Bully (20 page)

Jesus, I have to lighten the mood,
I thought.

And for some reason, I thought that the best way to re-establish some kind of bond between Twinnie and I was by bringing up some other incident from our past.

‘Does this remind you of the time we went camping up at Grange Heights?’ I asked, trying to massage some life into my stump.

Twinnie flashed me another of his unreadable smiles.

‘Yeah mate,’ he said. ‘It might well remind me of that night, but I can guaran-fuckin’-tee it won’t remind you of that night. I bet the only reason is you mention it is after something fucking Dick let slip.’

‘What you on about?’ I asked, calling his bluff. ‘I remember everything about that night… I remember the Black Panther stories… All of it.’

Twinnie started laughing. He laughed for so long that it soon became obvious that he was mainly doing it to prolong my discomfort.

‘Bully,’ he said, finally, ‘you were so drunk that night that there’s no chance you’d remember anything. Staggering about all over the place. Never could take your booze, could you?’

His comment may or may not have been intended as a slight on my manhood. I certainly
felt
it that way. In a town like Newton Mills, drinking all day is respected; making a show of yourself is not. Beating your wife behind closed doors is expected; striking her in the pub is a big no-no. She shouldn’t be in the pub in the first place, some wag might say.

‘Piss off, Twinnie,’ I snarled.

He laughed again.

‘Pack it in.’

‘What’s up, Bulls-eye? Don’t you like a bit of ribbing? A bit of dissent in the ranks? Can’t you take it?’

Can’t you take it?
It was what Twinnie always asked of his victims. As though the fault was somehow with them. And do you know what? When he asked the question of me, I sort of felt like it
was
my fault that I couldn’t take him bullying me as he was attempting to do. I sort of felt like I deserved it.

‘It’s not that… I just…’

‘Just what? Just what? What are you stammering like that for? You sound just like Tommy fucking Peaker.’

Suddenly there was silence in the room. We listened to the wind whip round the farmhouse and the far-off cries of Dick in the barn. I’m sure we both felt that by saying Tommy’s name, we were simply drawing him closer. For the first time, I saw a quiver of fear in Twinnie’s face.

‘When did you first see him?’ I asked. ‘Second time around, I mean?’

This time it was Twinnie’s turn to go on the defensive. He shrugged his shoulders, muttered something typically incomprehensible and picked up his porno mag, feigning nonchalance.

‘He came to the hospital… After what happened to my foot. Why haven’t you even asked about my foot, Twinster?’ I continued, pressing home my advantage.

‘Don’t fucking care about your foot,’ sniffed Twinnie, sounding like Dick, like a child. ‘Doesn’t bother me what happens to you. Not after you left.’

Were you lonely, Twinnie? Was that what fucked you up? Lonely for your dead twin? Did you kill him too? Did your purpling begin before you could even walk and talk properly?

I longed to be able to ask him those questions, but knew that I had to save them up. Save them for a time when we were gripping on to the edge of the precipice with just our fingernails, and he’d be trying to scramble all over me, just to save himself. Besides, Twinnie was stroking the shaft of the shotgun in a way that suggested that any mention of his twin brother, and I’d be chucked in the woodpile, just like that mad old farmer’s family.

Suddenly, he spoke again: ‘I presumed
he
did it to you. I thought that I didn’t need to ask. Not after Lion. Not after Lion.’

‘Not
him
actually,’ I admitted. ‘Rats did it.’

‘Rats?’ barked Twinnie, suddenly sitting upright on the camp-bed. ‘What you on about?’

‘Rats tried to eat me alive.’

‘Fuuuuucccccckkk,’ groaned Twinnie. Then: ‘Still; look on the bright side, you’re still walking. Sort of…’

Twinnie’s words reminded me so much of my dad’s that I was taken aback. Still, the conversation was the first sign that Twinnie wasn’t completely turned to the dark side. There was still something of the old him left, wasn’t there? Or was that the problem all along? Should he have been trying to
get rid
of the old him?

Later, after a silence which could hardly be described as companiable – I’d had to listen to some suspicious sounds from Twinnie underneath his sleeping bag – I started to feel the pangs of hunger eating away at my stomach like… well, like the rats that had gnawed away at the top-side of my foot.

‘Is there anything to eat?’ I asked.

‘Should’ve brought your own,’ Twinnie snapped. ‘You not pass any shops on your way up here. Like Burt’s or something?’

‘Why’d you say Burt’s?’

Twinnie bolted upright again; sensed the tension in my voice.

‘Just said it, that’s all. Blast from the past, like. You were the one bringing up all sorts like that camping trip at Grange Heights. Chill out mate, for fuck’s sake. Thought that by mentioning that old gormless fuckwit, I’d be able to make you laugh.’

‘Burt’s dead,’ I said.

‘Figured as much; not seen his shop open in donkey’s years; maybe the environmental health finally got hold of what shit he was trying to sell in them dog-meat pasties…’

‘No man; I don’t think you get what I mean. I mean he died
yesterday…’

Twinnie whistled through his teeth, clearly still not understanding.

‘I mean he died from the same thing as us!’ I cried. I longed to take his head and smash it against that whitewashed wall or on the blank space on the concrete where the Aga must have used to reside, before some hardy, and strong thieves managed to disconnect it and make off with it.

The fire returned to Twinnie’s eyes. ‘We’re not dead yet, man,’ he said. ‘Look at us. Alive and kicking… Well; some won’t be kicking as well as others…’

He twisted round on the camp-bed, gestured to the blood-red graffiti on the walls:
You’ll never take me alive.

‘That’s what I mean! He doesn’t want to take us alive; he wants to…’

Twinnie climbed up from the camp-bed. Towered over me. I couldn’t remember him being so tall.

‘Well, what do you suggest we
do
then, soldier boy?’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Huh?’

I still didn’t say anything. Twinnie returned to his seat, but picked up the spade from under the camp-bed again. I could see glints of blood on the blade. My blood.

‘You were talking about that night up at Grange Heights earlier, Bully,’ said Twinnie, in a soft voice which didn’t quite tie-up with the violence he’d so nearly inflicted just a few seconds earlier. ‘Well let me tell you about that night.’

‘Member it was around that time that everyone was afraid of the Black Panther. Some fucking busybody or other claimed she see’d a big black cat stalking through her garden messing with her washing or some such. Called the old filth in to report it. An’ of course they laughed their piggy-little heads off at the story. A big cat in Newton Mills? Where’d that come from? The travelling circus?

Anyway, turns out that because the woman’s garden backed on to the school playin’ fields, the filth
had
to go check it out. Just in case, like. Look for dock-off paw-prints and the like in her rose beds. And of course, they found nothing out of the ordinary. Whatsoever. But you know what it’s like in Newton Mills. People like to talk. There isn’t much else to do round here save killing yourself on drink or drugs or by joining the army. So this busybody starts talking. She starts talking in the shop queue and at the bus stop. She tells her neighbours. And before you know it, it’s like Chinese Whispers and
everybody’s
talking about this big old cat with sabre-tooth fangs that’s strutting round the town like he owns it. Men in the pubs start talking about the cat making off with a baby from a pram like that woman down under who had her baby snatched by dingoes. Women in the… wherever women go… start talking about pulling the kids outta school. Just in case.

‘Member the special assemblies they had round that time? How they told us we had to go straight home from school. Do not pass Burt’s. Do not collect two hundred 1p sweets. How they told us not to go out at night until that beast was caught? Do you not remember even
why
we went up Grange Heights in the first place?

It was after… after what happened with you know who. And nobody knew where he was still. So we decided –
all
of us – to go up the Heights and say we saw the Panther and that he had a piece of you know who’s clothing on him. In his fangs or something. Or that we saw the Panther carrying you know who’s school trousers – remember them shit ones that he always wanked in. I dunno, we just kinda decided that the best way of putting everyone off our scent was to set the bloodhounds on the trail of that imaginary cat.

But of course, once we got up there, we had nothin’ to do but drink and smoke, like usual. And it turned into a good party for a while. Dick was being a dick, but funny with it. Lion was trying to wrestle all of us, but playful-like; you know how he was. Me and you sat around sharing this dock-off bottle of cider that we’d pinched from the offie down on main street. You know the one; the one where they had that bird from a couple of years above us – well, a few years above us – and she always just gave us booze so we’d stop pestering her.

You got drunker and drunker. And more and more… maudlin. Yeah, that’s the word. Maudlin; like my old mum used to get when she got stuck into the gin. You were snivellin’ and cryin’ and everything. Just like you know who. Then you passed out for a bit. And that’s when Dick and me set fire to your bloody sleeping bag with you in it. You woke up like a man possessed. Wouldn’t see what we’d done as the joke it really was. But you stayed when we bribed you with more drink.

Anyway, after a while, we all had too much to drink and went to sleep – you in your half sleeping-bag, shivering away like a girl – everyone else wrapped up toasty warm. But after an hour or so, I got woke up. You, white as a sheet, like you’d seen a ghost, shaking and shaking at my shoulders. Claimed you’d seen the Black Panther. I mean
really
seen it. Not just as part of the story we were going to make up. Kept talking and talking about how it breathed. Even how it smelled. You said it smelled like fish. I’ll always remember that.

We all tried to calm you down. All of us. Lion sat on you for a bit, Dick tried telling dickish jokes. I just told you that we needed to stick to the plan. But then you said it: you said that you were going to go to the police. About you know who. Said you were going there straight-off. Gonna run all the way down to that piggy station like a good little pig. And you just scarpered, leaving us clutching on to your burned-out purple sleeping bag. Dick tried to run after you and you just increased the pace. But as you did so, you started slipping down the slope. Came a-tumbling all the way down, didn’t you? Bashed your arm up big-style. And your head.

Of course, we went knocking on the door of Maurice Dailly’s farmhouse like good little boys. And Maurice called your dad and the ambulance. You were in for two weeks. Your dad stayed the whole time. But when you came out, it was like you’d forgotten the whole thing. It was mad, like. But we thought it might interrupt your recovery or something, so we… get off… get off my throat…

I had my hands clasped around Twinnie’s neck. I could feel the grease and
purple
sliming its way off his skin and onto mine. I felt the old power in my hands and the righteousness of what I was about to do. Outside, the wind howled louder, like it was laughing away, ever so merrily about some fart joke in assembly.

I loosened my grip. Twinnie seized upon my moment of weakness and kicked out at my half-foot. Knocked me over. I crashed to the floor, still gripping him, but weaker now… weaker.

I ran my fingers across the ridges on the stone floor, tried to map my way back into a reality I could cope with. But suddenly, Twinnie’s story about what really happened at Grange Heights that night started to ring true. But it couldn’t be, surely?

‘You’re lying,’ I breathed.

Twinnie, who was still lying next to me, fingering his purple neck, started laughing.

‘I swear on Dick’s life that I’m not,’ he said, finally. ‘It was you that broke down up there… You that wanted to confess…’

‘But it was Dick’s sleeping bag,’ I pleaded.

‘It was
your
sleeping bag… Come on, you remember really, don’t you, soldier boy?’

I screwed up my eyes; tried
not
to remember.

Twinnie grabbed onto my shoulder and squeezed. I felt his fingernails slipping into those old scars left by Tommy Peaker back at the military hospital. Felt the searing pain of memory sting through me.

‘It was you that was in hospital. You that has that scar on your arm where the bone poked through…’

‘That scar on my arm is from when I fell off my bike… on the cobbles… on Hangman’s Row.’

‘Is that really what you think?’ demanded Twinnie, digging his fingers deeper into my flesh. Twisting them now too. Twisting so’s I’d finally understand what he was trying to tell me.

‘But why did Dick tell me all that stuff he did… back at the Choke? Why did Dick say it was him?’

Twinnie laughed.

‘He’ll say whatever he feels like depending on what the drugs tell him. Come on; you know that.’

I gasped, stared down at the familiar circular scar on my wrist, just down from the elbow. It glared purple.

‘Or he’ll say whatever I fucking well tell him to say,’ said Twinnie.

Chapter Fourteen

“
It landed foul on the grass”

I must have passed out. When I came to, I had the strange feeling that a lot of time had passed, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly how much. Through the cracks in the farmhouse walls, I could see that it was still mostly dark, but it was the kind of dark in which there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Or at least I hoped there was.