An extract from Verdigris Deep

1. The Flight of the Trolley

For a wonderful moment Ryan thought Josh was going to make it. When they had turned the corner to find the bus already at the stop the older boy had burst into a run, scattering starlings and shattering puddles. The bus’s engine gave a long, exasperated sigh and shrugged its weight forward as if hulking its shoulders against the rain, but Ryan still believed Josh would snatch success at the last minute, as always. Then, just as Josh drew level with its tail lights, the bus roared sulkily away, its tyres leaving long streaks of dull against the shiny wet tarmac.

Josh chased it for about twenty yards. Then, through the tiny crystal specks of rain that freckled his glasses, Ryan saw his hero stumble, slow and aim a kick at a lamp post.

The bus seemed to have carried away Ryan’s stomach, and the last of the summer daylight. Suddenly the dingy string of shops seemed much colder, darker and more dejected than before. Ryan could still taste the chocolate milkshake that had cost them their ride, and the flavour made him feel sick. 

Behind him he heard Chelle’s asthmatic gasping and turned to find her fumbling with her inhaler. She took a deep breath, her round eyes becoming even wider for a second so that he could see the whites all round them. She stared at Josh’s slowly returning figure.

‘He said … Josh said … he said that the bus was always late, he said there was time for a milkshake, he said there was, he said we’d have plenty of time … I am sososososososo dead … my mum thinks I’m babysitting …’ He pale eyebrows had climbed up her forehead in panic to hide behind her blonde fringe.

‘Shush, Chelle,’ Ryan said as kindly as he could. It was hopeless. Chelle was unshushable. 

‘But … it’s all right for Josh, everyone expects him to get into trouble. I … I don’t know how to be in trouble ..’

‘Shush, Chelle,’ Ryan said with more urgency. Josh was almost within earshot. Whenever Josh felt bad about something he had done he got angry with the whole world, became playfully vicious. Ryan did not want to be stranded in Magwhite with an angry Josh.

Needless to say, Josh, Ryan and Chelle were not meant to be in Magwhite at all.

Magwhite was an almost-place. The gas towers and the railway made it almost part of Guildley. The lurid fields of oilseed rape that stretched away to the east were almost countryside. The sad little strings of houses, the minimart and the bike shop were almost a village. The towpaths were almost pretty.

Someone had once been knifed there, or maybe a finger with a ring had been found on one of the paths, or perhaps the local rugby club came to pee in the canal from the bridge. Nobody could quite remember which, but something had happened to give the name ‘Magwhite’ ugly edges. If Magwhite was mentioned, parents’ faces stiffened as if they had picked up a bad smell. It was very definitely Out of Bounds.

There was nothing much to do there, to tell the truth, but its out-of-boundsness made it exciting. Feeding chips to the jackdaws outside the boarded-up Magwhite post office was more exciting than feeding ordinary birds in the park. There was a bridge with a cavernous echo underneath, so Josh always made Ryan and Chelle bring empty orange-juice cartons there with them. They blew them full of air, closed them and then jumped them flat and listened as the bang echoed like a gunshot. Ever since the summer holidays had started, the forbidden excursions to picnic by the Magwhite canal had become almost routine. 

Magwhite was their place, but now there was nothing Ryan wanted more than to be out of it.

Josh trudged back towards the others, his head bowed, the rain darkening his fierce, blond, scrubbing-brush hair. He seemed to be grinning at his foot. Maybe he had hurt it against the lamp post. Then he looked up, and Ryan saw that he was grinning.

‘S’all right.’ Josh shrugged and wiped the rain off his yellow-tinted shades with his sleeve. ‘We’ll catch the next one.’

Chelle was biting her lower lip, her upper lip pulling down to a point, like a little soft beak. She was trying not to disagree, because she worshipped Josh more than anybody else in the world, but words always seemed to dribble out of Chelle like water from a broken tap.

‘But … we can’t, that was the last Guildley Cityline bus, our return tickets won’t work for the Point-to-Point bus, and we haven’t got enough money for new tickets, Josh, we spent it on the milkshakes an’ the fruit machine … we’re stuck …’

‘No, we’re not.’ Josh was still smiling. ‘I have a plan.’

It was a simple plan, an odd plan, but it was a Josh plan, so it had to work.

Behind the wall of the minimart car park, there was a long tree-tangles slope that ran down to the canal side. In this wood roamed escapee supermarket trolleys, stripped grass trapped in their wheels, ‘sweetheart’ creepers trailing from their wire frames. Josh’s plan was to find one of these, take it back to the minimart car park, attach it to the train of trolleys outside the entrance doors and reclaim the pound coin deposit in the handle slot. 

Suddenly everything was an adventure again. The threesome dropped over the wall into the wood and started hunting through the trees like soldiers in a jungle.

It was a strange wood, strange still not the light was fading. Ryan loved it for its litter. Yellowing newspapers nestled in branch nooks, like a crop of dead leaves strangely patterend with print. A sprawling throne of rotten oak trailed dark ivy and coddled a treasure trove of crushed cans. The twigs of one wavering branch had been carefully threaded through the fingers of a red, woolen mitten, so that the little tree looked as if it was waiting to grow another hand and start applauding.

‘Ryan, you’re our eagle eyes, find us a trolley,’ said Josh, and Ryan felt an uncomfortable swell of pride and doubt. He was never sure if Josh was making fun of him. ‘He sees everything different to us, Chelle. Cos his eyes, right, they’re in upside down. You just can’t tell looking at ’em.’ 

Chelle gave a faint giggle, but in the darkness her dimly discernible face looked uncertain. Her eyes were large and widely spaced, windows into a world full of doubt and surprise.

‘’S true,’ insisted Josh. ‘He blinks upwards, you know. Not when you’re watching he doesn’t. But right now, in the dark, I bet he’s blinking upwards like anything, aren’t you, Ryan?’

Ryan wasn’t sure how to answer, so he plunged on through the trees and pretended not to hear. Scaring Chelle was easy, and Josh seemed to find pleasure in teasing her. It was often hard for Ryan to remember that Chelle was older than he was. Ryan himself had been ‘moved ahead’ and dunked into the icy waters of secondary school a year before everyone he knew. It did not help that was small, skinny and full of sentences that sounded fine in his head, then came out sounding over-adult and clever-clever. He had formed an alliance of desperation with Chelle. She had an air of kitten-tottering helplessness, and the pallor of her hair and skin made her look as if she had been through the wash too many times, losing her colour and courage in the rinse. All this made her an irresistible mark for the bullies I her class. Both Ryan and Chelle had been glad to find someone willing to talk to them, even if in Chelle’s case she apparently lacked the ability to stop talking. 

Josh had been their salvation. He had the advantage of age – there is a world of difference between a first year and a second year – but in any case, no bully knew what to make of Josh, with his Cheshire Cat grin and knuckle duster humour. Taunts seemed to bounce off the shields of his yellow shades, leaving his attackers winded by the ricochet. He won people around somehow, as if everyone wanted in on the private joke that kept him smirking. Josh had remembered Ryan from primary school, and suddenly, to their surprise, both Ryan and Chelle were taken under his capricious wings. For the last year, his friendship had protected them from the worst school-time persecutions like an invisible amulet. For all these reasons, Ryan guessed that Chelle did not truly mind Josh’s teasing, but he never felt comfortable joining in with it.

Usually there were half a dozen trolleys in the little wood. This evening, however, the trolleys seemed to know that they were in danger of being taken back to captivity and had all gone into hiding. At last Ryan cornered on e down by the canal. It was lying on its side as if it had fallen in its hurry to get away and been unable to get back on its wheels. The three of them dragged it over to the wall, feeling the trolley catch at every bramble and tussock, trying to jolt itself out of their grasp.

It was only when they reached the car-park wall that they started to see a small flaw in Josh’s plan – or what would have been a flaw if it had not been Josh’s plan.

The ground on the woodland side of the wall was much lower than it was on the car-park side. They’d scrambled up and down the wall themselves so often that they no longer noticed how high it was. Now they stared sadly at the trolley, then up at the wall, which loomed above and laughed at them.

‘We can do this,’ Josh said after a moment. ‘’S just mechanics, that’s all.’ 

Following Josh’s new plan, the three scavenged materials for a makeshift rope – a loose flapping ribbon of plastic cordon tape, a moldering abandoned T-shirt, a length of wire. These were knotted together, and one end tied firmly to the trolley. The other end was thrown over a low branch, and Chelle and Ryan grabbed it as it tumbled down on the other side. Josh, who was by far the strongest of the three, clambered up on to the wall and waited to grab the trolley when Chelle and Ryan had hauled it high enough.

This can’t work, thought Ryan as he started to pull on the ‘rope’. But then, amazingly, the trolley raised its handle-end, swung to and fro, and took to the air. Chelle had to keep one hand off the ‘rope’ to stop the trolley swinging into them, but it was aloft. The plan was working.

The flight of the trolley was a beautiful thing to see. It bucked repeatedly against the tree trunk, and its wheels left scars across the lichen, but it rose, a few inches at a time. Then  just as it was almost within reach of Josh’s fingertips, it bumped up against one of the lower boughs and half disappeared among the leaves. They tugged and tugged, and the foliage shivered and shook, spilling sleeping raindrops on to their upturned faces. A thin branch had pushed its way up under the trolley’s blue plastic child seat, and would not release it. 

At last Ryan and Chelle stopped tugging. They stood sucking their burned palms and stared up at the triumphant trolley.

‘I think,’ began Chelle, tumbling helplessly into the silence, ‘I think if we sort of stuck a stick up under that wheel and levered it, p’raps swayed it to and fro, then it might …’

‘It’s stuck,’ said Josh. They had all known this in their souls, but Josh saying so made it true. Josh’s yellow-tinted sunglasses had dulled with the setting of the sun, and behind them Ryan could see the pale flicker of eyelids as Josh blinked twice and narrowed his eyes. He was biting both lips together so they were quite hidden – a bad sign with Josh. 

Without another word, Josh dropped from the wall and strode away down the slope towards the canal. Ryan and Chelle exchanged a look and then followed.

He’s not going to run off and leave us, he can’t mean to do that … but what did Josh have to lose if he went home late? Being in trouble meant something different in Josh’s home. It brought only another crash against a chill wall of disapproval, and sometimes Josh seemed to have no fear of that. Ryan caught up with Josh and spent a moment trying to think of the right thing to say.

‘Where are we going?’ he tried at last. 

‘The well.’ Josh sounded too calm. 

They followed Josh’s ruthless pace, struggling through dead-nettles and ducking the drooping purple fingers of the buddleia, until they reached the moss-covered steps that led down to the canal bank and path. Trainers sliding against the wet slate of the steps, they descended until the glitter of the canal was just visible through the trees; then Josh stopped. To one side of the steps was a small dimple in the ground, and at the bottom of the dimple was a stark ring of concrete, with a wire mesh covering the hole in the middle. Several crisp packets, a few cigarette stubs and half an apple had been pushed through the wire and stuck in the mesh. A little Council Trust sign next to it had been scarred beyond legibility by cigarette burns.

Josh got down on his hands and knees. Only when he got out his Swiss Army knife and pulled free the screwdriver attachment did Ryan realize what he was doing. Soon Josh had unscrewed three of the bolts fastening the well cover in place and was starting on the fourth. 

‘It’s a wishing well, isn’t it?’ Josh explained, continually going to wrestle with the rusty bolts. ‘And that means coins. Got it!’ The wire mesh came away. ‘All right, who’s going down? Chelle, you’re thin and wriggly. Want to go?’

‘I can’t!’ squeaked Chelle. What if I fell in, it’ll be freezing, it’ll set off my asthma and I can’t swim properly when I’m gasping …’

‘Don’t be daft. If you fell in you’d just stick – there’d be no room for swimming.’ Josh grinned at her. ‘All right then.’ He swung his legs over the edge and, to the others’ dismay, started to lower himself in.

‘Josh, look, um …’ began Ryan. He exchanged a worried glance with Chelle as Josh disappeared into blackness. 

‘Josh, what if you go and get stuck, what are we going to do, shouldn’t we make another rope and tie it round your chest, cos if you get stuck, Josh, I don’t think we can--’ 

A sharp cry echoed in the darkness below them.

‘Josh!’ squealed Chelle. She threw herself on to her hands and knees beside the well to stare down into the murk, her pale hair falling in a shoulder-length curtain around her face.

‘Christ, it stinks down here!’ 

‘You git, Josh, you scared us!’ Chelle’s nervousness melted helplessly into giggles. 

‘That’s right, you go ahead and laugh. Here I am down here fighting … fighting well trolls for you …’ There were noises of pretend combat below, followed by a sudden splash. ‘Oh bollocks.’

Chelle peered down into the well again, her frightened laughter escaping in husky staccato yelps.

‘I think he’s fallen in,’ she managed. ‘I can hear sploshing.’

‘Can’t be that deep then,’ whispered Ryan. He was pretty sure that if Josh was drowning he would be spending more time screaming and less time swearing under his breath.

‘Right,’ I’ve got some,’ they heard at last. The well’s echo gave Josh’s voice a solemn and impressive sound. ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’

‘How do we know it’s still Josh down there?’ called Chelle, made bold by laughter. ‘How do we know it’s not just a troll looking like Josh, who’s eaten the real one and stolen his clothes …’

‘C’mon, Ryan, we’ll use Chelle as a rope, you lower her by her ankles an’ I’ll grab her wrists …’

There was a yelp of protest from Chelle as she scuffled quickly away from the well’s brink.

‘Oh, all right then, I’ll climb .. I dunno, no gratitude. Coming up.’ From the darkness below came the sound of Josh, or the troll-Josh, whistling to himself as he started to climb, interrupted now and then by the scrape and splash of dislodged masonry. At long last Josh reappeared and clambered out. He shook one leg then the other, trying to dance the water out of his trainers. Even in the dusk light, however, it was obvious that his trainers were the least of his problems.

Chelle fumbled a small white something out of her pocket. She looked at it, and then at the sodden wreckage of Josh’s clothes, and her shoulders began to shake uncontrollably. 

‘I’ve got a tissue!’ she squeaked, and somehow this was much funnier than it should have been.

Fortunately Ryan remembered the time, and five minutes later they were running down Magwhite’s high street just in time to catch the last bus to Guildley.

Open-mouthed, the driver looked at the green that slicked Josh’s hedgehog hair and smudged his sun-glasses, took in his clothes, dark and clinging with water from the waist down, contemplated the slimy puddle of blackened coins in Josh’s outstretched hand. 

‘You just pulled all that lot out of the blinking well, didn’t you?’

‘No,’ said Josh, with his best brash, unblinking stare. 

It was the total shamelessness of this lie that seemed to throw the driver off balance. He gave Josh a long look, as if to say that he wasn’t fooled, that he’d be watching him. Then he jabbed a few buttons on his ticket machine and a loop of three tickets curled into Josh’s waiting hand.

‘Thank you, my good man,’ said Josh, tearing them off crisply. It was taking cockiness too far, and Ryan’s heart jumped, but the driver said nothing. Josh sauntered to the back of the bus and waited while Chelle spread the seat with newspapers for him, then settled himself with a grin, as if he would face no inquisition when he reached home half-drowned, with rust under his fingernails.

He did it. He saw us safe. At that moment Ryan would willingly have taken a bullet for Josh. He would have followed him over deserts or waded across leech-infested rivers for him. Ryan hugged the surge of feeling, as Chelle talked and Josh wiped his sunglasses with Chelle’s tissue. Suddenly he wanted to face some great danger or difficulty and prove himself to his hero in turn, and he was so full of the wish that it seemed it might split him like a conker shell.

If Ryan had known as much about wishes then as he came to know later, he would have been a lot more careful of his thoughts.