Everlasting Lane

by Andrew Lovett

  ‘Things!’ snapped Anna-Marie. ‘Things. What do you mean,’ she did her stupid-question voice, ‘What things?’ She sighed. ‘Just things.’

  ‘But what things?’

  ‘I thought,’ Anna-Marie took a deep, shuddery breath, her fingers twisting her necklace, Tommie’s necklace, looping it around, ‘I thought I could change me. I thought I could … be better. Like Alice.’

  ‘Better?’

  ‘We shouldn’t’ve gone to the Lodge,’ I said.

  For a moment, from the look on her face, I thought she was going to hit me. Anna-Marie I mean. And I would’ve let her too. I deserved it. But, instead, her hand stayed in her lap and she said, ‘Really?’ and then she said, ‘Do you think?’

  She’d pulled the chain of that necklace tight around her finger; the tip all white but bulging, gasping for blood.

  ‘But we had to, didn’t we?’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean,’ and she put on her idiot-voice again, ‘We had to, didn’t we?’

  I hesitated. Searching for the right words was like searching for pennies in a big, black bag of sand. ‘I mean it’s like what you said about consequences,’ I started. ‘You made us go to the Lodge because we knew about Alice. Going to the Lodge was a consequence of that just like us all sitting here like this,’ I meant because we were all so miserable, ‘is because of going to the Lodge. I mean Kat says that consequences can be bad as well as good: like bombs going off.’

  ‘What do you know about consequences, Peter?’

  Actually, I was suddenly beginning to think I knew quite a lot: my ‘chosen specialist subject’ as the vicar might say. ‘It’s like you said: kids don’t know about consequences when they do things. They just do them anyway. And when we started trying to find out about Alice we didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. I mean what happened to her and if we hadn’t gone to the graveyard and if we hadn’t gone to the Lodge then we wouldn’t know but we did and now we know that something bad happened and we can’t change that, we can’t change what we—’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Anna-Marie. ‘We can’t change—’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We can’t change but that’s the point because now we know about the things that happen. Now we know about consequences we can decide what to do because we’ll know that there’s consequences and we can try to work out what will happen if we do this thing or that thing. It’s …’ What I wanted to say was that it was like what Anna-Marie had said about being a good teacher and teaching kids about consequences and that they should think about things before they do them and that if she hadn’t insisted maybe we wouldn’t’ve gone to the Lodge and we might never’ve known and that was a good thing, wasn’t it? But I didn’t say that. It would’ve sounded stupid, so, ‘It’s like something you said,’ I said.

  ‘Something?’ Anna-Marie laughed. ‘Something I said? Something you did, Peter. Something you did.’ She reached over and grabbed my knee. ‘Peter,’ she hissed through her teeth, her fingers like claws, ‘what did you do?’

  I shook my head. ‘I … I don’t know … I—’

  ‘My dad’s dead.’

  I looked up at Anna-Marie not quite sure I’d heard what I thought I’d heard. ‘What?’

  ‘My dad,’ she said again, ‘is dead.’ She was twisting the necklace round and round her finger until it was pinching her neck.

  I glanced at Tommie. He was watching Anna-Marie but I could tell he already knew. I mean, of course he already knew. Everybody knew everything except for me. But even so, this was …

  ‘What do you mean? When?’

  ‘He hit me with this broom once, you see. A broomstick I mean. He broke it clean in half.’ She released the necklace for a moment to mime the breaking of a stick. The chain had left a thin white line about her throat which quickly flooded with dark pink. ‘Across my back,’ she sniffed, her wrist across her nose she unpicked a tear from the corner of her eye with her thumb. ‘I broke his watch, if you must know.’ She examined her tear. ‘But it was an accident. He didn’t mean it,’ she said. ‘He just got angry, you know, and didn’t know how to …

  ‘Oh, it’s easy to sit in judgement, Peter. We all make mistakes. You’ve made a few yourself.’

  ‘But … What happened?’

  Anna-Marie looked at me. Tears were running down her cheeks like drizzle down a window pane, snot bubbling in her nose. Again she wiped it away leaving a swipe on her sleeve. ‘Peter,’ she said, ‘do you really have no idea? Do you really have absolutely no idea?’ She made a noise like it was supposed to be a laugh but wasn’t. It was more like a croak really, like she was being choked. ‘The police came. My mother called them and they came and took him away and they put him in a … in a cell and then they decided to put him in … in the Lodge,’ she took another deep breath all tattered and torn, her shoulders trembling, ‘because he wasn’t well and we could go and visit him but when I came home,’ she sniffed, ‘came home from hospital and my mother took me he wouldn’t see us and then,’ deep breath, ‘after we went home again he went to his room and then,’ deep breath, ‘he took his shoelaces and tied them to the light and stood on a chair and …

  ‘Oh, Peter,’ she cried, ‘don’t you know anything?’

  No. No, I didn’t know anything.

  ‘I thought he was in sales,’ I said.

  I needed to think. I needed to get away and find a willow of my own. No, I didn’t know anything, but I thought that if I could just go somewhere, somewhere else where nobody was talking to me I might be able to start fitting the jigsaw pieces together.

  But the funny thing was I’d thought it was only me—I mean me and Kat and Grandma and Dad and Alice—who had a jigsaw. I hadn’t realised or at least I hadn’t thought that Anna-Marie might have one too. And if Anna-Marie had one, what about Tommie? I glanced across at him, his spectacles all shiny like silver coins. Did he have one? What about his mum and dad? What about Norman Kirrin? Or Mrs Carpenter? The vicar? Surely not. Or maybe … maybe it was all just one big puzzle.

  Glancing at her watch, Anna-Marie lifted her bag and hung the strap across her shoulder. ‘But the thing is,’ she said, getting to her knees, wiping her eyes dry with the back of her hand, ‘do you want to know why he died?’

  I stared at her, her eyes so cold and blue. I shook my head. No. No, I didn’t. Not at all.

  ‘Because, Peter, people don’t get second chances,’ she said. ‘Not really. Not … Not literally. He couldn’t undo what he’d done and he couldn’t be forgiven any more than … any more than you can.’

  And then she was gone.

  31

  Tommie and I rushed to collect all our bits together; to chase after Anna-Marie as quickly as we could. But we were bumping into each other like a pair of It’s a Knockout penguins and my Mousetrap box fell from my arms, all the pieces higgledy-piggledy across the ground. Tommie was ready to part the long leaves of the willow and laughed to see me scrabbling around on my hands and knees. But then, with a sigh, he bent to help me shove all the bits back the way they’d been.

  It’d been so cool beneath the willow that we hadn’t thought how warm the morning was even though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock. It was too warm to run—all hot and treacly—but, as Tommie and I hefted our bags and stuff onto our shoulders and under our arms, Anna-Marie had already disappeared, so we didn’t have much choice if we were going to catch up with her, did we?

  As we panted up Everlasting Lane, Tommie shook his head and said, ‘She’s really cross. Maybe we should leave her alone.’

  But I was thinking, was she right? Anna-Marie I mean. When you thought about it, her dad was just like my dad. Not just that he was dead but because he didn’t get a second chance either. And I think it was all he wanted, my dad. He didn’t want to die. And I know Anna-Marie said we didn’t get second chances but she’d been wrong before. She’d been wrong about Alice, hadn’t she? And about going to the Lodge too, so maybe she was wrong about this. I was trying to think ab
out something Kat had said.

  We didn’t catch up with Anna-Marie until the sign at the very top. She was waiting for a gap in the traffic, arms crossed, toe tapping impatiently as the school cars and a big blue bus passed by.

  ‘It’s not true,’ I said breathlessly as we reached her. I grabbed her arm and said it again: ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘What?’ she spat, spinning round to face me, shaking my hand free. ‘What’s not true?’

  ‘I mean maybe your dad didn’t get a second chance but that doesn’t mean nobody does. Some people get stuff like I got an Action-Man helicopter for Christmas once but not everybody did. It’s like we’re, you know, butterflies—’

  ‘What are you wittering on about, Peter? Tommie,’ she pleaded, ‘shut him—’

  ‘No, no, listen,’ I said. I tried to take her hands in mine but she pulled them away like I had that ring-a-roses plague thing Mr Gale told us about.

  ‘Don’t you speak to me—’

  ‘Shut up!’ I shouted. ‘Just … It’s … Let me think … It’s important. I …’ I took a big breath as I shoved my hand deep into that sand, you know, not real sand but the sand in that black bag I was telling you about. And then I found it: a big shiny penny glinting in my hand. Not a real penny but … Well, you know what I mean.

  It was too late.

  Anna-Marie was already crossing the big road—the main Nancarrow Road—just managing to skitter out of the way of this big lorry that blared its horn as it roared by. Tommie and me shouted at her to slow down but she wouldn’t. So then we had to wait for this tractor—this big, smoky, green tractor with a rattley tin trailer—to go by before we could chase after her again.

  We squeezed along the hedges that separated us from the fields where Kat had seen the scarecrow man—I mean Norman—that day, with the hills all crumpled up in the distance like the folds of my blanket. We reached the pavement and passed the Amberley sign into the village. This was Rone Lane and all its little tea-pot cottages and creosote fences and low brick walls. I could see a lady outside The White Hart standing on a chair and pouring a pan of washing-up water into the hanging baskets. The pavement was all cluttered with children on their way to school, toys and games carried preciously in their arms, school-bags dragging along in the gutter behind them.

  Anna-Marie brushed past them all; Tommie and I stumbling along in pursuit taking turns to knock each other into the road.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘you don’t get second chances,’ as we pulled level with Anna-Marie alongside the telephone box. ‘Not even like that man in the Bible that Mrs Carpenter always says. Maybe that’s not what a second chance even means. You can’t change a dead man into a live man. Nobody can do that; not even grown-ups. Maybe not even Jesus.’ I was all breathless, what with walking as fast as her. ‘But maybe a second chance isn’t the chance to make a wrong thing right or a bad thing good,’ I went on. ‘Maybe a second chance is a chance to do another thing, a new thing that is good or right. But maybe you can’t know. Maybe it is a secret. But you can find secrets out like we found out about Alice.’

  I didn’t know for sure that she was even listening, until she said, ‘But—’

  I waved her quiet. She was always talking, wasn’t she? Now it was my turn. ‘Because Alice was like a mystery,’ I said. ‘She was like a magical thing that we didn’t understand like I don’t understand how a fridge can be cold even when it’s warm or how the world’s spinning about at a million miles an hour but we’re all here as if we were—’

  ‘Oh, Peter,’ growled Anna-Marie, ‘please don’t tell me you think fridges are magic.’

  ‘In olden times,’ called Tommie jostling along behind us, ‘like in caveman times, if you had a fridge they’d think you were magic.’

  Yes, I thought. Just like that. Thank you, Tommie.

  ‘It’s magic,’ I said. ‘And magic is true.’

  Anna-Marie stopped and turned and, well, you know how sometimes if you go for a walk in the country and sometimes you’ll see a field with horses in? There was one in the lane which I told you about. Anyway, sometimes we’d go right up to the fence and Anna-Marie would hold out handfuls of grass and the horses would come gallumphing over and nibble at the ends and then every now and again one of the horses would snort and ripple its nose about. Well, that’s pretty much what Anna-Marie sounded like when I said that magic was true: a big, horsey snort like I’d just said the stupidest thing in the world.

  And she was off again

  ‘Aaaow!’

  It was a funny noise to make, I know, but right then I just wanted to box her ears but I don’t mean box them like Muhammed Ali floating like a, well, a butterfly. I mean I wanted to cut them off and put them in a box and then take the box somewhere secret and private well away from her mouth like, maybe, the pill-box where I met Norman Kirrin that first time or deep in the woods. And when I was there I’d open the box and scream at the ears and they’d have to listen and her mouth would be too far away to interrupt.

  ‘But that’s what you used to say,’ I called after her. ‘You used to say it might be magic: the lane. I remember.’

  ‘Used to!’ I heard her shout. ‘That’s the kind of crap kids say!’

  I didn’t think Amberley had ever seen anything like this. Anna-Marie, head down, as she stormed along. Me shouting like I didn’t care who heard. I remembered that first day when I’d followed her hop-scotching from square to square and look at her now. How had this happened? What had I said? What was I trying to say? I was trying to make things right but it was like whatever I said came out the wrong way to make Anna-Marie understand.

  Tommie and me were running again. We passed the village green and all the little cottages that overlooked it. The grass hadn’t seen rain in months and the ducks that had once paddled in the pond had given up and disappeared weeks ago. Anna-Marie had stopped to wait for this car to reverse into the mouth of Fugler Lane. This time I jumped right past her so we were face-to-face.

  ‘But Kat said that magic is real,’ I protested. ‘Listen: a secret is another word for finding out what’s true, isn’t it?’ Tommie was nodding. ‘And a secret is just a mystery like in Sherlock Holmes.’ It was like he had a bee buzzing about his head he was nodding so much. ‘And magic is, well, it’s like a mystery that you don’t know the answer to but once you find it out what you find out is true.’

  It was like that bag of sand again but now it was a big saucepan full of words, all bubbling to the top. Words like ‘secret’ and ‘true’ and ‘magic’ and ‘mystery’ and, of course, ‘consequences’ all juggling around in my head and me trying to put them in the right order so that Anna-Marie would understand.

  ‘You know how you …? Do you ever pretend things? I mean do you sometimes pretend something is true when it isn’t?’

  Anna-Marie glanced at Tommie and raised her eyebrows. ‘What sort of things do you pretend, Peter?’ Her face was all quivery she was so cross.

  But it was hard to answer. I couldn’t think of anything right then. But maybe that was the thing with pretending. I mean sometimes, if you pretended strongly enough, it was hard to remember what was real and what was only pretend. Sometimes it was better to just forget there was a difference.

  ‘When I play football,’ said Tommie, bouncing his ball on the pavement, ‘I pretend I’m Martin Chivers.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  Thank you, Tommie, I thought again. I nearly could’ve kissed him. Well, not really but, well, you know …

  ‘My dad says—’

  But she was already gone. It was driving me mad. Every time I tried to explain she was always stomping off and not listening to a word I said. But then she would stop and I couldn’t get the words in my head to catch up with my mouth. I wanted to say how sometimes I could pretend something so much that it was almost like it was true. And sometimes I could pretend something so much that it was like my dad was alive. Just like she did when she said her dad was in sales. And, well, it was like
in a story. You know, like cats and dogs and laughing your head off. If you really wanted, then you could make it true if you … It was like in my scrapbook—

  We passed the church just as the bell began to chime: nine times, school time. I saw again that blue vase sat on a distant gravestone—do you remember?—except now I knew whose grave it was and now I knew whose vase and why Anna-Marie had told me not to go to that part of the graveyard.

  Here lies Christopher Alan Liddell,

  much missed father and husband.

  But if I’d seen it that day, would I have understood? If I’d seen it that day in the graveyard, would I have realised? In the distance I could hear the school-bell monitor—ring-a-ding-ding—sounding the end of morning play. The children would be lining up; the teachers opening their registers, pens at the ready. If I’d seen it though, would it have made any difference?

  We caught up with Anna-Marie at the school-gate. I grabbed her, feeling her tight waist beneath my fingers, the material of her T-shirt. But before I could think of what to say, she screamed: ‘Have you listened to yourself?’ and pushed me so hard that I stepped back into the road. ‘Good Lord, you’re like an infant.’ She was crying now. ‘Have I wandered into the chimpanzees’ tea-party? What are you talking about, Peter?’

  ‘But you said …’ I almost wanted to cry too. I put my head in my hands. I felt like I was running ten laps round the school field with Mr Gale going: ‘Come on, Lambchop, get your arse in gear!’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ I said. ‘When you told me your dad was in sales? I thought it was true. I mean, it was true. It was true to me. And it was nice, wasn’t it? That someone thought he was alive. And, when you told me that, because I believed it, it must’ve been like it was true. Even to you. I mean that’s why you said it. And if it’s like it’s true, why isn’t it?’

  ‘Because it isn’t, Peter! What are you saying? You’re saying this means this and that means that as if it’s all true but—’

  ‘But …’ I wanted to scream. ‘But …’ I really did. Why did everything have to be so hard? ‘It was true and if I was telling someone about it they’d think it was true too. So to them your dad was alive and they would think he was away on business and they might never even think to themselves: Oh, I wonder if he’s dead instead. And to those people it would be true. It would be.’