The Amazing Mind of Alice Makin

by Shea, Alan

  From The Chicken House

  I’ve always loved those old films where children run wild in the city all day, making friends and lives of their own in secret places. In this story the secret places are inside the kids’ heads, and the things that happen there are more strange than anything that happens on the streets of their home in old war-torn London. Stand by to be puzzled and amazed!

  Alan Shea beautifully fuses the real and the imagined like no one else – perhaps you’ll think more carefully about what you wish for in future…!

  Barry Cunningham

  Publisher

  Contents

  1. Beginnings

  2. Me and Reggie

  3. Stepdad or demon?

  4. Up the stairs

  5. Norman’s knitted underwear

  6. Bonfires, bother and . . .

  7. . . . bad feelings

  8. Fireworks

  9. Missing evidence

  10. Lolly sticks and the law of averages

  11. Picksmeup and dropsy

  12. Getting wet

  13. Challenges

  14. Truth and lies

  15. Shakespeare, scientists and Geronimo

  16. Nursery rhymes and breaking ice

  17. Nan

  18. Finding out

  19. If ifs and ands were pots and pans

  20. Flash

  21. Flowers

  22. Talking

  23. A fair time

  24. Birthdays of a different kind

  25. Passwords and parcels

  26. Facing fears

  27. Girl on a biscuit tin lid

  28. Awake

  29. The letter

  30. There comes a time

  31. Acting out of character

  32. The last bow

  Copyright

  For Margaret, who’ll always be my Alice.

  For my mum and dad.

  For John and Patrick, my sons and best friends.

  For Cerys, Alice Theresa and Steve.

  For Barry, Imogen and Anna.

  1

  Beginnings

  I see it like I’m a camera: distant, apart. I’m in class. It’s break. I look down on to the playground. Focus on Reggie, the new boy. He doesn’t fit in. He’s different somehow, and the others know it. I feel sorry for him.

  He’s watching wasps that have nested in a wall. They come and go, in and out of the tiny hole, in an endless rhythm. A procession of life. He watches them. I watch him. Zoom in . . . snap.

  The playground backs on to a canal. Its surface shimmers. The sun burnishes the water gold. The glare blinds my eyes. September sings a song only it knows; summer’s swansong. Soon be over. Days grow shorter, nights grow longer.

  I’m twelve. It’s my first year at senior school. Miss Druce, our teacher, is leaving, going to look after her dad. Don’t think of teachers as having dads. I help her take her life out of the cupboards and pack it into boxes. Dismantle her years here. Take things off walls that look as if they’ve been there for ever.

  Soon the room is bare, a tattered tree in autumn. Miss Druce doesn’t say much, but every now and then she stops and lingers too long over some old photo. Wipes her eyes on the hanky she keeps up her sleeve.

  Outside, Reggie’s still watching. The wasps are his world. A moment in time: frozen. He’s wrapped up, oblivious to everything else. I’m not. The Spicer twins have seen him. They walk towards him. Not directly – slow and sly. Winding like snakes. I push open the window and Denis’s voice drifts up.

  ‘Cor, look who’s here, it’s s-s-stuttering Stanley.’ He twists his lips. A dark smile.

  Gary Spicer laughs. Worms his hands deep into his pockets, ‘Or is it r-r-r-rattling Reggie?’

  Denis moves closer. ‘Read any g-g-g-good b-b-b-books lately, R-Reggie?’

  He exaggerates the stutter, machine-guns the words. They both laugh.

  ‘Or had any good bloody noses?’ Gary shoves his fist under Reggie’s nose. ‘What you lookin’ at there?’

  Reggie stands in front of the wall, tries to shield the nest. Too late.

  ‘Ah, look. It’s a lovely little wasps’ nest.’

  Denis Spicer takes out an elastic band from his pocket, loops it over his index finger and thumb and pulls back the elastic. He aims at a wasp, lets go. ‘Oops. Me hand slipped.’

  The elastic band dissects the wasp. It oozes life. Crawls crippled. Gary Spicer takes chewing gum from his mouth and sticks it over the hole – locking the door on the nest. Other wasps return; they maze, confused. Exposed. Denis snaps the band wickedly, snapping bodies. Reggie looks down on the floor at the dead wasps and tries to understand. He can’t. He turns to walk away.

  Gary blocks him. ‘Where d’you think you’re goin’, Titch?’

  Reggie’s answer sticks in his throat. Judders to his lips. Spurts out. ‘N-n-n-nowhere.’

  ‘Yeah, good place for you, mate.’

  Laughing, they grab him. Pick him up like he’s a baby. He doesn’t struggle, just lies still. The high wire fence that keeps us from the canal is broken in the corner. It comes away easily. They carry him towards the hole.

  I say to myself, ‘Don’t let them push you around, Reggie. Stand up for yourself.’

  Gary has him around the neck, hitting him on top of the head with the palm of his hand as if he’s not worth hitting properly. They pull back the fence and make a bigger hole. Reggie’s glasses fall off. Denis treads on them. Crunches the glass.

  I clench my teeth. Grit out the words, ‘Hit him, Reggie. Give him something to remember you by.’

  ‘What did you say, Alice?’

  ‘Nothing, Miss.’

  I know he won’t fight. My words die in the dusty classroom. Laughing, they push him through the hole. Pull the wire back. Shut him out. Close the door.

  Reggie gets up. Brushes the dirt off. Looks back through the wire. He says something. Denis doesn’t like it. His face changes, the smile is wiped off. He pulls open the wire again, and starts to climb through. Reggie sees him coming: freezes.

  I can almost hear his brain working. This is a problem. Behind him is a deep, dirty canal; in front of him, Denis. To his right there’s a long towpath that leads to the bridge. I’m not sure if he knows it, but if he takes the towpath he can get to the bridge, then up the steps to the main road.

  I screw up my mind. Concentrate. Try to send him the message. Go right, Reggie. Go right. Luckily, that’s the way he goes. I decide to try and help him.

  I walk quickly past Miss Druce. She looks up.

  ‘Where are you off to, Alice?’

  ‘Nowhere, Miss. Won’t be long.’

  ‘Don’t be. The bell’s going soon.’

  As I get to the door she goes to the window to see what I’ve been looking at. I go quickly down the stairs and out of the main gate, head up Copenhagen Place and turn left into Salmon Lane, going towards Commercial Road. This will lead me straight to the bridge. I run as fast as I can. The streets are fairly quiet, so no one gets in my way. By the time I get to the bridge, my heart is pounding. I stand there catching my breath. I’ve got a stitch in my side.

  I can see Reggie in the distance running down the tow-path towards me. He’s managed to keep ahead of Denis, but only just. Every now and then Reggie looks back. Denis is gaining on him.

  I take a deep breath and start to go down the steps that lead off the side of the bridge and down to the towpath. I take them two at a time, wondering as I go if I’m really doing the right thing here. Maybe I should let him fight his own battles. After all, I’ve not known him that long. Anyway, what’s the worst Denis can do? Thoughts dance through my mind in time to my feet as I fly down the steps. If this was the Olympics and there was such
a thing as step dancing, I’d have just won a gold medal!

  I reach the bottom. Stand with my hands on my hips, my head down, panting, trying to suck in air. My heart has turned into a sledgehammer trying to knock its way out of my chest.

  They’re a few hundred yards away; they haven’t seen me. Reggie’s concentrating on not getting caught, Denis on catching him. The canal towpath used to be concrete but it’s been neglected. Now it’s a ragged mess of stones and mud. Reggie’s foot goes into a pothole. He stumbles but doesn’t fall. Denis shouts something, just as a lorry thunders by on the bridge. I don’t hear what he says. Reggie’s legs are pumping, but he’s slowing down. It’s like he’s gone into slow motion. His brain’s saying, ‘Run’, but legs don’t have ears.

  Denis is almost on him now. I start to go towards them. I once had a fight with Denis – he won, but I gave him a bloody nose. I’m not scared of him and he knows it. Mind you, he’s tough as old boots. The trouble is, so is his brain. He’s getting closer. Reggie seems to put on a spurt, pulls away a bit. Denis shouts again, and this time I hear him.

  ‘You’re gonna go in that canal when I catch you, you little freak!’

  Reggie stumbles. His legs wobble. They’re stuttering, just like his words. Caught up in themselves. He falls. Denis is almost on him. I bite my lip. I’m never going to reach him before Denis. He’ll make mincemeat out of Reggie.

  Why is it the good people always get it? Wouldn’t it be great if, just for once, things evened up a bit in life? Like it was the Spicers who were being chased for a change. A cross between a dragon and your worst nightmare snapping at Denis, growling, baring its teeth.

  Then this strange thing happens. Denis stops. He’s just standing there. He’s not even looking at Reggie, he’s looking at something else. He’s staring up at the sky behind me. His mouth is open, his eyes wide. He looks scared: his face ghost-white. Reggie is still on the ground. He sits up. Looks across to where Denis is looking, then his eyes slowly go to me.

  Denis begins to back away, almost stumbles. Then he turns and runs, heading back towards school like the devil’s after him. Must be the first time Denis Spicer has ever run to school in his life.

  Reggie gets up, and rubs at some blood on his elbow. Then he looks at me again with a strange expression. Makes me shiver.

  2

  Me and Reggie

  Monday. November. Bright and cold as a packet of pins. I walk home from school, whistling. A weak winter sun leaks into the sky. Charcoal clouds smudge out the blue, rubbing out colour as if the sky is a drawing gone wrong. The air is smoky; tastes of bonfires. Mist on a stick. Have a lick of autumn.

  I live in this block of houses, three storeys high. Bit like flats. Some people call them tenements. Mum calls them slums. We live on the ground floor. I go in, walk down the passageway. The passage is open to the street and the only way in and out for everyone who lives there. ‘Like Piccadilly Circus that passage,’ my mum says, ‘never know who you’re going to meet.’ The floor is stone, the walls flake paint. It’s always cold.

  I call out as I go past the one bedroom where we all sleep and walk towards the one room we all live in, ‘Mum? Where are you?’

  She calls back, ‘I’m in here.’

  The voice comes from the bedroom. I stop, go back and in. In the room are two beds separated by an old curtain. Mum and Bert sleep in the one near the door. I sleep in the one over by the window. Mum’s sitting on her bed mending a hole in the sheet.

  ‘Anything to eat, Mum?’

  ‘“Hello” would be nice.’

  ‘Sorry.’ I say it slowly. ‘H.e.l.l.o. Mum. Anything to eat?’

  ‘Don’t be a clever-clogs. For that, you can wait.’

  I watch her sewing.

  ‘How was school?’

  ‘All right. I got into a bit of trouble with Miss Lacey.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Talking. She said I must have given Sheila Morgan an earache.’

  Mum smiles. I sit on the bed.

  ‘I got a prize from Sister Bernadette for my story.’

  ‘Another one?’

  She says it a bit like I’ve told her I’ve got toothache.

  I go to a Catholic school. It’s called Our Lad’s. Well, it’s not really called Our Lad’s. It’s Our Lady’s. It’s just that the ‘y’ went missing off the sign on the school gates – the Spicers probably nicked it to use as a catapult.

  The school is run by nuns called the Sisters of Charity. The Sisters wear hats. They’re stiff as a board and they sweep up on either side of their heads into wings. Flying nuns – now that would be something to see!

  I write stories. I’m not a swot, I just like doing it. Making things up. Making people up. Once, Sister Bernadette, she teaches English, found one of my stories inside my English book. Said she liked it. I got embarrassed. Sometimes she looks to see if there are any more. Occasionally I slip one in. Nice to be told you’re good at something. Doesn’t happen that often.

  ‘So, what did you write about?’

  ‘Dunno. I can’t remember.’ I can, but I can’t be bothered to go into it. I want something to eat. I fish in my pocket. ‘She gave me this.’

  It’s a little white plastic statue of the Virgin Mary. On the way home from school I put it under my jumper, and it glowed. ‘It glows in the dark.’

  Mum looks up from her sewing. ‘That’ll be all right when we run out of shillings for the electric meter then, won’t it?’

  She’s trying to be funny. When my mum is trying to be funny, she has this little smile on her face like she’s laughing at her own joke which only she understands. She looks up. Looks at the statue.

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘I think I need glasses. When I’m concentrating hard on something I get this funny dizzy feeling in my head.’

  She pulls a face. Re-threads the needle.

  ‘You probably need to go to the lav.’

  ‘Mum. It’s in my head.’

  ‘’Spect it’s your age then, love. You’ll grow out of it.’

  I once heard Mrs Gilbey tell Mum she had a pain in her back and a bad shoulder and Mum said, ‘’Spect it’s your age, love.’ At least she didn’t say, ‘You’ll grow out of it’. Just as well, as Mrs Gilbey is seventy.

  ‘And how’s Reggie been?’

  She asks the question casually. Like she doesn’t really care. One eye on me, one on the sewing.

  I’ve seen quite a bit of Reggie since the start of term. Trouble is, Bert doesn’t like him: says he’s a ‘bad lot’. I said, ‘A bad lot of what?’ He clouted me for being cheeky. It was worth it though.

  Mum knows I like Reggie, so she gets caught up in the middle. She said the other day that she felt she was the rope in a tug of war, with me pulling at one end and Bert at the other.

  ‘Alice, stop daydreaming. I asked you how Reggie is.’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Don’t say “dunno”; it’s common. Anyway, what d’you mean you don’t know? You spend enough time with him.’

  ‘You can’t tell with Reggie. He don’t say a lot.’

  Reggie lives in the flat upstairs. There’s him, his granddad and Flash. Flash is his dog.

  Reggie doesn’t go to school much. Even when he’s there he just sits looking out of the window most of the time. Miss Druce liked him. You could tell. She used to keep an eye out for him. Sat on a cushion to see over her desk. Sweet as sugar and sharp as an acid drop. Strict but fair. Worried at us like a sheepdog worrying sheep, nipping at us with a glance or a word. The Spicers didn’t mess with her. She wasn’t very big, but her stare was. She had this way of making her voice just loud enough, her stare just hard enough.

  ‘Denis Spicer, I saw that.’

  ‘But, Miss . . .’

  She full-stopped the Spicers. ‘Leave. Reggie. Alone.’ End of sentence. End of story. Miss Druce was water, putting out their fire. She didn’t shout or anything. Just ssssssssh
hh on the flame. The Spicer twins extinguished.

  She understood Reggie straight away. Most people don’t. She only taught us for six weeks, but I’m sure she knew us all.

  It all changed after she left. Miss Lacey is nice too, but different. She’s young, soft skin, white blouse, bright smile, expectation in her eyes, uncertainty in her voice. She doesn’t seem to see things: the crafty elbow in the ribs, the kicks under the desk, name-calling, embarrassment, hurt feelings.

  The Spicers don’t like new boys, they do their best to make Reggie’s life a misery. Nothing very dramatic, they never were original. They take the mickey, hide his things, write rude words on his books, that kind of stuff. They pick on him because he won’t fight back.

  Although I’m friends with Reggie, they leave me alone. I’ve got a bit of a temper – goes with my red hair. Mum says I chose to be his friend so that I could protect him. ‘That’s the way you are, darlin’, God help you,’ she said.

  I love my mum, but sometimes she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I liked Reggie from the start. He doesn’t try to be something he’s not. He’s just himself and you either take him or leave him. That’s the way he is. Trouble is, there are a lot of people out there who won’t let you do that. Reggie just likes being outside and making things. He’s brilliant at that, he can make anything. Except a friend.

  Mum bites off the thread. ‘They’re a strange lot.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  I can see her looking at me. She doesn’t really know. But that’s part of the thing with Reggie, you know what you feel but you don’t know why.

  ‘Well, for a start his granddad’s not his real granddad, you know. He’s just looking after him. Even the dog’s a bit scatty. And . . . well . . . there’s just something about that boy I can’t put my finger on.’

  Her eyes rest on my shoes. ‘You been scuffing the toes of your shoes again?’

  ‘No, I fell over.’

  ‘I’ll give you fell over.’

  I wonder what ‘I’ll give you fell over’ is supposed to mean but I don’t say anything.

  ‘You won’t get any new ones until Christmas, you know.’