by Ever Dundas
‘You really stuck it to that stinking old Mrs Carter, didn’t you?’
She thought I was some kind of hero, spitting that cake at the Snap-dragon. She cocked her head at me.
‘You’ll get a hiding for that, for sure.’
I gawped at her. She was tiny and her hair was as black as the midnight Cornish sky. When it shone in the sun, her hair sparkled like glittering stars.
‘Are you dumb or something?’
I said, ‘Maybe you’re an angel or a Martian.’
Her eyes popped wide and she said, ‘You’re daft.’
I said her name was Angel. She said I was a silly London rat. I said I’m not a rat, I’m a goblin and anyway, you’re a London rat too. She said, ‘Angel is a stupid name.’ I said, ‘But you’re not like some boring old angel all in white on a cloud playing a harp. You’re one of those angels like in Revelation who doesn’t let people away with sins like torturing spiders, an angel who rains fire and blood down on people.’
She looked at me, cocking her head again, narrowing her eyes. She didn’t say anything and I felt uncomfortable, so I just said, for no reason really, just for something to say, ‘“Rats” backwards is “Star”,’ and she shrugged and she said, ‘Goblin-Rat-Star? Let’s go on an adventure.’
‘Angel?’ I said, ‘I was born for adventure,’ like some terrible Hollywood line out of a cowboy film, and I blushed, but I was pleased. She was my friend. We walked through the forest and I said, ‘Where’re we going?’
She looked at me with hooded eyes and said, ‘Stupid Rat, we’re going to the sea.’
I got huffy and said, ‘Well, how would I know?’ though inside I thought I might explode. I was going to the sea with my Angel. What could be better than that?
She said, ‘This is the path to the sea, stupid. How long have you been here? You not been to the sea yet?’
I thought, who you calling stupid, and was about to say ‘Who you calling stupid?’ but I didn’t because I was trying to be all good and nice and not mess things up and I thought I could impress her later with all my stories, all the stories from Pigeon and the bible and the books I’d read and I could scare her with stories of Queen Isabella and her pulsing heart and I thought in my head how we would be on the beach and it would be getting dark and I’d scare her and she’d cuddle into me to stay safe and I liked that thought even though I knew it probably wouldn’t happen because she was some sort of angel of death or war or pestilence and I’m sure they don’t get scared by ghost stories.
I said, ‘I’ve not been to the sea. Tom keeps us working on the farm or hunting in the woods and he wouldn’t take us. But he said we’d be going fishing soon.’
She didn’t say anything. She just hit at the grass with a stick, like she hadn’t even heard me. I was going to tell her how I was good at hunting, ‘I’m a shit-hot shot,’ I was going to say, but I thought it might not impress her if she didn’t like the killing of spiders maybe she wouldn’t like that I shot rabbits but we have to eat and I have to help Tom or I’d be out on my ear but I kept quiet just in case. I was getting all in a tangle in my head and not appreciating the walk at all, my palms all sweaty and my mood turning so that I was frowning like mad and suddenly she turned to me and was about to say something and stopped, seeing me look like I was crazy angry about something, my face all twisted up. I tried to turn all happy but turned contorted and probably looked like I was grimacing. It was exhausting being in love.
‘What’s eating at you?’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to go on an adventure?’
‘I do! I’m just—’
‘I’m not wasting my time on some old misery guts.’
I thought I might just collapse then and there but I thought, Goblin-runt, get out of your bloody head. Stop thinking so much. That’s what David would say. Getting all caught up in tangled thoughts and look how it turns out, all back to front.
So I came out of my head and I said, ‘I’ve never been to the sea. Are there mermaids and pirates? My brother said there was.’
She looked at me, laughed and ran off ahead.
‘Mermaids and pirates!’ she shouted back. ‘Let’s find out!’
I ran after her, yelling a battle cry.
*
There it was, sparkling in the sun. Angel had already kicked off her shoes and was splashing around. I just gaped. There weren’t any pirates or mermaids, no anyone except us. Cliffs slanted up into the afternoon sun, gulls floated overhead and trundled along the beach, squawking. Angel ran back onto the sand and threw off her clothes. She ran into the oncoming waves and disappeared. I was anxious and jealous. Her head bobbed up and she waved at me.
I took off my shoes and shirt, but kept my shorts on. I stuck close to the shore, just splashing around, enjoying the feel of the warm water on my skin. I sat down, feeling the pull of the sea. Angel waved at me again, and I shook my head. She swam for shore.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘I can’t swim.’
She took me by the hand, dragging me up. I stumbled after her, staring down at our joined hands, water dripping between our fingers like we were melting into each other.
She took me past an outcrop, letting go of my hand so it was easier to scramble over the rocks. I followed obediently and we came to a rock pool. I wasn’t sure how deep it was, but the water was clear and you could see to the bottom. Seaweed swayed when the waves came in, the water gently entering the pool, flowing over the top of the rocks, causing only a slight ripple. I stared in awe at the starfish at the bottom of the pool. Angel lowered herself in and I followed.
‘I’ll teach you,’ she said.
*
It took about three weeks, mainly because my chores took up so much time, but also because the Idiot had noticed I was always going off somewhere, and he would tag along, pretending like we were friends. CP and I would just lead him to the woods and we’d stop there so CP could forage – he loved collecting branches and leaves and making a nest, so I pretended that’s all we did and after a couple of evenings of this the Idiot got bored and left me alone. Tom didn’t care where I went in the evenings, as long as I’d finished all my chores and as long as I was up at dawn to do my morning duties. Angel’s pretend parents were the ones who’d shown her the path to the sea when she’d first arrived. They were happy for us to go out in the evenings as long as she told them where we were going. She usually had to be back by nine, but at the height of summer they let her stay out until after sunset.
By the end of three weeks I was swimming pretty good. I stuck to the pool. I wasn’t ready for the sea, and Angel seemed fine with that. She didn’t even tease me for being a coward and I felt bad because I thought of Stevie and how if I had been him and I was Angel I would have given him a hard time and he probably would have swam in the sea just to prove to me he could and he probably would’ve drowned or got eaten by sharks and I’d be all twisted up with guilt. Angel was a real angel about it, not one of those Revelation angels, but those angels who give you a break.
I liked the rock pool better than the sea in those first days. It felt more private, like the whole world had disappeared and it was just me and Angel. Corporal Pig would come along most days too. He couldn’t get up to the rock pool and he’d make a godawful noise when we left him behind but he’d soon amuse himself, snuffling about in the sand. He would swim in the sea too. The first time I saw him I scrambled out of that rock pool, ran across the beach and into the sea to rescue him before I even realised he was swimming as happy as can be. I stood with the water lapping at my chest, feeling like a fool.
‘You’re making me look bad in front of my girl, CP. Look at you, swimming in the sea and swimming better than a Goblin could.’
I went back to Angel who was watching from the rock pool.
‘Who knew pigs could swim?’
‘How did you think you could rescue him? How could you drag that fat pig out of the sea?’
‘I dunno,’ I said, annoyed, wanting her to drop it
.
‘I like that you’d try,’ she said as I swam off, still feeling that ache in my belly, that fear of losing Corporal Pig.
I practiced hard that week, listening to Angel’s advice, determined to get good enough so I could swim in the proper sea with CP. After I’d done practicing we’d flip onto our backs and just float. Sometimes we’d reach out and hold each other’s hand and we’d float in silence or we’d chat about this and that, sometimes about what was going on in the town, about old Mrs Carter and her stupidness, or I’d complain about the Idiot but mostly I didn’t mention him because I didn’t want him messing up my happiness with Angel. Sometimes we talked about before, about London and who we were then and what we did and who our families were. I told Angel about how Devil used to swim in the canal next to Kensal Green Cemetery, but I was too afraid to go in.
‘Who’s Devil?’
‘My dog.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Buried. In Kensal Green.’
I didn’t tell her what really happened to him. I just said about how the Nazis had come to London without people knowing and killed all the pets so that we would feel all demoralised and not be as happy about being at war and we’d give up.
I said, ‘I don’t really want to talk about it. I want to know about you.’
She said how she lived not far from me and I wondered how I’d never seen her before. She said she was happy in London and her parents were nice, but her dad had gone off to fight and her mum was sad. ‘My mum loves me, so she sent me away. She didn’t want to risk me being killed by a bomb so she sent me off on that hellhole train and now here I am.’
I told her about my ma and da and about David.
‘He was in a row with my parents about the war. He didn’t want to fight.’
‘He a coward?’
‘He isn’t a damn coward. He’s a conchie. He hates fighting, thinks it’s a waste of time. He wants to travel the world, sail on the seas. That’s pretty brave, when you don’t know if there’s going to be pirates or krakens.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said, ‘that’s pretty brave.’
‘He was being made to go to the war. My parents were making him, but he said to me we would just leave. “We’ll leave all this madness,” he said. “We’ll go to the sea.” I dreamed it. I knew it would happen, but when I left I couldn’t find him and I had to go.’
‘Why did you have to go?’
‘The Nazis who killed the pets were after me, so there was no time to wait for David. I write to him but he doesn’t write back – I think he must have gone to the sea too. I’ll keep writing anyway, just in case. C’mon. I want to swim in the sea proper now.’
I swam to the rocks and peered over them, looking out to sea. I climbed up, pulled myself over and slipped into the ocean-proper. I became like liquid. I became emerald green, with seaweed hair. Angel came in after me, and we met beneath the surface, smiling at each other, blowing bubbles and chasing them to the surface. We swam over towards the beach and joined CP. I dived beneath him, his massive form blocking out the sun, his legs gently kicking. I came up by his side, planted a kiss on his head and followed Angel further out. The sea was cold, losing the concentrated warmth of the sun-drenched rock pool. It froze me blue.
As twilight fell, we sat on the beach and made a small fire from wood collected in the nearby forest.
‘The planes will see us. We’ll be bombed.’
‘They never come this far. Anyway, we’re sheltered. Hardly anyone can see anything down here.’
Corporal Pig lay on his side, snoring by the fire as Angel and I dried off. I told her about how at home I had washed in a shallow tin bath.
‘The water was cold. Ma scrubbed my skin raw. Sometimes she forgot, sometimes she forgot to scrub me raw and I’d go without a bath for weeks until David said I stank and locked me out our room. “You stink, Goblin,” is what he’d say. “You stink worse than old Mr Fenwick and he hasn’t washed for a hundred years.”’
‘You don’t stink now,’ she said.
It was true. Pretend parents made me and John wash every day in the river because God’s children had to be clean and pure. It was cold in the river. It turned me blue.
‘I was born blue,’ I told Angel. ‘Like the sea.’
‘Ha!’ she said.
‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I was born blue and dead and they had to slap me alive. I was so ugly, ma said, that the midwife died of fright. “Goblin!” was the last thing she said. The first thing I did when I was born was commit murder.’
‘It wasn’t your fault you were so ugly.’
‘No.’
‘But you’re not ugly now.’
I shrugged, still not really sure if I was ugly or not and I hadn’t looked in a mirror since that time I’d sneaked into ma and da’s room.
‘I grew out of being blue. David said I was only blue because the umbilical cord had tangled round my neck. Ma said she wished my da hadn’t slapped me to life because she thinks I would have been better off dead.’
‘Why would she say that? Why would your ma say that?’
‘Because I’m a monster, a demon, a goblin.’
‘A goblin isn’t a demon and I think your ma is a monster.’
I smiled at her, my heart aching as I watched the way the warm glow of the fire turned her skin golden. Her eyes looked like black pools, her pupils a flickering flame.
‘Your ma’s an idiot. Just like John. You’re handsome and goblins are magic.’
*
She showed me all the sea creatures. We didn’t know what they were called so we made up names. We didn’t know if they were a he or a she so we called the creatures ‘em’. It was that day I showed her Monsta and we three lay in the sun.
‘This is Monsta.’
‘It’s good to meet you, Monsta.’
‘Monsta, this is Angel.’
She reached out and held a tentacle arm. Monsta swayed and hummed before kerlumpscratching, up up up, crawling across my arm, tentacle worms wrapped round my neck.
Angel stared, and circled, hovering behind us. She stroked the pigeon spine, and Monsta hummed in my ear.
‘This is beautiful. Did you make it?’
‘Not an it, not a she, not a he. A Monsta.’
‘An ‘em’,’ she said, ‘like the sea creatures.’
Monsta crawled down and sat in the sun with us. Monsta’s bear body was wearing away, bald patches spreading across the torso like a rash.
‘You’re still pretty,’ I said, ‘pretty Monsta dead thing.’
The black shrew eyes rolled in their sockets, the nose twitched. I watched the wings unfurl and stretch, beating for a moment; Monsta hovered, the crow foot flexing. The tentacles swayed on the breeze, the doll foot stuck out, a little squint, inert. The wings neatly folded across Monsta’s back.
*
I swam to the surface and saw Angel disappear. A wave pushed me back under and she was beneath me, glinting white skin, a flurry of hair. She was sea serpent supreme. I flailed and panicked as I gulped down water. I was engulfed by a mess of bubbles, sand and seaweed. Angel took my arm and pulled me up, swimming to the shore, dragging me behind her, vomiting up the sea.
It was a stormy day. I’d insisted we swim, convinced I knew the sea so well that it couldn’t surprise me but it had pulled me under. Angel didn’t even say anything. We just lay on the sand. I knew what she was thinking, and Queen Isabella, I knew what she would say. ‘Trying to impress a girl by drowning, are we?’ and Amelia, with that cruelty, ‘trying to impress a brother who isn’t even here.’
I lay there and I was glad Angel didn’t say anything. She knew I’d learned my lesson. She was never cocky like the Idiot, there were no I-told-you-so chants.
The next day was calm and warm, even early in the morning when I got up to do my chores and go hunting. I met her in the evening and it was still hot. Before the sun disappeared behind the woods we lay on the sand basking like lizards.
We swam to cool
off, but even the sea was warm. I swam with my shorts on. Angel swam in her skin. She said to me later, before all the trouble, ‘I knew you were a girl. It didn’t matter either way.’
Before the trouble there was just me and her and the ocean. There was CP snoring in the sand, and the summer sun on Angel’s white skin, turning her gold. We lay on the beach and I watched the sea water dribbling over her ribs and the mound between her legs. I held her hand. I held Monsta’s tentacles.
She was my first kiss.
‘You’re handsome,’ she said. ‘You’re like a film star.’
‘Do my teeth shine?’
I grinned at her, a wide, manic grin. I gnashed my teeth.
She held my hand firmly and said, ‘You’re beautiful and you’re mad.’
We swam and we kissed and we made up names.
*
We made a fire on the beach. We roasted fish, their eyes popping. We watched the sun sink beneath the sea.
‘The kraken is pulling it down,’ I said. ‘Its tentacles reach up and drag the sun into its mouth and it glows in its belly. It keeps it safe until morning. When it wakes up it spits the sun into the sky.’
The sky was like velvet, layers of yellow, emerald, deep blue dotted with fuzzy twinkling stars. The sea turned to blood. The sea turned black. The sky was a mottled blanket of shimmering lights. We listened to the crackle of the sandhoppers as they threw themselves into the flames. They hopped and popped, like disembodied fish eyes. We sat for hours, poking at the glowing branches, encouraging their angry fizzing, drifting off to the sound of the waves. We lay side by side, pressed in against each other to keep warm. I said a lizard prayer for the troops at Dunkirk. I didn’t know it then, but my dad was one of them. Not my current da, or my pretend one, but my dad-to-be. If I’d known it then, I would have prayed harder to the lizards below, but instead we stared at the stars and I told Angel stories. I told her about The War of the Worlds and the Martians, The Time Machine and the Morlocks, The Island of Doctor Moreau and the Beast Folk. I told her about the secrets beneath the streets of London.
‘Underground is where the lizard people live.’
Angel shooed a sandhopper away from the flames and we heard the pop of a dozen more.