“I tried but he wouldn’t!”
“Where did he go?”
“He said to wait but I was on my own and I got worried—”
“Said what? What did he say?”
Oh no, Rory thinks. Oh no. Please don’t, Pink.
“—and I did wait but it was ages so—”
“Pink!” It’s like a slap. “Where is he? Where’s Rory?”
“I dunno! It’s not my fault!”
“What isn’t? What’s wrong?”
“He said he was going to Them!”
Oh no.
“Who?”
“He said, he was boasting and I said he never could but he swore he’d show me, he was going to find Them—” The women are trying to talk but there’s no stopping the frantic babble now. “And he said wait here and he’d come back and he went off to talk to Them, that’s what he said, I swear he did, I swear!”
There’s another small moment of silence. Then they’re all off running down the road, shouting together like the gulls. Rory stands at the window where Ol used to stand, wondering whether it would be better for him now to be underwater where it’s quiet, being led along by a white hand. Then he grabs up the bags. He only just remembers to stuff a pair of shoes in before he bolts down and out of The Larches at the fastest sprint he can manage.
* * *
He runs along the road on the east side of Home, the ruined side, looking across to even more ruined Martin. The road here’s full of rubbish as well as being overgrown. No one usually comes down this way, but he’s not worrying about what’ll happen if someone sees him. That’s the least of his problems now.
He’s going to have to say that Pink made it up. They’ll believe him. Some of them will, at least. Pink likes saying things to get people into trouble, everyone knows that. Pink will know, though. She’ll always know that he lied. Just like Ol will always know that Rory could have stopped him drowning but didn’t.
He’s feeling a bit teary. For no reason that he can pin down, his life has spun out of control. Running faster helps a bit. If only he could run away for good.
At the smashed-up houses by the Old Harbor and the Hotel he turns inland, swinging past the School towards the church and Parson’s. He hasn’t been here for a while. The weeds have grown so tall none of the fields he remembers look like fields anymore, they’re jungles of knotted green. There was a playground behind the school. It’s vanished completely under bramble and bindweed.
“Boy!”
He’d only turned his head to look at where the playground used to be for a moment. Before that moment it was just him and the Lane and the weeds everywhere. Now, out of nowhere, there’s a man. Rory skids to a halt.
The man’s bald and very short, with a weird thin nose between fierce-looking and outsized eyes. He’s wrapped in a big tartan blanket which looks exactly like the one they keep in the barn to help slide heavy things across the floor. His feet are bare, and a length of bare shin shows below the blanket. His toes are slightly curled. Rory notices all these things at once because this is the first new person he’s seen for a year and a half: the first new person in the world. It’s as utterly astounding as an alien invasion.
“This is food?”
It’s the stranger, the shape in the dark. He’s got that foreign voice. He skips forward. He moves bewilderingly suddenly and deftly, more like dancing than running. He looks left and right, swiveling his head like a bird. His scalp is pockmarked under a shadow of brown stubble. His face is scratched and rough. He’s compact, hard, tense, entirely unlike every other person in the world. The air around him’s almost vibrating with danger.
He snatches the bags like they’re prey and pokes around in them.
“Is good,” he says, and looks at Rory. His eyes are a bit too big for his face, and his head is in turn a bit too big for his body. His gaze is inexplicably overwhelming. Rory backs away as the man rifles through the bags. “Good,” he says again. He picks out an apple, sniffs it, takes a quick bite. His teeth are stained barley-brown.
“You want?” he says, holding the apple out, and grins.
Hot, still panting, feeling the sweat around his neck, Rory’s trying to make all of this come together. This stranger—a man—here on the road just down from Parson’s; his mother, Pink, Molly; the trouble he’s in; his life on this island, this world he inhabits. It’s not working. It won’t fall into place.
The man’s grin disappears.
“This you say to no one.”
This is audibly a threat, but Rory doesn’t mind that, because there’s no possible way he could put into words what’s happening, not even to himself. He swallows and nods.
“Or,” the man says, and hops forward and puts two fingers across Rory’s neck, a knife. Neatly, he draws them from one side to the other. “You know?”
What he means is, Do you understand? Adults are always saying that to him. He never does actually understand, least of all now, but the right answer is always—
“Yes.”
“Good. Domani. Day after this one. You bring more food. You bring,” he points down behind Rory, towards the wreck of the Hotel, “there.”
“Tomorrow,” Rory says.
“Ecco. Tomorrow. Domani.” His whole face changes when he grins, like he’s just got a joke. He bobs down and collects the bags. Even the way he does that isn’t like anyone else in the world. The women pick things up slowly, laboriously. This man’s fingers peck the plastic bags off the road like he’s plucking an insect out of the air. “Va bene,” he says. “Go.” He points the other way, up the lane towards Parson’s.
“How did you get here?” Rory blurts out.
He can’t believe he said anything. His face goes red. The man stares at him. Then he laughs. It’s hardly actual laughing, more like a single squawk—ah! He pounces and grabs Rory’s shoulder, but before Rory has time to be frightened the man turns him around and points up at the sky. A gull’s circling, one of the big black-backed ones.
“Like this one,” the man says, and squawks his laugh again. He spins Rory back to face the church and gives him a hard shove in that direction. “Go!” Rory stumbles forward. As he’s collecting himself he’s suddenly unsure what exactly he’s supposed to be doing tomorrow. He turns back, saying,“But—”
The man’s nowhere to be seen.
7
They find him not long afterwards. Or he finds them. He’s gone up past Parson’s, over the crest of the Lane, and he’s walking down towards the Pub when he hears Libby shouting, “Rory? Rory!” so—as if nothing’s happened at all—he trots around the corner to where she’s standing on the wall overlooking the Beach and says, “Hi.” She almost falls off the wall.
“There you are! Thank God.”
“Why?” he says. You’d think it would be easy acting like nothing had happened, because it’s just nothing after all, just being normal, but he’s finding it almost impossible.
“Where have you been?”
“Nowhere,” he says. That doesn’t sound good. “Having a poo.”
“Is that all?”
“Yeah.”
Libby looks exasperated, but not with him. “Your mother’s got the whole bloody island out looking for you.”
“Oh,” he says. “That’s funny.”
Word gets around quickly. Soon there’s a little cluster of people standing around him there in front of the Pub. They’re joking rather nervously with each other and with him. Eventually his mother comes running and all the chatting dies away. The cluster dissipates so she can tell him off in private. Libby and Fi give him sympathetic looks as they slink away.
He’s been readying himself for the telling-off for a while, and anyway it’s not like it’s the first time. He stands with his eyes half down (except when she says “Look at me,” which is often), and lets it roll over him. He mouths monosyllables when he has to. It’s only difficult when she makes him tell her what he said to Pink. “Nothing,” he tries, and “Don’t remember,”
but she’s not having that, so in the end he thinks of how Pink was bugging him and driving him crazy and he starts shouting back at her about that as if it’s all Pink’s fault, which, if you think about it, it really is, sort of.
“I don’t care!” his mother shouts. She’s getting breathless and shaky now. “You never, ever make a horrible joke like that! It’s a horrible thing to say.”
“She tried to make me kiss her.”
“I said I don’t care about what Pink did! Stop trying to blame her for everything!”
“She wasn’t letting me pick anything!”
“Rory!” She shouts right in his face. “Oliver’s been gone less than a week. Don’t you understand you can’t tell lies like that? How do you think Molly would feel about it?”
Viola appears, which means they have to stop shouting and pretend to be a bit calmer. She’s escorting Pink, whose face is blotchy and puffy and downtrodden. Viola takes one look at his mother and comes over to hold her by the arm.
“It’s all right, Connie,” she says. “No harm done.”
Out of her aunt’s sight Pink gives Rory a furious glare. Rory returns it.
“You two,” Viola says, “had better stop squabbling. I mean it. We can’t afford it.”
Hate you, Pink mouths. Rory can’t mouth it back because they’re all looking at him.
“Say sorry, Rory,” his mother says.
“Sorry.”
“Like you mean it.”
“Connie,” Viola says. “It’s all right. They’re just children.”
“She wanted to kiss me!”
“I never!”
“Stop it!” both adults yell simultaneously.
In the end Viola squats down and spends quite a long time reminding them both about the big Rule, the crucial one. They were given a job to do, she says, which means they absolutely have to do it. It’s only as her speech nears its end that Rory realizes what it means: he and Pink are going to be sent back to the woods to finish what they were doing, accompanied by the most stern and dire warnings about not even thinking about going anywhere else or doing anything else. Of course they are. You always have to finish what you’re doing if it’s to do with getting food.
Pink barely waits for the adults to be out of earshot before she begins hissing at him under her breath about him being a liar and how she’ll always hate him and all that. He trudges along like she’s not even there. That’s the funny thing about being told off, when it’s over it feels like nothing’s really happened. It’s just the same as when his mother gets all weepy and strange sometimes; it doesn’t mean anything afterwards. You let it pass and it’s gone.
Pink gets furious for a while, then when he goes on ignoring her she pretends to be upset. He concentrates on combing slowly through the woods. There are lots of mushrooms once you start looking carefully. Esme says it’s the same as with the fish and the crops. She says technology drove them away but now everything’s plentiful if you ask the spirits nicely, or something like that.
“Please,” Pink says. Now, at last, she sounds a bit like she’s really upset. He straightens up and looks at her.
“I’ll forgive you for lying if you stop ignoring me,” she says. “I swear.”
His back’s sore from bending over. He stretches out. He’s been waiting for this moment and he’s going to enjoy it.
“I’m not a liar,” he says. “Unlike you.”
Her eyes bug out and she’s about to answer back but he silences her by pointing.
“You said you wouldn’t tell,” he says, nice and clearly. He knows he’s right. He’s full of things he knows about, things stupid Pink couldn’t imagine in a million million years. “You swore. And then you told before I even got back. Now you’ll never see Them.”
He crouches down again and doesn’t say another word.
* * *
When Rory’s bags are full he starts back to the Abbey for lunch. Pink has to come with him, of course, because they promised to stay together. She’s hardly got anything in her bags because of all the time she’s wasted crying and threatening and begging. She won’t get in trouble because no one really expects her to do much proper work, but still, it’ll be embarrassing for her.
Lunch is fish, as always. The barbecue’s a perfect way to use up any twigs which are too small for the fire. It’s set up in a sheltered corner of the gardens. All summer long they’ve been sitting out there, people coming and going while one of the older ones looks after the fire. Today you can tell it’s not summer anymore. The sky’s clear and the light’s yellow but there’s a freshness in the breeze. Missus Grouse rubs her hands over the barbecue. No one else is eating yet. Dealing with the spelt is hard, slow work and chances are they’ll be at it till dark without a break.
Rory hitches himself up onto a garden wall with his plate (Missus Grouse insists on them using plates) and scoops dribbly bits of fish into his mouth. The garden slopes away in front of the Abbey. Parts of it are almost completely impenetrable now, but he can see over the top of the thick dark bushes, across the Small Pond and the scrubby southern tip of Home. On the horizon sits the bump of Maries, with its broken radio tower on top like a burned-down skeletal candle.
“What’s that boat?”
There’s a sailing boat he hasn’t seen before moored off the South Landing.
“Oh,” Missus Grouse says, “I’m not sure.”
Some awkwardness in her voice makes him look at her. She turns away to fiddle unnecessarily with her stack of kindling, though not before he’s caught her watching him with a weird stricken expression on her face.
“It wasn’t there before, was it?”
“Nothing to worry about,” she says loudly.
Last autumn, he remembers, people quite often used to talk about what would happen if Other People tried to land on Home. Ol got excited and made them play complicated games involving making fortifications and stockpiling ammo, but Rory could tell it was serious. The women knew they were barely clinging on after everyone else had left, a colony of the weak, the old, the inexpert, or so they thought until winter came to teach them how resilient they could be when they had to. Libby was always imagining bands of pirates or cannibals (or was it pirate cannibals?) roaming the world taking whatever they could get. Kate, more boringly, worried about the Maries or Martin people. So for a long time it was always someone’s job to spend the day on Briar Hill, watching the open waters around the edge of the world; quite often it was Rory’s own job. No one ever came. By the time winter set in they’d given up worrying about it. Everyone had left and no one was coming back: that was the way the world was, so obvious in the end it didn’t need discussing.
Until now.
“When did it get there?” he says.
“I’ve no idea. This morning, I think. Never you mind.” She prods the coals. “And do be careful with those bones, you know Fi can use them.”
Could it be the stranger’s boat? But it’s there in plain sight, obvious to everyone.
“I could go check it out.”
“No. I said never mind. Come on, let’s find you two something else to do.”
Pink complains about being tired so Missus Grouse sends her off to find Viola. Rory’s told to go and sweep out the stoves and fires in the Abbey. This is a stroke of luck. There’s no one else inside except Ali, who’s back in bed with her cough, so it’s the perfect opportunity for him to snatch a bit more food. He doesn’t try using a bag this time. It was stupid of him to think he could get away with carrying a bag of food around. Instead he has the idea of packing the pockets of his coat. He skims quickly around the cellars collecting things that don’t smell: potatoes, raisins, a few dried figs. He takes just a little from each pile so it won’t look like anything’s missing.
Then he goes up and down the Abbey collecting the ash. He ferries it to the big scuttle downstairs. It’s almost full by the time he’s done, so he goes and asks Missus Grouse whether he should take a barrow-load to the shed behind the old La
undry. Fi makes them keep all the ashes to use as some kind of fertilizer on the fields. Before What Happened Fi was a gardener at the Abbey.
“All right,” Missus Grouse says. “But mind you don’t go wandering off again.”
“I didn’t wander off,” he says. “I was just having a poo.”
You can’t hurry when you’re pushing a barrow full of ash, because even with a tarpaulin tied as tight as you can you’ll lose some if you jiggle around. So he walks slowly. The food in his pockets bumps his legs. He’s got time to think now. He wheels the barrow around the back of the Club and past the collapsed shed next to the old Laundry. All he has to do is think of a safe place to leave the food overnight, then he can find time to collect it in the morning and take it over to the Hotel and no one’ll know anything about it. There are hundreds of places where no one would ever look. Easy.
Normally when he’s walking by himself he’s thinking about Her, but today it’s all the stranger. He finds himself wondering what else the man might need.
It so happens that he’s thinking about this just as he’s passing the Toolshed. His eye alights on its wonky sliding door, and straight-away he thinks: matches.
Matches are incredibly precious. Last winter he and Ol were given the job of turning over every inch of every building they could get into looking for boxes or books of matches. They’ve taken them from houses, from behind the counter at the Shop, from the Pub (lots), from the pockets of jackets left hanging behind doors, even from the office of the Hotel though Rory nearly died of fright getting in there. Every abandoned sailing boat they can reach has been searched for them. People whose hands aren’t steady enough aren’t even allowed to try lighting matches in case they break one. And their whole collection is stored carefully in the Toolshed, in a waterproof tin box with a lock.
Rory’s not sure what the stranger would even do with matches. But he can imagine giving them to him. He can imagine this very clearly. I thought you could use some of these. And the stranger grinning in answer: Good boy.
He imagines this over and over.
He sets the barrow down by the Toolshed and slides the door across. It’s dim inside. While his eyes adjust he feels along the ceiling to the left, where the key to the padlock on the tin box hangs from a nail behind a rafter. He’s very proud of the fact that he’s been told where the key is and Pink hasn’t yet.
Arcadia Page 8
