The Tightrope Walkers

by David Almond

  We bounced towards Alnwick with a pair of terrified sheep in the open-backed pickup truck of a wizened farmer who told us as we left him that he would nivver have let his kids dae what we were daeing. Ower much freedom these days, he told us. That’s the top ’n’ bliddy borrom of it. What if he let his sheep just wander where they wished? What’d happen to them then? Tek care, he said. There’s alwiz a villain or three hangin aboot roond here. He gave us a pound note. Divent hoy it away on rubbish, he said.

  We were picked up by a gentle German named Hans in an old green van. There were ancient stone-cutting tools in an enamel bowl on the backseat. He told us they were everywhere in these parts, knives and axes just below the grass.

  “I’m a remnant of war,” he said, “discovering other remnants of other wars.”

  He’d been a prisoner of war during World War Two.

  “I was travelling,” he said. “A student, a young man on my own seeing the wonders of Northumberland. My plan was to be a historian, an archaeologist. But war impeded me.”

  He drove slowly. He pointed to a kestrel that hovered above the roadside, a pair of swans that flew seaward high above. He’d been detained in a tin shack in the Cheviots with another German and an Austrian.

  “War seemed far away,” he said, “for all of us. The farmers let us till their fields, which is where I first began to find these things. They even let us drink with them in their country bars. People were so kind, even on the nights we heard the bombs, even as we stood at the village’s edge as the sky darkened and we saw the fires of Tyneside shining bright in the sky to the south. ‘It is not you,’ they said. ‘We know it is not you.’”

  He lived in his own shack now, a stone and timber place with two rooms and without electricity. He lived alone. He had only once been home to Germany. He collected stone artefacts. He kept a pair of goats. Sometimes he served at a bar and in spring he helped farmers with their lambs. He was happy. People were very kind. He did not understand the world. Did we? He told us to visit him sometime. We would find his shack in the Simonside Hills, next to a sheet of black rock upon which mysterious circles and spirals had been carved many thousands of years ago.

  “You must live in peace,” he told us. “We are only in this world for a short period of vivid and wonderful waking in an eternity of dreamless dark.”

  We walked the final mile towards the sea. Fishing boats moved on it, the homeward-heading ones surrounded by white storms of dancing birds. The islands, the Farnes, reached towards the horizon. The red-and-white hooped Longstone Lighthouse stood on the rocks of Outer Farne.

  We kept pausing, staring.

  “It’s just so beautiful,” said Holly. “And it’s where we’re from, and it’s like Heaven.”

  We walked by the sea into Beadnell. In the harbour there were little fishing boats and sailing boats. Families picnicked on the beach. Kids splashed and screamed in the water. A fire burned at the far end of the long curved bay. We took off our shoes and waded ankle-high through the icy water towards it.

  Someone was singing Joni Mitchell, a song that told of our journey from the city to the sea.

  We paused by the rock pools and saw scuttling crabs, limpets, barnacles, grey little fish, dark rubbery anemones. Foot-long jellyfish were stranded on the sand. The rocks were black. Brown seaweed swayed in the surf. Strips of it lay dead and pungent on the tideline and flies buzzed on it. There was a line of great concrete cubes below the dunes, tank traps left over from the war. It was all so northern, so un-Californian, but Joni Mitchell’s words mingled with the crying of the dainty terns that danced above the water. A flight of our exotic-looking bird, the puffin, dashed by above our heads. A pair of seals raised their whiskery heads from the water and watched as we waved and hooted at them.

  The kids at the fire were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, poised at the end of schooldays. We hailed the ones we knew, and the ones we didn’t know. All of us were friends. Some of the boys wore necklaces of stones and seeds. Some who could manage it had scrawny beards. There were bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale, cans of Younger’s Tartan, bottles of wine like ours.

  The sun was warm all afternoon. High-up gannets headed further north towards invisible Bass Rock. There was talk of where we’d come from, where we were and where we’d go. We talked about those we knew who were following the trail to Afghanistan or had gone to Athens on the Magic Bus.

  “That’ll be us soon,” we said.

  A blond boy on a rock burned a lump of dope and rolled a joint and passed it round. I hardly dared to touch it, but I took a shallow drag and passed it on.

  The boys started playing Fally the Best in the dunes. It was a game that all boys played on these beaches. You imagined that war was going on. You took turns to tiptoe through the dunes. You kept crouching, tense, watchful, apprehensive. You knew that the silent enemy was somewhere close by. They waited, hidden, with their weapons poised — their rifles, their grenades, their knives. You came to the crest of the dunes. You never survived. You screamed in agony as the machine-gun bullets thudded into you, as the grenades burst open and shrapnel ripped its way into your flesh, as the sniper hiding still as death in the marram grass hit you with a single deadly shot, as the silent spinning knife struck deep into the heart.

  “Die!” called the killers. “Die!”

  “Aaaagh!” you screamed. “Ayeeee!”

  And you fell, in ostentatious agony, and tumbled down the dune, and lay dead still in distorted shapes upon the sand. And you were given a score out of ten, and you laughed, and rose, and brushed the sand away, and started again, and killed again and died again, and started again, again, again.

  The sun went down over the Cheviots and dunes behind. The air cooled, the game ended. We hung our blankets across our shoulders. We searched the jetsam for more fuel.

  We cooked potatoes in the fire. We ate bread and tins of meat, tomatoes and beans. We drank beer and wine. The fire glowed more brightly. The sky burned red and orange behind and all continued darkening. The sea moved gently, gleamed metallic. The Longstone Lighthouse light began to turn, just distant flashes at first, but soon the cone-shaped beam was visible, sweeping across the sea, the islands, the beach and us. The dope smokers sighed more deeply than the rest of us, but we all sighed, we all muttered and murmured. The cone of light intensified and we moved from darkness to light, darkness to light. We saw the lights of boats like stars beneath the stars. I sat with my arm around Holly. We sang along to the guitars, to the tambourine that someone gently swung. We kissed, and then we slipped away from the fire, walked hand-in-hand to the dunes. We found a hollow edged with marram grass, a kind of nest from which we could see the fire and the lighthouse light, the boats, the stars, the darkness of the sky to the north, the glow of the city to the south. The sand was still warm from the day’s sun. We kissed, and undressed each other. Do you have anything? we asked each other. No. We laughed. Oh, God, to be so unprepared after so much preparation. We made love and told each other that what would be would be. We told each other we had loved each other since that first moment we saw each other from the windows of our opposite houses. We made love again, and then lay silent and naked, as the light swept across us and away from us and back to us again.

  She ran her fingers across the sand upon my skin.

  She smiled.

  “Pebbledashed Dominic,” she whispered.

  How strange to think of that.

  “On Beadnell Beach,” I said, “I can connect nothing with nothing.”

  A boy sang, “The Times They Are A-Changin.”

  The voice moved on, and back into time, into the strains of “Felton Lonnen.”

  “ ‘The kye’s come hyem, but Aa see not me hinny;

  The kye’s come hyem, but Aa see not me bairn;

  Aa’d rather loss aall the kye than loss me bairn.’”

  Then silence, just the turning of the sea, beating of our hearts, soft sighing of our breath. We pulled the blankets close around us and we slept.


  “Dominic. Dom!”

  She was shaking me awake.

  “Look!” she whispered.

  She held the marram grass aside. The tide was out, the sea was still, the red edge of the sun rose over the Farnes. An ambulance slithered and swerved its way along the beach. A police car stood by the smouldering fire. Gulls called. Girls cried. Kids held each other tight. They stood around in nervous little groups. They knelt in depression and dejection. A policeman moved among them, scribbling in a notebook. Another policeman crouched by the body lying on the sand.

  We didn’t move. Just watched as the ambulance came closer, as the stretcher was brought out, as the body was laid on it, lifted into the ambulance and carried away. The policemen stayed as the kids collected their belongings. Two boys got into the car and were driven away. The others trudged afterwards, carrying their sacks and blankets and guitars, leaving a trail of scattered footprints in the glistening wet sand. We stayed till they’d all gone, till the beach was cleared, till the sun was huge and orange and round and the sea shivered as it turned and started to come back in again.

  Then we went down. Stood among the litter — the smouldering timbers, the ash, the cans and bottles, the bread crusts, the cigarette ends. Still early. Nobody around except a single dog walker along by the harbour. A black low-flying jet roared by above our heads, then another.

  We headed back towards the village through the dunes. We stood at the roadside and hitched. A red car swerved to a halt.

  “Get in.”

  He drove us quickly away. A middle-aged man with a long scar on his cheek.

  “You’re the third lot I’ve picked up already,” he said. “I’m doing my duty to get rid of you all.”

  He turned to glare at Holly in the backseat, swerved towards a ditch, swerved back into the middle of the road.

  “Who do you think you are?” he said. “Coming up here with your guitars and drink and drugs and sex.”

  “Did he die?” I said.

  “It was the same last year, the same the year before. Wailing all the night, drowning in your own damn sick, leaving the place like a midden.”

  “Did he?”

  “How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen? What are your parents thinking of?”

  He roared through the silent villages towards the A1. Another pair of long-haired hitchers stood in a lay-by at Chathill. He blared his horn at them. He flung a V-sign at them. He put his foot down.

  “Layabouts!” he snarled.

  We leaned back in our seats. We clung on to door handles.

  “What effect do you think you have on our children?”

  “Did he die?” said Holly.

  “It’d be a lesson for you all if he did. Is this what we fought a war for? No, he didn’t. Get ready to get out.”

  He shuddered to a halt at Felton.

  “Get away from here and back to your Tyneside hovels. And don’t come back.”

  “There’s bin a death,” said Dad.

  We were in the kitchen. I was frying chops and chips.

  “One of the tank lads,” he said. “Straight overboard. Straight doon to the bliddy dock. With not a bliddy hope.”

  Nothing I could say.

  “End of the shift. He was steppin down onto the shipside ladder. Mebbe it was loose or slippy, mebbe he just took a wrong step. Who knows?” He sighed. “They’re not too clever, that lot. Mebbe he was showin off or something. Mebbe anything.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Miller, he was called. A young’n, not been there too long. A bit of a clot by all accounts, but a canny lad, they say. You wouldn’t know him, son.”

  “One of McAlinden’s lot?”

  “Eh?”

  “Vincent. He’s in the tanks, isn’t he?”

  “He’s been took out. He’s just a bliddy skiver now, one of them that wanders about pretendin they’re goin somewhere special and doin something useful.”

  “And they keep him on?”

  “There’s always a few like that. Nobody knows quite what they do. They’re usually ones that’s soft in the head or hard as bliddy nails. The talk is that McAlinden’s got some kind of pull with Blister.”

  “Blister?”

  “Ye’ll find out. He’s always had his bliddy favourites.”

  I put the food on the plates. We sat together at the table.

  “What do you mean, I’ll find out?”

  “It’s awful, but it made us think of you.”

  “Of me?”

  He poured HP sauce across the chips.

  “They’ve been takin students on for the holidays. Usin them as cleaners and gofers and stuff.”

  “Aye?”

  “So I thought we could mebbe get you something for a couple of weeks afore school starts again.”

  “In the tank?”

  “Aye.” He shrugged. “They’re a man short, after all.” He laughed. “A job, eh? An amazin thought, eh?”

  I dunked HP onto my plate.

  “The wage’ll be canny enough.”

  I chewed a chip.

  “Or is it beneath you?” he said.

  “Course it’s not.”

  “Good. It’s your roots, you know. Your heritage. I’ll put in a word, see what’s what.”

  He laughed.

  “I already have, to tell the truth,” he said.

  He lifted a forkful of pork to his mouth.

  “Long ago,” he said, “I telt you I’d find a way to let you see.” He rolled his eyes and grinned. “Mebbe the time has come.”

  Holly and I made love in the hills now. We’d make our way across the fields towards the top. We’d go beyond the hawthorn trees, to the copses and meadows and paddocks on the opposite slope. We found beautiful places, where only the birds could see us. An ancient grassy clearing in a birch wood. A mossy bank at the edge of a flowered meadow. We heard groups of kids playing nearby. We saw distant couples walking hand-in-hand, maybe heading for their own sanctuaries. No one came to disturb us. We took precautions now, of course. Once a little black dog appeared, rushing at us to lick us and leap across our feet, before pelting back to its unseen hidden master. We heard bleating sheep and lowing cows. Once there was an hour when we heard the regular twang of an air rifle and regular yells of triumph. And as always there were the traffic and the factories and the insects in the air and singing birds.

  We looked down to the streets of Gateshead, the bridges across the shining river to Newcastle, the city itself and Northumberland beyond, all of it shimmering in the heat of the warmest days.

  The world was changing, as it always is. The land was being scraped clean of the past. Rows of terraced streets were being demolished. There were immense cranes, bulldozers, earth-shifters. New towers of flats were rising all across Tyneside, so that families could be lifted from the earth into the sky.

  We looked down upon it from our sanctuaries and enclaves. We were happy. We were in love.

  Once, heading homeward, we saw Jack Law. He was sitting on the lowest almost-horizontal branch of a chestnut tree. We waved and he returned our wave. We saw him again, another day, sitting cross-legged in long grass facing the sun.

  “Is he watching us?” we asked each other.

  “No,” said Holly. “He’s watching over us.”

  Bright morning. Sun shining through the thin curtains. Dad shook me awake.

  “Out of your pit,” he said. “On with your stuff, get tea and grub in you, bait in your sack, sack on your back, then off we gan to the river. This is work. We can’t be late. You hear me?”

  Down we went. I ate cold toast as we walked. Feet rang out on the pavements. Sun rose over the distant sea. The river gleamed. Men walked from all directions, from alleyways between houses, from back lanes behind tight-packed terraced streets, from distant pebbledashed estates. They walked or rode black squeaky bikes. Sometimes a Honda 50 or a Lambretta puttered past. The crowd increased as we came closer to the river. Down through the streets towards the high steel gates,
the great cranes, the gantries. Men were gathering at the other side of the gates, night shift finished, waiting to be set free. Dad showed me the entrances for the draughtsmen and office staff. He showed me the car parks for their cars.

  “Them,” he said, “and us. And never the twain shall bliddy meet.”

  A siren wailed and the gates creaked open. The night-shift workers were released. We shuffled forward.

  “We won’t see each other,” said Dad. “Just do what you’re telt and watch for the holes. We’ll have a pint in the Iona after.”

  He took me to the door of a wooden shed.

  “This is him,” he said. “Me lad. Dominic. Treat him good. If you cannot manage that, at least keep him alive.”

  Then he was gone, hurrying to clock in on time.

  There were three men there, smoking cigarettes, draining mugs of tea. Men, but they seemed no older than me. They wore overalls, shabby boots. Face masks hung about their necks. Each had a bucket with a dustpan and hand brush in it. There was a pile of dustpans, brushes, and buckets at their feet.

  “That’s yer weapons,” said one of them. “Here’s a mask if you like your lungs. Name’s Norman.”

  He held out a cheap metal face mask and a white gauze mouth pad.

  “You put the pad in them clips like this,” said Norman. “Hurry up, or Blister’ll be at us.”

  I took the mask, worked out how to get the pad on it, hung it around my neck. Got a bucket, a pan, a brush.

  “You’re the bliddy boffin, eh?” said Norman.

  “Boffin?”

  “This is Jakey. The handsome one’s called Silversleeve. You’ll knaa why when he’s got a cold.”

  Silversleeve and Jakey nodded.

  “Ye heard aboot our mate?” said Norman. “Poor owld Windy?”

  “My dad told me.”

  “He was a good lad. This place is full of peril. Keep your eyes and lugs wide open and tek care.”

  “And watch who ye waalk with,” said Silversleeve.

  “Where’s that bliddy cleanin gang?” yelled somebody from outside.