Counting Stars

by David Almond

  “Yes. Truth and memories and dreams and bits made up.”

  “Bits made up. But bits made up that kept me safe and real in all your hearts.”

  We listen to the beating of our hearts.

  Barbara says, “When I began to understand, I used to come among you. I knew you knew I was there. I knew you knew I was always there.”

  “Yes,” says Mam. “We always knew.”

  We smile at her. We listen to the blackbirds, to the children singing.

  “Tell us about another day,” says Mary.

  “Tell them about another day,” says Dad.

  “We were at the beach,” says Mam. She touches Barbara. “All of us but you. South Shields, another day like this, all burning bright. Dad and I sat by the bandstand and spread the blankets and towels on the grass. Mary and Margaret were hunkered down at the sea’s edge with their buckets, pouring sand into the sea and sea into the sand. Catherine knelt building a castle. The boys were right in, diving and swimming and yelling at the cold. We sat on the warm grass and leaned back on the warm bricks. Dad put a kettle on the camp stove. We saw the fog coming in. It was white and thick and so sudden. The horizon disappeared, then the great boat that was waiting to enter the Tyne, then the waves. And the fog came closer, until the boys were gone. You remember?”

  “I remember,” says Dad. “I ran down, and I called and called. I ran into the sea. The sea was icy cold and the air was icy cold. I stood there splashing, calling. You remember?”

  “Yes,” says Colin. “We heard you shouting and it was like you were a hundred miles away.”

  “I stood up and watched,” says Mam. “Dad in his soaking trousers, the girls behind him on the shore. I saw Dad running into the fog until he had disappeared, too.”

  Dad laughs.

  “Blundered into them, knocked them flying, tumbled into the sea myself. We came out icy cold and soaking wet.”

  “Giggling and splashing,” says Mam. “You all came up to me, to the bandstand, the tea, the sandwiches. Soon everybody wrapped in towels. You’ll catch your deaths, I said. You will. You’ll catch your deaths.”

  We drink tea, nibble toast, try to remember.

  “It was me that saw her,” says Catherine. “The little girl standing in the fog, pale as the mist, knee-deep in the sea. I pointed. There! I said. There! We watched the fog going back as quickly as it had come in. In the water, I said. There, in the fog. There. Peel your eyes. I ran down to the sea, pointing. There! The fog went back, the sea was empty, just water, little waves. Not a soul in there. Dreamt it night after night. Little girl in the water. The missing one, the one who seemed always to be somewhere in the fringes. Catch her in the corner of your eye, then turn your head and she’d be gone.”

  We turn our eyes to Barbara. She turns her eyes to each of us, eyes shining like the sea, complexion pale as sea fog.

  “I didn’t make you up,” says Catherine.

  “No,” says Barbara, and she reaches out and touches Catherine’s cheek. “And it doesn’t matter exactly what’s true and what’s made up. I was always there. I am always there, despite my death.”

  We are silent at the word, but we sigh together, those of us who are in life and those of us who are in death.

  “What’s death?” says Mary suddenly. Mary looks at Mam, at Dad, at Barbara. “You all died. What’s death?”

  “Death is very big and very frightening,” says Barbara. “Death is being all alone and waiting for others to come to you.”

  “Death is separation,” says Dad. “It’s when you’re torn away from those who have hardly known you, and who will have trouble in remembering you.” He touches Mary on the cheek. “Like you and Margaret,” he says. “You would always have difficulty in remembering me.”

  “Death is knowing you’re about to die,” says Mam. “It’s seeing the dead and seeing the living all at once. It’s wanting not to die and not to live. It’s wanting to stay with the last breath when the dead and the living are all around you, and touching you, and whispering, It’s all right, Mam. Everything’s all right. But there’s no way of staying with the last breath. You have to die.”

  “And then?” says Colin. “What happens then?”

  Barbara smiles.

  “And then the dead get together and tell stories about the living, just as the living tell stories about the dead.”

  “Yes,” says Dad. “The dead begin with, Do you remember? or, Let me tell you about the time, or, There was once . . .”

  We’re silent again. We listen to the birds, the children singing outside.

  Mam laughs.

  “I sang that,” she says. “January, February, March, April . . . Jumping the rope, running round to the line again. Time and again and time and again and time and again. There was once a little girl with lovely leaping legs . . .”

  She hums the relentless tune and taps her toes on the floor.

  “And anyway,” she says. “As well as life and death, there’s this.”

  “What’s this?” says Mary.

  “The kitchen. Just the kitchen, I suppose.”

  “The smallest place in the world,” says Dad. “An impossible place. An impossible story. A kind of Heaven.”

  “And what’s Heaven?” says Colin.

  “Maybe it’s just this, an impossible afternoon when everyone is together all at once.”

  We gaze out at the light, through the seething dust. The sun still hangs at the dead center of the sky. The children and the blackbird sing. No one speaks. Nothing happens. We look at each other, touch each other.

  “Tell us a story,” says Margaret.

  “Tell us a story,” we say.

  “There was once . . . ,” says Mam.

  We look at her.

  “Yes,” she whispers. “Listen. This is true . . . Hm. There was once a little boy from Carlisle Street who lost his voice in the winter snow. You remember?”

  “I remember,” says Dad.

  “His name was Jack Law,” says Mam. “He had seven sisters, a loving mammy and a loving daddy, and nowt but sacking tied around his feet. . . .”

  We listen to the truth, the memories, the bits made up. We gaze at each other. We eat warm buttered toast. We know that the sun will fall, that the children and the birds will be silent. We know that we will return to separate lives and separate deaths. We listen to the stories, that for an impossible afternoon hold back the coming dark.

  Jack Law

  “LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT JACK LAW,” whispered Carmel Bright.

  We were in Dragone’s. My grandmother was at my side. Carmel faced us across the thin table. They shared a pot of tea: two cups, the teapot, a jug of steaming water. Jack himself was in the next cubicle, past Carmel. Like me, he held a heavy Horlicks cup between his hands. Sometimes he raised his head and stared through the dividing glass, but there was nothing in his eyes.

  I leaned on my grandmother. I watched him, his wild long hair, ancient clothes, filthy fingers on the pale cup. Jack Law. I’d seen him always, rope around his waist, kit bag at his back, striding endlessly through our town.

  “Who is Jack Law?” I whispered.

  My grandmother shook her head, pressed a finger to her lips: not kind to talk of him, not with him so close.

  “Maybe there is a kindness in it,” said Carmel.

  She sighed, as if she felt Jack Law’s gaze upon her back. Her green eyes softened as she leaned across.

  “It’ll be all right. Drink your drink and let me tell you about Jack Law.”

  I sipped the Horlicks. I remembered the first time I ever saw him, striding past our garden in the sleet. I remembered tugging at the hand that held me: Who’s that? Who’s that?

  “It happened so long ago I can’t even be sure it happened as I say it did. Stories change in the telling, memory makes up as much as it knows. We were very small. The things we saw were all mixed up with the things we dreamt and the things that we were scared of. We were at school together: me, your grandma, Jack
Law, lots of others that you know and lots that’s dead and gone. Forty-five of us, fifty, who’s to know? Too many. No way of teaching anything worth having, not when there’s half a hundred of you and just one man before you with a stick. Filled your head with things that wouldn’t stop, things that still won’t stop once you let them go. Many’s the night I’m in my cold bed and if I’m not careful here they come from all those years ago. Seven sevens are forty-nine, eight sevens are fifty-six, I, said the sparrow, with my bow and arrow, Infant Jesus meek and mild, January, February, March, April, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth, a for apple, b for ball, c for cat . . . You know, Esther? Yes, you know. From all those years back, things we learned, useless things just going round and round and round our heads.”

  She smiled and touched my brow.

  “Not like now, though. Thinking’s happening in there. You won’t fall for it.”

  She loosened the silken scarf at her throat. I sipped the Horlicks. Jack wiped his ragged sleeve across his red lips.

  “We had Mr. Marks, a good man, no abuser of his stick, least no more than most were then. Beat the rhythms on his desk with it, whipped the latecomers and the chatterers and the sniggerers with it. But never touched the ones that were just slow. Never touched Jack Law.

  “You know your Catechism, boy? Course you do. The hammering at it still goes on. Who made you? Why did He make you? In whose image did He make you? Course you know. They’re the easy ones, the early ones. You know the other ones, the ones that’s deep inside the book? What were the chief sufferings of Christ? What is Hope? How can we show that the Angels and Saints know what passes on earth? In how many ways can we cause or share the guilt of another’s sin? Why are we . . . Never mind, don’t answer me, don’t try to think of the answers. Let them go. Every morning, nine till half past nine, we had the Catechism: Mr. Marks chanting the question, half a hundred chanting the answer back. Each of us with the little book to take home in our pockets, the only book they ever gave. Learn it in school and learn it at the fireside till you couldn’t forget it no matter how hard you later tried. Unless you were Jack Law, and others like Jack Law.

  “We had a headmistress, Miss Sloane. Remember, Esther? Not like these you’re getting now, these pretty things with legs and brains. Big as the door to our eyes when she came into Mr. Marks’s room. Hard as stone. Bundled up in scratchy tweeds. Face you didn’t want to see. Face that kept repeating and repeating in your dreams. Remember, Esther? Esther Conroy, Who made you? Carmel Bright, Why did God make you? Jack Law, In whose image did God make you?”

  She poured more water into the teapot, poured more tea into her own and my grandmother’s cup. Jack Law stared down into his rich sweet Horlicks.

  “Jack was a pretty little scrawny little thing. Eyes like saucers and bones like twigs. Lived on Carlisle Street just outside the school. One of eight or nine, who knows? One of lots of them. Dad worked on the river, humping coal from coal trucks onto coal boats. Mam took in washing. She chopped sticks and sold them round the streets. She sold sweets from her front window: barley twists, cinnamon sticks, licorice roots. You know those things? Kids everywhere inside, all neglect but bright as buttons mainly. Sisters sitting there with Jack and helping him. Who made you, Jack? Why did God make you, Jack? Sisters filled with love, holding their little brother tight. In whose image did God make you, Jack? Doesn’t matter, Jack. You know God made you. You know God made you to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. Long as you know that, what’s there to worry about? Maybe when he cried they told him, God made you in His own image and likeness, Jack, but it was just to comfort him. They knew he’d never remember more than two.”

  She paused and smiled.

  “You’re watching Jack. You’re wondering does he hear, does he understand. You’re wondering like your grandma, is this hurting Jack. Who’s to know? Ask him and there’d be no answer. The faith drives some to drink and some to silence. You could drive a nail in that man’s hand and never get a yelp. What’s certain is there were those that loved him then and there’s those that love him still.”

  She allowed her voice to rise.

  “There’s many still alive that love Jack Law.”

  There was no change visible in his face. He raised his cup and drank. He wiped his ragged sleeve across his mouth.

  “Fridays were the best days and the worst days. Story day. Used to love it, listening to Mr. Marks as he read them from the book. Noah and his ark. Jonah in the whale. Little David. Hairy Esau. Abraham and Isaac climbing up the mountain. Loved writing them. Not the way I hear you’re let to do them now from your imagination and your dreams. We copied the lines onto the slates, then copied the writing on the lines, and better keep it neat and straight, eh, Esther? Else it’s the rap on the slate and Mr. Marks all sharp and saying, Get it done again! Jesus walking on the water. Jesus changing water into wine. Jesus walking round his world, curing and healing and taking pity as he went. Yes, all those lovely tales. And in among them all the knowledge that Miss Sloane would soon be in to test us. Who made you? Why did God make you? Standing there huge before us, pointing down to pale scared faces, lining up in the front of the class the ones that didn’t know. How could they not? I couldn’t understand it till I found myself out there with my hand stretched out and Miss Sloane in front of me with Mr. Marks’s stick. Dread makes fools of all of us. You found that yet?”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t answer me. Put the question from your head. He’s still there? Silent Jack’s still with us?”

  I nodded. He’d finished his drink. He gazed down at his clasped hands. I leaned on my grandmother again, felt her shifting to allow me in.

  “Most every Friday, Jack was there, of course. More than any other, Jack was there. You make Jesus weep, she told him. You make his Holy Mother wring her hands in fear for you. Where you going to end, Jack Law? It was the question that he’d learned to answer. In Hell, Miss Sloane. That’s right, in Hell, she said, and she whipped him all the more.

  “They were poor days. Poverty you wouldn’t credit now. Folk going round in rags. Just the luckiest kids with boots on their feet and warm coats on their backs. The ones like Jack Law coming into school with thrice-timeholey hand-me-downs and sometimes nowt but sacking taped around their feet. Come winter, Mr. Marks’d load the classroom fire up and make sure the ones in peril were in its shine. He was a good man but a weak man. When Miss Sloane came in that Friday with the Devil in her eyes he should have stood in front of us and protected us, but he backed down, and let her have her way.

  “Jack Law was nearest the fire. She whipped the stick down onto his slate. Practicing for Judgment Day, Jack Law? In whose image did God make you, Jack Law? His mouth gagged and gaped and nowt came out. She whipped the slate again and asked the question again. I know, Miss, calls one of Jack’s sisters from the back of the class. Me too, says another. Miss Sloane glares across at them and there’s only silence.

  “Outside it’s winter, the yard’s all ice. There’s been earlier snow that’s hard as stone with slides and games. Now the snow’s come back, tumbling past the windows, swirling down onto the ice. She stands there watching it. She calls Jack Law and puts a Catechism in his hand. You will learn the answer at last, Jack Law. Go out into the yard. Stand there at the center where I can see you. Take the book. Read it until you remember. Mr. Marks is gasping. He’s there with a coat in his hand, someone’s coat, anyone’s. She closes her eyes and shakes her head. No, thank you, Mr. Marks. No need for that. Off you go, Jack Law. And out he goes, in his thin rags and his sacking, and he doesn’t look back.

  “Please, Miss! Oh, please, Miss Sloane! Weeping sisters and weeping girls. Children craning to the window, seeking to see out through the snow. Don’t speak! she yells. Don’t move! She stands there at the window watching. She sighs and turns back to us. The little pains we make you suffer now will give you due warning of the eternity of
pain to be found in Hell. Carmel Bright, Who made you? Esther Conroy, Why did God make you? When she’s asked enough and whipped enough, she turns to Mr. Marks. One hour should suffice, Mr. Marks. Bring him in when an hour’s over and we’ll try again. And she leaves us.

  “We dash to the window. No stopping us. There he is shaking in the center with the snow tumbling all around. Please, sir! Oh, please, sir, Mr. Marks. Oh, Mr. Marks, so weak and trembling. And as we watch, little Jack starts running out there in the yard, running round and round and round with the Catechism in his hand through the falling snow. Bring him in, we whisper. Please, sir, Mr. Marks. Would it happen now? Would no one make a move and run out there and bring him in, no matter what the teachers said or did? Would his brothers not raise their fists and fight to get him back? Would even his sisters just stand weeping, going, Please sir, Mr. Marks. Maybe not, but way back then the things we saw were all mixed up with the things we were told to believe. The things we knew were wrong were all mixed up with the things we were told were right. We looked down from the window. What we saw and what we knew was little Jack Law running through the icy snow to keep himself out of blazing Hell.

  “It came to an end, and maybe the hour wasn’t even all used up. Mr. Marks went out. He brought him in, purple hands, deathly cheeks, icy water streaming from him. Now we wrapped him in our coats and held him at the fire and we cried and cried. Then came Miss Sloane, looming through the doorway. Well? she says. Have you learned, Jack Law? In whose image did God make you? We gather around him. We pray as we have never prayed. She asks again. His mouth moves and there’s not a sound. Not a gag, not a gurgle. Nothing. Silence.

  “She reaches for the stick. Can you believe she reaches for the stick? But Mr. Marks holds it tight. Half a hundred pairs of eyes, daring her at last. Would we have touched her? Would we have torn her to a thousand pieces as we wished to? Who can tell? She casts her gaze across us. She whispers, Remember the punishments that wait for us all if once we falter. Then she goes.”

  Carmel placed her hand around the teapot, testing its heat. She poured in the last of the water. Jack Law raised his head, stared through the glass at me, and there was nothing in his eyes.