dares

‘Remember. Remember. The fifth of November.’

Balaclava hats, splodges of colour, in shallow winter light, showing the wan faces of my cousins ducked down together, in muttering confab, deciding what to do next. Someone bought a packet of bangers out of Maisie’s. Because Charlie Porter and me are too wee, neither of us were allowed to touch them even in their stringy cardboard packet. We’re just allowed to look. Neither were we allowed to strike a light from the penny box of Bluebell matches. I’m not sure who gets to light the first one, or who bought them, because money was a foreign thing. We must have been paid for them with little fingers scavenging for gingy bottles in the bins and around the backs of the tenement blocks at Kitchener Street.

These cousins and relations of mine had the nous for fireworks. Big boys like my brother Stephen, or my raven haired cousin Jim, or the blunt red head of Charlie’s big brother Tommy have served –I dare you –apprenticeships. They know how to quarry bog deep in aluminium bins, standing like half-cut daleks, every few yards in clusters of twos and threes. They have conquered fire by fire to fashion implements of war from the back court detritus of Heinz and Campbell’s soup tins. The washhouses were hives we buzzed in and out of with bobble-hatted will. They’re full of derelict smashed up sinks and flat sided planes of wood – good for axe handles. An orange masonry brick from the rubble inside acted to hammer flush Campell’s soup metal onto handles. We shriek and scream waving our fine axes at each other. Cowboys with smoking keps in their guns shoot at us little Indians. We can hoot like a monkey and step up the wall onto the top of the derelict washhouses and parade along, kings of the backcourt world.

Stephen–I dare you – spurred himself on to go higher. He scrambled up the drain pipe, taking a rest on the crooked arm of the cast-iron horizontal, looking down on us from two-stories up. He sat on our shit scarred window sill four stories up, croaking with maniac laughter and peeking in the window, before gently chapping on it. The shape of Uncle John slowly pushed up the window. He cooed like he was charming a tumbler pigeon, before the plunge and fall, jerking Stephen by the arm into the crash of pots and pans sitting in the kitchen sink. Da’s arms I knew were waiting. His arse was sore for a week afterwards. The glory of that climb hadn’t been bettered and was still fresh in my heart.

We break away from our circle of friends, one by one, from the prying tenement windows that ring our existence. In a mix match of black and brown coloured duffel coats at the far end of the rows of tenement blocks we shuffle together, Jim at the front because he’s the tallest and got the bangers snug in his side pocket. Our feet slow on the grey-blue uneven cobble stone tenement tunnels, the damp dripping sanctuaries of pee and dampness, the rats’ boulevard, which lead onto Dunn Street. We don’t go there often because of the stinking pack of Curly boys who lived on the other side of the road and who’ve all got nits. We best them by flinging stones and running at with our silver axes but we’ve brought something even more powerful. Tommy lights a banger and puts it fissing inside an empty milk bottle. He placed it down at the entrance to Dunn Street and his short trousers become hitched up his bum, so his moon-coloured bare legs swished beneath his brown duffle coat, as he sprints back to where we’re standing about twelve feet away. There was no Curlies. It turned into a game of dares to see who can get closest. Jim made a three step run and then darts back, just as quickly, his face red and black eyelashes blinking furiously. Tommy danced a step forward and took two steps back, stepping on my toes.

‘Sorry,’ Tommy shrugged apologetically towards me and looked at Stephen.

‘You better go up the road,’ he shouted at his wee brother Charlie, ‘or you might get hurt.’ He pushed him on the chest to make greet like a baby and go home.

My cheeks puffed out in readiness and I was holding my breath. Stephen pulled me by the hood backwards and waits until the last second to make his dash. His foot kicked at the bottle just as the banger exploded. The noise reverberated off the walls and roof, but the shock hung sharpest in our faces. Stephen started crying and limping back towards us. His right shoe was ripped and his foot bloody.

I started howling too because he was going to die.