London, 1963
I’m playing knockout with my younger brother James. It involves one of us kicking the plastic football at a goal on the school wall and the other, with his first touch, knocking the ball back on target – a sort of football squash. The rules are enforced as much by what we hear as what we see. The goal is an oblong of biscuit-like rendering. Hitting its crumbling surface is the sound of a ‘goal’; striking both rendering and glazed brick, is ‘post’, and if you hear the metallic ping of ball on brick only, you’ve missed. Today, we’re not trying to win but to keep the game going in regular, satisfying thuds that bring Mrs Johnson, who lives opposite, to the front door of her prefab.
‘Boys, I hope this wretched game will be over soon; the Archers is starting shortly.’ Mrs Johnson is Akela for the local cub pack. Her loud, posh voice doesn’t soften even when she is standing close. At church on Sundays, hymns don’t really get going until she starts singing.
‘OK, Mrs Johnson.’
‘OK Mrs Johnson,’ says James mockingly.
My eleven-year old ‘little brother’ is nearly as tall as me, and almost a stone heavier. He is a natural resister. Requests or orders are met with silence or sullen, slow acceptance. He leaves me to do the talking when adults are around but is quick to attack goody-goody politeness. Adults like me: kids prefer James.
Michael O’Rourke is sitting on the Johnsons’ garden wall. Behind him, smoke rises from a concealed cigarette. Between furtive drags, he looks up and down the street like a spy in a doorway. He blows the smoke down between his legs and with a ‘thtup’, spits real or imagined bits of tobacco from the tip of his tongue, and squirts saliva through the gap in his top front teeth. Michael’s slow-moving bulk makes describing sport easier than taking part. In his Irish accent, he is describing our game as if it’s the Cup Final.
‘A great attempt by Billy Cleave, roising starr of English football... and what a clearance from his kid broddhrr, James, surely de foinest young fullback in de land.’
Michael loves all things American, especially gangster films and Westerns. When he arrived from Ireland, his colourful language in our cowboy games made him an instant friend. He would never say, ‘stick ‘em up’ when he had enemies cornered; but slowly waggle his revolver under their noses and say, ‘now oi’d be abloiged if you’d be after handing me your weapons, and den reaching for de skoy.’ Occasionally, in the heat of battle, he’d confuse cowboys and gangsters: shouting ‘vamanos muchachos, dey’re packing heat’ or ‘dorty hoodlums are speakin with forked tongues’.
Now that we no longer play cowboys, he’s training to be a sports commentator. Today he is doing it from the ‘press box’ but he often strolls around in the middle of a game of football or cricket, speaking into an imaginary microphone. It’s like having Ken Wolstenholme on the pitch instead of the ref, or John Arlott for an umpire. His knowledge of cricketing terms is extremely Irish, ‘Cleave is after foiring de ball past de bowler’s kisserr.’ We love it.
Further along, little Bubba Smith is sitting astride the same wall, spurring it to a gallop, swivelling left and right to fire his cap guns at chasing Indians. He is wearing a fawn Roy Rogers cowboy hat, which was once James’s pride and joy. He gave it to Bubba, grudgingly, last year when I said he was too old to be playing cowboys. James would be at home in the Wild West. He’s deeply upset that it’s no longer a real place where he can go to kill outlaws and Indians. He settles for watching Audie Murphy and Jeff Chandler films, over and over, when they’re showing at the Regent.
As Bubba blasts away, worse than Indians, Stephen Griggs comes loping into view. Griggsy is the son of 'scrapman' Griggs, who rides around on his pony and cart, calling out for ‘old iron’ or ‘any done lumber’. Griggsy is nearly two years older than I am and so thick they kept him in primary school an extra year. He hates anyone he thinks is clever. This includes me since the time when, waiting behind me at the bus stop, he prodded me as a number 36 approached and I hadn’t put my hand out for it.
‘You want this bus?’
I couldn’t help myself.
‘Why, you selling it?’
This took him a second to work out and then, as he jumped on to the departing bus, he punched me in the ear.
‘That’s what I’m selling today, shitbag... very cheap.’
Not bad, for a moron.
Kids of his own age take the piss out of Griggsy; so he looks to younger, smaller kids to tyrannise. He’s become a street scavenger like his dad, regularly taking from us: sometimes sweets, sometimes money and, always, any fun we might be having.
Today he’s wearing one of his dad’s baggy plaid shirts, with the sleeves rolled up his beefy arms; like his old man, he has braces holding up brown corduroy trousers. Griggsy walks like a dick on springs; with every step, his heels launch him on to the balls of his feet. Seeing him on the move, you’d think he wouldn’t be able to stop, but he always does. Even then, he rises and falls menacingly on the spot like a nasty copper.
He stations himself in front of us. I smile in conciliatory welcome. James, who smiles only when he finds something funny, says nothing. Bubba sits petrified on his brick horse, as if the whole Sioux nation has appeared on the skyline.
‘Gis a kick then, educated.’
This is no friendly request to join in. I pass him the ball. He steadies it, thumps it hard against the wall and retrieves it clumsily. The kick is like Griggsy, hard and badly controlled. The intimidating thud on the wall is louder than any we can make. Satisfied at showing off his strength, he scans us for any lack of respect for his skill. Then he beckons me forward, flicking up the fingers on his upturned palms. If only the Archers would start and Mrs Johnson or, better still, her big milkman husband, would come out to complain. But no. Bullies always have so much time.
‘Cummun’en, try and geddit.’
Shit. I need to make my failed effort look real but I risk a clump anyway, once I’m in range. I attempt a tackle by moving deliberately one way, making it obvious, even to Griggsy, that the ball should be pushed to the other side. He manages this but the ball still hits my shin, forcing him to chase it. Having sorted me out, he stands with one foot on the ball and calls to James.
‘Now you, come on.’
James refuses the invitation. Griggsy is wondering whether this defiance merits a clump and looks at me for a clue. I’m about to tell James to do what he says, when Griggsy relents and dribbles towards him. James shrugs and blocks the ball solidly against Griggsy’s foot, sending him sprawling on his face. Silence. Griggsy springs to his feet in a failed attempt to convince us he’d fallen deliberately. Bubba giggles. Griggsy checks for a smile on my face and lopes across to Bubba to cuff him across the mouth. Bubba starts crying.
‘Ah now, Griggsy, de little fellah meant no harrm...’ says Michael.
‘You what, fatso?’
Michael has dozens of cowboy one-liners for facing down Comanches or baddies. But this is isn’t Jesse James, it’s mental Griggsy. Michael opts for silence and holds his chin in the air like Randolph Scott.
Griggsy yanks Bubba’s cowboy hat from his head, not realising that it has a chinstrap, which cuts into his neck and pulls him off the wall. When he hits the pavement, he stops crying until he realises he’s not badly hurt; then he starts screaming.
‘Shuddup ya little bastard. Cowboy eh? Cop this Roy Rogers.’
Griggsy takes the upturned hat in both hands. The veins in his neck stand out as he snorts a gob of phlegm up into his head and down into his throat. He spits it into the hat, which he drops to the ground and stamps on like an empty Jubbly packet. James, forgetting that it’s no longer his hat, dives forward to rescue it. Griggsy grabs him around the neck.
‘And you… fink you’re an ‘ard tackler do ya? Well this is ‘ard.’
He runs James towards the wall and I close my eyes until I hear the thud-scrape of his head on the bricks. When Griggsy lets go, James wheels round to face him. I can see he’s not scared, just furious that he’s not big enough yet to do Griggsy. Taken aback Griggsy grabs his shirt collar, twists it around his fist and shoves it up under his chin.
‘You little shitbag.’
‘Leave him alone, you fucking bully.’ I can’t believe I’m saying this and with my first step towards Griggsy, I know that it was a mistake. He hurls James down and turns to face me. I lose momentum and freeze in the no-man’s-land between spontaneous courage and returning fear.
‘Yeah?’ says Griggsy. ‘What’s big brother gonna do then?’
I know what I’m going to do: nothing. I lift my hands slightly like a cowboy starting to surrender. Griggsy has nothing to fear from me. James, like a big brother, is shaking his head, telling me to leave it, which is just what I’m doing. I wait for the first blow, but instead of hitting me, he takes a penknife from his pocket and opens it. I stop breathing.
James moves between us, fists clenched. On the back of his head, a maroon patch is staining his blond hair. Griggsy ignores him and, more painful than any punch, is his sneer at me for standing behind my younger brother, who at least has bottle.
‘Chicken,’ says Griggsy, making the quivering arsehole sign with the bunched fingers of his other hand. ‘Windy fucker… got your number.’
He has, and I’m close to tears. He swaggers over to our ball, picks it up and stabs it. As the air hisses out, James takes an involuntary step forward. I grab him and hold tight. Grinning at his cowed audience, Griggsy plunges the knife in again and again. We watch, mute, as he squeezes the air from the ruined ball and moulds it to a cup shape. Then he jams it on Bubba’s head.
‘Ere’s a cowboy at for ya.’
He turns to me, ‘Got any money to borrow me?’
‘No,’ I say, truthfully. For once, he believes me and doesn’t make me empty my pockets. He bounces off down the street. As he turns the corner, he snorts and spits more phlegm in our direction.
‘A Comanche if ever I saw wonn.’ Michael knows no greater insult. Comanches are, apparently, the lowest of the low; treacherous bastards even attack at night.
‘Bubba, y’ll need dat disinfect’n. Sure, ya moight catch TB, or even vinurial disease.’
Bubba stares, sobbing, at his soiled hat, wishing his guns were real. And I want to be Audie Murphy, galloping after Griggsy to lasso him and drag him through the dust screaming to make a grovelling apology before I run him out of town.
In the days that follow, Michael and I wreak all kinds of imagined vengeance on Griggsy, like staking him out in the sun, smearing his balls with honey and stirring up a nearby ants’ nest. Laughter eases our humiliation.
James doesn’t join in or laugh, even when we’re removing Griggsy’s dick with a tomahawk. Pretend vengeance won’t do for him; what James will do to Griggsy won’t take place in the Black Hills of Dakota. I’m still frightened of Griggsy, but now I’m a little frightened for him.
© Barry Walsh, 2008
The Cowboy Hat was read by Marc Forde at the Liars’ League “Fight & Flight” event
on Tuesday 8th April.
Comments