A Place of Hiding

Paul saw this directly he entered. Billy’s smirk gave him away. There’d been a time when he might have appealed to their parents. There was even a time when he might have flung himself mindlessly at his brother without considering the differences in their size and their strength. But those times had passed. The longtime meat market—a fixture of the proud old complex of colonnaded buildings that comprised Market Square in St. Peter Port—had closed forever, destroying his family’s means of support. His mother was now behind a Boots till on the High Street, ringing up purchases, while his father had joined a roadworks crew where the days were long and the labour was brutal. Neither of them was in the house at the moment to help and even if one of them had been, Paul wasn’t about to burden them further. As for taking on Billy himself, he knew he was slow at times, but he wasn’t stupid. Taking Billy on was what Billy wanted. He’d wanted it for months and had done much to make it happen. He was itching to assault someone, and he didn’t care who that someone was.

Paul barely cast him a look. Instead, he leaped to the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink and brought out their father’s tool box. Billy followed him outside, ignoring their sister who remained on the kitchen floor with her hands thrust into the flour bag. Two more of their siblings were squabbling upstairs. Billy was supposed to be getting them off to school. But Billy never did much of anything he was supposed to do. Instead, he spent his days in the weed-filled back garden, pitching pennies into the beer cans that he emptied from dawn to dusk.

“Ohhh,” Billy said with mock concern when his eyes lit on the ruin of Paul’s bike. “Wha’ the hell happened here, Paulie? Someone do something to your bike, di’ they?”

Paul ignored him and flung himself to the ground. He began by removing the tyre first. Taboo, who’d been standing guard at the bike, sniffed round it suspiciously, a whine deep in his throat. Paul stopped and took Taboo over to a nearby lamppost. He tied the dog to it and pointed to the ground where he wanted him to lie. Taboo obeyed but it was clear he didn’t like it. He didn’t trust Paul’s brother one iota and Paul knew the dog would have vastly preferred to stick close to his side.

“Need to go somewheres, do you?” Billy asked. “And your bike got wrecked. Wicked, that. What people will do.”

Paul didn’t want to cry because he knew that tears would give his brother more roads to take in tormenting him. It was true that tears would give him less satisfaction than defeating Paul in a brutal dust-up, but they still would serve as a better-than-nothing and Paul vastly preferred to give Billy nothing. He’d long ago learned that his brother had no heart and even less conscience. He lived to make the lives of others a torment. It was the only contribution he could make to the family.

So Paul ignored him, which Billy didn’t like. He took up a station leaning against the house, and he lit yet another cigarette. Rot your lungs, Paul thought. But he didn’t say it. He just set about patching the worn old tyre, taking up the bits of rubber and the glue and stretching them across the ragged incision.

“Now lemme see where lit’le bruvver might’ve been going this morning,” Billy said reflectively, dragging in on his fag. “Going to pay a call on Mummy down ’t Boots? Take Dad his lunch somewheres out on the roadworks crew? Hmm. Don’t think so. Clobber’s too posh. Matter of fac’, where’d he get that shirt? Outta my cupboard? Better hope not. ’Cause pinching from me would require some discipline. But p’rhaps I oughter have a closer look. Just to make sure.”

Paul didn’t react. Billy, he knew, was a coward’s bully. The only time he had the bottle to attack was when he believed his victims were cowed. Like their parents were cowed, Paul thought dismally. Keeping him in the house like a nonpaying lodger month after month because they were afraid what he’d do if they chucked him out.

Paul had once been like them, watching his brother cart off family belongings to flog in car-boot sales to keep himself in beer and fags. But that had been before Mr. Guy had come along. Mr. Guy, who always seemed to know what was going on in Paul’s heart and who always seemed able to talk about it without preaching or making demands or expecting anything at all in return but companionship.