Bird Blood Snow Read online

  *

  Rough. Mostly from unfinished MSS, by ___________.

  This is how it is told. He had, our gallant hero, stuck it three weeks at the place. Then he gathered what weapons he could [such things as sharpened pencils, marker pens, a dinner knife from the canteen which he sharpened up], took one of the old witches’ bikes, and left. [As he would put it, he ‘went on his way’. Later the terms ‘escaped’ and ‘broke out’ would be used.] He was now eleven years old.

  It was Baltic cold. The bike was too much a palfrey and not built for him, and he rode it to dismantlement. Finally the front wheel buckled, and he abandoned the bike in a ditch.

  For a while the cold abated, but as dusk dropped so the temperature did. Heroic or not, our hero was cold. [It is likely that this lowered tolerance to the elements was a result of his being kept almost entirely indoors, in a centrally heated, double-glazed environment, for the three weeks of his stay at the home. It is certainly not in keeping with his previous outdoor character.]

  It did not occur to him to hitchhike, but the car pulled over anyway. Unaware of the possible repercussions, our hero – taciturn though he was and not best at politeness – accepted a lift. In his mind he saw that Arthur had sent the car to him as a token of his worth.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked our hero’s deliverer.

  He explained that he had nowhere fixed.

  ‘Then stay with me. I have room.’

  And he stayed that night with the hermit.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Orange squash?’

  The boy had recoiled. He had felt an unusual instinct when the man ushered him in. The hallway of the bungalow was prim.

  He sat on the sofa. There was an electric hearth and the fake coals were warming up, giving out a glow the colour of streetlight, like the orange lamps around the place he had just left.

  The boy sat awkwardly on the sofa and felt its very great difference from the old leathered bench in the gym, times back. There was no real smell in this place.

  ‘You look cold,’ said the man. ‘Why don’t you kneel in front of the fire?’

  In some ways, a degree of uncertainty had been introduced into the boy in the foster home and over the last few weeks and he did not have his previous faith in himself. So he went to kneel before the fire.

  On the veneered shelf above the hearth were some pictures of the man himself and some slate mats engraved with landmarks, and in the centre a statue of a triple harp.

  At that moment, as if the harp had come alive, a music filled the room. The man seemed to stroke the speaker, and put the remote control down.

  He said ‘A nice cup of tea,’ and went through to the kitchen.

  The music affected the boy. It somehow seemed to berate him. The music smiled fakely while it patronised him, as if it – like the witches at the home – were telling him what was best.

  He thought about running. He felt distrustful of the place and of the fake hearth. There was a horrible domesticity, the odd air of an environment built too consciously. He was no longer, however, subject simply to his instinct. I guess it’s what Arthur wants, he thought. Faith – with the loss of confidence – fills in.

  The music kept going. It was clambering and fawning over him. He thought of the newt at the home, felt it pluck with wet fingers at him.

  The boy looked through to the kitchen at the man making a cup of tea. There was a corner cupboard and on it a tea set arranged with the teapot there in the centre, everything in its place.

  The man took down two cups and made the tea with bags in the cups. He saw the man squeeze the bags against the side of the cups and carry them on the spoon in his clean podgy little hand to a little pot and the boy for some reason felt nervous and a little sick.

  They sat on the sofa to drink the tea. The boy could not look at the man and the music just went round and round, petty and persistent and smiley.

  The man made fish fingers for tea.

  ‘Would you like a bath? Or anything?’

  The boy woke up from a dream that was a soup of his mother and a boy with a bleeding eye, and, from his memory of seeing her on the telly, the woman he loved best – physically confusing to him now the effect of the slits in her dress showing the white skin – and a nightmarish bike he could not pedal. It faded abruptly, a residue left, a weight carrying him back into sleep.

  When he woke again the man was standing over him, his shorts pulled down and his strengthless baby-fat stomach hanging over his hand as it flapped at his cock, his humiliating balls rucked up in a red and green waistband.

  The boy lay mortified and still, finally void of his own will, and the man snuffled as if he were crying. The man’s eyes were squeezed shut behind his little glasses and as he tipped his head to God a little light caught the lenses and made his look glazed.

  And the fatty white thighs came forward into the edge of the mattress and the stomach jiggled and there was a bereft and glorious groan and the man’s seed fell onto the boy’s face and across where he lay and there was a stench of protein. And then the man fell to crying, to weeping, and the boy lay there sullied, and he was sure he heard harp music.

  Note: Picks up MSS again here

  The bungalow of the hermit was protected by some spell, for we lose sight of our hero and thus what happened that night is unclear. But such was it that the following morning we find our hero in reflective mood, rare for a character of such usual vitality.

  That night it had snowed. [The record here is ambiguous and there is an implication this might be allegorical; it could be that it was simply a hard frost.] There was a duck, killed in the snow, and its head picked and spots of blood red in the snow. And our hero watched, and a jackdaw came down onto the carcass. It picked at the bird’s flesh, its head jerking into the meat and into the snow and when it arose it flew to the bungalow’s roof, a white cap of snow still upon its head and its legs like wooden sticks.

  Peredur stood and compared the blackness of the jackdaw and the whiteness of the snow and the redness of the blood to the hair of the woman he loved best, which was as black as jet, and her skin to the whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood in the white snow to the two red spots in the cheeks of the woman he loved best. And he thought of his mother who was in the black place of death, and of the red speedball in the gym, and of the starched white tunics of the carers and nurses and of many other things.

  And meanwhile, growing louder and louder, Arthur’s voice. And he bade it come to him, to come and find him at that place. And there was then a great conflict in his mind, with his thoughts of his mother, and of that mixing and toiling with images of the woman he loved best, and his fantasy of greatness all clashing with the messages that Arthur sent, and sentences and images fell into a great toil, and so it was as if the real world were very distant to him at that moment. [Indeed, the text suggests an internal conflict. We can surmise that though it was the protagonist’s great wish to be accepted by Arthur, there was, and perhaps tacitly, an understanding that to enter his circle would be an act of totalism – read by some to be akin to entering adulthood – from which there could be no going back. It is unlikely that the hero was not aware of this fact. He would, in effect, be leaving everything behind.]

  We were like: Isn’t that that kid?

  We looked at him standing there, in the snow.

  The one what smashed that guy’s eye. Years ago.

  It was like he was in a trance.

  Kay went up to talk to him and stopped his bike right in front of him but he didn’t move or nothing. Just stood there, staring like. Down at this gross bird what we couldn’t see ’til we found it there later.

  So Kay being Kay gets the hump and starts calling him a twat and lifting up his bike like in a wheelie, ’cept he wasn’t moving. Just drawing attention. Then he went to riding round and round the kid, trying to get a rise out of him, ‘Hey, Ape Frog, Ape Frog!’ slushing and spraying up the snow with his whee
ls. It was that crap snow, not enough and it was already sloppy, wouldn’t hold together. We couldn’t throw snowballs from it. And he just stood there, swear blind, Priestland’s pass now, staring down at that duck or whatever it was, holding this old curtain pole or something he’d picked up, like it was some great staff. Kind of obvious it was going to kick off, looking back. Bearing in mind how he was last time we’d seen him. But Kay’s kind of stupid like that. He was calling the kid all sorts by then and riding closer and closer.

  Well, no shock, but he finally got the kid’s goat. Smashed him right off the bike he did. Right under the jaw. Well, we were running straight off.

  The pole hit Kay under the jaw with a sickening crunch. He came off the bike over the saddle and hit the ground with a snap and for a few metres the bike kept going, wheeling and listing until it careened wildly into the ground.

  We thought he was dead. Didn’t move once he hit the ground and we heard the snap of his arm going from miles off. And that kid just stood there holding the pole. Like he was deep in thought.

  Well, we reckoned Kay needed an ambulance. We reckoned best thing was to get on the right side of the kid. Like, what with various scraps coming up and them all getting a bit more heavy with us being older. He could be handy. And Kay was giving it the ‘you fucking go and talk to him’ and all that, but then he had taken the piss a bit.

  So I went up to the kid, quiet like, trying to make it proper clear I didn’t want any trouble.

  ‘He shouldn’t have bothered you, man,’ I said. ‘You were obviously thinking something through.’

  The kid stood there for a while not looking at me. You have to understand. Being around him there was this kind of weird electricity.

  ‘He was taking the piss,’ he said.

  Then I saw the ripped-up duck down there at his feet.

  ‘He’s that tall one, isn’t he?’

  I was looking down at the duck.

  ‘Always throwing his weight around.’

  I looked up from the duck, the little drops of blood about it.

  ‘His arm’s broke,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Is he really one of Arthur’s sort?’

  I didn’t know what the fuck he meant. There was this vague bell going off that he’d said that before, couple of years ago when he was all dressed up like a looney tune.

  ‘He is,’ I told him. Seemed the best plan.

  Then he had this weird little smile to himself. Swear blind, he looked as mad as Andy Powell.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he said. ‘I’m ready now.’

  Then he gave me this big hug. That kind of stumped me.

  The boy stood in Gwalchmai’s room and Gwalchmai said ‘Here, borrow some of mine.’ And he set about digging out a shirt and other things for Peredur to wear. ‘Better get a shower first,’ he said.

  When he came from the shower he sprayed himself generously with deodorant and gelled his hair and when he was dressed both boys looked pretty much the same. Then they went out to meet the others.

  The entrance to the club was roped off and squat mushroomy bollards held the plush rope. A fog had fallen.

  They had drunk on the bus and were laughing deliberately and went ahead of him into the club.

  Peredur hesitated, watching them disappear through the door. He was afraid he would not be let in, but with the drink and the fog that had come after the snow he felt odd and like in some sort of spell.

  When he stepped up to the door he heard the most incredible music. The music was physical. And moved by that, he stepped inside.

  The instant he did so, the world changed. He found himself, not in some grey building on a worn street, but in a magnificent glittering place. It was crammed with people so good looking it took his breath away. They were dancing, joining hands, their movement captivating in the shattering light, white trainers flashing in the neon strobes, separate animals somersaulting from the ground.

  The colour of their clothes was spectacular. The boys wore caps, and the lights caught in the girls’ hair. He felt the watery edges of drink. It was captivating.

  Gwalchmai came to him and said, ‘Take this’. There was a smiling face on the pill. ‘World’s your oyster,’ he said. He grinned and spoke through the music. He gave him two alcopops, a yellow and a red one. ‘No water. Only rule!’ Then he folded into the crowd. Peredur put the pill on his tongue.

  •

  White girl dimming in the blue light. The pump. The thump. The feeling going through you. The bodies move as one, but the isolated faces stand out, minds dancing in their own places.

  The music like a cushion, like a place for your head, your bare arms, small skirt for the easily led; man-made lightnings in the man-made night, graced with looseness though the space is tight.

  The bass. The pace. The feel of being lifted. Your mind going away from it; being shifted. You let yourself forget things, want things buried by sound. Your worry’s being buried, body’s leaving the ground.

  In the chill-out room scenes of small capitulations, bodies giving in to intentions intended for ages: collisions of people while the music rages, who’ll regain distance in the morning, resume normal relations.

  Re-vamped 70s’ tracks, seething mass on the dance floor. Moving it. Watching it. And you’re dancing and your dancing and you’re letting in the music. You use it. And suddenly you know you won’t need anybody ever, as long as you can sail into the music with a million pale people moving to the same force, like all the spray on one wave all riding the same white horse.

  And you look at the fountains, the silver drinking fountains. The water continuously from them, a silver thread. And when you go to one you see the myriad lights fall spinning in the water, a thousand coloured fish. The water pouring forth and the drops of condensation forming on the silver of the dish.

  And you see yourself there mirrored, and you stare mesmerised, the smooth deliberate moving of the water so different from the dancing, bodies relaxing, tensing, grooving, so chosen – water drop choosing amidst all this trying to lose choice. Choosing falling.

  The pump. The thump. An anonymous glance. Then you’re taking in water and you’re back in the dance.

  ‘I don’t know if I blame myself.’

  You can see how she might have been then, a younger body. They can be feral and heartbreaking and pretty, girls like her, but they don’t last. She still wears all the gold on her hands.

  ‘I couldn’t imagine it.’

  I can see that his mother would have been like her.

  ‘He was different. Different odd.’

  ‘He get fixated on you?’

  She nods.

  ‘We were kids,’ she says.

  She moves the baby to the other knee so that she can organise a cigarette. Already she has the pinched mouth women can get from that. There’s an open packet of biscuits on the table and she offers me one.

  When they pulled him from the club there was a thin morning light. The last fawn slush of snow had gone. He had lost all sense of time.

  They were in the gradual morning light. There was a strange displacement to them there. They looked incongruous in their lurid clothes. Their sweat chilled, the spell passed.

  Peredur looked at Angharad, a white girl dimming in the blue light. They waited for the bus.

  He watched her hands on the pale burger. Behind her the golden arches of the M sat like they gave her angels’ wings.

  He looked at all the rings on her hands, the bangles and the charm bracelet all hung with toys – a golden lock, a golden heart, her golden initial, A, like she had hands full of gold. It hit him in his stomach to be around her.

  When he asked her out she said no: ‘I don’t want you.’ He had mistaken the sick feeling for love. He told her so. The others were over smoking by the bins.

  ‘Well I don’t love you,’ she said, ‘and I will never want you, ever.’

  She’ll change her mind, he thought
. I’ll make her change her mind. First loves and some loves after that are about conviction, not feeling.

  He stood there before her, reddening, and she felt sorry for him but was not interested. He stared at the charms – a key, a golden pussy cat that looked somehow like a lion. And she told him again, ‘I don’t want you. Stop being weird,’ but there was a fossilising happening.

  Peredur stared at her. To her he looked caught out and abashed but there was a violence rising in him. I’ll make you, he said. He built up a great speech within himself. I’ll make you then. I’ll go out from here, and one day you’ll know about me, and you’ll wish you said yes. You’ll beg to be with me.

  When he left he carried with him the death of his mother and those bones he had made broken. He had with him the stain of the harpist, which he couldn’t wash off, the stink of the corridors in the secure home. He had the smell of singed hair and piss and the sight of a tattered dress; he had the humiliating pictures of himself on his bike. The arm bands and pads, and a vision of an eye busting at its root, the immediate seashore sound of that boy’s breath. I’ll show you, he said. Fuck this. Fuck this world. And all of this he said within himself. And he took all of this with him. And it was on his back like a stone.

  *

  Incident Number: XXXX

  It would appear he came over the ridge on the high road and dropped down into the above detailed area of town.

  Damage was done to the pub sign. He then entered the Golden Lion. Present was the landlord, (----, 6’2”, 61yrs) and two regulars who were playing darts at the time, (----, brown hair, 5’8”, 22yrs, ----, blond, 5’2”, 24yrs).

  According to his account the said landlord challenged the youth regarding the sign he had damaged. The youth ignored the landlord and ‘walked through to the family bar’ which was at the time empty of customers.