Our Picnics in the Sun

by Morag Joss

  When the woman turned and beamed and said she’d made her husband stop, she just couldn’t think of driving past him in this weather, he gave her a faint smile and said nothing. He was horrified that tears were rising in his eyes. She asked him if he was a student and did he live locally, and he told her he was a bit hungover from celebrating his seventeenth birthday and didn’t mean to be rude or anything but he wasn’t really up to conversation. The man cast his wife a look and they drove on in near silence for over an hour. When they stopped for petrol at a service area seven miles from Exeter the husband told him this was as good a place as any for him to hop it. Adam took his cue.

  There was a café, where he wolfed down the all-day breakfast. Afterward he sat on, unable to think of moving without wanting to cry. He tried, and failed, to bring back the dream girl from the overturned caravan and place her in the seat opposite him and looking at him with love, trusting him to know what to do. Outside, the rain had stopped and beyond the canopy over the forecourt the sky was turning pink and silky with sunset clouds. Adam stared through the window as cars pulled in at the fuel pumps and drivers filled up, paid at the kiosk, and drove on again. He envied everyone he saw. They were all people who, he could tell by their careless way of walking back to their cars, had proper destinations, places they wanted to go and where they were expected. Next to them, his plan to find Callum and Fee’s house and stay with them began to look really stupid. He remembered how great they were, much younger than his parents and always nice to him, but suppose they’d changed? Or suppose they hadn’t: they’d done the same kind of smallholding stuff on Exmoor until they gave it up and went to live in Exeter, so were they really going to understand why he couldn’t stand it at Stoneyridge? They weren’t expecting him. They could be on holiday. They could be dead.

  Eventually he had to get up from the table to go and pee, and afterward he wandered into the games arcade, where he wasted money on Ace Driver. Feeling even more stupid and wretched, he latched on to three lads who came in and started playing some war game. They were loutish and friendly, and over the thumping of simulated rocket fire and planetary annihilation he learned they were on their way back to Exeter after a day delivering white goods in a radius around the city. Their van was empty now and the one who was driving told Adam he was welcome (“welcome” meaning it didn’t matter to them one way or the other) if he wanted to string along with them.

  The journey was raucous, the driving alarming, and when they reached the outskirts of the city the lads were in too big a hurry to go and get drunk to bother with him and left him in the car park of a floodlit, red-brick pub on a roundabout. It was a humiliation to Adam that they didn’t invite him along for a drink because that could only mean he looked his age. And he was slightly shocked they didn’t ask where he was going or if he’d be all right. He had a line ready about looking up old friends, a spur-of-the-moment thing. But they hadn’t even asked his name.

  He watched the pub door long after the lads disappeared behind it, trying to find the courage to follow them. But he couldn’t, and after a while turned away. He wasn’t in any part of Exeter he’d been before, and the picture he’d had in his mind, of arriving in an understandable, familiar sort of place that was somehow ready to welcome him, was suddenly absurd. It hadn’t occurred to him to buy a street map—he wasn’t sure how good he was at reading maps, anyway. If he’d thought about it at all he’d sort of imagined jovial strangers giving him directions to Bouvier Terrace, as if everybody he encountered would be friends of Callum and Fee’s. He hadn’t seen them himself since he was about ten; now that he thought about it, maybe there’d been no more than a couple of visits after they gave up their Exmoor place. And supposing he found the house, and even if they hadn’t moved, the idea of them taking him in would dissolve on the doorstep. How would they even recognize him? Why couldn’t he have seen all these problems earlier, when he was copying their address from his mother’s address book? His belief in the past was evaporating, the mirage of a welcome at Callum and Fee’s house vanishing before the hard churn of traffic on the roundabout, the garish pub, the dark pavements. In its place he saw how complete the world was, how perfectly well it turned without him—he wasn’t at the center of anything except his own failures. He saw with horror how childish he’d been. It was another example of how his mind changed itself, without his consent, and how he never thought things through in time to stop himself from fucking up.

  He left the roundabout behind, and making zigzag turns through the streets, headed deep into a suburb of terraced houses bordered by low hedges and shallow front gardens. It was dark now and curtains were drawn across lit rooms, and he thought of home with dreadful, false longing. He thought of telephoning. Do that, he told himself fiercely, and you’re stuffed. Give up now and it will matter. This night was going to be a test, it would prove something or other. How he handled it would be important for other nights to come, maybe for the rest of his life.

  He carried on walking, first of all to keep warm and then because he was afraid to stop, and beyond that because there was nowhere he could stop. He walked to get away from the strangeness of walking, to outdistance his panic, telling himself he’d be all right once he got his bearings. He didn’t, of course, get his bearings, and the strangeness and panic dogged him. It was weird that there was nothing to stop him walking anywhere he wanted, but he still felt cornered. The suburb grew darker and the houses bigger; they receded now behind high walls. After an hour or so he had the idea it was just as well he was wandering God knows where because he should be avoiding the main streets and the city center anyway, where he might be stopped and challenged by the police.

  Although the wind had dropped it was much colder. A smoky, orange night sky roared softly above him and through the trees bordering the long front gardens. Adam saw lights behind curtained windows go out. From a driveway ahead of him a fox appeared. It stopped, a front paw raised, snout in the air, and looked at him unafraid; its black lips wore a raddled, delinquent smile. Then, judging Adam no threat, it turned and carried on without hurry, looking back at him from time to time and loping casually into the middle of the road. Adam followed, feeling befriended at last. When the fox disappeared into another garden he loitered at the gate hoping to see it again, until he was too cold to go on standing there and went on his way, crestfallen.

  He was hungry again and berated himself for not having had the sense to buy food at the service station. There wasn’t going to be anywhere round here to get anything. It was unthinkable—although he did think of it, and then his innards burned with fear as well as hunger—that he might go up the driveway and around the back of one of the big dark houses and try a few doors in the hope of finding an unlocked one leading into a kitchen with a loaded fridge. But then he imagined alarms going off, security lights, people shouting, and if any of that happened he’d never be able to run away because his legs would seize. They were already heavy and stiff—fear and cold had him in irons—and if he stopped walking he might not be able to move again. He’d had no idea, he realized as he trudged on, just how many freezing hours were contained in a single night. But he had to stop being so afraid, he had to find a place safe enough for him to lie down and sleep. He saw himself, oddly, cartoonishly, on a park bench under newspapers. Was that what he was now, a tramp? Where did tramps sleep? Then it came to him, his first good idea for hours if not all day—a church. He could sleep in a church.

  So his walking took on purpose. He’d passed a church ages ago, not far from the pub. After a few wrong turns he found his way back to it, but it was locked. He went all around the building looking for other doors; everything was locked. His good idea was beginning to look really stupid. He was beginning to find the thought of lying under a bush not unbearable, and certainly better than walking through the night.

  He felt like crying again. Only because he couldn’t bear to retrace his steps, he slunk along the pavement and took a different turning. The houses thinned out.
He passed a school with railings and padlocked gates, a few playing fields, and after more walking found himself on an industrial estate. There were lights shining in some of the low buildings and he began to make his way cautiously from tree to tree, afraid there might be security guards or, even worse, guard dogs.

  He had to find somewhere he could stay hidden until morning. One of the buildings was unlit and surrounded by an overgrown hedge; he ventured near enough to peer through it and discover that the whole place was boarded up and derelict. The doorway wasn’t too filthy and at least looked dry, and it was deep enough to give him a little cover. He tucked all his money against his chest under his T-shirt, shucked off the backpack, and put on almost every piece of clothing he had with him. Then he lay down, pushed both hands high into his sleeves, and curled himself into a ball in the corner with his head on his emptied backpack. He couldn’t believe how cold it was for August; he wondered how really homeless people survived in winter.

  He couldn’t sleep. Whichever way he lay the concrete pressed into his bones as if he were naked, and his back felt open to attack even when he squeezed up against the door. Eventually he got so cold that his shivering broke into loud, distressed sobbing and he got up and paced around until he got a grip on himself and quieted his panic. Afterward, he could not bring himself to lie down again. Instead he hunkered in a corner and waited, and when the first birdsong started, long before it was properly light, he rose and moved off.

  He discovered he’d come almost in a circle. The edge of the industrial estate was only a couple of streets from the locked church. It was still locked, so he started again to walk, this time following the way he’d traveled before, sharing the streets at first only with seagulls. The white, cold early light softened as he went.

  Eventually he found himself back at the roundabout with the pub. He supposed it was too early for buses, especially as it was a Sunday, so he walked from there along a dual street into the city. Thinking vaguely that he might find a map there, he followed signs to the railway station, and next to the entrance there was a café open, one of those new places with armchairs and newspapers. He drank coffee, which he didn’t usually, with a lot of sugar heaped in, and ate a huge sandwich. Warm at last, he lay back and slept. Later he was woken by the woman who ran the place who told him he had to leave or buy something else. So he ordered more coffee and a piece of cheesecake, and after that he felt properly awake and able to think straight. It was now half past nine by the café clock. It was Sunday, not the day he would have chosen if he’d planned things properly, but too bad. He just had to get through the day—it was only a day, plus another night—and then it would be Monday and everywhere would be open again and he could sort himself out. He wasn’t sure what he meant by “sorting himself out,” but it would become clearer. It certainly had to involve sorting out money because he’d got through almost half of what he had, and another thing he’d definitely changed his mind about was trying to find Callum and Fee, because even if he did they’d take his parents’ side and drive him straight back to Stoneyridge.

  So, he would return to the church. Because churches were open on Sundays, right? No question of not getting in. First he’d buy some food, then he’d go back to the church and sneak in when the service was on. He’d find somewhere inside to hide and then all he’d have to do was keep quiet. Somebody would lock up after the service and he’d stay locked in until the morning when someone—a cleaner or somebody, it didn’t seem important who—came to unlock it again. Adam felt clever at last. He was getting on top of the game, figuring out how these things worked. And it was a comforting idea in itself, being locked in.

  He washed himself in the station toilet, peeled off and repacked his extra layers of clothing, bought some more sandwiches and two bags of crisps, and left.

  But when he walked all the way back and came within the sound of the church bells, he discovered there were far too many people around, straggling along the pavement and lingering on the church path. He walked on, past the entrance, cursing himself for not thinking about the problem of other people. He wandered along the surrounding streets until the bells fell silent. But when he returned to the church, the sight of its closed doors made him feel even more lost and hopeless. Of course he couldn’t go in. If he did he’d find himself standing in a packed church with everybody staring at him, and that would be even worse than if he’d followed those lads into the pub last night.

  He walked back to the empty industrial unit where he’d slept, but now there were cars going in and out from the unit two doors up that fitted tires. He settled himself on the ground behind the overgrown hedge, exhausted. When he heard the church bells once more he returned to the church gate, against the tide of people leaving the service. He stood at a bus stop across the road, from where he watched the vicar, a short woman in a white robe, shaking hands with everyone as they left. Eventually she went back inside and for the next few minutes Adam waited in despair, wondering what to do. Then the vicar reappeared with an elderly man; she set off, her vestments flapping round her legs, along a path leading around the side of the church and the man, carrying a sheaf of papers and a music stand, left by the gate to the pavement. Adam watched him get in his car and drive away, and then he walked quickly up the path. He entered the porch, opened the inner door, and stepped inside. He halted, realizing immediately that the church was not empty. A muted scraping and banging was going over a loud staccato conversation between two women apparently at opposite ends of the church from each other. The talking continued; they couldn’t have heard him come in. He slipped round the door and closed it quietly, then he squeezed in behind a thick brown curtain drawn back and hanging at one side. The talking women would have to leave sometime, wouldn’t they? But the conversation and the sounds of their work went on; they must be collecting up hymnbooks or something. The curtain was scratchy and smelled of dust and also something warm and unclean, a bit like sheep fleece, that immediately made Adam think of his mother and the birthday scarf. He also, suddenly, needed to pee, probably because he couldn’t. How long could he stand there not moving and not sneezing? What a stupid, fucking stupid place to hide, because even if he managed to stay still and quiet, when they did leave—if they ever fucking did—they’d have to walk right past him. They might see at once there was somebody behind the curtain. Or they could pull it across the door all unawares and discover him that way and scream the place down. And any of that might happen after he’d stood there for fucking hours and wet himself. Again Adam had to swallow a terrible need to cry, for feeling stupid and lonely and displaced, but just as much because he simply did not know what to do next.

  But after a while, the voices stopped. Adam waited. There was no sound of any movement at all. He waited some more, and then very carefully pulled the curtain aside a little. Still no sound came. He drew himself out and peered around, as far as the pulpit and choir stalls and altar at one end, and the font and display boards and tables at the other. Keeping close to the wall he made off down the length of the church. His feet made a dry, high-pitched squawking noise on the waxed floor and after two or three steps he halted, terrified he’d been heard. Nothing stirred. He walked all around the font, made his way up the middle aisle until he stood at the base of the altar steps, then turned and faced the empty pews. It was surprisingly pleasurable, he found, being alone in a place built for hundreds of people, especially a religious place. Some discovery that he couldn’t put into words was nudging at his mind, something about a church being both less and more of a big deal when you saw that it was just a building where a lot of people could sit and listen to you if you were standing where he now stood, and that was whether God existed or not. He was tempted to stretch his arms out wide, imagining them enrobed in deep, wizardly sleeves, and if he were to try his voice, he was sure it would resound with depth and power and not break into one of its uncontrollable warbles. But he did not quite dare do either. Instead he circled his hands around his mouth and made a toc
k with his tongue, and followed it with a soft woo-ooo. The echoes made his heart beat harder.

  The sense that he was alone was now exhilarating. Adam crossed to the brass lectern and stepped up behind it. A huge black Bible lay open; he had never before seen such an object. Light from the stained glass window above the altar caught the smooth gleaming gold of the edges of its pages, and he could not resist lifting and dropping them, loving the regular, liquid whirr of the membrane-thin leaves flickering through his fingers. Down the middle of the book, in the shadow between the opened halves that sloped in matching curves toward the spine, lay a bookmark of embroidered white satin. Adam lifted it and weighed its corded tassel in his palm. He raised it to his mouth and passed its scratchy, gold wire embroidery over his lips, tasted its metallic sting with the tip of his tongue. His eyes skimmed over the double columns of text without special interest; he had never thought of the Bible as a book anyone might actually read. At the top of the page he took in the words:

  And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

  He sucked in his breath. He read it again. Weird, like somebody knew he’d be here and had opened the page for him. And too fucking right—he did hath not where to lay his head. He dropped the bookmark. It was time he got a hold of himself; he had to concentrate. He walked down the church again and all the way back up, searching from side to side. There was nowhere to hide except on the floor between the pews and that would be useless; there was barely enough space to lie down, and anyway, he’d be discovered by anyone walking past. He’d always thought of churches as places full of secret nooks and crannies, but this one wasn’t much more than a big stone hall. He inspected the organ and choir stalls, then moved across to the pulpit; nowhere offered a hiding place. Behind the pulpit was a piano, and next to the piano, in the gloom of the side aisle, was a sloping wall of dark wood paneling with a door in it. Adam opened the door and found himself in a room with a high mullioned window. It was churchy but also homely, much warmer than the church and fusty with kerosene fumes and a clothy smell that came from the worn-out carpet. Plastic chairs were stacked along one wall; along the other hung several blue robes on a row of pegs. In the far corner, an area of floor was covered in red padded matting on which sat a kerosene stove, two large plastic boxes marked SUNDAY SCHOOL and several floor cushions in bright colors. Beyond the window was a door that led outside. It was locked; the two women must have left the church this way and locked it behind them.