boy.
He said it again, quietly. There was the manure smell of stout on his breath, and pickled herring. For a brief second Cy thought the man might be about to kiss him on the forehead with his large lips. He held very still. Those eyes looking at him! Desperate and dying blue, like the top of the sky when the sun is sinking. Then Riley released him, stood back, untucked and pulled up his painter’s shirt and exposed five inches of gut sporting some of the strangest compositions of ink that Cy had ever seen. He was bright like the skin of a tropical creature, like he was half-lizard. And then the man was gone, arched-legged up the wet, leaf-blown street.
Cy almost didn’t go. There were taut fibres within him that told him to stay at home, stay put at the Bayview after supper, go to his bedroom and read or sit with his mother at the kitchen table, which always made her happy. He should find the boys and throw stones into the sea. Anything other. He could not eat much of his dinner, being fairly well filled with ale from the afternoon, and as he forked the kale around his plate he remembered the blue-fascination of eyes, and the profound words, hearing them as well as if a light chanting curse had been laid upon him. This is important, boy. He had an inkling that within this choice there was one path, flat as the promenade, which doubled back and led somewhere he had already been, and another path that led somewhere high and low and haunted, like the trail alongside Moffat Ravine, where land fell sharply away and black space opened like a channel to the underworld. Or like one of the wending tracks on the Yorkshire moors by his Aunt Doris, which led away to nothing, and only sick animals or werewolves or madmen would choose to take them. And he’d a sense that if he saw Riley twice in that same day it would mean consent, it would make it certain, because Riley was a strong whirlpool of himself taking others in, because he was conviction. And while his manner was tawdry, the ink stains on his fingers were so very oddly compelling. When Cy thought of Riley it felt fated, like water was already tunnelling past him. Some rip current had already taken him, and he was going without fighting. He was going. Not to say yes, for he didn’t think he would, not to say no, because he was not sure refusal was yet ready in him. Just going.
It was a ten-minute walk to Pedder Street, give or take, having climbed from the washroom window out into a liver-brown night whose character made his belly turn. The town was mostly empty for the weather and the season. The waves on the shore were moderate, though fortified by darkness and imagination they echoed louder than their size. But the bricks and the gutters and the slates and the car wheels seemed precise and clear and absolute to Cy during the late walk, and owing nothing, as if electricity had lately passed through his body. His hands were deep in his pockets, and his tall body was hoisted backwards and forwards like a spinnaker by the breathing sea. His shoes loud against the pavement. Yes. He was going. Not in keeping with nor against his own will, just going. Past the creaking wooden fairground rides in the park – the spindle-some tumbling teacups and the Ring-o-Rounder – which were laid up for winter, and the empty toffee-apple stalls, past the Alhambra picture house and dancehall closed for the night and past Professor and Madame Johnson’s where they held communion with dead husbands and wives, ancestors, impending progeny and walk-ins, the lost souls of unreconciled lives. Until there were the droll Hebrew candles in the window, there was the door with the split lock, and there was his heart hammering a knock on it to open.
How long had it taken? How long for him to be convinced he would learn that intimate and colourful language? That folkish tongue, spoken in symbols and essence and tokens. It took no longer than twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to decide a
He said it again, quietly. There was the manure smell of stout on his breath, and pickled herring. For a brief second Cy thought the man might be about to kiss him on the forehead with his large lips. He held very still. Those eyes looking at him! Desperate and dying blue, like the top of the sky when the sun is sinking. Then Riley released him, stood back, untucked and pulled up his painter’s shirt and exposed five inches of gut sporting some of the strangest compositions of ink that Cy had ever seen. He was bright like the skin of a tropical creature, like he was half-lizard. And then the man was gone, arched-legged up the wet, leaf-blown street.
Cy almost didn’t go. There were taut fibres within him that told him to stay at home, stay put at the Bayview after supper, go to his bedroom and read or sit with his mother at the kitchen table, which always made her happy. He should find the boys and throw stones into the sea. Anything other. He could not eat much of his dinner, being fairly well filled with ale from the afternoon, and as he forked the kale around his plate he remembered the blue-fascination of eyes, and the profound words, hearing them as well as if a light chanting curse had been laid upon him. This is important, boy. He had an inkling that within this choice there was one path, flat as the promenade, which doubled back and led somewhere he had already been, and another path that led somewhere high and low and haunted, like the trail alongside Moffat Ravine, where land fell sharply away and black space opened like a channel to the underworld. Or like one of the wending tracks on the Yorkshire moors by his Aunt Doris, which led away to nothing, and only sick animals or werewolves or madmen would choose to take them. And he’d a sense that if he saw Riley twice in that same day it would mean consent, it would make it certain, because Riley was a strong whirlpool of himself taking others in, because he was conviction. And while his manner was tawdry, the ink stains on his fingers were so very oddly compelling. When Cy thought of Riley it felt fated, like water was already tunnelling past him. Some rip current had already taken him, and he was going without fighting. He was going. Not to say yes, for he didn’t think he would, not to say no, because he was not sure refusal was yet ready in him. Just going.
It was a ten-minute walk to Pedder Street, give or take, having climbed from the washroom window out into a liver-brown night whose character made his belly turn. The town was mostly empty for the weather and the season. The waves on the shore were moderate, though fortified by darkness and imagination they echoed louder than their size. But the bricks and the gutters and the slates and the car wheels seemed precise and clear and absolute to Cy during the late walk, and owing nothing, as if electricity had lately passed through his body. His hands were deep in his pockets, and his tall body was hoisted backwards and forwards like a spinnaker by the breathing sea. His shoes loud against the pavement. Yes. He was going. Not in keeping with nor against his own will, just going. Past the creaking wooden fairground rides in the park – the spindle-some tumbling teacups and the Ring-o-Rounder – which were laid up for winter, and the empty toffee-apple stalls, past the Alhambra picture house and dancehall closed for the night and past Professor and Madame Johnson’s where they held communion with dead husbands and wives, ancestors, impending progeny and walk-ins, the lost souls of unreconciled lives. Until there were the droll Hebrew candles in the window, there was the door with the split lock, and there was his heart hammering a knock on it to open.
How long had it taken? How long for him to be convinced he would learn that intimate and colourful language? That folkish tongue, spoken in symbols and essence and tokens. It took no longer than twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to decide a
Similar Books
