Guilty One

6

After school he made his way back to Minnie’s house. He walked slowly, his satchel hanging off his shoulders and his tie loose. He picked up a stick to beat the grass on either side of his path. He was tired and thinking about his mam. He remembered her sitting in front of the mirror in her bedroom and putting her eyeliner on and asking him if he thought she looked like Debbie Harry. She looked pretty with her make-up on.

He blinked twice as he remembered the eyeliner running down her cheek and the lop-sided smile when she injected. She didn’t look pretty then.

He looked up and saw the kestrel again, hovering over the moor. Daniel stood and watched as it snatched a field mouse from the grass and carried it off.

He didn’t hear them come up behind him, but someone pushed his right shoulder, hard, and he lurched forward. He turned and there were three boys.

‘Oi, new lad!’

‘Fuck off an’ leave me alone.’

He turned but they pushed him again. He tightened his fist but he knew he would get chinned if he went for them. There were too many of them. He stood still and let his satchel fall to the ground.

‘Like living with the old witch, do ya?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘What you doin’ that for? You a poof? Oooo!’ The biggest lad wiggled his hips and rubbed his palms against his chest. Daniel’s knife was in his bag but there was no time to get it. He charged the big lad instead and hit him in the stomach with his head.

He hurt him.

The lad retched as if he might throw up, but the other two boys pulled Daniel down. They kicked his body, legs, arms and face. Daniel put his elbows over his face but the boy who had called him a poof grabbed his hair and pulled his head right back. Daniel felt his chin lifted and his neck stretch. The boy’s fist smashed into Daniel’s nose. Daniel heard the crack and tasted the blood.

They left him bleeding in the grass.

Daniel stayed curled up in a ball until he heard their voices fade. There was blood in his mouth and his body hurt all over. His arms started to tingle and itch. When he squinted at his forearm he saw that it was covered in white spots. He was lying in a bed of nettles. He rolled over and on to his knees. He wasn’t crying but his eyes were watering and he wiped them with the raised nettle sting on his forearm. The tears seemed to help the sting for a moment and then the itch returned.

An older man walked past with his dog. It was a Rottweiler and it snarled at him, saliva and wrinkled nose. The bark and snap of its chain made Daniel jump. He got to his feet.

‘You all right there, lad?’ the man asked, looking backwards at Daniel as he walked on.

Daniel turned and ran.

He ran across the Dandy to Brampton station. He didn’t have money for the bus or the train, but he knew the way to Newcastle. He ran holding his side where he had been kicked, and then walked for a few strides before trying to run again.

Cars growled past with such speed that it affected his balance. His mind was blank, reduced to the pain in his nose, the ache in his side, the blood in his throat, the angry sting on his arm and the lightness of himself, burnt out and lifted up like papers in a chimney. The blood from his nose had dried on his chin and he rubbed it off. He couldn’t breathe through his nose but he didn’t want to touch it in case it bled again. He was cold. He rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and buttoned the cuffs. His nettle-skin rubbed, swollen, against the cotton of his shirt.

Home. He wanted to be with her, wherever she was. The social worker had told him that she was out of hospital. He would be home when she welcomed him, when she took him into her arms. He almost turned back, but then he pictured her again. He forgot the cars and the hard road and the blood in his throat. He remembered his mam putting her make-up on and the smell of her, all talcum powder after her bath. It made him forget the cold.

He was thirsty. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He tried to forget his thirst and remember instead the tingle of her fingers through his hair. How long was it, he tried to remember, since she had done that? His hair had been cut several times. Had she even touched this hair that now grew on his head?

He was walking along, counting months on his fingers, when a van drew up beside him.

Daniel stood well back. The driver was a man with long hair and tattoos on his forearm. He rolled down the window and leaned over to shout to him.

‘Where you headed, lad?’

‘Newcastle.’

‘Hop in then.’

Daniel knew the man could be a nutter but he climbed up beside him anyway. He wanted to see his mam again. The man was listening to the radio and it was loud enough that Daniel didn’t feel the need to talk. The man drove with his hands folded over the steering wheel. The muscles in his arms flexed when he turned the wheel. He smelled of old sweat and the van was dirty, full of crushed cans and empty cigarette packets.

‘Eeeh, man, better put your seatbelt on, eh?’

Daniel did as he was asked.

The man bit a cigarette out of the packet that was on the dashboard and asked Daniel to hand him the lighter that was by his feet. Daniel watched the man light his cigarette. He had a tattoo of a naked lady on his arm and a scar like a burn on his neck.

The man rolled the window down and exhaled smoke out into the air that rushed behind them.

‘You want one?’

Biting his lip, Daniel took a cigarette. He lit it and rolled his window down as the man had done. He put one foot up on the seat and let his left arm rest on the open window. Daniel smoked like that, feeling free and bitter and wild and alone. The cigarette made his eyes water. He laid his head back as the rush hit him. He felt sick, as he always did when he had a cigarette, but he knew he wouldn’t throw up.

‘What you up to in Newcastle, then?’

‘Just going to see me mam.’

‘Got yerself in a scrap, did ye?’

Daniel shrugged and took another drag.

‘You’ll be able to clean yerself up when you get home, like.’

‘Aye.’

‘What would you’ve done if I hadn’t stopped?’

‘Just walk.’

‘Eeeh, that’s a long way, lad. Take you all night.’

‘I’m not bothered, but thanks for the lift all the same.’

The man laughed and Daniel didn’t know why he was laughing. The man’s front teeth were broken. He finished his cigarette and then flicked it out of the window. Daniel watched the red sparks of the discarded cigarette leave them. He too wanted to toss his cigarette but it was only smoked halfway. Daniel thought he might get in trouble for wasting it. He took another few drags then flicked it out of the window when the man leaned out of his truck to hawk and spit.

‘Will yer mam have your tea on, then?’

‘Aye.’

‘What does she make for you?’

‘She makes … roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.’

His mother had only ever made him toast. She made good cheese on toast.

‘Roast beef on a Tuesday? My, I need to come live with you. That’s not bad, that is. Where am I dropping you?’

‘Just the centre. Wherever’s easier.’

‘I can take you home, like, man? I’m overnight in Newcastle. I want you home in time for your roast beef, don’t I? Where are you?’

‘The Cowgate, it’s …”

The man laughed again, and Daniel frowned at him. ‘Yer a’right, man. I know the Cowgate, like. I’ll take you there.’

Daniel felt cold when he was dropped off. The man left him at the roundabout and hooted his horn as he drove away.

Daniel pulled his shoulders up against the cold and ran the rest of the way: down Ponteland Road and along Chestnut Avenue on to Whitethorn Crescent. His mam had been living there for the past two years. Social services had allowed him to spend a night with her there a few months ago. It was a white house on the end of a row, next to two red-brick houses that were boarded up. He ran towards it. His nose was starting to bleed again and it hurt when he ran, so he slowed down. He put his hand up to touch it. It felt too big, like someone else’s nose. Even with his nose blocked with blood, he could still smell the cigarette off his fingers. His satchel was jumping up and down on his shoulders, so he let it fall off and ran with it in one hand.

He stopped at the path to the house. The glass was broken in all the windows, and the upstairs window was gone; everything inside was black. He frowned up at her window. It was getting dark, but the window looked blacker than all the other unlit windows. The grass in the garden was tall as his knees and growing all over the path. He took giant steps through the grass to the side door. The grass was littered with objects: a flattened traffic cone, an upturned baby’s pram, an old shoe. He could hear a dog barking. He was breathing hard.

He paused at the door before he turned the handle. His heart was thudding and he bit his lip. There would be no roast beef. Still he thought about her throwing open the door and holding him. Maybe she didn’t have a boyfriend just now. Maybe her friends weren’t round. Maybe she was clean. Maybe she would make him toast and they would sit on the couch together watching Crown Court. He felt a strange burning in his chest. He held his breath.

When he opened the door and stepped into the hall, it smelled damp and charred. He peered inside the living room but everything was black. He didn’t cry. He walked inside. The kitchen was gone. He placed a hand on the wall and then looked at his black palm. The air was still damp with smoke and it caught the back of his throat. In the living room, the couch was scorched to a spring skeleton. He climbed upstairs. The carpet squelched with water and the banister was charred. The bath and the sink were black with soot. In one of the bedrooms, the glass of the mirror wardrobe was broken, but he managed to slide the door open a little. Her clothes were still inside, unburnt. Daniel slipped inside the wardrobe and pressed her dresses against his face. He slid down to crouch among her shoes and sandals. He put his forehead against his knees.

He didn’t know how long he was crouched in the wardrobe, but after a while he heard someone on the stairs. They were walking from room to room shouting, ‘Is anyone in here?’

Daniel wanted to find out where his mother had gone, but when he walked into the passage a man grabbed him by the collar and pushed him against the wall. The man was only a little taller than Daniel. He was wearing a white vest. Daniel could smell the man’s salt sweat over the charred smell of the house. The man’s stomach pressed against Daniel as he held him to the wall.

‘What the hell are you doin’ in ’ere?’ the man said. ‘Scram, go on.’

‘Where did me mam go?’

‘Yer mam? Who’s yer mam?’

‘She lived here, her clothes’re still here.’

‘The junkies burned the place down, didn’t they? Out of it, all of them. They didn’t even know the place was on fire. I had to call the fire brigade. The whole bloody row could’ve gone up.’

‘What about me mam?’

‘I don’t know anything about yer mam. They took them all out on stretchers – still bloody out of it probably. One of ’em were burnt to a crisp. It were right disgusting. Couldn’t tell if it were man or woman.’

Daniel twisted away from him and ran down the stairs. He could hear the man calling after him. He started to cry on the way down and then he slipped and fell down a few of the steps. He scraped his arm, but he didn’t really feel it. He got up and ran out of the door and through the grass, stumbling again on the traffic cone. His feet slapped on the pavement. He didn’t know where he was running, but he was running as fast as he could. His satchel must have fallen off somewhere, in the wardrobe or on the stairs, and he felt light and fast without its uneven weight. He ran right down Ponteland Road.

It was dark and he was sitting on the kerb on the West Road when a policewoman came up to him. He didn’t look at her, but when she asked him to go with her he went because he was tired out. At the station they called his social worker and she drove him back to Minnie’s house.

*

It was after ten by the time they arrived in Brampton. The town seemed so dark, the green of the fields black against the night sky. Daniel’s eyelids felt thick and he tried to keep them open as he looked out of the car window. Tricia was talking to him about running away and about borstal and how he would be going there if he couldn’t stay put. He didn’t turn to look at her as she spoke. The smell of her perfume hurt his nose and his head.

Minnie was standing outside her front door, with her big cardigan wrapped round her. Blitz ran up to Daniel when he got out of the car. Minnie reached out to him but he twisted away from her and walked into the house. The dog followed him. Daniel sat at the bottom of the stairs waiting for them to come in, playing with the dog’s ears, which were like squares of velvet. Blitz lay on his back so that Daniel could scratch his stomach and even though he was tired he got down on his knees to do it. The white hair on the dog’s stomach was dirty from the yard.

He could hear Minnie and Tricia outside the door. They were whispering. School. Mother. Police. Fire. Decision. Although he was straining, these words were the only ones he could hear clearly. He had asked the police and his social worker about his mother. The police didn’t bother to try to find out, but Tricia told him in the car that she would look into what had happened to her and would tell Minnie if she heard anything.

‘Why are you going to tell Minnie, why won’t you just tell me?’ Daniel had shouted at her.

‘If you don’t behave yourself, you’re going to be in a Youth Custody Centre next year and that’ll be you until you’re eighteen.’

Minnie closed the door and stood looking at him with her hands on her hips.

‘What?’

‘You look like you’ve had a hard day. Let me run you a bath.’

He thought she was going to say something else. He had prepared himself for harsh words. He went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet seat as she agitated bubbles in the bath. The mirror steamed up and the air smelled clean.

She took a face cloth and soaked it in the hot bathwater.

‘Your nose is looking pretty nasty. Let me wash away some of that blood before you get in. Bit late, but we’ll put some ice on it. We don’t want you to have a squashed boxer’s nose, do we? Not a good-lookin’ lad like you; wouldn’t be right.’

He let her tend to his nose. She was gentle and the cloth was warm. She rubbed away the dried blood and then washed around his nose.

‘Does it hurt, love?’

‘Not really.’

‘You’re a brave soul.’

He could smell the gin on her breath when she leaned close to him.

When she was finished, she ran her hand through his hair and rested her palm on his cheek.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

He shrugged.

‘You went to find your mother?’

‘She wasn’t there.’ His voice thickened.

She pulled him into her gently, and he felt the rough wool of her cardigan against his cheek. He started to cry again, but he didn’t know why.

‘There,’ she said, rubbing his back. ‘Better out than in. Tricia’ll let me know what they find out about your mum. You’re going to be all right. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I could tell from the first minute I met you that you’re a very special boy. You’re strong and you’re bright. You’ll not be little for ever. Whatever anyone else tells you, being grown-up’s a lot better. You get to make your own decisions and live where you like and with who you want and you’ll be grand.’

The bathroom was wet with steam. Daniel felt so tired. He laid his head against her stomach and cried. He put his hands round her hips. His hands couldn’t meet in the middle, but it felt good resting on her stomach and feeling the rise and fall as she breathed.

He sat up and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

‘Come on. Get in there, and get warmed up while I make you some supper. Just leave those dirty clothes on the floor. I’ll bring your pyjamas down.’

When she left, he undressed and stepped into the bath. It was too hot and he took some time lowering himself into it. The bubbles whispered at him. His arms were a right mess: grazed from the stairs and bruised from the kicking. He had bruises on his side and his ribs too. It felt better once he was in the bath. He lay right back and let his head slip under the water, wondering if this was what it felt like to be dead: warmth and silence and the lap of water. He felt the pressure in his lungs and sat up. He was wiping the bubbles off his face when Minnie came in again.

She put his pyjamas on the toilet seat for him and then placed a towel on top. There was a stool by the side of the bath and she leaned on the sink and lowered herself down on to it.

‘How’s your bath? Are you feeling any better?’

He nodded.

‘You look better, I have to say. What a fright you gave me with all that blood. What happened to you? Look at your arms. You’re covered in bruises.’

‘Got in a fight at school.’

‘Who was it? I know them all in Brampton. They buy my eggs. I can talk to their mothers.’

He inhaled. He was about to tell her that he got a kicking because of her, but he decided against it. He was too tired to fight with her and he liked her, just a little bit – just right then, for fixing his nose and running him the bath.

‘You’ll be hungry.’

He nodded.

‘I had stew for dinner. I still have yours in the fridge. If you want I’ll heat it up for you.’

He nodded again, touching his nose to check if it was bleeding again.

‘Or do you just want cheese on toast since it’s so late? Cup of cocoa.’

‘Cheese on toast.’

‘Right you are then. I’ll get it started. You should get out soon. Stay in too long, you’ll get a chill.’

‘Minnie?’ He put one hand on the edge of the bath as she passed. ‘You know the butterfly – why do you like it so much? Is it worth a lot of money?’

She pulled her cardigan around her. He wasn’t being cheeky. He wanted to know yet he could sense her withdrawal.

‘It’s worth a lot to me,’ she said. She started to leave, but then she turned at the door. ‘My daughter gave it to me.’

Daniel leaned on the side of the bath so that he could see her face. She looked sad for a moment but then she was gone and he heard her sighing as she made her way down the stairs.

Later, in his bedroom, listening to the creaks as the house fell asleep, he checked that his mam’s necklace was still there and his knife was still under his pillow.