Free The Undertow by Jo Baker Page B

clenched for each push and he is just body and machine and it is good. He lets the speed cruise itself away—rounding the bend into Orbel Street clean and perfect. Then he’s out onto the High Street and the fog is lighter here, and the new business of the day is unfolding—the joy and clatter of it, the speed—and Mr. Hartley is unfurling the awning on the butchers, the new girl at Palmer’s emptying a bucket into the gutter, Leibmann’s clerk taking down the blinds. At the greengrocer’s the boys are unloading sacks from the wholesalers’ wagon, and the horses stand blinkered and half asleep and Billy turns his head to halloo the lads, to show off, but just then a man steps out into the street in front of him. Billy swerves, brakes. The man steps back just in the nick of time.
    “
Little fucker
.”
    For a second, Billy’s eyes are snagged on the man’s. But then he shifts attention back to the bike, balance, the road ahead. He cycles on.
    He only had one ear, Billy realises.
    But he doesn’t matter: Billy’s past him now, rolling off through a heap of horse dung, riding out along the High Street, back towards Cheeseman’s, the day beginning.
    He walks to school unpeeling the spiral of a Chelsea bun. It’s one of yesterday’s buns and a little bit stale but no less the welcome for that. No time to stop for a cuppa; he’d rather skip the tea than give up even a moment on the bike. Tomorrow he will shave another minute off his round. Another minute to dash out and away from the neighbourhood—see how far he can get. He whoofles the soft currants off the yeasty inner flesh, breaks off squares and rectangles of sweet dough and chomps them down. Spice and the sweet pulp of currants overlay the mintiness, erase it.
    This is work. This is what work means. A bike. A currant bun. An Everton Mint.
    Little fucker
.
    He flinches inwardly at the hard words. They don’t have words like that at home, but you hear that kind of thing sometimes, from the rougher men. Forget it, it doesn’t matter, over and gone now. He sucks the sugar off each finger, tasting both sweetness and the sourness and salt of skin. Could he borrow the bike on Sundays, or maybe in the afternoons? Would it be cheeky to ask? Maybe give it a week or two, settle in a bit first. He turns the corner into Cabul Road, sees the backs of Francie Clack and Mickey Peters and he dashes to catch them up. Hand in his pocket, cradling the toy car. The world is new today. He has a power, and it makes everything different from the day before. He can fold the world up into a concertina, roll it out into a ribbon, loop it into paperchains. He has a bike. He has speed. He can go anywhere.
    He comes alongside them.
    “All right?”
    He ducks his head down and scuffs his feet along, and tries to keep his grin under wraps.
    “Look at this.”
    He shows them the car. They walk along, heads bent to examine it. They round the corner and there are more boys here, heading for school, traipsing down the pavement and kicking along the gutter in twos and threes and singly, delaying the inevitable. They’re following the schoolyard wall now, the building looming rusty-black above them, with yelling and scuffling coming from the last-minute games on the far side—tig and football and British bulldogs—and the noise makes Billy pick up his feet, lift his head, hurry on, ready to run and shout with the rest of them, before school closes down around them for the day.
    And then he sees them. Tim Proctor and Charlie Grover. Billy slips the car back into his pocket. Long legs with scabs on and long wrists and jumpers worn out at the elbow. Just leaning there by the gate. Francie and Mickey go quiet. But the three of them keep on walking. They might get past without notice; there are plenty of other boys: Tim and Charlie might pick on someone else.
    There’s a boil on the side of Tim Proctor’s neck. It peeps up from underneath his collar. It looks sore. A nasty pinkish red, with