8
The days heat up. There’s restrictions on water use. The brook slows to a trickle. The river sinks. Max and I play football in the garden, climb trees, wander through the lanes. We camp out every night in the garden in the breathless nights. I polish the knife, I sharpen it, I soften its sheath. I dream about it resting snug in my hand. We talk about the baby. I spin yarns about her: she’s a fairy baby and the money’s fairy gold; she’s come through some kind of time warp from the time of the border raids; she’s the child of some barmy farmer and a witch.
We play with the kids on the field beside the school. The kids keep on laughing at us for how stupid we looked on telly, but they want to know the story again and again. Did you really not nick some of the money? they say. You must be stupid, they say.
One day Gordon Nattrass gets on about Greg Armstrong.
“Me dad was at school with him,” he says. “Says he was a right snobby ponce. He was probably poking and prying where he shouldn’t’ve been. We’re not weeping no tears for him. What was he doing there anyway?”
“What do you mean, What was he doing there?” I say.
“I mean what I say, brother. What’s Iraq got to do with him? Why couldn’t he stay where he come from, in Northumberland?”
“Like the Nattrasses have done?” I say.
He pauses. He looks me in the eye.
“Aye, Liam, like the Nattrasses have always done. Mebbe it’d be better if we all stayed where we come from. It’d save a lot of bother.”
He laughs.
“I’m keeping an eye on the Net. Mebbe it won’t be long till we see the video of him getting his head sliced off.”
He grins at me.
“Aye,” he says. “I know what you think. I’m a throwback. I’m like something from the Dark Ages. And guess what, brother? I couldn’t give a toss.”
We play endless war games. I throw myself into it and I get wilder and wilder. I’m growing, getting stronger. I let my hair grow long. Sometimes I go out with Death Dealer resting at my hip. We rip branches off the trees. We make bows and arrows and catapults and spears. We strip our tops off in the baking heat and we battle and fight and charge. The low-flying jets roar over us. We don’t cover our ears. We yell curses at them. We yell, “Bomb them right back to the Stone Age!” We stripe face paint and dye on our skin. Nobody gets really hurt, but all our bodies get nicked and scratched and bruised. Sometimes I see Max standing back from it all, watching me as if I’m a million miles away. He’s suddenly friendly with a girl called Kim Shields. They’ve started spending time at each other’s houses. They go walking together. I feel far away from him. Sometimes I feel far away from everything, like I’m spinning away into outer space.
Sometimes in the middle of the wild games on the field I find myself at the school windows. I look in at the classrooms I sat in when I first came here: the small desks and chairs, the paintings on the walls, the illustrated books. I remember the smells of our bodies on warm afternoons, the songs we sang, the plays we acted, the delicious lunches, the sweet teachers. I go to high school in Hexham now, and it’s fine, but it’s great to press my face to the window and look into the past, to see me and Max and the other little ones painting together, to see Nattrass scowling in the corner where he’s been put until his temper calms down.
One day I find Max standing beside me, looking into the classroom with me. Kim’s a few yards behind, like he’s just left her and she’s waiting for him to go back to her.
“It was easy, wasn’t it?” I say.
“What was?”
“Being little. Being looked after all the time.”
He shrugs.
“Suppose so. Why? Do you want to be like that again?”
“Dunno.”
I raise my hand. There’s a homemade spear in it. I pretend I’m going to plunge it into him, then I howl and run back fast into the field.
I don’t want to be little again. But at the same time I do. I want to be me like I was then, and me as I am now, and me like I’ll be in the future. I want to be me and nothing but me. I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind, and still as the earth. I want to be every single thing it’s possible to be. I’m growing and I don’t know how to grow. I’m living but I haven’t started living yet. Sometimes I simply disappear from myself. Sometimes it’s like I’m not here in the world at all and I simply don’t exist. Sometimes I can hardly think. My head just drifts, and the visions that come seem so vivid. Max still comes to the tent sometimes, but we’re getting more impatient with each other.
One night he’s talking about Kim and he says,
“You should find a girl yourself.”
“I don’t want a girl.”
“You should.”
He even says,
“And you should cut your hair, or at least keep it cleaner.”
“What?”
“That’s what they like, Liam.”
“What? How old are you, forty-seven?”
“No,” he says. “But I am growing up.”
He lies there. He looks at me. Probably we’re both thinking we don’t want to argue. We’ve been good mates. We’ve done so many things together. So we say nothing for a while. Then he starts talking again, and he starts like he’d have started in the old days, like he’d thought something really important about hiding places or treasure or how to trap rabbits.
“I’ve been thinking lots of things,” he starts. “And talking to my dad and the teachers.”
“Aye?”
“Aye. About the future. About the directions I should take.”
“Aye?”
“Aye. It’s obvious, really. I should be something like an agricultural engineer.”
“What?”
“Aye. My dad deals with them all the time. Says there’s great opportunities.”
I let him go on about what the job is, what it can lead to. We go to sleep soon afterwards.
I think of him dreaming of being married to Kim and of tractors and harvesters and conferences in nice country hotels while my dreams are filled with war, with snakes, with bloody wounds, disaster and death. I keep feeling blood trickling over my skin.
9
One day Mum’s spreading cream onto a bruise on my chest. She’s inspecting all the nicks and scabs and cuts. She tells me I should take more care, but Dad just snorts at her.
“He’s just being a proper lad,” he says. “Let him be. What’s the point of living in the backwoods if you can’t get a bit of blood on you?”
Then he points at my body, at all the stripes and nicks and bruises on it.
“Anyway, look,” he says. “His skin’s just like one of your paintings.”
She pauses in her movements for a moment. She regards me, then begins to touch the colors and marks more gently with her fingertips.
“Well, well,” she murmurs as I back away.
She makes a rectangle with her index fingers and thumbs and looks at my skin through it.
“You’re right,” she says. “The boy’s a living work of art.”
10
One Saturday morning I’m wandering alone when my name’s called out. There’s laughter. I look around stupidly. A stone falls from the sky, then another. Then Nattrass and a couple of his mates, Eddie and Ned, are coming out from behind a dilapidated cow shed.
“You’re looking dozy, brother,” says Nattrass. “What’s up? You in love or something?”
His mates laugh along with him. They’re all filthy, streaked with earth and sweat.
“We saw you,” he says, “and we thought, We could probably let him in on it. He’ll have the guts for it.”
“For what?” I say.
“Come and see.” He smiles. “If you let on, mind, you’ll suffer for it.”
They lead me back to where they came from. Past the cowshed, into the long narrow allotment behind Nattrass’s house. It’s all overgrown. A broken greenhouse with an ash tree growing in it. Brambles and raspberries growing w
ild. It’s Nattrass’s place, his hangout, his hideout. I remember it well. Used to play here so often, until we started growing apart, until I started hanging out with Max.
They’ve cleared a space. They’ve marked out a square. They’re digging a pit. Their spades are resting on the great pile of earth that’s been dug out.
“Go on, then,” says Nattrass. “Ask what we’re up to.”
He wipes the sweat from his brow with a filthy hand.
I look down into the pit. No treasure, as usual: just stones and tangled roots and soil. It’s maybe six feet wide. It’s already two feet deep.
“Go on,” he says.
“OK, so what you doing?” I ask.
“We’re digging your grave, Liam! Hahahaha!”
His mates roar with laughter along with him.
“Just joking,” he says. “Get a spade, Liam, come and help, otherwise come back and have a look tomorrow.”
“If you’ve got the nerve for it,” says Eddie.
“Aye, if you’ve got the nerve,” says Ned.
They grunt and laugh together. I spit.
“Just one thing,” says Nattrass. “We don’t want you telling nobody. OK, brother?”
I just look at him and turn away.
I go back the next day. As I walk by the cowshed, I hear kids’ voices. Two girls are coming towards me, leaving the allotment.
“Don’t go, Liam,” says one of them, Nancy Sloane. “It’s horrible. It’s cruel.”
But it just entices me. I shrug and smile and step past them.
There’s a little cluster of kids there.
“Let Liam through,” says Nattrass.
I sidle through. I look down with the others. The pit’s three feet deep now. There are three adders in it, two of them curled up dead still, the other slithering, squirming. It tries to raise its head towards the pit edge but it could never reach. Nattrass laughs and knocks it back with a stick. There’s a couple of mice in there as well, hunched together in a corner, petrified.
“They’re savage little buggers, Liam,” he says. “Mebbe they’re magic to townies like you, but they bite farmers. They bite dogs. They bite ramblers. They bite little bairns playing in the fields. And they’re ten times worse in hot years like this. So I been out catching them. Better that they’re here in my pit than out there being wild and doing harm.”
He pokes the squirming snake again. It bares its fangs. Nattrass licks his lips and spits.
“See what I mean, brother?” he said. “It’d bite you as soon as look at you.”
I pick up a fallen twig from the grass. I touch one of the snakes. It squirms, turns, bares its fangs. I touch it again. It bites. I feel the vibrations through the twig.
Nattrass grins.
“That’s right, Liam,” he says. “Get them angry.”
He looks around the faces.
“So,” he says, “who’s going first?”
He’s got a plank, six inches wide. He drops it across the middle of the pit.
There’s laughter, intakes of breath, muttered curses. A couple of kids head off home straightaway.
“Aye. Shove off if you like,” says Nattrass. “But remember, not a word. Otherwise …” He laughs. “Chickens!”
“I’ll do it,” says Eddie.
“I know you would,” says Nattrass. “But what about you, Liam, eh?” His eyes widen as he approaches. I clench my fists, get ready for him. But he just punches me gently in the ribs.
“Just joking, man. I wouldn’t ask nobody to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”
He steps onto the plank and walks straight across without a care in the world. He does it again. Stands in the middle and bounces. Pretends he’s falling, then steps across the three-foot gap from the plank to safety. We all do it. It’s easy. We shudder and gasp and we’re scared we’ll fall, but it’s easy. We pause. We watch as the squirming snake suddenly opens its jaws and stabs at one of the mice. The mouse shudders, wriggles, lies panting for a few moments, then it’s still. The other mouse squeaks, squeaks, squeaks. The snake bites that one, too, and it shudders on the earth and is still. Nattrass sighs, laughs. Another snake starts to move. The two snakes raise their heads six inches from the earth. We crouch at the rim of the pit and watch.
“Go on, my beauties!” murmurs Nattrass. “Go on!”
The snakes eye each other, then dart for each other. They writhe together, then separate and lie at opposite ends of the pit. The third snake moves, slithers around the pit.
We all watch, mesmerized.
“Time for episode two,” says Nattrass. “Too easy, that time. Wasn’t it?”
He holds up a black scarf.
“This’ll add a bit of spice,” he says.
He starts wrapping the scarf over his eyes. A few more kids head off home. Again, he does it first. Steps onto the plank, feels his way forward. All the snakes start slithering below him. He moves slowly. Short step, then balance, then short step again. He reaches the other side, pulls the scarf away, makes a fist, grins.
He dangles the scarf in the air.
“Next?”
Eddie does it, then another lad, Rod Hughes, then Ned. Then me. The blackness and the image of the snakes beneath are awful and the crossing is dreadful, terrifying. But it’s still easy. You just concentrate: one foot in front of the other, arms out wide, balance, next foot. The worst bit’s in the middle where the plank sags under your weight and you feel the snakes’ fangs are inches away. But you know you can easily jump to the side, even with the mask on. And the others guide you: Two more feet, one more foot. And they hold out their arms if you show any sign of tottering. You know that somebody will reach out, will give you an arm or a hand.
Then it starts to be a joke: It nearly got you! Aaaaagh, look out! A bit to the left! Oh no, I meant the right! The plank’s cracking! Jump! Jump!
Then prodding, and poking, and shoving. And we’re all giggling and laughing and cursing, filled with excitement and terror. And when the mask’s on you know that there’s nobody there to help, there’s only things to make it worse, to make it harder. And you think of the snakes and their slithering shapes and their jaws and fangs and venom. But you do it anyway because it’s so weird, it’s so engulfing, because you’ve never done anything like it before. And then of course one of us falls, Eddie Marks, a skinny lad, twelve years old. He topples as we’re prodding him. He can’t react in time and leap for the rim. He sprawls in the pit. We haul him out even as he’s falling. The snakes don’t get him. We throw him into the grass and he lies there screaming like a baby and he just won’t stop. And most of us are gasping air and shuddering and shaking and stamping and cupping our hands to our mouths and trying not to howl. And Nattrass moves among us, grinning. Then I crack. I go for him. I shove him over and grab him by the throat. He pushes me off and we writhe and struggle on the grass. I try to drag him to the edge of the pit. I see Eddie and Ned coming to us. Any second now there’ll be a boot in my face. But it doesn’t come, and anyway Nattrass is stronger. He’s fighting me off easily. He’s laughing.
“Oh, Liam,” he says. “I thought folk like you were all peace and love and joy. But you’re a bad bugger just like me, aren’t you, brother?”
And it’s him who’s dragging me, and he’s laughing and snarling and spitting and bleeding and I’m wishing I had Death Dealer with me to scare him off with.
He gets me to the pit.
“Come and get the bastard!” he yells at the snakes. “Come on!”
The snakes slide and slither but come no nearer.
“Come on!” he yells.
Then there’s a man’s voice, from Nattrass’s house, far away at the end of the overgrown allotment.
“Gordon!”
Nattrass is suddenly dead still.
“Gordon!” comes the voice again.
“Aye, Da?” yells Nattrass.
“What the hell you up to out there?”
Nattrass looks up at me. His dad’s disabled, lost his r
ight arm in a tractor accident years ago. He hardly ever gets out. He’s hardly ever seen. I remember him, slouched in a dark room on a sofa watching TV. I remember the half-closed door, the smell of piss, stale beer, cigarettes.
“Nowt, Da!” yells Nattrass. “We’re just messing about, Da!”
He lets me struggle free.
“That’s right, isn’t it?” he whispers. “Just messing about. Just playing, eh? Just joking?”
I kneel, stand. There’s blood and saliva and snot all over me and I can’t tell which is his and which is mine. Nattrass is trying to pull himself together.
“Who’d’ve thought that Liam Lynch had that in him?” he whispers. He slips closer to me. “You’re just like me at heart, Liam. Just like you always were, if truth be told.”
“Gordon!” comes the voice again.
“Aye, Da! Aye!”
He waves the others away.
“Shove off,” he says. “Shove off, all of you. Quick!”
They start to go.
I spit blood onto the grass.
“We’re blood brothers,” he says. “Remember? We’re linked in blood.”
“Piss off, Nattrass,” I whisper.
“OK, brother. But you’ve started something. You know that, don’t you?”
“Gordon!”
He grins as I shove past him. I follow the others, past the dilapidated cowshed, heading homeward. Eddie Marks crouches in the next field, vomiting. I whisper to him that he’ll be all right, that he’ll get over it.