I forced my head backwards and squinted up at the cliffs. ‘How did it happen, Derek? What was he doing up there?’
‘You see that rock – the one jutting out about halfway up?
I felt dizzy just looking at it. ‘You mean the one a bit like a sausage?’
‘They called it Death Rock,’ said Derek. ‘If a young crofter wanted to prove himself suitably virile for marriage, he had to climb up to it and steal a fulmar’s egg.’
‘What’s that got to do with Kevin?’
Derek dabbed his eyes with an unpleasant-looking handkerchief. ‘He was trying to recreate it, you see – the old crofter ritual. Must have lost his footing; poor lad didn’t stand a chance.’
‘Can we go now, please?’ called Campbell, sounding more like a frightened kid than the prototype Bond villain on the clifftop.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Derek. ‘And well done, guys. I’m really proud of you.’
No one said much on the way back. Even the sight of a flock of cackling kittiwakes merited little more than a polite gasp. It was only when we arrived back at the Symposium that the Striplings started reverting to their disgustingly animated selves.
‘Thank you, Derek. Those fulmars were awesome.’
‘Wasn’t the light sensational?’
‘I’m going to write a poem about a Viking warrior seeing the island for the very first time.’
‘Yes, well, don’t work too hard,’ said Derek. ‘You know what the afternoons are for.’
They turned, like a well drilled, but appallingly styled, dance troupe. A moment later the Striplings were gone.
‘Where are they off to?’ I said.
‘To the new forest,’ said Derek. ‘The afternoons are set aside for free play. Did you know that according to a recent study, you guys are the unhappiest young people in Europe? You grow up so fast you don’t have time to be just children any more. We want our Striplings to experience some of the innocent pleasures that twenty-first-century living has denied them: playing in the woods, building dens, climbing trees . . . getting their knees dirty.’
Never mind compulsory euthanasia and genetic engineering, the thought of hanging out in the woods with the Striplings sounded about as dystopian as it gets.
‘Let me tell you something, Jessica: nothing gives me more satisfaction than the sound of their infectious laughter.’
‘Should I go with them?’ I said, doubtfully.
‘Not today. There’s something I need to show you first.’
The Dawdler library was a medium-sized pod a short walk from the composting toilets. ‘They’re shutting these places down on the mainland,’ said Derek, stepping through the entrance hatch and clicking on the light. ‘We really are very lucky.’
At least our local library, which I’d visited more regularly since the skinny-jeaned Adonis from Millie’s debating society started his Saturday job, had a couple of past it computers and a selection of DVDs. The Dawdler version was just a couple of rickety shelves and some smelly books.
‘That’s the Young Adult section,’ said Derek. ‘Why don’t you go and chose one?’
‘Only one?’ You could take twenty books and as many DVDs as you wanted from the place in town.
‘We prefer you to concentrate on one thing at a time,’ said Derek. ‘Now tell me, what sort of fiction are you really passionate about?’
Despite what I might have suggested to skinny jeans boy, the only book I’d read lately was a synopsis of Lord of the Flies. Luckily, Millie wasted hours with her head in a paperback. At least I knew what she was passionate about. ‘Have you got one about a dying teenager who wants to have sex?’
Derek winced. ‘I don’t think so, Jessica. But I’m sure you’ll find something much more suitable. What we have here are timeless classics.’
Never mind judging a book by its cover, the titles said it all. Little Lord Fauntleroy sounded almost as ridiculous as Swallows and Amazons and who gave a toss about What Katy Did? Black Beauty was about a horse who wasn’t even a private detective, The Secret Garden should probably have stayed that way and if Tom Brown’s Schooldays were anything like mine, it would have been a total waste of time writing a book about them.
‘Thanks, I’ll have this one,’ I said, pulling out a battered hardback with a picture of a tunnel on the front. ‘Do I have to get it stamped or something?’
‘We operate on trust here,’ said Derek. ‘Good choice, I see.’
Mum made us watch it on telly every Christmas. And every year she cried at the end when the kids’ dad got off the train. The Railway Children was a disgustingly syrupy movie, but at least I’d be able to blag it if he started asking questions.
‘I’ll see you at dinner, then,’ said Derek, waving me out into the light. ‘The new forest’s that way, Jessica. Why don’t you go and join the Striplings? I’m sure they’d be delighted to see you. Or perhaps you just want to get stuck into your new book.’
I had no intention of doing either, but just to pacify him I glanced at the back cover of The Railway Children before taking a few paces towards the new forest and listening for the for the sound of infectious laughter.
But I didn’t hear any.
Stormy Weather
That night there was the mother of all storms. Earl had predicted as much in the Symposium. After such a bright day, it sounded rather unlikely. But the Dawdlers never doubted him, and there was no shortage of volunteers to walk down to the landing stage and fill the fishing boat with rocks. Earl was expecting winds of over one hundred and fifty miles an hour, and if we wanted to keep enjoying all that ‘delicious’ seafood, it was crucial to stop it blowing away.
They were all so eager to please him, hanging on his every word like he was some kind of prophet or the lead singer in a really credible band. He seemed to have an almost magical ability to make people feel that he cared about them. After meditation, everyone wanted a piece of him. Helga and Toby were desperate to discuss the harvest, a beaky woman in a floral headscarf called Kirsten had an idea for a folk opera and a group of young mums were keen to canvass his opinion on controlled crying (Earl was not a fan), but he still found time to ask if I was having a good time.
It was a pity the Striplings weren’t so welcoming. The truth is I was having a terrible time. Millie went off with Sue to collect cowrie shells, so I’d spent the afternoon watching Erika and the Junior Laggards playing skipping games and checked out the dismal shower facilities. I couldn’t even text Ella. She could be pretty annoying at times, not to mention her rubbish taste in music, but that didn’t stop me missing her. I was so bored I actually started reading The Railway Children.
In fact, I was genuinely relieved when Mum said we should all get an early night. And I’d just started dreaming about Dad – a warm comforting dream where he turned up on the island in the speedboat from Brighton pier with fifty-seven varieties of moisturiser and my favourite curling tongs – when the rain started pummelling on the roof.
Earl’s weather forecast was spot on. Although to call it a storm was the understatement of the century. It was more like something out of the Bible or a 3D disaster movie. I’d never been frightened of the wind before, but the howling beast that threatened to rip our little pod from the ground and spit it out into the sea was louder than the deafening surround sound at the multiplex. Even the rats scratched restlessly against the walls. Perhaps they were trying to desert the sinking ship. I just hoped they didn’t decide to take the short cut across my face.
At first, I wanted to crawl down the connecting tube and wake Mum, but she was so exhausted after her first day in the health centre that I didn’t dare. According to her, the Dawdlers were even worse hypochondriacs than ‘real people’.
If only Dad had been there too, I wouldn’t have felt half so scared. Except he wasn’t, so I cowered beneath the itchy blankets, praying it would soon pass over. But when the wind forced its way through the tiny porthole in the ceiling, freezing my face with its icy breath, I knew the storm
was getting closer.
I had a special night-time playlist for just such an emergency. But without my iPod, there was no wall of sound to hide behind, no comforting favourites to mask my feelings of helplessness and muffle my fears. If ever I needed an older sister, it was now.
I stumbled across to Millie’s futon, tapping her gently on the shoulder before resorting to a vigorous poke in the ribs. ‘Mills, wake up. I need to talk to you.’
She whispered a drowsy expletive and wrenched open her eyes. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need to ask you something.’
‘What about?’
‘You know what about. Come on, Millie, surely you can tell me now. What’s the deal with you and Mum?’
‘Do you mind? I’m trying to sleep. Sue’s giving me my first carving lesson tomorrow. I don’t want to be tired.’
‘Why are you acting so weird?’
‘You’d be acting weird if someone started giving you the third-degree in the middle of the night. Just go back to sleep, why don’t you?’
‘Please, Mills, talk to me. If you’re hiding something, I want to know.’
Millie reached out instinctively and touched my cheek. ‘Please, Jess, just go back to sleep. There’s nothing to tell.’
‘But I . . .’
She turned her back on me, rolling into a tight ball like a harassed hedgehog. ‘And stop making such a bloody fuss.’
By now I was shaking like the walls of the pod. It was dark, I was terrified, and it felt like the wind was out to get me. The more it howled, the more I missed my music and the more I missed my friends. But more than anything, I missed my family. With Dad over five hundred miles away, and Mum and Millie so distant they might as well have been in China, I’d never felt more alone.
What Jessica Did Next
A week later, things were no better. Dinner was over, but before meditation, Kirsten was leading a music appreciation session. The last thing I needed was a dose of ancient music played on an ancient wind-up gramophone.
‘Does this sound familiar?’ said Kirsten, cranking the handle. ‘Twenty thousand songs to choose from and not one that you’ve listened to the whole way through? That’s why, for the next six weeks, we’ll be concentrating on Alfred Cortot’s classic 1929 recording of Chopin’s waltz in C sharp minor (opus 64 number 2).’
‘What, every night for six weeks?’ whispered Mum. ‘She’s got to be joking.’
‘There’s too much choice these days,’ said Sue. ‘Earl says that channel hopping is almost as stressful as a messy divorce.’
‘You brought us here,’ said Millie. ‘It’s not our fault if you can’t handle it. What’s the point, anyway? Why can’t we just get on with meditation?’
I thought by now they would have made up, but the tension between Mum and Millie was getting worse. Neither of them would tell me what it was all about, and I’d almost given up asking. Whatever it was, they both looked pretty damned miserable.
Millie claimed to be helping with Kevin’s memorial, but Sue said she hardly ever turned up to their carving sessions. I was worried about her. The one thing she seemed to look forward to was meditation. I had a feeling it was her way of trying to escape.
And Mum was just as bad. She’d already stopped changing for dinner, and her spirits were fading faster than her scruffy jogging pants. All she ever talked about was work, and how impossible it was when ‘our beloved leader’ kept interfering. According to Earl, the best cure for everything from constipation to chicken pox was ‘a lethal dose of aquatic bog beans’.
It felt like they were slowly slipping away from me, and I missed them both.
Kirsten placed the record on the turntable and lifted the needle. ‘Now, first time through, I think you should just try and listen for the arpeggio figures in the left hand.’
Alfred Cortot’s legendary 1929 recording of Chopin’s waltz in C sharp minor (opus 64 number 2) sounded rather like having your tooth drilled while someone played the piano in a distant waiting room. I got to know it pretty well over the next few weeks, but that first time, I didn’t even notice the ‘subtle tempo change’ in the second section; I was far too preoccupied with what I’d decided to do next.
I was lonely. And in some strange way I think I was actually missing school. St Thomas’s could be terrible at times, but at least if you were enduring the wind band’s latest rendition of ‘The Circle of Life’ or stuck in detention, there was always someone your own age to share the pain with. I suppose that’s why I kind of started obsessing about the Striplings. Our mornings with Derek were a grim mixture of pointless discussions and hard labour. When we weren’t trudging round the island in search of endangered species, Derek shared his thoughts on advertising or genetic engineering while we humped wheelbarrows of manure to the allotments or mucked out the pigs.
But there was something about the Striplings that didn’t quite add up. I mean what were the odds of eight teenagers getting so hyped about natural fence weaving techniques? That’s why I started watching them. If anyone was faking it, sooner or later they’d have to let something slip.
I even pretended to be having a good time, eagerly volunteering for some of the worst jobs in history and flashing my fake smile until my face ached. That way they wouldn’t suspect. In fact, I got so good at it that an innocent bystander would probably have believed that globalisation and pig shit were just about my favourite subjects. And although they never once invited me to their afternoons of riotous free play (the idea of getting my knees dirty in the woods was totally disgusting anyway), I was pretty confident that the Striplings believed it too.
The trouble was the Striplings never slipped up. They sat entranced through Derek’s talk on environmental degradation and joined in the discussion afterwards like guest nerds on a late-night telly show. Admittedly the seals on the north beach were kind of cute, but all they wanted to talk about was their ‘complex courtship rituals’, and how Edward was working on an in-depth study.
And Campbell was the king of the eco-freaks. He was always ready with a smartarse answer, and the way he kept disappearing into whispery huddles with Lucy was truly nauseating. I watched him closer than anyone.
But if I really wanted to test my theory, my best chance was to catch them unawares. What were they like when they knew I wasn’t watching them? It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all I had. Every night they’d slipped out of the Symposium before meditation. This time, I’d decided to follow.
I was desperate to get on with it, but Earl was angry that night. After the sixth and final dose of Chopin, he jumped onto the stage and ranted for a good twenty minutes. I’d never seen him like that before. His cheeks glowed unhealthily and the teeth he usually flashed at every opportunity were kept carefully hidden behind closed jaws. They were grown adults, but by the time he’d finished with them, the Dawdlers looked like a shell-shocked group of Year Sevens after Mr Catchpole’s annual ‘mindless vandalism’ lecture.
‘All right, that’s enough from me,’ said Earl, snapping his fingers at the guys with the candle. ‘All I’m saying is that we can’t possibly call ourselves hunter-gatherers if so few of us are prepared to slaughter our own food.’ He stared accusingly at his flock. ‘OK, let’s make this a good one, shall we?’
Campbell and the others had left the Symposium. Millie was staring fixedly at the candle and Mum was so knackered I don’t think she even heard me when I whispered, ‘Just popping out for a bit,’ and drifted slowly towards the entry hatch.
Earl had got it right again; summer really was on its way. The stars were splashed across the sky like spilled milk and the lingering sunset was bathing the moor in a golden haze. OK, that sounds weird, doesn’t it? Twinkling stars and golden sunsets aren’t really my thing, but it felt so good to be outside in just my jumper, jeans and thickest hoodie. As for the stars, I had this silly idea that Dad might be watching them too. Well, there wasn’t much else to do at Grandma’s – unless you were addicted to Scrabble and Rich Tea b
iscuits. Two days at Christmas was bad enough, but by now he’d be climbing up the walls.
And then I remembered the reason I was out there in the first place. They were running up the side of the hill in a squiggly line. The sight of Dawdlers running was one thing, but what really threw me was the alien sound they were making.
It was the sound of infectious laughter.
I’d never heard them laugh like that before. They’d chuckled politely at Derek’s pathetic jokes, but this was so carefree, I didn’t like the sound of it at all.
But no amount of creepy hilarity could stop me now. It was a steep climb to the top of the hill and the stone circle beyond. Gulping down a mouthful of salty air, I set my sights on the summit and started the ascent.
Every now and then I’d duck down behind a boulder or lie motionless in the damp heather. That must have been how I lost sight of them. One moment they were laughing their heads off, and the next minute they’d vanished. All I could see was an empty expanse of soggy moorland and the stone circle looming up ahead.
I dawdled aimlessly from stone to stone, exchanging doleful high fives with the cold granite. The scene was eerie enough without the stark wooden cross in their midst. According to Sue, Earl had sobbed uncontrollably as he hammered it into the ground.
‘It’s OK, Kevin,’ I whispered, trying to raise my own spirits as much as his. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
But I wasn’t fooling anyone. I couldn’t even follow a bunch of stupid teenagers up a stupid hill. Out on the rocks, the seals were singing a soulful ballad about a stupid girl with stupid hair who couldn’t even follow a bunch of stupid teenagers up a stupid hill. And if the stupid girl wasn’t very careful, she’d soon be giving the moon the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
What would Dad have done? Dad was a realist. He wasn’t the kind of parent who kept on about how you could do anything you liked if you wanted it badly enough. He’d probably have magicked me up a mug of hot chocolate (with little marshmallows on top) and sent me back to bed. And that’s where I was heading, until a pin-prick of light emerged from the old blackhouse on the side of the hill.
Firewallers Page 9
