L
‘I thought the Knights never got caught?’
‘Foukin’ straight,’ Boz prickles and straightens up.
‘Let’s go – watcha selves awright.’
‘Bye boys.’ Lunagirl adds.
When the distance from the boys is beyond an ear clip or backhander Lunagirl hears Nige spit, ‘Fouk off Shades.’
Wait till they graduate from drinking Buckfast and Stone’s Ginger Wine in the park thought Rainfish. Give ‘em a couple of years trading cans under bus shelters and pints in the pub and he won’t recognise any of these scroats.
Rainfish launches Lunagirl back out into the incumbent light. They skip around the back of the Oxford Rd station, between the colossal old mills along Cambridge and Hulme Street, and weave under the brick arch of Oxford Rd station to find the stairs by the Attic.
Rainfish flies up the station steps, trampolining off every second step, dragging Lunagirl behind like a balloon. They coat-tail a passenger through the guarded gates, and vault up and over the walkway to the south bound line as the waiting train hisses for attention and closes its doors.
‘Fouk!’
The locomotive winces like sneakers on a polished surface to find traction. As they land onto the platform Rainfish’s abrupt stop would have put Lunagirl hard into his back but his fence wire arms absorb her momentum and he draws her effortlessly into a protective cradle behind him. Standing in the middle of the platform like boulders are two Sunderland cousins, Billy and Steve grinning like farmers.
‘Who’s this then?’
‘Little Neil Ranford from Moss Side.’
‘You been a bit naughty ‘aven’t you Neil?’
Down below in the cobbled basin of the station outside the Thirsty Scholar Rainfish and Lunagirl hear Boz and Nige shouting.
‘Get the fouk off me.’
‘Fouk you.’
They’re getting worked over. Their voices slump into deep, desperate grunts that blister at the end like feral animals cornered. They punch ‘fouk off,’ like pneumatic cannons which ricochets about the archway.
‘Don’t fouking touch me you paedo.’
Rainfish obsesses with the thought someone must have sold him out. Could it be Phil? Not that it matters. His senses heighten to his surroundings. He plants his feet – and like roots penetrating deep into Manchester’s core he taps into a sub terrestrial nervous system and starts to feel everything. He senses the minute variances in wind and humidity and barometric pressure, recording it all. By pure force of will he feels as if the whole planet has stopped spinning while his mind frantically rotates in orbit around it. Lunagirl shatters the spell.
‘Wot do we do?’
The boulders roll forward with bulldog jaws and ruddy fat faces. Rainfish realises he’s been pushing the both of them backwards in retreat.
‘You and your boys got a bit greedy didn’t ya?’
‘Fouk off – we ‘aven’t done n-thing.’
‘And who’s the little gothic freak with ya?’
‘It’s emo you foukin nonce.’
Rainfish hears the distinctive heavy plodding and smokers’ weeze of more Sunderland thugs approaching on the walkway overhead.
‘May have to teach her some manners as well, aye Billy?’
An apoplectic wind besieges the platform as the Virgin London Euston Express sallies out of Piccadilly. Lunagirl’s hood whips back off her head. Her hair and ears prick. She can hear The Smiths Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want, as the skies blacken with tar smoke.
Lunagirl’s arms automatically rise like an antenna. The thugs chuckle like their mouths are stuffed full of breakfast butties. Rainfish sniffs rain. Lunagirl hears Morrissey buzzing faintly like a nearby commuter’s earphones, then his voice resounds in a whale breaching gust that crashes through her.
So please,
please,
please-
let me,
let me,
let me,
let me
get what I want
this time
Rainfish stabs Lunagirl with his hip as he lassos her to him with one arm.
‘Do you trust me Jane?’
No matter how callous or hard his grip, the trust and tenderness in his fingertips always allows her to forgive. The Virgin Express hurtles through the station. Spittle flies off ribcages of carriages. Rainfish grabs a stray puck droplet like monkey bars and swings them both over the three-story high railing. Cries and whistles from above are lost in the callathump of metal on metal.
Rain starts to fall. Rainfish and Lunagirl fall faster. Lunagirl’s eyes are trapshut. She still hears The Smiths like they’re being broadcast in the din of an airbus during take-off.
Lord knows, it would be the first time.
Lunagirl’s expecting a bone snapping mash of pain or death. She wishes for death. It shouldn’t take this long. Rainfish sees a soft mist of rainfall overtake him. The pavement is there. He stretches out for a splinter of a tear drop like it’s a football. He grunts. He catches the thinnest pellet and strikes down on it like hitting a steep travelator. His clenched teeth spume with spit as his leg strains to upright them both.
Mortal velocity dampens but the weight of two bodies still carries downward with frightening speed. Fingers from the ground Rainfish feels the tension catch. They slow suddenly like they’re in the resiled pouch of a bungee slingshot. His trainer grazes the concrete. The inertia allows him to pull Lunagirl and him back into balance. He lunges and jumps breaking bed springs back up into the moist air. They climb quickly but the imbalance of Lunagirl slews them violently left and right like a damaged kite up over rooftops.
The Smiths fade to a tin whistle of air. Lunagirl opens her eyes. She sees two clay moulds with thumbs for arms throw Nige and Boz onto stone with a wet smack, which gives them the rarest opportunity to scuttle out of sight. Rainfish’s entire focus extends simply to the next step in front of him.
They just clear the railway line leaping and swinging through the air – over stained tiles towards Castlefield. Lunagirl can hear his heart whack against his chest, but he is barely raising a sweat and breathing in short straw breaths. She glimpses up and sees he wears a grimace and dogged stare. His concentration is stealing his oxygen and he looks between lost and found.
The tempest, like an augury abates as rapidly as it appeared. Rainfish feels the ceiling of the rain plummet down. He descends heavily with it, knee cartilage crunching back down to the walkway along Rochdale canal. Lunagirl hears the desperation break in the rhythm of his breathing. Rainfish cusses and grunt with each buoyed stretch like they’re abandoning a temple that’s sinking into the ground without having discovered its secrets. Lunagirl opens her eyes again and sees the black murk of the canal.
‘Neil the water!’
‘Whacha think I’m-’ but he’s out breath. He can’t even scoff – he only has enough reserve energy to think what he wants to say.
The last stink of rain cushions their fall four feet from the ground and they crash hard onto the pavement like two logs with knees and elbows, and roll to a stop inches from a lowered lock.
Rainfish peaks under Lunagirl’s hood. He stares into her eyes the colour of faint stars and his mouth curls with an impish grin. Lunagirl smiles back then slaps his shoulder.
‘Ow!’
‘You almost killed us!’
‘You awright?’
Rainfish gets to his feet. Joints start burning with grazes. He hears flesh smacking on pavement. He helps Lunagirl up but she collapses heavily to one side.
‘Fuck, my ankle.’
‘Come-n Shades.’
They’ve landed on a raised knuckle of the passageway by Deansgate locks. The sealed canal gates beside them cascade loudly with maculated water.
Rainfish spots the signature white shirts and forearms further down by Hacienda. Lunagirl feels the sun. She knew it wasn’t a coward and what it wanted. She knew she fit Manchester because here misery was stronger than happiness, and the ferrous sky generally obeyed.
Rainfish feels the heat and sees the wetness rapidly evaporating. He puts her on her feet and she grips him like a tree. Two more youthful looking lieutenants march out from the Albion St underpass – mallet fists pumping with cheap gold sovereign rings.
The auspicious opening note to Stone Roses Waterfall strikes inside Lunagirl’s head, dripping in reverb and echo.
Lunagirl is scared shitless but can’t help smile as the jangling guitar matches the pounding to the rhythm of the dog soldiers approaching.
Bowh de dough dewdee dough dee
Bowh de bough dewdee dough dee
Bowh de dough dewdee dough dee
‘We’re gona fouk you two up,’ whistles out between broken teeth.
Sutures in the cloud start glowing like liquid glass. Lunagirl nuzzles under Rainfish’s arm like it’s a wing.
‘We’re fouked aren’t we?’
But for the first time Rainfish hears the music in the clouds.
To steal what she never could own
And race from this hole she calls home
Rainfish hears the galumph of more footsteps approaching along Whitworth St. He stiffens with expectancy to hear the same soles hit the wooden ramp overhead, and seal their entrapment between the canal and its steep embankment.
‘Do you trust me?’ Rainfish says with a horned smile.
Lunagirl looks up at him. She knows.
‘Will you stop saying that?’
‘It’s the Stone Roses innit?’
Retribution is at arms’ reach. Lunagirl smiles as she throws herself around Rainfish and tackles him over the edge of Deansgate lock in a breathless embrace.
There’s a thin splash like a coin in a wishing well, a single ripple, an exhausted gathering of muscle and cannonade of swearing. A small bubble bursts the dead water, then another and another that form a small chain skating patterns in the middle of the lock. One of the men dusts the ground with his knuckles, feebly grasping for loose rock to toss his aggression into water.
‘Quit it! It’s just a foukin’ newt.’
‘Must ‘ave hit their heads.’
‘They’re done in,’ says another.
‘Tidy piece of work in the end aye boys.’ adds the leader and slaps the men on their backs as they leave.
She’ll carry on through it all
She’s a waterfall
She’ll carry on through it all
She’s a waterfall
Rainfish and Lunagirl were never seen again. As predicted Phil was back smoking a spliff when Nige and Boz returned with incoherent rants and rambling stories of conflicting events that got retold in the wind and rain from bus shelters and shop fronts for the next two weeks. By the time bruises faded and cuts healed Rainfish and Lunagirl were already forgotten. But that’s the way life is.
Six months passed. Yvonne sat in front of the nightly news broadcast bouncing Ttey on one knee. He was getting big she thought. She had run a bath and was waiting for the water to cool when a news report announced strange weather patterns and storms afflicting the south coast of Spain. If they subsisted the report warned it could jeopardise tourist numbers and the vital revenue these areas relied on in the high season. Yvonne turned the TV off.
‘Shall we go ‘ave a bath then – you and me aye.’
Ttey laughed with pure delight.
‘Well you’re not like your daddy that’s for sure, God bless – he hated having baths.’
She’ll carry on through it all
She’s a waterfall
She’ll carry on through it all
She’s a waterfall
