Wreckage (10 page)

—Wharrabout him?

—Shouldn’t he be here n all?

Shake of the head from Shem. —Gorrer bit more brains, Joey has. He’ll work it out for imself, tellin yeh. He’ll be able to figure it out on is own, that one will.

They skirt the city and head north, towards West Derby. Shem and Dusty talk and Tommy looks out at the passing world and the older men don’t seem to notice as little Thomas does the amount of people outside who react to the car, who squint their eyes at it and then either wave or look quickly away. And the difference in the wavings, how some are meek handflaps at chest height and how some are an abrupt
rising
of bladed hands almost like a salute. The two big men appear not to notice these reactions but the smaller boy does, some swelling in his breast and burgeoning in his belly as merely by sitting here in this car with the two bigger men he elicits some response in all these unknown people. Just by doing nothing, just by being driven, all these pedestrians react. As if the car itself is their dream or nightmare taken form and seen passing them in city street their happiness or horror here before them on this early-evening weekday. Their nocturnal secret longings drifting by and how they do respond, rise or recoil. Tommy first grins at them all, he does not differentiate, they all get a grin, but then a thing within him tells him not to smile but to scowl instead and he obeys it, whatever ringing thing it is. See the young boy in the car, the big boy scowl jowly.

They enter an estate. New rows of pebble-dashed semi-detacheds no more than a few years old. Small front gardens and glassed-in porches. Children on Choppers or playing football whose heads swivel to trace the car as it passes now slow.

—This it, Shem, aye?

Tommy’s father nods.

—Must av some money aye, livin here like. Can’t be cheap these places.

—Exactly. Can’t afford to pay me back but can afford to move on to a good estate like this. Makes me fuckin sick, Dust, it does. Always pay yer debts off first, isn’t that right?

—It is, sure. Hear that, young Tommy?

Both big men looking at him. The car has stopped.

—
Always
pay yer debts, Tommy, his dad says. —Yeh know why?

Shake of the head.

—I’ll
show
yiz why. Don’t forget that hammer.

At the kerb outside one of the new, clean houses. No graffiti here, no flat planks for windows, no steel-sheeted doors. Net curtains twitch as they leave the car, Tommy carrying the hammer grunting in two hands, smiling too because this is interesting, this is a
good
game. It seems that someone owes money. He thinks that means that someone must pay.

He walks between the two men up the trail of crazy paving across the well-kept small front lawn. Some children are called then dragged bodily inside if they do not respond and doors are slammed. A dog barks four times then yelps and falls quiet.

Uncle Dusty raps on the door with his oil-stained knuckles. A soft, rhythmical tattoo; he plays a jaunty tune. Tommy smiles.

The door opens. His father says: —Iya, love, then the door is slammed shut again and seared into Tommy’s eyes the woman’s face and her look of terror the recognition so quick and utter and feet are raised and thrust and the door bursts inwards. Wood splinters, glass shatters. There is a woman screaming. Tommy’s heart pounds hot and loud his skull throbs with each bloodbeat already he feels sick with excitement his mouth sandy dry and Dusty has hoisted him by the oxters over the threshold and into the house before he has even noticed it. He steers him by the back of the banging head down the hallway and towards the screams into the bright kitchen where his
dad
looks immense, King Kong-sized. There is a man seated at a round white table and a woman standing by him at his shoulder with her hands over her face and it is from behind these hands that the screaming comes. Shem is pointing at her with a ringed index finger but shouting at the seated man. The stabbing finger, the shouting mouth flinging spittle.

—Tell
er
to fuckin shurrup! Tell er to shut er fuckin trap or al fuckin break it!
Tell
er!

The man stands, puts his arms around the woman, manoeuvres her towards the back door. —It’s alright, love, it’s alright … you go in the backyard an al call yer when it’s over … it’s fine … don’t worry, al be okay … go on now …

—I
told
yeh this would happen!
Told
yeh, didn’t I, but would yeh friggin listen?!

—Shhh, now, it’s alright … go on …

He opens the back door for her and ushers, shuffles her out, her hands still over her face. The man closes the door softly and turns, his arms spread in surrender. He has a kind of quiff and sideys like Alvin Stardust, Tommy notices.

Sweet, ness. I like your dress.

—Aw now, lads. It’s like this.

And then he is on the floor, propped up against the fridge. His eyes roll and glaze and his head lolls and as Tommy watches his lips swell and blood leaps out on to his shirt. Tommy sees that his father’s fist is clenched white and realises that he has just punched this man.

Who gurgles. Flaps his hands feebly at the height of his chest which is the height of Shem’s knees. Both
Shem
and Dusty pounce and Tommy behind them sees their stack-heeled shoes rise and stamp and sees their elbows working as they do when trying to start a lawnmower and between their frantic legs he sees chunks of the man, his own legs kicking in their tartan slippers, hands raised protectively to his face and those hands slapped away and how quickly that face has been changed has been altered the flesh swollen in folds purple and black lips split front teeth gone such instant mutilation. Nose smashed flat driven back above the champing jaw and there is screaming and begging in a voice gone thick what has happened to this man in so little time.

See Tommy cry. His ribs ache with the whacking of his heart. His dad grabs the man’s ankles and Tommy sees his slippers fall off to expose bare feet very white and this makes him cry further. The wrecked man is dragged towards him and that smashed and purpled face is at his feet. Oh how smashed it is. It is like stew.

There is a roaring in his ear, his dad’s voice: —The fucking hammer, Thomas! Wanner be top dog? Wanner be a gangster, son?
Welly
the fucker! Hit im! IT im!

There are noises coming from that pounded mouth. Faint screechings, kitteny noises.

—IT im!

Tommy raises the hammer. It takes all his strength. It is not right what has happened to this man. Tommy raises the hammer and cannot see through scrunched and stinging eyes.

—Go on, now, Thomas. His uncle Dusty’s voice in a whisper. —Ye must hit him now, sunshine. Or just drop the hammer.

Little Thomas raises the hammer. He feels a scrabbling on his legs and looks down and sees the smashed man’s fingers crawling up his shins, pulling at his socks, grabbing at his ankles. The thin screeching. The bubbling blood bursting on those noises high and rising. He is trying to plead Tommy thinks but his face, that face, it is not like a face any more it is burst like jam it is –

Tommy drops the hammer and vomits. Where it goes he doesn’t know, he doesn’t care. The spew just leaps out of him and he turns and stumbles.

—Take him to the car, Dust.

He is lifted. He is airborne in arms. There is cool air on his face then he is lying on the back seat of the Capri. Probably he sleeps because the next thing he knows he is moving and he can hear laughter.

—Djer see it, Dust? Bleeurgh, all over his kite. See it?

—I did that, aye. Straight in the mug. What the fuck has he been eatin, the wean? Looked like corn.

—Probly all them Golden fuckin Nuggets his mother keeps feedin im. Loves them things he does burrit’s all the lazy cow ever feeds him. That’s why he’s so fuckin fat.

Tommy keeps his eyes closed. The colours there now the colours of a face, plum and black and maroon, a face so easily altered. So very easily ruined.

—What do we do with im now?

—Take im back home. Let his mother look after him, clean im up, likes. Us two can goan avver few wets, spend some of this ginch, yeh?

—Aye. Think he’s learnt his lesson?

—I’d say so, aye. Poor little bleeder pissed isself n all, did yeh see? Friggin
terrified
he was, the poor little get. See im? Ee ain’t gunner grow into
this
fuckin business, no way. Not one doubt about that, lar.

—Aye. In future, tell im to stick to playin cowboys n indians.

—It’s all IRA v UVF at
that
school, Dust.

—Well. As long as he’s a Goodie.

—Oh fuck yeh.

The car rolls on. The two men continue to talk and laugh. They
laugh
; how can they be laughing after what they’ve just done? What is so funny? The world to Tommy now is not what it once was. All is changed. There are things in it he didn’t know existed yet the two big men can laugh still. How, though? How?

He doesn’t sleep that night, little Thomas. His mother, uncharacteristically gentle, tucks him in and kisses him and tells him tenderly that he’s learned a lesson and she even leaves the landing light on for him without complaining about the electricity bill but still he doesn’t sleep because of the fear of the dreams that may thunder. Floods of blood and faceless howlings. But the following night he sleeps better than he ever has before and when he returns to school Mr Lyons has one arm in plaster and a bruised face and he says not one word to Thomas, will not even look at him in fact not even when Thomas whacks Toasty Fagin on the back of the burn-scarred head with a ruler. And Tommy will never return to the way he was before; something new he will become to himself as he grows, as his bones stretch and his flesh fills further
out
. As his hands and face spread as if rolled and pressured out by the city’s winds he comes to love, at his ears, at his elbows, at his always active throat, these sea breezes strong and salted forever pushing him onwards, out into the available world.

NURSE

She’s maybe not cut out for this job. She’s maybe too sensitive, that’s what Carl, her boyfriend, says; he says that she should find something else, or if not that then she should learn not to bring her work home, to leave it at the hospital gates. To keep the two worlds separate, homelife and worklife, not let the one affect the other. She suspects that this is simply because her work stories bore him but nevertheless he has a point, she feels; for example, look at this – she’ll lose sleep over this tonight and tomorrow night and maybe the night after – this scene through the wired window of the recovery room in the Intensive Care ward:

Like an octopus the woman with all those tubes in her and her head the size of a white pumpkin wrapped in all those bandages. She hasn’t moved for hours not since the emergency surgery to close her skull and remove bone splinters from her brain she hasn’t moved but is still alive. A Vegetative State that may become Persistent. Robbed by two thugs is the story, they came into her post office in the little village and whacked her with some blunt instrument and stole all the takings four thousand pounds and are probably out in the pubs now living it up and laughing and boasting and waving all the money around while here she is in a coma. And
her
husband, Emrys the nurse heard the sister call him, he’s sitting by her and holding her hand and even through the closed door his weeping can be heard. He presses his wife’s unmoving hand to his cheek and lays his head on her breast and clasps her one hand in both of his and this nurse can hear his desolate sobs and knows she’ll hear them in her pillow for several nights to come, more if the woman remains catatonic, more and more and more if she dies which she might, still.

Leave it at work, Carl will say tonight, hunched over his takeaway jalfrezi and not taking his eyes off
Holby City
because he fancies Lisa Faulkner and also Angela Griffin. Leave it at work. Don’t bring it home with you, but what the fuck she thinks would a carpet fitter know of the sorrow that stalks the world? Of the terrible threat more terrifying in its randomness than the static stagnant sump that can be a human heart? Maybe she’s not cut out for this. Maybe she should find another job, one with less potential to upset; embalmer, perhaps. Undertaker. Nothing, nowhere is safe.

And what would a man who fits carpets know, or for that matter an old woman who tends a post office. What could anybody know of this. What, truly, could anyone expect.

These are not questions, the nurse thinks; these are
not
questions. She moves away from the window before Emrys can turn round and behold her staring face.

DARREN, ALASTAIR

D: FUCKIN FUCKIN FUCKIN FUCKIN

A: Jesus … me fuckin ed, man … me
ed
…

D: FUCK YER FUCKIN ED YOU FUCKIN CUNT YOU FUCKIN BRAINDEAD BASTARD SHITFERBRAINS YOU FUCKIN –

A: How? How is this my fault, Darren? Look at me, lar, cunts wellied me n all, didn’t thee? How is –

D:Yeh shoulda been fuckin lookin out for me, yeh fuckin prick! Leavin
me
to look after the swag the fuckin state
I
was in … what’s in yer fuckin ed, ey? WHAT THE FUCK’S IN ERE ALASTAIR!

(A rigid finger poking bone: THUNK, THUNK.)

A: Argh, Darren, don’t, lar! It fuckin
herts
, man!

(THUNK THUNK.)

D: Don’t see how it can, like, when there’s nowt but fuckin
shite
in there.

(THUNK THUNK.)

A: Gerroff! It’s all swollen!

(THUNK THUNK.)

D: Wannit swollen some more, do yeh? Ey? Is
this
what yeh fuckin want?!

A: Arrgghh! Gerroff! Am sorry, Da, just stop fuckin
hertin
me, will yeh!

(Patter of rain on shellsuit material. Honk and diesel rumble of a passing black cab.)

D: Utter fuckin knob’ed. No lie, man, yerrah fuckin balloon’ed, honest to fuckin God. Nowt in your skull but shite, lar, am tellin yeh. This is the
last
fuckin time we’re ever gunner be seen together, me n you, believe. The
last
fuckin time. Count yerself lucky am not stampin yer friggin brains all over the fuckin road an djer wanner know why?