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still and I got an excitement in me and got a bit jumpy inside cos of the monster that might come out of the lake and Drunkle laughed and said no one’s seen it yet but he knows a feller who reckons he saw it one day when he was in a rowboat fishing on the lake and that it was like a great big crocodile with hooves which Drunkle had told me before but he told it to me again then cos he was my Drunkle. He said he didn’t believe this feller but I did cos I wanted to. And we sat and watched Bala Lake for a bit just me and Drunkle. He drank and watched the darksome waves on the screen and I did too except I didn’t drink but I could’ve had an orange juice if I’d wanted one or some lemonade but I didn’t. Arrn came up to join us but he didn’t watch too he just took his beef-bone under the bed and went on crunching it in the dusty dark under there and me and Drunkle didn’t see any monster but I was happy there like that and I think he was too, just us two sitting there in a togetherness like that and not talking or anything just watching out for monsters.
    Drunkle put his head to the side like birds do when they’re listening or maybe they’re not but Drunkle was.
    —Can you hear an engine?
    I listened with my head straight up and could.
    —There’s a truck coming up the mountain Drunkle said and I thought flippin heck My Mam was quick and not telling fibs either. Drunkle went to the window and pulled a curtain back and looked out and the enginenoise got bigger. It got bigger and bigger until it was dead loud and a light came into the room and swooped a slice of yellow across the walls and Drunkle said:
    —Aw Christ. It’s Arthur.
    Fall then fall went my heart inside, once cos of who it
was
and then twice cos of who it
wasn’t
. I heard a shouting outside and then a banging on the door down below, the door to the house.
    —I’ll go down and see what he wants. You stay here and if you see the monster be sure to call me up, eh?
    He gave a smile to me but looked worried and the door-banginess went on til Drunkle went downstairs and opened it and then I heard a big, big shouting:
    —FUCKING BASTARD! MORE DEAD FUCKING EWES! SOME CUNT PAYS THIS TIME BOY NOT ONE WORD OF A BASTARD LIE!
    A growling came from under the bed in the dusty dark. I heard Drunkle say:
    —Shh, mun, shh. I’ve got the boy upstairs. The nephew.
    —THINK I CARE? THINK I CARE WHEN ANOTHER FUCKING EWE –
    A door banged shut downstairs and then I could hear the shouting only through the floor and not proper words just a loud, loud voice. Arrn growled again from under the bed and I told him it was okay so he went back to his crunching.
    But it wasn’t okay, really, and Arrn probably knew that which was why he went ‘arrn’ and said his name. Cos nothing was ever okay when Arthur was there to make it not. I was more scared of Arthur being downstairs in the house than I was of seeing the monster on the Bala screen cos Arthur was a kind of monster himself who liked to hurt people. He was always hitting people and he had a wife who he would hurt and a daughter in my class at school before school went away who had a terror-ness in her for him but of course she wasn’t in my class any more cos there was no school any more which should’ve been happying me but it didn’t cos of NotDad and Mam’s eggy eye and now Arthur with his big shouting downstairs and I was scared for Drunkle. Some people there are, some fellers who are born with a black thing inside them as black as Bala Lake and just as sad as that and that’s Drunkle and there are others who are born with another kind of blackness inside them that wants to put hurtings on others and make a kind of blackness in them as well and that’s Arthur. He’s a scary man. I thought he might hit Drunkle and then come up and hit me too but then I thought that Arrn would rescue me and bite his bastard head off but that thinking couldn’t make me laugh that time like it normally did cos Arthur was