Stones

by Polly Johnson

  ‘How could he be, silly? He wasn’t in the water yet.’

  Banks shrugged and grinned. ‘All the trouble I’ve ever been in happened on land.’

  He hiccuped and burped, and we stood for a bit longer looking for the old man and finding only unbroken sea.

  ‘He musta drowned,’ Banks decided. ‘Horrible way to go, or so they say.’

  We began to walk up the beach, away from the town. Banks waved his arm around, trying to dry it, and sometimes he’d stop and pick up a pebble then throw it down again. None of them seemed special. They were just boring ordinary pebbles. They were just stones. Banks turned up the shingle and onto the road and I followed him without thinking. We cut behind the bushes to the grass, where he sat down and took out a little bottle. The ground was littered with cigarette butts and empty cans but it didn’t bother Banks. He tipped up the little bottle to drink, and turned to me.

  ‘Tell me about your brother then,’ he said. So I did.

  ‘Sam was all right as a boy. That’s why I hate how I feel now. He used to play with me even though I was much younger. Sometimes he laughed so much he couldn’t breathe, but he changed as he got older.’

  Banks nodded, looking down. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘what made it happen?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. He couldn’t get on with people; he felt like he didn’t belong. I think getting drunk helped that. He said it made him feel better … ’

  ‘Ahh,’ Banks said. ‘I remember that. Better. Right.’

  ‘Later,’ I went on, ‘I think he took other stuff too. He started to see things – normal things, but to him they were something else. He thought people were plotting against him too. He was drunk all the time – and then he started seeing the shapes. He’d phone the house at three in the morning, screaming that devils were chasing him, and Dad would go out with a jacket over his pyjamas to find him. First I wished the shapes would get him, then I worried they’d follow him home.’

  Banks dragged on his ciggie and burped. ‘He was a proper boozer by then.’

  ‘And the rest.’

  ‘Violent?’

  ‘And the rest; he hit our mum.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘He hit everyone. Even himself.’

  I try to remember that once Sam was just my brother. I try to remember when we were very young and not what came after. Sometimes I wonder if there was ever a time when someone could have stepped in and stopped it. Useless thoughts, those.

  ‘He wasn’t bad looking,’ I tell him. ‘He had curly hair and freckles, but later he got pale and blotchy, with bags under his eyes like he was about sixty.’

  ‘What’d he drink?’

  ‘What didn’t he? Beer first. Then cider, then later on, spirits – vodka and that.’

  Banks nodded. ‘Sends you funny, spirits – best stick to cider.’

  ‘He used to invent games,’ I whispered. ‘Games we had to play when our parents were out.’

  Banks looked at me and spat onto the grainy floor. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes. He liked to make me do things I shouldn’t do, like steal stuff or say things to people in the street. He liked to see me get into trouble.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound so bad,’ Banks said.

  ‘When I didn’t want to play them, he got angry.’

  ‘It was the drink,’ Banks said

  ‘No it wasn’t! Stop making excuses.’

  Banks looked down.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Not your fault.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Banks said. ‘I did ask.’

  He sighed and started rolling another of his ciggies – one handed which was pretty impressive. His fingers were yellow-brown right up to the first knuckle and the nails looked like he’d spent the last year living in a coal cellar. When the rollie was finished he lit it – right in the face of the wind blowing across the promenade – by lifting his coat sideways and hiding inside it. Banks knows how to do all sorts of difficult things that would seem useless to most people.

  ‘He’s dead now, right?’ he said to me.

  ‘Meant to be,’ I said. ‘But it’s not that simple.’

  The psychologist woman told me, on one of my first visits, that when something is so big you don’t know where to start, you can take just a little bit. One sip from the whisky bottle, one slice from the loaf, or just the melody line of the song and manage with that. So I’d have to tell her about Sam in little bits that don’t join together. How he stole my life in tiny little bites. First my parents, then my home and finally even me. Everything turned around Sam like some dark sun, and whether he was drunk or not we turned in our orbits. Sometimes I wonder what sort of person I’d be if he’d never been born. Thing is, it’s just too much effort; there’s too much to tell.

  The door cracks open and the Shrink Woman is back, apologising all over the place and promising to make up the time. Who cares? An extra ten minutes staring at each other for about twenty-five quid? That would buy Banks a whole heap of sausage rolls.

  8.

  Thought Diary: Today: Words about the sea: ‘A swatch is an incoming wave, backwash is an outgoing wave, and fetch is the distance travelled by a wave. The longer the fetch, the bigger the wave.’

  ‘I think of my life now in terms of the sea. Sam was the swatch, the curling wave that swamped us, and the backwash is still going out, dragging us with it, over and over in the stones until one day it will spit us all out again on a distant shore. Right now we are still travelling, on the crest of the biggest wave I ever saw. Rolling on – a long, long way.’

  I’ve started to write in the Thought Diary, and that’s what came out today.

  ‘You learn about those words in school?’ Banks says when I tell him, and I nod.

  ‘I coulda told you,’ he says. ‘I know.’

  We’re sitting together. Me in my school uniform with my bag tucked under one arm and Banks in his heavy black coat. We are on one side of a square of wooden benches; it’s cold and the wood beneath us is wet.

  Across an expanse of grass, there are some swings and a climbing frame dotted with little kids who flit like birds from one thing to another, their voices fluting in the air. They are the bright beginning and the men on the benches are their worst nightmare futures – the ones their parents dream up late at night when they get the first bad school report or worrying news from the doctor.

  The men are all wearing several layers of ill-fitting clothes and I can smell them from where I’m sitting. One is old with a Santa Claus beard and a fat gut barely covered by his fraying jumper. He clutches a can of beer and sways backwards and forwards, head lolling on his neck like a dandelion on a broken stalk – his beard a thick fluff of seeds that never seem to blow away. Next to him is a thin wiry man who has no teeth. He carries on a muffled conversation with the man next to him who does nothing but nod and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, you were right, you were really right…’

  The fourth man is Alec, the red-headed shouter, and he’s glaring at me from his pale, flickering eyes. I move closer to Banks because I know he’ll look after me. The thought makes me feel warm inside.

  Banks sees Alec looking and gives me a little nudge. ‘Found her in town, didn’t I?’ he tells him. ‘Couldn’t let her wander round on her own, could I?’

  The red-haired man spits on the ground and stands up. It isn’t till Banks hands him a beer that he sits again, snapping off the tab and sucking it down, still staring at me over the rim.

  ‘She helped pay for that,’ Banks says. ‘Dinner money!’ He starts to shake with laughter and the ripples of it come all the way through his coat, pressed as it is against my body.

  I have a beer of my own and though I don’t like it, I sip at it now, feeling the cold liquid all the way down to my stomach. I wasn’t sure what to do when Banks gave it to me and for a while I just held it.

  ‘If you don’t want it…’ he’d said, and I didn’t want to turn down the gift, because that’s what it was really, coming from him. Then, as we walked, we kept ge
tting these looks from people in town – staring from me to Banks and back again. I hoped someone I knew would see me, and wonder what I was doing, and that’s when I opened it and swigged at it as we went along. It felt good somehow.

  I sip at the beer again and Banks grins at me. It doesn’t taste so bad now and anyway, it’s only one can of beer. I won’t even finish it.

  After a time, Banks relaxes. His face is quiet, eyelids drooping. I huddle a bit closer to him and stare at the red-haired man, steadily and without blinking. At first he stares back, flaring his nostrils as if that will scare me off, but I keep on going until he starts to twitch. He gets up, then sits down again, sucking and sucking at his can and muttering. I wait. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ I mouth at him, but that’s too much. He launches himself forward with a growl, flinging the can hard. It slams into Banks, who springs into life, grabbing hold of the nutter just as he reaches me.

  It’s all over in a moment. Banks has pushed him away and they scuffle into some bushes, snapping and cracking the twigs like the bones of some animal. There’s no sound but for their grunting and puffing. The old man wakes with a start and stares wildly round in the direction of the playground while the others shout their odds like punters at a boxing match. The bushes explode outwards and only Banks comes out. Alec is rolling on the ground, corkscrew hair caught in the twigs, snarling like a mad dog.

  Banks comes over and drags me away, holding me by one arm and stumbling slightly. Behind him, when I turn my head, I see Alec rising up, one hand rubbing and rubbing at the scratches on his face.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to Banks. ‘You saved me.’

  He says nothing until we get further into town and can see the line of the sea ahead of us.

  ‘What did you do to get Alec going?’ he asks me. I shrug my innocence but I’m scared now. Banks is angry with me, and I’ve made the nutter hate me even more. Banks will protect me, I know that now, but he won’t always be there. I shake my head at Banks. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You must have,’ Banks says, ‘and what are you doing here anyway, instead of being in school? And what’s with the bag?’

  I look at it, all hugged tight in my arms, and shrug.

  ‘What you got in it – school stuff?’

  ‘No! Why would I hump that about? What’s it to you anyway?’

  Banks shrugs and turns towards the promenade.

  ‘If you must know,’ I tell him, ‘it’s my bag of stuff – for when I leave.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ he says and then just nods.

  ‘I want someone to say they’re sorry,’ I blurt. ‘No one ever says they’re sorry.’

  Banks looks at me, nudging a strand of hair out of his face with a flick of his head. He’s made himself a roll-up and smoke streams from the side of his mouth.

  ‘Sorry about what?’ he asks, and he’s smiling.

  ‘About me,’ I say. ‘Sorry about me. Everyone goes on about how terrible it is that Sam died, and I know it is! But it’s like nothing he ever did matters now – as if he’s become a saint or something.’

  I realise how stupid I must sound, but if Banks laughs at me now, I think I’ll die.

  A long time passes and then he puts out his hand.

  ‘Gimme the bag,’ he says. ‘I’ll keep it for you.’

  I look at his grubby hand; at the bare wrist disappearing into his sleeve. I’m not sure.

  ‘I won’t nick anything,’ he says. ‘I just want to be sure you talk to me first.’

  ‘I don’t even know where I might go,’ I admit. ‘London, I thought.’

  Banks makes a little noise that might have been a laugh, but when I look at him he’s not smiling.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, London,’ he mutters. ‘Then what? When you’ve been missing for a while, the police will find you and bring you home, and your mum and dad, who’ve been out of their heads with worry, will be really sorry? Is that it?’

  I flush to the roots of my hair, and look away, but Banks keeps staring.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I tell him, ‘you don’t know what you’re on about.’

  I remind myself he’s a stinky tramp. If I shut my eyes and think back, it could be Sam standing there, smelling of alcohol and stealing my life away.

  I try to take back the bag, but Banks has hold of it. I get so mad I hit him across the shoulders with my closed fist twice but he still doesn’t let go.

  ‘Keep it then,’ I scream at him. ‘Steal it; do what you want. You think you know everything but you don’t. Look at you.’

  He has the bag in one hand, and the other comes out of a pocket holding a round pebble. He stands gazing down at it, turning it round and round in his yellow-stained fingers like a marble egg; a kid playing with a tiny world. I turn my back on him and go.

  ‘And stay clear of Alec,’ Banks shouts after me. ‘I’m telling you!’

  9.

  Thought Diary: Dictionary: ‘Alchoholic: Pronunciation [al-kuh-haw-lik, -hol-ik] adjective: Of, or pertaining to, or of the nature of alcohol. Containing or using alcohol.’ Long-winded explanation for getting pissed too often. No chance with beer – it’s vile!

  By the next evening I’m starting to feel bad about hitting him. When the streetlights come on, Mum draws our heavy curtains against the cold and sweeps off to the kitchen. We’re having a dinner party. Mum is cooking a curry from scratch and Dad is shutting the back windows. It’s too cold to use the garden anyway.

  The year is on the turn for sure – it was freezing first thing. I’d left my bedroom window open and the chill woke me up before it was properly light. I didn’t mind in the end because when I checked my phone, there was a text from Joe:

  ‘Be yourself,’ it said. ‘You can’t be anyone else.’

  The silliness of it made me laugh and I texted back in the chilly darkness:

  ‘Be someone else. Anything’s an improvement.’

  To my surprise, he sent one straight back: ‘Love you just the way you are.’ And there we were, in our separate bedrooms before anyone else was awake, miles apart, but just a fingertip away.

  I got up when I heard Dad go downstairs and we sat in the kitchen eating toast. I tried to imagine Joe thirty years from now, but I just couldn’t. Dad looked like he’d been grown up for ever.

  Dad spent the morning sorting the back yard out, but had to give up. There’s all this timber out there from ages ago when he had an idea for a sort of awning we could sit under. Sam had been in one of his ‘good patches’ where he didn’t drink as much. He’d talked about getting a job or moving away, and when he came into a room I didn’t immediately look for the quickest way out of it. He’d been really keen to help Dad with the awning. Mum had in mind lights and rambling roses, but it never happened of course. It stayed a pile of wood under a blue tarpaulin. Sam started drinking again, and soon the ‘good patches’ stopped for ever.

  In the end the evening is okay. Ben and Matt come round and we eat at a new table Mum has just bought for the shop. It’s noisy and enough fun that the knot in my stomach unwinds. Mum is laughing – she’s had a glass or two of wine – and she leans into Dad’s arm, which encircles the back of her chair.

  Afterwards we play cards, and then let the chill air in from the garden while Dad makes coffee. By the time I see Ben and Matt off, it’s almost two in the morning.

  ‘Nice weather for polar bears,’ Matt jokes. ‘Good thing we’re just across the way.’

  He peers into my face. ‘Here if you need me,’ he says, and I open my mouth to tell him… but I don’t know what.

  ‘Yes,’ I say instead. ‘Yes, I’m all right.’

  I smile and watch them go, but when I glance down as I shut the door I see three cans right outside under the shop window. A stain runs from them into the gutter. A chill goes through me and I almost call out to Matt, but it’s late and what would I say that wouldn’t make him ask too many questions? Then he’d want to tell Mum and Dad, and they’d ask more. No. It’s probably nothing. Lots of people dr
op cans around here – they could belong to anyone, but somehow I know they don’t. I nudge them aside with my foot and they roll crazily across the pavement with a sound like Chinese gongs.

  It’s freezing in the hall now and I think of Banks. How does he keep warm? How does he wash or go to the toilet? What does he do for food? It feels wrong going back to the warm kitchen to scrape leftover food into our big bin. The table still holds dishes of creamy dessert and wineglasses with dregs of red wine. All Banks has is whatever nasty stuff he’s drinking. I wish he could have been here tonight, but let’s be honest, even sober, he’s not the sort of dinner guest Mum would have in mind.

  ‘Are you all right, Coo?’ Dad says as he feeds the dishwasher.

  ‘Yes. I’m just thinking,’ I say – and I am. I’m hatching a plan that’s making my heart beat faster with excitement. I’ve just remembered that tomorrow is Sunday, and Mum and Dad are going on a buying trip. It will just be me here. It’s the perfect time.

  My scheme almost goes wrong first thing, when Mum asks if I want to go with them. She stands in the doorway of my room looking awkward, more like a guest than a woman in her own home. ‘We wondered,’ she says, ‘if you’d like a trip out with us.’

  I look at her long fingers stroking the wood of the doorframe, at her hair where it’s come loose from its clip, and her eyes as they search mine. They’re creased at the corners but the wrong way up. Not laughter lines, that’s for sure.

  ‘I’d rather stay here,’ I tell her, but I wonder what I’d have said if I hadn’t got my plan. Whether I’d have gone with them and tried to mend the chasm that’s widened between us without any of us noticing until now.

  She goes to say something but then stops and just nods her head and goes. I hear her feet on the stairs and then the click of the front door. ‘Bye, Mum,’ I whisper.

  The silence in the house seems to rise like air pressure, and I hurry out, slamming my bedroom door behind me.

  I smuggle Banks in by the main front door like a fugitive, and he stops dead just inside so I have to push him to get the door closed. Even then he just stands there, sniffing the air like an animal brought indoors, checking out the danger spots. I squeeze past him then lead him by the hand into the kitchen where I make coffee as if I do it every day. When I press down the plunger on the cafetière and turn round, I notice, with a lurch in my stomach, that he’s disappeared. I want to trust him, and I do, but it is Mum and Dad’s house after all, and I know what they’d think. I dash out of the kitchen in a sudden panic, but he’s only in the hall, peering through the inside door that leads to the shop.