Scrap Metal (14 page)

“Don’t worry about him. Leave him to me.”

“Has he no’ told you about me, blondie? Has he no’ said he turned me out of my living tae install your wee pansy arse?”

I flinched. An unwanted heat stirred inside me. He could sling mud at me if he wanted—not at Cam. “It’s none of your business, Kenzie, but he’s a student. I’m not paying him. Anyway, in case it slipped your memory, my granda turned you off, not me.”

“Och, a Seacliff’s a Seacliff—all the damn same.”

Were we? I hadn’t thought we were that redoubtable a clan, especially now we were reduced to two. “I was sorry when Harry told me what he’d done, okay? I know you’ve got family.”

That had been the wrong tack. Kenzie’s eyes blazed, a sickly chemical light. Yeah, he was high—I could see the throb of his carotid from here. “The fuck you care about my family!”

The fuck
you
care about them, if you’re down here spending your benefit on crack.
“Do you want to come back and work for us for free?” I asked him roughly. “Because that’s all we can afford.”

“And you think that’s all right, do ye? To turn off decent men if you can get the job done free?”

No, I didn’t. I sighed and leaned down to pick up my shopping bags. I didn’t think it was all right to farm out call-centre work to India, or all right to give Indian workers shit pay to do it. I didn’t think
we can get it cheaper somewhere else
was ever fair, or in the long term sustainable. But I didn’t have any answers.

“You’ve got a good right to be angry,” I told him. “If times change and we can take you back, we will. I don’t know what else to say to you. Come on, Cam.”

I turned to walk away. People were losing interest, thank God, starting to go about their business. Public opinion had never meant much to me, but I hadn’t meant to drag Cam here to get called names in the street.

“Jesus,” I said, when he fell into step at my side. “Sorry about that.”

“It wasn’t your fault. Don’t worry about my wee pansy arse. That guy—Kenzie—is he all right? He looked like he was off his face to me.”

“Yeah, he’s had a skinful, God knows what of. It is my fault in a way—I should’ve argued with Harry when he decided to—”

“Nichol, look out!”

His warning gave me time to whip round. Part way, anyway—Kenzie hit me on a diagonal, a flat-run rugby tackle that sent us both crashing to the kerb. I landed hard on my back. The air left my lungs in a harsh bark, and my bags of fresh salt block and sheep vitamins went flying. At least we hadn’t made it to the supermarket yet and it wasn’t Harry’s meagre quart-a-month indulgence of Johnnie Walker getting smashed in the street. That would have pissed me off.

I was pissed off anyway. I lurched onto my hands and knees, coughing, shaking my head clear of stars. Kenzie had overdone it, shot over me and landed in the gutter.

“Kenzie, you twat!” I rasped. “Leave it alone!”

“Aye, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, fairy boy?” He was scrambling upright. “Aye, I bloody know what you are! Yer granda may be blind, but I didn’t knock around that farm for years and years and not see you screw the living daylights out of Archie bloody—”

Oh, no. I got there just in time, my backhand whack across his mouth, clumsy but a decent silencer. Half the people in this street knew Archie Drummond, and Archie had given up everything—myself included—for his secret. That gave me a peculiar right to keep it. Kenzie staggered back from me, snarling.

“Button it,” I warned. “You’re no holy angel yourself.”

“Better a junkie than a fudgepacker.”

“A
what?
” To laugh at him was a mistake. He wasn’t in the mood. But for God’s sake, here we were, two grown men brawling in the street in daylight, the Victorian majesty of Brodick Castle rising up behind us. Tinny bagpipe music drifting from the woollen-mill store across the road. “Kenzie, for God’s sake. I haven’t heard that one since high school.”

“I’m gonna kill you, you piece of shit!”

He meant it. Whether it was him or the speed buzzing round in his system I didn’t know, but this time when he went for me he hit me like a truck. I deflected his haymaker so that it only grazed my jaw. The impact carried, though, knocking me back against the wall of Malcolm’s fish shop—brickwork not glass, thank God, or I’d have been laid out among the herring. He grabbed me by the shirtfront, ripping buttons, damn him. I’d dressed up a bit for today. When I shoved him off me, some of the fabric went with him. His next punch landed square in my gut.

He shoved his face into mine, his lips curling bestially. “You fucking faggot. Fight!”

I did my best with him. We weren’t too badly matched in terms of strength. But I was sober, and I really didn’t want this. I’d never been much with the punching and wrestling round my schoolmates had engaged in, and when you grew up with a brother like Al, you either took a gun to him or learned negotiation skills.

Peripherally I saw Cameron, backed flat against the wall. His face was white as bone. He looked sick, scared shitless. That was good, I told myself, ducking a roundhouse from Kenzie and landing a blow for myself. I didn’t want him involved. Not his problem.

Kenzie flailed out and caught me on the bridge of the nose. Fat blue sparks exploded on my retina, blotting out the mundane Brodick street. God, maybe he
was
about to kill me. Who would stop him? Al was dead. Archie had left me. I was alone.

Kenzie got the drop on me, tackled me off the kerb and right out into the road.

Tyres screeched. Something shot past me. Just a blur, but Kenzie’s weight vanished off my chest. Reflexively I rolled aside, got my arms and legs under me and sprang upright. A car was stopped two feet away from me, the driver’s face behind the wheel a pale astonished oval. In the middle of the street—yes, bang on the white line, between one set of cat’s-eyes and the next—Cameron was crouched over Kenzie’s supine form.

I ran to him. I grabbed his fist between one savage punch and the next, hauled him up and back. Kenzie had his arms crossed in front of his face, as if he were warding off a demon.

“Cam! Stop it!”

But he twisted in my grasp like a wet wildcat, tore away from me and pounced again. This time when I grabbed him I couldn’t pull him off. He got a blow past Kenzie’s defences that made him yelp. Desperately I glanced around for some burly lad to help me out. I’d used to have friends in this damn town…

Ah, no—better still, a good Arran-bred woman. Belatedly I recognised the car, the huge beast of a Subaru Shona Clyde had acquired for herself after Jimmy’s death. Shona scrambled out, her eyes wide. “Jesus, Nichol! I nearly ran you down.”

“It’s all right. Give us a hand here, will you?”

She looked delicate, but that was as far it went. She’d spent her adult life herding cows and giving her bastard of a husband as good as she got. She nodded curtly and waded in with me. I seized one of Cam’s shoulders, and she took the other. Between us we hauled him bodily up and away from Kenzie, who after a moment flipped onto his front, scrambled upright and took off as fast as his legs would carry him. He threw us one terrified backward glance then disappeared, weaving into the crowd.

“Nichol, what the hell happened?”

I glanced at Shona. She still had a good firm lock on Cam, as did I. His face was quite expressionless, his eyes filled with wild sapphire lights. He looked scarcely human.

“Oh, Kenzie had a go at me,” I told her. “Harry had to turn him off a few weeks ago.”

“Aye. I heard he’d been running his mouth in the pubs. Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”

“Fine. He just popped me on the nose.”

Cameron jerked in my arms and I tightened my grip. “Cam, for God’s sake. It’s okay. He’s gone. This one went off like a firecracker, Sho.”

“Well, he obviously…” She shut up and turned her clench of Cam’s shoulder into more of an embrace. “Hey, you. What’s his name? Cameron? Cameron, love, it’s all right. Nicky’s okay now. Nicky’s okay.”

I stared at her. She never called me Nicky. And Cam didn’t need to be baby talked, did he—a man big and lairy enough to send a hopped-up thug like Kenzie running for his life. But he had stopped straining against my grip.

He blinked and wiped a hand across his eyes, visibly coming back. “I saw blood,” he said, turning to Shona. “I just saw his blood.”

“I know. It’s a nosebleed, that’s all. Isn’t it, Nichol?”

“Er…yes,” I agreed distractedly. She gave him a little push towards me, as if handing him over. I put an arm around him. “That’s right. Come away now, sunshine.”

“I’d best go, unless you lads want a lift anywhere. I’m stopping traffic.”

“No, we’re okay. Thanks for helping. And…” I glanced back at her car, still at an angle in the road. “And for braking in time.”

“My pleasure.” She stopped on her way into the driver’s seat. She gave me a once-over and a bright grin, and I realised my shirt was hanging open. “You want to be careful, Nichol Seacliff. Next time someone tells me that I ought to marry you, I might just listen.”

I guided Cam away. He came with me passively. On the kerb, I stopped to pick up our scattered shopping, and he helped me. As he tucked the boxes back into the bag I was holding, I saw the tremor of his hands. He was breathing too fast. He wouldn’t look at me.

I took him gently by the wrist. “Come with me for a second. Come on.”

An alleyway ran down between Castle Street and the seafront road. A few yards into its shadows, when I could hear the seagulls and get a glimpse of the mill-pond blue of the bay, I stopped. Cam leaned against the wall. He was definitely shivering now, probably in the backlash of whatever adrenaline surge had turned him from terrified bystander into my unsuspected secret weapon. What had he said to Shona?
I saw his blood.

I turned to him. “Cameron, you nutcase.”

I’d have taken him into my arms. As soon as he read my intention, he grabbed me by the shoulders, holding me back. Finally his eyes met mine. They were frightened, dark with a plea I couldn’t interpret. “I’m sorry.”

“I was handling him, okay?” As soon as the lie was out, I reviewed it. “Well, no. He was beating the crap out of me. But you can’t… You can’t flip out like that, not over a stupid street fight. I thought you were going to kill him.”

“Don’t.” He let go one of my shoulders and briefly pressed cold fingers to my mouth. He was focussing now, beginning to see me. Releasing his grip on me, he tugged lightly at the torn-open fastenings of my shirt then suddenly ran his fingertips down my chest, making me shudder. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I said hoarsely. I was meant to be giving him a telling-off—couldn’t have him wreaking chaos in the streets of Brodick every time something upset him—but all my words had melted away. He had leaned his brow against mine. All I wanted was to hold him, crush his skinny frame against my own strength until whatever fears plagued him were gone. Why couldn’t I? The barriers were still there, intangible and barbed, higher than ever now. Worse, I was a hypocrite. I loved that he’d dashed to my rescue, bloody loved it. Right or wrong, I bloody loved that he’d been ready to beat Kenzie to death for me.

I kissed him through the barricade, just once on the brow. “Listen,” I whispered. “Thank you. You can’t do it again, but…thank you.” We stood together in the gull song and the iridescent air, full of subtle sea lights even in this alley. Arran was always like that, I remembered. I remembered, for the first time in years, that I loved it. “Shall we just go home?”

He’d found a handkerchief in one of his pockets. Absently, as if tending a child, he licked one corner of it and began to ply it over the blood on my shirt and my face. “We haven’t done our groceries yet, have we?”

“No, but they can wait. I’m a mess, and you…”

“I’m okay now.” He glanced up from his work. The fear, the odd pleading, was gone from his eyes. Had I somehow answered it? He was even managing a faint half-smile. “No, let’s stay. If we just fasten up your jacket to cover all this, and smooth down your hair… There. You’re decent.”

“You sure you don’t want to call it a day? You’re very pale.”

“Am I interesting too?”

“Bloody fascinating. I think it would take a lab and a team of psychologists to figure you out. What happened to you, Cam?”

“Shh. Please let’s not talk about it. I want to go shopping like a normal person, get your granda some of his Reynolds tobacco.”

“Okay. It’s Black Ox he smokes, though.”

“Just because it’s cheaper. He likes the Reynolds for a treat.”

Did he? I’d had no idea. Yes, I thought—this tender little homicide now watching me anxiously again was definitely lacking a grandparent. It seemed to me tragic that he’d stumbled over Harry as a substitute, but I supposed that couldn’t be helped. “I never knew that. Did he tell you?”

“Yes, when we were cooped up fixing the baler last week. Do you mind?”

I grinned. “God, no. Of course not. Anything to keep the old sod sweet. Come on, then—we’ll go down the Co-op and you can get Harry his present. I owe him a bottle of Johnnie myself.”

For as long back as I could remember, the front-street supermarket had played out the same tape of 1980s classics to help part the Arran shoppers from their money. “Tears of a Clown”, “Baker Street”. Incongruously in the midst of this, an unedited cut of “Relax”
.
Cam and I arrived in time for this, and I steered the shopping trolley, watching him.

He rode out the first couple of minutes, gravely selecting for us the best deals on tinned goods and cereals while Frankie urged him to hold back from the brink of orgasm—didn’t let the grunty climax distract him from courteously handing an old lady’s dropped purse back to her. Only when the final explicit squirt resounded through the aisles did he set down a bottle of ketchup and start to smile. “That sell a lot of fizzy pop, does it?”

“Must do. Radio 1 banned it, Mike Read went into a moral decline over it, but the Brodick Co-op serenely plays on. I used to think it was something to do with cleaning fluid.”

“I can almost beat that. I used to think he was singing
when you want a car.
I was fixated on die-casts at the time, so I reckoned he was telling me not to blow all my pocket money at once.”