The Light That Gets Lost (Shakespeare Today)

by Natasha Carthew

  Trey flicked the tail end of his tea towards him. ‘I worked that out already.’ He looked at Kay and asked if they had managed to get any food.

  ‘We got some bits and bobs,’ she said and she put a sack to the floor. ‘Flour and oil and a bit of sugar.’

  ‘We’re gonna make pancakes,’ said Lamby. ‘The twins are gone to bag up some hens so we got eggs.’

  Kay sat down and said she hoped nobody else had thought of it before them. ‘Them chickens will be on skewers soon enough.’

  Trey asked if she’d seen anything of Wilder and she hadn’t. ‘Rumour has it he’s holed up in the farmhouse now. Spose that’s where he’ll stay.’

  ‘We won’t see much of him,’ he said. ‘He int so stupid to lead his men from the front.’

  ‘Happy givin orders from the castle,’ laughed Lamby. ‘He’ll be fine till the food runs out and he got no bribes left to dole out.’

  They wondered what it would be like when the food ran out and they thought about the chickens and the eggs that might or might not be coming their way.

  ‘At the end of the day,’ said Lamby suddenly, ‘you can’t leave a bunch of kids alone out in the middle of nowhere, razor wire and electric fence surroundin em. You just can’t do that.’

  He boiled more water for tea and Kay said they should think about collecting firewood for when the gas in the camping stove ran out and the others nodded but their heads were still on the buzzing, ripping fence.

  ‘Can’t we switch it off?’ asked Trey. ‘Where’s the electric comin from?’

  ‘Underground,’ said Kay. ‘And don’t ask me where from cus I don’t know.’

  ‘We could go diggin,’ suggested Lamby. ‘Dig till we find it and short it and cut a hole in the stupid thing.’

  ‘Underground and outside the fence probably,’ she continued.

  ‘We could try to get into the underground storage, how far down does the fence go?’ asked Trey.

  ‘Far.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Really far, I was here two years ago when they dug it, trenches so deep you could be standin and still be buried alive.’

  They all sighed and Lamby continued with the fresh pot.

  ‘We’ll have to get firewood soon,’ Kay said again. ‘Get it before we need it.’

  Lamby stewed the tea longer than was necessary and poured it and said how he couldn’t believe Wilder was living in the farmhouse. ‘I mean in an actual house, with beds and everythin.’

  When the twins arrived back everyone was happy to see them and they were happier still to see the chickens swinging in a sack. Kay put them in an unused stall and she threw in a bit of grain and straw to keep them busy.

  ‘When will we get eggs?’ asked Lamby.

  ‘When you think?’ she asked.

  ‘When they’re ready, stupid question I know. What’s up with you?’

  ‘You ask too many questions, stupid ones.’

  ‘So, always have.’

  Kay took up her mug of tea and went and sat against the open door and Trey told Lamby to leave her for a while.

  ‘But I always ask loads of questions, that’s just me.’

  ‘Maybe you ask too many questions at once,’ said Trey. ‘Maybe that’s it.’

  ‘Just wonder this and that.’

  ‘Well un-wonder it.’

  ‘Just wonderin in case, like when will someone come for us and if they don’t then what? Dint nobody listen to me on the outside?’

  The ‘what’ hung in the air and stuck to the walls like cooling chip-pan fat and they all had it in their minds to worry too much about it.

  ‘Spose your parents might be wonderin,’ said Trey, ‘if you int writ them for a while.’

  ‘Bout that,’ said Lamby and Trey could see some echo of guilt in his eyes.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘The parents thing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I int rightly got any.’

  Trey started to laugh.

  ‘I int and I int lyin, not this time anyway.’

  Trey looked at the boy and he looked at him a long time. ‘So why lie?’ he asked.

  Lamby shrugged. ‘Just always said it, spose it made me diffo from all else.’

  ‘So you int got no folks and no home and nice bedroom and all that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You fosters same as?’

  Lamby nodded and he smiled all the same.

  ‘And I know you are,’ Trey said to the twins and they nodded in unison.

  ‘You know you’re crazy, don’t you?’ he said to Lamby.

  ‘It’s what I bin tellin you the whole time.’

  Each and every one of them was a looked-after kid. One year or two or more, and here they were, children in need looked after and protected in a wrong sort of way. Trey wasn’t the only one with a million unfathomable worries strapped to his chest like a run of explosives.

  He lit a small fire and they spent the afternoon playing cards like there was nothing left to do on earth and Kay sat at the door with the pitchfork ready and she didn’t move or speak until a hen called her in from the intruding dark.

  ‘We got eggs,’ she said and she went to check and was right. ‘Two eggs.’

  She gave them to Lamby like a making-up gift and he took them to the fire for cooking.

  ‘Why int you usin the stove?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a novelty,’ he said. ‘Cookin on a dot of flame is fun till it int.’

  He worked with what pots he had and it was the only time he spent just plain doing.

  When the time came around to eat they sat in separate worlds and fed on the thin-flip pancakes. After they had eaten they lay circled in the bedroom stall and sleep came close and teased and at times it came but mostly it did not.

  Deep into the night Trey wrestled with his blanket and he stretched it and pulled it until his cheek was the furthest it could be from the sanding hay bale but still it was no good. He took the blanket and went from the communal stall and lay close to the nothing fire. He slept better when alone, safer.

  He wrapped the blanket around and worked it top to toe and he noticed one small bead of light within the dead-eye coals and it reassured and absorbed him completely and pulled him towards sleep. He dreamt of horses running the open plains and he dreamt of Kay and they were all the same, wild and free with untameable spirit, and his thoughts plunged into the engulfing fire and it warmed him and if it wasn’t for the memory of the burning barn and the screaming horses come alive in mind he could have come close to comfort. Part-dream, part-reality but everything feared and laced with terror. He could see their nodding heads, nostrils torn wide and teeth wet with guttural panic. His heart beat fast at the horror of it all, their screams were his screams.

  ‘Trey, wake up.’ Kay bent over him and she wagged the torchlight into his face.

  He sat up and rubbed his eyes to look at her. ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Course I am. What’s up with the screamin and shoutin?’

  Trey pulled the blanket over his lap. ‘I int.’

  He could see Kay shaking her head. ‘You is.’ She got up and turned off the torch.

  ‘Bad dream,’ he said to the dark.

  ‘Long as you’re OK.’

  Trey nodded to himself. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  He watched her fade into the dark and took out his lighter for the comfort flip.

  ‘Damn,’ he said and he kicked at the cold fire with one bare foot. He wished he hadn’t let the worm of weakness seep from his body. It was nothing, a nightmare, a memory mixed. It didn’t matter. The coming battle was his and he was ready for it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Trey woke with his body cocooned in a twist on the stable floor. He listened to the sound of the horses shuffling in their stalls and he sat up and waited for one of his friends to speak but he was the only one awake.

  He lay back down and thought about his life with a clear head and Mum and Dad and the rubber
-straps that until now had kept him bound, secure restraints that threatened to snap and sling parts of him in all directions. Somehow he had to escape and get back to Billy; he had to try everything he could think of to rid himself of camp. He sat up suddenly, there was one option left open to him, one option and the only option remaining; he had to speak to Wilder.

  Trey was slow to put on his trainers and he unlocked the door and crept quietly from the stables and out into the damp mizzle morning.

  He looked across the camp and the rise and fall of the wet pumice tors in the distance and the neatly pressed creases of the moor and he thought about what it would be like to stand on the other side with the shape of some kind of future paved ahead; a future without walls and fences and boundaries. He went on towards the farmhouse, past the bunkhouses with the doors sprung wide and the food tent drooping from the rain and stolen pegs.

  He stood out on the clearing and shouted towards the house and when nobody came to the door there was enough nerve in him to step up on to the porch and knock.

  ‘What?’ shouted one of the older lads through the screen door.

  ‘I wanna speak to Wilder,’ Trey shouted back.

  ‘What you got to trade?’ asked the boy and he opened the door fully.

  ‘I int got nothin to trade,’ said Trey. ‘Where’s Wilder?’

  ‘Restin, what you want?’

  ‘I need to speak to him.’

  ‘He don’t wanna speak to you.’

  ‘Wilder,’ Trey shouted through the door.

  ‘Watch it, will you.’

  ‘Just five minutes.’

  ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Wilder appeared in the doorway and he stretched and pushed the boy back into the house in one move.

  ‘Well if it int my mate Trey,’ he smiled. ‘What you want?’

  ‘We need to talk,’ said Trey.

  ‘You come round to your senses?’

  Trey stepped forward. He didn’t know how to ask a boy like Wilder for something. It felt wrong but in the end he just came out with it.

  ‘What?’ asked Wilder.

  ‘I want you to let me go,’ he said again.

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘Out of camp.’ Trey knew this would be difficult.

  ‘Why you? Why you so special?’

  Trey swallowed hard. ‘Cus I’m you’re cousin,’ he said.

  Wilder started to laugh. ‘Killed you to say that, dint it.’

  Trey looked away.

  ‘What bout the authorities?’ Wilder continued. ‘You’re a criminal, can’t just let criminals out for the sake of it.’

  ‘Come on, Wilder, I know you don’t care bout any of that.’

  ‘How you know? How you know I int doin what’s right?’

  Trey shrugged. ‘Cus you’re a selfish bastard.’

  Wilder laughed. ‘Such a shame, init, Rudeboy? Me and you got so much in common. It’s a good thing you’re givin up here.’

  ‘Just let me out.’

  ‘Why? Why you and nobody else?’

  ‘My brother,’ Trey said honestly.

  ‘Boohoo on that score.’

  ‘He needs me.’

  ‘We all need somebody; don’t mean we get it though, does it?’

  Trey looked at Wilder and for a moment he felt sad for the bully boy. Maybe he wanted Trey to join his crusade because he was family.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t it?’ Wilder shrugged and Trey thought perhaps he had got through to him after all.

  ‘Time to go now, Rudeboy. Back to your little tribe of circus freaks.’ He shouted this so his gang could hear and Trey saw the boy standing behind Wilder laugh.

  ‘You all livin in there now, is you?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Where’s the chaplain?’

  ‘Don’t worry bout him,’ Wilder laughed. ‘That old boy is fine o’ fine.’

  ‘I int seen him about camp in a while, have you?’ asked Trey.

  Wilder ignored him and asked if there was anything else he could do for them because he was busy.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m goin.’ Trey turned a circle in the mud and he kept his mouth shut for all the roar reeling within.

  ‘I’ll be seein you,’ shouted Wilder, ‘and tell Kay to hold on to em horses. I heard em right nice to roast.’

  Trey went through camp the way he had come and when he saw a few kids standing around the tent he told them that if it was food they were waiting for they would be waiting a long time. He went on towards the ridge with the scraggy trees and the stump where he liked to sit and he stood and watched the patterns in the sky darken and become one. When the rain began to fall Trey took shelter beneath the faint canopy of trees and he hunkered out of the wind and rested his head against a trunk. He waited. For one final thought to come to his mind and change from a maybe idea to a definite plan, he waited and it was a long time.

  He thought about Billy window-sitting, staring out from a world where he did not belong. Perhaps he remembered that day Trey had visited so briefly; two brothers looking, leaving, gone.

  Trey closed his eyes and he pressed his palms into them to stop whatever it was that threatened. Since the demon’s departure he’d been left with a huge cavernous pit inside, a gaping wound where once he’d filled with anger and spite, but now all that was left was a hole, an empty bucket soul.

  He’d come so far, so much had happened and still he remained in camp. Trey was never meant to belong, he never wanted more than what was owed him, revenge.

  When the wind grew stronger he got up and he left the trees and stood on the stump and he shouted for the world to hear that Trey Pearce was not done yet. Wilder would not let him out, but Trey would find a way.

  He jumped from the stump and went down the hill and he went on towards the farm.

  ‘He’s a mean you-know-what,’ said Lamby when Trey returned to the stables and relayed the conversation he had with Wilder. ‘What he said bout the horses, no need to bring the horses into it.’

  ‘Just knows what buttons to push,’ said Kay. ‘Ignore him is best.’

  Trey took off his trainers and put them by the fire to dry and he settled in amongst his friends and took pleasure in the comfort that he found there.

  ‘Spose we know who’s had away with the calves,’ said Trey and he sat to watch the twins squat close to the fire as they took turns to stir some kind of stew in a pot not meant for cooking.

  They sat fixed in contemplation and waited for their mug to be dipped and passed and Trey tried to make some sense of what he was eating but he got nothing but potato and the grain meant for animal feed. To have something in his stomach was better than none and he thanked the boys for their bother.

  When eating was done they settled back to speculate in regards to the chaplain and Trey had a feeling there was something not quite right and he said as much.

  ‘He int around,’ said Lamby. ‘If he int in the farmhouse he int around no more, he’s off with the rest.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t just leave us,’ said Trey. ‘He int the type to just go.’

  ‘So who’s in charge?’ asked Kay. ‘Not Wilder.’

  ‘No but he thinks he is,’ said Trey. He knew without a doubt they had been abandoned but the thought of the chaplain someplace in camp still bugged him. Perhaps he was his ticket out of there, if he could just find him.

  ‘We should go find the chaplain,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ asked Lamby.

  ‘Cus it don’t feel right. He int like the Preacher and McKenzie.’

  He looked at Lamby and then he looked at Kay and shrugged.

  ‘Why?’ asked Kay. ‘He’s long gone.’

  ‘What if he int? What if he’s someplace left to fend?’

  ‘They left us the same. Only reason some folks might bother bout us is if we escape and go crazy on the outside.’

  ‘More’n likely they’ll leave us here,’ said Lamby. ‘Lea
ve us to fend or whatever, seems like no authorities is comin in any case, spose they couldn’t care less.’

  ‘Well I’m goin lookin,’ said Trey. ‘Chaplain int such a bad old boy and I wanna know if he’s all right just to know it.’ He looked at Kay to see if she agreed and she did.

  ‘But,’ she said, ‘we wait till dusk.’

  ‘Can we all go?’ asked Lamby and he looked at the twins with his thumbs up.

  ‘No,’ said Trey. ‘Just me and Kay.’

  When the grey of storm-sky smudged into charcoal black Trey got up and put on his oilskin and went to stand at the door and he waited for Kay to do the same.

  ‘Sure you wanna come?’ he asked.

  ‘Course. Why wouldn’t I?’

  Trey nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  The two teenage warriors left the stables in the pitch black fright of night. The sky was clogged thick with heavy heaving clouds and Trey could smell the metal tang of electricity in the air.

  ‘It’s gonna thunder,’ he said and he kept his eye on the heavens until light sprang zip-wire crazy across the horizon.

  ‘We bein punished you think?’ he shouted. ‘Punished by God over and over again?’ He looked across at Kay and she shook her head.

  ‘Penance tails up within. You only got yourself to answer to when you slap yourself over the head with it.’

  Trey laughed, she had a way of saying things that were simple and complicated and perfect all in the same breath.

  ‘You think we’re born bad? Some of us anyway?’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘But what if bad things happen right from the get go, what then?’ He could feel the small child within jostling to speak. The boy that lived inside him before the demon moved in.

  Kay stopped suddenly and she asked him what he was going on about.

  ‘Bad things happen to the bad, don’t they?’

  ‘No, Trey, bad things happen cus they happen. It’s just the way things are.’

  ‘How you know?’

  ‘It’s called the chaos theory, ask Lamby, he’ll tell you all bout it.’ She circled in the mud and continued to walk.

  ‘Science,’ he laughed.

  ‘Science,’ she shouted. ‘Now come on and watch where you put your feet.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well watch harder.’