You know you made that vow to read more fiction…
Feedback always welcome…have a good Sunday.
DITCH
Two boys dressed in school uniform stumbled along a path that ran through a wasteland of knee-high grass, cinderblocks and twisted metal. Tower blocks and the backs of terraced houses framed the field on three sides, but, apart from the boys, the only movement were the dots that circled high above Heathrow in the late afternoon sun. The boys walked in file, the taller behind, twisting the left arm of his slightly-built companion up behind his back.
Andrew started to trot, forced by Patrick’s longer stride. Andrew was twelve, with pale, undefined features and a thatch of untidy brown hair. He had no tie. His shirt pocket was ripped, his trousers streaked with mud and dust. His shoes scuffed along the path, kicking loose stones into the long grass and weeds. Both boys appeared composed, and they proceeded without a struggle, in silence.
Freckles and sunburn had merged into a red band across the broad face of the larger boy. Patrick was thirteen. Sweat glistened in his shaved hair, soaking into the blue and gold tie wrapped around his forehead. He gave a sudden tug to the left, and the two turned into the tall grass, towards the open side of the field. In the distance there was a wire fence, and beyond that, a railway line. A tube train, running overland, clanked its way past and was gone. Grasshoppers whirred ahead of the boys as they forced their way through the growth. Old cans and crisp packets, half-buried in the mud, gleamed and were lost again. There had been rain, a summer downpour, that morning and the air was rich with the smell of earth and wet grass.
They both knew where they were going. The ditch was Patrick’s latest favourite. They had been there twice before. Patrick, who had been growing bored of torturing Andrew, had been enthused by the discovery of the ditch the previous week. He made it a point of pride to know the areas in which he lived better than the locals. It was only a short distance from the school, an easy detour to drag the smaller youth.
Patrick was a traveller, and had been at Andrew’s school for three months. Travelling kids did that, mysteriously appearing, staying for half a year, a year, a month, and then disappearing again. For two of those months he had tormented Andrew, relentlessly hunting him at and after school.
They reached an area of scrub and small trees where the ground rose and fell like the barrows of Saxon kings. Butterflies took off as they approached; the bushes were buddleias, their white and pink flowers glowing in the late sun. At the brow of a low rise they stopped.
They were standing at the lip of a ditch, about three metres deep, with steeply sloping sides that were a patchwork of grass and weeds and treacherous blue-grey clay. Tyres and broken timbers protruded from the black water that filled the bottom of the ditch. At each end were the dark mouths of concrete pipes, about half a metre in diameter, into which the water disappeared. One pipe was sealed with a rusted iron grille. The other was open.
Suddenly, Andrew leapt, kicked his legs and tried to dart away. But the older boy’s grip was strong, and he forced Andrew’s arm even further behind his back.
“Owww! Owww! Sorry, sorry!” squealed Andrew.
Patrick gave a high laugh of delight. “You done that before- I don’t forget. You sly little prick.” He twisted Andrew’s arms, forcing him to his knees. “No use, Williams. You’re shit, so why try?” Patrick’s voice was light, relaxed, with a faint Irish accent. “You know what’s coming. You know it, don’t you?”
“Please Pat, please. I don’t want to do it. You’ve seen me do it before, not again.”
Patrick laughed again. “You were cheeking me in school today, boy. You were cheeking me.”
“No Pat, that wasn’t me. You know it wasn’t me.”
“And you’re calling me a liar to my face are you?”
“No.”
“So you’re either cheeking me, or you’re calling me a liar, ain’t you?” Patrick grinned at his cleverness.
“Pat!”
“Look at the ditch today!” said Patrick.
“Please.”
“Down you go!” A high, sing-song voice.
“Please!”
“Do you want me to push you or do you want to go down yourself? It’s gonna happen, so you might make it easy,” sang Patrick. “Show- some- brains- Will-iams- you- shit.”
Patrick pushed Andrew to the very edge of the ditch and released him, letting him turn to face his tormentor. Patrick took a step forward, forcing Andrew back. Andrew dropped to his hands and knees and extended a foot behind him, trying to feel for a foothold.
“Oohh, no hands I think,” said Patrick, kicking at his wrists.
“Fuck,” said Andrew and he started to slip. His foot caught in a tussock of grass.
“Lick my boots and you can come up.”
Andrew stared up at Patrick. From his angle, Patrick filled his vision, the blue sky wrapped around him. There was wink of light over his shoulder, as a plane turned and caught the lowering sun.
“Lick it,” said Patrick. Patrick balanced on one foot, holding out a shiny black shoe in Andrew’s face. There was a smear of brown on the toe. He waved it in front of his nose. Andrew could smell the dog shit.
“Lick it. One lick and you can come up.”
Andrew said, almost to himself: “Fuck off.”
“Excuse-me?”
“Fuck off.”
“Fuck off? Fuck yourself then.” Patrick pushed the sole of his shoe in Andrew’s face. Andrew felt his toe-hold go; he almost stopped himself, but then fell utterly, tumbling down the slick flank of clay.
His back cracked against a tyre and he gasped for breath. He sat waist deep in the inky water, shocked at the pain in his ribs. He didn’t know you could be winded by being hit in the back, and he felt angry at his body, obscurely betrayed. He plucked at his soaked and filthy shirt. His mother couldn’t miss this. Normally, with a few grass stains, he could slip in the flat and stuff his clothes in the washing machine without her noticing. The pills she took slowed her down. If she did ask, the bruises were from football or rugby; sometimes he would even change into his games kit before he came home.
Something exploded into the water by Andrew’s face.
“You fucking animal, Williams!”
Patrick was dancing. He whooped and sang, and rained handfuls of clay down on Andrew, spattering his body and the water around him. A strong boy could have climbed the bank, gouging handholds with debris from the ditch. Andrew wasn’t strong, and, anyway, Patrick would have joyfully stopped any attempt.
The only way out was through the tunnel. He had done it twice before; two hundred metres of stinking slime, of animal bones and faeces, until he emerged into a ditch with sides shallow enough to climb. The first time, Andrew truly thought he was going to die. Forced into the tunnel by the jeers and stones of Patrick, he had found himself shaking with fear, unable to move forward or back. Now, despite his dread, he knew the crawl was possible. But those times the ground had been almost dry, with only a trickle of water in the tunnel. Today, between the water and tunnel roof, there was barely room for his head. He shivered and looked up. The war-whoops and cat-calls had stopped. Patrick stood with hands on hips.
“Do something then!” shouted Patrick.
“It’s too small,” he called back, contemplating the pipe. “The water’s too high.” He looked up. Patrick had gone; but, a moment later, reappeared, cradling something in his arms.
“You better watch out, Williams!” He had a brick in his hands. He threw it high in the air over the ditch. It fell a body-length from Andrew, dousing him and the ditch sides. Andrew didn’t move.
“Go on! Go on! I’m not going to stop. I got plenty more!” He bent down and hefted another brick. It flew over Andrew’s head and thudded into the clay. Too close. Andrew scuttled on his hands and knees towards the hole, his body tensing like a soldier expecting a bullet.
Without a final glance, he ducked into the pipe.
The water was up to his chin, and he had to press his cheek against the rough roof to breathe. There wasn’t even enough space to turn his head. The only way out was forward. He began to inch along the pipe. Patrick’s taunts distorted and receded. His fingers probed through the soft mud, touching twigs and gravel, wire and bone.
As he crawled deeper, he lost sense of time, its meaning leached away by the water. He couldn’t hear Patrick any longer, and the only sound was his breathing, harsh and amplified in the enclosed space. Gradually, he realised the pipe wasn’t entirely horizontal. There was a gradient; not huge, but enough to force his face closer and closer to the water. The wave he created as he crabbed forward would suddenly slosh back, forcing its way into his eyes and mouth.
Eventually, he came to a place where there was no space left for his head. Fear rose in him, threatening to overwhelm, and he had to fight to stop himself from retching. He paused, and tried to stop shaking that had seized him. The only way out was forward. He remembered a TV programme he had seen once, on free diving, when divers would hyperventilate, packing their bodies with oxygen before descending into the depths. For a minute he took deep, fast breaths, and then plunged his face into the water, screwing his eyes shut. He moved calmly and methodically, hands and feet pressing against the sides, pushing him along. He counted as he moved: one alligator, two-alligator, three-alligator. Once his trouser leg caught on a branch, but he calmly reached behind and plucked it free. On the count of forty-seven, with his lungs screaming in his head, he found there was space above his head again. He surfaced and promptly vomited. Through the pain and blurred eyes, he could see the half-moon of the tunnel’s end, twenty metres away. He didn’t stop to catch his breath. There was always the horror that Patrick might block the other entrance.
The light of the early evening was soft and forgiving, and Patrick was nowhere to be seen. This ditch was shallow, with crudely cut steps running up one side. He pulled himself to his feet, and stumbled out of the ditch. When he reached the top there was still no sign of Patrick. He rolled in the long grass like an animal, trying to get rid of the filth that covered him. He could taste it. He could feel it inside him. Tears of disgust and shame sprang to his eyes. He squatted and convulsively pulled clumps of grass from the earth, putting the roots in his mouth, tasting the stems and leaves and earth.
When he looked up, there was an old man watching him from the other side of the ditch. Andrew coughed and retched and the ball of half-chewed grass fell from his mouth. The man was tall, and well-built, wearing a faded tweed-jacket and brown trousers. His face was as tanned and weathered as a walnut, deeply lined around his mouth and eyes, and his chin was flecked with white stubble.
“I saw it,” said the man in a flat voice. He started to walk around the head of the ditch, above where the pipe emerged from the earth. Andrew scrambled to his feet.
“I saw it all,” said the man again, still walking.
“I gotta go,” said Andrew, half-turning to look at the field. It was still deserted.
“Wait.” The man stopped walking. “I saw it all.” A faint, sickly-sweet smell, of alcohol and aniseed, drifted across the ditch. Andrew didn’t think there was much he could say. He nodded, and again glanced behind, judging the distance to the path
“I was wondering if you’d make it.” The man plucked the head from a tall stem of grass, and rubbed it in his hand. “You’d like to get him, yes?” The man’s voice was educated, unaccented; but strange. Each word was painfully enunciated, as though forced out at a cost.
Andrew stood still. He slowly nodded.
“Do you hate him?” .
“Yes.”
“How much?”
Andrew shrugged.
“How much?” repeated the man, his voice lifeless. He held his arms apart, as though boasting of a record fish: “This much?” It could have been comical gesture, but it wasn’t.
Andrew shook his head. The man raised his eyebrows in a gesture of surprise, and held his arms further apart. “This much?”
Andrew shook his head. “No,” he said, and held his arms as wide as he could. “This much.”
The man tilted his head on one side, eyes gleaming like split coal.
“I could get him for you,” said the man.
“What?”
“I could get him for you. Shall I?”
“Get him?”
“Yes. Do you want me to?”
“Yeah. Get him,” said Andrew in a flat voice. “Fucking get him.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and fled across the field. Brambles tore at his trousers, but he didn’t slow down. Only when he reached the edge of the field did he look back. The man had gone.
The next day was a Tuesday. Andrew wondered whether Patrick would be at school. He was. He spat on Andrew in the playground at lunch, and then went back to playing football. As though they were something private and intimate, the events of the previous evening went unmentioned.
But, after school Patrick didn’t come searching in the cloak room for him. Patrick didn’t fall in step with him as he sneaked out of the gates. Patrick wasn’t at the shops, or at the bus stop. Andrew walked home scarcely able to believe his luck. Only when his Mum opened the door of the flat, did he allow himself to sag with relief.
Patrick wasn’t at school the next day, or the next. By Thursday evening, a dull, mysterious ache had appeared in Andrew’s lower stomach. The relief of each day untouched was beginning to be replaced by something else. Had he misheard the man, misunderstood him? Had he even been real? On Friday, Andrew asked a boy who played basketball with Patrick whether he’d seen him. The boy looked at him with contempt.
“What? No, haven’t seen him. Fuck off.”
At the weekend he almost managed to forget what had happened. But, shopping with his mother, he found himself constantly watching the crowds, scanning for Patrick. He knew that on Monday the basketball team were receiving an award in assembly, for winning the borough championship. Patrick was on the team, one of the top-scorers. He would be there, thought Andrew, he wouldn’t miss that.
Monday came. Andrew sat in the hall, his stomach churning, waiting for the familiar, swaggering figure to appear. He didn’t. No mention was made to explain his absence. After assembly he approached Patrick’s form tutor.
“Sir, what’s wrong with Patrick Duffy?”
“Don’t know.” Mr Mitchell kept on walking, a stack of exercise books balanced in his hand. “Why?”
“Nothing. He’s been away. Just thought that….”
“I’ve heard nothing,” said Mr Mitchell and strode away.
Three days later, he tried again. Mrs Cross was both Patrick’s and Andrew’s English teacher. Andrew waited until the class had filed out.
“He’s a traveller,” replied Mrs Cross. “He must have gone.”
“Oh. Do you know that? Did he tell you?”
“What? No. They never say when they’re going.”
“Oh. Ok.”
Mrs Cross looked closely at Andrew.
“You should be glad. I’ve seen him around you. I’ve seen what he does.””
Andrew nodded. “Yeah. Course.”
As the days went by, fear and hope became tangled and indistinguishable in Andrew’s chest. He didn’t ask the teachers again, wary of linking his name to Patrick’s. Like a problem in maths class, columns of possibilities stacked themselves in his mind. The man was old. What could he do to Patrick? Patrick could handle himself. But the man was big. There was something wrong- frightening- about him. Patrick had never talked of leaving.
On a Saturday, twenty days after the encounter, Andrew spotted the man, dressed in his tweed jacket, walking slowly along a street near Andrew’s flat. The man swayed as he walked, leaning against garden walls for support. For half an hour, he trailed the old man, trying to pluck up the courage to approach. The man seemed to be following no particular route, taking streets at random, sometimes doubling back. Eventually, when walking beside a busy main road, the man suddenly turned and went into the basement of a house on a crumbling Victorian terrace. The small front garden was overgrown, surrounded by an iron fence. Andrew knelt in the shadow of the bushes. The flats above the basement appeared abandoned, with several smashed windows and a large water-stain, like a port-wine mark, spreading over the front of the house from a broken gutter. The curtains of the basement flat were drawn. He crept from his hiding place down the path to the door, and pressed his ear to the wood. Over the noise of the traffic, he thought he could hear a hammering. He ran.
One month later, on a Wednesday evening after school, he went back. He hadn’t heard Patrick’s name mentioned at school for weeks. Andrew crouched on the pavement outside the house, his hands gripping the sun-warmed railings as though resisting the buffeting wind of the traffic. Although bordered by a busy main road, the street had few pedestrians; some quirk of town planning had cut it off from the hustle of city life like an oxbow lake from a river.
The flagstones of the short path were cracked, and covered in moss burnt brown by the summer heat. On the tiny area of grass was a pile of objects: two stacked plastic chairs, a sewing machine, bulging bin bags, a stained mattress. The front door was open, showing a dark, wood-panelled hallway.
A middle-aged woman, large and white, with her blonde hair scraped tight into a bun and forehead glossy with sweat, appeared in the open doorway and walked heavily up the stairs. Andrew moved further into the shadow of the bush. She deposited an armful of books on the growing pile in the garden. The women disappeared down the steps, but re-emerged a moment later with a brown-haired woman, also large and white, carrying a long white table between them. Both were dressed in white polo-shirts, and dark blue aprons with Swiburn’s Cleaning Services printed in gold letters. As they climbed the stairs, the plug connected to the table uncoiled and caught under the door. The blonde-haired women called back into the hallway:
“Grace!”
There was silence from the house.
“Grace! Gracie!”
A younger woman, with coffee-coloured skin and gold hoop earrings appeared. Like the others she wore a blue apron. She looked bored.
“The plug?! Get it, yeah?”
“What is it?”
“Tanning bed, isn’t it?”
“What’s an old man want with that?”
“I dunno! The house is full of crap.”
“You don’t want it do you?” said Grace, and sniggered. “Can you imagine!”
“Shut up and help us move it.”
Gracie helped them lift the sun-bed into the garden. She kicked the mattress, and it slithered off the pile. Dust billowed out. He caught the faint smell of decay and mould.
“Don’t do that!”
“It all wants burning, I say.”
“Probably will be, love.”
They went back inside. Gracie and the woman with brown hair emerged again, carrying a Hoover and plastic boxes filled with cleaning cloths and bottles. They lit cigarettes and sat on the stairs.
“All done,” said the older woman.
“Creeps me out.”
“You get used to it. First day and all that.”
“I wouldn’t have believed the shit you can find.”
“This one’s not the worst. This one’s fine.”
“So that’s it? All finished?”
“Yeah. Leave it in the yard. It’s not gonna rain is it?”
“No, not tonight”
“Council will pick it up tomorrow. No relatives. Nothing else to do.”
The blonde-haired woman came out and shut and locked the door behind her. The others flicked their cigarettes away and walked up the path. Andrew followed at a safe distance, watching as they loaded a small white van parked on the next street and drove off.
In the garden, Andrew started to pick gingerly at a bin bag, and then he realised he didn’t know what he was looking for. He stared at the pile for a long time, and then turned and walked out of the garden and down the street. He realised he was smiling.