The Tightrope Walkers

by David Almond

  “What are you going to do?” I yelled from deep inside myself. “What the fuck? What?”

  Nothing, was the answer.

  Silence, was the answer.

  She stood there like he hung there, two jokes, two massive lies.

  Holly came to me with a saw, with a long-bladed knife, with some pruning shears, with the wire.

  We went quickly to our trees. The blossom was nearly gone by now.

  “First cut away the old dead stuff,” she said.

  Some of it was so old, so sapless, it could be just snapped off. Thin boughs cut easily. They tumbled down onto the grass. We sawed off the bigger boughs. We snagged our skin on thorns. Bulbs of blood and trickles of blood appeared on our skin. We kept moving in with the cutting tools, moving back again, assessing, revising, editing, changing. We trimmed tiny single growths, snapped off single thorns. The boughs that remained reached up towards the sky to form an interleaving arch. They appeared to form an upturned nest with the sky as ground, the ground as sky.

  We pulled away the cuttings so that the earth under the trees was clear, just tangled grass with flowers in it.

  We watched for Jack Law, but there was no sign of him.

  We attached the wire between the trees. We attached it to branching boughs and tightened it with the tightening winch. It was almost as high as my shoulder.

  Holly went up first. She shinned up into the red tree, stood with one foot on the wire, one foot on a bough, back pressed against the boughs behind, and then stepped out and walked the wire against the sky. So secure in her walking, in her balance, in just being herself up there. She leapt down and rolled across the grass to my feet.

  Then me, squat me with the muscles and the hair and the thickening chest. Me, the chimpanzee. I climbed up into the white tree. I walked on the wire. I stepped, slithered, teetered, but I got across. I crossed again. Paused at the centre, stood there swaying high above the river and the town, against the sky.

  I dropped to the earth, caught the scent of decay.

  I sniffed, I looked around.

  “It’s the hawthorn,” said Holly Stroud.

  She lifted a cut stem to her face.

  “It’s known for it,” she said.

  We kept on walking, improving. We untied the wire.

  We walked away from our trees, our beautiful damaged pruned trees.

  They took Mam away the very next day. An ambulance again, so garish, so massive-looking in our little street. She walked out with Dad. She lay down on a stretcher inside. I stood at the ambulance doorway.

  “All this fuss,” she said to me as we said goodbye. “You make sure you get to school now. Work hard, be good. I’ll soon be back. This fuss!”

  Her lips trembled as she kissed me, and I saw how pleased she was, to be taken away from having to be so strong. I watched the ambulance drive away. Its orange light began to flash and spin. I didn’t go to school. I went down to steal fruit from Bamling’s. I stole Beech Nut and a Mars Bar. I bought five Park Drives and smoked them one after the other by the railway line and sickened myself with them. I eyed up flying birds and thought Kapow! I thought how puny my transgressions were. How puny I was to have allowed them to affect me so much. Stealing a fiver from an open doorway! What was that? What a child I was! I walked back and forward through the familiar streets. I thought of Mrs. Charlton, her contempt for us as she travelled through our estate, as she stood in our little house. She shouldn’t have got that far. Instead of pissing on her carpet, I should have found her, and murdered her in her home. I thought of God, of nonexistent, useless, absent God. “Save my mother and I will be good,” I said into the nothingness. “Let her die and I’ll start to kill!”

  I gathered some stones and put them in my pocket. I went into the church. It was silent and empty.

  I started to fling the stones at Christ, trying to bring him down, to break his stillness, his stupid silence.

  “Fall!” I said, in savage whispers. “Fucking fall.”

  He rocked and swung and creaked as the stones struck. I saw the marks I made on his body. Flakes of his skin and tiny fragments of his flesh drifted to the floor. The stones that missed scattered down onto the altar, littered the white cloth there and the red carpet around it.

  “Fall. Fall! Fall!”

  I aimed for the cords that held the cross, but even when I hit them, I didn’t bring him down, his cross didn’t fall.

  He just hung there, swayed and shuddered there.

  I heard doors opening beyond the altar. Heard running feet. Maybe I should stand my ground. But I ran out again. The great church door groaned open and groaned shut behind me.

  I ran across the wasteland.

  I knew that she would surely die.

  It only took two weeks. I saw her a few times more. I was with her when she died. A Tuesday afternoon. A message had been sent to Dad, but there was no way of knowing if it would get to him, and no way of knowing if he’d be set free. Through the window of her little room I could see the river and the yard, the dark and distant sea. I knelt at the bedside. I held her hand and whispered that everything would be OK, that Dad would be with us soon.

  “Yes, it is,” she whispered. “Yes, he will.”

  She was stunned by pain and morphine. Her breath diminished to a whistle, but her lips still moved. Boats were important, she whispered. She said that she could see them on the shore.

  “Will you wave?” she gasped.

  “Yes, Mam.”

  Her body jerked and her breath came to an end.

  I kissed her brow.

  A nurse came in.

  I should have called her, she said.

  There would have been nothing she could do, she whispered.

  “She died knowing that she was loved,” she said.

  Then Dad arrived. He had the smell of the yard on him. Sweat trickled down over the dust and oil on his face.

  “The gate was locked,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me out.”

  He wiped his filthy hands on a towel.

  “They said wait till shift’s end. It’s just a few minutes’ time. I could see the hospital through the locked gates. I climbed over them. Somebody even tried to pull me down as I was climbing them.”

  He groaned.

  “I saw her go,” he said. “I saw her soul.”

  I listened.

  “I was running. I was still right down on the High Street. I kept my eyes on the hospital. And I saw her, Dominic. I saw her soul rising from the roof of the hospital and disappearing into the sky. Her! Yes! Don’t go! Not yet!”

  He leaned to her now.

  “Oh, love. Oh, how I ran. Where are you now?”

  She came back home. A hearse drew up. A top-hatted undertaker led her in. She was carried by men in shiny black suits and grubby black shoes and white nylon shirts and slipshod black ties. They closed the front-room curtains, laid her on trestles, opened the coffin lid. Mascara on her lashes, foundation on her face. Neighbours and relatives came to drink tea and to eat ham sandwiches. They brought cards and flowers. They said she was just as lovely as she’d been in life. They said she was out of pain now, it was a blessing it’d been so quick. Father Caffrey came. He drank whisky and smoked cigarettes with Dad. He said it was impossible to always understand the ways of God but there was always a purpose to events in this world. He said she’d gone to a better place. He said we’d all be with her there one day. Dad said that was all a load of crap. He said God must be a fucking cunt to do a thing like this. The priest said he understood our pain, our confusion. Dad told him no, he didn’t. He said if he was going to drink his whisky he should just shut the fuck up and fucking drink.

  I left the house when the Brothers arrived, as they always did when a Catholic died. They gathered in the garden, whispering, wearing black ties and pompous faces, carrying rolled-up rosary beads in their pockets. I slipped past them, shrugged off their attempts at comforting words and comforting touches, and went to Holly. We watched from her windo
w as the Brothers went in, so many of them I wondered how they’d fit into the room around her. Even through the window we heard the ghastly beat and drone of their chants, their Thy will be done, their Pray for us sinners, their Deliver us from evil. I imagined our little house vibrating with it, humming with it. The estate shone pale beneath a sickle moon. The gardens darkened.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We walked the ring of the estate, then went through the alleyway that led to the upper wasteland. Kids had a fire burning there. We sat on stones beside it. There was a white tent nearby.

  A boy came to us.

  “We’re campin oot,” he said. “We’re never gannin yem again.”

  “There’s been a war,” said another. “Everythin’s gone. Everybody’s deed. We’re the last of the survivors.”

  “But we’re ready to kill,” said the first. “I’m Dan, and he’s Stan.”

  They lifted black potatoes from the edge of the fire and gave them to us. We cracked the hard scorched skins and nibbled at the steaming creamy flesh inside.

  “We seen three shooting stars,” said Dan. “And we think there’s a fox in that hedge there.”

  “And the ghosts of the slaughtered’ll be comin at midnight,” said Stan.

  “It’s true,” said Dan. “You ever seen the ghosts? There’s always been a load of them roond here, ever since I was a little bairn. I could see them, I could hear them groanin and stuff.”

  “The ghosts of what?” said Holly Stroud.

  “Ghosts of the deed. Ghosts of them from the past that’s still aroond.”

  “They can find nae peace,” said Stan. “They roam the earth forevermore and evermore.”

  We fell silent for a time. We listened to the hissing and the crackle of the fire. Holly hummed something hymn-like. I scraped at the ashes with my feet.

  “You could tek your lass in the tent and shag her if you like,” said Stan.

  “Aye,” said Dan. “We got to get mankind started up again.”

  We laughed and ate the delicious potatoes. We saw a shooting star, and another.

  “That might be nothing but a bit of dust,” I said.

  “Are you the one that’s Mam just died?” said Stan.

  “Aye.”

  “Ye’ll get over it. Me dad died last year. Me mam says the best thing to do is pretend I never loved him and he never loved me. Then I won’t feel so bad.”

  “So are you doing that?” I said.

  “Aye.”

  “And is it working?”

  “I think so. You want another spud?”

  “No.”

  “She says I got to pretend he was never even here. She says I got to think that what I think I remember aboot him is really just a dream.”

  “And is that working?”

  “I think it is. Sometimes I’m not sure if what I remember is real. You should try it.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “Good. Now we got to gan and get ready for the comin of the ghosts.”

  We stayed a while and then we left.

  In the shadows between the fire and the estate we kissed each other hard. I held Holly tight, and wanted to disappear into her.

  Then Dad’s yells echoed over the rooftops.

  The Brothers were leaving the estate. We pushed our way through a group of them.

  One pushed back.

  “Stop your shoving,” he snarled.

  “Son of the bloody father,” said another.

  Another caught me for a moment by the arm.

  “Keep an eye on him,” he murmured.

  Dad was at Holly’s door, yelling at Bill Stroud. His fists were flailing. The priest was trying to haul him back.

  “Howay, then, Mr. Bliddy Conchie Draughtsman!” Dad yelled. “Let’s see some fight! Let’s have it out at bliddy last.”

  I put my arms around him.

  “Please, Dad!” I called.

  He writhed, snorted, grunted, swung his fists.

  “Why wasn’t it yours?” he snarled at Bill. “Why wasn’t it the bliddy maniac upstairs?”

  Bill stepped forward and held him, too.

  “Oh, Francis,” he said.

  “Daddy!” I begged. “Daddy, please!”

  He slumped at last. He let us pull him back. He leaned upon me as we shuffled across the street.

  “Would you like me to stay?” said the priest at the door.

  “No, Father,” Dad sighed. “Just fuck off back to your God.”

  We went inside. He went to her one more time. I helped him up the stairs and into his bed and then went down again.

  There was a scent of hawthorn in the coffin room.

  I touched her icy brow. I kissed her icy cheek.

  They laid her in the earth next day.

  Dad drank. He drank in the Iona Club and tottered home to drink again. He drank cans of McEwan’s Export and bottles of Bell’s whisky. He chain smoked Player’s No. 6. I smoked along with him, and he didn’t care, and we flicked our fag ends into cinders and ashes that slid out from the grate. We ate Heinz baked beans, Heinz spaghetti, sausages, fried eggs, tinned tomatoes, ambrosia creamed rice. Loaf after loaf of white sliced bread. Bags of chips smothered in HP sauce. We hardly washed the dishes, we hardly changed the sheets. Lightbulbs flickered out and weren’t replaced. We wore pants for days and shirts for weeks. The house smelt, we smelt. We watched The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone. We lay awake at four a.m. and listened to the howling dogs and the night-shift caulkers and we stared into the horrors of the night. I’d hear him weeping, hear him cursing, hear him wrestling with himself within his tangled sheets. I’d hear him rising with a groan to go downhill to his detested work. I’d get up and follow him an hour later.

  At school, Creel and Joyce tried to comfort me. Joyce tried to give me poems for grieving. The poems told of veils, of separation, of lights in darkness, of a coming-together again. They tried to tell me that death itself would die.

  I ripped them up, dropped them into bins, burned them in my heart. I scribbled my own words of hate, yowls of rage and snarls of spite. I cursed, blasphemed and howled onto page after empty page. I wrote of monstrous murders, of knives, guns, hatchets, of broken bones and severed flesh and pouring blood and seeping gore.

  I wrote that every missile should be launched right now and all bombs dropped. I dreamed of the whole world blazing bright.

  Holly stayed at my side. She went down to school with me. She sought me out after lessons and at break times.

  She said there was meaning in nothing, and that was the only meaning we could know.

  She painted me and painted me: against the pebbledash, against fierce flames, against abundant never-ending stars, against the hawthorn trees, upon the wire against the foliage and the sky. In each of them I had a different face, a different shape. I was old, I was young, I was a tender innocent, I was a brute.

  When I questioned the variety, she laughed.

  “We have everything inside us,” she said.

  “Each of us is everybody,” she said.

  We hardly knew what we were saying but we said such things and thought such things. We were young. We were testing ourselves out against the pebbledash and against the future and the past.

  She painted my mother for me, as she had been in my first memory, reaching up to a clothesline with bright-blue sky beyond and with bright translucent fabrics dancing around her head.

  I hung these paintings in my room. Dad hated them.

  “Fucking art,” he said. “What’s the use of fucking art?”

  I tried to lift myself. I worked hard. The time of O levels was approaching. I read, I revised, I committed great chunks of history and geography to heart. I memorized list after list of French vocabulary. I learned Archimedes’s principle and SOHCAHTOA and Euclid’s Elements. I drew the human lungs and the human brain and named their parts. I learned the speeches of King Lear.

  But to the girdle do the gods inherit,

  Beneath is all th
e fiends’;

  There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulphurous pit,

  Burning, scalding, stench, consumption;

  fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!

  I sat by the hearth cramming information into my brain and Dad wavered between pride, astonishment and scorn. One day, Oh, I’m so proud of you, Dominic. You are what it’s all been for. And on another, What’s the bliddy point of it? There’s nae place for the likes of us. You’d be better getting a trade, learnin a skill. What’s the point of all this learnin and all these bliddy books? And then tears would be falling from his eyes. Oh, she was so proud of you. Wasn’t she so proud. And then again, What is the point? What’s the point of this of that of anybliddything at all?

  I got on with it. I felt like I was facedown to an icy deck, that I slithered all alone through a dark and filthy double hull.

  One day I ran uphill alone in search of what? In search of skylarks, of light, of disappearance? In order to run and not stop running till I’d run into a new life that wasn’t me, in which there was not a me at all? I ran past the hawthorn trees upon their crag and ran to the rock with the heavenly space in it. Could see it nowhere, told myself it had just been an illusion, a kind of dream. Then there it was. Gnarled shrubs and the ancient oak, the jagged stone beneath, the narrow opening between the roots. It was as if it had been prepared for me. I crouched and saw that new candles had been recently lit, illuminating Heaven. I slithered in, the knee-high opening just wide enough to let me through. I lay facing upward. The air was warm and scented by the candles. The only sound seemed to be the tiny hiss of the candles burning, the tiny crackle of the paper shifting. The floor was soft. I ran my fingertips across the sky, across the saints and angels, God in glory, Christ at his side, the dove and the tongues of fire to the Holy Ghost. I tried to pray. Our Father, who art in Heaven. Knew I could not. As I looked close, I saw that Heaven was painted upon other images, earlier shapes. There was graffiti visible just beneath the blue: cocks and balls and blasphemy and scrawled black curses. Jack’s Heaven was painted over coarseness, mischief, violence, grief, confusion. Maybe it had been repainted many times. I closed my eyes. I wept for a while. After what could have been a thousand years the tears stopped and I grew still and calm.