Ticket To The Sky Dance

by Cowley, Joy

  ‘Are they identical?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then the fact that they are twins is neither here nor there.’ She stared at him with cold eyes. ‘They are not worth more than the usual rates, if that’s what you are thinking.’

  It was but he denied it.

  ‘Tell me about them,’ said Dr Frey.

  He took his notebook from his pocket, opened it and stabbed several buttons. Then he scrolled the text down the small screen. ‘Here. You want to read it?’

  But she waved the notebook away. ‘You read. I’ll listen.’

  He hunched forward. ‘Ashoga and Jancine Donoghue, twin brother and sister, born Belfast, Ireland, fifth of December 1995.’

  ‘Where did they get names like that?’ asked Dr Frey.

  He went on reading. ‘Mother was Carmel Winifred Dupont born in Jamaica, 1973. Father, Seamus Donoghue born Londonderry, 1969. They lived in Belfast with the father’s mother Maureen Donoghue, born 1937. When the twins were eight months old, the parents went out to a pub one night and never came back.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Car bomb.’ Peachman licked his lips and glanced round the bar. ‘Parked outside the pub.’

  ‘And the grandmother?’

  ‘She left Ireland with the twins, and came here. Not for a while. Her son and daughter-in-law had life insurance. There was some problem with the claim. Maureen Donoghue battled for four years before she got the money paid out, then she moved over here and bought a house in Maple Drive. That was in 2000.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Kids started missing school two years ago. Grandmother was suffering from premature dementia. According to neighbours, it started with lapses. Going to the shops with her underwear on top of her street clothes. Trying to buy food with bus tickets. She rapidly got worse and the twins took it in turns to stay home and look after her. For a while no one knew how bad the Alzheimer’s was. The kids drew money from her account at the ATM, did the shopping, ran the house. When they ran out of money, they stole what they needed. I told you, smart as tacks, but criminally inclined, even then. Kids like that grow up to be terrorists, believe you me. Told you they came from Belfast, didn’t I? It’s in their genes—’

  ‘Do go on!’ she said.

  He hesitated, hating the way she always interrupted him. If Mandy ever did that—but then Mandy never would. Mandy was a real woman who knew how to look after a man. ’The old lady was put in a nursing home and the kids went to foster parents—Fern and Trevor Sanders, run a macrobiotic farm Hillsbro way. They grow vegetables and eggs. No kids of their own.’

  Dr Elizabeth Frey tapped her fingers on the stem of her glass. ‘I assume they didn’t stay,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t last five months,’ said Lieutenant Peachman. ‘They ran away and joined a gang of street kids—you know, McCready’s lot.’

  She waved her hand at him. Her nails were not painted but short and bare at the end of long white fingers. ‘McCready is an imbecile,’ she said. ‘I am very much afraid—’ She sipped her wine. ‘—that we will have to terminate.’

  Peachman looked away and his hand trembled slightly as he picked up his beer glass. He went on. ‘The Donoghue twins are living with the gang down at the old fish factory, pinching everything they can get their hands on. Never out of trouble, these days.’

  ‘You’re sure they don’t do drugs?’ she said.

  ‘As far as I know, not even tobacco. But there is a long list of crimes—theft, vandalism, graffiti. I get complaints by the dozen every week.’

  Dr Frey gave a small, disbelieving smile. ‘Really?’

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ he said. ‘No mistaking them, either. How many kids you know look the colour of used tea bags and talk with an Irish lilt? Mostly it’s petty larceny but it’ll get worse, believe you me. What do I do about it? If I take them in, put them back in care, they’ll run away again, be on the street in a couple of days.’ He closed down his notebook. ‘They’ve been at the fish factory four months now. No school. Already they’re moving into gang leadership. I told you. They have the instincts of terrorists and I want them out of this town. Are you interested?’

  ‘I might be. You say they’re intellectually above average.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘In good health?’

  ‘I’d say so. But I can bring them in any time you like and have them checked out.’

  Dr Frey nodded and her black hair spilled like a waterfall over the smooth white skin of her cheekbones. ‘Lieutenant, you understand just how expensive the process is, don’t you? Our clients pay large sums for our information, but getting that information from the minds of our subjects incurs huge costs. My colleagues and I recruit from many sources and, naturally, we would like to continue our arrangement with you. However, I must tell you, Lieutenant Peachman, I can’t afford another McCready, or someone like that Smith boy who suddenly had a stepmother searching for him.’

  Peachman scratched his ear. ‘That was a fluke,’ he said.

  ‘This new projection will be rather different, something that is vitally important to my research. The Donoghue twins must be in the best of health and there must be no one to cause us embarrassment.’

  ‘Well, you’ve only got the old grandmother and she doesn’t know what time of day it is.’

  Dr Frey pushed her chair back to signal the end of the conversation. She stood up. ‘No next of kin,’ she said. ‘Well, that’s it, Lieutenant Peachman. That’s the ticket to the sky dance. But I will personally examine them before any transaction between us is finalised. Is that clear?’

  He nodded briskly, wishing that there were some way her soul could be fired into outer space. What would Dr Frey’s soul look like, he wondered. An ice cube? A computer chip? For that matter, did she have one?

  She said, ‘I shall be in town tomorrow. You have my personal phone number. I would be pleased if you would take delivery of the Donoghue twins tomorrow afternoon, and then call me.’

  Chapter Three

  For as long as Jancie could remember, the factory on the wharf had been closed down, yet it still had a smell of fish. It was as though there were fish juices dried in every crack of every board, fish ghosts swimming in the dark dusty air. She had become used to the smell, the way she’d got used to no hot water and sleeping on the floor and the wind howling through the walls like a hungry cat. It wasn’t too bad, all things considered.

  When McCready went, she and Shog and Banjo moved into his area which was the old office of the factory. It wasn’t a big room, just enough space for their bedding and one chair, but it had a basin and a toilet in a doorless alcove, and that was something. Jancie had stretched an old blanket across the bathroom doorway and she regularly came out of supermarkets with big breasts made of toilet tissue. So far, no one had caught her. The other kids had to use a hole in the factory floor, below the low tide mark, and that was cold in bad weather.

  Kids came and went. No one was ever sure how many were there at a time. Could be ten one night and thirty the next. Some came from out of town, jumping trains or freight trucks. Some were more or less permanent. Some, like Banjo, had homes when they felt like going back to them. It was not the out-of-towners but the ones with homes that were called drifters. That was because they went to and fro like seaweed on the tide and many, like Banjo, were useful for the stuff they could bring in. A few weeks ago Mario Vanelli had got a purple tent from the home of one of the drifters, a kid called Spike. They had brought it back in a wheelbarrow and it was set up on the floor of the factory like an Arab tent in a desert. The metal wheelbarrow was handy too. They lit fires in it and did barbecues when somebody got some discount beef or chicken.

  Banjo’s dad lived in a caravan and he didn’t have anything worth taking, just heaps of empty bottles all over the place. But sometimes there was money left in his trouser pockets and Banjo reckoned he was owed that. Jancie thought Banjo was owed plenty, considering all the beatings his drunken father had giv
en him. If anyone beat her to leave blue marks across her back, she would near enough to kill him. But skinny little Banjo took it and went back for more. Shootin’ strange, that kid. Heaps generous. He had more giving in him than Gran, and that was saying something.

  Jancie walked out on the wharf and watched the sea lick up the wet sand. Parts of the wharf had boards missing and they said once a girl had fallen through and got drowned. It was before their time, but maybe it didn’t happen. Kids at the camp were always making up things. You got used to that.

  She knew that Shog grieved for their house in town, and to be sure, she did, too, but she missed Gran more. Not the Gran in the nursing home but the other one of three years back, who laughed and danced and swore and drank Guinness, wearing the suds above her crooked lipstick like a moustache. Jancie held the memories as so much treasure. How often did she sit on Gran’s lap while Gran added her own bits to fairy-tales, like Cinderella trying on the glass slipper and farting in the prince’s face, and the good little pig in the brick house getting made into sausages?

  She remembered how she and Shog lay on either side of Gran, on the big bed, brushing Gran’s hair for fifty cents an hour. She smiled at the way the old lady had shouted at the weather man on TV, telling him he didn’t know his arsehole from breakfast time and then, in the next minute, had been praying the rosary in a voice as sweet as angel dust. One time Gran had chased an insurance salesman with the hosepipe from her vacuum cleaner, screaming that she hated insurance villains because they all belonged to the Mafia. Outside the gate, the man had stopped long enough to say to Jancine, ‘Your grandmother has certainly got a lot of go in her.’

  He never said a truer word. In those days, Gran had more go in her than a racing car. Now all that go had gone, and Jancie didn’t know where it had got to. But she still talked to Gran inside her head and imagined she was getting answers. Sometimes that was a comfort. Sometimes it wasn’t. Like today at the shoe shop, when she kept hearing Gran’s voice. Nothing’s free, girl. You pay one way or another.

  Jancie went down to the end of the factory to look for Shog. No sign of Banjo, either. Where the shoot were they?

  Alicia, who was Mario Vanelli’s girlfriend, came padding out over the boards. Alicia always had bare feet and she wore silver rings everywhere, on her toes, her fingers, ears, belly button. Her hair blew about her face and she held it back as she asked, ‘You get them?’

  Jancie grinned. Everyone at the camp knew they were going after Zeus boots for Shog. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Like Mario’s?’

  ‘Same. He’s not back yet.’

  ‘Any grief?’

  ‘The guy in the shop had a minder, a heavy who belted out after us. No real problem. Shog can handle it.’

  Alicia turned her back to the wind, to light a cigarette. She snapped the lighter shut, puffed and held her hair again. ‘You heard about McCready?’

  ‘Is he coming back?’

  ‘Not likely. He’s in Paris. Got a job as a fashion model.’

  ‘Old shootin’ McCready?’ Jancie laughed. ‘You’re sending me up!’

  ‘No, really.’ Alicia blew smoke past the silver rings in her nose. ‘Bull and Shirley told me. Even Mario knows. Bull seen a hologram video somewhere. Department store, I think. You know that new kid’s gear called Class Act? Video showed him standing in Class Act ski pants in front of the Eiffel Tower. Bull swears it’s McCready.’

  ‘Big joke,’ said Jancie.

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ said Alicia. ‘I think it’s for real. If Class Act are looking for models, I’m going to be where they can find me. Imagine getting to Paris! I reckon I got as much show as McCready.’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ laughed Jancie.

  She watched Alicia saunter back across the wharf. The problem with the kids at the camp was that they’d say and believe anything. But if McCready had gone somewhere permanent, it meant that they wouldn’t have to move out of the office room with the en suite.

  The wind came up brisk, ruffling the sea, beating the T-shirt skull and crossbones flag someone had put on a pole on the roof of the factory. The sun slouched behind cloud on the horizon and light was going fast. Jancie felt cold but she was determined to stay out on the wharf until Shog came back.

  He was limping a bit and the boots had lost their brand-new look.

  ‘Where’ve you shootin’ well been?’

  ‘He didn’t give up,’ said Shog. ‘He ran me all over town.’

  ‘But you lost him?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ He looked tired. ‘I took him to the car yard. You know the Caddy?’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  He nodded.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I didn’t hang around to see,’ he said. ‘But I heard the crash.’

  She looked at him for a moment, then she bounced on her feet and punched the air, hooting a call of triumph. ‘Wo-wo-wo! I can’t believe you actually did that!’

  Shog turned and walked away.

  She ran after him. ‘Sure and he had it coming,’ she said. ‘Serve him right.’

  ‘Jancie, I’m sick of it.’

  ‘He was evil, Shog. He was going to use that baton on us.’

  He turned to her. ‘I don’t mean him. It’s all this! I’m sick of living like we do!’ He spread his arms. ‘I hate this place! I mean, was it so bad at Fern and Trevor’s? We went to school. There was a bed. There was food.’

  ‘Peanut butter burgers! Beansprout salad!’ She was yelling at him. ‘You want to come home from school every day to clean stinking chicken houses? What about our own home, eh? What about that? Do you think those greenie nerds were going to help us get our own place back?’

  Shog shook his head. ‘They aren’t nerds, Jancie. I tell you, it wasn’t so bad at that farm.’

  ‘It was worse than bad! It was a chicken shit prison and they were a couple of weirdos with their herbs and healing stones! They didn’t even talk normal. Lovely this and darling that! How would you like us to adopt you and change your name to Sanders? Puke stuff, Shog!’

  But it was no use trying to get through to him. His eyes had got that closed-down look and he was walking off as though she wasn’t there. She hated it when he did this to her!

  She heard Gran saying in her head, ‘That’s a fine wee firey devil you got in you, Jancine Donoghue, but it’s you the one who’ll end up getting burned.’

  Her anger puffed out like a candle. She said, ‘Shog? Hey, Shog?’

  He didn’t stop.

  She ran up to him and grabbed his arm. ‘This place is okay for now, Shog. It really is. Maybe they’ll give us our own house back. We should go and see one of those lawyers they have for kids. I reckon we could stop it from being sold.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Hey!’ She punched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘How about a movie tonight? Banjo said he had enough money for the three of us.’

  That made him turn round. ‘Where is Banjo?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. He’ll be back soon.’ She glanced sideways at him, waiting for a softness to come back to his face, then she grinned and said, ‘Hey, hey hey! Have you heard the news about McCready?’

  Chapter Four

  When he woke up, the first thing Shog saw were his Zeus boots, shining in the morning sun and reflecting more rainbows than an oil slick. The second thing he noticed was that Banjo’s bedding hadn’t been slept in. Third, was Jancie. She was standing in her sleeping bag like a green caterpillar, bent over the chair, trying to light the gas primus. Behind her, light detailed the dirt on the window, slid down the yellow painted walls, emphasising the cracks, bounced off the chrome arm of the chair and then was caught in the prism of his boots. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue—wow! They were so beautiful! Worth all the strife.

  ‘Where’s Banjo?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Must have gone to his dad’s last night.’

  Shog sat up and yawned. ‘I said yesterday we’d all meet at the camp
. Didn’t I say that?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘He didn’t come back. Not at all.’

  The match she was holding burnt low and singed her fingers. She dropped it quickly, put the fingers in her mouth and sucked them, turning the stinging on him. ‘Maybe he came back and you weren’t here. The way I came back and you weren’t here. Shog, he’s not your shootin’ slave. Oh! Crying saints! People make machines that crawl around Mars and the bottom of the sea. They make factories out in space. You think they could make a shootin’ primus that’d boil water for coffee.’

  ‘I think it’s out of gas,’ he said. He reached for his boots and turned them this way and that to admire a whole heap of fire in their smooth silver surface. ‘How about breakfast at the City Mission?’ he said.

  It was a fine morning, cool but bright as a new diamond, and although the backs of Shog’s legs were a bit stiff from yesterday, his boots made the pavement feel like a trampoline under his feet. The smell of fear, the panic, the exhaustion, were so far back in his memory, it was as though they had never existed, and all he felt was a great day ahead with great boots for walking through it.

  He goose-stepped and side-kicked. He swung round posts, one foot in the air. At the corner lights, he shuffled to a blare of music from a waiting car.

  ‘You’re like a little kid,’ laughed Jancie, pleased because the boots had been her idea.

  They knew every free food place in the city, the churches that passed out food parcels, the community soup kitchens, the coffee shops that’d give away stale rolls and croissants if you swept their pavement or emptied their trash cans, the shopping malls that had cooking demonstrations and free samples. It was all a matter of dropping your shoulders and making eye contact, looking halfway between helpless and cute. Manners, too. Old folk, especially, liked excuse me and please in a buttery voice. It was like dropping coins in a slot machine. The smile and the words went in, things whirred and, chances were, a handout dropped clunk, just like that.

  Gran used to quote some saint who’d said you caught more flies with a teaspoon of honey than a gallon of vinegar. That was sure true but Shog doubted that Gran would approve of the way they were applying the technique.