ground.
‘Hark at him,’ she said, ‘he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’
Poor old Ma. You’d never take her for a child now. She’d thickened and grown weatherbeaten, and her hair was going grey at the sides. Still walked like a sailor though.
‘I always knew it would come to this,’ she said, with her sore-looking eyes and me feeling bad. I loved my ma. To me, she would ever and always be a warm armpit in the night.
‘What you want then, Ma?’ I said, trying to jolly her along. ‘Eh? What shall I bring you back?’
‘I don’t want anything, you silly sod.’
‘Don’t worry, Ma! It’ll be the making of me. Can’t hang about here all my life, can I? There’s no money here. How you expect me to look after you in your old age if I hang around here all my life? This is a chance of a lifetime, this is. Think!’
‘That’s the trouble,’ she said, pushing me aside with a fishy hand and taking off her apron, ‘I’m thinking all the time. Oh damn. Have you eaten?’
‘Had plenty. Look, Ma, just pour me some tea, will you?’
‘Well, it all sounds ridiculous to me,’ she said, going over to the fire.
I laughed. ‘And there’s the beauty of it,’ I said. ‘It is! Be proud! You can tell everyone: my son’s gone off to catch a dragon. Like knights of old.’
‘You said you wasn’t going to be involved in any hunting!’ She turned accusingly, the poker in her hand.
‘I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m only saying. Of course I’m not.’ I laughed again. I felt quite hysterical. ‘That’s Tim, not me. But I’m part of the enterprise.’
How very important that sounded. How I milked it with the girls at Spoony’s and the Malt Shovel. The enterprise! The great enterprise!
‘You’re only fifteen,’ she said, ‘and you know you’re not a big boy.’
‘Don’t I just.’
Oh, didn’t I just. It had its rewards. They loved me like a babe, those big whores, all wanted to take me into their soft, lemony, lavender bosoms. Many a time for sure I sank my face in there between the creamy swells and drank deep like a babe of mother’s milk, and never a penny was I charged for what others paid for. I was a big man now, though. Fare thee well, you London girls. Jaf Brown is off around the world, and when next you see him he’ll have a tale to tell.
‘Oh, Jaffy, I don’t want you to go!’ Ma palmed an eye angrily. ‘I wish you’d—’
‘Please, Ma,’ I said, embarrassed and irritated.
Please don’t spoil it for me, I wanted to say. I don’t want to have to worry about you while I’m out there, do I? Please please, Ma, don’t make it hard.
‘There’s money in it, Ma,’ I said. ‘A lot of money in it. He’s a very rich man.’
‘Oh, sit down,’ she said, ‘have your tea.’ She knew there was nothing she could do.
‘That’s nothing,’ Tim said when I saw him. ‘You should have heard my ma. Funny!’ And his long, fluttery fingers flew up around his face. ‘“Oh, not you! Not you too, Tim! No-o-o! No-o-o-o! Oh, Lord God in Heaven! N-o-o-o-o!”’
We laughed. What’s a boy for if not to break his ma’s heart?
‘Let’s go to Meng’s,’ he said.
Ishbel was in Meng’s with Jane from Spoony’s. That’s what she did. Work all night bringing in the money at Quashies, at the Rose and Crown, at Paddy’s Goose, and in the afternoon go to Meng’s. Drago was long gone, broken up bit by bit over one sweltering June week when the sloppy green weeds smelled like Neptune’s armpit. Meng’s was our Drago now. A Chinaman in a shiny red coat stood at the door. The pictures on the walls were silky and the great mouth of the fireplace glowed yellow. I got next to Ishbel next to the wall, Tim on the other end of the bench sprawling round ginger Jane and chewing on a liquorice twig.
‘Oh, here they are,’ drawled Ish sarcastically. ‘Hail, the mighty explorers. These bum boils are leaving me, Jane.’
‘I know,’ Jane said, tweaking her tight red curls. ‘It’s all the talk.’
‘Three years! What am I supposed to do all that time stuck here all on me tod?’ She put her arm round my neck. Two years since we’d started cuddling, but she never let me kiss her. She was driving me mad.
Meng wanted to know if we were buying. Tim nodded and paid for us both.
‘Three years?’ said Jane. ‘That’s a very long time.’
‘Maybe less,’ I tossed in in the interests of truth.
‘Well, you couldn’t very well go much further, boys, could you?’ Jane said. ‘Bob says he don’t want to lose you, you know, Jaf.’
‘I think it’s mad.’ Ishbel fussed her hair, still hanging onto me. ‘I think Fledge is mad. Must be, the way you never see him, and he wants this and he wants that and he never shows his face, mad bugger, completely insane if you ask me. Probably lives in a castle and never goes out and wears a mask because he’s hideously ugly.’
‘No doubt.’ Tim was leaning down towards Jane’s round creamy throat. ‘Who cares? He’s paying.’
‘It’s not a real dragon,’ I reminded them.
‘How do you know?’ Tim said. ‘No one knows what it is.’
There was a dragon on the broad mantelpiece, along with a selection of pipes and an owl carved out of wax. I thought of this beast, this old story. Deep in a forest I saw it, great sad red eyes and a crimson tongue, forked like a swallow’s tail and thin as a grass blade, flicking in and out. Sitting there, waiting to be found.
‘Dan Rymer thinks there’s something,’ Tim said staunchly.
‘Oh, and he knows, does he?’ Ishbel said. ‘He knows everything.’
‘He knows a hell of a lot, that’s for sure.’ Tim put back his head and blew a great blue cloud of smoke up at the ceiling, smiling. His hair glowed gold in the firelight. I don’t even know if he really wanted to go. He said he did but you never knew with Tim. ‘Even Jamrach doesn’t know the half of what Dan knows about wild animals,’ he said.
There are dragons and dragons, of course. It was an eastern dragon we were after. The one on the back of the doorman’s shiny red coat and the one on the mantelpiece were eastern dragons, fierce sort of winged snakes with many coils, huge whiskered heads and enormous, bulging eyes.
‘It’s not a real dragon,’ I repeated. ‘It hasn’t got wings.’
‘I’m glad you’re going, Jaf,’ Ishbel said. She put her face right in mine so I could taste her spicy breath. I pulled back a little. It was always a now and then thing, and only when she felt like it. That wasn’t fair.
