Barry Hines - A Kestrel for a Knave (Penguin Modern Classics)

PENGUIN BOOKS

A Kestrel for a Knave

Barry Hines was born in the mining village of Hoyland Common, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire. He was educated at Ecclesfield Grammar School, where his main achievement was to be selected to play for the England Grammar schools football team. On leaving school, he worked as an apprentice mining surveyor and played football for Barnsley (mainly in the A team), before entering Loughborough Training College to study Physical Education. He taught for several years in London and South Yorkshire before becoming a full-time writer.

He is the author of nine novels, including A Kestrel for a Knave, The Blinder, Looks and Smiles, The Heart of It and Elvis Over England. Both A Kestrel for a Knave (as Kes) and Looks and Smiles have been filmed, the latter winning the Prize for Contemporary Cinema at the Cannes Film Festival. He has also written many scripts for television, including Threads, which won the BAFTA award and the Broadcasting Press Guild Award for the best single drama.

Barry Hines is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of Sheffield Hallam University.

Barry Hines

with a new Afterword

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published by Michael Joseph 1968

Published in Penguin Books 1969
Reprinted with Afterword 1999
Reprinted in Penguin Classics 2000
16

Copyright Barry Hines, 1968, 1999

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Expect in the United States of America,this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any from of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

EISBN: 9780141903835

To
RICHARD

An Eagle for an Emperor, a Gyrfalcon for a King; a Peregrine for a Prince, a Saker for a Knight, a Merlin for a Lady; a Goshawk for a Yeoman, a Sparrowhawk for a Priest, a Musket for a Holy water Clerk, a Kestrel for a Knave.

Selected from the Boke of St Albans, 1486,

and a Harleian manuscript.

THERE WERE no curtains up. The window was a hard edged block the colour of the night sky. Inside the bedroom the darkness was of a gritty texture. The wardrobe and bed were blurred shapes in the darkness. Silence.

Billy moved over, towards the outside of the bed. Jud moved with him, leaving one half of the bed empty. He snorted and rubbed his nose. Billy whimpered. They settled. Wind whipped the window and swept along the wall outside.

Billy turned over. Jud followed him and cough coughed into his neck. Billy pulled the blankets up round his ears and wiped his neck with them. Most of the bed was now empty, and the unoccupied space quickly cooled. Silence. Then the alarm rang. The noise brought Billy upright, feeling for it in the darkness, eyes shut tight. Jud groaned and hutched back across the cold sheet. He reached down the side of the bed and knocked the clock over, grabbed for it, and knocked it further away.

Come here, you bloody thing.

He stretched down and grabbed it with both hands. The glass lay curved in one palm, while the fingers of his other hand fumbled amongst the knobs and levers at the back. He found the lever and the noise stopped. Then he coiled back into bed and left the clock lying on its back.

The bloody thing.

He stayed in his own half of the bed, groaning and turning over every few minutes. Billy lay with his back to him, listening. Then he turned his cheek slightly from the pillow.

Jud?

What?

Thad better get up.

No answer.

Alarms gone off tha knows.

Think I dont know?

He pulled the blankets tighter and drilled his head into the pillow. They both lay still.

Jud?

What?

Thall be late.

O, shut it.

Clocks not fast tha knows.

I said SHUT IT.

He swung his fist under the blankets and thumped Billy in the kidneys.

Gioer! That hurts!

Well shut it then.

Ill tell my mam on thi.

Jud swung again. Billy scuffled away into the cold at the edge of the bed, sobbing. Jud got out, sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, then stood up and felt his way across the room to the light switch. Billy worked his way back to the centre and disappeared under the blankets.

Set talarm for me, Jud. For seven.

Set it thi sen.

Go on, thar up.

Jud parted Billys sweater and shirt, and used the sweater for a vest. Billy snuggled down in Juds place, making the springs creak. Jud looked at the humped blankets, then walked across and pulled them back, stripping the bed completely.

Hands off cocks; on socks.

For an instant Billy lay curled up, his hands wafered between his thighs. Then he sat up and crawled to the bottom of the bed to retrieve the blankets.

You rotten sod, just because thas to get up.

Another few weeks lad, an thall be getting up wi me.

He walked out on to the landing. Billy propped himself up on one elbow.

Switch tlight out, then!

Jud went downstairs. Billy sat on the edge of the bed and re-set the alarm, then ran across the lino and switched the light off. When he got back into bed most of the warmth had gone. He shivered and scuffled around the sheet, seeking a warm place.

It was still dark outside when he got up and went downstairs. The living-room curtains were drawn, and when he switched the light on it was gloomy and cold without the help of the fire. He placed the clock on the mantelpiece, then picked up his mothers sweater from the settee and pulled it on over his shirt.

The alarm rang as he was emptying the ashes in the dustbin. Dust clouded up into his face as he dropped the lid back on and ran inside, but the noise stopped before he could reach it. He knelt down in front of the empty grate and scrunched sheets of newspaper into loose balls, arranging them in the grate like a bouquet of hydrangea flowers. Then he picked up the hatchet, stood a nog of wood on the hearth and struck it down the centre. The blade bit and held. He lifted the hatchet with the nog attached and smashed it down, splitting the nog in half and chipping the tile with the blade. He split the halves into quarters, down through eighths to sixteenths, then arranged these sticks over the paper like the struts of a wigwam. He completed the construction with lumps of coal, building them into a loose shell, so that sticks and paper showed through the chinks. The paper caught with the first match, and the flames spread quickly underneath, making the chinks smoke and the sticks crack. He waited for the first burst of flames up the back of the construction, then stood up and walked into the kitchen, and opened the pantry door. There were a packet of dried peas and a half bottle of vinegar on the shelves. The bread bin was empty. Just inside the doorway, the disc of the electricity meter circled slowly in its glass case. The red arrow appeared, and disappeared. Billy closed the door and opened the outside door. On the step stood two empty milk bottles. He thumped the jamb with the side of his fist.