‘Penny for the Guy?’
It was me who asked – Connor was coming up behind – I was going up to anyone who passed to get their money first.
‘Penny for the Guy, mister?’
‘What Guy?’
I looked over my shoulder, and there wasn’t one. There was Connor, and past him the bus stop where we’d got money off people. They weren’t there any more, the bus had come and they’d all gone. It was a long way back from there to the corner before you could see round to where it was.
‘Round the corner,’ I said, but the man shook his head. He had thick glasses and a look on his face like he didn’t believe me.
‘If you haven’t got a Guy –’ he spoke quietly so I had to lean in to catch what he was saying, ‘that’s begging. Begging and lying.’
I was stung.
‘What?’ It was Connor pushing me out the way, ‘What d’you say?’
The man pushed up his glasses on his nose and shrugged, ‘Where’s your Guy?’ He was tall and stooped, his voice was English off the telly, like he was something to do with the cricket up the Oval. He had a tie on, a long coat and thick leather shoes. He blinked, and was looking round like he couldn’t see anything and said, ‘We haven’t let you into this country to beg.’
‘We have got a Guy,’ I almost said, but Connor punched him, shouting, ‘Come on!’ and ran off.
He was bent over double, trying to get his breath back where Connor hit him in the stomach, coughing and dripping from his mouth and nose on to the pavement. His face was going purple, and the top of his head was bald and flaking where the grey hair made it look whitish.
I waited for him to come up.
‘You all right, mister?’
He pulled his coat in and leaned up against the wall of the shops, steadying himself and wiping his mouth on a handkerchief. There were red sores and brown blotches on his hands. He was old.
‘You all right?’
‘What’s your name?’ he said.
I looked at the snot on his handkerchief, I didn’t know what to do. It was too late to tell him there was a Guy. He could have come round the corner and seen it. A whole gang of us made him out of old newspapers stuffed into a jumper, we put on two cardigans that had holes in, and a balaclava filled up with paper for his head. Manus put on a cardboard mask with elastic that came from a scary Halloween comic to make him a face. He was a skeleton. We sat him up on cardboard under the big factory door at the bottom of the street with the newspaper sticking out the bottom of the jumper and everyone spread out to start getting in money. But that didn’t feel right, so Julie went in and got him some old trousers her dad left and a pair of socks with holes in. The socks didn’t fit, so he had newspaper sticking out his trouser legs ready to be lit. Everyone’s mum and dad gave us money so I thought it was all right. Harry’s mum gave us some and his dad was a policeman until he broke his back and they moved in round the corner while they were working out the insurance. I wasn’t sure what my mum and dad would think, they’d gone up the hospital in the morning. I didn’t know when they were coming back. Would they know what a Guy was? Manus and Connor and Busola were doing it, everyone was, so I joined in and people were giving us money as we went along.
‘Where do you live?’ I woke up from what I was thinking and the man was saying we’d gone too far, he didn’t believe us. He stood up from the wall he’d been leaning on and his hand was shaking. I reached out to hold his sleeve and steady him, but he shook me off, ‘You don’t belong here. Why don’t you just go back to where you came from?’
A bus came and people were walking past, looking. So I left him there and walked home.
I didn’t know why all the tramps were coming to live at the bottom of our street and round by the railway arches. As I turned the corner, some of them were starting to bed down in the doorway of the factory. The Guy was gone and there were just scraps of newspaper and cardboard left on the ground. The man with one leg wasn’t there. He was gone, and lots more had come – red and black and oily and grey, with bruised faces. People said they looked like a pack of dogs, that they could smell people were moving out so they were moving in. But I could see they were just looking for somewhere to sleep. A woman with heavy bags stopped and crossed into the road to go by them. She looked weighed down, her shoulders were hunched – it was Danny’s mum, Mrs Keogh. She stopped her bags again in the road between the cars for a moment and was asking them something. One man shook his head, and Mrs Keogh nodded and walked on. It was all right to talk to them, they belonged in the street. ‘They’re angels in disguise,’ my mum said, you had to be good to them. But my dad said they were like the dead, you had to be careful to give them something if you could.
One of the tramps got up to pee against the wall. His face had gone deep red, he had swollen hands and he was losing his hair. His coat was torn at the back and hanging down, stiff with dirt and trailing like he couldn’t help it any more. I looked at him longer than I should have.
‘What d’you want?’ The old man with the grey beard Mrs Keogh spoke to was picking up cigarette butts over the road. I shook my head because he was drunk, and I shouldn’t talk to strangers. He was stooped over and keeping his eyes down, searching the dirt on the pavement, ‘I’m looking for money,’ he said. His voice was raspy and thick, and he was closed to anything else – he wasn’t seeing me.
I looked away.
The streetlights came on, rosy and orange, flickering at the edges. There was no one else on the street, everyone had gone in. I felt a pang in my stomach getting up to our door. I’d stayed out too long and didn’t hear them calling all-y-in! I thought it was all right to be out if I was with Connor, but he’d run off. I thought about the man, crumpled up by the wall. I didn’t know why Connor hit him, but I felt bad about begging. But there was a Guy, so he was wrong. But maybe what was wrong was I’d gone too far to be able to show him. And if I’d come round with him, it wouldn’t be there, so that would be begging.
Connor came round the corner at the top of the street. ‘What you waiting for?’ he shouted. ‘A punch?’ He was angry and I didn’t know why.
‘Where’s the Guy gone?’ I said.
‘They’ve taken it and they’ve nicked the money.’
‘Who has?’
‘How much you give ’em?’
I gave everything I’d got to the two brothers round the corner who were Manus’s friends. They said they’d stay by the Guy and look after it. They put the cardboard under it and even had a biscuit tin they put the change in so it rattled when they both held on to it.
‘They’ve run off with the money,’ said Connor, ‘I’ve just gone and kicked their door!’
‘Won’t they give it back?’ We hadn’t decided how to spend it, so why would they give it back if it wasn’t for anything? I didn’t really want it any more, anyway.
‘They wouldn’t come out,’ he said.
But that was because they were coming out our house with their dad holding the biscuit tin. Manus was at the door and saw us. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Daddy wants you.’
‘More dirty toerags,’ their dad said as they walked past us with the tin rattling under his arm.
It was a punch. We stood there and watched them go.
I didn’t know what had happened. There was an argument while we were gone about money going missing and the brothers had gone off with the tin and taken the Guy. Everyone blamed Manus and he’d gone round while their dad was out and got the money back off them. He’d spent some of it in the shop buying chocolate and handing out bars like he was rich to people who said they’d been collecting. I didn’t get any, but by the time I got back everyone had gone in anyway, so he put what was left under his jumper and took it home. My mum was in from the hospital and found the biscuit tin under the bed when she didn’t believe him about why he had chocolate on everything, and she took it to my dad. She said he came home with the chocolate melting on his face and his tummy rumbling.
He wasn’t good at lying, so they were just getting to the bottom of it, that he’d gone out begging with us, when the door knocked and his friends turned up with their dad saying Manus had stolen the money from them.
That was when me and Connor got home.
‘Are you so stupid, I won’t find out?’ I could tell he was angry from how calmly he was talking to us lined up in the front room. He looked from Manus to Connor, ‘Begging in the street?’ He looked at me, ‘I don’t feed you?’ And then at Busola. ‘And you,’ he said, turning to Manus again, ‘I have to find you stealing.’
Manus lowered his eyes, ‘I wasn’t stealing.’
My dad exploded, ‘So you bring your criminal friends to attack me? Bring them to my house?’ He looked at my mum. ‘Did they say he was stealing from them?’
She was standing by to stop it getting out of hand, but she nodded, her face stretched tight and looking sad. He was fuming.
‘It was Penny for the Guy –’ Connor said, but then he stopped and put his head back down.
‘Penny for what?’ my dad said, and waited for an answer. ‘Begging and stealing? You are all banned from going outside! Go to school, come home, I’m going to watch you like a hawk. You can forget anything else. And tomorrow, so you can think what you have done,’ he was looking at Manus, ‘I am going to break a stick on your head!’
Manus started crying. No one moved to stop him. It was what he got from our dad, and no one else did.
‘Now go away!’ he said, and we trooped out the room.
‘Why did you hit that man?’ I asked Connor when we were on our own.
‘Because he said we were begging.’
‘Oh,’ I said, thinking that was what our dad was angry about. Was it begging?
‘You shouldn’t have got that chocolate, we wouldn’t have got caught,’ said Busola, trying to get Manus to look up.
‘They’d have still come round,’ Connor said.
‘You’re all useless!’ said Manus. His eyelashes looked wet, bitter and closed, so we all shut up for a bit.
‘What happened to the Guy?’ I said.
‘The head kept falling off,’ said Busola. ‘We had to put it on a stick.’
‘Can we get him back?’
‘What for?’ Connor said.
I shrugged because I was feeling bad about the man with his head flaking, the way he tried not to fall over, about him not being able to breathe.
Connor was watching me, ‘You’ll get in trouble, you will.’
‘They’re gonna burn him on the bonfire tomorrow,’ Busola said, looking at Manus. ‘They’re gonna get a stick and light his toes till his face burns off.’
Manus looked up, and thumped her on the arm, and we all shut up as her face turned cold and her eyes shut off and the dark feeling came on.
We watched bonfire night inside from the windows. Bangers were going off on the street and fireworks over the roofs. There was the smell of gunpowder. I was all shaken up with the excitement, but I couldn’t go out. There was a bonfire going on in the school, you could put your Guy there and they’d burn him for you. You could put potatoes in tinfoil and get them out when they were hot. There was a big crash from the firework display going off in the park but I couldn’t see it properly, even from the backyard, so I rushed back up to the front windows. A group of boys threw a banger at a car going down the street and ran. It slammed on the brakes, and moved off again with a man shouting his head off out the window.
‘Stupid!’ Manus said, sulking back into the room.
‘It’s those brothers,’ said Connor. ‘I’m gonna get ’em.’
‘You have to get out first,’ said Busola. It was the first time she’d spoken since Manus hit her. We looked across at him. ‘Go on, I dare you,’ she said, looking up from the telly. ‘Daddy’s not in, he’s forgotten about you.’
‘You’ll tell him,’ Manus said.
‘Of course I will,’ she said, and left the room.
‘Why’s that?’ said Connor. ‘Because you didn’t give her no chocolate, or you thumped her?’
‘Because she was supposed to go out and meet her boyfriend,’ he said.
Connor didn’t expect it and his mouth fell open.
‘She blames me. Everyone blames me,’ Manus said. The door slammed downstairs. We rushed up to the windows and saw Busola in her coat going up the top of the street. She turned the corner without looking back.
‘Does Mummy know?’ Connor said.
I rushed to the kitchen and said, ‘Mum, Busola’s gone out!’
‘She’s gone on an errand for me,’ my mum said, putting her lips tight and rattling the pots on the cooker. ‘And you can be minding your own business.’
I put it together in my head that Busola had told about how Manus had thumped her and my mum was letting her out to stop it building up.
‘Go on, out of the kitchen, I’m busy,’ she said.
I walked down the stairs slowly, away from the others, and lifted the flap of the letterbox open to the street. There was no one out there. It was empty. There was frost in the air, the smell of fireworks drifting in against the smell of the cooking. A stream of cold air blew on my eyes and made them water. It wasn’t fair, she wasn’t treating us equally, I wasn’t stealing, Busola and Manus were stealing that money, that’s what happened. Was that what happened?
‘Did you steal out that money, Manus?’ I asked.
‘So what?’ he said.
Connor looked up at him.
‘Not all of it. It was my money, I put the mask on.’
‘And you let Busola take some?’ I said.
‘She wanted it, if that’s what she told you.’
‘So what about me kicking their door in?’ said Connor.
‘You’re lucky their dad wasn’t home,’ he said. I thought they were going to fight. Connor was looking at him and Manus was just being brazen, ‘What you gonna do about it?’
‘What about the money I put in?’ Connor said.
Manus went behind the sofa and pulled out a packet of sparklers. He opened it up and gave one to me and held out one to Connor.
‘All right?’ he said.
Connor shook his head and looked at him, but took it. They sent me into the kitchen to get matches from under my mum’s nose. She was cooking, so it was easy.
‘Go on, out of the kitchen. Don’t go in the cupboard, we’ll be eating as soon as Daddy gets home.’
We leaned out the window together and lit the sparklers, waving them in the air and letting the light burn itself into our eyes so they left an afterglow once they’d gone out.
‘Don’t tell Daddy,’ Manus said, and pulled back into the room.
I stayed leaning out with Connor, listening for fireworks, but he was quiet and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He thought in flashes, he had a temper.
Manus came back with more sparklers and gave us one each and said that was the last. We lit them together and I lifted mine up against the stars and let it sparkle against stray fireworks still going off over by the river. I felt I was holding Fireworks Night in my hands, fizzing and burning and silver. I put my fingers up against the sparks and felt the tingle. The glow went out, but we stayed up at the window seeing who could throw the used wires furthest into the street.
Those boys came back. The brothers were there. They glanced up at us from the other side of the street and hurried on. No one said anything. We watched them all the way up to the corner, carrying what looked like cut-out shapes of trousers and jumpers under their arms.
‘Is that the Guy?’ I said.
‘No,’ said Manus, ‘they’re nicking clothes off people’s washing lines.’
I hadn’t heard that before, only people stealing things out the shops. The man Connor thumped came into my head, telling me I was stealing, that the sparklers were stolen. I shut him out.
‘They’re your mates,’ said Connor.
‘No, they’re not,’ said Manus, pulling back in from the window.
‘Come on, let’s shut it,’ said Connor, going in. ‘It’s cold.’
I looked down the street on my own, the tramps were huddled up under the big door but they weren’t moving. I thought about those boys flitting up the road like shadows, holding the clothes they’d stolen, stiff with frost, and the echo of them calling out, Penny for the Guy ...
‘You shouldn’t have hit that man,’ I said to Connor as I came in from the window, ‘just because he thought we were begging.’
He looked at me like I was asking for trouble, but Manus stopped it saying, ‘We weren’t begging. It’s only Daddy doesn’t know.’
‘You’re the one who’s stupid,’ said Connor. ‘We didn’t do anything to him. It was Penny for the Guy, and he knows it.’
‘But we have now,’ I said.
‘So shut the window.’
‘They can put that Guy on the bonfire,’ said Manus. ‘I don’t care. They can burn him till he goes black.’
Connor pointed his finger at me, ‘I hit him because you’re too stupid to. Remember that. No one likes you.’
A burst of cold air pushed past me into the room. I shut the window, and it came down with a bang.