The Tightrope Walkers

  “From damn and blasted bloody Hell.”

  “Now listen to the howling of the dogs.”

  “Aoooooo!”

  “And listen to the gnashing of their teeth.”

  “Gnash gnash!”

  “The father of the Macs will walk these very streets tonight.”

  “Tonight.”

  “He will wait till all bairns are asleep in bed.”

  “Asleep in bed.”

  “Whose door will he enter?

  “Whose stairs will he climb?

  “Whose bedroom will it be this night?

  “Which child will be taken to the oven?

  “Which child will be carried down to Hell?”

  Colin raised his hand, extended his index finger and began to point to each of us in turn, one stab of the finger, one body to each syllable.

  “They need a child to cook tonight. Will it be you? Will it be you? No — it — will — be — y-o-u!”

  And, with one of us chosen, we suddenly separated and scampered below the inadequate streetlights towards our doors, towards our parents, towards cups of cocoa and chairs by coal fires, towards the thrill of being in there with tingling skin and racing hearts, with the thrill of the night still seething within us, towards our desperate nightmares and our soothing dreams.

  The lower wasteland, down the rocky path, between the pebbledash and town, was left to Vincent. In the early years it had been a place for play. We dug our dens there, sledged in winter, we skipped and fought and dreamed that we were in a world far off from our homes, which were a few short footsteps away. But as we and Vincent grew, we used it warily.

  He walked his dogs there, yanking at their throats with steel-and-leather chains. He squatted in holes in the dirt by smouldering fires. He wore a sheath knife at his waist. He smoked, he spat and snarled. When kids passed by he yelled that we were nancies, poofs, snobs, berks, teacher’s pets and Holy bliddy Joes.

  He gouged stones out of the earth and flung them at us. If we dared to face him he yelled, “Howay. Just bliddy try it, then.”

  One day I crossed the wasteland and heard wailing. Bernard was tied with a rope to a post. Vincent stood before him, snarling that he’d set the bliddy dogs on him if he ever dared do that again. Was he going to apologize? Was he going to bliddy apologize?

  “What you lookin at?” snarled Vincent when he caught me watching. “What’s it got to diy with bliddy ye?”

  He laughed.

  Untied the rope, set Bernard free.

  “See? It’s up to me exactly what I diy.”

  “Aye!” called Bernard in a frail and high-pitched voice. “What’s it got to diy with bliddy ye?”

  He giggled as Vincent put his arm around him. Bernard leaned onto him and they faced me, arm in arm, cheek to cheek.

  Another day. Bernard stood against a door that leaned against a stunted hawthorn tree. He had his arms stretched wide like wings. Vincent had the sheath knife in his hand. I watched as he took aim and raised the knife, and threw, and the knife spun glittering from his hand to thud into the door six inches from Bernard’s side. Vincent punched the air. Bernard punched the air as well, then spread his arms again.

  “Come to see the show?” said Vincent to me.

  He took the knife from the door, walked away, turned again and flung the knife without a hesitation. It thumped into the door six inches from Bernard’s thigh.

  “What about that, then, eh?” he said. “Pretty canny, eh?”

  He called to Bernard, “That’ll do, old son. Bring the knife and let’s go off and have some fun.”

  Bernard twisted the knife out from the timber, went to his friend.

  McAlinden hugged him tight.

  “Good lad, Bernard,” he said. “Good brave bliddy lad. Howay, let’s gan.”

  They passed close by. Vincent looked me in the eye.

  “Why not come alang with us?” he said.

  I didn’t move.

  “We’ll have a laugh, eh? Me and you and Bernard.”

  “He hasn’t got the guts,” squeaked Bernard. “Not to come to play with Vincent McAlinden and his pal.”

  Vincent winked at me. He put one arm around Bernard’s shoulders and raised his other arm, as if to take me to his side.

  He lowered his voice, softened it.

  “Naebody would knaa, Dom,” he said.

  He held my gaze.

  “You want to, don’t you, Dom? You really want to.”

  He shrugged.

  “Ah, well. Mebbe another time, eh?”

  “He’s just a chicken,” said Bernard as they turned away. “Squawk, squawk, bliddy squawk.”

  Vincent tightened his arm around Bernard’s throat.

  “No, he’s not,” he snarled.

  He turned back towards me. He held Bernard’s head down.

  “No, he’s bliddy not,” he said into my eyes. “This one’s got something special, Bernard. Haven’t you, Dom?”

  I said nothing.

  “And one day he’ll see it,” he continued. “And he’ll come to me just like you did, little Bernard.”

  He grinned, he turned the grip into a hug, held Bernard to his side. Then turned away downhill, towards the town and river.

  Days later I was in town buying bread for my mam. I was beside Dragone’s coffee shop. Here came Bernard, passing by.

  I grabbed his arm.

  Stared into his frightened eyes.

  “What do ye want?” he said. “Let me bliddy go.”

  “Why do you let him do it to you?” I said.

  “Let who diy what?”

  “You know what I mean. Why do you let him treat you like dirt?”

  “What he does and what I diy is nowt to diy with bliddy ye.”

  “He could have killed you with that knife!”

  “Oh, no! Vincent could have killed his poor ickle Bernard!”

  He sniggered. He pulled away, walked away.

  “Squawk squawk!” he squeaked. “Squawk, squawk bliddy squawk.”

  He turned.

  “And you’re jealous!” he said.

  “What?”

  “Aye. Cos I’ve got a proper pal in him, and Vincent’s got a proper pal in me.”

  I laughed at the stupid idea.

  “And who’ve ye got, chicken?” he said. “That locked-up crazy witch’s daughter! And I’ve got the one and only hard as nails and scary Vincent bliddy McAlinden.” He pointed at me. “And I’ll set him on you if you divent bliddy let me be.”

  He laughed.

  “Mebbe you’re the one he gets to kill!”

  Then off he ran, uphill towards the waste.

  And I walked by Vincent with Holly Stroud one day, and he was sitting on a stone, and fondling his dog.

  “Dom!” he cried. “And his bonny lass!”

  He jumped to his feet.

  “Watch this!” he cried.

  A hen must have escaped from his garden. He ran to it, lifted it up in both hands and held it squawking and frantic in the air above his head. Then crouched and slammed the bird across his knee, twisted its neck, and strangled it right there in front of us. Then held it out to us again as it jerked and shuddered in its post-death throes.

  “Tek it!” he said. “Tek it home and cook it for your tea!”

  He giggled.

  “You’re horrible, Vincent McAlinden,” said Holly, looking calmly at him.

  “Ah well,” he answered. “Nen of us is perfect, eh?”

  And he lifted the hen to his open mouth as if about to eat it feathered and raw. He went on giggling as we walked away.

  “Gannin for a little shag?” he yelled.

  We were seven or eight years old.

  “Yes!” yelled Holly, laughing loud. “We’re gannin for a little shag!”

  “I’ll come!” he called. “Let me come and I’ll join in!”

  Holly went on laughing.

  “Don’t leave me!” yelled Vincent. “You’re me mate, Dom! And oh how I love you, lovely Holl
y Stroud!”

  “What he really needs is a war,” said Dad.

  He swigged from a can of McEwan’s Export.

  “You can’t say that,” said Mam.

  “Course I can. He’s the kind of lad that should be battling, a lad that needs a war.”

  I had a notebook on my knees, a biro in my hand.

  “War!” scoffed Mam.

  “Aye, war. Ye’d be in a fine damn fettle if we hadn’t fought it for ye, wouldn’t ye? You’d not be writing in notebooks if me and them like me hadn’t killed and died for you. Ye’d be a caulker just like me. Ye’d be a bliddy tank cleaner like me father, the lowest of the bliddy low.”

  Mam winked at me.

  “Your father’s such a hero, Dominic.”

  He shrugged.

  “What I say is true. It’s thanks to war we’ve been raised up. And it’s thanks to lads like Vincent. He’d have been fine out there in the jungle in the heat with the terror of the bliddy Japs. I knew lads like him, and no, you wouldn’t want to come across them in a pitch-black alley late at night, but out there they were worth their weight in bliddy gold.”

  He threw his cigarette into the fire.

  “Mebbe war’ll be back soon, and Vincent’s time’ll come.”

  “Let’s pray not,” said Mam.

  “There’s some that want it. There’s some can’t bliddy wait for it.”

  He swigged off the last of the Export. He held up the can to the light and twisted his face.

  “It’s not the same,” he said. “A proper pint of beer is a thing of joy.”

  Mam laughed.

  “Is that right?” she said.

  He crunched the can in his fist.

  “How we used to talk about it, out there in the stinking heat. Just wait till we get back, we used to say.”

  “To get a pint of beer?”

  “Aye, a pint of beer. Nowt else! And I’m off to get one now.”

  He winked at me. He kissed Mam and stroked my hair.

  He hesitated.

  “One day I’ll find a way to let you know what you’ve been rescued from,” he said, then went into the dusk.

  Mam asked to see my writing, turned it towards the fire’s flames to see it better.

  “Where do you get it from?” she said.

  “Thin air.”

  “Ha!”

  She read to the end, to the place where the flow of words met empty space.

  “What happens next?” she said.

  “Dunno.”

  “Like life.”

  She looked out. Large silhouetted birds flapped through the sky. We heard the voice of Mrs. Stroud coming from across the street:

  “ ‘What is life to me without thee?

  What is life if thou art dead?’”

  “Kathleen Ferrier,” Mam said. “Poor soul.”

  “Poor soul?”

  “To keep herself locked away like that . . .”

  “Why does she lock herself away like that?”

  “Maybe there’s no answer. Maybe she’s just happier like that. And Kathleen Ferrier herself was a poor soul, of course.”

  She sang again, so beautiful.

  “Died far too young,” Mam said.

  “Did she?”

  “Aye. And where’s the sense in that?”

  “ ‘What is life, life without thee?

  What is life if thou art dead?’”

  “I know! Maybe I should take your story for Mrs. Charlton to read. Would you like that? I’m sure she would.”

  Mrs. Charlton. She lived over the hill in Low Fell. Once a week Mam cleaned for her. She brought back tales of a garden with apple and oak trees in it, of dark furniture, softly lit rooms, of high ceilings, of walls filled with books, two cars in the driveway.

  “Would you like that?” she said again.

  “Dunno.”

  “Dunno! Dunno! What a lad for your dunnos!”

  Mrs. Charlton sent us gifts: packets of teas with names like Darjeeling and Lapsang souchong; a tin of green olives that we nibbled suspiciously and spat straight out; a cracked green Oriental table lamp with a shade showing horsemen playing polo against a landscape of castles and domes and minarets.

  Each year she sent a birthday card.

  Happy Birthday, Dominic. To the lovely son of a lovely mother. Work hard, be good, I’m sure you will go far.

  “Well, I do know,” said Mam. “She’d love it, and so would you. Get it finished and I’ll take it to her.”

  “OK.”

  I continued writing. I led the words into the empty space. This was new for me, to write for an unseen audience. I wrote about two boys who climb through the window of a huge abandoned house. They find a chest of treasure in the attic. They wonder if they can keep it. Maybe we should give it to the police, they say. And if no one claims it, it will be ours. They tell nobody. They turn the treasure into cash and buy beautiful houses for their families. But it’s just a dream, a trick of the mind. The two boys wake in their separate beds in their tiny houses, penniless as ever.

  I marked the last full stop with disappointment.

  I wanted to write a savage sweaty violent tale, the kind of tale that Vincent McAlinden might have made if he was interested in writing. But I could not do it. Because I was me? Because I wasn’t up to it? Too nice, too good? Because the tale was to go to a woman I’d never seen, to a house in Low Fell?

  Mam took it from me.

  “So clever,” she murmured.

  She gazed out at the sky and sang along:

  “ ‘Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,

  Blow the wind south o’er the bonny blue sea.’”

  “Thank God there’s no war to send you to,” she said. “And thank God you won’t be going down into the yard.”

  She folded the story carefully, slid it into an envelope.

  “Who knows what you’ll come to do,” she sighed.

  She sang again:

  “ ‘Blow bonny breeze, my lover to me.’”

  “She says it’s the angels,” said Holly.

  “Angels?”

  “She hears them, the sound of them singing within everything. She tries to sing with them.”

  We stood listening. A light breeze blew dust along the pavements, over our feet.

  “Do you believe her?” I said.

  “She says sometimes they’re far away and sometimes they’re very close. Sometimes they’re right here, with us, but we can’t see.”

  Today there were no words, just a weird wailing.

  “She says one day we’ll all be drawn to the heart of it and we will see the glory.”

  “The glory?”

  “Yes. She says the glory of Heaven is very close to us. She says the angels wish to share it with us.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “She seems happy, Dom. She says she hears the music of the spheres, too. The music made by the stars and planets as they turn. She sometimes asks me to listen with her, but I can hear nothing.”

  “Why won’t she come out?”

  “She says someone has to be still, and to pay attention.”

  I listened. Engines, birdsong, breeze.

  “But sometimes I think she’s just dead scared,” said Holly.

  I did go to the yard one Christmas, to the heart of all the sound, to see what I’d been rescued from. There was a party for the draughtsmen’s kids. As a single child, Holly could take a guest, and she chose me.

  She brought the invitation across the street: a gilt-rimmed card with a picture of three sailing ships upon it.

  “My dad got the secretary to type your name on it, Dom! Look!”

  “Master!” said Mam. “How exciting! Oh, doesn’t it look grand.”

  “You’ll come?” said Holly.

  “Of course he will!” said Mam.

  She put it at the centre of the mantelpiece.

  Dad spat and cursed when he came home and saw it.

  “The Management and Draughtsmen!” he snee
red.

  “Don’t,” said Mam.

  “Don’t what? You’ve said he’ll go?”

  “Of course he’ll go.”

  “Of course he’ll go. Of course he’ll swan about with the bosses and their bliddy bairns.”

  “It’s Christmas, Francis.”

  “An where’s the bliddy parties for the caulkers’ and the cleaners’ bairns? What about the parties in the double bottoms and the bliddy tanks?”

  She clicked her tongue. She put the card back above the fire.

  “Take no notice, son,” Mam said. “I’m very pleased for you.”

  Dad muttered, cursed under his breath.

  “Christmas in the bliddy drawing office.”

  Mam bought me a new white shirt and tie and a cardigan from the Co-op. She took me to Laurie’s Barbers in the town square for a haircut. On the day of the party, Dad woke me up. He’d calmed down by now.

  “Have a good time,” he said. “But divent get conned by them. Remember who you are and where you’re from and remember your own dad’s outside crawling in the vessel’s guts.”

  He grinned and kissed my brow.

  “Look out for me,” he said. “I’ll be looking out for you.”

  And he hurried out and I heard his running footsteps in the street.

  Bill and Holly came for me at lunchtime. She had a silver ribbon in her hair. Bill was in a tweed overcoat and trilby. We walked downhill, past the Christmas tree in the square, the turkeys in the window of Dodds Butchers, the piles of apples and tangerines in Bamling’s fruit shop. We waved to people we knew. We headed lower, across the footbridge over the railway line, towards the scents of the river, the din of the factories and yards, to the jibs of the great cranes that stood above the river. There were other fathers with other children, all washed and brushed like us. The pavements turned to cobblestones. We approached the high shipyard gates, the great arch above them bearing the name, SIMPSON’S, upon it. Beyond it were dark brick buildings, and then the cranes and the huge dark wall of a ship.

  The gatekeeper in his boiler suit came out of a cabin to us.

  “What do you think you’re diyin here?” he asked. “Get yersels back yem!”

  The children giggled.

  “Ye know what we’re here for, Mr. Martin,” called some keen-eyed girl.

  “What’s that, then?”

  “The party, Mr. Martin!”