The One Safe Place (18 page)

The brown cardboardy bungalows, which couldn't be much older than he was, looked squashed by the sky, a blue lid patched with white like the wrong color of paint covering up rust on a car. Their windows poked sunlight in his eyes as he picked at the nails of his right hand with his left, trying to get rid of the sample of graveyard he'd brought away with him.

Two boys about his age were watching him over the sawtoothed fence of a bungalow opposite. They'd less right to be off school today than he had, he thought with a revival of the anger he'd experienced when the teachers had reacted as if Uncle Jim's funeral was just one more excuse he'd made up. He thought of the knife he'd used to scratch the paintwork of as many cars on the road outside the school as he'd suspected might belong to teachers, but he'd dropped it down a grid. He was searching around him for a weapon as he stalked to the wall of the car park. "What's your fucking problem?" he shouted across the road.

Another head appeared next to the boys at once, and started barking and slavering. He'd take the dog out first, he told himself, bare-handed if he had to, and vaulted over the low wall. Then the doors of the rest of the cars began slamming behind him, and his mother cried, "Not now, Darren. Not today. Look what he's doing. Someone stop him."

He heard feet pounding toward him, and turned to see uncles in black swarming like beetles across the concrete. If any of them hit him while the boys were watching, he'd—He climbed back over the wall, carrying more rage with him. "That's right, son," his mother said, and yelled past him "You little sods show some respect. Someone's dead. Shut up that dog."

The door left a hole in the front of the bungalow, and a woman wearing some kind of uniform marched out onto the concrete stub of path. Darren saw his mother getting ready for a fight, and his head, which felt full of one of the cobwebs loaded with rubbish that were appearing in corners all over his house, seemed about to grow clear. Then the woman saw how many people were ready to take her on, and muttered at her children and the dog until they retreated with her into the house.

At least the family had seen her off despite her army uniform, but then Darren realised it had only been Salvation Army, and the weight of his disappointment dragged at the inside of his head. He'd wanted a scene that would remind all the people living around here that this had been his Uncle Jim's favourite pub. He trudged after his mother and the rest of them, feeling sunlight snatch at his ankles as each of his steps pulled up the too-short legs of his only black trousers, under the suddenly shaky sky into the Dog & Gun.

Maybe the previous building had had some reason to be called that, but the brewery had chased the dogs. The interior was someone's idea of a saloon in a Western, with walls and chairs bulging with mauve plush, bare floorboards, a bar and a mirror which both stretched the length of the single room. Rifles were attached to the low beams, and in case anyone still missed the point, the walls were crowded with framed posters of John Wayne and a lot of other old men who Darren supposed must have been in Westerns, not that they meant any more to him than a crumb of a turd stuck on a pimple up his arse. The broad-shouldered box-headed barman in his loud checked shirt and Levi's looked as though he was trying to be in a Western too as he swaggered slowly along the bar, from the glassed-in food counter called The Trough to The Hitching Rail, but his Lancashire accent let him down. "How old's the kid?"

"The Headphone Kid, is that?" said Bill, who never kept a joke to himself.

"The Wanking Kid, I wouldn't be surprised," said his wife, Clara, and made a gesture like shoving a handful of peanuts into her wide sloppy mouth.

"Eh," the barman warned her, and turned his head to survey the party, so slowly that the head reminded Darren of some kind of security device, its large translucent ears sprouting hairs for extra sensitivity. "Who brought him in? Who's he with?"

"Us," Bernard said, showing his teeth behind the reddening remains of his cigar. "Your other feller said he'd be let, seeing as this do's for his uncle."

"The other feller said a lot of things till they found him with his hand in the takings."

"He was a friend to Sharon after she lost Jim," Bernard said, stubbing out his cigar just inside an ashtray a few inches from the barman's fingers.

The two men stared, their heads close enough to crack each other if either moved, while a spark on the back of the barman's hand turned to ash, and then Darren's mother said, "The law says he can come in anyway. He's fourteen."

Darren saw himself in the mirror. He looked older than twelve, at least five years older, maybe ten. He'd never been so proud of the dark under his eyes, dark that resembled bruises on his thin pale face except that they were still there even though his father wasn't around to batter him. His reflection started to twitch and shift, and he pulled his attention away before his face could turn into something else. "I'm nearly fifteen," he said, resenting his mother for not claiming he was older.

Abruptly the barman seemed to lose interest in him, and stepped back to glance under the bar. "What can I get anyone?"

The men set about buying drinks for themselves and their partners. Who was going to buy for Sharon was the subject of an argument. "Don't upset Shar, don't fight on a day like this," the women protested, and Ken took advantage of the lull to declare, "I said I'm buying." Bernard bit the foreskin off another cigar and spat it almost in an ashtray while he waited to buy Darren's mother a large gin, and presented Darren with a faceful of smoke as he turned to him. "What do you want that's soft, lad?"

Darren was speculating what weapon the barman had been checking was under the bar, and heard himself being called a soft lad. Even when the question caught up with him he felt no better. If he'd known he wasn't going to get a proper drink he wouldn't have come to the pub, he'd have stayed home and remembered how Uncle Jim used to take him fishing in the canal, though all they ever caught were condoms and tampons and syringes, and to the arcades where they had lost money until they got thrown out for battering the fruit machines, and to the races where nobody objected twice to anything Jim screamed at his horse or his dog. His eyes felt prickly from remembering Jim or because he was being treated like some wimp who never smoked or drank or took drugs. "Don't give a shit," he mumbled.

The barman swung a finger at him. "If there's any more of that, lad—"

"Just give him whatever kids drink and mind your business," Bernard interrupted. "There's no bugger but us in here."

The barman filled a glass with a drink which the sign on the pump alleged was lemonade but which tasted like water full of gas and sugar to Darren, who felt he was being used by the barman to demonstrate he wasn't scared of any threat Bernard had meant him to hear. He considered spitting the mouthful on the floor, except that some of the women and even some of the men might yell at him. He carried the glass to a table at the edge of the party farthest from Bernard's cigar and scraped his chair closer to the table when his mother gestured angrily toward the empty place next to her and Bernard. Misunderstanding the gesture, Clara brandished her tankard. "Here's to those who aren't with us."

"To Jim," Darren's mother said as if someone had accused her of forgetting him.

"Jim," everyone agreed, and kept agreeing while they clashed glasses with everyone else within reach. When that was completed there was a silence in which Darren sensed the barman watching them. "Phil too," Bernard supplied, "seeing as he can't be with us."

"Phil," everyone repeated, and performed a somewhat less energetic clash of glasses. Darren might have thought the party shared his lack of enthusiasm until Dave said fiercely, "Wouldn't even let him out for his own brother's funeral."

"Must've known we'd have hid him," Bill said.

Ken slammed his tankard down like a hammer. "It was Jim stopped me and Dave doing them Yanks that got Phil put inside."

"We should've fixed them when we found them in the pisser," Dave said.

Ken made an idiot's mouth at him. "That'd've made real fucking sense, that, giving them a kicking in front of the filth."

"We could've waited till the filth went. Or we could've told him we seen the Yank playing with his kid's dick. Six months it took to find a lorry coming back right way with a driver we could trust, and then Jim has to help pick up the stuff 'cos Phil's inside."

His mind must have caught up at last with the possibility that some of this sounded as though he was blaming Ken, whose grip on the handle of his tankard was close to showing its bones. "Don't care," Dave said, never able to stop until all his slow thoughts were out of him. "I still say Brad should have been driving the van even if he was banned for three years. They'd never have found out he was, they'd never have been fast enough to catch him."

"Here's what you do then, Dave. You go and visit fucking Brad in hospital and break the rest of his bones for him for letting Jim drive, that's when you've got past the police."

"I've got nothing against fucking Brad. I reckon it was Jim who wouldn't let him drive."

"Boys," Bernard said, holding up his hands between them and jerking his head to indicate the barman. "Let's have some music."

"Wet Side Story,"
Dave said. "He were always singing bits of that, Jim."

"And some more drinks," said Ken, swinging himself around his chair toward the bar.

"Wet Side Story.
Let's have that. It was his favourite."

"It's West Side, Dave," Clara said as Bernard dumped coins for the jukebox in her hand. "It's some place in New York."

"It can rain in New York, can't it? It's a real fucking place, in case you didn't know," Dave said, and even more slowly, "It was his fucking favourite."

Clara headed for the jukebox without speaking as the men swarmed to the bar, leaving Darren with most of the women, their perfume massing beneath their clouds of smoke, the clatter of their bracelets shunting up and down their arms, their browned flesh which bulged out of their black dresses whenever they moved. Sharon was being comforted by the others, who kept patting her or taking her hand and saying "Ah, never mind" or "He was the best" or "Ah, you'll get over it, love" or "There'll never be another like him" or "God love her" or "Aaah, never mind" as she tried to hitch up a smile and dabbed her eyes with an increasingly blackened handkerchief. Darren's embarrassment at all this felt like a new kind of sweat covering the whole of him. Ken brought Sharon another rum and peppermint, and returned with a pint of beer and a large Scotch as a chaser, then shoved the Scotch at Darren. "Here, lad, get that down you before any sod can tell you different."

Darren saw his mother drag a worried look onto her face, but it was turned to Bernard at the bar. Darren gulped half the glassful and clenched his throat to hold down the burning as Dave shouted at the reflection of Clara and the jukebox, "I call it
Wet Side Story.
Put it on."

"It isn't here, Dave. I didn't think it would be."

"Give us a pint and a double vodka and no ice and no lemon," Dave said louder than Bernard, who was ordering, and slapped a note on the bar. "I'll have a look. Tarts can't be trusted to find their own arse half the time. No offence, Bill."

"None taken, lad," Bill said, and dealt Dave's upper arm a punch that could be heard throughout the room.

As Dave showed his teeth Brenda, who was living with him, sprang up and shoved between the two men. "Don't you be upsetting Shar," she muttered, and stared at Dave until he swerved at the jukebox and wrapped his arm around it as if he didn't mean to let go before it gave him what he wanted. By the time he'd finished mouthing the titles of the discs everyone was back at the tables and not looking at him. "It isn't here," he said after a final prolonged glare at the list, "but Shar's kept Jim's record, haven't you? You'd never get rid of your man's favourite."

Sharon lowered her gin and then her face, dabbing her eyes all the time. "It's at home."

"You can get it, can't you? He'd like it. It was his favourite. Or here you are, give us the keys and I will."

"You won't be changing any discs in there," the barman informed him. "It's locked."

"Aye, and which cunt who thinks he's hard has got the key?"

"Don't look at me, pal. The company we rent from has."

The barman's hands were resting above the concealed weapon, and Dave's were groping about the beam above his head. He found the rifle and poked it off some of its hooks as Sharon cried, "Jim used to like the songs on there, the cowboy songs."

Dave closed a fist around the barrel of the rifle. "Weren't his favourite though, were they?"

"He used to listen to them all the time we were in here. He always put them on."

Dave shoved a hand in his pocket, and excitement flared in Darren as though the whiskey in his stomach had caught fire. But the weapon he produced was only a handful of coins which he sent rattling into the jukebox. Darren sagged with disappointment, some of it on Uncle Jim's behalf. The jukebox fed itself a disc, and some woman started singing words that meant nothing to Darren until she told someone to stand by their man, which sounded like a message for him about his dead uncle. "That was Jim right enough, always stood by you," Bill said.

"Found summat good in everyone," said Clara.

"Always lent you a few bob if you needed it," Darren's mother said, "and never asked for it back."

"Must've known he wouldn't get it."

"Always do anyone a favour," Bernard quickly intervened, "would Jim."

"Couldn't stand anyone being unhappy around him," said a temporary aunt whose name Darren was no longer able to remember.

Perhaps Sharon took that as a criticism, because she forced more of a smile. "You liked going out with him, didn't you, Darren?"

He felt as though a teacher had flung a question at him. "Right," he said, which he could see Sharon and his mother and quite a few others thought wasn't nearly enough. He tried to search his brain, but the unlit empty space of it only grew larger. "He used to tell jokes while he was driving," he remembered suddenly out loud.