The Tightrope Walkers

by David Almond

  “Look at the fuckin state of them, Dom. I’m damaged as them ancient tortured fuckin saints. And listen to the inside, to this raspin, wheezin, rattlin, gaspin. Day after bliddy fuckin day, since I was hardly a few years more’n you. Crawlin in the filth and shadows every fuckin day God sends, there inside the bliddy ship, in confined space and dark and filth. It’s like I’m the speck o’ dirt in me own damn lung, crawlin and crawlin through tubes in search of the way out, and findin the way out, but knowing next day I’ll be in there again, fuckin in there yet abliddygain. For what?”

  “For all of us,” said Mam. “And so you can pay your round at the Iona Club with your good mates. Come on, get washed, get out.”

  He watched me reading. He saw the book.

  “Billy Waggledagger, eh?”

  “Aye,” I answered.

  “Good?” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “Aye,” I said.

  I surprised myself by turning my eyes to him, showing the book to him.

  “This is what I want to do,” I said.

  He grunted. “Eh?”

  “Be a writer,” I said. “Write books.”

  He laughed. He looked out at the darkening pebbledash.

  “What’ll you have to write about?”

  I shrugged.

  “You,” I said, for something to say.

  “Me? You’d better bliddy not!”

  He laughed.

  “Or, if ye do, ye’d better tone the bliddy fuckin language down.”

  I smiled and scribbled it.

  Tone the bliddy fuckin language down.

  I smiled and smiled and was a villain. I started to feel a spite for Holly’s singing, her piano playing, for her art, for her family. I cursed like my dad at the music drifting across the street. At school, despite all my supposed talents and skills, I was out of place. I was a caulker’s son, a tank cleaner’s grandson. Yes, there were others like me from families like mine, but there were also the sons and daughters of draughtsmen, doctors, teachers. I’d been reading Enid Blyton when Holly and her like had been reading Dickens. I’d been listening to Doris Day when she’d been playing Chopin. I’d been to the pantomime when she’d been watching Chekhov. I’d gone on believing in God and Heaven and Hell and Sin when the Holly Strouds had been calmly discarding the illusions as they grew. I had so much to learn, so much to throw away, and the effort to do it seemed so huge.

  I changed, of course. But the boy in the mirror seemed to be turning into a brutish thing, a Vincent McAlinden thing. Hairs on my chin, hairs on my cock-and-balls. I kept pushing my fringe back, scared of finding a new widow’s peak there. My muscles thickened. They wrenched me into a copy of my father. Brows thickened, darkened. Lips turned downward. A scowl often took possession of my face. We boys wore shorts as part of our uniform. The sudden growth of dense black hairs on my legs drew much laughter. For a time I was referred to as the Ape-Boy and, when we learned about evolution, as the Missing Link.

  I worked hard and my marks were good. We were continually tested, graded. To be top of the class must be the bright ones’ constant aim. I kept on coming top, or near to top. But as I got to twelve, thirteen, I became ever more uncertain, ever more insecure. Maybe it was the alienation common to all adolescents. But how could I know that when I was in the throes of it? How can anyone know anything true of his life when he is in the throes of the life? All I knew was that I teetered, that there seemed to be a void beneath me, nothing to support me.

  I wrote with care at school. I scribbled in secret notebooks at home — violent bloody outbursts of rampant nouns and verbs and blasphemies and curses.

  One day Joyce said that we were to read Macbeth.

  Holly clapped her hands and grinned at me.

  “Yes, Miss Stroud?” asked Joyce.

  “Eye of newt and toe of frog!” said Holly.

  “Indeed!” he said. “And wool of bat and tongue of dog! My favourite of all plays. A thing of blood and guts and sorcery, and gorgeous brutal language.”

  He curled his lips and bared his teeth.

  “In theatrical circles, this play, because of superstition, is often only referred to as —”

  “The Scottish play,” Holly interjected.

  “Indeed! And this is to do with fears of doom and disaster and death! Imagine that. A name with such a force, a play with such a force. We neither shall give it its proper terrifying name. But we shall name it something else.”

  He stared at all the faces.

  “We shall turn this into a play for us, as all works of art should be. Its language being Scottish is not too far distant from the tongue we use right here. Its setting in the northern wastelands is not too distant from the lands that ring us here. Its action being brutal is not too far distant from the leanings of you boys. We shall call it the Geordie play and we shall speak it in our own dear tongue. And if you do not enjoy it you may . . . what? Hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot at me!”

  In a bottle like a cat and shoot at me!

  Holly spoke the lady’s part. She ignored the sniggers when she said that she’d given suck and knew how tender ’twas to love the babe that milked her. She glared when I giggled with the others, even though the words were singing in me, even though I knew they’d echo and echo that night in my dreams. I giggled again when I spoke the porter’s part and declared that I’d been carousing till the second cock.

  She spat at me the words intended for her husband. “ ‘We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking-point and we’ll not fail.’ ”

  The sticking-point and we’ll not fail.

  I giggled again.

  “You giggle?” she spat. “You giggle when we are in the throes of killing a king!”

  Joyce laughed.

  “Be kind to him,” he said. “Be kind to all the lads. They’re only lads, coming up a little way behind the girls.”

  “Lads!” she said.

  “I know. What are we to do with them? Sadly, once I was one of them myself.”

  He looked sadly at the boys.

  “Oh, what it is to be a lad. To wish to be good and be only seen as bad!”

  He grinned.

  “Who said that? Some minor poet, I fear. Maybe the lads should write the lines about the lads. In the meantime, get practising those proper lines for next time, get them tripping off the tongue. No better words to drum into the brain than those of our great bard! Good night, my brutal boys. Good night, my sweet sweet girls!”

  We still went home together that afternoon, but even though she softened, and though she laughed, and though she praised the lessons of Joyce, there was venom in the lines she practised as she crossed the waste. She softly snarled and pointed to the open McAlinden door.

  “ ‘O proper stuff!

  This is the very painting of your fear.

  This is the air-drawn dagger . . .’ ”

  Air-drawn dagger!

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop bliddy showing off or whatever it is you think you do.”

  “Oh, Dominic Hall, I shame to wear a heart so white.”

  A heart so white!

  And hurried on, into her house, and left me all alone.

  Alone. As the months passed by, I continued to walk the wire with her, and she was at my side, ready to catch me, urging me on. But I told myself that she was false, that she was just indulging me. I imagined her sniggering with her father about me, the clumsy caulker’s son. I imagined her dreaming about the other lads, the ones who were becoming more than lads. I told myself that this had always been true. She’d spent time with me only because there’d been no other in the narrow confines of our pebbledashed estate and in the barbaric classrooms of the Miss O’Kanes. Now everything had changed, now that she was at grammar school with children of her ilk, with teachers of her ilk.

  One day I snapped that I had other things to do when she came to walk the wire. I stood in the back doorway and rolled my eyes and sa
id it was a stupid, childish thing to do.

  “You don’t mean that,” she said.

  “I do.”

  “My God, you think it’s beneath you. My God, you think it’s girly.”

  I shrugged.

  “Or it’s just me?” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “My God, you think I’ve stunted you and held you back.”

  No answer.

  “That’s what your dad thinks, isn’t it? The silly Stroud lass, the weird woman’s daughter stopping his lad from being a lad.”

  No answer.

  “You didn’t think that before. Why are you suddenly thinking what your dad wants you to think?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “And even if I am, what’s wrong with thinking like my dad?”

  “We’re supposed to be moving forward, Dom. We’re supposed to be making our own minds up about things.”

  “Like you do?” I said.

  “Aye!”

  “You think exactly what your dad wants you to think.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Going to bliddy plays. Doing bliddy art and bliddy CND. Spoutin fuckin stupid Shakespeare.”

  “That’s not what he wants. It’s what all of us should want.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes! And if you can’t see that you’re getting even boringer and stupider than I thought.”

  “Piss off, you freak!” I snapped.

  “You piss off too, you boring bliddy git!”

  Her mother started singing “Hernando’s Hideaway.”

  “That’s how you’ll turn out!” I shouted as she turned from me. “A freak, daughter of a bliddy freak.”

  She just raised her hands and showed two backward-facing V-signs. She walked to her place across the street a million miles away.

  I kicked the outhouse wall. Tiny stones skittered across the concrete. I kicked again. Spat and cursed and spat and cursed. Next day I slung the ship-steel knife at my hip and I went in search of Vincent McAlinden.

  He was almost a man. He’d soon be leaving school. The death of Bernard had changed him. We all said that. He’d grown quieter. He didn’t threaten and scoff. The tale was that he’d become more compliant in school. It was the sadness, of course. The grief. The people of the estate had begun to look upon him with sympathy. Vincent McAlinden? He had gone through purification by fire. Tragedy had enriched him, poor lad. We told ourselves that what we hoped was true: that there was a strain of goodness in each of us, even in this troubling son of the McAlindens.

  “Thank God for that,” said Mam one evening.

  “Aye,” said Dad. “Thank God. I knaa what it is to lose mates. I knaa what it can do to you.”

  We looked at him.

  “I went through war,” he said.

  Mam kissed him.

  “And came out safe and sound, thank God,” she said.

  “As Vincent will. I always said he was just a lad. He’ll grow up and find his way. God knaas I was hardly an angel meself. God knaas there’s none of us that’s angels.”

  It was as if he was expecting me that sunny Saturday morning. He stood leaning in his doorway. I didn’t dare to look at him at first, but I slowed down, and hesitated on the path.

  “Aye aye,” he said.

  He repeated it. I stopped, turned. He held an open pack of No. 6.

  “Smoke?” he said.

  I looked back up the street.

  “Nobody’ll knaa,” he said.

  He stepped towards me, and I took one. I lit it, tried to inhale, coughed.

  “Ye’ll learn,” he said. “Your throat gets used to it. So what ye wantin?”

  “Nothing,” I replied. “Nowt.”

  “That’s easy, then.”

  He was taller than me and had grown leaner. His nose was thickening. He had long sideburns now, dark stubble, and the black widow’s peak pointed down towards the space between his grey eyes. The endless fire burned in the house behind.

  I felt so young, didn’t know what to say, was about to move on.

  “I was ganna walk the dog,” he said.

  He lowered his eyes and I saw the shyness that seemed to be in him, too.

  “You could come if you like,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “Aye,” I said. “OK.”

  He got the dog, a black, low-slung thing with bandy legs and wheezing breath. He put a chain on it. It walked between us as we moved down the path alongside the wasteland. Didn’t go far. The dog was snorting, straining on its leash.

  “Down, Horror!” said Vincent. “I said get down!”

  He jerked on the chain. The dog snarled at him.

  “It’s mental, this one,” he said.

  Saliva drooled from its open mouth.

  “What the hell,” said Vincent. “I’ll let it run.”

  He took off the leash and the dog galloped jerkily across the uneven earth. We sat on a pile of stones. Vincent smoked again, said he wouldn’t offer me another one just yet. Didn’t want to rip my throat apart. I saw a black boat far out on the sea, heading northwards, right on the horizon. The dog barked viciously. It snarled into a hole, then rushed down into it.

  “Summat’s bit the dust,” laughed Vincent. “Horror! Leave it!”

  The dog raged for a while, then trotted back to us, with blood on its mouth and peace in its eyes. It sat with us.

  “Ye got nae dogs yourself?” said Vincent. “I love mine, the silly sods. They’re like me mates.”

  He let the dog lick his outstretched hand.

  I saw that he saw the knife at my hip.

  I took it from its sheath and worked the blade into the earth, loosening the close-packed soil, prising out pebbles.

  “Ye got plans?” he said.

  “Eh?”

  “For today. Or are ye fancy free?”

  “Dunno.”

  He watched me for a moment.

  “Want to gan shootin?”

  I hesitated.

  “You don’t have to,” he said.

  “Aye,” I said. “I will.”

  He yelled for the dog, put the chain on it again. We went back to his house. He hauled the dog through the gate, tethered it to the clothes post, went inside. I heard shouting. He came back out with an air rifle angled across his shoulder and a canvas sack hanging at his back.

  “We’ll gan slaughterin,” he said. “Just jokin.”

  We set off uphill through the estate. Horror howled as we walked away.

  “I should tell me parents,” I said as we approached our house.

  “Aye,” he said. “Good idea. Don’t want them worryin.”

  I led him through the gate, past the outhouse, towards the back garden, the back door. Mam was hanging washing on the line.

  “Vincent!” she said.

  “Howdo, Mrs. Hall.”

  Her eyes were on the gun. I wanted to tell her what she’d told me, that we had to care for Vincent, had to include him in what we did.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Hall,” said Vincent. “We’re not gannin murderin. Thought we might do some target practice on the wastelands. If ye approve of course.”

  Mam’s shoulders slumped.

  “A rifle?” she said to me.

  “Air gun, Mrs. Hall,” said Vincent. “Wouldn’t hurt a . . . But mebbe it’s not the thing, eh? Mam sends her regards by the way.”

  She thanked him.

  Tell him it’s not the thing, I wanted her to say. Tell him you don’t approve. Send the boy and the gun back down again.

  Dad came to the door, in his white vest, wiping shaving cream from his face with a white towel.

  “Vincent,” he said.

  “Aye,” said Vincent. “Your lad brung us up here.”

  “Aye?” he asked me.

  “Aye,” I said.

  He lit a cigarette. He eyed the gun.

  “I thought we might get some rats, Mr. Hall,” went on Vincent. “Even some rabbits up on t
he fields.”

  “And mebbe a pigeon or two, eh?”

  “Aye,” said Vincent. “Food for free. Just like in the olden days.”

  “You’ll not get me eating poor little slaughtered beasts,” Mam said.

  Dad grunted.

  “What about the lamb that you’ll be chompin on tomorrow?” he said. “What about this mornin’s lovely crispy bacon?”

  “That’s different,” she replied.

  Dad reached out for the gun. He raised it, looked through the sights, pointed to the sky.

  “Everybody likes a gun in their hand,” he said.

  “Not everybody!” snapped Mam.

  She lifted away a shroud of white washing that blew across her from the washing line.

  “You OK these days, Vincent?” he said.

  “Aye, thanks. Gettin over things, you know.”

  “That’s good. You’ll be workin soon, eh?”

  “Soon enough.”

  “That’ll help.”

  “Aye, that’ll help.”

  Dad swung the gun through the air.

  “Loaded?” asked Dad.

  “No,” said Vincent. “D’you want a pellet in it?”

  “No, son.” He clicked the trigger. “Kapow!” he snapped. He clicked again. “Kapow!”

  He weighed the gun between his hands.

  “Nice,” he said.

  “It was me dad’s.”

  “They make them good these days. Back in my time they were as dangerous to the shooter as to the thing to be shot.”

  He looked at me.

  “You ever used one of these afore?”

  I shook my head.

  He passed it to me. He came close. He moved my hands so that I held the barrel with one hand, had my finger by the trigger with the other. Raised my arms so that the stock rested against my shoulder. Tilted my head so that I could look through the sights.

  “How’s it feel?” he murmured.

  “Feels OK,” I said.

  “Got to be more than that. Got to feel part of you. Got to feel natural when you pull that trigger. Let the gun ease into your body. Let your body ease into the gun.”

  “Francis,” murmured Mam.

  “I was in the army, remember? I was trained. And in me young days there was a ton of these around. Nobody come to no harm.”