by Jd Field
Chapter 11: First to Wake
I walked down Chalice Drive in a daze. The old lady with the empty shopping basket stood outside the third house along. “Are you alright, dear? You look awfully pale.”
“I’m fine.” Somehow, though, I had acquired a limp.
Mum stood in the front window. I wanted to tell her about everything that happened; when I thought about the taxi driver, tears pressed at the back of my eyes and I knew that pouring the story out to her would make me feel better. She would give me a hug, then alternate between shouting about the horrible man and stroking my hand telling me how everything had turned out alright. If I told her, though, she would never let me go anywhere again. Not being allowed to meet Eddy, presuming he wanted to meet me, would be unbearable. I held my head up, took deep breaths, and made for the back door.
“Hi Mum!” I called.
She appeared in the doorway from the front room. “Hello sweetheart. Oh what happened?”
“Um.” I glanced around the kitchen. “Have we got any...” My mind tested distractions that might work, like trying to fit jigsaw puzzle pieces into a hole. “Icepacks?”
“I think so. Or some frozen peas, for sure.” She opened the freezer door. “Oh Maddie have you hurt yourself?”
I sat down. “I think I twisted my ankle.” While Mum fussed over my injury I would be able to tell my story to the walls, and not have to look her in the face.
“You poor thing. So what happened? Why are you late?”
“I don’t know what happened to the taxi you booked.” This was probably true. I couldn’t believe that Mum would choose a taxi company employing anybody as dodgy as the big, hairy driver. Probably he didn’t work for anybody at all, just drove around on Saturday nights, seeing what poor unfortunates he came across. “I waited around for a bit, then I bumped into this guy from school.”
“What was he doing in Wells?” Mum crouched in front of me and eased my shoe off.
“I guess he knew I would be there.”
Mum looked up at me for a moment. “Had you been texting him?”
“No!” I overdid my outrage, to make her think that possibly I had been in touch with him and was being secretive. Better she thought I was stretching the truth, than she started to wonder about whatever peculiar sixth sense he had for my safety.
“Who is he?”
“Mum!”
“Well, is he a nice boy?”
“Of course.”
“And he has his own transport?”
I smiled with relief at the word ‘transport,’ letting me avoid a lie. “I guess, though it might belong to his parents.”
“Well I suppose that’s alright, then.” She stroked my ankle. “How’s that feel?”
“It feels great.” I eased to my feet and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. “Mum, I’m really sleepy. It’s been a long day.”
“But Maddie, you haven’t told me about Amina. And what did you buy?”
I stopped in the doorway. My shopping bags and purse!
“What?” Mum stepped forward, her eyes scanning my face.
“I left them. I left them in the...” I held onto the door frame with one hand. “I left my bags in the car. I guess I’ll get them on Monday.”
I limped upstairs as fast as I could, staggered into my room and pressed madly at the light switch. Eddy was out of sight at the end of the road, but I presumed he was still there. I stared out the window and across the road the cormorant flapped its wings. The tree it slept in every night seemed to have died. I shuddered. What was it doing there?
After pulling the curtains I got ready for bed, then tugged my blue covers up around my knees and flipped open my laptop. Amina wasn’t online.
I closed the computer again and lay staring at the wall. Over and over I replayed the day’s events. Amina’s information about Endymion. The building realisations of what Eddy must be. I shook when I remembered the taxi driver, but the shaking stopped when I remembered how I felt in Eddy’s arms.
And Eddy. What was he? Was he a ghost?
I opened the computer again and read the history of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I tried to calculate which of the knights he might be. Couragous, hot-headed Gawain. Lancelot the toughest, bravest and sleaziest. Tristan the romantic. Galahad the pure and innocent. I read the information about Galahad again and then lay back. Maybe he was Galahad, the knight who discovered the grail.
I turned out the light and lay in the darkness. How had it happened? What did somebody do to make him sleep for so long? How did it work? How must it feel? And how had he gone into the cave under the hill a grown man and come out a small boy?
And Mr. Neil, the mysterious Mr. Neil. What was his role?
I asked myself questions over and over, until the curtains began to pale over the window. Getting up, I drew them back. Chalice Drive lay silent, still sleeping on Sunday morning. Dew covered the parked cars.
More than wanting to see Eddy, I needed to see him. Waiting until school on Monday wasn’t an option. But how? Calling would work. The Hechters’ number wouldn’t be difficult to find. The Shire Horse Centre had to be listed. Alternatively Tiago might even give me the number.
It was feasible. I could phone Eddy and ask him to meet me in Glastonbury somewhere. But I wouldn’t. It would be too weird. After the last conversation we had, at school, it was possible he would say no, and I couldn’t bear that. So I took a long, long shower, then went to the newsagents on the main road to get a newspaper for Mum.
“Mornin’ love.” The newsagent pointed at the picture on the front page, of a politician who had misbehaved. “What’s the world comin’ to, eh?”
I blinked. “Um, I don’t know.”
“They’re all at it, aren’t they?” He took my coins and stowed them in his register. “Oh well. You can tell he’s not from round here, can’t you?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure Glastonbury’s inhabitants were more moral than people anywhere else.
To accompany the newspaper I cooked Mum breakfast, made a pot of coffee and set everything on the kitchen table.
“Oh Maddie, what’s this for?” She raised her hands on either side of her plate, as if she had conjured its contents by magic.
“No reason. I woke up early. Coach says we have to make sure we consume plenty of protein. So I thought, scrambled eggs.”
“Right.” She nodded. “Are you feeling okay? You look a bit...”
“I had a long shower. Used a new facial scrub.”
“Right.” She unfolded the newspaper to its full extent and scanned the front page. “Oh dear. Global warming. Wars here there and everywhere.”
Nodding, I buttered my toast. “The newsagent said as much. Though apparently everything would be better if more of the people in charge came from around here.”
Mum chuckled. “Of course.”
I checked the clock. Nine o’clock. Early for a Sunday morning, but with all the stable work he must have to do, Eddy might be up. I checked my phone. I had battery, signal, the ringer was on full volume; everything ready for if he called.
Mum looked up from the newspaper. “Are you okay, love?”
“Yeah. You know. I’ve got ants in my pants.”
“Go for a bike ride.”
I tilted my head to one side. “Um. Nah. Bike riding’s for going to school.”
“A walk?”
“Walking around here? Really? No. And my ankle’s still sore. I’ll just do homework. Read books.”
I went upstairs and arranged my school books in my desk cubby hole, then checked my phone. My biography shelves niggled at the corner of my eyes. I reordered them into subjects’ second names, then birthdates. In the end I found that death dates gave the most aesthetically pleasing line of spines. I ran my finger along them, then checked my phone again. I should have been able to add a “Life of Gorbachev” from Bath, but the thug of a taxi driver had it. Maybe it would do him some good, expand his world view. I doubted it.
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After checking my phone again I started my physics homework. It took three times as long as it should have done, what with time spent looking out my window and examining my phone.
I rearranged my clothes in my new IKEA closet. The beginning of November was a week away and I figured all pale and light clothes could be moved to the back, warm winter stuff to the front.
At eleven thirty-two my phone rang. I leapt from the closet to my desk and went over on my twisted ankle. The number was local, a landline. It had to be him. I perched sensibly, professionally, on the edge of my desk chair, and answered.
“Um. Hello.”
“Hi Maddie, how are you feeling?” His voice was deep and steady.
I wrapped my free arm around my stomach, to keep myself from disintegrating into a heap on the floor. The sound of his voice made me shiver, as if I was sitting in a roller coaster, rumbling towards the first drop.
“I’m.” My own voice squeaked like a cartoon mouse. I took a deep breath, trying to force my lungs into more than fluttering gasps. My lips felt like they had been folded out of cardboard.
“Maddie?”
“I’ve got a funny uncle.”
Silence.
Oh my God. My stomach pushed at my throat. I looked at the wastepaper bin. Maybe I was going to be sick. “I mean ankle. My ankle is twisted.”
“I’m sorry.” He chuckled. “Still, better than a twisted uncle, eh?”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t muster a giggle. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Listen, I tracked down the cab driver this morning.”
“No!”
“It wasn’t hard, what with Boxer’s fingerprints all over his car.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing, really, in the end. I’m sorry. He didn’t seem to know what had happened. I think he’s sick. He’s definitely worried. He gave me your purse, and all your shopping.”
“You’re kidding.” I moved my free hand to grip the edge of my chair.
“No, so...” For the first time his voice lost its firmness. “Do you want me to bring it to school tomorrow, or shall we meet up somewhere today?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I bit my lip. Of course I knew, but I didn’t want to appear to be stumbling over myself to spend time with him. “Probably, you don’t want to be carrying bags from girls’ clothes shops around school with you?”
“To be honest, with my status, I don’t think it could make much difference.”
My heart sank, but all I could say in argument was, “no surely not?” I crunched my eyes closed and pressed on. “Anyway, I actually need one of the things today...”
“Okay. So, in Glastonbury somewhere?”
Eddy was fantastic at taking charge when he was rescuing me from snarling dogs, or malevolent taxi drivers, but it seemed that arranging a cup of coffee presented more of a challenge. I wracked my brain. Health food stores combined with cafes and hippy little coffee shops filled Glastonbury, but I couldn’t remember the names of any of them. “Um, Starbucks?” I scowled at my reflection in the window. Could I be less imaginative?
“Ok. Fine.” Eddy switched back to certainty. “Three o’clock?”
“Cool. I’ll see you then.”
My hero! Not only was I going to see Eddy again, I was going to get back all the stuff I thought I had lost for good. I checked the clock again. Three hours and fifteen minutes to get ready. In front of my closet I eyed the neatly ordered autumn and winter clothes, then piece by piece I hauled them off their hangers, examined them in front of the mirror, and threw them onto my bed.
I showered, dried and straightened my hair, took another shower, and got dressed eleven times. Too nervous to eat lunch I set off for Starbucks just after two o’clock, but when I arrived there Eddy was already waiting outside.
“Hi.” My mind raced, trying to work out how I should approach him on a non-school, non-being rescued occasion. More than anything I wanted to stand on tiptoe and kiss him.
“Hi. I didn’t check your handbag, but I think it’s all fine.” He held out three shopping bags and my purse. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
“Let’s go inside.”
“Right.” I followed him, feeling like crying. I had a more personal conversation with the guy in the newsagents.
Eddy ordered me a chocolate milk-shake and an iced-tea for himself. I chose us a table next to the window.
He sat down opposite me. “So that was all pretty strange, last night. How do you feel about it?”
I flipped a hand. “I know I should be weirded out, but I don’t think I am.”
“Really? Great.”
“Yeah.” I sipped from my shake. “I’ve just got, like, tons of questions.”
“Ok.”
“So first, which one are you? Lancelot, Gawain, one of the others?”
He frowned and sat back. “Me? No, of course not. I was first to wake.”
“So what does that mean?” As I spoke I knew what it meant. I remembered how he dragged the sword from the water and won the leadership of Camelot.
“I’m not one of them. I’m the first. I was the king.”