Stones

by Polly Johnson

  ‘Lotta nice stuff in there,’ he says, squinting past the lace curtain

  ‘Yeah, I guess so. It does okay. It’s Mum’s thing really.’

  ‘Lots of that Japanese looking stuff.’

  ‘Mostly pine – boxes and that. They used to keep blankets in them but now people use them as coffee tables.’

  ‘Can we go in?’

  ‘It’s closed because Mum’s not here. She locks it.’

  He sighs. ‘Okay then,’ and straightens up, twisting his head so he’s looking right up the stairwell. ‘How many floors?’ he says.

  ‘Three. You want to see?’

  We go up the first flight and he stops to look at the claw-footed bath before we work our way up. It feels odd to see him tiptoeing through my parents’ bedroom. He picks things up from the dressing table, examines Dad’s book by the bed and even opens the wardrobe like the snowman in that cartoon – he’s certainly no less weird. I know he shouldn’t be here. I’ve made a mistake but now I have to see it through, so I follow him like an estate agent while he pokes about. He looks at everything, even the flock wallpaper on the upper landing – running his hand up it to feel the texture.

  When we come to my room I push ahead in case there’s anything out that shouldn’t be, like knickers! There isn’t, but an old diary is on the floor and I kick it under the bed. I don’t use it any more – I got tired of shouting from the end of a biro, but it’s pink and embarrassing somehow.

  Because he’s there, it’s like seeing my room for the first time. Teddies on the bed and little kid curtains still up at the windows; even an old poster on the wall behind the door. He must think I’m a right baby. He’s certainly not saying much.

  ‘I feel funny with you being in here. We should go down.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says, ‘if you like.’

  We go back downstairs, feet muffled on the carpet. ‘What’s in there?’ he says as we reach the first floor again. We are outside my brother’s room. The door is plain stripped pine like all the others, except for a square of wood in the centre that’s a different colour. Banks runs his hand over this as if puzzled by it, fitting his fist into the outline as if measuring for a boxing glove. He says nothing. ‘Sam’s room,’ I say, moving to the staircase. ‘Or it was. Shall we go down?’

  As we start, however, I have the best idea.

  ‘Why don’t you have a bath?’ I say. ‘Wouldn’t you like that?’

  He looks at me and then at his feet, and I realise how rude that must have sounded.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean because you’re dirty! I just thought…’

  He shakes his head. ‘No, no. I am. I haven’t had a bath for ages; showers sometimes, yeah, but not a bath. If you think it’s okay, that would be good.’

  He goes to the front door to get a little bag he left there, and I start filling the bath. It’s one of those old ones that Mum rescued from a house demolition; big, deep and free-standing, with lion’s feet legs.

  I empty in loads of bath foam and little soap petals until the whole room is steamy and smells of roses. When it’s done, I get towels from the wall safe – big, fluffy white ones – and pile them on the wicker chair. Banks has taken off his jacket and shirt and his hands are on the hem of another layer. I’m not straightened up yet and from the corner of my eye I see bare skin appear as he peels off his T-shirt. Compared to his arms and face it’s dead white, and a little fluffy line runs down from his tummy button into his jeans.

  ‘Wait!’ I laugh. ‘Let me get out first. I’ll make some sandwiches. When you’re done, just come down – there’s no rush.’

  My heart is pounding and a little snake of disquiet squirms in my guts. What the hell am I doing? He could kill me and leave, and who would ever know he was here? How could I ever have thought this was a good idea?

  I finish making the coffee and put it on the table in chunky blue cups with some flapjacks and biscuits. When he still doesn’t come, I find some corned beef in the fridge and make sandwiches with brown bread and rocket, then sit staring at the clock. In the end, I go to the bottom of the stairs and look up, but the bathroom door is ajar and it’s silent, as if no one else is here.

  ‘Banks!’ I shout. ‘Come down. Coffee’s getting cold.’

  At last he comes. I hear feet on the stairs and then he’s in the kitchen, wearing some new clothes that I don’t recognise. He grins.

  ‘Sally Army,’ he says. ‘Men and women in funny hats. They give out food ’n’ clothes, you know.’

  I don’t really, but it doesn’t matter right now. I’m too stunned by this new person that’s come into the kitchen and too busy pretending I haven’t noticed.

  Banks now has golden brown hair that falls in waves to his shoulders, and his face is clean and much younger looking. He seems to feel awkward too because we sit down and don’t speak. He sticks his nose over the mug of coffee I’ve made him and breathes in, ‘Snnnfffff’ like he’s smelling roses, then stuffs half the sandwich I’ve made into his mouth, chewing with his eyes closed. I get up and put his old clothes in the washing machine like a regular housewife. He’s brought them down in a little pile, with the stuff from his pockets in a paper bag. As they go round in the machine we sit watching the water turn black, like it’s a television. Banks laughs and tells me to change the channel. ‘This one’s too mucky for a girl your age,’ he says, winking.

  He starts to peel an orange with his strange, new fingers – so clean you can imagine the person they could have belonged to – a Banks who’s married, with a job and a house. His eyes, without the oily lines round them, look wider and brighter and he doesn’t smell any more. I like this Banks, even if it’s only a ‘good patch’.

  ‘Now you’re all clean and not totally drunk, why don’t you find a job and somewhere to live?’ I suggest. ‘I mean, you must feel better, right? You could come here for Sunday dinner. My dad could introduce you to some people. You could make a fresh start.’

  Banks looks at me over his coffee mug and doesn’t speak. I blush and feel like a kid again, a stupid kid who should know better.

  He eats the orange and we say no more about it, but I can’t believe he’ll really just go back to where he was – not now he’s been in a house again and remembered how things could be. I look at the clock and it’s later than I thought.

  ‘I have to clean up,’ I tell him. ‘Do you want to watch some TV while I do it?’ I hear him going up the stairs and the creak in the floorboards halfway along the landing, then a little while later the sound of a studio audience laughing. I wash the cups up and put them away, then put his clothes in the dryer. Not long to go now.

  He’s back before the clothes are even dry and comes in as I’m putting the last plate away and stands in the doorway. ‘I need a smoke,’ he says. ‘I should go.’

  He seems nervous and edgy, stuffing his clean clothes in the duffel bag without even a thank you, staring at me as if he’s not sure how to escape. Then, in the soft light from the stairwell, he leans forward and kisses me on the cheek.

  A flash like electricity goes through me, and my face, where his hair has brushed it, seems to burn. I can feel the blood rushing into my cheeks and step back, but he doesn’t seem to notice; he’s looking at the door. ‘Bye then,’ he says. ‘Thanks for the bath ’n’ that.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Thanks for coming. I’m glad you did.’

  Truth is I’m not sure I mean it. Now he’s gone, I’m worried. He knows my address; he could turn up any time he likes. I run upstairs to check the bathroom, which is just as well. There is a big black oily ring round the sides of the bath and a raft of grit and bits in the bottom. Three towels – two big ones and a little hand towel – lie on the floor in a wet heap, and everything is grey with steam. I open a window, bundle up the towels and spray cleaner in the bath.

  He’s also shaved in the sink, and I suddenly realise what made such a difference to his face. The stubble and little beard thing had gone, and now it’s all over the sink in tin
y pieces like insect legs. Dad’s shaving foam and aftershave lotion are capless on the side unit, and there’s another towel on the floor. I’ll have to do another wash.

  The whole house feels strange now, like I’ve brought in something alien that Mum and Dad will detect the moment they come in. I check the other rooms and in Mum and Dad’s the coverlet is creased as if someone has sat on it. I go to the door of my brother’s room and put my hand on the brass knob, but don’t turn it. I can’t risk letting the ghosts out.

  Last of all the sitting room, where the TV is still going. I walk slowly and look down at the coffee table. In the centre is a ten-pound note that Dad left for me. Banks didn’t take it. I knew he wouldn’t.

  I sit down on the sofa, my heart going way too fast, take out my phone and call Joe. I have no idea what I want to say, only that I don’t want to be alone.

  It rings only twice and then ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘I was just about to call you. What’s up?’ His voice sounds thick like he’s starting a cold.

  ‘Nothing’s up,’ I say. ‘I just wanted to hear a friendly voice. Mum and Dad are out and I just feel…’

  ‘S’okay,’ Joe says into my silence. ‘I feel like that too.’

  I lie back in the sofa cushions, close my eyes and listen to the small sounds that Joe makes as he does the same. His soft breathing is like the sea.

  10.

  Thought Diary: PostSecretUK: where people send anonymous postcards with their deepest secrets on them, just so somebody knows. I posted one of mine, but it’s a secret. Find it if you can.

  The next morning, Dad shouts up the stairs, ‘Has anyone seen my razor?’

  Mum shouts back of course not, and then they start yelling. Mum comes into my room with the biggest frown on her face.

  ‘Have you taken your dad’s razor? It must be one of those three-bladed-diamond-encrusted ones from the fuss he’s making.’

  ‘I’m not making a fuss!’ Dad has heard her from the stairs. ‘It’s the only one I have, and some of us are trying to get to work. One of you has been shaving your armpits with it or whatever you do – why can’t you just say so!’

  We hear him stamping about, then the slam of the bathroom door. Mum makes a face. ‘Have you seen it?’ she asks. ‘You were doing something funny in there yesterday – I’ve never seen so many towels used, and there was a ring round the bath like you’d been washing rescued seabirds. Nothing’s wrong is it?’

  My heart starts thumping. I haven’t cleaned it properly, though I scrubbed it for hours. ‘Nothing!’ I say. ‘Nothing; I used some of that tan stuff, sorry.’

  Mum looks at me and sighs. ‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘He’ll have to go to work with stubble – and don’t you look so amused. It’s all secrets with you, isn’t it?’

  In assembly, the police are there. A tall, grey-haired man and a woman. They warn us about going out alone because there’ve been more attacks: two girls down by the marina and a boy late at night in town.

  ‘The young man is seriously injured,’ the policeman says. ‘We want you all to be aware, and to call us if you see or hear anything suspicious.’

  I did phone the police once, when Sam was having a go at Mum. He had her cornered in the kitchen, screaming at her like he wanted to kill her. All they did was ask to speak to Mum, but all she said was that I’d made a mistake. I wouldn’t bother again.

  I remember this later when Mr Graves gives us his writing topic. He looks just like a stork with his long neck and hooky little nose, and paces the front of the classroom with carefully placed steps, as though he might step on something sharp.

  ‘Write about your weekend,’ he says. ‘If it’s boring, make something up. I don’t mind that, it’s what we all do, unless it’s just me? But then again, I spent most of last night painting the dining room. Haha…’

  I have a vision of him up a ladder – a pot of paint above, wife below. She wouldn’t see him as an English teacher but as a man. Wonder if she regrets marrying him.

  I look down at my exercise book and smile. I could write about letting Banks into the house – that would be honest – but everyone would think I was lying. I imagine Joe in his English lesson, trying to disguise the secrets I know he has but won’t tell me yet. So many secrets, secrets, secrets.

  Instead I put my head on the desk and sigh. We’ve done this topic before. I remember the last time quite well. I wrote about Sam. The truth.

  He’d come home and thrown a chair right across the room at Mum, just missing her face. It crashed into the sideboard instead and broke an antique plate. Later on, he’d demanded that I give him some money. Dad was sitting in a chair across the room and I looked over at him, but he didn’t move, just sat there. I was up against the wall, heels touching the paintwork, and Sam had hold of my wrist, twisting it. Then he raised his fist and whacked me on the side of my face, so hard it was like an explosion. I saw stars just like in a cartoon and everything went silent in my head. Sam smiled into my face, gave my wrist a final twist, let me go and walked out. Dad still did nothing, just let him do it; sat there like nothing had happened at all.

  He didn’t do anything later on either, because the house was dark and he was asleep. Sam let himself in with his key and climbed up the stairs, thumping and banging, swearing and muttering, and he came to my room like he’d done before, only this time I’d forgotten to block the door.

  ‘’Ello Corinne…’ he said.

  He was a huge, dark shape against the light from the passage, lurching against the doorframe, staring at me.

  ‘I was asleep,’ I said, and my heart jumped in my chest like a bird at a window. The alcohol stink seeped into the room like snakes and he came in and sat on the bed, making me wait. It would either be blows, or questions that had no answer, and he’d ask them over and over again, hissing in the gloom with his hand twisted in my hair until it tore from my head. There’d be another sound too – the sound of no one coming.

  I didn’t hand it in, of course. They don’t really want the truth. So I grip my pencil and lie again: ‘Yesterday, I went with my parents to a relative’s house where we had lunch…’

  The next day is tense. Mum and Dad are having one-of-those-days when the past gets too big to ignore. It’s coming up to a year soon – Sam died at the end of last November. They’ll want me to do what they do. They’ll want me to cry. They’ll want me to visit the grave to talk about how tragic it all was, but I’ll only be glad. Glad he’s gone. How do you admit a terrible thing like that?

  When I get upstairs, the door of Sam’s room is ajar; someone has been inside. I stand outside and listen, but there’s nothing – just a gurgle of running water from the bathroom behind me. I look at the door again, touch it, and listen to it squeak. The same squeak I’ve been hearing for years. I push a little further and step inside. Not too far in – I want to be able to hear if anyone comes so I can get out quickly. I don’t want anyone to find me there.

  It’s very quiet, only a couple of cars going past outside. The bed, which for a long time used to be made up as if he might be coming back at any moment, is now stripped. It could have been like that for months, or only just today. Perhaps today is the day when Mum puts his sheets in the washing machine when they aren’t even dirty. Or perhaps it’s the first time she won’t. She’ll just put them away and leave the mattress bare. Mum’s moods break and change like clouds. You have to watch her face like the sky.

  I let my breath out and twist round, looking but not touching. I’d rather my feet were off the floor too, really. I couldn’t say why. It’s not like death is catching or anything, is it?

  There isn’t much to see; someone cleared up the bottles and the mess a long time ago. It’s not even really like his room. There’s a pair of boots and a single trainer behind the door, and above his desk there’s a poster of a Hell’s Angel on a motorbike with the words ‘Live fast, Die young’ written in letters shaped like knives. Apart from that it’s just a few books and a plant that looks like it’d rather be
anywhere but here, if it had a choice.

  Last of all, just as I’m about to go, I see a chess piece lodged against the skirting board. Dad taught both of us to play when we were little, but I was better at it than Sam and he hated that. He used to hide the pieces when I was halfway through a game, and one day he took the chess set and I never saw it again. It was lost and never replaced, like a lot of other things. I put my hand out to pick the piece up, but find I can’t. I leave it where it is – a little wooden knight without his companions. My heart beats very fast and the blood pounds in my ears, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh…

  ‘Mum, Sam took my chess set.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure he’ll bring it back. Don’t make trouble, Coo.’

  ‘I’m not making trouble. He takes my stuff all the time…’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Corinne.’

  ‘He does. You should make him buy me a new one…’

  ‘Quiet, Corinne! Sam – what are you doing—?’

  Mum in the hall – Sam holding her by the arm – money in his other hand, twisting, twisting, and Mum with her mouth open, soundless.

  ‘You idiot,’ I say to the wall poster. ‘I hate you.’ And then, suddenly, I’m afraid. I’m afraid he knows. Even though he’s dead – that he knows.

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I whisper into the still air. ‘I didn’t mean to kill you.’

  Nothing changes. The silence remains the same. No avenging ghost comes to slap me down, just an image of Sam’s face when he was really young. Fresh and smiling, holding up a present he’d bought for me on a holiday we had one time. I blink it out of my mind; I don’t want to think about it.