Winter Damage (10 page)

‘Enjoyin the Coco Pops? The best, int they?’

Ennor nodded.

‘Well don’t go wild after um, hellfire.’

‘They’re nice,
really
.’

‘They are, int they? That’s the last of um. I’ll have to go shoppin someplace else after Christmas.’

‘What village you go to?’

‘Minions.’

‘Don’t they recognise you?’

‘Ha, now that’s the fun of it. Go in disguise, don’t I. Got wigs and hats and all sorts. You can come with me next time if you’re that intrigued.’

‘So you’re the spy.’

They both laughed and Ennor finished the cereal and drank the chocolate milk from the bowl and when she had finished she wiped her finger around it to mop up every last drop.

‘That’s it, girl. Get it down you.’

The two girls sat steady and looked at each other with suspicious curiosity and it was Ennor’s turn to ask the questions.

‘How old are you?’

‘Fourteen.’ She smiled.

‘You don’t look fourteen.’

‘What can I say? I’m mature for my age unlike some. Next question.’

Ennor tried to think of something clever to ask because the girl thought her stupid and green. ‘Have you always travelled?’

‘What kind of a question is that? I’m a gypsy, int I?’

‘Some of your trailers don’t look like they seen tarmac in a while.’

‘Well they int my trailer. What else you got?’

‘Any brothers and sisters?’

‘Nope.’

‘You go to school?’

‘Borin, nope.’

‘Ever bin another country?’

Sonny thought for a minute. ‘No but I’m plannin on it, once my career takes off. You?’

‘I’ve never bin cross the bridge.’

‘Never bin out of Cornwall? Hell.’ Sonny started to laugh and she held her sides for added effect. ‘Call the doctor. Gonna bust a gut here,’ she screamed.

Ennor shifted in her seat and decided she wanted to get going. She wondered how to say it without the girl bullying her to stay.

‘What career you plannin? World’s on the brink or dint you notice?’

‘Bare knuckle fightin. Look at these.’ She smacked her hands down on the table and Ennor leant forward to look at her scabs and scars. ‘Want a demo?’

Ennor shook her head. ‘What’s the money like?’

‘Good. Just cockfightin with kids really.’

‘Who d’you fight?’

‘Townies, travellers, used to fight emmets till they stopped comin and I fight boys as well as girls. I int no baby.’

Ennor was unexpectedly impressed and she found herself saying as much and she swallowed what she was going to say about leaving back down into her belly.

The girl scared her as it was and she was now showing off her arm muscles.

‘What you think of these?’

‘Nice.’

‘Nice? Is that all the word you got?’

‘No. I’ve also got thank you and goodbye.’

‘Well that’s just great. After you troughed the last of me Pops.’

‘You gave um to me.’

‘Dint hear you complainin.’ She got up and settled herself into a wide stance and was about to say more when a woman’s voice from elsewhere in the trailer shouted for Sonny to keep the noise down because they were filming.

‘Filmin what?’ asked Ennor.

‘A film. Don’t mind um. Most days there’s somethin or other goin on. Where’d you think this fancy kitchen come from?’

Ennor got up and she put the empty bowl and spoon into the sink. ‘How’d they let you fight?’

‘It’s all money, int it? Don’t worry, they make a pretty penny off me out on the ropes. I’ll teach you some moves if you want.’

‘I really got to get goin. Got to get somewhere and back before Christmas.’

‘Where?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Secret, is it? You know my life story. All I know bout you is cows and not much else besides.’

‘I don’t know where I’m goin exactly.’

Sonny shrugged. ‘So how do you know where you’re goin if you don’t know where you’re goin? Don’t go yet. We’re havin fun, int we? I could teach you to wrestle, self-defence and all that, and we got the party tonight.’

Ennor was under the impression that there hadn’t been much jollity at all and she asked why she wanted her to stay.

‘Are you kiddin? Hell, look at this place. It’s Boresville with a capital bore.’

Ennor went outside and lifted her rucksack up on to one of the crates. She wanted to go and she wanted to stay just the same. The camp swung an invisible cape around her shoulders that was safe and warm, a womb. She thought of Mum. ‘I have to go.’

‘Don’t say that. Stay for the party, we’ll get up to pranks and all sorts. Please?’

Ennor thought the idea of doing things for the sake of it was strange and wasteful in time and purpose, but she was fourteen and could count fun times on the fingers of just one hand.

‘Well?’ asked Sonny. ‘Only I int got all day.’

‘OK. I’ll stay. For one night and that’s it and I’ve got to get up early in the mornin.’

‘I know,’ Sonny laughed. ‘You gotta get somewhere and back before sundown or somethin. We’ll go nick some booze from the other trailers later.’

She threw Ennor’s rucksack into the door of her bedroom and told her to follow and not to worry about anyone because they were either busy or sleeping.

‘You gotta help me out.’

‘Why?’ asked Ennor.

‘I’m in a fix. Bin given the task of settin traps all over the place and I can’t remember where I put the buggers.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘You want to eat tonight, don’t you?’

Ennor shrugged. ‘I guess. What you usually catch?’

‘Nothin,’ she laughed. ‘This is my first time. I begged Dad to give me somethin worthy to do and now can’t remember where I put um. Not all of um anyway.’

‘That’s dangerous. Could catch a kid, maim um even.’

‘Know that, don’t I? Hell, I’m lookin for support here.’

Ennor said she’d help Sonny find the traps. The camp was a safe hole in which to hide for a day and night, a place the police would hopefully avoid to keep the peace. She could forget about the boy, if only for a little while.

‘Come on, girl,’ shouted Sonny as she set off down the track. ‘We gotta do this while it’s light, you know.’

Ennor ran alongside her and the faster she went the more the snow clumped to her feet and stumped her in her tracks.

‘Where d’you think you put um?’ she asked.

‘Mostly in the forest but, hell, maybe I got carried away a little. I remember thinkin and plottin all sorts of ways.’

‘How many you put out?’

Sonny shrugged. ‘Ten of um, roundabout.’

‘Ten? What they look like, the traps.’

‘You a farm girl and you don’t know what traps look like?’

‘I know they’re all evil and snappin, but there’s all kinds, int there?’

‘How the hell do I know? You ask some dumb uns, don’t you?’

Ennor looked across at Sonny and shook her head. There was something scary and something striking about her, the way she looked and the way she spoke, with arrogance and swagger kicking out from under her badly fitting clothes.

They entered the forest from a low split in the track and it was a clamber to get to the ridge without sliding backwards. Ennor wanted to ask why they hadn’t just walked through the woods by the camp and when she fell headlong and frozen into the snow for the third time she shouted out the question.

‘Why d’you think?’ asked Sonny.

Ennor lay on her back and she stared up at the nothing sky. ‘Surprise me.’

‘Cus this is where I put the first one. I remember this one.’

Ennor rolled on to her side and got to her feet. ‘Let’s go back to camp.’

‘Hell, you got a right moan runnin through you. Where’s your sense of fun? You’re like an old bird squabblin and squallin. Now come on.’

The forest was familiar to Ennor from wandering through it yesterday, but only in the way of smell and form and the way it made her feel. The pine trees in this part of the forest were freakish tall and their trunks were thick and good for hugging. Living, breathing things, they had even guided her to the gypsy camp last night, she believed that.

The girl up ahead was going on and roundabout, her mouth beaking like a baby bird and her eyes bursting with all the things she wished and thought she’d seen. The world to Sonny was a sudden pleasant surprise, a constant revelation.

To Ennor it was a rope-tie of let-downs, knot upon knot of confusion and restraint and fear.

She could see the boy’s bludgeoned head everywhere she looked. She could see his face etched in the pleats of tree bark and it merged with her dad’s and she imagined him dead the same.

‘You listenin to anythin I say?’

‘Course.’

‘What then? What I just say?’

‘You were sayin bout the traps.’

‘What about the traps?’

‘Bout them bein well hidden for a reason.’

Sonny stood facing her and she jammed her hands on to her hips. ‘That’s a lucky guess.’

Ennor smiled. ‘See I was listenin.’ She wasn’t.

They walked further into the forest and Sonny screamed when she saw her own handiwork. She fell to her knees and was careful to dismantle the wigwam of sticks and pine fronds that disguised the trap.

‘Anythin?’ asked Ennor.

‘Shush.’

‘Why shush? It’s either dead or int nothin there. Which is it?’

‘Nothin there, hell.’

Ennor crouched beside her and looked into the trap. ‘Looks like somethin got the bit of meat.’

‘No they dint.’

‘How’d you know?’

‘Cus there weren’t any, I forgot.’ She sat back on her haunches. ‘That’s what I was sayin bout.’

‘You got others though, right?’

Sonny started to laugh. ‘Nope, none with gristle. Anyway I lost um, int I?’

‘What you gonna tell your dad?’

‘Nothin. Say they was all empty and whatever.’

Ennor stood up and a little bit of herself felt sorry for the big-mouthed gypsy girl. There was a lot of talk and bluster to her but she knew there was a reason for that. It was the same with Butch.

‘Let’s go back. I’m freezin and there’s no point to bein cold when there’s a fire goin.’

‘Can’t,’ said Sonny as she got to her feet. ‘Not yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Gotta put a little time between us and the day. Don’t want to look failed even if I failed.’

She started to walk and Ennor followed.

‘Where we goin?’

‘Vantage point.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Can’t we just go back to the trailer, please?’

‘Not yet. I’ll build us a fire, so just shut up.’

‘You’re not very nice, are you? Someone who wants a friend to knock about with and all.’

Sonny didn’t answer her and she didn’t look back at Ennor to see if she was following.

She led them through the corner of forest and up a bank of carpet pine until they stood high up on the cone of a silt stack.

‘This is what a vantage point is, see? Over there you can see the clay mountains. Somethin else, int it?’

Ennor nodded. ‘St Austell.’

‘Right. You know how high we are?’

‘No.’

‘Neither do I, but it’s high, really high.’

Ennor walked a little way out on the man-made ridge. The silt underfoot was frozen solid and she stabbed the toes of her boots and climbed it up and down like a ladder.

A great middle chunk of Cornwall sprawled below her and she closed her eyes and winged her arms like a bird. She heard buzzards fighting and she imagined jumping in to join them, a dance of wing and claw and love and hate, a flamenco. A great leap towards freedom, a fleeting one-chance opportunity.

‘I gather wood when I can,’ shouted Sonny. ‘Whenever I’m up here I stack it up.’

‘Why?’ shouted Ennor and she walked back to where Sonny was crouching out on a level spot.

‘For fires, hello?’

‘Why you have fires up here on your own?’

‘Why not?’

Ennor sat on one of the thick quarry slates that were positioned beside the fire and watched Sonny tend and pet the coming flames until they grew and smoked out on the wind.

‘Bin comin up here for weeks. I’m callin it my relaxation spot.’

‘You meditate or somethin? Put your legs behind your ears?’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘You come up here every day?’

‘No, just some days.’

‘Why?’

‘When I gotta escape.’