Even Tony is heading for the beach. On Giles Street, mothers haul kids out of oversized cars, men brush dog hairs off khaki cotton jackets, taxi drivers push sun-drunk women out of cabs. On Giles Street, Tony limps, side-stepping the dog shite, stepping over cracks. Careful now, careful. The bear, his mother had said, step on a crack and that dirty great bear’ll get you. He pushes past the Maxwell’s overgrown hedge, gives it a shove with his elbow. Thorns tear pink at the loose scoop of his skin. A momentary bloom of pain. The air smells of chip fat, Chinese takeaways and candy floss. Not the sea. Council tractors put paid to that. Ploughing and hoovering the seaweed off the butter-white sand every morning before the mobs arrive. The dirty great bear, his mother had said. He’d reached for her hand. For pity’s sake, Tony! And then the shove. His wee mouth popping in shock. He’d tumbled, legs scrabbling away from the bear. Did he scream?
A rabble of students pushes past him, forcing him further into the prickle of the hedge. All fake tans and canned laughter, blackcurrant aftershave and plastic bags of cheap booze, shorts right up their arses. Rude wee shites. Feels in his pocket for his folding knife. Strokes the wooden handle. Can’t beat a cheese piece cut from a polished blade. Remembering that knife grinder in the leather apron, shouting his wares as they got home from school. Flustered mothers sending running sons out with blunt steels. All the sons but Tony.
A blackbird lands on a garage roof on the other side of the street, bursts too much beauty too much tune over the whole damn lot of them. His father running his thumb along the freshened steel, the oozing blood an obedient pulsing track. Tony pauses, leans hard on the iron gate at No.5, catches his breath. A woman squeezes past him, her fat hip soft on his. A hot rush of human touch. His free hand slips to his groin. She’s sour sweat and Persil Automatic, belly cut off at the midriff with a purple t-shirt proclaiming GOD. GOD? No, DOG damnit. His mother swore it was the devil that summoned his father every weekend to the dog races. He wouldn’t have gone there on his own, she whispered. But it was God that sent his father home with an empty wallet and sick-sweet vodka sighs. Also fists.
He pulls his hand up from his groin. That sound, Greensleeves? He frowns, looks around. An ice-cream van pulls in, turns and parks by the promenade. That summer of the bear there’d been an accordion player bashing out Greensleeves. With a three-toed monkey and a red felt hat and a moustache that curled twice around each ear. His sister sucking on the stick of blue rock with black lettering down the centre that he couldn’t yet read.
And now, look at that. A wee girl running towards the tinkling van on the other side of the street, a pink balloon tied to her gold plait, a note clutched tight in a pale hand. She is, perhaps, five. She jumps every crack. She knows. She knows about the bear. She beams for ice-cream. His father had held him low above the slam of the beer-froth waves. Swinging him hard side to side. Lower and lower until the sea was grasping at his back, yanking down his shorts, soaking his bare bum. ‘Heh Grandad,’ a bloke says to him, ‘going to hang onto that all day?’
Tony lets go of the gate. Shuffles aside. He hauls up his dodgy leg. Steps over the first crack, drags his leg, steps over the second. His father shouting and laughing. His sister calling from the safety of the sand, her hand tight in their mother’s. ‘Me, Daddy, now me!’ Tony praying away sharks. Tony dribbling fear spittle on his father’s wet denim sleeve. If he doesn’t step on a crack, the blackbird will survive the winter. If he doesn’t step on a crack. The wee girl stumbles, twists to look at Tony, smiles, regains her step, runs again. His father scolding his mother. He’s got to learn, Agnes. Stand on his own two feet. Don’t molly coddle him. His mother replying, her voice stuck on tremble. Show him some love, Arthur. He’s only five. Tony crouched in the cupboard under the stair with the reeking mop and the scum-rimmed bucket, covering his ears. His sister sat on the kitchen table sweeping a finger round the cake mix, her face a muddy chocolate blur.
He’s tempted by the path that turns into the Samaritans, swept clear and wiped of sin. His dodgy leg aches. He checks his feet. Both feet on the crack. No, no. Oh Jesus, no. His feet together all neat over the crack. His full weight through the buttercup in the crack. The blast of a horn. A shriek from the blackbird. Every window from every Victorian house leaning in, aghast. The wee girl on the road. Red skirt and white socks. A pink balloon, a golden plait. Tony wobbling on the crack, reaching for the Samaritans sign, fists punching off the bear. The wee girl on the centre white line of the road. The driver’s eyes rolling white. Two white eyes slingshot black through the tinted windscreen of the black truck. Crying. Not his crying. Greensleeves trilling and jivvying. Didn’t cry over his mother’s missing hand even as his feet jerked and thrust away from the bear. People screaming police ambulance police! A herring gull swooping down beside him, stabbing a red crisp wrapper from the gutter, lifting off, giving up the bag in flight. All about him coconut sun cream and laughter, stalled. Taking off in the wind, the red crisp bag, so high, higher, spiralling down over the wee girl on the road, the wee girl spreadeagled face down on the road, so much noise in so much hush. Tony’s shoes glued to the crack. A Velcro strap come undone, over the canvas fade a loose tongue.
Image by John Purvis.
SANDERLINGS 