Stones

by Polly Johnson

  We never speak on the journey there. Dad listens to the radio and I sit with my head turned to the window with my eyes half-closed, trying to think of nothing while the fields drift by, dotted with horses and isolated buildings. The clinic used to be a house, I think. A big building with carved gables and gardens, but it’s no house now. When you go in and see the smart reception desk and the people sitting around in chairs, you know where you are.

  On my first appointment I didn’t say a word – nothing at all. I just sat there looking at a patch of brown stuff on the carpet and a cat outside the window as it played with a bird. Seeing the struggle and the flapping and the blood made talking seem pointless. Anyway, I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t like those other people crying into their handkerchiefs. I wasn’t crazy.

  ‘No one here is crazy,’ Dad’s always insisted.

  ‘Only you,’ I’d say, ‘paying all this money for nothing. You’re the biggest nut of all.’

  The psychologist is very glamorous, like she should be in a movie or something. Piled up silver hair, huge blue eyes and what they call ‘good bones’, which means she’ll always look wonderful, even when she’s ancient. I suspect she changes clothes between clients like some kind of chameleon woman. Buddhist for the middle-aged trendies, prim for the nervous and clip-on dreads for the alternative types. Whenever I go it’s all African jewellery and joss sticks; I watch the smoke curl like ghostly snakes up the white walls and listen to her questions, which I never answer. They’d only lead to other questions and so we sit there – her in one armchair and me in another with a view of the garden. Poor old Dad, he pays all this money and she just looks at me and waits, and I look at her and make her wait some more. Until today that is, when she picks up the Thought Diary and to distract her I blurt out: ‘I saw a tramp. He talked to me. He was a bit like Sam.’

  She doesn’t move, just lifts an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes?’ she says.

  ‘Yes. He came over and sat down. He could have been anyone – a vampire even, but I didn’t care.’

  ‘That’s an interesting choice. Why a vampire?’

  ‘I dunno; only that he could have been anyone.’

  We look at each other.

  ‘Tell me something about him,’ she says, and I think.

  ‘He had really nice eyes.’

  She smiles. ‘I’m surprised you noticed.’

  Outside, the trees dance in the wind.

  We’ve broken the silence now and she glances at my folder, at a piece of paper where I wrote stuff down before my first appointment.

  ‘And how is the other thing?’ she says. ‘The Pit.’

  I consider The Pit. This is the term I use to describe the way I used to feel all of the time, but less often now.

  It’s like one of those holes you dig on the beach. The ones you spend all day on when you are a kid. In the end it’s home time, and there you are standing at the bottom. It’s probably not very deep to anyone else, but to you it’s almost Australia. The sides are steep and narrow and cold, and right down at the bottom is a pool of smelly water. Here is where you’ve been sitting.

  The frightened feeling comes back again and I clench my fists together, then apart and then together again.

  ‘What?’ she says. ‘What is it?’

  But of course, if I knew that, I wouldn’t need to be sitting here, would I?

  We drive home through slow traffic. The Thought Diary is on the back seat. The Shrink Woman wants me to write in it at least once a week, but I doubt I will.

  The radio’s on and Dad hums tunelessly under his breath. He stops halfway home at a café and the warm air and clatter of knives and forks makes things all right again. There’s something so normal about cheese on toast. You can’t imagine traitors eating it for a last meal, or ordering Earl Grey tea with lemon-not-milk to go with it as we do now, trying not to swallow too loudly and watching the other people come and go as if we’ve only been shopping or something. I wonder what the Shrink Woman made of what I said; I wonder why I brought it up at all. I wonder what the tramp is doing now and how long it is since he had cheese on toast, so hot that it comes to his mouth still bubbling.

  Dad nods at me across the table. A little lump of cheese sits on his top lip.

  ‘You all right?’ he asks me, and the little lump drops onto the table cloth.

  I don’t say anything. Not because I can’t, but because I don’t want to. Dad waits a minute and then looks away, transferring his little smile from me to the waitress. Then we go home.

  6.

  Thought Diary: Graffiti in the town: ‘I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason.’ Glinda, Wicked (the musical).

  There’s something going on with Joe. He gives me a call on Sunday morning to say he needs to get out of the house, and then again an hour later to say he can’t. It’s obvious he has his hand over the phone, but I can still hear shouting and his voice is pulled tight as a fishing line.

  ‘I can’t come. Sorry … ’

  ‘Are you okay? What’s all the noise?’

  ‘…Yes. That’s right. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you.’

  I wait, but there’s nothing more, and then the line goes dead and I’m left in silence. I wonder if he’s changed his mind about meeting and didn’t want to say so, but then I remember the way his voice sounded, and the yelling in the background. People don’t yell for nothing.

  Mum’s in a strange mood too. I catch her standing outside Sam’s room with the laundry basket – as if she’s forgotten there is no more laundry. She turns as I pass and jumps like she’s seen a ghost, then goes inside and shuts the door. I stand outside and listen, holding my ear close – careful not to touch it – just like I used to when I needed to check if Sam was in or not. I can’t hear a thing though, except for my breath in its careful whisper against the wood.

  I leave her to her ghosts and go downstairs, but the house is silent. Through the kitchen window I see Dad in his garden shed. He’s in overalls and obviously busy. I watch as he drags out bits of rubbish and old cans of paint. His face is relaxed and his movements easy, but then it changes. He comes through the shed door slowly, something red cradled in his arms. It’s an old three-wheeled bicycle. Sam’s I think. He stands holding it for a long time, and I don’t move even though he can’t see me. I hold my breath until I can’t stand it any more and have to let it go in a huge burst. When I look up, the bike is lying on the rubbish pile and Dad isn’t moving. Then he goes into the shed and shuts the door.

  I take my coat off the hook and go out.

  The promenade is crowded as usual. Mostly families again with kids made fat by bobble hats and puffy jackets, and dads skimming pebbles across the water. A little boy falls down and his mouth opens in a wide circle of rage. A girl runs across the promenade, screaming like a seabird, flapping her arms while her mum chases after her in a low crouch. I hurry on, eager to escape.

  When I’ve gone almost as far as the nudist beach, I see the homeless man from yesterday. He’s standing on the hump of pebbles, staring at the sea, while a cloud of smoke bursts from his face to disappear into the air. He seems to be alone but I hesitate in case Alec the Shouter is around. It would be best to just leave, but I don’t. Instead I walk over until he can hear my feet on the stones.

  ‘Hi again,’ I say.

  He twists, loses his balance and lurches sideways. One hand goes down and hits the pebbles hard, but it saves him. He stands up tall, trying to pretend it didn’t happen because he’s drunk, but I know better. I’ve seen it all before.

  ‘Hello,’ he says, ‘what brings you back then?’

  I don’t know, so I can’t say. Instead I bend down and pick up a handful of pebbles. There’s a tin can down towards the water and I throw them at it.

  ‘I like the fact it’s stones here,’ he says, picking a couple up and rolling them in his palm. ‘If it was sand, it would get everywhere, and it’d be crawling with kids an’ that.’

  I glance around. Of cou
rse he’s right; I’ve just never questioned it before. Stones aren’t much good for lying on or building sandcastles.

  ‘Why is it, though?’ I ask him. ‘Why not sand?’

  He throws me a startled look and rubs a hand across his mouth.

  ‘You don’t know, do you?’ I say. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Actually,’ he says, sitting down with a crash, ‘there is sand, when the tide goes out, but stones are more meaningful anyway.’

  I hesitate. I feel stupid standing over him like this, but I can’t just walk away, can I? I drop down next to him; we’re so close that the sound of the wind cuts out. Now, sitting as we are on top of the rise, it seems like the sea is just below us and we’re on the edge of the world. I look at him sideways: long lashes, stubble; a nice face. Not a dirty, mad face like the other man.

  ‘Meaningful how?’ I say. ‘Aren’t pebbles just pebbles?’

  ‘Dig your hand down,’ he says, ‘pull some up. You ever think how many there are? Like people – millions of ’em and not one the same.’

  I push my hand down, like I must have done a hundred times before, but this time I look properly. All the colours are different and some have shapes or patterns like scales, or holes that bore right through them. The tramp is looking at me, smiling.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘you find a stone that’s like a message – you know?’

  I realise I’m meant to answer, but what can you say to something daft like that?

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘really. If you got something on your mind or you don’t know what to do, you make a decision, and then you wait. If it’s the right one you’ll find a stone. Then you know.’

  I stare at him. ‘Then you know what?’

  ‘If it’s the right decision, it’ll be a special stone, not just any stone.’

  ‘Good,’ I say, ‘because who’d notice an ordinary stone here, right?’

  He catches my eye and we laugh. ‘Try it,’ he says, then drops his head and gives a little sigh.

  ‘I think it sounds nice,’ I say. ‘Something helping you out – what would it be, though, that made you find it?’

  ‘I dunno… Maybe God…’ He must see my face because he looks down again, ‘or maybe the devil. I told you, I dunno.’

  I don’t know what to say. He doesn’t seem the type for God. He smells like he’s been drinking something heavy, and he looks tired and rough. I should leave, but I don’t want to. There’s something about him that makes me feel warm.

  ‘They say,’ he goes on, ‘that in Heaven there’s a stone for everyone. Underneath, it has a new name for you, so all this… doesn’t matter any more.’

  His hands tremble in his lap. I can’t stop looking at them. He laughs and I know he’s embarrassed. ‘Take no notice,’ he says. ‘Tell me your name.’

  My muscles tense with the scared feeling and I should just get up and walk away.

  ‘It’s Coo,’ I find myself saying, ‘short for Corinne.’

  He puts out his hand and I have to shake it. ‘Banks,’ he says. ‘If you come again, bring us a cup of coffee would you?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, and then my mouth goes on, ‘I’ll come in the evening if you like.’

  He smiles, lets go of my hand and I get up. ‘You be careful,’ he says.

  ‘Careful of what?’

  ‘Just careful. There’s bad things out there.’

  I don’t know what to say. Bad things again. Bad things everywhere.

  I tell Joe about it on the way to school next morning and he gives me a sideways look. ‘Which one is it?’ he grins. ‘The one who was shouting at you? I told you he fancied you.’

  I give him a jokey swipe around the head and he ducks like lightning. His expression changes like cloud shadow on the grass and he walks on without waiting for me.

  ‘Joe? You okay?’

  ‘Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘I dunno. You just…’

  He sniffs and wipes his coat sleeve across his face, then in an instant he’s all right again. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Tell me about your alky – is he crazy too?’

  ‘Get out, don’t be mean. He reminds me of Sam.’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘My brother,’ I remind him. ‘That was his name.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Joe. ‘But that’s not good is it, to remind you of your brother?’

  ‘I guess not, but Banks is different.’

  ‘He’s still a tramp, Coo. Not really the best of company.’

  ‘At least he’s there, and he listens to me.’

  Joe says nothing, but the look on his face says it all. I remember my meeting with Banks and wonder if I’m losing it. Perhaps I shouldn’t go again, but I know that I will.

  All the time we’re walking, I think about Sam. Lots of people lose brothers, but the usual noises of sympathy are no good to me. I lost mine a long time before he died, and I hated him and loved him like two sides of a sheet of paper. There are also the secrets. The secrets Sam told me when he was drunk and desperate, which I carry inside me like dark stones. Only someone like Banks could listen and not find them strange. He must spend all his time in dark and dirty places – my secrets would mean nothing to him.

  It wasn’t always like that – hiding things and being scared. The change came slowly, like a dark stain in clear water. I was a late baby. There were eight years between me and Sam so I didn’t realise he had problems at school or that he was skipping it. Then, one day, there was a huge row between him and Dad, and after that, there was little else. He started hanging round with older people, and maybe he felt better with some booze inside him – more confident, more equal – but it didn’t stop there. You wouldn’t think a little thing like a drink could do so much, but it did. In just a few years it turned Sam into a monster. When he came home our house became a frightened place, and at night I lay in the darkness with a desk pushed across my bedroom door. How do you tell most people a thing like that?

  7.

  Thought Diary: ‘Here we go gathering nuts in May!’ Nursery rhyme.

  Now I’ve started talking to the Shrink Woman, I can’t seem to stop. I tell her on Tuesday evening that I’m planning to leave home. I don’t say ‘run away’ because that sounds stupid, like something little kids do then turn up at teatime. I tell her I’m packed and ready to go, which feels good because I know she can’t tell anyone because of patient confidentiality. I doubt she believes me anyway.

  I also tell her I have two new friends, and this seems to cheer her up because she nods and makes a little note on her pad. She smiles when I talk about Joe. Her eyebrows wiggle about and she leans forward just a tiny bit, but she’s not so happy to hear that the other one is Banks. Her body language changes at once; even her feet want to tell me it’s all wrong, and the eyebrows stop wiggling and bunch together in the middle like two caterpillars.

  ‘He sounds a lot older than you,’ she says. ‘Is he?’

  ‘I guess so. I think he’s about thirty, but it could be his skin.’

  ‘His skin?’

  ‘Yes. People who drink a lot have old looking skin. It changes the way they look. It puts ten years on them and makes them smell bad, like old cheese. If they keep on doing it, they can’t even stay living in a house with other people, and in the end it usually kills them.’

  She nods. ‘I thought you didn’t like to be around people who drink.’

  ‘I don’t mind Banks,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t drink when I’m with him.’

  ‘Do you think you can stop him?

  I look at her. It’s a stupid question. ‘I’m not his counsellor,’ I say, ‘he’s just someone I met.’

  ‘And what do you think the point is?’

  ‘The point?’

  ‘Well. Why? Why an alcoholic?’

  I don’t know what to say. She’s talking like I picked him out of a dating site and checked a list of his hobbies or something. ‘There isn’t a why,’ I say, ‘that’s silly.’

  She looks at me for a bit,
her long, elegant fingers toying with a tortoiseshell pen. ‘There often is,’ she says. ‘There’s very often a hidden “Why”.’

  Every comment leads to another question – we are two contestants in a ring, where only one comes out. It’s all about getting me to say what I think without slipping up herself, but like I said, I know her game.

  We fall into silence, but just before it gets awkward she’s called out to the telephone. Nothing is meant to disturb our sessions, so it must be something serious – maybe someone forgot to pay her and she’s worried about buying her caviar for the weekend. I lie back in the big chair and think about Banks.

  I was going to go home after school yesterday, but Mum rang me.

  ‘I’d rather you came straight home today,’ she’d said. ‘A girl’s been attacked down by the marina.’

  ‘I’m not going to the marina,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I can look after myself.’

  I turned the phone off then. Too bad. I didn’t go home lots of times when they were running after Sam, and they barely even noticed, so it seems a bit late to start playing nanny. I didn’t go home. I went for a walk – right down towards the marina. Serve her right.

  I didn’t get that far before I saw Banks. He was stumbling along as if he had to get somewhere fast, but there was only the beach, with the sea splashing at his feet all annoyed looking. A bit further along an old man with a white bathing cap was starting a swim. That’s what Banks was looking at. An old man with white, stalky legs, a slack-skinned stomach and a chest with saggy little breasts all covered with hair.

  My feet clattered on the stones and Banks turned, losing his balance and tottering down the incline. He staggered right into the water and went down on one knee. His arm was soaked to the elbow when he got out, and the tatty little cigarette in his mouth was a grey rag. I hurried the last few steps and when I reached him, the old man had taken a quick plunge. Nothing could be seen of him now but his pale face looking back at the beach.

  ‘You look like a sailor who tried to catch a mermaid,’ I said as I reached him.

  ‘He’s no mermaid. I thought he was in trouble for a sec there.’