booksnew/source/Bane/Bane04.txt

CHAPTER FOUR
For a week I was like a caricature of a novelist, spasmodically
ripping out half-typed sheets and crumpling them up into tight
little balls which steadily mounted in the waste-basket and
overflowed on to the iioor. I just couldn’t shake out those ideas that
had been burbling along just under the surface, only needing to be
keyed in and run together. I’d tried to work on a plot, but the more
I wrote out the draft, the more complex and unbelievable it got.
Instead, I just started typing along a rough guideline, and every
time I looked at what I had written I was ashamed. It was wooden,
stilted, the dialogue unbelievably bad.
I’d promised Jimmy Allison and old Mr Bennett that I’d meet
them along in the Chandler, but I didn’t make it. On the Sunday,
I’d sat down and sorted out all my paper and put the filter coffee
maker on heat. Then I’d started writing garbage.
I wasn’t sleeping properly either. At nights, I’d drag myself
upstairs and throw myself into bed and toss and turn until the early
hours, wondering where I was going wrong.
There was another reason of course, which I didn’t realise at the
time. I spent a lot of time at nights just trying to get to sleep, and
when I finally did I had dreams that would shock me awake with
the same drained and horrified feeling I’d had on the night when I
stepped on the seventh stair. I would be running with sweat and a
couple of times I had to change the sheets because they were so
damp.
Sometimes I’d awake with no recollection of what I’d been
dreaming about. I’d just have an overwhelming feeling of threat
and dread, and although the substance of the nightmare might
have vanished as I leapt with a harsh scream of pent—up terror
almost bursting from my throat, the aftershock would leave me
trembling.
There were other nights though, when I did remember. Not the
whole story, but glimpses of the picture, sections of nightmare that
were still vividly careening across my imagination. Sometimes
those scenes not only left me with the feeling of fear, but shook me
so badly I felt I needed to throw up. I’d had the tunnel scene a
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couple of times, and it didn’t get better with familiarity. But there
were others.
One which really did have me crying out in the darkness was an
appalling dream where I was crawling in mud that was thick with
blood. Behind me I could hear a slavering, grunting growl of
whatever monster was after me, and my feet kept slipping while
the rending teeth of the thing snapped and crunched behind me, .
and I knew that it was going to eat me up because there was no
possibility of escape. As I slipped and slithered in the red-streaked
mud I saw a small shoe lying there, embedded in a gory puddle.
There were little strips of flesh hanging from it, and I knew that
what was going to eat me had done this, and my feeling of terror
was so great that just before those enormous jaws closed upon me,
I awakened from sheer terror, panting for breath. Panting for life.
After dreams like that- and there were many of them — I’d lie in
the darkness and stare at the shadows on the walls. I’d smoke a
cigarette held in a shaky hand. And sometimes I’d wonder what
the hell was wrong with me. In the mornings I felt slugged and
dopey. The feeling of fear and oppression might have ebbed during
the night, when finally I’d got back to sleep, but there was still an
underlying apprehension that maybe I was having some kind of
breakdown.
On the following Sunday I decided to give myself a break. What
the hell. I’d enough money to last me a long time, and if it took a
long time, I’d still do it. I told myself I just wasn’t ready for it yet.
Holly’s bar was warm and smoky and welcomingly busy when I
stepped off the street and through the smoothly polished wooden
door into the light. I had to push past a couple of regulars who sat in
a group playing dominoes, and made my way up to the bar. Big
John was at the far end and I caught his eye. He waved. Linda, the
barmaid, was nearest me and I ordered a pint of Guinness which
she poured in the usual slow manner, letting the head separate
from the black stout and form a creamy lid on the surface.
I turned and leaned against the bar, with my elbows propped on
the surface, and had a look around. Very little had changed in the
past decade. Probably in the last fifty years. Maybe a lick of paint
here and there, and some new upholstery on the bench seats that
lined the walls, but essentially Holly’s bar was the same as ever.
Holly had resisted the space invaders infiltration, and there was no
pin-ball machine or juke—box. Up in a far corner there was a
television for watching football on Saturdays and replays on
Sundays, but that was it. It was a bar, plain and simple. A meeting
place for a fair percentage of Arden’s adult population. The faces
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hadn’t changed here either. As I looked around, I recognised most
of them, and there were some youngsters who would still have
been in short trousers when I took off for pastures new, but they
were the sons of people I knew. If I couldn’t put a first name to
them I could at least identify them with a family tag. No doubt that
history had repeated itself down the years as the pub had been
handed down through the Hollinger family. In fact, while its
official name, in green paint above the door, proclaimed it to be
the Arden Inn, and the old building dated back nigh on two
hundred years, it had been known as Holly’s for as long as anyone
could remember.
I turned around when Holly tapped me on the shoulder, and
thanked him for the drink which was on the house. I had just
started sipping it and the big landlord had gone off to serve
somebody else when a crowd of men came in and jostled past the
old men at the table as they made their way to the bar. There were
four of them, in their early twenties, dressed in jeans and
fashionable zipper blousons. One of them bumped into me as they
crowded the bar in the space between me and the other customers.
‘Three of heavy and a big Whitbread, sunshine,’ one of them
called out to Linda. ‘Make it quick and I’ll give you a big kiss.’
The girl rolled her eyes to the ceiling as she continued pouring
for someone else, and the man who had called the order, the one
who had bumped my drinking arm, drummed his fingers on the bar
top with impatience. Eventually she came across and started
working the beer tap with the order. She set the drinks on the bar
and the customer handed over a fiver which he whipped back just
as her fingers were about to close on the money.
‘How about the kiss, sunshine?’ he asked, turning to his friends,
who laughed. The man was small and wiry, his brown hair swept
back from his forehead, and when he grinned he displayed a set of
strong, slightly mis-shapen teeth.
‘That’ll be the day, Billy,’ the girl said. ‘You’ve no chance.’
One of his friends, a tall, skinny youngster with a long, horse-
like face, laughed uproariously. ‘You tell him, Linda. Saving
yourself for me, aren’t you?’
The girl shot him a look as if to say she’d sooner kiss a snake, and
quickly reached out and grabbed the money from the first man’s
hand. »
‘Better luck next time,’ said horse—face, and the thin, wiry one
told him to piss off.
The four of them made their way to a free table in the corner,
talking loudly as they went, and pulled up the bentwood chairs as
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they sat in a huddle. On my left side, someone said hello to me and
I turned round and went through the same half-second of
disorientation that Iwould experience time and again over the next
few weeks before the name sprung from memory.
‘Hi Tucker,’ I said. Tommy O’Neil was the town’s postman, as I
discovered. He and I chewed the fat for a while, and I savoured my
beer. We swapped stories about what I’d been doing and what had
been happening in Arden over the piece, which wasn’t much more
than small-town small talk, but it was pleasant anyway. While we
were talking, the pub door opened a couple of times as people
came and went, but I didn’t bother looking round to see who the
new arrivals were until I heard one of the four sitting at the table let
out a yell.
‘Badger, you big daft bastard}
Right away, I knew who was at the receiving end of that. I turned
round and saw him and my stomach gave that quick lurch of
sadness or pity or conscience whenever I’m faced with one of life’s
unfortunates. You know what I mean if you’ve ever been in a
handicapped children’s hospital, or seen mutilated beggars in the
streets of Bangladesh, or the swollen bellies of stick—insect children
in Ethiopia.
Badger Blackwood was one of them. And the feeling that made
my insides drag was coupled with the knowledge that he hadn’t
always been the way he was. Badger ....
Colin Blackwood had been my best friend once. He was that
‘poor boy who’s never been the same since’ that Jimmy Allison had
been talking about. He’d been with me and the girl that night they
pulled us out of the rockfall at Ardhmor, but while Barbara and I
recovered — I was delirious for a week — Colin did not. He was
damaged, brain damaged. They’d kept him in the hospital for
months while the terrible injuries in his head healed over, and the
scars, two great wounds that had ripped his scalp from the crown to
his forehead, had left their mark. The two lines of hair had grown
in white against the glossy black, and ever since he was let out of
hospital he’d carried the mark. The children had started calling
him Badger, and the name had stuck. God knows, he didn’t have
the capacity to care one way or another about his new name, for
the damage inside his head had left him slow and dull, and he’d
stayed that way ever since. I found out later that he was a regular in
Holly’s bar, where he’d be allowed a couple of shandies with
hardly any beer, and he’d sit for hours watching the old men play
dominoes, smiling at them all with that vacant, gut—wrenching look
on his face. It was the saddest thing you ever saw, but I suppose
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whatever the rocks had knocked out of Colin’s head had killed off
any memory of what he had been like before.
‘Jesus Christ, you big ape,’ said the wiry youth who’d bumped
into me at the bar. ‘You’ve spilled my fuckin’ beer.’
Badger just stood there, next to the complainer, his big, dark
eyes bewildered and apologetic.
‘I-I’m sorry Billy,’ he said slowly. ‘I d—didn’t mean it.’
Billy had jumped up from the table and started frantically wiping I
spilled beer from his jeans.
‘Why don’t you watch where you’re going?’ he grated, and
shoved at Badger, slamming his shoulder with the heel of his hand.
Badger lurched back, and as he did so the shandy he was carrying
slipped right out of his hand and fell against the small man,
covering his jeans properly this time.
‘Jesus! Look what you’ve done now,’ yelled Billy, as his three
companions pushed themselves rapidly away from the table in a
futile bid to avoid the deluge. The glass tumbled to the floor but for
some reason remained intact.
‘I-I—I. . . ,’ the bewildered Badger started to stammer. I could
hear panic rise in his voice.
‘You fucking cabbage,’ Billy yelled again, and grabbed Badger
by the lapel of his jacket, dragging the slow face up close to his, and
shaking Badger back and forth.
‘You’re going to pay for that,’ he almost screeched. ‘Look at the
state of these jeans.’ .
‘Leave him alone,’ I said, walking forward and gripping the
man’s arm at the wrist. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ he hissed, rounding on me. His eyes
were glaring in fury.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said as calmly as possible. Inside I was
seething. ‘J ust leave him alone and pick on somebody else.’ One of
his friends sniggered. I saw what was coming a mile away. Billy
pushed Badger away from him — the lumbering figure cartwheeled
his arms as he fought to retain his balance — and Billy’s head lunged
towards mine in the classic Glasgow kiss, his forehead angling
down to catch the bridge of my nose. As I said, I saw it coming and
had already started to move back, bringing the heel of my hand
upwards as fast and as hard as I could, squashing it right into the
front of his face, and my left hand came whipping round, the
knuckles twisting hard, to take him solidly just under the ribs.
Billy yelled and it was his turn to look like a windmill as he
staggered back, crashing into a chair which overturned, and into
the arms of one of his mates.
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‘Oh by fugging dose,’ he moaned. ‘Jesus fugging Christf
The whole bar had gone quiet. From the corner of my eye, I
could see the bulk of John Hollinger come through the bar—ilap.
‘Right. You, you and you, out. You’re barred. All of you,’ he
boomed. ‘And you, Billy. Get yourself out of here and don’t come
back until you learn to behave.’
Billy still had his hands clapped to the front of his face, but there
was no mistaking the venom in his eyes as he lurched towards the
door.
‘I’ll get you for this, you bastard,’ he screeched from behind his
hands, almost unintelligibly, but there was no mistaking what he
said.
Badger just stood there with his hands at his sides, looking as
bewildered as ever.
‘Right. What’s going on here?’ Holly said. Badger started to
mumble a reply, but it was beyond him.
‘That one was giving him a bad time. He knocked the drink out
of his hand, and then blamed Badger for it,’ I said. ‘He was going to
hit him, so I stopped him.’
‘I saw that bit. I was down in the cellar for the rest of it. That was
a quick bit of hitting there, from what I saw. Billy’s a mean little
bastard if there ever was one.’
‘I gathered that.’ ‘
‘But I don’t like violence here. If anybody’s going to do the
hitting, it’s me. It’s my licence,’ he said.
‘Sorry, Holly. I thought I was doing the right thing,’ I said, as we
both walked to the corner of the bar, Badger in tow.
‘You were , lad, you were. That was just for the benefit of the rest
of them. Anyway, I saw the good bit. I didn’t realise you were a
lighting man. I wish I had an action replay of that one—two. Have
you been training‘?’
‘A couple of nights a week I do this karate stuff just to keep lit.
I’ve never had a chance to use it before}
‘Looked pretty good to me. But watch out for that Billy. He and
the rest of them are worth the watching. I had to throw them out
last year for smoking whacky baccy. They’re nothing but trouble.’
Holly didn’t throw me out. I bought another pint for me and a
shandy for Badger who was looking at me as if I was a hero.
When his drink came, Badger thanked me shyly. ‘Are you all
right now, Colin?’ I asked.
‘Yes mister,’ he said, after drinking a big mouthful. He hadn’t a
clue who I was. I could have wept, looking at his bland, child-like
face, for I remembered when we had played about the trees as
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youngsters, Colin bright and fast and full of fun. Destined to go
places, always full of enthusiasm. Destined to lose all that under
the rockfall at Ardhmor. Destined for nothing.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
He looked at me, examining my face with those dull, dark eyes,
then shook his head.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I told him. ‘I’m Nicky Ryan. I used to live
here. I was in the same class as you at school} t
He smiled brightly, and nodded. I could see him puzzling over
that, but he still smiled. It didn’t mean a thing to him. The pub had
gone back to its usual busy hubbub, as always happens within
minutes of any brawling, and Badger and I sat together. He told
me he worked up at the Renfrew stables where the better—off kids
from all over came for pony trekking in the summer. Colin could
have been anything he wanted to be. Badger mucked out stables.
Behind my feelings of sadness at that waste, I’m sure there was the
certain knowledge that this could have been me. I hadn’t a clue
how Colin and Barbara and myself had ended up getting clobbered
with rocks in the old fumarole on the Sleeping Rock, but Babs and
I had come out alive. Only part of Badger had.
Would somebody have stood up for me?
The nickname was maybe cruel, but apposite. The two white-
grey lines on Colin’s hair really did give him the appearance of a
badger, and he answered to the name quite readily. He didn’t see
anything wrong with it, and in fact, before the end of the night, I
found myself calling him that myself. Everybody did. It was just
one of those accepted things.
I walked Badger home. It only took a few minutes to get to his
house which was a two-up, two—down on the north side of Main
Street on Broadmeadow Road which lay in the lea of the hill that
led up to High Arden, or Upper Arden as the residents called it.
There wasn’t much conversation. Badger was big and shy and
talking to him was like having a conversation with a small child.
Every now and again, he’d look over his shoulder to make sure
Billy and his pals weren’t following us, and occasionally he’d sneak
a glance at me which read pure hero worship. I could have done
without that.
His mother was peering through a crack in the curtains and came
bustling out as soon as we reached the gate.
‘Colin? Colin! Is that you?’
‘Uhuh,’ he said.
She came down the flagstones that led from the wrought-iron,
waist-height gate to the square of light that came through the front
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door.
‘Who’s that?’ she started to say as she walked the dozen or so
steps. ‘Who are you with?’
A small, grey-haired woman with a drawn face, and a pair of
reading glasses dangling from a thong round her neck, she came up
and peered at me. Her dark eyes were a match for her son’s, except
that hers were quick and alert.
‘Oh. It’s you.’ She looked me up and down, then looked at her
son. I’d seen that look before, the one she directed at me. Ever
since the doctors had told her that Colin wasn’t going to recover,
I’d seen that look on her face. Maybe she didn’t consciously think
it, but even at ten years of age I knew what it meant: ‘Why my boy?
Why not y0u?’ I didn’t know why then. Hell, I hadn’t a clue even
about what had happened. It was as if a handful of days of my life
had been plucked out and never happened. Except that they had
happened, and Badger was the living, enduring evidence.
‘Hello, Mrs Blackwood. I just walked Colin home.’ I was careful
not to use the nickname in her presence.
‘That’s right mom.’ Badger nodded, smiling. ‘Mr . . . Mr . . .
Nicky. He did it. He hit Billy Ruine.’
Ruine. That name rang a bell. One of I ack Ruine’s boys from
down the south side of Milligs. I knew the family well. His big
brother Mick had been the terror of our generation, a whip-thin
youth with a tight smile and ready fists. A fighting man among the
fighting men on the far side of town. The whole family were wild.
‘What’s that?’ Badger’s mother snapped. ‘What happened?’
Badger started to stammer an explanation that was beyond him.
I broke in and said: ‘It was nothing much, Mrs Blackwood. A
couple of guys were causing a bit of trouble down at Holly’s, and
B . . .’ I just managed to catch myself in time .... ‘Colin got caught
in the passing. I just got him out of the road.’
I don’t like you going down there, Colin. You’ve got no business
going and getting in fights.’
‘No mum,’ said her son, kicking his boot toe into the edge of the
low wall, his hands jammed in the pockets of his jacket. He did
look like a big foolish child. Mrs Blackwood looked at me, and
there wasn’t a lot of friendliness in her gaze. I had been a memory
that maybe for her sake should never have come back to Arden.
‘Right, Colin. In you go and get your tea.’
‘Yes mum,’ he said and shambled up the path, turning to look
back at me with a big, shy smile, before going inside.
‘Well, Nicky Ryan. I suppose I should thank you for getting V
Colin out of trouble.’
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‘No, it’s no trouble. Anybody would.’
‘I can’t stop him going there. He’s just a big baby, God help him.
And look at you, looking after him.’ I knew what she meant, and it
made me feel indescribably sad. What she meant was that I
shouldn’t have to look after him.
‘But thanks for bringing him home,’ was what she did say. ‘He
doesn’t know how to take care of himself, the big lump.’
‘Any time, Mrs Blackwood. The Ruine boy and his pals are just
loud—mouths. If I’m in Holly’s again, I’ll make sure they leave him
alone.’
She nodded, and quickly said goodnight, and bustled up the
path. The door closed quickly.
I didn’t go straight home, but wandered round the old harbour
to the side where the lifeboat shed stood, to the left of the small
crowd of boats tied up at the white-plank moorings. It was a cool,
calm night, and this time the masts of the dinghies were hardly
moving. I stayed watching the boats for a while, smoking a
cigarette, then walked back the way I’d come and down the street
towards the house. It was warm when I got in. I’d left the gas fire
on, and the room’s heat quickly got rid of the evening chill. I
thought about trying to write, but didn’t bother. Instead, I turned
on the television and watched an old movie until quite late, and
then just went to bed.
At two in the morning, I was wide awake again. One of those
dreams had slammed me awake, and as I sat up in the dark, a shaky
hand groping for my cigarettes, I could feel the force of it drain
away. I couldn’t quite remember what it was about, but an image
of something big and terrible that was after me, snapping at me
with huge slavering jaws, was somewhere in the dark recesses of
my mind.
I lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, letting it all trail out again
slowly. My heart was still pounding in my chest, but gradually it
diminished as I became more awake. I didn’t understand this. I’d
come back to Arden and I’d been scared rigid on my first night, and
even worse on the morning after down at Ardhmor. Now I was
having a spate of nightmares about God knows what. Was there
something wrong with me? Was I beginning to Hip?
The thought of being a candidate for the funny farm was almost
as scary as the feeling I had when I woke up. I put that straight out
of my mind.
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