"What's 'e bin tellin' you, eh?" He pointed at his mate. "I've a right to know."
"You're not welcome. Keep away from us."
"Well that's fuckin' charmin'." Louis stood his ground. Could see her tits under the tee shirt and wondered about the rest. The girl was staring. Little did she know what he knew about her. "Please explain what I'm s'posed to 'ave done."
"We'll save that for the cop shop if I see you round here again.”
She reclaimed the buggy, and, snatching Jez by the hand, took off down Wort Passage without looking back. When they'd gone, Louis waited a moment to recover his composure. His watch showed 8.50. He felt something touching his trousers. The dog dribbling cloudy yellow piss. Ribs moving under its fur.
He had time to kill. Forty minutes in fact. Payback time. To teach them all a lesson.
*
The dog was stupid - its eyes on him, same as that hedgehog six years ago. And look where that ended up. Louis felt the narrow skull snug in his palm. He pressed down and the creature tried to pull away, but he'd got it by the collar.
"C'mon Jip." He'd remembered his name. "Let's go play." He released his grip, clicked his fingers and the dog followed him down the steps and the opposite way to Scrub Lane Comprehensive School. Here the alleyway got worse. More crap, a dead crow, a screen of flies - some in his hair, one even between his lips.
Down past the end of the flats and the burnt-out cars, the dumped Tesco trolleys, to the dark humus of Black Dog Brook. "Named after you, eh?" Louis said stepping around young trees whose trunks had been snapped off, leaving pale, raw spears.
The lurcher's nose was busy, but it stayed close while the boy found a level patch of ground and squatted on his heels to get a closer look at what passed for water. He found a stick and prodded the surface, bringing up a foul smell and a lump like treacle at the end of it.
It was a miracle the swans and ducks still came along like they did, he thought, trying not to inhale. And yet like Wort Passage, the shit was real. What you did every day, twice a day in The Maggot's case, down a pan with a little perfumed parcel hooked over the toilet rim.
In Meadow Hill, this open sewer became Willow Brook, lurking at the bottom of their garden, stinking on a hot evening...
"'Ere." He clicked his fingers for the dog's attention. "Fetch!" The stick flew from his fingers and landed in the sludge. Its forked end just visible.
The dog waded forth, struggling to swim out of trouble once the silt had taken hold. But it was soon held fast and sinking, accompanied by a yelp then a whimper. Its frightened eyes fixed on him, but he was already making his way along to Dead Man's Hollow as it disappeared from view, followed by a few bubbles.
"Fun, eh?" Louis to himself, looking back and seeing nothing. His dick on the move again inside his trousers and this time as it was nice and private with not a soul around, he unzipped his fly.
*
"You're fuckin’ late," he accused the younger, red-haired boy struggling through the undergrowth with his green bike. "So I get that fiver. Now."
An angry blush spread across Jez's freckled face, but that was all. Here was too quiet. Anything could happen. He wasn't that dumb...
"Sorry mate." He handed over a crumpled fiver. “Homework check.”
“Ta,” Louis sneered. Prep, assembly, French and Games were all irrelevant now. His schooling involved Jez's little knife kept hidden in the biggest hawthorn leaning into the brook. It also involved a rope and a roll of Tesco Value black bin liners. Certainly not what The Maggot and The Fawn had in mind for his extra-curricular activities. However, at his request they'd just upped his pocket money and soon, so Jez had reckoned, there'd be even more dough to spend on his special kind of nose candy.
"Sorry about me Mum an' all." Jez mumbled. "She was goin’ mental all the way to school."
"You told 'er about them photos, didn't ye?" Louis accused him.
"Do us a favour."
"If ye did, yer dead."
Thinner foliage now; the peppering of sunlight on their heads as they finally reached a sharp, junk-filled curve in the brook, known as The Loop, where moorhens, mallards and swans would climb on to the bank to preen themselves before swimming towards the Canal. Louis remembered Saturday. After he and Jez had jerked off, they'd heard a commotion in the undergrowth, and seen a swan’s huge, white wings beating towards them. A scary bark coming from its orange beak...
They'd emerged panting from the wood near the Mall. Why he'd left his blazer for The Fawn to find. Big mistake. Next time, he'd be more careful...
So here they were again, and Jez fiddling deep in his trouser pocket. The foil, the three inch straw and then what looked like crushed-up Disprins. What The Maggot took when he'd had a bad day at work. Maybe when some student he fancied wasn't opening her legs. Louis' right nostril burned. He felt light-headed, like he was taking off somewhere. This was better stuff than Nick Weaver at school had palmed him off with. Pure and perfect.
"Here they come," Jez whispered, almost falling over as the moorhen convoy appeared. It was too early for the swans, but these would do. Six in all.
Ping… ping... ping…
Louis had found a new, better forked branch, and Jez now had his own, his freckled face set in concentration. Two stunned, black-feathered bodies struggled ashore. One each, so Louis demanded the bigger one.
Crack… crack...
Idiots.
Jez then produced a small, plywood box from his saddlebag and slid its lid back. Inside lay an identical, sheathed knife with WALTON-ON-SEA burnt along its handle.
"Cool," Louis stared at the blade which looked newer than his.
"For spare. OK?" Then Jez set to, starting on the moorhen's head skin first with less confidence than usual.
"Fancy the feet?" he asked tentatively.
"Nah. Nuffink's safe at 'ome no more." Louis said. With no key, his Secrets’ box couldn’t be added to. He then ordered his eager friend to get twigs. "Dry ones mind, an' 'urry up.”
In five minutes the fire was sending little licks of flame into the darkness. Louis turned the spit, careful to give each side of the bird equal time to roast. He thought of home. The Maggot and The Fawn both liked their steaks
bien cuit
, while he preferred blood under his chips. The sweetness of it.
"Yum." Jez pulled off the pink flesh with his teeth. "Jip'd like this." He turned his greasy mouth towards Louis. "Ye ain't seen 'im ‘ave ye?"
"Nope. Should I?"
Silence, save for sounds of chewing.
"Your Dad still away, then?" Louis asked, changing the subject, knowing that whoever it was, hadn't showed since the kid was at Briar Bank.
"Nah. Mum saw ‘im in Poundland the other day." The boy spat out a small bone. “Buyin’ jeans 'e was."
Louis felt more than a twinge of envy. "Mine lives in Levi’s.” Then burped for effect. No way would he let on the smallest thing about his so-called parents. How The Maggot actually wore corduroy and wasn't his real Dad. Or let his disappointment show.
"That Meadow Hill place of yours..." Jez mused. "Mum calls it Fort Knox."
"I fuckin' hate it. There’s Nazis too. Some good stuff in their garage, mind, and it ain't alarmed yet." He was well pleased with his new voice. It made him and Jez sound like brothers, which in a way they were. "And they dance in the garden."
"You're kiddin'?"
"It's like two turtles shagging..." He stamped on the fire's remains. "Any drink?"
"Forgot."
"Next time, eh?" Louis checked his watch. Five minutes to spare talking about the Zellers like that had got him excited. So had the moorhens. He unzipped his trousers and made Jez do the same. This time Saturday's result would be different. It had to be. A thin trail of smoke reached them as they worked, snatching their breath, their eyes glazing over. They stood close for the verdict, but when Louis looked down he was mortified to see nothing had changed.
He turned away to zip himself up while Jez finished off into the nettles.
"Wot about tomorrow? You game on?" Jez wiped his hands on his pockets while
Louis found the boy's new-found confidence irritating. With a proper Dad, too. No way would he take over. He prodded his arm. Hard.
"I'll decide. OK?"
"OK."
Louis kept him waiting.
"Wednesday three o'clock. I can skip off D&T. Probably some quiz or other now it's end of term."
"We got Readin’ Hour. Big joke."
"One thing, mate." Louis suddenly gripped the boy's ear. "Not a fuckin' peep to anyone 'bout what we do, eh?" He squeezed until Jez's face skewered in pain. "An' if you so much as mention where I bleedin' live, you'v 'ad yer last birthday."
Jez whitened.
"And I'll show yer noncy vicar and Molloy them photos you took."
"Wot d'ye think I am?" Jez trembled.
"I ain't sure." Louis let go, and the other boy sighed his relief.
Then Jez hesitated.
"How come ye don't speak like a poshy, livin' in Meadow Hill?"
Louis snapped back.
"'Cos I don't. I fibbed."
"Right."
"Best hide that fuckin' box and knife over there." Louis pointed to a clump of nettles by an alder tree. "Yer Mum mustn’t see our special gear, must she?"
The ginger let out a yell as the nettles burned his skin.
"Shurrup, ye twat!" Louis barked. "Someone could 'ear. C'm on. Let’s shift."
So they parted. Jez up Wort Passage then turning left towards the underpass, still sucking his fingers. Louis to the right, back to his green shirt and blazer then the footbridge with the bus blundering its way up the hill.
12
"Why
did
you get my dick cut?" Louis demanded during supper that evening. The Fawn had placed a slice of chicken pie and carrot salad on his plate. They lay untouched.
“You mean,
penis
?” his not-real Dad then loaded his mouth with pastry crust.
"Yeah. Was it because you’re a Yid?"
The Maggot stopped chewing, while she picked up the peppermill and rained black dust over her meal. "Yid's such a horrible word. We don’t want to hear it again in this house. Dave is Jewish by birth, but not by religion. OK? And it’s for hygiene reasons.” Now, eat up and stop worrying."
"How can I? Louis addressed The Maggot. "I'm the only one in my class with no foreskin..."
Both adults downed their knives and forks. The Maggot finally swallowed.
"Well that means a lot of kids must have trouble keeping clean down there. Think about it."
But it was Jez's dick which came to mind.
"Let's see yours then." He said instead. "Did your folks do it to you?"
The Maggot pushed back his chair. "I think, Jacquie, this is going beyond." He leant over the boy whom he'd impulsively taken on over thirteen years ago. "And
you
are off to your room.
Schnell
!"
Instead, Louis began dismembering his pie, separating the pale chicken cubes sealed in a sauce that looked like cum.
"
Jetzt
!"
A slap stung his ear.
"You shouldn't do that," Louis retorted. "It’s unlawful."
The Fawn held her head in her hands while Louis eyed The Maggot for the next hit.
"And you wonder why I’ve stopped doing Games. I had my pants pulled off in the showers so everyone could stare.” he pointed to his groin. “How would
you
have felt?"
He'd actually given up on pants. He liked touching
It
too much through his pockets... But they believed his story and that was all that mattered.
"I'll write a note this minute." The Fawn got up and made for the study. "We don't pay fifteen hundred pounds a term to have our child tortured."
"
We
?" The Maggot shot her a look.
"I mean
you
, of course." Her neck reddening.
"So what’s replaced Games?"
Louis was ready. "Library studies.
And
I learnt a new word on Friday."
"Which was?"
"Runt."
The Maggot watched a wasp settle on Louis' pie crust. "Off you go. We'll chat later."
I’d rather you just died…
*
When he’d gone, neither spoke. Sounds of the Zellers mowing came through the back door. Then another delivery van scorching through the development. Probably Ocado, thought Jacquie, sealing the envelope on her letter, or maybe Speedi-Press ironing for the Linbergs in number 9. He was a pilot with Virgin, she a solicitor commuting to Birmingham every day. Super smart. Super rich. She felt sick. Not because of them, Mr and Mrs Bloody Perfect, but because Louis seemed to be drifting further and further away.