what topped herself in the stream. I went close to look because I ain’t never seen no corpse. Then she sits up, like she was finishing off a sunbathe and I wet me knickers. ’Course she ain’t real old. Not underneath. Not like my mum.
‘What them chaps doing over there?’
‘They’re building the new motorway, Missis.’
‘A road? They’re building a bloody road near my stream?’
‘Yeah. Why you lying in the water?’
‘A bloody road! If that don’t beat all!’
‘I thought you was dead.’
‘Well, I ain’t. A bleeding road! You know how noisy them things are?’
‘Yeah. You’ll get rheumatics, sitting in there. My gran has rheumatics every time she goes out in the rain.’
‘Your gran’s a wanker, Nipper, and no mistake. Why’d they build here? Why can’t they go and mess up some other place?’
‘My mum says it’ll make getting over to Langley real quick.’
‘Your mum’s a wanker. Why’d she want to go to Langley to start off with? Bloody awful town.’
‘Everyone’s a wanker to you, Missis. I reckons as you’re a wanker yourself.’
‘You hold your tongue, smart arse. And don’t swear. ’S’not becoming in a young girl.’
‘You swear. You’re swearing like buggery.’
‘I’m allowed. You’re not. You hear me?’
‘Why?’
‘’Cause I says so.’
‘I’m fourteen. I’m big enough to swear now. And smoke. My mum don’t mind.’
‘Your mum ain’t brought you up right. What’s your dad say?’
‘’E don’t say bloody nothing, do he? I ain’t got no dad.’
‘Don’t bleeding swear, girl. I told you once and I won’t tell you again.’
‘What’ll you do if I does?’
‘This.’
‘… Oh! … Christ almighty, Missis, how’d you do that?’
‘With practice, Nipper. I had lots of practice.’
‘Could you show me how to do it?’
‘Might. Depends.’
I got ordinary mates too, like I said. Not as many as when I was a kid but that’s sort of how things go, ain’t it? I got this bloke, Ian. He’s leaving school soon but he ain’t training for anything except thieving. No jobs round here, see?
I let him do it to me once when we was out down the Rec. I makes him get a thing, you know, a condom thing, because of the HIVs and he didn’t know how to put it on. So I done it for him.
It was quite nice but it hurt a bit.
My best mate is Marie. I took her down Hob’s a couple of times but the old girl didn’t show up. Marie said I was a nutter and I got cross. Then the silly bitch told her mum about what I said about the old girl. Marie didn’t say what her mum said back. I was real narked so I stole her trainers and slashed them with my Stanley. She keep her mouth shut now.
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?’