by Peter May
The tattoo shop was in Rose Street, next door to a working man’s pub. It was a pretty seedy single room, with a space off the back separated by a vomit-green curtain with shredded hems. It smelled of ink and old blood. There were brittle and faded sketches and photographs pinned around the walls, of designs and tattooed arms and backs. The tattoo artist himself had tattoos on both forearms. A broken heart with an arrow through it, an anchor, Popeye. A girl’s name, Angie, in fancy curlicued lettering.
He had a mean, underfed face, with fusewire sideburns. The last shreds of head hair were scraped back from a receded hairline across a shiny, almost bald, pate, to a luxuriant gathering of Brylcreemed curls around his neck. I noticed the dirt beneath his fingernails, and worried that Peter would catch some horrible infection. But perhaps it was just ink.
I don’t know how much regulation there was in those days, or if it was even legal to tattoo a boy of Peter’s age, but the Rose Street tattoo artist didn’t care much about it if there was. He was taken aback when we said we wanted a tattoo of Elvis Presley. He’d never done one before, he said, and I think he saw it as a sort of challenge. He gave us a price:?2, which was a fortune in those days. I think he thought there was no way we could afford it, but if he was surprised when we turned up with the money nearly six weeks later he never showed it. He had prepared a sketch, from a photograph in a magazine, and worked the lettering below it, Heartbreak Hotel, into something like a banner blowing in the breeze.
It took hours, and a lot of blood, and Peter bore it without a single word of complaint. I could see in his face how painful it was, but he was never going to admit it. Stoic, he was. A martyr to his dream.
I sat with him the whole afternoon, listening to the whine of the tattoo gun, watching the needles engraving flesh, and admired my brother’s fortitude as ink and blood got wiped away with every other stroke.
I would have done anything for Peter. I knew how frustrated he got sometimes, aware of his limitations. But he never got angry, or swore, or had a bad word for anyone. He was a good soul, my brother. Better than me. I never had any illusions about that. And he deserved better in life.
By the end of the afternoon, his arm was a mess. It was impossible to see the tattoo for the blood, which was already starting to dry in a patchwork of scabs. The tattoo man washed it with soapy water and dried it off with paper towels before wrapping it in a lint bandage which he fixed in place with a safety pin.
‘Take this off in a couple of hours,’ he said, ‘and wash the tattoo regularly. Always pat it dry and don’t rub it. You need air for the wound to heal properly, so don’t cover it up.’ He handed me a small jar with a yellow lid. ‘Tattoo Goo. Rub this into the wound after every washing. Just enough to keep it moist. You don’t want a scab to form. But if it does, don’t peel it off, you’ll pull the ink out. As the skin heals it will form a membrane. And eventually that will flake off. If you look after it carefully it should be fully healed in about two weeks.’
He knew his stuff that man. It took about twelve days to heal, and it was only then that we saw what a good job he had done. There was no doubting that it was Elvis Presley on Peter’s right forearm, and the way he’d worked in the banner lettering of Heartbreak Hotel it looked like the collar of his shirt. Very clever.
Of course, we had to go to some lengths to keep it hidden during that time. Peter always wore long sleeves around The Dean, and at school, even though it was still summer. On bath night he bandaged it up again and kept it out of the water. I told the other boys that he was suffering from psoriasis, a skin condition that I’d read about somewhere in a magazine, so the tattoo remained our secret.
Until that fateful day in late October.
Peter’s problem was that just as a leaky bucket can’t hold water, he couldn’t keep a secret. So open was he, so incapable of dishonesty or concealment, that sooner or later he was bound to tell someone about the tattoo. If only for the pleasure he would derive from showing it off.
He used to sit sometimes just looking at it. Holding his arm in different positions, twisting his head this way and that to see it from various angles. The biggest kick he got was from gazing at his reflection in the mirror. Seeing it in full context, as if it were someone else, someone worthy of admiration and respect. There was a tiny broken heart between the Heartbreak and Hotel. Red. The only colour in the whole tattoo. He loved that tiny splash of crimson, and I sometimes found him touching it, almost stroking it. But most of all he loved the sense that, somehow, Elvis belonged to him, and would always be with him. A constant companion for the rest of what turned out to be his short life.
There was early snow that year. Not a lot of it. But it lay on the roofs, and in ledges along the walls, and dusted the branches of trees newly naked after unusually strong autumn winds. Everything else seemed darker, blacker, in contrast. The fast-flowing water of the river, the soot-blackened stone of the old mills, and the workers’ tenements in the village. There was a leaden quality about the sky, but a glow in it, too. Like a natural lightbox diffusing sunshine. It cast no shadows. The air was crisp and cold and stung your nostrils. The snow had frozen and it crunched underfoot.
It was morning break at the school, and our voices rang out, sharp and brittle in the icy air, breath billowing about our heads like dragon smoke. I saw Peter at the centre of a small clutch of boys near the gate. But by the time I got there it was too late. He could hardly have chosen to show off Elvis in more dangerous company. They were the three Kelly brothers, and a couple of their friends. Equally unsavoury. We only ever hung out with the Kellys because they were Catholics, too, and we were all made to stand out in the cold waiting for the Proddies to finish their morning service. It bred a sort of camaraderie, even among enemies.
The Kellys were a bad lot. There were four boys. One much younger, who wasn’t at our school yet. The two middle boys, Daniel and Thomas, were about my age, with a year between them. And Patrick was a year older. People said their father was involved with some notorious Edinburgh gang, and that he’d spent time in prison. He was rumoured to have a scar that ran in an arc from the left-hand corner of his mouth to the lobe of his left ear, like an extension of his lower lip. I never saw him, but the image conjured by that description always stayed with me.
Catherine got there before I did, because even then she’d become protective towards Peter. Although she was younger than me, and just about the same age as Peter, she fussed and mothered us both. Not in any sentimental kind of way. Hers was a bossy, almost brutal kind of mothering, perhaps born of experience. No gentle warnings, or loving pats on the head. A kick in the arse and a mouthful of abuse was much more Catherine’s style.
I arrived among the group just in time to see her shock at the tattoo on Peter’s arm. We had never told her about it, and the look she flashed me conveyed all the hurt she felt at not having been included.
Peter had his jacket off and his sleeve rolled up. Even the Kelly boys, who were not impressed by much, were wide-mouthed in admiration. But Patrick was the one to see mileage in the situation.
‘You’re going to be in trouble when they find out about that, Daftie,’ he said. ‘Who did it?’
‘It’s a secret,’ Peter said defensively. He started rolling down his sleeve. But Patrick grabbed his arm.
‘That’s a pro job, init? Bet that guy could be in big trouble for scarring a boy your age. What are you, fifteen? I’d say you’d need parents’ permission for something like that.’ He laughed then, and there was a cruelty in his voice. ‘Course, since you don’t have any, that would make it a wee bit difficult.’
‘Better to have no parents than a father who’s been in the fucking jail.’ Catherine’s voice cut through the laughter of the boys, and Patrick turned a dangerous look in her direction.
‘You shut your mouth ya wee shite.’ He took a step towards her and I moved smartly between them.
‘And you watch yours, Kelly.’
Patrick Kelly’s pale green eyes met min
e. He had ginger hair and a face the colour of porridge. It was spattered with freckles. He was an ugly boy. I could see the calculation in his gaze. He was a big lad, but so was I. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m a bit sensitive to bad language.’
There was some laughter, and the eldest Kelly boy didn’t like that. He glared at his brothers. ‘Shut the fuck up.’ Then he turned back to me. ‘So they let kids at The Dean get tattoos if they want, do they?’ he said. And when I didn’t reply, he grinned. ‘Why do I get the feeling that Daftie’ll be in deep shit if they ever find out?’
‘Why would they ever find out?’
‘Someone might tell them.’ Patrick Kelly smiled disingenuously.
‘Like who?’
His smile vanished and he leaned his face into mine. ‘Like me.’
I stood my ground, flinching only from the stink of decaying teeth that he breathed in my face. ‘Only cowards tell tales.’
‘Are you calling me a fucking coward?’
‘I’m not calling you anything. Cowards reveal themselves by their own actions.’
The anger and humiliation of someone showing themselves to be smarter than him combined to make him brave. He stabbed my chest with his finger. ‘We’ll see who’s a fucking coward.’ He nodded his head towards the road bridge that soared overhead, connecting the city to the western suburbs. Thomas Telford’s second-last, I would learn much later in life. ‘There’s a ledge runs along the outside of the bridge, just below the parapet. It’s about nine inches wide. Up there tonight. Midnight. You and me. We’ll see who can walk it.’
I glanced up at the bridge. Even from here I could see the snow crusted along the length of the ledge. ‘No way.’
‘Scared, are you?’
‘He’s a fucking coward,’ said one of the younger brothers.
‘I’m not stupid,’ I said.
‘Shame about your brother, then, eh? Guess they might even kick him out. Put him in a hostel. A load of shit like that on his arm. Guess you wouldn’t be too happy about being separated.’
It was a real possibility. I felt the net of inevitability closing around me. ‘And if I do it?’
‘Elvis’ll be our secret. Unless, of course, you chicken out halfway. In which case I’ll tell.’
‘And you’re going to do this walk, too?’
‘Sure I am.’
‘And what do I get out of that?’
‘The pleasure of calling me a coward if I chicken out.’
‘And if you don’t?’
‘I get the pleasure of proving you wrong.’
‘Don’t do it.’ Catherine’s voice came from behind me, low and laden with warning.
‘Shut up, slag!’
I felt Kelly’s spittle in my face and glanced towards Peter. I wasn’t sure if he understood the gravity of his situation, or the trouble he’d got me into by showing off like this. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said earnestly.
‘See? Even Daftie’s got more balls than you.’ Kelly was gloating now. He knew he had me cornered.
I shrugged. Trying to be dead casual. ‘Okay. But let’s make it a little more interesting. I’ll go first. We’ll time it. And whoever is slower has to do it again.’
And for the first time I saw Patrick Kelly’s confidence waver. It was his turn to be trapped. ‘No problem.’
What stupid boys we were! As Catherine was quick enough to point out to me when I pulled Peter away across the playground to give him a piece of my mind.
‘You’re insane,’ she said. ‘It’s about a hundred foot fucking high, that bridge. If you fall you’re dead. Nothing surer.’
‘I won’t fall.’
‘Well, I hope you don’t. Cos if you do, I won’t have the chance to say I told you so.’ She paused. ‘How are you going to get out of The Dean?’
I had never told anyone about my night-time jaunts to the village and the cemetery, and was a little reluctant now to reveal my secret. ‘Oh, there’s a way,’ I said casually.
‘Well, you’d better fucking tell me. Cos I’m coming, too.’
‘And me,’ Peter piped in.
I stopped and glared from one to the other. ‘No, you’re not. Either of you.’
‘And who’s going to fucking stop us?’ Catherine said.
‘Aye, who’s going to fucking stop us?’ Peter puffed up his chest defiantly. It was almost shocking to hear him swear like that. Catherine was a bad influence. But I knew I was beaten.
I said to Catherine, ‘Why would you want to come anyway?’
‘Well, if you’re going to do the walk against the clock, someone’s got to keep the time.’ She paused and sighed. ‘Besides, if you do fall, someone needs to be there to make sure Peter gets safely back to The Dean.’
I couldn’t have slept at lights out, even if I had wanted to. Three hours to go and I was feeling sick. What on earth had possessed me to get sucked into this stupid dare? Even more annoying, Peter had fallen asleep almost immediately, with an absolute confidence that I would wake him when it was time to go. I toyed with the idea of sneaking out without him, but knew that the uncertain nature of his response if waking to find me gone would only make it dangerous for both of us.
And so I lay beneath the blankets, unable for some reason, to get warm, and shivered from the cold and my own fear. Of course, word had spread like wildfire amongst the kids at school and everyone at The Dean that there was a dare between the Kellys and the McBrides. No one seemed to know why, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before Peter’s tattoo became public knowledge, and then only a matter of time before the powers that be got wind of it, too.
The future seemed a scary thing, then, obscured as it was by the darkness of unpredictability. I had the sense of my life, and Peter’s, slipping out of our hands. And while we’d had no control over our incarceration in The Dean, the place had provided, in that last year, a degree of comfort, if only in the brutal certainty of its routine.
Time passed both slowly and quickly. Every time I checked my watch it seemed only five minutes later. And then suddenly it was fifteen minutes to midnight. I wondered if, at the last, I had somehow dozed off without realising it. But now my heart was hammering away, beating right up into my throat, nearly choking me. It was time to go.
I slipped out from between the sheets, fully dressed, and pulled on my shoes. They had thick rubber soles that I hoped would give me some grip. I tied my laces with trembling fingers and jiggled Peter by the shoulder. To my irritation it took him some time to wake up. When finally he had shaken himself free of sleep and some undeservedly happy dream, the memory of what we were to be about that night returned to him, and his eyes shone with anticipation. ‘Time to go?’ he whispered loudly.
I put my finger to my lips and glared at him.
It wasn’t until we reached the door of the dormitory that I realized just how many others were awake, too. Voices whispered in the dark.
‘Good luck, Johnny.’
‘Show the fucker what the Dean boys are made of.’
I felt like saying, ‘You fucking show him!’
Catherine was waiting for us at the foot of the cellar stairs. She had a torch with her, and shone it in our faces as we came down. It almost blinded me.
‘For God’s sake put that away!’ I raised my hand to shade my eyes. And then, when the light went out, plunging us into darkness again, almost fell. ‘Jesus!’
‘You’re late!’ she whispered. ‘It’s scary as hell down here. Something keeps making strange clunking noises. And there are things scurrying about the floor. I’m sure it’s rats.’
I slid back the bolt to release the door, and felt the cold night air rush in as I opened it. There was a real smell of winter on its leading edge, and I could see stars, like pinholes in the black sheet that was the sky, revealing an imagined light that lay behind it. A light that was reflected in the frost that glistened all across the black of the tarmac. Heaven perfectly mirrored on earth. Or hell perfectly reflected above.
/> By the time we got down into the village we could hear a clock somewhere striking midnight. It pealed through the cold, clear night air, like a bell ringing for the dead, sonorous and deep and filled with a dreadful prescience. The hike up Bell’s Brae in the dark, past the silent mews houses, was slow and treacherous. Snow had fallen, then melted where the sun had touched it, then frozen. By the time we reached Kirkbrae House at the top of the hill we were, all three of us, sweating from the effort. They had told us at school that the turreted and step-gabled Kirkbrae House, half of which disappeared down below the bridge, had been a tavern in the seventeenth century. I’d have given anything right then for a glass of the fine fizzing ale they had drunk back in those days. Something to stop my tongue from sticking to the roof of my mouth, and restore the courage I felt deserting me as the bridge approached.
The Kelly boys were waiting for us where the first arch of the bridge began, huddled in the shadow of Kirkbrae House. The town was deserted and as silent as Dean Cemetery. There wasn’t a car on the road, or a light in any of the windows of the stone terraces that marched up Queensferry Street towards the west-end. But the moon reflected off every snow-covered surface of the village below. Only the black waters of the river itself were completely lost in darkness.
‘You’re late!’ Patrick Kelly hissed from the shadows. ‘We’ve been waiting here for ages. And it’s fucking freezing!’
I could hear him stamping and clapping his gloved hands together, trying to keep warm, and I wished I had gloves, too.
‘Well, we’re here now,’ I said. ‘And we might as well get started. Me first.’ I moved towards the parapet, but felt Patrick’s big open hand pushing into my chest.
‘No. Me first. I’ve been hanging around here long enough. Who’s going to time it?’
‘I am.’ Catherine stepped forward into the pale yellow glow of an electric street lamp and opened her hand to reveal an engraved silver stopwatch with a pink ribbon attached to it.
One of the other Kelly boys grabbed her wrist to get a better look, and you could hear the envy in his voice. ‘Where’d you steal that?’
