A Kestrel for a Knave (3 page)

‘Is that him you come home wi’ last night?’

‘There’s some tea mashed if you want a cup, but I don’t know if t’milk’s come or not.’

‘Was it?’

‘Oh, stop pestering me! I’m late enough as it is.’

She crumpled her sweater into a tyre and eased her head through the hole, trying to prevent her hair from touching the sides.

‘Do me a favour, love, and run up to t’shop for some fags.’

‘They’ll not be open yet.’

‘You can go to t’back door. Mr Hardy’ll not mind.’

‘I can’t, I’ll be late.’

‘Go on, love, and bring a few things back wi’ you; a loaf and some butter, and a few eggs, summat like that.’

‘Go your sen.’

‘I’ve no time. Just tell him to put it in t’book and I’ll pay him at t’week-end.’

‘He says you can’t have owt else ’til you’ve paid up.’

‘He always says that. I’ll give you a tanner if you go.’

‘I don’t want a tanner. I’m off now.’

He moved towards the door, but his mother stepped across and blocked his way.

‘Billy, get up to that shop and do as you’re telled.’

He shook his head. His mother stepped forward, but he backed off, keeping the same distance between them. Although she was too far away, she still swiped at him, and although he saw her hand coming, and going, well clear of his face, he still flicked his head back instinctively.

‘I’m not going.’

He moved behind the table.

‘Aren’t you? We’ll see about that.’

They faced each other across the table, their fingers spread on the cloth, like two pianists ready to begin.

‘We’ll see whether you’re going or not, you cheeky young bugger.’

Billy moved to his right. His mother to her left. He stood out from the corner, so that only the length of one side separated them. His mother grabbed for him. Billy shot across the back of the table and round the other corner, but his mother was back in position, waiting. She lunged
forward, Billy skipped back and they faced up again from their original positions.

‘I’ll bloody murder you when I get hold of you.’

‘Gi’o’er now, mam, I’ll be late for school.’

‘You’ll be more than late, unless you do as you’re telled.’

‘He said I’d get t’stick next time.’

‘That’s nowt to what you’ll get if I catch you.’

Billy ducked down. His mother followed, holding on to the table top to retain balance. They faced each other under the table, then Billy feinted a move forward. His mother dived, at nothing. Billy jumped up and ran round the table while his mother was still full stretch on the floor.

‘Billy come back! Do you hear? I said come back!’

He whipped the kitchen door open and ran out into the garden. He was half-way down the path when his mother appeared, panting and jabbing her finger at him.

‘Just you wait lad! Just you wait ’til tonight!’

She went back in and banged the door. Billy turned away and looked down the garden, over the fence into the fields. A skylark flew up, trilling as it climbed. Higher and higher, until it was just a song in the sky. He opened his jacket and dipped into the pocket. The egg carton was dented. He opened it. Two of the compartments were filled with yellow slime and shell. He eased out the sound eggs and placed them together on the path. Their shells were sticky, so he carefully wiped each one in turn and re-grouped them like a four egger, crouching over them and looking down. Then he picked one up, weighed it in his palm, and threw it high in the direction of the house. The egg described a parabola in the air and fell on to the slates. He threw the others in rapid succession, stooping and releasing while the previous one was still in the air. The kitchen door opened and his mother came out. Billy backed
away down the path, massaging his right biceps with his left hand. She locked the door and turned round.

‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten, lad, ’cos I haven’t!’

She slipped the key under the lip of the step, then pulled the ends of her headscarf tight under her chin.

‘An there’s a bet of our Jud’s to take, an’ all. You’d better not forget that.’

‘I’m not taking it.’

‘You’d better, lad.’

‘I’m fed up o’ taking ’em. He can take it his sen.’

‘How can he, you dozy bugger, if he don’t get home in time?’

‘I don’t care, I’m not taking it.’

‘Please yourself then….’

She rounded the house and hurried up the path. Billy gave the path a V sign and made a farting noise with his mouth. When he heard the gate bang, he turned round and walked down the path towards a shed at the bottom of the garden. In front of the shed a small square of ground had been covered with pebbles and bordered with whitewashed bricks, set into the soil side by side, at an angle. The roof and sides of the shed had been patched neatly with lengths of tarpaulin. The door had been freshly painted, and a square had been sawn out of the top half and barred vertically with clean laths. On a shelf behind the bars stood a kestrel hawk:

Rufous brown. Flecked breast, dark bars across her back and wings. Wings pointed, crossed over her rump and barred tail. Billy clicked his tongue, and chanted softly, ‘Kes, Kes, Kes, Kes.’ The hawk looked at him and listened, her fine head held high on strong shoulders, her brown eyes round and alert.

‘Did you hear her, Kes, making her mouth again?…
Gobby old cow. Do this, do that, I’ve to do everything in this house…. Well they can shit. I’m fed up o’ being chased about…. There’s allus somebody after me.’

He slowly lifted one hand and began to rub one of the laths with his forefinger. The hawk watched it all the time.

‘An’ our Jud, he’s t’worst o’t’lot, he’s allus after me… allus has been. Like that day last summer when I fetched you, he was after me then….’

… Jud was having his breakfast when Billy came downstairs. He glanced up at the clock, It was twenty-five to six.

‘What’s up wi’ thee, shit t’bed?’

‘I’m off out, nesting; wi’ Tibby and Mac.’

He whooshed the curtains open and switched the light off. The morning light came in as clean as water, making them both look towards the window. The sun had not yet risen, but already the air was warm, and above the roof line of the house opposite, the chimney stack was silhouetted against a cloudless sky.

‘It’s a smashing morning again.’

‘Tha wouldn’t be saying that if tha’ wa’ goin’ where I’m goin’.’

He poured himself another pot of tea. Billy watched the last dribbles leaving the spout, then put a match to the gas. The kettle began to rumble immediately.

‘Just think, when we’re goin’ up to t’woods, tha’ll be goin’ down in t’cage.’

‘Ar, just think; an’ next year tha’ll be coming down wi’ me.’

‘I’ll not.’

‘Won’t tha?’

‘No, ’cos I’m not goin’ to work down t’pit.’

‘Where are tha goin’ to work, then?’

Billy poured the boiling water on to the stained leaves in the pot.

‘I don’t know; but I’m not goin’ to work down t’pit.’

‘No, and have I to tell thi why?…’

He walked into the kitchen and came back carrying his jacket.

‘… For one thing, tha’s to be able to read and write before they’ll set thi on. And for another, they wouldn’t have a weedy little twat like thee.’

He put his jacket on and went out. Billy poured himself a cup of tea. Jud’s snap was still on the table, wrapped up in a cut bread wrapper. Billy turned it round and round with his fingers, sipping his tea. He poured himself another cup, then unwrapped the package and started on the sandwiches.

The kitchen door banged open and Jud rushed through, panting.

‘I’ve forgot my snap.’

He looked at the unwrapped package, and then at Billy, who was holding the ragged half of a sandwich. Billy bolted it into his mouth, slid off his chair and turned it over as Jud came for him. Jud ran into the chair and sprawled full length across it. Billy ran past him, out into the garden and over the fence into the field. A few seconds later, Jud emerged, wrapping up the remainder of his snap. He used it to point at Billy.

‘I’ll bloody murder thee when I get home!’

Then he pushed it into his jacket pocket and hurried off round the house end. Billy climbed on to the fence and looked round at the sky.

By the time he had crossed the estate and reached Tibby’s house, the sun was rising behind a band of cloud,
low in the East. High in the sky the moon was still visible, flimsy, and fading as the sun climbed steadily, illuminating the cloud. Until finally the sun appeared, burning the cloud golden, and the moon disappeared in the lightening and warming of the whole sky.

Billy walked round the house, looking up at the drawn curtains. He tried the kitchen door, then stepped back and whispered loudly up at the bedroom window.

‘Tibby. Tibby.’

The curtains remained closed. He searched about on the concrete, then picked up a clod of earth from the garden. The crust was damp from the dew, but when he crushed it, the inside was dry and crumbly, and dust puffed up from his palm. He stepped close to the house and lobbed it underhand at the bedroom window. The soil smattered the panes, then fell to the sill, which threw it back to the concrete in a wide arc, like a projection half-way down a waterfall. Down into Billy’s face. He ducked his head, spitting and wiping his mouth, then looked up and opened his eyes. The right eye blink-blinked and began to water. He rubbed it with his knuckles but it only reddened the white, and the eye still watered. So he tweezed the lashes between his finger and thumb and drew the lid down, blinking underneath it and looking up at the window with his other eye. The curtains remained closed. He released his eyelid. It blinked once, twice; then stayed up.

At Mac’s he used tiny pebbles, pinking them individually off the glass. Pink. Pink. Pink. He had used half a fistful before the curtains were lifted and Mrs MacDowall looked down, clutching her nightdress to her throat. She waved Billy away, but he looked up at her and mouthed,

‘Is he up?’

She pushed the window open and leaned out.

‘Whadyou want at this time?’

‘Is your Mac up?’

‘’Course he’s not up. Do you know what time it is?’

‘Isn’t he getting up?’

‘Not that I know of. He’s fast asleep.’

‘He’s a right ’un. It wa’ him that planned it, an’ all.’

‘Stop shouting, then. Do you want all t’neighbourhood up?’

‘He’s not coming, then?’

‘No, he’s not. You’d better come back after breakfast if you want to see him.’

She closed the windows and the curtains fell back into place. Billy scrunched the pebbles round in his fist and looked up at the pane. He threw them, and was running before the first one struck the glass.

He ran back across the estate and straight down the avenue, slowing to a walk as he reached the cul-de-sac, round like the bulb of a thermometer. He cut down a snicket between two houses, out into the fields, leaving the estate behind him.

The sun was up and the cloud band in the East had thinned to a line on the horizon, leaving the dome of the sky clear. The air was still and clean, and the trilling of larks carried far over the fields of hay, which stretched away on both sides of the path. Great rashes of buttercups spread across the fields, and amongst the mingling shades of yellow and green, dog daisies showed their white faces, contrasting with the rust of sorrel. All underscored by clovers, white and pink and purple, which came into their own on the path sides where the grass was shorter, along with daisies and the ubiquitous plantains.

A cushion of mist lay over the fields. Dew drenched the grass, and the occasional sparkling of individual drops
made Billy glance down as he passed. One tuft was a silver fire. He knelt down to trace the source of light. The drop had almost forced the blade of grass to the earth, and it lay in the curve of the blade like the tiny egg of a mythical bird. Billy moved his head from side to side to make it sparkle, and when it caught the sun it exploded, throwing out silver needles and crystal splinters. He lowered his head and slowly, very carefully, touched it with the tip of his tongue. The drop quivered like mercury, but held. He bent, and touched it again. It disintegrated and streamed down the channel of the blade to the earth. Slowly the blade began to straighten, climbing steadily like the finger of a clock.

Billy stood up and walked on. He climbed over a stile and followed the path through a herd of cows. The ones grazing lifted their heads slowly, chewing their cud. The ones lying in the grass remained motionless, as solid as toy cows set out on a toy farm. A covey of partridges got up under his feet, making him jump and cry out. They whirred away over the field, their blunt forms travelling as direct as a barrage of shells. Billy snatched a stone up and threw it after them, but they were already out of sight over the hedges. The stone flushed a blackbird, and it chattered away along the hedge bottom, disappearing back into the foliage further along.

He reached the stile which led into the woods, climbed on to it and looked back. Fields and fences and hedgerows. The sun was in the sky, and the only sound was the continuous relay of bird song.

As soon as he entered the wood, Billy left the path and mounted a bank into the undergrowth. He pushed the branches back, away from his eyes, keeping hold until the last moment; then releasing them to thrash back into the foliage behind. He cut a branch off an elm sapling, trimmed
it to walking stick length, then used it to fence his way through, slashing and fracturing any limbs in his path.

The undergrowth thinned out, giving way to grassy clearings between the trees. Overhead their branches webbed into a green canopy, and in places shafts of sunlight angled through, dappling the grey-green trunks, and bringing up the colour of the grass and the foliage. Light and shade, a continuous play of light and shade with every rustle of the leaves. Here the bird songs were less frequent, yet more distinct. Hidden somewhere amongst the branches a chaffinch gave out its long undulating notes, concluding each sequence with a flourish. A wood pigeon managed a few series of throaty coo-ings, ending each series with an abrupt ‘cu’, as though its chest was too sore to carry on. The silence between these calls emphasized the noise of Billy’s progress, and birds retreated prematurely before the swishing and snapping: a robin, tic-tic-tic, a pair of wrens, their loud churrs out of all proportion to their mouse-like size, and a jay, its white rump flashing across the bars of the trees.