But it had all gone. I did not want this. I really did not want this.
Potter, however: very much in the other camp.
Panic flushed all counterfeit passion from my limbs, and I went rigid. My mouth clamped shut and I squealed.
‘What?’ said Potter. His hand tightened around my hip. ‘What’s up wi’ ya?’
‘I don’t want this,’ I said, clearly. ‘Stop.’
It wasn’t mumbled or half-said, as if I wasn’t sure. I delivered the fact straight into Potter’s face. I was proud of Becky when I remembered that later.
Of course, it made Potter — whose loins had been preparing themselves for the joys of a sixteen-year-old girl for some time — mad.
‘Please stop,’ I said again.
His face drew into an angry sneer.
‘Yyeeeewww feeeerkin’ prick tease.’
‘I just want to go back to the party, Rob.’
His hand travelled back up my side and squashed painfully against my left breast, kneading it like dough. I cried out.
‘Ow, Rob! No!’
His other hand forced my mouth shut.
Stop!
I tried to say the word. But he didn’t. Robert Potter did not stop until he was done.
I came to my senses as Becky Fisher closed her eyes against the pain of Potter’s first dry and shuddering thrust.
I left her with him.
There was silence in the gymnasium, apart from the gurgling noise from my throat like a drain emptying. The lights were down. Shadows were still on the stage, then moving one by one, craning their necks. The heads of parents, now firmly attached to their bodies, were turning in my direction.
‘Elliot,’ whispered Luc. ‘What are you doing?’
I swallowed and choked on the saliva in my throat, then looked at Luc. He had pulled down his faders and was waiting for me to push mine up. I tried to move, but I felt tense and sluggish. Luc jumped across and shoved me out of the way, pushing the faders up. Music burst in, already midway through its introduction. The lights came up and I saw a hundred faces arranged in a palette of amusement, concern, disgust and everything in between. Some of the cast looked annoyed, but kept their smiles for the applause. Becky Fisher’s face was the worst to behold. It was nothing but apathy, a grin of scorn shared with the girl next to her.
What a weirdo.
Rob Potter arrived back, fretting.
‘What just happened?’ he said, as the parents cheered their offspring. He glared at me. For some reason I reached out for the faders, pulling one down a little from its maximum. He slapped it away.
‘Get your bleedin’ dirty hands off my rig, you,’ he said.
‘It’s all right,’ said Luc. ‘I did it.’
‘Roight,’ said Potter, turning to Luc. ‘Roight, well done.’
The cast filed past. Some frowned at me and spat remarks I couldn’t properly hear above the sound of the audience leaving. Becky Fisher was near the back. She looked right through me, straight at Rob Potter, and winked.
We packed up Potter’s rig in silence. As my reality settled again, the memory of what I had just seen, heard and felt became more and more visceral. Anger overtook me. I shot Potter glares which he half-caught from the corner of his eye. I wanted him to see me, although I had no idea what I was planning to do to him. He was already the man and I was only just beginning to relinquish the boy.
But I knew I had to stop him. If there was one thing I could do, it was that. That’s what I believed, so that’s what I set out to do.
Brave little Elliot.
The after-show party was at Mrs Daniels’ house. She had filled her kitchen table with paper cups and warm, weak cans of cider and lager, due to the fact that it was 1985.
Luc and I helped ourselves to a can and found a place to loiter in a dark corner of our teacher’s dining room. Nobody had mentioned my episode, although I saw a few of the teachers talking seriously behind their hands and nodding in my direction. Apart from a few strange looks, I was ignored by the rest of the cast, which suited me. I said nothing to Luc, and I could tell his embarrassment in my company was growing. I sat and waited, keeping quiet and scanning the room for Becky or Potter.
‘I’m going to the toilet,’ said Luc. He took his can and I knew he wasn’t planning on returning, so I got up and skulked through the party. Most of the younger members of the cast were sat on high-backed chairs around the walls. A group of second-years had changed Mrs Daniels’ LP of Broadway tunes for a David Bowie album to which they were dancing goofily in the dining room. Mrs Daniels weaved between them, twittering with a paper tray of vol-au-vents. She saw me and her face froze. She tried to smile.
‘Elliot, are you all right?’
‘Fine. Have you seen Becky?’
‘Becky?’ she said, twisting her pendant nervously. ‘Well, I don’t know. I think she’s in the hallway, dear. Elliot, is there anything you want to talk about? I’m always here, you know.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, brushing past.
The hallway was crammed full of teachers and sixth-formers spreading up the stairs. I tried to push between them, accidentally nudging the elbow of my English teacher, Mr Gould.
‘Childs,’ he said, wiping a splash of white wine from his pullover.
‘Sorry, sir,’ I said, still craning my neck above the throng.
‘It’s all right. Er, well done. Good show. Bit of a mess-up at the end but no harm done.’
I had already pulled away from him, because there at the bottom of the stairs, standing with Egg and two other girls, still in her stage makeup and black costume, was Becky. My insides somersaulted. I was halfway through the crowd, still with no idea of what I was going to say, when Rob Potter’s face filled my view. He pushed me into a corner, out of sight, a cruel and nervous smile on his face.
‘You like a bit of that, do you?’ he said, nodding over his shoulder. ‘Like to get your nose up her skirt, eh? Like a dog?’
‘What?’ I said. ‘Get off me.’
‘Are you a dog, Childs? Are you, doggy?’ I felt his hot, heavy breath on my face.
‘I don’t…I don’t…’
‘What’s that, doggy?’
Then he pressed both of his hands hard against the sides of my head and looked down into my eyes. He grinned, planted a rough kiss on my forehead, slapped my cheek and left.
I stood in fright and shame, watching him sidle through the hallway crowd, politely patting shoulders and giving winks and thumbs-up. Becky’s eyes flashed and her body seemed to dip a little as he approached. And then he was next to her, casual and friendly — he wasn’t stupid enough to touch or flirt in front of so many people, but I could tell that whatever he was saying was having its effect. She smiled and twirled a lock of glittered hair, then laughed with her mouth wide open, showing him her tongue. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear. I saw the merest hint of a nod up the stairs, at which point her laugh became something else entirely. She nodded back, full of confidence. Then he left her and made his way upstairs, weaving through teenagers hanging on bannisters and sprawled upon steps.
She followed soon after.
It is hard for me to describe that feeling, but I still feel it now. I could feel what it was like for her, that sense of freedom, of moving effortlessly into adulthood. She would find a room and go into it, entice him in and emerge from it a woman, glowing with pleasure and unaware of the crawling awkwardness of adolescence. Her path through puberty was clear and strong, pushing through the wall that separated the child from the adult with ease.
I was still on the other side of that wall. I felt heartbreak, shame and desire in one tangled mess of emotion.
This would have been all well and good — just another teenager witnessing the death of his hopeful lust at a party in which he did not belong. But, over it all, I also felt the certainty that what was going to happen in that room was not what she expected. I remember taking terrible comfort in this.
As she disappeared
from view I felt the dizziness begin. I think I knew then what was about to happen to me, or who was about to happen to me. The feeling was too familiar by that point, its effects too inevitable. David Bowie juddered and caught in my ears. The words to ‘Heroes’, bursting with hope and possibility, now seemed like dull afterthoughts.
‘We could be heroes!’
We could, but we probably won’t.
Faces and heads froze and flattened, as if the crowd were becoming cardboard cutouts. I seemed to float up the stairs. Mrs Daniels’ teacup wallpaper tore apart and a new reality tumbled through. Potter’s reality.
I heard my own footprints, boots on pavement. The bass thump of music played somewhere far away behind me. I heard my own breath and blood pumping fast, though I knew it was slowing down. It was dark. My hands were in my pockets. I pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one without stopping. The first drag seemed to calm me and I stopped.
I was hot, burning, elated.
Sound. Sight. Feeling. Then smell and taste.
Not the smell of cigarettes. The smell of her. Juicy Fruit and cherry lipstick and something else, thick and deep.
I walked on, thinking.
Stupid little bitch. Why had she ruined that? It could have been so much easier. I was right to carry on. She wanted a man to teach her how it was done. She was scared — who wasn’t their first time — but that’s why he’d had to have a firm hand, keep her steady, keep her on the same page. Otherwise she would have bolted. I was right to keep going. She’d thank me later, that tight little…
‘Childs, get out of here.’
Potter’s voice was calm. My gurgling was no such thing.
I was standing in the doorway of a darkened bedroom, Potter facing me. Behind him, Becky stood in the shadows.
‘Jesus,’ muttered a voice behind me.
I turned. A crowd surrounded me on the landing and down the staircase; pupils and teachers, horror, amusement or disgust on every face. I heard whispers, but I knew they weren’t coming from mouths. They rustled through each other like brittle strings, punctuated by the occasional louder word, barked or laughed — the thoughts of the crowd, every face that leered at me, all spoken at once.
Little pervert…bet he’s got a stiffy…weird look on his face…wait till this gets out…Rob Potter and Becky Fisher? Lucky…used to like him…he’ll be dead or locked up by twenty…
The feeling of a rough hand shook me. Rob Potter took the can of warm beer from my hand.
‘I think you’d better get home, Childs,’ he said. He led me down the stairs, past the sea of quiet faces, each one whispering its own thoughts — fucking pervert…filthy…animal…disgusting — and out through the front door.
And I ran home, the feelings of both rapist and victim still raw in my mind, trapped and vying for freedom. And I cried. I cried for me, little Elliot, and for Becky and for everyone, even Rob Potter, whose fag smoke still clung to my tongue, and crying because I knew right there and then, that there would never be enough good in the world.
So yes, I lied — there was a moment. And it was only the first of many.
SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE DAY
Cornwall, 1940
BILLY WOKE AND SAT bolt upright in bed. Something was wrong. It wasn’t just the silence or the empty room. It wasn’t the unmade beds or the urgent voices in the distance. It was the air, the light, the day. Something was wrong with the day.
His thoughts travelled back to the evening before. His argument with James seemed somehow far away now, a strange conversation between two different boys. It was as if night was a hard dividing line that separated days into distant worlds, full of strangers.
He’s the enemy. Daddy would be furious.
What would you know about what Daddy thinks?
The cruelty of his own words stung him.
But then he had a thought. What would James know? How could he possibly know?
He sat still for a moment, breathing the cold air sweet with the smell of the farm. Then, reaching beneath the pillow, he found the letter. If anything could change his brother’s mind, it would be his own father’s words. Perhaps if he read them then he would understand. Perhaps he would no longer see Schmidt as the enemy.
With a silent curse at his own selfishness, he jumped out of bed, dressed quickly, and dashed from the room. Down the stairs, across the yard and over the field to Potter’s Copse he ran, clutching the letter, full of hope. He knew where they would be. He always knew.
THE KNOT
Lasswick, Present Day
IT’S BARELY DAWN, AND a grey, salted drizzle floats in from the Atlantic as my father drives us down the narrow, winding road from the house. I sit in the back of his battered Citroën with Zoe and Morag, while Heathcliff gets the front seat. The storm has passed, but black shapes still heave out at sea.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask as we reach the town. I scan the dark streets for a Bentley.
‘Watson’s, of course. The bookshop.’
We park at the harbour. The engine rattles to a stop and an eerie silence opens up, filled only by the knocks and clanks of tethered boats bobbing in the storm’s swell.
My father’s bookshop is a tall, thin building with a sagging thatched roof, slumbering against the Ship Inn pub like a drunk. My father peers inside, then unlocks the door and lets us in. He tries the light switch twice, to no avail.
‘Power cut,’ he says. ‘Storm, no doubt.’
He wanders through to a back room, returning with some matches and candles, one of which he lights. The room fills with a warm glow. Nothing has changed since I last set foot in here, thirty years ago. The walls are filled with shelves like rickety tenements strung together on uneven streets, each one crammed with books with no discernible relation to their neighbour. The ceiling is papered with maps that make no geographical sense. Oceans lap mountain ranges, cities lie within deserts. A stove dominates the centre, its chimney penetrating the ceiling at an odd angle, and a circle of dusty chairs surrounds it where customers can sit and read.
‘Books and books and books,’ whispers Morag, spinning around the stove.
‘Do you remember it?’ says my father. Morag’s face shines in the light of his candle.
‘Of course.’
My father appraises the room.
‘To be honest, this was really all just a front.’
A sweep of light from the harbour makes us freeze, and my father shields his candle.
‘Quiet,’ hisses Zoe, running to the door. She peers through the shutters. We hear an engine powering down with the tight squeal of brakes. It idles as a door clicks open.
‘Who is it?’ I say, joining Zoe at the door.
‘I can’t see.’
We hear footsteps on cobbles.
‘They’re coming this way.’
‘Get away from the door!’ says my father. ‘We can leave through back.’
‘Wait — ‘
‘Elliot.’
There’s a chink of glass from a few doors down. The footsteps return the way they came, a jaunty whistle joining them.
‘It’s just the milkman.’
The van pulls off, our shoulders sag, and my father uncups his flame.
‘Don’t know why we don’t get the bloody electric floats anymore. Damn racket.’
He shakes his head and turns to William.
‘You may have to stay down here, my friend. All right? Keep a lookout for us.’
William nods, pats my father’s shoulder, and takes a seat by the empty stove.
‘You three,’ says my father. ‘Come with me.’
He leads us past the counter and up some crooked stairs to the top floor. It’s darker up here, and we stop on the landing. He picks up a stick and, holding the candle above his head, bangs it against the ceiling. There’s a shower of dust, followed by a rattle, and a portion of the ceiling falls away to reveal a ladder, which he pulls down.
‘Careful,’ he says, climbing.
We fol
low him up into an attic. The space seems to defy physics, spreading out much farther than the size of the shop would seem to allow. My father lights more candles and spreads them out around the room.
‘We bought the attic above the Ship,’ he says. ‘Knocked it through. We needed the space, as you can see.’
Within the eaves have been built shelves and cupboards of all sizes and shapes, hammered together, extended and expanded over the years like an ancient tree of nooks. The floor is carpeted red, with a column of brick through which the chimney is fed.
At first the shelves appear to be bric-a-brac, but on closer inspection we see tins, boxes, books, baskets and chests. There are photographs too, in frames. Each seems to be standing by a box of some kind, as if they are related, like pictures of the dead by their coffins.
‘What is all this?’ I ask.
‘Memories. Other lives.’
‘This is what you collected?’
‘Yes. This is our life’s work. Everything here was collected and collated through research and correspondence. And quite a bit of travel as well, if you remember.’
‘All your trips. I always wondered where you went.’
He turns to me, a look of regret suddenly crossing his face.
‘Yes. Yes, I was away a lot. I know. But you don’t understand how many of these things we uncovered once your mother got going. We found stories from all over the world — Japan, Alaska, Africa, Russia, Thailand, Croatia…One led to another, and another, and another. It was like a landslide.’
He walks to a long strip of oak.
‘Each of these boxes contains a single person’s memories of their other lives. Some only have one, some two or three, others…’
He looks down at an iron-bound trunk at his feet. ‘Others have many more.’
‘How did you find them?’
‘Your mother had a knack for it. When she found something that interested her, like a photograph which looked out of place, or an article that didn’t make sense, she pursued it until she had found out everything she could about it. She wrote letters, telephoned — this was all before the internet of course — and most of the time she found nothing. But on some occasions, she would find somebody. And these people, just like you, had memories they could not explain.’
The Other Lives Page 27