by Polly Crosby
Dad shook the collection bucket, listening to the clink of coins. ‘Nice one, Roe,’ he said, passing me my orange juice. Bert was lying on the carpet, stretched out, his genitalia leering up at me. He lifted his head at Dad’s voice, his tail thumping on the floor. A pearl of white shone at the end of his penis, glinting in the firelight, and I looked away, feeling queasy.
Dad had set up a tattered game of chess in my absence. I hadn’t bothered playing chess with Dad for a long time, as I got sick of him always beating me. But this time, as I sucked hard on the dregs of my orange juice, some magical alchemy began to happen. I moved my pieces thoughtfully around the board, chewing on my straw and taking his pawns in quick succession. After he had refilled his pint and, grudgingly, my orange juice, I jumped on one of his rooks, circling his king. His queen had gone off on a promenade around the edges of the board, no use to anyone. Perhaps she was drunk too, I thought, looking at Dad’s crossed eyes as he sipped his fourth pint.
A couple of pickled eggs and a fifth pint appeared as Dad managed, at last, to overpower one of my bishops. Alas, it was too little too late as he plonked himself right in front of my queen. I made sure the end was gory.
Dad was sitting slumped at the table, his head on his folded arms. He was talking, but his mouth was attached to the cuff of his jumper and his voice was muffled. I leant closer, the better to hear him, and he lifted his head.
‘I went out to the hazel wood,’ he said, his mouth slack now that it was loosed from the wool of his jumper, ‘because a fire was in my head.’ He looked at me, his eyes squinting. ‘I have a fire in my head,’ he said, touching the tip of his finger to my forehead.
‘Shall we go home?’ I asked and he nodded, picking up my bucket and knocking the chess set to the floor as he attempted to get up.
It was a clear, dark night, the thin sliver of moon hardly lighting the way.
‘They want a treasure hunt,’ Dad slurred, ‘but they don’t understand.’
‘What don’t they understand?’ I said, trying to steer him along the edge of the road.
‘It’s not for them.’
The spring moonlight seemed to trickle down the back of my neck, ‘What do you mean? Who’s it for?’
Dad stopped in the middle of the road. ‘It’s for me,’ he said, ‘and for you.’ He pointed his finger at his chest and then tried to do the same to me, but he tripped on the grass verge. The collection bucket spilt onto the grass like a clown’s water bucket at the circus. For a moment I felt terribly, terribly sad for my father, for even though I was the one dressed up, it was obvious that he was the clown. He dropped down onto his knees and started picking up the pennies.
‘The silver apples of the moon,’ he said, collecting up a handful of change and letting it slide through his fingers, ‘the golden apples of the sun.’ I knelt beside him and began to help, but his huge hand rested on mine, stopping me.
‘What treasure is this?’ he asked, turning to look at me again, his eyes full of tears.
Eighteen
I could always tell when the summer holidays began because my garden became off limits, not just at weekends, but every day. Families arrived bringing picnics and metal detectors. Little children carried buckets and spades as if they were going to the seaside. It was the day after my thirteenth birthday, and already my summer purgatory inside the house had begun.
‘Stacey, why don’t you go to school?’ I said, drowsily. We were lying on my bed, staring out of the window over the tops of Dad’s mobiles.
‘You know why, Mum home schools me. Anyway, you don’t go to school either.’
‘I don’t know if what Dad does could really be called home schooling. It’s mostly art and ancient history.’
‘Sounds nice.’ Stacey picked at a scab under Monty’s fur. He purred loudly. ‘Is it the summer holidays yet? For people who go to school, I mean?’
‘Only for private schools so far. Soon all the schools will break up, and then it’ll get even busier, and I’ll be stuck in the house, day in, day out.’ I rolled over and looked at her. ‘Did you ever think about going to high school?’
I had met a girl from my primary school while I was out walking the other day, and had been surprised when she told me she’d already been at high school for two years.
‘Did you think we stayed at primary until we were eighteen?’ she had said, looking at me with pity. It felt strange knowing all the children I had briefly met at the little school down the road were moving on in their education without me.
‘Why would I want to go to high school?’ Stacey said.
‘To learn? Maybe we could go. If we both went, it would be OK. You could ask your mum…’
‘Learning’s overrated,’ she said, lifting the edge of the scab. It came away with a few hairs attached.
I frowned. ‘Well, maybe your mum could home school me too, then. For the stuff that Dad knows nothing about. Can I come to your house sometimes?’ I knew the answer, I had been asking it for years.
‘Nah. It’s boring at mine. It’s much more fun at your house.’
‘No it isn’t. It’s so dull here.’ I began picking at Monty too. ‘What shall we do?’
The summer stretched before us. My usual excitement at this time of year had been replaced by a foggy malaise. My gaze settled on a flicker of green playing across the far wall. ‘What’s that?’ I said, pointing to it.
Stacey got up and went to the light, following it back to a dish on my dressing table. She came back to the bed and opened her hand. My mum’s emerald earrings lay in her palm. I picked them up, letting them dangle. The green light splintered and spun across the room. I wondered if Mum had ever worn them, and with that thought came a longing, a need for her that puzzled me. It had been two years since I last saw her, and then only for a short few days. Why did I suddenly need her now?
‘Let’s pierce our ears,’ Stacey said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘You want to be able to wear your mum’s earrings, don’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said, doubtfully.
‘We’ll need a needle and a candle,’ she said, and I remembered a programme we had seen recently on Children’s BBC about a girl who had done exactly that. I tried not to think about how she had gone to the doctor’s afterwards because they’d got infected.
Stacey was rummaging around my room and came back with the surgical instruments. ‘I’ll do yours first,’ she said.
‘OK,’ I said warily, eying the needle.
We lit a candle, and I sat on the edge of the bed, holding an ice cube to my earlobe, while Stacey put the end of the needle in the flame. As she approached me, I had a fleeting feeling of foreboding, and then she was pinching my ear between her finger and thumb, and pushing the needle into my skin.
‘Ow!’
‘Keep still.’
‘I don’t think the ice cube has numbed it.’
‘It’s nearly through now, stay still. Gosh, your skin is tough.’
With a jolt, I felt the needle exit the back of my ear. Stacey pulled it out, her hand bloody.
‘Now the other one,’ she said.
‘No way, that was enough.’ I backed away, onto the bed.
‘You can’t have just one ear pierced.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s weird.’
‘I’m going to start a new trend. Anyway, one of Mum’s earrings is bent. Your turn.’ I took the needle from her, wiping the blood off on a tissue.
‘No way. You think I’m going to go through that? Here—’ She slipped the earring into the hole she’d made in my ear. It stung for a moment and then I could feel it dragging my earlobe down.
It was a strange feeling, wearing an earring. I felt lopsided. My whole ear burnt. When I looked in the mirror, my skin there was bright red, but I was bewitched by the sparkle of the emerald, the gleam of the gold. I wished Mum could see me.
Stacey lay down on the bed, picking at the wooden beam above her head, trying to
coax a death watch beetle onto her finger. ‘I forgot to tell you,’ she said, ‘I’ve found somewhere new: a secret place. I wanted to show it to you for a birthday present.’
Stacey never brought me material gifts. Her presents were places or objects she found out on her walks, and I treasured them always.
‘I think it might even be a shrieking pit,’ she added.
I turned to look at her. She hadn’t mentioned shrieking pits for years, not since we went looking when we were nine and Dad had to pull me out of the mud minus my wellies. ‘No way,’ I said.
Stacey grinned. ‘Get your shoes on, Rom,’ she said.
‘Do you think we’re the same people we were when we first met?’ I said to Stacey as we walked across the marsh. My earring swung wildly as I walked, brushing against my neck.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, stopping to study me.
I was finding it hard to identify with the version of me in Dad’s stories. Romilly in the books was forever nine years old. She had a talking cat and lived in a world where adventures happened as soon as she opened her bleary eyes. No spots marred the face of the storybook Romilly, and I was pretty sure she didn’t need to wash her hair every day like I had to now.
Unlike my literary counterpart, I was growing like a weed, my body erupting with weird and embarrassing lumps, and my second patched denim dress hung in the wardrobe, too small and tight on my frame to ever be worn again.
I looked at Stacey. She was not quite as tall as me. Her shoulders were broader, and her hair was long and wavy. Everything about her was soft and rounded. It suited her.
‘Do you remember when I used to think you were a boy?’ I said, immediately regretting it as the smile dropped from her face.
Stacey turned and carried on walking. ‘I wanted to be a boy,’ she said, ‘when I was younger. Still do sometimes.’
‘Did you? Why?’
‘I thought if I was a boy I could run away.’
I pictured her with her short, scraggy hair, a polka dot handkerchief tied to the end of a stick over one shoulder. ‘Girls can run away too,’ I said.
‘I didn’t know that then.’
We had reached the edge of the marsh now. It gave way to flat fields, shimmering with corn.
‘Listen,’ Stacey said, stopping suddenly so that I bumped into her, ‘it’s like singing.’
‘What is it?’
‘I think it’s those trees. Over there in the middle of the field.’
‘What do you think they’re saying?’
‘Probably telling everyone to bugger off.’
‘Oh, nice.’
‘Come on.’
Close up, they weren’t a line of trees, but a circle. I stopped on the edge of the field, not daring to trespass through the corn.
‘Come on, Rom,’ Stacey said with a glint in her eye, ‘dare you.’ And she parted the corn like silk in her hands and waded into the golden field, her body swinging through it like a slow pendulum.
I watched her weave her way through, trying to decide whether to follow her, but then something black caught my eye, way off in the distance. It was the size of a large dog, but it moved very differently, slinking low to the ground, its long, slim tail furled out behind it. The panther, I thought with a shiver, watching it as it disappeared over the horizon.
‘Stacey, wait for me!’ I called, hurrying through the corn to catch up.
At the edge of the trees we stopped, a tangle of brambles blocking our path. Stacey ducked down to peer through.
‘There’s a way in here,’ she said, pushing her way into it, holding the bramble cables so I could squeeze through behind. The trees above us were deafening. It was more like chanting than singing, but as we came through into the centre, it died off until it was hardly audible.
I gasped. A small, perfectly round lake lay in front of us, the water brown and brackish. We stood as if we were in a church, shivering, waiting for something. And then the sun broke over the tops of the trees and a ray of light pierced the water. The opaque lake became gold before our eyes, revealing the long, wet fronds of weed that lay horizontally on its bed.
‘I bet people have drowned here,’ Stacey whispered to me, and then she was pulling at her clothes, unbuttoning and unzipping until they fell in a messy crumple round her feet and she ran, plunging into the water, shrieking at its cold chill.
I couldn’t help but stare at the change in her. Whereas my breasts were little more than tiny protuberances on my chest, hers were alive, rolling down towards her stomach, settling on the skin there, the nipples like eyes gazing into her tummy button, only to jump upwards and gaze at the sky as she bounded into the water. As the first cold droplets landed on her skin, her nipples shrank and darkened like sea anemones sensing an exploratory finger.
‘Come on!’ she shouted, the mad glint back in her eyes. And so I did, pulling at my clothes in the same excited panic, running at the water as if my life depended on it.
Even in high summer the water was cold, and my nerve endings died a sudden, scissory death as I hit the water. Stacey and I dared each other to run in, taking it in turns to splash to the pool’s centre, our feet caught up in mud and pondweed. The water swirled with a hurricane of disturbed silt, tiny filaments of dead leaves and insects and whirling vegetation.
After we had run and jumped and dived until our hair and skin was plastered with the lake’s debris, we lay on the long grass, feeling the sun dry our bodies until the little pieces glued themselves to our skin.
‘What kind of death frightens you most?’ Her voice was quiet, rousing me from the beginnings of a warm dream on the bank. I squinted at her through my eyelashes.
‘I dunno. You?’
‘Drowning. But not on a day like today. Under ice, so there’s no hope of getting out.’ She had sat up and was staring out over the little lake, her hands encircling her knees.
A trickle of cold sidled across my skin. ‘Why?’
‘It’s like a window you can’t cross, isn’t it? Your skin would get so stiff from the cold that it cracked, and all the time you’d be watching the world going on on the other side of the ice.’
She hugged herself. I felt the cold penetrate my bones, and I rubbed at the goose pimples on my arms.
‘Let’s make a potion,’ I said, changing the subject.
Her expression changed too, like scudding clouds leaving the sun. ‘Yes,’ she said happily.
‘What could we make it in?’
She pointed to an old glass bottle bobbing in the water, ‘That do?’
The potion-making had become a ritual, started two years ago when we were eleven. It was something we usually did in the garden at Braër, hidden behind Dad’s shed under the cool of the willow, but this time it felt different: secret.
We stood, as if in a trance, and collected blossom from the wild flowers that ringed the lake. Stacey waded out and picked a wilting yellow flag iris. We pushed them into the bottle, and filled it to the brim with lakewater.
Legs crossed, our knees touching, naked but for our knickers, we gazed at each other as Stacey swirled the bottle. The perfume was musty, like undiscovered attics, and it curled high into my nose and stayed there. The ritual had been perfected over the years: taking my hand, Stacey pulled it towards her and dabbed the perfume on my arm. I copied, pulling her arm to me and swiping the water over her wrist. Fragments of brown petal plastered themselves to her, mimicking the freckles on my own arm. We sat, looking into each other’s eyes, our skin anointed. Stacey lifted a hand and tucked my hair behind my ear, watching my new earring catch the sun.
Sitting there, our skin prickling, we leant towards each other and touched nose to nose, mirroring what the other held out. It had always fascinated both of us, this game, since we’d first met.
Her nose was oily, slipping against mine. I could smell the darkness of her unwashed hair, hear the downy whisper of her top lip. We held the position for a second, our breath filling each other’s mouths, choking our tongues.
Finally we reeled back, exhaling quickly and rocking our bony bottoms against the ground. The tip of my nose felt greasy.
Stacey leant forward again and whispered about a wetness in the gusset of her pants, her breath hot and virulent in my ear. She spoke proudly of blood and pain and stains she couldn’t remove. She placed my hand low on her warm stomach, and I felt the knotted muscles beneath the fat. Stacey showed me her pants, still damp from her swim. They had the echo of a dark stain in the warm bit that went between her legs. My own pants were stretchy and a little bit small for me, with cartoon flowers dancing across them.
In the golden light, amid the spiders’ nests and tiny midges, we placed our hands together so that our palms were touching, warm and soft. My heart prickled in my tummy and my fingers flexed, wanting to touch more.
Quietly we let go, picked up our clothes and began to dress.
Nineteen
In November, the dew-covered spiderwebs on the lawn were replaced by creeping webs of frost. The beech tree was completely smooth now, the bark long since fallen away, and in the early morning frost it shimmered like a huge snake winding its way through the garden towards the house.
Dad and I lit the fire earlier each afternoon, and spent our mornings on long foraging walks, finding wood we could burn. Dad had developed a love of collecting conkers. They were piled into bowls and lined up on every window sill in every room of the house, burnished and fat, as if he wanted to stop an impending invasion of spiders.
One particularly cold evening, Dad was watching the news. A man was stepping out of an aeroplane into the wind and rain, waving at the waiting crowds.
‘He is thinner and greyer,’ the reporter said. I stopped on my way to bed, caught by the poise of the man as he stood, stooped in the aeroplane’s doorway. He looked a bit like a skeleton. He was stumbling down the steps now, the skin of his face ashen, his eyes vacant and staring, despite the smile.