Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks

Author:Kevin Brooks [Brooks, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781908435712
Publisher: Scholastic Australia

Sunday

Clingclangclong, clingclangclong, clingclangclongclong ... Bloody church bells. Every Sunday morning they’re at it, damn bell-ringers, clanging away like lunatics. I wouldn’t mind if they knew what they were doing, but they don’t, they don’t even know any tunes. All they do is clingclangclong, clingclangclong, hour after hour, the same old racket over and over again – clingclangclong, cling, cling, clingclangclongclong. Don’t they know it’s Sunday? People are trying to sleep.

The bell-tower’s in the church on the other side of the main road, opposite the timberyard. A dirty old place, the roof’s covered with sheets of blue plastic and you can hardly see the walls for rusted scaffolding. There’s a graveyard out front, overgrown and abandoned, where crumbling gravestones lean drunkenly in a jungle of rampant weeds. It’s a ghost church. No one ever goes there, apart from the bell-ringers. I saw them once, a bunch of sad-looking vegetarian types with beards and long arms. Bell-ringer’s arms. Perhaps that’s where they drink – the Bellringer’s Arms. Ho ho.

It was nearly eleven o’clock.

Despite the cold, I’d left all the windows open during the night. Under the duvet I was warm and snug, while my exposed face tingled pleasantly in the icy breeze. I lay there and breathed in the cold air, sucking it right down into my lungs. It didn’t smell of anything – no cigarette smoke, no stale beer, no whisky, no sweaty clothes, no Vaporub, no dead bodies – just cold December air.

Beautiful.

The bells stopped ringing and a dead silence descended. A snowy silence. You can tell when it’s been snowing, it soaks up all the sounds, deadens everything. This was a snowy silence. I lay there and listened to it. A soft, white sound.

After a while I dragged myself out of bed.

It was freezing. I skipped naked to the window and checked outside. I was right. The street lay covered in snow. Crisp and white, unbroken. I smiled. Everything was clean and white – cars, walls, the road, the pavement. All the muck and the dirt was hidden beneath a pure white blanket of snow.

It wouldn’t last long, though. Cars driving up and down, people out with their shovels and brooms, gritter lorries spreading sand and salt all over the place – by this afternoon it’d just be a wet, grey, mushy mess. Why can’t they just leave it alone? It’s only snow. It’s not a plague of locusts or anything. It’s the same with fallen leaves in the autumn. Why can’t people just leave them be? Why does everybody rush round dementedly sweeping up every little leaf that falls to the ground? Sweep ’em up, brush ’em up, pile ’em up and burn ’em. Burn the buggers! Burn them all before it’s too late!

They’re all mad.

I closed the window and got dressed.

I made boiled eggs and toast soldiers for breakfast. Three eggs and four slices of toast. And a pot of tea. A pot, not just a cup, with real tea, loose, out of a packet. I couldn’t remember how many spoonfuls you’re supposed to use.

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