By Any Other Name

by Jarratt, Laura

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Nineteen. He joined up straight from school.’ Joe’s holding his knuckles so tightly they’ve gone white and I’m starting to get a bad feeling. ‘You know I said I’d had a bad day when I first saw you? Well, we’d just got bad news that morning – Matt got injured in a roadside bomb in Helmand last year and –’

  I gasp and my hand flies to my mouth.

  ‘He was critical for days and he lost both his legs, one above the knee and one below. They flew him home but he’s still in hospital in Birmingham. He was supposed to be coming home for the first time that day I saw you, but the hospital called to say he wasn’t well enough. I was gutted.’

  ‘Oh my God, Joe, I am so sorry . . .’

  What do I say? What can you say? He’s not crying, but he looks like he’s screaming inside and I know how that feels. When you can’t let it out, because if you did it would never stop.

  He shakes his head. ‘You didn’t know.’

  ‘He’s going to be OK though . . . oh God, no, stupid, stupid thing to say . . . I mean, he’s going to . . .’

  ‘Live? Yeah, though he picked up a secondary infection so it was hairy for a while, but yeah, he’s going to make it.’

  But without his legs. Nineteen, and the rest of his life . . .

  ‘What happens now? How long will he be in hospital?’

  ‘He’s doing well. He always was stubborn. We’re hoping they’ll let him out for a visit soon. But then he has to move on to the rehab place before he can come home for good.’

  ‘So he’s . . . in a wheelchair . . .?’ I say it hesitantly because how do you ask that?

  ‘At the moment, but they’re building him up so they can give him prosthetic legs and he’ll be able to walk on those after they’ve finished with him. Then he can come home for good.’ He closes his eyes for a minute and I think he’s crying, but when he opens them again, he’s not. He’s still holding it inside. ‘Don’t know what he’s going to do when he gets here though.’

  No. Of course. Coming home and unable to do things around the farm. I can see how that could be awful. I get up and walk round the table – I’m really not sure Joe will want this but it has to be done.

  I bend down and hug him.

  He’s stiff with shock at first, then he relaxes into my shoulder and I hold him for a moment. Then I let go.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says dully.

  ‘Do people know?’

  ‘Not yet, only family. Mum and Dad don’t want people going on at them about him all the time.’

  Only family. So why did he tell me?

  Maybe he needs someone too. How would I feel if it was Katie? That’s what I keep thinking as I walk home. If someone hurt Katie that badly. If Katie had to live her life with limbs missing.

  I judged Joe for being miserable and antisocial. When his most important person had had his life ripped apart.

  You think you know people and then you find you don’t know them at all.

  He said they go to the hospital at least once a week. Apparently Matt’s in some military wing. Joe wants to go more often but the farm gets in the way.

  Always the stupid farm.

  As I walk through our front door, I understand something. Matt was supposed to come back after the army, to work on the farm. Joe would have been free to go then. He could have gone to uni. He can’t now.

  I think over what he said about it and I know that has to be a blow. I wonder if he’s ever blamed Matt for it – even if only in the privacy of his own head? I know how thoughts like that can eat you up. They can make you hate yourself.

  I know that, don’t I, Katya?

  I’m still reeling from his news when I open up my laptop and see there’s a message from Tasha. I can’t be bothered with it right now. Instead I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling, wondering what Joe’s doing right at this moment. Hoping he’s OK.

  I felt something when I hugged him. I don’t know exactly what it was. Weird.

  I try to find a word for the feeling. All I can come up with is ‘right’.

  The scent of the pine needles was crisp and sharp through the darkness. My bones were cold, my muscles frozen into immobility. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. But I could feel the memory of the man leaning on me from minutes earlier, crushing my body into the car seat.

  Wet soil underneath me, and the Christmas tree aroma all around.

  I lay motionless on the ground.

  I still couldn’t seem to breathe right; as if he was still leaning on my ribs, all the air squashed out of me. My heart should be pounding in fear but it wasn’t. It beat steadily in icy temper.

  They would not win.

  No matter how impossible it seemed to overcome them, to get away, they would not win.

  My life would not pour out here, accompanied by the smell of Christmas and the sound of harsh voices. It would not end this way. I would not let it. I psyched myself up to run again.

  I wake sweating and I realise I’m in bed. Then I throw off the covers to cool myself down and force myself to relax. I’m almost used to it now. The dreams come all the time. Even during the day, if I close my eyes for a few minutes. Will they stop after the trial? I don’t know. Maybe they’ll never stop.

  Maybe I’ll be eighty-three and still dreaming of the night three men tried to put a bullet in my brain.

  Will I still dream of Katya lying pale and unmoving on the summer grass?

  I wish there was a pill I could take to stop the dreams. To make the bad stuff go away. But Mum won’t let me take sleeping pills. She says all they’ll do is knock me out so deep I won’t know if I’ve dreamed. Right now, in bed, clammy with sweat and sick with fear, being knocked out deep sounds pretty good.

  As the bell goes at school the next day, I can’t believe it’s already the end of the spring term. The geography teacher is giving out packets of past papers for us to practise over the holidays. I’ve got six similar packets for other subjects in my bag and a couple already on the tiny desk in my bedroom at home.

  Home.

  To use that word for the house we live in still feels strange and wrong.

  Joe’s waiting for me by the gate, looking even more down than the rest of us. I’m still pleased to see him. Stupidly I always feel safer walking home with him. Very stupid – as if he could do anything against Them.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Matt. He just texted me. I was hoping they’d let him out over Easter but it might only be for a day. He might get to stay with us overnight, but even that’s not certain at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, that sucks then. Sorry.’ I think about giving him a quick hug, but as I go to put my arms round him I see Fraser watching sidelong. He’s seen me notice him. I don’t want him thinking I hugged Joe to try to make him jealous so I draw back. ‘But they might change their minds again.’

  ‘Yeah, and a day’s better than nothing.’ We start the walk home. ‘You should come round and meet him.’

  ‘Oh, you think? Won’t I be in the way? I mean, of family and stuff.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Mum’s changed her mind about not telling people now he’s due to come home. She wants a party for him. She says if it’s all quiet and normal day-to-day things, he’ll be noticing that we’re off doing farm work and he can’t do that now. If there’s loads going on and it’s all focused on him, he won’t get the chance to. Dad doesn’t agree with her – he says Matt’s got to get used to how things are. Mum said yes, but it’s too soon and to give him time, not the first day he comes home.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think he’ll feel shit whatever we do. It’s not like you can avoid noticing missing legs. She’s right about needing stuff to distract him, but I’m worried if there’s loads of people there that they’ll look at him funny or say things about him being injured and make him focus on it that way. So maybe Dad is right.’

  ‘Why did you ask me around then?’

  ‘Because you know ho
w not to stare and say stupid things.’ He bites his lip a little as he says that, as if he’s unsure whether I’ll be annoyed. Or maybe even upset.

  I’m not. I know exactly what he means, and I’m not. ‘People who do that can make you really mad, you know. Are you prepared for that?’

  He sighs. ‘It’ll be harder outside the village, I suppose. Here it’ll just be annoying amounts of people wanting to be sympathetic. Or if Matt’s really unlucky, and they’re really stupid, pitying him, because he’ll hate that.’

  I grab his arm and hug it briefly. It’s thin but surprisingly hard and muscled in a wiry kind of way. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’ll cope better with it than I do when people treat Katie like that.’

  He looks at me and I can see the shadows of worry in his dark, dark eyes. ‘No, I won’t. If it was me they were being stupid about then yeah, maybe. But not when it’s Matt.’

  Whoever invented the concept of exams should have medieval torture techniques practised on them for the rest of eternity.

  I google medieval torture techniques to choose one, and then change my mind.

  ‘Oh my God, that is so sick!’

  Joe looks up from frowning at his maths textbook. ‘What is?’

  ‘I just googled medieval torture. I can’t believe people did that stuff to each other. What is wrong with humanity? Why? Just why?’

  It reminds me of what they did to Katya. No reason for it but to make another human being suffer. Sick and evil.

  He grabs the laptop from me. ‘Urgh! OK, that’s just wrong in the wrongest way possible. Hit close!’

  I don’t have his concentration span for revision today. It’s exactly fifteen weeks to the beginning of the trial and that fact keeps going round and round in my head. I catch my heart starting to beat faster without my permission, and adrenalin surging through me in response, and the panic trying to build already. And I can’t let it. I have to hold it together.

  Today is no different to yesterday or tomorrow, I tell myself. It’s just a date. It doesn’t mean anything and flapping about it now isn’t going to help.

  Joe watches me steadily. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Noth–’

  ‘And don’t say nothing.’

  I laugh despite the little panic flutters in my stomach. ‘OK, something then, but I’m not allowed to say what.’

  He comes and flops next to me, leaning on one elbow. ‘You’re worried.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But not about the exams.’

  ‘No. Well, yes, but no.’

  He chuckles. ‘Very articulate, but I get you. Is it something you should be worried about? As in really worried because it’s something bad.’

  I nod slowly. ‘It’s . . . pretty frightening.’

  ‘Is it something you can get out of ?’

  I think of Katya the last time I saw her. ‘No.’

  He looks at me for a moment longer and then pulls me into an unexpected hug. ‘I wish you could tell me because I can’t help otherwise.’

  I’m startled into immobility. I don’t hug him back, I just let him keep hugging me for a second longer. And another second.

  He smells good. Not of overpowering deodorant or aftershave like some boys, but a natural skin smell that’s spicy and has a kick like ginger. I breathe him in like a natural high.

  But then I pull away because that’s too, too weird. I’m sniffing Joe. That’s so not right.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say and he’s looking at me as if he’s puzzled too. I wonder for a moment if he was breathing me in too, but that’s even freakier so I smile vaguely and pick up my book again.

  I feel him watch me for a little while longer, then he scoots off on to the floor to get on with his work.

  I manage to hold my concentration just long enough for him to get lost in what he’s working on again, then I can’t keep my mind from drifting back to Katya. I keep seeing her face that last time, as she lay there, so pale and still, so many tubes . . .

  She was so gentle. But you can be as good as you like in this world – it doesn’t stop the bad things happening to you. They come for you anyway.

  After Katie pointed out the white car passing the cottage, I looked for it whenever I passed a window or we were playing around outside. But for the next few days there was no sign of it and I thought it must be someone who’d been renting a nearby cottage and had gone home again.

  I called for Katya to go swimming one morning and we picked our way down the cliff path to the cove together. ‘Where’s my little namesake?’ she said.

  ‘In bed, still asleep. She had a difficult night. It happens sometimes.’

  ‘Is that part of her condition?’ Katya asked hesitantly. ‘Your mother told us that she has a medical problem . . . I am sorry, I cannot remember the name.’

  ‘Autism, and yes, it is. Or it seems to be. Some of her friends with autism have sleep problems too.’

  Katya touched my arm. ‘It sounds very confusing for her. And she is such a sweet child.’

  We arrived on the beach and began pulling off hoodies and jeans. ‘She is. She’s a poppet, but it must be horrible for her. Sometimes I wish I knew what it felt like to be inside her head, and then other times I’m so glad I don’t.’

  Katya nodded. I didn’t know what it was about her, but she oozed this air of quiet, calm compassion.

  We slipped into the sea, gasping at the cold at first, though that was me more than her. She pointed to a rock ahead and looked at me questioningly. I nodded and we swam out together towards it. Not a race, just a focus for some exercise. As we swam I wondered if Katya was popular at school. Her quiet manner could mean she was overlooked. Or dismissed as boring.

  I thought of her painting. No, there was nothing boring about Katya. The surface waters might be still but currents ran beneath.

  She touched the rock before I did, swimming with grace and ease, and she waited for me to catch up so we could swim back together. There was no splashing each other and playing in the water when we reached the shore again. I couldn’t imagine Katya doing anything like that. Instead we floated for a while and then I suggested swimming out parallel to the shore to a cave just out of sight around the bay. The sea was quiet today so there should be no danger from the rocks.

  We set out and again she reached the cave before me. I had to shout to her or she would have passed it because it was hidden from view by a rocky outcrop. When the tide was out, you could walk around to the cave on a narrow strip of sand that edged round the bay and out to the outer coastline, but as the tide was in we swam straight into the cave itself and hauled ourselves out of the water to sit on a large flat rock.

  ‘This is like being a mermaid,’ Katya said, gazing around, entranced. ‘So beautiful.’ She turned the smile on me. ‘Thank you so much, Lou, for showing me this place.’

  I smiled back. ‘Mum showed me it when I was Katie’s age. She used to come here on holiday when she was small. It was her parents’ cottage. Dad bought it from them as an anniversary present for her one year.’

  ‘That is an amazing present! I hope I’ll be lucky and find a husband thoughtful enough to buy me a present like that.’

  I noticed she didn’t say rich enough. Her dad was probably rich enough to buy the whole of Treliske on a whim.

  ‘Do you think your dad will manage to get down here or is he still tied up at work?’

  Her face clouded and I wished I hadn’t asked. ‘No, I think he is still very busy.’

  Well, that killed the conversation. I didn’t know what to say to her and we stared at the sea for what seemed like ages before she spoke again.

  ‘Papa is often very busy. He has business interests all over the world.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t really understand it. He does not talk about his work much except that it is very stressful and sometimes difficult.’ She shook her head and changed the subject. ‘You live in Muswell Hill, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought it might be nice if we kept
in touch once we go home?’ She played with the strap on her swimming costume as she spoke, flicking it nervously against her shoulder.

  I smiled as wide as I could. ‘I’d like that. You’re right – it would be very nice.’

  I was rewarded by a relieved smile in return. ‘Oh, I am so pleased you think so too!’

  There was another awkward silence when we just smiled at each other, probably looking quite foolish. But at that moment I guess we bonded.

  I realised I envied Katya her calm composure, that inner stillness she carried with her, even when she seemed worried. I wasn’t quite sure how to describe that envy . . . except . . . I looked up to her, I supposed.

  I recognise Joe’s knock now, so when it sounds at half four in the afternoon, I go to open the front door totally puzzled. ‘Why aren’t you milking?’

  It’s the first Tuesday afternoon of the Easter break. He’s excused farm work for most of the day to revise, but he still has to be there for milking. In fact he only left here a couple of hours ago, after revising all morning and staying for a toasted sandwich for lunch.

  ‘I got another text from Matt.’ He’s grinning from ear to ear. ‘They’re letting him come home for the whole of the Easter weekend.’

  ‘That’s brilliant!’ I hug him briefly and there’s that strange buzz of excitement again as I do.

  ‘We can collect him on Thursday afternoon and he doesn’t have to be back until Tuesday morning – he’s off to rehab then. Oh, but I can’t come round tonight because I’ve got to help Dad move Matt’s bed downstairs into the dining room after milking.’ Joe can’t stop grinning. He looks so happy he could lift off into orbit. ‘I had to come and tell someone to make it feel real. Gotta go now.’

  He jogs off to the corner, then he stops and waves, before running back to the farm.

  I go back inside laughing. I’m so happy for him that his brother’s coming home. I couldn’t not be happy seeing his face all lit up like that. I’ve never seen him look so . . . joyous.