Angel Blood

by John Singleton

  And on our own.

  CHAPTER 15

  Everything Sucks

  1

  ‘Who's the freak at the counter?’ asked Nail as they sauntered back to the PO and the caravan.

  ‘My aunt.’

  ‘Not yer mum then?’

  ‘Aunt, mum. I think I know the difference.’

  A girl with edge thought Nail. Well, he didn't mind some sharp knives in his drawer. He could wait. Take yer time he told himself. The feisty ones always come hottest in the end. Yeah, best wait.

  They were passing a wooden bench and Nail edged Natalie towards it. Clean out a caravan? No way. He'd rather do a bit of getting-to-know-you.

  In the centre of the back rest was a small brass plate. Evidently the bench had been placed in the memory of a Mrs Margaret Murdoe who was sadly missed by all. Nail leant back and rested his arm hopefully along the top of the bench behind Natalie's shoulders. She could lean against him any time she liked.

  They talked.

  Nail said he was from London up for a holiday at his uncle's stud farm where he bred racehorses for rich Arabs and where Kenno was just one of the stable hands, a mucker-out as he put it.

  Turned out Natalie was from some posh boarding school in Yorkshire. She was a boarder playing at being a day pupil. She was always running away, bunking classes and hiding in the hockey store where she kept her fags hidden inside an old goalie helmet. She hated the place. Every time they closed the gate on her she climbed the wall.

  ‘Why?’ said Nail.

  ‘Why?’ Natalie snapped. ‘You want to know why? I'll tell you why.’

  Nail whistled quietly. He could hear steam coming. Too late to turn off the bleeder valve. This was angry.

  ‘Because they wear straw hats. Because nail varnish is OK but studs are so yesterday. Because they talk about horses and Porsches and it sucks. Because if you're butch you play cricket and if you're not you play netball and that sucks. And because they're all trying to be so now, so boy, so same as, they play football and that sucks. And the teachers think it's so progressive and that sucks because they're all so jilly and jolly and hockey and horsy and Country Life and corsets and they don't realize sticking a load of girls together for three months in the middle of Wuthering Heights sucks, sucks so much it turns them all into bitches or battery hens and that sucks and sucks. And they bully you and that sucks and they lock you in lavatories and that sucks and they put curses on you and that sucks and they pick on just one and that sucks and they don't stop till they've pecked you to bits and that sucks and if you're plain you're a Joan or a Jane and that sucks and some are in and some are out and that sucks and if you're out you want to jump in the pool and that sucks because they've drowned you before you know it and that sucks and when you mobile for rescue they've left bad text messages and that sucks and when it rains in the middle of the moors there you feel you're the only one left on the planet and that sucks and if you ring home Dad's out and that sucks and your mum says to pull your socks up and that sucks and it costs a fortune to keep you there she says and that sucks because she's trying to make you feel bad and that sucks so you bolt out and they catch you and you lie awake at night and it's freezing in the dorm and you're wearing a cardie and your nightie and your gloves and that sucks and you can't talk to anybody about it because they'd just tell you to pull your socks up and that always sucks and it's just a girl phase and a hormone phase they say and that sucks because your mum thinks but doesn't actually say you're really old enough to sort it all out for yourself and that sucks because, Nail, I just can't sort it all out for myself and that sucks because I should be able to and can't and that sucks and the fact that my mummy can't even make a phone call and do it for me sucks the most of all.’

  ‘What a nightmare,’ said Nail at last trying to keep his head above the torrent of her words. ‘That place sure sucks.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Natalie. ‘But that was yesterday. This is now. This is Garvie. This is better.’

  ‘So why aren't you back home?’

  ‘Because…’

  ‘It sucks,’ said Nail.

  Natalie nodded. ‘They sent me here. To stay with Aunty Jessie and Ben the dog. I can only stay if I promise not to keep on running away. Mummy says it's only a phase. That's her answer to everything. It's only a phase. I suppose Daddy's endless meetings are just phases. I suppose the au pair is just another Daddy phase. Anyway he's threatened to cut my allowance.’

  ‘Allowance?’ said Nail.

  ‘Oh, it just means money.’

  Nail nodded. ‘It just means means, I'd say. So you're a loaded toff.’

  ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘And yer always doing runners.’

  ‘Yeah. Same as you.’

  Nail looked at her, sitting there arms folded, blonde hair crimped. The smell of her sun-creamy skin came faintly to him. He was that close.

  ‘What do yer mean?’

  ‘You're on the run. Think you're hard as. But I think you try too hard at hard. Why? Because you want to hide something.’

  ‘Hide what?’ said Nail, beginning to feel irritated. What was the little tart getting at?

  ‘What about your “soft as” side? Ever thought of that or is that what you're running from?’

  ‘Soft ass to you, Nats.’

  ‘Natalie or Nat but so definitely not Nats, thank you. Anyway think about soft.’ She dug him in the ribs with an elbow. ‘You shouldn't get pissy-faced with me. You're a toff as well you know, with your uncle owning horses. So you'd better behave like a toff and pay for the pub.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Nail, beginning to wonder what he was buying into. He'd thought he was in the saddle. Now it looked like Nats was giving him a good ride for his allowance.

  They agreed to meet down the Garvie Arms at seven.

  ‘Bring yer allowance,’ said Nail. ‘I don't do toff.’

  2

  It is nap time in the afternoon before they let us back into the dormie.

  All morning we have to wait and we huddle our time on the Big Chair, and drink water and cry. We are all peeing to go.

  Second tuck-in comes and it's cold – flat ham and sliced eggs. I'm not hungry. None of us are.

  ‘You won't grow up to be big and strong,’ says the nurse. He takes hold of Lights Out and raises her arms in the air. ‘Look at you, little tiddler.’

  He isn't really a nurse because he doesn't carry a trank pack but he has the same uniform. ‘I've just heard about your friend,’ he says lowering his voice. ‘That's bad. But, well, it was on cards, wasn't it? They should have kept a better eye on him.’

  Chicken Angel looks up. ‘Cameras keep an eye on us, all the time,’ she says.

  ‘Cameras! Are you going to bunk off? I think not,’ he says. ‘Hardly the bunking types are you?’

  *

  After he's gone Chicken Angel murmurs: ‘What's bunking?’

  I shake my head. Who cares if we're bunkers or not?

  Then Lights Out reaches down behind the cushion and draws out Maiden China.

  Chicken Angel looks startled.

  ‘Cameras are red-off,’ I say.

  Lights Out just has no sense. If Tin Lid catches her with Maiden China she'll get trank, no question.

  Lolo morses Chicken Angel.

  We're like the princess she says. Locked up but one day we'll escape from the witch and fly away.

  Just then the dormie door opens and Tin Lid says we can go in for our nap.

  None of us move.

  ‘Now,’ she snaps. ‘Come on, there's nothing to see.’

  Slowly we shuffle into the dormie.

  Lights Out pushes Maiden China under her top.

  Cough Cough's bed is still there, no bedding just a sheet stretched over the mattress blank and white.

  And his bedside cupboard.

  I lean against my pillow. I'm not ready for naps. CC must have gone takeaway in the night. But for the nurse telling me not to I could have touched him.

  I see
in my mind Cough Cough's huddled body, lumped under his blankets.

  What would it be like to touch a dead body I wonder. Does it go all soft like a jelly? Does it turn into bones like the ones we saw in the desert on The Natural World? Where does all the blood go? Where has Cough Cough gone?

  I look at the white bed.

  I think of CC wheezing. CC telling me all about London and the sea and the stars. All the things he'd read about in his books. I think of him doing his fizzio and his balloons and the ones with the funny udders and how you could see his fat face through the TRANSPARENT skin when he blew them up and how he came out gasping and how one time he let go the balloon and it screeched across the dormie and how Lights Out squealed because she thought it was Jack the Cat doing a daftie on her.

  And I remember him slumped in his wheelchair hardly able to breathe any more and hardly able to see any more and how we were going to do the eye thingie so we both had one good one and how he smelt because he couldn't get to the washes because the nurses never came in time whenever we called and how I wish, I wish I could smell that smell of him again, cola-puke and pitch.

  Tears swell and fall, swell and fall.

  3

  Chicken Angel and Lights Out are asleep.

  The camera is red-off.

  I slip out of bed and tiptoe across to the dormie door. Slowly I open it a slit and see that Tin Lid is sitting in her office doing something at her desk.

  I close the door and go over to Cough Cough's cupboard. I slide open the drawer and feel for the envelope underneath.

  It's still there.

  I untape it and draw it out.

  It's empty! All the tabs are gone!

  I sit there staring at the empty brown envelope.

  Something's wrong here.

  Where have all the tabs gone? Did the nurses find them? Take them away?

  No I say aloud. Because they wouldn't then bother putting an empty envelope back in its hiding place. They'd have got in the Hyena Men and squealed us for an explanation.

  Then I remember the hypo that CC gave me. It's hidden now under the mattress. I lie down on my front and reach for it. I can feel its hard tube. That's good. It's safe.

  I sit up again.

  Who took the tabs? That's the question.

  And why put an empty envelope back? What's the point of that?

  Then without warning Cough Cough's words come back to me. I'm getting out. That's what he had said. I've got my own surprise. He said that too. Something they won't expect.

  ‘Surprise,’ I murmur. For a long time I suck at the word SURPRISE. I suck and suck till I reach the centre and a sickly bitter taste spills on my tongue.

  I want to vomit. I swallow it down. At last I know where the pills have gone.

  I know what you did, Cough Cough, I say. I know your secret now.

  You took them yourself didn't you, Cough Cough? Swallowed them all so they couldn't experiment on us, so they couldn't take our eyes. Take mine.

  Yes, you over-dozied yourself so they couldn't operate me.

  ‘Oh, Cough Cough,’ I weep. ‘You went takeaway for me.’

  4

  For a long time I sit there hardly able to move.

  I am shock still.

  All last night – and last night seemed so far away now – all last night I think, Cough Cough was dying as he lay next to me. Into coma, into the dark windowless room, into nothing.

  No one there holding him. No one to gently gently him to sleep.

  And he never said goodbye because if he had we'd have guessed what he was going to do.

  And stopped him.

  All I want to do, all I will ever want to do now is cosy cosy him. My friend. That's all. Take him in my arms and cosy cosy him.

  Now he's gone.

  ‘You all right, X-Ray?’ a voice says quietly. It is Chicken Angel, her face close to mine, her breath warm and sweet and faintly pukey.

  I look at her emptily.

  ‘Cough Cough,’ I whisper.

  ‘Yes,’ she nods. ‘I know.’ She slides her thin arm under my neck and hugs me gently.

  ‘All that pain and going blind. Perhaps it's best,’ she says. ‘He felt nothing. Not with the tabs.’

  I stare at Chicken Angel.

  How does she know CC took tabs? Over-dozied?

  She sees alarm on my face. ‘We had to do it,’ she says.

  She sits up.

  I am dumbfounded.

  ‘Cough Cough asked me,’ she says. ‘He hadn't got the strength. I said no never. Never. He said I had to. Soon he was going takeaway he said. He had to go before the operator came for him. He said it was easy with tabs, he had hundreds. But he couldn't reach them any more. I had to get them. I had to help him.’

  She has her hands on my arm.

  I move them aside.

  Why didn't he ask me? I was thinking. I've always been his friend.

  ‘Don't push me away,’ says Chicken Angel. ‘Lolo asked Mrs Murdoe and she said it was right.’

  I swing around.

  ‘Lights Out knew as well?’ I say. ‘All of you knew except me?’

  ‘Just the two of us,’ says Chicken Angel. ‘It was terrible, X-Ray. It was. It was. Please believe me. Please. Cough Cough was gasping for breath,’ she says crying again. ‘Gasping for takeaway you might say. What could I do? I didn't know what. He said he couldn't ask you to help. He said you weren't strong enough. He said it had to be me. I said no. He said he was ready. He didn't want to fixy out as if a pillow was being held over his face. He wanted takeaway cosy cosy.’

  Tears well up in Chicken Angel's eyes.

  ‘So last night after we talked and you were asleep I got him the tabs and the water and… and… helped him.’

  Chicken Angel is trembling my bed.

  ‘He just went to sleep,’ she whispers.

  You took him from me, Chicken Angel, I am thinking. Took him from me and never asked or told. Kept me in the dark.

  I stare into emptiness. Just for a moment I am takeaway with Cough Cough.

  ‘He said for you not to worry,’ Chicken Angel is saying. ‘He said we've got to stick together. He said he was going to a place called heaven, the one Mrs Murdoe told us about. He said it was better than Scotland. It was like The Natural World but without the leopards. He said he expected to meet Jack the Cat there because he'd never seen him in the Bin. And to tell you he and Mrs Murdoe were going to give some squeal to Doctor Dearly.’

  Despite myself I smile.

  Cough Cough and Jack the Cat going for walks together and CC telling Jack about elephants and jungles and Jack telling Cough Cough about his bag of tricks, talking talking till the sun goes down and the cat's fur is smoulder red and CC is breathing in the clear night air.

  ‘Don't fit at me,’ says Chicken Angel. ‘Please. Please, X-Ray.’ She bites on her hand. ‘I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have. But he would have gone soo… soo… soon. He would have fixied like some of the others. I couldn't let that happen, could I. Was I right? Could I…? Who else… was… oh…?’

  The words gulp for air in her tears.

  I say nothing.

  Nothing's to be said.

  Suddenly she goes and jumps on her bed, hunches up her knees, wraps her arms round them and bows her head.

  She is weeping weeping.

  CHAPTER 16

  Disabled and Deleted.

  1

  Inside the emptiness of me a dull fist of anger tightens. I feel like fitting out hard shot, blasting Chicken Angel, blowing Lights Out to bits and bits.

  I close my eyes.

  Try and catch up with CC.

  But little by little he is already fading.

  His face seems not here like a face behind a misted mirror. His voice has gone, not a whisper of it can I hear any more.

  I am looking into blackness. I am tumbling and drifting through the dark skies getting further away from Cough Cough. My anger is getting smaller and smaller. I am too moosed to care any more
.

  Gradually a sound breaks through to me. It's Lights Out. She is mewling and crying and pointing up at the Weather Eye.

  I sit up and listen.

  Something's going on in the Outside.

  Lights Out has her arms stretched out in front of her pointing at me. No, not pointing, reaching for me.

  I hesitate.

  Then we hear doors slamming.

  I stumble across to Lights Out.

  She wraps her skinny white fingers round my wrists. Her lips are popping and bouncing like a fish gobbling air.

  Cough Cough she is saying.

  I climb up and clamber on the bed. I pull out the knot and look through the Weather Eye.

  It doesn't matter whether Tin Lid comes or not. It doesn't matter at all.

  The Outside is bright and I have to thin my eye to see.

  What I see is a white van with a big red cross. Two people, they look like Hyena Men, are pushing a trolley towards the white van. The trolley is just like the ones we have to lie on in Recovery. On the trolley there's a small hump covered in a white sheet. The men reach the van and one of them takes off the white sheet. Underneath is a green bag like a big lumpy.

  It's Cough Cough.

  I watch them slide the top of the trolley into the van.

  Cough Cough has gone.

  I watch the doors close.

  Then I realize Chicken Angel is standing next to me. I move and let her see.

  I can just hear the engine start.

  ‘It's going,’ she says.

  She steps back.

  ‘He's gone.’

  2

  All afternoon we sit on beds like silent monkeys.

  I know Chicken Angel wants me to talk to her.

  When we got down from the Weather Eye she tried to hold my hand but I wouldn't let her. She killed Cough Cough. Cough Cough, my friend.

  Lights Out is still and silent. What is she thinking? I look across at her. Her hair is thin and straggly. Every day Chicken Angel brushes it. Every day more and more hair comes out and goes in the incinerator or the soil tub. No brushing today. And she's getting thinner. You should see her wrists, all bone, and skin white as Doctor Dearly's stretchy gloves.

  Then the buzzer goes for third tuck-in.

  It's broth and dumplings.