Blackberry Wine

22

Nether Edge, Summer 1977

ZETH HADN’T CHANGED. JAY WOULD HAVE RECOGNIZED HIM instantly, even without the rifle crooked into his arm, though in a year he seemed to have grown much taller, his long hair tied back now in a thin pigtail. He was wearing a denim jacket, with GRATEFUL DEAD written across the back in biro, and engineer’s boots. From his hiding place above the canal Jay could not tell if he was alone or not. As he watched, Zeth raised his rifle and took aim at something just beyond the towpath. Some ducks which had been sitting by the water sprayed upwards, their wings going like clapperboards. Zeth yelled and fired again. The ducks went crazy. Jay stayed where he was. If Zeth wanted to shoot ducks, he thought, that was his business. He wasn’t going to interfere. But as he watched he began to have his doubts. Zeth seemed to be firing not at the canal, but somewhere beyond. Past the trees and towards the river, though the terrain there was far too open for birds. Rabbits, maybe, thought Jay, though with the noise he was making, surely any animal would have already fled. He narrowed his eyes against the lowering sun, trying to make out what Zeth was doing. The bigger boy fired again, twice, and reloaded. Jay realized he was Standing in almost exactly the same place he himself usually hid to watch…

The gypsies.

Zeth must have been firing at the washing line strung between the nearest two caravans, for one end already trailed limply into the grass, like a bird’s broken wing, flapping half-heartedly in the wind. The dog, tethered in its usual place, set up a strident barking. Jay thought he caught sight of something moving at the window of one of the caravans, a curtain pulled aside briefly and a face, pale, blurry, eyes wide in anger or dismay before the curtain was yanked back in place. There was no further movement from the caravans, and Zeth laughed again and began to reload. Now Jay could hear what he was shouting.

‘Gypp-o-oh! Gypp-o-oh!’

Well, Jay told himself, there was nothing he could do. Even Zeth wouldn’t be crazy enough to actually hurt anyone. Firing at a washing line, that was his style. Trying to frighten people. Making a fair job of it, too, he imagined. He thought of himself that first summer, crouching under the lock, and felt heat creep into his face.

Dammit, there was nothing he could do.

The gypsies were safe enough in their caravan. They’d wait it out until Zeth got tired or ran out of ammunition. He had to go home sometime. Besides, it was only an air rifle. You couldn’t do any real damage with an air rifle. Not really. Even if you hit a person.

I mean, what was he supposed to do, anyway?

Jay turned to go and let out a yelp of surprise. There was a girl crouching in the bushes not five feet behind him. He had been so absorbed watching Zeth that he hadn’t heard her approach. She looked about twelve. Under a bramble of red curls her face was small and blotchy, as if her freckles had been stretched out of shape in an attempt to save on skin. She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt so large that the sleeves flapped around her thin arms. In one hand she was carrying a grubby red bandanna, which looked to be filled with stones.

The girl was on her feet as quickly and silently as an Apache. Jay barely had time to react to her presence before she sent a stone whizzing through the air with incredible speed and accuracy to strike against his kneecap with an audible, agonizing crack. He gave another yell and fell over, clutching at his knee. The girl looked at him, a second stone ready in her hand.

‘Hey,’ protested Jay.

‘Sorry,’ said the girl, without putting down the stone.

Jay rolled up the leg of his jeans to inspect the injured knee. A bruise was already rising. He glared at the girl, who returned his gaze with a flat, unrepentant look.

‘You shouldn’t have turned round like that,’ said the girl. ‘You took me by surprise.’

‘Took you…!’ Jay struggled for speech.

The girl shrugged. ‘I thought you was with him,’ she said, jerking her small chin fiercely in the direction of the lock. ‘Using our caravan and poor old Toffee as target practice.’ Jay rolled back his trouser leg.

‘Him! He’s no friend of mine,’ he said indignantly. ‘He’s crazy.’

‘Oh. Ok.’

The girl returned the stone to the bandanna. Another two rifle shots sounded, followed by Zeth’s ululating war cry, ‘Gypp-o-oh!’ The girl peered down warily through the bushes, then lifted a branch and prepared to slide underneath and down the banking.

‘Hey, wait a minute.’

‘What?’

The girl barely glanced back. In the shadow of the bush her eyes were golden, like an owl’s.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What do you think?’

‘But I told you already.’ Jay’s anger at her unprovoked attack had been replaced by alarm. ‘He’s crazy. You don’t want to have anything to do with him. He’ll get tired soon enough. He’ll leave you alone when that happens.’

The girl stared at him with undisguised contempt. ‘Spect that’s what you’d do?’ she demanded.

‘Well… yes.’

She made a sound which might have been amusement or scorn, and passed effortlessly under the branch, steadying herself with her free hand as she slid down the banking, braking with her heels when she reached the scree. Jay could see where she was heading. Fifty yards down the slope there was a cutaway, which opened out right over the lock. Red shale and loose stones smattered the banking where the hill had been opened. A screen of thin bushes provided cover. A tricky place to reach – if approached fast or carelessly you could ride the scree right off the edge onto the stones below – but it would provide her with a good place to launch her attack. If that was what she was planning. It was hard to believe that she was. Jay peered down the banking again and caught sight of her, much further down now, barely visible in the undergrowth except for her hair. Let her do it if she wanted, he told himself. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t warned her.

None of this really had anything to do with him.

It was none of his business.

Sighing, he picked up the coalbox with its three-day load and began to scramble down the rocky path behind the girl.

He took the other path to the ash pit, shielded from view most of the way by bushes. In any case, he thought, Zeth wasn’t looking. He was too busy shooting and yelling. Easy enough, then, to get across the open expanse of the ash pit and under the concealed lip beyond. It wasn’t as good a hiding place as the girl’s, but it would have to do, and with two of them against one even Zeth might have to concede defeat. If it was two against one. Jay tried not to think about any friends Zeth might have in the area, maybe just within shouting distance.

He put down the can of coal chunks and settled himself close to the edge of the ash pit. Zeth sounded very close now; Jay could hear his breathing and the snicking sound of his rifle as he broke it to reload. Glancing swiftly over the edge of the ash pit he could see him, too, the back of his head and a slice of profile, his neck glaring with acne, his flag of greasy hair. Above the lock there was no sign of the girl, and he wondered, in sudden anxiety, whether she had gone. Then he saw a flicker of something red above the cutting and a stone zipped out of the bushes, hitting Zeth on the arm. Jay knew a moment’s amazement at the accuracy of the girl’s aim before Zeth swung round with a roar of pain and surprise. Another stone hit him in the solar plexus, and as he whipped round towards the cutting Jay threw two chunks of coal at his back. One hit, the other missed, but Jay felt a hot rush of exhilaration as he ducked down again.

‘Kill you, you fucker!’ Zeth’s voice sounded both very close and horrifyingly adult, a teenage troll in disguise. Then the girl fired again, hitting him on the ankle, missing once, then scoring a direct hit on the side of his head, making a sound like a pool cue potting the ball.

‘You leave us alone, then!’ yelled the girl from her eyrie above the lock. ‘Bloody well leave us alone, you bastard!’

Now Zeth had seen her. Jay saw him move a little closer to the cutting, his rifle in his hand. He could see what Zeth was doing. He would try to move under the overhang and out of sight, reload, then jump out firing. He’d be firing blind, but all the same. Jay looked over the edge of the ash pit and took aim. He hit Zeth between the shoulder blades as hard as he could.

‘Get lost!’ he shouted deliriously, firing another coal chunk over the lip of the pit. ‘Go pick on someone else!’

But it had been a mistake to show himself so openly. Jay saw Zeth’s eyes widen in recognition.

‘Well, well, well.’ Zeth had changed after all. He’d broadened out, his shoulders fulfilling the promise of his height. He looked fully adult to Jay now, fully grown and ferocious. He smiled and began to move closer to the ash pit, rifle levelled. He kept under the overhang now, so that the girl could not target him. He was grinning. Jay threw another two pieces of coal, but his aim was off target and Zeth kept on coming.

‘Get away!’

‘Or what?’ Zeth was close enough to see clearly into the ash pit now, with one eye on the overhang which shielded him. His grin looked like a bone sickle. He levelled his rifle with a quizzical, almost a gentle smile. ‘Or what, eh? Or what?’ Desperately Jay lobbed the remaining chunks of coal at him, but his aim was gone. They bounced off the bigger boy’s shoulders like bullets off a tank. Jay looked into the barrel of Zeth’s rifle. It was only an air rifle, his mind repeated, only an air rifle, only a poxy pellet gun. It’s not as if it were a Colt or a Luger or anything, and anyway, he wouldn’t dare shoot.

Zeth’s finger tightened on the trigger. There was a click. At this range the gun didn’t look poxy at all. It looked deadly.

Suddenly there was a sound from behind him and a flurry of small rocks slid from the cutaway, scattering down onto his head and shoulders. Zeth must have stepped out of the shelter of the overhang, Jay realized, into The Girl’s sights again. Funny, that leap into proper-noun status. He moved back towards the edge of the pit, never taking his eyes off Zeth. His assumption that it was The Girl throwing stones from her bandanna had to be wrong: these were not isolated flung stones, but dozens – make that hundreds – of pebbles, shards, gravel chunks, small rocks and the occasional larger one falling down the banking in a cloud of ochre dust. Something had dislodged a part of the overhang and scree was shooting off the edge in a gathering rockslide. Above the scar he could see something moving – an oversized T-shirt, no longer very white, topped by a carroty tangle of hair. She was on her hands and knees on the banking, rabbit-kicking at the scree for all she was worth, dislodging chunks of rock and soil and dust, which fragmented onto the stones below, pelting Zeth with earth and stones and acrid orange powder. Behind the sound of falling rubble Jay could just hear her thin, fierce voice screaming triumphantly, ‘Eat shit, you bastard!’

Zeth was taken completely off-balance by the attack. Dropping his rifle, his first instinct was to take shelter under the cutaway, but although the overhang protected him from thrown missiles it did nothing against the rock-fall, and he stumbled, choking, right into the thick of the falling scree. He swore, holding his arms protectively above his head, as chunks of rock suddenly came down on top of him. One piece the size of a housebrick caught him on the bony part of his elbow, and at that Zeth abruptly lost all interest in the fight. Coughing, choking and blinded by dust, clasping his injured arm to his stomach, he stumbled out from under the overhang. There came a triumphant war cry from above, followed by another avalanche of small rocks, but the battle was already won. Zeth flung a single murderous glance over his shoulder and fled. He ran up the side path until he reached the top, and only then did he stop to howl his defiance.

‘Thar fuckin dead, atha listenin?’ His voice rolled off the stones at the canal side. ‘If I ever see thee again, tha fuckin dead!’

The Girl gave a mocking yell from the trees.

Zeth fled.