The Tightrope Walkers Read online

  “Just a cold, Dr. Molly, a cough. They’re fussing, Doctor.”

  The doctor took out a stethoscope, asked Mam to sit up, to lower her nightgown, asked me to turn away. I turned, heard the murmured words: Breathe in. And now breathe out. Hold it. Yes. Again, please. And now again. And how long have you been coughing, my dear? Not long, Doctor. A week or so, Doctor. A little longer, perhaps. And how long has there been blood? Not long, just a few days, Doctor. A bit longer, perhaps. Your husband? At work, Doctor. He’s a caulker in the yards. And is there pain? Not much, thank you, Doctor. You’re sleeping? A little, thank you, Doctor. There is just your son with you? Yes, Doctor. Turn back again, Dominic, if you would.

  She rolled up her stethoscope.

  She took out a prescription pad from her bag.

  “Will you be able to get this for your mother this morning?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Good lad.”

  She scribbled some notes, fast and hard.

  Mam coughed, coughed again.

  “We’ll see about getting a check-up for you, Mrs. Hall. Get you up to the hospital for that, I think.”

  Mam didn’t speak. I didn’t speak.

  “A little X-ray or two, I think. That kind of thing.”

  We didn’t speak.

  “I’ll sort it out. You have a telephone?”

  “No, Doctor,” I answered.

  “We’ll send a card.”

  She closed her bag. She tugged at her fur collar.

  “It’s probably nothing,” she said. “Lie back, Mrs. Hall. Rest is important.”

  I led her down to the door. She smiled on the threshold.

  “Oh, how quickly you children grow,” she said. “You’ll stay with her today?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Good lad. Quickly down to get her prescription, then back up home to her.”

  She smiled sadly.

  “It’s likely nothing. We’ll sort her out, Dominic, and you’ll all be right as rain again.”

  She tousled my hair and went on smiling.

  “Yes, how very quickly,” she said.

  Then turned back to her barking dogs.

  I ran down through the waste for her prescription. I got it at Sisterson’s. The smell of disinfectant in there, of bleach, of cleanliness. I stood at the counter, waiting, found myself slipping my hand into a box of lozenges that lay open there. Watched my hand take one tube, then another, and put them in my pocket.

  “Three times a day,” said the pharmacist. He handed me a box with a bottle in it. “No more than that.”

  I looked at him, waited for him to find me out.

  “And this one is for sleeping,” he said, handing me another box. “One at bedtime. No more than that.”

  I nodded, waited a moment more.

  “Off you go, then. The quicker it’s started, the quicker she’s well.”

  I turned and ran.

  At home, she lay half sleeping. She sat up as I entered, tilted her head.

  “Do you hear?” she said.

  I tilted my own head.

  “So beautiful,” she said.

  “It’s only Mrs. Stroud again,” I said.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.” I opened the bottle, poured out a spoonful, held it to her lips.

  “Are you certain? Only Mrs. Stroud?”

  “Yes, Mam. Yes. Now take this.”

  “The bastards docked me half a bloody day,” said Dad as he came through the door at dusk. “I said, ‘what would you do if your lass weren’t well?’ ‘We’d make arrangements,’ they said. ‘I’ll arrange your bloody face,’ I wanted to say. Don’t worry. I didn’t get the words out. How is she?”

  “OK. The doctor came. There’s stuff for her. They’re sorting X-rays out.”

  “Hell’s teeth.”

  “She said it’s nothing.”

  “Nowt. Good. What’ll we eat?”

  “Dunno.”

  “You could get some chips, eh? I’ll give you some cash, you’ll get some chips.”

  “Aye.”

  “Mebbe a little bit later, eh?”

  “Aye.”

  He tilted his head, listened to silence.

  “Dan Liver’s lass has got a cough. Billy Wells’s lass and all. It’s going round, Dominic. The time of year. Or something in the air. And lots of it down there in the bliddy yard, of course. It’s brung on by the filth, the cold, the filthy bloody river. It’s us that works down there that brings it home. Germs. Coughs and colds. Sneezes. No wonder the lasses is all getting ill. I’ll gan up and see her, eh?”

  “Aye, Dad.”

  “You OK? You been OK?”

  “Aye.”

  “You’re a good lad. I’ll gan up, then, eh?”

  “Aye. Go on.”

  He turned away and then turned back again.

  “I’m frightened, Dominic. Ha. Can you credit that?”

  “It’s mebbe nothing, Dad.”

  “The blood, though. On your lass’s mouth, on your wife’s mouth. There’s been blood today?”

  “Just a bit. Go and see her, Dad.”

  “Aye. Then I’ll give you cash, you’ll get some grub, it’ll all be fine. We’ll laugh about it in a week or so.”

  “Aye, Dad. Aye.”

  “That’s right. Haha! Bloody bliddy aye.”

  I went down for the chips. The sky darkened, reddened, intensified. Vincent McAlinden sat silhouetted in his darkened doorway as I passed by. I didn’t pause.

  “Silent as Jack Law, eh?” he said.

  “Me mam’s not well,” I blurted.

  “That’s a pity.”

  He held out a cigarette.

  I hesitated. A sudden urge to go to him, to be with him.

  “I’m going for some chips,” I said.

  “Tek a quick drag. Pass the time of night.”

  He came to the fence. I took the cigarette from him, put it to my lips.

  “It came to nowt, then, eh?” he said. “They could have done us but they didn’t.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “You’re the lucky one. Nothin they did would have mattered to me, but they could have truly buggered you.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You been saved,” he said. “Allelujah!”

  I sucked the smoke into my lungs, breathed it out again, felt the pleasant harshness in my throat.

  “I’m workin now,” he said. “I’m in the tanks.”

  I caught the scent of the yard on him, the sourness I knew from Dad but with an extra edge to it. The filth of the tanks, I guessed.

  I inhaled the smoke again.

  “Me mam’s not well,” I blurted out again.

  “Poor diddums. D’you remember all that ballocks about Hell?”

  “Hell?”

  “Aye, all them stories. About the noise, the never-ending din, the screeching and the grinding? That’s what it’s like down there inside the tanks. Like the noise of bliddy Hell. And them fuckin gates, creakin open every morning to let you in, slammin shut behind you, creakin open every night to let you out.”

  He laughed again.

  “The money’s nice. I get me smokes. I get some pints down at the Angel in Bill Quay, where they divent give a toss how old you are. And lasses. Bliddy hell. Them lasses in the yard, Dom. Them little office cleaners and them canteen girls. The things they’ll do for a coin or two.” He laughed. He winked. “Not like that little Holly Stroud. She’s comin along very nicely, eh . . .”

  He laughed as I backed away and headed down the rocky path.

  “Get your chips for your mammy,” he said. “Hahahaha!”

  I stood in the queue in the chip shop, in the steam, in the sound of the bubbling fat. I wanted to tug somebody’s arm, to blurt out to them, me mam’s not well. Did nothing. Said nothing. Took home three portions of chips, wrapped in the News of the World. Peeled the paper from the chips, put them on plates, put salt and vinegar on, HP sauce, made some mugs of tea, took it all up to
her room.

  She was asleep.

  He was on a chair at her side, looking down at her.

  “She took a pill, it knocked her out,” he said. “Best thing for her, eh? A good night’s sleep. That’s what she needs.”

  “That’s right, Dad.”

  We ate the chips, drank the tea. He wheezed, like always. Her breath was gentle, long breaths in and long breaths out and not a cough.

  “What we worrying for?” he said.

  “We’re daft,” I said. “It’s nowt.”

  “Eat up,” he said. “It’s nowt.”

  Late Sunday afternoon, a few days later. Bells were ringing in a distant church. Holly had a brand-new wire, a long cable that her dad had brought out from the yard. It was a lovely thing, with interweaving filaments and a dark grey glossy gleam.

  She curled it across her shoulder and led me up towards the larks.

  She asked about my mam. I said there seemed to be no more blood.

  “It should be the other one,” she said.

  “The other one?”

  “My mother, Dominic.”

  She took me to the top beyond the pits, to where the landscape of the west was visible, the pitheads and winding gear on the Durham moors, the purple-headed moors beyond, and the Cheviots far off in the hazy north. Hardly a breath of wind up here for once, and the late sunlight was warm.

  She took me to two hawthorn trees that stood at the very top, twelve feet apart. One was white and one was red. The blossoms were already falling and the buds of berries were already showing at their hearts.

  “That’s them,” she said.

  “Them?”

  The trees were old: gnarled trunks, a mass of tangled branches, a hundred thousand thorns. They stood on a stony ridge, with roots reaching down into the cracks and openings in the stone itself.

  She told me to crouch with her and to look up into them.

  “Imagine walking from one tree to another,” she said. “Imagine our silhouettes against the sky. Against a blazing sunset, Dominic!”

  Too many branches, too many thorns, I told her.

  “We’ll cut them and prune them to make a space for us.”

  “We can’t do that to the poor trees.”

  “The Killer Hall is saying that?”

  She showed me the place on each tree where the wire should be fixed. She showed me that the wire was long enough to reach.

  Then took a knife from her pocket, clicked a switch and a long thin pointed blade snapped out.

  “A gift from our friend Vincent,” she said.

  She held the blade against a stem that grew out from the trunk.

  “Not the right kind of knife for this,” she said. “We need an axe or a saw or just a bigger knife or something. We’ll clear the clutter away. There’ll be space for the wire and for us. And the branches left behind will be a canopy.”

  She held the knife against a thin bough with blue-grey lichen on it, with the remnants of white blossom on it, with the new berry already becoming exposed.

  She started to cut. And then we saw Jack Law, his head just visible over the ridge.

  “Don’t look,” said Holly. “Maybe he’ll come closer.”

  She started to cut.

  “Vincent said I might need the knife to protect myself,” she said.

  “From who?”

  “That’s what I said.” She laughed. “Maybe from you, the murderer! Hush. Jack’s very close.”

  I saw him from the corner of my eye, moving forward step by tentative step. He moved faster. I couldn’t not turn to him. I turned and he stopped. He reached out his hands towards Holly and her knife. Then dropped to his knees and focused his eyes on the tree and joined his hands as if in prayer. He moved his lips.

  “He’s praying to the tree,” Holly whispered.

  “To the tree?”

  Now she dropped to her knees.

  “You as well,” she said.

  “What?”

  “We pray to the tree before we cut it,” she said. “Like ancient hunters apologized to the spirits of their prey. Put your hands together, Dominic. Pray.”

  “Pray what?”

  “Do it for Jack Law.”

  I shrugged, knelt down, joined my hands together.

  “Pray to what?” I said.

  “To the tree. To nothingness.”

  I prayed into the nothingness.

  “Make my mother better,” I murmured. “Keep her safe.”

  Minutes passed. Jack Law stood up and started to back away.

  “Don’t go,” said Holly. “We won’t harm you, Jack.”

  But he just turned and walked his smooth and rapid walk. He turned his face to us, then walked again. We followed him down the slope on the far side.

  Here were ancient paddocks and hawthorn lanes and the humps of old earthworks and old mine workings. Jack moved smoothly as he always did. There were long evening shadows now and we kept losing sight of him, then seeing him again. He led us through a low opening in a hedge and we found ourselves in a small field with blue and yellow flowers growing in the tangled grass. Now he did stop, and he did turn. The sun shone on his flaxen hair. His eyes gleamed. Was he looking directly at us? Beyond him was another opening in another hedge. He paused, looked back, went on again. He moved through the opening.

  “We should go back now,” I said.

  “No, Dom,” she said. “Let’s go on.”

  The sun was almost at the horizon. The sky to the west was burning. Against it were the dark etchings of the coalfield. I thought of men tunnelling deep down inside the earth while we were up here in the late light. I thought of the bones of men who had died down there, turning the whole earth to their grave.

  “We’ll get lost,” I said.

  “Of course we won’t!” she said, but I heard the shudder in her voice.

  She moved towards the second opening and I followed her. So dark in there beneath the hedge. She held my hand as we went through and came into a paddock, all tussocks and unearthed stones and a broken fence at the far side. And another rocky outcrop like the one with the hawthorn on it. This time there was an ancient oak tree whose twisted roots gripped the rock. There was a gap in the roots, an opening two feet or so high with a gleam of light burning in it.

  We went towards it slowly.

  “Is this it?” she whispered. “Is this where Jack Law lives?”

  We crawled to the opening in the rock.

  We whispered Jack’s name.

  No answer.

  We looked inside. There was a cavity there, not big enough for a home. Just big enough for a body or two to lie down in. There were candles burning on more cracks in the rock inside. The candlelight showed the pictures on the walls and roof.

  “There’s God!” whispered Holly.

  He was high up on the wall. A sentimental hackneyed God in white robes with white beard. The rock around him and above him was painted in flaking crackling sky-blue. Angels flew there on widespread wings. There were awkward figures that must have been saints in prayer. There was a white bird, there was a tiny tongue of white fire. This was the childish sentimental Heaven we’d been told about in junior school, but here, inside this rock upon the hill, smudged by the soot of the candles, it was a thing of beauty. It quickened our hearts, it made us catch our breath.

  We stared for minutes. We didn’t crawl in. Maybe we were scared. Maybe we felt it would be a kind of trespass if we did go in. We lay close to the opening. Such silence in there, such light. We gazed for minutes and then we left. The world seemed much darker now. We heard a low murmuring sound — like weird singing, or maybe just the breeze moving through the grass and across the rocks.

  We hurried back through the paddocks, the hedges, past the earthworks. A flock of crows cawed as they scattered from some trees and took erratic flight above our heads. We caught sight of each other’s golden faces. Holly laughed, and suddenly kissed me on the cheek. “Phew!” she whispered. “Bloody hell!” And then we ran t
o the top and to the hawthorn trees. I snapped off the blossomed fruiting lichen-laden bough to carry home for Mam. We headed past the spawn ponds and the mines and the gorse. We ran down through the fields and as we ran we heard the voices of parents ringing out across the roofs and across the darkened sky as they called their playing children home.

  She was already half asleep.

  I sat on the bed beside her.

  “I brought you this,” I whispered.

  She stirred.

  I already had it in a glass vase. It angled upwards through the clear water, the white falling blossom and the new red fruit exposed.

  “I’ll put it here,” I whispered.

  I put it on her bedside table beside her clock, her box of white handkerchiefs.

  She came round, opened her eyes.

  “Hawthorn,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She closed her eyes again.

  “It’s lovely, Dominic,” she whispered.

  She put her hand on mine as if to comfort me.

  “It’s beautiful, my son.”

  The cough abated. No more blood. But pains in her back, pains in her legs, pains in her head. She said it was nothing, it was all the lying around and sitting around she’d been doing. She just needed to get back to normal. One night her screaming woke me up.

  An ambulance came to take her to hospital for X-rays. Dad took a day off work and went with her. The ambulance brought them home again. They said the radiologist had been so kind, so sweet, was a girl they knew, in fact, the daughter of a nice lass from down Stoneygate way. Nothing happened. She went on coughing a little. She got out of bed each morning, made breakfast. I saw her wincing as she moved, I saw her losing weight.

  I took to leaving the house early, calling into church on my way to school. I’d kneel beneath the cross that hung suspended above the front pews. How did it stay up there? The cords that held it were so thin, hardly visible. As I had when I was a child, I waited for the cross to fall, for Christ’s body to crash to earth and shatter. But he hung there as he always had, with his arms spread wide, making the shapes of pain, making the shape of an angel with outstretched wings against the dark brown roof above. At first I stupidly tried to pray, but soon I took to cursing his silence, his changelessness. He’d hung there all my life without affecting anything, without changing anything, despite all the fervent bodies below him, despite all the eyes on him, despite the endless prayers. I cursed the creamy shining bloody body of him, the blood fixed in mid-trickle on his skin, the suffering eyes that looked upon nothing and nobody. And I cursed his mother as well. There she was, like always, high up in her niche in the wall, in her sky-blue clothes, with the serpents crushed beneath her feet, with her eyes turned down towards us.