It was frustrating to leave so much unsaid, not to be able to speak of work – the work she could still look forward to and which I already missed – or to wonder aloud what the ghost was doing in the cold spot and why the school attracted so many of them.
‘Later then,’ Becky said at the end of break, meaning after school and before she left for Islington.
As things turned out, we never had the opportunity to talk again later because I was destined for another showdown with Mr Hatcher.
So far that day the sickly light-headed feeling hadn’t bothered me, which was something to be grateful for, I supposed. But in Mr Redfern’s afternoon art class in the upstairs room with the best light in school, it came back with a vengeance, and something else – something strange and terrifying – came with it.
Today we had a still life session. Tables were pushed together to seat six to eight, and for those of us who’d forgotten to bring our own objects to draw – nearly all of us – Mr Redfern took a selection from the cupboard behind his desk.
There was a basket of wax fruit, a lump of fossilised stone with whorled eye-like patterns, a Wedgwood vase embossed with angels, and a grinning garden gnome with a red-painted coat, white beard and pointy peaked cap. These were placed one to each table while Mr Redfern assigned us places to sit. I got the basket of fruit, Becky the vase. The gnome on Decker’s table had a grin that looked weirdly unhinged.
‘You’ll think the subjects are dull,’ Mr Redfern said before we began, ‘which they are, but this isn’t entertainment. It’s about training your eye to see. Take in what’s in front of you all at once, then look again closer, notice the details, the lines and contours and imperfections that go to make up the overall. Then think about which media to use. Would the stone look best in charcoal or pastel or paint? Your choice.’
An uneasy hush settled over the room. Mr Redfern retired to his desk and we set to work, heads dipping over sketch pads.
For the wax fruit I chose wax crayons. I began by roughing out the general shape in pale colours, outlining within that shape the individual fruits, but from the start I had trouble keeping it all in focus. The mound of bright apples, bananas and pears seemed subtly different each time I looked, as if they were being rearranged in the basket by unseen hands.
After five minutes the texture looked right but not much else did. The bananas were banana shaped but the apples and pears could have been anything. You couldn’t tell which was which. Every change I made, every line I added only made matters worse, and at times I had to look away to clear my head.
Soon others at the table were taking more interest in my work than their own. Even Fay De Gray watched with big baffled eyes. They all knew art was my subject, something I was supposed to be good at, and I knew what they were thinking, Ryan and Curly and all the rest. They were taking a kind of pleasure in seeing me get it so wrong.
In my sketch pad the fruit had become a blistered, rotting mass, all weeping and putrefied. Snorts and giggles broke out around the table, and now others at other tables were gawking too. There were always off-days, days when I didn’t see clearly and the image I wanted to capture stayed just out of reach, but I’d never made such a hash of anything as this.
The others left their tables and came over to gawp. The picture was slipping further away from looking like fruit at all. Another line here, a patch of shade there, and suddenly it became something else – an abstract mess of colours all melting together, something a blindfolded chimp could’ve done.
You would’ve thought I’d never held a crayon before, that I wasn’t in charge of this one now. The crayon snapped between my fingers as it whipped across the page, gouging the paper as it went and skidding on across the desk. I wasn’t in control of it, but something was – the freezing cold something clutching my hand.
I dropped the crayon and jumped clear of the table. The rest of the class gathered around, looking from me to the vandalised sketch pad in amusement. Even Mr Redfern had made his way over and shook his head like a bystander at a traffic accident.
‘What on earth is that supposed to be?’ he said.
Whether he meant to or not, he’d just given 8C permission to gloat. They didn’t hold back, and laughed freely, nudging each other and pointing.
He did that. Him.
A dull ache pulsed behind my eyes. The lights in the room seemed to brighten and streak. Through the crowd I saw Fay De Gray’s astounded face, and Becky, close to tears, sharing the humiliation. The pressure gripping my fingers was only just starting to fade, but something else was taking its place. Bunching my hands into fists, I turned and looked around for Simon Decker.
He was the only one still seated. Alone at his table with the grinning gnome, he put down a red pencil and peered up with innocent eyes that seemed to say, ‘What?’
That was all it took.
I threw myself through the crowd and straight at him, fists flying. The first blow landed cleanly, catching Decker so sweetly on the right cheek it swivelled him around on his chair. The next split his lip in two places as I carried him the rest of the way to the floor. I’d landed a good few more shots before Mr Redfern dragged me away by the scruff of the neck, clamping my arms behind me until my shoulders locked, just as the Vigilants had on the night they arrested me.
In the reception area outside Mr Hatcher’s office, I sat on a moulded plastic chair next to Simon Decker. Decker stared off into space, working his way through a stack of paper towels from the washroom, mopping his busted lip and bloody nose. I didn’t recall connecting with his nose but I supposed I must have. I’d been blinded by the red mist at the time.
We’d been here for twenty minutes, time enough for me to cool off, but I still felt like one of those geysers in Mum’s holiday snaps. Sooner or later the pressure inside had to find a way out.
If Hatcher asked me to explain why I’d done what I’d done, I wouldn’t know where to start. But I couldn’t tell the truth. I’d have to invent something. He’d looked at me in a funny way. Something like that.
A buzzer sounded on the desk. The receptionist reached in slow motion for her phone, listened a moment and then looked over.
‘Mr Hatcher will see you now.’
Decker frowned at the red-stained paper towel in his hand, dropped it in the waste bin beside him and took up another towel. As we stood to go in, he turned to me with an anguished face, and to my amazement I heard him speak for the very first time.
‘Why do you hate me so much?’ he said.
16
FEVER
could have given him a list, even if hate wasn’t exactly the word. The changes we’d seen around school, the strange air, the constant needling and threats of detention – all of this I blamed on him. For all I knew, the lockdown was an idea he’d put in Hatcher’s head – and I was certain of it after the meeting.
Decker didn’t make a sound all through it, but his lips were never still. Hatcher had to be blind or spellbound, because if he noticed what Decker was doing he didn’t comment. It seemed Decker was pulling the strings, feeding Hatcher his lines – and Hatcher had plenty to say.
I was a bully, he said, prone to aggressive and disruptive behaviour, disrespectful to staff and fellow pupils, attention-seeking, argumentative and sullen. My homework was often late or incomplete, shoddy and badly organised, showing a lack of attention to detail. My concentration was poor, my communication skills less than poor, and my general lethargy in class led him to suspect I was staying out late on school nights. None of which would look good in the next school report.
‘One more thing,’ he finished, ‘and taking everything into account, it won’t come as a surprise. You’re suspended for the rest of the week.’
And as Decker whispered on, I couldn’t help wondering if a few carefully directed thoughts of my own might seal up his mouth for good.
Becky had left by the time Mr Hatcher dismissed us. I walked home through De Beauvoir Town, kicking a plastic bottle along the gutter
, slowing to watch a raven sail above the houses. I willed it to swoop down and become Mr October, who’d show me a way out of this mess, but the raven flew south and shrank into the distance.
Mum would throttle me, or at the very least ground me, and if she didn’t hear the news from me it would find her on the grapevine eventually. I was grateful to find she wasn’t home – I hadn’t a clue what to tell her. In the kitchen I found a hastily written note she’d left, which said:
Honey, sorry to miss you. We’re going walking on the Heath this afternoon, which will be freezing but the exercise and fresh air will do me good. After that Tom wants to take me to a little restaurant he knows – sounds very posh, the menus are all in French! But he speaks several languages so will save my blushes there.
Oh, and he has a little something he’d like to give you on Saturday after my appointment. I know you’ll love it, but don’t ask. I’m sworn to secrecy.
Won’t be too late but I’ve put some goodies in the fridge for your tea. Enjoy!
Love, Mum. xxx
The thought of food made me queasy, and I wasn’t all that curious about Tom’s gift either. Was he being generous or was he trying to buy affection, pampering the kid to please the mother? Either way, I didn’t particularly care.
Darkness was falling. As I went around the maisonette, turning on lights to keep the shadows at bay, the fever closed over me again. My balance was so rocky I had to feel my way along the walls. In the bathroom, I doused my face with cold water, then cried out in alarm at the stranger staring back at me from the mirror.
That couldn’t be me. Those eyes like dark smears and the greying corpse-like skin couldn’t be mine. I turned away to clear my head and looked again and touched the glass, and in the mirror the tiled walls tilted sideways. On rubbery legs I stumbled along the landing to my room and plunged headlong into the dark.
I was asleep before I knew it, but the sleep was shallow and restless, and twice I woke in a cold sweat, convinced I wasn’t alone in the room. If I dreamt, I remembered only flashes – Simon Decker’s cold gaze and split lip, the Vigilant’s smile, Nathan Synister’s leathery scarecrow mask and his clawed finger pressing my cheek.
The sickness deepened. The night stretched out. The room began to feel like a coffin. At one point I woke with my face buried in the boiling pillow as a car’s sound system shook the building. Later, I came round to the thump of a door and a soft tread of footsteps on the stairs. Just before eight in the morning a hushed voice spoke from the doorway.
‘You can’t go to school like this,’ Mum said, and by the time I looked up she was gone.
The nearest thing to a thought in my head came hours later, this time at noon with icy daylight squeezing between the curtains.
As she gets better, so you get worse.
At various times snacks and drinks appeared on the night-stand – sandwiches, soup, tumblers of fruit juice – and were taken away untouched. Then I felt Mum’s weight on the bed as she dabbed my forehead with a cool flannel. I couldn’t open my eyes.
‘Mum . . . what’s the time?’ I yawned.
‘Five after three, darlin’. Friday afternoon.’
Again she left and again I drifted. What she’d said didn’t register until my next waking spell. I’d lost two whole days.
I finally made it downstairs that evening. Mum was in the living room, pondering a crossword puzzle in a glossy magazine. She looked up to see me swaying at the door, grabbing the door frame for balance, and threw the magazine aside and came to take my arm.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘sit down.’
‘Not used to standing,’ I said.
‘That’s no surprise. It’s been a while.’
She eased me into an armchair. I fell back, breathing heavily, the room and its furnishings slowly revolving around me.
‘Wait there,’ Mum said.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
She brought hot milk from the kitchen and perched on the sofa opposite me.
‘This is all wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to be looking after you.’
‘Sometimes even carers need caring for,’ she said. ‘What good would they be if no one looked out for them?’
‘Did I miss anything? It’s weird, losing so much time.’
‘Ellie came last night to keep me company, and your friend Becky phoned, quite worried about you. Also, I called the school to explain your absence, and they said—’
‘I’ve a good idea what they said.’
‘So what happened? They said you’d been in a fight, a very one-sided fight by all accounts. Doesn’t sound like you at all.’
‘It was nothing.’
‘Three days suspension is not nothing, Ben. Is this true?’
‘Suppose so, but there wasn’t much to it. This new kid’s been on my case ever since he joined the class, and I lost my rag with him, that’s all.’
‘So much worry,’ she said. ‘I remember you going through a . . . difficult stage after Dad left, skipping school, threatening to run away from home. It’s understandable when you’re unsettled and unhappy and life seems so unfair. Are you unhappy now?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘I’m not sure you are. You know you can talk to me if something’s upsetting you. This isn’t about my new . . . situation, is it?’
‘Situation?’
‘Because of Tom. Because if it is we need to work it out. I won’t have you wasting away. You look dreadful.’
‘It’s the flu or something. And the fight was a one-off. It won’t happen again.’
‘It better not. You’ve never been in trouble like this,’ she said.
Damn right, I thought. Trouble every day, everywhere. You don’t know the half of it, Mum.
‘What about tomorrow?’ she said. ‘Shall I just cancel our afternoon at Tom’s? He won’t mind. We’ll do it another time.’
‘Dunno how I’ll feel tomorrow.’
‘Let’s see after my clinic, then. Who knows, the present he’s got for you might make you feel better. Shall I give you a clue? You’ve always wanted it but we could never afford it.’
Money again. Money in the air every time Tom Sutherland’s name came up. Money on the skinning surface of the hot milk in my mug.
‘He’s trying hard,’ Mum said. ‘He wants you to like him.’
‘He doesn’t have to try and he doesn’t have to buy me things. We’ve only met once and I haven’t made up my mind about him.’
That took the wind from her sails, and she smiled, but not with her eyes. She needed my approval, my blessing, and I couldn’t give her that yet. I missed Dad too much, but I felt bad for hurting her again. It had never been so hard to say the right thing.
By the time they returned from her Saturday clinic, I’d decided to tag along to keep Mum happy. Still a little shaky as I came off the stairwell and out to the path, I took one look at his car and nearly keeled over.
The white Cadillac limousine, long and sleek and gleaming, more than whispered money – it screamed it. A gang of hoodies had gathered round to admire it, checking their reflections on its polished surfaces. A rear window purred open and there were Mum and Tom, smiling out at me.
‘Hop in, make yourself at home,’ Tom said. ‘How are you, sonny? Your mum tells me you’ve been out of sorts.’
‘A bit better, thanks.’
‘That’s good.’
The limo’s interiors smelt of new leather and were spacious enough for a coach party. I settled at one window, Tom at the other, while between us Mum shivered with pleasure.
‘Isn’t this something?’ she said. ‘I’ve never been so spoiled. Don’t forget your seat belt, Ben.’
‘Say hello to Hector,’ Tom said. ‘Hector, here’s Ben.’
‘Pleasure,’ said Hector. The driver, fiftyish with an olive complexion and bristly silver hair, nodded at me in the rear-view mirror.
‘So how did it go?’ I asked Mum.
‘The clinic? Couldn’t have b
een better. The nurse was amazed! Said she’d rarely seen such good progress. I’m her star patient.’
‘Brilliant news!’
‘There are still some questions about my white cell count, though, so they’ll keep a close eye on me and of course I’ll have to keep attending.’
‘Still, it sounds really promising.’
The limo was already moving, but I hadn’t realised until then. It was like moving on air, not a hint of a bump or a dip on the road. The hoodies, who’d lined up at the roadside to watch us go, turned away towards London Fields.
‘Glad you could make it, Ben,’ Tom said. ‘Just say if you need anything. We’ll do our best to make you comfortable. Here’s a little thing to keep you entertained on the way.’
Mum’s eyes twinkled as Tom reached for whatever it was on the seat beside him. She knew what was coming, but I still wasn’t especially interested, at least not until he held out the gift, and then my jaw hit the floor.
‘Take it,’ he said, passing me a copy of Detective Comics issue 27 in a sealed plastic wrapper.
On the front cover the caped crusader swung from a rope above Gotham City, one arm locked around the neck of a criminal in a green pin-striped suit. Starting this issue, the cover said, the amazing and unique adventures of The Batman!
My hands trembled as I held it. The comic looked new, unopened and unread, but it couldn’t be an original. Mint originals were rarer than rare, highly sought after by private collectors and selling for astronomical prices. A genuine 1939 Detective Comics #27 in top condition would be worth more than most houses, many times more than the Cadillac we were gliding along in.
‘Don’t worry,’ Tom said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. It’s a 1970s reprint, although even those are hard to come by these days. I’m not crazy, I see the attraction – I have a soft-spot for hero and villain stories too – but I can’t see how any comic could be worth millions.’
The Great and Dangerous Page 13
