The Facts of Life and Death (2 page)

John Trick was twenty-nine and had not worked for three years.

He used to do welding at the shipyard, and when there was no welding he’d done scaffolding, and when there was no scaffolding he’d done labouring, and when there was no labouring, he’d started to do nothing at all.

Then he had done nothing at all for so long that he’d gradually adjusted, until nothing had become the new something.

The new something was the drive up the hill and back and breakfast in front of the TV. It was combing the beach for driftwood, and surprising limpets for bait. It was a six-pack of Strongbow cooling in a rockpool, and pissing in the sea like a castaway.

After a while, he wondered how he’d ever found time for a job.

And on days like this, that suited him just fine. The morning rain had stopped and the cloud had thinned so that it only diluted the sunshine, rather than blocking it out completely – a reminder that, somewhere up there, summer was as it should be. The sheltered cove was always warmer than the clifftops, and the moisture was already leaving the land for the sky again in steamy wisps.

Through cheap earpieces, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson sang to him of real men and the women who’d wronged them. Sometimes – when the wind was up – he’d join in.

Short snatches of songs carried off on the spume.

He had collected half a dozen limpets and now dug one out of its shell with his penknife and put it on the hook. The outer flesh was tough, and the creature pulsed in his fingers as he threaded it over the barbs.

He cast and felt the weight touch the bottom, then he took up the tension on the line, and settled back into his old nylon camping chair.

John fished mostly at the Gut – a squareish wound blown out of the rock with gunpowder two hundred years before, so that ships could land their cargoes of lime and anthracite. The kilns where the lime had been burned were still there, built into the sea wall either side of the slipway – fortress-like stone ovens forty feet high that were now occupied by rats and by gulls, and so acrid with the shit of both that not even the children played there.

Mackerel was his most common catch, with whiting a close second. Both were good enough eating, and if he bothered to pick his slippery way to the end of the Gore, he could catch eels as long as his arm, and dogfish. Rock salmon, they were called in fancy restaurants, and sometimes Alison rang Mr Littlejohn at the hotel and he’d say yes or no. If he said yes, he gave Trick a tenner a fish. Then cut them into eight thick steaks that he sold for twenty quid a time.

John snorted around his roll-up. A hundred and sixty quid for a fish
he
caught and his
wife
cooked. He failed to see how Mr Littlejohn could sleep at night, for the thieving old bastard he was.

He could have sold the dogfish to the Red Lion in Clovelly, of course, but he never went to Clovelly, even though he could see it from here, across the shallow curve of the bay. Clovelly was the favoured brother to Limeburn’s runt, and nobody in either village ever forgot it.

The fluorescent end of the fishing rod shivered, and he tensed, ready for action. But the tip pinged back into position, pointing skywards with a trembling finger.

John subsided.

Bloody crabs.

Sometimes he would reel in and check the bait and cast again somewhere else, but it seemed like a lot of work when the air was so warm and the cider so cool.

He closed his eyes and waited.

He slept.

That night the window row began again. First the window, then how much the new tyre on the car had cost, then the mess Daddy had made cleaning the fish in the sink. Ruby went into the other room before it could get to the job.

Wherever the row started, it always ended up at the job.

It got there without her.

MISS SHARPE WROTE
two words on the whiteboard and Ruby copied them carefully on to the cover of a brand-new blue exercise book.

My Dairy.

‘You should write in your diaries every day,’ said Miss Sharpe, to groans from the boys. She put down the marker pen and walked up and down between the desks. Ruby liked it when Miss Sharpe walked about, because it made it harder for Essie Littlejohn to poke her with a pencil. Essie’s daddy owned the hotel where Mummy worked and Ruby hated her, with her big ears and her good crayons and her fancy mains gas.

‘All the things you do, and the thoughts you have,’ Miss Sharpe continued. ‘All your secret dreams and plans for the future.’

Ruby noticed that she had pale pearl varnish on her short nails. Ruby wasn’t allowed to paint her nails because only slags painted their nails, but Miss Sharpe didn’t look like a slag. She had ugly brown hair and no make-up, and her only jewellery was a bracelet that tinkled with charms, including a little silver horseshoe. Ruby liked the horseshoe, and – by extension – Miss Sharpe, so she didn’t see how Miss Sharpe could be a slag. Maybe nail polish was only slaggy if it was a French manicure, like the girls from the college, who smoked on the bus.

Miss Sharpe saw Ruby looking at the charms and smiled her lopsided smile. She had only been here since the beginning of term, so she hadn’t had time to get miserable yet.

David Leather put up his hand and asked if he could write about his milk-bottle collection and Shawn Loosemore asked if he could write about smashing up David Leather’s milk-bottle collection, and everyone laughed – apart from David and Miss Sharpe, who had to clap her hands to make them all be quiet.

‘Of course, David. Hobbies, or what you did at the weekend, or what you want for your birthday, or your pets. It will be like Facebook, but just for 5B. Then,’ she said, ‘those who want to can read their diaries out in class, and we’ll be able learn about each other’s—’

The bell rang and Miss Sharpe had to raise her voice over the scraping chairs.

‘—everyday lives! Have a lovely weekend everybody!’

Ruby stuffed
My Dairy
into her plush pony-shaped backpack, then trailed out of the classroom behind the others.

The other kids had no interest in her
or
her everyday life.

Writing it down wouldn’t make any difference.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Cowboy.

Cowboy Night was the best night of the week.

On Cowboy afternoons, Ruby would get off the bus and go into the shop to spend her pocket money under the suspicious eye of Mr Preece. She didn’t like Mr Preece, who had hair curling from his ears, and eyes that looked too big behind thick glasses. She took an age every Friday to buy the same two things: a Mars bar and a copy of
Pony & Rider
, which were her treats for the week.

By the time she reached the little chapel, she’d always eaten the Mars bar.

Pony & Rider
lasted longer, and Ruby ambled down the hill, envying the pretty girls with their long legs wrapped around immaculate ponies, and looking for good pictures to cut out and stick over her bed, until it became difficult to see by the miserly light that the forest allowed. Then she hurried the rest of the way to Limeburn, letting gravity speed her home.

Daddy sucked spaghetti into his mouth in long strings that were still attached to his plate, and Ruby did the same, but Mummy said ‘Ruby!’ and made her stop.
She
wound her spaghetti around her fork so that it was like putting a knot of wet wool in your mouth. It wasn’t half the fun.

‘Mmm,’ said Daddy, ‘that was great, thanks.’ He leaned back and played the drums on his tummy. Sometimes Ruby had to guess what song.

‘More?’ asked Mummy.

‘Please.’ He made the most of a burp and Ruby giggled. Daddy could say ‘Bulawayo’ before finishing a burp. He laughed too; Daddy was always in a good mood on Cowboy Nights.

Mummy got up and crossed to the stove. Daddy watched her all the way. When she got back with the second plateful, he said, ‘What’s the occasion?’

‘What?’

‘New shoes.’

Mummy looked down as if they were a surprise to her too.

‘Oh,’ she said, pushing her hair behind her ear.

Ruby leaned off her chair to see the shoes. Mummy always wore flat ones because she was too tall. These were far from flat, and had lots of thin straps. They looked like the shoes models wore in magazines.

‘Mum gave me some money for my birthday,’ said Mummy. ‘You remember.’

‘That was months ago.’

‘I haven’t had time to go shoe shopping.’

‘Bit high, aren’t they?’ said Daddy.

Mummy looked under the table at her feet. ‘They
are
a bit higher than they felt in the shop. I just thought it would be nice to have one good pair just in case …’ She tailed off.

‘In case of what?’ said Ruby.

‘Just in case we went out somewhere,’ she shrugged.

Daddy sucked up the new spaghetti.

‘Can I have some more spaghetti too?’ said Ruby.

‘What’s the magic word?’ said Mummy.

‘Please.’

‘Are you still hungry?’ said Mummy. ‘That was a big bowl for a little girl.’

‘Let her eat if she’s hungry,’ said Daddy.

‘I
am
hungry,’ said Ruby.

‘See?’

Mummy pursed her lips and Ruby felt cross, because faces like that made her remember that she was fat. Not fat like David Leather, whose legs rubbed together so hard that there were threadbare patches on his school trousers, but fat enough to hate a waistband and a mirror. Daddy said it was puppy fat and it was cute, but Ruby knew it wasn’t.

Mummy got up and brought the pan over and draped a little more spaghetti into Ruby’s bowl. She didn’t sit down again; she stood, watching the clock.

‘So,’ said Daddy, glancing at the clock. ‘What’s the occasion?’

‘No occasion,’ said Mummy. ‘Just thought I’d wear them tonight to show Mum what her money bought, that’s all.’

Ruby wound the spaghetti around her fork against the bottom of her bowl. ‘They’re too high, Mummy,’ she said. ‘You’ll fall over on the cobbles.’

‘Break an ankle,’ agreed Daddy.

Mummy stared at her feet and bit her thumbnail. The nail was already ragged, and when she went to work every day she put a fresh blue plaster on it.

Daddy pushed his chair back from the table and Ruby sucked up her last mouthful of spaghetti, then rushed upstairs after him, to watch him change.

Ruby loved Daddy every day, but on Cowboy Night she loved him even more, with his black clothes and black hat and the fake brass bullets glinting at his waist.

Cowboys was the best game she played in the woods, even though she didn’t have a hat or boots or a gunbelt. She had sticks that were shaped like guns, stuck into the pockets of her jeans as if they were in holsters.

Daddy adjusted his black Stetson so that it was low over his eyes, then opened the bottom drawer. Ruby craned to see what was coming out of it, because she wasn’t allowed to open the drawer herself. She wasn’t allowed to mess with Daddy’s cowboy things.

It was the Texas string tie, with a blue stone cattle skull and pointed silver tips to the laces. Daddy stood in front of the pitted mirror that hung on the back of the bedroom door, and looped it over his head, then replaced his hat – making sure it was just right in the mirror.