Wilkes glances at you. He says: ‘You’ll av to zerve yourzelf.’
There. The secret is revealed.
‘Barman’z gone to wodge.’
You shrug, aping the other man’s indifference.
‘What’z de madder wid you, den?’
‘What?’
‘You don’t lige de show?’
You have no answer to that. You neither like nor dislike my show. You understand that it is a thing beyond liking and not liking. Still, you want to say something.
Wilkes’s face is as belligerent as his question, and you struggle to right yourself under the power of his pale blue gaze. You fancy that our close association – talent and agent, slave and master – has lent him some of his living property’s power, though none of its charm.
‘I know you,’ you tell him. ‘We worked together. On these houses. You had charge of the site.’
Wilkes looks at you without even trying to recognise you. He shrugs. ‘Worked all over,’ he says.
‘But here. These houses—’
‘Shid houses.’
‘Are they?’
‘Bund do better dan dese in an afdernoon.’
Wilkes breaks off his stare, snaps upright as though heaved on a wire and begins paddling the pockets of his trousers. He tilts his head back, his mouth stretching in a rictus that reveals the browned nubs of never-shed milk teeth. His sneeze, coming after so theatrical a delay, is explosive, escaping his rapidly cupped hands. Spit flecks your cheek; you take a step backwards.
‘Shid.’
You have no handkerchief to offer him.
‘Fug.’ Wilkes wipes his nose with a bare hand. ‘Shid.’
The break in transmission encourages you to try again. Why you should want to attempt communication with this oaf beats me. But try you must.
‘How do you—?’
Then his eyes are upon you again, and you stop.
‘Whad?’
‘The chickie. How do you—?’
Absently, Wilkes runs his hand down the front of his shirt. ‘Rezizt?’ The man snorts phlegm and, swallowing a bark of laughter, taps the side of his nose. ‘Oh, I gan rezizt. No broblem. I don av none of dis, mate. None of your zense of zmell.’
The show is over. Chickies bring you on, goes the old joke, but they cannot bring you off. Now my striptease is done, we have a room here full of men and women with no idea – none – what to do with themselves. All this spangle and glitter is but the delivery system for a state of mind you lot cannot resist and can never find a name for, suckers that you are. And since no one wants to meet each other’s eye, it makes logical sense that the entire audience repair en masse to the bar, clamouring and shouting, waving damp banknotes in the air. It is thirsty work, being worked on the way I work on you.
Glasses clash and tinkle, in and out of the bottle-washing machine. Beer gushes. Slops puddle the bar. The barman reappears, disappears, reappears. Now there are two of him. Seriously: they are as alike as twins. Someone nearby lights a cigarette. You fish in your pocket for change. There’s only enough for a half. What time is it?
‘Bollogs.’ Wilkes leans away from the bar. He wobbles a moment, a boat casting off, and by the pitch of his gaze you can only assume he is looking for me, for while I am many things, I am not what you would call tall, even in these ridiculous heels. ‘Mate,’ he says to you, ‘wodge my pint.’
One glance at the cloudy muck Wilkes has made of his drink is one glance too many. Anyone making off with that yeasty backwash gets what they deserve.
Half a pint of IPA in hand, you squeeze through to a narrow space to the right of the bar, and at a small table you sit, only to find yourself tourniqueted by that damned twist in your trousers again. You stand up and turn out your pockets, and what should turn up but that corn dolly of yours? Odd: you could have sworn you left it behind at the flat. It’s somewhat the worse for its escapade. One arm is mushed beyond saving and there are loose stands of straw around its neck: a makeshift ruff.
You shove the dolly back in your pocket and sit down abruptly. You feel embarrassed, though there’s no very good reason why. Such trinkets are common enough. Dollies. Arrowheads. Little baskets (‘Fairy baskets’, they call them). Felt shoes. Crude clay figurines of animals, no bigger than your thumb.
Every village in England has a store peddling the leavings of its local chickies. They sit happily enough in the window display, nestled among the other tat those places sell. Stuffed mice dressed up in doll’s clothes. Hand-drawn maps of local walks suitable for the halt and the lame. Pamphlets anatomising the local church. There were a couple of shops of that sort in Hebden Bridge, do you remember? One was a post office, the other a riot of incense, posters, semi-precious stones, pendulums, tarot cards, runes, wands.
Do you remember the summer Jim came home on furlough and brought along mates of his, rough army lads from Sheffield and Penistone? How excited you were! How much you wanted to be a part of their games! You were just about old enough to drink by then, and Jim let you tag along after them up to Heptonstall for a boozy lunch of curries and crumbles, and then to the pub for more pints. They were friendly lads after their fashion. They teased you for your glasses and your weak frame. You were too excited to let anything they said hurt you.
Do you remember afterwards, what you got up to together on the moors?
Do you remember stumbling upon my hive, and what you did with it?
If you had bothered to clear it out instead of burning it, you could have sold my things to that shop. It sold all manner of rubbish, that place, like Mayan Music Balls which came with a note that read, ‘Because they are handmade, no two balls ring alike.’ Most didn’t ring at all.
What would you have found to sell, had you bothered to dig me out? A brooch made of hammered tin. Some horn buttons. A few long-stemmed pipes. A clay oil lamp. You could have earned a few bob from that lot.
But no. Jim and his mates were far too drunk by then. Liquored up, they were, and they even had you lugging a crafty keg after them onto the moors. Big army louts, your brother’s mates. Clumsy and vicious, and you no better, leaping up at them, wagging your taiclass="underline" Jimmy’s kid brother, eager to be joining in with the older boys.
Pathetic.
It was your match, Stu. Remember that.
Do you remember the dance you did? Of course you do. Ululating and farting, how you hopped and skipped around the blaze. Such brave young braves. Shirts shed and feathers in your hair. (And I got the last laugh there, didn’t I? What did you think I saved feathers for? How could it not occur to you, to any of you, that I might want something soft with which to wipe my arse?)
You didn’t hear my mewling, and this I guess is just as well, because it saves us having to explore the vexed business of what you would have done, or not done, or egged each other on to do, if you had realised what was choking to death under your feet. A dozen eyes not opened. Half a dozen mouths not weaned. Does anything so young feel pain? Oh, trust me.
A peculiar ululation, distant but very loud, cuts through the pub and silences its banter. The noise is impossible to place: it sounds hardly human. Something horrible must have happened, but beyond that the cry gives nothing away.
In a silence so total it is almost comical, you stand and walk to the door. For some reason you are the only one in motion. No one else thinks to follow you and investigate the sound. This, apparently, is your moment, though you would feel more the man of the hour were you able to walk in a straight line. Your early start this morning (did today really start in the West Riding?), a few mouthfuls of lager and those ridiculous work boots of yours have robbed your legs of their power; you might be tottering from a sickbed.