Was she talking to him or to the people hiding around him? "Who's that?" he cried, and realised he'd given himself away. "Da?" he pleaded, feeling abandoned by his friend. "Are you there?"
"My mam's gone out," his friend shouted. "Stay where you're put."
At least the voices had stopped. The people in the clothes must be wary of giving themselves away now that they'd heard there was someone else in the house. Marshall sat and waited for his friend to bring him whatever he was going to bring. But his friend's sounds were moving away, farther and farther, so far it seemed impossible they were still in the house—at least, the one Marshall had thought he was in. He was losing his sense of where he was again, and beginning to fear that even his friend wouldn't be able to keep him safe. "Da?" he called, praying his voice wouldn't rouse the people around him.
There was no response. The other boy's sounds had grown tinny and blurred, a transmission which a radio was no longer able to grasp. Marshall stared around the room in case anything was sneaking toward him, and everything straightened up from starting to creep into another shape. He sucked in a breath which tasted of all the stale smells of the room, tobacco smoke and newspaper and unwashed clothes and some indefinable species of rottenness, and was trying to wait as long as he could bear, even a little longer, before repeating his plea, when he understood why his friend hadn't responded: because Marshall hadn't called him by his proper name. For a moment Marshall was afraid the name had been swallowed by the hole he could feel growing in the midst of his brain, and then he remembered. "Darren," he shouted in panicky triumph.
His friend said a word. Though Marshall couldn't identify it, at least it meant Darren had heard him. The sounds of his activity continued, too distant to be reassuring. He was looking for something; maybe he could use some help. "Darren?"
That brought a rush of footsteps, which sounded as though they were several rooms away an instant before the door was flung open. "What?" Darren demanded. "You're worse than some old shit who can't get out of bed."
The idea of illness triggered Marshall's question. "Why did your mom go out?"
When Darren only stared and opened his mouth in a grimace of disbelief, Marshall began answering for him. "I know she's a nurse. Did she have to go to the hospital?"
"What do you think, lad? Don't know why you have to ask."
"I don't suppose I did really, sorry, but did she leave anything?"
"Left a lot of fucking stuff. Nowt you'd want to know about, though."
"I mean, you know what I mean. Anything for me?" Marshall heard his own voice turning harsh. He was desperate not only for an answer but also to shift the expression from Darren's face, which looked as though invisible thumbs were wrenching both corners of his mouth down. "You know, to take?"
"Greedy cunt, aren't you?" Abruptly Darren straightened his mouth. "All right, just stick there and I'll see what she's got."
"Shall I help you look?"
"No chance, lad. You reckon you could find anything the way you are?"
"No," Marshall admitted, and tried to grasp what his friend was feeling which looked like relief. "Only you sounded as if you were looking for something before."
"Aye, well, maybe we won't need it. Up to you. Now just shut the fuck up and do what the fuck you're told," Darren said, his voice growing louder and flatter as if he was shouting at someone beyond Marshall, and stomped out of the room.
Marshall felt unable to move until he comprehended how he had managed to infuriate his friend. At least Darren had left the door open, and the thuds of his feet on the stairs sounded not unbearably far away. Now they were shaking the ceiling above Marshall, and now they were tumbling downstairs so rapidly that Marshall was afraid his friend had fallen until Darren came marching on invisible strings at him. "Swallow this, lad, if it'll stop you whining."
Marshall peered at the object the other boy dropped on the pinkish desert of his hand. Though he couldn't judge its size, dwarfed as it was by the largest dune, it looked familiar. "Didn't I already take two of these?"
"Right, and there's another."
"Doesn't your mom have anything stronger?"
"She said you have to take three before they start to work. Don't look at me like that, lad, I can't do nowt about it. Stick it up your arse for all I care."
"I'm taking it. I mean, thanks for everything you've done for me." Marshall threw back his head to help the pill down his dry throat, and swallowed hard until he could no longer feel it bulging his insides. As he lowered his head, the set of a room raised itself to meet his eyes, and he couldn't keep quiet, even if he sounded more ungrateful than ever. "Will she have something stronger at the hospital?"
"Aren't you satisfied yet? She'll have some stuff where she's gone all right. Maybe you want some of that. That'd do for you, no messing."
Marshall couldn't make sense of the tone of his friend's voice, and hadn't time to try. "Can we go there?"
"That's what you're after, is it? Fucking hell." To Marshall's bewilderment, Darren sounded both disgusted and delighted. "I don't reckon she can say much against it," Darren said, wiping away a snort with the back of his hand. "Fair enough, come on. I'll take you where you can get some."
"Is it far?"
"As far as you'll be going, lad, and no mistake."
"Couldn't you get it for me?"
"What do you think I am, your fucking servant? Got a butler at home to wipe your arse, have you?" Darren visibly controlled himself—Marshall saw his face reform in a series of movements stuck together. "You want to take it as soon as it's got, don't you? Can't do that if I have to bring it back."
His urgency didn't quite override Marshall's doubts. "I know, only..."
"What? What's your fucking problem this time?"
"You said my mom said I had to stay in your house till she came."
"Jesus." Darren jerked his fists up and shook them, almost hitting himself in the face. "I know I said that, but you want to get home to her, don't you? You want to talk to her, any road. Can't do that if you stay in the house."
He was making Marshall feel sad behind his eyes and in his chest, but Marshall had to overcome that and think. "I don't need to speak to her now you have. Suppose she comes to fetch me and we aren't here? I mustn't be meant to go outside while it's cold or she'd have come for me by now in the car."
"She's a nurse like my mam, is she?"
"No, but—"
"She knows more about it than a nurse does, you reckon?"
"She's always looked after me. Like you're trying to, Darren," Marshall added in case he was sounding ungrateful. "Only your mom didn't say I should go out either, did she? You'd have said by now if she had."
Incredulity dragged the other boy's mouth down as he shared his stare with the room. Then his attention veered to one corner, and Marshall saw that what he had thought he'd seen before was still there. "Is that real?" he said.
"What do you reckon you can see, lad?"
"That's a gun under those papers, isn't it? A revolver."
"What do you know, I can see it too."
Rather than reassuring Marshall, that confused him, all the more because he couldn't grasp why it did. "Yes, but I mean, is it, you know, really real?"
"That's a song, isn't it?" An uninterpretable smile flickered across Darren's lips, and he seemed to be restraining himself. "I don't know what you're pissing on about."
"You know, real like it can shoot. It only looks real, doesn't it? It's not a real gun that could hurt anyone, it's just a toy. You wouldn't have a real gun in the house in Britain."
"Want to find out?"
"Sure, if—"
That had been all the excuse Darren needed to stop holding himself back. He darted to the corner, kicking aside strewn newspapers and an ashtray full of fractured stubs, and stooped to grab the weapon. As he straightened up he twisted around and levelled the gun at Marshall, who ducked, almost sprawling off the chair, before he saw that Darren's finger wasn't on the trigger. "Don'
t do that," he protested. "Never point a gun at anyone."
"Not much fucking use having one then, is there? I thought you thought it wasn't real."
Marshall fought off the notion that he'd made it real by being scared of it. "I still don't think it is."
He watched Darren close his free hand around the hand on the butt and hook one finger around the trigger. The gun wasn't quite pointing at him. "How much do you bet?" Darren said.
"I can't bet anything. You have all my change."
The barrel swung toward him, so slowly he saw it catching at the air. "So bet that," Darren said, "and maybe you'll get twice as much back."
That would be twice a few pounds, as far as Marshall could remember. He dug his spine into the chair so as not to dodge while the gun found him, opening its round mouth as it came. Now the mouth was facing him, for the moment emptily, or was it filling with more than darkness? Perhaps his senses had grown so acute that he would be able to glimpse the bullet in the instant before it blew his head open. Apprehension hit him in the stomach, folding him over himself. "I believe you," he almost screamed.
The gun followed him down, and he thought he saw Darren's finger tightening on the trigger. "Bit fucking late, lad."
He hated himself for having let Darren see him panic. He forced himself to sit up straight and gazed at the revolver, which was pointing at his chest. "I didn't bet. You still have to give me my money back."
"Come and get it."
Marshall tensed himself to do so. If he moved slowly there would be no cause for Darren's finger to shift on the trigger. Once Marshall was close enough he could push the gun aside, maybe even take it from him. Darren wouldn't really shoot, he was Marshall's friend, but just suppose he squeezed the trigger without meaning to? How sensitive was it? Marshall couldn't move after all, not while the gun was on him. "I'll let you give it to me," he said, feeling his cheek tug at his mouth.
"That's the idea."
His friend was only playing, Marshall told himself. Only you shouldn't play with guns, and he was suddenly certain that if it was aimed at him much longer it would go off. He wasn't about to plead—he'd humiliated himself enough in front of the other boy—but he had to talk it away from him. "Why do you keep that around the house?"
"Where do you want it kept? In the road?"
The gun wasn't relenting. Maybe Darren thought Marshall's attempt at a conversational tone meant he was planning to grab it. Marshall turned his empty hands up, not too fast, he told himself. "No, I mean why do you have it?"
"Why do you have guns where you come from? To take care of any bugger as shouldn't be in here."
A wave of unexpected grief rose from Marshall's throat to his eyes. "My dad got one," he blurted.
"Got a bugger, did he?"
Darren's voice had turned harsh—because he was embarrassed by Marshall's grief, of course. "No, a gun," Marshall said with a shaky attempt at a laugh. "He shouldn't have without a license, but he thought he needed it."
"Why was that, lad?"
Marshall's ruse wasn't working yet; if anything, Darren's aim looked steadier than ever. "Because some jerk pulled a gun on him in the street over nothing at all," Marshall said, "and when he got sent to jail, this rat sent his family after my dad."
"Good job he had a gun then, eh?"
"No." Another wave of grief was threatening to spill out of Marshall. "He wouldn't have shot anyone. I wish he had. He took the bullets out and tried to make these scum think he hadn't."
Darren flexed his finger and replaced it on the trigger. "He should have got a lesson off my da."
"I wish," Marshall agreed, and tried to think of anything that would stop his eyes from brimming over, then had a thought he couldn't believe he hadn't had sooner. "Are there any in that one?"
"Any bullets? Real bullets, is that? One way to find out, lad."
Darren no longer sounded like a friend. Marshall didn't understand how he could have antagonised him, unless it was any show of emotion Darren couldn't stand. "Sorry," Marshall said, wiping his eyes quickly and hard in the hope the other boy mightn't notice.
"For what?"
"I don't know," Marshall pleaded. "For not trusting you. I mean, I know you aren't going to shoot me. You're my friend."
"You reckon." Darren considered the gun and then Marshall. "Long as I'm your mate, let's play a game. Give you a chance to win some of that money you wanted to win."
"I only wanted my own back."
"Doesn't work like that round here. I thought you were supposed to trust me. You carry on with that and you'll be amazed what you get."
"What kind of game?"
"Bet you guessed. It's been in enough films." Darren pointed the gun at the ceiling and released the cylinder. As he sat down, bullets dropped into his hand. At last, watching them quiver and glisten on the boy's palm, Marshall understood why they were called slugs. When Darren placed the five of them under his chair they crawled about for some moments before subsiding. He swung the cylinder back into place and spun it with the heel of his hand, then sat forward and turned the butt toward Marshall. "Six goes. Three each. You go first."
Marshall's hand hesitated an inch short of the gun. "Have you played before?"
"Course I have, lots of times. And I'm still here, so I don't know what you're shitting your pants for."
"I'm not," Marshall protested, pressing his buttocks together. He glared at his hand to make it stop letting him down, and once it had more or less ceased trembling he took hold of the revolver.
It was larger and heavier than he was prepared for. No wonder Darren had been using both hands. It felt cold and leaden and bulky, and he thought he could smell the metal of it, like the taste of a coin in his mouth. When he extended his finger around the trigger, the presence of the weapon seemed too detailed for him to grasp. The light had grown more artificial, and he saw himself performing on a stage. All the people in the room were watching, no longer a threat to him, just an audience. He turned the gun and pointed it at his forehead.
He felt his wrist twinge and creak. The revolver sagged in his grasp, leaning the trigger against his finger. The mouth of the barrel gaped at him. Its perfect circle seemed capable of hypnotising him; certainly the aching of his wrist had detached itself from him. He had almost forgotten what he was meant to be doing when Darren lost patience. "Come on, lad," he urged.
The trigger was absurdly stiff. Trying to pull it bruised Marshall's finger, and he felt more of a wimp than ever. To Darren he must look as though he was pretending not to be able to squeeze the trigger. He rested the muzzle against his forehead above his right eye, and closed his free hand around the barrel, and dragged at the trigger with all the strength he could focus.
He felt the lever shift reluctantly, felt the mechanism heaving the hammer back. He was about to reach into himself for one last effort when there was a loud impact which shook both the gun and his head. The hammer had fallen on an empty chamber. He lowered the weapon, grabbing his wrist to steady his shivering hand, and released a breath he hadn't been aware of holding. "Oh, that was—"
"Give us it." Darren lurched forward on his chair and grabbed the barrel, twisted it toward him, jabbed his other thumb behind the guard and pressed the trigger. Marshall heard a click, nothing like as loud as the one he himself had triggered. Darren shoved the butt at him. "You again."
Marshall rubbed his hands on the sleeves of his track suit. Most of the weight of the gun seemed to have remained in the palm of his right hand, bruising it. He used his left to take hold of the barrel, and raised his head so as to rest the muzzle more or less comfortably under his chin. He leaned back, propping the butt low on his chest, and closed his stinging hand around the butt and squeezed the trigger as hard as he could.
It shot up through his jaw, vibrating his teeth—the impact did. The breath he expelled through his nose sounded like a shivery laugh. As he let the barrel fall he had to remind himself to point it well away from his friend, in case the weight
of the gun pulled the trigger against his finger. Darren didn't appreciate the gesture, or rather, Marshall told himself, he felt unable to acknowledge it. "Get a move on," he demanded. "I'll be asleep before you're done at this rate."
As soon as Marshall let go of the butt Darren seized it, swung the gun toward his scalp and narrowing his eyes, pulled the trigger. His face was a blank mask, and stayed that way as the revolver emitted a click. He thrust the gun at Marshall. "Here you go. Don't hang about."
The fist which Marshall had clenched on his behalf was opening to accept the gun when Marshall clutched at the wrist to delay it. "Wait a minute, Darren. I know it's only a game, but—"
"Summat up, lad?"
"You didn't really point it at yourself just then. Weren't you aiming past yourself?"
"You reckon, do you? You think you can see what's going on around you in the fucking state you're in?" Darren was blustering, and Marshall saw him realise it was obvious he was. He sneered, showing all his teeth, and opened his mouth wider. "All right then, watch this," he snarled, and stuck the barrel in his mouth.
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