Infinite Sky (7 page)

He pulled at his top lip, and the field was so quiet I heard the kissing sound it made as it suckered his gums.

‘What?’

He glanced at me, then back at the ragwort. ‘He found out I haven’t been going to school.’

I was confused. Of course he hadn’t been going to school, it was the summer holidays.

‘I mean, he found out I’ve been
chucked out
of school.’

‘Oh. But you said—’

‘I know,’ he said, meeting my eyes properly for the first time. ‘Let me tell you what happened.’

I plucked an ear of corn because my heart was thudding against my chest and I needed something to fiddle with so I could listen properly.

‘Me da wasn’t bothered about me going in the first place, he wanted me to go to work with him – thinks school’s a waste of time after a bit.’

The corn felt cool and unfamiliar as I passed it between my sticky hands. Trick seemed nervous and defensive – completely unlike he’d been before – and I couldn’t work
out if it was because of what he had to tell me or because he was lying.

‘It was okay for a bit,’ he said. ‘For ages, actually. Just normal. People left me alone, or were friendly; I liked it. I played footy at break, it was all right. Then this
lad, my year, got attacked by someone.
Gypsy
, he said, and the way he acted, you’d think it was me who did it. Matt
Dunbar
. A big, blond, sporty bastard. Him and his mates
started shouting at me at break, trying to get me to fight.’

I saw Year Tens doing this kind of thing to younger boys all the time, but it was hard to imagine Trick as the victim.

‘In the end, I got angry because he kept saying it was . . .’ He stopped talking, but his feet kept tapping, left then right, and I wanted to put my hands on them, to make them stop
because they were distracting me.

‘Go on,’ I said.

I dismantled the corn on the cob, making a food pile for the pheasants.

‘Well, Matt Dunbar’s giving it
backwards pikey scumbag
and all that, and none of the teachers notice, or give a toss, and I’m not too bothered neither, till he starts
calling me a pussy. Says
pikeys
only fight when they know they can win, as if I wouldn’t dare fight him! And every time I refuse, it gets worse. So one day I just have enough, and when
he asks me for a fight, I punch him straight in the eyes.’

‘Well, yeah,’ I said. ‘So what?’ I knew people like Matt Dunbar, and the only thing that made them stop was a smack in the eyes.

‘But I shouldn’t have, Iris, that’s the thing, because I
know
how to fight. I’m not being big-headed or nothing, but I was bred for it. Me da taught me, and I kind
of hate it but . . .’

‘
Bred
for it?’

I felt as though a curtain had been pulled back to reveal a whole world I didn’t know about, right here in England, in this little town. In my back garden.

‘He used to be a bare-knuckle fighter, for years – you should see his hands, they’re a holy mess, fat bendy sausage fingers . . .’ He pulled a face, as if the sausages
were coming for him. ‘Hates them now he’s stopped, they won’t do what he wants, but he used to be over the moon. They were his pride and joy when I was growing up.’

‘Is it legal?’

‘Nah, but no one cares. Rozzers leave us to it. Me da was one of the big boys, no one beat Paddy Delaney. I wanted to be just like him. I started to have my own reputation at the old camp.
But I got fed up of it too. It never ends! I don’t see the point. I don’t want to fight any more, but it’s like I don’t have a choice. I tell my ma, it comes for me, I
swear! But I should never have fought a
gorgia
. Not the way I did. No offence.’

‘So what happened?’

He looked at me, pulling at his top lip. ‘He was a big lad, you know, Iris, hardest in Year Ten . . .’

‘
Trick
.’

‘I punched him and he went down, and his face smacked on the tarmac – school tarmac, no less – and knocked his front teeth out. I gave him a bit of a kicking, you know, then I
ran off.’

He didn’t sound proud or sorry as he spoke, just matter of fact. I wondered how I would do in a fight.

‘I hear later he had to stay overnight in the hospital. Concussion and all that. He’s all right now, though,’ he added quickly.

‘So how d’you know you’re expelled?’

He looked puzzled.

‘They can’t expel you without asking for your side.
At least
. Kids at my school stay on for worse than that.’

‘Trust me, Iris. I wrecked it. And now me da says it’s work with him. Don’t come crying to me, he said . . .’

‘And you did?’

‘Course I friggin’ didn’t, but he found out anyway – he finds out everything – and now he’s spitting because he told me what’d happen, told me not to
get mixed up with . . .’ He stopped, but it was obvious what he’d been about to say.

‘I just thought if I waited till the new term, everything’d calm down, and they might let me back in, and I wouldn’t have to tell him, or you, or go to work. It doesn’t
really matter cause I’m gonna work for myself, but I don’t know. I liked it at school.’

He ran out of words, and he looked so dejected that I couldn’t help reaching out to him. I stroked his knee, as if he were a pet that had just come back from an operation.

‘Matt Dunbar sounds like a prick,’ I told him. ‘I’m glad you beat him up. You should have told me though. I tell
you
everything.’

‘I know,’ he said, and he smiled at me, full whack. ‘That’s why I like you, Iris. I can talk to you about anything.’

I shrugged because I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

‘And you’re pretty,’ he added, really quickly, and I almost laughed out loud with the joy of it.

I wished there were some way Matty could have witnessed this.

When the energy shooting around my bloodstream had calmed down, I asked what he was going to do.

‘What can I do? Hole up here for a bit, then go face him.’

Babyish ideas entered my head, like
You could hide in the chicken coop
, or
Camp in the cornfields
, or
We could run away together
, but I managed to keep them inside.

Trick said he was on driving duties, for lying, which meant he wouldn’t be able to get out for a while, and I tried not to look shocked that his dad would let him drive a car about before
he was even fifteen. We arranged to meet in a few days’ time, on Wednesday, at nine p.m. If he wasn’t there by ten, it meant he couldn’t get out.

‘I’ll just come back the next night,’ I said.

And the night after that.

And the night after that.

Trick couldn’t relax, but he didn’t want to go home, and so we headed to the brook to cool our feet.

At the ancient oak, I heard something.

‘Wait,’ I said, raising a finger.

We cocked our heads.

‘There,’ I said, and he nodded.

‘You’re not wrong.’

It was Dad. And he was shouting my name.

Clearing the pig farmer’s gate, I heard Dad shout again. I kicked up dust as I ran down the lane. Through the wispy branches of the poplars surrounding our yard, I could
see him, fingers at his mouth, about to whistle. I shouted, and he stalked to meet me on the drive.

‘Where the
bleeding
hell have you been?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Nowhere? I’ve been shouting all morning.’

My pulse throbbed at my temple.

‘Austin’s out looking for you.’

‘Why?’ I asked in a small voice, thinking of Sam and Mum and rubber skid marks across busy roads.

‘Some stuff from the shed’s gone missing,’ he said, heading for the house. ‘I need you to wait in, in case the coppers call back.’

‘Wait in?’ I followed behind him. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Blasted chainsaw’s banjaxed again. Austin’s driving me into town. Haven’t got time to waste, waiting around for the bloody phone to ring.’

‘Have you spoken to Sam? Maybe he borrowed something?’

‘Course I flaming have,’ he said. ‘Though God knows what he’d want with a monkey wrench, he can’t even wash his bleeding football kit. Anyway, the window’s
smashed at the back.’

I shut up. I didn’t know what there was to say anyway, I just wanted to slow things down.

‘I told you this would happen, didn’t I?’ he went on, in the kitchen now. ‘I said so. They wouldn’t bloody listen.’

‘Who?’

‘Who d’you think? Bloody coppers! What did they expect?’

I sat at the kitchen table while he hunted around the kitchen for the pick-up keys. They hung off a bundle of keyrings Sam and me had brought him back from different school trips, but he still
managed to lose them every day.

‘
Iris!
’ he shouted, out of nowhere. ‘That
bloody
foot . . .’

I stood up and stared at him. My eyes prickled as if there were little stags behind them, charging. I wasn’t upset, I was angry, and I wanted him to notice me for once, but he was focused
on the phone, like that would solve all his problems.

I stamped upstairs, dragging my finger through the dust on the banister. He hadn’t even tried to keep things nice. I sank into the armchair in his room, not caring that he was in and might
catch me. I wanted to see what Trick’s mum and his little sisters were doing in the paddock.

I didn’t expect to see Trick. He must have decided to come out from the cornfield straight away, because he was slumped by the fire with his mum and little sisters, eating something. They
looked just like a family on a camping holiday.

I was angry because stuff got nicked all the time. Just because it hadn’t happened to us before didn’t mean it was never going to. It could’ve been anyone. But Dad would make
out I was stupid if I even suggested something like that. He thought I was so gullible.

Trick’s mum was handing some drinks out. She moved like Trick, swift and precise. He was nothing like his dad at all. The way he hunched over to lace his boots, ignoring everybody, his
thick neck sloping to meet his shoulders. My stomach dropped when I thought of him. Trick smiled at something his mum said and I just knew it, I felt it.
He wouldn’t steal from us
.

Beyond the travellers, on the Ashbourne Estate, the maize flowers rippled prettily. I pictured the corn den, empty, and wished we were back there, just the two of us, without all this.

Trick’s mum chucked him an apple and he bit into it, looking tense as he waited for his dad to get home. I wanted to warn him about what was happening. I wanted him to be prepared.

‘Eye?’

Dad’s voice made me jump, and I pretended to be rooting through the washing pile on the armchair. He held out a cup of tea, and I took it without saying thanks.

‘Look at all that rubbish,’ he tutted, coming to stand beside me.

Black sacks and some tied-up carrier bags were piled at the back of each caravan, and one of the dogs, or a fox, had ripped out the insides. Food cartons and nappies were strewn about the
paddock. There were piles of old tyres and sheets of corrugated iron and an empty gas canister by the fire.

‘You didn’t answer me before,’ he said.

Neither of us looked at the other, and I listened for clues in his voice about whether or not I was in trouble.

‘Where were you? When I shouted.’

I blew on my tea, making the surface move: Ashbourne Lake in the breeze.

‘Iris?’

‘Pig farmer’s field,’ I lied.

‘Then why didn’t you hear me?’

‘Must’ve fallen asleep.’

He looked worried, which meant he’d decided to talk to me about something, and I crossed my fingers so hard my knuckle joints hurt that it wasn’t anything that would stop me from
seeing Trick.

He shifted his weight from left to right hip then tidied up the towers of five pences he was collecting on the windowsill.

‘Look. I know I’ve been letting you run wild lately, but it’s only because I trust you. I don’t worry about you like I do your brother. I know you’re
sensible.’

I picked a cat hair from my tea.

‘Leave that alone a sec, I want to talk to you. About the gypsies . . .’

Irish travellers
, I corrected secretly.