‘Maybe it’s other pagans?’
‘Shut up, would you? I’m tryin to focus here. Ah, got the buggers.’
‘What is it?’
‘Cars, burnin cars on the edge of the village. I’m guessin somethin must be goin down.’
‘What kind of somethin?’
‘The crazy kind. People are goin mad roundabout with the hunger and the cold, I swear they are.’ She passed the telescope to Ennor and sat back down. ‘Guess I should tell me dad.’
Ennor looked through the lens and she walked it from one fire to the next and back and counted them one to five. ‘There’s five cars burnin. Why burn five cars?’
‘Useless I spose. Int bin no petrol or fuel oil for two months or thereabouts. Don’t you listen to the news?’
She took the telescope off Ennor and stuffed it into the bumbag and took out another bottle of scrumpy. ‘If we drink enough, we won’t care one way or the other soon enough.’ She unscrewed the top and drank while Ennor finished the other carton.
‘You bin livin under a stone or somethin?’
‘Course not. Dint think things were all that bad. Spose I thought it was just us.’
‘Well it’s gettin that way. Gotta keep your wits more and more these days, hell.’ She sat forward and pointed into the crowd. You see everyone here? Dad and the boys know every single face, every name.’
‘Apart from mine, I’m a stranger.’
‘No, strange is what you are.’
Ennor laughed and repaid the compliment and when Sonny asked her why her life was so bad she surprised herself by telling her about Dad and Trip and the trailer and in a roundabout way she told her about Mum too.
‘Let me get this straight. You’re trekkin out in the snow to the north moor to find a mother who may not even exist?’
‘Oh she exists, I’m just not sure where. I’ve got no choice, got to get our lives on track before the social take Trip and Dad dies and I’m left without a home.’
‘What’s up with your dad?’
‘Cancer.’
‘Bummer, hell.’
‘I need someone to take care of us before the social split us up.’
‘Really?’ Sonny started to laugh a little. ‘Like they really care bout things like that, with everythin goin on.’
Ennor shrugged. ‘Got a letter to say as much. Sounds like they got a prison waitin for us.’
Sonny nodded and said her getting somewhere and back made sense. They drank the scrumpy and then the beer and, when the sky cleared to moon and snowflakes became stars, they danced out with the others and sang along to songs they didn’t know.
Boys of all ages danced around Ennor and they took turns to dance her around the fire and for a moment she forgot herself in the spin of things.
‘Who are these boys?’ she called out to Sonny in passing.
‘Cousins, each and every one of them.’ She told Ennor she was meant to marry one of them soon enough and she made a face like she was going to be sick.
Ennor didn’t think they were all that bad. They had manners and praised her on her dancing, smiling and winking as if they found her in some way special.
‘Don’t be taken in,’ shouted Sonny on her next passing. ‘They’re only after one thing.’
Ennor nodded but she didn’t believe her and she thought briefly about Butch and how maybe he was supposed to be the one. She blushed when she thought what he might think of her dancing wild with a gang of strange gypsy boys and this made her suddenly sad and she said she had to sit down when Sonny next came laughing around the fire.
She sat back from the crowd on an upturned crate and lit a cigarette. When people smiled at her she smiled back and she tapped her hand on her leg so as not to seem rude but her mood had changed abruptly.
The drink and the boys and Sonny made her fit back into the place where she should by rights be, a fourteen-year-old girl out having fun, careless and carefree. She wished she could stay cocooned in the party for ever because life and the changing world around was just plain wrong. Nothing fitted as it should, all and everything square pegs in round holes.
There was one boy who kept looking her way and smiling and finally he had courage enough to come over. Ennor told herself that this was the way things were done. The girl was supposed to sit and look and the boy was meant to stand and look and, when he found some nerve down there in his pockets where his hands were stuck, he came over. In truth the long looking made her nervous and, besides, there was a lot more than one boy to look at.
He stood in front of her and asked if he could sit down beside and she nodded and smiled and stubbed out the cigarette she’d been smoking and put it in her pocket for later.
‘Good night.’ He smiled.
Ennor nodded.
‘You a friend of Sonny? She’s my cousin.’
She shrugged and looked him over, noticing the family resemblance. The thick black hair and black-pebble eyes, the type you might pick up off the beach.
‘You want a drink?’ he asked. ‘I can get you one.’
‘I got one, thanks.’ She picked the plastic bottle up off the ground and passed it to him. ‘I don’t mind sharin.’
He took the bottle and drank some down and wiped his chin with the back of his hand where it had spilt.
‘You go to school?’ he asked. ‘You look like the type of girl who goes to school.’
Ennor nodded. She wanted to look like that type of girl.
‘Where’d you go?’
‘Just in town.’
‘You like it?’
Ennor nodded and then shrugged.
‘You?’ she asked.
‘Not really.’ He smiled again. ‘Never did really and now I’m sixteen so that’s the end of that.’
They watched the others dance about the fire and Ennor thought what question to ask next and she folded her arms to stop herself fidgeting.
‘What do you do?’ she asked.
‘This and that.’ He shrugged.
Ennor wanted to ask him his name but the chance had come and gone. She looked out for Sonny but she was leaping about the flames with the rest of the revellers.
‘My name’s Gary by the way.’ The boy extended his hand and she shook it hard like a grown-up and he asked if she wanted to walk a little way from the noise.
‘We can talk easier.’
‘OK.’ She smiled and she hoped this was the way to behave with grown-up boys.
They walked with a little distance put between them and Ennor talked about school and her life like she was reading from a book and in a way this was exactly what she was doing.
She told the boy she was top of her class and that her favourite subject was English because she liked to write and she told him she lived in a big house with both her parents and she knew that she was drunk because she enjoyed spreading the lies way too much.
‘We put up the Christmas tree this mornin.’ She smiled. ‘Put it up in the hall by the grand staircase so guests can see it when they come to the door.’
Gary nodded. ‘You must live in a big house.’
‘Yep, big enough.’
‘That’s nice.’
Ennor nodded and agreed and she thought how nice it really would be to have a mother and a father and a nice big house.
Gary asked her question after question and Ennor answered without the usual reserve because she was making it all up. She jazzed up her replies with flair and bright sparks and the boy’s eyes grew wide with wonder. Maybe he could picture himself someplace in Ennor’s world, smartly dressed and nervous at the dining table on Christmas day, trying to make a good impression and failing. He was no Butch.
Ennor laughed. If the boy could see her father and the trailer, he’d laugh too. He’d probably turn around and leg it without a goodbye or a thank you.
‘What you smilin at?’ he asked.
‘Nothin.’
‘Don’t look like nothin.’
‘Just a funny thought, nothin.’
&n
bsp; They had been walking for quite a while and they turned and stood to watch the party unravel below them.
‘We have some crazy parties,’ said the boy.
‘I can see that.’
‘Spose it’s different for your kind. From what you know, I mean.’
Ennor agreed, it was, but not for the reasons he thought.
They stood awkward against the wind and Ennor worried that now was the time they were supposed to do something. ‘Shall we go back?’ she asked.
The boy shrugged. ‘You want to see somethin really cool?’ he asked.
‘Is it far?’
‘Not far at all.’
‘How far?’
‘Just up to that quarry a bit.’ He started to walk and Ennor followed and she laughed when she slipped.
‘Where you takin me?’
‘To the quarry. Come on.’
She followed him up the incline and she wanted to go back but didn’t know how to say it without sounding like the fourteen-year-old girl she was.
‘Here we are,’ he shouted as they followed a path towards the pit.
‘What is it?’ she asked, squinting into the dark.
‘Christmas come early,’ he laughed.
Ennor stood next to the boy and looked towards the crater of rock and the circle of frozen water that flattened there.
‘Summit else, int it? We come up here in summer, just swimmin and muckin bout, but this is summit else, don’t you think?’
Ennor nodded and she stepped forward and tapped her toe on the thick ice.
‘Spect someone like you bin skatin enough times.’
‘Not really. Is it safe?’
‘Hard as rock.’
‘You sure?’
‘Come on. I’ll show you.’
He took her hand and led her out on to the rink and Ennor found herself suddenly skating in a fairy tale of forbidden love and long-losts and happy-ever-afters.
Gary was guiding her and pulling her close and she laughed when he spun her in his arms. She was at a school dance and the world was watching, cheering ‘Good on you’ and ‘Go, girl, go’.
She let go of his hands and swung out on her own, holding her breath to keep the moment from dying. The ice below her dancing feet sparkled like summer sand and she let it carry her up through the cloud and snow and to the moon and back. She grabbed at the stars and put them in her pockets for the warmth and bent low to the ice as she skated to touch the amber orbs beneath her. Eyes just like her own and like her mother’s, looking back and flashing bright like fires in the snow.
‘You’re a natural,’ shouted Gary as he caught up to her. ‘You defo done this before.’
‘Maybe.’ She smiled. Alcohol ran riot in her veins and she was of a mind to do and be a million dazzling things. This was what it was like to let go and she picked up speed and called for the boy to chase her.
‘Hell,’ shouted Sonny from the path divide. ‘What you done with her, Gaz?’
‘Sonny!’ screamed Ennor with delight. ‘Look, I’m ice-skatin.’
‘I can see that.’ Sonny put her hands on her hips and waited for them to come over.
‘Where did you find her, cuz?’ asked Gary. ‘Bit posh to be your friend, int she?’
Sonny shrugged. ‘I guess.’ She looked at Ennor in the half-light and raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s as posh as I don’t know and that accent, hell, it’s like chattin with the Queen.’
‘She’s bin tellin me bout her life.’ He grinned.
‘That’s nice.’ She smiled again.
‘You don’t have to look after me,’ giggled Ennor. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I’ll be goin then, only with your screamin and goin on.’
Sonny turned to go and they followed her. When they got back to the party Gary left them and joined the other boys.
‘He’ll be tellin the others he had you,’ said Sonny.
‘No he won’t, he was all right.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Why? You jealous?’
‘Of my cousin’s attention?’
‘Of any attention.’
‘Girl,’ Sonny laughed. ‘You got a lot to learn bout life, int you?’
Sonny went to get them food and Ennor sat and lit the half-smoked cigarette and she smoked it down to her fingers and apologised that it was her last to anyone that asked. The singing and dancing stopped and gave way to some kind of worship and all of the gypsies and some of the travellers sat back from the fire or went to the roasting pig that cooked over a small fire pit beyond the stone circle.
Dining chairs were thrown into the pyre to keep it burning and a wooden rocking horse was added and it sat dumbstruck, riding out the flames.
‘Hope you’re hungry,’ shouted Sonny as she approached with dripping hands. ‘We got pig in a blanket,’ she laughed.
‘What’s the blanket?’
‘Some kind of barley flatbread, who knows. It’s no hotdog but you get used to it.’
Ennor thanked her and said she’d spent the last few days mostly eating potato cakes. The meat had been barbecued to within an inch of its life and tasted of charcoal and rotten flesh and she wondered how long the pig had been dead.
‘Tasty, eh?’ grinned Sonny through fatty lips.
‘The best,’ lied Ennor and she swallowed it down and chased it with flat coke Sonny had found. She rinsed it through her teeth like mouthwash.
‘You want another?’
‘No, I’m good thanks.’ She patted her stomach to indicate fullness and pretended to be engrossed in her surroundings so Sonny wouldn’t push it.
‘Who are they?’ she asked, pointing to a group of men standing across from them at the far side of the fire.
Sonny squatted beside her. ‘Where?’
‘Over there, I int seen um before.’
‘Damn.’
‘What is it?’
‘The uninvited. I knew there was somethin I had to tell Dad.’ She told Ennor to stay put and she ran up the bank to where her dad sat and whispered something in his ear.
Ennor’s heart pounded and her ears rushed with the charge of blood. Maybe they were looking for her. She kept an eye on the strangers as they kicked about the fire and put the empty rucksack on her back so as not to leave it behind. A few men were having words with the strangers and Ennor knew by the cut and swagger of them that peaceful celebrating was not on the newcomers’ minds.
The chanting stopped and raised voices could be heard and they echoed about the standing stones and caught in the branches of trees and snagged in the briar.
A sudden hand on her shoulder made her jump from the crate. ‘Come with me. You need to help take the children into the forest.’ Sonny pulled her to her feet and they ran drunk and stumbling to where the children and woman gathered.
‘Head back to where they were cuttin trees this mornin and stay away from camp in case they try to trash it. They’ll try and head there for sure. They’ll see what they can steal and burn the rest.’
Ennor held on to the collar of Sonny’s leather jacket to steady herself. ‘Who they lookin for?’
‘Nobody in particular.’
‘Where you goin?’
‘Fightin.’ She jumped from the bank and went towards the beginnings of a brawl and Ennor wanted to pray and she wanted to run but instead she followed the others in a convoy of raised voices and some of the children were crying. In the forest clearing the tarpaulin sheets were patterned together like patchwork on the floor and the children sat at odds and angles to the outside world.
Ennor sat on a tree stump and pulled her legs up under her. It was cold after sitting by the fire and the drink was wearing off. She thought about the boy and she smiled and let herself be drawn into the dance once more, her innocence intact no matter what he told his friends.
The women eyed her as if she were perhaps some kind of decoy and after a while she felt pushed enough to stand out at the edge of the forest. She looked to see if the fighting had trailed up to th
e camp but it hadn’t and she ran.
Inside Sonny’s trailer she took up her things and packed the best she could considering and she was about to take a little food from the kitchen when she saw Sonny standing against the door frame.
‘Goin somewhere?’
‘No, I dunno. I’m scared.’
‘Of what?’
‘Out there, the fightin.’
Sonny laughed and kicked off the biker boots and lay down on the bed. ‘You’re bonkers, know that? You’d rather be out there alone in the dark with the crazies at it than safe in camp.’
Ennor sat at the edge of the bed and listened to the many voices returning and circling the clearing outside. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothin much, really just a let-down in the end, a right anticlimax.’
‘Are they gone?’
‘Slapped and gone with their tails beneath. Hell, I was lookin for a bit more of a put-up if you want to know the truth.’
‘Will they come back?’
‘Not unless they want more of the same.’
‘You got a black eye.’
‘No biggy. Do what you want, guest and all, but you can get off my bed. Have the floor if you want.’ She tossed Ennor a pillow and told her to turn off the light.
Laughter had returned to camp but the comfort of community no longer reassured Ennor.
She unlaced her boots and put them next to the rucksack by the door and knelt to sandwich her blanket against the floor. She got in with the pillow plumped and listened to the shrill voices of tired kids being led to their beds and the murmur of drunken songs bringing the camp back to life. Ennor closed her eyes and tried not to think about the killer inside and she thought about home. She didn’t know which was worse.
‘You awake?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Goodnight then.’
‘I’ll try for one, if someone stops natterin.’
Ennor turned left and then right and she settled on her back and watched the flashing flames through the window turn the ceiling into moving marble. She thought about her bedroom and she told herself to be positive because what else was there? She closed her eyes and thought about Butch and in her close-to-dreaming state she had him dressed in a suit and he was spinning her around on an ice-rink. She fantasised that they were together and in love but as sleep came settling she was soon back to dreaming the one foot in front of the other. Ennor Carne walking circles into the snow, nothing but a dying father and fading brother and a dead boy stranger to her name. Dreams had become life and the cold and the snow were everywhere, inside and out. It sucked her blood while she slept and chewed her down to rime bone, a dusting on the land.
Winter Damage Page 9
