by Fiona Shaw
So what you going to do, Jake? His mother’s voice inside his head. What are you going to do about it?
Jake stayed there, very still, for a long time. He was so still, two blackbirds perched, unconcerned, on the branches near him to pluck the red berries. They were so near to him, he could have reached out and touched them. His grandpa came out and called for him. Later his grandma. He called back to them, and they let him be.
The sun had dropped close to the water and the light was failing by the time he climbed down. The kitchen was dark, but through the sitting-room window came the flickering blue light of the TV. Jake looked in from the outside. His grandparents were watching the news. He couldn’t hear what the voices were saying, but there on the screen was the New Wall, with its barbed wire and CCTV, and hubbers at watching posts with semi-automatics. And there too, right next to the Wall, was a vast crowd of people. They were smiling and waving banners, and holding up their phones. Men and women, old and young. Some were carrying sledgehammers and pickaxes, and many were carrying children. The hubbers were staring down at the crowd. They were wearing their riot gear, but they weren’t shooting.
The screen changed to another crowd, angrier looking, outside Big Ben. There were the hub police again in their riot gear, only this time you couldn’t see their faces because they had their visors down, and they held truncheons out in front of them, and some of them held Tasers. This crowd was waving pieces of paper in the air, all of them, every single one, and they were turned towards someone standing on a stepladder, who was speaking with a loud-hailer.
Jake read the news ticker along the bottom of the screen:
English crowds rally to New Wall in peaceful protest … Angry scenes outside Coalition Parliament … Coalition foreign ministry summons Scottish Ambassador to demand explanation for overnight leaflet drop … Thousands of leaflets dropped across England exposing Coalition plans to implant nano-microchips in all citizens …
So that’s what the crowd was waving. Leaflets dropped from the sky.
–Yes! Jake said. Cos you couldn’t put any kind of wall up against those. Not a firewall, not a physical wall. They’d done it. The gang had done it.
Mum, Dad, hope you can see this, he thought.
His grandparents had turned at his voice, and they smiled and beckoned him in.
By the time he sat down the screen had changed again. A line of people sat at a table, facing a room full of journalists. Jake stared at them and his heart pounded.
–Aliya, he whispered.
She was seated at the far end, small against the grownups, her head down, hair over her face. But he knew her. Knew her immediately. Beside her sat a woman in a smart suit. Jake knew who she must be. He could see the resemblance. And beside her, also in a smart suit, sat the blond Surfer. There were hubbers at the table too.
Jake barely heard the questions asked, the answers given. He couldn’t take his eyes off Aliya. Was she all right? What had they done to her?
The blond Surfer was speaking, and now the hub officer. Then there was a question for Aliya’s mother.
–Minister Khan, have you caught the gang that abducted your daughter?
Jake watched Mrs Khan turn towards Aliya, put an arm around her shoulders. He still couldn’t see Aliya’s face, but he saw her flinch.
Mrs Khan didn’t take her eyes off Aliya as she answered the question. –We will leave no stone unturned to apprehend those lowlifers responsible for my daughter’s abduction. She has been exposed to a traumatic series of events and I am only glad that she will be able to benefit from the wonderful facilities and expertise provided within our Home Academy system. The doctors have assured us that she will, in time, make a full recovery. Then Mrs Khan squeezed Aliya’s shoulders. –You’re looking forward to it, aren’t you, Aliya?
And, horrified, Jake saw Aliya lift her face to the cameras for the first time, and he saw her smile, and nod.
–No! Jake yelled.
Aliya’s voice was small, next to her mother’s. –Yes, she said, –I am looking forward to it. Looking forward to being better.
Questions rained down from the journalists. Jake watched Aliya lean into her mother and whisper something, and her mother nod, and turn to the waiting cameras.
–My daughter is exhausted. She will answer no more questions.
And while the journalists turned their attention back to the blond Surfer, Jake saw Aliya push her chair out from the table and stand to leave. But before she turned away, he saw her stare straight out at the camera, for all the world as if she were staring straight out at him, and him alone. And in a gesture that was over in a moment, she scribed a small circle on the table and placed her fingertip at its centre. Then she was gone.
I won’t leave her there, Jake thought. Whatever happens, I’m not leaving her in England.
Forty-eight
The tide was nearly full and Jake walked along the edge of the water. Out in the bay a few kayakers were paddling out, a couple of windsurfers. He didn’t want to think about anything. Not about England, or the New Wall, or the gang. He didn’t want to think about his sadness.
He shut his eyes. Bird cries, the break of the tide against the beach, a car starting, faint voices from the village. Why was it that you could hear more clearly if you couldn’t see? There was the distant noise of a boat engine, a tiny sound. Opening his eyes, he looked across the water again. There it was, just a dot far out in the bay.
On the far side of the beach, a group of birds was rushing to and fro, orange beaks pecking in the wash. He walked towards them and they took flight between the waves, calling and calling, a panicky, piping sound. He crouched and flicked away some seaweed, black, rubbery stuff, and tiny, translucent creatures jumped this way and that. A crab the size of his fingernail ran sideways. Jake caught it and set it down on his palm. It was white, and on its back it wore a green diamond.
He took off his trainers, rolled up his trousers and walked in up to his knees. The stones were sharp underfoot and the water was cold. Cold enough that if he were to swim in it, he thought it might fill up the whole of his mind.
He didn’t know how long he stood in the water for. Maybe it was only a few minutes. The wind had dropped to nothing. The kayaks had gone and the windsurfers had given up. The boat was still there, a bit bigger now, its engine grown to a chug sound.
His gang was gone, and he didn’t know who he was, or what to do, without them. He didn’t know how to fill the holes in him, made by all the people who’d gone. His parents. The gang. Jet …
He didn’t belong here, in this village. He didn’t belong in Scotland. Not yet. His grandparents loved him and wanted him here, but there wouldn’t be anyone else like him. He saw other children in boats and canoes, and playing on the beach, and hanging around the inn, and he couldn’t imagine being friends. They’d ask questions, and he wouldn’t know how to answer them. And if he did answer, they’d say he was making it up, or else they’d be freaked out and leave him alone.
A memory came to him, as sharp as if it was from yesterday. He was watching TV with his mother. Except for her old films, she didn’t much like watching TV, so that hadn’t happened very often. It was a programme about orcas. Killer whales. A mother whale was separated from her calf. She was making these sounds, whistles and clicks, over and over.
–What’s she doing? he’d said.
–She’s crying, his mother had told him. –Crying for her calf. She’s heart-sore.
–Heart-sore. He said it out loud. That was how he felt. His heart was sore.
He could feel the sun on his shoulders. Either his feet had grown used to the cold water, or they’d gone numb, like the rest of him.
The boat sound was larger now, and the dot had become a squat red boat. Not a sailing boat – no mast – and not a fishing boat, he didn’t think. It had a square nose and a line of tyres tied round its side as fenders. It stopped out in the bay and Jake heard the sound of a chain giving out. The anchor, he supposed. Becau
se then a small rowing boat was lowered to the water.
Last night he’d dreamed about Aliya. He’d dreamed she was locked in a safe room in the basement of a Home Academy, and he was in the Home Academy too. He was crawling, in the dream, under the dormitory beds to rescue her. At first it was easy, but the bed coverings hung down to the ground and as he crawled beneath each bed, they trapped him, twining round his legs. Then the Father was in the doorway and he spoke Jake’s name …
The tide was drifting in; he felt its gentle push against his legs. Something fingered round them, and he started and kicked out. But it was only seaweed, and when he saw it for what it was, he kept his ground.
He’d woken sobbing from the nightmare and his grandpa had been there again, beside him, and he’d felt the wash of relief because he was here, in Scotland with his grandparents, not locked away in a Home Academy. Then he’d remembered Aliya, and the nightmare became real again, because he’d heard her mother speak, and somewhere in England Aliya was locked away.
Jake watched the rowing boat because, except for birds, there was nothing else to watch. This had to be the quietest place he’d ever been.
Two figures got in. Men, he reckoned, from their size. The smaller one sat in the stern with some luggage beside him. Some bags, a box, maybe. The bigger one began to row, but Jake could tell, even at this distance, that he wasn’t used to it. He kept dipping the oars in wrong, and Jake could hear him cursing each time. A voice sounding over the sea. Jake reckoned it was cursing, though he couldn’t hear the actual words.
Jake couldn’t get the hang of rowing either when his granny took him out, kept putting his oars in wrong and throwing up a spray of water. Catching crabs, his granny called it. Twice he tipped backwards and the boat went round in a circle. Worst of all, his granny just laughed at him. But she made him keep on and he liked it in the end, the leaning forward and dipping down of the oars, then pulling them back through the green water. He liked the tug of the boat with each stroke. He liked it that he couldn’t think about anything while he was rowing, only about getting the oars in the water right, and keeping them even, and pulling back smoothly.
The big man in the rowing boat had got the hang too. Not so many splashes now, and the rowing boat came in a straighter line. But it stayed small for ages, a little boat beneath such a big sky, and the mountains behind, and the sea that would take you all the way to Ireland, if you set off swimming. Jake had seen it on his granny’s map.
The boat drew nearer, and the man in the stern began waving. Jake could see the swing of his arm. But who was he waving at? Jake looked around. There was no one on the beach except him.
–Hey! The man’s voice travelled like a bell-note across the water. There was something familiar about it, but Jake couldn’t place it. Closer the boat came. Jake could see the man in the stern more clearly. Baggy black trousers, black coat. Grey hair pulled back to a ponytail. Jake saw it when the man looked round. He stood knee-deep in the sea, mesmerised. Who was it?
Then suddenly he knew, and he waded, not heeding the sharp stones, though they made him catch his breath. He was out of the water and running along the beach, shouting, yelling:
–Ralph! Ralph!
And the rower. He knew the rower too. That leather jacket, that broad back.
–Monster!
And he heard his name returned, Ralph’s voice deep like thunder.
–Jake, boy!
Jake’s heart leaped. Monster and Ralph! Maybe they’d seen Poacher. Or Aliya! They might have news of her. And in the same moment, his spirit sank. Where was Jet? He’d left Jet in Ralph’s care. His dog, so badly wounded, close to death. What was Ralph doing here? Why had he left Jet?
And he felt the thought he couldn’t bear to think, and every stone cutting into his feet screamed up at him: Jet is dead.
The boat was close now, but Jake didn’t want to see them, or hear the news Ralph had come to tell him. He’d come all this way from England on a boat to tell him, and Jake didn’t want to hear it.
The boat was rocking from side to side and the bags and the box on the stern seat had tumbled. Monster’s oars had caught a pile of crabs, sending water into the air like diamonds, and he was swearing and splashing, and it would have been funny, except that nothing could be funny now. Not ever.
Why did he have to come? Why couldn’t he have sent a message?
Ralph was lifting the bags back on to the seat and now he had his arms beneath the box and Jake could see he was struggling with it, because the box seemed to be moving by itself, and Ralph was trying to keep it steady, keep it on the seat beside him.
They were nearly to the shore and above the sound of the oars splashing, and Monster’s curses, there was another noise coming from the boat. A noise Jake didn’t understand. Not a noise a man could make. It was like small bird noises, except there wasn’t any bird.
Small, urgent yip noises.
Jake stood silent, not daring to call another name, not daring to hope.
Monster rowed on, his big shoulders pulling steady again on the oars. The boat was only yards away, and Ralph was undoing the box.
–Said I’d look after him, din’t I? Ralph called. –So I had to get him home to yer.
As the boat pulled to the shore, Ralph lifted the box lid. That second, no more, was the longest in Jake’s life. And then from nowhere, from nothing, from out of Jake’s despair, a dog leaped.
A black dog; a thin dog now, with a wound on his shoulder that was healing. The dog Jake had thought was dead.
Tumbling out of the boat, into the shallows, Jet bounded towards him, yipping and barking, and then he was leaping up at Jake, licking his face, turning in circles so that the water was thrown against the sunlight in a silver sheen.
And Jake buried his face in Jet’s black fur.
–Hey, boy, he said. –We’re home.
Acknowledgements
This novel has been made possible with the support of many people, and institutions. My thanks to the University of Northumbria for providing sabbatical time for writing, and to my colleagues for their writerly support. Many thanks also to Arts Council England for their Grants for the Arts Award, which gave me invaluable time to write, and to Claire Malcolm at New Writing North for her help with this.
Two residencies, the first at Hawthornden Castle International Writers’ Retreat, and the second at the HALD, the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators as part of their International Residency Programme for Writers, gave me two months of uninterrupted time to write, for which I am enormously grateful.
A considerable portion of this novel was written in the wonderful Pig & Pastry cafe: it’s been a great place to write in. Thank you.
Thank you to Dave Wilson, for giving me the low-down on freight trains and their timetabling; and to John Cunningham for introducing me to the world of nanotechnologies. Also to the lorry driver at Michaelwood Services on the M5 for his vivid account of life on the road and how freight security is maintained.
Workshops with children in St John’s and Waverley Primary Schools, Newcastle, gave me very helpful feedback about the ideas in my story and two great first audiences. Thank you to all of them, and especially to Kelly Bewick and her class at St John’s who welcomed me back with open arms the following year. You are all fantastic imaginers and I loved your stories and ideas.
To all at David Fickling Books, thank you for welcoming me so wonderfully; and to Bella Pearson, particular thanks for superb editing.
Thank you to Gillie Russell at Aitken Alexander for most helpful notes on Outwalkers.
Thank you to my beloved daughters Eliza and Jesse for their support and opinion. There has been no shortage of either.
To Julia Evans-Turner, Matthew Jamson, Rosa James Kilbane, Elodie Salter, Romy Salter and Alex Turpin: a big thank you for reading the first draft of Outwalkers and for giving me such strong responses. Your thoughts and comments have been invaluable, and I have, I think, addressed each one.
To
my wonderful agent, Clare Alexander, a most heartfelt thank you, as ever.
Finally I’d like to thank Martin Riley as friend, ally and pacer, for all his thoughts and wisdom about stories, over much coffee and cake, as this story developed. And most of all, thank you to Karen Charlesworth, who has walked the length of the UK with me, literally and metaphorically, and kept me off the straight and narrow in the writing of Outwalkers.
Fiona Shaw
Also by Fiona Shaw
Out of Me
The Sweetest Thing
The Picture She Took
Tell it to the Bees
A Stone’s Throw
Copyright
Outwalkers
First published in 2018
by David Fickling Books, 31 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2NP
This ebook edition first published in 2018
All rights reserved
Text © Fiona Shaw, 2018
Cover design by Levi Pinfold
The right of Fiona Shaw to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN 978–1–78845–002–7