Touch (11 page)

Drinking felt good now. He drained the gill of mild and ordered a pint of bitter. The real stuff. It slid down easily. Then another. Pint after pint. Each one consumed in the same easy rhythm. Each one savoured, appreciated, held up momentarily to the light before Stott's low growl of anticipation and the fierce dipping down of his mouth. The hours flowed away around him. The landlord stoked the fire, which flared up, sending out yellow smoke and stabs of flame. The whole room was the amber colour of beer. Stott hardly spoke, except to order more drink. But the conversation went on around him, murmuring like a slow sea, dripping into his ears. It was honey and he was a drowsy bee, heavy with nectar, fumbling towards some golden chamber of sleep.

At ten to eleven Stott ordered his last pint. He had finished it by five-past. It was time to go. Time to go. He reached down for his coat, knocking his head against the brass rail in front of the bar. That was fucking twice in one night. He straightened up, rubbing it, grinning, struggling with his sleeves and collar. Two attempts at the catch and he was through the side door. His pockets were full of small change. Amazing. Shillings and fucking pence. How? He stood for a moment, buttoning up his complicated coat. It was a mystery. All those coins. A dizzer. A real fucking mystery.

The bus stop was at the brow of the hill, next to the town hall. He set off towards it, but his progress was slow, distracted by patterns of light on the wet pavements. He arrived in time to see the last bus pass, hissing through the spray from the road. His hand was half raised. Too late. Again. Cunt of a driver. Paki. Fucking rag-head. A ship in the night. Passing. Like that fucking barmaid. Stott shrugged. He'd missed it before, dozens of times. That last pint robbing him of a warm ride home. He'd never learn, silly bastard. But so what? He'd walk. Fuck the lot, he'd walk. Stott rambled through wet streets. Under the rank-smelling pedestrian precinct where his feet slapped and echoed. Over a patch of wasteland where a mongrel stood drenched in the rain. It yelped at him and cringed away, wouldn't come to his hand. He walked on. Across another side road, onto a grass verge, until he stood at the pavement on the ridge of the hill that led down towards home.

 
The land spread away in a confusing mass of lights. Far away, he could see one clear strand, a string of yellow beads draped over the foothills of the moors beyond Bury. There were the patchy lights of tower blocks. A few mills lit up like ocean-going liners. There'd been hundreds once. Ships in the night. Neon hoardings and electric signs above the shops. A faulty streetlamp blinking from red to yellow, a wrecker's beacon. Below him the road dipped away, its gleaming tract inscribed with broken white lines. Stott set off to follow them.

It began to rain almost at once, splashing against his face, running down from his nose and eyebrows. Shuddering, he stopped. He needed to piss. On his left was a disused church, a Victorian red-brick affair with wrought-iron railings and a short, ugly clock tower. He went into the yard and round the side of one of its buttresses. Stott pissed clumsily, wetting his leg. Did it matter? Did it fuck. He was wet anyway. He was pissed through. Pissed. He giggled. He'd be even wetter by the time he got home. Home to the silent street. The still house where his parents would already be snoring blindly in their beds.

Stott got back to the road, peering round to make sure he hadn't been spotted. It wouldn't do to be seen. Not in a church. That was another thing, fucking priests. That was something else. He lost the thought. Or it never came clear of the blur of lights. There was something about that he wanted to say. Churches. Priests. But it was gone. Fuckit.

Stott began to amble downhill in a rapid, rolling walk, overbalancing and then balancing again like some ingenious mechanism or a droll circus clown. He came to a chip shop and remembered that he was hungry. Must eat. Must. Fucking starving. There were smells of vinegar, hot food. He spat on the pavement, almost drooling, then stepped up into the shop. There was a queue and he had to wait in his damp clothes. They prickled in the heat. The light was hard. A sign proclaiming
Holland's Pies
blinked at him.

‘Fish an' chips, love?'

Stott nodded. The girl had a rose tattooed on her arm and a silver stud piercing her lip. Her eyes looked huge behind thick glasses. She'd asked him first, before he'd tried to speak. That was clever. His tongue felt numb and swollen. The girl spoke again.

‘Salt an' vinegar, love? To eat now?'

The piercing made her lisp slightly. Stott wondered if she had one through her tongue. He nodded again, swaying back onto his heels. Say nothing. Get the money. Get the fucking money. He fumbled a handful of change over the counter, watching the girl pick through it with red fingers and drop the remainder into his hand. She wasn't bad looking. It was just the glasses. She was alright, big tits pressed against her tee shirt. Funny tattoo, though. And that thing in her lip. Why do that?

 
Taking the packet of fish and chips, Stott went out into the rain. Walking a few paces, he leaned against the wall of the engineering works to eat. Platt Brothers. They were fucked, now. The pride of the town, gone west. Like everything else. On the corner of the street below him the landlord of the Westwood pub was locking up. Stott ate carefully. He'd forgotten to get a fork, would have to use fingers. So what? He broke open the hot fish, slobbering cool air into his mouth as it burned him. Fuck. Too fucking hot, that's what. Cars swept by on the road beside him. The traffic lights at the crossroads changed from green to amber and then to red.

A line of traffic began to gather beside him. There were pale faces at car windows, hands smearing holes through condensation on the glass. In all the gutters of the town rain-water was draining away, its voices hoarse as a man's cut throat. Stott paused over a mouthful of chips, remembering the barmaid at the Hare and Hounds. Those bastards at the bar who'd turned to laugh, to stare, to mock. The way he'd stumbled past them out of the pub. Nearly broken his fucking neck. What was it she'd said?
Dirty
. He couldn't remember anything but that.
Dirty
. Then a hot gush of shame.

The cars began to move off beside him, leaving him alone under the street lamps. Alone under needles of rain that slanted down at him, stinging his face. He dropped the fish and chips into the gutter, lurched away from the wall, sobbing as he went down the hill. Breaking into a shambling trot, he felt his left heel rub where the skin had blistered. His smart new shoes were sodden with rain. His toes squelching as he ran, his legs gathering momentum. His open coat cloaked out behind him, loose change chinking against the dead lighter in his pocket. Down the hill, street lamps ran out in lines and the road ran out, hard and true. Squalls of rain blew into his face, blurring everything. His eyes fused the molten street lamps into the lights of cars as they spilled down the road. His fingers were wet, held out, groping as he ran.

Stott was taken by the sensation of flight, rising from the pavement into the lights that hung above the town, haloed with rain. Light everlasting. He rose in a wild exultation, above and beyond them. He rose into the night where he found an echo for the howl rising in his chest. Then he began to fall. He fell into the confusion of lights and rain. He fell like a star through darkness; fell through all the Friday nights and all the beer and all the emptiness that lay before him.

Kevin watched the three boys file into the gully that led down to the culvert. That was where the river came through the railway embankment. Today they had no gun. Once he had seen them shoot a robin with their air rifle. Red blood on the red breast; he'd never forgotten it. They called him Mud Bastard. He'd never found out why. He supposed it was because he was fat, or because he had no parents. Because he was half-black and his dad was a coon. Because they hated him. He was lying on the tarpaulin roof of his granddad's pigeon cote. Beneath him he could almost feel the sobbing cries as they bubbled in the birds' throats.

The roof was black and hot. Kevin half-turned to scratch his leg. In the intense light it looked almost white. He settled back, waiting for the boys to appear again. All around the river grew thickets of willowherb. From where he lay it looked like clumsy purple brushstrokes. It was sending out a fine mist of cottony spores that drifted up into the gardens, setting seed in the more neglected ones. His granddad hated the stuff. 
Fireweed
, he called it.

Kevin dug a fingernail into a bubble of tar on the roof. He caught the faint shouts of the boys as they emerged from the far end of the gully and gathered on the little bridge that went over the river. It was so hot that the topmost branches of the big sycamore tree shimmered in the air. He'd peered through a piece of ice once and things had looked like that, but cold. He turned over on his back. Behind him lay fields, the river, railway, canal, farms with cows in their fields. This side, rows of houses followed the old river terraces and the hulks of mills rose above their dark slate roofs. Through a gap in the houses he could watch a constant stream of traffic, which rumbled in and out of the town.

Kevin lived in the end house with his grandparents. His parents were dead, or somewhere else, or he had never had a father. No one had told him, except in the insults they threw. The Mud Bastard. His granddad worked the night shift at the bakery; his grandma did days at the Co-op vinegar works. She always smelled of stale vinegar, as if she was being slowly pickled. Today was a Friday in the school holidays: his granddad's night off, so he was in the pub with a pint in his fist, playing darts or maybe bowls since it was a fine day. Soon he'd be home to have lunch – a bacon muffin or a slice of pie with some of the pickle his wife brought home.

 
Kevin turned back to watch the boys who were gathered aim-lessly, looking down from the bridge. Once they'd tipped some barrels from the dye works into the water and it had turned dark red, like a biblical river running with blood. The roof sloped back towards the house, so he could watch without being seen. The Mud Bastard is watching, waiting. He knows everything you do. Waiting. Waiting for his granddad. Waiting for the boys to leave his territory.

Sliding off the roof, Kevin brushed at his filthy shirtfront. He'd catch it off his grandma. He took the peg out of the fastener and carefully prised open the door of the cote. Quickly, he slid inside. There were six birds, white ones and soft grey ones. Racing pigeons. Sometimes Kevin went with his granddad to let them off. Somehow they found their way back through miles and miles of air, always knowing where they were going, always sure in the emptiness. They clucked in alarm at Kevin's approach, jerking backwards on the perches. Their eyes were expressionless, yellow irises like coloured glass.

Kevin dug his hand into a sack of corn that stood by the door and poured a golden trail into the feeding tray. Like the nuggets that men had killed each other for in the Klondike. He held a single piece out towards the birds, but they shrank back from his hand. They would never come to him as they would his granddad. He stood watching them, the faint sounds of the world outside filtered by the stillness of the cote. Finally bored, he went out again into the blinding sun, fastening the door behind him, shading his eyes to look down the long dirt back.

 
The sun had drunk all colour, bleaching the walls of the houses. Kevin's granddad was making his way unsteadily along the back where the neighbours threw their ashes. A group of small children who were playing with a skipping rope made way for him fearfully. He was in his shirtsleeves, holding a paper bag of muffins in one hand. With the other he touched the wall beside him, looking straight ahead like a blind man. Kevin saw him wipe the sweat from his forehead, ruffling his grey hair, tearing at the collar that constrained his fleshy neck. As he approached, the boy dodged behind the hut, unsure, watching.

‘Kevin!'

It was more like the call of a crow or a magpie than a human voice, harsh and ragged. He didn't answer and the voice came again, muffled this time.

‘Kevin!'

When Kevin turned to look, his granddad was pissing unsteadily against the midden door. That's where they'd thrown their rubbish in the old days, when his grandfather was a boy. The dustmen came with shovels, then. Now, he was in full view of the neighbours. A fine spray was rebounding down the front of his trousers, glistening in the sun like dewdrops. He kept throwing out his free hand behind him in little balancing movements.

‘Kevin!'

‘What?'

‘Wha'? Come for your bloody dinner, that's wha'!'

Kevin came round the end of the shed as his granddad was trying to mount the steps into the back yard. He stumbled and dropped the bag. Then stooped forwards to grope for it, falling onto his hands and going up the steep yard in one lunge like a bear. Coming behind him into the house Kevin heard the far-off cries of the boys. Turning, he saw them flicking some dark object high into the air, gathering around it as it fell, a distant black dot. They'd found something: something soft and alive.

 
In the kitchen Kevin's granddad was hunched over the stone sink with his braces hanging down from his waist. He was retching, his eyes glassy, like those of the pigeons. Suddenly, a belch of brown vomit gushed out. The kitchen was full of the stench of stale beer and sick. The big man spat then straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand, shuddering. His small blue eyes had rolled upwards, showing little cuticles of white beneath the irises. It was the face of a dead man, blanched as suet.

The boy was afraid. He kept close to the open doorway. There was a streak of vomit across the flagstones of the floor and down the front of his granddad's shirt. A damp patch had formed on his trousers. He took a step towards Kevin, then steadied himself, both hands grasping the back of a chair. The knuckles were white and he grinned in a ghastly, forced way, sweat glazing his face. It was like the way he smiled when the social worker came.

‘Dinner! S'ave some dinner.'

He swayed, steadying himself against the chair, resisting the terrific pull of gravity that wanted to drag him down. The bag of muffins lay crushed on the table.

‘I don't want any.'

The blue eyes blinked in disbelief. He cocked his ear as if he was listening to the radio, to some faint, crackly broadcast from a far country.

‘Wha'?'

‘I'm not hungry.'

His granddad took a hand from the chair back to wipe his face and almost fell.

‘Not hungry? Wha' the bloody ‘ell, d'yer mean? I've got summat.'

‘I don't want owt.'

The glassy eyes blinked furiously.

‘Don't want owt is it? Yer kekky little bastard!'

The man lunged forward, aiming a blow at Kevin's head. Kevin ducked, but his granddad fell against him, toppling them both out of the doorway and over the step into the yard. Kevin heard the crack of a head as it hit the yard stones. He rolled free of the bulk of the man and crouched in the corner.

His granddad lay on the yard with one leg still inside the house. A thin trickle of blood rolled down from a graze on his temple. The blood was very dark; his skin was white as fungus and sweated a thin mucus. The man raised his head, eyes unfocused, then started to vomit quietly onto the flagstones. Slowly, semi-conscious, he ceased. His head subsided into the congealing pool. Then he went to sleep, snoring almost at once in raw, shallow breaths.

Kevin didn't dare move. He stared at the fallen man from a corner of the yard. Had anyone heard? Would a crowd of neighbours come rushing to offer help? He dreaded the thought, cringing at the shame of it.

No one came. After a time he stood up, unsteadily, took a step towards his granddad and bent down to listen. The breathing came in steady rasps, like a piece of iron being filed. Kevin touched his shoulder.

‘Granddad!'

There was no response. The man had entered oblivion. He tried again, this time shoving at the shoulder so that the body rocked from side to side.

‘Granddad. Wake up!'

Still nothing. The boy put his hands under his granddad's armpits and tried to drag him forward, so that at least his feet would come out of the doorway. But his own feet skidded in the pool of vomit and he lost his grip. He was unable to budge the weight of the fallen man. Its sheer lack of life defeated him. He smelled his granddad's sweat on his hands and wiped them on his trousers.

 
Kevin went down into the garden and unfastened the door of the pigeon cote. The dim light and the soft cooing of the birds made a sanctuary. The thought of the man lying up there in the back yard made him feel hollow, the kind of nausea that comes from a blow to the stomach. Kevin had banged his hip against the wall as he fell. He pulled up his shorts to look at the bruise that was forming. Under his brown skin it would be the same colour as the blue in the plumage of the birds. His granddad's birds; they wanted nothing to do with him. Waiting there, he imagined his granddad's voice at any moment, but there was nothing.

 
After a while he left the cote and went into the garden. The boys had gone from the stream and there were no shouting voices. Kevin went slowly with his sore hip, down through the garden. Past the neat rows of his granddad's cabbages. Past the rhubarb patch. Two white butterflies went by, interlocked in a wild dance, their wings trembling through the air. There was a paling missing from the garden fence and he was able to squeeze through into the meadow beyond. For a time he sat in the thicket of ferns that grew at the edge of the field, breathing their minty scent.

He watched the gully and waited. There was no one. When he was certain of this, he stood up and went forwards through the waist-high grass, its seeds sticking to his sweaty legs.

Kevin ducked into the gully, afraid of an ambush. He almost ran to the river. A magpie flew out of the scrubby elders, startling him for a second. His heart thumped hard upon his tight chest. For a while he stood on the bridge looking down into the filthy water. Everything seemed still and peaceful. Then he saw the frog laid out across an old car tyre in the full heat of the sun. The boys had thrown it up into the air and let it fall on the path, catching it by the leg and flicking it up, again and again. Kevin had watched the game before, he knew that look on the boys' faces, half-horrified, half-hysterical with laughter as they felt the living thing give and twitch under them. Afterwards they had pinned it down like a crucifixion with a stone on each foot, so that it lay on its back under the terrible sun.

Kevin knelt. He was close to the black mouths of the culvert. One by one he took the stones from the frog's feet. Its skin was baggy and loose. All over its body there were grazes. Dust and tiny stones had been driven into its thin skin. The frog twitched feebly as he touched it and he drew his hands back, suddenly appalled. He watched it struggle with its hurt. Its long back legs stretched out uselessly. They looked like the pale legs of a girl. He turned and broke off two stems of Himalayan balsam from the thicket that grew near the water. Their foetid smell made him want to retch. Carefully he manoeuvred the frog onto them, as onto a stretcher, and carried it down to a little sandbank that made an eddy in the river. Here he floated the frog out on the stems and watched it being carried slowly away, jerking its front half feebly as its body tried to connect a broken spine.

A flight of six pigeons went overhead. They flew in a smooth circle above the houses, wheeling like handfuls of torn paper. They flew over the man who lay unconscious in the hot yard, the only things he had loved.

Kevin watched them. Had he fastened the door of the cote? Did it matter, because they would return wouldn't they? But for him? Would they come back for him? The thought was like a hot needle, jabbing, jabbing at his brain. Had he? But the voices broke out in front of him.

‘Mud Bastard!'

‘Mud Bastard!'

‘Mud Bastard!'

And the boys emerged one by one from the tunnel, their chanting faces stiff as masks, stepping from darkness into the blade-hard light.