Boy Overboard

by Peter Wells

  Breathless.

  It felt.

  ‘It felt,’ I say, closing my eyes, then going on walking.

  Now I have them. I glance over to see Keely feel me with his eyes. His football-shaped head leans towards me, curving. The skin on his lips unseals in slow motion, like skin which is burning, being ripped apart. Soft pink inside there, small bubble percolating. His sweet, almost grass-smelling breath. I know it.

  ‘Howudfeel?’ his voice groans, prickpoint, expectant.

  ‘Like,’ I say, wondering how to describe it. Like. Like. Like. I close my eyes. ‘Like I was inside a fountain but comin’ out the fountain mouth.’

  The eyes of boywatch stare at me.

  Carrot’s banana breath sneers all over me.

  ‘Where’d ja put it?’

  ‘… like an earthquake,’ I say, convinced.

  ‘Earthquake …’ Winkie echoes. Happy to have me proved right. If he can stand in my shadow, he is protected.

  I move away from him, leaving him rooted to his own shadow.

  Eye of sun stares down at us curiously.

  ‘… quake?’ says Carrot, suspicious.

  Beat of our feet across football mud. Thudbud.

  ‘Ye-es,’ I say.

  There is a pleasant pause here, because I know I have reeled them in.

  ‘Tell us then,’ says Keely, anxious to get over-and-done-with-it.

  Sometimes I don’t know with him whether he actually likes me. Like now. I feel the warm spray of his eyeshot as it wets me sweetly.

  ‘Tell us then,’ he breathes down deep inside me, settling into me.

  ‘O …’ I open wide. ‘It was a hot still day. It had been hot for weeks, months. Everyone went about their daily tasks. It was the first day back at school. Nobody suspected anything …’

  ‘Like today?’ asks Winkie cleverly.

  ‘Now,’ I say. ‘Like now.’

  We lift up our heads and look all around.

  ‘Nobody suspects a thing,’ my words murmur, treacherous creek. Lilylapping words lull them underground, into cavern echoes, where the words shiver up the walls, break into crystal stalactites, hang low over us, shimmering.

  Listen, I don’t say to them as I tweak the silver reins round their ears, pulling them underground with me.

  A SOUND BREAKS open my dark.

  A splinter burns. Footsteps thunder over the roof, which tilts, turns as I roll over in the surf of my dreams. Tide runs out.

  I am in Ponky’s bedroom. Ponky.

  Night.

  I hear, first, footsteps skittering across the tiled floor, then, as if catching a ball just a second too late, the hall door in-between closes. But it is too late: already in the kitchen I can hear the faintly high-pitched wheedling of Uncle Ambrose’s wheeler-dealering. His voice is bright alight, and I can hear, too, the skid of Aunty Gilda’s laugh. Her laugh is high, mounting like looking inside a shaken-up Coke bottle and seeing the bubbles chasing one after the other: arrow-bright, exploding. Other voices too, happy, crowd round her laugh, florally arranged all around it, fishfern and foliage.

  I hear the fridge seal unslurp.

  Moments later a bottletop spins across the lino floor. Giddy. Chairs scraping back. The patter of highheels tittering. Laughter, adult voices, joking. The splutter of a match. Uncle Ambrose has been to the races. Uncle Ambrose has been investigating his winning streak. Uncle Ambrose has won. I fall back into the soft feather eiderdown of sleep.

  UNCLE AMBROSE IS inside the room. He has brought into the room all the smells of the night outside, the faint ordure of the horse track, the softer staleness of beer, the saliva in his mouth, of cigarettes and the busy glands of his eyes. He stutters in his enthusiasm, words falling over each other, tipping over hurdles as he persuades. This is Uncle Ambrose the refrigerator salesman. This is Uncle Ambrose who has a whiteware franchise, his very own showroom in town. This is Uncle Ambrose who has the first motor mower, the first electric frypan and pop-up toaster in the district. He has been to the races, we know. He has won. Won! Won!

  Of course he has won, he is a magician, he pulls thousands of pounds out of a rabbit’s hat, he changes his car constantly as he moves forever upwards, producing a Holden and changing it into a Vauxhall, he takes the Vauxhall and changes it into a Velox. And now he has produced the most wonderful of things, a bright red, no, a scarlet Jaguar.

  ‘How’s my boy?’ Uncle Ambrose says to me, as the bed sags down. ‘What’s he been up to? Has my favourite boy been good?’

  ‘I’ve been good, Uncle Ambrose,’ I say. Thinking of the bright red, no, the scarlet Jaguar. I see myself getting off by the school gates. Linger, door half open. I walk away, casually, head held high, eyes closed to slits so I can just see. Through the fur, CarrotnKeely watching. It only has to be one. Better if it is one. Then they will be forced to tell. The truth.

  Uncle Ambrose bends down, quick-attack, and buries his prickles on my forehead, a wet slug kiss. I resist my impulse to reach up, snatch away the snail. In the dark, we breathe.

  ‘OK, everybody, don’t keep the kids awake. They’ve both got school tomorrow.’

  It is Aunty Gilda by the door. ‘Please,’ she says, and though there is a laugh in her voice, everyone knows she is serious. On the level, Aunty Gilda. Fair and square.

  ‘Shhh!

  Shhhhhhhh!

  SHHHHHHHH!’

  The adults sillybugger a shushing game, disappearing down a howling tunnel into silence. The lounge door closes. I know soon enough someone will break out the door, go to the fridge to get another beer. So the adults retreat, laughing and talking, letting leak into the world all their loose happiness.

  I can hear Ponky’s breath.

  We listen to the adults’ voices, high, excitable, careering. We listen to Uncle Ambrose’s voice proclaiming, ‘Bejeez I felt it in the end of my little finger, I could tell I was off on my lucky streak …’

  WE LIE THERE in a mute conspiratorial silence in which we both read each other’s telepathy, hard, cruel and unsparing, oblivious if not hostile to the sentimentality which adults clearly need to mask the stink of their failures and loneliness.

  Bright and hard as the iris inside a flame, we lie there, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for darkness to snatch at us.

  HOURS LATER, THROUGH the wall, I wake to hear them sing, Show me the way to go home.

  If only I could.

  The City of the Night Soil

  Shushabyebaby don’t you weep,

  shoeshuffle your shimmy across the street,

  rainaway future, fox chase the past,

  this is the end but not of the last.

  O, let’s pretend, he said. Let us play pretend.

  THERE IS A house, a small blue house, in a long street, a very long flat wide street, a street as long as a streak, as wide as the world, rocking, rocking like a plane slowly turning, wings tipping; but this street never moves, except under the crowd of cloud which skitter their shadow fragrantly, flagrantly onto the bitumen burning under the sun, broiling and bubbling into pockmarks, which you pick with your fingertips, your nails drip black, black tears under a white sky, and a high eye of burning sun; and this is what is so very special about this place, the seaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, which surrounds every part of it, but the sea goes out as well as comes in, and when it disappears it appears so final it will never return. There is mud here for miles, and mangroves, and nearby, in amidst the mud and the mangroves, the composted lives of an entire city, for this is where the rubbish goes, this area, this is where the shit was taken to be dumped, and this is where the night soil, the night soil of a city was delivered, this is where the defecation of an entire town was sent to compost.

  So, naturally it is a place rich in dreams, and nightmares, and visions grown from when men and women and children and animals and houses and trees and insects sleep; so, naturally, this place is for nightmares both generous and surreal; so, naturally, each moment of the day there are dreams both waking and sleepin
g; so, naturally, there is, like a balm, at any chosen moment in the day — that is, at a moment chosen by the moon — tides which creep in over the mudflats, like a pool, like a mirror, like a harbour, and so, in this area, wedged between a dump, a zoo and a loony bin, in this small triangle, a long wide empty road down which a bus whistles on its wires, to a projection, a peninsula, a point, a wedge, a dagger of land with sparkly, glittery waters like diamonds dancing on points, is a place known as Hungry Creek.

  This is a small world, an entire world, an utter world, a pinprick, a freckle, nothing more, a dot in a series of dots, which close-up to your eye makes up the name of a word on a map, nothing more. An unimportant name, a place of no importance, overlooked, to the side, a joke, in so far as it is known. This is a place where occasionally a body is washed up on the beach. A woman, a lunatic, takes her own life. It is no loss. She has lived in the institute for the insane for all her adult life. She dies, aged fifty-six. She almost has no name.

  Up the road from the blue house (but sharing the same night) there are electric shocks, there are padded cells, there are barred windows. Up the road there is a cinema with a waterfall curtain which changes its shades from raspberry scarlet to lime-green to gold. Up the road is a library, a wooden ark full of books, which at full flood floats you away from the surface of the earth, the dirt, the composting ordure: in this ark is something better than two animals of everything (they are imprisoned, at any rate, just along the road, at the zoo) — in the wooden ark full of books lies one hundred, no, one thousand, no, one hundred thousand maps for you to read: none of these worlds exist — none! Just think of it, the mysterious provenance of these maps to non-existent worlds: each day people queue up nervously, anxiously, before the central turret in which, majestic and busy, the lady librarians live — even Miss Twist with her calliper leg spitting, ‘Hsssst! Be silent,’ be respectful towards books, the words, these maps which lie in your hand — trace with your finger a way out, an escape — read carefully, in silence, mapping out on paper yourself, this underground tunnel which will lead you away and out and far away and beyond until you reach that ether known as, known as …

  what word can describe it …

  … heaven happiness peace, perhaps. Yes! Peace. Peace is the ether, the secret heartland for which these maps exist, this is the secret for all of us; peace of which there is no more beautiful word in the language, not one with a finer sound, a lispier sibilance yet with a more profound reality: peace silence stillness.

  Night

  I AM INSIDE the dark empire. Every night it comes to claim me. I leave the world prepared. Under my pillow, a revolver. This is a smart little black plastic number, quite evil looking. I am ready. Even as I sink into sleep my fingers feel towards it, brush the hot plastic. I lie very still in my trench, knowing when he comes he will not be able to tell whether there is a body in my bed.

  I have my plan. My plan is ready. If there is enough time I will get inside the wardrobe. I pull the door shut, slide the clothes along on their rails, school blazer crushed against my face. I crouch in there, hiding, staring.

  He has his back to me, he moves intently, still, sensing at the same time if there is so much as a breath in the room. I do not breathe now. Nothing. But at that moment, as always, he stiffens slightly, under his fawn coat. I know then it is inevitable. Where I have sought to hide, I cannot escape. He turns quickly, face taut with power. He is smiling, lightly. Sneering. The power of his body is a wall, a wave, it comes towards me.

  Either that, or I manage to get under the bed. I have heard a tiny sound, out in the corridor, which wakes me. I lie there, listening. Waiting to see if it is him.

  Night surrounds me, packed tight as ice. Cold, I climb down onto the floor. It is lino under there, a field of dust. Breathing is hard. But I must try not to breathe.

  Yes, gradually the door falls back of its own accord. He is standing out there, in his coat. He has pushed the door back gently, to look in. But I am clever. I have my gun. And I have arranged the bed secretseven fashion, with my pillows.

  I see now, as the door swings open, his shoes. The shoes. They are brown brogue shoes with a soft squidge of grey-yellow mud. He has come across the park. Pine needles edge onto the soles of his shoes. He brings into my warmsmelly room a chill scent of death, of the hole he has dug for me, the mud he has walked over. He lives in the night, he …

  Shoes come closer. Right by my face. I open my mouth, ready to yell. But I know already no sound will come. I have entered the empire where nothing is as it seems. I am in the night empire, the vast space where you find out what really happens in the world.

  There are two worlds, a long daylight world in which everything happens like a dull circus roll on a roundabout, everything coming back at the same time, each day, each night. Gulls in the evening flamesky, shimmering through, back to the old pine tree they restnest in. In this world I am not who I am, I am only pretending, badly, to be who everyone thinks me to be. I cannot even play myself very well, I forget the words and what he, Jamie, should be doing. This is because me of the nightworld, this longer eternal world, the one which waits for the daylight to end, is sitting there, powerfully. This me wants things which Jamie cannot have, is not allowed, shouldn’t want.

  I lie, under the bed, gripping my gun.

  His shoes stand there.

  I feel the bed above my head squeak as his hands coldasdeath, his ice fingers, fireflame through the sheets. He cannot find my body. Now it is the moment. He will either lose interest, and vanish as quickly as if he never existed: or the most terrible thing will happen. He will bend down under the bed and I will see him face-to-face. But he has no face. That is what is so terrible. For I have seen his face. And it is not there.

  Like me. He has no face, in this dark world.

  If he finds me, I will begin to run.

  Each night this happens.

  He finds me and I begin to run.

  This is where we live, this world.

  By day it is one thing, by night it changes into its true form.

  What is true? Who makes up things? I know this world to be true, and real.

  YET — WAKING UP, bursting into light — everything is so still, and I lie there, waiting to hear his footsteps running away down the street, running as fast as he can go.

  But I hear nothing.

  Once Upon

  ‘JUST ACT CAJ.’

  This is Ponky to me, as we pad off over asphalt soft as butter, her in front, slightly. It is a hot February day, one in an endless line, one after the other, so the whole city swelters and the tar bleeds on the roads, making little hillocks and blisters which we puncture, with our fingernails, letting the dark treacle stick to us, burning. Sometimes we scoop chewing gum off the road, little dried lakes of it, and carefully place it in our mouths, watching each other solemnly, as we taste the road inside us, teeth gritting on bits of tiny gravel. It tastes grey, like winter. But Ponky is clever like this. She knows.

  It is she who organises me and Matthew to scout round the beach, after the big weekend days, the hot days. We go looking for threepences, which are such tiny moons of silver, crossed clubs, that fathers drop them out of pockets as they reach in for a dirty handkerchief with which to mop their sweaty brows. Mothers scatter them, having opened their purses, then turned, suddenly, to catch the tottering pyramid of their teenage sons, balancing, wobbling on each other’s shoulders. Look Mummmmmmm!

  We own the beach, Ponky, Matthew and I. On these hot days, everyone from the suburbs all around swills out to our beach. Right outside our front windows, families disgorge, taking out blankets, billies, deckchairs and rugs. Each trolley bus unloads another crowd who head off to the beach, quickly, fighting to get their own particular possie.

  Down by the beach, three shops operate non-stop, selling ice-cream, raspberry, lime, pineapple drinks: the wooden shutters of the kiosk, which are padlocked all winter, are prised open and Mrs Baveridge works behind the counter, fierce in her m
ake-up, never wavering as she hands out ice-creams, cold drinks, milk-shakes, cricketballs, oddballs, heartshapes, buzzbars, chocolate fish, TT2s, a never-ending stream to a queue which is constant, as if never quenched.

  The sea becomes churned up by one thousand feet: old people paddling, courting couples glued together, children who hold toddlers. A sweet widdle piddle falls into the sea as all the sugar eaten by everyone leaks out of our bodies and turns the salty water into a grey warm soup.

  And through it all, casually, effortlessly, people drop threepences, sixpences and occasionally, by way of an El Dorado, an entire shilling.

  ‘Act caj,’ Ponky gives the orders. This means, act casual. Ponk, alias PK chuddy gum, her favourite brand, is dressed in her usual rig-out: T-shirt; shorts; a cap on her head. Her hair is cut short as possible and she is tanned all over, a uniform soft brown, the only mark on her body (which I am allowed to see) the two white Vs where her jandal marks flare. She walks slightly ahead of me, as is only right for our intrepid captain. But she also occasionally falls back just to the side of me, so we are in easy eye range.

  Today is the day we look forward to every summer. And every summer is measured by our degree of success. Because this is the day when the meat and packaging works put on a picnic for its workers. And on this day, they have races for the workers’ children. We infiltrate, as spies. And naturally, as fast athletic children used to running, we win. And we win model cars, a bag of sweets, a paint set. But each year it is a testing time: can we pass?

  Ponky doesn’t wear today what she normally wears when we scout round the park. Then she wears her Davy Crockett fur hat (made out of possum skin), sporting the imitation rifle over her left shoulder. I was given this rifle for Christmas by my father — and which she swapped, saying, ‘Can’t I? I mean, you don’t really want it do you, Jamie? I mean, it’s not very good, it doesn’t go or anything.’ All the time her eyes are on the gun, they cannot leave it. I am in her room and my eyes are on her doll, my eyes can’t leave that either. The doll is so big and sits there, with a stiff lace dress on, its mouth so open you can see the miniature serrations of teeth, little pig fingers grabbing.