Stones

by Polly Johnson

  He turns and sees me, and I can tell he’s pleased. He slows his step and lets me catch up, and when I show him the pasty he doesn’t even pretend he’s not hungry. He takes it like a kid – tearing open the paper; the hot smell lifting into the air and making my mouth water. It’s a chill day, with a sky as white as the inside of an egg. I look behind and see no one, but I stopped being worried a long time ago. Nothing will happen to me with Banks around. He wouldn’t let it.

  He looks up from the food, still chewing. ‘I need to sit down,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to come.’

  I wonder if he’s trying to tell me to go, but if so he’s out of luck. I follow him into the old building and don’t even blink when I see the old man. He’s standing in the open entryway, scratching his beard. His face is a network of red veins. He scowls at us as we come in and shuffles into the side room, where we hear him rattling about and muttering. Banks stares into the doorway, head cocked on one side, his eyes wide in their frame of long lashes. We sit down on two broken car seat cushions and he gives a big sigh.

  ‘He’s not well,’ he says, cocking his head towards the sounds.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I say.

  ‘I’m going to be like that, if I live that long.’

  ‘Banks! You won’t. You’re going to stop drinking. You’ll get better.’

  ‘Why will I?’

  I don’t know what to say and we sit in silence. All I can see are his hands resting on his knees, and a tear in his jeans where the top of his leg shows through. I imagine him for a second standing in a shower getting ready for work, his wife nearby with the baby. Maybe they even shower together, perhaps they— Banks coughs and I jerk back to the present, glad he can’t tell what I’m thinking.

  ‘I could help you get better,’ I insist. ‘My parents would help. Once, they wanted to pay for Sam to go into one of those places, you know – a drying out place. Would you do that?’

  He says nothing, and when I look round his head is down and he’s laughing silently into his lap. His scorn burns me like a scald.

  ‘What do you want, Coo?’ he says. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’ve tried too many times.’

  ‘No, Banks, you haven’t. I know how you feel. Like, some days I feel I can’t do anything, but people are nice and they help me. Why not you?’

  He lifts his head and his eyes flash with anger, but then he looks down again, biting it back. ‘Coo,’ he says, very gently, ‘you’re a sweet girl, but you don’ know what you’re talking about. You make it sound as simple as turning up at school, and you can’t even do that.’

  I don’t know what to say.

  ‘Worry about yourself,’ he’s saying. ‘What’s going to happen to you? What are you going to do with yourself in some bum job ’cos you got no exams? You’re too smart for that; you’ll be sorry. I know you will.’ He flips his hand at me as if he’s fed up.

  ‘I just want…’ I start to say, and then stop.

  ‘You just want what?’ says Banks, and I look at him – at his nice face and his eyes, which are narrowed at me – and I’m scared.

  ‘I want you… not to die.’

  He stares at me, and then his shoulders slump and he lets out a breath. Taking my fingers, he holds them a second, then tips his head back and seems to go to sleep. ‘I’m not Sam,’ he whispers, ‘and I’m no good for you. You need to get home now. I got things to do.’

  When I reach home I feel shaky. The door to the shop is closed, the lights out, and though I can smell something nice from the oven, Mum’s not there. There’s that strange sense of silence in a house when you know there’s someone in it. I creep up the stairs in my socks, watching my hand slide slowly up the banister, tracking the flight of dust motes circling in a beam of unexpected sunlight from the window. As I rise I see the tap in the bathroom dripping into the sink and a pound coin lodged between the carpet and the wall. Then, up ahead, there’s a sound. The door to Sam’s room is ajar and soft noises come from inside. At first I stand there like a ghost, my breath loud, and then I push the door wide and there is Mum, looking at me as if it’s no surprise I’m there.

  She’s sitting on Sam’s bed – eyes red, hands clutching a tissue. She says nothing but just stares at me, too far gone to pretend there’s nothing wrong. I look at her and feel only anger: the childish, enraged anger of a little girl screaming because someone else got the big balloon. The anger that means I can’t be kind; the anger that’s there because nobody knows what happened to me and nobody seems to care. It’s all over and Sam is slowly being turned into the saint he never was and I refuse to worship at the shrine. It rails at me, reminding me of all the hurts and slights, the disappointments and resentments. It whispers in a creaky, urgent little voice, desperate to make me stop and turn away, or run to my room and slam the door.

  Instead, I hear my own voice saying ‘Hey. Hey Mum…’ and then I’m next to her. Her face crumples with relief and she flings her arms round me and pulls me onto the bed. We cling together while her body shakes with sobs. Big, heavy tears roll down her face and my hands twist into fists behind her back, screwing the anger out like water. I wonder what she would do if she knew that I was there that night, but I say nothing. We sit until the room darkens, and only when we can no longer see clearly do we get up and go, closing the door behind us.

  For the rest of the evening, Mum and I tiptoe round each other without talking. I feel tremendously tired, and about nine o’clock I go to bed. This time, when Mum puts her hand out to me I take it – just for a second. I wait for the familiar feeling to come, but it doesn’t. Instead of anger there’s nothing at all, like I left it on a bus or down by the sea. I get a glass of water and go upstairs, wondering if it will come back and what I might do if it doesn’t.

  The door to Sam’s room is shut again, but I feel no need to go inside. It’s only a room, empty of everything but what I might bring into it. Instead I lie in bed and listen to the rain that peppers the window like flung gravel, wondering where Banks is, and whether he’s warm.

  27.

  Thought Diary: ‘You’ll be with me like a handprint on my heart.’ Elphaba, Wicked (the musical).

  The same strange mood stays with me the rest of the weekend. I don’t go far from home. On Saturday I empty the whole of my bedroom out onto the landing. Everything looks tatty. There are grey outlines against the walls where the furniture used to be and I find old socks and a pair of knickers for a child aged nine to eleven. It’s like my whole life’s been frozen in time.

  Dad helps me to bag everything up and move the furniture. He takes away one old cabinet and we talk about buying new things. I sit and look at paint charts. ‘Paint for Life’ it says on the cover, and I think how easy it would be if we could just paint over our lives in a nice, clean white and start again.

  I spend New Year’s Eve with Mum and Dad over at Ben and Matt’s place. Somewhere, at different parties, I know that Raven and Joe are doing it like I should be, but I don’t care. I’m still in the strange, still mood and would rather be here letting off fireworks with the adults. I drink my first champagne and watch the stars with Ben while Matt plays the piano in their front room. And so the fresh year creeps quietly in and closes the door behind the old one.

  It gets colder. The party remnants are swept away and soon it’s psychologist night again. This time, though, something strange happens. Before I go in – in fact the very moment I’m about to get out of the car – I somehow know that this is the last time I’ll need to come. I look at Dad to see if he feels it too, but he settles back in his car seat with the radio on like always, so I say nothing, just get out and walk through the quiet darkness to her door for the last time.

  Inside, we take our usual places but before she’s had time to put her smile on, I find my mouth has opened and I’m speaking. She looks startled and sits frozen – audiotape halfway to the recorder – uncertain whether to disturb me by clicking it into place – but I don’t care. I’m never going to listen to a
ny of it. It’ll just have to stay here in the room, trapped for ever with all the other voices.

  ‘D’you want to know,’ I say, ‘what happened when my brother died?’

  Her mouth opens and shuts again like a stranded fish, but I carry on in this strange, still voice that doesn’t seem to be mine.

  ‘He had a heart attack,’ I say. ‘They said it would have been quick, but that could be a lie. When they found him, there were bruises on his face – cuts too – but then he was always falling, or getting into fights. They said it was his heart. He was there all alone for three days, and none of us knew. If you didn’t hear from him, that was good. That’s why no one wondered. For us it was like one minute he was alive and the next he wasn’t. But we hadn’t known. Not for three days.’

  She looks at me, waiting, but for a moment I can’t speak. It’s like the horror of it has only just hit me. To lie dead for days while everyone carried on as normal, glad you hadn’t disturbed them.

  The whites of the Shrink Women’s eyes are gleaming and one hand, still holding the tape, is loitering on her thigh. I watch it furtively slide out of sight as I carry on talking.

  ‘The rest of that day was unreal. Mum called Dad at work and he came home. They went into the sitting room and didn’t make any noise at all. I was standing right outside listening and there was just silence. I bit a strip of skin off my finger almost to the knuckle and stood there sucking the blood, and when they came out they didn’t even look at me, just went downstairs and sat in the kitchen with cups of tea they never drank. Dad stood by the back door looking out into the garden, saying “Oh My God, Oh My God” until Gran turned up and they went to the police station.

  ‘You can’t do anything when someone’s died; not even watch telly to take your mind off it, because it would look like you don’t care. I just sat there while Gran shuffled back and forth to the window, sniffing into her hanky. I wondered why she was crying. She’d always been on about Sam, and how we’d all be better off without him, so why was she crying now?

  ‘I told her I was going to bed and she said “Will you be all right?” and I thought sure, why not, did somebody die? And of course they had, so then I wondered if I’d gone nuts. I went upstairs in the dark and when I got to Sam’s room I stopped outside and listened. I wanted a ghost like it was a movie or something, so I opened the door and went in. I sat on his bed and looked at all the things he’d never touch again, and I couldn’t touch them either.’

  There’s a long pause while I remember and then Shrink Woman says, ‘What’s next?’

  ‘I killed him,’ I say.

  28.

  Thought Diary: ‘Oops. Now you’ve went and gone and done it.’ Me.

  The Shrink Woman gazes at me and nothing moves except the ball of her crystal earring, which spins gently, like a tiny planet. I take a deep breath and get ready to tell her, but then I can’t. She doesn’t deserve the truth. Not for money. Not for nothing at all but a tick on her sign-off sheet. I tell her the other part: what I said to him not long before he died that might have set it off – an ill-wish as powerful as an angry fist.

  ‘I told him to go away and die,’ I tell her. ‘Maybe that’s what started it. I remember that afternoon clearer than I remember yesterday. Mum on the floor of the sitting room while Sam went through her bag for money, dropping her things to the floor like trash. I remember the red mist that boiled up in me just before I said the words, and how they were backed up by this huge reservoir of hate and rage. I remember it rushing out of me like a burst dam or a flash flood, making me shake all over. At that minute I felt strong enough to blow away worlds, and I wanted to. I wanted to smash something. I wanted him – just for that one second – to die. So that’s what I said to him: “Why don’t you then! Why don’t you just go away and die!”

  ‘Then, like it was coming from a hundred miles away, I heard Mum’s voice and when I saw the look on her face, I swallowed the rage down like a big cold stone, because that’s what I always did. My brother laughed, but I could see he was shaken, because he just turned and walked away.’

  The Shrink Woman looks at me. ‘It’s not possible to kill someone like that you know. Not with words.’

  I stare at her and it seems to me that for all her being a psychologist, with all those exams, that she really doesn’t understand much at all.

  ‘If you say so,’ I tell her. ‘But I did mean it. Just for a second, I did. And I swallowed all that anger. I swallowed it, and I can’t get it up.’

  Perhaps that’s why it’s taking so long for me to feel any better – because of this thing I’ve swallowed and can’t get out. Maybe at last it will kill me too.

  ‘I’ve heard that a heavy blow in the wrong place can stop a heart,’ I say, ‘so why not a thought? Why not an evil wish?’

  There’s a long silence. The Shrink Woman waits to see if there’s more, and we both know there is, but it’s not for her. I can’t do it.

  Her eyelids slide down, then up again like the shutter on a camera, while one long nail, turquoise coloured and shining like a polished shell, taps on her notepad. I don’t think she has any idea what to say.

  We part like two old women at a bus stop, and I walk back to the car to find Dad asleep, with his head tipped back and his lashes like falsies against his cheek, where the shadows have extended them. He startles awake when I crack the door and rubs his face like a little boy. Then he remembers who he is, starts the car and drives me home.

  29.

  Thought Diary: ‘Nobody told me there’d be days like these/Strange days indeed, most peculiar, Mama.’ John Lennon.

  Over the next few days I begin to feel better. Hey – it’s a New Year and it’s starting with no psychologist. There’s another week before school starts back and I’ll need to start making decisions. My bag is still hidden away in The Mansion so I can still leave if I want to, but for the first time in ages I begin to think about other things.

  The house is quiet. Mum is finishing her shop clearout and I help for a bit, moving parts of other people’s lives: crystal, glass, dark furniture. It seems wrong somehow, that these objects are still here while their owners are gone. After a while, I tell Mum I’m meeting Joe and head off for the sea with a bag of bits left over from Christmas. If Banks isn’t there I’ll give them to the gulls.

  It’s a still, cold day and if I was a kid, I’d run. All the way along the road, down the slope by the house, through all the shoppers and the noise, across the roads without looking and onto the promenade where the cold wind makes me cough. The air is sharp as a knife blade. I can feel it all the way down to my lungs like I’ve swallowed the sky, and the sea is tipping up white horses, stretched out to a distant haze.

  Down on the shore, gulls ride low over the waves and dive to tussle over whatever the tide has thrown up: bits of crab, dead fish, an empty chip box. There’s hardly anyone about apart from a couple of dog walkers. It’s only as I get away from the busy part, towards the end of the railway, that I see something that makes me hurry. There is a figure standing up on the promenade with its arms wrapped round its body, unmoving. It’s the old woman, which means the swimming man is back – on this cold, cold day. I spot him as I come crashing down the beach and he, seeing me, stops in the middle of taking off a sock as if he fears I’m going to speak to him. I just nod and sit down a little way off, my back to the wind. There’s a small half pyramid of stones just ahead of me and I start lobbing pebbles at it. The chill is already spreading upwards from my contact with the ground. I can’t believe he’s really going in.

  The old man peels his blue joggers downwards, revealing thin legs that remind me of turkey bones. To be honest, he doesn’t look at all enthusiastic. When he gets up he seems wobbly on his feet, and his skin flinches in the cold air. I really wonder why he does it if he hates it so much. He casts a quick glance at me as he sets off towards the water, as if trying to explain, or perhaps he’s hoping I’ll do something to stop him. All I can do is smile and raise my
eyebrows and he keeps going. Just as he reaches the water, someone speaks behind me.

  ‘He came back, then.’

  I twist round to look but my face becomes buried in my hood. Banks sits down next to me and nods at the carrier bag.

  ‘I hope that’s a sossie roll for me.’

  I’m glad he’s getting the food instead of the gulls, and my heart starts to hammer and my fingers tangle in the top of the bag.

  ‘It’s better than that,’ I say. ‘It’s Christmas stuff – bit mashed together, but really nice.’

  I’m babbling and Banks is hungry, so I shut up, unroll the top of the bag and give it to him. He sniffs and starts right in, looking down the beach to where our old man still stands before the sea, uncertain. I’m warmer now with Banks blocking out the cold.

  ‘How’s things?’ I say. ‘How’s your old man?’

  Banks laughs then covers his mouth, choking on pastry crumbs.

  ‘You don’ have to be polite,’ he says. ‘I know what you think of him.’

  I go red and Banks looks at me sideways. ‘It’s okay. God knows what any of us look like. It’s not often we get to a beauty parlour.’

  ‘You like them,’ I say. ‘They’re your…’

  ‘Mates,’ Banks finishes. ‘Yeah, they are. When you go home, they don’t. That old man saved my life – showed me how to survive.’

  ‘What about that nutcase?’ I say. ‘What about him?’

  Banks pauses and looks around, but the beach is empty. ‘He might be nuts,’ he says, ‘but he’s got a name. Alec should be somewhere he can be looked after, but no one bothers.’

  ‘They’ll have to when he kills someone,’ I say, then wish I hadn’t.

  Banks looks at me and shrugs. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah, I guess they will.’ He goes quiet and I sneak a look sideways.