David began to scream. The fingers grew more persistent, pulling at his hands with a strength he couldn’t resist.
“David! What’s the matter with you!”
The big light was on. Dad’s face hovered above him. Mum stood at the bottom of the bed, her thin white hands tying and untying in knots.
“. . .” He was lost for words, shaking with embarrassment and relief.
Mum and Dad stayed with him for a few minutes, their faces drawn and puzzled. Simon never pulled this sort of trick. Mum’s hands knotted. Dad’s made fists. Victoria’s white face peered around the door when they weren’t looking, then vanished again, quick as a ghost. All David could say was that he’d had a bad dream. He glanced across the desk through the bland yellow light. The Fortress was covered by its sheet again. Simon’s rotting face grinned at him from the folds. You can’t catch me out that easily, the grin said.
Mum and Dad switched off the big light when they left the room. They shuffled back down the landing. As soon as he heard their bedroom door clunk shut, David shot out of bed and clicked his light on again. He left it blazing all night as he sat on the side of the bed, staring at the cloth-covered model. It didn’t move. The thin scratches on the backs of his hands were the only sign that anything had happened at all.
As David stared into his bowl of Rice Krispies at breakfast, their snap and crackle and pop fast fading into the sugary milk, Mum announced that she and Dad and Victoria were going to see Gran that afternoon for tea; did he want to come along? David said No. An idea had been growing in his mind, nurtured through the long hours of the night: with the afternoon free to himself, the idea became a fully fledged plan.
Saying he was off to the library, David went down to the Post Office on the High Street before it closed at lunchtime. The clouds were dark and low and the streets were damp. After waiting an age behind a shopkeeper with bags of ten-pence bits to change, he presented the fat lady behind the glass screen with his savings book and asked to withdraw everything but the one pound needed to keep the account open.
“That’s a whole eleven pounds fifty-two pence,” she said to him. “Have we been saving up for something special?”
“Oh, yes,” David said, dragging his good-boy smile out from the wardrobe and giving it a dust-down for the occasion.
“A nice new toy? I know what you lads are like, all guns and armour.”
“It’s, um, a surprise.”
The lady humphed, disappointed that he wouldn’t tell her what it was. She took out a handful of dry roasted nuts from a drawer beneath the counter and popped them into her mouth, licking the salt off her fingers before counting out his money.
Back at home, David returned the savings book to the desk (his hands shaking in his hurry to get back out of the room, his eyes desperately focussed away from the cloth-covered model on the top) but kept the two five-pound notes and the change crinkling against his leg in the front pocket of his jeans. He just hoped that Dad wouldn’t have one of his occasional surges of interest in his finances and ask to see the savings book. He’d thought that he might say something about helping out a poor schoolfriend who needed a loan for a new pair of shoes, but the idea sounded unconvincing even as he rehearsed it in his mind.
Fish fingers again for lunch. David wasn’t hungry and slipped a few across the plastic tablecloth to Victoria when Mum and Dad weren’t looking. Victoria could eat fish fingers until they came out of her ears. When she was really full up she sometimes even tried to poke a few in there to demonstrate that no more would fit.
Afterwards, David sat in the lounge and pretended to watch Grandstand while Mum and Dad and Victoria banged around upstairs and changed into their best clothes. He was tired and tense, feeling rather like the anguished ladies at the start of the headache-tablet adverts, but underneath there was a kind of exhilaration. After all that had happened, he was still determined to put up a fight. Finally, just as the runners and riders for the two o’clock Holsten Pils Handicap at rainswept Wetherby were getting ready for the off, Mum and Dad called Bye Bye and slammed the front door.
The doorbell rang a second later.
“Don’t forget,” Mum said, standing on the doorstep and fiddling with the strap of the black handbag she’d bought for Simon’s funeral, “there’s some fish fingers left in the freezer for your tea.”
“No I won’t,” David said.
He stood and watched as the Cortina reversed out of the concrete drive and turned off down the estate road through a grey fog of exhaust.
It was a dark, moist afternoon, but the rain that was making the going heavy at Wetherby was still holding off. For once, the fates seemed to be conspiring in his favour. He took the old galvanized bucket from the garage and, grabbing the stiff-bristled outside broom for good measure, set off up the stairs towards Simon’s bedroom. The reek of plastic was incredibly strong now—he wondered why no one else in the house hadn’t noticed or complained.
The door to Simon’s room was shut. Slippery with sweat, David’s hand slid uselessly around the knob. Slowly, deliberately, forcing his muscles to work, he wiped his palms on his jeans and tried again. The knob turned. The door opened. The cloth face grinned at him through the stinking air. It was almost a skull now, as though the last of the flesh had been worried away, and the off-white of the sheet gave added realism. David tried not to think of such things. He walked briskly towards the desk, holding the broom out in front of him like a lance. He gave the cloth a push with it, trying to get rid of the face. The model beneath stirred lazily, like a sleeper awakening in a warm bed. More haste, less speed, he told himself. That was what Dad always said. The words became a meaningless jumble as he held the bucket beneath the lip of the desk and prodded the cloth-covered model towards it. More haste, less speed. Plastic screeched on the surface of the desk, leaving a wet grey trail. More waste, less greed. Little aircraft-shaped bumps came and went beneath the cloth. Hasting waste, wasting haste. The model plopped into the bucket; mercifully, the cloth still covered it. It squirmed and gave a plaintive squeak. David dropped the broom, took the bucket in both hands and shot down the stairs.
Out through the back door. Across the damp lawn to the black patch where Dad burnt the garden refuse. David tipped the bucket over quickly, trapping the model like a spider under a glass. He hared back into the house, snatching up a book of matches, a bottle of meths, firelighters and newspapers, then sprinted up the garden again before the model had time to think about getting out.
He lifted up the bucket and tossed it to one side. The cloth slid out over the blackened earth like a watery jelly. The model squirmed from the folds, stretching out its wings. David broke the cap from the meths bottle and tipped out a good pint over cloth and plastic and earth. The model hissed in surprise at the cool touch of the alcohol. He tried to light a match from the book. The thin strips of card crumpled. The fourth match caught, but puffed out before he could touch it to the cloth. The model’s struggles were becoming increasingly agitated. He struck another match. The head flew off. Another. The model started to crawl away from the cloth. Towards him, stretching and contracting like a slug. Shuddering and sick with disgust, David shoved it back with the toe of his trainer. He tried another match, almost dropping the crumpled book to the ground in his hurry. It flared. He forced himself to crouch down—moving slowly to preserve the precious flame—and touch it to the cloth. It went up with a satisfying whooph.
David stepped back from the cheery brightness. The cloth soon charred and vanished. The model mewed and twisted. Thick black smoke curled up from the fire. The grey plastic blistered and ran. Bubbles popped on the aircraft’s writhing skin. It arched its tail in the heat like a scorpion. The black smoke grew thicker. The nextdoor neighbour, Mrs Bowen, slammed her bedroom window shut with an angry bang. David’s eyes streamed as he threw on firelighters and balled-up newspapers for good measure.
The aircraft struggled in the flames, its blackened body rippling in heat and agony. But somehow,
its shape remained. Against all the rules of the way things should be, the plastic didn’t run into a sticky pool. And, even as the flames began to dwindle around it, the model was clearly still alive. Wounded, shivering with pain. But still alive.
David watched in bitter amazement. As the model had no right to exist in the first place, he supposed he’d been naive to imagine that an ordinary thing like a fire in the garden would be enough to kill it. The last of the flames puttered on the blackened earth. David breathed the raw, sick smell of burnt plastic. The model—which had lost what little resemblance it had ever had to a Flying Fortress and now reminded David more than anything of the dead seagull he once seen rotting on the beach at Blackpool—whimpered faintly and, slowly lifting its blistered and trembling wings, tried to crawl towards him.
He watched for a moment in horror, then jerked into action. The galvanized bucket lay just behind him. He picked it up and plonked it down hard on the model. It squealed: David saw that he’d trapped one of the blackened wings under the rim of the bucket. He lifted it up an inch, kicked the thing under with his trainer, then ran to find something to weigh down the bucket.
With two bricks on top, the model grew silent inside, as though accepting its fate. Maybe it really is dying (why haven’t you got the courage to run and get the big spade from the shed like big brave Simon would do in a situation like this? Chop the thing up into tiny bits) he told himself. The very least he hoped for was that it wouldn’t dig its way out.
David looked at his watch. Three-thirty. So far, things hadn’t gone as well as he’d planned, but there was no time to stand around worrying. He still had a lot to do. He threw the book of matches into the bin, put the meths and the firelighters back where he had found them, hung the broom up in the garage, pulled on his duffle coat, locked up the house, and set off towards the High Street.
The greyness of a dull day was already sliding into the dark of evening. Pacing swiftly along the wet-leafed pavement, David glanced over privet hedges into warmly lit living rooms. Mums and Dads sitting on the sofa together, Big Sis doing her nails in preparation for a night down the pub with her boyfriend, little Jimmy playing with his He-Man doll in front of the fire. Be careful, David thought, seeing those blandly absorbed faces, things can fall apart so easily. Please, be careful.
He took the shortcut across the park where a few weary players chased a muddy white ball through the gloom and came out onto the High Street by the public toilets. Just across the road, the back tyres of the Pickfords lorry had rolled Simon into the next world.
David turned left. Woolworths seemed the best place to start. The High Street was busy. Cars and lorries grumbled between the numerous traffic lights, and streams of people dallied and bumped and pushed in and out of the fluorescent heat of the shops. David was surprised to see that the plate glass windows were already brimming with cardboard Santas and tinsel, but didn’t feel the usual thrill of anticipation. Like the Friday-feeling and the Weekend-feeling, the Christmas-feeling seemed to have deserted him. Still, he told himself, there’s plenty of time yet. Yes, plenty.
Everything had been switched around in Woolworths. The shelves where the models used to sit between the stick-on soles and the bicycle repair kits were now filled with displays of wine coolers and silk flowers. He eventually found them on a small shelf beside the compact disks, but he could tell almost at a glance that they didn’t have any Flying Fortresses. He lifted out the few dusty boxes—a Dukes of Hazzard car, a skeleton, a Tyrannosaurus rex; kid’s stuff, not the sort of thing that Simon would ever have bothered himself with—then set out back along the High Street towards W. H. Smiths. They had a better selection, but still no Flying Fortresses. A sign in black and orange suggested IF YOU CAN’T FIND WHAT YOU WANT ON DISPLAY PLEASE ASK AN ASSISTANT, but David was old and wise enough not to take it seriously. He tried the big newsagents across the road, and then Debenhams opposite Safeways where Santa Claus already had a pokey grotto of fairy lights and hardboard and the speakers gave a muffled rendition of Merry Christmas (War is Over). Still no luck. It was quarter to five now. The car lights, traffic lights, street lights and shop windows glimmered along the wet pavement, haloed by the beginnings of a winter fog. People were buttoning up their anoraks, tying their scarves and pulling up their detachable hoods, but David felt sweaty and tired, dodging between prams and slow old ladies and arm-in-arm girls with green punk hair. He was running out of shops. He was running out of time. Everyone was supposed to know about Airfix Flying Fortresses. He didn’t imagine that the concerns of childhood penetrated very deeply into the adult world, but there were some things that were universal. You could go into a fish-and-chip shop and the man in the fat stained apron would say yes, he knew exactly what you meant, they just might have one out the back with the blocks of fat and the potatoes. Or so David had thought. A whole High Street without one seemed impossible. Once he’d got the model he would, of course, have to repeat the long and unpleasant task of assembling the thing, but he was sure that he’d make a better go of it a second time. In its latter stages the first model had shown tendencies which even Simon with his far greater experience of model making had probably never experienced. For a moment, he felt panic rising in his throat like sour vomit. The model, trapped under its bucket, squirmed in his mind. He forced the thought down. After all, he’d done his best. Of course, he could always write to Airfix and complain, but he somehow doubted whether they were to blame.
He had two more shops on his mental list and about twenty minutes to reach them. The first, an old-fashioned craft shop had, he discovered, become the new offices of a building society. The second, right up at the far end of the High Street beyond the near-legendary marital aids shop and outside his normal territory, lay in a small and less than successful precinct built as a speculation five years before and still half empty. David ran past the faded To Let signs into the square. There was no Christmas rush here. Most of the lights in the fibreglass pseudo-Victorian lamps were broken. In the near darkness a cluster of youths sat drinking Shandy Bass on the concrete wall around the dying poplar at the centre of the square. The few shops that were open looked empty and about to close. The one David was after had a window filled unpromisingly with giant nylon teddies in various shades of green, pink, and orange.
An old woman in a grubby housecoat was mopping the marleytiled floor and the air inside the shop was heavy with the scent of the same cheap disinfectant they used in the school toilets. David glanced around, pulling the air into his lungs in thirsty gulps. The shop was bigger than he’d imagined, but all he could see on display were a few dusty Sindy outfits, a swivel stand of practical jokes and a newish rack of Slime Balls “You Squeeze ’Em And They Ooze”; the fad of the previous summer.
The man standing with his beer belly resting on the counter glanced up from picking the dirt from under his nails. “Looking for something?”
“Um, models, er, please.” David gasped. His throat itched, his lungs ached. He wished he could just close his eyes and curl up in a corner somewhere to sleep.
“Upstairs.”
David blinked and looked around again. There was indeed a stairway leading up to another floor. He took it, three steps at a time.
A younger man in a leather-tasselled coat sat with his cowboy boots resting up on a glass counter, smoking and reading Interview With A Vampire. He looked even less like an assistant than the man downstairs, but David couldn’t imagine what else he could be, unless he was one of the non-speaking baddies who hung around at the back of the gang in spaghetti westerns. A faulty fluorescent tube flickered on and off like lightning in the smoky air, shooting out bursts of unpredictable shadow. David walked quickly along the few aisles. Past a row of Transformer robots, their bubble plastic wrapping stuck back into the card with strips of yellowing Sellotape, he came to the model section. At first it didn’t look promising, but as he crouched down to check along the rows, he saw a long box poking out from beneath a Revelle Catalina on the bottom shelf.
There was an all-too-familiar picture on the side: a Flying Fortress. He pulled it out slowly, half expecting it to disappear in a puff of smoke. But no, it stayed firm and real. An Airfix Flying Fortress, a little more dusty and faded than the one Dad had given him, but the same grey weight of plastic, the same painting on the box, £7.75, glue and paints not included, but then he still had plenty of both. David could feel his relief fading even as he slowly drew the long box from the shelf. After all, he still had to make the thing.
The cowboy behind the counter coughed and lit up a fresh Rothmans from the stub of his old one. David glanced along the aisle. What he saw sent a warm jolt through him that destroyed all sense of tiredness and fatigue. There was a display inside the glass cabinet beneath the crossed cowboy boots. Little plastic men struck poses on a greenish sheet of artexed hardboard that was supposed to look like grass. There were neat little huts, a fuel tender and a few white dashes and red markers to indicate the start of a runway. In the middle of it all, undercarriage down and bomb bay doors open, was a silver Flying Fortress. His mouth dry, David slid the box back onto the shelf and strolled up to take a closer look, hands casually thrust into the itchy woolen pockets of his duffle coat, placing his feet down carefully to control the sudden trembling in his legs. It was finished, complete; it looked nothing like the deformed monstrosity he had tried to destroy. Even at a distance through the none-too-clean glass of the display case, he could make out the intricate details, the bright transfers (something he’d never been able to think about applying to his Fortress) and he could tell just from the look of the gun turrets that they would swivel up, down, sideways, any way you liked.
The cowboy re-crossed his boots and looked up. He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“I er . . . just looking.”
“We close now,” he said, and returned to his book.
David backed away down the stairs, his eyes fixed on the completed Fortress until it vanished from sight behind a stack of Fisher-Price baby toys. He took the rest of the stairs slowly, his head spinning. He could buy as many models as he liked, but he was absolutely sure he would never be able to reach the level of perfection on display in that glass case. Maybe Simon could have done it better, but no one else.
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