Ever Dundas - Goblin

I wrote to Angel and told her about Captain Flint and Miss Campbell’s Betty, but I didn’t tell her I didn’t go to the shelter anymore – I pretended they were good and obedient. She replied saying she looked forward to meeting them one day and told me she was happy because Ann and Bill were going to adopt her. That made me feel sad, even though I should have been happy for her, so I didn’t write to her for a few days.

I just got on with looking after my family. Groo became attached to CP. She’d groom him like she used to do with Devil, except CP didn’t mind at all. She’d follow him around and soon she was riding on his back, lying stretched out, like she was trying to get her legs all the way round him in a big hug. I saw her riding backwards once; she watched CP’s curly tail jiggling and swiped at it.

‘Claws in!’ I warned her, but I didn’t need to. If she hurt CP at all, he’d snort and roll over and she’d leap off before he crushed her. She’d meow at me, all put out, when it was her own stupid fault.

Sometimes the chickens ran through the house, shitting everywhere, and I’d chase after them and curse them and tell them, ‘Do your pooping outside, ya vagrants! This is a respectable household! Here I am looking after the house all alone, and there you are pooping on the upholstery.’ That’s what I said to those chickens, and I’d chase them and they’d flap and cluck and not give a care. Groo would ignore the chickens, turn her back on them like they weren’t even there, like they were beneath her. She only had eyes for CP.

Then CP went and vanished. Now ma was gone I thought it was safe to leave CP in the garden, snuffling and rolling in the mud, but he went and vanished. My comrade, my friend for life, he was gone, throat slit for sure, bubbling away in someone’s stew, in someone’s bloated belly.

‘I tried to look after him, mister,’ I said, thinking of our kindly stranger who liked pigs. ‘I tried. But there’s a war on, and people get nasty in a war, mister. They steal your best friend and boil them in a pot. That’s the war for you, mister sir. That’s the bleedin’ war for you.’

We held a ceremony in memory of Corporal Pig, Comrade in Weary Walking, Friend for Life. Queen Isabella, Amelia and Scholler came along, and I could tell they could tell I was really grieving for that old CP so they didn’t give me any trouble. Queen Isabella said, ‘We’re sorry about your hideous beast,’ and I know she was trying her best so I just nodded and let them stay. I gave a speech and put a stake in the ground, tying a plaque to it that read ‘Here does not lieth Comrade in Weary Walking, Corporal Pig, Friend in the Highest Esteem, for he lieth in the belly of a bloated son of a whore. A salute to Corporal Pig, the finest friend for life, may the lizards below keep thee and curse the bloated belly of the murderous bastard. Salute!’

Groo wailed and wailed after CP vanished, and I cried with her and I said, ‘I’m sorry, Groo, I’m sorry I didn’t look after your comrade. And I’m sorry I let Devil die. I’m sorry,’ and she wailed and wailed and started chewing on my hair again.

From then on I looked at my neighbours with suspicion, checking their bellies, looking to see if they’d gotten suddenly fatter. ‘Good morning, Goblin!’ they’d say. ‘What’s good about it?’ I’d say and walk on, eyeing their bellies.

From then on the chickens were only allowed out when I was there. All the animals lived in the house with me and they pooped wherever they pleased.

I wanted to ask Angel to come, but I didn’t. I wanted to tell her about CP, but I didn’t because she’d only worry, so I wrote to her and said everyone was happy and everything was fine.

London, April 1941

Trundling and bumping and falling at times, Monsta and I.

I’d made a scooter from wood, scraps here and there, and it was rickety and squint. Still early, still quiet, people stooped and tired, bending to the rubble, searching and searching and finding crushed food and clothes and toys and photos and bodies and parts of bodies and burnt up bodies that didn’t look like anything at all. We flew through the streets, turning and feinting, once here, once there, avoiding rubble and people and holes but a brick we hit and over we go, Monsta and I, head over heels in the air. Oi kid! Stop messing and help, don’t you know there’s a war on? Let the kid play leave him be, it’s good to see them play. Bleedin’ kids think it’s all a game, eh?

I lay in the rubble and stared and blinked. There was a hand on the ground; roughly severed, bone protruding, two fingers broken, twisted back.

I pulled myself from the rubble, hunkered down and inspected it. I placed my hand on the ground next to it and saw how small my hand was. I crawled my hand over the rubble and onto the hand and I felt it. It was cold and hard, like plastic. I turned it over. The palm was blackened. The fingertips were torn. I pulled off a dangling shred of skin. I took the hand. I locked my fingers between its fingers and I took it, I picked it up and shoved it in my waistband, tying my string belt tight so it stayed put so it was hidden so the man couldn’t see I had treasure. The treasure was mine. Cold and plastic, it’s mine.

I picked up my scooter. It was still working, but scratched and squint, so I had to work out all over again how to ride and not fall head over heels, and off I went home with Monsta and treasure. On our way I saw a bunch of kids crowded round a water tank.

‘What’s all the fuss about?’ I said, pushing my way in. ‘What’s all the fuss?’

This little runt of a kid, even runtier than me, he said, ‘There’s a body in the tank.’

I looked down at the kid, all aloof, rolling my eyes, and I said, ‘Kid, there’s dead bodies everywhere.’

I pushed in further to have a look, just to see the kid wasn’t lying, and there it was – the truth of it – a girl, a dirty white dress face down just floating, a tiny thing, her dirty blond hair all raggedy and tangled floating out like a messed up halo, a dirty little holy girl with no shoes and sores on her feet and bruises on her legs and a homemade boat bobbing through her tangled hair. I stepped away and said, ‘What’s all the fuss? Dead bodies everywhere.’

I pulled the severed hand out from my waistband and said to the crowd of kids, ‘But this, this is special.’

They gathered round me, forgetting the girl in the tank as I held the hand aloft and said it would cost them if they wanted to feel it and hold it.

‘This is the hand of a monster. Look at the black skin, black as night, and there’s flaps of skin hanging off the fingertips. When the monster was alive, the skin would open up and it would ooze poison. The monster would grab you and put poison in your body, in your blood, and you’d die and it would eat you but maybe it would eat you even before the poison made you die, it’d eat you alive.’

Some of the kids made noises of disgust, others pushed in and said, ‘Let’s see it then, let’s see the monster hand.’

‘You can touch it, you can feel it,’ I said, ‘and I’ll tell you the terrible story…’ and I filled my pockets full of coins, buttons, and battered sweets, until along came Doris who clipped me round the ear. Old Doris was so enraged she couldn’t get out any words, her face just puffed up as she hit me round the side of the head, snatching the hand from my hand.

She held it, her rage turning to disgust and she let out a startled yelp, dropping the hand at her feet. It rocked for a moment, like an upturned crab. The kids all scattered and before I could run off, Doris had me by the arm, pinching, hitting at my head again, my ears ringing.

Old Doris was a tank. She always could give a good hiding. She’d beat off the Germans single-handed, I thought to myself. She’d beat them off even if she had her hands all cut off. She pinched harder and I squinted at Monsta who lay fallen next to the hand.