“What, are you too scared to come with me?”
It doesn’t take long for them to climb down out of the tree, leaving the half-built den behind, the loose tarpaulin fluttering gently in a slight night-time breeze.
Each boy’s actions confirm the actions of the other two: they are a team, a unit, acting as one entity, each permitting the others to behave in a certain way. They walk slowly through the trees and head towards the lonely lane of Beacon Grove Rise. Right will take them to the derelict railway platform, where older kids go to take drugs, drink beer, and muck about. They turn left towards the centre of the Grove, and eventually the Needle.
A tall figure moves up ahead, heading towards the cut-through formed by Grove Nook. Simon glimpses it for but a moment, and it might just be shadow play, but he convinces the others that it is the one they need to follow — the creature that will now forever be known as Captain Clickety, just like the character in that creepy old rhyme. A shape without an identity, a fear with no real purpose… a nameless, faceless entity that will haunt them all until the day they die.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Brendan’s question hangs in the air; neither of the other boys even needs to provide an answer.
“Come on,” says Marty, assuming the dominant role in the group. Simon has sown the seeds; the others are simply falling into their natural grooves, taking up their allotted positions in the simple structure of the small gang.
They walk along the street in single file, turning left as they reach Grove Terrace. There are no cars on the road at this hour. The house lights closest to the boys are all turned off, the windows dark. Even the usual urban sounds seem to have been suspended for a little while — no barking dogs, no distant alarms or revving engines. A pocket of stillness exists in the night, and they have entered, crossing its borders to stand at the edge of a new place.
The boys cross the road, walk along Grove Street and step onto the Roundpath, the narrow walk-around circling the Needle. The large building hovers above them, as if cast adrift from its concrete foundations. It seems to totter and sway, and as they approach the place they feel a sense of dislocation, as if they have ruptured something, broken through an invisible wall. The upright tower of the Needle straightens like a snake discovering it has a backbone after all, and the few unbroken windows on the upper floors seem to collect all the available light in the area, transforming into small, bright screens.
Simon looks up, at those grim windows, and upon them he sees played out, like a movie, scenes from his own life: his mother and father shouting, his much younger self hiding in the bedroom wardrobe and weeping, an endless queue of wine bottles lined up along the skirting board in his parents’ room… all the hurt and the frustration, the pointlessness of his existence is summed up in those scant few images, and he knows that he is not going to turn away. He is going to enter the building and find out what has gone inside there before him, and perhaps even discover something miraculous within its walls.
For a long time, Simon felt like he was nothing, just a speck. His parents did not love him; his teachers thought he was a waste of space. Then he found that he could manipulate those people into noticing him, and he focused his energy on making that happen.
But this is something different. The situation in which he finds himself, poised at the edge of revelation, makes him feel that the world is ready to notice — not just his family and friends, not even all the other people who live on the estate. The world. The planet. The very earth itself might look at him as he strides across its surface, making footprints in the muck and the filth and the squalor.
This might just be his chance to be somebody.
“I’m going in there,” he says, moving forward, his body moving with a sense of great ease, even of inevitability. “I’m going to see what’s happening.” He feels no fear, only a sense of what he will years later recognise as longing. For his entire young life, Simon has only ever been shown the banal, the prosaic, but here is something that could elevate his experience. Here is evidence of the sublime.
“Me, too,” whispers Marty, gripped by the same spell, the same dark magic.
“Wait for me,” says Brendan, as he catches up with the other two boys. “I’m coming, too.” But the he does not sound as convinced as his friends.
The tower does not move an inch.
The earth beneath their feet is stiff and unyielding.
The night closes like a fist around them.
PART FOUR
The Three Amigos Ride Again
“It’s not what I expected.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SIMON AND BRENDAN stood outside the low-rise apartment complex in Gateshead, in view of the Baltic Flour Mill and not too far from the banks of the River Tyne. They could hear traffic in the distance, and somewhere nearby loud music was playing — in a public park or a local beer garden — and it drifted on the still air, bringing with it a sense of subdued frivolity.
“Jesus,” said Simon. “It hasn’t half changed round here.”
Brendan nodded, but he did not speak. He looked exhausted. Simon reached out and touched his arm, rubbing the sleeve of his jacket like a concerned mother. “We don’t have to do this now, mate. You can go home, be with your family.”
Brendan turned to face him. “No,” he said, smiling lightly. “It’s fine. Let’s do this. There’s nothing to be gained from my going back. I told you, the kids are fine. Harry’s home and Jane’s coping. I’d only make things more stressful if I was hanging around at the house.”
Simon squeezed Brendan’s arm. His friend had been through a lot the previous night — Harry throwing up, and what could only have been a small bird erupting from his throat. Then the boy going into some kind of convulsive fit. The ambulance. The hospital. That was a lot to deal with, for anyone… especially a neurotic night owl with serious attachment issues.
Simon’s new mobile phone was yet to turn up from the distributor, although his new credit and debit cards had arrived by courier that morning, at the break of dawn. So when he’d got out of bed Simon had called the Coles from the payphone on the corner (which was miraculously still working) to find out how the kid was doing, and Jane had told him that Harry had finally been sent home to rest about an hour ago, feeling restless but more or less comfortable. They’d taken samples of his blood, done some tests, and little Harry had sat up in the hospital bed smiling and chatting and asking for food. He didn’t seem to realise what was going on, and had no memory of what had happened back at home the night before.
The doctors had taken plenty of time to convince themselves that Harry was in good health, apart from a sore throat and a minor headache, and then told the family that he could be taken home. He was prescribed infant aspirin for his aches and pains, a week off school to recuperate, and plenty of pampering from his parents.
“Come on, then,” he said, turning to face the apartment block. “Let’s get up there and see if he’s at home.”
The two men walked along the path at the side of the residents’ car park, looking at the expensive vehicles lined up in their private spaces: Jeeps and Land Rovers, sports models and coupes. There was a lot of money in those white-painted parking spaces.
“Looks like Marty’s landed on his feet.” Brendan seemed calmer now, more focused, if exhausted. “I always knew he would, eventually.”
“He’s only flat-sitting. It isn’t his. None of this belongs to him.” Simon felt a pang of envy, or perhaps it was
