A Corner of White

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  He joins her at the microphone.

  ‘Anybody here seen Elliot Baranski?’ he says, and there’s laughter at his informality, and because he’s turned all their thoughts into words.

  The team from Horatio are protesting, though, and so are the Horatio supporters, and an official blows a whistle hard.

  ‘Welcome, everybody,’ says Jimmy into the microphone, stalling, ‘to the Bonfire Sports Field on this fine and beautiful day!’

  There’s an obliging cheer from the crowd, and the Horatio team fold their arms, hostile—and then there’s the roar of a truck engine.

  Everybody sees it, just over the crest of the hill: it’s the Baranski truck.

  The cheer fades into the engine roar itself, and there’s a pause, and the truck door opens, and here’s Elliot. They watch him get out.

  Now he’s crossing the empty field, heading for Jimmy and the microphone. He’s walking kind of slowly and oddly, limping a little, his shoulder askew, and his chin’s low, eyes down, like he’s studying the ground. Two or three times he nearly trips on the furrows, and each time a shadow flashes across his face. Over at the stands, his mother climbs out of her seat and starts heading fast in his direction.

  But he reaches Jimmy first. They speak quickly to each other, and Jimmy’s face changes, confusion sliding down from his forehead to his chin. He leans his head close to Elliot, and nobody knows what they’re saying, but they’re both looking down. Elliot’s hand is in the pocket of his shorts, and he’s taking something out. Their heads bend low together, squinting.

  Jimmy’s head swings back up. The light’s shining on his face again, and he’s got a smile as curved and bright as a wedge of orange.

  ‘Well, here he is, folks,’ he says into the microphone. ‘It’s Elliot Baranski, and you know what he found? You know what he’s got?’ He pauses. ‘He’s got the Butterfly Child!’

  Some people catch it, the gleam of light and colour in the palm of Elliot’s hand before he slips her back into his pocket, safe, and Elliot’s speaking to Jimmy again—‘You think you could pop my shoulder back in?’ is what he’s saying—but those words are swept and blown away by the roar from the crowd, the whooping and laughing and applauding.

  Practically everyone is crying.

  5

  ‘You could sew up the hole in your pocket.’

  Belle laughed at that. ‘Ah, who sews? You’re funny.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack. ‘I just think—’ but then his knee hit a sandwich board outside a butcher shop. His arms flew up and curved down, body tilting forward from the waist.

  ‘It’s like you’re worshipping those pork sausages,’ observed Belle.

  Jack regained his balance, stepped around the sandwich board and looked at her with frank hostility.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Belle. ‘I fancy a bit of pork sausage myself sometimes.’ She laughed hard, stretching the laugh into a chuckle that she carried with her for another block.

  ‘You’re sounding like a low-volume jackhammer,’ Jack told her eventually.

  ‘Ah,’ Belle shrugged, and let her chuckle go.

  Jack and Belle were walking along Mill Road, their eyes searching the pavement and the gutter as they walked, looking out for Belle’s lost keys. It was a Thursday morning and they were heading to their ITC class. Or possibly to a Geography lesson. The computer guy who lived downstairs from Madeleine taught both, looping between subjects like a fish between the reeds.

  ‘I don’t need to sew up my pocket, because whenever I put something in it,’ Belle explained, ‘I keep my hand there as well. And hold onto it, see? So that stops it falling through the hole.’

  ‘Didn’t stop your keys from falling,’ Jack pointed out.

  ‘Now, isn’t that the truth,’ Belle sighed, shaking her head at the strangeness of the universe.

  They passed Mike’s Bikes, a Subway, a drycleaners, a pharmacy.

  ‘Sorry to have to tell you this,’ said Jack, ‘but your horoscope for today did not say a word about finding your lost keys.’

  ‘Did it say I’d have Frosted Flakes for breakfast? Did it say I’d hit my forehead on the whatsit thing with the shampoo on it when I picked up the soap in the shower? No, eh? Well, that’s weird, isn’t it, because I thought I did both those things.’ Belle’s lips made a thoughtful pop-pop sound, like a child imitating a helicopter, and she murmured to herself: ‘Must have imagined it all.’

  ‘What your horoscope actually said,’ Jack glanced up just in time to stop himself headbutting a telegraph pole, ‘was you should take a stand about an issue that’s been troubling you, and stop biting your fingernails.’

  ‘I don’t bite my fingernails.’

  ‘That’s lucky then, you’ve already done that bit.’

  They passed Spice Gate, Café Brazil, Piero’s Hairdressing.

  Jack stopped suddenly and crouched down in the gutter—but it was only a bottle lid.

  ‘Everything glints,’ he said, and gave a philosophical sigh.

  They walked in silence for a while.

  ‘My own horoscope said I should dive right in and try the thing I’ve been hesitating about,’ Jack chatted. ‘And Madeleine’s said that someone close to her is going to surprise her.’

  ‘Maybe her dad’ll turn up,’ suggested Belle. ‘What race is she anyway, do you reckon? Her accent’s so mixed up.’

  ‘That’s cause she’s lived everywhere in the world, and race hasn’t got a bloody thing to do with a person’s accent, you berk.’

  Belle shrugged and looked up, rubbing her neck.

  ‘My keys aren’t anywhere, eh? Which is totally your fault for what you said about my horoscope. But listen, don’t you sometimes think that Madeleine doesn’t exist? Like, she’s not real?’

  Jack kept his eyes down, flicking them from the double yellow lines in the gutter to the wheels of bicycles that drooped against each other outside shops. It seemed to Jack that he was being very methodical about the search for Belle’s keys, whereas Belle herself was not, and that this was why he kept tripping over things while Belle maintained perfect grace.

  ‘“Madeleine doesn’t exist”,’ he repeated now. ‘What I sometimes think is, I sometimes think you haven’t got a clue what you are talking about.’

  ‘Nah, it’s just that you can’t follow the complicated pathways of my brain. It’s like a labyrinth, my brain, and as beautiful as a brain can get. What I mean is, there’s too much going on with Madeleine. It’s like when you get every paint colour and mix them up, you end up with not a proper colour at all. Madeleine’s lived in so many bloody places and she wears so many different bloody colours. You know what I mean? So she’s not a proper person any more, she’s just a mess. Like, she doesn’t exist.’

  Jack stopped altogether and turned to Belle.

  ‘You are being racist beyond all my abilities for measuring racism,’ he said. ‘You don’t say someone who’s mixed race is a mess, Belle. Do you actually want to know what race she is? She’s part Iranian, part Somali, part Polish, part Irish, and a bit of Tibetan, and what she is, she’s not a mess, she’s beautiful.’

  ‘You can’t be all those things,’ said Belle, flicking his words away. ‘See, that’s my point. You can’t. That’s like five different people had to have sex to make her, which is not possible. Only two people can have sex.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’ve got the hang of genetics.’ Jack began to walk again. ‘Or of sex parties.’

  They were reaching the residential part of Mill Road now, the shops and restaurants disappearing. Neither of them was scanning for lost keys.

  ‘Ah, you know what I mean,’ complained Belle. ‘I’m not saying her skin colour’s like a messed-up paint tray, you tosser. She’s got very nice skin and that, like honey or whatever, and when I said she was a mess I meant because there’s so much going on with her past and that, and her clothes. But I’m very glad for people to come from everywhere and that. Although you’ve got to admit, she takes it too
far. And actually, she takes it so far that sometimes I think maybe she makes things up. Like, can those stories of her being so rich really be true? Can she really be all those different races? I mean, if she is, she’s the poster bloody child for racial integration.’

  ‘There’s something about her,’ Jack said, ‘about her essence or her soul or whatever, and it shines with all the colours that there are. And listen, that reminds me, I have to tell you something. You know how I’ve become Lord Byron?’

  ‘Byron? I’ll be honest with you, Jack,’ Belle studied him, ‘I still don’t see it.’

  ‘Well, I was reading about him and do you know what? One time he was mad in love with his cousin, and he said that she had a transparent beauty and that she looked like she was made out of a rainbow. I read that line and I just got goosebumps. Because that’s exactly what I’d been thinking about Madeleine.’

  He was quiet, and so was Belle. Their footsteps were slowing.

  ‘Apart from anything else,’ added Jack, ‘it was proof that I am Lord Byron, despite your unsupportive stand on the issue. Both him and me thought that a girl, a particular girl, had transparent beauty like a rainbow.’

  They reached Madeleine’s building right at the word ‘rainbow’; it blinked in the air between them.

  Jack looked up at the windows of the computer guy’s flat, and above that, Madeleine’s flat, and above that, the sky.

  He kept looking at the sky because something had occurred to him, and it was this: maybe he and Belle were having a fight.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly: one of their fights.

  Now he turned to Belle and her face seemed to confirm his fear. She was leaning forward to ring the doorbell, and the ferocity on her face was echoed right there in her index finger. He stared at the finger—straight, taut, the part around the nail turning pink, red, crimson, the rest turning lurid yellow-white, as it pushed harder and harder at the bell, until her finger had an otherworldly glow to it, ringing and ringing the bell—and suddenly, she took her hand away. She shook it in the air.

  ‘Transparent bloody beauty,’ she said. ‘You think Madeleine’s got transparent beauty like a rainbow? You realise that means you can see through her, right?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t mean—’

  ‘Go on then.’ Footsteps pounded down the stairs. The air reverberated with the leftover shrill of the bell. ‘You have a go at it today. See if you can see through her. I’ll stand behind her and you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up.’ She giggled, suddenly hysterical.

  There was a shadow behind the door glass—the computer guy downstairs was at the door; and Jack breathed it in, the sound of Belle’s giggle, with relief.

  The computer guy downstairs had a name.

  He was Danek John Michalski, forty-two years old, born in Wisconsin in the US of A, but raised in Kentucky. His interests included computers, travel, judo and his dog, an Irish setter named Sulky-Anne.

  He was asthmatic, which he tended to blame on whatever might be going on in the fields surrounding Cambridge. Belle always told him it was nothing to do with the crops, you berk, it was an allergy to dogs. Let an Irish setter laze about on your bed all day, she told him, you get what’s coming to you.

  Danek called himself Denny (‘No, not Danny, don’t be calling me Danny.’), and he smiled vaguely and kindly at Belle whenever she suggested the dog allergy.

  His flat was one big room and a bathroom, the same floor plan as Madeleine’s upstairs, except that his ceilings and walls stood up straight, whereas hers leaned into angles and slopes.

  Also, the chaos in Denny’s flat was more extreme than in Madeleine’s. Rising from the chaos were two big workbenches that faced one another in the middle of the room. The bed was pushed against the far wall, and that’s where Sulky-Anne was always curled, fast asleep.

  Denny’s teaching method was to follow the same three steps.

  First, he made sure there was something baking in the oven when the kids arrived. It was his belief that the fragrance would stimulate their endorphins, making them work faster and sharper in a hedonistic rush towards their coffee break.

  Second, he began by having them all, himself included, do ten star jumps (only he called them jumping jacks) to loosen up their minds (and for bonus endorphins). This was even though the star jumps produced the fragrance of sweat, which undermined the fragrance of baking; and even though Denny himself had been told by a physiotherapist that star jumps were killing his knees, and even though he was always rasping with asthmatic breathlessness by the time they were done, and (finally) even though the neighbour downstairs (who worked night shift) frequently put notes under Denny’s door saying, WHAT’S WITH THE STAMPEDING ELEPHANTS UP THERE?!! SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP!!

  Despite all this, they always did the star jumps.

  Third, still puffing and panting, Belle, Jack and Madeleine would sit in a row at one of the benches, each in front of a computer. Their assignment for the day would be displayed on the screen. Denny would sit at the other bench and get on with his own work fixing computers.

  Today, Denny’s face had a shadowed, stubbled look, as if the grey specks in his hair had spilled onto his cheeks and his chin. He was even more asthmatic than usual, his tongue moving around in his mouth looking for air.

  ‘It’s the harvest of the rapeseed,’ he explained, following the just-arrived Belle and Jack back into his flat.

  Madeleine was already there, leaning against the kitchen counter.

  She was thinking about Denny’s accent: it was always so loose and free, as if his voice had started the day with its own star jumps. The kind of accent that made slow smiles rise on listeners’ faces.

  The opposite of her accent. That made people squint or lean forward: something’s at an angle or askew, something needs straightening or pinpointing.

  The room smelled of baking pecan and banana muffins; they did their star jumps, and then they sat at the workbench and looked at their computer monitors:

  Construct a message board (or internet forum) on the topic of hurricanes. Start by drawing up your goals and your rules. Comment on one another’s message boards as if you YOURSELF have experienced a hurricane.

  ‘How do you know we haven’t?’ said Belle.

  ‘Have you?’ Denny paused, his inhaler almost at his mouth.

  ‘No,’ she shrugged. ‘But I bet Madeleine has.’

  They all looked at Madeleine. In fact, she’d experienced three typhoons and a cyclone, which were the same things as hurricanes, but there was a strange challenge in Belle’s voice, so she shook her head no, and they all started work.

  For a while, they worked happily. Now and then Denny would say something like, ‘Now, what do you call the unique web address of every page on the net anyhow?’ or ‘I’m just sitting here trying to recall what a phreatic volcanic eruption might be.’

  He liked to make his pop quizzes appear as if they had grown, naturally and organically, out of a nonexistent conversation.

  Once, Sulky-Anne sat up on the bed, clattered to the floor and wandered moodily around the room. There was something disapproving in the elaborate care with which she moved through the chaos: the old motherboards and modems, boxes of socket spanners and wire cutters, baskets of tangled cables. She pressed the side of her head against Madeleine’s knee for a moment, slurped from the water bowl in the kitchenette, then headed back to her place in the centre of the bed.

  They kept working. Denny wondered aloud just what the relationship was between Java and JavaScript anyway, and all three of them told him there was no relationship.

  Then Jack announced that he hadn’t even done his intro yet, so maybe Denny could give them a break from interruptions.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ said Belle.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Intro. Say “introduction”. I hate people who abbreviate.’

  Madeleine and Denny both looked up from their computers.

  ‘What do you mean you hate people who ab
breviate?’ demanded Jack. ‘Everybody bloody abbreviates.’

  Belle blinked rapidly. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You just did. What do you think “don’t” is. It’s an abbreviation of “do not”.’

  ‘It’s a contraction. That’s different. Ah, where are my house keys anyhow?’

  There was a surprised pause in the room and everybody raised eyebrows at Belle, who laughed, swerving into her new topic. ‘I thought I must’ve dropped them on Mill Road somewhere, but they’re not there any more if they were. Did you accidentally take them home from my place yesterday, Madeleine?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Madeleine. ‘That would’ve been kind of a strange thing to do.’

  ‘Could you just check your backpack maybe?’

  Now there was a curious quiet. Denny picked up a pair of tweezers and leaned over the open computer he was working on. Jack gave Belle a questioning look, but she refused to look back.

  Madeleine reached for her backpack and opened it.

  Over at his workbench, Denny worked and wheezed quietly.

  ‘Don’t just rummage around like that,’ said Belle. ‘Take everything out so you can be sure.’

  Madeleine shrugged slightly. ‘Whatever.’ And she began to place the objects onto the desk beside her. Books, notepads, a pencil case, a bruised banana.

  Belle watched closely.

  ‘Your keys aren’t here,’ said Madeleine.

  ‘Tip your bag up and shake it out,’ commanded Belle.

  Madeleine looked up. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Seems to me those muffins must be ready!’ Denny stood and moved across the room. ‘You know what we ought to have? A bake sale! Schools have them, right? To raise money for my travel fund!’ He pointed to the jar of pound coins that stood against the wall, alongside two old bikes with missing wheels and half a dartboard.

  ‘I don’t think teachers are supposed to use bake sales for personal benefit,’ Jack pointed out. ‘They’re supposed to be for charity or new instruments for the school band or whatever.’

  Denny opened the oven. Obligingly, the smell of muffins billowed across the room, and Sulky-Anne sat up and smiled, swinging her tail back and forth. Denny kept up his chatter, now addressing the muffins themselves. ‘Well, you’re looking mighty fine and golden in there, little guys; you feel like coming on out?’ and to the others, ‘I’ll put on the coffee, who’s for a cuppa?’