I wonder if it’s Harold who now gives Banks his sausage rolls and cups of tea. Perhaps they’ve developed a whole relationship I know nothing about. I feel a stab of jealousy and shake my head at the old man’s back. As soon as he reaches the old woman, she takes his arm and steers him away like a tug picking up a boat. Mum and I watch them leave – two slowly moving objects in a sea of urgency.
‘That’s nice,’ says Mum. ‘To know he’s all recovered.’
We get up and continue to shop, but now my mind’s out there on the water. The wind is fresh in my ears, the stones so cold that numbness reaches through the soles of my shoes.
36.
Thought Diary: ‘A friend is someone who… dumps on you!’ Me.
It’s days before I get to see Joe. We seem to have drifted out of being friends without even noticing. Often he doesn’t wait for me after school or reply when I leave him messages or call him. I don’t think he’s even living at home, but I don’t see him to ask and Raven’s not saying. Today, though, I pin him down. I collar him at lunchtime and tell him he’s meeting me on the pier, tomorrow. No arguments. He doesn’t say no, but he doesn’t sound thrilled either. In the end he says yes, just to get rid of me, I think.
I go to meet him, determined things will go well, and despite the cold I’m feeling happy. Tiny chips of snow are whirling around in the wind, but it doesn’t matter. I figure we can spend the whole day together, maybe go out later to a club and reconnect somewhere liquid and noisy. Then, as I make my way down the boards, I see he’s not alone. He’s standing with another lad, their backs to the people passing by, their heads together. I come up and stand behind them until Joe looks round and sees me. ‘Hey,’ he says.
‘Hey.’
‘This is Toby – my friend. I’m staying with him; he walked down with me.’
I stop. ‘Okay, right.’ It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask whether he needs help feeding himself now as well, but I bite it back.
‘Shall we get some chips?’ Toby says, looking bored, and I wait for Joe to say no, that’s okay because he and I are going, but he doesn’t.
‘Sure,’ he says, ‘why not – you want some, Coo?’
I do, but I say no, and then have to queue up while they get theirs and eat them in front of me, leaning over the side of the pier to throw bits for the gulls to catch. I may as well not be there, and I know Toby wishes I wasn’t. He doesn’t ask me a thing, just carries on a conversation with Joe while his long fingers sketch something in the air, almost hitting me in the face. I look at Joe – hard – but he seems to be avoiding my gaze so I retreat behind a wall of silence which he tries to break by including me in the discussion.
Toby doesn’t even try, and soon Joe’s tension is stretched between us like a rubber band ready to snap. Finally it does.
‘Where’s your friend today?’ Toby asks me, lifting one eyebrow like a bad actor. ‘Joe says you hang around with some odd people – got a thing for tramps, is it?’
I’m about to say that he seems pretty odd to me. It’s obvious that the black hair isn’t his own, with ginger roots showing at parting and ears, and his Welsh accent is the whiny kind that I can’t stand. I catch Joe’s eye, but though he must realise that things are bad, he’s grinning! He actually thinks the idiot is funny.
‘Joe should know better than to talk about private things,’ I say. ‘Joe should remember who his friends really are rather than – whoever you are.’
As a riposte it’s pathetic, and that just makes it worse. Toby’s lip lifts in a sneer that makes me want to hit him, and Joe does nothing, only scratches his head and looks from one of us to the other. ‘Coo,’ he says at last, ‘it wasn’t like that. Toby – why did you say that?’
I walk away fast, back down the pier past the stupid people with their candyfloss in midwinter, their silly kissy faces and their stupid brats. Past the daft girls all painted up in lipstick and badly applied eye shadow for hideous boys who only want one thing.
‘Hey, watch it!’ one shouts as I push my way past her. I glare daggers back, begging her to say one more thing, but then she’s gone and there’s only the blood roaring in my ears and salt on my face. I go to the place I know would annoy Joe most, not that he’ll even know. I go to the most honest person I know.
37.
Thought Diary: ‘Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.’ Oscar Wilde.
Banks is sitting on his bench, tucked away behind the bushes, in the gloom of the alcove. When I arrive he shuts his eyes then opens them again and sighs. I’m in no mood to care. Next to him on the bench is a bottle of clear liquid, which I snatch, open, and pour into my mouth. It has a strong, fiery taste and I choke, spitting some of it back onto the concrete.
‘Watch it,’ Banks says and takes it from me. ‘That’s proper stuff – expensive!’
He swigs from it himself and then lets me take it back. I take a long, defiant swallow while he makes a roll-up and we sit in silence with the smoke flowing out into the frozen air. The alcohol hits my stomach and Banks relaxes, head tipped over the back of the bench. I ask him a question I’ve wanted to ask for ages. ‘Banks,’ I say, ‘how did you lose your wife and baby?’
He doesn’t move, not even an eyelash, but I know he’s heard me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked, but the Shrink Woman once told me that running away from things causes more problems than it solves. That looking at something right in the eye without flinching often shows it’s not as bad as we first thought. Suddenly, though, that seems stupid. How could losing a wife and baby get any better for being looked at?
‘I shouldn’a married,’ Banks says. His hand is covering his face and his voice is muffled. ‘I was never very good at anything that matters.’
‘Did you walk out?’
‘She threw me out.’
‘Why? I wouldn’t have.’
‘Yeah you would. So would I.’
‘Were you drinking?’
‘Yeah I was drinking, and… other things. I was no good.’
‘When did you have your first drink?’ I ask him, and he laughs wearily.
‘That’s a daft question. When did you? It’s not like that. When you start, it’s not drinking is it. It’s just having a beer, or a whisky – or another chocolate biscuit! Too much of anything can kill you.’
I have the bottle in my hand again and this time it tastes okay. It seems a silly question indeed and I start to laugh. I lean against Banks’ coat and sigh. ‘Tell me a story about you and your wife,’ I demand. ‘About your baby.’
For a moment he doesn’t say anything, but then he relaxes. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘When I was about twenty, Daniel came along. Danny, we called him. His mum and me, we lived together. I had a job and everything, like a real bloke, y’know?’
I shut my eyes. It’s warm and cosy here. Banks pauses and I can hear him rolling another cigarette, then he coughs and goes on.
‘One day we came here. S’why I came back after, ’cos I remembered. Anyway, there was this little funfair thing set up – stalls and stuff. We parked the pram by the hoopla and had a few goes, then we went to the next one, and the next. Didn’t win anything, course, but it was a laugh. Then… there was this little kid with a big ice cream… and we looked at him, and then we looked at each other, and guess what? We didn’t have Danny. We’d forgotten him. The pram wasn’t with us. We’d left him somewhere!’
He takes a drag from the roll-up, which flares against the grey light like a beacon, and then goes on. ‘Man, we went mad. My heart was bombing an’ I was thinking over and over What-if-he’s-gone, you know? We’d have to tell the police we forgot him.’
Banks is quiet for a long time, so I have to ask: ‘What happened? Was he gone? Is that why you’re not still with them?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘No. He was still there by the hoopla where we started. Parked up, quite happy. We just wheeled him off home. We never told him – not even later. Guess we were ashamed.’
He sucks the last ga
sp from the roll-up and flips the tiny scrag of paper away.
‘I remember one time,’ I tell him. ‘I found a watch lying on the grass in Hyde Park when we went to London. I imagined someone looking for it – retracing their steps, searching the ground where they’d walked, where they’d sat – but they wouldn’t find it, would they? Not even if they looked all day and night for a week. I’d found it completely by accident without even looking, but couldn’t tell them I had it. Life is crap sometimes.’
Banks laughs. ‘How is that the same thing?’ he asks. ‘Losing a baby isn’t like losing a watch!’
I don’t know what to say. I think it’s just that life is unfair. That the more you want something, the less likely it is to happen. If there are gods, I think they like messing with us. Banks is still looking at me, waiting for me to explain, but I give up.
‘Why d’you keep coming here?’ he asks me. ‘Drinking my booze, hanging around.’
I can’t answer that either. Not really. ‘I don’t have to,’ I say. ‘If you’d rather I didn’t.’
He fixes me with a long stare, until something creeps in and softens the look. He hangs his head. ‘Course not,’ he says. ‘I only wondered.’
‘I worry about you,’ I say. ‘I came along a couple of times, but no one was here. Not even the old man. I went up the top and sat on that bench. I wondered where you were.’
‘Don’t do that,’ he says. ‘Not on your own.’
‘Because of Alec? You do know, don’t you?’ I say. ‘What would you do if I did come and he went for me, Banks? Would you do something then?’
There’s a long pause. Neither of us moves. Above the bushes, the air darkens as I watch.
‘Just don’t come,’ he says at last. ‘Better that way.’
I see something. Finally, I see. Sometimes it’s just not that easy for people to choose. Sometimes it’s got nothing to do with who you love best.
At last we see the sun start its slide down the sky and then it’s dark. The temperature has dropped so that I’m shivering and I wonder again how Banks can stand it.
‘I should go,’ I say. ‘Sorry if I said things I shouldn’t.’
In the almost dark, I turn my head to find him looking at me. Everything is spinning slightly.
‘It’s cold,’ Banks says. ‘Let’s go into the house.’
38.
Thought Diary: ‘All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.’ Winston Churchill.
I giggle as we walk the short way from the alcove to The Mansion. I can’t get over the way Banks calls it a house. It looks even worse in the cold half-light, even with the entrance partly blocked with cardboard. It smells of pee and there are empty cans, a couple of mouldy looking blankets and a Chinese food carton in one corner. Banks steers me to some broken car seats as if they were a couch in a palace. I fall onto one of them and try not to close my eyes, because every time I do, it feels like the world is trying a judo throw on me.
Banks stands for a long moment and I think he’s changed his mind, but he sits at last and rests his head on one hand. The hand is dirty even in the dim light, with that oily dirt that means it’s been a while since he washed it. As always, there’s the reek of alcohol and cigarettes but I don’t mind it. I only wish I could clear my head a little.
After a time, Banks starts mumbling to himself and every so often he looks up and stares off to his left, as if someone just said something irritating. A man’s head appears at the doorway, peers over the cardboard, then disappears from view as quickly as it came. I know how it must look – me and Banks, here together. He’s just what people say he is: ‘All wrong for me’. Too old, too weird, too dirty, too altogether nasty. Yet here I am, reaching for the warmth of his hand while he mumbles into his stubble about being followed, about a baby called Danny-Jack and about some stone he’s looking for. I fall into a sort of sleep – a heaviness where my head bobs gently like a boat on the tide, and the next time I look up, the dark has crept across the entrance as quietly as an animal. The sea is sighing away somewhere under the sky, and it begins to feel like we’ve been here for ever.
Do I really live in a house up in the town, with three storeys and an antique shop in the bottom? I can imagine Mum right now, putting aubergines in the oven, stopping to pour a glass of wine now that we can keep it in the house again, or perhaps even filling in a crossword clue here or there. She’ll be glancing at the clock, wondering where I am.
‘I used to like knowing Mum might be worried,’ I say into the quiet. ‘I thought she didn’t care if I was there or not.’
‘She cared…’ Banks has his face turned towards me – a vague blob in the darkness. A light from outside is picking out golden streaks at the edges of his hair, and his breath blows on me with the alcohol smell. Whatever it was I drank stirs in my guts in a kind of warning. He’s twirling my fingers between his now, and then he looks down and goes still – staring, as if he’s forgotten what fingers are. He starts to lift my hand up towards his face, then suddenly drops it and turns his body away from me.
‘You should go home,’ he mutters. ‘Your mummy will be worried…’
‘Don’t talk like I’m some kid!’ I shoot back at him. ‘What’s up with you?’
Banks gets up – a huge figure looming over me – the hair from his bent head brushing my cheek. ‘You’re a kid!’ he tells me. ‘A stupid – little – girl. Go home! Please go home!’
Something about the way he’s standing, the way he’s breathing makes me get up. We stand together – close – his breath warm on my cheek. My head feels fuzzy, as if it’s gently expanding, and for a crazy moment I wish more than anything in the world that he’d kiss me. My hand goes out and he catches hold of it, pulling me forward, and I go with it – until I get really close and see the look in his eyes. I step back then, but he doesn’t let go.
‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Banks! Let go … ’
He doesn’t seem to hear. He’s saying my name, and his hand clutches mine so hard it hurts. His other hand, wrapped round my back, is pulling me forward and I step sideways, catch my foot in the strut of the seat and fall, one hand crashing hard into the concrete floor.
‘You stink,’ I shout at him. ‘I don’t want to see you any more!’ Then I’m casting around in the darkness for the gap in the entrance, amazed that I’ve been happy to sit there next to him – not just now, but for all these weeks.
I snatch at the cardboard, tear it aside and stumble onto the forecourt. As soon as I get into the light, I run. Behind me, someone shouts, but I couldn’t care. He’s a dirty drunk; he’s disgusting. My breath is ragged and I’m saying things out loud like some kind of loony. I slow down because I’m getting up among people, but I can’t stop rubbing, rubbing, rubbing at my hands and face and the backs of my thighs where they’d touched the smelly old seat. Everything is dirty!
When I reach our street, the houses are all shining with light. There’s a glow spilling from the windows onto the gardens opposite. A woman in a wax jacket is walking a little dog, and I can see Matt through the window opposite, holding a bottle of wine to the light, turning it to read the label.
I can’t wait to get indoors. I wrestle the key into the lock, like the devil is after me, then stand for a moment in the hallway while the warmth drops round me, welcoming me home as if I’ve been gone for a long, long time.
The scent of cooking comes from the kitchen; Mum and Dad are in there together and they stop talking immediately. Mum draws the door open and her face relaxes.
‘Coo – there you are. We were worried…’
‘It’s all right,’ I smile. ‘I was just looking in the late shops. I think I’ll have a bath if that’s okay.’
Sitting in the warm water, steam saturating the air, I scrub at my fingers. Tears fall with the weight of blood into the water, and I speak out loud to my brother.
‘Why? Why did you want to give all this up? Why did you have to ruin it for everyone? Why did you die?’
A board creaks outside, and it might be a moment later or half an hour. It’s Mum going up to my room. She comes back past and speaks through the door.
‘Dinner will be ready soon. I left your dressing gown on the bed for you… don’t be long will you?’
I think of aubergines lying in Mum’s antique serving bowl, slushed and purple like a bruise, and suddenly I’m quite sure I’m going to be sick.
39.
Thought Diary: ‘Sometimes, tearing down a house is the only way to rebuild.’ Heard this on TV, I think.
The next day I get through school somehow, though my head hurts and I can’t concentrate. Around me the stupid squealing girls and the spotty boys make enough noise for a thousand. They have nothing to do with me and my life at all. At lunchtime, Joe tries to talk to me but I don’t answer. He follows me into the canteen and waits there while I get a tray of food I don’t even want.
‘Why don’t you let me explain?’ he’s saying, but I just go on shovelling mince into my face.
‘I don’t care,’ I say at last, pushing the plate away. ‘Your friend’s an idiot, and you seem to think I am! If you’d told me you were joined at the hip, I’d not have bothered coming.’
‘Oh come on, it wasn’t like that. He was going—’
‘No he wasn’t. And why was he there at all? If spending time with me is so boring just say so. I do have other people to see you know.’
I peel open the top of my yoghurt and watch his head drop.
‘Look,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. Where did you run off to anyway? We could have spent the evening together—’
Stones Page 16