by Olivia Levez
It’s early and Cassie won’t be up for hours yet. She’s sleeping off all the late nights and she’s got a few appointments later – Darren 2 p.m., Leroy 4 p.m. – so it’s better that I’m out of the flat and out of her hair.
Only a fiver in her purse today. She’ll not miss it. I wish she’d miss it.
I carry on past the station, then change my mind and cross back over the road towards Brixton. I walk down avenues of posh houses, gloss-painted front doors in smart navy and green and plum.
Each Peach Pear Plum.
That was the name of Johnny’s favourite book. Together we knew all the words, only I’d pretend not to remember and he loved that; he’d shout the end-rhymes and get it right every time.
Little white Fiats are parked on the tarmacked drives; first cars for teenage kids. Inside the sash windows are wooden blinds to stop people like me staring in. A couple of builders sit on some steps, dragging on fags in the rain. They watch me as I walk past and I switch on my Medusa stare.
I am a rock.
Dead Pigeons Don’t Cry
I decide to eat before heading back.
Everyone’s packed in here because of the rain; the only table free is mine and Johnny’s.
Tinny pop music and lime and orange walls. I sit on a brown fake-leather stool with my quarter-pounder-no-cheese.
I want to die because all the kids remind me of Johnny.
That little boy with the buzzed hair who gazes at me with treacle eyes. He trails his hand across my table as he passes. He’s sitting next to his mum now, kicking the bench with his white Velcro trainers. Has a chicken burger the size of his head but he’s still making good work of it. He tilts his head to one side in concentration as he licks mayo from his mouth and his mum reaches over and nicks a chip.
I stare out of the window.
My burger tasted so good I could eat three more, but I only have pennies left. I can make a large Coke last hours.
There’s Lambeth Town Hall.
I once saw a wedding through this window. A white couple, the girl in a short cream dress, him in brown polished shoes that shone like conkers. And a little crowd of friends, all young, happy and laughing. Two women had sandwich bags filled with rose petals and were throwing, throwing, and snapping, snapping with their cameras. And the groom stooped and grimaced but you could tell he loved it really and he and his new wife clutched each other for all eternity in those photos.
My little brother, busy playing The A-Team on my smartphone.
‘When can we go home, Frannie?’
‘Not yet,’ I say.
A dad, his dreads tucked up tight under a black beret, is asleep sitting up; his head sways and nods as he sits with his kids, a girl who stares out the window, and a boy with his orange juice and his iPad. This kid is chubby, cheeks fat as pumpkins.
I sit alone, jeans clinging cold to my thighs.
I am a rock. I am an alien.
Outside, red buses reflect in glassy puddles.
Walking back up Brixton Hill, the rain still falls.
Glassy pavement. Glass-eyed people. By a wall, a crow pecks at a puddle of vomit.
Outside our flat, on the pavement, I see a dead pigeon.
A woman is pulling her kid away from it.
‘Why’s it got no head, Mum?’
I check the time on my phone: 4.30 p.m.
Cassie should be done by now.
Animal
So today I bleed.
A lot.
Blood drips, over my cupped hands, through my fingers, into the sea.
I watch it drip down the inside of my legs. My legs are hairy, I think. Hairy and blistered and tanned as a conker.
The first day’s always heavy.
I’m squatting in the shallows, and the water’s flowering pink with my blood and the sun’s scouring the back of my neck and I’m naked and I’m bleeding and I don’t care.
At first it felt strange and raw to be naked; I felt watched by the beach, the whispering trees by the edge of the forest.
But there’s no one to bother about. There’s no one to see.
My belly throbs. To ease it, I swim, pulling at the water, smoothing out my pain. It helps.
Later, I wash out my bikini bottoms and SpongeBob’s still winking. I hang them on a rock and take the tampons from the Hello Kitty bag.
I take one out, just because I don’t want to spend the whole day leaking like hell in the sea. But something makes me stop. It feels wrong to be chucking these in the sea when I’m done. And do I bury them? I have no fire to burn them. And there are only twenty in the pack. What then?
Using my knife and my teeth, I tear two strips from the bottom of my leggings. Roll one up into a pad. One to wash. One to wear. They’ll dry instantly in this sun.
I feel kind of wild and free.
Blood, hair, teeth.
I am all animal.
Berries
Shall I?
The nail file hovers over one of the blisters on my legs. It’s fat and squishy and as big as a small jellyfish. But what if it gets infected or something? I once read a horror story where a man’s legs got gangrene and he had to chop them off himself.
I use the nail file to try to sharpen my safety knife instead. Then I punch holes in three could-be nuts and gulp down the water. I’m getting to like it very much; it’s warm and clean and slightly sour.
But I need to be careful because there’s not many left on the ground and what if the wind doesn’t shake any more down? There’s no footholds on those palms, like on the mulberry tree in Brockwell Park.
I decide to smear the pulpy stuff from the could-be nuts all over my legs. I don’t know if it’ll do any good but it feels cool and soothing on my blisters.
Then I pull on Joker’s red T-shirt and smear on some of the lip balm.
Made with petroleum jelly, the little tin says on the side.
For a moment, something flickers in my mind.
I lick my lips and almost, but not quite, taste cocoa. Lip balms are always like that: smell so good but never taste like the smell.
Next I have to sort out my shoes. I can’t just use T-shirt sleeves again; my feet are still cut up and sore from my last trek in the forest. I end up tearing what’s left of my leggings into strips and levering the cardboard base out of the rucksack. When I’ve hacked at it with my knife, it’s in two sections, which I use as soles. I place them on my feet and wind the legging strips around tight as I can.
The bag’s too scratchy on my bare shoulders so I turn my hoodie into a makeshift sling and stick a could-be nut and my empty water bottle into it. Then I push the knife down the side of my SpongeBob bikini bottoms.
There. Don’t I look the part?
Creaking a little in my new shoes, once more I enter the sweating forest.
If the knife was sharper, I could maybe make some progress. But it seems to be getting blunt with all the work it’s been doing. I have to tear branches and creepers away after hacking at them for what seems like hours and I kick at quite a few trees in rage.
Soon I’m too sweaty to be angry. It’s like I’m in a bathroom and the hot taps and shower are turned on full, and then someone turns on the heater and closes the doors and windows.
Or I’ve just climbed inside a hot oven.
And if I thought I’d have the energy to just open a could-be nut and swig from it while I was in the jungle, I must’ve been mad. The swilling nut in my sling tortures me.
But don’t throw it away ’cause you don’t know when you might find another.
It seems easy at first because all I do is follow the broken and kicked-at-in-rage creepers. But then I realise that it’s not so easy to see my path: already the trees are netting themselves together again, criss-crossing themselves in crazy lines.
What if I get lost like last time?
And I have no torch; not any more.
I squat and pee.
Around me, the forest simmers.
Distant creatur
es howl; a large grey ant on the leaf beside me cleans the air with its feelers.
There are loads of palm trees here; fat ones that look like giant pineapples, skinny ones with strange brown flowers. None with could-be nuts on them though; those seem to only grow along the beach.
Reaching up, I tie a knot in the huge leaf of the palm nearest to me. I decide to do this to each one as I pass; that way I’ll know the way back.
Once my path is barred by a monstrous, storm-toppled tree, old as time, bound and choked by hundreds of snaking vines. Saplings thin as fingers shoot out from its ancient branches, bunching together to reach the sky.
I clamber through in my cardboard shoes; crawl over this sleeping dinosaur with its many knotted eyes.
After days or hours or minutes, I reach the pool.
Something has eaten the dead rat; only its bones remain. Above the water’s surface a thousand tiny flies flicker.
I wade in to where the water seems cleaner and fill the bottle. When I hold it to the light, the water inside looks lovely: brown and cloudy and floaty.
Mmmmm-mmm.
Later, I think, I’ll have to use the last match to boil this water and make it drinkable. And I have to find more containers; I can’t keep trekking all this way for one bottle.
It’s when I’m screwing the lid back on and placing it in my sling that I see the bush.
Its drooping branches kiss the pool; a pretty bush with striking glossy leaves. But it’s not these that I’m staring at. Because it’s hanging – literally hanging – with bright red berries.
I wade in closer. They look like a cross between a blackberry and a redcurrant.
I pick one and squeeze it. Purplish flesh squishes out, full of tiny black pips. I think of blackberries from the park and strawberries from the market and the blueberries we’d nick from Brixton Marks & Spencers.
It looks all right. It feels all right.
Surely it wouldn’t do any harm if I tasted just one? I could spit it out straight away if anything happened.
Slowly, I raise it to my mouth; put it in.
Oh dear me, oh dear me, wails the bird.
It tastes slightly sour and prickly but most of all it’s juicy and my stomach is gurgling because it’s been so long, so long, since I’ve eaten fruit.
I eat another.
After several minutes, I stop and stuff the rest of the berries in my sling.
When I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the murky pond, my chin and teeth are dripping red like Bella frickin Swan after she’s eaten a woodchuck.
I have food and water and a knife swinging at my hip, and for the first time on this stupid island I start to feel different: sort of capable and free and even happy.
Almost.
Stupid me.
Fever
Kick sand over the mess I’ve made.
A thin reek rises.
Stagger back, stagger back.
Crawling on hands and knees.
It’s cold and hot and cold.
Wrap myself up in everything I own.
Mustn’t drink the water.
The sea’s all black now and the forest bawls. The creatures come crawling.
Need to go again. Stumble out of my shelter, stumble through the dark sand, cool as salt through my fingers.
Cover it up, cover it up.
Must
Sun scours me awake.
Sometime or other, the fever stops.
I am better. I am not better.
I wait, huddled under my rubber shelter, for the night to creep in again, for the sun to drip from its melting sky into the waiting sea. There’s Fang Rock, cut out in black paper and pressed against the wet paint of the ocean.
I wipe the crusted sick from my mouth. Panting, I bring the could-be nut down on the rock, bring it to my mouth. Lie on the sand, let the liquid in, turn my head, am sick again.
Must keep on, keep on drinking myself
alive.
Do Dreams Have Wet Noses?
The stars shudder when I wake.
I’m wrapped up inside my hoodie and lie gasping, mouth dry as sand. It’s warm in my bed because I seem to have a hot-water bottle pressed behind my knees.
Hot-water bottle?
Slowly, I reach my hand down and feel something soft and firm and warm.
When I listen, it pants.
There it is again.
Oh my God.
I lift the covers slowly and something is curled up behind my legs. Something that is staring at me with gleaming eyes.
I snatch my legs away and wriggle into a sitting position.
‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ I whimper.
When my eyes get used to the dark, I see:
Two eyes, blinking.
Two ears, pricked.
One head, tilted.
If it’s a dream, it’s better than the last one, but I’m waiting for this –
dog, it’s a dog –
to turn into a giant rat or maybe a dripping-haired girl –
don’t go there, don’t go there –
with pearls for eyes.
But it doesn’t.
The dream just sits there, head tilted, panting gently.
Then it butts my arm with its nose.
Do dreams have wet noses?
‘Good dog,’ I say.
The dog yawns out smelly breath, warm as sewers. Then it settles again by my side and wriggles down into the hoodie blanket.
I sit frozen for a moment next to my stinky-breathed dream. Then I curl up on to my side and close my eyes and dream-dog sighs and sneaks in behind my knees and I slide back to sleep to the whiskery tickle of its breath on my skin.
Hushabye
We have a secret, Johnny and me.
Because never does he stay in Cassie’s room at night.
Ever.
The minute I hear him cry, I’m out of bed and stepping over the boxes in the hallway.
‘Shh-shh, Monkey.’
He’s standing, holding the bars and shuddering, little fists all slimy hot with tears. Face all hot and wet and streaming. I lean forward and help him climb out. He’s too old for his cot really.
Cassie sighs and turns over in her sleep.
I’m twelve years old and strong as a giant.
Better
In the morning the dream-dog is gone.
As I lie there remembering its little body pressed against mine, the warm-stink of its breath, I realise that I had no bad dreams last night. For the first time since coming here, I slept well.
I take out the Eezi-Meals and line them up on the sand. There are thirteen. When they’ve gone, I don’t know how long I can last on just could-be nuts.
But my head, my stomach, are no longer spinning. I’m able to split and pierce my first could-be nut without shaking. I think I might be better.
I stand up, go into the sea to wash. I peel off my filthy bikini and wash my body carefully as if I’m a baby. I scoop up water and let it trickle over my arms, my shoulders, my still-sore belly. I scrub my bikini as clean as I can and chuck it back on to the beach and then I float back in the water and close my eyes. The sun dapples my eyelids with shifting patterns as it kisses my cheeks, my nose, my eyes. I let myself drift in the shallows, let the warm waves take me where they will, bumping and nudging gently.
Reluctantly I get out, my toes sinking in the sucking sand. But the sun is tender as it dries me; shrinks the water-beads on my naked skin.
Slowly, I dress. My boobs and bum are London-white against the nut-brown of the rest of my body. It’s like I’m one big stencil which the sun has peeled pieces off. I put on SpongeBob and he’s already dry. Next, I wrap my red T-shirt around my head to keep the sun off. My hair is ragged and full of sand and salt but I twist it into a knot and shove it under my makeshift hat.
I stuff the fishing line from the Red Nylon Bag into my rucksack and also the washbag; there’ll be things in there that will be useful. Finally, I get my Ray-Bans and knife.
&nb
sp; Holding my bag up high over my head, I wade into the water and climb on to Fang Rock. I’m going to have a go at fishing.
Even though Fang Rock isn’t so big, the effort of climbing up out of the water tires me out; I must still be weak after my bout of sickness. I get myself comfy on a ledge and wonder how many days and nights I lost to the berries. I wish I knew how long I’ve been on this island. Will I live out the end of my days here? Is this it then? Is this what happens to monsters?
Even though my hands are shaky, I manage to pierce the top of a could-be nut after only a few attempts. I must have learnt a lot already, since being on this island. I drink deep till I feel my strength coming back.
So, how to fish? There are limpet things on the rock, which I suppose I can bash off with my knife and use as bait. I stand up, grabbing at a ledge to steady myself when I feel myself swaying. Taking my time, I collect a small pile and peer underneath one of them. It’s fat and orange and frilly, and when I poke at it with my finger it shrinks right back inside. I take my nail file and prise the creature from its shell; then I jab a hook in.
I’m not bothered by the slimy squelch of strange frilly things that live inside the shells. All I care about is hooking a fish. There are six hooks on the line so I bait them up, one after the other.
Then I unravel the line and cast it out, far as I can. I sit up high on my rock, and I let my line down and I fish and I think about my dream and how it feels to be held. I remember a warm body and warm breath, and hands that hold tight to mine. I remember the huff of sweet breath on my cheek.
I’m sitting up high and alone when I see.
Something white is nosing about my camp.
Eyes Like Treacle
I squint through my sunglasses and there it is again: small and busy and running in and out of the forest. It must be some kind of bird. I’ve seen big white ones on the beach that look like the pelicans in St James’s Park. I took Johnny there once to watch them getting fed their fish. He got tired though; it’s a lot further than the Horniman. These birds tend to huddle together at the far end of the beach and when I approach they rise into the air slowly with a great whup-whup-whupp-ing sound.