The Tightrope Walkers Page 12

  “A gift from bliddy God above!” he says.

  And now he’s at a rabbit hutch, murmuring to the little black rabbit there, stroking his thumb and fingers together. And poor silly thing, it comes to him and poor silly me says nowt. And now Vincent opens its door and takes his knife and cuts its poor throat. And I’m so weirdly excited that I go to him and I’m the one that bliddy butchers it, the one that saws off its still-warm head with my ship-steel knife and rolls it across the earth before the hutch.

  And I put my knife in its sheath again and we retrace slow steps along the precarious drive, and enter the peaceful street again and continue walking and continue to try to stay calm, and Vincent sighs a curse, sighs praise of me, of both of us.

  “We’re cool as cats,” he says.

  He turns his face to the bounteous sky.

  “We’re bliddy brilliant!” he sighs.

  We turn the corner of the street, then run like little scampering kids again, back through the park, back past the crees, back below the rushing pigeons, back through a dusty shadowed lane towards the world we know.

  “We’re free!” he says.

  “The thing you done with the bliddy books!” he says.

  “Bliddy fantastic!” he says.

  “But, Christ, the rabbit?” I say.

  “Poor ickle thing.”

  He shows the blood still on his fingers. I look at the blood on my own and want to scream.

  “Why did we do the rabbit?” I say.

  He grabs me and kisses me full on the lips. I try to pull away but he just laughs. Wipes his bloody fingers on my throat.

  “Cos we wanted to. Cos you wanted to.” He giggles. “You got its bliddy head off fast enough.”

  Then his knife’s in his hand again. He has me by the scruff of the neck and he’s holding the knife to my throat and he’s suddenly so strong, stronger than he’s ever been, and I can’t get free of him.

  “Do ye not understand?” he says.

  “It’s nowt to do with bliddy why,” he snarls.

  “And there’ll be no why if I do you,” he says.

  He thrusts forward and kisses again.

  “Don’t worry,” he says.

  “I’m just jokin,” he says.

  He puts the knife away into its sheath.

  “We’re pals,” he says. “And more than pals, eh? Pals that kill and pals that kiss and pals that . . . Ha!”

  His eyes are bloodshot. His teeth are bared. He licks his lips.

  We walk again. He tells me to walk natural and normal.

  “I’m your guide,” he says.

  “Nobody else’d get you doing the things I get you to do,” he says.

  “You know that, don’t you?” he says.

  “And you like it, don’t you?” he says.

  We walk.

  I try to shake the rabbit and the knife from my brain. Try to shake everything we’ve done from my brain.

  “Ye’ll remember this forevermore,” he says.

  I try not to scream.

  We show each other our bounty and we laugh.

  And walk.

  And think it’s over, and think we’ve got away with it.

  The car moved slowly at our side. A small blue Ford Anglia, an amber light spinning slowly on its roof, with a policeman and a woman in it.

  “Now then, lads!” called the policeman.

  We didn’t turn.

  “Just stop where you are and I’ll have a little word with you. Just gimme a second, eh?”

  Vincent laughed, he breathed his bitter words into my face.

  “Payback time.”

  The car stopped, the policeman stepped out.

  “Ready to run?” said Vincent.

  He laughed.

  “No, course you aren’t.”

  He laughed.

  “I’ll soon be in the tanks. I wonder will I ever see you there. Ha!”

  Then he walked quickly away.

  The policemen came to my side. We watched Vincent diminish in the distance, become absorbed into the familiar streets close to home.

  “Farewell!” the policeman called.

  “You’ll give me his details, of course. Won’t you, son?”

  I couldn’t answer.

  “Course you will. I’m PC Romero.”

  He tilted his head.

  “Dominic Hall,” I whispered.

  “So, Dominic. Is it you that’s got the fiver, or is it your disappeared pal?”

  I took out the note. I took out the silver spoon, held them out towards him.

  “Nowt else?”

  “No.”

  “Just the urination, of course,” he said. “And the books. And the rabbit.” He sighed. “Ah yes, the rabbit!”

  He leaned close to me, shook his head, widened his eyes in astonishment.

  “Why the rabbit?”

  I put my bloody hand to my bloody throat.

  It was like somebody else was speaking my words.

  “It wasn’t me.”

  He reached down and took my bloodied knife from its sheath. He grinned.

  “Make that stand up in court, son. But enough of all this chat. Say hello to Mrs. Charlton.”

  The woman came out of the car. Brown woollen coat, brown shoes, brown glossy hair. All neat, all clean.

  “This is the lady whose house you burgled,” said PC Romero. “The lady whose house you defiled. The lady whose rabbit you slaughtered.”

  I held out the fiver and the spoon to her.

  “Whoa,” said Romero. “That’s evidence, son.”

  He took the note and wrapped a handkerchief around the spoon.

  “There’ll be fingerprints,” he said, “and character checks and school checks and chats with Mam and Dad and then . . . Ah, Dominic, who can know what then?”

  “Why did you do it, you filthy boy?” said Mrs. Charlton.

  I answer like a trembling child.

  “You’re Mrs. Charlton. I sent you a story once. You said it was lovely. You said I must be a very clever little boy.”

  I cried like that boy as we headed home. I sat in the back of the car. What did this woman make of this place: this small square with the fountain at its heart; Dragone’s coffee shop with condensation on its windows and steam seeping from its door; Bamling’s fruit shop with the tempting apples in boxes outside; Myer’s pork shop with the pig’s head grinning through the glass; the great codfish on the fishmonger’s slab? These scampering children, these headscarved women, these old men with their dogs, these working men in boiler suits heading wearily homeward after half-shifts in the yards?

  Her head was still, her eyes were cold.

  We entered the estate. Through her cold eyes I saw the crumbling pebbledash, the cracks in the pavements, the potholes in the roads, the sinking garden walls. Kids in filthy vests made dens in little gardens. Faces at the windows watching this police car bringing Dominic Hall home.

  We pulled up outside the house.

  Mrs. Stroud was singing Doris Day.

  Girls were singing too, their never-ending skipping song.

  A pony whinnied, a cockerel called.

  My parents stood at the front window.

  And I looked through the cold eyes again: this tiny house in a pale narrow street. This creaking gate, this concrete earth, this outhouse, this washing line with sheets on it, these hooks for a childish tightrope. And this little neat living room with flowery curtains, cheap workaday furniture. This squat muscular man, this caulker with damaged hands and damaged lungs, this father sucking in smoke, breathing it out, this lovely little shocked mother.

  And I saw through their eyes too. I saw their boy, the boy who was supposed to walk away from all of this towards the sky.

  The tale of the tawdry boy was told to them. The plunder and the knife were shown to them.

  Mrs. Charlton touched the lamp that she had given us those few short years ago, the one that Mam had cared for as a precious thing.

  She sighed.

 
“I do not wish to stay long,” she said. “I just wish this to be over with.”

  She ran her fingers across the towers and minarets upon the lamp.

  “I will not press charges,” she said.

  “Are you certain of that, Mrs. Charlton?” said the policeman.

  “I wish to be sullied no further. I will show mercy.” She looked Mam in the eye. “Only for your sake, Elaine.”

  Mam caught her breath. She sobbed. Mrs. Charlton turned her face away.

  “What about the other boy?” asked Romero.

  “Oh yes, the other brute.” She shuddered. “To think that there are two of them with the same leanings. Scare him, Officer, but leave him to his filth.”

  Romero shrugged.

  “I loved your little story,” Mrs. Charlton said. “I kept it on my bookshelves for a year or more. I showed it to my guests. I knew from your mother that there were such high hopes for you. I thought you were such a credit to her. . . .”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “Who’d have thought there was such a . . . thing beneath?”

  She pushed the lamp away with extended fingertip.

  “I wish never to see you again, Dominic,” she said. “And I’m afraid that I do not wish to see you again either, Elaine.”

  She shrugged.

  “I am sorry about that. But what else could you expect?”

  She stood in the living-room doorway as the policeman took details of me, my school, my father and his place of work, my mother and her places of work. He said that he must pass on some details of this to my school. Of course he bliddy should, my father said. He asked for details of Vincent McAlinden. I hesitated.

  “Dominic,” said Dad, “the officer asked for details of Vincent McAlinden.”

  I said who Vincent was, where he lived, where he went to school.

  “Hardly peas in a pod, then,” he said. “But who can ever tell?”

  He wrote in his notebook.

  “You’re a grammar school boy,” he said to me. “One of the privileged. So what ambitions do you have?”

  No answers.

  “How will you grasp the opportunities that are offered to you?”

  “He’s very clever,” said Mam.

  “Clever enough to do the things he did today. And to do the other things that he must do.”

  “Oh, Dominic,” whispered Mam. “What else is it you do?”

  I could not answer.

  Were you not like this? I wanted to ask the stupid policeman. Do you not have memories of this beneath your stupid uniform?

  “Whatever it is,” said Romero, “you’d better stop it now. It gets to be a habit. The first time’s hard, the second’s easier. And then the third . . . And we know you now. We’ll see you. We’ll find you out.”

  He scanned us all.

  “You’re on a knife edge,” he said.

  Then he shrugged.

  “I hope we don’t have to meet again.”

  Dad held his hand out to him. He didn’t take it. He put my knife on the table. He turned away.

  Mrs. Charlton gave a final shudder of disgust. They went away.

  Holly and her father watched from the house across the street.

  “Why did it have to be Mrs. Charlton?” whispered Mam.

  “She should be asking for the bloody birch,” Dad said.

  “You do it, then!” I said to him.

  He came at me. I tried to hold him off but I let myself fall like a child. I wanted to cry out, Daddy! Daddy! Mammy! Mammy! He raised his fist and I got ready for the pain, but Mam pulled him away from me.

  “Don’t, Francis,” she groaned. “Not that.”

  “What else you been up to?” he said. “What crimes, what filth?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t remember!”

  “Was it Vincent that made you do such things?” said Mam.

  “Don’t you bloody dare say yes to that!” said Dad.

  He raised his fist again. I cowered.

  He lit a cigarette. Bared his teeth at me. He took the knife, pressed the point to the hearth and stamped on it viciously until it snapped in two. Flung the pieces into the bin.

  Glared at me, glared at me, seethed with contempt for me.

  “Mebbe I need to be drunk to do it right,” he groaned.

  He got his jacket, went out to the Iona Club.

  I wanted to collapse in Mam’s arms.

  “Is this what you were brought up for?” she said.

  No answer.

  “And to do it to me as well.”

  “You?”

  “Like you did to Mrs. Charlton.”

  I couldn’t look at her.

  “I told myself it wasn’t true. I wouldn’t believe the evidence of my eyes. You took money from my purse, Dominic. Didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  No answer.

  “O sweet Jesus,” she whispered. “I do believe you’ve forgotten it.”

  Her eyes remained upon me.

  “Do you see the damage you’ve done today?” she said.

  No answer.

  “Oh, how you’ve wounded me.”

  It was late at night when Dad came home. Mam and I had gone to our beds. I didn’t sleep. Heard him, his footsteps on the pavement. Then the click of the gate, the click of the door, the groan of his breath, his feet on the stairs, my mother’s call: “Francis? That’s you?”

  No answer. My door opened, and he was at me.

  He stank of beer, of cigarettes. His words were slurred, his actions slovenly. He punched me hard on my cheek. He pressed his hands around my throat. He beat my head against the pillow.

  “My dad would have bliddy killed you,” he slurred.

  “So kill me, then,” I grunted.

  We writhed together on the bed.

  “You must have done it!” I yelled at him. “You must have done the kind of things I’ve done!”

  “Burgled? Pissed like a pig in somebody’s house? Killed an innocent beast? Who do you think you’re bliddy talkin to?”

  We writhed and fought, our snot and spit and tears and blood upon us. Mam came in, begging him to stop. He took no notice of her. He seemed to want to beat me to death.

  He just groaned at last and collapsed on me.

  “Oh, Dominic,” he whispered. “What you done, my stupid boy?”

  We slept together on my bed for a while.

  When I woke up he was sitting on the bed’s edge. The moon shone through the thin curtains. His silhouetted face was turned from me.

  “I’ll tell you what I did,” he said.

  “There was two of us,” he said, “me and Mickey Carr, a Westgate lad. We were bairns, hardly older than you are, Dom. Who had the sense to send lads like us to fight a war? Who had the sense to send us to the jungle? Monkeys in the trees, and birds as bright as fire, and snakes and spiders. I was used to the banks of the Tyne. Mickey was used to the coalfields of County Durham. Jesus, it was hot. It was steaming bliddy hot. Sweat ran across your eyes and got to rot your feet if you weren’t careful. We stuck together, Mickey Carr and me, like good pals do. It was up to the likes of us to save the world, they said. We used to laugh, used to say that we were bliddy heroes. We didn’t go far that day. We never went far. Too damn dangerous to go too deep into the trees. The sarge told us what to do. Just have a little reconnoitre, lads. Stay where it’s familiar. Keep in sight. Keep looking back to check you ain’t gone too far. We only went a few short yards, and there he was, down in a little hole. Weird. We thought he was dead but turned out he was fast asleep. Kicked him. He shifted. Weird. A sleeping Jap. Didn’t know they had such weakness in them. He was just a kid as well. A kid like me, like you. Only difference was that smooth skin they have. Them clear eyes. Them slender bodies. Couldn’t tell if he was scared or not. He lay there looking up, then raised his hands. We didn’t believe him. Japs don’t do things like that.”

  He paused. He lit another cigarette.

  “And?” said Mam.

  “We didn�
�t even look at each other, Mickey and me. We were on him before we thought, before we knew what we were doing, though we knew not to use guns, too loud. We stuck our knives in him. We just jumped on him and stuck our knives in him. Stabbed him. Like that. Stabbed him. Stabbed him.”

  He smoked. He shook.

  “We told the sergeant he was reaching for his gun,” he said. “ ‘Course he was,’ he said. ‘Good lads. Good brave bonny lads. Now get that blood off you.’”

  He stared out at the moon.

  “We killed him,” he whispered.

  “You were scared,” said Mam.

  “Terrified. And it was in a war. A bliddy war! Imagine what happens all around the world in bliddy war.”

  “And think what he might have done to you, Francis.”

  “Ha. Me son stole a fiver from the hallway of a house. He killed a pet rabbit. I killed a lad in cold blood that might have been myself and might have been my son.”

  “It was war,” said Mam again.

  “Aye, war. And the sergeant said that now we’d done it once, the next time would be easier.”

  “And was it?” she said.

  No answer.

  “Was it, Francis?”

  “You don’t want to know. You don’t know what you’ll do till you come to it. There’s lads walking round the streets today with tales to tell that they’ll never bliddy tell.”

  Mam stroked his back. He lit another cigarette.

  “Make sure such tales don’t enter your life, Dominic,” he said.

  He drew deep, breathed out. Mam coughed.

  “We buried him in a shallow grave,” he said. “Hard to dig in the jungle with so many tangled roots around. Next night we hear somethin growlin, snortin, diggin the lad back up again. Last I heard, Mickey was panel-beating, out Consett way. Listen to them bliddy howlin dogs. Let’s gan to sleep now, eh?”