News Where You Are

12. Michael, October 2009

It’s a strange place for a bench. He’s walked past it hundreds of times and never seen anyone else on it. He wonders if it’s been waiting for him.

The seat is lower than he’s used to. He bends his knees as far as he can and then allows himself to fall the rest of the way, hitting the bench hard, rocking back with the momentum. Black specks swim in the air around him. He closes his eyes and waits for the buzzing in his head to stop. When he opens his eyes, he assesses the view. Three lanes of cars hurtling towards town, and another three fleeing in the opposite direction. Not something many people are keen to gaze upon.

The carriageway marks the eastern edge of the housing estate. The houses and most of the streets he knew were cleared decades ago, even the old name of the neighbourhood has been lost, but still he likes to look for traces of the places he used to know, places he and Elsie used to meet. He finds them now and then: the birch tree on the corner of Ellesworth Street, the small section of iron railings in the park, the blackened bridge over the canal. He sees himself as an unlikely archaeologist, searching for worthless treasure.

He’s started revisiting the area since Elsie’s death. Most weekends he catches the 86 into town and then walks the rest of the way. He can’t get used to the empty spaces. His memories are of houses built on top of one another, families crowded upon families, but now he finds a landscape dominated by gaps. The flats and maisonettes stare at each other over vast concrete quadrangles and landscaped hillocks. The wind blasts across the open spaces, bending the sapling trees and choking the weeds with litter. He doesn’t know what the spaces are for; no one seems to use them. He doesn’t understand where the children are.

Down the road a little from the bench remains a chunk of the past still intact. Edward Street School, it seems, is no longer a school. The sign outside speaks of opportunities and resources for the unemployed, but the building itself is the same Victorian redbrick lump it always was.

He looks over at its familiar silhouette and he remembers the sounds most of all. He closes his eyes and he can still hear the familiar footsteps behind him. There are three of them. His heartbeat speeds up in time with their approach and as he turns he gets the full weight of a satchel of books square in the side of the head. He smells leather and ink as he fights to keep his balance. He’s dazed but lashes out, flailing wildly, using every part of himself to inflict as much damage as he can in the few seconds he has before they bring him down. He rams his knuckles into somebody’s face and catches someone else in the balls with his boot. For a moment he feels invincible and lets out a victorious roar, but then he tastes the blood in his mouth and the horizon begins to shift.

Once they have him on the ground they begin in earnest. He catches glimpses of their grim faces as they lay the boot in and he almost respects their dedication to something they seem to get so little pleasure from. They breathe noisily through their open mouths, putting all they’ve got into the job at hand.

They see him lying there curled up on the wet surface of the playground taking a beating, but it’s an illusion. Michael is far away. His name is Rusty and he rides through Monument Valley on his Appaloosa horse. He saves the life of his trusty dog Pancho after he’s bitten by a snake and they team up with a Cherokee scout to capture a dangerous outlaw by the name of El Capitan. They free the beautiful girl that El Capitan has locked away and she rides with Michael on the back of his horse, her arms clasped tightly round his waist. Her name is Maria. Her heart beats hard against his back and it feels good. The setting sun casts strange shadows on the valley floor and Pancho barks and wags his tail.

The kicks have stopped. He stays on the ground, clinging to the image of Pancho’s shiny eyes, but it fades fast and instead he sees the chalk smear of a hopscotch grid trickling towards him. He sits up slowly and checks himself. His back hurts and his head throbs, but Rusty would take far worse and never complain. He touches the back of his head and the pain shoots out. He closes his eyes for a moment and when he opens them there’s a pair of legs in front of him. Phil pulls him up. He holds Michael’s chin in his hand and turns his face from side to side.

‘Nice work, mate. You’re getting better. They didn’t get a decent kick into the face today.’

Michael rolls up his jumper and shirt and asks Phil to check his back. Phil breathes in sharply.

‘Bloody hell, Mikey. The bruises have already come up and one’s a big bugger.’

‘I don’t think they broke anything.’

‘They had a good go, though, didn’t they?’

‘Did you see it all?’

Phil’s quiet for a moment. ‘Well, most of it.’

Michael looks at him. ‘It’s all right. It’s not your fight.’

‘Three against one, that ain’t a fight. They’re just cowards.’ He stops for a moment. ‘I’m a coward too, just watching it happen.’

Michael shakes his head. ‘You’re not a coward. You stick your neck out — you talk to me.’

‘The rest of them are idiots.’

Michael smiles at that. ‘It doesn’t matter. They don’t bother me.’

‘You know you’re mad, don’t you? You could outrun them.’

‘I was always told that was the worst thing to do with bullies.’

‘Well, I’m saying that’s bollocks. “Stand your ground,” they say. “Fight back!” Well, you do that and look where it gets you. “Run away,” I say — that’s what they want. They don’t even enjoy it any more, mate. They’d take any excuse to stop.’

‘I don’t think my dad would have liked me to run away.’

Phil is exasperated. ‘What you talking about? Your dad ran away. Left your mom before you were even born.’

‘She said he missed Germany. He went back to be a shepherd.’

They look at each other. ‘A shepherd?’ says Phil. He shakes his head. ‘Baaa.’ He and Michael start laughing.

They walk out of the school gates and start heading home. Phil wonders if they’re going to be evacuated again and asks Michael if he remembers all the odd bods in Belbroughton when they were there in 1939. As if Michael could forget. Then Phil starts on about the bulgy-eyed vicar in Evesham when they were sent there. He does the vicar as a crazed, toothy Alastair Sim and he knows it always makes Michael cry with laughter. He begs Phil to stop as it hurts too much.

Phil spots the girls first. ‘Come on, Mikey, let’s go and impress them with your bruises.’

They’re sitting under the tree in the park. Michael looks across and sees her chatting to her friend. She’s smiling and moving her hands and her hair bounces as she laughs and he feels as if he’s been kicked in the stomach again. He stops walking and Phil looks at him.

‘Come on. What you doing? All right, we won’t show them the bruises. We’ll just tell them how you took three of them on and you were the only one left standing.’

Michael thinks he needs to sit down. It’s hard to breathe.

Phil’s smiling. ‘Come on. You know she likes you. God knows why when I’m around, but she does.’

Michael manages to shake his head. ‘She never looks at me.’

‘Exactly.’

Michael doesn’t move. ‘I don’t think I can.’

Phil pulls on his sleeve. ‘Just walk with me. I’ll do all the talking. You can be the strong silent type. The other one’s sweet on me anyway; she has better taste.’

Michael looks in Phil’s eyes. ‘You’ll do all the talking?’

‘Do you think I’d let you blow it?’ He straightens his collar. ‘I told you to protect your face, didn’t I? Those eyes of yours — the girls go for those. They make you look innocent — you can get away with anything.’

Michael buries his hands in his pockets and walks up with Phil.

A lorry pulls up and the school disappears behind it. The traffic is heavier now and the queue for the roundabout reaches right down to the bench where Michael sits. He can’t remember a single word of what Phil said to Elsie and her friend. But he remembers Elsie’s eyes settling on his for the first time and he remembers the shock of the knowledge that passed between them.