Men from Boys Read online

  ‘This is the short cut,’ Vincent said. ‘My quickest way . . .’

  The boy in the cap swallowed. ‘Your quickest way home is via the airport.’ The smile that Vincent had thought he’d seen now made itself very evident. ‘You want the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow, mate . . .’

  Vincent chuckled softly, pretending to enjoy the joke. He saw the boy’s face harden, watched him raise a hand and jab a finger back towards the main road.

  ‘Go round.’

  Vincent knew what he meant. He could walk back and take the path that led around the perimeter of the estate, approach his block from the other side. It would only take a few minutes longer. He could just turn and go, and he would probably be home before they’d finished laughing.

  ‘You heard.’ The skinny boy leaned back against a bollard.

  He could easily turn and go round . . .

  ‘Now piss off . . .’

  The edges of Vincent’s vision began to blur and darken, and the words that spewed from the mouth of the boy with the shaven head became hard to make out. A distant rhythm was asserting itself and as Vincent looked down at the cracked slabs beneath his feet, a shadow seemed to fall across them. A voice grew louder, and it was as if the walls on either side had softened and begun to sway above him like the tops of trees.

  The voice was one Vincent knew well. The accent, unlike his own, was heavy, but the intonation and tone were those that had been passed on to him and to his brothers and sisters. It was a rich voice, warm and dark, sliding effortlessly around every phrase, each dramatic sentence of a story it never tired of telling.

  His father’s voice . . .

  Looking out from his bedroom window, the boy could see the coffee plants lying like a deep green tablecloth across the hillside, billowing down towards the canopy of treetops and the deep, dirty river beneath. If he raised his eyes up, he saw the mountain on the far side of the valley, its peaks jutting into the mist, the slopes changing colour many times a day according to the cloud and the position of the sun. Black or green or blood red. Other colours the boy had no name for.

  A dozen views for the price of one, and he’d thought about all of them in the time he’d been away. He’d tried to picture each one during the bone-shaking, twelve-hour bus ride that had brought him home from school five days before.

  ‘Hey! Stand still, boy. This is damn fiddly . . .’

  Uncle Joseph, on his knees in front of him, his thick fingers struggling with the leather fastenings, as they had every morning since they’d begun. It was hard to tie the knots so that the strings of beads clung to the calves without slipping, but not so tightly that they would cut into the flesh.

  When he’d finished with the beads on the lower legs, Uncle Joseph would move on to the thick bands of dried goatskin, each heavy with rows of bells and strapped around the thighs. These were expensive items, handmade like everything else. Lastly, Joseph would wrap the dark, highly polished belt round the boy’s waist. On three out of the last four mornings, much to the boy’s amusement, he’d sliced a finger on one of the razor-sharp shells sewn into the leather.

  Behind him, Uncle Francis worked on attaching the beads that crossed his back and chest in an X, like brightly coloured bandoliers. Francis was always cheerful, and the boy imagined that he too looked forward to that moment when Joseph would cry out, curse and stick a bleeding finger into his mouth. It was always Francis and Joseph who dressed him. The rest of his uncles waited outside. He’d been amazed at quite how many uncles he had, when they’d gathered on the night after he’d got back; when the family committee had met to organise it all.

  There had been lots to decide.

  ‘Do we have drummers?’

  ‘Of course. This is important. He is important . . .’

  ‘Grade A. Definitely Grade A . . .’

  ‘These drummers are not cheap. Their damn costumes alone are a fortune . . .’

  ‘I think they should come with their costumes. It isn’t fair. We shouldn’t have to pay for the costumes separately . . .’

  ‘We should have lots of drummers!’

  And on and on, deep into the night, arguing and getting drunker while the boy listened from his bedroom. Though he didn’t understand everything, the passion in the voices of these men had caused excitement to swell in his chest. Yes, and an equal measure of dread to press down on it, like one of the huge flat stones that lay along the river bed at the bottom of the valley. He’d lain awake most of that night thinking of his friends, his age-mates in the other villages, wondering if they were feeling the same thing.

  ‘All set, boy,’ Uncle Joseph said.

  Uncle Francis handed him the headdress, rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Feeling fit?’

  Outside, he was greeted with cheers and whoops. This was the last day of gathering and there was more noise, more gaiety than there had been on any day previously. This was the eve of it all: the final glorious push.

  He took his place in the middle of the group, acknowledged the greetings of his brothers, of uncles and cousins whose names he could never remember. Though no one was dressed as extravagantly as he was, everyone had made the necessary effort. No man or boy was without beads or bells. The older ones were all draped in animal skins – monkey, zebra and lion. All had painted faces and strips of brightly coloured cloth attached to the edges of their leather vests.

  A huge roar went up as the first drum was struck. A massive bass drum, its rhythm like a giant’s heartbeat. The smaller drums joined then, and the whistles, and the yelps of the women and children, watching from the doorways of houses, waving the gatherers goodbye.

  The boy cleared his throat and spat into the dirt. He let out a long, high note, listened to it roll away across the valley. The rhythm became more complex, more frantic, and he picked up his knees in time to it, the beads rattling on his legs and the shells clattering against the belt round his waist.

  He began to dance.

  The procession started to move. A carnival, a travelling circus, a hundred or more bare feet slapping into the dirt in time to the drummers. A cloud of dust rose up behind them as they picked up speed, moving away along the hard brown track that snaked out of the village.

  The mottled grey of the slabs was broken only by the splotches of dogshit brown and dandelion yellow.

  Vincent looked up from the floor of the walkway.

  The eyes of the two taller boys darted between his face and that of their friend. It seemed to Vincent that they were waiting to be told what to do. They were looking for some sort of signal.

  The boy in the cap raised his eyes up to Vincent’s. He took a long, slow swig from his bottle, his gaze not shifting from Vincent’s face. Then he snatched the bottle from his lips, wiped a hand across his mouth and glared, as if suddenly affronted.

  ‘What?’

  Vincent smiled, shook his head. ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Yes you fucking did.’

  The boy with the shaved head took a step forward. ‘What did you say, you cheeky black fucker?’

  The smaller boy nodded, pleased, and took another swig. Vincent shrugged, feeling the tremble in his right leg, pressing a straight arm hard against it.

  ‘Listen, I don’t want any trouble. I’m just trying to get home . . .’

  Home.

  Vincent blinked and saw his brother’s face, the skin taken off his cheek and one eye swollen shut. He saw his mother’s face as she stood at the window all the next afternoon, staring out across the dual carriageway towards the lorry park and the floodlights beyond. He saw her face when she turned finally, and spoke. ‘We’re moving,’ she’d said.

  One more blink and he saw the resignation that had returned to her face after a day doing the maths; scanning newspapers and estate agents’ details from Greenwich and Blackheath. As the idea of moving anywhere was quickly forgotten.

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ the boy with the bottle said. ‘If you’re so desperate, just go round.’

  V
incent saw the face of his father then. As it had been that day when his brother had come home bleeding, and then, as he imagined it to have been twenty-five years before. In a country Vincent had only ever seen pictures of.

  The boy sat at the back of the house, beneath the striped awning that his father had put above his bedroom window. Rose rubbed ointment on to his blisters. They stared across the valley at the sun dropping down behind the mountain, the slopes cobalt blue beneath a darkening sky.

  He knew that they should not have been sitting together, that his uncles would not have approved. Contact with young women was frowned upon in the week leading up to the ritual. He would regret it, his uncles would have said, in the days afterwards, in the healing time after the ceremony. ‘Talk to young women . . .’ Joseph had told him, ‘let them smile at you now and shake their hips, and you will pay.’

  He didn’t care. He had known Rose since before he could walk and besides, Joseph, Francis and the others would be insensible by now. They had sat down around the pot as soon as they had finished eating supper. Talking about the day, filling in the elders on how ‘the boy’ was doing and getting slowly drunker. Sucking up powerful mouthfuls of home brew from the pot through long bamboo straws.

  The boy had watched them for a while, no longer jealous, as he would have been before. Once it was all over, he would have earned the right to sit down and join them.

  ‘Fine, but not yet, you haven’t,’ Rose had said when he’d mentioned it to her.

  It had been a hard day and the boy was utterly exhausted. He reckoned they had danced twenty miles or more, visited a dozen villages, and he had sung his heart and his throat out every step of the way. He was proud of his song, had been since he’d written it months before. Even Rose had been forced to concede that it was pretty good. He’d practised it every day, knowing there was prestige and status attached to the best song, the best performance. He’d given that performance a hundred times in the last week and now his voice was as ragged as the soles of his feet.

  It had been a successful day too. Uncle Philip had not announced the final tally, but it had certainly been a decent haul. Relatives close and distant in each homestead had come forward dutifully with gifts: earthenware dishes piled high with cash; chickens or a goat from cousins; cattle from those of real importance. Philip had made a careful note of who’d given what, in the book that was carried with them as they criss-crossed the district, each village ready to welcome them, each able to hear them coming from a mile or more away.

  Everyone had been more than generous. By sundown the following day, the boy would be a rich man.

  ‘Are you scared?’ Rose asked.

  He winced as she dropped his foot to the floor. ‘No,’ he said.

  The boy wasn’t sure why he lied. Being frightened was fine, it was showing the fear that was unacceptable, that would cost you. He remembered the things that had scared him the most that day, scared him far more than what was to come the following afternoon. He had been sitting with the elders in the village where his father had been born. Squatting in the shade, stuffed full of roasted goat and green bananas, with barely the energy to nod as each piece of advice was given, each simple lesson handed out.

  ‘You will not fear death . . .’

  ‘You will defend your village against thieves . . .’

  Then he’d been handed the baby.

  ‘There are times when your wife will be sick, and you must look after yourself and your children.’

  ‘You will learn to cook . . .’

  ‘You will learn to keep a fire burning all day . . .’

  They roared as the baby began to piss on his lap, told him it was good luck. They were still laughing as the boy danced his way out of the village. All he could think about, as he began his song again, was how being unafraid of death and of thieves sounded easy compared with taking care of children . . .

  He thought about telling Rose this, but instead told her about what had happened in the first village they’d visited that day. Something funny and shocking. A distant cousin of his father’s had been discovered hiding in the fields on the outskirts of the village. Trying to dodge the handover of a gift was a serious matter and not only had the offering been taken from him by force, but he had brought shame upon himself and the rest of his family.

  ‘Can you believe it?’ the boy said. ‘That man was Grade A! Cowering in the tall grass like a woman, to avoid handing over a bowl. A bowl for heaven’s sake . . .’

  Rose pushed her shoulder against his. ‘So, you think you’re going to be Grade A? Grade B maybe? What d’you think, boy?’

  He shrugged. He knew what he was hoping for. All he could be certain about was that this was the last time anybody would call him ‘boy’.

  The one with the bottle stood a foot or so forward from his two friends. He reached over his shoulder for the lit cigarette that he knew would be there, took three quick drags and handed it back. ‘What team do you support anyway?’

  ‘Fucking Man U, I bet . . .’

  For a moment, Vincent thought about lying. Giving them their own team’s name. He knew that he’d be caught out in a second. ‘I don’t follow a team.’

  ‘Right. Not an English team . . .’

  ‘Not any team,’ Vincent said.

  ‘Some African team, yeah? Kicking a fucking coconut around . . .’

  ‘Bongo Bongo United FC!’

  ‘“Kicking a coconut”, that’s classic . . .’

  ‘Headers must be a nightmare, yeah?’

  The skinny one and the one with the shaved head began to laugh. They pursed their lips and stuck out their bumfluffy chins. They pretended to scratch their armpits.

  ‘You know what FC stands for, don’t you? Fucking coon . . .’

  Vincent looked away from them. He heard the monkey noises begin softly, then start to get louder.

  ‘Look at him,’ the one in the cap said. ‘He’s shitting himself.’ He said something else after that, but Vincent didn’t hear it . . .

  Dawn, at the river, on the final morning.

  Dotted for a mile or more along the flat, brown river bank were the other groups. Some were smaller than his own, while others must have numbered a hundred, but at the centre of each stood one of the boy’s age-mates. Each ready to connect with the past, to embrace the future. Each asking for the strength to endure what lay ahead of him.

  The boy was called forward by an elder. As he took his first steps, he glanced sideways, saw his age-mates along the river bank moving in a line together towards the water.

  This was the preparation.

  In the seconds he spent held beneath the water, he wondered whether a cry would be heard if he were to let one out. He imagined it rising up to the surface, the bubbles bursting in a series of tiny screams, each costing him grades.

  He emerged from the river purified and ready to be painted with death.

  The sun was just up but already fierce, and the white mud was baked hard within a minute or two of being smeared across his face and chest and belly. The mist was being burned away, and looking along the bank, the boy saw a row of pale statues. A long line of ghosts in the buttery sunlight.

  He watched an old man approach each figure, as one now approached him. The elder took a mouthful of beer from a pumpkin gourd and spat, spraying it across the boy’s chest. The beer ran in rivulets down the shell of dried mud, as prayers were said and his uncles stepped towards him.

  The group that had been nearest to him jogged past, already finished, and he looked at his age-mate, caked in white mud as he was. The boy had known him, as he’d known most of them, for all of their sixteen years, but his friend was suddenly unrecognisable. It was not the mask of mud. It was the eyes that stared out from behind it. It was the eyes that were suddenly different.

  The boy was nudged forward, was handed his knife, and the group began loping away in the same direction as his friend. Drumming again now, and singing, heading for the market place. All of them, all the ghos
t-boys, moving towards the moment when they would die and come back to life . . .

  ‘Shut up!’ Vincent shouted.

  After a moment or two the skinny one and the one with the shaved head stopped making their monkey noises, but only after a half-glance in their direction from the one in the cap.

  ‘Turn your pockets out,’ he said.

  Vincent’s hands were pressed hard against his legs to keep them still. He slowly brought each of them up to his pockets, slipped them inside . . .

  ‘Maybe we’ll let you pay to go home. Let me see what you’ve got.’

  Vincent’s left hand came out empty. His right emerged clutching the change from his train ticket. He opened his hand and the one in the cap leaned forward to take a look.

  ‘Fuck that, mate. Where’s the notes?’

  Vincent shook his head. ‘This is all I’ve got.’

  ‘You’re a fucking liar. Where’s your wallet?’

  Vincent said nothing. He closed his hand around the coins and thrust his fist back into his trouser pocket.

  The one in the cap took a step towards him. He was no more than a couple of feet away. ‘Don’t piss me about. I don’t like it, yeah?’

  He could easily turn and go round . . .

  ‘Where’s his phone?’ the skinny one said.

  ‘Get his fucking phone, man. They always have wicked phones.’

  The one in the cap held out his hand. ‘Let’s have it.’

  It suddenly seemed to Vincent that the phone might be the way out of it, his way past them. Handing it over, giving them something and then trying to get past was probably a good idea . . .

  The mobile was snatched from his grasp the second he’d produced it. The one in the cap turned and swaggered back towards his friends. They cheered as he held it up for them to look at.

  The three gathered round to examine the booty and Vincent saw a gap open up between the far right bollard and the wall. He thought about making a run for it. If he could stay ahead of them for just a minute, half a minute maybe, he would be virtually home. He reckoned he could outrun the two bigger ones anyway. Perhaps his mother or father, one of his brothers might see him coming . . .