Tommo & Hawk Read Free Page A

they be wrong! That's their biggest mistake! What Ikey taught us at cards, me hands took to natural, like they had a mind of their own.

    Ikey himself were most complimentary about this. 'Most elegant and nimble, full o' guilefulness and most diabolical of purpose, flippers tailor-made by the devil himself to belong to a broadsman o' most superior talent. Congratulations, my dear.'

    Ikey were right, me hands has a pure and natural ability for winning at cards by means of cheating. They's good enough kept on the straight, mind - they hold their own and more in any honest game, if such an event be possible. But they is most amazing on the cross. Sometimes they do things with a deck o' flats what can even astonish me. Never's the day they don't earn me grog enough to dampen down what's ugly and frightening and burnin' inside me. There's always some mouth who fancies himself at cards and who's got a silver sixpence to lose in a hurry. Or a trooper with the Queen's florin he wants to double or treble and who grows most confident when he watches Tommo's clumsy little hands busy at spreading the cards around the table.

    That be me only asset, hands what are up to no good, good only for cheating at cards, fist-fighting, dog-baiting and being most fast and nimble when they are clasped around the handle of a small lopping axe, like the one I always carries on me belt in case of mongrels.

    Them's me total credentials, me hands. Hawk says he'll learn me reading again, the trick of which I've long since forgotten. But I'm not so sure I can pick it up again. 'Look,' he says, 'you learned Ikey's hand language soon enough again. Reading is the same, you'll soon be schooled back to it again.' But reading be a thing of the head, and Ikey and Hawk's hand language be a thing of the hands. That's the big difference, me head's fucked but me hands ain't.

    Nastiness is the only thing what I'm well schooled in now. Mary's nicely brought up little lad, Tommo, what even at seven years old had some book learning and writing, is now everything what's deemed bad. But Mary and Hawk expects that with a bit of plumping up, kindness and affection, what I am become will go away again. That the niceness is still inside me, only for a moment drowned out by me wilderness life, that with a bit of gentleness and love and a few gravy-soaked Sunday dinners under my belt, it'll all bob back to the surface, like a cormorant what's been fishing. And there I'll be, good as new, floating merrily down the river of happiness and contentment.

    How the hell, I begs to know, does I do that? For seven sodding years I had the living daylights kicked out o' me by mongrels the like o' Sam bloody Slit! Now I'm supposed to pretend all is forgiven and the world ain't no longer a bad place. Can't them two see that ain't possible? That what's inside me is all screwed up. for good?

    A large hand come down on the back of me neck and squeezes. Not so it hurts but firm enough. Crikey, it be Hawk! I didn't see or feel him come in, so lost am I in me own stupid misery.

    I grabs at the tot in front of me and tries to knock it back, but me head won't go back because Hawk's holding me neck and I spills most o' the precious liquid onto me blouse. 'Damn!' I twists away angry and looks up. Sure enough, Hawk's got his finger and thumb pinching at his nose, lamplight shining on his fingernails. I can't help but smile.

    Hawk lifts me from the bench by me scrawny neck. He don't do it rough but he don't intend to have no protest from me neither. I could still twist and kick him in the bollocks, double him up, then head-butt him as he's coming down - I'll take on any cove what's up to a foot higher than me and bigger yet if I be drunk. Besides, I got me axe. But I don't, of course. I don't fight Hawk, who's like a band of iron around me neck. It ain't him what's making me angry, so I lets him steer me towards the door.

    Brodie shouts I owe him sixpence.

    Hawk lets go my neck, digs in his coat