The Tightrope Walkers (5 page)

“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 sneered.

“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!”

“Oh. It’s for the party, is it? Then ye’d better get yerselves inside.”

He slid great bolts and locks and pulled the gates. They groaned and clanked and screeched as they opened.

“Howay in,” said Mr. Martin. “Mek yerselves at yem.”

We started going through.

“Tek care, though,” he said. “There’s some lads in here that’ll gobble ye up if ye don’t watch oot!”

Bill led us all up ornate metal steps. We came to a wooden door with
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
printed on it.

“Ready?” said Bill.

“Yes,” we said.

“Then come inside.”

We went through the door. The others filed in behind us. We entered a huge room with wide windows that overlooked the yard. The men grinned as the kids gasped: the half-built ship outside, so huge, so dark, so close. It blotted out the river, obscured the opposite bank, filled half the sky, filled half the world.

There were decorations strung across the ceiling, a bright-lit Christmas tree in a corner. There were framed drawings on the walls: splendid finished ships that now sailed the seven seas, some of them a century or more old. There were photographs of famous launches.

The draughtsmen unrolled great sheets of paper for us on massive room-long tables. They bore drawings: ships and bits of ships; hulls and decks and funnels and anchors and chains and gantries.

Bill stood with us and directed us to see.

“See?” he said. “Everything must be drawn before it can be made. We draw every single step in every single stairway. Every water pipe, each single electric switch. We show where every single rivet goes.”

Holly traced the lines with her fingertips. Everything was so clear, so accurate.

“Proper art,” said Holly.

Bill smiled.

“Ah, no,” he said. “We’re copiers. We draw the plans, but we’re just followers of other plans. We draw the things we’re told to draw.”

He laughed.

“We draw bits and pieces, fragments. We make them exactly right. No room for any imagination.”

He pointed through the window.

“And the fragments turn to steel and men turn steel to ships.”

We all looked out at the wondrous work.

“And if we all do it right,” he said, “the ship goes out onto the sea and doesn’t sink. And then we move on to another ship.”

The drawings were rolled up again. Sandwiches and cakes and lemonade and orange squash were brought into the room by waitresses in black-and-white and laid out on the tables.

I chewed a ham sandwich. It was crustless and triangular. I drank a glass of orange squash.

“Does somebody,” said Holly, “have the whole ship in their head? Every bit of it, right from the start, everything in order?”

“I guess they must have an idea of it,” said Bill. “Not all the detail, maybe. But it must be like they have a vision.”

We looked out at the ship again.

“So that great metal thing outside started as something like a dream. And look at the damn thing now. Pretty solid, eh?”

We went on eating, drinking.

“Mebbe the dreamers are the true artists of this place,” said Bill.

I kept looking out. Dark-dressed men lugged machinery and tools through the December winds, they clambered across frail-looking scaffolding, they crawled into gaping holes in the ship’s side, they bent to the decks like they were praying. I went closer to the window.

“Looking for your dad?” said Bill.

“Aye.”

“He’ll be one of them with sparks flying all around him,” he said.

But there were so many of them like that, and so many of them walking, crawling, squirming, praying. Was
that
him? Or that? Or
that
? They were like ghosts, like devils, like a living part of the ship itself.

“No?” said Bill.

I shook my head.

“Mebbe he’s inside it,” said Bill.

A fat man in a black suit entered. He spoke into a microphone. He was so very proud of us all, he said.

He spoke directly to the children.

“Are you proud of the work of your fathers, boys and girls?” he asked.

“Yes!” was called.

“Yes, indeed. Where would we be without them?” He snorted. “Without these fine artists, that ship out there could sink! And we don’t want that, do we, children?”

“No! No!”

“No indeed!”

He told us he was thankful for the achievements of the past. So hopeful for the days that were to come. So delighted to see us here, the citizens and shipbuilders of the future.

He pointed out towards the ship.

“Look at that,” he said. “One of the great achievements of mankind. And it is made here, on this river, by us.”

He raised a glass of champagne towards the ship, then towards the draughtsmen, then towards the children.

“You should be very proud,” he said to us. “Will you be the ones who will help us build the ships of the future?”

“Yes!” some called.

Even with the windows closed, the din and clatter from outside were immense. Dark bodies in dark clothes in the deepening dusk. Soon they blended with the colour of the ship. Long fluorescent lights were turned on in the drawing office and spotlights began to shine outside.

The ship became truly beautiful then, truly like a vision. The sparks from welding rods and caulking hammers were like fireworks. Strings of light dangled as on Christmas trees. Tiny jets of acetylene burned bright blue. Light shone out from trapdoors and portholes and holes and cracks and gaps. The sky above became deep red, and black smoke from braziers on the deck swirled across it. The dark figures climbed, clambered, slithered, emerged and disappeared.

We all got a selection box with chocolates inside. I was given a biro with four colours in it. Holly’s gift was a little set of drawing pencils.

We were told we had to leave before the workers were let out, or we’d be crushed in the stampede. We went back through the gates and walked uphill again. After five minutes we heard the grinding of the gates, and the hectic clatter of running men in heavy boots on cobblestones.

“Run!” we giggled. “Run!”

“Did it gan well?” said Dad when he returned home.

He stood before the fire, warming his legs and backside at it.

“Yes,” I said.

“They looked after ye all reet?”

“Yes.” I showed him the biro. “They gave me this.”

“I seen you,” he said. “I seen you lookin out. I even waved at you.”

I clicked the biro.

“Did ye see me?” he said.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

I wrote a green word, a black word, a blue word, a red.

The lights flickered on our little Christmas tree.

“You divent bliddy think so?”

“No. I couldn’t make you out, Dad.”