Dancing Towards the Blade and Other Stories (3 page)

Did they think he would try to run?

Joseph and Francis smiled as the shit ran out of him like water.

‘Better now than later,’ Francis said.

The boy knew that his uncle was right.

He stood and wiped himself off. He felt no shame, no embarrassment at being watched. He was no more or less than a slave to it now.

A slave to the ritual.

The beercan hit him first, bouncing off his shoulder. It was almost empty, and Vincent was far more concerned by the beer that had sprayed onto his cheek and down his shirt. The can was still clattering at his feet when the cigarette fizzed into his chest. He took a step back, smacking away the sparks, listening to the skinny one and the one with the shaved head jabbering.

‘I don’t believe it, he’s still fucking here.’

‘Is he? It’s getting dark, I can’t see him if he isn’t smiling.’

‘He said he wasn’t looking for trouble.’

‘Well he’s going to get a fucking slap.’

‘He’s just taking the piss now.’

‘We gave him every chance.’

‘They’re
all
taking the piss.’

‘He’s the one that’s up for it, if you ask me. It’s
him
who’s kicking off, don’t you reckon? He could have walked away and he just fucking stood there like he’s in a trance. He’s trying to face us down, the twat. Yeah? Don’t you reckon?’

‘Come on then.’

‘Let’s fucking well. Have. It.’

Vincent became aware that he was shifting his weight slowly from one foot to the other, that his fists were clenched, that there was a tremor running through his gut.

A hundred yards away, on the far side of the estate, he saw a figure beneath a lamppost. He watched it move inside the cone of dirty orange light. Vincent wondered if whoever it was would come if he shouted.

His eyes darted back to the boy in the cap, and to the boy’s hand, which tilted slowly as he emptied out what drink there was left in his bottle.

The noise in the marketplace died as each one stepped forward, then erupted again a minute or two later when the ritual had been completed.

It was the boy’s turn.

The crowd had moved back to form a tunnel down which he walked, trancelike, his uncles slightly behind. He tried to focus on the two red splodges at the far end of the tunnel and when his vision cleared he saw the faces of the cutters for the first time. Their red robes marked them out as professionals – men who travelled from village to village, doing their jobs and moving on. They were highly skilled, and had to be. There were stories, though the boy had never seen such a thing happen, of cutters being set upon by a crowd and killed if a hand was less than steady; if a boy were to die because of one of them.

The boy stopped at the stone, turned to the first cutter and handed over his knife. He had sharpened it every day on the soft bark of a rubber tree. He had confidence in the blade.

In three swift strokes, the knife had sliced away the fabric of the boy’s shorts. All he could feel was the wind whispering at the top of his legs. All he could hear was the roaring of the blood, loud as the river, inside his head.

He was offered a stick to clutch, to brace against the back of his neck and cling onto. This was the first test, and with a small shake of the head it was refused. No Grade A man would accept this offer.

He was hard as stone.

His hands were taken, pressed into a position of prayer and placed against his right cheek. His eyes widened, and watered, fixed on the highest point of a tree at the far end of the marketplace.

Repeating it to himself above the roaring of the river.
Hard as stone.

The boy knew that this was the moment when he would be judged. This was everything – when the crowd, when his family would be watching for a sign of fear. For blinking, for shaking, for shitting …

He felt the fingers taking the foreskin, stretching it.

Focused on the tree … chalk-white ghost-boy … stiff and still as any statue.

He felt the weight of the blade, cold and quick. Heavy, then heavier and he
heard
the knife pass through the skin. A boom and then a rush…

This was when a Grade A man might prove himself, jumping and rubbing at his bloody manhood. The crowd would count the jumps, clap and cheer as those very special ones asked for alcohol to be poured into the wound.

The boy was happy to settle for Grade B. His eyes flicked to his uncle Joseph, who signalled for the second cutter to come forward. The knife was handed across and with three further cuts the membrane, the ‘second skin’ was removed.

A whistle was blown and the boy started slightly at the explosion of noise from the crowd. It was all over in less than a minute.

Everything took on a speed – underwater slow or blink-quick – a dreamlike quality of its own as the pain began.

A cloth was wrapped around the boy’s shoulders.

He was gently pushed back on to a stool.

He lowered his eyes and watched his blood drip onto the stone at his feet.

There was a burning then, and a growing numbness as ground herbs were applied, and the boy sat waiting for the bleeding to stop. He felt elated. He stared down the tunnel towards the far side of the marketplace, towards what lay ahead.

He saw himself lying on a bed of dried banana leaves, enjoying the pain. Only a man, he knew, would feel that pain. Only a man would wake, sweating in the night, crying out in agony after a certain sort of dream had sent blood to where it was not wanted.

He saw himself healed, walking around the marketplace with other men. They were laughing and talking about the different grades that their friends had reached. They were looking at women and enjoying the looks that they got back.

The boy looked down the tunnel and saw, clearer than anything else, the baby that he’d been handed the day before. He watched it again, happily pissing all over him.

He saw its fat, perfect face as it stared up at him, kicking its legs.

The skinny one and the one with the shaved head were drifting towards him.

Vincent knew that if he turned and ran they would give chase, and if they caught him they would not stop until they’d done him a lot of damage. He felt instinctively that he had a chance of coming off better than that if he stood his ground. Besides, he didn’t want to run.

‘I bet he’s fucking carrying something,’ the skinny one said.

The one with the shaved head reached into his jacket pocket, produced a small, plastic craft-knife. ‘Blacks always carry blades.’

Vincent saw the one with the cap push himself away from the bollard he was leaning against. He watched him take a breath, and drop his arm, and break the bottle against the bollard with a flick of his wrist.

Vincent took a step away, turned and backed up until he felt the wall of the block behind him.

Hard as stone …

‘Stupid fucker.’

‘He can’t run. His arse has gone.’

‘I bet he’s filling his pants.’

Vincent showed them nothing. As little as his father had shown when the blade sang against his skin. He tensed his body but kept his face blank.

‘Three points in the bag, lads,’ the one with the broken bottle said. ‘Easy home win.’

Vincent had learned a lot about what you gave away and what you kept hidden. They could have his phone and whatever money they could find. He would give them a little blood and a piece of his flesh if it came to it, and he would try his hardest to take some of theirs.

Vincent looked down the tunnel and saw them coming. He would not show them that he was afraid though. He would not give them that satisfaction.

He was Grade A.

STROKE OF LUCK

So many things that could have been different.

An almost infinite number of them: the flight of the ball; the angle of the bat; the movement of his feet as he skipped down the pitch. The weather, the time, the day of the week, the whatever.

The smallest variance in any one of these things, or in the way that each connected to the other at the crucial moment, and nothing would have happened as it did. An inch another way, or a second, or a step and it would have been a very different story.

Of course, it’s
always
a different story; but it isn’t always a story with bodies.

He wasn’t even a good batsman – a tail-ender for heaven’s sake – but this once, he got everything right. The footwork and the swing were spot on. The ball flew from the meat of the bat, high above the heads of the fielders into the long grass at the edge of the woodland that fringed the pitch on two sides.

Alan and another player had been looking for a minute or so, using hands and feet to move aside the long grass at the base of an oak tree, when she stepped from behind it as if she’d been waiting for them.

‘Don’t you have any spare ones?’

Alan looked at her for a few long seconds before answering. She was tall, five seven or eight, with short dark hair. Her legs were bare beneath a cream-coloured skirt and her breasts looked a good size under a sleeveless top. She looked Mediterranean, Alan thought. Sophisticated.

‘I suppose we must have, somewhere,’ he said.

‘So why waste time looking? Are they expensive?’

Alan laughed. ‘We’re only a bunch of medics. It costs a small fortune just to hire the pitch.’

‘You’re a doctor?’

‘A neurologist. A consultant neurologist.’

She didn’t look as impressed as he’d hoped.

‘Got it.’

Alan turned to see his team-mate brandishing the ball, heard the cheers from those on the pitch as it was thrown across.

He turned back. The woman’s arms were folded and she held a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun.

‘Will you be here long?’ Alan said. She looked hesitant. He pointed back towards the pitch. ‘We’ve only got a couple of wickets left to take.’

She dropped her hand, smiled without looking at him. ‘You’d better get on with it then.’

‘Listen, we usually go and have a couple of drinks afterwards, in the Woodman up by the tube. D’you fancy coming along? Just for one, maybe?’

She looked at her watch. Too quickly, Alan thought, to have even seen what time it read.

‘I don’t have a lot of time.’

He nodded, stepping backwards towards the pitch. ‘Well, you know where we are.’

The Woodman was only a small place, and the dozen or so players – some from either team – took up most of the back room.

‘I’m Rachel, by the way,’ she said.

‘Alan.’

‘Did you win, Alan?’

‘Yes, but no thanks to me. The other team weren’t very good.’

‘You’re all doctors, right?’

He nodded. ‘Doctors, student doctors, friends of doctors. Anybody who’s available if we’re short. It’s as much a social thing as anything else.’

‘Plus the sandwiches you get at half time.’

Alan put on a posh voice. ‘We call it the tea interval,’ he said.

Rachel eked out a dry white wine and was introduced. She met Phil Hendricks, a pathologist who did a lot of work with the police and told her a succession of grisly stories. She met a dull cardiologist whose name she instantly forgot, a male nurse called Sandy who was at great pains to point out that not all male nurses were gay, and a slimy anaesthetist whose breath would surely have done the trick were he ever to run short of gas.

While Rachel was in the Ladies, a bumptious paediatrician Alan didn’t like a whole lot dropped a fat hand onto his shoulder.

‘Sodding typical. You do bugger all with the bat and then score
after
the game!’

The others enjoyed the joke. Alan glanced round and saw that Rachel was just coming out of the toilet. He hoped that she hadn’t seen them all laughing.

‘Do you want another one of those?’ Alan pointed at her half-empty glass before downing what was left of his lager.

She didn’t, but followed him to the bar anyway. Alan leaned in close to her and they talked while he repeatedly failed to attract the attention of the surly Irish barmaid.

‘I don’t really know a lot of them, to tell you the truth. There’s only a couple I ever see outside of the games.’

‘There’s always tossers in any group,’ she said. ‘It’s the price you pay for company.’

‘What do you do, Rachel?’

She barked out a dry laugh. ‘Not a great deal. I studied.’

It sounded like the end of a conversation, and for a while they said nothing. Alan guessed that they were about the same age. She was definitely in her early thirties, which meant that she had to have graduated at least ten years before. She had to have done something, had to
do
something. Unless of course she’d been a mature student. It seemed a little too early to pry.

‘What do you do to relax? Do you see mates, or … ?’

She nodded towards the bar and he followed her gaze to the barmaid who stood, finally ready to take the order. Alan reeled off a long list of drinks and they watched while the tray that was placed on the bar began to fill up with glasses. Alan turned and opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it.

‘I’d better be getting off.’

‘Right. I don’t suppose I could have your phone number?’

She gave a non-committal hum as she swallowed what was left of her wine. Alan handed a twenty pound note across the bar, grinned at her.

‘Mobile?’

‘I never have it switched on.’

‘I could leave messages.’

She took out a pen and scribbled the number on the back of a dog-eared beermat.

Alan picked up the tray of drinks just as the barmaid proffered him his fifty pence change. Unable to take it, Alan nodded to Rachel. She leaned forward and grabbed the coin.

‘Stick it in the machine on your way out,’ he said.

Alan had just put the tray down on the table when he heard the repetitive chug and clink of the fruit machine paying out its jackpot. He strode across to where Rachel was scooping out a handful of ten pence pieces.

‘You jammy sod,’ he said. ‘I’ve been putting money into that thing for weeks.’

Then she turned, and Alan saw that her face had reddened. ‘You have it,’ she said. She thrust the handful of coins at him, then, as several dropped to the floor, she spun round flustered and tipped the whole lot back into the payout tray.