I think about that for a while. I don’t know if anything is unforgivable. Not if you’re real sorry. I mean, I don’t think he killed anyone or anything like that. Cos I think he’s probably real nice.
Caretaker snuggles back under his blankets again. I pick up the mince pie. It smells okay. I go to take a bite. But then I remember what we were talking about before Short Guy arrived.
‘Caretaker?’
‘Mmm?’
‘What’s a one-hundred-and-fifty-million-euro development?’
He opens his eye and squints at me. ‘That’s one big, shiny digital future and there ain’t no escaping it.’
I don’t know what that means but I have an idea. The cranes. The plastic-wrapped buildings with the perfect windows and perfect corners. ‘But it’s our Castle,’ I say.
‘As the old saying goes, “One man’s castle is another man’s hundred-and-fifty-million-euro development”,’ he says. Then he says, ‘You should forgive her.’
‘Who?’
But he doesn’t tell me. Just says, ‘You have to move on.’
‘Where? We’ve nowhere to go,’ I whisper.
‘Out there. Anywhere. The ether. The big bad beyond.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I say.
‘Understand? Course I do. Been here fifty years, haven’t I?’ He sits up straight and looks at me so hard, it’s like he’s trying to see through me. ‘People get stuck. But time moves on. And now they’re coming to get us.’
Then his eye goes real wide. He tilts his head back and raises a fist. He shakes it at the city. ‘The future will not be ignored. The mill and her ghosts are crumbling into the canal. She’ll take us all with her if we can’t escape first.’
He stares at the sky for ages. His sunglasses slip a little and I nearly see his other eye. But he pushes them back up before I get to see it. Then he settles back down again and sighs. He notices my mince pie. ‘Not eating that?’
I hand it to him. He lifts it to his mouth but he looks at me. ‘You’ve got to move on,’ he says ‘Let all this go. Easier said than done, I know.’ He nods, over and over again. ‘You’d think I’d take my own advice.’
Then he pops the pie in his mouth, the whole thing at once, and when he swallows, he doesn’t even bother brushing the crumbs off him. He just pulls his hat down and lies back. ‘But not today,’ he mumbles. ‘That’s a problem for the New Year. Merry Christmas, kiddo.’
I run up to our room. Ma’s there, on the bed. I push in beside her and pull her arm over me.
‘Happy Christmas, Ma,’ I say.
She starts talking like she’s underwater. ‘So small. So cold. My fault. But I came back.’
‘Don’t worry, Ma. The Castle is safe.’
‘Never leave me,’ she says. ‘I’ll always come back.’
‘I won’t let them take it, Ma.’
‘I promise,’ she says. But she’s just saying words. They don’t mean anything.
‘We’ll fight them, Ma. If they come back. We’ll scare them away. So you don’t need to be stressed out.’ I turn to look at her. Her eyes are open. But they don’t see.
‘I always come back, don’t I, love?’ she says.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
But coming back’s not the same as being here.
I’m on the roof. The city’s real weird on Christmas Day. Like it’s dead. The cranes looking like mantises praying for Christmas to end so they can start eating again.
It’s cold and it’s clear and there’s a little bit of snow on the top of the mountains. It looks like the sun is trying to break through the clouds but it has no energy left, it’s too weak, and it has decided to give up and go back to bed.
The streets are empty. No one is walking or working or buying coffee. The green boat has lights around the windows and they flash red and yellow. Inside, the woman has the baby strapped to her front and she’s chatting away as she cooks. Behind her is an old woman sitting on a couch. I think it’s Boat Woman’s ma cos they look like each other. Both of them have big noses and hardly any chin at all.
Boat Woman walks outside. The swans are there. There’s only the ma and dad swan now, and one baby. Except the baby’s as big as them and all its feathers are white. Maybe the other two babies left cos they’re too grown up to stay with their ma and dad. Maybe the last baby isn’t as brave as the others yet.
Boat Woman throws pieces of food to the swans and they snap it up. Seagulls swoop down too and they dart in and out of the swans. Boat Woman stands back and shoos them away. I think she’s scared they’ll grab her baby like they grabbed those two other baby swans a while ago.
I wonder where they’d take a human baby if they did snatch it. Maybe they’d fly it up to the mountains.
And Boat Woman would feel real guilty that she let the seagulls take her baby away. And she’d spend years trying to find it.
But that won’t happen. Cos her baby’s strapped on real tight.
I look up at the glass apartment. The man and woman are there. She looks like a glass angel in a pink dress and she’s carrying a turkey to the white table. He stands and picks up a knife and spends ages cutting pieces of turkey that are all the exact same size. She puts a napkin on her lap and smoothes it out, over and over again.
Finally they start eating. At least he does, shoving huge pieces of meat into his mouth. She spends her time cutting it into tiny pieces and then chewing each piece for an hour.
There’s a big green tree in the corner. There are all these empty boxes and presents on the floor. I bet you could build a cardboard castle big enough to fill the whole room with them. But I don’t think Glass Woman would like that very much. Anyway, the kid’s not trying to build anything. She’s just watching TV. She’s not even playing with the new toys.
I wanted to ask Ma for a hairband for my Christmas present. Like the girls from my old school wear. But there was no point. I should have just asked for cardboard boxes. She’d have been able to get them.
I drop the binoculars and turn around. The clock on the church looks like a full yellow moon. I walk to the other side again and I lift the binoculars and I look for a concrete yard with a pond in the corner, somewhere out there in the direction that the girls walk every day.
Is Gran having turkey and ham and potatoes with gravy?
I bet she is. That’s what we used to have. There’d be so much turkey that we’d be having it in sandwiches for days after.
I walk back to the canal side again. There’s smoke coming out the chimney of the green boat. Inside, Boat Woman and her ma are chatting and eating. The baby is asleep on the couch beside the gran.
I wonder, was it like that in my gran’s house when I was a baby? I wonder, did Ma and Gran used to chat and laugh. Before it went bad.
But I see Gran’s face, the day we were leaving. Like she’d taken a wrong turn and she didn’t know how to get back. I wish I could have done something to help her. To stop Ma from leaving that day.
I wish there was something I could do now to make Ma go back.
FORTIFICATION
Christmas was over a week ago and everyone has gone back to work. I’m sitting in the shadow of the door. Ma is on the bottom step.
‘Spare change?’
No one is giving her anything. I don’t blame them. She looks like a corpse these days.
‘Stingy git.’ Ma spits at a guy who is passing.
Her hands are shaking real bad. She curses as someone else passes. Then she stands up and shoves her hands in her pockets. ‘This is poxy. I’m going somewhere else.’
‘Where?’
‘I dunno. Maybe over by the river.’
‘There’s no use, Ma. There’ll be no one there this time of day.’ The bridge over the river was where we always used to beg. But I don’t want Ma to go out. I don’t want her to leave me on my own, not any more. ‘What if the Authorities come back and you’re not here?’
‘They won’t,’ she says. ‘Just wait here, will ye? I’ll only
be gone for a little bit.’
‘They said after Christmas, Ma. They’re going to come back.’
She’s not listening, though. All she says is, ‘Don’t go out there, ye hear me?’ Then she starts walking down the street.
‘Ma!’ I call. But there’s no point. I watch till she disappears around the corner and then I go inside and lock the door.
Maybe I’ll paint the third floor too, this time with pictures of Boat Woman and Glass Woman and Red Coat. I’ll do one picture of them when it’s sunny and they are happy. Though I don’t think Glass Woman is ever happy. Then I’ll do another one when they are sad and it’s raining, like it is now.
I stop. It’s not raining. I was just outside. And it wasn’t raining. But I can hear a tinkling noise. Like rain hitting off Caretaker’s tin roof.
I go back to the door and open it and peer out. It’s not raining.
I close the door and listen. But whatever it was, it has stopped now.
‘Rose?’ I whisper. I watch the fingers of light that come through the gaps in the boards. But the dust is just normal boring dust. It’s not doing anything.
‘I’m not afraid of ghosts,’ I say out loud in case anyone is listening. Or anything.
And it’s true. I’m not.
But I am afraid of the Authorities. What if they come back and I’m on my own? What if I don’t even hear them come in and they come straight into my bedroom at night or something?
I look over my shoulder at the door. That’s how the Authorities will get in if they come. So I need to know when that door is opened.
I need an alarm.
I drag two bags of empty beer cans from the backyard into the kitchen. I tear a big hole in both. I pour them onto the floor. A little brown pool of liquid forms. It stinks of stale beer and cigarettes.
First I pick out the cans that have cigarette butts inside them and I throw them back into the ripped bags and chuck them out into the backyard. Then I put all the rest of the empty cans into a bucket and carry them outside. I wash them, and my fingers go blue from the cold and I have to stick them in my mouth till they’ve warmed up and I can feel them again.
And I suddenly have the flash. The piece of memory. The annoying feeling that there’s something I’ve forgotten.
I blink and look at the sky. But I can’t grab it, the memory. It’s like something in the canal floating past just out of reach.
I shove my hands under my armpits and I wander around the backyard. I kick over a stone and some rubbish and bricks till I find what I’m looking for. A rusty nail. Then I pick up a flat stone that’s rounded at the edges so it won’t hurt to hold it.
The final thing I need is some wire. I think about every floor of the mill and in my mind I go through all the things that are lying on the ground or sticking out of the ceiling till I can think of where I’d find some. The sixth floor.
I run up the stairs to the sixth floor and I sidestep along the wall and then crawl across the rotted floorboards till I get to the massive corkscrew grinder that’s hanging over the hole. There are loads of wires coming out of it. Some of them reach up to the ceiling. Some are fat and some are skinny. It’s the skinny ones that I want.
I stand beside the bin under the chute that comes from the conveyor belt. I hold onto the edge of the bin with one hand and I stand on my tippy-toes and stretch up real tall till I can wrap my fingers around the skinniest of the wires. I yank it and it gives, so I pull more and more and the wire’s falling down all around me.
It’s three or four times the length of me. I bend it at the same point, from one side to the other, till it snaps.
I need a little more.
I reach up and grab a second wire. It looks pretty loose. I yank on it but it’s jammed. I wrap both my hands around it and I pull real hard and it comes flying down. But there’s this rumble and a ‘snap’ from the roof and the corkscrew drops down with a jerk. I think it’s going to fall through the floor. It swings a little. I grab the side of the bin. I hold my breath. I wait till it calms down.
I think that’s enough wire. I probably shouldn’t do it again.
I go back down to the kitchen.
I pick up the rusted nail and the flat stone and the first can. I start to hammer the nail into the bottom of the can till it punctures it. I do the same with the next.
It takes me the whole morning to do every can, but then I have over a hundred of them with holes in the bottom.
I break off pieces of wire and feed them in through the bottom of the cans and out through the top. I do that again and again till I have ten rows of cans all tied together. At one end I make a hook with the leftover wire so that it looks like a clothes hanger opened out.
I take the rows and drag them into the basement. I look around the floor and find some pipe that’s just the right size. I hook the rows of cans over the pipe.
Now I go back to the kitchen and grab a chair. I carry the pipe with the cans in one hand and the chair in the other, all the way over to the front door.
I stand on the chair and lift up the pipe and I balance it on the ledge above the door. I climb down and move the chair and unlock the door and open it real fast. The door hits the cans and the whole thing falls to the floor. There’s a loud clatter.
Now there’s no way the Authorities can come through the front door without me hearing them.
I’m pretty happy that my plan works. I go to shut the front door so I can lift the pipe back up again but then I stop.
It’s real busy outside. Everyone’s back at work and it’s lunchtime and there are people walking up and down. I look at the floor inside the door. Ma left one of her old begging cups. I pick it up. It’s empty.
I wonder if she’s out there somewhere right now with a cup in front of her, saying ‘Spare change?’ to people who don’t care. I hope that’s what she’s doing.
I step out and pull the door behind me but I don’t close it. I sit down in the shadows and watch the people go past. I look at the spot where Ma was sitting earlier. It’s only three steps away. But it’s outside.
I push myself up and crab-walk out, inch by inch, till I can slip onto the bottom step. Two guys walk past, chatting away. A woman in high heels and business clothes is coming. She’s holding a sandwich that’s all wrapped up in paper. She’s fingering her change. If Ma was here she’d definitely get it off her, cos the woman can’t pretend she doesn’t have any when it’s obvious she does.
She’s almost at the steps now. Ma would ask her for spare change and the woman would look around and maybe say something like, ‘Cold today, isn’t it?’ when she was dropping the coins in the cup. Ma would say ‘thanks’ and the woman might even smile at her before she left.
I take a deep breath. She’s at the steps now. All I need to say is ‘Spare change?’ She’s so close I could spit on her. I smell her perfume. Two words. That’s all I need to say. I open my mouth. Try to speak. But I can’t make the words come out. My breathing has gone all jaggedy.
She’s passing the steps. She’s putting the change in her pocket. Pulling her jacket tight.
I still don’t say anything.
There are more people coming. She moves to the side. She walks past them. She’s gone.
I grab the step behind me and pull myself up and scramble a little till I’m at the top, in the corner, in the shadows. I close my eyes and count to ten and try to stop my heart from racing.
There’s no point. I can’t do it. I can’t go out there again. I can’t say ‘Spare change?’
I stand up and go back inside and shut the door.
US AND THEM
I had always seen people begging on the streets. The guy with the straggly beard who sat beneath the cash machine. The woman with the baby that never cried, begging outside the place where they sold theatre tickets.
I just didn’t know we were like them.
Ma chose a bridge over the river cos that way we could see the Authorities coming a mile off in any direction. When we sa
w them I’d hop up and walk away into the crowd. Not too far. Just far enough so Ma could always see me but they wouldn’t notice me.
We had to get up real early or else we’d wait till the offices closed, cos they were the best times for begging. Morning and evening. When people were off to work or going back home.
When Ma had enough money we went to get food. The Do-gooders had a centre where they handed it out. I’d have to stand outside while Ma queued. That meant they’d only give her food for one person but she was never hungry back then. Not for food anyway.
Friday was wash day cos that’s when the Do-gooders handed out clean clothes. We’d choose a pub or café we’d never been in before and we’d go into the jacks and wash real quick and change into the new clothes before the security guard could chuck us out.
Everywhere Ma went, I went. If she was sleeping in the morning, I’d play in the trees and pretend that the shed was a ruined castle and I was a princess wandering through the forest. And when she went to Monkey Man’s gate, I went with her and hid behind her.
I hated going there. But at least he didn’t know where we lived. No one did. It was ours. But then one day we came back, and before we even got inside we could hear the voices. And I saw a flash of neon yellow. And Ma cursed. And I knew the shed wasn’t ours any more.
We grabbed Ma’s rucksack from behind the bush and we legged it through the trees and under the archway and back onto the streets.
A BULLET WAITING TO BE FIRED
I’m walking up the stairs when I hear something from way off. I know the noise but I can’t place it straight away. I’m sure it means something. And then I know what it is and I’m flying back down the stairs. It’s my beer-can alarm!
It must be Ma. She’s back. That’s all. It’s okay.
I’m running downstairs so fast that I nearly fall into the basement, but I make myself slow down and on the bottom step I take a deep breath and I stick my head around the corner.
I see them. Men in plastic hats. And yellow jackets. Coming through the door.
The Girl in Between Page 13