Kid Alone

by Simon Mason

  Light came on in the flat and Blinkie’s face withdrew. A silhouette appeared in the dimpled pane of the door, and Garvie tensed up, waiting for Zuzana to appear. But Zuzana did not appear. The door opened and Alex stepped out. He turned, scowling, and Blinkie stepped forward laughing and put his hand on Alex’s shoulder, and they stood close together whispering. Garvie waited a moment but could hear nothing, so he took a risk and slipped through the shadows across the alley to the wooden gate at the far side and tiptoed through it, and stood at the gatepost, listening.

  He heard Alex say, “Forget it, man.”

  He heard Blinkie say “Be nice to her” in his strange reedy voice. “Tell her it’s all good. She going to love it.” His laugh was a wet crackle in the silence.

  Then he heard Alex mutter, “I’ll call you. Don’t call me.”

  There was the sound of Blinkie fumbling in the pockets of his tracksuit, chuckling in the same cracked way, and Alex turned without saying anything and went back inside the flat, and Blinkie stood alone grinning to himself, lifting his face occasionally to look about him, blinking.

  Garvie stood there, thinking. Alex had taken a risk getting mixed up with Blinkie once. But Alex had said all that was over.

  As Blinkie turned to come back down the alley, Garvie slipped deeper into the blackest shadows at the back of the little yard, where he tucked himself into the side of an old metal wardrobe to wait for Blinkie to go past. Down the alley Blinkie’s footsteps came nearer, and Garvie held his breath while he went by. But he didn’t go by. His footsteps slowed—and stopped. There was silence. In the shadows of the yard Garvie listened to Blinkie listening on the other side of the gate. Then the gate slowly opened inward, and Garvie saw Blinkie standing there, peering around blindly, blinking with his watery big eyes, cocking his head as if he was trying to smell what he couldn’t see. There was a moment when he seemed to look right at Garvie, though his expression didn’t change, a strange expression, unsmiling and unhinged, fishlike, predatory. The man closed his mouth briefly, it fell open again, then he turned and shuffled away.

  Moments later there was another man’s voice in the street, and an engine started up, a door slammed, and a car with a pimped-out exhaust muffler roared away. Garvie stayed where he was. Ten minutes passed. Silence descended. Finally he emerged. He stepped out of the yard and heard in the night quietness the faint sound of a man’s crying in a room above Jamal’s shop. Khalid’s room. It came and went, a quiet baby-wail of mucus and despair, the loneliest sound in the world. He listened to it for a moment. Then he went out onto the street and walked slowly away down Bulwarks Lane, thinking.

  Saturday morning, just after breakfast, Garvie and his mother went to his uncle’s. His mother was going shopping with Uncle Len and Aunt Maxie, and Garvie was going to watch Bojo—in between dedicated periods of studying. That was the theory.

  They sat all together in the front room, drinking coffee. Garvie said nothing, and his mother said nothing to him. Occasionally she gave him a strong look. Aunt Maxie and Uncle Len glanced at each other.

  “Well, Garvie,” his uncle said, “how did your exam go yesterday?”

  Garvie considered this. “Good,” he said at last. “Very straightforward, thanks.”

  “What subject?”

  He considered this for a while longer. “Geog.”

  “I thought you’d dropped geography last year.”

  Garvie glanced at his mother. “Don’t think so. Think I’d remember if I’d dropped it.”

  In her position on the sofa his mother began to fill her lungs. It gave her an overloaded and unstable air.

  “Yeah,” Garvie said, taking a risk. “Definitely geography. I think.”

  His mother spoke—to Uncle Len. “ ‘Geography,’ yes. ‘Straightforward,’ no. ‘Good,’ almost certainly not. Quarter of an hour before the end of the exam I had Miss Perkins on the phone. Informing me my son appeared to have left the examination room. Was nowhere to be seen. Had left behind his paper with half an hour left on the clock. Which had surprised her, she told me, particularly because he’d turned up half an hour late and had only been in the room an hour for a two-hour paper.”

  “I’d finished,” Garvie said.

  “The point isn’t to finish,” his mother said. “The point is to pass.”

  “Maybe I’ve passed as well.”

  “Just went,” his mother said to Uncle Len and Aunt Maxie. “Didn’t ask, didn’t give a reason. Just slipped away.”

  “Didn’t want to disturb anyone.”

  “You disturbed them plenty. Formal warning given, inquiry to follow, possibility of automatic penalties. What is wrong with you, Garvie?”

  Garvie rolled his eyes. “It’s only an exam. I don’t see why everyone’s so worked up.”

  Garvie’s mother’s eyes whitened and widened and threatened to detach themselves from her face, but she stopped herself from saying whatever it was she had in mind and breathed in and out for several seconds until she appeared normal again.

  “Len,” she said.

  Uncle Len gave her an anxious look. “Yes?”

  “I wonder if this would a good time for you to have that chat with Garvie we talked about.”

  “Chat? Oh. Yes. Garvie, give me a hand clearing away these coffee things, will you?”

  In the kitchen, they faced each other over the breakfast bar.

  “I don’t like doing this,” Uncle Len began, “but you give your mother such a hard time.”

  Garvie just looked at him.

  “I shouldn’t have to do it,” he said.

  Garvie said nothing to that, either.

  “Stop staring at me—you know it makes me lose concentration. Listen. You think no one gets to tell you what to do, you think it’s your life, you take the decisions. Yes? Well, you’re right. So, let me ask you, what are you going to do next year?”

  Garvie shrugged.

  “Stay on at school? Leave and get a job? Go on the dole?”

  Garvie shrugged again, and Uncle Len nodded. “Okay, Garvie. I’m trying to think, What would I do in your place? What would I do if I were not exactly stupid but lazy as all hell. I wouldn’t want to be on the dole; you have to spend all your time applying for jobs you don’t want to do. I probably wouldn’t get a job, either. Even good jobs are hard work for a really lazy person. I’d ask myself what subject I liked best at school, and I’d stay on, fully paid for, and spend two years doing that. I wouldn’t have to work so hard if I didn’t want to, and I’d still end up with an impressive-looking qualification. Of course, you’d have to pass at least some of these exams now to stay on. But, as I say”—he spread his hands—“that’s up to you.”

  He sat back and looked at Garvie, and Garvie looked back at him. His nephew was unnervingly hard to read. For a minute neither spoke. Then Garvie gave a little shake as if coming out of a trance, and said, “Uncle Len, did Gimpel have anything of interest in his pockets?”

  “What? Have you been listening to anything I’ve just said?”

  “Or anything at all really, even stuff you’d expect to find—you know, an apple, uneaten sweets, ammunition for his gun.”

  “Garvie! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I know, I know, it’s confidential. Just tell me then when the personal effects are being returned to the family.”

  “Tell you when the … ” Uncle Len breathed hard. “Why do you even want to know?”

  “So I can go and look at them.”

  Uncle Len snorted. “Oh yes, of course—if you knew these people, which you don’t; if it wasn’t an invasion of their privacy, which it is; and if you spoke Polish, which luckily you don’t. Anyway,” he added hurriedly, “for all you know, the police still have them.”

  Garvie sighed. “You’re always one step ahead of me, Uncle Len.” He got down from the breakfast bar and drifted over to the door and looked back.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll tell her you gave me hell.”

&nb
sp; Aunt Maxie had brought Bojo down and, avoiding his mother’s eyes, Garvie went over and began to play with him. When he looked up, the others had all gone into the kitchen, and he could hear the low strain of voices through the shut door. They were talking about him: He could imagine his mother laying into Uncle Len.

  He looked at his cousin, who knelt on the floor like a miniature colossus in scarlet overalls among scattered dinosaurs and heavy-duty trucks, and sighed. “Bojo, what do you think? Sounds to me like the personal effects have been returned already.”

  Bojo put his fingers into his mouth and solemnly showed Garvie the wet remains of a chocolate finger cookie.

  Garvie nodded thoughtfully. “But the violin isn’t one of them. So where is it, Bojo?”

  Bojo regarded Garvie placidly. He gave a little wave with the chocolate finger and put it back in his mouth.

  “Think, Bojo. If you had a favorite thing, I mean something you couldn’t eat, and you had to make sure no one found it, where would you hide it? Where would you hide it if you were a clever kid, a kid who always has a plan. Hmm?”

  Bojo laughed till he choked and what was left of the chocolate finger slid out of his mouth and was lost in the carpet, and he began to look for it, making noises of outrage and distress.

  Garvie’s thoughts switched to Alex, and his frown deepened. His best friend had just joined the category of people he didn’t understand. Why, now that his life was back on track, would Alex hook up with Blinkie again? What the hell was wrong with him?

  The phrase echoed uncomfortably in his mind, in his uncle’s voice. He thought of what Uncle Len had just said. He knew it made sense. If he was half as smart as people said he was, he’d put in the minimum amount of work to pass his exams and take the next two years off. He’d go along with it, all the stupid questions and answers. There must be something wrong with him, he thought—perhaps some actual medical problem—to make him think they were the wrong questions, the wrong answers. He just couldn’t help thinking that the right questions, the important questions, were elsewhere. Briefly he thought of his mother. He knew how worked up she got. She couldn’t help it. He promised himself that he would do everything he could to avoid upsetting her, no matter how many slightly shaky reassurances he had to give her.

  When the others emerged from the kitchen they found Garvie and Bojo sitting stickily on the sofa with a new box of chocolate fingers.

  “We’re off,” Aunt Maxie said. “Be good.”

  Garvie’s mother looked meaningfully at Uncle Len.

  “Ah yes,” he said. “Remember what I said, Garvie, about studying. What’s your next exam?”

  “Biology, written paper.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when is it?”

  “Monday afternoon.”

  “Monday afternoon when exactly?”

  “Monday afternoon at two o’clock.”

  “And where is it?”

  “Gym.”

  “And you know where that is, and you’ll be there on time?”

  Garvie looked at him evenly. “I’ll be there,” he said. “There is absolutely no need to worry.”

  At half past one on Monday afternoon Garvie stood with Felix and Smudge in the cemetery of the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Strawberry Hill, the “polski church.” The cemetery was an isolated tangle of tilting tombstones and crumbling monuments surrounded by the high brick walls of the shopping center and cinema. Beyond its wrought-iron railings was a line of policemen, a crowd of journalists with their cameras and sound booms, and, farther along, groups of well-wishers standing with flowers and mementos. Behind them cars accelerated noisily up the hill, and other people went past talking and laughing, but inside the cemetery, at the far end, there was a hush broken only by the steady quiet chanting of the priest reciting the final part of the service that had gone on much longer than anyone had expected.

  Behind the grave was a small group of black-suited mourners, middle-aged and elderly representatives of the local Polish community. At the priest’s side were Zbigniew and Bogdana Gimpel, formal and bowed in their stiff mourning dress, and, beside them, a younger woman holding a baby, her wet face distorted by weeping, and, next to her, Zuzana, pale and quiet, in a dark gray skirt and jacket that made her seem slighter and smaller and more elegant than Garvie remembered. There was only one other person at the side of the grave, and he left it now and walked, as if irritably, to where Garvie, Felix, and Smudge were standing a little way off. He was wearing a full police uniform, tight around the stomach and creased around the knees, and a peaked cap with a dribble of gold braid on the rim, and he got close up to Garvie and looked at him with menace before he spoke.

  “Told you I’d remember you.”

  Garvie gazed back at him. “Met before, have we?”

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Smith.”

  “Funny.”

  “Depends on your sense of humor. My mother doesn’t think it’s funny.”

  Unsmiling, Detective Inspector Dowell took in Felix and Smudge with his small, hard eyes. “Okay, let’s do it all again. You.” He raised his eyebrows at Felix. “It’s a school day. So what’re you doing at Pyotor Gimpel’s funeral?”

  “Personal friend.”

  “And you?”

  “Personal friend,” Smudge said. “Quite close.”

  Finally Dowell looked at Garvie. “Personal friend too?”

  “No.”

  “Another field trip, then.”

  “No.”

  “Sick leave maybe?”

  Garvie shook his head.

  “Why are you here, then?”

  “Related,” Garvie said. “On his mother’s side.”

  Dowell’s peaked cap seemed to vibrate slightly on the crown of his bald head. “Polish, are you?”

  “My great-great-grandfather was. Makes me six and a quarter percent Polish. Though I’m sure you could have worked that out yourself.” He cleared his throat. “Jesteś palantem i nie wiem dlaczego tracę na Ciebie czas,” he said.

  Before Dowell could respond, there was a noise from the graveside and they all turned. Pyotor’s grandmother hung staggering on her husband’s arm, shouting at the younger woman, who turned away as if to protect her baby and, face lifted in anguish, began to wail. Zbigniew Gimpel maneuvered his wife to the other side of the grave and, tentatively, the priest continued his chanting, but Zuzana moved away and came up the path toward them.

  “Here’s another of my cousins,” Garvie said to Dowell. “She’s pretty much all Polish. She’s come to collect me ’cause we have to get back now to put the kettle on. Good luck with the investigation, by the way. I hear you’ve got everything sewn up.” And he went past the policeman and took Zuzana’s hand and they walked away together down the path that ran around the outside of the church and through the gates.

  When they had gone a little way Zuzana said, “You can stop holding my hand now.”

  He dropped her hand without looking at her, and they walked along the road around the corner into the pedestrian precinct, where they sat on a bench outside a betting shop.

  “You can explain as well,” she said.

  Garvie’s hand still tingled where it had touched hers. A sort of embarrassment came over him. “He’s a policeman,” he said briefly.

  “Yes, I noticed that.”

  “But he’s getting a bit too friendly. I had to get away. I’m not encouraging him,” he added. “He must be the friendly type.”

  When he glanced at her she was looking at him steadily.

  “I’m glad to help,” she said.

  “Yeah. Oh—thanks.”

  She was looking at him as if trying to decide whether to say something else before leaving, or just leave, and he said quickly, “In any case, I wanted to ask you a question. Like you said,” he added, “I could do with your help.”

  She looked amused again. “What question?”

  �
��What was all that shouting by the grave?”

  Now she sighed. “Pyotor’s grandmother is angry with his mother. She says she abandoned him. It is true; she went to start another family. Pyotor still saw her but not too much. He thought about her a lot, though. I know this because his mother’s new baby is ill. He needs an operation, and it can’t be done here, only abroad, and it is very expensive. They have had a price given to them, and they can’t raise the money. Pyotor was upset. He thought perhaps the baby might die. He kept asking Zbigniew and Bogdana how much money the operation would cost. For months he’s been obsessed with it.” Her expression changed again and she looked at Garvie with brimming eyes. “You see? How much sadness in his life.”

  Garvie gave a brief nod.

  She said, “And how many people come to his funeral? You, Smudge, Felix. Is all.”

  “I thought maybe Alex would be here as well.”

  She gave him a little look of outrage. “No. Alex doesn’t come. You think Alex is Pyotor’s friend? Are you? Is Smudge or Felix? Pyotor had no friends. He saw no one except at school and Juwenalia—and he only went there because his grandparents made him. No friends. No friends at all. This is sadness. You see now?”

  Garvie sighed. “Yeah, course.”

  “He found all the world hard. Things happened and he did not understand why.”

  She sat on the bench in her smart gray skirt and jacket with her hands folded in her lap. When she was serious she had a slight pout, he noticed. Her mouth softened and pursed, her chin puckered.

  “How is Alex, by the way?” Garvie asked.

  “Good,” she said shortly. “But we are not talking about Alex.”

  “No worries. Can’t stop long anyway—there’s something I’ve got to get to. Before I go, did you bring the answers to the questions I wrote down for you?”

  She turned and looked at him a long time without answering. Finally she took several sheets of paper from her jacket pocket. “I did not ask your questions,” she said.