The Shell House

by Linda Newbery

  ‘Shall we go up to that ruined house you’re always on about? I’d like to see it.’

  ‘OK, why not?’

  They arranged to meet later on bikes at the church. At home, making himself a ham sandwich in the kitchen, Greg found himself the centre of attention.

  ‘Oh, you’re not honouring us with your presence later, then?’ Katy observed.

  ‘No, I’m going out.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Who’s the lucky girl?’ asked their father, home early and rummaging in the bottom of the fridge for a beer can.

  ‘It’s not a girl. I’m meeting Jordan.’ Greg looked for mustard in the larder, mentally kicking himself as he waited for Katy to swipe back with the jibe he’d set up for her; but instead she made her eyes round and said, ‘Jordan, mmmm. Bring him home if you want.’

  ‘I wouldn’t subject him to that.’

  ‘I’d like to meet this Jordan myself,’ said their mother; ‘he seems to be mentioned quite a lot. Why don’t you invite him round some time, Greg?’

  ‘I might,’ Greg said cautiously. ‘But only if you can guarantee Katy’ll be somewhere else.’

  By the time they reached Graveney Hall, Greg felt almost nervous. The place was deserted, the way he liked it best: nothing but birds and rabbits to disturb the lingering presence of the past. He and Jordan hid their bikes in the place Faith had shown him—well out of sight round the farthest side of the stables, behind the brick ice house. There was no-one else around. Since the vandalism, the front entrance was padlocked, and there were barbed-wire strands all along the fence that separated the front of the house from the gardens, but it was easy enough to get in for anyone with a mind to. They walked slowly around the main house, Jordan asking questions, Greg taking photographs: one with Jordan in it, just one. ‘Could you stand over there for a second, by the entrance?’ All very low-key. Friday evening, unwinding from school, thinking about the weekend; maybe a couple of beers at the pub later.

  They wandered away from the house, their feet brushing the grass. Greg explained about the ha-ha; they stood there looking out over the curve of hillside, towards the woods. A pheasant screeched from the cover of the trees. It was a perfectly still evening. Jordan climbed down over the fragments of the steps that had marked the western entrance, where the magnificent gates had once been, and followed the ha-ha where it contoured round. Watching him walk, the way he placed his feet, the shape of his shoulder-blades through a thin sweatshirt, Greg caught himself deliberately lagging behind for the pleasure of looking, and felt newly disturbed. He’d speed up: have a quick look round, then suggest biking to the Forest Tavern, where they might find some of the girls from school and things would be more normal.

  But Jordan wouldn’t be hurried. He walked on slowly, looking at everything. At the farthest end of the yew hedge that had once marked the boundary of the formal garden, there was a large hexagonal slab of concrete, about a metre high, with steps up. He stopped, seeing this.

  ‘What is it? A bandstand?’ He turned and waited for Greg to catch up.

  ‘There used to be a statue here. There were statues all over the garden, all gone now. This one was of Pan—I’ve seen a photo.’

  ‘Must have been a huge statue, then, going by the size of this base.’

  ‘It was. Larger than life.’

  ‘You’ve seen Pan in real life?’ Jordan said, so seriously that Greg didn’t immediately realize he was teasing. ‘He was the one with goat legs and horns, wasn’t he? Liked music and a lot of noise? I wonder which way he’d have been facing. Down towards those woods would have been best. He was always capering about through the woods, wasn’t he? I don’t think he was a tame god.’

  ‘But are any gods tame?’ Greg blathered. ‘I don’t think there can be such a thing as a tame god. God—capital-G God—isn’t tame.’

  Jordan looked at him, puzzled. ‘I only meant I didn’t think he’d belong up here, near the house, where it was all smart and manicured from what you say. If I had a stately home and a Pan statue, I’d put Pan in a clearing, in the wildest part of the woods. I don’t know about capital-G God. As far as I’m concerned, he’s fictional, like Pan—a bit prone to sending down plagues of locusts and afflicting people with boils, wasn’t he?’

  ‘If God is fictional, then what? Do you believe in something else?’

  Jordan gave him another quizzical look, paused, and said: ‘Really it’s odd we don’t spend the whole time wondering. Why don’t we wake up every morning and think, Hey! Here’s daylight again! And there’s oxygen for me to breathe! And I’m alive! And who’s arranged all this, and what’s it all for? We ought to be more surprised. But we get so used to it, we stop wondering how it happens, and clutter up our brains with what’s happening in Brookside or whether we’ve got the right kind of trainers. This is a good place to ask, really—Pan’s place. Because if I had to say I was anything—atheist, agnostic or whatever—I’d have to say pantheist.’

  Greg raised his eyebrows. ‘You believe in Pan?’

  ‘It means all. God-in-everything. Only I wouldn’t call it God. A kind of spirit of the earth might be another way to put it. Gaia. It makes more sense to me than anything else. Have you heard of it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Greg said. ‘Only I thought it was a rock group.’

  Jordan laughed. ‘Gaia means earth spirit. It’s a kind of energy, a will to live or to survive. It’s what keeps the planet going in spite of humans molesting it. Or has kept it going. Perhaps eventually Gaia will give up and the earth will suffocate in a cloud of greenhouse gases.’

  ‘Yeah, so where do humans fit in?’

  ‘Gaia must be in us, but only as in all animals—all creatures and all plants. Everything has the same will to live. But we’re not that important—no more than slugs or snails, only we’re a million times more harmful collectively. Gaia could manage a lot better without us. The problem is we can’t just be. We want more than we ought to have—we want cars and cinemas and swimming pools and continental holidays, and we don’t just want them, we take it for granted we’re entitled to them. If we could just be, just live off what the earth can give us, not by taking and taking, the rainforests would grow and the atmosphere would clear and the earth would find its own balance.’

  ‘So a catastrophic disease—a plague or something that killed off the whole human race—would be a good thing on the whole?’

  Jordan considered. ‘Yes, for Gaia, for the earth and its survival—if we haven’t damaged it too much already. But it’s impossible to think on that sort of scale, isn’t it? We’re too wrapped up in ourselves, thinking we’re so important. We’re here and now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Greg said. The hereness and nowness were very much on his mind.

  ‘And of course I want all those things too—the cars and holidays. Especially the swimming pools. I’m not really planning to live in a cave in the Outer Hebrides.’ Jordan sat on the statue plinth, elbows resting on his knees. ‘We can’t link up the two—the two scales we think in, or on. The us and the whole. They’re so vastly apart that we don’t even see the connection. Everyday stuff gets in the way.’

  ‘You’ve never said any of this before,’ Greg said, sitting too, a careful distance apart. In fact, he’d never heard Jordan talk so much about anything.

  ‘No. Well, you asked. I don’t think about this all the time because—well, what I said about everyday stuff. Anyway, most people would think I was a complete nutter. You know that Wordsworth poem we read, Tintern Abbey? He would have known what I’m on about. And I know what he was on about. The spirit that moves all things. Bit of a pantheist, Wordsworth was. O’Donnell was having a job convincing everyone in the classroom on a Monday morning. Should have brought us up here.’ He turned towards the house. ‘This whole place is a kind of symbol of Gaia, really. Humans came and built on it, tamed it, made straight lines and put down concrete. Now the humans have gone and Gaia is taking it back. Things grow wherever they can. These blackberry bushes an
d tree saplings are full of the will to live. I like it like this.’

  ‘Me too,’ Greg said. He picked up a stone and chucked it over the ha-ha, then another. They sat in silence for a few moments. About to suggest they went down to the lake, Greg began getting to his feet when Jordan, absorbed in his own thoughts, said, ‘If I had to find the equivalent of praying, it would be swimming. That’s when I’m most me—do you know what I mean?—when I can be the most I can be. It’s a sort of pure, concentrated being—no room for anything else. I swim, therefore I am. No, perhaps what I mean is I am, therefore I swim . What would it be for you? The best way of being?’

  Greg thought. ‘A physical thing? Riding down a steep hill on my bike—I don’t know—scoring a goal. Diving.’

  ‘Sex, I suppose, must be like that as well,’ Jordan said, ‘if you do it properly.’

  ‘Properly?’

  ‘With your whole self.’ Jordan leaned forward and plucked a grass stem.

  The quietness hummed in Greg’s ears, blurring his thoughts.

  Jordan looked at him. ‘Maybe that’s why you didn’t go with that girl at that party. You didn’t want it to be just a quick grope. It ought to be more than that. It ought to mean something.’

  A burning silence. Greg fiddled with his bootlace. Where was this leading? Did he want to go where it might lead? He had to know, even if he didn’t want—

  ‘I have a dream—a fantasy,’ Jordan said, ‘of spending a night in the open, by the sea, with another person, on a warm, still night when the sky’s really clear. We’d lie all night looking up at the stars and listening to the waves, and then when the dawn came we’d wade into the sea and swim. That would be perfect enough to last my whole life. Stars and darkness and space and sand and waves and water and light.’

  Another person? You mean a girl? Greg wanted to ask, though he was almost certain by now that Jordan did not.

  But Jordan was off in another direction. ‘You know I told you Michelle was waiting for a transplant?’

  ‘Mm?’ Greg was startled, half-disappointed.

  ‘My mum’s going to donate a kidney. Isn’t that incredibly brave? I think so.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ Greg could barely make himself sound interested. ‘Is it risky, then? For your mum, I mean?’

  ‘Yes—well, there’s the small risk of something going wrong with the kidney she’s left with. And there’s no guarantee of the transplant being successful. Either way, it’ll take Mum two or three months to get over the operation. But it’s better for Michelle, not just because she won’t have to wait, but because the chances are higher than if she got one from someone not related. And she won’t have to live with the knowledge of someone dying before she can have their kidney. When you’re on the transplant list, you’re waiting—hoping—for a kidney to become available. And the most likely source is someone who dies in intensive care after a car accident or something like that.’

  ‘Mm, difficult. When will this happen?’

  ‘Soon, when they’ve finished all the tests to make sure it’s a perfect match, and the counselling.’ Jordan paused. Greg, sensing that he wanted to say more, looked at him encouragingly; he went on, ‘I did offer to give her one of mine when we first talked about it, but I only did it because I knew they’d all say no. My parents, the doctors, Michelle herself. And that let me off the hook. I’m not brave enough, or generous enough, when it comes down to it. I feel bad about that. It was cheating. I got the credit for offering when I knew I wasn’t really risking anything by opening my mouth.’

  ‘I don’t think you need beat your brains about it! It would be an awful lot to ask of you. Going through a big operation—losing fitness, when you’re in the middle of training—when it could turn out to be useless. Put on the line like that, I don’t think I’d volunteer for my pain of a sister—’

  ‘But no-one has asked it of me. I thought I should be able to ask it of myself, so that Michelle can have a normal life. Imagine what it’s like for her—tied to a machine she can’t live without, always having to watch her diet, never being able to go on holiday unless it’s near a hospital with a dialysis unit.’

  ‘She hasn’t got the choice. You have.’

  ‘But that’s what I mean. It’s only when you’re faced with a difficult choice that you find out things about yourself.’

  For a second their eyes met; Greg looked away. Another silence. A wagtail landed on the stone facing of the ha-ha, flicking its tail.

  ‘See, that’s a big difference between your family and mine,’ Greg said gruffly. ‘Your lot talk about things. Mine don’t. We’re just people who happen to live in the same house and don’t always get on specially well. It’s a logistics thing, really—getting everyone in and out of the bathroom and out of the house on time, and out of each other’s hair. That’s how my lot function.’

  ‘We’ve always talked about things,’ Jordan said. ‘Especially since Michelle’s been ill. It makes you . . . stop being petty, I suppose. You realize how important your family is. And my parents have always been pretty good at listening and helping with problems. I wouldn’t be afraid to tell them anything.’

  Greg huffed a laugh, thinking of his own parents. His dad’s attempts at man-to-son frankness were an embarrassment to both of them, making Greg want to wriggle away.

  ‘What?’ Jordan said.

  The wagtail was startled off, with a chizzick call and a fanning of white tail feathers. Close at hand, war whoops and cackles shredded the quietness. Something looped through the air: a chunk of dead wood, narrowly missing Jordan’s head, thudded on the edge of the ha-ha then rolled over. Voices jeered from behind the hedge.

  ‘Faggots!’

  ‘Gay boys! Pooftaaahs!’

  ‘Bum bandits!’

  Greg was on his feet at once, turning, defensive. Dean Brampton stood in the gap in the yew hedge, leering, tongue rolling obscenely, hand pumping in an unmistakable gesture; then he ran after the other two towards the house, thrusting two fingers at the sky.

  ‘Bastards!’ Greg spat out the word.

  ‘Those yobs from school? Why do they keep coming here?’

  ‘Because they’re mindless morons.’ Greg was more angry than he wanted Jordan to see: he was hot with frustrated aggression. Furious with Dean & Co. for stalking him and Jordan, for being here at all. Furious with himself for letting it happen.

  ‘Don’t take any notice,’ Jordan said. ‘It’ll only make them worse if we go after them.’

  ‘What they said—’

  ‘They’d yell that at any two blokes,’ Jordan said calmly.

  ‘They spoil everything.’ Greg’s fists tightened. What now? To go down to the lake would be to risk the boys following, to invite them to trash the place with abuse and stone-throwing and spray-cans. ‘We’ll have to get them out of here. They’ll start damaging the house, throwing bricks.’ He saw Jordan’s hesitation. ‘I don’t mean fight them. Chase them off the place. They’ve always cleared off quickly enough before, even when I was on my own.’

  They crossed the grass. The shell of the house seemed as deserted now as it had been when they arrived. It was eerie in its emptiness, facing the waning sun.

  ‘I bet they’re inside.’

  Jordan looked at the DANGER KEEP OUT signs. ‘I thought it was all boarded up?’

  ‘You can still get in round this side. That’s where they’ll be.’ Greg pushed aside trailing ivy and led the way below the steps and inside to the towering central area. Their footfalls echoed off the walls. Jordan made a sound of amazement, looking up at the staircase to nowhere, the vast first-floor fireplace, the sapling trees clinging to brickwork toeholds, and on up to sky and clouds.

  ‘No sign of them.’

  ‘No,’ Greg said, ‘but they’ve climbed around in here before. With a bit of luck they’ll break their stupid necks.’

  Above their heads, a whistle: then a shower of brick-dust.

  ‘Come and get us, Hobb-Knob! Tosser! If you’re not chicken.�
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  Greg looked up—unwisely, as a whole brick hurtled down this time, ricocheting off the wall behind him and splatting close to his feet, breaking into three jagged pieces.

  ‘Are you brain-dead or what?’ he yelled up. ‘Don’t you know this whole building could come down?’

  He glimpsed a figure clambering close to the crumbled edge of the staircase, another darting through a doorway on the upper floor. Baboon-calls echoed through the shell of the house. A renewed volley of brick-dust and brick-pieces showered them, a renewed torrent of insults. Jordan began to move back the way they’d come in; Greg made to follow him. No point in this. They’d walked into an ambush, presenting themselves as targets. Faith’s dad had said that if the boys committed any more vandalism, he’d phone the police. Jordan’s mobile phone was in his bike-bag . . .

  But now there was a scuffling sound above, a frightened yell, a grumble and scrape of dislodged brickwork, and Greg’s upturned eyes blinking dust saw a toppling shape, an arm-waving rag-doll of a body, in slow-motion drop from the edge of the staircase. Awkward fall and slither against a jutting edge of chimney-breast—the body upended, tilted, dropped at a new angle. Greg’s dash—an attempt to break the fall—brought him flat-footed to the wrong place. All in a heartstopping, throat-grabbing moment, he heard freefalling body strike concrete: a soft, cracking flump. Breath slammed out of a bird-fragile body. Then silence. Jordan standing frozen, horrified. Greg first numb, then trembling. Now both moving at once.

  Dean on the ground. Dean the Mouth, quiet now. Blood trickling from the side of his mouth, limbs limp, like a drowned spider. Greg, trained life-saver, was first to act.

  Is he dead?

  Check he’s breathing. Check airways clear. Don’t move him more than I have to.

  With any luck they’ll break their moronic necks—

  Jordan: ‘Is he—?’

  The boy’s eyes were closed, his mouth open. A convulsive twist of his neck, then the smallest of wheezing sounds, painful, as air re-entered his shocked body.

  ‘He’s breathing. Trying to,’ Greg said to Jordan. ‘Your mobile—’