As she was saying these things to me I was aware of some movement above us. At first it was hard to distinguish it from the noise of the rain hitting the bridge and the water, but it soon became apparent to me that there were people up on the bridge. At first I presumed it to be people, office workers or locals maybe, passing over the canal on errands or something, but the voices — there were more than one — weren’t moving. The voices remained directly above us. I then realised that the voices weren’t adult voices, they were too energetic, too excitable. I knew that it was them. I knew that it was the Pack Crew. I just knew it was them. I tried to peek out above the bridge, but it was impossible to see anything. I imagined the redheaded lad to be there, he must have been there, fiddling with his mobile phone, or lighter, spitting indiscriminately onto the tarmac at his feet. I imagined their hoods up, shielding their faces from the sheets of rain. I wondered what it was they could be doing up there, above us, on the bridge in the pouring rain. I knew they had to be up to something: no one in their right minds, even a teenage gang, would stand on a bridge, over a murky canal, exposed to the torrential downpour, for the sake of it, to merely hang out. Nobody does that. I knew that they must be doing something nefarious, that they were standing on that bridge for a particular reason. I signalled to her, gesticulating to her to look up and listen. She did what I said, understanding my signals and listened for a short while, then she shrugged her shoulders. I put my finger to my lips; I didn’t want us to be heard; I didn’t want them to know we were just below them.
The first time I ran away from home — after some trivial argument with my brother about football or something — I ran all the way to the canal, eastwards, towards Broadway Market. By a bridge, I found some scrubland that was bordered by a red brick wall at one end. The wall was quite old. It had probably stood there for over one hundred years or more before I finally reached it that day. It stood at the farthest end from the canal. Behind it was a derelict print works that was being used as a scrap yard. I ran through the long grass towards the wall and sat there beneath it with the moss and the damp, breathing heavily, determined never to go back home, before I spotted the old front door that had been dumped there in the long grass. It was still quite solid, having apparently not been exposed for that long to the elements, so I lifted it up and leant the door horizontally against the decaying red brickwork. I thought nothing of disturbing the newly-formed ecosystem in the process and relished my new impromptu den. I climbed inside. It soon began to rain; I was completely protected from the elements. I felt warm; safe. I must have fallen asleep, because I awoke to voices: two men on the other side of the wall. I can remember what the two men were talking about: they were talking about a woman. I presumed she was the wife, or girlfriend of one of the men.
Man A: She just took off.
Man B: When?
Man A: Last night. With him.
Man B: Why?
Man A: Said she was fucking bored.
Man B: Bored?
Man A: Yeah. Fucking bored.
Man B: With what?
Man A: With me!
Man B: With you?
Man A: Yeah. With me.
Man B: Fuck. That’s shit.
Man A: I know. I want to fucking kill her.
I wet myself, I think. I was terrified. My damp trousers biting into my shivering thighs, my skin reacting, tightening, feeding my burgeoning paroxysms of fear. I closed my eyes until they both walked away. Whoever they were, however normal they were, or psychopathic, I didn’t want to see them, or them to see me. It was the wall that saved me from them. It was the decaying, one-hundred-year-old, red brick wall that separated me from them. It no longer exists.
That night I walked home in the dark. I walked into my parents’ house, trying to act as if everything was okay. I was happy when my parents’ combined anger subsided into waves of relief and comfort. After my father had lectured me my mother took me aside. We walked into the kitchen, away from my father and my brother — who seemed to have found the whole episode highly amusing — and the rest of the house. We stood by the kitchen sink, it was still full of unwashed dishes. My mother began to wash a plate under a tap. She didn’t say that much, and most of it I find difficult to remember, but I do remember one thing, and it has left a mark in me, she said: “There’s no point in running away. Never run away, all you find is yourself. There’s nothing else to find.” I didn’t understand her then, all those years ago, and it’s hard for me to understand those words even now — but I think I might. I think she might have meant no matter where we hide, no matter into which hole we choose to burrow, we have to make room for the shadow that always accompanies us — wherever it is we go — revealing to us our true nature: the sheer, undeniable weight of it all. The beauty of it being this: weight isn’t distinguishable by some thing. There is no thing. It is weight, the paradox being that it — the weight that envelops us — somehow calms us.
At least I think that’s what she meant. I should have listened to my mother.
sixteen
The voices above us on the rusting iron bridge became louder, more excitable and energetic. Something was happening up there. They were doing something. At first, they presented themselves, the collective voices, as a continuing, muffled voice, a collective voice that could not be understood, a rising noise of undecipherable syllables and accents, a slight rumpus of varying octaves. Yet, the more intently I listened, each voice began to separate itself from the other, the once homogenous mass of amusement began to filter through, as if I had finally cracked some form of verbal cipher, and I began to pick out and select certain words, each too arbitrary to fit into any context.
“___________________There_____________”
“_____Now___________________”
“___________________Again___”
“__Let____”
“___________________No_”
“________Aim___________________”
“______________Up___________________”
“____Do___________________”
“___________________Missed________________”
It was difficult to understand what was happening up above us. I imagined the redheaded youth to be orchestrating the whole thing — he was leading whatever it was they were doing up there. I wanted them to go away, to leave me alone. I wanted to expel them from my life, or for them to become bored with whatever it was they were doing and walk elsewhere and do something else in the rain, away from me, away from the canal — away from us. But something was occupying them, something had rooted them to that spot above us, something exciting, something that passed the time for them. Whatever it was they were doing.
Their voices began to filter down below the bridge, reverberating between us, within its shelter. I began to detect the beginnings of short, vigorous sentences, followed by little bursts of verbalised anticipation.
“______________There! It’s there!___________________”
“___Do it now, again!___________”
“___You missed!___________________”
“_Up a bit! There! Again, do it again!______”
“_________Let me have a go!________”
“_________Just hit it!___________________”
“________Come on! Give me a go!___________________”