Stonemouth (20 page)

‘It’s a fillum!’

‘Zit in black an fuckin white, aye?’

‘Naw!’

‘Do
not
call him Mongo,’ Ferg said.

‘Stu, you callin the big guy Mongo?’ Wee Malky asked.

‘No. I agree with Ferg.’ I looked at Phelpie. ‘Don’t call him Mongo.’

‘But he needs a name an he’s a fuckin monster. That boy is pure Mongo.’

‘Yes, but you might upset him,’ Ferg explained, obviously exasperated. ‘Worse than that, you might upset Hugo.’

‘Ah, fuck him,’ Phelpie said.

Ferg and I exchanged looks. Of the dozen or so kids involved, we two seemed to be the most aware that this new venue for fun was entirely at Hugo’s disposal. Not letting nutters come along who’d spoil it for everybody had already been talked about.

‘Hugo’s allowed to use a shotgun,’ Wee Malky said, looking solemnly at Phelpie, who might have said something more, but then Fraser spotted the enemy force, sneakily using the hillside rather than the road, and we had to redeploy quickly.

The sun was still high over the hills as the afternoon started to draw to a close and we set up for the last game of the day. A complicated arrangement of scoring across the various skirmishes and the different team combinations had resulted in Wee Malky coming out last, so he had to be the prey.

Basically he got a two-minute start and then we all chased him. If he lasted for half an hour or got back to his bike without getting splatted again, he’d won. If he managed to splat any of us, we started the next day’s play a point down, but he had only one paintball for each of us, and we were allowed Noisy Death, meaning we could yell out when we were shot, which meant everybody else would know where we were, so if you were the prey, just slinging your gun over your back and running like fuck was generally agreed to be the best course and never mind trying to splat anybody back. There were more rules about not being able to cross the great lawn or the herb garden to keep it all interesting, but that was the gist of it.

We
were quite far into the depths of the garden by this point, up near the arboretum (whatever that was – we had no idea at the time, though there were a lot of funny-looking trees around) with acres of parkland, the overgrown glen, the ornamental lake and the old walled garden between us and the house and the courtyard with our bikes in it. Opinion was divided whether this favoured us or Wee Malky.

Wee Malky disappeared into the darkness of an overgrown path, going mostly in the wrong direction, and Ferg and I counted down on my phone and his watch.

‘That’s a weird fu—’ Callum Murston began, then remembered you weren’t supposed to swear in front of George, in case he parroted the same language. ‘What sort of weird fu— what way’s that to go?’ he asked, pointing at where Malky had taken off into the undergrowth.

‘Could be quite a good choice, actually,’ Hugo said thoughtfully.

‘Aw, could it, ectually,’ Callum said.

George’s deep voice rumbled into action. ‘May I have a gun too, this time, please?’ He was the least paint-spattered of us, though even he’d taken a couple of stray hits – partly due to his sheer size, you had to suspect.

‘No, George!’ Hugo told him.

‘Oh.’

‘Zat no two minutes yet?’ Callum asked, annoyed.

‘Still fifty seconds to go,’ Ferg said.

I made a
mm-hmm
noise in agreement.

‘Aw, come
oan
!’ Callum said, slapping his gun. ‘That
must
be two minutes now!’

‘Forty-five seconds to go,’ Ferg said crisply.

‘Fu—’ Callum began, then just roared, ‘Ahm off !’

‘Ah wondered what the funny smell was!’ Phelpie yelled, as Callum stormed off, ducking under the hanging leaves and disappearing into the darkness of the path.

‘The
rest of us might actually choose to adhere to the rules,’ Ferg said tightly, taking Phelpie by the collar. Phelpie shrugged him off but he stayed with the rest of us until the two minutes was up.

‘Right,’ Hugo said, when there was under half a minute to go, ‘there are at least half a dozen different ways young Malcolm can take back to the house, starting from that path.’ Hugo was in the officer cadet force at school and naturally tended to assume command. I think he regarded Ferg and me as his trusty yeoman lieutenants, though frankly we thought of ourselves more as ascetic commissars keeping a steely eye on the efficient but politically suspect toff. ‘He could even go as high as the top reservoir and still get back round to the house.’ Hugo clapped his brother on the shoulder. ‘I propose that George and I take the least demanding, lower route, to cut off his approach via the north side of the lake.’

‘Loch,’ Phelpie said.

‘Whatever,’ Hugo replied.

Ferg concentrated on his watch, lifting one finger.

‘Go,’ I said, and pocketed my phone.

Callum lost Wee Malky and blundered off into a bog, getting very annoyed. Most of the rest of us set off up the same path, taking different trails and tracks off it as it progressed, while Hugo and George and Phelpie took the most direct route back to the house. There was an offside rule about just lying in wait for the prey, but – appropriately – nobody entirely understood it. This party of three was halfway back to the house when they heard a lot of shouting uphill and assumed that Wee Malky had been spotted. Hugo left George in Phelpie’s charge and climbed a handy tree to take a look. When he got back down George had gone.

‘You were supposed to look after him!’ Hugo roared at Phelpie.

‘Aye, so? I told him no to go! What else could I
dae
, man? He’s a fuckin monster!’

At this, Hugo stepped forward and raised a hand and Phelpie
thought a proper fight was about to kick off, but Hugo seemed to get a grip and just asked which way George had gone.

The stories diverge at this point. Later we reckoned Hugo was telling the truth and Phelpie sent him in the wrong direction deliberately, just to fuck with him, though Phelpie’s never admitted this.

All the shouting they’d heard involved a false alarm; some of us had spotted the mud-smeared Callum and mistaken him for Wee Malky. When we did see him, finally, it was a good quarter of an hour later, and there had been some mobile phoning to coordinate the hunt – supposedly banned, and not easy with the patchy reception on the estate, but sort of tolerated when somebody was proving particularly elusive, and also technically more effective where we were by now, high up on the wooded hillside that looked down on the main gardens.

‘There he is!’ Josh yelled.

About half the chasing pack had got together at the north side of the upper reservoir, near the furthest western extent of the house gardens before they gave out on to the rest of the estate and the grouse moors and plantation forests beyond. The upper reservoir was there to feed the ornamental lake and other water features below; it was a simple, slim, delta shape, a dammed miniature glen surrounded by woods with a grass-covered dam wall forming its eastern limit and a long, steeply sloped, stone-lined overflow at the far, south edge.

Josh had spotted Wee Malky running along the top of the dam wall, sprinting like a hare for the far side, where the overflow was.

A few of us had been up here already, before we’d been allowed in legally. The overflow had no bridge over it; if you wanted to cross it you’d have to walk along the submerged top lip of the thing: about seven metres of round-topped, weed-slicked stone under an amount of overflowing water that varied according to season and recent weather. There was deep, brown-black peaty water to one side – and reputedly some sort of undertow that meant you’d never surface again if you fell in – and that steep, twenty-metre-long slope
of slimy-surfaced overflow on the other, pitched at about thirty-five or forty degrees and with stumpy stone pillars at the foot you wouldn’t want to encounter at the sort of speeds implied if you started sliding down from the top.

Callum claimed he had made this perilous crossing, as did a few older boys, but nobody we trusted had witnessed anybody doing it. Wee Malky was making straight for this scary, bravery-testing obstacle and the track on the far side, ignoring the steep grass slope of the dam wall dropping away to his left. There was a track at its foot that led back to the house, but that one constituted good going; he’d be overtaken by a faster runner. The way up the far side of the shallow stream that ran from the bottom of the overflow was covered with brambles and nettles, and looked almost impassable. If he crossed the overflow and we didn’t follow him, we’d lose him.

We were twenty-five minutes into the chase by this point, even not allowing for Callum’s early start, plus we were out of paintball range – a high, lucky shot might just hit Wee Malky, but it wouldn’t splat – so Malky crossing the overflow without pursuit would mean he’d win, we’d lose.

We all started yelling, and raced along the shore track after him, hoping to put him off just with the sheer amount of noise we were making. Hugo appeared, running from the other direction, joining us at the top of the dam summit.

‘Anybody seen George?’ he asked breathlessly. I don’t think many of us heard him; nobody answered, just streamed past him, turning along the top of the dam. Hugo jogged after us. ‘Look, have any of you seen—’

Wee Malky was at the overflow. We saw him step down carefully onto the round-topped, water-covered stones. The waves spilling over the top came up to his ankles. He started walking along, arms outstretched, the flowing water splashing out around his trainers. He wasn’t taking it slowly, either; he knew he needed to get to the other side fast and be in cover to get back out of paintball range.

He was halfway across and our sprint after him was starting to
tell on our legs when somebody at the front of the pack suddenly pulled up, coming to a stop and causing somebody else behind to slam into him, making them both stumble and producing a mini pile-up behind them. They were looking down at the foot of the overflow.

‘Look,’ Hugo said, jogging up from behind, ‘have any of you guys seen …’

‘…George?’ somebody said.

Wee Malky had stopped in the centre of the overflow. We were coming to a straggled halt on the top of the dam.

Down at the bottom of the grassy slope, stepping down the halfmetre into the concrete channel and then wading upstream to the foot of the overflow slope, was George, holding, in both hands, a sword almost as big as he was.

‘Where’d
that
fucking come from?’ Phelpie breathed beside me. My throat didn’t seem to be working properly. ‘House,’ I managed to say, gulping, remembering the circles and fans of weapons arrayed across its walls.

The blade glittered in the sunlight and looked sharp as a newly broken bottle. Wee Malky was stock-still and staring down at George. George looked up at Wee Malky, making a threatening gesture with the big sword. George was still smiling, but that didn’t feel like it meant much beside the naked reality of that shining metal edge. George looked up towards us, held the heavy sword one-handed, and gave us a thumbs-up sign.

We had all come to a near-complete stop now, strung out in a line across the top of the dam, a few of us still stepping forward a little, to see properly. Hugo was shouting, ‘George! George! Just stay there; put the sword down, old son! Look, I’m coming down!’

George held up one hand to his ear. He was right at the foot of the overflow now, where the water zipped down and sprayed up against the stone stumps and – now – against George’s feet and bare calves, also darkening his khaki shorts. Maybe the water splashing all around him and fountaining up past his waist meant he couldn’t hear.

I
looked at Wee Malky as Hugo started gingerly down the steep grass slope of the dam. Wee Malky looked petrified. He’d been running hard with all the desperation of having been pursued by a baying pack for nearly half an hour on a hot summer day, so he was drenched in sweat, his shirt sticking to him, his curly hair darkened to black and plastered against his skin. His eyes were wide as he looked at me. His head turned and he stared back down at George. He wobbled as he did this, arms waving wildly before he steadied again.

Nobody followed Hugo down the grassy dam. I suppose that sword – suddenly so adult compared to our play guns – had sent a chill through all of us. Everything felt very still, as though the air had coagulated around us.

I held one hand flat up to Wee Malky, patting the air, mouthing him to remain motionless, but he was still staring at George, who was continuing to waggle the sword. If it had just been a stick he was holding, it would have looked comical. Callum Murston came up and stood beside me, covered in drying mud, breathing hard and wiping snot from his nose.

Hugo was moving slowly down the dam wall. He had one hand on the grassy surface, helping him descend without going arse over tit, and the other held out to his brother, as though petting him, stroking him from a distance while he kept talking to him, telling him to put the sword down, that it was okay, that the game was over and it was time to go back to the house for drinks and cakes, and to put the sword back.

While we were all watching this, Callum raised his gun and fired, hitting Wee Malky in the head with a yellow splash of paint.

Wee Malky yelped and fell, splashing into the water on the overflow side, one arm reaching out to try to grasp the round stones at the summit, but failing. He started sliding down the slipway, arms flailing as he tried to stop or slow himself.