“Stevie, why don’t you put your coat on and go out for a bit of a walk? I know you’re bored,” Nan offered.
Great idea I thought.
“Don’t you mind? I did come over to spend time with you.”
“Oh stop being so polite, it doesn’t suit you.” Nan answered with a smile. Nan always seemed to know what I was thinking. I grabbed my coat and ran out of the door before she changed her mind.
“Keep away from the quarry,” she shouted after me.
I headed straight for the quarry pretending I hadn’t heard her. I knew I couldn’t explore right inside it as the workmen would be blasting and it was dangerous, but I could climb up the bordering hillside and look over the edge—something I’d never had the courage to do before as I didn’t want to get caught by the workmen.
I walked about half a mile to the end of the road, took a left turn and made my way up the narrow, stony lane that led to the large hill Charlie and I had nicknamed ‘Walton’s Mountain’. I passed a couple of very small cottages and came to a field at the end of the lane. A group of lambs scattered down the hillside, startled as I climbed over the five bar gate. I walked in the opposite direction, up the hillside, and past the hollow tree that marked the halfway point between the gate and the quarry boundary, daydreaming of being an adventurer and fighting ninja warriors. I was about to save the world from a disaster brought on by an evil genius when a loud voice interrupted my game play.
“Hey, you’re trespassing!” I looked around but couldn’t see anyone. “Get out of my field and stop worrying my sheep or I’ll shoot you,” the voice continued. I still couldn’t see anyone. I thought it was the farmer’s wife shouting at me for trespassing, and hoped she wasn’t going to ring Nan. “Right I’m going to get my gun.” I heard some laughter and realised it was coming from inside the tree.
“I’ve never met a speaking tree before,” I joked. Suddenly a teenage girl appeared just above the trunk. She wore a blue zip-up hoodie, old jeans, and trainers. Climbing onto a thick branch and holding onto a smaller branch just above her head, she slide off the thicker branch and hung there for a few seconds before letting go and landing on the floor quite near my feet.
“Hey watch out,” I warned her. “You nearly landed on me.”
“A miss is as good as a mile,” she grinned. “You didn’t think I was the farmer’s wife did you?”
“No.” I replied, hoping my expression didn’t betray me.
The girl told me her name was Gemma, she was fourteen and she lived at the bungalow next to the main road at the bottom of the lane. I told her I was thirteen. It was nearly true; my birthday was only a few months away.
It was starting to rain so she said, “See ya,” and ran off down the hill.
A few days later I spotted her again while I was climbing trees near the quarry. This time she was with another girl. The two girls noticed me near the top of one of the trees and walked over to my tree.
“This is Julie,” Gemma called up to me, gesturing to the rather plump girl standing next to her. “She’s more your age and she likes you.”
Julie hit her and scowled, “No I don’t.”
Gemma ignored her and called to me again, “You wanna come up the quarry?”
“We can’t ’cause of the workmen,” I answered.
“Nah, they don’t work on Sunday afternoons. Come on if you’re not chicken.” I couldn’t have a couple of girls thinking I was scared, so I decided to go with them. There wasn’t anything else to do anyway, and it meant I could spend time with my new friend. I climbed down from the tree and we all walked further up the hillside together.
We took a narrow rabbit-trail path, two thirds of the way up the hill, next to a low wire fence which bore a warning sign: ‘No trespassing – Danger, Intermittent Blasting!’ This part of the hillside was very steep, so we had to be careful and walk in single file. Julie led the way and I took up the rear with Gemma walking in front of me. Every so often she turned around and smiled. Her smile made me feel warm inside.
Many mature oak trees and conifers grew on either side of us and at one point a large dead tree lay across our pathway, having smashed the fence down when it fell. Moss and ivy grew on its gnarled trunk, suggesting that it had lain there for some time.
“Watch out for the tree spiders,” Julie shouted back at me as I clambered over the fallen tree. I didn’t like Julie and decided that if I found a tree spider I’d put it down her neck.
A little further along the rabbit trail we came across a place where a section of the path had crumbled away leaving the fence and its wooden posts hanging in the air. To get past the small landslide and back onto the path we had to climb further up the hillside over brambles and through waist high stinging nettles.
After a ten-minute walk and lots of scrambling, we emerged from the woodland onto a rough, stony lane. Huge heaps of chippings and larger rocks piled up in front of us, and all around the area, forming small hills. Gemma said they had all been blasted from the hillside quarry. Seven or eight corrugated metal buildings of varying size nestled into the hillside, joined by conveyor belts and what looked like scaffolding and multi-level walkways, all open to the weather. Everything was covered in a fine dust created by years of blasting, giving the appearance of soft grey snow.
Excited, and wanting climb up the ‘scaffolding’ to explore the buildings and run along the walkways, I started towards the nearest building, but Gemma called me back, warning me that the security man might hear us.
“There’s something much better ’round here,” she said, pointing further up the pot holed lane.
I took her advice and let her guide me around a corner next to some large bushes, my jaw dropping open in amazement at the sight before me. Thousands of tonnes of rocks had been blasted from the hillside creating terrace upon terrace of rough jagged rock, all cut into a horseshoe shape, leaving a huge, gaping scar in the landscape, each terrace wide enough for two lorries to drive past each other comfortably. The quarry site was enormous. At the bottom, many metres below us, lay a small pond, its dark waters the collection of years of rainwater running and splashing down from the higher terraces before becoming trapped by the impermeable, solid bedrock. I was about to suggest that we could walk down to investigate when my wonder was cut short.
Gemma shouted, “Security van! Quick, back down the rabbit path!” A yellow van bearing the name of the quarry was driving towards us; we had been spotted by the security man. I leapt through the bushes and ran back down the narrow path slightly ahead of the girls.
“Keep going,” they shouted at me. I had no intention of stopping. The van turned around and headed out of the quarry taking a left turn. As we sprinted down our path we could see the van being driven down the main road, which ran parallel to our pathway, about a hundred metres further down the hillside on our right. The security guard was trying to intercept us at the point where our path joined the lane next to the main road.
“This way,” shouted Gemma, sounding quite breathless. She climbed through a break in the fence on our right. I was beginning to really admire my new friend; to a twelve-year-old lad she seemed invincible. We followed her down the steep hill, through the long grass, and over a stile leading into her back garden where we collapsed onto her lawn with relief, all laughing and panting for breath. The three of us lay on our backs in the grass talking and looking up at the clouds and apple trees for about fifteen minutes until the security man gave up waiting for us to emerge from the pathway, and drove back up the road to the quarry.
__________
Over the next year I stayed with Nan for a few days each school holiday and got to know Gemma quite well. Although she was only a friend I told the boys at school that she was my girlfriend. This gave me more ‘street cred’ and Charlie went along with my story, keeping my secret.
Chapter 4
It had been a while since I had visited my empty planet, and by my fourteenth birthday I was beginning to think this was something
that only happened to little kids.
Summer holidays dawned, promising an endless stretch of warm days and free time. During the first few weeks of the holiday I spent lots of time with Mark and my other friends. We did the usual things: playing football, riding our bikes and messing around at the swimming baths. The first week in August Mum and Dad took Charlie and me camping in Southern France. We stayed at a campsite near Royan in Brittany where we spent lots of time on the beach. I played around the campsite with lots of other children, some of whom didn’t speak English, and collected fir cones twice the size of the ones I’d seen at home. It was wonderful having Mum and Dad living together and I loved spending time with them and Charlie. I felt really happy and complete.
Too soon the holiday was over and we set sail for England. The sky was cloudy and it was much cooler than it had been so I didn’t mind going home too much. We took a day crossing on a ferry. While our parents sat around being boring Charlie and I spent time exploring the ship together.
It was very smart and smelt of new paint. I wanted to go to the front of the ship and stand on the front railings like they did on the Titanic film, but an Officer sent me back when I tried to sneak past the boundary railings. Charlie and I soon gave up trying to get past him and decided to try to scrounge some money off Mum and Dad instead—there were a few places on the ship selling sweets and snacks and we were as usual quite hungry.
We walked along the outside gangway past several deckchairs where families sat with small whingeing children. Their bellyaching and crying was just starting to irritate me when the world suddenly became silent and I realised I was alone again. I had secretly hoped Charlie would join me on my empty planet, but even he had gone.
The first thing to hit me was the bright sun and unexpected heat, immediately followed by the realisation that the ship was sitting at a sharp angle to the sea. The bow of the ship was much lower than the stern, and, with the exception of a small area around my feet, the wooden decking was slippery, covered in some type of slimy green seaweed I’d previously only seen growing on rocks. I caught hold of a railing just in time to stop myself loosing my footing. The place I was holding onto was freshly painted and in good condition, but the railings further away from me were rusty and covered in slimy seaweed.
The ship had obviously run aground. It appeared battered, possibly by several winter storms. The deckchairs were missing, the metal walls were rusty and most of the windows were broken. Pieces of dead seaweed hung on the metal steps above my head, probably thrown up there by the winter storms, although how many winters the ferry had been marooned here I could only guess.
Its condition suggested that several years had passed. I reasoned that when the people disappeared the ship had been left to the mercy of the winds and sea currents, drifting away from its original course until a violent storm had washed it onto the underlying rocks where it now rested.
The ship shifted slightly as a large wave hit the side of the ferry. This made me realise how unstable it was in its present position on the rocks. I hoped everything would quickly return to normal, in case the high tide sent huge waves over the ship or broke it up. The thought of being washed into a turbulent sea terrified me.
There was no landmass in front of me, only sea, but I could tell it was comparatively shallow as I could make out the dark shadows of the rocks beneath the clear water. I carefully made my way to the far side of the ship holding onto railings, steps and anything else I could find for balance. It would have been treacherous enough walking on the slippery flooring if it were level, but the acute angle at which the ship was grounded meant that I was trying to walk uphill. It took several minutes but I made it to the other side. From there I could see a small island with a beach fronted by lots of palm trees. Well that’s not Portsmouth, I thought.
Wanting to get off the ship and onto dry land, I visually checked along the side of the ship hoping to find a lifeboat, but they were all either destroyed or missing. I carefully made my way to a place nearer the front of the ship where I couldn’t see any dark rock shadows in the water below.
Right, I thought, maybe it’s a bad idea but I’m going to try to swim to shore. I was a very good distance swimmer and didn’t feel safe on the ship. Thinking it would be safer on land, I climbed over the railings and jumped away from the boat as far as I could. It was a long way down to the sea and I fell down and down … and landed in the ships swimming pool splashing several of the ladies sitting nearby. Ah, so they’re back again I thought. This will take some explaining.
This was the first time normality had returned me to a different location to the one in which I’d found myself on my empty planet. Only as I grew older did I consider that if I had succeeded in my plan of swimming ashore, I might have been stranded on an island thousands of miles away from home when everything got back to normal.
Mum was furious to discover my clothes and shoes were wet, and even more annoyed when she found out she couldn’t get to our belongings in the hold. She and Dad had to buy me some dry clothes and flip-flops from the on-board shop at what she called extortionate prices. I told her a teenager had pushed me into the pool, but she still made me apologise to the ladies whom I’d splashed.
Dad managed to convince Mum that the pool incident probably wasn’t my fault, so she reconsidered her decision and still let me stay at Nan’s house for the last part of the summer holiday break.
A few days later she drove the one hundred and twenty mile trip down to Walton where she and Charlie stayed overnight before heading back home after breakfast the following morning. Charlie didn’t want to stay this time; he was going on a five-day rugby-training trip. Boring.
I messed about in the garden and texted Gemma all morning with the mobile phone Dad had bought me for my birthday a few weeks previously. Between texts I checked out my tree hut, then managed to sneak into the neighbour’s garden through a gap in the hedge and stole some pea pods. I stuffed them into my pockets and climbed back up the tree to shell and eat the peas: delicious.
While I was still scoffing my bounty Nan opened the kitchen window and called me into the dining room where she’d made us both a ham salad and a cup of tea.
As I sat finishing my salad she said, “I can see you’re antsy, why don’t you meet your girlfriend after lunch. That mobile of yours is driving me mad anyway.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I objected. “She’s a friend who’s a girl, there’s a difference.”
“If you say so,” said Nan, not believing me. At fourteen Nan believed I must be getting interested in girls and so Gemma had to be my girlfriend.
“I’ll see you later,” I replied feeling my face reddening.
“Before you go, can you place the jelly in the well?” Nan asked. “It’s strawberry, your favourite.”
Nan had a spring in her back garden. Years ago Granddad had dug out the spring, lined the hole with large stones and built three stone steps leading down to the pool at the bottom. The well water was only about a metre deep but it was fresh and could be used in cold drinks, and it was invaluable for keeping her milk cold in the days before she had a fridge.
I knew the routine well. I was to place the jelly bowl on a cork mat, cover it with a clean teacloth and float it on the water. Even on a hot day, the water would still be cold and by mid-afternoon the jelly would be set. These days Nan could have used her fridge for this but she reckoned the well did a better job.
“Stevie, make sure you’re back for tea … half past five as usual.”
“Ok”
“And by the way, that jelly is the same colour as your face.”
“Oh,” I said, blushing redder as I took the jelly off the kitchen table and made a hurried exit, somehow managing not to spill any of it on the way to the well.
Chapter 5
As I walked up the lane to Gemma’s bungalow I could hear raised voices coming through an open window at the front of the property. I didn’t know whether I should knock on the door or not so I
paused by the garden gate and listened.
Gemma was shouting, “It’s not fair. Everyone else is going.”
A male voice, probably that of her father, replied firmly, “Well they aren’t my responsibility. You are, and you’re not going to a party where there’s no adult supervision.”
“Mum, tell him.”
“I’m sorry Gemma but I agree with your father. There’s no way you’re going to that party tonight,” her mother replied.
The front door opened and Gemma stormed out, slammed the door and turned to face the kitchen window screaming, “You’re ruining my life!”
She barged through the gate, ignoring me completely, and turned to her left, walking up the hill towards the hollow tree. I followed at a distance. When I got to the tree she was already sitting on the grass, leaning against the tree trunk and glaring at the dusty earth, poking it with a dry stick.
“I hate them,” she fumed. “I wish they’d disappear … and never come back.” Alarm bells went off in my mind as I remembered the times when everyone disappeared in my life.
“What? Why did you say that?” I asked, staring at her for a moment, before continuing, “You wouldn’t like it if they did disappear.”
She stood up and started walking further up the hill speaking more quietly, “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
I was speechless, trying to find the words to express the cacophony of feelings and emotions that were racing through my mind.
Before I could say anything she added, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
We continued walking in silence. Gemma didn’t speak because she was angry and upset, and I remained quiet because I didn’t know what to say.
We walked all the way to Saint Stephen’s church. It was about a mile, all uphill, and by the time we got there I was really hot and sweaty. I felt self-conscious and hoped Gemma wouldn’t notice. We sat on an old box gravestone in the churchyard talking about Charlie’s rugby trip, the college course Gemma was starting in a few weeks, her karate class, and anything that avoided the subject of her family or anyone else disappearing.
Empty Planet Page 3
