by Kevin Brooks
And it’s then I realise how utterly pointless such thinking is. What if, what might have been …
It doesn’t matter.
I did see him, and nothing can ever change that.
These things, these moments you take to be extraordinary, they have a way of melting back into reality, and the further we got from the Stand – the further we got from the moment – the less tingly I felt. By the time we turned into the narrow lane that leads down to our house, the buzzy feeling in my head had just about gone and the world had returned to something like normal.
The car lumped and shuddered down the lane and I gazed out at the familiar view: the poplar trees, with the sunlight strobing through the branches; the green fields; the pitted driveway; then the old grey house, looking restful and welcoming in the cooling sun; and beyond it all, the beach and the sea glistening in the evening distance. Aside from a lone container ship inching across the horizon, the sea was empty and still.
Dad told me once that this part of Hale, the east side, reminded him of his childhood home in Ireland. I’ve never been to Ireland, so I wouldn’t know. But I know that I love everything about this place – the peace, the wildness, the birds, the smell of salt and seaweed, the call of the wind, the unpredictability of the sea … I even love this straggly old house, with its mouldy old roof and its uneven walls and its scattering of outhouses and tumbledown sheds. It might not be the prettiest house in the world, but it’s mine. It’s where I live. I was born here.
I belong here.
Dad parked the car in the yard and turned off the engine. I opened the door. Deefer bounded out and started barking at Rita Gray, our neighbour, who was walking her Labrador along the lane. I got out of the car and waved to her. As she waved back, a pair of Mute swans flew in low across the field, their wings throbbing in the breeze. The Labrador started after them, barking like a lunatic.
‘She’ll never catch them,’ Dad called out.
Rita shrugged and smiled. ‘It’ll do her good, John, she needs the exercise – oh, hello Dominic, I didn’t recognise you.’
‘Yo, Mrs Gee,’ Dom replied, scuttling into the house.
The Labrador was halfway down the lane now, its tongue hanging out, yapping at the empty sky.
Rita shook her head and sighed. ‘Damn dog, I don’t know why she – oh, Cait, before I forget, Bill said would you give her a ring about tomorrow.’
‘OK.’
‘She’ll be in until nine.’
‘All right, thanks.’
She nodded at Dad, then strode off down the lane after her dog, whistling and laughing, swinging the dog lead in the air, her red hair blowing in the breeze.
I noticed that Dad was watching her.
‘What?’ he said, when he saw me looking at him.
‘Nothing,’ I smiled.
Inside, Dominic had thrown his rucksack on the floor and was stomping up the stairs. ‘Give me a shout when grub’s on,’ he called out. ‘I’m just going to have a quick kip. I’m knackered.’
The bedroom door slammed shut.
It felt strange having someone else in the house. It unsettled me. I suppose I’d got used to being alone with Dad. Our sounds, our quietness. I’d got used to the calm and solitude.
Dad picked up Dominic’s rucksack and leaned it against the stairs. He smiled reassuringly at me, reading my thoughts. ‘He’s just a big kid, Cait. He doesn’t mean any harm.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’
I nodded. ‘Do you want something to eat?’
‘Not just now, eh? Give him an hour or two and then we’ll have something together.’ He leaned down and tightened one of the ribbons in my hair. ‘Plumes, you say?’
‘Plumes,’ I agreed.
He fixed the ribbon then stepped back and looked at me. ‘Very becoming, indeed.’
‘Thanks,’ I grinned. ‘You’re not too bad yourself. Did you see the way Rita was looking at you?’
‘She looks at everyone like that. She’s worse than her daughter.’
‘She’s always asking after you, you know.’
‘Look, Cait—’
‘I’m only joking, Dad,’ I said. ‘Don’t look so worried.’
‘Who’s worried?’
‘You are. You worry about everything.’
We chatted away for a couple of minutes, but I could tell he was itching to get back to work. He kept looking at his watch.
‘I’m going to ring Bill,’ I told him. ‘And then I’ll take Deefer out for a walk. I’ll make something to eat when I get back.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’d better get a couple of hours in while I’ve still got the chance.’
‘How’s the new book going?’
‘Ah, you know, same old stuff …’ For a moment he just stood there staring down at the floor, rubbing at his beard, and I thought he was going to tell me something, share some of his problems with me. But after a while he just sighed again and said, ‘Well, I’d best be getting on – make sure you’re back before it’s dark. I’ll see you later, love.’ And he was gone, stooping into his study and shutting the door.
Dad writes books for teenagers, or Young Adults, as the bookshops like to call them. You’ve probably heard of him. You may even have read some of his books – Some Kind of God, Nothing Ever Dies, New World … No? Well, even if you haven’t read them, you’ve probably read about them. They’re the kind of books that get nominated for prizes but never win, the kind of books that get rubbished by all the papers for being immoral, for setting a bad example, for contributing to the destruction of innocence in the youth of today. Basically, they’re the kind of books that don’t make very much money.
Bill was eating when she answered the phone. ‘Mmyeah?’
‘Bill? It’s Cait—’
‘Just a mm – hold on …’ I could hear the television blaring in the background, Bill chewing, swallowing, burping … ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Urrp – sorry ‘bout that.’
‘Your mum said to ring you. I saw her down the lane.’
‘Yeah, I thought she was never gonna go – just a minute …’
‘Bill?’
‘That’s better, dying for a ciggy. You all right?’
‘Fine—’
‘I saw you coming back in the car, where’ve you been?’
‘Picking up Dom.’
‘Hey, now you’re talking—’
‘Oh, come on, Bill—’
‘What?’
‘You know what. He’s nineteen, for God’s sake.’
‘So?’
‘You’re fifteen …’
‘Girls mature earlier than boys, Cait. It’s a well-known fact.’
‘Yeah? Well you certainly have.’
She laughed. ‘Can I help it if my hormones are hungry?’
‘Maybe you should try going on a diet?’
‘Ha!’
‘Anyway, Dom’s got a girlfriend.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know, someone at university, I think.’ I quickly formed a mental image. ‘A tall blonde with long legs and pots of money—’
‘You’re making it up.’
‘No, I’m not. Her name’s Helen, she lives in Norfolk somewhere—’
‘There you are, then.’
‘What?’
‘She’s in Norfolk – I’m two minutes walk up the lane. End of story.’ She laughed again, then covered the mouthpiece and spoke to somebody in the background.
I twiddled the telephone cord in my fingers and wiped a cobweb from the wall. I jiggled my foot. I told myself to ignore it, forget it, don’t let it bother you … but I couldn’t. This thing with Bill and Dominic was getting out of hand. It used to be funny – Dear Trish, My best friend fancies my older brother, what should I do? Yeah, it used to be funny, when Bill was ten and Dominic was fourteen. But it wasn’t funny any more, because Bill wasn’t joking any more. She really meant it. And that bothered me. The trouble was, if I told
her what I really thought she’d just laugh it off. She’d say – oh, come on, Cait, don’t be so bloody serious all the time, it’s just a bit of fun, girl …
So, right or wrong, I just went along with it.
‘Cait?’
‘Yeah, who was that?’
‘What?’
‘I thought you were talking to someone.’
‘Nah, it’s the telly. I was just turning it down. Anyway, are you still all right for tomorrow?’
‘What time?’
‘I’ll meet you at the bus stop at two—’
‘Why don’t I come round to your place? We can walk over together.’
‘No, I have to go somewhere first. I’ll meet you at two.’
‘The bus goes at ten to.’
‘All right, quarter to, then. What are you wearing?’
‘Wearing? I don’t know, nothing special – why?’
‘No reason, I just thought it’d be fun to spice it up for a change.’
‘Spice it up?’
‘You know, skirt, heels, skinny top …’
I laughed. ‘We’re only going to Moulton.’
‘Yeah, well … you look nice when you get dressed up. You should do it more often. You can’t wear those worn-out shorts and a T-shirt all the time.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do. Shorts and a T-shirt in summer, jeans and a jumper in winter—’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing – all I’m saying is, you’ve got to make an effort now and then. Show a bit of leg, bit of belly, slap a bit of lippy on, you know …’
‘We’ll see. Maybe …’
‘Oh, go on, Cait. It’ll be a laugh.’
‘I said maybe—’
‘You never know, we might bump into someone decent … what’s Dom doing tomorrow? Bumpety bump—’
‘Look, Bill—’
‘Oops – gotta go. I think I heard Mum coming back and I’ve still got a ciggy going. I’ll see you tomorrow at two—’
‘Quarter to— Bill?’
But she’d already hung up.
I put the phone down and went into the kitchen. The house was quiet. Faint sounds drifted in the silence – the soft tap-tapping of Dad’s keyboard, the drone of an aeroplane high in the sky, the distant cry of a lone gull. Through the window I could see the container ship drifting round the Point, its vast grey hulk weighed down with a cargo of multicoloured metal crates. The sky above it was clouding over a little but the sun was still warm and bright, bathing the island in a gauze of pale pink.
I like this time of day. When the light glows softly and there’s a sense of sleepiness to the air – it’s as if the island is breathing out after a long hard day, getting ready for the night. During the summer I often sit in the kitchen for an hour or two, just watching the sky change colour as the sun goes down, but that evening I couldn’t settle. I’m a worrier, just like Dad. I was worried about him. I was worried about Dominic, how he’d changed so much in the last year. And the boy on the Stand … it worried me why I couldn’t stop thinking about him … and Bill … I wished I hadn’t called her. I wished we weren’t going into town tomorrow. I wished … I don’t know. I wished I didn’t have to grow up. The whole thing was just too depressing.
I called Deefer and headed off down the lane.
The thing about Dad is, he’s got far too much sadness in his bones. You can see it in the way he walks, the way he looks at things, even in the way he sits. When I left the house that evening I looked over at his study window and saw him hunched at his desk, staring at his computer screen, smoking a cigarette and sipping Irish whiskey. He looked so sad I felt like crying. It was that unmasked look of sadness you rarely see, the look of someone who thinks they’re alone so they don’t have to hide it any more.
It’s Mum, of course. He’s been alone with his sadness ever since she died.
It’s not that he doesn’t talk to me about her – he does. He tells me how wonderful she was, how pretty she was, how kind, how thoughtful, how funny she was – ‘God, Cait, when Kathleen laughed it made your heart sing.’ He tells me how happy they were together. He shows me photographs, reads me her poems, tells me how much I remind him of her … he tells me how sad he is. But he won’t take his own advice – he won’t give his sadness some life.
I don’t know why.
Sometimes I think it’s because he wants the sadness to die inside him. That if it dies inside him, he’s keeping it from me. But what he doesn’t realise is that I don’t want to be excluded from his sadness. I want some of it. I want to feel it, too. She was my mum. I hardly knew her, but the least he could do is let me share in her dying.
I don’t know if that makes any sense.
I don’t even know if it’s true.
But it’s what I was thinking.
Down at the creek, Deefer had ambled onto the little wooden bridge and was staring at a family of swans – an adult pair and three large cygnets. One of the adults was making a show of defending its brood, approaching Deefer with spread wings, an arched neck, and a loud hiss. Deefer couldn’t care less. He’s seen it all before. He just stood there staring and gently wagging his tail. After a minute or two the swan gave up, shook its head, and paddled back to its family.
The creek lies in a sunken valley that runs parallel to the beach, stretching all the way from the middle of the island right up to the mud flats across from the Point. Between the creek and the beach there’s a broad spread of saltmarsh, a pale green carpet of glasswort and purslane dotted with countless muddy pools fringed with reeds and rushes. If you know your way around, which I do, there are tracks through the saltmarsh that cut across to the beach. Otherwise you have to follow the creek path all the way up to the west end of the beach where the marshes thin out and merge into the shore, or else cut through a maze of dunes and gorse to the east and follow it round to the shallow bay beside the mud flats.
I called Deef and we cut across the saltmarsh, emerging onto the beach by the old concrete pillbox. The sea breeze was strengthening as we made our way down towards the shoreline, scenting the air with a mixture of salt and sand and unknown things that only dogs can smell. While Deefer trotted along with his head in the air, sniffing out the stories of his world, I paused for a moment and listened to the sounds of the sea. The waves lapping gently on the shore, the wind in the air, the rustling sand, the seabirds … and beneath it all, or above it all, the faint bubbling of the mud flats beside the Point.
The Point is the easternmost end of the island, a slim finger of shingle bounded by the open sea on one side and mud flats on the other. When the tide is out you can see the remains of ancient boats that have been sucked down and lost in the depths. Like skeletons of long-dead beasts, their stripped and blackened frames emerge from the ooze, giving stark warning of the dangers that lurk in the mud. Beyond the mud flats, a tangle of stunted woodland darkens a rugged islet in the mouth of the estuary. The tiny island overlooks the shore with a haunting blend of beauty and menace, the limbs of its wizened trees twisted by the wind and tide into strange grasping shapes, like misformed hands reaching out for help.
Even in the height of summer this part of the beach is usually deserted. Visitors to the island generally keep to the west side, the village side, where the sand is soft and there’s space for parking, where there’s a country park (a field with litter bins), cliff walks, kite-flying, ice cream vans, a bandstand – there are even plans to open a caravan park. But that’s another world. Down here on the east of the island the only people you’re likely to see are locals, fishermen, dog walkers, the occasional anorak with a metal-detector, and sometimes, late on a summer’s night, illicit lovers in the dunes.
That evening, though, as the light was beginning to fade, the beach was empty. A raw breeze was blowing in from the sea and the temperature was starting to drop. It wouldn’t be long before the chill of night closed in, and all I had on – as Bill had kindly pointed out – was a T-shirt and a pai
r of worn-out shorts. So, rubbing my arms, I called Deef again and got going, heading briskly along the beach towards the Point.
Without really meaning to, I started thinking about the boy on the Stand again, wondering who he was, where he was going, what he was doing here … making up stories in my mind. He was an islander’s son, I imagined, he’d been away for a while, in the army perhaps, maybe even in prison, and now he was coming home. His father was a white-haired old man who lived alone in a tiny old fisherman’s cottage. He would have spent all day cleaning the place up, getting something nice to eat, fixing up the spare room for his boy …
No, I thought. The boy’s not old enough to have been in the army. What is he? Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen? I pictured his face again, and – damn it – my heart actually skipped a beat. Those pale blue eyes, that raggedy hair, that smile … I could see it all quite clearly. But the odd thing was, no matter how hard I studied the face in my mind, it was impossible to tell how old the boy was. One second he looked about thirteen; the next, he was a young man – eighteen, nineteen, twenty …
Very odd.
But anyway, I decided, he couldn’t be an islander’s son, he didn’t look right. Islanders – and the offspring of islanders – have a particular look about them. They’re short and dark, with lidded eyes and wiry hair to combat the wind, and even if they’re not short and dark, with lidded eyes and wiry hair, they look as if they should be. The Boy – I was thinking of him now as the Boy – the Boy wasn’t an islander. The face in my mind wasn’t worn by the wind. The face in my mind was the face of a boy from nowhere.
Maybe he’s looking for work? I thought. Or looking for someone? A girl, a sweetheart – or an enemy, perhaps? Someone who’s wronged him. Someone who’s offended his honour. He’s travelled the length and breadth of the country in search of …
I stopped, suddenly aware of what I was thinking. My God, Caitlin, I thought. What the hell are you doing? Sweethearts? Enemies? Honour? It’s Mills & Boon stuff. It’s embarrassing. Look at yourself. You’re acting like a dumb little girl swooning at some dopey-looking pop star in a magazine. For goodness sake, girl, get a grip. Grow up. Grow up, grow up, grow up …