WE ARE THRILLED TO BE HOSTING A YORKSHIRE GUEST TODAY! AUTHOR CHRIS GILL, IS SHARING CHAPTER SIX FROM HIS NOVEL, 'THE BUTCHER BOYS' #RWRTeamBlog #ReadWriteRepeat
- Apr 29
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 29
It is the summer of 1976 in the Yorkshire Dales village of Fowlbeck. The boys are 12 years old and Michael has fallen out with his mum. Jack has decided to take his best friend out on an adventure to help him escape for a while. This excerpt is from Michael's point of view:
CHAPTER SIX
Michael followed Jack as they rode their Chopper bikes across the parched, rock hard fields toward The Beacon, thinking it would have been sweltering if it weren’t so gusty. He watched that fancy hanky, which Jack had round his neck, flapping in the wind. What had he called it when he put it on just after the bridge? A bandana or summat. What cowboys wore. It looked like a hanky to Michael, anyhow. Jack was funny, the long streak of piss. He loved stuff like that, no mistake. Blooming heck, it were brilliant being out on an adventure with him again, getting away from all that rubbish going on back home. Good old Lanky. He’d rescued him for a bit. But there were reminders about. Even the sun, which made Michael think of a big butterball on a giant blue plate, because Mum always melted a dollop on her peas at Grandad’s. Eddie Weir? He still couldn’t believe what she’d done.
When the fields got too steep, the boys hid their bikes in some woods and continued on foot, following the dried-up streambed which led to The Waterfall Den.
“Hope no-one’s been messin’ wi’ our collection,” said Michael, trailing a long stick over bone dry pebbles.
“Who knows about t’ den except us?” said Jack, straightening his fancy bandana.
“Rats might o’ been scrattin’ round.”
“Ya what? Robbin’ fossils for their little ratty museum?”
“Sod off, beanpole. Just watch out for owt precious, can’t yer? Eh, did yer remember t’ logbook?”
“Micky, will ya give over chelpin’? How could I forget the logbook?”
As they walked, they searched for objects to add to their hidden collection on the cracked streambed and in the dusty hedgerows which ran close to its sides. Michael had eagle eyes. Dead good at spotting stuff like flint glinting in the dirt. Daft if you thought about it. Collecting ancient stones or smoothed pieces of coloured glass. Recording them, storing them away like squirrels in a secret place. Except it were more akin to what children did, wasn’t it? They could be kids again while they did that. Instead of having to be grown up all the time, thinking right serious. Exploring, discovering, being on a mission, that’s what they needed. Besides, Michael loved being out here in nature. He knew he were going to be a butcher. He had no choice, but it was what he wanted, anyhow. To make a success of it, to uphold the family name. But being in these fields, in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales, happened to be his favourite thing. In another life he’d have been a gamekeeper. He’d be out here in nature all hours God sent if he were a gamekeeper.
While Michael looked for things worth collecting, picking a near perfect speckled eggshell from a holly bush, finding a nineteen-thirties coin on the streambed, passing them to Jack for safekeeping in that toffee tin he always brought for the purpose, he tried taking everything in. Just like Dad had taught him. Perhaps Dad teaching him how to look at nature properly was what had given him eagle eyes. And he’d shown him how to breathe it all in, to smell it, to listen to it. Something strange about the wind today which made you prick your ears up. It could have been Dad speaking in his whispering voice. He’d liked using his whispering voice when he’d talked to Michael about nature: ‘Look on yon leaf, Son. Can yer see t’ tiny white spots? You’ve got good eyes, lad. Most folk’d miss them. Know what they are? Caterpillar eggs. Inside are little caterpillars growin’. Same as you in your mum’s tum. They’ll hatch soon. And they’ll grow and grow. And their skin’ll grow bigger and harder, until they turn into chrysalises. And what fly out two weeks later? That’s reet, Michael. Beautiful butterflies! And every one started as a tiny white spot on a leaf. So remember, whenever a butterfly flutters by, that’s nature showin’ thee a miracle.’
Michael snapped out of it and looked at Jack, near as damn it six foot tall, black hair blowing in the wind, marching up ahead. Always had to be in front, didn’t he? Getting a fair old shift on today.
“Go steady, Lanky! We might miss stuff for t’ collection.”
“I’ve got ’em peeled.”
“Me dad said you had to take yer time wi’ nature.”
“Did he?”
As they marched on, Michael listened to the blackbirds chattering away in the hedgerows. Fond of a natter, blackbirds. Similar to Fowlbeck neighbours having a right good gossip. Whenever he saw summat in with the tangled brambles or hawthorn that might be worth collecting, he dropped on his haunches. When you got down that low, you could really see how dry the earth had turned this summer. All powdery. The wind must be have been lifting it a bit, because it kept tickling your nose. You might think all the smells would be dry down here in a drought, but they weren’t. Moss still grew on the rocks in the shadows and that smelt damp. Damp, but soft to touch. Like comfy carpet. Even moss were a miracle in nature.
The closer they got to The Waterfall Den the deeper their route cut into the earth. By the time they were near the den, and the collection tin held a few dusty objects, the banks on either side of them had got steep and tall. The sun and wind had been blocked out too now and they were properly in shade. Michael could feel how much cooler it were. He shivered when he looked at the little trees jutting out from the banks, curving upwards, trying to reach the light. It looked like ferns, ivy, sharp-smelling nettles had taken over the world down here. How had they done it with nowt to drink?
The boys followed a final twist in the streambed before the deep, narrow space widened into a big horseshoe shape, carved from layered limestone rock: The Waterfall Den. Except the waterfall was gone. Michael stood and stared at where the old girl used to be. He knew she’d have disappeared in a summer like this, but it still made him proper sad. She were usually so alive, with that white spray falling. She’d give you a decent shower most of the time, if you fancied. He looked up through the horseshoe at the clear sky, imagining clouds and a downpour.
"Checklist and dustin’, then?” said Jack.
"Aye,” said Michael.
They moved to the edge of the horseshoe, where nooks and crannies had been eroded deep into the limestone over a million years. Pushed inside these deep bits was the collection, hidden away from any folk who might find themselves out here, stumbling across this place. Michael knew that, for the next few minutes, they’d only be speaking to check off each collection object against the list in the logbook. He didn’t know why, but they took this part dead serious. Like they were working in their own museum, as if they were taking care of important stuff for the future. They’d never talked about why it happened that way. But if their mates back in Fowlbeck could see them they’d rip the piss summat rotten. Anyhow, it were Michael and Jack’s secret. And they’d sworn, as blood brothers, that they’d never tell another soul.
Carefully picking the objects from the rock, they set them out on a fat slab of moss-covered limestone which lay on the ground in the middle of the horseshoe. Then they took off their rucksacks and sat cross-legged on the right dry earth either side of the stone. Michael watched Jack undo the drawstring on his rucksack, take out a pen and two yellow dusters, then silently remove the logbook, slowly lifting it up and setting it down beside the objects on the soft moss. They looked at it for a bit, as if it was an ancient document you were only allowed to touch with white gloves on. It were just a butcher’s order book which Rodney Hargraves had never got round to using, but it had a hardback black cover with a red spine and it looked pretty smart. It were what it had inside that mattered, mind. Jack opened it, angled it so Michael could see it better, took his time turning the pages.
Michael thought about all the brilliant adventures they’d already been on when he saw the wildlife they’d recorded in lists and colourful felt tip pictures again. Kingfishers, hares, water voles, red grouse, otters, deer. Amazing what you could see just mucking about in the countryside. They were lucky lads, having all that. Then there were the maps they’d drawn of their climbs up The Beacon. Different routes dotted out in black, danger zones inked in red with bold biro words written across: ‘Boggy’, ‘Slippery’, ‘Tangled’, ‘Jagged.’ On the last page of the map section, Jack had drawn an outline of The Beacon and left it blank. At the top of the page he’d written: THE NORTH FACE! That made Michael think on what was sometimes put at the end of Starsky and Hutch episodes: ‘To be continued...’ Suddenly, the air in The Waterfall Den wasn’t just cool, it felt right chilly.
“Lanky?” said Michael, rubbing goosebumps off his forearms. “Get to t’ checklist pages, will yer?”
Picking up the yellow dusters, they started cleaning their precious things, sometimes holding them up to the horseshoe filled with blue sky to make sure they were bright as a bobbin. Only after an object had been properly dusted, cleaned, polished, was it placed back gently on the mossy stone. To finish this part of the job, they took the things they’d found that day from the toffee tin, Jack adding them to the checklist, and cleaned them, making the collection even more precious. The last important job, before they put the collection back in the horseshoe’s nooks and crannies, was the one Michael reckoned Jack loved best. Always had to be in charge of the checklist, didn’t he? Fancied himself a bit, ticking them boxes. Michael nearly got off laughing once or twice when he listened to him calling out like that Sergeant Major in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum on telly. Dead funny. Especially seeing as Lanky were always moaning that his old man blithered on too much about having been a soldier in the war.
“Quartz!” said Jack, pen poised over the logbook.
“Check,” said Michael, holding up the shiny crystal.
“Mudstone!”
“Check.”
“Swan feather!”
"Check.”
“Purple glass!”
"Check.”
“Belt buckle!”
“Check.”
“Horse’s bit!”
“Check.”
“Slate arrowhead!”
"Check.”
“Bird bones!”
“Check.”
“Iron key!”
“Check.”
“1939 coin!”
“Check.”
“Speckled eggshell!”
“Check.”
“Mystery seashell!”
"Check.”
“Gi’ us a listen.”
Michael passed Jack the shell and watched him put it to his ear. The lad had his eyes scrunched up, as if he were trying like mad to think.
“Do yer see land yet, Captain?” said Michael.
“Very far away,” said Jack.
When they’d finished the checking and hidden the cleaned collection back in the limestone horseshoe, they sat on the ground again and used the moss-covered slab as a table for Sunday dinner ‘pack up.’
“Thanks,” said Michael, digging his teeth into a potted meat sandwich.
“What for?” said Jack, looking out from under his long fringe.
“Comin’ for us today. Bringin’ me out here. Getting me away.”
“It’s nowt. You’d do t’ same.”
“I’m reet lucky yer me best mate, Lanky.”
“I’m lucky havin’ you an all, but... Stop bein’ soft, will ya?”
“Be a hard bastard like you, eh?” said Michael.
“You’ve allus got to fight, lad.”
Michael looked at Jack chomping on his sausage roll. He was a fighter. He’d crack you one in the gob if you’d got it coming. Oh yes, he were a mad allik all right. A fighter in his head too. You could see it when he gritted his teeth.
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Amazon Link: Tinyurl.com/5n7ue8rr
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AUTHOR BIO
Chris Gill is an author who grew up in Yorkshire as part of a Dales family. As a proud Yorkshireman, he was able to draw on the landscape and voices of his home county whilst writing his first two novels, ‘Back Road’ and ‘The Butcher Boys’. This has given his work a powerful authenticity.
Chris discovered his love of storytelling whilst travelling throughout Europe and Asia during the nineteen-nineties when his passion for literary realism developed through observation of real life and the opportunity to read widely.
Determined to continue his learning journey upon returning to the UK, he read Politics and English at The University of York. In addition to studying, he wrote and produced various plays. ‘The Picnic’ won a Commendation for Outstanding Writing at The National Student Drama Festival.
After graduating, Chris spent a decade as a Further Education teacher but never lost his ambition to become a traditionally published author. Throughout his time as a teacher, he matured as a writer by penning plays and short stories. He then devoted himself to what became his first published work with Fisher King Publishing, a novel about the battle between altruism and egotism, ‘Back Road’.
With a desire to develop his writing further, Chris joined a group of accomplished authors in Manchester, where he now lives with his teenage son, and began writing his second novel, ‘The Butcher Boys’. This labour of love was completed over eight years and is now also published by Fisher King. It is a story about how our need for identity can threaten what we hold most dear:
In a Yorkshire Dales village in the nineteen-seventies, best mates Michael, a boy with a strong sense of tradition and family loyalty, and Jack, a boy drawn to new horizons, are there for each other through traumatic childhoods. But as they become men, set against the backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain and the fall of the Iron Curtain, their struggles for identity and the intense rivalry between their butchers’ shops threaten to destroy them.
Chris is currently working on his third novel, a modern-day story exploring the ‘lives’ we present to the world and the lives we actually live.
Facebook: Chris Gill Yorkshire Author
Instagram: @chrisgillyorkshireauthor
Twitter: @ChrisDavidGill
Tiktok: @chris.gill.author
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COMING SOON: On Sunday, 3rd May, we are thrilled to welcome our guest author, Ella Jade, who is sharing an excerpt from her novel, 'Hade's Revenge'
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