The Birthday Party (40 page)

The one good thing that happened was Dave’s health improved, with the fresh air and the dryer environment. He was excited
about going to go to a new school, too, until his mother revealed the fact that it was a Welsh-speaking school, and he had
no grasp of the language.

‘You’ll soon pick it up,’ she told him, but she didn’t understand how difficult it was, to feel like an outsider, an alien.
He
was teased – at least, he thought he was, he didn’t have a clue what any of the other pupils were saying, but from the looks
on their faces he didn’t think they were being particularly friendly.

He withdrew into himself even further. Books and music became his escape. There was money at last – from Bernie’s taxis, and
whatever was in the sheds out the back. From time to time, he heard barking.

‘Guard dogs,’ Bernie would say. ‘Vicious. Don’t go near them or they’ll have your hand off, sonny.’

But as Dave grew, so did his suspicions. There was more barking from the sheds than just guard dogs. And he had seen huge
bags of dog-feed in the back of Bernie’s truck more than once. His mother kept the office locked and he wasn’t allowed in
there.

He watched and waited. Every night, Bernie and his mum got drunk in front of the telly in the lounge, or went down to the
pub for Country and Western. And he knew where Bernie kept the keys: hung on a big hook in the kitchen. And so one night,
while they were out, he took the keys. His heart was thumping. He felt sick with terror, both from the fear of what he was
going to find and from the fear of being caught. Bernie had a sort of sixth sense and was always looking at him suspiciously.
Dave reckoned he didn’t trust him, but he probably didn’t trust anyone.

He fumbled with the lock. It was stiff, but eventually the key turned. He pushed the gate open, slipped through and shut it
behind him. He didn’t want to raise Bernie’s suspicions if he came back early. He crept quietly towards the big barn at the
back. Again this was padlocked, so he went through all the keys until he found the one that fitted and finally opened the
door.

The smell hit him full in the face. He could barely see for flies. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he could finally
see what lay inside.

Cages. Dozens of cages. And inside, dogs. Bitches on their
sides, bellies swollen but the rest of their bodies emaciated. Litters of puppies scrambling over each other, desperate to
suck what nourishment they could from their mothers’ teats. Cracked plastic bowls of congealed drying food lay untouched,
swarming with flies. Most of the cages had no water.

It was hard to tell what breed each dog was, but he managed to identify a few: a Dalmatian, recognisable by the spots but
totally etiolated; red setters, judging by the colour of the coat, even though due to the condition their coats were flat
and dark. And smaller toy dogs – pugs, bichon frises, schnauzers – of the type favoured by mad old ladies and Hollywood stars.

It was a puppy farm. Dozens of breeds, the bitches churning out litter after litter. Bernie’s money wasn’t from cabs at all.
It was blood money.

Dave stepped outside the shed and vomited, his sick splattering onto the concrete. He wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand and looked up. Bernie was standing there. Fear made him retch again – he’d get a hiding for this, he was certain. But
Bernie just laughed.

‘Well, now you know, you can help me out. I could use another pair of hands.’

And so Dave became Bernie’s partner in crime. He had no choice. If he reported him, or told anyone else, or went to the police,
his mum would be implicated. She knew about the puppies. It was obvious now. She did all the paperwork. She took all the phone
calls. She organised the sales.

He only referred to it once.

‘Why?’ he asked her.

‘To give you a better life,’ she replied sadly, and he knew this was true. At least now he had his health; and he was warm
and dry and fed and clothed. Bernie had been her way out of a miserable existence, and if she felt guilty about the puppies
at least it was better than feeling guilty about her son. She did love him. Dave knew she did.

Bernie and Dave travelled the motorways, working out the
best routes on a large tattered map pinned up in the office. Sometimes they would stop in a deserted car park somewhere and
hand over a clutch of puppies. Sometimes they would pull up at the back of a pet-shop, offloading their illicit cargo in the
dead of night to monosyllabic men. Sometimes they flogged puppies to members of the general public through a free paper. You
got the best profit this way, but the chances of being rumbled were higher. And that was where Dave came in: a good-looking
young lad was far less suspicious than fat, dodgy-looking old Bernie. And if he got arrested he was underage, and Bernie had
given him a good cover story.

At least when he sold to members of the public, he knew the puppies had the chance of a better life. He could tell by the
way people handled them what sort of owners they were going to be. Usually the biggest danger was that they would be spoilt.
It was unlikely that they would be sent back into the sort of hell they had escaped. He prayed they were little enough to
have no memory of the horrors; that they would adapt to their new surroundings and become happy and healthy.

And all the time he buried himself further and further in his music. Bernie would give him a cut – a generous cut, to give
him his due – and Dave spent it on cassettes. And a new guitar, and an amp. He discovered The Smiths, David Bowie, Talking
Heads, Iggy Pop, The Cure, Leonard Cohen. Springsteen, Tom Petty, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Guns ’n’ Roses. He didn’t home in on a particular
genre – just anyone he considered a good song writer. And he began to write himself, hoping that one day, one day …

It was a miserable and lonely existence. He hated the guilt, the double life. He distanced himself from his school companions
for fear of them taking too much of an interest. He lived in terror of becoming too close to someone and blurting it all out.
So he became even more of an outsider, the class freak, the guy who wore black and never took off his earphones. It was an
isolating existence, but he had become Bernie’s facilitator, the one who enabled all the puppy deals,
to protect his mother. It was a vicious circle, a trap, and they were all implicated. So they had to stick together.

When he turned fifteen, he began to plot his escape. He stole money at school. Even from the teachers. It was surprising how
many masters left their jackets on the back of their chairs; how many mistresses forgot to supervise their handbags during
class. A fiver here and a tenner there soon added up.

He never stole from his mother. And he never stole from Bernie, because he knew he would catch him, and he would do something
terrible in retaliation, something that might stop him getting away.

In the meantime, he buried his head in his books and played music. Books and records provided him with an escape and took
him to another place. They gave him hope. He knew from the stories and the lyrics that not everyone’s life was like this.
One day he would be free.

Then came the day when he couldn’t take any more.

He went into the shed to do the evening feed. At least he had persuaded Bernie to keep the animals cleaner and better fed,
but their conditions were far from ideal, and they were barely given any medical attention. As he looked around, he saw that
one of the bitches had haemorrhaged whilst giving birth. Next to the puppies was a pile of bloody insides.

His instinct was to rush to her, pick her up, demand that Bernie take her to the vet. As soon as Bernie saw her, he scoffed.

‘Put her out of her misery!’

The dog had done what she needed. Seven litters in quick succession. What was the point in wasting precious profit on trying
to save her life when she could no longer make him money?

Dave knew he had no choice. There was no way he would be able to get her to the vet himself. How would he get her there? How
would he pay the bill? And what about all the questions that would be asked? Could he just say he’d found her on the side
of the road?

‘Do it!’ Bernie forced a spade into his hands. ‘She’s done for; better off dead. Longer you keep her alive the longer she’ll
suffer.’

Dave looked at the puppies, each of them barely alive, their little noses poking the air blindly for the nutrients they needed
but wouldn’t get.

The mother was obviously in pain. She was bleeding heavily. A vet wouldn’t be able to save her. A vet would put her down.
But at least she’d go with kind words, a soothing voice, a gentle stroke as the injection was administered.

Not a bloody shovel over the back of her head.

He shut his eyes, lifted the spade, prayed that he had the strength to hit her hard enough the first time, that it would be
all over quickly, that she wouldn’t suffer – well, not any more than she already had.

Whack.

Bernie gave a bark of triumphant glee. ‘I’ll make a man of you yet,’ he crowed.

‘Shall I bury her?’

Bernie looked at him scornfully.

‘Don’t waste your energy digging a hole. Sling her in the incinerator.’

The smell of burning fur stayed in his head for ever.

The next day he jumped on a train. He was driving through glorious fields full of free animals. He was on his way to a new
life. With four hundred and ninety-three pounds in his rucksack. He wasn’t afraid. Nothing could be worse than what he had
escaped, just like the puppies he had released out into the world.

He didn’t think about his mother and how she might feel. He shut his mind to her. She would be all right without him. She
had made her choice, the day she took up with Bernie. He didn’t want her to come to any harm, but he didn’t love her enough
to tolerate what was happening at the farm any longer, and he knew if he forced her to make a choice between him
and Bernie, she would stick with Bernie. Dave was old enough now to make his own way in the world.

On the train he chose his new name. Louis, because he had been reading about Louis XIV, and he liked the idea of a Sun King
– it was an image full of hope. And Dagger. Like David Bowie, who had named himself after the knife ‘to cut all the lies’,
he chose Dagger to kill all the memories.

The train drew into Paddington. The passengers stood up and surged for the exits. The minute he stepped off the train, he
would be truly free. There would be no trail.

Louis Dagger stepped onto the platform.

As he finished his story, he could barely stand to look at Tyger and see her reaction. Tears were pouring down her face. He
couldn’t read her expression. Horror? Disgust? Loathing? Revulsion? The realisation that this was it; it was all over between
them?

It was worse than waiting for a judge to pronounce the death sentence. The pause before she finally spoke seemed like an eternity.

She was whispering something. He leaned forward to catch her words.

‘You poor baby …’

He looked at her in surprise.

‘You don’t … hate me for it?’

‘Hate you? Of course I don’t. You were forced into it. You didn’t have any choice. You were just a kid.’

As he realised she wasn’t going to judge him, he finally broke down. All the years of shame, all the horrible memories, came
flooding back; he tried to choke them back, but now he’d allowed the tears to fall, they came thick and fast. He felt Tyger’s
arms around him, holding him tight, and he hugged her back, unable to believe how lucky he was.

He wasn’t going to lose her. Despite his heinous crimes, Tyger was still his.

‘What about your mum?’ she was asking. ‘Do you still see her?’

He shook his head.

‘I can’t go back. In case I’m seen. I can’t let anyone know my past.’

‘She must be sad, to have lost you.’

Louis shrugged. ‘When you come from nothing, like we did, you don’t have a lot of choice in life. You have to make sacrifices.’

Tyger sat for a moment, chewing her thumbnail. Which meant she was thinking.

‘Is the bastard still selling puppies?’ she asked finally.

Louis’ heart sank. This would be the sticking-point. Tyger would want him to grass Bernie up.

‘I think so.’ He couldn’t lie to her. ‘I know the paper he advertises in. I still see his number. But I can’t report him,
Tyger. Mum would go down with him. And none of it’s down to her. She only went with him because she thought she would give
me a better life. And then she got in too deep.’

‘I know, I know. And I’d never ask you to dump your own mother in it. But there’s another way.’

‘There is?’ This girl never ceased to astound him. Her understanding, her compassion. Thank God he’d had the guts to tell
her at last.

She nodded, and a brightness came into her eyes.

‘We go down there ourselves. And we rescue them. The whole lot.’

S
ince her arrival, Delilah had barely left Gortnaflor. She curled up on the sofa in the drawing room reading Molly Keane: wonderful
tales of draughty Irish houses and mad old aunts. She borrowed a too-large pair of gumboots from the porch and went walking
by the lake, watching the dragonflies skitter over the surface and the large brown trout glide underneath. There was a little
boat-house, much of it rotten, most of it covered in slimy green moss, and inside she found a rowing boat. She didn’t have
the courage to take it out – it wasn’t large, but she had no idea how to manhandle it to the water’s edge or how to get in
or how to wield the oars.

Raf would know, she thought sadly, then told herself she wasn’t going to think about him. She wasn’t going to think about
any of them. It was a waste of her time. She was going to think about herself, and what she wanted from the rest of her life,
and how to go about getting it.

Best of all was Elizabeth’s food. Wonderful and plentiful Irish food: golden poached eggs with crunchy, groaty black pudding
for breakfast; sorrel soup for lunch, laced with cream, and always a plentiful supply of the cakey soda bread that Elizabeth
got up at six o’clock to bake. There would be lamb or salmon or salty gammon for supper, with potatoes – she’d never tasted
potatoes like it, earthy and floury with the most fulsome flavour. She could feel herself putting on the pounds, but she didn’t
care. It was just fabulous to have somebody else to do the cooking. Other people usually shied away from catering for her,
always thinking they were going to be harshly
judged. And eating out in restaurants was no better. Chefs would fall over themselves to show off and bring out their signature
dishes, and then wait for a verdict. Elizabeth just seemed pleased that she enjoyed what she ate.