Wreckage (14 page)

—Of
course
I will, Katie said again, to her whole family but primarily to her sister because she was still regarding her with big and seeping eyes. —As often as I can. Every second weekend I’ll try to come back, I will. Don’t none of yew worry about me. I’ll be fine, see. I’m not going to be going very far at all.

And then suddenly she had an appetite and she ate the now cold slice of liver and some potatoes and a baked onion with butter mashed into it and salt. The sun sank further behind the mountain and as it did more people appeared, friends and neighbours from villages more seawards than Betws Garmon, Groeslan
and
Creunant and Caeathro. Tales were told of more names annihilated in Flanders and healths were drunk and memories toasted and food was eaten and songs played on fiddle and harp were danced or wept to accordingly and loss rolled down into the valley from both the mountain and the coastal plain and its smell was unidentifiable yet had something in it of the clear and sharp and unsullied. Kate’s grandmother awoke to sing toothlessly ‘O Jesu Mawr’ and then fell asleep again. Much later than intended Wil Roberts of Fferm Llandwrog appeared in his charabanc which contained only enough room in it for himself and Kate and her luggage so after wet and exhausting farewells under the blackening mountain he drove her to the train station at Caernarfon where with mere minutes to spare she caught the train to Bangor where she caught the train to Llandudno where she caught the train to Chester where she caught the train to Liverpool where she arrived at the Johnsons’ house by horse-drawn cab through the city that drew from her gasps and tears and on two occasions smiles. As it was morning she was fed and allowed to rest in a huge bedroom where she only wept. She spent a decade in that house, in service, during which time in 1917, when she’d been there two years, her father died at Cambrai, part of a tank crew which caught a direct hit from an Austrian howitzer and of he himself there was nothing left to bury so they interred an empty coffin in the sloping cemetery outside Capel Garmon which in the last three years had crept closer and closer still to the village. The Johnson patriarch died after a long illness when hostilities ceased and his wife took their children
to
a different town and Kate then found work as a convalescent nurse, helping soldiers to recover from or perhaps simply cope with is a more apt phrase their various injuries, their missing limbs or faces or smithereened minds. In the late 1930s she intended to quit this job but of course there soon came another influx of these broken beings the convalescence of which occupied another decade during which her brother was killed in Burma and her sister took their now ancient mother with her and her new husband to America, north New York State, where shortly after arriving their mother died too. Kate lost her Cymraeg, slowly but never entirely; there was a Welsh-speaking chapel in Toxteth that she attended and she met in that city many others who shared her first tongue, but since diurnal exigencies were conducted in English then her first language dribbled away like a thaw of something, some kind of melt. In the fifties she left nursing for good and turned to hotel portering, in one of which jobs she met a Greek man, a chef who, after getting her pregnant, suddenly vanished and left her at rather too late an age for mothering to give birth to a girl, alone, although afterwards she was visited frequently by the many friends she had made, men with false limbs and glass eyes and the women who cared for them. This daughter at a very young age fell pregnant to what Kate called a roustabout and indeed she was not surprised when this man refused to recognise the child, unsurprised but not unsaddened; the desolation of her daughter and the helplessness of her grandson scoured her raw heart. Her daughter then turned increasingly to alcohol for comfort as in fact
Kate
herself had been doing secretly for some years and it fell to her to look after this first child, named Alastair after his father, through primary and secondary schools into his drifting and desultory years when he began to run with the wrong crowd and, Kate was sure, turn to drugs and crime. The second-born grandchild was of necessity adopted by Kate too; a straw-haired girl who began to suffer eczema in her infancy and was called Scabby at school, although she now suffers rarely from that affliction and has developed a certain attractiveness. She has lived in London for some years. By the time of Alastair’s first custodial sentence for persistent shoplifting Kate hadn’t worked for some time and was claiming a state pension and had been subject to a constant heaviness in her chest and bad pain in her joints and, most worryingly, unpredictable blackouts; the last straw came when she awoke in a butcher’s, blood in her eyes from where she’d hit the counter edge as she toppled, surrounded by concerned faces. Terrified only that she’d have to go to hospital and wouldn’t be able to have any brawn for her tea and indeed shouting very loudly about this problem, an ambulance was called and she was taken to the Royal and there she lies now. She has been there quite some time and her mind has rapidly disintegrated and her lungs are filling slowly with fluid as are her joints and her heart is weakening and will soon become too feeble to pump any blood through her furred arteries. She will die soon. She is very old; nearly a century of years on this planet she has lived. In her own way she has not forgotten whom and what she loves. Life is a confused cloud. Her grandson will soon appear to her
through
that cloud but she will probably not recognise him. Across an ocean her younger sister still lives, now in Canada, not America; she has three children and seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. At times she wonders about her elder sister Katie and if she is still alive. The last time this sister wrote, about ten years ago when one of her grandchildren went off to fight in Iraq, the letter was never answered and nor was it ever returned. Nor was her grandchild, at least not alive; the transcription on his tombstone in Alberta which the sister hopes Kate will see one day although the possibility of that is extremely remote simply reads:

HERDD

PERFFAITH

HERDD

WHORE

God, that Tommy. Changes his ’tude like David fuckin Beckham changes his ’do. Mean, me an Vix come in ere to give im is wedge, like, an ee grins all nice as pie and gives us back a score each, tells us to get ar nails done or summin an then his man Lenny brings in that no-mark Darren an all of a sudden Tommy’s all ‘right, youse two, fuck off, werk to do’. Mean, ere he is the BIG MAN all of a fuckin sudden showin off like, in front of his boys. But ee coulda been nice about it, couldn he, I mean he coulda just said ‘see yiz later’ or summin but no, oh no, he’s gorrer come on all friggin dead aggressive tough guy like, so he tells
us
to fuck off and get back to werk. Back to bleedin werk, he sez! Fuck
that
, man. It’s been a busy friggin day what with the Eurocash conference, like, an ten sweaty Continentals in one afternoon is enough for me so I give Vicky a look like come ed, it’s Breezer o’clock an we gerrout of there quick-quick, that scally Darren checkin ar arses out as we do. Oh aye, never mind that he’s got his face all swollen like an a shaved patch on the back of his head where he’s been cut an what looks like fried friggin
onions
all over his kite that he fuckin reeks of, never mind all that, ee can still manage to check out ar arses, like. Yeh, so I give the divvy a wiggle of summin he’ll never get cos he can’t afford
this
werkin girl, oh no, no way. Lenny, God bless im, just gives us a little smile an looks away, gettin all shy like he normally does when we’re around. Sound feller, Lenny. I
like
Lenny. Got this lovely accent, like … dead soothing it is …

But God that fuckin Tommy.

Outside on the street in the drizzle I turn to Vicky. —Where now, Vix? Few bevvies in Concert Square is it?

She looks at me, her eyes all funny in that black eyeliner inch-thick.

—Jeez no. Avn’t we gorrer get back to werk? Isn’t that what ee just told us?

—Who, Tommy?

—Yeh.

I put me hand on her shoulder and steer her in the direction of the city centre and all the bright bars down there.

—Fuck what T just said, Vix. He’ll av his hands full
tonight
, did yeh not see the marks on that Darren’s head?

—Saw that gash on his scalp, like …

—Aye, an his kite all puffed up. That Lenny one must’ve given him a few digs, I reckon. Tommy’s got some business to attend to if yeh ask me an he’s gunner be occupied all night so
fucks
back to werk. Let’s goan get bevvied. Don’t worry about that Tommy. We’ll goan av a laugh, alright?

She still looks unsure. A Beemer pulls up at the kerb, winda comes down, cigar smoke an a red an worried face peers out.

—I, ah … I look for ladeez business to
-night
, mm?

Another foreigner. Honest to God, is that all thee do at these conference thingios, buy sex?

—Not now, love, I tell him. —Try Faulkner Square.

—Where
iz
zis Fuckenah Square?

—That way. I point in the vague direction of Tocky.

—You show me?

—
That
way, I say again an walk off with Victoria. Whether he drives up there or not I don’t know cos I don’t look back at him. Don’t hear his engine, tho.

—See, Vix, what yer’ve gorrer know about Tommy is he
needs
yeh.
Needs
the dough yer bringin in. Ee knows full well that if ee starts gettin too snotty with yis then yeh just gunner tell him to do one and goan werk for someone else. Yeh? Tellin yeh, he’ll shit imself, you do that. Dozen av many girls werkin for im, see, an he’s scared yer’ll just go off an start werkin for the Hunter brothers or someone. Yeh don’t need to worry about Tommy, darlin.

Ah, Victoria; she
needs
this reassurance. Feel dead
sorry
for her, I do. Mean she’s only been werkin for Tommy a matter of months like, she’s still findin out how things werk. She used to werk on her own, housecalls an that, all upmarket kinda stuff likes but she went into a, what, a
depression
I suppose yer’d call it after her best friend killed her own boyfriend, strangled him to death during sex like. It made the papers an the news an evrythin. She was let off, this girl, Vicky’s mate like, verdict of accidental death or misadventure or summin an then she vanished, just took off like, an no one knows where she is now but the thing is, see, is that Vicky blames herself; she told me once that she took this girl out on a job, over to Heswall I think it was to whip shite out of some masochist an she reckons that this gave this mate of hers a taste for it, like, y’know, unleashed her inner violence kinda thing an that’s why she was able to choke her boyfriend to death. All her own fault, Vicky says it was. So after it happened, like, she stopped werkin an started drinkin an lost a lot of money in earnings like, so she came to me for advice when things started
really
fuckin up an I guided her towards Tommy. She needs swag quick, T will help her out, an fair play to him he did; gave her a big wedge like to get herself sorted, pay off her debts n stuff, an she could pay it back in instalments like, by werkin for him, bein one of his girls, which is what she’s doin now an, considerin the interest the stingy get charges, will be doin for years to come. So yeh, I feel dead sorry for her; mean, she’s tied to Tommy now. All that stuff about the Hunter clan was shite, I just said it to make her feel better;
Tommy’ll
fuckin
mark
her if she leaves him, or doesn’t pay him back. Or, rather,
he
won’t, but he’ll get someone else to do it for him; Gozzy Squires or one of them creepy fuckin blade-merchants. Nasty pieces of werk, them, tellin yeh. Probly cut her up for free. Got them friggin
eyes
on em, like … like that friggin Darren one. Looks at yiz an his eyes just go straight fuckin through yeh, no messin. Wonder what he’s been up to, to gerrer whack like that … wonder what’s happenin back there now … what Tommy’s doin to him …

—So forget about im, Vicky. Time we got hammered, innit?

She gives me a small, very red smile. —Aye, alright, well. Where to?

—Dunno. Somewhere classy. Modo?

She laughs. —
Look
at us, Kathy. We’ll never gerrin.

She’s right; mean, ere we are in arse-freezin skirts an platform leopardskin thigh boots, push-up bras an evrythin … guy on the door’ll take one look at us an berst out friggin laughin. But I av an idea:

—Eeyar, well. Mine’s just around the corner, we’ll goan get changed, yeh?

So we do; go back to mine, wee Damien’s asleep thank God an I slip the childminder another flim to stay over. She’s alright; stuck into a vid an a Chinky, like. I lend Vicky some kex an a jacket an we head off into town. Hit Modo first, cocktail or five, y’know … Soon gorrer smile on her face, Vicky has. Round about midnight in the Baa Bar she’s wellied enough to start dancing on her own, slinkin all sexy like, an just for a moment I gets a glimpse of the
old
Victoria
, the one I first met just out of school; cocky an confident an smart, dead sexy. I expect that moment to last only for an instant an then vanish but it doesn’t, it hangs around. An that makes me glad.

TOMMY MAGUIRE

Thee get moren more fuckin cheeky evry fuckin day, tellin yeh, bolder, like, start dead early thee do. Mean at
theer
age I was on the dip down fuckin Bold Street like, but
dese
lil cunts, I
ask
yeh; tryna set emselves up in fuckin bugle, at
theer
fuckin age? When I was
theer
age I though a bugle was summin yeh blew into, Roy fuckin Castle likes, knowmean? Thought it was a fuckin trumpet, lar. Thought it was.

Just a coupla fuckin kids tho. Need a friggin lesson like I got by me ahl fuckin man, lesson in fuckin
fear
, man, lesson in fuckin
life
. Knew wharry was doin my dad no fuckin lie pure
knew
wharry was up to that cunt. Pure did it fuckin
right
he did he
knew
wharry was doin.