Writing On the Wall

by Lynne Reid Banks

  Mary said, privately in our room, “Never mind the Dutchmen, Tracy, you watch out for Kevin. I know his type, let him out of sight of home and he’s up to any old tricks. Just you keep yourself to yourself and don’t let him talk you into anything.”

  I didn’t like that, of course, and I told her pretty sharp she didn’t know him and should keep her tongue off him. It worried me, secretly, because Mary has this instinct about men, like I said before – I’ve never known her wrong unless she’s been daft over one herself. But I got over it by sulking with her for a day or so and then forgetting what she’d said.

  Vlady talked to me while he showed me all about his precious bike and how to take care of it (I didn’t even take a day to forget all that, of course). He said we should be careful to make a good impression in Holland, that people who travel abroad are like representatives of their own country and that the foreigners judge your whole nation by what you do. There was nothing in that to get my back up so I paid more attention to Vlady than to any of the others; like I always do, really, because I love him best.

  I don’t include Dad in that, of course. Dad’s lecture was the longest and the most boring because it was all the others rolled into one and went on over the whole two weeks before we left. I took in anything that didn’t seem to criticise Kev, and ignored the rest.

  We got off at last. In the end all the family helped, even Lily (her “lecture” had just been about being sure to bring her back a present). The girls helped me to pack my rucksack and saddlebags and Sean showed me how to keep my new sleeping-bag rolled up in its little canvas sack-thing, Mum made sure I had all my money and tickets and passport safe. At the last minute Dad gave me an extra fiver and such a tight hug I was breathless before I started.

  We got the train to Harwich from Liverpool Street, and from that straight on to the boat. It was a Dutch boat, so we could feel right off we were in a bit of Holland – if only by the prices. Everything was double, even a cup of tea.

  Of course, the boys had another use for their money – the one-armed bandits. Karen too. Connie said she wasn’t throwing her money away, and that helped me not to – I won’t say I wasn’t tempted, especially when Kev was winning. But in the end he was down two quid. He didn’t tell Michael (who was on deck at the time) and he said he’d do me in if I did. If you ask me, he was a bit scared of Michael, even though he kept saying he wasn’t taking orders from him, and that he’d best not start being too bossy.

  It was a night crossing and we all slept in sort of lean-back chairs – quite comfy except your neck got stiff and it was hard not to let your mouth fall open. Not that we slept much. Truth was, I felt a bit funny about sleeping with all those boys around me. Specially when Kev reached over and tried to touch me up in the night. I did wonder how we’d arrange the tents and all that. We’d only brought four – the girls didn’t have to carry tents. Who’d share with who? We hadn’t talked about that.

  Still, it sort of added to the excitement. When Michael woke us up and there we were, in Holland, Abroad, I think everyone felt the way I did – that we’d never be quite the same after the week to come. How right we were!

  8 · Bikes and Dykes

  Right from the off, I took to Holland. I don’t know why. The port was nothing to speak of, and even when we got out of the town (which was hairy, cycle-track or no cycle-track!) there was nothing much to see.

  But, like Michael said as he stood by his bike, breathing deep and looking all round at the flat countryside: “Cor! What an eye-stretcher!” And it was. My eyes were so stretched they almost popped out – after London, where they’re brought up short every two yards, they hardly knew how to focus so far.

  The others weren’t committing themselves, except Con, who breathed deep as well and said, “Smells different, anyway.” It did, too, and after the coffee factory in Acton, that could only be an improvement, though it was mainly just the sea, so far, that we were smelling.

  Me, I felt all worked up and full of go. I looked along the flat, straight road reaching into the distance, and jumped astride my loaded bike like a cowboy jumping on his horse.

  “Well, let’s go if we’re going!” I yelled, and took off. When I looked back, they were all streaming along behind me.

  Mile after mile! Michael soon overtook me on his newish racer, but he didn’t go too fast. We had time to look round. Not that there was much to see, not at first. But I’m funny. I’ve always liked being around water. Never mind what kind, sea, lakes, rivers, anything (even a nice bath’ll do if nothing bigger offers!). And here was enough water for anybody. It was more than half water, some of the way. Great shining sheets of it, with roads and fields in between, and these big dykes, like high grassy banks, running for miles with roads along the top so you could ride up there and get a good view.

  I rode alongside Connie.

  “What do you think so far?” I asked her.

  “Ain’t half a lot of sky,” she said.

  In London you don’t look up much. It’s either sunny or it’s grey. But here, spinning along these dyke-tops, the sky seemed to be three-quarters of the world. Blue, with every sort of cloud in it, little wispy ones and big bunchy ones and that sort that’s like the sand, far down the beach at low tide, wrinkled and ridged. The sea was a bright line, far away.

  I rode faster and caught Michael up.

  “What’s this place called?” I asked. I knew he’d brought a guide-book and knew a good bit to begin with. He’d kept telling us we ought to read up on Holland before we came, only we hadn’t of course, only maybe Darryl.

  “I think we’re in Zeeland,” he said. “Sea-land. It used to be sea. All this water’s bits of the sea that they haven’t pushed back yet. The land part’s called polders.”

  We were riding along one of the dykes. On the sea side the water lapped the foot of it, like a huge reservoir. On the other side were neat little houses and fields and orchards and stuff.

  “If this dyke wasn’t here—”

  “—all that, there, would be flooded. Yeah.”

  “Let’s stop. I want to look.”

  Michael put up his hand and we all stopped. There was no other traffic. The road wasn’t even a proper smooth road, it was made of bricks. There wasn’t a soul in sight except an old farmer digging his vegies below us on the land-side. I kept running from one side of the dyke to the other, thinking what would happen if the water got higher or the dyke broke.

  Cliff and Kev and Karen were standing on the sea-side, looking down at the water at the foot of the bank. Michael had his back to them, pumping up his tyres. They started fooling around. Cliff gave Karen a push, and she grabbed him and screamed. Gave me a fright in the middle of all that quiet. Con, too. Con shouted, “Oh shut up!”

  “Who are you telling to shut up?” asked Kev, turning round and coming at her. “You’re not a bloody prefect now, you know!” He got hold of her and started dragging her along. It was all for laughs of course, but she pulled back and Kev yelled, “Here, Cliff, let’s get her!” The pair of them chased her along the edge of the dyke and then they caught her and made like they were going to shove her over – there was no fence or anything, just a grass slope straight into the water.

  Karen, Darryl and me stood watching. Uneasy somehow. I’d done plenty of scuffling and shoving in the school yard, but here it was different. I felt I ought to go and help Con but I didn’t want to get involved. I looked at Michael. He was crouched by his bike, looking over his shoulder. Frowning, but not getting up.

  “Knock it off now,” he said, but they didn’t even hear him. Con was really struggling now, with the two of them pushing and pulling her towards the edge. And suddenly she lost her temper.

  I haven’t mentioned Con’s temper. When she was a prefect she usually kept very calm, but just sometimes, when some kid would cheek her or ignore her, she’d do her nut. There was one black sixth former who kept pushing past her when she was on dinner-duty and swearing at her and that, and finally she lost
her rag and clouted his head. What a fuss! He yelled and raved that she was picking on him because he was black, and she got suspended from being prefect for three weeks. Only she was the best they had, so they had to reinstate her in one week. I’ll tell you, that was one week of chaos at dinner-times.

  Now she lost her rag again. She pulled loose and gave Kev one shove. I let out a scream then, because over he went, straight down the bank, arse over tip.

  Michael was up on his feet like a shot and half-way down the bank, sliding and grabbing the grass to keep from falling. Kev tried to stop himself but he couldn’t. Hit the water with a walloping great splash. That stopped him!

  There he was, half in, half out, holding on to great handfuls of grass, yelling what-for up at Connie, who was leaning over with a face like chalk. Michael slid down and grabbed him by the scruff and yanked him onto dry land.

  “You bloody nutter!” he said. First time I’d seen him lose his cool.

  “She done it – she pushed me over!” Kev yelled. He looked ready to cry, he was so cold and wet, and the fall and everything. I felt sorry for him, even though he’d started it. As he came scrambling up to the road again I wanted to run and put my arms round him. I more or less did.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. But I’ll get that rotten cow,” he said, glaring at Con.

  Well, Michael made him change his gear. He tied his wet jeans to the back of his rucksack somehow so they flapped about a bit as we rode in the hopes of drying. Horrible things, wet jeans. Kev was still in a rage; he wouldn’t talk to Con. I rode alongside him now. Michael didn’t say anything else but you could see what he thought. His lip was sort of curling. I thought to myself, I hope he never looks at me like that. I hate being made to feel small. It’s something my brother Vlady’s very good at.

  After a bit we came to a little town. After that we were so busy looking round we forgot what happened before. You had to cross a bridge to get to it – it was like on an island – and there were great twisted towers by a gate like a castle gate in a fairy story.

  Inside the town it was all a bit like that too: cobbled streets, the houses and the town hall and that all old, some of them leaning a bit, but all ever so nicely kept up. The town hall had a fantastic clock tower with a little metal man who clonked the bell every hour, with a statue of Neptune on the very top. Everything dead clean, the streets and that.

  We were walking along, just strolling, looking in the shops, and Cliff got out a packet of fags and lit up. He gave one to Kev and that was his last, so naturally he chucked the packet away, like he would at home. Michael was walking ahead with Darryl and didn’t see this happen, but somebody else did – two of the locals.

  It wasn’t some little old lady, neither, it was a young couple, walking towards us. They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw that fag-box hurtling into their nice pure gutter. Boggling at it.

  “I hope it’s not going to be like this everywhere,” Kev muttered. “We’ll never have any fun if they’re all so bloody uptight. Bet you when we get to Amsterdam we’ll see lots of decent gear, and discos and that. That’s where it’s all at, is Amsterdam.”

  “But Michael says we’re not going to Amsterdam, it’s too far.”

  “I’m going to Amsterdam and I don’t care what Michael says,” said Kev. “And you’re coming with me.”

  “How’ll we get there?”

  “On a train of course,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

  We had a sort of picnic meal on the grass outside the walls of the town. It was ever so nice there by the water. Michael didn’t exactly tell us not to leave litter, but when we were packing up I saw him quietly picking up a few bits and pieces and putting them in his pocket.

  “How much further we going today?” Cliff asked. The boys had a lot of clobber, really a lot, and they weren’t used to biking with all that on their backs.

  “The camping site’s another fifteen miles,” said Michael.

  “Fifteen miles!” Heavy groaning all round. “Why can’t we stop here? There must be a youth hostel!”

  “We ought to leave youth hostelling for the towns,” said Michael. “It’s good weather for camping. Silly to lug those tents and then not use ’em. Come on, we’ll be there before you know it.”

  We set off again. More nice flat roads. Lovely not to have traffic to speak of, and even at that there were these cycle tracks so you never got scared some speed-merchant was going to zoom by and land you in the ditch. London seemed as far away as the moon.

  I was thinking of something – something I was trying to remember. About dykes. Something I read once, when I still read kids’ books. I shouted across to Kev:

  “Here, did you ever hear about a little boy who put his finger in a leak in a dyke?”

  “Blimey, get a leak in one of these things and you couldn’t plug it with an elephant’s bum!”

  *

  We got to the camping site around tea-time. It was pretty full, but not too bad. We found a good place for our tents and started putting them up while Michael settled up with the owners or whoever takes the money. By the time he found us, all hell’d broken loose.

  This time Michael just stood there with his hands on his hips, roaring with laughter.

  “Easy to see you lot don’t know one end of a tent from another!”

  Darryl was the only one who’d got his tent to stand up at all, and even his sagged in the middle like a wash-line when the pole’s blown down. Cliff was inside his, crawling about like a cat in a bag, struggling with the aluminium bits and yelling to Karen to pull on ropes she couldn’t even find. Kev and me were holding his up from each end, standing there sort of helpless – you’d think we’d got a tiger by the tail and whiskers between us and didn’t know what to do next.

  “One at a time,” said Michael. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  So he gave us a demonstration, and we soon got the idea. While I was sticking Kev’s skewers into the ground I started worrying again about the sleeping arrangements. When the tents were all up (more or less) I dragged Connie off to the toilet (the Dutch even manage to be clean about that).

  “Where you going to sleep?” I asked her.

  I was always afraid Connie was going to jeer at me; I don’t know why because she never did. This time she just said, “With you, unless you got other plans.”

  “Oh,” I said. “No.”

  When we got back to the others they were all crawling in and out of each other’s tents and joking and fooling about. Kev came up to me straight off. “Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly.”

  I crawled in on hands and knees. There wasn’t much light in there, but enough to see what he’d been up to. Our sleeping-bags – his and mine – were lying there side by side. All cosy.

  “Oh, no!” I said. “OH no you don’t!” And I started heaving mine out again, sharpish.

  I should have known better. In a second I was flat on my face on top of the sleeping-bag, and he was flat on his face on top of me.

  “Gerroff!” I shouted, pushing at him. We were rolling about, with the built-in ground sheet crackling underneath us.

  “Sshhh!” He put his hand over my mouth and tried to reach round and kiss me, but I ducked.

  “GERROFF!” I yelled again as soon as I got my mouth free. I started wriggling out backwards. I got my feet out of the slit in the tent and started kicking like mad. The whole tent must’ve been heaving about. I felt my foot hit the front pole.

  “Will you stop it? You’ll wreck my tent!” said Kev.

  “So let me out!”

  Just then I felt someone take hold of my ankles and pull. Out I slid backwards with Kev riding on me like whatsisname and Flipper.

  Kev jumped up quick then, of course. His face was beet-red. He stalked off. Karen and Con, who’d pulled me out, were laughing their heads off.

  “What was he up to, Tracy? He can’t have been very good at it, from the sound
of you!”

  “Listen,” said Michael. “Don’t yell the place down. You’re disturbing people. Now then, who’s for a cuppa?”

  He was good at that, I’d noticed – calming us down without getting mad at us. We all brought our mugs round his little camping-stove where he’d got a kettle boiling and he made us tea with tea-bags and milk from a carton. Tasted great. There were biscuits too. Dutch ones that he’d bought us in that town. I could’ve eaten the whole packet. Kev came mooching back after a bit. Nobody said anything. I gave him a grin to show no hard feelings. I just wished he’d get his timing right. Or maybe it was as well he didn’t. That tent had felt ever so private and cosy. I wondered what it’d be like at night. . . .

  When we’d sorted ourselves out we walked around the site, chatting people up a bit and finding out the score from the ones that hadn’t only just come. Michael palled-up with a couple of the grown-up lads and was making notes about places to go and things to see.

  “D’you like Michael?” Con asked me.

  “He’s all right. It’s good he’s with us. We’d be pretty useless on our own.”

  “I’m not so sure I like him leading the way all the time.”

  “Would you know where to go and that, by yourself?”

  “Where to go? I’d go where I liked, what’s to stop me?”

  “But you might get lost – ride for miles – I mean if you didn’t know where the camping places were.”

  “Listen. I got my sleeping-bag. I got my knife and fork, and a change of gear, and some money. How many barns did we pass today, even in the loneliest spots? Haven’t you ever dossed down in a pile of hay?”

  I stared at her. “No. And neither have you.”

  “All right, I haven’t, but I wouldn’t mind. Then in the morning you could go to the farmer and get a drink of milk and some fresh bread—”

  “Get away, how would you ask?”

  “Like this,” she said, and she pretended to milk a cow and then drink, and then slice bread and eat it. “And if they didn’t get that. . . . Well, maybe I’d take Darryl with me. He knows the Dutch for milk and bread.”