Lisa Ballantyne - Guilty One

‘Oi, new lad!’

‘Fuck off an’ leave me alone.’

He turned but they pushed him again. He tightened his fist but he knew he would get chinned if he went for them. There were too many of them. He stood still and let his satchel fall to the ground.

‘Like living with the old witch, do ya?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘What you doin’ that for? You a poof? Oooo!’ The biggest lad wiggled his hips and rubbed his palms against his chest. Daniel’s knife was in his bag but there was no time to get it. He charged the big lad instead and hit him in the stomach with his head.

He hurt him.

The lad retched as if he might throw up, but the other two boys pulled Daniel down. They kicked his body, legs, arms and face. Daniel put his elbows over his face but the boy who had called him a poof grabbed his hair and pulled his head right back. Daniel felt his chin lifted and his neck stretch. The boy’s fist smashed into Daniel’s nose. Daniel heard the crack and tasted the blood.

They left him bleeding in the grass.

Daniel stayed curled up in a ball until he heard their voices fade. There was blood in his mouth and his body hurt all over. His arms started to tingle and itch. When he squinted at his forearm he saw that it was covered in white spots. He was lying in a bed of nettles. He rolled over and on to his knees. He wasn’t crying but his eyes were watering and he wiped them with the raised nettle sting on his forearm. The tears seemed to help the sting for a moment and then the itch returned.

An older man walked past with his dog. It was a Rottweiler and it snarled at him, saliva and wrinkled nose. The bark and snap of its chain made Daniel jump. He got to his feet.

‘You all right there, lad?’ the man asked, looking backwards at Daniel as he walked on.

Daniel turned and ran.

He ran across the Dandy to Brampton station. He didn’t have money for the bus or the train, but he knew the way to Newcastle. He ran holding his side where he had been kicked, and then walked for a few strides before trying to run again.

Cars growled past with such speed that it affected his balance. His mind was blank, reduced to the pain in his nose, the ache in his side, the blood in his throat, the angry sting on his arm and the lightness of himself, burnt out and lifted up like papers in a chimney. The blood from his nose had dried on his chin and he rubbed it off. He couldn’t breathe through his nose but he didn’t want to touch it in case it bled again. He was cold. He rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and buttoned the cuffs. His nettle-skin rubbed, swollen, against the cotton of his shirt.

Home . He wanted to be with her, wherever she was. The social worker had told him that she was out of hospital. He would be home when she welcomed him, when she took him into her arms. He almost turned back, but then he pictured her again. He forgot the cars and the hard road and the blood in his throat. He remembered his mam putting her make-up on and the smell of her, all talcum powder after her bath. It made him forget the cold.

He was thirsty. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He tried to forget his thirst and remember instead the tingle of her fingers through his hair. How long was it, he tried to remember, since she had done that? His hair had been cut several times. Had she even touched this hair that now grew on his head?

He was walking along, counting months on his fingers, when a van drew up beside him.

Daniel stood well back. The driver was a man with long hair and tattoos on his forearm. He rolled down the window and leaned over to shout to him.

‘Where you headed, lad?’

‘Newcastle.’

‘Hop in then.’

Daniel knew the man could be a nutter but he climbed up beside him anyway. He wanted to see his mam again. The man was listening to the radio and it was loud enough that Daniel didn’t feel the need to talk. The man drove with his hands folded over the steering wheel. The muscles in his arms flexed when he turned the wheel. He smelled of old sweat and the van was dirty, full of crushed cans and empty cigarette packets.

‘Eeeh, man, better put your seatbelt on, eh?’

Daniel did as he was asked.

The man bit a cigarette out of the packet that was on the dashboard and asked Daniel to hand him the lighter that was by his feet. Daniel watched the man light his cigarette. He had a tattoo of a naked lady on his arm and a scar like a burn on his neck.

The man rolled the window down and exhaled smoke out into the air that rushed behind them.

‘You want one?’

Biting his lip, Daniel took a cigarette. He lit it and rolled his window down as the man had done. He put one foot up on the seat and let his left arm rest on the open window. Daniel smoked like that, feeling free and bitter and wild and alone. The cigarette made his eyes water. He laid his head back as the rush hit him. He felt sick, as he always did when he had a cigarette, but he knew he wouldn’t throw up.

‘What you up to in Newcastle, then?’

‘Just going to see me mam.’

‘Got yerself in a scrap, did ye?’

Daniel shrugged and took another drag.

‘You’ll be able to clean yerself up when you get home, like.’

‘Aye.’

‘What would you’ve done if I hadn’t stopped?’

‘Just walk.’

‘Eeeh, that’s a long way, lad. Take you all night.’

‘I’m not bothered, but thanks for the lift all the same.’

The man laughed and Daniel didn’t know why he was laughing. The man’s front teeth were broken. He finished his cigarette and then flicked it out of the window. Daniel watched the red sparks of the discarded cigarette leave them. He too wanted to toss his cigarette but it was only smoked halfway. Daniel thought he might get in trouble for wasting it. He took another few drags then flicked it out of the window when the man leaned out of his truck to hawk and spit.

‘Will yer mam have your tea on, then?’

‘Aye.’

‘What does she make for you?’

‘She makes … roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.’

His mother had only ever made him toast. She made good cheese on toast.

‘Roast beef on a Tuesday? My, I need to come live with you. That’s not bad, that is. Where am I dropping you?’

‘Just the centre. Wherever’s easier.’

‘I can take you home, like, man? I’m overnight in Newcastle. I want you home in time for your roast beef, don’t I? Where are you?’

‘The Cowgate, it’s …”

The man laughed again, and Daniel frowned at him. ‘Yer a’right, man. I know the Cowgate, like. I’ll take you there.’

Daniel felt cold when he was dropped off. The man left him at the roundabout and hooted his horn as he drove away.

Daniel pulled his shoulders up against the cold and ran the rest of the way: down Ponteland Road and along Chestnut Avenue on to Whitethorn Crescent. His mam had been living there for the past two years. Social services had allowed him to spend a night with her there a few months ago. It was a white house on the end of a row, next to two red-brick houses that were boarded up. He ran towards it. His nose was starting to bleed again and it hurt when he ran, so he slowed down. He put his hand up to touch it. It felt too big, like someone else’s nose. Even with his nose blocked with blood, he could still smell the cigarette off his fingers. His satchel was jumping up and down on his shoulders, so he let it fall off and ran with it in one hand.

He stopped at the path to the house. The glass was broken in all the windows, and the upstairs window was gone; everything inside was black. He frowned up at her window. It was getting dark, but the window looked blacker than all the other unlit windows. The grass in the garden was tall as his knees and growing all over the path. He took giant steps through the grass to the side door. The grass was littered with objects: a flattened traffic cone, an upturned baby’s pram, an old shoe. He could hear a dog barking. He was breathing hard.