Half a Creature From the Sea: A Life in Stories, Page 2

  “Aye,” I said.

  He plunged the sandwich into a trough of gravy.

  “Bliddy lovely,” he said. “Though I say it myself. A shilling to you, sir.”

  I paid him but I couldn’t go out through the door. The sandwich was hot. The gravy was dripping to my feet.

  Billy laughed.

  “Penny for them,” he said.

  I watched Slog get onto the bench beside the bloke.

  “Do you believe there’s life after death?” I said.

  Billy laughed.

  “Now there’s a question for a butcher!” he said.

  A skinny old woman came in past me.

  “What can I do you for, pet?” said Billy. “See you, Davie.”

  He laughed.

  “Kids!” he said.

  Slog looked that happy as I walked towards them. He was leaning on the bloke and the bloke was leaning back on the bench, grinning at the sky. Slog made a fist and a face of joy when he saw me.

  “It’s Dad, Davie!” he said. “See? I told you.”

  I stood in front of them.

  “You remember Davie, Dad,” said Slog.

  The bloke looked at me. He looked nothing like the Joe Mickley I used to know. His face was filthy but it was smooth and his eyes were shining bright.

  “Course I do,” he said. “Nice to see you, son.”

  Slog laughed.

  “Davie’s a bit scared,” he said.

  “No wonder,” said the bloke. “That looks very tasty.”

  I held the sandwich out to him.

  He took it, opened it and smelt it, looked at the meat and pease pudding and stuffing and mustard and gravy. He closed his eyes and smiled, then lifted it to his mouth.

  “Saveloy with everything,” he said. He licked the gravy from his lips, wiped his chin with his hand. “Bliddy lovely. You got owt to drink?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Ha. He has got a tongue!”

  “He looks a bit different,” said Slog. “But that’s just cos he’s been…”

  “Transfigured,” said the bloke.

  “Aye,” said Slog. “Transfigured. Can I show him your legs, Dad?”

  The bloke laughed gently. He bit his saveloy sandwich. His eyes glittered as he watched me.

  “Aye,” he said. “Gan on. Show him me legs, son.”

  And Slog knelt at his feet and rolled the bloke’s tattered trouser bottoms up and showed the bloke’s dirty socks and dirty shins.

  “See?” he whispered.

  He touched the bloke’s legs with his fingers.

  “Aren’t they lovely?” he said. “Touch them, Davie.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Gan on,” said the bloke. “Touch them, Davie.”

  His voice got colder.

  “Do it for Slogger, Davie,” he said.

  I crouched, I touched, I felt the hair and the skin and the bones and muscles underneath. I recoiled; I stood up again.

  “It’s true, see?” said Slog. “He got them back in Heaven.”

  “What d’you think of that, then, Davie?” said the bloke.

  Slog smiled.

  “He thinks they’re bliddy lovely, Dad.”

  Slog stroked the bloke’s legs one more time then rolled the trousers down again.

  “What’s Heaven like, Dad?” said Slog.

  “Hard to describe, son.”

  “Please, Dad.”

  “It’s like bright and peaceful, and there’s God and the angels and all that…” The bloke looked at his sandwich. “It’s like having all the saveloy dips you ever want. With everything, every time.”

  “It must be great.”

  “Oh, aye, son. It’s dead canny.”

  “Are you coming to see Mam, Dad?” he said.

  The bloke pursed his lips and sucked in air and gazed into the sky.

  “Dunno. Dunno if I’ve got the time, son.”

  Slog’s face fell.

  The bloke reached out and stroked Slog’s cheek.

  “This is very special,” he said. “Very rare. They let it happen cos you’re a very rare and special lad.”

  He looked into the sky and talked into the sky.

  “How much longer have I got?” he said, then he nodded. “Aye. OK. OK.”

  He shrugged and looked back at Slog.

  “No,” he said. “Time’s pressing. I cannot do it, son.”

  There were tears in Slog’s eyes.

  “She misses you that much, Dad,” he said.

  “Aye. I know.” The bloke looked into the sky again. “How much longer?” he said.

  He took Slog in his arms.

  “Come here,” he whispered.

  I watched them hold each other tight.

  “You can tell her about me,” said the bloke. “You can tell her I love her and miss her and all.” He looked at me over Slog’s shoulder. “And so can Davie, your best mate. Can’t you, Davie? Can’t you?”

  “Aye,” I muttered.

  Then the bloke stood up. Slog still clung to him.

  “Can I come with you, Dad?” he said.

  The bloke smiled.

  “You know you can’t, son.”

  “What did you do?” I said.

  “Eh?” said the bloke.

  “What job did you do?”

  The bloke looked at me, dead cold.

  “I was a binman, Davie,” he said. “I used to stink but I didn’t mind. And I followed the stink to get me here.”

  He cupped Slog’s face in his hands.

  “Isn’t that right, son?”

  “Aye,” said Slog.

  “So what’s Slog’s mother called?” I said.

  “Eh?”

  “Your wife. What’s her name?”

  The bloke looked at me. He looked at Slog. He pushed the last bit of sandwich into his mouth and chewed. A sparrow hopped close to our feet, trying to get at the crumbs. The bloke licked his lips, wiped his chin, stared into the sky.

  “Please, Dad,” whispered Slog.

  The bloke shrugged. He gritted his teeth and sighed and looked at me so cold and at Slog so gentle.

  “Slog’s mother,” he said. “My wife…” He shrugged again. “She’s called Mary.”

  “Oh, Dad!” said Slog and his face was transfigured by joy. “Oh, Dad!”

  The bloke laughed.

  “Ha! Bliddy ha!”

  He held Slog by the shoulders.

  “Now, son,” he said. “You got to stand here and watch me go and you mustn’t follow.”

  “I won’t, Dad,” whispered Slog.

  “And you must always remember me.”

  “I will, Dad.”

  “And me, you and your lovely mam’ll be together again one day in Heaven.”

  “I know that, Dad. I love you, Dad.”

  “And I love you.”

  And the bloke kissed Slog, and twisted his face at me, then turned away. He started singing “Faith of Our Fathers”. He walked across the square, past Myers’ pork shop, and turned down onto the High Street. We ran after him then and we looked down the High Street past the people and the cars, but there was no sign of him, and there never would be again.

  We stood there speechless. Billy Myers came to the doorway of the pork shop with a bucket of bones in his hand and watched us.

  “That was me dad,” said Slog.

  “Aye?” said Billy.

  “Aye. He come back, like he said he would, in the spring.”

  “That’s good,” said Billy. “Come and have a dip, son. With everything.”

  “We were kids. There were always tales of ghouls and ghosts and monsters going around. In my first school, St John’s, a spooky stone place down by the Tyne, there were fiends waiting in the deep, dark cupboard just past the staffroom door. The ghosts of dead pit men and pit boys, killed in the Felling Pit disaster of 1812, could be seen during winter dusks in the school yard. A madman lived in that abandoned paint works by the river. Some folk had tails hidden beneath their cloth
es. Strange creatures were said to have been born in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital; creatures that could never be allowed out into the world – half human, half beast, born by weird couplings. When I camped with pals in their gardens – with Tex Flynn or Graham and Charlie Mein – we quaked as we whispered to each other about the witches and demons that waited in the darkness just beyond the thin canvas wall.

  Our imaginings were intensified in church, especially during mission week. This happened every year or two, when teams of priests and fierce monks were sent to us. They roamed the streets and glared. They came to our homes to check up on our attendance at Communion or confession. They stood in the pulpit in a crowded St Patrick’s and terrified us with detailed and gory descriptions of hellfire, burning flesh, demons, brimstone, red-hot pokers.

  “Beware!” they snarled, gripping the pulpit edge and leaning towards us. “The creatures of Satan truly do walk among us. Perhaps they are with us now! Be alert! Keep away from them! Avoid all sin. Keep your mind on God!”

  In this story, May Malone is lapsed – she used to be a Catholic, but she’s lost the faith and has left the Church. Just like one of my friends did in real life, when we were eighteen, May stood up in church one day, yelled at the priest that he was a bliddy liar, and stormed out, never to return. To believers, May had put herself into a very perilous position. She was already headed for the fire. Not surprising, then, that there were rumours about her life, her child … about her monster.

  May lives in the dark terraced streets at the lower end of Felling, below the railway line. Norman lives in the new flats by Felling Square, Sir Godfrey Thomson Court, where my family lived for several years. I took Norman’s surname, Trench (which I like a lot!) from Richard Trench, a nineteenth-century archbishop who wrote a strange and strangely wonderful book called Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord. Trench’s book is one that I keep around me on the shelves in the shed where I write. Another book that’s always near by is a collection of William Blake’s poems. This story was written for a radio series called Blake’s Doors of Perception. I was invited to take a line or two from Blake and use it as an inspiration, so I chose his poem “The Garden of Love”, which contains these lines:

  And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

  And binding with briars my joys and desires.

  There are more echoes of Blake in some of the sentences. I like to think that, by the end, Norman’s own doors of perception have started to open.

  The story was that May Malone had a monster in her house. She kept it in chains. If you went round to the back of the house and put your ear to the wall, you’d hear it groaning. You’d hear it howling at night if you listened hard. There were tales about May and a priest from Blyth. There was a baby, it was said, but the baby was horrible because it was born from such a sin. Even weirder tales were whispered. The Devil himself had come to May and it was the son of Satan living in her house. She’d been with horses, with dogs, with goats. Anyway, whatever it was you’d risk your body, your sanity and probably your soul if you got too close.

  Norman Trench was ten or eleven at the time. He lived in the new flats in Felling Square. May’s house was at the bottom end of Crimea Terrace, not far from the muddy green where the lads played football.

  Norman’s mam tightened her lips when he asked her about it.

  “Them daft tales! Tek nae notice. What’s done is done. Just keep away and leave her be.”

  To look at May you’d never think she had a monster. She was getting on, but she wore tight skirts, she dyed her hair, and she wore high heels that clicked and clacked on the pavements as she hurried along. She was lapsed. Everybody knew the tale of how she’d stood up in church in the middle of Mass and yelled that the priest was a lyin’ bliddy bastard, then stormed down the aisle, spat at the altar, and never went again.

  You could see people’s faces closing down as she dashed through the streets. She hardly spoke to anybody and you could see that nobody wanted to speak to her. Except for some of the blokes, of course, the ones who sighed as she came near, and who couldn’t help following with their eyes when she passed by.

  Norman was a miserable kind of kid. Aye, he had some reasons – the brother that’d died at three years old, a dad that’d gone wrong with the drink and ended up in the clink. But everybody’s got something to put up with. Norman was just the kind that took it all too seriously.

  People used to go, “Cheer up, man! It might never bliddy happen.”

  And sometimes he’d yell back, “It’s happened albliddyready, right! So bugger off!”

  Norman thought about illness and death and dying all the time. He thought about the Devil and Hell. And those nightmares! Boiling oil and scorching flames and red-hot pokers and devils’ horns. He told the priest about it in confession and the priest sighed. Oh dear. Such fears and dreams were common enough among his flock. We all had such a cross to bear.

  The priest leant closer to the grille, trying to get a proper look at Norman.

  “Desolation of the heart,” he said, “is often a sign of God’s call. Do you ever feel you might have a vocation, my son?”

  Norman’s mam had been through everything that he had been through, of course, and far worse. The difference was, she had a cheerful heart.

  “Let’s have a smile,” she used to say, and Norman would curl his lips up and try to please her, but it just made things worse.

  “Oh, son,” she’d say. “Don’t grow up so sad. God is good, the world is beautiful and Heaven waits for us.”

  Made no difference. Norman believed in none of that. He was shutting down, getting ever more miserable. He couldn’t stop himself, even when the lads started moaning.

  “Why can’t you just enjoy yourself, man? You’re like a wet bliddy Monday morning.”

  No wonder they started to turn their backs on him, like he was May Malone, or running away from him and howling, like he was the monster.

  It was October when Norman went to May’s for the first time. The nights were turning cold and cutting in. He waited till dark, then down he went to the end of Crimea Terrace and into the back lane. He scrambled over the wall into May’s back yard. He went to the house wall and pressed his ear to it. Nothing. Maybe a radio somewhere far away. The distant voices of the lads echoing on the green. He concentrated. All he heard was his heart, then the noises of monsters inside himself. He tiptoed to the kitchen window and cupped his hands, peered in and nearly yelled with bliddy fright. But it was just his own staring eyes that goggled back at him. Nothing else.

  Next time he went, though, he was sure there was a bit of grunting, a bit of squeaking. May came into the kitchen and made a pot of tea and put some biscuits on a plate. She looked out. Norman pressed right against the back wall. Then she leant up and pulled the curtains shut. Norman climbed back over the wall and stood in the dark at the end of the terrace. He lit the cigarette he’d bought at Wiffen’s shop that he’d said was for his mam. A river bell rang. A door clicked open and shut on Crimea Terrace and footsteps hurried up towards town. He drew deeply on the cigarette. He coughed. He stood looking down through the night towards the river. All this is pitching me closer to bliddy hell, he thought.

  “Where you been?” his mam said when he got back in.

  “Football,” he said. “With the lads.”

  “Good lad. That might cheer you up, eh? Or mebbe not.”

  He kept going back to May’s. Maybe he had it in his head that he’d be able to go to the lads and say “It’s true. There is a monster. Come and see”, and that that’d sort everything out. But there was nothing, and soon the lads were taking no notice of him at all. It was like they didn’t even see him, like he wasn’t there. Probably they’d even forgotten all about May’s monster.

  Then he steps out of Wiffen’s one afternoon and there’s May Malone right slap bang in front of him. She’s wearing a green coat. Her eyes are green, her fingernails bright red.

  “So,” she says. “What have yo
u got to say for yourself?”

  Norman gulps.

  “Come along,” she says.

  “Nothin’, Miss Malone.”

  “Huh! Nothin’. So would you like to see my monster?”

  Norman gulps again and blinks.

  “Well?”

  She doesn’t smile. She isn’t cross. Her voice is crisp and clear.

  “Yes, please, Miss Malone,” he says.

  “You won’t want to be seen walking with me. Follow me down in five minutes or so. Come to the front door.”

  And away she clacks.

  He smokes his fag as he walks down Crimea Terrace. He’s trying to seem nonchalant.

  The door’s ajar.

  “Don’t just stand there,” comes her voice from inside.

  He sidles through and finds her waiting in a narrow corridor. She goggles, gasps and claps her hands across her mouth.

  “Oh no!” she says. “You are in the house of May Malone! Lightning will strike at any moment!”

  Then she laughs and tells him to stop his bliddy trembling and come properly in.

  Everything is neat and clean, just as she is. Her green coat is hanging from a hook on the wall. There’s a door open to a living room. He sees a couple of armchairs, a couple of ashtrays. There’s a decanter with what looks like whisky in it, and two glasses. There’s a painting of a Chinese lady on the hall wall. When May closes the front door, the hallway is deeply shadowed, and a red light shines down from upstairs.

  She reaches out and takes his hand in hers. He flinches and she holds his hand a little tighter.

  “Don’t worry,” she softly says. “Come with me and see.”

  She leads him towards a dark door the back of the house. She hesitates.

  “You won’t tell a soul, of course,” she says. “Will you?”

  She squeezes his hand.

  “Will you?”

  “No, Miss Malone.”

  “Good, for I am the one who decides who knows.”

  She turns the handle of the door.

  “Now you may meet my boy. His name is Alexander.”

  It’s a small room. Light falls from a skylight in the ceiling. There’s a narrow bed against the wall. The boy is sitting on a small blue sofa. His head is slumped onto his shoulder.

  May goes to him, kneels beside him, puts her arm around him.