by Olivia Levez
But pelicans don’t wag their tails.
I leave my fishing line wedged in a crevice and scramble down the rock into the sea. Then I half swim, half wade to the beach and wait behind One Tree, panting.
Nothing at first, then –
it must be a dream, it must be a dream –
a little dog, tongue lolling, trots out of the forest and noses busily into my bedding, pushing and tugging the clothes and raft rubber around till it feels it’s comfortable. Then buries under my hoodie and settles down so that all you can see is its black nose.
I stare and stare and blink.
‘Um. Dog?’ I say.
I move slowly from behind the tree so that I don’t startle it.
But it doesn’t even move when I crouch down next to it and lift back my hoodie. Just gives me a hot little lick on my hand and sighs.
So I squat there and stroke its ears and it’s the first time I’ve touched anything living –
anyone –
for about a million years –
well, since Johnny –
and it feels nice, just crouching there, stroking its warm little head.
‘Where the frick have you come from?’ I say, and this time it doesn’t feel mad and lonely to be speaking out loud; it feels sort of OK.
‘Where have you come from, little dog? Huh?’
My voice needs oiling but I can’t help smiling as he?/she? gives a stretch and its legs stick out stiff and straight from my bedding. I notice that it’s a little boy dog. He has the shortest legs and can’t possibly be comfy like that, but he falls asleep there, huffing gently.
‘Did you come from the plane? Is that it? Are you the pilot’s little dog?’
I remember the dog in its travel bag; a freckled arm reaching over me to stroke it.
‘What’s your name, eh?’
I search on his neck but of course he has no collar. He’s been through the wars, this little dog, just like me; his ears and neck are covered in cuts and scratches. But he doesn’t look too thin, and he’s obviously found water to drink.
This thought excites me till I realise it’s probably just the same muddy pool I use. Dog must find plenty of rats to eat in the forest.
In the end that’s what I call him: just Dog.
He’s mostly terrier, with short stocky legs and ginger patches on his back and both ears; looks a bit like a Jack Russell. He has eyes like black treacle and stinky breath, which I don’t mind until he wakes up and pounces on me, licking my ears and neck as thorough as anything.
Which he does a lot.
When I go back to my fishing rock, it seems like Dog has brought me good luck because there’s something caught on the end of the line. When I reel it in I find a crab, legs circling like clockwork, and I don’t even think twice about bashing through its brains with my knife.
Because I’ve got two to feed now.
Burn, Baby, Burn
‘So you see,’ I tell Dog, ‘we have to make a fire so that we can boil water because once all the could-be nuts are gone, we’ve only got the dirty pond, and without water we’ll die.’
Dog sits with his head tilted, listening carefully.
‘!’ he says.
‘Three days,’ Steve liked to say. ‘That’s all it takes.’
So we make our preparations, spend hours hacking away in the forest, bringing back dry wood and piling it neatly on the beach.
It’s good to be active, but really I’m delaying time; I’m terrified to start, to strike that last match.
This time I remember to tie knots in the palm leaves, like Hansel and Gretel, so that we can find our way back from the jungle. Not that I need to now: Dog is my guide, a small white shape always ahead, always looking back to check if I’m following.
We find some real coconuts, the normal brown ones, and carry armfuls back to One Tree Beach. I hack off the hairy husks and pull them apart to form dry bundles.
There are sticks strewn on the beach, and lots of prickly-looking seaweed that is bone-dry. But the best find of all is a giant piece of driftwood that makes me pant and swear as I lug it across the soft sand like it’s a dead body through sugar.
We make piles of the seaweed and tiny twigs I’ve collected. And I set out my tools: my lip balm, a cardboard box, a handful of coconut hair. With shaking fingers, I place my very last match on a flat stone.
Coconut hair, cardboard, twigs: surely one of these will burn?
But what if they don’t? What if the fire goes out again like last time? And the time before?
I push the thoughts away and, with Dog beside me, I build a low wall, one stone at a time. The cardboard box is the one containing tampons and I pour them out on the sand and rip the box into tiny strips. These I place next to the pile of coconut hair.
‘We can do this,’ I tell Dog.
His tail twitches in agreement.
Now for the lip balm.
’Cause if it’s made from petroleum jelly, then surely that’s like petrol – surely that burns?
I stare at the lip balm in my hand; take a strip of cardboard and smear it on.
On an impulse I take a tampon out of its plastic.
Dry cotton.
There’s a much better use for this now.
I pull the tampon apart till it’s no longer bullet-shaped; it’s fluffy and drydrydry. Then I smear lip balm all over that too.
Burn, baby, burn.
I pile all my kindling in the middle of my stone wall.
‘So you think we should go for it?’ I ask Dog. ‘Use the last match?’
Dog gives me a hot little lick and settles down to watch. He trusts me. ’Course I can do it.
So I take a breath. And strike.
The beach breathes heavily over my shoulder, watching, waiting.
The flame –
my last flame –
flickers.
Leaning forward, I place the flame against the fluffed-up cotton. I blow, nice and slow. I wait.
And whoosh.
It bursts into flames, just like that.
On goes the coconut hair, a little at a time. Careful now – I don’t want to knock out the fire. It’s still at its baby stage and I must slowly breathe it into life (but inside I’m screaming, yesyesyes).
I breathe into it, steady and slow. The island is with me now, breathing and smiling.
All the world has shrunk to this moment.
And it grows. My little flame grows.
Add dry sticks and then some more.
I almost forgot the shredded cardboard but do I need it?
I toss it on and the fire likes it and licks it clean. It loves the seaweed; sucks it up like Cassie with a bag of crisps.
I seize the sticks and the driftwood; throw them on.
When the fire’s burning strongly, I drag on the huge log. The fingers of flame explore it delicately and I watch as it blackens.
I just need to find something to put pool water in – maybe there’ll be cans or tins cast ashore by the sea – and then I can boil water at last. It won’t matter that the could-be nuts are running out. And we can cook our food. No more raw crabmeat, which takes a million years to get out of the claws.
Whatever I do, I must make sure that the fire’s kept going.
’Cause if that goes out, there’s no matches,
no matches left,
and then where will we be?
The fire can’t ever go out.
I’m not going to die out here.
I used to love burning things. I used to love fire.
It’s like you stare into the flames and you see all the colours of the universe there. And you get sucked into the very heart of the fire and you’re dancing, fighting, and it’s OK to spit and snarl and crackle; it’s OK to feel pain, to scream, to roar.
I used to be able to stare at a fire for hours.
Look Away Now
Even though I try so hard to blot it out, to turn myself into stone, I still see her face.
Miss, with her fake smiles and writer’s notebooks and let’s pretend –
let’s pretend –
to be interested in what Fran Stanton’s got to say because then maybe she won’t play up in class and then maybe she’ll achieve her targets and then we’ll all be happy.
‘You’ve got talent,’ smiles Miss Bright. She’s new; she’s shiny-new. She digs around in a big cardboard box. ‘A writer’s notebook, for your first novel.’ She calls it my magnum opus, don’t ask me why.
‘How’s your magnum opus?’ she always says.
One day I leave it on the desk for her to read.
It was that simple, and I was that stupid.
The flames lick and spit and I have to turn away. I don’t want to see what I am ’cause looking into the heart of those flames – it’s like looking into my stinking, rotten soul.
I get up then; walk away from the flames, and then I’m running, running, over the sand, down towards the sea, trying to get the pictures out of my head. If I had vodka I would drown it all out, but I don’t. So there’s only running, and yelling and dancingdancingdancing and Dog barks and runs and dances too; we’re wild things, we scream and kick sand and we don’t cry.
When I’m finished I’m shaky and sick. Big mistake to dance in the sun. I throw another log on to the fire. Then I lie down with my T-shirt over my head and listen to my heart running races with the sea.
Let’s Pretend
Miss Bright is beaming. Her hair’s wisping out of her ponytail and she looks about twelve years old. Eyes outlined prettily in purple shimmer.
‘So here’s a writer’s notebook. Bring it to my after-school club, if you like.’
The notebook’s in my hands. It’s a dusky red colour and the cover’s nicely textured, with a sort of weave. I like it, but am careful to shrug and shove it in my bag without looking like I’m looking.
‘Have you signed my report card?’ I ask.
‘What? Oh yes, here it is.’ Miss takes it from a pile of sheets on her desk and scribbles something into Monday, unit five.
‘Well done, Fran. Fab lesson today,’ she says.
She’s always saying stuff like ‘fab’ and ‘coolio’ and ‘super’.
She hands the report card back to me and later I see that she’s done a smiley face, with two pigtails coming out of its head. Fab lesson.
‘So just do an ink waster, let it all flow. Don’t worry about punctuation, don’t think too deeply about it. Just write.’
Miss is perched at the back of the classroom, legs swinging, face smiling. She’s always doing that – sitting unobtrusively. She’s not one of those teachers who stalks about, swinging their arms and talkstalkstalks at you all lesson till your eyeballs pop with boredom.
She’s new – an NQT, which means Newly Qualified Teacher, which means let’s all piss about in her lesson ’cause she won’t be able to control us.
But it’s not like that in Miss’s lessons.
She’s quiet and soft but she gets even the bad lads at the back to hang on to her every word.
She says ‘thank you’ a lot.
‘Thank you, Sam, for that comment,’ she says, when Sam-the-big-man sniggers and says something under his breath that probably doesn’t bear repeating.
‘Thank you, class, for how you entered the classroom today.’ Seeming not to notice all the fightingpushingshoving but smiling at the only two kids who’ve sat straight down.
‘Thank you for cheering us all up this Monday afternoon, Shasta.’ Shasta, who’s just farted and fallen accidentally-on-purpose off his chair.
I stare at Miss’s pen. I don’t have my own, ’course I don’t. Girls like me don’t bring their own pens into school. My tiny bag’s crammed with my fags, lighter, spare inhaler, Monkey’s drawing of Anakin Skywalker and a clutter of lip balms that I swiped from Superdrug on the way to school.
I can’t write anything. It’s all crap. Everyone’s scribbling away, even Tyra, even Jaheem with his headphones on.
The starting line on the whiteboard is: Once on my way to the bus stop…
I start to write.
“Cave Girl” by Fran Stanton
Once on my way to the bus stop, a girl rose like a wraith to greet me, all streaming mascara and waving arms and acid-jaggy teeth.
‘My boyfriend – he’s beaten me up – I need help. Please.’
Her eyes flit to my bag.
‘I need money for my bus fare – to go to my mum.’
Yeah, right.
‘Please,’ she repeats, giving me a ghastly grin.
She’s no older than me, probably. Looks about sixty though.
She stares as I open my purse. Hungry eyes. She has badly dyed hair with the roots showing, and her arms and bare legs are silver-scaled.
‘The bus fare’s seven fifty,’ she informs me. And all the time her eyes are flitting round, perhaps for her pimp boyfriend, perhaps for her dealer.
I give her a couple of quid and she melts away, back into her hole.
All day I think about her.
All day I worry for her.
‘And three, two, one, pens down.’
Everyone stops writing and sighs.
Miss goes round, and I sit cringing in case she gets me to read mine out.
But she doesn’t.
When she passes me, she murmurs, ‘Very strong’, and nudges my arm a little.
I’m not going to write in her stupid notebook.
’Course I’m not.
Rooftops
I take a swig of my cider and light a new fag from the old one.
In front of me, there’s the Gherkin, and to the left of that, the London Eye. Everything’s sort of misty and hazy.
I’ve got a pile of blankets and an old mattress that I’ve found up here, and cushions. I’ve made myself a nest from vintage scarves. I’ve brought candles and matches and my notebook because this is where I’m going to do my writing.
I chew Miss’s pen, which I never gave back.
Below me, I can hear children playing in the park.
‘Write a fairy tale,’ she said. ‘A story for children. Just let yourself go.’
Once upon…
Once upon a time…
Once upon a time there was…
To get up here, I have to wait for Albert to start his litter-picking, then drag the broken old ladder from the empty balcony downstairs and take it all the way up to the top floor. There’s an iron ladder that hangs from the ceiling for maintenance work. Albert is supposed to lock it with a padlock but he never does because he’s up and down the flats all day; it’s too much bother. Basically, anyone can get up on the roofs if they want to.
I look down and see a large lady with Sainsbury’s carrier bags waddle to the ground floor. Never seen her before, but then no one sees anybody round here. I hear her footsteps go up the steps. There are no lifts in these flats because they’re only three storeys high. She’ll be a while.
I blow a smoke ring and think of Johnny, down in the flat. He’ll be playing games on my phone, eating the packet of biscuits I gave him. I made sure he did his spellings first though ’cause I don’t want him to be a loser like his big sister.
No one’s supposed to be on these roofs except for repair work, but I can see it’s been used before. There’s this mattress I’m sitting on, and a row of dried-out plastic pots. Cannabis plants, dried up and dead. I know because Cassie tried to grow them once; we couldn’t use our bathroom for months because of all the special lighting and plastic sheeting she’d rigged up. She’s more into Tennent’s Extra Strength nowadays.
I rearrange my cushions and settle into the evening.
Evening noises over Brockwell Park include:
Kids playing on the swings and chattering away in Portuguese or Spanish.
The thwack thwack of tennis balls, even though the courts are miles away.
Planes from Heathrow.
A pipe. Someone on their balcony is playing a pipe, like one of those hollow
things from the African room in the museum.
It feels good to write, sort of freeing.
I tuck the blankets more tightly round my legs and take another handful of crisps. It’s getting cold but it’s OK; the late sun’s still slanting over my face and arms.
I’ve run out of fags now but I hardly care. Can’t stop can’t stop scribbling.
Wayne won’t be back for a while.
It’s March or April and the day melts into night like the cider on my tongue.
“Our House by the Sea” by Fran Stanton
Once upon a time there was a little girl and she had a brother. Their daddies had left and their mother had gone far, far away.
But that didn’t matter because the little girl knew that when she grew up, she’d live in a house by the sea and she’d have all the time in the world to look after her brother. She’d cook and she’d clean and she’d fix the roof when it leaked and make a garden full of flowers and shells.
There’d always be cold wine in the fridge and vodka in the cupboard and lots of books on the bookshelves, which she’d make out of boxes that she’d paint in bright colours: yellow and orange, and blue like the sky.
Outside there’d be a little garden, small as a pocket, but it wouldn’t matter because it’d be big enough for the two of them. Each evening after all the chores were done, the girl and her brother would cuddle up in the last of the sun on a bench specially put there amongst the flowers. The girl would drink wine out of a vintage glass and the boy would drink milk, which gave him a big white moustache. And they’d watch the sea as it endlessly patterned and unpatterned under the bluer-than-blue sky.
Let’s Be Partners
Next day, I go into school early so that I can leave the notebook on Miss’s desk. Then I leave to hang around town a bit because who wants to be on time for registration?