His feet, like swinging pieces of iron — one of which felt dangerously heavier than the other — also found ledges. It was a fight to steady himself, and he stopped breathing to do so, pushing each finger as far as it would go into the ledge to strengthen his grip for the pull-up. He heaved, and began to lift slowly. At the same time his fingers dragged back, as if the rainspots that had fallen on to the ledge were grease instead of water. Before they could snap off and send him whistling like a bomb into the ground, he lunged forward with his elbows, swung his body at the top shelf of stone, and landed in a sitting position. “Yo’ needed all day to do that bit of a job.”
“I didn’t tek as long as yo’ did,” Brian retorted. He looked back over swamp and tips, railway and distant factories, with not a living soul in sight, then turned to see a six-foot drop within the Sann-eye: mountains of dustbin rubbish ready for burning after the weekend, tins and boxes and cinders stretching in waves away from the wall to form an escarpment at the dozen doors of the cooling stoves. Dim light came in through high arched windows all around the great interior, and such vastness seen from the ledge he stood on made it seem like the inside of a church — except perhaps for the stuff of every dustbin piled below.
The oven-doors had been bolted and shutter-drawn; they looked harmless, not like monsters’ mouths any more but corpse-grey and a bit ghostly, sinister in their temporary inaction. The only remaining signs of heat were mixed with warm ash and a nose-cutting smell like that of old vegetables and fish. Something moved in the rubbish. “A cat: they get the biggest feed of their lives here.” Bert’s gruff voice echoed around the space still left between rubbish and ceiling.
“I’m off,” he said. He jumped a yard out from the window-sill and dropped into the rubbish, almost out of sight as his feet went in. “It’s like landin’ on a feather-bed,” he yelled. Brian held his nose and took a clumsy flying leap.
The height, twice his own, looked immense, but was reduced to nothing by the crash that pulled at his legs like an electric shock and rolled him sideways a bit too soon after the leap. Shuddering, he tried to get up, but couldn’t until Bert pushed a hand out and jerked him to where it was less spongy underfoot. “It’s like sinkin’-sands, if you ask me,” Bert said. A cold herring wriggled from his face. The green eyes of an angry cat speared him, outraged at the cheek of his intrusion. It’s trespassing in here, he thought. We’ll get sent off if a bloke comes in: there’s nowt worth pinching anyway, so what’s the bleeding odds? We should ’ave gone off and spent my tanner. He sat to look back at where he’d hit the rubbish and, peering through the grey of the foreclosing afternoon, used a few seconds to discover what it was piled in heaps and taking up nearly half of the whole Sann-eye. Herrings and mackerel and bloaters, he’d never seen so many, not even on the pictures when it showed you big steamboats bobbing around Newfoundland and pulling in netfuls. Where did they all come from? “I don’t know,” Bert said. “I expect it’s all rotten, though.”
“It don’t smell rotten.”
“You can bet it is anyway.”
“What about taking some home?” Brian said. “We can fry it for supper.”
“You can’t; it stinks like boggery.” Bert seemed certain, so Brian was ready to take his older word for it, except for: “It don’t smell all that bad.”
“It wouldn’t be ’ere if it worn’t, would it?” Bert retorted. “Use your loaf.”
“I’m using my bleddy loaf. Look, the cat’s eating it.” He picked up a fish and smelt it, opened its mouth, turned its tail. “It looks all right to me.” Bert was alrealy in another corner, scraping through more varied heaps. “Fish shops chucked it ’ere,” he called back.
“I’ve never seen this much fish in fifty fish shops.” He threw the herring back on the pile. “I suppose lorries brought ’em?” Bert said they must have. A huge black cat ran from a window, took a fish in its mouth, climbed out. Other cats were round about, fixed in the windows like bats or owls, bloated with food, hoping for enough appetite to make another dive. Some moaned like babies in the dusk, unable to move, too loaded to live, dazed at the shock of an easy life, as if filled with a nagging fear that they would never recover from it.
“I suppose they threw it away at the shops ’cause they couldn’t sell it? It’s old stock; like them tuffeys you find on tips.”
“Why don’t yer forget about that bleedin’ fish?” Bert said. “You’re getting on my nerves. Come over ’ere to look for summat good.” There was boat-loads on it, enough to feed thousands: you could roast ’em over fires or fry ’em in pans, and fill your guts for a year of teas and suppers, as long as it didn’t mek yer sick. “Bollocks,” he shouted to Bert, making his way on all fours over tin cans and ashes towards him.
“They’ve nearly orluss got this much fish in.” Bert was too absorbed to slam back. “It’s bad, though.” He tore into a wall of rubbish, and Brian had never seen him use a rake with such skill. Tin cans, bottles, cardboard boxes, orange peel, and solidified masses of unnameable parts were burrowed into, while objects of doubt were hooked up to the failing light: either jettisoned or laid aside on the sackbag.
Brian looked closer to see how such quick raking came about. “That’s a strong rake you’ve got. Did you find it ’ere?”
“On tips. It was under a load of old swarf from the Raleigh.” With a boastful gesture and a satisfied grin he held it up, meaning him only to glimpse it before bending to work again.
“I’ll believe you when I see it,” Brian said, already suspecting. The rake swung, so he grabbed out and pulled it close, which brought a laugh: “What did you think I was limpin’ all the way from the tips for? I couldn’t let anybody see it, could I?”
“That’s ’is best rake. He’ll be lost wi’out it.” Brian cried indignantly: “You rotton sod. Fancy doin’ a thing like that.”
Bert tried denying it, in fun as much as hope of belief. “It worn’t Agger’s. It was somebody else’s. Honest. Cross my ’eart and cut my throat if I tell a lie.”
“I don’t believe yer. I know Agger’s rake when I see it. I’m not blind.” Bert gave up his act of innocence and turned on him: “What if it is? Agger found it, di’n’t ’e? He di’n’t pay for it, did he? We needed one, di’n’t we?”
Brian admitted the truth of this barrage. “You still didn’t need to nick it.”
“I didn’t. I found it in his sackbag. Anyway, our Brian, when I took it I seed ’e’d got about ten more. He finds plenty o’ new ’uns every day. Or else p’raps he nicks ’em like I did.”
Maybe he does at that, Brian thought, and became absorbed in Bert, who seemed to be carving a grotto from the bank of rubbish. He stayed back while the dextrous excavation went on, on all kinds of domestic residue landing not far from his feet. He’ll get through to the wall soon by the look on it. That’s what came of nicking such a good rake: it worked like a machine, some sort of field thresher they often have near the Nook in summer.
A tunnel opened so that Bert was half hidden. What’s he trying to find? I’ll go in soon to see what it’s like under all that rammel. Maybe he wain’t let me. Course he wilclass="underline" he’s my cousin. My pal as well. Our birthdays are nearly the same. A large tin from the top of the mountain rolled menacingly towards him, and the instinct to kick it out of the way was curbed by a thought that it wouldn’t be safe to do so. Bert, adaptable and quick, capable of looking after himself, came from a long line of colliers, and cocked his ear as if he’d heard some mythical splitting of pit-props far down in his soul. Another tin rolled, followed by jars, bottles, and wet paper, until Brian saw the whole mountain sway like an earthquake. A cat ran across the top to forage at the fish beyond, its green eyes looking momentarily to one side as if its light feet were causing the subsidence.