Everlasting Lane

by Andrew Lovett

  ‘Well, moving on from that … reprehensible interruption,’ said Mrs Carpenter.

  I was relieved. At least she wasn’t cross.

  She read the story of Lazarus. You know, about the man who gets a second chance. That was one of her favourites which was kind of pretty funny, once you thought about it. As she spoke she toyed with the crucifix that hung about her old reptile’s throat. Her hair looked newly curled and gleamed like metal. And when she’d finished everybody closed their eyes and put their hands together whilst she hallowed God’s name and asked him to forgive us our trespasses. But my eyes didn’t close at all. They squinted through my armpit trying to catch Anna-Marie’s.

  I thought I’d seen her sat towards the far end of the back row but I couldn’t be sure. It was like she was only half there, pale and see-through like a ghost, her eyes all red. It was like when you look at the sun but you know you shouldn’t because it’ll burn your eyeballs out and so you kind of look at it but look away at the same time. And when you wake up from a dream and the dream itself is in your head but as soon as you start thinking about it you can’t quite find it: you look to the left but it’s on the right; and then you look to the right and it’s slipped behind you and in the end you’re spinning round and around but it’s too late because it’s already gone and it’s just you sitting up in bed in the darkness with your dad’s breathing and your mum’s crying and the moon through the curtains.

  ‘Anna-Marie!’

  But it was like shouting at the sky or down a long tunnel with the echoes bouncing back at me like rubber balls. Why couldn’t she hear me? I imagined this picture of myself in the ground in a box—I suppose I mean like a coffin—and I was kicking and screaming and punching at the wooden lid trying to escape, trying to make myself heard over the silence which had been buried with me, stuffed in and flattened, packed good and tight with shovels. I hammered my fists and called and cried but Mrs Carpenter just kept on talking and the children kept on staring and the teachers just kept on winking to each other and smirking when they thought no one was looking.

  I looked around the hall. The curtains were pulled back and the sunlight stuck to the windows like the sticky-backed plastic on the cover of my geography folder. It was hot and stuffy. Only the stupid children were still wearing their jumpers. Many of the teachers were waving sheets of paper in front of their faces to cool the air. The hymn books had all been stacked neatly for the end of term and all the children’s work that usually plastered the walls had been removed leaving only big pale squares and pin-holes on the sugar paper that remained. All the P.E. equipment, like the big box that only the sporty children could really leap over and the thin mattresses that always twisted your ankle when you jumped funny, had been pushed to the side. The climbing ropes had been tied up and hung there like half a dozen nooses.

  ‘Anna-Marie!’

  This time some of the children nearest to me turned and stared. A couple of them exchanged glances and giggled into the palms of their hands.

  ‘Peter!’

  Mr Gale’s eyes were bulging. His big stubby finger pointed at me and then at the empty space on the floor beside his chair.

  ‘But …’

  At me. Then the empty space.

  I slid across the floor towards Mr Gale, my backside polishing the floor as I went.

  Mrs Carpenter had begun to ask the school leavers about what they wanted to be when they grew up. They used to do that at my old school too.

  ‘Robert Sawyer,’ she said, ‘have you decided what you would like to be?’

  ‘Yes, Miss. A Farmer, Miss.’

  Mrs Carpenter chuckled. ‘No surprises there, then, Robert. Like father like son. And what about you, Lucy? Lucy Carr? Leave her hair alone, girl. I’m trying to … ascertain your ambitions for the future?’

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘What do you want to be when you grow up, dear?’

  ‘Oh, Miss. Sorry, Miss. Work in an office, Miss.’

  Mrs Carpenter’s eyes widened. ‘Really? Quite the women’s libber, aren’t we, Lucy?’

  Lucy smiled blankly.

  ‘Peter Lambert! Will you stop fidgeting, boy!’

  But I couldn’t stop, could I? How could I stop? I felt like … Well, you know when people say they’ve got ants in their pants? Well, that’s just how I felt then. Big ants. Small pants. You know what I mean.

  ‘Anna-Marie,’ I hissed, hoping that nobody would hear me but her. Everybody turned round. This time everyone had heard me. Everyone except Anna-Marie. Her eyes were open but—

  ‘Goodness me!’ cried Mrs Carpenter. ‘Will somebody shut that boy up?’

  Mr Gale put his big hand on my head and turned it to face him. ‘Peter, for God’s sake, what the … the … the hell has gotten in to you?’

  ‘It’s Anna-Marie,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to …’

  Got to what? I didn’t know what to say, did I? My brain was full of thoughts flying this way and that, crashing into each other like jumbo jets and so noisy I could barely work out what any of them were trying to say. Was he right? Doctor Todd I mean. All that stuff about what was real and what wasn’t. I could see all the children right in front of me. They were real, weren’t they? And the school, that was real. But what about everything else? Anna-Marie was real, wasn’t she? And Tommie must be real. There he was in the middle of our row, glasses peering at me. Why would I make up a Tommie? And after all Anna-Marie had taken me to see my grandmother so I couldn’t have attacked my grandmother if it hadn’t’ve been for Anna-Marie. But then I hadn’t attacked my grandmother, had I?

  ‘And you, Marilyn?’ said Mrs Carpenter.

  My head was spinning like a tornado.

  ‘A housewife, Miss.’

  I didn’t know what to think.

  ‘And don’t you let anyone tell you that isn’t jolly hard work, Marilyn.’

  ‘No, Miss.’

  On and on she went, every job you could think of: a nurse, a drayman, a footballer, a mechanic until finally she was scouring the back row with lidded eyes. ‘Well, is that it? Have I missed anyone?’

  Mr Gale cleared his throat and Mrs Carpenter’s head twitched towards him like a newspaper after a fly. ‘Anna-Marie,’ he said. ‘Anna-Marie Liddell hasn’t spoken yet.’

  Well, I can tell you that that remark went down like the Torrey Canyon and Mrs Carpenter’s lips did the can-can whilst she considered whether or not to—

  ‘Very well,’ she said, and pointed at Anna-Marie. ‘You.’

  The boy sat next to Anna-Marie nudged her. And then he nudged her again. She turned to look at him. She scowled. ‘What?’

  Again a flurry of giggles amongst the children.

  ‘Miss Liddell, yes,’ said Mrs Carpenter, sounding like the Queen of Britain, ‘dearest Anna-Marie, if you would be so good as to grant us a moment of your precious attention, I am lead to believe by Mr Gale,’ and the look she gave my teacher right then seemed to make him shrivel all up until he was sat on his chair looking like an old apple, ‘that we should enquire into your dreams and aspirations. For my part, I can’t imagine—’

  ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’

  Anna-Marie’s announcement was greeted with surprised silence and then, among one or two of the teachers, by wide grins. Mrs Carpenter looked startled for a moment as if someone had unexpectedly driven a stake into her heart. And then she laughed, a hearty, throaty chuckle but chilling like cold rain sliding down the back of your shirt.

  ‘What a thought,’ stuttered the headmistress. ‘I should think that, thankfully, highly unlikely, dear. Standards have fallen, of course, in the modern world but thank the Lord they haven’t yet fallen to quite such … subterranean depths that anyone in their right mind would allow the likes of you within a country mile of impressionable children.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Anna-Marie. ‘After all, they let you.’

  A murmur passed among the assembled children. For most of them this was beginning to look like the best assem
bly they’d ever had. A bit more of this and the hymns and the Bible stories wouldn’t seem so bad. Some of the teachers glanced at Mrs Carpenter eager for her reaction. They were enjoying it too.

  ‘Be that as it may, my dear,’ said Mrs Carpenter, through a tight lizardy smile, ‘I at least have some mathematical ability. I think you’ll find it hard to make a career in teaching when there are horses in circuses with a better grip of basic arithmetic than you.’

  ‘So what?’ said Anna-Marie. ‘I’m going to be a teacher. I’d be a good teacher.’

  ‘When it comes to maths, Anna-Marie,’ said Mrs Carpenter, allowing each word to drip like hot wax, ‘you are barely sentient. It doesn’t matter, dear, how much you may kick and scream that the universe is unkind. You will never be a teacher. As sure as I am standing here today. The sooner you adjust to reality the better for everyone.’

  And then Mrs Carpenter smiled again and this smile made my skin turn all pimply like when I watch the Daleks or Cybermen or something on Doctor Who because I could tell that what she was saying was true. She wasn’t just upsetting Anna-Marie for the fun of it, not only that: she was telling the truth. And when I looked at Anna-Marie, I could tell that she knew it too.

  ‘Perhaps, my dear,’ said Mrs Carpenter with a chuckle, glancing at the teachers, ‘you should consider working in a shop. I am sure it could be a very rewarding career for someone so … dissolute. Or, perhaps, waitressing. Besides, they have tills, don’t they? I’m led to believe a monkey could operate one.

  ‘You are what you are, Anna-Marie,’ said Mrs Carpenter. ‘Do you imagine that life will be different at your next school? Do you imagine that you will be different? What you are now, Anna-Marie, is what you will always be: a rude, ignorant trouble-maker who thinks only of herself. It would be funny,’ she said, ‘were it not so … pathetic.’

  Anna-Marie just stared at her, tears filling her eyes. I called out—‘Anna-Marie’—but it was like she was at the wrong end of a telescope, so far away that I could run all night and never get to her. And then she stood up and, ‘Excuse me,’ she said very politely to the boy next to her in the row. He shifted his legs and Anna-Marie walked to the end of the line, stepping carefully over everybody’s toes, and then towards the hall door towards the car park.

  Mr Gale kind of raised his arm to try and stop her. ‘Mrs Carpenter,’ he said but Mrs Carpenter said, ‘Let her go,’ and, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’

  I tried to stand up—‘Anna-Marie!’—but Mr Gale’s strong hand held me in place.

  And then she was on the car park. Anna-Marie I mean. Everybody was watching through those big windows and this time Mr Gale got up. ‘Mrs Carpenter, I—’ but Mrs Carpenter told him to sit down and, ‘Let her get on with it.’ Just like that.

  I’d leapt to my feet too but I was already too slow and Mr Gale had grabbed me by the arm.

  ‘Mrs Carpenter,’ he stammered, ‘I really think this … this …’

  I couldn’t see Anna-Marie now. She’d headed off towards the playground, out of view. I was trying to get away from Mr Gale but he’d locked both arms around me so I could barely move.

  ‘Anna-Marie!’ I called out.

  ‘ “A man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition reject!” ’ cried Mrs Carpenter, eyes blazing. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Potter?’

  The vicar had been watching events with a look of amazement and was startled to be suddenly asked to contribute. ‘Well, Sybil, I’m not sure that I …’

  Mr Gale was on his feet again, his big barrely chest heaving against my back, his arms still holding me tight. ‘Now, Mrs Carpenter,’ he said. ‘Heretic? Is this … this …’

  ‘This! This! This!’ screeched the headmistress, phlegm and fury spitting from her lips. ‘Get the words out, you ridiculous man! Yes, this is completely necessary. “For vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” Leviticus, I believe vicar.’

  The vicar sat rigid on his chair, his face bulging like a big, fat plum.

  This was no good. I had to get free. I squirmed and wriggled against Mr Gale’s grip, twisting and turning, and as soon as I could I turned and kicked him in the shin. Do you remember when I kicked Anna-Marie that time? Well, it was just like that but about a thousand times harder. I was sorry to do it, though, because, in spite of everything, I kind of liked him. ‘You little shit-bag!’ he cried but he let go of me and clutched his leg as he fell onto his chair so hard it neatly toppled backwards beneath him.

  There was lots of noise now. Mrs Carpenter was screaming like a banshee but nobody was really listening. A lot of the children were laughing or shouting or clapping apart from the infants, of course, who were all crying and being comforted by their teachers who were on their knees mopping up tears and trying to explain that everything was all right and that there was nothing to be worried about and that, yes, there was a lot of noise but they were just being silly, really.

  Now I was free I stumbled between the rows of children not being nearly as careful of toes as Anna-Marie had been. I didn’t have time for that and I didn’t even have time to say I was sorry either. By the time I was half way across the hall most of the children were hurriedly pulling their feet back under their knees for fear of being trampled.

  ‘Peter Lambert!’ cried Mrs Carpenter above all the commotion. ‘Where on earth do you think you’re going?!’

  ‘Go on, Peter. Go on.’ It was Miss Pevensie out of her chair and waving me on. It was funny really because it wasn’t like I even really knew her or anything. I mean I wasn’t even in her class.

  I ran out of the hall, through the lobby and out into the car park. I was pleased to leave all the shouting and screaming behind. And I didn’t even need to look around to find Anna-Marie. I knew where she’d gone. I skidded around and nearly fell but managed to go so fast that I didn’t. The gravel crunched beneath my feet. As I spun around the corner towards the playground I could see her. She was standing on the swing, clutching the chains in each hand. The chains of the broken swing hung beside her.

  ‘Anna-Marie!’ I cried, now running across the dried field and the broken grass. ‘Anna-Marie!’ as loudly as I could.

  She looked up.

  As I drew near I gasped: ‘Anna-Marie, don’t.’

  She stared at me but not like she could really see me. It was like she’d seen a little boat on the horizon or maybe a distant swimmer waving at her as the sunlight twinkled on the waves.

  I was right in front of her and held out my hands where they cradled the tiny fairy like a crib.

  Oh, I didn’t tell you I got it, did I? It was when fat old Mr Kirrin was scrabbling round on his hands and knees for all those coins on the floor. It was easy.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, puffing for air. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  Anna-Marie frowned at my open palm and then squinted as if she couldn’t quite see what I was offering.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘It’s …’ Well, I wanted to say that it was what Mr Merridew said: that it was something different from what it was. You know, like my mummy’s ring. That it was a symbol. Or a … a token. But that would’ve sounded stupid, wouldn’t it? So I just said: ‘It’s the fairy.’

  And then her eyes lit up and went all wide. She whooped and leapt off the swing leaving it waving wildly in the air.

  ‘It’s for you,’ I said as she drew close. ‘I got it for you.’

  ‘How did you …?’ she sniffed. ‘How much did it cost?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’ And then I said, ‘I stole it.’

  And then she smiled and closed her eyes. And then she grinned, and then she laughed her head off. Literally.

  She reached out and took the fairy in her own hand. She looked at it. That was all: she just looked at it. And then she said, ‘Thank you, Peter,’ and I thought my heart was going to blow up. I mean like a bomb, not like a balloon.

  Tommie came trotting up behind us. He was hooting with laughter too.
<
br />   ‘It’s complete chaos in there,’ he said slapping me on the back. ‘They had to let everybody go early. Good for you, Pete. You’re a hero.’ He’d never called me that before: Pete or hero, but I kind of liked it. ‘That,’ he said, ‘was the best assembly ever.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said to Anna-Marie, ‘it’s like a story.’ I held her hand really tight. ‘It doesn’t need to be real. It can still make you happy or make you sad. You can make the story end any way you like and if you don’t like the end of the story then you can close the book and make up your own.’

  Anna-Marie made a face like a mad person. ‘What are you on about, bean-brain?’

  ‘We have to walk the lane,’ I said.

  ‘Well, that’s just what I—’

  ‘Shut up, Tommie! Why, Peter? Give me one good reason. Why do we have to walk the lane?’

  ‘I … I don’t know,’ I said. And then, ‘Just because.’

  Anna-Marie gave me a heavy look but then she shrugged. And then she looked at the fairy and smiled. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s good enough for me.’

  And then I smiled too. And Tommie smiled although he didn’t even really know why we were smiling. And then I began to cry. It’d been that kind of day. Anna-Marie gave me a funny kind of look and then glanced back to the swings and their long shadow; the chain, turning, creaking, the air still. She frowned again and then she looked back at me. And then she cuffed me round the ear. But not too hard.

  ‘Oh, and, Peter, another thing,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say “literally”.’

  Postscript

  Everlasting Lane was fresh and new, as if newly washed, newly made, newly born. As if we, Anna-Marie, Tommie and I, were the first to see that sun and the first to taste that air. As if the world were untouched and unused like a box of paints, new out of the stocking on Christmas Day or a set of coloured pencils all the same length with perfect points or even that piece of wood waiting for Kat’s magic to turn it into … into something. And the day was still. As we walked the trees saluted us and Everlasting Lane unrolled itself like a carpet.