Stones

by Polly Johnson

  ‘That would be telling,’ he says.

  22.

  Thought Diary: ‘Boneyard, an archaic word used synonymously with “graveyard”. Boneyard (comics) a horror-themed comic book series by Richard Moore.’ Wikipedia.

  Sunday morning, and a year since Sam died. Mum comes into my room early, drawing the curtains back to let in a grey light. ‘We’re taking some flowers to Sam,’ she says. ‘We’d like you to come, but it’s up to you.’

  I lie there a long time after she’s gone and can’t go back to sleep. I listen to her moving about on the floor below and the steady hum of voices as she talks to Dad. A slow anger begins to grow. It becomes a buzzing energy in my limbs, but just as I throw myself out of bed, the anger dwindles. I poke around for it as though it’s a missing heartbeat, but it’s gone. There’s nothing to do but open the door and go downstairs without it.

  In the kitchen, I ram bread into the toaster and slop juice on the worktop, but it’s no good. Mum smiles at me and goes outside to bring in a bunch of flowers from the greenhouse while Dad opens the front door, letting cold air in to sweep through the hall. When I’ve finished my toast, we get in the car and drive through the streets, upright and silent as crash-test dummies.

  The crematorium is up a driveway lined with empty flowerbeds. We could almost have been arriving at a hotel for a weekend away – who do they think they’re fooling? The building at the top gives it away. It has a sort of church look to it, but not quite. I suppose the atheists have to feel at home too. We walk in a stiff silence across a lawn of wet, slimy grass inlaid with rows and rows of square gravestones. They are set so close together that you can’t help stepping on them if you want to get to the one you came for. Hundreds of ‘Fell asleep’s and ‘Beloved Dad’s with their toppings of faded fake flowers and ribbons lie miserably in the chilly wind. I stand a bit apart, watching Mum and Dad moving round the square stone that carries Sam’s name and the date he died. They mutter together, and because it seems wrong to come all that way and turn round and leave so soon, they fiddle with the flowers, pull up the overgrown grass, and throw glances at me where I stand watching them, silent and apart.

  If I go over there I won’t be able to stand it. I won’t be able to resist shouting it out: ‘I don’t miss him! I don’t miss my brother and if I had the time over again, I still wouldn’t save him!’ Then they’d know for sure how wicked and evil I am and I wouldn’t have to pretend any more.

  See, if I could bring him back, he wouldn’t come alone. With him would come the shouting and the police and being afraid. We’d all disappear into the dark again with no one to pull us out.

  That evening, at dinner, Dad asks if I’m all right and I shrug and say what’s the big deal – it’s just a slab of stone, isn’t it? Mum starts to yell at me but Dad says no – if that’s how I feel, it’s fine. But all evening he looks at me as if I’ve got two heads or something. In the end I can’t stand it any more and go upstairs. I try having a bath, then play music really loud, but it’s no good. I open the front door and walk out, forgetting that I need to check now; that like an animal leaving its lair, I should make sure there are no wolves waiting. As I suck in the cool air from the quiet street, I see him. Over the road, in the shadow of Ben and Matt’s gate, is Alec, and he’s smiling. ‘I’m watching you,’ he growls. ‘I know where to find you.’

  I wonder if he’s not some personal devil, sent from hell to pay me back. We stand there, staring at each other while the wind plays whistles round my ears. Then someone opens a door, light floods the pavement where he’s standing, and like a good little demon, he slinks away back into the darkness.

  I shut the door and back away down the hallway to where I can hear Mum and Dad talking in the kitchen. What would I tell them? What has Alec actually done? Besides, I don’t want to cause Banks any more trouble, with police poking round.

  Before I know it, the shops are full of Christmas and everything gets sprayed with fake snow, but I’m less in the mood than ever.

  Everywhere I go now, I’m watching out for Alec. Often, there’s a beer can outside our front door, carefully placed so that whoever comes out is sure to kick it. Every time I turn a corner I peep back to see if I’m followed, and sometimes at night I’m sure I hear his feet on the pavement beneath my window, but when I look, there’s no one there.

  ‘He’s mental,’ Raven tells me. ‘Don’t blame me when you come home and find him in your kitchen frying someone’s liver.’

  We’re sitting in her room painting our nails and listening to some of her music, which sounds like someone screaming over and over.

  ‘You don’t get it,’ I say, but she just looks at me from under her magenta fringe.

  ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I get it.’

  Only with Joe can I forget him.

  When I leave Raven’s I meet up with him. We go shopping and the rest of the world slinks away for a little while. He’s said little about the party – just that he’d been surprised to find me gone, so I figure there’s nothing to say either. It’s stay quiet or risk losing him as a friend. Stay quiet is often the best way.

  He’s in a good mood today, and soon I’m laughing with him at the gadgets and silly things we might buy each other. Every so often, his phone rings and he turns away to answer it, and when he turns back, his face is flushed. I walk home with him and wave at his dad, but nothing’s changed. The man just glares at me as if I’ve offended him somehow. I wave to Joe but he ducks inside, leaving his dad to see me off.

  I walk to the beach afterwards – where I know I’m wanted. I don’t like to think he’s waiting for me, but Banks is there, slumped in his big black coat like a pile of unwanted clothing.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘Got any food?’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  I sit beside him and the tension goes out of me. His lips tremble.

  ‘You must be freezing. How do you stand it?’

  ‘Got my ways – we do this all the time. You better get used to it if you’re running off to London.’

  I’d almost forgotten. ‘You don’t think I’ll do it, do you?’ I snap. ‘Well, I will. When it gets warmer, I told you.’

  Banks grunts and we turn to gaze over the water. For the last couple of weeks, usually on a Saturday and a Wednesday evening, the swimming man has been coming down again. We have a bet on how long he’ll keep it up as the weather gets colder. He’s missed a couple of times lately, which is not surprising. We worry about him as if he’s our own granddad.

  Today the old man has new swimming trunks. The first time we saw him he wore baggy old things that looked like they’d been hauled out of a trunk somewhere. Today, though, as if to recognise that he’s a serious swimmer instead of just a summer bather, he’s got these new ones. They’re blue, and go right up to his chest and halfway down his legs. We watch him stagger down the incline, looking back once to where the old woman stands halfway up the beach, before continuing down to the sea. It’s strange the way she never comes down. She could sit with his pile of clothes and a flask of coffee or something, or even just stand closer, but she never does. Every time, she waits up the slope of pebbles as if ashamed to be with him, and only when he comes out – dripping and shivering like a child – does she step down to wrap him up and talk at him. We never hear what she says, only see her mouth moving. She dries his back roughly then stamps off back up towards the promenade while he dresses alone.

  We watch as he lowers himself stiffly onto a towel, leans forward and hauls socks over his big, bony feet, folding down the flap of his trainers as though its complexity defeats him. Banks and I sometimes make up stories about him and sometimes we wave, but he always ignores us.

  ‘I reckon he’s on a fitness thing,’ I say. ‘He’s got a girlfriend somewhere and wants to tone up. His wife’s on to him, and that’s why she’s angry.’

  ‘She wouldn’t bring him a towel, stupid,’ Banks grins. ‘She’d put poison in his c
ocoa late at night. Nahh, I reckon he’s heard some bit of folklore about how seawater keeps you young. More likely to give him a bloody heart attack if you ask me, specially this time of year.’

  ‘Did you ever swim, Banks?’

  ‘Yeah, I used to swim. I was good. I could swim now if I had some trunks.’

  He sits up straighter and stares at the sea, which today is a huge grey swell under white clouds. We are both cold in our coats, the pebbles beneath us freezing our thighs and calves, so the prospect of swimming is an insane one.

  ‘Get lost,’ I shudder. ‘You’d be mad!’

  Banks, though, is not listening to me. He gets up and wanders over to where the old man was sitting, glancing back up the beach to where his small form is now trailing the old woman towards the distant steps. He scuffs at the little wet patch, then bends and picks something up. He comes back over, drops it in my lap and then crashes down towards the sea where he loses his balance and ends up with his arm in the water. I see his skin white as plant stalks when he pulls back the coat sleeve and runs his fingers through the lapping white edge of the water.

  ‘It’s freezing,’ he shouts to me. ‘Bloody freezing.’

  I look down at my lap. There’s a pebble there – white and chalky. It doesn’t look anything very special to me, and as the wind dries the water from it, it turns dull and uninteresting.

  ‘Banks!’ I shout. ‘I’m cold. I’m going to go.’

  He turns at once and comes back, hauling me up by one hand. He looks tired, the stubble round his mouth like iron filings. There are three little cuts around his eyebrows.

  ‘Have you –’ he starts, looking at my feet and straightening the front of my coat so it covers my neck ‘– got any money?’

  ‘Hungry?’ I say. ‘Or will you buy booze?’

  ‘Booze,’ he says. ‘I won’t lie to you. I had some stuff last night that was like lighter fuel. It gave me visions. Don’t want any more of that. Just want some beer.’

  I sigh over him like someone’s mother, and then give in.

  ‘If I give you some – and a bit extra – will you eat something too?’

  ‘I might. Yeah… okay, I will. Promise.’

  ‘Banks, do you have to? Why can’t you not do it?’

  ‘You think I do it for fun?’ he says, and his eyes are on my purse as I draw it from my pocket.

  ‘If it’s not fun, don’t do it,’ I snap, and into my mind comes a picture of the old man shivering his way into the water. The way his skin flinches as the cold rises up over his quivering chest. The way his eyes squeeze shut just before he ducks his shoulders, as if he is steeling himself for some great trial. Some people don’t have the courage to find a quick way out. Maybe each time he goes in, the old man prays for death, but every time is spat back up onto the stones with his prayers unanswered. Then he goes creaking back up the beach to his wife and another try tomorrow.

  I give Banks ten pounds, which is all I have left, and he walks away.

  23.

  Thought Diary: ‘Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. If you can’t afford a turkey, buy yourself a cat.’ That’s horrible, isn’t it? Read it on a wall.

  As the weather gets colder, a thaw begins at home. Each afternoon when I get in, Mum comes out of the shop, props open the inner door in case anyone calls, and makes hot chocolate with marshmallows. Every day we stand there like two people in a waiting room, while she asks what’s gone on in my day. She wants to know if I’m in the school play or if there’s going to be a carol service. She asks would I like to have a party, so she can meet my friends. ‘Especially Joe,’ she smiles, inviting me to share my secrets. I say nothing, just sip the sweet chocolate and tip the marshmallows onto my tongue until she gives up and goes away. Funny thing is – day by day I feel something melt inside me, until one day I answer her properly. I talk to her about nothing – just funny things that happened with Raven and Joe – but I watch her smile come quicker and more easily. When she goes to wash up, I want to call her back so I can tell her more. Sometimes I can’t work myself out at all.

  Tonight Dad keeps the thaw going over dinner. He’s all cosy in a new woolly jumper and his face is relaxed like a kid after a hot bath. He wants to make plans for Christmas. He wants so much for us all to be happy that he chip chips away at the glacier that imprisons me, until I begin to see him – still distorted by layers of injury and ice – a little clearer each time.

  ‘We could go to a show,’ he says, ‘or maybe even on a weekend shopping break – abroad somewhere?’

  I look at him and don’t know what to say. His face is so eager. He wants me to be pleased so much it’s almost coming out of his ears. Then, in a flash, I remember that he wouldn’t want to take me anywhere if he knew what I’d done – that I helped to kill Sam. Especially if he knew that I’m glad. Glad he’s not here any more.

  Mum sees the silence between us and almost as if she’s desperate to fill it, she throws the local paper onto the table. ‘Look at that,’ she says. ‘Ben dropped it in for me to show you, so think before you go wandering about on your own while you’re off school.’

  ‘Ben wouldn’t bother if you didn’t talk behind my back,’ I snap, but I take the paper anyway, feeling a surge of panic jet through my arms and legs.

  There’s been another attack. A girl of seventeen, hit over the head on her way home from college. I look at her picture and I’m strangely relieved to see how little she looks like me. The paper says she didn’t see who did it, but that she could smell him. I wonder what the smell was.

  I feel unsettled all week; not ready yet for this new atmosphere; not ready to let go and forget. By Saturday I’m desperate to get away. My nerves are back and I want to be with friends, but there’s no answer from Ben and Matt’s when I knock, or from Joe’s phone. Nothing from Raven either. As ever, I end up by the sea, thinking how pathetic it is that my most reliable mate should be a tramp.

  Tonight we sit on the high seat above The Mansion. It’s freezing, but the lights down the promenade are somehow brighter for it, all laid out like a huge amusement arcade. The wind carries a burst of music as we eat warm doughnuts and Banks swigs from a little glass bottle. It’s seldom the same stuff. Sometimes it looks like water and sometimes it’s yellow. I don’t ask what it is.

  He seemed nervous when I turned up – staring around, then taking my arm and staggering us up the path to the top, right past his secret alcove.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘Why can’t we go in there?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not today.’

  ‘What are you scared of?’ I ask him now. ‘Is it him?’

  Banks takes a long swallow from his bottle and says nothing. Down below we can hear Alec weaving around the forecourt, shouting about God and Christmas.

  His voice is like metal dragged over glass; a harsh contrast to the carol singers in the shopping precinct.

  ‘He’s best left alone,’ Banks says. ‘He doesn’ like you.’

  I think carefully and then I ask him. ‘If you knew he was going to hurt me – or anyone – what would you do?’

  Banks smiles as if I’m being stupid again. ‘Hurt you?’ he says. ‘No. He wouldn’ do that.’

  ‘Do you know where he goes? Always?’

  ‘You think I’m married to him?’

  ‘I think you know more than you’re saying.’

  Alec is laughing like a demon now and shouting, ‘Merry Crapmus, Merry Shopmus!’ until something in the darkness smashes and he falls silent.

  ‘He’s right about one thing,’ Banks says. ‘Christmas is crap.’

  I bite into a doughnut and pass him the bag. ‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘Does it matter? It’s not crap for people who believe, and everyone else just makes it an excuse to have some fun.’

  Banks coughs from deep down in his chest and turns a white face towards me. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Debt is real fun. It’s pagan, anyway; replaced an old date. I bet it was okay then – lotsa fires and ritual
s and eating and drinking.’

  His eyes look very green today, but watery; the brows fluttering anxiously above them. He’s cold and looks sick. ‘I wish you could come home with me,’ I say. ‘For Christmas. I just don’t think my parents would—’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Banks interrupts. ‘But thanks. That’s nice of you. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll go to the Sally Army,’ he says. ‘They do dinner. They give you a present too.’

  ‘I saw them in town today,’ I say. ‘The Salvation Army.’

  I had been coming out of the last shop before going home, when I heard music. There was this group of people in dark uniforms like soldiers; the women in funny hats and sensible shoes. They played instruments, with music stuck on the top of tiny stands, and even though it wasn’t the sort I like, I stopped to listen. It’d seemed strange in the middle of all that rushing and spending to find that little pool of stillness and the brass playing slow, soft notes. ‘God rest you merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay…’

  ‘They had a collecting tin,’ I say. ‘For you maybe!’

  ‘Support the lonely this Christmas?’ Banks says. ‘I know it. ’Cept I’m not lonely.’

  ‘Aren’t you? I am.’

  The wind gusts up suddenly in an angry blast and we both shiver and shrink into our coats. Banks coughs again and our cold fingers touch. I close mine round his and look at him. He’s gazing straight out to sea with his chin down in his collar, while his chest shakes with silent coughing and his fingers grip with each spasm. He looks really young now – younger than the stubble and his rough lifestyle have painted over. Something about the yellow light coming down from the road above takes out the harsh lines and grime. I shut my eyes, but Banks shifts suddenly. He lets go of my hand, and when I look up I see Alec walking towards us, holding out a bottle.

  ‘Hey mate,’ Banks says. ‘I was about to come down.’ He gets up and walks over, keeping his body between the madman and me. I don’t need to be told. I turn to creep off down the slope furthest away from them, but not before Alec sees me. He doesn’t speak, just stares at me; his whole body poised as if to give chase.