Blackberry Wine

46

Nether Edge, Summer 1977

AFTER HE LEFT GILLY, JAY SAT BY THE BRIDGE FOR A WHILE, feeling angry and guilty and certain she would come after him. When she didn’t appear, he lay in the wet grass for a while, relishing the bitter smells of earth and weeds, and looked into the sky until the falling drizzle made him dizzy. He began to feel cold, so he got up and began to make his way back to Pog Hill along the disused railbed, stopping every now and then to examine something by the side of the tracks, more out of habit than real interest. He was so lost in his brooding that he completely failed to hear, or see, the four figures which emerged silently from the trees at his back and fanned out behind him in pursuit.

By the time he saw them it was too late. Glenda was there, and two of her mates: the skinny blonde – he thought her name was Karen – and a younger girl, Paula – or was it Patty? – ten or eleven, maybe, with pierced ears and a mean, sulky mouth. They were already moving across his path to cut him off, Glenda to one side, Karen and Paula to the other. Their faces shone with rain and eagerness. Glenda’s eyes met his across the track and they were gleaming. For a moment she looked almost pretty.

Worse still, Zeth was with her.

For a second or two Jay froze. The girls were nothing special. He had outrun, outtalked and outbluffed them before, and there were only three of them. They were familiar, part of the Edge, like the open-cast mine or the scree above the canal lock; a natural hazard, like the wasps – something to be treated with caution but not fear.

Zeth was another matter.

He was wearing a Status Quo T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A pack of Winstons was tucked in one sleeve. His hair was long, flapping around his thin, clever face. His acne had cleared up, but there were deep marks on his cheeks where it had been – initiation scars, channels for crocodile tears. He was grinning.

‘Astha been pickin on my sister?’

Jay was already running before he finished his sentence. It was the worst possible place to be cornered; high above the canal and its many hiding places, the straight, open railbed lay in front of him like a desert. The bushes on either side were too thick to squeeze through, too small to offer protection. A deep ditch and a screen of bushes hid him from even the closest houses. His sneakers skidded dangerously on the gravel. Glenda and her mates were in front of him, Zeth was a heartbeat behind. Jay took the best option, dodging the two girls and making straight for Glenda. She stepped out to intercept him, her meaty arms held out as if fielding a wide ball, but he pushed her with all his strength, shouldering her aside like an American footballer, and hurtled free down the abandoned tracks. Behind him he heard Glenda wail. Zeth’s voice pursued him, ominously close: ‘Tha little bastard!’

Jay didn’t look round. There was a railway bridge and a cutting about a quarter of a mile from Pog Hill, with a path leading up onto the street. There would be other paths, too, leading to the cutaway and waste ground beyond. If he could only get there… The bridge wasn’t far. He was younger than Zeth, and lighter. He could outrun him. If he could reach the bridge there would be places to hide.

He glanced over his shoulder. The gap between them had widened. Thirty or forty yards separated them. Glenda was back on her feet and running, but in spite of her size Jay wasn’t worried about her. She looked out of breath already, her overlarge breasts bobbing ludicrously under her straining shirt. Zeth was jogging quite slowly next to her, but as Jay looked round he put on a sudden, terrifying burst of speed, his arms pumping, gravel spraying up fiercely around his ankles.

Jay was beginning to feel dizzy now, his breath a hot stone. He could see the bridge just around the curve of the line, and the row of poplars which marked the abandoned points. Five hundred yards would do it.

Joe’s talisman was still in his pocket. He could feel it against his hip as he ran, and he felt dim relief that he’d brought it along. He could just as easily have forgotten it. He had been too busy that summer, too snarled up in himself to think very much about magic.

He just hoped it still worked.

He reached the bridge, with the gap between them widening, and cast about for somewhere to hide. Too risky to try the steep path up towards the road. Jay was winded by now, and there was maybe fifty feet of twisting dirt path before the road and safety. He clenched his fist over Joe’s talisman and took the opposite direction, the one they wouldn’t expect him to take, under the bridge and behind, towards Pog Hill. There was a swathe of willowherb gone to seed behind the rail arch, and he bobbed down in it, head pounding, heart tight with dark exaltation.

He was safe.

From his hideout he could hear voices. Zeth’s sounded close, Glenda’s more remote, thickened by distance, rebounding over the empty space between the bridge and the cutaway.

‘Wheer the bleedinell izzy?’

Jay could hear him on the other side of the arch, imagined him checking the path, measuring distances. He made himself small under the waving white heads of the willowherb.

Glenda’s voice, breathy with running.

‘Thaz lost ’im, tha beggar!’

‘ ’Ave not. He’s here somewhere. He can’t have gone far.’

Minutes passed. Jay clung to the talisman as they went over the area. Joe’s talisman. It had worked before. He had not fully believed in it then, but he knew better now. He believed in magic. He truly believed in magic. He heard a sound as someone crunched over the accumulated litter in the space underneath the bridge. Footsteps crossed the gravel. But he was safe. He was invisible. He believed.

‘Iz ere!’

It was the ten-year-old, Paula-or-Patty, standing waist-deep in the foamy weeds.

‘Quick, Zeth, gettim! Gettim!’

Jay began to back off towards the bridge, clouds of white seeds puffing away with every move he made. The talisman dangled loosely from his fingers. Glenda and Karen rounded the curve of the arch, faces sweaty. There was a deep ditch just beyond the arch, ripe with late-summer nettles. No escape that way. Then Zeth came from under the bridge, took his arm, drew Jay towards him by the shoulders in a dreadfully matey, not-to-be-refused gesture of welcome, and smiled.

‘Gotcha.’

The magic had finally run out.

Jay didn’t like to think about what happened after that. It existed in a curious silence, like some dreams. First they pulled off his T-shirt and pushed him, kicking and screaming, into the ditch where the nettles bloomed. He tried to climb out, but Zeth kept pushing him back, the leaves raising welts which would itch and burn for days. Jay put his arms up to cover his face, thinking remotely, How come this never happens to Clint, before someone yanked him up by the hair and Zeth’s voice said, very gently, ‘Now it’s my turn, yer bastard.’

In a story he would have fought back. He didn’t. He would at least have shown defiance, some hint of desperado swagger. His heroes all did.

Jay was no hero.

He began to scream before he felt the first blow. Perhaps that was how he escaped a serious beating. It could have been worse, he thought as he assessed the damage later. A bloody nose, some bruises, both the knees of his jeans taken out from a skid across the railbed. The only thing broken was his watch. Later he came to understand that there had been something more, something more serious, more permanent than a watch, or even a bone broken that day. It was to do with faith, he thought dimly. Something inside had been broken and could not be mended.

As Joe might have said, the art was gone.

He told his mother he’d fallen off his bike. It was a plausible lie – plausible enough, anyway, to explain his shredded jeans and swollen nose. She didn’t fuss as much as Jay had feared; it was late, and everyone was watching a rerun of Blue Hawaii, part of the Elvis post-mortem season.

Slowly he put his bike away. He made himself a sandwich and took a can of Coke from the fridge, then he went to his room and listened to the radio. Everything seemed speciously normal, as if Gilly, Zeth and Pog Hill were already a long time in the past. The Stranglers were playing ‘Straighten Out’.

Jay and his mother left that weekend. He didn’t say goodbye.