Ironopolis Read online

  I didn’t want to be left out, so I got paper of my own, but when I looked at Nana…where did I start? The head, I supposed. Ms Fox in art class said that a face was a crucifix inside an oval, but Nana’s face wasn’t an oval. It wasn’t any shape I could see. I glanced over at Una’s page. Already, Nana was beginning to appear: her but not her, less the lines themselves but the spaces between them. I began my own drawing slowly. Each tiny, tentative stroke I made took me further from the picture in my head.

  Una’s blunted pencil rolled from her fist. ‘Her ears are weird,’ she whispered.

  Her picture was…stunning. Proper art at ten years old. I tried hiding my own scrawl, but she tugged it from me with pinched fingertips.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  Nana woke herself up in the usual way, by breaking wind. She always said the same thing: ‘Oh deary me.’ It creased us up, that. She wanted to know what mischief we were up to, and demanded we hand over our drawings. She held mine up to the window. The rain clicked softly against the glass.

  ‘Oh, this is lovely,’ she said. ‘Just lovely.’

  I could see my stupid drawing through the paper and said nothing.

  Then Nana looked at Una’s page and something passed across her face. She peered over the paper. Had Una drawn this just now?

  Una nodded.

  Nana looked at the page for a long time. ‘I’m old, aren’t I girls?’ she said.

  We said she wasn’t, but I suppose she was.

  Nana pinned our drawings on the wall above my sea chest, where they remained for many years, long after things had gone bad between the two of us. I would see them every day – an awful reminder of why they had.

  *

  When you said in your letter that Una had painted hundreds of the same scene, I knew exactly which one you meant. She used to do that riverbank over and over again. At first, I’d thought it was the river Tees, but later knew it wasn’t. I can still see it: the black mud, the rustling reeds. The way you couldn’t tell where the fog ended and the river began. Sometimes there would be shapes in the fog, just out of focus, or mostly off the page, but Una would never say what – or who – they were.

  You asked if I knew why she was ‘fixated’. Well, Ms Fox asked Una the same question after she had, for the umpteenth time, spent the lesson on her swirling blue-grey riverbanks. Una replied that it was a dream she had, actually the only dream she ever had. Ms Fox looked at her funny when she said that.

  There’s more to say about this, and it’s to do with the Green Girl, but I can hear Chopin howling. That means Vincent’s back, and I won’t be able to relax until he and Alan have made peace. That’s still my job, for now at least.

  Sincerely,

  Jean

  P.S – No, I don’t have any of her early work, sorry. Who knows where those pictures are now? Where does anybody’s childhood go?

  10/4/1991

  Dear Stephan,

  You wanted to know who the Green Girl was in that one painting you described. Well, you’re in luck.

  Apart from art, the other thing Una loved was giving herself the heebie jeebies. Every other Wednesday, a man called Henry drove the mobile library down Loom Street and Una checked out as many ghost stories as her ticket allowed. Spooks floating down corridors, The Thing in the Cellar, those mad Victorian photos of ectoplasm coming out of the gypsy woman’s eyes – Una ate it up.

  Her favourite stories, though, were about being buried alive. You would not believe how often hospital patients used to wake up six feet under after some sackless doctor declared them dead, their long-buried coffins finally exhumed to show scratch marks on the inside of the lids. Or renovators turning an old castle into a swanky hotel knock through a wall and the mouldy bones of some bricked-up so-and-so rattle out. Or explorers going into an ‘uncharted’ South American cave system, only to find in the most inaccessible antechamber two human skeletons curled together like quotation marks.

  Una’s absolute favourite was about the luxury cruise liner that made a mysterious clanging below decks. Engineers combed the whole ship top to bottom but couldn’t find the source. Years passed and the clanging got worse, got into the pipes, started echoing through the entire ship to wake up First Class, which was the last straw because once posh people got the hump, you knew about it. Unexplained fires began breaking out. Food supplies went rotten. A cabin boy was washed overboard by a freak wave on an otherwise calm sea. Word got around about the cursed cruise liner, and people stopped booking passage. Eventually the ship was scrapped.

  Una had told me the story a dozen times, but still gripped my arm for the last part: ‘and it’s only when they prise the hull open that they find the riveter who went missing all those years before, during the ship’s construction. Still in his overalls, mallet still in his bony hand. He’d been working in the hull when it was sealed up and nobody heard his cries for help. That’s what the clanging was! His ghost hammering let me out! Let me out!’

  Una was fascinated by what might have gone through the head of that doomed riveter during the days it must have taken him to die.

  ‘He must have realised things,’ she said to me once.

  ‘Like what things?’

  Una was serious. She leaned close so her lips brushed my ear. ‘Like…BOO!’

  Books aside, Nana was best for giving us the creeps. Whenever me and Una got too rambunctious for our own good, or didn’t come back for tea on time, or ran our gobs during Hancock’s Half Hour, she’d say, ‘If you don’t mind yourselves, Peg Powler will get you.’

  Peg Powler, as Nana never tired of telling us, was a witch who lived in the river Tees and drowned boys and girls who didn’t listen to their elders and betters.

  ‘But we don’t live on the river,’ we’d say.

  Nana was ready for that. ‘Peg’s in the pipes,’ she’d say. ‘She’ll drag you down the netty (toilet to you, Stephan) by your bum.’

  Usually, that was as far as the Peg stories went, but one day, when we must have been being particularly flippant, Nana said: ‘Oh, so you think I’m having you on, do you? Did I ever tell you about how she almost got me?’

  Mesmerised, Una plonked herself down at Nana’s feet.

  ‘I was about your age,’ Nana said, her eyes turning to Una’s drawing above the sea chest, ‘a long, long time ago now. I lived in a place called Foulde, not far from Egglescliffe, right on the Tees. Back then there were none of these awful council estates. We weren’t all squashed up like we are now.’

  ‘Was it a farm?’ Una asked.

  ‘No, lass. Not a farm, but there was nature all around. Real dirt under our feet. We knew all the stars. I’ll bet you girls don’t know any stars.’

  Which was true. Then as now, whenever I look up, all I see is orange. Missing stars were just one of the ways Nana complained about the Burn Estate. She often reminisced about how the good people of Foulde (and later St Esther, where she moved with Granddad) were told by the powers that be that their homes were in fact slums not fit for human purpose. It was an injustice, Nana said, made worse by those communities being split up and forced into ‘these bloody cement chicken coops.’ Whenever Mam and Dad were in earshot of this kind of talk, I’d catch them rolling their eyes at each other.

  But back to the story. ‘Anyway,’ Nana went on, ‘my Mam – that’s your great Grandma – she used to warn us bairns against Peg Powler, just like I’m warning you lasses now. And just like you two, we paid her no mind. Peg Powler? Haway, that’s babby stuff. So of course, one sunny day we all trotted off down to the river to play…’

  Me and Una held each other on the hearth rug.

  ‘If memory serves,’ Nana said, ‘it happened just past Egglesciffe, where the river bends towards Yarm. We were messing about, skimming flatties and catching sticklebacks in jam jars, when my brother Bill said we should play hide and seek. He counted whil
e the rest of us scattered. I went the opposite way to everyone else, and found a willow tree growing out over the river. The dangly leaves came down and met the reeds to make a sort of veil around me. Its roots were just above the water, so I clambered down onto them and ducked. It was a good hiding place and soon, in the distance, I heard my friends screaming as Bill caught them. I remember thinking, “I’m going to win!”’ Nana leaned forward in her chair. ‘But then a cold feeling crept over me. I was being watched. I looked down and the river was going white. Mam had warned me about Powler’s Cream. It meant she was close…’ she glanced at the clock. ‘Oh, I think its teatime girls.’

  ‘NO!’

  Nana flashed her dentures. ‘Sure?’

  ‘YES!’

  We settled back down and Nana carried on.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘I was looking at the cream when Peg appeared. All I could see of her was her head above the water. She had a hand like this’ – Nana splayed her hand over her face and glared at us through arthritic fingers – ‘and she was looking right at me.’

  Una dug her filthy nails into my arm.

  ‘I couldn’t move,’ Nana said, ‘couldn’t speak. I was in some kind of trance. I could hear her in my head, calling my name, and the more I listened, the more I wanted to go to her.

  ‘Then she took that bony claw away, and I’ll tell you, girls, I never want to set eyes on another face like that as long as I live. Her skin was a sickly green stretched so tight you could see her skull. Black hair plastered down the sides of her head, and there were wriggly things in it. Worms and parasites, God knows. You could see her workings under what little flesh she had left – the bones, sinews, tendons. And the smell. Can you guess what she smelled of?’

  We shook our heads.

  ‘Mildew,’ Nana said. ‘She stank so bad I couldn’t breathe. When she smiled her teeth were like broken bottles.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘But do you know the worst thing, girls?’

  Whisper: ‘What?’

  ‘She was beautiful.’

  I didn’t understand. How could someone so terrible looking be beautiful?

  But before I could say anything, Una spoke. ‘So what did she do?’

  ‘Peg? She got closer and closer. I tried to move, scream, but I couldn’t. I wet myself. My foot started slipping off the roots. It all happened so slowly, and her eyes – oh God girls, those eyes – they never left mine. When she was close enough, she reached out and her long slimy fingers closed round my ankle. They were so, so cold. Cold and dead. And that’s when I heard Billy shouting my name from the top of the bank. Somehow his voice did something, broke the spell. I tried to scramble away, but Peg tightened her grip and started sinking. She wanted to take me down into the water with her.’

  Una’s leg jiggled against mine.

  ‘I was in up to my knees, girls, I was this close,’ Nana leaned forward in her chair, holding her thumb and index finger a centimetre apart, ‘this close to letting her have me. But then I thought of Billy and Mam and Dad, how I’d never see them again, and I yanked my leg as hard as I could and suddenly I was free. I staggered through muck and reeds and collapsed on the bank just down from Billy and the rest of my friends. Bill was white as a sheet, bless! My shoe was full of blood. She’d taken a chunk out of me.’

  I glanced over at Una. Her fists were balled.

  ‘I never played on the river again,’ Nana said. ‘I knew Peg had the taste for me.’

  ‘Did you ever tell?’ Una whispered, awed.

  ‘I told everyone! Even Mam and Dad. I didn’t want Peg getting anybody else, did I?’

  ‘Did they believe you?’

  ‘Why not likely. Me and Bill both took a hiding, and my friends thought I was soft in the head.’ Nana worried a loose thread on her skirt. ‘Anyway, shortly after, Bill got pneumonia and died…I didn’t feel much like playing after that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nana.’ I said. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.

  ‘It was a long time ago, hin.’

  A silence. Then, me: ‘Nana?’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘None of that was real, was it? About Peg Powler?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘It was real,’ Una said. ‘How old was she?’

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ Nana said. ‘Old and young at the same time. It was queer.’

  ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘I only saw her up to her chest, but it didn’t look like she was wearing anything.’

  Una clenched her fists. ‘What do you think would’ve happened if she’d got you?’

  ‘Una, lass, I don’t know…’

  Una turned to me. ‘Don’t you believe her?’

  ‘I dunno…’

  Nana wriggled her right foot. ‘Slipper.’

  Una pulled it off.

  ‘Sock.’

  Una gripped the toe of the sock and tugged it off inch by inch, revealing Nana’s thin, splotchy shin. We gasped: there, just above the nub of her ankle, was a sickle of scar-tissue.

  So I think that’s the Green Girl in the painting, Stephan. Her name is Peg Powler and she quickly became more than just another spooky tale to Una. She kept pestering Nana to retell the story, demanding more information each time, and I think Nana was puzzled by her growing obsession. Worried, even.

  One day not long after, Una didn’t come to school, or appear round my house for tea the way she did most days. When she finally turned up in my backyard the next morning, her clothes were stiff with mud and she had sticky-jacks in her hair. She’d walked all the way to Egglescliffe, to where Nana had played hide and seek, and waited on the riverbank all night for Peg to come. She’d even splashed her feet in the water. I asked Una what she’d seen, and anyone in it simply to get swept up in some girlish nonsense would’ve gone, ‘I saw her! I saw!’ But Una just shook her head, ground filthy fists into her eyes.

  *

  I’m not sure I want to see this painting of Peg you tell me Una did. There’s always been a cranny of my mind where that witch has festered (I never told Alan about her when he was a boy because I didn’t want him carrying her around like I’ve carried her). I also worry that confronting Peg again would somehow unleash her…or more specifically, unleash the way I felt back then. It’s ridiculous, but as Peg tightened her grip on Una’s mind, I felt left out once more. Jealous even, because I wondered if Una, my only friend, heard Peg the same way Nana had done on the riverbank that day: a voice calling from a place I would never be brave enough to follow.

  Jean.

  4/5/1991

  Dear Stephan

  My folks visited today, and it’s the same old rigmarole each time Dad and Vincent get together. Nodding at each other like they’re suffering whiplash.

  Grunt: ‘Vincent.’

  Grunt: ‘Ronnie.’

  Men!

  Today, after the usual warm salutations, Vincent had the good sense to make himself scarce and go over to his garage, or the Labour Club, or his allotment. Or wherever he really goes when he says he’s going to those places. Once he was gone, Alan emerged from his room and made the tea. He gets on well with his Gran and Granddad, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me. Dad asks him the time-honoured question of whether he’s courting. It makes the lad squirm, bless. I’d love it if Alan was courting, but he isn’t. I know.

  As always, Mam took me in, searching for signs of weight loss, bags under my eyes, new things of pills on the side. Her Avon foundation was the colour of a peach melba, and when she plonked herself down on my bedside chair, the cushions whoomphed exactly like the chip pan had when it went up last year and I, like a divvy, went to throw water on it. Vincent grabbed my arm at the last second, spinning me into the counter and bruising my hipbone, which lead to the X-rays that found the shadows on my ovaries. Lucky, really. Not th
at I could tell folk round here. When they saw me on my crutch, I knew what they really thought had gone on.

  But that’s all by-the-by. Mam told me about the family recently moved onto 1 Loom Street, Una’s old house. More 2am slanging matches, more thudding ‘techno’ music. The parents looked barely out of school themselves, Mam said, yet had three bairns. I told her to look on the bright side. If they were anything like the last family, they’d be gone within the year.

  ‘But pet,’ she replied, ‘what if the next lot’s worse? At least these ones wear shirts most of the time.’

  The estate is going to the dogs. Private landlords who’ve never once set foot in the place are snapping up the ex-council properties to rent back to the self-same council for silly money when they don’t have enough homes to house the homeless. It’s madness. Or they fill them with all kinds of trouble makers. Those who can are upping sticks. But not us. Vincent bought our house ten years ago, and he’ll refuse to move no matter how bad it gets. And bad it’s getting. There’s less and less familiar faces around these days, and packs of kids roaming the streets. They hang around bus stops and corners until all hours. When I see them, I wonder: Where are your parents?

  But then I think of George and Talitha, and I know.

  To the north of the estate there is a patch of woodland through which the Cong Burn used to run, a little river which eventually fed into the Tees (well, I say river, but really it was more of a stream, and it’s dried up now, or so I’ve heard. They blocked it to build the new houses somewhere between here and Yarm). On the bank of the burn was a large pipe above the water: an entrance to the underground labyrinth of old sewers connected to the derelict waterworks on the other side of the estate.