Grimms21

Snow breezes into the close, but turns to rain.  Angela trails behind Pizza Face and Tony. Duffle coat hoods up, sucking in cool air, and a trio of turning heads and feet, to face each other, and plan strategy for playing like they’re planning an army manoeuvre.

‘Beat it,’ Pizza Face tells her. ‘You’re too wee and you’re a girl.’

‘I’m no’ too wee,’ she shouts. ‘I’m nearly five.’ She chases after them, across the back court.

The boys run away with a laugh. They’ve got on wellies, and she’s got on ankle-strap shoes. It’s no match and they’ve entered a different world in which bins and walls and rone-pipes become climbing frames to greater things. Pizza Face is acrobat king in the sky, because he’s so fearless, and because he can hang by his legs and drag his torso up and gain ground without using his feet. Even the bigger boys from Dunn Street watched him climb up a drainpipe and shuffle along to the kitchen window of his house, three storeys up, and sit on the window sill as if he was sitting on the lavvy pan. His mum had dragged him into the house by the jumper and gave him a doing for it, but the glory remains. He uses a bin to spring and leap onto the washhouse wall and he’s up. Tony is more cautious and uses a different route, coming at the roof from the next washhouse along, where a broken frame of a door is wedged against the wall and a ladder to the roof. He clutches onto the parapet of concrete roof above, dangles, kicks the underside of the wall and uses his elbows to crawl onto the flat surface his bare knees soaking and cold. The side of his duffle coat, sopping, but heat of conquest warming him.  Pizza Face is waiting for him. They’ve got the run of the washhouse roofs all the way to the end, running parallel to the gap where juggernauts bin lorries duck and squeeze through pens and cobbled lane between Stewart and Swindon Streets. Below them Angela follows their route, weaving through puddles, stampeding bins and stomping household junk, but they soar about her leaving her behind like pigeon droppings. Washhouse doors are bricked up, chimney pots smashed, leaving a rectangular-sized hole in each block, a boy’s own entrance into the darkness of empty rooms. Cats hiss as the boys drop onto a worktop. The place reeks of ammonia and until they acclimatise, they breathe shallow breath. Pizza Face rattles a box of matches and scratches one. Their eyes take that bit longer than their noses. They searching for scraps to burn, and give a more lasting light. Luminous eyes watch them from the corners of walls and the pitter patter of feet in empty space swirls around alive sounds marks their orbit. They came to explore in the great depths of walls, but are more explored. The light goes out and they stand and wait in gloom. Another match strikes light. Tony sees them first, kittens and nudges Pizza Face, but he’s spotted them too, and drops down into the rubble and the light goes out. Tony creeps into the darkness beside him.  Another match, and cats scurry away from their swinging feet, hissing dissent. Kittens raise their heads from their nest, soft belied and slack, warm and sleek to the touch as Pizza Face picks one up, and smooths its head and little ears. The match goes out.

‘Stick one in each of your jacket pockets,’ Pizza Face says. ‘And we’ll take them outside to play with.’ He holds the kitten he’s holding out. ‘Hurry up,’ he says. ‘I’m running out of matches.’

Tony takes the kitten in the palm of his hand and out of the darkness he hears a hiss and sees a cat come calling. He places the kitten back with its brothers and sisters, and speaking into the glow of eyes in soft voices reassures the maternal presence, ‘It’s OK, we wouldnae take your wee baby.’

‘Hi,’ says Pizza Face, ‘I’m takin’ a couple of them to play with.’

‘No you urnae.’

‘I am ur.’ Pizza Face bows down to pick one up and Tony shoves him, hears him stumble.

Cats around him howl, but he’s more concerned that Pizza Face has not breenged into and hurt the kittens. He peers into the darkness. Pizza Face catches him side on and he topples. They roll together in the blackness. Pizza Face is on top of Tony punching him on the cheek and Tony is on top of Pizza Face, knees pinning his arms,  his hand is on his mouth, his thumb hooked in his mouth and he’s pulling on his cheek, scared and excited that he’ll rips his cheek off.

‘Give in,’ Tony says, ‘and don’t touch the kittens and I’ll let you up.’

‘Awwwight,’ says Pizza Face.

Tony shifts the weight in his knees gradually, scared he’ll be betrayed and the promise of truce broken. A match strikes when they stand together and look at each other.

‘I wouldn’t have hurt them,’ Pizza Face says. ‘I just wanted to play with them.’

‘I know but they need their mum.’

‘Jaz says I was to batter you every time I seen you, because you’re a wee Papish bastard.’

‘I’m no’ a Papish bastard and I go to the same school as you. It’s no’ my fault I don’t support Rangers. I don’t even like fitba that much.’

‘Aye, that’s whit I thought.’ Pizza Face climbs up ahead of Tony into the light. ‘I wouldnae anyway. Jaz is just a cunt, I can’t stand him.’