Stones

by Polly Johnson

  I get up and go out, careful to leave the door the exact way I found it. Down below, Mum calls my name and I jump like she caught me doing something I shouldn’t, but it’s only for dinner.

  ‘Did you want to go somewhere tomorrow?’ Dad asks as I sit down.

  ‘Why?’ I say. ‘It’s a school day.’

  ‘We could take a day off,’ Dad says, but I know where he wants us to go and I don’t fancy a day out in the Boneyard thank you. I’ve never been and I’m not going now. I shake my head.

  ‘I’d rather go to school,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to go there.’

  Dad says nothing, just stares at me. He drags a hand through his hair and looks at Mum. We’ve forgotten how to be a family and this is like some book they’ve got hold of, and we’re on Chapter Five, ‘A functional family talks’. But it’s just too late.

  ‘If I’m having a day off,’ I say, ‘why can’t I do what I want?’

  Dad looks confused. ‘I thought—’ he says again, and then he stops, head pressed low on his chest as if he’s looking at a gravy stain or something.

  Mum goes out. I hear her open the door to the shop, go in and start moving stuff around. Dad stands by the back door making a sort of humming noise in the back of his throat.

  ‘It’s not easy you know,’ he says to me, ‘and you don’t exactly help.’

  Suddenly I’m on my feet, black energy coursing through me.

  ‘Why should I help?’ I shout, shaking now, ‘When did anyone help me? I wanted you to, loads of times, but you just didn’t, did you?’

  I turn to the door and Mum comes out of the shop all flushed in the face. I push past her and run upstairs two at a time. As I pass my brother’s room the draught pushes the door a little and it creaks sharply.

  ‘Go to hell,’ I shout at it, and then I’m in my own room, on the bed, clutching the sheet in my fists and screaming into it so no one hears. I’m mad as hell, but all I can see is Mum’s face, startled and confused. Maybe we weren’t going to the grave; maybe it really was just a day out, but it’s still too late; way too late. Wherever it is, they can go without me.

  A long time passes. I put my fingers in my ears and try to sleep. It’s been a long time since I did that – tried to go to sleep with my fingers in my ears so I wouldn’t hear the yelling or the horrible sound of Sam gurgling in his throat: gurgling and bubbling like he did that last night in his horrible place. Tonight it’s only water burbling in the pipes, but it’s too close. Suppose I’ve raised his ghost and any moment I’m going to hear his feet on the stairs, stumbling up to see me one more time?

  11.

  Thought Diary: ‘A sick thought can devour the body’s flesh more than fever or consumption.’ Guy de Maupassant, Le Horla. This is true. From a weird story about a man who’s going slowly mad!

  I take the day off anyway. In the morning I go into the kitchen and make some toast. Dad is still in his dressing gown, and just for a moment I have a vision of us as we were years ago, cracking the tops of our eggs – he’s a slicer and I’m a basher – and just talking. There’s a little curl of hair twisting round one ear and his nails are bitten. I want to hug him, but find myself walking away instead. I take the toast with me to the front door, and as I open it, Mum calls me from the shop.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she says. ‘I want you back before dark – we’re not having that again.’

  I look at her and don’t answer. That was always the one bit of power I had. As I walk out, I remember what she means by that.

  I was thirteen when I went missing for almost three days. It was a bad time at home with Sam coming in drunk every day. I tiptoed round him, scared to even move, and Mum went round with a fixed smile on her face as if a wild animal had wandered in and she needed to keep it from biting us. She’d make a call and then Dad would come home and I’d talk to him, but he wouldn’t hear me. He’d tread right over my feet like I wasn’t even there. I preferred the company of the Riley brothers.

  Dan and Jack Riley lived with foster parents who never seemed to ask where they were. I’d change out of my uniform in their garden shed and follow them wherever they went. Once we went to a house where there was more furniture in the garden than inside. It was waiting to be pulled down so that something decent could be put up instead, but people were living in it.

  Inside was a legless sofa where a man and woman sat smoking. The room stank of something earthy and sweet, and while the man talked to Dan the woman stared at me with a stupid smile on her face. I remember something crawling over my foot as I stood there and just before I could kick it away I looked down. There was a little girl no more than two years old in a nappy that dragged like it was full of wet sand.

  ‘Baby,’ the woman said to me. ‘She’s my little baby.’

  Later on I felt better, smoking some of the toffee-coloured block that Dan had crumbled into a spliff. My head was bouncing on his bony knees and I was laughing, laughing, laughing – even while tears ran from the corners of my eyes. I stayed for two days, smoking the stuff and following the brothers round town, until the police picked me up as I tried to balance like a tightrope walker on the white lines in the middle of a road. I looked round for Dan and Jack but they were nowhere. They’d left me, so I rode alone in the police car to the station where Dad was waiting. He talked to the policeman for a while and the policeman talked to me, and then we home. Dad never even asked me why, and I wanted so much to tell him.

  I didn’t see the Riley brothers after that. They’d failed the test. Once someone dumps on me, they’re done. No second chances. Sometimes that’s all that’s saved me.

  Now I’m out of the house and on my own, I have the strangest feeling that I’d like to go back, but I resist it and flip my phone out. Joe will take the time off, I’m sure he will, but every time I call it goes straight to voicemail. There’s only one thing for it. I leave him a message asking if he’s noticed I’m not at school, then stop and buy doughnuts and a sausage roll. I eat one of the doughnuts and save the rest, walking along licking sugar from my lips as the seagulls rise and fall on the air currents. The sea sounds far away and there’s a haze above it which makes it melt into the sky with no division. It’s as if there’s nothing there at all – no sea or sky – just the place where the earth ends and everything falls over into nothing. I close my eyes, praying for something to come and save me, and when I open them again, there, like magic, is Banks.

  He’s quite a long way ahead of me, but I know it’s him because of the coat. He wears it all the time because he’s afraid it’ll be nicked if he takes it off, especially now it’s so cold. The colder it gets the more valuable the coat becomes. Funny really – I guess in one way he’s a rich man, though right now he looks more like Dracula with the wind lifting the sides of the coat and dropping them down again.

  I walk faster to catch up, pebbles shifting away beneath me. My eyes stay looking down in case I miss it – the one I’m looking for, with the answer to my question – but all I see is a mass of grey and white, nothing special at all.

  Banks must hear the clatter I make, because he calls out: ‘Hey!’ and sits down on the shore right where he is, waiting. I’m glad I’ve got the sausage roll and wish now I hadn’t eaten the first doughnut.

  I drop down next to him and we look at the sea together. Banks has a cut on one side of his head, with a bead of blood like a ruby piercing. The fingers that tip the sausage roll from the bag shake slightly and the smell coming from him is stronger than usual. I turn my head away a little and breathe in the fresh, salty air.

  ‘Tell me a story about before,’ I say, and go down the beach to make a stone pyramid. I examine all the stones I put on in case any are special, but they all seem the same to me, then I take up my place next to Banks and get ready to throw. To the sound of chank-chank-chank, Banks swallows crumbs and starts to talk.

  ‘Before,’ he says. ‘Before this, I was someone else. I looked like me, yeah, but I was some other person. You wouldn’t kno
w me.’

  ‘Like what?’ I say, and he leans forward a moment, staring at his nails, which are black and stained with tobacco again.

  ‘Do you know Witt – genstein?’ he hiccups.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘Is it a country?’

  Banks smiles and the smile turns into a little laugh. ‘Wittgenstein,’ he tells me. ‘Austrian philosopher. Lived here too. You know him?’

  ‘No,’ I admit. ‘Should I?’

  Banks sighs. ‘Wasn’ laughing at you. I’m just saying. People don’t expect me to know stuff like that. I’m just a bum, right?’

  He stops, squints at the pyramid and throws a stone which strikes the top and levels the whole thing. ‘Hah!’ he says. ‘Strike! Make one further down.’

  While I scramble to do it, he makes a roll-up, glancing from me to the papers then back again. ‘That’s better,’ he says when I scramble back. ‘You look nice today. Got your hair off your face.’

  I’m surprised. My hair’s pulled back in a scrunchy, which is making my ears cold, but keeps it out of my face. I look at him to see if he meant it, but he’s lighting the ciggie. As fast as he sucks on it, the smoke is snatched away by the wind.

  ‘Can you believe I was ever anything else?’ he says. ‘Well, I was. I used to go out every morning and do my job. I had a wife… an’ a baby boy … ’

  He stops talking and looks down. I’m so surprised that I don’t know what to say. Just as I’m wondering, Banks looks up and aims a stone at the pyramid. His throw falls short, and he gives a sigh like he’s just failed at something important.

  ‘I should go,’ he says, and stands up, shaking out the bag so the crumbs fly away in the wind. I look about, trying to think of something to make him stay, but I can’t and he walks off – up the beach towards the promenade as if I’m not even there. ‘I got things to do,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘You should go home.’

  ‘Shall I bring another sossy roll? Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, sure. Maybe a cuppa tea? Anything you like. If I’m out of it you can have it yourself.’

  I hate how he talks like that, as if he’s planning ahead; like he isn’t even going to try to be different. I watch him go, a flappy black shape slipping on the pebbles. It’s really cold now, and a pissy little drizzle is starting up.

  The day lies ahead with nothing in it but my own thoughts. In my guts, a small snake of fear twists. ‘Banks!’ I shout. ‘Wait – wait for me…’ and without stopping to see if he’s heard, I run after him. By the time I get up on the promenade he’s halfway across the road and heading for The Mansion. When I catch up he looks startled, but he doesn’t turn me away and we walk on together until we come to the open front of the building. Banks stops me by putting a hand on my back. ‘Wait,’ he says.

  He breathes loudly, and we peer together into the doorway. In the darkness a figure moves, and Banks turns to the left, beckoning to me. We go silently up a little pathway to the side. Here, the wind cuts out in a lane of bushes, and after we turn again, walking back on ourselves towards the front of The Mansion, I see an alcove with a bench in it. A private place no one can see from the road.

  ‘This is mine,’ Banks says. ‘Out of the wind, secret like. The others leave me alone when I’m here.’

  Inside is dim and smelly – hardly a place anyone would want to call their own, but he’s letting me stay. I sit on one end of the seat and Banks on the other and he takes a bottle out of his pocket, looks at me and tips it into his mouth. ‘Want some?’ he says.

  I look at him; at the little creases round his eyes and the scruffy clothes. He’s like some weird anti-hero from a movie who might throw off his cloak at any moment to reveal a prince in hiding.

  ‘Yes, okay,’ I find myself saying. ‘I think I do.’

  12.

  Thought Diary: Booze, Hooch, Liquor, Moonshine, Oil. Trashed, smashed, crocked, blitzed, hammered, oiled, tanked, loaded.

  ‘Why are you here again?’ Banks asks me, taking the bottle back and squinting at how much I’ve swallowed. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve nothing better to do than sit with a piss-head like me.’

  I think. Somewhere up above our heads, normal girls are walking in clean jackets and jeans, with the scent of gum on their breath, or they’re in class writing stories or drawing maps of the world, while I’m here doing nothing at all.

  ‘If you don’t want me here, I can go.’

  ‘Not what I said. Jus’ sorting you out.’

  I laugh at the idea that he could sort anyone out. He’s definitely drunk now. Not falling-over drunk, but the sort of drunk that means he’s topped his permanent level up just a tad too high. His eyes keep closing in a lazy-summer-afternoon sort of way, except it’s more of a keep-jiggling-the-muscles-to-keep-from-freezing sort of day.

  ‘So, Mr Psychiatrist. Analyse me,’ I say, looking at his fingers drift through the knotty curls of his hair. ‘I’ll pay you in sausage rolls.’

  Banks smiles for a long time. Sometimes his face tends to get left behind and keeps an expression long after it’s had its time. I wonder what he’s staring at. I look out into the tatty bushes and wait.

  ‘Didn’t say I was a shrink,’ he says. ‘But all right. All these things you do – has anyone ever noticed?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ he says, waking up a bit and looking at me sideways, ‘is it working?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Yeah you do. You want someone to notice you, so you throw sand about like someone in a hole. You just keep throwing it at them till they’re covered in it an’ have to notice you.’

  I stare at him. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ I say, but he just carries on looking at me with one eyebrow raised, waiting for something.

  ‘I mean, Miss Coo,’ he goes on, in a terrible mock German accent, ‘zat you are just vanting ze attention, no?’

  ‘Why does everyone think psychiatrists are German?’ I laugh, but the lump rises in my throat and my stomach turns over.

  ‘Thing is,’ he goes on, ‘your parents. They didn’t do anything wrong. Jus’ too busy dealing with stuff.’

  ‘It was always about Sam,’ I say, and now it seems pathetic. ‘Whatever he did, whatever he did to me, it was always about him.’

  Banks sighs. ‘Course it was,’ he says. ‘Wasn’t it for you too? He was like a bomb I bet. You were just in the way.’

  I stare at him. It’s not what I want to hear. ‘That’s not fair, though,’ I insist. ‘Not right. It was like I’d disappeared.’

  Banks sighs and shakes his head at me. ‘Flaming hell,’ he says, ‘nothing but blood will do, will it? You’re gonna have your pound of flesh.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. Don’t make me feel like I’m stupid.’

  He turns away, leaning back on the bench, tipping the stuff down his throat and holding the bottle out to me again.

  ‘You think you know everything,’ I spit, ‘and look at you!’

  He smiles again. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘look at me. Learn something.’

  I take the bottle and drink some more. I have no idea what it is, but it makes me feel good. Maybe this feeling is why Sam did it, but he didn’t know when to stop. I’ll never end up like him. I’m stronger than that. It’s just when I’m with Banks. Just for now.

  After a bit I don’t care about school or the row this morning. I find myself leaning against Banks. His hand is in my hair and his head droops onto his chest like he’s asleep. Outside, the rain starts up in a fierce hiss, and a burst of fresh air blows into the alcove. I shut my eyes. This is nicer than my own bed at home. It’s beautiful in fact. It’s lovely…

  When I get in, it’s dark. Mum is setting out a cottage pie on the table and comes to the kitchen door with it cradled in her oven gloves.

  ‘There you are. I was worried.’

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to say ‘Oh, really?’ but it doesn’t come out. I just stand there looking at her. What did I expect her t
o do? Call the coastguard?

  In my head, Banks winks at me and I know that yeah, actually I did. Maybe then I’d have forgiven her.

  13.

  Thought Diary: ‘Being sober on a bus is, like, totally different than being drunk on a bus.’ Ozzy Osbourne.

  The next day I feel sick. I stumble through lessons and only nibble a bit of Joe’s sandwich at lunchtime. He sounds worried when I tell him where I’ve been. He looks a bit tired himself but when I question him he goes quiet.

  ‘I slept out,’ he says at last. ‘At a mate’s house.’

  ‘Trouble or pleasure?’ I grin, but his expression doesn’t change.

  ‘My dad,’ he states flatly. ‘Sometimes I have to get away.’

  I look at him, surprised, but he says no more, just flushes a wash of pink and turns his head away.

  ‘I left you a voicemail,’ I say. ‘You didn’t call back. Were you in school?’

  He looks down. ‘No. I wasn’t in the mood – but I couldn’t have met you anyway. I had to go somewhere else. Sorry.’

  I wait for him to explain but he doesn’t, so I let it go. Sometimes it’s hard to say things, I know that.

  ‘I’ve got a bag,’ I find myself saying. ‘It’s all packed ready to go. I just need to get some money. You could come with me.’

  To my horror, Joe laughs. ‘You idiot,’ he says. ‘Just where did you plan on going, and what for? You think things are bad now, just wait till you get on the train to wherever.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do! What do you know anyway? Banks is okay with it. I left my bag with him. He’s taking care of it for me.’

  Joe stands up and scowls. ‘If he’s got any sense he’s keeping hold of it so he can talk you out of it,’ he says. ‘But hey – he’s an alky isn’t he? What sort of example is that? He’ll just lose it or nick everything in it. You must be bloody mad. He could do anything to you. It could be him doing all these attacks.’