The Tightrope Walkers Read Online Free PDF Page A

frantic in the air above his head. Then crouched and slammed the bird across his knee, twisted its neck, and strangled it right there in front of us. Then held it out to us again as it jerked and shuddered in its post-death throes.
    “Tek it!” he said. “Tek it home and cook it for your tea!”
    He giggled.
    “You’re horrible, Vincent McAlinden,” said Holly, looking calmly at him.
    “Ah well,” he answered. “Nen of us is perfect, eh?”
    And he lifted the hen to his open mouth as if about to eat it feathered and raw. He went on giggling as we walked away.
    “Gannin for a little shag?” he yelled.
    We were seven or eight years old.
    “Yes!” yelled Holly, laughing loud. “We’re gannin for a little shag!”
    “I’ll come!” he called. “Let me come and I’ll join in!”
    Holly went on laughing.
    “Don’t leave me!” yelled Vincent. “You’re me mate, Dom! And oh how I love you, lovely Holly Stroud!”

“What he really needs is a war,” said Dad.
    He swigged from a can of McEwan’s Export.
    “You can’t say that,” said Mam.
    “Course I can. He’s the kind of lad that should be battling, a lad that
needs
a war.”
    I had a notebook on my knees, a biro in my hand.
    “War!” scoffed Mam.
    “Aye, war. Ye’d be in a fine damn fettle if we hadn’t fought it for ye, wouldn’t ye? You’d not be writing in notebooks if me and them like me hadn’t killed and died for you. Ye’d be a caulker just like me. Ye’d be a bliddy tank cleaner like me father, the lowest of the bliddy low.”
    Mam winked at me.
    “Your father’s such a hero, Dominic.”
    He shrugged.
    “What I say is true. It’s thanks to war we’ve been raised up. And it’s thanks to lads like Vincent. He’d have been fine out there in the jungle in the heat with the terror of the bliddy Japs. I knew lads like him, and no, you wouldn’t want to come across them in a pitch-black alley late at night, but out there they were worth their weight in bliddy gold.”
    He threw his cigarette into the fire.
    “Mebbe war’ll be back soon, and Vincent’s time’ll come.”
    “Let’s pray not,” said Mam.
    “There’s some that want it. There’s some can’t bliddy wait for it.”
    He swigged off the last of the Export. He held up the can to the light and twisted his face.
    “It’s not the same,” he said. “A proper pint of beer is a thing of joy.”
    Mam laughed.
    “Is that right?” she said.
    He crunched the can in his fist.
    “How we used to talk about it, out there in the stinking heat. Just wait till we get back, we used to say.”
    “To get a pint of beer?”
    “Aye, a pint of beer. Nowt else! And I’m off to get one now.”
    He winked at me. He kissed Mam and stroked my hair.
    He hesitated.
    “One day I’ll find a way to let you know what you’ve been rescued from,” he said, then went into the dusk.
    Mam asked to see my writing, turned it towards the fire’s flames to see it better.
    “Where do you get it from?” she said.
    “Thin air.”
    “Ha!”
    She read to the end, to the place where the flow of words met empty space.
    “What happens next?” she said.
    “Dunno.”
    “Like life.”
    She looked out. Large silhouetted birds flapped through the sky. We heard the voice of Mrs. Stroud coming from across the street:
    “ ‘What is life to me without thee?
    What is life if thou art dead?’”
    “Kathleen Ferrier,” Mam said. “Poor soul.”
    “Poor soul?”
    “To keep herself locked away like that . . .”
    “Why does she lock herself away like that?”
    “Maybe there’s no answer. Maybe she’s just happier like that. And Kathleen Ferrier herself was a poor soul, of course.”
    She sang again, so beautiful.
    “Died far too young,” Mam said.
    “Did she?”
    “Aye. And where’s the sense in that?”
    “ ‘What is life, life without thee?
    What is life if thou art dead?’”
    “I know! Maybe I should take your story for Mrs. Charlton to read. Would you like that? I’m