Free The Ballroom by Anna Hope

you turn round? Look up there instead?’ John pointed to the brow of the hill, the place the girl had come from when she ran.
    Sutcliffe raised a grey, grateful face to him. ‘Can I?’
    ‘Aye.’ John nodded. ‘Do that.’
    The young lad stood, turning three times on the spot, and then, like a dog fussing over its bed, set himself down on the earth, facing away. John could hear him muttering away to himself as he began to dig.
    After an hour or so, when sweat was pouring down his face, and Sutcliffe had grown quiet and, from his bent head and thin, bowed back, looked as though he might have fallen asleep, a whistle blew, and the figure of Brandt appeared on the brow, swaggering down the hill.
    ‘What’s happening here?’ The attendant came to stand before Sutcliffe. He kicked the lad hard in the knee. Sutcliffe sounded a frightened yelp. His face, when he raised it, was panicked, puffy with sleep.
    ‘Get up. Go on.’ Brandt kicked him again. ‘Get up and get down in there.’ He pulled Sutcliffe up by the elbow and shoved him backwards into the grave, where he sprawled in the dirt.
    ‘If you don’t start digging, I’ll start digging,’ said Brandt. ‘And I’ll bury you in there.’
    Sutcliffe began whimpering. ‘No. No. It’s not for me. He promised it’s not for me.’
    ‘If you don’t shut up, when you’re finished I’ll send you downstairs.’
    ‘Please, no …’ Sutcliffe gasped, pointing to John. ‘He said … he said … it weren’t for me.’
    ‘What’s that?’ Brandt’s ratty little eyes came to land on John. ‘So you’re giving orders, are you, Mulligan?’
    John shook his head, lifted his spade, carried on with his work.
    ‘Hey.’ The man’s stick thwacked him on the upper arm. ‘Hey. I’m talking to you. Can you not hear? Or are you deaf as well as daft?’
    Brandt crouched on his haunches, and their eyes were level. ‘Do you know what?’ The man had no front teeth and he hissed as he spoke. ‘I’ve always wondered what you were in here for. What is it then? Being a stupid Irish fuck? I know you lot.’ His spittle landed on John’s jacket. ‘You come over here. Sit on your arses. Expect to be looked after. And now you’re telling people what to do?’
    The man’s breath stank of cheap liquor. The edges of his eyes were yellow, but their pupils were beady and black.
    ‘Why are you never in the ballroom? Don’t they have dances back in Ireland? Can’t lift your feet up out of them bogs? Or is it you don’t like women?’
    ‘Aye,’ said John.
    ‘Aye you do or aye you don’t?’
    He said nothing more.
    ‘Don’t they teach you to speak English over there?
En-ger-lish?
’ Brandt made his mouth slack, tongue hanging, like some of the men in the ward. ‘En-ger-lish, you fuck.’ He waved his stick in the air, as if deciding which of the two of them to beat with it. ‘Tell you what,’ he grinned, gesturing towards Sutcliffe, ‘I’ll let this lad off his trip downstairs if you say it. Say, “I’m a stupid Irish fuck.” And you can dance while you do it.’
    Sutcliffe had stopped his moaning. John could hear him panting like an animal behind him.
    ‘
Say it.
’
    John’s hands twitched on the handle of his spade.
    There was a stirring on the hill above them. A small procession coming down across the railway tracks to Mantle Lane: four men, carrying a plain coffin, and a vicar, all in a line. Brandt twisted to look and then clambered up to attention, his hat pulled off his head and held in his hand. The funeral party stopped at the unfilled grave. One of the men took the boards from it and laid them to the side, and the coffin was lowered in. John could see its pine lid peeking out. Space was tight in there; the grave was full.
    The vicar looked uncomfortable, as though he had been pushed on to a stage against his will, long skirts flapping in the cold and the breeze. One of the men stepped forward and put something else in the hole, a small box this time,