Everlasting Lane

by Andrew Lovett

  ‘Look at poor Peter,’ said the Reverend Potter nervously. ‘We’ve sent him off to sleep with all our chatter.’

  I didn’t say anything. I knew that if this went on much longer I would be late for Melanie’s party. I was afraid that any contribution I made—not that I had any to make—would only make it longer still.

  ‘Your problem, my dear,’ went on Mrs Carpenter, ‘is that you simply lack the courage to believe. Even now, having had all your questions answered, you would rather deny the Lord than admit you are wrong.’

  ‘But you haven’t answered them,’ cried Anna-Marie in frustration. ‘You haven’t answered them at all: the miracles, the babies. We didn’t mean to break the vase. It was the grave. We just wanted to—’

  ‘It’s always sad when people die, my dear,’ said the vicar, ‘particularly a child when they’ve barely had a chance to live, but, well, it’s complicated. I wouldn’t expect a child to—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, I wouldn’t expect a child—’

  ‘It was me,’ interrupted Anna-Marie. ‘It was all my fault. The vase I mean.’

  ‘Really?’ Mrs Carpenter looked up. ‘Are you sure?’ Her smile unfolded like a tablecloth. ‘But Peter’s guilt seems—’

  ‘It was me,’ said Anna-Marie again. ‘I mean it was my idea.’

  I wanted to protest. I mean I tried to. But, well, it was Melanie’s party and she—Anna-Marie—well, she wouldn’t even look at me.

  ‘At last, perhaps we are getting somewhere,’ said Mrs Carpenter rising and marching to the office door. She swung it open, the blast of cool air making me dizzy. Returning to her desk the headmistress shouted: ‘Caroline, would you call Mrs Liddell and have her come to school right away. Tell her it’s urgent.

  ‘And fetch Mr Gale to come here at once.’

  She turned to Anna-Marie. ‘What an obnoxious child you are,’ she said. ‘I don’t doubt that you think you are very clever: standing here debating with the vicar like a … like an adult but your … games will have their own … ramifications. As reluctant as I am to resort to this,’ her thumb lovingly traced the harsh curve of the leather strap, ‘it is, sometimes the only satisfactory deterrent to this kind of …

  ‘After all, Anna-Marie, if you wish to be treated like an adult, then you must be prepared for punishments that fit your misdemeanours, don’t you think?’

  Anna-Marie’s top teeth clamped down on her lower lip; her eyes set like stone; a rod of steel ran through her, and she said, very softly: ‘Yes.’

  Mr Gale barged in looking flustered and sick. ‘Mrs Carpenter?’

  ‘Take Peter to collect his belongings from the cloakroom and off the school premises.’

  ‘What about Anna-Marie?’

  ‘Anna-Marie must learn to suffer the consequences of her crimes.’

  ‘Crimes, Mrs Carpenter? To be fair—’

  ‘And when I want your opinion, Mr Gale, I will ask for it.’ As she leant forwards, resting on the flinty squares of her raw, red knuckles her face shifted and collapsed in on itself. But it was the same old mask that turned to face my teacher. ‘Go!’

  Mr Gale stood guard as I collected my bag from the cloakroom and gathered my stuff. We walked from the classroom and across the hall to the exit. I jumped from my skin when he turned and said: ‘Going to Melanie’s party tonight?’

  How did he know?

  He escorted me to the main doors past Mrs Carpenter’s office. At that very moment we heard a slap and a muffled cry as if through gritted teeth. Mr Gale glanced at his watch and laid his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Peter,’ he said, ‘you really are a … a … a gutless cunt, aren’t you?’

  I wanted to say something, something to defend myself, but my tongue wouldn’t let me. You see, it knew, like I knew, that he was right.

  You see, I never answered the question: did I believe? In God, I mean. And, well, I don’t know, but if Anna-Marie was right and there’s no God: well, when there’s hurricanes and floods and disabled babies and stuff like that, who are you supposed to get angry with?

  22

  Leaving Dovecot behind me, I trotted through the village and left into Fugler Lane, which, turning quickly to gravel and dust, led me upwards and out of the valley. Every step of my shoe slapped on the ground like a leather strap on naked …

  I hadn’t told Kat about the party, of course—I suspected it wasn’t the kind of thing she meant when she said we should ‘keep ourselves to ourselves’—so I was still in my uniform and the fierce sun soon made my collar tight and my shirt as hot and sticky as it had been in Mrs Carpenter’s office. My pace began to drag, my satchel cutting deep into my shoulder, until I began to feel like one of those ants sagging beneath the weight of a twig: an Anna-Marie-shaped twig stretched across my shoulders like a bad feeling, just waiting for God’s great pink thumb to descend from the sky.

  But I shrugged off the weight as best I could. After all, when you thought about it, it wasn’t really my fault that Anna-Marie had been so rude to Mrs Carpenter and the vicar, was it? Not really. If they’d only asked me what had happened with the vase I could’ve told them. It was only an accident after all. It was Anna-Marie who had started going on about God and stuff like that. I hadn’t even known what she was talking about. Who would argue with a vicar about God and stuff? It didn’t make any sense.

  As the road straightened out, I glanced across at the fields draped over the hilltops. From up there it was hard to believe there wasn’t some kind of fountain high up in the hills, pumping out field after field until they flooded the land as far as I could see. Of course, usually they’d be all different shades of green and maybe yellow but that day, that summer they were all brown, dry and crispy like pie crust. I looked down to the village sparkling like gold at the bottom of a clear, glassy pool. I could see the church too, its spire like a rocket, the high street, the little cottages scattered like pebbles and, of course, the school where Anna-Marie was … where Anna-Marie was.

  I could hear this little voice in my head: ‘What do you mean you didn’t wait for her? You went to Melanie’s party? Who would do that?’ It sounded a lot like Tommie Winslow but there was no point going back now, I told him. Not really. Whatever punishment Mrs Carpenter had chosen, it would be over by now and Anna-Marie on her way home. I mean even if I’d turned around that minute, that very minute, by the time I got back to school she’d already be gone.

  Probably.

  Besides it would be just as rude to accept an invitation to a party and then not go, wouldn’t it? For all I knew I might be the only guest and it wouldn’t be much of a party for Melanie if her only guest didn’t turn up, would it? And Anna-Marie, of course, when you thought about it, was much tougher than Melanie anyway. I mean Mr Gale had read us this story once and this dog died and Melanie’s eyes had got all watery on the story-carpet until Mr Gale snapped at her to pull herself together, ‘For God’s sake,’ because ‘It’s only a story.’ I mean Anna-Marie hadn’t even cared when the Beast died. And that was real.

  And it wasn’t like it was even the first time that Anna-Marie had got the strap at school. Tommie had told me that. After all she was ‘bad news.’ She’d said it herself.

  Ahead of me, Finches’ Farm—the farmhouse itself and all the sheds and barns—rose into view, nestled in an orange burst of late afternoon. The farmyard was cluttered with wood, rusting metal, planks and tubes, bales of wire, random wheels, like the dismantled remains of some fancy machine. And the smell, the stink, as if some fairy-tale giant had been left slowly rotting to death in this empty barn, was so wet and heavy the still, warm air was smothered by it.

  I stood alone, just a little dot, in the middle of the road to the farmhouse as it whipped away to the left. Fine for a truck or a tractor but for me another half hour’s walk. In the distance, the faint tremors of a party: like hens cackling and dogs barking and the Bay City Rollers singing.

  So I wasn’t the only guest after all. But it was still b
est that I go.

  When you thought about it.

  So I ploughed straight across the field, chest high through the withered crops.

  Ten minutes later the farmhouse door gaped open drooling with the high-pitched squeal of children. I hesitated a moment before stepping softly onto the welcome mat. The insides of the Finches’ farmhouse were all over the place as if several buildings and rooms, not to mention the furniture, had been shoved together by that dead giant I told you about before, but at its heart was a kitchen, and a stove burning as if it’d been lit a hundred years ago and never allowed to die, separated from the living room only by the tassels of a large and ancient rug. The homely stink of dogs kept the stench of the farmyard at bay but whatever tangle of dogs usually stampeded from room to room had today retreated to cower in safe, shadowy corners well away from the many-headed monster of girls that now filled the farmhouse.

  Because, whilst I wasn’t the only guest, I was the only boy.

  Every corner was crammed with girls: either gathered in gossipy groups or dancing alone or splitting off into pairs, one sobbing and the other, an arm about her friend’s shoulder, throwing daggers at a third until the sobber sobbed herself dry and the pair limped back to the dancing as another couple removed themselves and the scene repeated.

  Oh, and I was the only person still wearing their school uniform. Everybody else, each girl, was dressed in clothes that made them look about five years older than they had in assembly that morning and their faces were all smeared in powders and creams so thick you could’ve stuck teaspoons in and stirred without touching the sides.

  And, as I stepped into the room, the moment spun on the edge of silence as every head twisted to look at me. And then a swell and a burst of laughter knocked me backwards and the monster on the living room rug teetered gleefully in its tiny party shoes.

  They were like hens in a chicken coop: snap, cackle and pop.

  But then, there at the centre of all the giggling silliness, I saw Melanie. Her lips and her nails were painted a shiny pink and a red ribbon sat in her dark hair. When she saw me her cheeks glowed and, for an instant, her eyelashes dropped to the floor before she rushed up and grabbed me.

  ‘Mummy—Mum—this is Peter,’ she cried, pinching me by the elbow towards a pink smock stretched over the big behind of a woman, arms buried bubble-deep in the sink. But there was something about that pink smock that made me uneasy. And, when she turned around and smiled, I found it very hard to keep breathing. You see, she was that woman from the Lodge: the one who recognised Kat on that first day of school. She was short, no taller than me, plump like a ripe fruit, with a pale face and Melanie’s pretty pink lips. When she caught me staring—perhaps I stared a little longer than I should—she winked.

  ‘Oh, Peter, m’love,’ she cried, and her soapy hands clasped mine. ‘I was so pleased when Mel said you was coming. Ooh, and look how smart you are.’ She meant because I was still in my school uniform. ‘Let me get that for you,’ and she slipped my bag from my shoulder. ‘Mind, you’re so late, we was fretting you weren’t coming after all.’ And then, ‘Oh, Peter!’ now rubbing Fairy soft suds into my cheeks, her smile a lipsticky flash of amusement. ‘You know, you’re very familiar, aren’t you? Have we met before?’

  I lurked, back to the wall, in the shadows of the party, peering in at the strange dancing creatures and casually looking at the family photographs that cluttered the sideboards and shelves. I could feel my face glowing like headlights on a flying saucer. Every now and again one of the girls would grin in my direction but, if I tried to smile back, my face got all hot and cardboardy and out of place like it wasn’t my face at all but like some stranger’s face stuck on with glue. The music rattled around my ears like ball-bearings in a tumble drier. My big, clumsy feet tried to shuffle in time and I tried to move my arms in rhythm but it was like all the bits weren’t even connected to the rest of me any more, just pieces of the wrong puzzle all jammed in together.

  Anna-Marie wouldn’t’ve had any time or patience for this party, I thought. I pictured her in tatty plimsolls and a grubby frock; I could even see her grumpy scowl. Anna-Marie would never cake her face or have any time for all the giggly gossip or high-pitched nonsense. She was so very different from them.

  If you wanted to think about it.

  Which I didn’t.

  And then I saw this one photograph which made me gasp.

  It was one of those old photos. No, not black-and-white-old. Not that old. It was coloured but all soft and blurry, slowly fading away with the summer. And it, the photograph, made me think of this story my dad once told me about these burglars who would break into people’s houses but instead of taking all their jewellery and stuff they would only rearrange their furniture. It seemed a kind of funny thing to do, which is why I remember it, so that when you came down in the morning you’d trip over the rug because it hadn’t been there before and when you went to find your favourite chair by the window it was by the door instead. Anyway, that was kind of like what the photograph was doing inside my head: rearranging the furniture so that nothing was in the right place any more.

  I recognised Melanie straight away, of course, even though she was only a little girl. Even then she was pretty enough to turn you into sand. I couldn’t miss the black-jack hair and her lips all strawberry-red like those hard boiled sweets on Mr Kirrin’s high shelf. And, of course, I recognised the little boy too, the Pinky-Perky puppet waving from his hand, even though I was too little to remember. I mean I recognised his face from the bathroom mirror and the silver tap in the school cloakroom, upside down in spoons and the reflection in my mother’s eyes. It was like seeing yourself for the first time but knowing, just knowing that it’s you and that that’s your mouth and your nose. And you know they’re your eyes even though you’ve only ever seen them from the wrong side before.

  We were sat together, in the picture, Melanie and me, in that paddling pool. You know, the one that was hanging in Kat’s workshop like a big, blue rubber skin. And there behind us was the cottage, Kat’s cottage, my cottage and, over there, my willow tree. And there with us was Kat: smiling at us, smiling at the camera. And it was like I was in there with them, like I was inside the little silver frame, and I could laugh at all the splashing and feel the warm sun and hear the willow leaves ripple like the pages of a book.

  But it was funny to see Kat in that picture: funny because she was almost as fat as Melanie’s mum. I mean her face wasn’t so fat but her big flowery frock, like that sheet in the workshop covering something secret, was draped all the way over and her big belly looked like it was about to pop. It was like one of those dresses ladies sometimes wear when they’re going to have a—

  ‘She was my best friend, you know.’

  A big dark shadow had loomed up behind my reflection in the photo glass like the Loch Ness Monster. And I felt Mrs Finch’s hand on my shoulder, her meaty fingers slowly flexing. ‘Peas in a pod, we were,’ she said. ‘The Giggling Gerties they used to call us. You probably want to know what happened.’ I shook my head. Well, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to know or not. ‘One day,’ she went on, ‘I went down to the cottage to see her just as usual and she’d gone. It was her mum opened the door. I says, “People just don’t up and go,” and her mum says, “Well, then, how come that’s just what they’ve done?” ’ Mrs Finch’s fist turned me round to face her and she looked at me like a judge: ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ her eyes whispered. ‘How do you plead?’ like I was the guilty one. But it was as if I was swallowing this big slice of birthday cake in my throat.

  ‘Mel says you live with your aunt,’ said Mrs Finch. ‘Was that who I saw you with at school? She looks just like your mum, doesn’t she?’

  I tried but I couldn’t say anything, could I? I only coughed and spluttered. I mean, what would you have said?

  Melanie shared her mother’s pretty face and rosy lips but her skinny shape and dark skin she got from her father. He was sat at the
over-laden kitchen table, a shotgun laid across his lap, fuelling and refuelling his pipe and sweeping a suspicious eye over the intruders. From his large feet, cooling in a bowl of water, to the sweat on his brow he was made of the un-ploughed earth, of the crops he raised, of the seasons that turn the world.

  Mrs Finch began organising party games, strutting up and down like a German General and barking instructions but it wasn’t until Mr Finch rose from his place and stood there stiff like the village green War Memorial that the snorting and sniggering quietened down enough for games to begin.

  We sat in a big circle flinging brightly wrapped parcels from lap to lap. And then we stood in a circle and, this time, when the music stopped, we had to stand as still as statues. I won, my arms and legs like stone, whilst the girls pulled faces and, if they thought they could get away with it, pinched their neighbours. And then another circle and we played a game of Truth or Dare which went well enough until Melanie twirled the bottle and it pointed at me like an angry teacher.

  ‘Peter?’ It was Charlotte Blackett, a girl with glasses and bunches from the second year. ‘Do you love Melanie?’

  Mrs Finch performed a pantomime ‘Ooh’ of surprise and clutched a hand to her heavy bosoms as my cheeks bulged with all the crimsons of the world and the room began to spin just like the bottle had.

  And then Lizzie March said: ‘Or Anna-Marie?’

  ‘Ugh,’ groaned Cheryl Sawyer. ‘Anna-Marie smells like cabbage.’

  ‘That’s because she never washes,’ said Sarah Randall.

  ‘Now, now, girls,’ said Melanie’s mother, ‘it’s not like Anna-Marie can help being a bit … different,’ and everybody laughed. ‘Now, who’s hungry?’ and everybody cheered.

  At the head of the table sat Mr Finch. Next to him sat Melanie and, at Melanie’s insistence, I sat next to her. We were surrounded by plate after plate of sandwiches: ham on one side, cheese on the other, egg and cress in the middle. Crisps and snacks were spread before us and pineapple chunks, cheese and sausages lost in forests of cocktail sticks. Glasses, cups and tumblers were filled to the brim from large jugs of squash. Mrs Finch drew a loud chair to the table and squeezed herself in so that she was facing me, her eyes bright and nosey. Mr Finch was watching me too, eyeing me like a crow, his mind turning over like dry earth.