The Wolf in the Attic Read Free Page A

longer cold, but I am afraid.
    I kiss Pie, and raise my head. It suddenly seems a very difficult thing to do. I wonder if they will see my white face glowing out in the dark, but a calm, reasonable voice inside tells me that they are blinded by the firelight. The night is blank to them, a wall of black.
    ‘Look at you, you worthless gyppo shite. Call yourself a countryman. You nicked the guts, you bastard. We’ll have to wash the thing now. Go take it to the river.’
    A little carcass is flung across the fire by one of the men about it, to slap wetly in the face of another. This one jumps to his feet. ‘If you had a knife worth the name and not one blunt as a tinker’s thumb, I’d be able to cut clean. I’d have been better off using a fucking spoon.’
    They are both on their feet now, a fat man and a thin one, the light glaring out of their eyes. Three more men are lying around the fire on bedrolls and blankets. I can see bottles glinting in the flame-light. I can smell the booze from here. It reminds me of the smell in Pa’s study on the afternoons. It surrounds them all, like a bubble of violence all heated up by the fire. I know this. I have seen it before. Somehow I know what is going to happen.
    ‘Go on Bert, teach the little bastard one.’
    ‘Aye. Fucking gypos. Useless bastards. Show him how to use that knife, Bert.’
    The fat man slowly pulls a length of shining metal out of his pocket. It is as long as my hand from fingertip to wrist. It certainly looks sharp to me. The thin one, dark and fine-boned, looks at it as though he has just seen a snake. He is much younger than the fat man, barely more than a boy.
    ‘You would cut a fellow just for that?’ he asks softly. And he is afraid, I can see it.
    ‘I would cut a little squint like you as soon as spit.’ The fat man edges around the fire, and there is a cackling from the others reclining on the grass. They sit up, pass a bottle around, and generally look as though they are about to be entertained.
    ‘You thinks you are something special, boy, just ’cos we lets you travel with us and share a fire? You think we don’t know your kind?’
    ‘I got no fight to pick with you,’ the boy says. ‘Not if you are who you says you are.’
    ‘What do you know about who I am?’ the fat man sneers, and he flips the knife up in air and catches it again with a grin. All the men laugh, except for the dark boy.
    There is a moment, still as a stone, when I think it will end at that, and everything will blow over. But suddenly the fat man utters a yowl, and comes springing round the fire, stepping on one of the others, who spits curses, and he lunges at the boy, pointing his way with the knife blade like a man lighting his way in the dark with a candle.
    I thought the dark boy would run away – I want him to. But he stands his ground, side-steps, and with a grunt, he punches the fat man – Bert – in the side of the head, a slap of flesh which makes me cringe. The fat man stumbles, and the boy is so quick and deft that I do not quite see what he is doing. There is a tumble of shadow, a grunt, and then a high, thin wail of pain.
    Bert is on the ground, very still. He is still breathing, because I can see his breath smoke. He groans.
    The thin dark boy is standing over him. The knife is in his fist now, and he has the firelight at his back so that he is a silhouette. He raises his head, and is breathing very fast, the air sawing out past his mouth. He looks out into the moonlight where I am lying, and my heart seems to stop its rush in my throat for a second. Just for a second, I could swear that there is a light in his eyes, that they catch the moon and reflect it back, as bright as two coins of silver.
    And then he throws the knife away, and I hear it clump into the grass just in front of me. I could reach out and touch it. And it is as though the blade is covered in fresh black paint, glistening under the moon.
    My heart starts again, beating like the