Damascus

by Richard Beard

  ‘And don’t talk to any strangers!’ she yells, the wind crumbling her words as they break across the water.

  By now there’s quite a breeze blowing across the low summit of the sand dune where Olive (10) lies on her front and absent-mindedly waves her feet as she reads At the Back of the North Wind or Death in the Tunnel or Little Women. Seagulls go very fast coming in from the sea, dipping towards land, turning figures of eight over the swell of waves in which Hazel stands waist-deep, steeling herself for the swim to a distant red buoy. She ducks her head under the cold salt water, shivers and shakes out her dark hair and turns to make a last check on Olive. A girl, about Olive’s age, but with slim brown legs and short sun-bleached hair, sprints towards Olive, skids round her (Olive barely looks up from her book), and then sprints back inland disappearing behind the curve of a dune.

  It’s a diabolical liberty. Hazel leaves the water, strides up the beach, and reaches Olive just as she’s about to be lapped a second time. Hazel sticks out her leg, says whoops sorry, and then helps the unknown girl to her feet. She asks her what she thinks she’s doing.

  'I’m training for the World Cup marathon.’

  ‘Well you can’t do it here,’ Hazel says. ‘This is our sand dune.’

  But the girl says she has orders from her coach, and she slides back down the slope, sprints away, disappears.

  Hazel is outraged. She wraps a towel around her waist, picks up the bag her mother insists she carries at all times, and doggedly pursues the girl’s footprints until she finds herself at the top of the enemy sand dune, where there is a boy of about her size with no head. This is because he is getting in a mess with a T-shirt which says I Follow The Town, The Rovers, United, The Rangers, City, and which he is hurriedly trying to put back on. Eventually his head pops out in the right place and he has a crop of black hair and sand stuck to his forehead.

  ‘That’s our hill,’ Hazel says.

  ‘Do you want to see my stop-watch?’

  ‘I don’t talk to strangers.’

  He clicks the button and Rachel races off on another lap of Olive, whose waving feet are visible over the top of the dune. Rachel is a beautiful runner. Her legs are long and brown and she holds her head high and still. Mr Kelly says that if Rachel were a racehorse she’d be worth thousands, and unasked, Spencer shares this information with Hazel.

  Rachel makes it back and Spencer clicks the stop-watch. He tells her it’s a world-record time for this particular circuit and Rachel laughs as she catches her breath, her hands on her knees. Everything’s going to turn out just fine. Hazel says:

  ‘I bet I can run faster than that.’

  ‘I’ll time you,’ Spencer says.

  ‘If I wanted to.’

  Rachel sets off again and as they watch her run both Spencer and Hazel, without knowing why, are thinking in a vague way that this is better fun now, to be standing on top of a grassy sand dune with the other, than it was when they were doing whatever they were doing before, not standing together. They try each other out with some simple questions, starting with where do you live and what does your Dad do, quickly followed by are your parents married and who’s your favourite famous person? And shouldn’t you be at school?

  ‘We’re on holiday,’ Spencer says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s cheaper.’

  ‘You’re missing lessons.’

  ‘Dad says it doesn’t matter because we’re going to be professional athletes.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Rachel’s going to be the Olympic champion of the world. She’s my sister.’

  Rachel runs some more laps while Spencer explains that his family moves around a lot, and Hazel says same here. Her father has just been voted Salesperson of the Year ‘93, whereas Spencer’s Dad, in his job as a warehouseman, often stacks boxes full of furniture belonging to famous people.

  Like who?

  Like John Major.

  They both laugh out loud.

  Hazel’s parents are married all the time, she says, even though her Mum thinks her Dad is having an affair.

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Hazel says, ‘he’s married.’

  Spencer says he isn’t sure about his parents, because his Dad sometimes worries he was swapped in the hospital at birth, so maybe his real parents aren’t married, no.

  ‘River Phoenix,’ Hazel says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My favourite famous person.’

  'The Queen,’ Spencer says, which is funny enough to set them both off again. Rachel comes back. She asks for her time but Spencer’s forgotten to set the watch so he makes something up. It’s another world record.

  ‘Spencer’s my coach,’ Rachel says. ‘We’re going all the way to the top.’

  And because Hazel sees this as a challenge, she says:

  ‘My Dad writes one hundred Christmas cards every year.’

  Spencer tries to think of something better, but he can’t, so he asks Hazel what she has in her bag just as Olive appears at the top of the slope, lies down on her front, carries on reading.

  ‘My sister,’ Hazel says. ‘Her name’s Olive. She reads a lot.’

  Rachel lies on her back and does some bicycle kicks while Hazel empties her bag onto the sand. It contains a towel, three oranges, a bag of chopped walnuts, a bottle of vitamin supplements, a phonecard, a spare sweater, A Fresh Wind in the Willows, a pair of red-and-white knitted gloves (for cold November hands), and a white Conchita Martinez tennis skirt.

  Spencer picks up the phonecard. Instead of being the normal green colour it has a fuzzy black and white photograph of a pair of eyes staring up from it, and these eyes clearly belong to Charlie Chaplin.

  Hazel stands up and brashes sand off her legs. She unwraps the towel from her waist, shakes it out and starts to dry the ends of her hair.

  'It means we can ring up if anything goes wrong,’ she says.

  ‘What could go wrong?’

  Hazel rolls her eyes and Rachel copies her, still upside down, her legs pointing straight at the sky.

  ‘Something unexpected and very nasty,’ Hazel says.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s unexpected.’

  ‘Why not just money?’ Spencer asks.

  ‘Because then we could be robbed,’ Hazel tells him. ‘Or mugged.’

  ‘Or raped,’ Olive adds, without looking up from her book.

  ‘Murdered,’ Hazel says. ‘So anyway, Mum decided we better have a phonecard. Last to touch the sea’s a walrus.’

  And Hazel is already sliding down the sand dune, waving her towel, and Rachel is right behind her followed by Spencer, desperately clicking his stop-watch. Rachel and Hazel reach the sea in a dead-heat. ‘Spencer takes bronze,’ Rachel says, and then Hazel starts slapping water at him, and Rachel tackles him into the shallows.

  Later, they take turns to dry themselves with Hazel’s towel. Spencer pinches Hazel, though not hard, and then punches her arm, but only playfully.

  ‘Pinch and a punch,’ he says, ‘first day of the month,’ and lies down beside her, looking up at the sky, the clouds moving, the sky.

  Hazel pinches him back, and then kicks him. ‘A pinch and a kick for being so thick. What’s better,’ she asks, ‘rich or famous?’

  ‘Famous,’ Spencer says.

  ‘Wrong.’

  11/1/93 MONDAY 07:48

  ‘Not today,’ Spencer said. ‘Any other day. Maybe tomorrow.’

  William stared hard across the breakfast table. Between him and Spencer there was a teapot, The Times, and an empty plate covered in a clear film of butter from William’s kipper. William took a sip of tea from his mug - Celebrating 100 Years of the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society - thinking that Spencer looked unusually haggard this morning, as if he hadn’t slept very well. He was unshaven and his dark hair was unruly, although this was nothing new. He also had on his double-breasted suit, flapping open over a brownish shirt, which meant that at some stage
today there were people coming to look at the house. For prospective buyers Spencer always made the concession of a suit, but never a tie, and this always annoyed William.

  ‘I want to go out,’ William said.

  'Tomorrow.’

  'Today.’

  Spencer’s mug said Mal Pelo - The Southern Dogs Tour, but his tea had gone cold while he watched William’s goldfish exploring his new home, a glass fruit bowl further down the table. Spencer was definitely acting strangely this morning, and he’d already upset William by pretending not to have known it was the last day of Britain.

  ‘I must have missed the build-up,’ he said, enthralled by the slow circuits being made by the fish.

  This was just about possible, William conceded, because even The Times could only spare half a column on page six: European Union horn in confusion. As for the front page and the rest of the day’s news, it was so long since William had been outside that he didn’t know what to believe any more. According to the newspaper, outside was a choice between toddlers abducted by ten-year-old boys and Irish gunmen in large black hoods. Or it was a nation buoyant with pride because its Rugby League team could thump New Zealand into the back of beyond (twice in a row. Ha!). Fellini was dead and so was River Phoenix. Youth crime was up and it was National Library Week, but none of this greatly mattered to William unless he could see it for himself. He was determined to go outside, and Spencer was going to help him.

  ‘It won’t make any difference,’ Spencer said, at last looking away from the fruit bowl. He balanced a knife across his finger and told William that Britain was unlikely to have changed since yesterday. We could still be consoled by Buckingham Palace and teenage vandalism and Thomas More (Saint). We still had Norwich and disaffected Celts and the Princess Royal as Upper Warden of the Honourable Woolmen’s Company.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ William said, wondering what could possibly be wrong with him.

  ‘We still have fox hunting and the National Trust and a criminal stock exchange, and there’s usually a Test match to be lost in your sport of choice to Australia. The NHS is never far away, slow but free, trundling up and down the Ml. Policemen in tall hats care deeply about radio licences for drag offenders, so there’s no need to worry, William. It all carries on, just the same as always.’

  'I want to see it for myself.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be seen,’ Spencer said. ‘Nothing ever changes. Overnight nothing changes at all.’

  'It might be different this time.’

  ‘And I’m a walrus.’

  ‘And anyway,’ William said, ‘don’t you have to do what I say?’

  ‘Not always, no.’

  'I think you do.’

  ‘Not today, William.’

  ‘Today and every day. You have to do what I say. Those are the rales.’

  With the end of his knife Spencer drew a stick-man in the film of butter setting on William’s plate. This rebellion was very unlike him, William thought, unless he’d secretly been given one of the acting jobs he always said he wanted, was imminently about to be flown to LA, and therefore expected to fall in love with a dippy actress who’d provide him with a home of his own to go to. He should be more careful. Nothing lasted for ever, and William’s brother was always trying to sell the house, so it was only today that there was this. Tomorrow there might be something else entirely.

  ‘I want to go out,’ William said. ‘And I want you to come with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  'Just in case.’

  ‘Just in case what?’

  Just in case, in the absence of an overnight miracle, William stepped outside the front door and turned red in the face and found it hard to breathe and clutched his heart in his hands while he hyperventilated and his knees gave way, just like the last time and the time before that. Luckily, on both those occasions, Spencer had been there to save him, catch him, carry him back inside.

  Spencer pushed back his chair. He stood up and went looking through cupboards, ignoring packet soups and cornflakes and upended tins of beans, until he eventually found some loose teabags. He brought them back to the table. He dropped them into the pot.

  ‘Look, William,’ he said. 'I’m sorry, but today’s not a good day. My niece Grace is coming for lunch. There are lots of things I have to do.’

  ‘Let’s do them together.’

  ‘There’s something urgent I have to do outside, by myself. I can’t afford to waste any time.’

  ‘So why are you making more tea then?’

  William may have been more than twice Spencer’s age but he wasn’t born yesterday. In fact, Spencer was so absent this morning that he even went to fetch another mug down from the cupboard, the one with thick green and white bands which said Glasgow Celtic Football Club - For Ever.

  'I have a guest,’ Spencer said.

  Busying himself with the extra mug, re-filling the teapot, Spencer suddenly looked less tired, more eager for the day. And then it began to dawn on William, quite slowly at first, hardly believable in fact, until gradually the awful and obvious truth became increasingly clear to him.

  ‘It’s a woman, isn’t it?’ he said, amazed. He rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s Jessica, isn’t it? I knew this would happen.’

  It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere in Britain, just outside Penarth or Holyhead or Dover, close to Redruth or Havant or Tenby, it’s the last day of the holidays and Spencer Kelly (12) wants to hold Hazel Burns (12) by the hand. This is the meaning of life. He wants to sit beside her on a sand dune and hold her hand and then kiss her. Just kissing, in a nice way, on her cheek perhaps and then a little bit at the top of her arms.

  The thought of it makes his chest and the corners of his mouth hurt, and this is happening right now, with the seaside wind in his hair and the seagulls wheeling above. If he can kiss her this once then he’ll always have kissed her, and everything which follows will be different. The sun will stay out and the wind will drop. His father won’t mind when he doesn’t practise his football, snooker, running, basketball for the end of century Olympics, because a kiss with Hazel Burns will be equally as good. It’ll be like the winning goal or try or run in the last and deciding game of the Carling Premiership or the Heineken League or the Sharjah trophy. It’s to be the one moment which instantly changes everything.

  Spencer and Hazel are out walking on the dunes, alone. Nobody knows where Philip is, but Mr and Mrs Kelly are playing bowls on the front (Mr Kelly 44 Mrs Kelly 9). Mr Burns has hired a small yacht and is sailing. Mrs Burns, not knowing when her husband will next have time for a holiday, is sitting in the bow of the boat scanning the horizon for storms. Rachel is on the beach teaching basic boxing stances to Olive, who only stopped reading when Hazel told her she’d better walk somewhere before she lost the use of her legs.

  ‘Mummy said you had to look after me.’

  ‘Mummy says lots of things.’

  ‘You’re in big trouble.’

  In return for keeping Olive busy, Spencer promises Rachel a timed game of Ironman triathlon. Later, when he and Hazel get back.

  Now, Hazel steps over a tuft of sandy grass. She is wearing her swimming costume and her tennis skirt and no shoes. She’s thinking it’s no crime to leave Olive behind because I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you. Love you for ever. A long flat cloud rolls across the sun, and the seagulls are suddenly closer, clearer, each movement of a wing like a rearrangement in a shrugging shoulder. Their yellow eyes see everything that moves but remember nothing, not Hazel and Spencer at the top of a dune, the way they stop, stand still, glance nervously at each other’s fingertips.

  They hear someone coming. They turn and shade their eyes and it’s an older boy with walking boots and a rucksack. He wants to know where the coastal path is, but not the one which goes up to the cliffs. He says the cliffs are dangerous at this time of year. He wants the low-level path which follows the shore, and Hazel tells him they don’t know.

  ‘We’re on holiday,
’ she says.

  The older boy walks away with the big rucksack bouncing on his back and Spencer and Hazel lie down out of the wind, head to toe, looking up at the sky and the evenly-wheeling seagulls. In a blue gap between two white clouds, a bright interval, a tiny silver aeroplane pipes out a neat pair of vapour-trails.

  Hazel moves her wrist so that the ends of her fingers touch the back of Spencer’s hand, and this now, both of them think, this now is truly phenomenal, this is really happening right now and in real life, me and a girl, me and a boy, and this will last for ever. I shall never forget you. I shall love you always. This is love, and it’s wonderful and frightening because there must be a right and a wrong way to move on from here. But in the meantime there is only me and a girl, me and a boy, and the slow progress of a jet plane to capture as it angles steadily across the pale blue sky.

  ‘Aer Lingus,’ Hazel says.

  'Iberia.’

  ‘British Airways.’

  ‘SAS.’

  ‘Lufthansa.’

  There is a pause as the plane slips behind cloud, heading for the sun.

  ‘You know your airlines,’ Spencer says.

  Hazel pinches his shoulder, but squeezes only softly. When he lifts his arm to protect himself she punches him in the side. He grabs her and they roll each other over, once, twice, until they end up side by side and breathless, absolutely equal no winners.

  They break apart and sit up quickly, as if someone was coming. Hazel inspects a fingernail and some sand stuck behind it.

  ‘I’ve got a scholarship to a new school,’ she says. ‘At lunch you always have to sit in the same seat.’

  'I hate school,’ Spencer says.

  'If you were at my school you could sit next to me.’

  And then when Spencer doesn’t say anything Hazel says: