as my dad walked off.
We followed him, crawling up roofs and sliding down walls. Selby found a fire escape and we climbed down to the road. We hid behind parked cars and trees and wheely bins. It was quite exciting. We always kept our distance.
Dad crossed the road and stopped at a bus shelter. He put his bag on the pavement and watched the seagulls screeching overhead.
“He looks stoned,” I whispered from behind a Mazda on the other side of the road.
“Probably is,” said Selby.
“Reckon he’ll go to Gran’s?” I asked.
Selby shrugged.
Just then a bus drew up. Our dad was the only one waiting, but as he went to get on he turned his head back in our direction. I couldn’t move. I just thought what a funny sight we must look, two skinny heads peeking over the bonnet of the car. I don’t know what I expected back then. Definitely not some soppy reunion. Not my dad dropping his bags and running over to us saying, “My sons,” and taking us off for a big slap-up breakfast somewhere. It was a good job I didn’t expect that.
My dad saw us. I know that. Something crossed over his face but I can’t really explain it. Sorry. He stared for a few seconds, then gave himself a little shake and got on the bus. My mouth fell open.
As the bus drove past he looked out of the window at us then turned his head away. Then the bus was gone.
“Bastard,” said Selby.
My dad didn’t go to Gran’s.
The man in the hammock, my father, sits up.
“It’s you,” he says in his best rasping voice.
I nod.
“What do you want?”
My dad’s never been one to roll out the red carpet. The first time me and Selby found him out here, he tried to chase us off.
“Got a fag?” asks my dad.
I give him two. At least he has his own lighter. Everyone’s bumming fags off me these days.
My dad lives in a wood in a steep valley right in the middle of the moors. At least sometimes he lives here. In winter he’s usually hanging around the hostels in town. I thought I might find him here because the weather is warming up a bit. He has this bender, made of planks and a tarpaulin, with a stove in it. Outside he has another fire and his hammock. There’s an old dustbin he uses to collect rainwater. He has a kettle and pots and pans sitting under a gorse bush. There are food wrappings and scraps of plastic lying everywhere. A white raggedy sheet hangs in the branches like dad was trying to build something and gave up. I’m standing on fag butts, dead leaves, and a rotting item of clothing. Dad’s made a right mess. Empty milk cartons lie around and half-buried planks and scraps of metal. The only thing that looks organized is a massive wood pile close to the bender. There’s a sharp saw on a wide log. Malackie sniffs at the wood pile and cocks his leg.
“Any grub?” asks my dad. I think of the pig and fight a crazy urge to laugh.
I hand him a banana, three oranges and six apples. All nicked from the Reynolds’s everlasting fruit bowl. My dad looks disappointed. “Nothing else?” he asks. “A drink?”
I shake my head. I’m not giving him the rabbit. I’m keeping that for somebody else.
My dad swings his legs round and sits up. He runs his hand through his mop of hair. His beard has got bigger. It’s all dark and matted and streaked with grey. His hair is clumping into a massive dreadlock on the back of his head. His hands are filthy and the nails are brown and broken. His skin is tanned a deep brown and there’s a smear on his nose. He’s wearing a torn pair of trousers and a thick winter coat. Dad smells of pee and smoke and BO. I look closer at his boots. They’re brand new Caterpillars.
“Where did you get them?” I ask.
“Mate gave them to me.”
Whenever my dad says his mate has given him something, I know it means he’s nicked it.
Dad rubs his eyes, belches and looks at me. “You here alone?”
“I drove here,” I say. “I need a favour.”
“Oh come on, Stephen.” Dad finishes the first fag and lights up the second.
He’s always smoked, my dad. When I think of him I always picture him with a fag in his mouth. When he got sent down, when I was about eight years old, there was a smell of smoke around my gran’s house for months after he’d gone. And it wasn’t from us kids. Gran made us smoke outside. Even if it was raining! No wonder we got put in Care.
“In trouble are you?” asks my dad. “You can’t stay here.”
“It’s nothing like that,” I say. I’m nervous. My dad has this way about him. You just want to run off and leave him alone. It feels like it wouldn’t take much to tip him over the edge. But I hold my ground. After all, he got me in this mess in the first place.
“What else have you got in your bag?” asks my dad.
“Nothing,” I say. But before I can stop him he has grabbed my bag off my shoulder and is rifling through. I feel angry. I mean, I’m not a little kid any more.
“That’s mine,” he says, pulling out the rabbit. He gives me a look. “What do you want that for?”
I don’t reply. I just get more and more angry watching him pick through my stuff. He finds some coins and asks me if he can have them.
“Please, Stephen, I don’t get paid till next week.”
Paid! I like that. That’s what my dad calls his dole money. He goes to the post office once a fortnight for his giro. After my dad left prison, Selby and I traced him to the hostel in town. St Mark’s. That’s right; you have heard the name before. It’s where Social Services are planning to dump me. Nice, eh? You can understand why I’m not keen to go there, not if it accepts scumbags like my dad. In the past I would have let my dad take the money. But not today. He has about three quid in his palm. I had to work in the meat factory to earn that.
“Give it back,” I say, and snatch it out of his hand.
My dad is surprised. “No offence, lad. I just thought you might want to help your old dad out.”
I always felt like a skinny midget next to him. He makes everyone feel like this. But I am pleased to notice that I am now as tall as him. Soon he won’t dare to boss me around any more.
I think he might have noticed I’ve grown as well because he gives me back my bag, though he keeps the rabbit. Sitting back on his hammock, he swings gently back and forth on his toes. I try to think what this reminds me of.
“What’s this then? Got some girl in trouble?”
I wish.
“It’s two things actually,” I say. I pull on the lead and pull Malackie forwards. “I need you to look after my dog. They won’t let me keep him.”
My father grunts and lies back in his hammock.
“Can’t feed him,” he says. “I can’t feed myself. And I don’t want it crapping everywhere.”
“Please, Dad.”
I don’t know why I bothered with that. Pleases and thank yous never made much of an impact on my father.
“No way. Why don’t you just leave him at some farm?”
I feel really angry then. It sort of reminds me of how he treated us kids.
“I’m being kicked out of the Reynolds’s,” I say. “They’re putting me in the hostel.”
My father sniffs and looks at me. “Stay off the scag and you’ll be all right.”
If people had to be interviewed before they became parents, my dad definitely wouldn’t get the job.
I lean against a tree and my heel crunches a beer can into the ground. My dad isn’t like one of those survival experts you see on the telly. You know the ones, who can make a fire with two bits of wood and eat roasted squirrels. They build fancy shelters and carve spoons out of branches. You’d think
he’d know a thing or two about survival because he used to be in the army. But he isn’t a hero. He went off to the Gulf, but all he did was fix the trucks and tanks the real soldiers were driving. No, my dad is a messy old man who couldn’t survive without his giro and the generosity of his “mates”.
I’m not going to end up like him.
“Remember that pet you bought me for my birthday when I was a kid?” I say.
He frowns and combs dirty fingers through his beard.
“What, is it him?” he points at Malackie who is sniffing the bender.
“No, Dad, the one you said you got from Fraser’s uncle.”
My dad still doesn’t get it.
“Off the boats in Cornwall?”
His face lights up.
“We had the three of them off the Lady Margaret. My contact wouldn’t pay for the third. Said it looked half dead. Evil little thing nearly took my finger off. Didn’t you keep it in a fish tank, Stephen?”
I look at my father. His coat has torn away from his forearm and the skin is all purply and wrinkled. How is this useless old drunk going to help me? Then I remember I’ve no one else to ask.
“Dad, I’ve still got it.”
That makes him look at me. He gives a low whistle and stands up.
“I’d have thought you would have flushed it down the crapper years ago.”
“No, Dad,” I say.
He looks at me a long while. I recognize something of Selby in his eyes. I don’t like this. I’d rather not see any connection to him at all.
“Liar,” says my father. “Get out of there, dog.” He yanks at the trailing lead as Malackie sniffs inside the bender.
“He’s massive,” I say. “I’ve got him caught in this water cage, a sort of pump house. He could escape any day.”
“Where?” asks my dad. He wipes his nose on his sleeve. He still sounds like he doesn’t believe me.
“At the reservoir at Gruton.”
I have finally said it. I have kept this a secret for four years. He wasn’t so big then; only about three feet long, though he could still inflict some damage. He’s maybe four times that now. I finger the scar on my arm.
