Stones

by Polly Johnson

  Banks sniffs and nods his head. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘– then Dad paid for all these courses. Trying to find something he’d stick at.

  Didn’t matter how much money he wasted, or how many times Sam gave them up, there was always money for another course.’

  Banks smiles to himself and blows out a cloud of smoke.

  ‘It’s true,’ I say, ‘always. Another training course – and a car when he was doing this gardening…’

  Banks perks up. ‘He was a gardener?’

  ‘No. Not a gardener. Well, he worked for a man who was landscaping – you know? When Sam died, we found all these little seeds in matchboxes. He couldn’t remember to brush his teeth, but all those seeds were labelled – in Latin too. Can you imagine? Latin!’

  Banks grins. ‘Yeah. I know Latin. You don’t know what I know. You use Latin to classify things. You should plant them.’

  ‘I don’t know where they are or what happened to them. I can’t remember a lot about it.’

  This time, it’s me who stares out of the entrance. Banks takes out a little bottle and swigs. He hands it to me then immediately takes it back. ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  ‘Actually, I don’t want to talk about it.’ I look up – afraid because the funny feeling is coming back, like I’m going to be executed at dawn or something. Banks leans forward and looks into my face. His breath is fumy but nice.

  ‘It’s going to be a year –’ I find myself saying ‘– since he died. In a few weeks they’ll want me to go to the grave, but I won’t. I haven’t since the funeral. They can’t make me.’

  I wait for him to say something. Something perfect to make the pressure go out of me like steam, but he doesn’t.

  ‘Watch out,’ he says suddenly. ‘Alec’s here.’

  I look up from under my fringe and see the red-headed man. He’s trying to walk in a straight line but it’s as though he’s on board ship. His hair is still in wild corkscrews, but this time there’s a silly little hat perched on top of it. His pink face is covered in golden stubble and he leers at me as he comes closer. He stands there swaying, and I can smell the drink oozing out of his pores.

  ‘Whaaasaa doing Banksssy? Whaasis girl here?’

  I move closer to Banks as Alec crashes down on a box next to us. His eyes are a very pale blue like a baby’s; the pupils not more than tiny black pinpricks.

  ‘I saw God,’ he says, leaning in close to my face. ‘Ssssaw God and he said I am his avenging angel!’

  He stands up suddenly and laughs in high-pitched shrieks, swiping the air around him as if it was filled with wasps or bats. He twists one way and then another, looking at something we can’t see. Banks takes my elbow and we get up, walking without looking back. ‘Get going,’ Banks says. ‘Get off home. You don’t want to be around him. He takes stuff with the drink, and it’s done his head.’

  ‘What about you though, Banks? Will he hurt you?’

  Banks laughs. ‘He tries. I can handle him. Go on now; quick.’

  Behind him Alec is watching us, hands balled into fists, his whole body shaking. ‘Banks,’ I say. ‘He scares me. I think he’s dangerous.’

  ‘He’s my mate,’ Banks says. ‘Only one I got.’

  ‘But if you knew he was… hurting people… you’d say, right? I mean, there’s things going on. The police came to our school…’

  ‘He doesn’t do that.’

  ‘But if he did?’

  ‘Go home,’ Banks says.

  I walk home through the lanes again, looking in the shops. One window is lit up and filled with bags shaped like teapots, big lips, and tiny shoes made of felt and satin. I stand staring at them for a long time. Everything feels fractured.

  A pregnant woman is turning over some tiny felt pumps, one hand on her stomach, gently stroking. In her belly the baby is lying like a little plant. I can see in her face the bright future she is seeing for it, that starts with these little felt shoes. I bet she doesn’t see it finishing in a ruined building, raving about God into empty air.

  18.

  Thought Diary: ‘Insanity, or madness. A semi-permanent, severe mental disorder typically stemming from a form of mental illness.’ They say that one person in most big groups will be nuts, and if you can’t see who it is – then it’s you!

  The incident with Mad Alec unsettles me. Today in the local paper there’s news of another attack, where a girl not much older than me was half-strangled. It happened in Hove, but still, that’s not so far. Who knows where Alec wanders?

  I go to school and don’t see Banks at all. One night, I go with Chloe to Raven’s house where they stick false nails on me and dye my hair. It’s not anything too wild or permanent, just something that promises to bring out more ‘coppery lights’. After this we go to another girl’s house and it seems that I’m getting on with Raven better than Chloe is. We find ourselves sharing jokes the others don’t find funny – laughing so hard it makes my sides and my jaw ache. When I get home I’m smiling, and Mum looks like she just won the lottery. I don’t even mind her seeing I’m happy and I don’t feel guilty about it either. She makes big mugs of hot chocolate and we sit and drink them while some awful home shopping channel plays across the TV screen.

  By the time Dad comes home, Mum is curled up asleep on the sofa and I’m almost as tired. It’s been fun. When I’m in bed, the nervous thing that’s always there, pulling at my tendons and squeezing my muscles, isn’t. I poke around for a minute looking for it, then leave it alone and sleep.

  Finally, I hear from Joe. He’s ringing from outside somewhere and sounds a bit odd. He keeps breaking off as if someone’s distracting him. He asks me to meet and we end up in town just hanging around and talking.

  ‘I’m not living at home right now,’ he tells me. ‘But I’m okay.’

  I remember what Raven said about bruises and search his face. There aren’t any but he does look tired. I want so much to ask him about it, but then I see his smile in the streetlights and don’t do it. When someone is happy, it’s best not to spoil it.

  ‘What do you want, Joe?’ I ask him and he pauses for a long moment before answering. ‘I want to be myself!’ he says at last. ‘And I’m doing something about it. You should too. You want your parents to listen to you and explain why they let you get hurt but you never outright ask them. You’ve got some secret you’re hiding away but you don’t tell anyone. I won’t be like that.’

  ‘You have secrets too, Joe, that you don’t tell me.’

  ‘Turn and turn about,’ he says. ‘When I know yours, you’ll know mine. But by then, mine will be sorted.’

  I’m glad he’s so sure. I’m glad his week is going well. Mine isn’t. Only two days after meeting Joe, I come home from school and know at once that something is very wrong.

  Dad appears at the top of the stairs and signals to me. Then, in the voice he uses when he’s being Father, not Dad, he says, ‘Corinne? There you are. Would you come up for a moment, please?’

  In the first floor sitting room Mum is standing at the window looking down into the street, and there are two policemen standing awkwardly in the centre of the room. One of them has a face like a party mask, with big tufty eyebrows and cheeks as red as tomatoes. The other is younger, with gelled hair. He’s taken his hat off and is smiling at me. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Corinne? I wonder if we might ask you a couple of questions. Don’t worry. You haven’t done anything wrong.’

  I wonder if I have the right to refuse, or if anything I say will be taken down in evidence, and my brain whirls round trying to think what I might be guilty of.

  ‘Sit down if you like,’ the policeman continues. ‘It’s just a question or two. We need to clear something up.’

  My heart sinks. We’ve all of us been here before. The police used to come round fairly regularly when Sam was at his worst. Once when he’d been drunk and taken a swing at a traffic cop, once when he’d been found wandering about shouting at people, and of course, there was the night they found him
in his rooms and couldn’t wake him.

  I sit on the long sofa, as far away from the policeman as I can, so he sits on the other end, like he was proposing to me in an old Jane Austen novel.

  ‘I wonder, Corinne,’ he says, ‘whether you know a man called Stuart Banks?’

  It goes terribly quiet. Mum turns from the window to face me. Dad leans in to whisper something to the other policeman.

  ‘I…’ I begin, ‘I know a man called Banks – a bit. But I don’t know if he’s called Stuart. I don’t know him well. Is he dead?’

  Everyone looks at me as if I’ve said something stupid, and the policeman shakes his head. ‘No. No,’ he says. ‘Everything’s fine. It’s just that we stopped Mr Banks today outside a porn shop. He had a ring in his possession that he claims that you gave him.’

  Now I’m confused. Why would the police stop Banks outside a porn shop? And when did I ever give him a ring? The policeman has taken a little box from his pocket, which he opens, and then – unbelievably – there on his palm is Mum’s ruby ring. The one her mother left her. I gaze at it and my mouth opens. I don’t know what to say. Mum has come over and is leaning over the sofa back. Her fingernails are painted bright red and she digs them into the leather of the sofa, ominously. The policeman is looking at me, his eyes wide and round, a tiny encouraging smile on his lips. And then something clicks into place.

  I remember when I was waiting for Banks to come down the day he had the bath, and what a long time he was. I remember the little hollow in the bedding in my parent’s room, and I get a mental picture of the ruby ring, where it always is, in the little glass trinket box next to Mum’s bedside lamp. My face goes bright red. I can feel the blood beating in my cheeks, and there is a rushing sound in my ears. What do I say? That I brought him in here that day – a stranger, a drunken tramp – because that’s how they’ll see it.

  ‘What did he say?’ I ask.

  The policeman flips open a notebook and reads from it.

  ‘Mr Banks claims that you were talking to him – a little while ago – he couldn’t remember. That you were wearing the ring, and that you took it off at one point because it was…’ he looks closer at the writing, ‘…too tight on your finger. He claims that you then went off home, and he noticed the ring on the bench afterwards. Mr Banks claims he was keeping it safe until he saw you again. I wonder if you can tell us if this is true?’

  Before I can say anything, Mum bursts in. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Of course Corinne doesn’t know this man – he’s obviously stolen it. That’s what he was doing at the pawnbrokers, trying to sell it.’

  I have it now. Not porn – pawn – a pawnbroker, where people without much money take things and get what they can for them, and when they have some cash they buy them back again – or not. The policeman is looking at me, so is Mum. So is Dad.

  ‘I see,’ I say. ‘Right.’

  Banks stole Mum’s ring, and he tried to sell it. Now he’s trying to get out of trouble by lying, and making me lie too. If I choose to that is. My eyes start to prickle. ‘I think I did,’ I find myself saying. ‘I’m sorry Mum. I did wear it. I just wanted to wear Gran’s ring. I’m so sorry. I did lose it, and I’ve been so worried ever since.’

  I’m crying now. I’m so angry with Banks. I hate him.

  The policeman is talking to Dad, and Mum is hissing away in a high, angry voice that I only hear half of: ‘…A tramp of some kind! What is she doing talking to someone like that? It’s really too much. You need to have a serious talk with her, Mark. And perhaps you police should be doing more to catch this person who’s going round attacking people. Perhaps you should be concentrating on important things…’

  ‘Karen!’ Dad says. ‘Stay with Corinne while I see the officers out.’

  He takes the policemen downstairs. I hear their voices getting quieter as they go down. Mum sits next to me on the sofa – close but not touching – the ring in her hand. I can see her knees pressed together and the tips of her red nails turning the ring over in her palm with tiny, tiny clicking sounds. Then she polishes it on the sleeve of her cardigan, rubbing at it like she might catch something from Banks’ hands – his dirty, thieving hands. Mum sighs. The house is silent around us, and the sound seems to go on for ever, settling into the empty spaces like a skein of silk spooling out unnoticed and unchecked.

  19.

  Thought Diary: Why do I never, EVER, learn?

  The silence lasts most of the following week. Mum says nothing, but her mouth is set in a straight, hard line that Joe says is more worry than anger. He shrugged his shoulders when I told him what Banks had done, as if to say, what did I expect? Matt said nothing when I went over to get away from Mum’s silence. I sat in a huge beanbag while he made us lunch, raising a questioning eyebrow at me every so often – waiting for an explanation that I didn’t give him. Raven was kinder, but even she thought I was crazy to be surprised. ‘He’s, like, a tramp,’ she said. ‘Give the guy a break.’

  I sit in Sam’s room now, in secret, while Mum and Dad whisper to themselves downstairs. I don’t know why I came in here. Perhaps it’s because it’s the last place anyone will look for me. I sit on the edge of his bed while the voices rise and fall beneath me, and remember just how far back the stain spreads.

  Once, when I was quite small, we went on holiday to Cornwall. I don’t know why I did it, but I stole a marble from a tourist shop. I’d been brought up to know that stealing is wrong, but I remember wanting the marble more than anything I’d ever wanted before. It was a clear green like the sea, with a twisting spiral of white deep inside, which trapped the light when you held it to the window. I didn’t have a penny of my holiday money left and remember standing there, knowing that I couldn’t leave without it. Then, before I knew what I’d done, the marble was in my pocket and my heart was hammering as if it would jump right out of my chest. I changed my mind at once. My hand went to my pocket and clutched the marble ready to lift it back out and return it, but then I saw Sam staring at me from across the aisle. I ran, and he ran after me, shouting my name. He chased me all the way to the cliff path and caught me in a grip of iron. ‘What’s in your pocket?’ he demanded. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I cried. ‘I’ll take it back!’

  ‘You can’t,’ he said, ‘you’d give yourself away. I’ll do it.’

  ‘Don’t tell, Sam. Don’t tell Mum and Dad.’

  He looked at me with his hand out, waiting, so I put the marble on his palm where it winked in the sunlight like the most beautiful green eye.

  ‘This is going to be hard,’ he said. ‘I could get caught doing this and go to jail. You owe me. Never forget that. You owe me now.’

  I was only young. I believed him. I remember it clear as day.

  Years afterwards, I crept into his room to see if he’d taken my purse. I remember easing open a drawer and seeing the green marble lying in one corner like a dirty secret. It seems like people have been stealing from me ever since.

  At lunchtime I see Joe. He’s sitting alone in the canteen. He looks at me as I walk past but says nothing and nor do I because I’m angry with him. He always seems to be judging me, and now I just know he’s all smug. He was right about Banks, wasn’t he? And I bet he just loves it. He isn’t waiting after school either, so I wander down to the seafront, well away from The Mansion. I don’t know what happened to Banks with the police, and I don’t think I care. Then I realise that I had no reason to come down here. If I really didn’t care and I didn’t want to see him I’d have just gone home.

  I turn with the wind behind my back and think of Gran’s ring in the window of a pawnshop. That’s the thing to do if something hurts too much: think of something that stops the pain getting through and making a mug of you. Something that allows you to feel hate, or something like it, then walk away.

  As I’m walking, a text comes from Joe: ‘Sometimes its not about u.’

  I think of a smart answer, but realise just as I’m about t
o hit send that I don’t really know what he means. ‘Who is it about then?’ I say into the air, and suddenly the answer hits me and I feel ashamed.

  I go home and have dinner with Mum and Dad. We talk trivia – anything to avoid talking about what we’re all avoiding. Afterwards we watch a drama together, curled up like sheep avoiding a storm. We’re together and not together, feeding off one another’s warmth for a brief time before going to sleep alone. As I go up to bed, a real storm gathers outside. It rumbles away somewhere over the sea then moves across the town, flinging rain at the windows. I wonder where the homeless people are and whether the old man, disturbed by the thunder, lies twitching on his sleeping bag bed.

  I fall into a half-dream, where the red-headed man runs naked across the shingle, outlined in thunder. He screams at me that he has seen God and has a message for me. It’s written on the underside of a white stone that he turns and hurls into the dark water like the best bowler anyone ever saw. Then he laughs at me. ‘I know where your answers are! They’re on the bottom of that stone – swim for it!’ and he screams like a wet, white gull and flaps away over the water.

  I wake with a start. Mum is standing at my window staring out at the night. I pretend to be asleep so that when she bends to pull the duvet up, she won’t know how much it means to me. I pretend to sleep on, hiding the knowledge inside as an act of defiance.

  20.

  Thought Diary: Apparently, to dream of seagulls indicates a desire to get away from your problems or the demands of your waking life. I should be dreaming of a whole flock!

  Joe calls me on Friday night and we meet up the next morning to wander round the shops. I can’t seem to stay angry with him. I did try, but it seemed such a waste of time. Anyway – sometimes it’s not about me.

  He looks so much older out of uniform, and while we walk with his arm looped through mine, I can tell that people think we’re together. We buy him a new jacket, and when he takes off the old one I can see both his arms have black bruises at the top where the muscles are. They are so clearly the imprints of someone’s fingers that I daren’t ask.