Writing On the Wall

by Lynne Reid Banks

  “It’s okay if you want to lean,” he said. And I did want to, just to see what a really broad shoulder felt like. But I was too shy, somehow.

  “Sorry I’m not Kev,” he said, teasing.

  “I’m not,” I said before I’d thought. No “Should I, shouldn’t I” tonight anyway. I wondered whether I was missing him, and decided I wasn’t, but I told myself it was because I was too sleepy. It was great, just sitting there under the stars, listening to the singing and letting the sand run through my fingers.

  There was no talking in bed that night. I was asleep before I’d crawled all the way into the tent. I never even heard Con come in. Had a few funny dreams though, all about hunting for my bicycle pump, riding about Amsterdam peering into the gutters saying, “I must find it, I must find it!” In the end Michael rode towards me holding it up in front of him saying, “I’ll give it to you!” And Kev came out of nowhere and knocked him flying and shouted, “Let me give it to her, or I’ll bash your face in.” Well, maybe I’ve added a bit to make it sound good, but I know it was something like that.

  Next day was our last day. We had a meeting in the morning, after breakfast, to decide what to do.

  Karen and Cliff wanted to just lie about on the beach and spend the rest of their money on some nice grub – they hadn’t much left anyway. Darryl surprised us all by announcing that he wanted to go to some bird sanctuary. Of all things!

  “You can go by boat,” he said. “It’s on an island. There’s thousands of different birds there, all in their proper habitats.”

  “What kind of birds?” Cliff mocked him, and I started singing, “On Ilkley Moor Bah t’habitat—” But Con said, “How far is it?”

  Darryl looked at her. He had a gleam of hope in his eye. “Not far,” he said. “And the boat goes to other lakes and that, it’s a whole day’s trip.” He kept looking at her.

  “Well,” she said, “it might be okay. Do they have hot-houses for the tropical ones? Like in the zoo?”

  “Yeah!” Darryl said, all eager now. “And things like ice-caves for the Arctic ones, and there’s ostriches strolling on the lawns!”

  I began to think I might like to go myself, but when Con gave one of her shrugs and said, “Yeah, okay, I’ll go,” I took one look at Darryl’s face and I knew I couldn’t. Not that he had a hope; I knew that now after what she’d said, but he’d never forgive me if I was there to stop him having a go.

  So that left me and Michael. I looked at him and my heart sank a bit.

  “I suppose you’re going to museums and that again,” I said.

  “Not today,” he said. “Sun’s shining, I want to be outdoors.”

  “Shall we stop here then?” – only I’didn’t want to, not with Karen and Cliff carrying on like love-sick poodles.

  “We could make a trip too, if you like,” he said.

  “Where to?”

  The old guide-book was out in two ticks of course.

  “Well,” he said, “there’s a little place near Gouda where we might have some fun.”

  I looked round at the others, expecting them to set up a howl at the word “fun”, but Karen and Cliff were wandering down to the beach with their arms slung round each other, and Con and Darryl were packing up to go.

  “Can we leave our tents and stuff here?” I said. “Then we won’t be weighed down with clobber.”

  “Hope Karen and Cliff manage to take their eyes off each other long enough to make sure nobody nicks nothing,” said Michael.

  So when we set off we felt as free as birds. It was a beautiful day. But as we flew along the cycle track with the breeze blowing and the sun shining, I couldn’t have had any idea what a beautiful day it was going to be, in a way that had nothing to do with the weather at all.

  18 · Tent-Talk

  Snug in our little tent that night, Con and me whispered.

  “What sort of day did you have?”

  “Fabulous,” she said. It was the first time I’d ever heard her say that. She wasn’t much for straight enjoyment, Con wasn’t – if she did enjoy herself, she didn’t like admitting it somehow, she’d always shut it off and say “Not bad” or “It was okay in its way,” or something. Now she lay on her back looking up at the roof of the tent and said, “– Just fabulous,” again.

  “What was it like – the island?”

  “Heaven.”

  “And the birds? Were they nice?”

  “There was one hot-house,” she said, all kind of dreamy, not a bit like her usual self, “with all sorts of tropical stuff in it, huge leaves and great big juicy-looking flowers, all reds and purples, looking like they wanted to eat you up. I mean, honest – they had their tongues sticking out to catch you. And the heat just closed round you, all steamy. I felt like Tarzan’s mate or something. I wanted to pick up a vine and start swinging through the trees.”

  “That’s just like at Kew then,” I said. They took us to the hot-house at Kew from school once. Too hot for me by half.

  “But there’s no birds at Kew,” she said. “In this one they were everywhere, lovely bright-coloured ones, some big and some so small I thought they were big insects at first. Sucking out of the flowers with their little wings beating so fast you couldn’t see ’em, even. . . . And others flashing about round your head. We stopped in there for an hour. We pretended we was in Africa, in the jungle. The smells were something else, too. Exotic.”

  “Wasn’t it all hot and sticky?”

  “Sticky? It was great, I told you! I’m never hot enough usually. That’s my trouble. Feel my hand now.”

  I took her hand. It was cold as ice, like a dead fish.

  “Yuk!”

  “You see? I’m cold-blooded. I think I’ll leave England and go south. I told Darryl. He said he felt the same. It’s just too cold in these northern countries, you spend half your energy trying to keep warm.” I was kind of automically rubbing her hand, like Mum does mine if I come in cold without my gloves. But Con took it off me. “It’s no use,” she said. “I rub ’em sometimes myself, but they only get cold again. Darryl’s got very warm hands, have you noticed?”

  “No I haven’t! How come you found that out?”

  “He held my hand a lot while we was walking around,” she said. “It started in the cold part, where the penguins and that are – they got ice-caves; not real ice of course, it’s only got up like ice, but they keep the temperature cold for the Arctic birds, and I was shivering while we walked through there and Darryl took my hand and kind of stuffed it into his pocket. His hand’s naturally warm.”

  “Not surprising.”

  “What you mean?” she asked quickly.

  “He’s a warm sort of person,” I said. “Shy, but he’s got a warm nature, I’ve noticed.”

  She didn’t say anything for a bit. Then she said, “One thing about him, he’s very gentle. I mean you can’t imagine him – you know, hitting anybody.” I didn’t say anything. I knew what she was thinking about. After a while she turned towards me in the dark and said, “What about you, where did you go?”

  I’d been waiting for her to ask.

  “Best day I ever had,” I said.

  That was going it a bit, I admit – I’ve had a good few nice times in my life. There’d been holidays at Frinton and even one in Wales, when the shop’d had a good year, and there were always good Christmases (when there weren’t too many rows). Mum was good at Christmas. We always did things traditional, starting with Midnight Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes, and hot drinks with a drop of something in them so we always had a good sleep. Then waking up to stockings.

  Every year Mum says, “Now you big ones are far too old for all that nonsense. It’ll be just Tracy and Lily this year” – or, lately, “just Lily”. And we’d all set up a terrible howl and clown around pretending to be little kids – Sean put on a nappy last year and lay on the floor sucking his thumb and howling till Mum gave in! Then there’d be late lunch and afterwards we’d go for a walk – Dad always insisted, and we a
lways went to the same place, Acton Park, and the boys played football.

  It was the only time Vlady ever would, and he was a lousy player of course. He could scarcely kick the ball. Sometimes if Sean sent it at him hard he’d pretend to be scared of it and jump over it or dodge out of the way, hands over his head. Sean would send him up rotten and we’d all stand there yelling with laughter while Vlady put on a big act of being ashamed and ran off to get the ball back. Sometimes we’d all play, us girls too, all breaking the rules on purpose, picking the ball up and playing pig-in-the-middle with it while old Sean did his nut.

  Then we’d go home for tea and Mum’s Christmas cake, all black and gluggy inside from all the whisky she’d poured in the little black holes in the bottom of it for weeks before, enough to make you drunk, and with the same little figures of Father Christmas and his reindeer, and a tree, that’s been on our cakes for years and years. Then we’d go to the evening service and. . . .

  Bloody hell. How did I get onto all that lot? I was talking about my good day in that village. . . . Bloody hell. I’m crying now. You’d think, just because of what I’ve done, there was never going to be Christmas any more.

  To get on with it then. So Connie of course asked, “What was so special?” and I told her about Gouda and then how we’d gone on to a little place a few miles away where they used to have a lot of witches, or what they thought were witches. This village found it was getting a bad name through burning more poor old girls there than anywhere else in Holland. It was hurting trade. So they had this idea. They made a law that everyone who was accused of witchcraft had to be brought to their public weighing house to be weighed. The person had to be dressed in a witch’s costume made of paper, and have a paper broom. Then they’d weigh her, and announce she was too heavy to ride on a broom stick! They’d give the poor old cow a certificate to say she was too fat to be a witch and off she’d go.

  Con wanted to know if the scales and that, that they’d weighed them with, were still there, and I said not only that, but you could have yourself weighed and get a certificate to say you weren’t a witch! I’d even got one myself! I switched on my torch and showed it to her.

  “Cor,” she said, half-joking.

  “And then,” I went on, warming up now, “we had a meal at a little café, not the Tourist menu, and Michael treated me, and we talked.”

  “What about?”

  “Him mostly. He’s going to stick with his building job, and try and study architecture at night school or even on Open University. He’s got one A-level already. In history. Like me.”

  “What you mean, like you?”

  “I mean it’s my best subject, too. I could’ve got an O-level in it if I’d tried. And in English too, I bet.”

  “So what stopped you, eh?”

  “I dunno,” I said. “That’s what he asked too. Why I don’t stop on at school. To be honest I never even gave it a thought. I mean, all our lot’s leaving, aren’t they.”

  “I might not.”

  “Get away! You staying on?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “I said I might.”

  “But you just said you were leaving England!”

  “I didn’t say now. I said some time.” She paused a bit and then said, “Of course I can’t stay on, though. I’ll have to leave home and take a job. I can’t stick it at home much longer, certainly not another two years.”

  “Well I could,” I said. And Dad’d be pleased. . . . Funny, I never considered it. . . . Going back to school next September, though. Could I stand it? We lay in the dark. I was trying to think ahead, but I couldn’t; my head was too full of today.

  “Listen though, let me tell you the rest. So we talked, and we found out we got a lot in common, him and me—”

  “You mean, apart from both having A-levels in history?”

  “Shurrup you. Of course I haven’t half his brain—”

  “Oh Jesus, Trace!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t be so bloody humble! Your brain’s all right, nothing wrong with your brain except you never give it enough to do.”

  “How’d you work that out?”

  “Well. I’ve seen you, haven’t I, sitting in class for four years, or rather, laying about in class in your case, doing the least you could get away with—”

  “I never! I did my best—”

  “Oh yeah? What about in English? Just because old Nelson told you off once for your spelling, you lay down and played dead. Never did another stroke in her lessons. Did you? A whole year wasted for one bad mark. You’re just stupid, you are.”

  “That’s what I said. I got no head.”

  “That’s one excuse for just being bone bloody idle.”

  If I’d been less happy and more in the mood to tangle, I’d’ve given her what-for, but as it was I just shut up for a bit. And in the silence it came clear that what she was telling me off for was being brighter than I thought I was. So after a bit I said, “You think I’m not so thick, really?”

  “I never thought you were thick. Did he try anything?”

  “Eh?”

  “Michael.”

  “No! He doesn’t fancy me.”

  “If you think that, maybe you are thick after all.”

  I rolled right over on my side to face her.

  “Connie, what are you getting at? Michael – fancy me?”

  “You really didn’t notice? Why d’you think he hates Kev so much?”

  “Because he’s a bit of a tearaway, writes on walls and that.”

  “That too. . . . Do you know Michael had us all round that bleeding statue in the dead of night, scraping and scrubbing away. . . .” I started laughing, I couldn’t help it.

  “D’you get it off?”

  “I dunno, do I, we could hardly see what we was doing in the pitch dark. . . .” We muffled our giggles in our bundles of clothes. When we calmed down a bit, she said, “Darryl did.”

  “What, started necking? And you let him?”

  “It was in that hot-house. I felt all funny. I had to kiss someone, and he was there.”

  “Was it nice?”

  “Nice! Listen, Trace, you’ll never get your English O-level till you stop saying ‘nice’ all the time. It’s a nothing word. Of course it wasn’t ‘nice’. What does it mean, ‘nice’? It was. . . .” She stopped. Then she rolled away from me, sudden. “I dunno how it was,” she mumbled.

  “Did it turn you on?” I persisted.

  “Well, if it did,” she said, “it wasn’t because of Darryl. Take more than some spotty sixteen-year-old to turn me on. It was those bloody birds and the heat and the scent of those jungle flowers. I’d’ve been turned on necking with King Kong in there if you want to know.”

  I felt she didn’t want to talk any more so I shut up. I didn’t either, to say the true, I just wanted to lie quiet and think about my day. Riding through the villages with Michael, and stopping to look at things, and being weighed on the witches’ scales, and later, going to another place, near a river, where we saw some silver jewellery being made. Filigree it’s called, very fine silver wire twisted into shapes like tiny bits of lace.

  I reached out my hand and groped about in my pile of clothes. Pinned to my T-shirt I found it, a little hard shape – a butterfly brooch, smaller than a real butterfly. Delicate. Perfect. He’d bought it for me and pinned it on. If Kev’d done something like that (not that he ever had), he’d have tried to touch me up when he was pinning it on, but not Michael. He did his best not to touch me, but his fingers just couldn’t help themselves. I could feel them now, as light as if a real butterfly had landed on me for a second. . . .

  I thought of Kev groping me in that doorway after the disco, and then I thought, if Michael ever put his hand right on me like that, on purpose, to show he fancied me – but I couldn’t think about it. It couldn’t ever happen. I mean he’d never do it, and if he did I couldn’t have stood it. I felt hot and weak just thinking about it. Much more than I did when Kev actually did it
. And that was bad enough, though somehow I found I didn’t like thinking about that either, now.

  19 · Turned Right Off

  Michael woke me in the morning. He did it by reaching into our tent and taking hold of my foot. I wasn’t in my sleeping-bag because it was too hot, and my pyjama leg was rucked right up. First thing I knew, I felt this hand touching my foot and giving it a little shake. Or maybe more of a little stroke. It gave me something like an electric shock. I jerked up and hit my head on the roof-pole. Everything sparkled round Michael’s face in the tent opening.

  “Time to get up,” he said. He was smiling at me.

  Then he went. I woke Connie. We got dressed half-lying down. I still felt a bit dizzy, though, and when I crawled out and stood up I nearly fell down again.

  There was a lot of bustling about, packing, while Karen got breakfast. Getting dead good with the old frying pan, Karen was – way beyond hard-boiled eggs now, it was sausages and bacon and fried bread – you name it. Michael and me had filled up our side-bags with groceries on the way home last night, and while we sat around eating in the sun we had a grand settling-up. I’d paid my own way except for the first couple of nights when Michael had been organising and paying for everything, so I just said to him, “What do I owe you for the first night in the camping site?”

  “That’s okay.”

  “What do you mean, okay? I got to cough up my share!”

  In the end he gave in, and I fished out my purse and paid my debts. As I put the money into his hand I got that funny shock again, and he got it too seemingly, because he jerked his hand and didn’t look me in the eye. I thought, God, what’s happening here? I might not have even noticed it if it hadn’t been for what Con’d said the night before about Michael fancying me. Could it be? I kept giving him little looks out the sides of my eyes, taking him in as if I’d never seen him before.

  He looked different from before somehow. I remembered something Mary said once when I was asking her whatever she saw in some boy or other she was going out with. Face like the flatside of a gumboot. She said, “You don’t see ’em the same way when you’re in love.” I made throw-up noises I remember, thinking she was too soppy to be true, but now I looked at Michael and I felt a bit soppy myself. All brown – the rest of his face had kind of caught up with his freckles – and his hair a bit longer than before, down his neck, curling.