Stones

by Polly Johnson

  He glares at me, his face angry and grim looking. ‘I told the papers about him because I thought they might help,’ he goes on. ‘I thought they might get him in somewhere. Don’t blame me for that too – he wasn’t going to stay. He just wasn’t.’

  I can see how desperate he is, and all the air goes out of me. ‘Do you care about me?’ I ask him, and he says yes, of course he does, but I know now it’s never going to be the kind I want. He smiles at me and squeezes my hand. It’s early evening, and although we’re out together it’s like we’re in different worlds. In my head, while we walk along in the early dark, glancing in the shops as they close up for the night, I’m actually walking with Banks. I’m asking him why he left without saying anything. I’m asking him why he’d rather go back to a smelly hovel and sit with a lunatic and an old man who coughs like his lungs are full of syrup. I want to know why he’d rather share a bottle, grimed with the spit from their gluey mouths, than be with me.

  Joe, from the look on his face, is also elsewhere. His eyes are hooded, and his mouth is set in a grim line. We’re like two people in a queue for bread – seemingly united but really thinking about the separate dinners we’re going to make of it.

  We share a kebab, standing in the road to spear the greasy meat with little wooden forks. We stuff it in our mouths as fast as possible, before setting off to meet Raven. I’ve put make-up on and done my hair, more to get past the age restrictions than anything else, and when we meet, Raven gives my arm a squeeze. ‘You look nice,’ she says. ‘It’s going to be a good night.’

  After a bit, when we’ve had a couple of drinks and some other people have turned up, I begin to believe her. I forget about Banks altogether. We sit at a round table where someone is telling a ridiculous story that seems to have no end. When I turn to share a groan I see that Raven’s not even listening. Her eyes keep flicking sideways to where Joe stands talking to a tall boy whose jeans seem to have been painted on. I’ve put away too many drinks I think, because when I grab her arm, I yank it right off the edge of the table. It seems terribly important that she’s listening. ‘Do you understand what this is about?’ I ask her, and we both look at the lad telling the story – at his red face and his hands sketching the outline of whatever girl he’s talking about.

  ‘Mark?’ she says. ‘He never finishes his stories; he’s an idiot.’

  ‘I don’t know your real name,’ I tell her. ‘Isn’t that stupid? I just call you—’

  ‘It’s Jasmine,’ she shouts, raising her voice above the music and laughter.

  ‘But I don’t like that. I’m much more of a Raven.’

  I look at her black hair and eyes and long, purple nails and agree it suits her better than Jasmine. Her eyes are still flicking from me to Joe, who’s still talking to the tall lad, his head cocked sideways like a man trying to pick out a voice at the end of a very bad telephone line. She looks really unhappy.

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’ I ask, and she stares at me a moment.

  ‘You don’t?’ she says. ‘I thought you and him…’

  ‘We’re friends,’ I say. ‘He’s my mate. He doesn’t fancy me; nothing I can do.’

  I laugh, but I don’t mean it and she knows. She stares at Joe a moment longer, then shrugs and hooks her arm through mine.

  ‘I don’t think it’s your fault,’ she says. ‘I don’t think we’ve got what it takes.’

  After a bit when I look round again, Joe’s gone, and after that the people at the table seem more and more moronic. Raven and I sit in silence while it all goes on around us, until she takes my arm and drags me from my seat. ‘Come,’ she mouths, and steers me through the people and out into the street. The cold air hits me in the face like a scouring pad the second we get out there, but we walk anyway, holding on to each other in case we fall down. We ramble through the streets, stumbling and shivering, then lean on a window outside a kebab shop.

  ‘I can’t wait to leave school,’ Raven says. ‘What are you going to do? After, I mean.’

  It’s funny, when you’ve had too much to drink, questions don’t seem to matter. You think the entire world is right where you’re standing and everything feels just fine.

  ‘Dunno,’ I say. ‘I guess something will turn up.’

  We walk again, past dark shop windows and restaurants full of people. When we leave one street for another, the wind hits us broadside, making talk impossible. Raven stops me after a while and we sit on a bench while she lights a cigarette. The traffic goes past and the stars wheel above our heads just as they always have. We’re insignificant. Tiny.

  ‘I’m glad we’ve got to know each other,’ Raven says.

  So am I.

  We sit there until it begins to get too cold. The buzz of alcohol is starting to fade now and I wish I was home. We debate getting a taxi but neither of us has any money. Raven gives me a hug and sets off back the way we came, while I head home. Neither of us gives it a minute’s thought.

  33.

  Thought Diary: ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.’ Macbeth, William Shakespeare.

  Dad wakes me up early, way before I’m ready to get up. My head feels like someone packed it with candyfloss. I can’t grasp what’s going on.

  The young policeman is back; the same one that came about the ring. This time there’s a woman with him and they’re asking me about Raven. Where did we part company? What time was it? Did I see anyone in the vicinity? I can’t get my thoughts together. It’s barely seven o’clock. My feet look white and frozen on the kitchen tiles.

  ‘I’ve told her – I don’t know how many times,’ Mum is saying. ‘Call us. Get a taxi. Is the girl all right?’

  Apparently, just a few minutes after I left her, someone jumped Raven in a quiet street, knocked her to the ground and tried to strangle her. My heart jumps and seems to stop.

  ‘Don’t worry too much,’ the policewoman is saying. ‘She’s all right. Banged her head and she’s very frightened, but the man ran off. We just need to ask you a few things in case you can help us.’

  The questions are detailed and I can’t answer any of them. I don’t remember anything being wrong. I don’t remember anyone else on the street. I can’t help them.

  ‘Did Raven say what he looked like?’ I ask. ‘Will it help you to catch him?’

  ‘She said he was “smelly’’,’ the policewoman says. ‘Otherwise it all happened too quickly.’

  After they’ve gone, I call Raven. She’s awake, but she’s been up all night and sounds wiped. ‘I’m okay,’ she says. ‘But Coo – Joe told me about your bloke. He’s a tramp, right? Well, I think this guy was too. You don’t think it was him, do you? Should I say something?’

  I pause for only a moment. ‘Tell them what you like. I’m just so glad you’re okay. You could have been killed.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I guess I could. But it’s you I’m worried about. You’re the one hanging around with these people. You could be next.’

  ‘You don’t know it was any of them,’ I say, and she doesn’t answer for a minute, but when she does I can hear the tears in her voice. ‘It was horrible, Coo. He was growling at me.’

  I hang up and let her sleep. I stand there while my heart races in my chest. ‘He was growling,’ she said. Maybe in the dark, Alec made a mistake. Maybe if it was me he’d caught, I wouldn’t have got away?

  34.

  Thought Diary: ‘Why is it that when we really want to punish someone for how they’ve made us feel, it’s usually ourselves we end up hurting most?’ Me.

  I stay away. I don’t go down to the seafront at all. I think Banks knows that Alec’s dangerous but he’s keeping quiet about it. I never did understand why someone would protect a person that way – not when they’re hurting people. Mum and Dad did that with Sam – and am I doing it too, with Alec? Not telling anyone because he’s Banks’ mate?

  I think of Raven and hear myself saying: ‘Tell them what you like … ’ and I know I’m hopin
g she will so that I don’t have to.

  I stay at home doing English coursework by the patio heater, under the awning Banks helped to build. Sometimes I go over to Ben and Matt’s and lie on their chaise longue while they try to improve my taste in music. I’m everyone’s project: music with Ben and Matt, homework with Mum and Dad, clothes with Raven, and God knows what with Joe. On my last visit to his house, his father let me up the stairs and we sat in Joe’s room, listening to the boards creak outside the door. I began to wonder why he’d asked me over. When I left, squeezing past his father at the front door, Joe’s face was scarlet. It was like he felt guilty or something.

  Everyone has secrets. Banks about Alec, me about Sam, and Joe – I don’t know what. Sometimes he doesn’t answer his phone for days, just sends me odd messages at all hours of the day and night: ‘You’re the best. I know I can rely on you.’ ‘Do you ever wonder what it all means?’ ‘Do you really like me for who I am? Whatever that is?’

  Sometimes I answer them, sometimes I don’t. When they wake me up in the cold, empty time of night, I lie there and worry about where he is, and why he’s thinking of me, but I can’t think of anything to say. He misses more school than I do too, though he’s clever enough to get by. He’s in the sixth form and makes sure he hands all his work in on time. He says no one and nothing is going to spoil his plans, and that the secret for keeping people off your back is simple: give them what they want and they leave you alone. I say it depends what they’re asking.

  My resolve to avoid the seafront, and Banks, doesn’t last very long. By the end of the day I’ve decided I have to know if Banks is protecting the man who attacked my friend. I’m sick of silence. I go to find him, determined to make him listen, but he’s nowhere on the beach, and there’s no sign of him in the alcove. It’s only when I come out at the front of The Mansion that I see him. He’s with Alec – dancing! They’re out on the wide space of concrete where we held the Christmas party, hands locked together at head height, bodies braced and shuffling backwards and forwards. Dancing. Until I hear the madman screeching and realise how stupid that is.

  ‘Come here…’ he’s bellowing. ‘I’ll kill you … tear your heads off…’

  His body twists, snake-like, as he tries to free himself from Banks’ grip. His head turns horribly, almost backwards, to where two boys stand halfway up the path, laughing at him. ‘Yeah? Come on then,’ they taunt. ‘Come on then you nutter, what you waiting for?’

  Alec frees a hand and takes a swipe at Banks’ head, catching him above the eye, and then he’s lurching up the path after the stupid boys, who are now running like greyhounds. He’ll never catch them.

  Banks stares after them, then turns and sees me. We stand eyeing each other for ages, but he doesn’t move. In the end I walk away, and when I look back he’s following me.

  We walk like we have nothing to do with each other, further than we normally go, and then sit down at the bottom of the high bank of pebbles on the nudist beach, where Alec can’t see us.

  Banks looks terrible – worse than when I first met him. His nails are black, his eyes are bloodshot and he’s wearing a strange shirt and jumper. He smells sour, like the end of a beer can the morning after a party. We stare at each other and then he runs a hand through his hair with dirty fingers. When it snags in a tangle, he keeps pulling until it rips from his head.

  ‘Don’t!’ I say. ‘Don’t do that, Banks.’ But when I go to take his hand he snatches it back and bends his head down. ‘Let it alone,’ he says. ‘Why you here anyway?’

  ‘I had to come – I wanted to know if you were okay.’

  ‘As you see. I’m all right.’

  ‘You’re not!’ I say. ‘You look like crap.’

  ‘People are scared of me,’ he says. ‘Like I’m some animal.’

  I look at him – scruffy, dirty, smelly man that he is today – the cut over his eye congealing into a black blob. He looks dangerous. If I met him for the first time now, I’d never come back.

  ‘What happened?’ I say. ‘Why didn’t you stay with us? It could have been all right. I know it could. You just didn’t want it, did you?’

  For a moment he looks at me, and then he starts to laugh. His head goes back and I see his Adam’s apple bob like a cork on the water, the curls on his neck rolling and how white his teeth still are – still nothing a good bath can’t fix.

  ‘Couldn’t do it, Coo,’ he says. ‘What do you know.’

  He fishes out a cigarette and lights it, letting the acrid smoke burst away down the beach, holding some back in his lungs, then coughing and coughing. When he’s done, his eyes are streaming, and I remember the medication for his chest infection but I don’t want to be stupid and ask him about it. I guess it’s a bit like putting a plaster on someone whose head’s been cut off.

  ‘I let you down,’ he says. ‘Spent all the money your Dad gave me on booze an’ drank the lot. Didn’t know where I was, but Alec got me back. I slept it off. Hoped you wouldn’t come.’

  ‘You could have stayed,’ I insist. ‘How could you want to be with Alec, when you could have been with me?’

  ‘Ha,’ he says. ‘You got some booze then? You gonna listen to me swearing at you? Catch me when I fall down?’

  ‘Punch you in the face?’ I say. ‘Rant and rave at you about devils?’

  ‘I know he rants,’ Banks says, ‘but … ’

  ‘He’s a nutter, Banks. Really a nutter. How could you?’

  ‘I know – but listen. He goes on about this stone… He says that in Heaven, there’s a stone you get; a white stone. It makes you a new person. I’d like that.’

  ‘He’s not just mad!’ I say. ‘He’s dangerous. I think it’s him who’s been attacking people. You need to get away. We need to tell someone.’

  Unbelievably, Banks is smiling. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, we don’t.’

  I stare at him. ‘Does that mean you agree?’ I ask. ‘You can’t think it’s okay to let it go on. Do you know what happened last night? If something’s wrong you have to fix it, not wait to die and expect some supernatural Santa to pick up the pieces.’

  Banks is looking at me very closely, but he’s not listening. I don’t think he wants to know. ‘Are you hearing me at all?’ I ask him.

  He shakes his head then puts a finger on my arm – just a finger – and strokes the material of my coat. ‘Sometimes I get tired of being me,’ he says. ‘I get tired of this, but I dunno what to do about it.’

  It’s quiet and his voice falls back into the bank of pebbles. Behind us, some little creature is treading, its tiny sounds magnified in the stillness. It’s trapped in being what it is, just as we are. I look at Banks, and he looks at me, like he’s waiting for the answer to a question I must have missed.

  35.

  Thought Diary: ‘Only in silence the word.’ ‘The creation of Éa’, Ursula K. Le Guin.

  Mum and I have been talking. Not about anything big or important, just talking. Last night we were laughing like idiots over a box of scraps she bought at an auction. There was a lot of lace and embroidery, and a huge pair of Victorian knickers with ribbons on the legs, which we took over to Matt and Ben as a present. They thought they were pretty funny too.

  ‘There’s going to be a fight over who wears them,’ Matt said, laughing.

  ‘Not with me there won’t,’ said Ben.

  It seems like ages since Mum and I went out together, but today we’re in town, shopping for my room. We buy things I don’t really need, but are just fun to have. It feels strange being together, but nice too. We even look in the piercings shop and consider how Mum would look with an eyebrow ring. She’s got pink streaks in her hair already – just tiny little bits that you only see when the light catches, but they’re there.

  After an hour or so, we sit down on some seats outside a shop, and when I look up, there’s the old swimming man standing in front of us.

  ‘Are you the young lady who was there when I was drowning?’ he says.


  I stare at him like a fish on a plate. Mum nudges me. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You must be Mr Cornwell.’

  I’d kept the newspaper cutting after what happened. There’s a picture of ‘Mr Harold Cornwell, 72’ with his arm pointing out to sea, and another one of him and Banks together, like father and son. It’s a clean version of Banks of course, with him still smelling of ‘Honeycomb and Rose’ soap, courtesy of us. The article just calls him ‘Stuart Banks, a homeless man’ and goes on to tell the story of how he dived into the freezing water with no thought for his own safety. There are two follow-up articles. One about the dangers of swimming in the sea when it’s too cold or you are over a certain age, and one about the homeless situation. I expect everyone else has forgotten by now, recycled the paper or thrown it away.

  The old man is smiling at me, but he’s hard to recognise when he’s all dry and dressed and so far from the sea. ‘I’m glad you’re all right,’ I tell him.

  He looks more than all right. He’s wearing a blue jacket and cap and his face is bright. Standing close by is the old woman. She’s clutching a string bag and twisting at her headscarf.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he goes on, ‘fine. But your friend, the young man, I’m not so sure. I see him sometimes and I wondered if he’s quite well? He’s taken to paddling at the water’s edge and I just wondered…’ He looks at Mum and back to me as if not certain who to talk to. ‘He’s surely not well enough to go in?’

  We look at each other like two children in a conspiracy. Maybe when you get really old you don’t have to play by the rules any more. You can keep secrets or share them, just as you please. You can even swim on snowy days without anyone telling you off.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t see him much.’

  Mum is busy in her bag, but I know that her ears are on alert. The old man smiles at me, nods and moves off. He’s given me his message, but I already know Banks isn’t well enough to swim. I just can’t make him get out of the water.

  ‘I didn’t know he still went down to the sea after all that happened,’ I say to Mum. ‘You’d think he’d not want to.’