Dear Nobody

by Berlie Doherty

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Dear Nobody

  Berlie Doherty is a distinguished writer for young people, twice winner of the prestigious Carnegie Medal. A former teacher, she has worked in schools’ broadcasting and adult education. She has also written for adults, and writes plays for radio, theatre and television. She was born in Liverpool and now lives in the Peak District.

  www.berliedoherty.com

  Some other books by Berlie Doherty

  DAUGHTER OF THE SEA

  THE SAILING SHIP TREE

  Berlie Doherty

  Dear Nobody

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published by Hamish Hamilton Ltd 1991

  Published in Puffin Books 2001

  17

  Copyright © Berlie Doherty, 1991

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: ISBN:978-0-14-192886-9

  Maybe we all want to burn off across the horizon, into space, perhaps, to take off into some unknown territory and meet ourselves out there. This book is a kind of journey, but I don’t know yet where it’s all going to end.

  It all began last January, on a dark evening that was full of sleet. Funny, it’s not long ago. I was just a kid then. But today is October 2nd, and this is where I begin to write, where I open a door into the past. It leads into a room in my own house, in a back street not far from the city centre. From the window I can see the lights of thousands of houses that dot out the contours of the hills and valleys of Sheffield. This is my bedroom, full of all kinds of things: my model railway packed in boxes under my bed, my posters and photographs looking like bleak little flags of childhood on the walls. When my wardrobe door swings open it shows just a few tee-shirts, a jumper that’s too tight, my old trainers. Already it feels like somebody else’s room.

  I had finished packing my rucksack, ready to take to Newcastle the next day. I took it downstairs and propped it up in the hall. I felt restless; it was too early to go to sleep, but there was nothing left to do to fill in the massive gap between that day and the next: my old life and my future. In a way I was dreading it, leaving all that behind, knowing that nothing would ever be the same again. I hated the thought of saying goodbye. It would be so much easier to just go, just walk through my bedroom door and find myself in a student’s room with my posters already on the walls and my guitar by my bed.

  At about eight my dad came upstairs with a parcel for me. He stood in the doorway, looking round at the room with its open, empty drawers.

  ‘All packed, Chris?’ he said.

  Most of all I hated the thought of saying goodbye to Dad.

  ‘Looks as if you’ll have to open it all up again. You’ve got a goodbye present.’

  He touched my shoulder lightly as he put the package on my bed. I knew it was going to be hard for him, too. I listened to him as he made his way downstairs, leaning a little on the banister because of a slight limp he has, his hand making that familiar squeaking sound on the wooden rail as he took each step. When I looked down at the parcel I recognized the handwriting on it straight away. It was Helen’s. Now I could remember the last time I’d seen her; her face then, the misery I’d felt. I opened up the parcel and shook out the contents over my bed. It was just a pile of letters. I picked them up one by one, not understanding what it was all about. They all began the same way. Dear Nobody. I sat there feeling bleak, with a growing kind of grief in me. Once she and I were the most important people in our world. Is this what I’d become to her? Nobody? I began to read them, in order, trying to make sense of what she was saying in them. They took me back to January. As I said, that’s where this journey really begins.

  January

  * * *

  Late January. The sort of day that never really starts, when daylight hardly happens and night folds in by mid-afternoon, hushing everything back to sleep again. I was at Helen’s house, and we were alone together, lounging back in the big comfortable settee, reading and listening to music, kissing a lot. Helen said she wanted to go upstairs for something and she stood up, trailing her fingers out of my hand, smiling down at me. I didn’t want her to go away from me for a second. I followed her up and put some music on in her room, very softly. She has flimsy blue and green silk scarves trailing down the walls; they billow out with the slightest breath of air, as if they were birds drifting. Whether it was the choice of music, or the strange dim light in the room with the curtains still open and these long mothy scarf wings fluttering; or whether it was the way she looked at me, questioning and smiling, when she came to me, I don’t know. Maybe it was that something we had never dared talk about had been building up in us for weeks and took us by surprise and storm. It certainly wasn’t calculated, that was for sure. Neither of us had known it would happen. But that January evening when the house was empty and a pale and watery moonlight cast the room into white ghostliness, and our favourite music was playing, Helen and I touched each other where we had never touched before and made love.

  Afterwards I found it impossible to look at her without smiling. Her mum and dad came back from the shops arguing about which of them had been responsible for forgetting to buy something for that evening’s meal, and Robbie came home wet and hungry and was told off for being late. Helen and I sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and touching hands, trying not to look at each other.

  ‘I wonder if they can tell?’ I mouthed at her. She looked away from me with a glimmer of laughter in her eyes and stood up to help her mother to unload cleaning powders and unsweetened grapefruit. I watched her stacking things up on the draining board. I could see her reflection in the window, two Helens coming together and separating as she moved backwards and forwards from table to sink, together again, and apart. I wanted her to turn round and smile at me. She knew I was watching her, just as I knew that she was holding me snug in the middle of her thoughts, in spite of all her chattering. It was while I was watching her that I realized that the focus of my life had shifted. For years Dad had been at the centre of everything. Now it was as if he had suddenly turned away in that thinking way he has, his hand just touching his mouth, remembering something that needed to be done, and Helen had stepped smiling into his place.

  ‘I’m starving,’ Robbie said. ‘What are we having for tea?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Mrs Garton said grimly. ‘All your father was interested in buying was bottles of Newcastle Brown for his blessed band practice.’

>   ‘Bogroll,’ said Robbie, emptying a carrier bag. ‘Bleach. Windowcleaner! I’m famished!’

  ‘Did you write your letter, Helen?’ Mr Garton asked suddenly, and Helen flushed and put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘Oh no! I forgot!’

  ‘You forgot!’ He raised his voice with disbelief. ‘You forgot!’

  ‘What’s she forgotten now?’ Mrs Garton demanded.

  ‘Only the most important thing in her life,’ Mr Garton told her. ‘Her acceptance. How on earth could you have forgotten, Helen?’

  Helen looked at me quickly, a tiny glance of accusation, and away again. ‘I’ll do it now,’ she said. ‘There’s still time.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. All I knew was that Helen had upset her dad, that he was visibly shocked and disappointed in her, and that for some reason it was my fault.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Mr Garton said, tight in his throat. ‘The girl gets a full offer from the Royal Northern College of Music to do Composition and she forgets to write back and accept it. That’s all.’

  ‘I’ll do it now, I said,’ Helen told him. She was nearly crying. ‘I’ve got till tomorrow, Dad.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ I said.

  ‘I think you had,’ said her mother, arms folded, looking from one to the other of us.

  Helen came to the door with me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Helen,’ I whispered.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s just that it means so much to Dad. Nearly as much as it means to me.’

  I put my arms round her. It meant that in October our ways would separate, mine to Newcastle, hers to Manchester. But October was a long way away.

  ‘It’s raining,’ she said. ‘Do you want a brolly? I could lend you the yellow one Nan gave me for Christmas. In fact, you can keep it. It makes me look like a daffodil.’

  ‘No. I love the rain.’ I had to keep clearing my throat. ‘I love you, Nell.’

  ‘Helen, shut that door! It’s like a fridge in here!’ her mother called.

  Helen pushed me off the doorstep and pulled the door to behind her. She put her arms up and looped them round my neck. I could smell her hair.

  ‘I want it to happen all over again,’ I said. ‘Now.’

  ‘You’d better go.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘We could stand out here in the rain all night,’ she suggested. ‘But my hair would frizz up and you’d go off me.’

  ‘I know when I’m beaten. I’ll ring you.’

  I ran off, dancing backwards, as Helen raised her hand for a moment with the light of the open door behind her, framing her. It was like a pose for a photograph. I keep remembering it. Then she closed the door. It was full dark by then. The rain had sleet in it and slanted across the streetlamps like long glass splinters, separate and sharp. I unzipped my jacket and ran with it flapping loose and with my face tilted up and my mouth open. I had a sudden wild thought that I would like to run across the road into the park and stand naked in the sleet. I would keep on running as naked as a fish through Endcliffe Park and on up past Wiremill Dam and Forge Dam, and past the swings and slides where I used to play when I was little, and on and on till I was right up on the dark moors.

  ‘I’ll take Helen up there,’ I thought. ‘When it snows. I’ll take Helen up there and we’ll lie down in the deep deep snow and keep each other warm.’

  A car pulled up beside me, whooshing spray against my legs. The driver beeped and I looked round, zipping up my jacket, cursing. She beeped again and leaned over to open the passenger door.

  ‘Get in,’ she said. ‘You’re soaked to the skin.’

  I climbed in, glad now to be somewhere dry. ‘I’m not supposed to accept lifts from strange women.’

  ‘I’d be hard up if I was thinking of abducting a skinny rat like you, Chris.’ She looked in her mirror and edged out into the traffic again. It was the rush hour. Sleet fizzed against the windscreen, fracturing the dazzle of lights.

  ‘You mustn’t go out of your way,’ I told her.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve got some manure in the boot to deliver to your dad. You can carry it home instead, if you like. It would save my petrol.’

  I leaned my head back on the rest and closed my eyes. I had a sudden absurd desire to start singing. I would have loved to have told her about Helen.

  ‘I think I should call you Jill now,’ I said.

  ‘I wish you would. I’ve always hated the “aunty” bit. I always feel as if an aunty should be knitting you nice jumpers and asking you round to tea.’

  ‘I’m a deprived nephew, then. I knew there was something wrong with my life.’ I gave a long, satisfied yawn. ‘I’m tired,’ I murmured. My head was in a wonderful foggy sleepy spin. ‘Really tired.’ I closed my eyes.

  I rang Helen as soon as I had a chance to. I just wanted to hear her voice. I stood in the hall grinning and not saying anything and I could tell that Helen at the other end was smiling into the receiver.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Smiling.’

  ‘I knew you were.’

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Smiling back.’

  ‘Helen. I need the phone.’ That was her mother. She does it every time.

  ‘I’ll have to go, Chris. See you tomorrow?’

  ‘We’ve got a trip to Rotherham.’

  ‘Rotherham! Our school’s going to Geneva at Easter.’

  ‘We’re going to see Much Ado at the Civic.’

  ‘Helen!’

  ‘Okay, Mum. See you, Chris.’

  I stood listening to the buzz of the dead phone, imagining her going back up those mossy green stairs of theirs to her room, pulling the curtains closed, stopping perhaps to look out at the sleet against the streetlamps.

  ‘You’re sweet. You’re so lovely,’ I murmured as I put the receiver down.

  ‘Thanks,’ my dad said, coming down the stairs behind me. ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed. How about doing the washing-up, Chris?’

  I joined my brother in the kitchen. Guy had filled up the sink with bubbles, and as soon as I went in he started flicking them at me. He always does it.

  ‘Give over,’ I said, flicking back. I scooped up a handful of froth and eased it on to Guy’s head when he turned away to get a tea-towel.

  ‘You can do the pans,’ Guy said. ‘They’re all burnt, and it serves you right for gassing on the phone for hours.’

  He kept walking round the kitchen with that lacy pyramid on his head, his glasses still flashing earnest intelligence. I don’t know how he does it.

  ‘Dad,’ I shouted. ‘Did you know the snow’s corning into the kitchen!’

  ‘Very pretty,’ said Dad, glancing in on his way past. ‘Love the head-dress, Guy.’

  Guy walked past him, the tea-towel flung across his shoulder, and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. He made a ball of the tea-towel with his fist and hurled it at me and I charged at him with another handful of froth and stuffed it down his neck. We were yelling our heads off. He’s all knees and elbows and chins. It’s like fighting with a sackful of coat-hangers. The cat dived for the cat-flap, backed in again when it saw the sleet, and darted upstairs.

  ‘Will you two stop it!’ Dad shouted. ‘I’d rather have a pair of two-year-olds in the house any day.’

  Guy cupped another handful of froth against my chin, where it dangled like a threadbare beard.

  ‘Very funny, Guy.’ I kept it there, letting it wobble as I talked. We were both gasping for breath. I love fighting with Guy. ‘But I’m above such childishness.’

  ‘Since when?’ asked Guy.

  I tapped the side of my nose. ‘That’s my business,’ I said. I wish I could wink. I have to close both eyes. Guy winked for me, understanding nothing, and I leapt on him again.

  ‘Pans,’ shouted Dad from the front room. ‘Homework!’

  I let Guy go and he hopped upstairs to do his essay. I gave the pans a good beating, too. I co
uld hear Guy’s cassettes thumping away upstairs. He has terrible taste in music. I’ll have to educate him. I finished off the pans, leaving the worst one to soak even though it had been soaking for three days already since my disastrous bean curry had turned into carcinogen. Helen would be sitting in her room doing her maths project by now, her books spread round her, her chin propped in her hand.

  I sat with Dad for a bit, watching the nine o’clock news. The room smelt slightly of manure because Jill and I had had to carry the bags through to the yard. All through tea I’d wanted to talk to Dad about something, and now that we were alone together at last I didn’t know where to start.

  ‘It’s all politics these days,’ I said.

  ‘You want to take it in,’ Dad said. He had a way of pouting out his lower lip and stroking it with his fingertips when the news was on. Guy said that was why he could never bear to watch the news. ‘It’s bound to come up on your General paper, you know. This is history.’

  I groaned.

  ‘And it’s happening now. That’s what history is, Chris.’

  ‘Give over, Dad. We’re getting it all the time at school, too.’

  ‘I should hope so. It’s the only thing that matters, you know, what happens to people. You can keep your pop shows.’

  ‘I’m going up,’ I said.

  ‘At this time?’

  ‘I’m shattered.’ I hadn’t asked him, and I was disappointed in myself. It’s hard to say the things that matter, but I don’t know why.

  ‘I’ll have to get you a dishwasher,’ Dad murmured.

  I wrote a song for Helen. I worked out some chords for it on my guitar, then tried it all again in a minor key. I wrote another verse and practised singing it, standing with one foot on the bed so I could balance my guitar on my knee. The last verse was so good that I sang it again, much louder this time. Guy threw a book against the joining wall, and the cat fled downstairs again and headbutted the cat-flap. I wrote the chords down so I wouldn’t forget them and then put a blank cassette into my radio-recorder and sang it all through, strumming softly, picking out a few bass runs with my thumb. I thought I might re-record it the next day so I could do it all finger-style, but I needed to get a new plectrum. The one I was using was the plastic tie-tag from a sliced loaf and it had split. I tried it in another key. Helen had taught me all the chords I knew on the guitar. One day I wanted to just wake up and be able to play like Jimi Hendrix. I decided I would post the cassette as it was through Helen’s letter-box on my way to school next day.