Work Text:
Glasgow, 1977
Billy followed his sister out of the corner store, one hand clutching a small packet of sweets they’d bought with the spare change after the groceries were seen to. The butterscotch exploded on his tongue and stuck to his teeth.
“Here, carry this, I’ve got all the rest,” said Maggie, handing over the jug of milk, as she hefted the paper bag of the groceries up against her middle. “And give me one of those.”
He shook another candy out of the packet and put it in her outstretched palm. She popped it in her mouth and hummed at the flavour happily. “Don’t tell Mum, okay? They’ll never know anyway,” she said mischievously, “We’ll hide them in our room.”
Billy grinned, pushing the candy packet haphazardly into a pocket. As she looked both ways across the big road that flanked the east side of Cranhill, her ginger ponytail sparkling in the gloaming of summer, he reached for her hand instinctively. They crossed it together at a run, the milk jug thumping heavily against his leg.
As they trudged through the unkempt grass along the dilapidated park, Billy could hear the sounds of laughing nearby. He slowed to see where it was coming from, but Maggie stopped only long enough for him to catch up. “Come on,” she hissed, grabbing his hand to pull him along, as several boys cleared the top of the old drainage ditch and saw them.
“Oi! Look here, lads,” called one of them, “It’s Margo, innit? From the Longstone flats?”
Maggie kept on walking with her nose in the air. Billy dropped her hand, feeling heat rise immediately to his cheeks.
“Who’s that, eh? Your boyfriend?” taunted another boy perched on a bike.
“My brother, you git,” Maggie paused to shoot the boy a glare, “Go away.”
The boy who seemed to lead the group eyed Billy appraisingly, sauntering forward, “I don’t remember seeing you at Lamlash.”
“’Cause he’s not old enough for secondary school yet,” Maggie shifted the groceries enough to cock a hand on the slim hip of her cut-off jeans, “Now piss off, Geoff, we have to go home.”
Billy fired a look at his sister, flushing an even deeper shade of pink. “I’ll be at Lamlash next year,” he told the older boy defiantly.
“Ah,” the boy named Geoff feigned being terribly impressed by this. “In that case, you’ll best be learning who’s in charge and who’s not.”
Quick as a flash, the boy reached out and plucked the bag of sweets from Billy’s pocket. Billy made to swipe it back, forgetting the milk, which shattered at his feet while Geoff held the candy out of reach.
“Billy! Oh cripes, we’ll be deep in the shit now, you idiot,” Maggie wailed, helplessly staring at the milk sopping into the ground.
Billy ignored her and the milk, stepping up to the older, taller boy. “Give it back.”
Geoff raised his eyebrows with a grin, “Or what? You’ll go tell Mummy?”
Billy lashed out for the candy, but Geoff was faster, tossing it in the air behind him. One of the others caught it and doled out the candies amongst the group, watching and laughing.
“Tell you what,” Geoff told him. “I’ll give it back, but you have to prove to me that you're Cranhill through and through.”
“No,” Maggie said, “Billy, let’s just leave it and go. Mum’s waiting to make dinner.”
“Come on, wee Billy,” Geoff goaded, “There’s a lot on this when we’re all back at school, ya ken? You might hang about with us cool kids, or you might not. And those who don't learn the hard way where their place is.”
“Billy, we’re going home, come on,” Maggie made to grab his hand again, but he jerked out of her grip.
“What do I have to do?” he asked the boy.
Geoff smiled slowly, and pointed to the Cranhill Water Tower looming above the backfields. “Climb that.”
Billy gazed up at the massive structure, a monolith of pillars topped by a square concrete cistern. The green lights that illuminated it had come on, giving it an eerie futuristic glow in the deepening twilight. With an arched brow and a nonchalant sniff, Billy turned and started through the field towards it decisively.
“Billy, no!” Maggie’s voice called, but he ignored it, reaching the chain-link fencing, posted with no trespassing signs. He’d be breaking the law by doing this, and the thought exhilarated him, almost as much as it scared him. But he wasn’t about to let Geoff see that.
Slithering through a tiny place where the fencing had rusted away from a fence post, he grinned privately that being little was a benefit to his being cool. Geoff would never have fit through such a space.
Darting around the support columns beneath the tower, however, he found that the ladder he was meant to climb was at least ten feet off the ground, out of reach, and quite plainly meant to keep little hoodlums from climbing it.
“Yeah, Billy, be cool!” the boys egged him on, laughing and whooping from the opposite side of the fence. Maggie was nowhere to be seen. His eyes searched around in the junk and refuse scattered in the grass around the tower, looking for a way. He spotted a rusting metal oil-drum.
Rolling the drum from the grass to the concrete base made considerable noise, but he heaved the thing upright, and clamored on top of it. The laughter from the fence tapered off as he couched on the rim and then carefully stood, balanced on top of the drum, the rust making crunching noises under his trainers. Looking up at the bottommost rung of the ladder, there was still at least three feet to go. Billy closed his eyes briefly, opened them and jumped as high as he could.
As his hands caught, he heard the drum clatter over on its side, but he’d done it. Adrenaline pounded through him as he swung himself up for the next rung by the strength in his reedy arms, and the next, then the next rung, and kicked up to get his feet on the ladder. He paused and rested his head against the cool metal. He'd made it up.
There was a spring of cheering from the fence, and in it he heard the ringing of true admiration now, that he really was cool enough to make it this far. He looked up at the long expanse of the ladder above him. He was cool. He could be cooler than even Geoff. And with that he started up, hand over hand, foot over foot, steadily up to the concrete heavens.
The sun dropped below the horizon as he climbed. The air was colder up here, pushing through his t-shirt. The sounds of the boys were all but lost in the wind, nipping at his bare legs and elbows. He stopped three-quarters of the way up, and looked down.
His heart flew up into his throat and pounded so hard it made his brain throb. Below him was a great expanse of nothing, space and air and hard, cold concrete, thousands and millions of feet below, far higher than the window of their flat, far taller than even the tallest building in all of Scotland. The world spun, and he could see nothing, no boys at the fence, no Maggie, no butterscotch candies, no shattered milk bottles. There was nothing below his feet but certain death.
Frozen, he clamped his freezing fingers around the ice-cold metal of the ladder, watched the world seep into darkness behind his eyelids, and wept.
It was a hundred years before a noise penetrated his mind, a familiar sound which ebbed and flowed through the safe dark place in his head. But then his perch seemed to shake, vibrating beneath his grip like an earthquake. He cried out, his voice high like frightened sparrow.
“Billy!” the noise, sound, voice came closer as the ladder shook and shook. “Billy? I’m here. I’m right here, son.”
“Da’? Da’, help me!”
“I’m right here. Wheesht now, I’ve got you. You’ve got to let go and climb down.”
“No!”
“Yes, boy! You got your arse up here, now, come!”
“I’m sorry!”
“I know. I know you are, lad. And you’ll be sorrier once we’re back on the solid ground and your mum gets a hold of you. Now, you must climb down. We’ll do it together, aye? I’m right behind you. I won’t let you fall.”
“You’ll catch me?”
“You won’t fall, Billy-my-boy. Come, one foot, one hand… that’s it. Good lad.”
They climbed and climbed, slowly, terribly slowly, until suddenly the protection of his father at his back abruptly dropped away. Billy yelled out for him, sure the world would end on the concrete below.
“Billy, you must jump now. There’s no more to climb.”
“No! I won’t!” Billy cried, holding fast to the ladder.
“I’ll catch you, lad, come on, now, trust your Da’. I will catch you. You’ll be safe on the ground in a tick, I promise.”
Billy breathed in and out, terrified, wanting nothing more than to be home and warm and away. His father promised. Da’ never made a promise he didn’t keep. Never.
He swallowed the sob that wanted to surface, stood away from the security of the ladder, and let go.