No one on the new Gabbett housing estate knows anything of tales, rumours or legends. On the dust-blown estate there is no collective memory. But for the long-term residents the dragon is a source of civic pride these days, not every village had one after all. At the Village Association it had become their very own heritage item, their motif, and nobody thought to be fearful, not now in the twentieth century, what with two blokes hoofing about on the moon and a nuclear reactor just a few miles up the A40.
Sean paddles frantically towards the bank, his chin held high out of the water, destreamlining him, turning his eyes wild; green stuff slimes his hair. It is doubtful at this stage that he will ever manage to break free of the Earth's gravitational field to find himself orbiting around anything other than his own imagination. He scrabbles at the bank, strangled by tubing, tearing at pond rushes, while Ann closes her eyes against the sun. She knows it is best not to interfere with his preliminary training. She senses this would be detrimental in the long run; sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. She holds out her palms instead to the butterflies tumbling around the tall reeds. A small blue one lands on her thumb and she calls out to Sean to look and see. She sidles over, cupping her other hand over it. 'Look! Look! It likes me, see?' Sean has managed to get himself on to the bank, and is wet and dazed and wrapped in blue tube like an alien birth. He is on his back, gazing up at Ann through his slimed fringe. 'Ahh, look, Sean, look.' Sean stares up at the inverted vision of her bare legs and softly astonished face, at her curled hands, and the bright blue butterfly growing out of her thumb. 'Ahh, look. I love you, do you love me?' she asks the insect. 'It loves me, look.' And Sean looks and sees. But he loved her first, he loved her before the butterfly, he loves her more than any insect ever could; he loves her so much he cannot speak to tell her.
*
Glow-worms aren't worms at all. This is a demented lie. You can see them at Dancers End, by the railway embankment. They hang from bushes, bricks and ferns in long glittering chains, twinkling like Woolworths. The chains quiver when the air moves. The same wisp of air carries the call of the evensong bell from the church at Kingshill and the bark of the dog fox in Gomms Wood. It occurs to Sean that these are magic things, like stars and storms and meteorites.
Stars die all the time. People don't think of it. They look up and they see them twinkling in the night sky and they think because they can see them that they are there, but they are not, not always. Sean has learned this recently. His brother Ty read it out for thruppence. Ty's name is Craig, but everyone calls him Ty, which is short for Typhoid, which is a disease that can kill you. Their dad once said living with Craig was like living with typhoid. Sticks and stones.
Ty is twelve. He is built like a shed. He regularly lets off a jungle cry that, ordinarily, you would only ever hear Tarzan produce. He has sleepy eyes, as though he is permanently struggling to stay awake. He has a big head, like an ass, and a slack mouth. In spite of this he is considered to be gifted. He wins cereal-box competitions. For reading, Ty charges Sean sixpence per hundred words. It is likely that he cheats. He reads fast and you can hear snot around his tonsils. The words cannot stand it in his mouth; you can hear them sticking in his throat and hurrying to escape through his nose. The liar alphabet hadn't arrived in Cryers Hill when Ty was at the primary school; back in those days they did ABC the traditional way. Ty says when he was young they were beaten with straps and canes. Sean doesn't believe him. He's cribbed the stories from their dad's schooldays after the war. But Ty shows him a scar on his arm and narrows his genius eye at Sean. He says the ABC alphabet is much harder to learn, they have to beat it into you, he explains. Sean should think himself lucky, he says, that he's got it so easy. Sean thinks about this.
In Sean's Space book there is a picture of a dying star. It resembles a salt grain on its journey over someone's left shoulder. A book will find you out things that you didn't know were true. For instance, if a ship could carry men all the way to Neptune or Pluto, they'd be dead of old age before they got there, skeletons in their seats. Space just didn't know when to stop, so it didn't. The book says people could be living on the moon by the year 2000. It says folk will go there on their holidays. Sean stares at the drawing of the rosy-faced children with buckets and spades, waving cheerily as they board a lunar rocket. Pan Am, the rocket says along its side. There are stewardesses in tight blue jumpsuits with rocket-booster chests and pillbox hats, they are pointing people through the door and laughing, as if they know perfectly bloody well that space is too big and that the twinkling stars are dead and cold, and have been all along.
The saddest thought of all is that the North Star, trusty guide, loyal friend, could be dead, has maybe been dead all this time, but we just don't know it.
'That's your lot, Spazbrain!' Ty takes his sixpence. Sean is glad. Ty takes all the air, all the light. He knows what his brother spends the money on. He knows more than people think. He has the number you are supposed to ring if you have anything to say. He keeps it in his pocket.
The book says the light from a star will shine on long after that star is dead and gone. It is a trick. It is not the only trick in life. There are things that appear to be there when they are not. It is hard to spot the difference, even if, like Ty, you narrow your genius eye.
There is a hare on the surface of the moon. Miss Day says so. She says if you look properly, you can't miss it. Sean is not surprised to discover he isn't looking properly. As far as he's concerned there is no hare there at all. All he can see is the moon-man's face, with its frightened look of surprise. Lately, though, he has seen other things on the surface of the moon, alphabet letters that made no sense, words that wind around, continuing on the dark side, so you cannot read them anyway, even if you can read.
He thinks he can make out an S and a Z, and he chills at the thought of spaz being up there, hung with glitter, accusing him in front of the whole planet. He has seen a running animal, a bear perhaps. And he has seen the workman's sign, the one all over the estate, the little man with his shovel dug in. He can see its shadow shape, plain as day on the moon, as though they were up there too, the red naked builders, building more almost-houses with their diggers and trucks and sacks of cement.
The moon aside, it is Martian these days on the Gabbet estate. A red dust covers every surface, blown in numerous directions by an unaccountable wind. Bricks, lava red in colour, are stacked tall and tapering as pyramids, offering their summits to a deserted sky. You can make out the kids at the top, inches from the sun, and above them the wide blue dome that hides the comings and goings of an impartial God.
Sean runs. The diesel exhaust, woodsmoke, and the dust from brick, timber and cement all threaten to blot out the sun. Sean narrows his eyes against the dirt. If there is a streaker, murderer, Enoch or serpent about today he will know about it. He has his eye on the ball. He glances at the sky. Certainly he will not be surprised to spot God's finger poking through a cloud, same as in his picture prayer book – an enormous accusing finger pointing with deadly conviction directly down at the estate. He runs past the dazzle that comes off car windscreens and wing mirrors, bright and glary as spaceships, making you think of little green men and saucers that can fly. The Martians live here, the estate residents themselves. Ordinary aliens these, slapping in and out of their front doors, mechanical and in-coherent, cheery at times, glowing red from burns caused by the fireball sun; sleepwalking to and from their cars or nodding up the hill with an empty shopping bag. Then there is the noise. Nothing prepares you for it. When the machines drive into it, the sound comes up through the ground like rounds of shelling, of artillery fire, like mortar bombs landing, until the air shatters in your face and the ground explodes beneath your feet. Sean runs through the dust to the Wilderness.
'Enter.' It is Pilo who speaks. Sean doesn't know why he has a stupid name, or indeed if it is a name. Pilo is small like Sean and thin as a cat. His teeth are set with wide gaps where his words fizz and bubble. Sean tips his head back
to appear taller as he squeezes inside. Simon is talking, nobody is listening. He is explaining that murderers are often armed and hide in bushes. He tries to pace up and down but is jostled by other boys. He goes on to say that murderers are cunning and sometimes have special powers. He reckons he could catch a murderer quicker than a policeman because a murderer wouldn't suspect him, whereas he'd spot a policeman a mile away, in his helmet and all.
'Ip dip sky blue, who's it, not you.' Jaclyn Johnson is working her way methodically through everybody until she gets to the person who has done the crime.
In the grimy half-light it is hard to make out faces until your eyes adjust. Ann is lying at the back. She has leaves in her hair and a twig between her teeth; she ignores Sean. Jasper holds up a builder's dog-end, he says it is a clue. He asks everybody in turn whether they recognise it. Sean puts his hands on his hips. He spits on the ground a couple of times and swerves his eyes to see if Ann is watching him. The policeman who came to their school had removed his helmet, like a cowboy. He had stood in their classroom, making a silence with his dark uniform and heavy shoes. Sean places his feet the same wide way now for Ann to see. At school there is a number on the blackboard. You must telephone this number if you have anything to say. Or tell your teacher. Miss Day, I have something to say. Sean thinks he has something to say. But he has decided not to say it. The policeman said there was no reason to be frightened. Sean thinks this is probably a lie. The policeman said they would leave no stone unturned. Sean thinks this is the most beautiful thing he has ever heard.
'Coo-coo-ka-choo, Mrs Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know. Ho ho ho.' Sean wondered if these were the correct words. His dad had quite a good singing voice, Sean reckoned. No one else in the family seemed to notice. His mother closed her eyes as she laid each plate down around the dinner table. Sean wondered if she was praying, if it had come to this. They watched as she set her own plate down and sat down to join it without opening her eyes. Ty and Sean knew it was not their place to enquire, so they didn't.
'S'matter now?' enquired Gor, as gently as his natural impatience would allow him.
Cath opened her eyes and looked at them as though she'd expected to find herself somewhere else.
'I'm quite happy,' she replied. 'Can't you tell? I am ecstatically happy.'
Well, that was all right then. Except somehow it wasn't. It was the game: you had to guess the liar words.
'Let battle commence,' said Gor, picking up his knife and fork. Sean wondered if this was a just-add-water meal or whether his mother had done it the old-fashioned way. Ty began to eat, expressionless, like a panda. You could put a blob in the oven nowadays and it would come out as a roast dinner with all the trimmings. The television said women should go to work because they had nothing to do at home all day; modern appliances did it all for you.
'Headache?' Gor offered. Ty and Sean looked across at their mother. Cath closed her eyes again. Her eyelids were her most effective weapon. Against her eyelids Gor's words bounced off like toy arrows. Once the lids were down, nothing could penetrate. They would have to wait. She would come out when it suited her. Sean wondered what happened behind the lids. Did she switch off? Or, was it possible she had established contact with a superior intelligence? Some sort of extraterrestrial life form perhaps, some kind of outside influence. There were a lot of alien sightings these days, many of them in Buckinghamshire and nearby Oxfordshire. You could hardly stroll down the road for a paper without spotting a UFO or bumping into someone who had. Aliens were everywhere, TV, newspapers, cereal packets, people's brains. It was only a matter of time before they would be competing in the Olympics and starring in Z Cars.
Sean kept an eye on his mother's eyelids in case, for example, a coloured light flashed. He listened too, for beeps or buzzes that might indicate she was in radio contact. When she finally opened her eyes, he would avoid her again, just in case. Aliens could control you through eye contact, through thought control, and it was best to play safe, even with members of your own family, sometimes especially.
'Three wheels on my wagon, but I'm still rolling along.' Sean reckoned his dad was just as good at singing as Tom Jones. Women liked men who sang, his dad said. Gor was an expert on women. It was his specialist subject, along with natural history and the evolution of humankind. Sean knew this to be a fact, and he felt cringingly proud about it. When he was next to his father in the passenger seat of the car, for instance, it would come up. The fairer sex, that's what his dad called them, though there didn't appear to be anything fair about it. There were two main types of woman, his dad explained: decent girls, birds and tarts. OK, three. Only not to tell his mother he said that. Then there were the women's libbers, who burned their bras. Gor didn't know why. Men and women, Gor expanded, were little different to how they were in prehistoric times, which was why these days women got their knickers in a twist about things. What they didn't understand, he explained, was that they were designed for child-rearing and sewing animal skins. Nowadays, he said, they all wanted jobs and driving licences and equal pay. Next thing you knew they would be sticking their noses into politics and the armed forces. It was a slippery slope. Married women were now demanding credit cards. Imagine the debt we'll be in, he gasped. Sean tried to imagine.
There was a whole language that went with women. There were women who would give you the brush-off and the cold shoulder; there were others who would give you the come-on and the once-over. Women were birds and chicks and tarts. Older ones were hags, bats and biddies. If you were a bloke you had to chat up birds or else you wouldn't get one. It was important to have good lines or else you'd never pick up a looker. You had to chat them up properly, they expected it, you couldn't just slide up and go Wur. Women were comparable to other things – cars and horses mainly. They had mileage and chassis and bodywork and go.
'If I, as a male, approach a woman, she will be curious but intimidated,' Gor mused. Sean had seen his dad reading The Naked Ape. Sean had been shocked to see that it featured men and women without a stitch of clothing on the front cover and all across the back too.
'The male, Sean, is superior, the female submissive.' Gor shook his head in amazement at some of the complex things he came up with.
Sean stared straight ahead at a speck on the windscreen and wondered if it was a dead ant. He was glad, in a way, that his dad knew so much.
'A rich, varied, mysterious world, son. A rich and mysterious world.'
'Watch the ball.' This is maybe good advice for life in general, or perhaps it is not. Sean watches the ball anyway. He will not look away now, not even if there is a nuclear attack or a streaker. He does not even blink. Gor throws the ball. The ball leaves Gor's hand and arcs upward.
'Watch it.'
Sean watches it. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the sky and the yellow cranes and the orange-red brick towers, but mostly he sees the ball, turning in space, spinning towards him. Why do curved objects spin in space? Perhaps it is not a question for a spaz. The ball has already begun its descent. This is a crucial time. Sean is watching it and watching it. Who exactly is the naked ape? He must not take his eye off it. He will not take his eye off it – though his eye wants very much to look somewhere, anywhere else. How can an ape be naked?
'Move your feet!' A new instruction. He does not want to move his feet; if he does he will take his eye off the ball. The ball is coming. It rushes up to meet him, parting the air. The ball is here. Sean closes his eyes. Too late he realises some facts: he cannot see anything; the ball has arrived; he has taken his eye off it. He hears the ball thwack as it lands behind him. It ricochets, gedang, off the metal garage door before it spins away, travelling across five or six not-yet gardens and beyond, into the dust and debris of advancing progress.
You didn't watch the ball, you blockhead! You're a twit, Sean. What are you?'
Gor liked the heroes on TV. He empathised with them, their jump-cut black-and-white lives, the pressure, the temptations, the problems th
ey had to solve within a thirty-minute episode; never a word of thanks from anybody either; all that effort, nil appreciation. He understood this. He watched them all, Danger Man, The Saint, Adam Adamant Lives! His muscles twitched as they sprinted and sprang and cornered villains; as they detained for questioning the haughty girls in zip-up boots – the ones with lustrous mink-coloured fringes and snappy answers – the ones he would never get to meet, though in his mind he had put them over his knee and spanked them all.
'Two wheels on my wagon, but I'm still rolling along, Those Cherokees are after me, but I'm singing a happy song.' You heard Gor before you saw him. The songs were always the same; a consolation to a blameless victim. 'Raindrops keep falling on me head – they keep falling.' He felt himself Butch and Sundance both; he knew how they felt. He wished the girl with the long dark hair and the lace dress would ride towards him on her bicycle. He'd kiss her like Paul Newman did. He could have been a bank robber. He could have been a movie star. He could have had it all.
Sometimes on a Saturday night Gor would throw a little party at the house. 'What'll it be?' he'd ask himself as he approached the drinks cabinet with the glass-lined door panels that opened to form a cheery bar, complete with internal lighting. The drinks had beautiful names: whisky sour, Scotch and ginger, White Lady. Inside the cabinet were napkins and coasters and bar snacks. Gor would arrange a selection for himself, and fold into a triangle a fresh paper napkin. He would toss peanuts into the air and catch them in his mouth. He would toss them higher and higher, challenging himself, until they bounced off the ceiling and hit him in the eye. Gor mixed drinks that were the colour of jewels; ruby or emerald, topaz or amber concoctions that glowed and chimed with ice. Martini-Bianco-on-the-rocks. Sean thought these were beautiful words. He'd seen them on television, the Martini people, parking their boat and running on the beach. He and his father stared at the suntanned girls as they threw back their hair and knocked back their drinks. 'Whoa! Steady on, love!' Gor commented. 'Holy cow.'
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