LEE SULLIVAN, BARRY REED, Simon and Ronald Ashworth, all of Fellside Road, all skinny St Jude Junior School lads whom Nedra knew, having fetched and fed them, and more than once out of charity, just as she’d fetched and fed their mams and dads back when they too could be found laid like beached seals for games played across the bubbled tarmacs that marooned these flat-roof estate pubs.

This was a good hour before night with May’s Saturday sun bloody. It bled the vast empty carpark into a lake of fire with the Red Beret its centre island. Nedra stuck to the long shadows of the short brick walls but felt her feet burning.

‘Iya, Missus Dodds,’ Lee went.

They had a ragged porridge-coloured blanket on which they’d pitched a ring of plastic soldiers and robots.

‘Lee, have you seen Joey Harvey?’

‘Little Joey can’t play with us,’ Simon went.

‘He nicks the marbles,’ Ronald went.

‘He hides them round your house,’ Barry went.

‘I’ll put you lot in the mad house if you keep this up. Now, have none of yous seen little Joey Harvey since teatime?’

They squinted up at her, propped on their elbows, their fists bursting with marbles. ‘No, Missus Dodds. . .’ they said.

Her brass necklaces had gone quiet when she stopped to ask after him and she began to worry them just to hear them, as if to convince herself she was still moving, towards Joey.

‘. . .No, but we seen his dog, didn’t we?’ Marbles flushed onto the blanket but as they scattered Simon cupped and herded them in one motion and hid them under his gliding hand. ‘We fed it Golden Wonders and then he ran into the pub. And then they put him out and give him a drink of water, and then he run off down there. . .’

All four pointing into the sun till she looked.

‘Keep away from that dog, you hear me?’ Her walking stick’s shadow striped their backs. ‘God bless.’

 

To enter the pub Nedra parted a great wedge of lasses cackling under its covered porch. Painted like, smelling like, drinking like the Devil’s daughters – as did her Jan and now her Carol too. Their colourful brassieres: peeking out of electric blouses and shiny wrong-sized frocks. Workshy buxom Sabrinas, the lot, giving her slitted glares of amusement. Abdicated mams; defeated wives; the fickle unwed; faithless elders and keen apprentices; some circuitously blood-related but most complexly estranged from hopeless husbands not-quite replaced or divorced; almost all Sharston Industrial Estate girls at one time or another; all keyed up for incitement. Assuming Nedra’s arrival a harbinger of scandal they intuited a stir. Nedra knew each face, it weathered by age or sin or trial or ruin or just the slow daily quarry slide of garden disappointments. Nedra knew the names of the childless whom she rarely directly encountered. Nedra knew who’d been sacked from the cake factory when and after Carol was there.

‘Evening, love,’ they said, their red cheeks high and red mouths lines.

They followed her in quick.

Inside Nedra was greeted by wet coughs and chatter and lazy whorls of smoke. She waited for summat to happen while cooking in her hat and coat. For older men, tashed and stooled, to put down their drinks and tilt with their good ears. For older women to hold their elbows, letting their fag ash grow. For history to suffocate the stale-sweet air and make them kneel to it with her. But in her local Nedra felt obscene and forgotten. Like the victim of a life-long joke or conspiracy – one that mattered no more and had been abandoned before its punchline or exposure. Nedra could not keep the past in proportion or the present at bay and there she began nodding at them sadly and slowly.

As she nudged forward then crossed the bar none made way. But a fat pony-tailed barman about forty-odd mirrored her coming, and asked: ‘What can we get you, love?’

She tried to de-age his features to work out his name or his street but couldn’t. He held the bartop, stamped his hand in drinkspill, leaning over to hear her but no words came. A wet gold sovereign ring instead of a wedding band. It reminded her of Father Culler’s signet, which he’d always remove before Mass so as not to upset the prelates.

Nedra swivelled carefully and looked. The myrtle seats, the red Victorian carpet, the walls with dead footballers framed. Pints foaming over distorting glass. Ice cubes and mouths and blinking game machines. Such separate things got up to move about, then join up, smudging into queer patterns. It was like she had opened a wardrobe and freed a giant stripy moth – its wings batting on her face.

These punters were foreign to her. Even ones she thought she knew, and she thought knew her, were strangers.

‘Her youngest lad’s not come home,’ she told them.

‘Who’s this?’ the barman said.

She turned again. ‘Little Joey. We need to be out if we’re gunna find him before dark.’

‘His mam’s in here?’

‘Noooo. They took Linda away.’

‘Oh, I see. That’s a shame.’ He served three fussy drinks to two gormless fellers and took pound coins from them and tossed their coins into music by cupping and uncupping his fist. He said: ‘Right, love. Where was we? How about a drink a water for now? Have a sit down there.’

‘I’ve not set foot in a pub since my Jim and my Sefton was taken.’

‘Well, there’s another shame, love.’

‘Good customers, they was, my Dodds men. Once upon a time. They made sure they wasn’t no trouble round here, and if they was trouble then it got sorted quick.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘You must tell them all now to come out and look for little Joey.’

‘Tell who?’

‘All them.’

‘Ee-ah, love. Have a drink of water. Can have summat else on me if you’re feeling better after that.’

‘They don’t know me, do they?’

‘Should they?’ But he looked past her and then stood taller, broader, and went: ‘Bev Willows, did you forget you’re barred?’

‘That were last week. Oi, I know her. That’s Missus Dodds.’

‘Well, can you see to her and I’ll see about letting you drink in here next week?’

‘You can’t wait that long to see me. Don’t tell lies.’

‘How the bloody hell does she know someone like you?’

‘I’m here,’ Nedra said. ‘You don’t have to talk like I’m not.’

Bev Willows crushed next to her in a sleeveless frock: ‘What’s the matter, love? Won’t he serve you either?’ – a voice blasting her and pumping smoke. Nedra’s hair moved. Bev, a shameless slattern about Carol’s age, cow-lashed, pancake complexion worse in this stained light. A lapsed Catholic and recurrent homewrecker who had chased after Linda’s husband years ago, no doubt after his big win at Belle Vue. That was before Joey was even thought of, before Gene could crawl. But Nedra remembered. It had all come out.

‘Little Joey Harvey’s gone missing,’ she said.

‘Right.’ Bev dropped her lit fag in somebody’s drink. ‘Come on, old girl. Let’s have a look.’ She led her back onto the carpark, the lingering sun a burst yolk and the sky still blood.

Nedra watched Bev watching the kiddies play.

‘Pink as piglets and twice as wiffy. Mind, our Alice and your Jan were like that. Still bloody thick as thieves, aren’t they? How’s Jan doing with her babba, anyway?’

From her ginger anorak Nedra unslipped the photo she’d taken of Joey, lined up smart at the privets with the rest of her flock, for the Pope’s visit. She showed it to Bev, careful not to crease it. ‘He’s six so a bit bigger now but not much.’

‘Faces on this lot. Bunch of smacked arses.’

‘They’d just seen Linda getting upset.’

‘Linda Harvey? Sounds about right.’ Bev glanced up and whistled like a bloke with her ringless fingers.

Nedra hunched at the sound.

Lee, Barry, Simon and Ronald came over.

With the photo: ‘You know who this little lad is here?’

They nodded.

‘Well go tell every kid round here Missus Dodds wants him. And when you find him tell him he’s not in for it, but you will be if you don’t bring him back. First one to come back with him gets a quid.’

‘Show us the quid,’ they said.

‘Cheeky buggers. Get going!’

Nedra called after them: ‘But make sure you’re in before dark. I’ll be round tomorrow to ask your mams. And if you see Gene, you tell him to get home and all.’

‘Yes, Missus Dodds!’ they said. And were gone.

Bev laughed and linked her and they crossed Simonsway to try Painswick Park. Both women sturdy – shaped and scaled almost the same but with very different walks.

‘Has Joey ever run off before?’

‘His brother has. Once.’

‘What happened?’

‘I found him.’

News that Joey was missing had already reached the park but nobody had seen him or knew where he could be.

As they arrived Kevin and Roger were leaving with a frog in a bucket.

‘Oi, leave her in the pond,’ Bev told them. ‘It’s where she lives.’

They turned to Nedra for final word, then raced to the pond edge and tipped the bucket together.

Kevin told them Gene had gone to Rodger’s Park to see if Joey was hiding there.

‘What about Susie-Ann?’ Nedra asked.

‘She’s in,’ Kevin said.

‘Good.’

‘Her mam’s not letting her out now. Since she cut all her hair off.’

Bev scoffed. ‘Who’s this? Who’s her mam. . .?’

But they kept on.

Nedra began to twitter her prayers.

Bev’s touch: kind, scalding. ‘Don’t be worried, love. He’ll be right. you’ll see. Think you can walk it or do you wanna get home and wait?’

‘I’m gunna go have a look.’

‘Aye. We’ll do that. No harm in looking, is there? Ay, how’s your Carol? Never see her now.’

‘Carol’s in town tonight.’

‘Don’t tell us she’s finally found herself a feller?’

‘. . .’

‘Good on her. God help him.’

‘Our Sefton’s long gone.’

‘Never knew Sefton. Remember your Jim, though.’

‘You didn’t know our Jim. You weren’t old enough.’

‘Too bloody right I weren’t! I were fourteen, yeah? March fourteenth, nineteen-fifty-seven. I can remember it dead well cos it were the day that plane missed Ringway and crashed on Shadow Moss Road. Landed right on a house over there. You remember? Killed a wife and tot.’

‘I knew her,’ Nedra said.

‘Me mam did and all. He was a bad bugger, your Jim. I wasn’t the only one he had his way with, you know?’

‘. . .I’ve stopped going visiting their graves. I’ve been too ashamed.’

‘Listen, love. Me husband was a bastard too. Got more kids now. Lives down south. Doing well and all. Heard he bought his new missus a car. And I still love him. Pray to Our Lady we never see him again. Cos I know I’d only forgive him.’

O Mother of Perpetual Help

‘What do they say about me these days?’

‘Who?’ Nedra said.

‘Oh, the Knickers of Virtue, Mother Mary and the Holy Caboose? I used to go Mass with some of your lot, you know? Before I had our Alice. I were wed up at the one in Edgeley. What’s it called. . . Our Lady and the Apostles.’

‘They say that you like a drink.’

‘That all?’

‘That you bring fellers home and don’t care whose. That they feel for your Alice.’

‘Can tell them our Alice gets looked after, and she gets taught more wisdom than their daughters put together. I’d sooner she be trouble than troubled, if you get me drift. Ay, are they all still knitting cardis for Father Culler? I’m the best seamstress round here, me. No, I am. Owt you ever want altering – just give us a ring, love. Now, there’s an idea. Could stitch them all nooses, couldn’t we, for Lent?’

‘What’s the bloody matter with you?’

‘Just imagine what they say about your lot? Birth not been registered? They’ll shop you for that, you know. Can’t hide it in the house forever.’

‘Go back to the pub. I’ll find Joey meself.’

‘Oi, I know they all call me round here. Fat slag. Sucks right down to the priest’s collar. They’ve gotta blame someone for their lot, haven’t they? It’s flattering to think at forty-two I’m still summat to worry about. But listen. You wanna know what they have to say about Missus Dodds?’

‘Go on.’

‘They say nowt, love. No bugger round here knows you. They don’t remember. That’s why you’re lucky.’

Trees curtained proud homes and junk gardens from one to next. Rodger’s Park presided; the breeze dropped after bringing to her its wild scent. She turned her weighted neck. Through fence bars foamed cow parsley and milkmaids and floating crosshatches of evening insects.

Park-side on Firbank Road was without voices and traffic. Nedra tried not to see this as an augury – telling herself it was not unnatural when in the deserted street they passed suckered arrows and a plastic sword; hula-hoops and a torn football like a peeled satsuma. Skriking magpies began to travel the trees that greened the red houses, reporting their coming. Wings casting brief shadows on the cracked pavement. A white longish feather floated down and kissed a broken flagstone that waited raised before them and Nedra reached this flagstone a step first and it see-sawed loose. But she didn’t trip.

Bev Willows tightened their link, her expression pinched now and held forward avoiding hers.

They heard summat ahead.

Nedra’s stick fell away. It clacked on the pavement like another discarded toy. She led now, shuffling along at a good clip.

In the middle of the road, they were. A circle of young kiddies. Crushed up and faced in. They stood squirming and pushing and Nedra’s eyes sought little Joey Harvey among them since her eyes could recognise these moving heads: shorn skulls and bowl cuts and twin pigtails. Nedra could name each one in his or her handmedown swaps but needed to wait another split-second for some heads to turn. She could extract the right cry or salty playing-out smell that she caught ripe and from above, when soaping Joey’s tiny hands at the sink, him unable to withstand the tickles of her nailbrush.

‘Get out of it,’ Nedra told them. ‘Let’s see.’

Their sweaty heads spun to her. The group was Joeyless and not speaking not breathing not picking noses, scabs or coldsores. Nedra saw them all ageing as quickly as they parted for her.

His white staffie lay with its chin on the road. Against tarmac the fur shone bright and smooth. There was no blood she could see but the muscled domes of its limbs were too still for sleep. Only its brow was wrinkled; the eyes under rucks of skin and fur-tuff like buttonless threads. ‘Look, Missus Dodds. Look. Snowy’s dead.’

‘Joey’s not dead,’ she twittered at the children and Bev shushed her gently.

‘There’s the moon!’ said Sally Morrison, a dungareed girl without top teeth, craning and twisting to show it her bleeding elbows.

Between the Heavenlit trees the streetlamps came on like altar candles as the rest of the kiddies stood around, church-quiet, illumined, stumped by drab mysteries: perhaps aware of their obscure intimations and unable to shake them or make any use or sense of them.

Soon the fidgeting bug spread – once each clocked they’d been snuck up on by the dark.

Nedra turned away from her flock to cuff her vision clear and dry. She saw flying insects assume Our Lady’s glow. A quickening struck her. It ran her heavy old bones and lightened them. It hit her middle. Nedra felt unsteady for a moment only and in no danger of pain. Though Bev Willows rushed to hug her. Bev’s arms were not through hers but around, supporting her.

‘Steady, love. Steady.’

‘. . .Can’t breathe.’

‘Is it your chest?’

‘No; it’s bloody you!’

She saw Bev the Incorrigible: a giving, wayward, smutty, sobered-up woman, afraid to smile at her. Bev let go.

But the children lingered –

itching to scatter

waiting for her word.

Nedra gave it and they took off in all directions to fly their streets on true feathered wings that carried them home in a few blurred beats.

 

‘What’s his name again?’

‘Joey.’

‘No, the other one. His brother.’

‘Gene.’

Bev called out for him while Nedra plugged her ears.

It took one try for Gene to call back.

In near dark, spit glistened enough on Bev’s teeth to show she was smiling at her now.

They stopped and waited in the long field grass that prickled their calves, Bev’s without tights, in what felt like no-place, edged in by great dimming tree trunks and fern meadow. A dense weave that bobbed and twitched with foraging sprites.

Sprinting Gene found her.

He leaned back to halt before he ran through her. It happened too fast for her to panic that he wouldn’t stop in time.

He was panting a little, his shoulders moving up and down. His polo smelled rank hot. He was Jan’s age and heads taller than both women but had only begun filling out and in the gloom he seemed less grown, more precious to her. She saw him better here than in her kitchen. Here: without looks to read into or stages to ignore. It was like she’d cut him out of a picture that her mind had taken, of a young man costumed in his dad’s Man City shirt – cadging a meal at her table and never leaving a crumb on his plate, to sit there invisible almost in her full house, stealing glances at Jan with a hankie balled inside his pocket sleeve in case of nosebleeds. But Nedra had to glue this cut-out of a young man and fold him into natural dark to see the lad he still was.

Together they searched under a final sky. It could deceive them. Tint and un-detail all they could see so that the small park expanded with the night. Right above their heads tiny bats flitted in drunk silhouette. Nedra grew afraid but when Bev noticed her fear, Bev warned the bats like husbands – not to get tangled in her hair.

‘Joey. Joey!’

‘JOEY!’

‘He’s here,’ Nedra said. ‘Have a listen.’

They leaned into the nervous quiet and heard him shift over crackly twigs.

‘This your den and that, love?’ Bev said.

‘. . .’

‘Wouldn’t happen to have any ciggies in there, would you?’

‘. . .No,’ Joey said ruefully.

Bev laughed and its boom woke things in the trees and sent them scurrying. Bits of stick and bark rained and Nedra held her hat.

‘Can you reach down there?’ she asked Bev.

‘Can I fuck; no. I’d never get up again, me.’

Nedra shut one eye and then gripped one knee to bend down and peer into the deep narrow furrow roofed with skinned branches that let the moon in. There was a soily beard of exposed roots; green lush bracken of fading lambent.

‘Out you come,’ she said.

Gene pinned the branches to help Joey crawl out.

Nedra put him on her hip. He had no more weight to him than when he was four. His arms, his legs were gritty and cold. Their hollowness unbearable. He wanted feeding up till she didn’t dare lift him.

‘Ay, where’s your specs?’ Nedra said.

‘They broke,’ Joey said, and she could hear tears mulching his voice.

‘We’ll get them fettled, love.’

‘You’re best taking him to mine.’ Bev’s fingers: combing soil out of his hair.

‘Why?’ said Gene.

‘I’m only the next street. Plus, I’ve got me a pack of Lamberts in the back of a drawer. Unless our Alice has took them.’

‘He’s hungry,’ Nedra said. ‘You got food in?’

‘Have you not seen size of this arse?’

‘Where do you wanna go, mate?’ Gene asked him.

‘I’ve a dog, you know?’ Bev said.

‘Have you?’ Joey said.

‘Aye. He’s a staffie. And he eats arses.’

Joey giggled, in spite of the tears.

Nedra jogged him higher on her hip, leaving the park with the twilight gone. ‘Take no notice, Joey.’

‘Well, what d’you eat?’ Bev said.

‘Go on,’ Nedra said. ‘Tell Missus Willows what you eat.’

‘Butties.’

Bev touched his head. ‘You’ll be alright eating your butties at our house – so long as you’re sitting.’

Nedra said to him: ‘You’ll manage that now, no bother. Won’t you, love?’

Joey pressed his arms around her, pressed his face into her coat. She held him close and closer so he didn’t bounce with her step.