Slow Poison - Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

In time there will be nothing for anyone to see

Save the thin spider that crawls from under a secret stone

To keep a date with destiny as we did.

Diana Dors

Stonehouse. July 1956

The nights were never really completely dark. Council kids roamed the still-hot pavements in grubby clusters, a patina of sweaty smears and sunburn radiating out from scabby knees, peeking out through torn jerseys. They haunted the twilight walls and kerbs, taunting the Snake Island Girls, beehived and sugared, scratching cryptic runes in the soft grey wood of the council benches with their nail files. Trace and Tina. Vic loves Gina. Stilletoed and mindless, they mouthed their hour-long calls into the glassless booths with lust and venom. The dirt balls flew from willow catapults, lodging among the lacquer work.

“Bugger off home, you little sods!”

“Gis a bit of yer candy floss first!”

“Bugger off!”

And off they ran, Fred and Lenny and the others, leaving the girls to carve and bitch and mouth the Alma Cogan songs they could not sweep away. Then the Nortons would arrive, roaring gutsily from the farm lanes, into the heart of the estate. Maisonette lads, tight oiled jeans astride the gleaming motors - three of them, baskets packed, curling side-burns oozing Brylcreem on to soiled Millet’s shirt collars, wet Woodbines hanging from the corners of their Wild One mouths.

‘WOTCHER!’ they yelled, roaring their rides in small circles around the bench, motorised cattlemen ready for the round-up. There were choices to be made. There was little to choose between them, the Ronnette clones were either blond or not. The girls squealed in delight, pushing out their padded cardigans, as though vying for the job of milk monitor.

“Miss! Me Miss! ME MISS!”

Fred and Lenny had found a half finished cigarette, still burning, near the entrance to the playground. Fred snatched it up and raced to the top of the slide, leaving Lenny whining, helpless, at the foot of the polished chute.

“It’s not fair! I want some too.”

“Come an’ get it then. I aint stopping you!”

He could see Glyn’s bedroom window from the top of the slide. Glyn would already be in bed. Would be listening grumpily to the other kids, unshackled by a caring Mum or Dad. Lenny had almost reached Fred, was almost close enough to grab, when off he went bounding down the steps, the butt almost all used up.

“Yer you are then.” said Fred, holding out the glowing end. Lenny slid down the slide, but Fred dropped the butt as he approached, blowing instead a great cloud of smoke into his face. Lenny gulped hungry mouthfuls in between his sobbing.

“Let’s go down Snake Island. Come on. Race ya!”

With a sudden turnabout, Fred was off, running across the open playground diagonally, toward the far stile. Lenny bounded after him, unable to catch him. They passed the foot of the Jam Factory wall, the little Chinoiserie pagoda set amid the rhododendrons, turning left at the unfinished end of Festival Road. There was a narrow path between the doomed fields that led to the railway bridge over the Dudbridge line. The chocolate and cream colours of the Western Region had peeled, and there were several boards missing, leaving wide gaps that showed the line beckoning sickenly below. The gaps made Lenny dizzy.

“Don’t look down then, if you be scared!”

Lenny fixed his gaze on the gaudy sky that hung purple and orange behind the spire of St. Cyr’s. He expressed his fear in little involuntary farts. The bridge seemed to stretch away forever, wide and high, broader and longer than the Bristol Suspension Bridge. It would be easier to jump now and have done with it.

“Come on, our Len!” Fred shouted from the safety of the far gate. “Come on.”

And Lenny made it, chugging forward, clutching the rivets and bolts, Braille signposts leading him to Salvation. ‘Our mother who art in the kitchen.’ He felt Fred’s strong fingers grip his jersey and pull him forward, his knees buckling under him.

“You took bloody ages.”

There was twenty yards between the bridge gate and the main road. Snake Island lay to the right of the bridge gate - a clump of trees set on a gnarled root-bound mound in the marshy ground. The island was protected by a deep boggy moat of earth-sodden water, black and evil, reached by a felled and twisted tree stump. With pounding hearts Fred and Lenny made their way across the stump and into the dark depths of Snake Island. Everything about the place reeked with the illicit, the devious, the prurient. The debris of sex, the litter of tobacco, the charred remains of damp bonfires, leaf mould and bloodied gauze.

“Bit creepy tonight ennit?”

“Nah. I aint scared.”

“Well, I be!” Lenny announced. But Fred was scared. There was something decidedly eerie about the small microworld of Snake Island. A world within a world at the centre of the Universe. An arbour of lost innocence and stolen chastity. The adder’s tongue was trampled and damaged, grass pushed to the edges of the tread hardened earth.

“What shall we play?”

“Jerries and Frogs!”

“Nah – let’s play Nazis an’ Jews.”

“Wos Jews?”

“You know. Like that old geezer in the flats. That foreign bloke. Him.”

“Oh. Wot do they do then?”

“Well, it’s the same ennit. Same as Jerries and Frogs. I plays the Nazi and I ties you up and tortures ya till you talks. Gives I the secrets like.”

“Wot else?”

“I dunno. They paint on the doors. Jew. Stuff like that.

“We aint got no paint.”

“I got me penknife. I could cut it on.”

“Wot do we have to write?”

“I dunno. Jew. Summat like that. I dunno.”

“Is he the one with that bloody cat?”

“That’s him!”

“I hates that bloody cat. Can’t we do summat to the cat?”

“Yeah. Bloody cat.”

“Shhh!”

“Why?”

“Thur be somebody coming.”

They heard the bridge gate creak and a nervous high pitched giggle, a low throaty grunting.

“It’s bloody Charlie Martin with some bint!”

“Be they coming yer?”

“Wot you fink? Course they be!”

Lenny was not yet quite sure of the games they hoped to play. The giggles and grunts came closer and Lenny and Fred were on their feet. They faced Martin across the fallen tree, his grunts hanging precariously in the summer night air.

“You two can just bugger off and all. Go on, hop it!”

The girl giggled. The two boys scuttled across the tree and dodged Martin’s cuffing hand. There was a bright aura around Martin and the girl as he lit two cigarettes. The smoke mingled with the girl’s Woolworth scent and Lenny’s flatulence. Fred was almost desperate enough to beg for a fag, but he had suffered at Martin’s welders hands before. He knew better.

“Bugger off, I said, bugger off!”

Fred and Lenny scurried off toward the bridge gate like startled crows. Lenny was trembling at the thought of the bridge crossing again. He cowered behind Fred who held fast to the top of he gate, suddenly motionless.

“Let’s watch ’em!”

“Wot?”

“Let’s go back all quiet an’ watch ’em shagging.”

“Wot?”

“Shhh!”

Fred crept low along the hedge that topped the railway embankment, Lenny following. The hedge curved around behind Snake Island, dark shadow hiding the boys. Snake Island stood black against the darkening sky, the last light throwing itself on the pale moons of Martin’s heaving buttocks.

“Wot they doin?”

“Shhh!”

“But wot they doin?”

“Shagging aint they!”

“Is that wot you did with they girls in the park?”

“Yeah.” Fred lied.

“Wot you doin’ now?” Lenny asked, watching Fred’s darting hand.

Ephraim Abraham Isaacs splashed luke warm water into the milk-smeared bottles, washing them clean. The lips were chipped and blemished, like glass fragments on a beach, ground by the rolling of the tide, worn by time.

“Come on cat, out you go.”

The animal curled around his trouser legs, pressing hard, leaving a residue of possession, purring loudly. Isaacs carried the bottles down the steep steps to the front door, the cat remained at the top, staring defiantly down as Trim opened the door and placed the bottles to one side of the Cardinal red doorstep.

“Come on, out you go.”

The cat remained motionless. Trim turned and climbed the stairs, reaching forward to pick the cat up, but she dodged him and flew down the stairs and out of the open doorway, rattling the bottles as she went. Isaacs turned and descended once more, sighing as he went. He looked out at the azure night, the clear sky studded with stars so bright they might have hung over the summer cottage. 

‘Did you turn the gas off?’ ‘Yes papa.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes papa, don’t worry.’

Juniper. The perfume materialises, a butterfly lighting on a berry somewhere, enough to transport the atoms. At his feet, his own little pansies gazed shyly up at him, their dragon faces her favourites. Far off, the distant drone of a Norton, chickens and children echoing closer, wisps of a bonfire dispelled the juniper with an atmosphere of its own, taking over the night.

“Zhere he iss! Dass Jew”

“Whur?”

“He iss standing in hiss doorvay. Shhh - he must not see us!”

Lenny picked up the thread of the game.

“Yavole, mine kapitain!”

Lenny picked at the bark of the stick he held. Fred fumbled with the twine in his pocket. They watched from the oak tree set in the remnants of a field, captured by the concrete. They watched as the door closed, leaving the doorstep lightless, the garden in shadow. They watched for more minutes, watched the stars and the sky, listening for prey.

“Look! Thur it be!”

The cat came scrabbling over a neighbour’s interwoven fence, landing softly among the pansies. Up went the pads, pawing away at the council paint, scratched and worn by the habit.

“Quick!”

Fred and Lenny scuttled from their cover, accents abandoned, calling the cat with whispers.

“Puss, puss, puss. Here, puss.”

The cat shied away, but Fred was too fast.

“Got it!” he hissed triumphantly. He held the squirming cat aloft by its scruff, and he and Lenny dashed off into the oaken shadows with their prize.

“We should have brung a bag.”

“I knows where we can get one. Quick!”

Fred was off again, the cat wriggling and drawing blood from his arm. The distance from the tree to Vic’s coal yard was not far. Down the alley between eighty-one and seventy-nine they ran, toward the railway line and the coal yard.

“Shin up and grab a sack. Go on.”

Lenny threw himself at the wire mesh fence and scrabbled up and over to the great mound of ovoids that were piled up against the fence. He slid down to the ground, a thick layer of gritty fuels crunching under his shoes. He quickly located a pile of grimy hessian sacks weighted down with a length of sleeper. He pulled at the rough material and several sacks came loose, sending billowing clouds of coal dust into the air, covering Lenny with black.

“Bloody hell! It be all over I.”

He spat out globules of black spittle that burst like blisters at the corner of his mouth. He scrambled back up the side of the ovoid mountain and dropped down with a thud on Fred’s side of the fence. The cat was struggling less, hanging limp in the curious way of a captured beast. Playing dead. Lenny held the rough sack open and the struggle began anew.

The cat was already dead and bloodied by the time they reached the deserted halt, the broken platform bumping under the hessian cruelly. The halt was haunted with the acrid odours of an abandoned convenience, overgrown with a tangle of woodbine and dog-rose.

“I aint pulling the stick out!”

“It were your stick. Your idea.”

“Well I aint pullin’ it out!”

There were rats among the broken tiles and old tickets. One scampered across a shaft of moonlight sending the boys running back toward the coal yard. They saw the light of a bicycle coming toward them, so they turned on their heels and ran back toward the haunted halt, toward the infested undergrowth, toward their crime.

“I’ll do it then.” said Fred, panting heavily. He opened the neck of the sack and felt gingerly inside.

“Oh bloody hell. It’s all wet an’ horrible!”

An hour later Fred and Lenny were asleep, soiling the sheets of a single bed in the house near the level crossing. The house was deserted, the meter empty, the electricity temporarily disconnected, the remains of a coal stained Sunblest lying on the draining board.

Midnight. The Farthing’s knew where to drink until the early hours, with the drunken few, the pissed policeman, the alcoholic landlord, the track through the poppy field that led them there, accessible by foot alone. Or by bike. The bobby whistled a crooked path along the edge of the field and hoisted his bicycle over the stile, up the stairs of the grey iron bridge, pausing to urinate on to the track and a goods train that began and finished its passage before the policeman was done.

He was gone before the Farthings pinched and punched their way home, the unconscious landlord behind them, their consumption scratched in chalk upon a slate. Home, they did not bother to check if the boys were asleep, or if they were there at all.

At four, the Stonehouse Dairy was alive with activity and the clink of the glistening bottles as they made their way under the jets of water. The rounds were due to begin. The crates filled with skittle sized pint bottles, others with the half-pints. But there was blood ahead.

“Oh my god!” the milkman retched and turned away from the polished step, all Cardinal red.

Fred  woke at ten, stretching and yawning, blinking in the brilliant sunlight that flooded the bedroom. The Bristol express thundered by, shaking the house, shifting another day’s worth of dust. He slid from between the warm sheets and pulled on yesterday’s clothes. There was nothing else.

“Len, come on, shift yourself. Get I some tea.”

Lenny looked like an angel, his tousled hair curling on his pillow, his grubby face smooth and innocent. He woke with a jolt and sat up instantly, like an animal aware of a nearing predator. Fred  pulled the thin sheets from the bed and rolled them into a ball.

“Hurry up! I wanna cuppa.”

“Whur’s Mum?”

“I don’t bloody know. Come on, you lump.”

Downstairs the sink was piled up with used crockery. The rancid smell of burnt butter hung around the kitchen, the Sunblest was gone. There was nothing in any of the cupboards. Nothing except a packet of Typhoo and a jar of white sugar.

See if the milkman’s bin.” Fred shouted at Lenny who shuffled into the kitchen. There was milk on the doorstep. The foil tops had been prised open and in one of the bottles a good inch layer of yellow cream had been stolen.

“Wot we gonna do this mornin’?”

“Let’s go cross the fields to Standish. Go up the back by the farm. See if they apples be ready.?”

“It’s too early fer apples.”

“I dunno. We’ll fink of summat.”

“I’m hungry. Whur’s the bread?”

“Thur aint none.”

“Gis the sugar”

Fred  took the opened jar and dug into the crystals with a dessert spoon, shovelling the sugar into his mouth, filling his head with the sweet solace.

“Let I have some an’ all?

And they breakfasted on the sugar and milky tea; boosting their youthful summer energy many fold. Energised, they raced from the house and sprinted around the bend at Severn Road and through the Magpies’ car park, over the concrete and chain link fence and into the wilds of the thistled acres.

Roaming their fields, the boys missed the outcry at the dawn horror. There were tears and sedation and endless unanswered questions. Groups of housewives gathered at safe distances to stare across at the doorstep, waiting for a sign from heaven, a clue scribed like a vapour trail across the blue page. Curtains were drawn, keeping their questions at bay.

At noon the sun burned down fiercely, unhampered by cloud, firing the estate like a clay plate. The gossip had stopped, leaving small children to their intense games along the kerb. The Erinoid hooter blew a couple of minutes late, and after a moment more, the Bedford Van pulled away, the homecoming husband none the wiser.

And then the streets were empty. Little salad lunches served in cool kitchens up and down the road. Fred and Lenny sweltered in the stifling heat. They were still hungry. The fleeting hollow energy supplied by the sugar had left them listless and irritable. They lay under the shade of an apple tree its branches alive with wasps. The buzzing of the wings had a soporific effect on the boys, almost by design - for as soon as they neared drowsiness, several of the insects swooped down at them and brought them to their feet, hollering and beating the air with their dirty hands.

“Get off you bloody wappies. Get off I.”

Lenny slapped the back of his neck and squealed with pain as the dying wasp fought back.

“Ow our Fred , I been bloody stung!”

The sting rose lividly on his neck, a soldier’s scar. Fred , unscathed, looked on in helpless admiration. Lenny howled like a baby. The noise brought Fred  to his senses.

“Shut up, you babby. Like a bloody girl, you be!””

“I aint. It hurts.”

“You be! BABBY! BABBY!”

“I’ll tell our Mum.”

But his voice trailed off at the futile idea.

“Come on, babby.”

Fred ran between the gnarled apple trees toward the open meadowlands and Stonehouse. Fred sighted the Reddings as they approached Standish corner. The double-decker had just pulled away from the stop and there would twenty more minutes before the next bus arrived. The Reddings seemed abandoned, the street deserted. The end of the world. Dinnertime. Fred paused by the last stile before the village began and waited for Lenny to catch him up. Lenny had gathered a ragged bunch of wild flowers; cowslips, periwinkle, celandines, cow parsley. He dropped them at the stile. There was no one to give them to.

Fred had remembered Hughes. The General stores that serviced the Maisonette debtors with Methodist charity. Hughes would be at lunch too. Fred could picture the store, the racks of fruit and vegetables ranged outside on the pavement display. The shop stood on the High Street, on the corner of Woodcock Lane, bright summer vegetables shining in the strong sunlight, the striped blue and white awning furled tight. There were cauliflowers too, and Cox’s and Jonothans and hands of bananas all within reach; a veritable garden of Eden.

“Come on. Don’t shit yerself!”

They flew at the shop, blurs of jerseys and shorts, nimble fingers clutching at fruit, sending a pound or two spinning to bruise in the dust.

“Wot did you get?”

“A apple and a pear. Wot about you?”

“This!”

Fred held a hand of seven bananas proudly aloft.

“Bloody hell.” said Lenny.

“HEY! YOU TWO! COME BACK HERE!”

The voice of a lay preacher.

“Oh, bloody hell. RUN!”

“I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, YOU FARTHINGS. I”LL BE ALONG TO SEE YOUR MUM AND DAD!”

But Hughes wouldn’t. It would take more than a few bananas to make the trip worthwhile. Fred and Lenny ran with echoes following, through the dark pedestrian tunnel cut into the stone railway bridge that divided the village into the two halves; Maisonette and Wycliffe. They had disposed of the evidence by the time they emerged into the sunlight at the other end of the tunnel. Faces smeared with sticky fruit juice, the tunnel made unsafe with banana skins. The wasps were waiting.

“Oh bugger. RUN!”

And they ran like jets, raspberry engines spluttering through the quiet lunchtime estate. Out of breath and feeling slightly sick, they landed under the oak.

“I fergot the cat! Bloody hell!”

“I did an all.”

Fred and Lenny sat under the tree, legs splayed out, panting like dogs. They stared across at the old man’s house. They could just make out the scratched door. The doorstep had been cleaned and re-waxed. A small tin of Dulux with a brush balanced across the lid stood where the bottles had been.

“He’s gonna paint it off.”

“Old bugger.”

“We could paint summat up thur. If it were dark.”

“Could do it now. Nobody be about.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Betcha I would.”

“How much?”

“A fag. You get I a fag an’ I’ll do it.”

“Whur'd I get a fag?”

“I dunno. But you get one an’ I’ll do it!”

“All right then.”

With one brief pause for respite, Fred bounded into the sun under his cloak of invisibility. The act so audacious that none expected it.

At the doorstep he prised the lid off the paint tin with his penknife. The heady fumes wafted up around him. The paint was green. The same colour as the door. Of course it was. The doorstep. The blood red doorstep. Red and green should never be seen. Three letters. Down, curve to the left. Down, across, across, across. Down, up, down, up. For good measure he pushed the dripping brush firmly through the letterbox, staying long enough to hear the slap upon the linoleum, the snap as the letterbox closed. And then he was back with Lenny, swallowed by the shadows. He had been away for ninety seconds.

“Reckon anybody saw I?”

“Nah. I would have shouted.”

“You owe I a fag.”

“Wot did you paint?”

“Jew. Same as last night.”

“Ugh. Look at your ‘ands.”

Fred looked at his hands and was surprised to see them covered in green smears of paint.

“Ow do I get this muck off? They’ll know it were me.”

“I dunno.”

“Hang on. Our Dad’s got summat in the shed. Turps or summat. That’ll shift it.”

They ran off down Midland Road, under the blue sky, and the Erinoid hooter blew and the estate slowly came to life again, like a log shifted, freeing the woodlice.

The shed; the shed lay derelict against the overgrowth of the hedge, close to the line. The windows were dusty and cobwebbed, snail-trailed and cracked. Zinc hinges and a zinc bolt held the door in place, holding in the heat. Fred left green fingerprints on the zinc as he unleashed the violent beast of heat that burst out at them, singeing their skin and hair with its breath.

“Bugger me. It’s bloody hot in thur.”

The air in the shed hung heavy with a wealth of evaporating fumes; varnishes and emulsions, creosoted brushes and weed killers, meths and turpentine.

“Yer it be.”

Fred unscrewed the top of the glass bottle and doused his hands liberally with the oily fluid.

“Don’t half stink, don’t it?”

He rubbed his hands together, giving his hands an eerie green tint. He found an old duster to wipe his hands with.

“Do it burn, this stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s try.”

“Go an get some matches and we’ll have a go.”

Lenny scuttled off into the house. It was empty, inhabited only buy the burnt butter remains.

England’s Glory. Another joke. No. 309. Q. What are assets? A. Little donkeys!

“Fred. Fred! I don’t get this. You read it.”

He handed Fred the box and he read the joke. He burst out laughing, laughter that did not ring true.

“You’re too bloody thick to get this.”

He struck a match without warning and flames flared up around the litter on the floor.

“You silly bugger! Why didn’t you tell I you was gonna do that?”

Lenny looked on in horror as the flames grew from Fred’s fingers and hands. He held them out toward him, and Lenny wanted to scream. Fred stood in the doorway, barring Lenny’s escape, flicking his fingers at his face.

“Stop. STOP! I don’t like it. I be scared.”

“BABBY! BABBY!”

“STOP IT! STOP IT OUR FRED!” he screamed. ‘STOP!”

“It don’t hurt. Feel.”

But Lenny would never know. The flames died, the green glaze gone, the bottle empty, ready to be smashed.

“I’m famished!” Fred announced, turning and leaving Lenny sweating and trembling in the sweltering shed. There was nothing to eat in the house and Fred had lost his appetite for sugar. He ran a finger over all the likely cash dumps, without success; the lintels, the meter, the settee. He ran up the stairs and saw his parent’s heap of pub clothes lying across their unmade bed. Trousers. He felt in the pockets of his father’s trousers and located the milled edges of a half-crown and a shilling. In his excitement he called out to Lenny.

“Hey. Come yer. I found some money.”

He regretted his rashness at once. Now he would have to share.

“Oh bugger it!”

But there would be enough for chips and a fag or two. He stopped before the butterfly mirror and listened to the strange moaning that rippled the wallpaper on the party wall. He held the vision of pale moons and Snake Island in his head as he listened to the confession approaching absolution. Uh, uh, uh, as he watched his fist in the mirror, knees buckling under the effort. Sanctus. Sanctus. He closed his eyes in prayer and did not see Lenny watching him from the door. Among the cheap opaque glass trinkets on the dressing table was a stupider bottle half full of water. Holy water. Blessed by a pope. Lenny was downstairs again when Fred was done. Fred sank to the threadbare carpet and grabbed for the bottle. He removed the stopper and drained the bottle of the water. He felt sainthood trickle through him as the stagnant water ran down his throat. Through the wall silence throbbed.

Fred ran down from the bathroom and reached the hall before the flush stopped pouring. He clipped Lenny around the ears. Lenny was sitting at the kitchen table firing matchstick arrangements; donkeys with waving, smouldering tales.

“Come on Len. I got some money fer chips.”

“Whur’d you get it?”

“Don’t matter. I got it”

 It was on their way back from Mill’s, both with salty, shiny fingers and Sarsons breath that they saw Francis Trim sitting at the edge of the kerb across from the old man’s flat.

“He’s one and all!”

“Wot?”

“Like the old geezer.”

“It’s his granddad or summat, so he must be and all.”

Francis had been watching the council workers, shirtless and sweating, removing the old man’s door, unscrewing the pain-fast hinges. A fine new door leaned against the wall, unpainted, the colour of pure pine more pleasing than the drab green that was the rule.

“Wotcher Trimmy. Wot they doin’?”

The boy eyed the brothers with suspicion. He noticed slight traces of green in the life line of Fred’s palm. He looked too for blood.

“Wos it look like?”

The three of them watched the men lifting the new door into position, two of them, a third began to fix the hinges. The new door was hanging within a few moments. The men stopped work, the three of them, as each took a cigarette from a packet offered by the hinge man. They smoked slowly, wiping sweat from shoulders and brows, two of them sitting on the step. Women watched them from windows.

“Comin’ to play with us?”

“Wot you gonna play?”

“I dunno. Summat.”

“Yeah. All right.”

“We can make a den in the shed.”

The shed. Francis’ skin crawled. He liked the sound of the shed. The magpie in him brought him there, and the open doorway revealed a treasure. Muffin. Easy. Now or later. What a prize.

“I got some biscuits. Want one?”

Francis nodded. Fred pulled a packet of Marie biscuits from his shorts pocket. It was the final bait before pulling in the line. There was no need. Francis wanted to be inside the shed more than life itself. He wanted Muffin. Winter would have given him spacious voracious pockets to use, now there were just the shallow khaki ones.

“Let’s play Nazis an’ Jews.”

The skin crawled again. The shed door slammed shut. Fred’s weight pushing out the sunlight.

“Tie him up, Len.”

“No.”

This was wrong.

“No, don’t.”

Fred, eleven years old, grimy and smeared, towered over Francis Trim. He gripped him tight in a bear hug, allowing Lenny to bind his wrists behind him, bind his ankles below.

“No, don’t. I’ll tell me Mum.”

“Gag him.”

The turpentine duster. Francis was at once nauseous and light headed with the fumes. This was all wrong.

“He’s gotta have a number.”

“Wot do you mean?”

“They had numbers tattooed on their arms and things.”

The shed reeled and Francis closed his eyes. There was an ear-splitting explosion as another Staverton jet tore through the flimsy curtain.

“Wot was THAT?”

“End of the world.”

Fred had found a bent safety pin and some Quink in a box. He began the task of piercing Francis” skin just under the hem of his shorts on his left thigh.

“Wot number shall we give him?”

“I dunno. Nine, nine, nine. Summat like that.”

“That’s stupid.”

The pin was blunt, but sharp enough to draw blood. Nine. The ink smeared upon the wounds helped the pain subside, but it hurt. Worse, it humiliated, it sickened. It was no longer a game. It would never be a game again. Suddenly, the jet roared lower, grazing the village spires and chimneys,. But leaving the windows unshaken this time, a slower Passover, a deep-throated roar that churned the stomach. Another nine. Tears rolled down and splashed over Fred’s shaking hand.

“Shut up, you Jew cry babby!”

The last nine. Quink stains, blue-black and bloody.

“Looks good, I reckon.”

“Jew.” Lenny ventured.

“Right! Now you vill tell us your secrits. You are a traitor.”

This was not the game they had played. Clabberaters. This hurt. This was not the game. What’s the time Mister Wolf?

“You vill tell us all you know, or else!”

He was gagged and bound - what could he say. He was hog-tied and numbered. Where was the world?

“Zen ze tortures must begin.”

Fred leaned past Francis, quite close, and lifted the tangle of twine and metal over. Muffin. He removed his penknife and hacked away at the twine, severing each limb, letting each dismembered section fall with a clatter to the shed floor. He yanked at the waistband of Francis” shorts and pulled them down. They were stained dark with a broad damp patch.

“He’s wet himself!”

They stared down at Francis” midsection and gawked.

“He aint half different. Is that wot they looks like?”

Francis wanted death to take him.

“Bugger me.”

Fred took the heavy donkey head, paint flakes clinging to his damp hand. He wound the twine tight and pulled. Francis screamed a muffled scream as his sac felt the weight of the lead.

“Now his tongue.”

“Bloody hell, our Fred, we aint done nuffin like this before.”

Far off, rounding the Moreton Valence corner, the Nortons, the prizes of perfumed pillion girls clinging tight to leather belted midriffs. At seventy miles an hour they reached the Standish bus stop and slowed to sixty to negotiate the Reddings and the High Street, making it fifty as they roared under the railway bridge at the divide. There was a pause for the girls to alight at the War Memorial, wet kissing promising nappies and curlers and boiled cabbage. Two of the bikes reared up, heading back toward Gloucester, the third began the slow approach to the clear length of Midland Road, a mile of kerb ahead.

“I reckons he’s had enough, our Fred.”

The metal head was swinging gently between Francis’ legs, a hock swelling the tongue, slurring the scream. Fred stood behind him, shorts unbuttoned, and began the bear hug again, pushing his boycock hard against the boy’s buttocks and his tethered hands, rubbing himself to a crashing climax. After what seemed an aeon, Fred let the boy loose.

“OUT. GET OUT YOU JEWBOY GET OUT OUT OUT!”

Fred pushed at him like a wild thing, his eyes wide, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. Lenny cowered behind the mower, frightened of his brother’s sudden uncontrolled violence. Fred hacked at the twine binding the boy’s wrists and ankles with his penknife.

“OUT OUT OUT OUT”

“Fred.” Lenny whimpered, afraid.

Francis threw himself at the rectangle of white light that Fred had conjured up from nowhere. His eyes stung with the tears of real pain that few children ever know, a pain that a true god would relieve, but there was no god that day. Francis ran blindly, summer naked, shattering the headlight of the Norton with the force of the collision. The thick chain broke at the weakest link, lashing out and branding the boy, wrapping with a whiplash crack around the thin legs, dragging the bike over, it’s rider under the wheels, the boy skidding behind in a high screen of dust. The noise brought everyone running from their homes.

No one escaped the scream and the grinding groan of the buckling metal. To watch the dust cloud thrown, from eighty-one to seventeen, was to watch a film in the flea-pit, broken, slowing down, slow-motion, just before the slow handclaps began. There was a brief second of nothing, the point of the pendulum that hangs motionless at the peak of its swing, before falling once more and setting time irreversibly to rights.

Fred and Lenny ran out of the shed to see what the new noise was all about. There had been jets and bells and the Bristol Express - this must be the end of the world at last. They saw the workmen first, backs glistening as they ran shouting along the straight road toward the awful sound - neither human nor machine, a little of both. Others ran too, the little children from the kerb, the women, the priest and slower than the others, the old man.

There was blood, a thin smear, and oil, all the way from eighty-one to seventeen. There was blood and there was oil and there were gasps and shouts and barking dogs, and above the rolling scene, the jet returned to split the sky, cracking the clay plate.

“Mrs. Gull’s got a phone. Quick!”

Mrs. Gull had a phone, one of the few, but Mrs. Gull was basking in the sun in a deckchair in Pittville gardens listening to Sousa.

“Her isn’t home.”

“Mawhood’s have got one. Run up thur.”

The council men couldn’t wait. They began the untangling of metal and flesh, dripping sweat onto the chrome.

“You mustn’t move him.”

“We’ll have to.”

“Are you all right, mate?”

Someone addressed the biker. He sat dazed, rubbing his jaw, staring at the bike.

“I’m all right. What about the kid? He just come flying at me.”

Leather had saved the biker from injury. The zips had clipped the asphalt, spitting sparks.

“Watch him. Careful. He’s bad.”

“We shouldn’t move him.”

The mother ran to meet them, called from a neighbour’s kitchen, gulping in the news. Hysterically she led them, the bloodied body limp and torn, all the way from seventeen to eighty-one. The old man stood by, his skin turning grey, his body bloodless. He could see his baby, broken and abused, the triad sweating and cursing, such a sun blazing down as brashly then. That death could come on so perfect an afternoon was beyond his reasoning. The biker limped to the kerb and found his balance at the gate of seventeen. He watched the procession bearing the sacrifice silently away.

“Cup of tea’s what you need, me dear, in you comes.”

“He just run at me. I didn’t see him. He come flying at me out of nowhere.”

They laid him out at eighty-one on the double bed in the sunless bedroom at the back of the house. Blood poured from the wound and soaked the sheet and the mattress underneath. Outside on the pavement Lenny was blubbering and Fred had lost his tan and bit his lip, drawing out a bead of blood that tasted of bitter aloes.

“He’s bloody dead, our Fred. We did it.” Lenny choked out.

“Bloody shut up, our Len. Shut up.”

“They’ll hang us if he’s dead. What’re we gonna do, our Fred?”

His words were drowned by the sound of the black Morris that pulled up at the curb. The tall driver walked quickly through the gathered crowds, leaving a wisp of gin on the air. Around the bed, the Mother, the old man, the neighbour, the council men and now, the doctor. The Mother could not speak, the old man comforting her with his droning foreign words, a council man supplied the details.

“He should not have been moved. A blanket over him would have sufficed. He should not have been moved.”

The doctor bent down to listen for a heartbeat,. There was none. He applied his lips to the lips of the boy and breathed his gin soaked breath into the lifeless lungs.

“Oh god, he’s dead!” the Mother screamed.

Then silence; the hum of the growing crowd beyond the curtain, the heavy breathing of the watchers in the room, the steady sighs of the doctor, and once more the apocalyptic explosion as the jet breached the sound barrier at a thousand feet a second. The windows rattled with the violence of the shifting air.

“He’s breathing.” said the doctor, quietly. “He’s alive.”

The jet was heading back to Staverton as the ambulance turned in at the War Memorial. The siren could be heard from there. Lenny and Fred watched helplessly by as the ambulance men carried the stretcher like a furled umbrella into the house, to reappear moments later with its bloody passenger.

“Mind the way boys - mind the way.” said one of the ambulance men.

Lenny and Fred shuffled backwards, and caught the gaze of the old man. He stared at their frightened faces, reading some of the truths that hid there. Fred retched slightly and turned on his heels. He grabbed Lenny’s jersey and tugged him after him as he began the breakneck chase toward home. They ran with the abandon of children, light, skimming steps that flung them forward along the hot grey pavement. The level crossing gates were closed as they rounded the bend. Lenny slowed instinctively as another express roared toward the crossing. Fred flew on, fury fuelling his feet as the train roared by before him. He ran at the wheels, the decapitating wheels, impaling himself on the wire mesh barrier that held him from death.

“Fred! Fred!” Lenny screamed above the steam and rumbling. He stood behind his brother, not daring to disturb him, not daring to look as he hung sobbing over the white wooden gate.

“GO AWAY. Get away from me. Go on.”

Fred sobbed. Lenny kicked his way sullenly into the dirty kitchen. He sucked at a teaspoon of sugar as he filled the kettle. The milk had been left in the window and had turned sour in the sun. Fred entered the kitchen a few minutes late, his dirty face streaked and red from tears. He stamped upstairs and slammed the bathroom door behind him.