Литагент HarperCollins - Flying High

I didn’t tell Ian about the Hob. Ian thinks he’s tough. He’d think I was soft and I ain’t. I told Dixey though. Dix is my mum’s mate when they ain’t slagging each other off. She lives two doors down with her brats. Dix is all right. She just nods and says, ‘What, the old cow’s still up Hob’s Lane?’ and carries on frying chips. She don’t know nothing about Foreman and Longman though, so I scored there.

My mum give me some grief. Shit, she was a pain. Always going on about what time I come home at night just because some silly little prat has got herself done in over on the Park estate. She wanted me to be a nurse! A nurse, I ask you! And tight. God, tight as a duck’s arse. Mind you, I don’t have to bother with that lot nowadays. The old girl saw to it. She’s got some sense, I’ll give her that.

Mind you, the Missis come over mean when I tell her I seen Foreman down in the square drinking with the alkies. She tells me to hold my tongue and gives me a shiv when I cheeks her. I don’t mind though. I’m going to learn how to do it back. Stands to reason, don’t it? Like we was saying in Community Studies last term, it’s everybody for theirselves, ain’t it? Because there ain’t nothing else to do. Nobody else cares about you but you. That’s what the old boss, that Thatcher woman said and I agrees. The Missis calls it survival of the fittest which is what she said she’d done. Yeah, well, I’m pretty fit. And I don’t take no crap.

Anyway here’s how I first went up the Ridge.

The old girl says one day she’s off on her travels, yeah? Could have knocked me over – I was gobsmacked. I never seen her walk about much, see? Most of the time she sits around in her stream like it was a chair in front of the telly. Every now and again she’ll come and squat down besides me on the bank and wave at the cars when they goes past. But I never seen her walk about before. So I says, ‘Where you going then?’

‘Why? You want to come along, Nipper?’ she says.

I caught the old bus and got off at Yalderton. Stupid bloody place – not even a shop. Mainly farmhouses and snotty kids riding horses. I walked up the big hill like she said and threshed around in the wood at the top for a bit. Full of sodding stingers it was. And wet and muddy in spite of it being late June and dry everywhere else.

She was halfway down the other side under this great yew tree sitting in a kind of pond thing like it was her own personal swimming pool. I suppose there must’ve been a spring coming out up above somewhere. Mind you, I wasn’t going to mess my tights up finding out. Too many spiky trees around. Too many bloody bushes. I was cut to pieces, you can believe it. When I comes down to her I sees the old tree she’s underneath is all hung up with bits of rag and scraps of cloth like it’s some kind of mad washing line. Dead weird it looked.

She was making a kind of singing, droning noise too when I comes down. It had words to it. They goes:

‘ Dance, Ringman, dance,

Dance, my good men, every one,

For Ringman, he can dance alone,

Ringman, he can dance alone.’

Out of her barrel, I thinks. Always was loopy but gone and ripped her hairnet now.

‘You been doing your washing, Missis?’

‘What? Quiet, kiddo, or I’ll smash you good.’

‘You finished singing yet?’

‘Yeah, I finished now.’

‘What you doing up here?’

‘Visiting.’

‘Who you visiting? I don’t see no one.’

‘See that stone there?’

‘What, the big one?’

‘That’s Ringman.’

‘That’s Ringman? Where is he then?’

‘Told you before, girl. He’s shy.’

‘He won’t come out like Longman does, you mean?’

‘Might do.’

‘Them blokes, Longman and Foreman. They ghosts?’

‘Ghosts? Nah, Nipper. They’re real. Same as you and me. They ain’t dead, you know.’

‘What’s Ringman doing in that stone?’

‘Waiting.’

‘What’s he waiting for?’

‘Tonight.’

‘What’s happening tonight?’

‘Depends.’

‘Oh, come off it, Missis. Tell us. I ain’t come all this way in that stupid bus just to fuck about.’

‘You watch your language, girl. Or …’

‘Or what, then?’

‘Or Ringman might decide he don’t like you, after all.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘He’s good looking, Ringman is. A sight better looking’n that wanker Ian you mess with.’

‘So what?’

‘If you was to play your cards right Ringman might make you his girl.’

‘What if I don’t want to be his girl?’

‘I reckon you will. Oh yes, Nipper, there ain’t much doubt about that.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Oh, he’s nice, Ringman is. And he’s good. Very, very good.’

My mum made one hell of a stink when I didn’t come back that night. There were pigs out all over the place looking for me. God, the fuss they made. Where was I? Who did I talk to. Did I get raped?

Raped! Took most of my cool, but I kept a straight face. I mean, who’d tell the fuzz about the old girl and the bloke? Bloody fascists, the lot of them. And my mum, she raved so much I reckoned it was funny-farm time for her. Tried to ground me, she did. Locks me up in my room. But I got to go to the bathroom now and then, ain’t I? And when I goes, it ain’t my fault if the window’s just above the extension roof. And it sure ain’t my fault if I just tests it to see if I can climb down. Which I done nice and quick. Then I borrows old Dixey’s bike and cycled the six mile up to Yalderton Ridge for another visit with the bloke.

It was all them social bloody workers what made me do it. If she’d have left them out I might have let her be. But she always had to be in charge, did my mum. I suppose I didn’t mind when I was a kid but now I tells her I’m a grown woman she just laughs at me. And I won’t have that.

I thought maybe the old girl could do something about it. And I thought right. Mind you, the old girl give me one hell of a time joshing me but I sticks to my guns.

‘How’d you like it,’ I says, ‘if you had some prying old cow asking you questions night and day about everything you does and getting a pack of half-arsed women coming around too? Bloody nosy bl—idiots. Would I like to change school? Am I happy? Happy? ’Course I’m ruddy happy long as they leave me alone.’

The old girl had a little brood and she says she’ll fix it for me. Which she done.

I got to roar each time I think about it. She got made up as one of them social workers, see? She come visiting my mum. They shuts theirselves in the kitchen and I hears Mum making her a brew and later they comes out and the old girl goes off. Didn’t even look at me, she didn’t, but she grab my hand niftyish and squeezes it and I knows she’s pulled a stunt.

Mum went all pale after that like she’d had the spunk taken out of her and she stop fussing and telling me off and trying to keep me home. It was as easy as peasy. It was wicked. Excellent.

Dixey come round next day. ‘What’s the matter with Lynda?’ she asks me. ‘Why’s she gone so quiet?’

‘Dunno. Got a cold, probably,’ I says.

Dix give me a nasty look and I gives her one back. And that worked too. She goes off like a little white mouse and don’t even give me no grief for cheeking her while she’s going.

It was more or less the same the rest of term. What’s more I got bloody good at cycling.