Oestara

 

The sort of kid that never stays still, pulsing on the balls of his feet, trying to peer above the shoulders of giants. I heard his mam say you’re doing well, Dion - a few more minutes - and then I saw his face. His cheeks were the colour of unworked clay with a vacancy behind his eyes. I put out my fag in a stone cherub’s stream of piss and flicked the nub in a Keep Britain Tidy bin. When I looked back, he’d crouched low to the floor and was threading his way through all the Sunday best legs with his mam stuck there, way back.

 

Dion, Dion, we’ve to wait our turn, she said in a collective plea, and urgent, but her voice diluted when she saw all the heads swivel to glare their knife-lipped disapproval.

 

He got right to the top of the steps at the entrance gate where kids were being allowed in. One family at a time. The National Trust girl shook her hobby horse head at him, closed the gate with a clang, its echo high as a tuning fork.

 

Want my egg, my egg, he shouted and his arms flapped at his sides in the same way chicken wings thrash at the wire. Children leaving the EXIT turnstile clutched foil-wrapped chocolate eggs to their chests, treasure in the sunlight’s bleach, and when he saw them he screamed as if scalded. He screamed as though it was on behalf of Jesus. He screamed for his nailed hands. He screamed for betrayal.

 

His mam got to him first. She undid the zip on his red Adidas top and knelt beside him where he laid out spent on the tiled floor. Words came from her, then, whispered ones, slow in reaching him. When I got there, his face was wet, hers too and a man to my left said: what he wants is his fucking legs smacking, and I said, son, give us your arms tight around my neck, we’ll get your egg some place else.