The Tightrope Walkers (2 page)

“I didn’t mean it!” he shouted. “I aimed to miss!”

“Get back home,” snapped Bill.

He held Holly back from running to him.

“Leave him,” he said. “He’s just a daft tinker.”

His white handkerchief reddened with my blood. He spread his hand before my face.

“How many fingers?”

“Three.”

“What month is it?”

“March.”

“Good lad. Lie still.”

Kids were gathering.
He’s bust his skull. Is his eye out? He could’ve had his bliddy eye out
. Then Mam was here, reaching down to me.

“We’ll have the bliddy polis on you!” someone called.

“Bugger off out of this estate, ye little sod!”

“How many fingers now?” said Bill.

“Two.”

Mam held me and I sobbed.

“He needs a cuddle,” said Bill. “And an Elastoplast, and a nice sweet cup of tea.”

He stroked my brow.

“You’ll be all right, son. You’ll survive.”

Then here was Dad in his black work clothes, with his knapsack hanging from his back.

“It was the new kid, Mr. Hall,” said some child.

“Him that just moved in the other day.”

“Vincent McAlinden, Mr. Hall.”

“He threw a stone,” said Bill. “The little sod.”

“Are ye aal reet?” Dad said to me.

“Aye, Dad.”

“And ye done nowt about it?” said Dad to Bill.

“Not yet,” said Bill. “He’s been . . .”

Dad took me from Mam and stood me up. He took the handkerchief from Bill and pressed it to the wound. He set off down the street with me. I could smell the shipyard on him, the oil, the grease, the river, the filth. He drew furiously on a cigarette.

“What were ye up to?” he said.

“Just playing, Dad.”

“With the Stroud lass?”

“Aye.”

“Diyin what?”

“Walkin on the walls, Dad.”

“Walkin on the bliddy
walls
?”

We came to the house at the foot of the estate. The rocky pathway that led out of the estate ran right beside it. A pair of dogs snarled through the fence. The back door of the house was open, a fire blazed in the grate inside.

“Where’s that lad!” shouted Dad.

Mrs. McAlinden came to the door. She wiped her hands on a piece of cloth. She lit a cigarette and drew on it.

“Look at this!” snapped Dad.

I lifted the handkerchief away.

She came to the fence and looked down at me. She yelled at the dogs to stop their bliddy snarling. Kids wailed inside the house, and she yelled at them to stop as well.

“Vincent?” she said.

“If that’s his name, that’s him,” said Dad.

I could smell the sweat on her. Could see the grease in her hair shining in the sun.

“Is it sore?” she said.

I squeezed back my tears and nodded. Yes. The blood was trickling down past my eyes now.

“The lad’s a terror,” she said.

“Get him here.”

“Vincent!” she yelled at the house.

“Keep down!” she yelled at the dogs. “I dunno what to do with him,” she said to Dad. “Be different if I had a man like you to give him a proper thrashin now and then.”

“Get him out and I’ll diy it now,” said Dad. “At least I’ll scare the little sod.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “Vincent! Vincent!”

She leaned closer and her huge breasts swung inside her loose black blouse.

“Would you like a cup of nice warm milk, son?” she said.

“No!” I gasped.

She looked at me fondly. Wiped blood from my cheek with her fingertips, then wiped them on her skirt.

“How d’ye get them to be so nice?” she said.

Dad threw the stub of his cigarette away. She gave him another and for a few seconds they just smoked, watching the fumes rise from their lips and towards the bright sky.

“Vincent!” she yelled.

He came to the door at last and stood just inside.

“It was just a bit of carry-on,” he said. “I aimed to miss.”

“Well bliddy miss better next time,” she said. “Now howay here and say sorry to this bairn.”

“Not while that bugger’s standin there.”

Dad snarled.

“Get here now!” he said. “Or I’ll come and get ye and I’ll bliddy swing for ye!”

Vincent shuffled out. He took one of the dogs by its collar and held it at his side.

“Have ye seen what ye’ve done?” said his mother.

“Aye,” said Vincent.

“Just look at that bliddy blood,” she said. “He’s just a little lad. Ye should be lookin after him, not hoyin bliddy rocks at him.”

“I aimed to miss!”

“Say yer sorry.”

His shoulders slumped. He curled his lip and looked down at the ground.

“I’m sorry.”

Dad grabbed his collar and dragged him close. The woman kicked the growling dog away. Dad hauled Vincent till he stood on tiptoe.

“Say it like ye
mean
it,” he said.

“I diy mean it. I’m really sorry. What’s yer name, kid?”

Dad elbowed me.

“Speak up for yerself. Tell him your name.”

I looked into Vincent’s eyes, looked down again.

“Dominic,” I said.

“I’m really, really sorry, Dominic.”

“Are ye?” said Dad.

“Aye! Really. Aye!”

“So it won’t happen again, will it?”

“No, mister.”

“Cos if it does I swear I’ll bliddy swing for ye. Do ye knaa what that means?”

“Aye, mister! Aye!”

“Good.” He shoved Vincent away from us. “Now bugger off back into the house and diy something to help yer mother.”

“Aye, mister. I will right now.”

He scuttled back into the house.

Dad put his hand tenderly on my shoulder at last.

“Look at you,” he said. “You’d think you’d been to bliddy war.” He dabbed the tears and blood. “Ye’ll need to toughen up, eh?”

“He’ll learn,” said Mrs. McAlinden.

“Will he?” said Dad.

Mrs. McAlinden shrugged. She shook her head.

“Kids!” she said.

We went back up through the estate. Holly and Bill and Mam were still standing there. Mrs. Stroud still sang.

“That bugger there,” Dad said softly. “That Stroud bloke. He’s a conchie. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“So he’ll not be much use to you, will he? And just listen to the lunatic upstairs.”

“ ‘Morning has broken, like the first mo-o-o-orning . . .’ ”

“You ever heard owt like that?”

“No, Dad.”

“No. Anyway they’ll not be stayin much longer. This is a place for the likes of us and not the likes of them.”

Mam came to us and cuddled me.

“Better now?” she said.

“Aye, Mam.”

I lifted the handkerchief away.

“What a mess,” she said. “But look, it’s stopping now. Soon there’ll be a scab and then a little scar, then it’ll be like nothing happened at all.”

“Better now?” said Bill.

I nodded.

“Brave lad,” said Bill.

“Come out again soon,” said Holly.

We went inside. Mam cleaned me up with Dettol and cotton wool and put an Elastoplast on me. Dad went upstairs and changed his clothes, and came back smelling of toothpaste and Old Spice. We had pork pie and chips and peas. We all sat together on the sofa and Dad smoked and Mam waved his smoke away.

Dad laughed at her, cuddled her, kissed her and sighed.

We watched
The Lone Ranger
and the picture fuzzed and faded and crackled in and out of view. Dad imitated the voices of the Indians and of Tonto.

“Kemosabe!” he said. “Ungawa!”

Mam clicked her tongue and laughed.

“That’s from
Tarzan
!” she said.

“What is?”

“Ungawa. Isn’t it, Dominic?”

“Aye,” I said. “It means, Cheetah, go and get an elephant!”

Dad snorted and stood up, ready to go to the Iona Club. He kissed Mam, he stroked my hair.

“Hoy the rock back at him next time,” he said.

“Don’t say that!” said Mam.

He stood with his back to the fire and pondered.

“Why not?” he said. “Seems to me there should be a bit more of that Vincent McAlinden in him, and a little bit less of that Holly bliddy Stroud.”

Mam rolled her eyes and he went away.

“More of Vincent McAlinden!” she scoffed.

We stayed together on the sofa. She clicked her tongue, for there was blood again, showing through the Elastoplast. She peeled it free.

“The skin’s that thin,” she said. “That’s the trouble.”

She tried dressing it again, and soon put me to bed.

“Don’t forget your prayers,” she said.

She kissed me and left me. I lay and listened to the night. Listened for the ghosts and monsters that all we children dreaded in this place. And then I slept, and Dad woke me: his footsteps, the click of the gate, the click and clash of the front door. I heard my parents talking softly together, then coming up the stairs.

I touched my brow, licked my fingers. Blood again. I imagined it bleeding forever, all the blood in me draining away through this narrow opening.

I slept again, woke again, heard more footsteps, rapid, soft.

Dared to go to the window and look out through my hands.

It was no ghost, no monster.

It was the tramp Jack Law. He leaned forward as he passed quickly beneath the orange streetlights, heading towards the upper wasteland and the fields. His long fair hair, pale as the pebbledash, glinted in the moonlight, then he was just a shadow and then he was gone.

I lay back down.

“ ‘Our Father,’ ” I started, “ ‘who art in Heaven. Hallowed be thy . . .’ ”

I licked my bloodied fingertips again. Put my fingers to the wound, whose mark would be with me forevermore.

“Our Father,” I began again.

Who made you?

Why did God make you?

Kind Miss Fagan said that these were the most important things we’d ever learn. We must learn the answers word by word. We must commit them to our heart.

“Who made you, Dominic Hall?”

“God made me, Miss Fagan.”

“There is no need to include me in your answer. Who made you, Dominic Hall?”

“God made me.”

“Good boy. And why did God make you, Holly Stroud?”

“God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”

“Good girl. See how simple it is, children? We will learn a little every day until mistakes are made by none of us, until we can answer the most difficult questions deep inside the book. For we wish to have no blemishes on our souls, do we, children?”

“No, Miss Fagan.”

“We wish to go to Heaven, don’t we, children?”

“Yes, Miss Fagan.”

“And we wish to please Miss O’Kane, don’t we?”

“Yes, Miss Fagan.”

“Yes, indeed. Now, put away your catechisms and we will make some words and pictures. Would you like that?”

“Yes, Miss Fagan.”

And she’d take a stick of chalk and reach up to the blackboard and start to write. Her fingers were slender. Her movements were deft. She curved the marks and angled them, and spoke the letters as she wrote, then spoke the words the letters made, then left a space and went on to the next word and the next until she dotted a stop, then spoke the words again to let us hear the meaning and the beauty of it all. And then we copied what she’d done, to make the shapes and sense and sentences for ourselves.

The grass is green
.

The sky is blue
.

The yellow sun is in the sky
.

“No need to rush,” she’d say. “Stay on the line. Remember your finger spaces. That’s good, that’s so lovely, children.”

She’d gently tap the shoulders of some of us and whisper that yes, we had it right. She’d lean down to the slow ones, sometimes take their hand in hers, guide their uncertain clumsy fingers into the right actions, the right marks.

“Yes,” she’d murmur. “Well done. Practice makes perfect. Remember that.”

She never lost her temper. Her classroom was benign. We sat on hard steel-and-timber benches bolted to steel-and-timber desks. There was a crucifix high up on the wall behind Miss Fagan’s desk, and the alphabet, and numbers from one to a hundred, and a painting of poor Saint Lawrence being roasted on a fire. Through the high windows, we saw the scudding northeastern sky, occasional songbirds flying past, tight flocks of rushing pigeons, and far away, for those of us who knew how and where to look, the tiny almost-invisible dots of distant larks.

Miss Fagan had us for our first three years.

I loved to be in there. I loved to copy the letters and make the shapes, to hear the sounds and rhythms, to see the visions that the words made in my brain.
The ship sails. The bird flies
. To write with chalk on slate. To be among the group allowed to write with dip pens, to dip the pen into my own little pot of blue ink, to write into neatly lined red exercise books, to copy prayers and hymns and Bible stories from the board, to dry the ink with bright white blotting paper.
Infant Jesus, meek and mild, look on me, a little child. In the middle of the night He came to them, walking upon the sea, and told them, Do not be afraid
. I loved the books we read.
Here is Janet. Here is John
.

And to write, to be allowed to write words of my own, sentences of my own, tales of my own.
Once there was a boy carled Dominic, who warked acros the waystland to have an advencher
. I loved to learn that
waystland
must turn to
wasteland
, to learn the power of a comma and a full stop, to love the patterns made on paper by strings of sentences, blocks of paragraphs. There were many who couldn’t do this. I sat for some time beside a boy called Norman Dobson. I was mystified by the way his words were scrawls across the page, no spaces between them, how they made no sense at all, how punctuation was random, meaningless, how he bent breathing wetly over his work as if in great pain. I would try to help him.