Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“Won’t you come over here, pet?” one of them keeps saying. “We’ve got things to show you.”

“That your sweetheart there?” the other one jumps in. “Looks in real bad shape, ’e does. No joy cuddlin’ the sick.”

Livia looks over at Thomas. It is a closed, a haughty look. It must mean she is scared. She does not ask him for his help. But Thomas is already on his feet. The Smoke wafting through the carriage helps him, gives him strength. He breathes it in with a sense of recognition; watches his body exhale a fine blue mist in response. All the same he is careful not to inhale too much. He must not get too angry to think.

“Ah, look at the pup! Chival’russ, ’e is, a proper little knight. Forgot ’is armer though, didn’t ’e?”

“Nah,” says his mate, “he’s got his lass there to protect him. What you say, bonny lad? Sit yourself down again and we’ll help you break her in.”

Thomas ignores them, steadies himself against Livia’s shoulders. From the corner of one eye he is aware of the third man, plucking feathers off a bloody lump of chicken. Ahead, the land shifts from flat to the slight incline of a hill. Livia’s ear is right in front of him, its outside clean, the inside glowing black with coal dust. Her body is shaking under his hands, or perhaps he is shaking and passing it on into her slender frame. He whispers to her.

“I’m too weak to fight them,” he whispers. “But if we stay here, I must.”

Her eye flicks back momentarily. It communicates a question.

Why?

“The Smoke,” he explains. “I’m not like Charlie. It makes a home in me.”

As he says it, he realises he is afraid to fight these men not because he will lose. He is afraid he will disappear, disappear into the Smoke, as he did when he fought Julius. One day, he thinks, he won’t find his way back.

But there is no need to explain all this to Livia. She has already understood the most important thing. They must get off the train.

“When?” she asks.

“Now.”

He has been listening for it, the moment the train’s engine clears the crest of the hill. The moment it is at its slowest, its rump tethered to a dozen wagons, gravity tugging at its nose. It is a sound the body hears, not the ears, a change in vibrations racing through the chain of wagons like a rumour: steel wheel to axle to coupling to wood.

Now.

Thomas pushes Livia with both hands, afraid that she will miss the moment; pushes too hard, perhaps, and sees her stumble awkwardly across the threshold of the door. The wind whips at her hair. Then she is gone from sight.

Him, the vagrants try to stop before he can follow. It is a clumsy charge. Thomas ducks one man’s arm, sidesteps the other’s leg, and throws himself forward. He feels himself falling through the sharp twigs of a shrub. Then the ground jumps up at him. He hits it shoulder first, feels the air pushed out of his lungs; goes head over heels, then starts rolling down a slope of unkempt grass, the world a carousel, hips, elbows, knees pummelled by the impact of each revolution.

ф

They are lucky, in a sense. The hill slopes gently where they leapt, and the hedgerow that parallels the tracks is free of thorns. All the same, the twigs have torn clothes and skin. They each come to rest some six or seven yards down, where a ditch welcomes them with its bed of hard-caked mud. He looks around winded, and sees Livia sitting up not far from him, her face dark with dirt, and blood seeping from a cut lip. She gets to her feet and stands over him, rubbing her upper arms and neck. He thinks she will ask him whether he is all right; whether his wound has reopened or he has broken any limbs.

“Stupid,” she says. “We should have waited for a steeper hill.”

He tries to speak but doesn’t have enough air.

“How far to London?” she asks.

He gasps, spits.

“Don’t know,” he manages. “Can’t be far.”

“Get up then.” She brushes at her clothes, her face. “We need to find water. I want to wash.”

ф

She won’t be talked out of it. What does it matter, he tries to explain to her, if they are dirty? In London everyone is dirty. It will help them blend in. She could wet her handkerchief with some spit, rub off the blood if it bothers her. But she won’t be swayed, glowers at his words. Something about him makes her angry. He understands this well enough. Something about her makes him angry too.

Half an hour later she finds a creek. They are walking south, keeping the tracks in sight, on an unmarked path. Already the sun is sitting low in the sky. The day has cleared, its light bright and pure, carving shades of colour out of every blade of grass. It is hard to believe that they emerged from darkness only that morning. Seven hours of daylight and already Thomas’s wonder at the world has worn thin. His head is hurting, his back, the bruises on his hips and knees. A lone crow sits in empty fields and watches him hobble past.

The creek is three feet wide and a foot deep. There is no bridge, but a fallen tree has been placed across from bank to bank. Livia climbs down to it, crouches, then looks at him expectantly.

“What?” he asks, uncomprehending.

“Some privacy, if you will.”

“You are going to strip? Just dunk a hankie in and mop your face. Be done with it.”

It’s like talking at a stone. He curses, turns away from her, shuffles ten steps down the path. The crow is still there in its field, caws hoarsely at him, picks an insect out the dirt. While he waits, impatient, Thomas makes an inventory of his pockets. There is a penknife and a handkerchief so stained with coal dust it is a featureless black. A length of yarn; a spent and broken match. A stone he picked up in some childish moment because it impressed him by its smoothness. Then he finds the cigarettes. There are four of them, each bent like an old man’s fingers. He has a memory of forcing open Julius’s little box and stuffing them in his coat. The smell leaps up to him, sticks to his fingertips even after he scatters the cigarettes on the ground. An invitation to sin. Renfrew would have been pleased to witness his fear.

When Livia finally emerges, her hair is streaming wet. She has no towel and has put on her shirt over her still-wet frame, is using the miner’s coat like a blanket thrown about her shoulders. Her face is flushed with cold. Beneath it shivers her young body, more naked than dressed. Thomas sees it and quickly turns away.

A silence descends. Behind him he can hear her wring out her hair then climb into the shoes she has been holding in her hand.

“There,” she announces at last. “Nearly dry. I needed to. . Those men made me feel dirty.”

Thomas hardly hears her. He wonders whether she saw him look. Whether he showed. He needs to say something; warn her; apologise. Her belly button showed dark through the wet cotton of her shirt; he saw the slender arches of her rib cage. You have to be careful , he wants to say. There is a curve, a hollow where her arm runs into torso, so much softer than a boy’s. I am no different than those who rode the train.

“Livia,” he says instead, his eyes on dirt and crow. It sounds sulky rather than apologetic. “What sort of name is Livia?”

Instantly, her voice turns cold.

“What do you care?”

But his mind has already moved on, slides from thought to thought without finding traction.

“I wish Charlie was here,” he mutters. And then: “He’s in love with you.”

“And you disapprove.”

He listens into himself and discovers she is right.

“Charlie is the best,” he tries to explain. “The most honest, the bravest person I have ever met.”

“While I’m a stuck-up little madam pretending to be a saint.”