‘Shut it, Anders,’ shouted Wilder. ‘Big crackin mouth, you got.’
Trey ignored them all and he took a moment to think about Billy. He wondered what he might be doing at that moment. Cocooned in a hundred blankets and tuck-stuck to a chair not of his choosing, the care home was a different kind of prison. Trey had been there, he’d seen it, a long time ago and briefly, but on some nights he still couldn’t wash the smell from his memory.
When the time came for activities he allowed himself to be led by others and he wondered if he might see Kay in passing to help lift his mood.
Activities were nothing much settled into a corner of one big echo of room, a converted outhouse adjacent to the dorms that fell into one of two categories: games or a religious version of schoolwork.
The room was damp and peeling and close to empty and Trey tried his hand at nothing but standing and idling against one of the walls. He kept his eyes fixed on his fiddling fingers and bit at the dry corners of skin and the nowhere nails. From the corner of his eye he could see the idiot boy Lamby set four chairs to a table and sit down to shuffle the deck of cards he was holding.
‘Who’s up for a game?’ he shouted and Trey looked down at his feet. ‘Anyone at all?’
‘What you playin?’ called Wilder.
‘Anythin you want,’ Lamby wormed up in his seat. ‘What you like to play?’
Wilder turned a chair backward and sat down and he told his gang to quit with the sniggering and going on.
‘You know a game called “swat the fly”?’
Lamby shook his head.
‘You know a game called “spank the tiddler”?’
Lamby attempted to smile. ‘You could teach it me?’
Wilder grinned and he looked around the room and his eyes met Trey’s.
‘How you play it?’ asked Lamby.
‘What?’
‘ “Spank the tiddler”.’
Everybody laughed.
Wilder took the cards from the boy and he blocked the pack tight to the table. ‘It’s a game of sharin,’ he nodded. ‘Everyone gets to play.’ He flicked a card at Lamby and then at each of his boys and Trey watched as they fell on to the dirt floor.
‘That int a game,’ said Lamby.
‘Tis. Game int finished yet, we int got to the spankin part.’ He stood up and kicked his chair to one side of the room and flipped the table towards the other.
Trey stood free of the wall and he wanted to say something or do something but he told himself that this was not his world for getting into. He left the room with Lamby sitting tiny-tight in the middle of the circling boys and when he passed DB in the corridor he mentioned a fight was about to break out.
‘They’re just havin a bit of fun,’ the man laughed. ‘Don’t worry bout it, Rudeboy.’
‘Just sayin.’ Trey shrugged and played it like a no-biggy.
‘Lettin off steam is what it is,’ DB continued.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You gettin an early night?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good boy, full day tomorrow. Now go on and don’t forget to pray.’
Trey nodded a hundred ‘yes, sirs’.
He walked to the bunkhouse with his feet kicking and tailing, the good and the bad at war within. He wished he were stronger and he wished he were less of a chicken and he wished he was someone else. If he was he would have stuck up for the boy. He thought about the choices made in life and the little choices made in passing, and right and wrong were muddied in everything did, done and said.
Inside the bunkhouse he sat on his bed in a fidget and he picked at his hands and picked at his head until the scrabbling demon was dug from out of hiding. Tomorrow he would play himself into a better light and start the search for the man he knew was his parents’ killer.
He sat back and dangled his legs from off the side of the bed and was about to lie back when he saw the chaplain standing at the door.
‘Tremain.’ He smiled.
‘Yes, sir.’ Trey sat up and then he stood.
‘No need for ceremony, sit down.’ He stepped once into the room and continued to smile.
‘So how you gettin on? First day and all that.’
Trey shrugged. ‘OK, sir.’
‘And you int had no problems settlin and whatever?’
‘No, sir.’ Trey felt uneasy. He liked it better when adults were strict.
‘Just tired, sir,’ he added.
‘Good, well if you have any problems, anythin at all then don’t hesitate to come find me. I’m master of Lynner house.’
Trey nodded. He knew that already.
‘What bout em others?’ he asked.
‘Tavy is DB, which obviously you know, and Tamar is McKenzie.’
‘What bout the other one?’
‘Plym? That’s the Preacher, but he don’t need to spend much time cus that’s the older boys, and they known the Preacher long enough to behave. Anyway, any problems let me know.’
Trey watched the man leave and then he wondered about him and all the house masters and wished there was something more certain in his memory so that he might recognise his parents’ killer. He kept losing the thread of what it was he was trying to do. It was meant to be so simple, but each man in camp settled somewhere between maybe, maybe not. DB was too short, the chaplain too gentle, and no matter how he wished it was McKenzie who’d killed his parents something about his voice and manner wasn’t right. There was a part of him that wished he knew how to accept defeat, but the demon wouldn’t have it and while he waited for the others to return Trey went back to that fateful morning and like a movie stuck on a loop he played it out all over again.
‘What’s up with you?’ asked Lamby as he limped towards him.
‘What’s up with you the same?’ Trey settled casual and uncaring on the bed.
‘Nothin.’
‘Why you limpin?’
‘Nothin, just a bit of messin. It’s all good.’
Trey shook his head and he looked across at the glut of bully boys coming through the door and some nodded and he nodded back.
‘You like activities?’ asked Lamby.
‘What was there to like?’
He lay back fully and hoped the boy wasn’t one for going on through the night and he told him he was dead dog tired. The light went out and there was a brief moment of tranquillity. Trey gazed up at the smudge of night sky through the one grimy skylight in the tin roof above. He thought about the boy in the bed next to him and shame came crashing in a stomp through the dorm.
Across the room Wilder and his gang were striking matches and throwing them at each other and he watched the beautiful flights of flame as they rocketed through the tepid gloom and part of him hoped they’d set the beds alight for the magnificence of fire.
The heat in the place was like a pyre and Trey untangled himself from his sheets and lay cooling until condensation gathered beneath the metal ceiling above and spat occasional dribble-drops down upon his chest.
He glanced about the room for the all-clear and stretched to take the photo from the back pocket of his floor-flung jeans. He needed to set things back on firmer ground like he did every night before he went to sleep.
He leant on his side with the photo tipped from view and slowed his breathing down to seaside thinking. The tiny cut of blue sky he stretched out and pinned beyond the four corners of its paper frame and the thin line of ocean he let flood and he closed his eyes as it pulled him under. Mum and Dad holding him in the swing of things and Billy threatening to dip him under, everybody laughing, best day last day ever after.
With memories made mighty he slipped the photo beneath his pillow and whispered the goodnights like he did every night and when Lamby asked him what he was mumbling he told him nothing and to mind his own.
‘Only if it’s bout the rain don’t mind it.’
‘What you talkin bout?’ asked Trey.
‘The rain above, you get used to it; spose you do anyway.’
‘Like everythin,’ the boy answered.
CHAPTER THREE
Trey woke to the sound of the strange boy talking through a wardrobe dilemma. Would he wear his T-shirt or would he wear his vest? Trey turned into the rough-mesh pillow and tried to retrieve what was left of an OK dream, a dream that didn’t involve fight and fire and fear, but it had abandoned him.
Trey sighed and he turned and looked about the dimly lit room, one solitary light bulb swung worn and cleaved with dust, a nothing light.
‘Why they bother with the light in the mornin?’ he asked and he looked up at the cracked window above the door and saw that it was going to be another hot day.
‘Int got no choice,’ said Lamby. ‘It’s set on a timer.’
‘Why don’t someone open the door?’
‘Still locked.’ He came close and bent his face into view. ‘You excited?’
‘Bout what?’
‘Today, your first full day in camp. The first full day’s the best day, I’d say.’
Trey sighed.
‘What?’
‘I knew you’d say somethin like that.’
‘And I did!’ The boy squealed and he opted for the T-shirt.
When the siren boomed into the room Trey dressed quick and went to stand at the door and he ignored the jabbing Wilder and waited for it to be unlocked.
‘You’re eager,’ the boy said from his bunk by the door.
‘Just want some fresh air,’ said Trey. ‘Stinks in here.’
‘Int so bad.’
Trey shrugged and the demon inside kicked at the ground, confusion circling and boiling because Wilder was hard to read.
‘Gonna tell us a bit bout yourself, Rudeboy? You and me got a fair bit in common, I reckon.’
Trey tried the door despite knowing it was locked. The claustrophobia that was forever in him was threatening to rear and his hands were near to scratching the walls.
‘What’s there to tell?’ he asked.
‘I dunno.’ Wilder slid to his feet and he stood against the wall next to Trey. ‘Give us a piece of yourself, see if we wanna let you click up.’
Trey gripped his hands into his pockets to keep the monster that was demon down. He just wanted to get gone. ‘Who says I wanna join your gang?’ he asked and it was the demon talking. The demon who poked at him with talons and threatened to bust from the inside out.
‘What you say to me?’ Wilder came close.
‘I int got no problem with you. Just keep myself to myself, that’s all.’
Wilder laughed wet into his face and he snapped thumb and finger towards his gang and they laughed too.
‘We got ourselves a lone wolf here, boys. Broodin bubble of a boy by all accounts.’
Trey wanted to add something in his defence but the intimidation had him pebble small. When the door swung open he pushed through with the other waiting boys.
‘You in a rush, int you?’ DB shouted as he bolted past but Trey ignored him and went to find a spot for sitting and collecting thoughts away from other kids.
Trey knew Wilder was angling some version of friendship towards him and he didn’t want it and more than that he didn’t want to have to say that he didn’t want it. There was nothing wrong with liking solitude when you were a loner; it was a used-to thing and a right thing and better for all concerned.
When his mind returned to the day of the fire he took solace in it and settled down to thinking time. He remembered lying in the bed in the room that was supposedly his, a room shared with other boys that passed through the home like eels through a net. Trey had been passed around from foster home to foster home since the day he was found out on the cliffs and taken into care. He really was a lone wolf. He had no family other than those in the ground and Billy, who had been reduced to child in one momentary blast and then hidden away like a shameful secret. Trey had no friends either and there lay a billion reasons too complicated.
Other kids didn’t like him. He was too quiet and he didn’t like to fight but when he did he’d fight too much. He’d get into trouble when the demon fire came to his head and then into his hands. Pyro-boy, they called him and, he had to admit, he liked that bit.
The plan started as a little germ thing tickling, an itch thing he knew he had to scratch in order to get wrong-sided with the law. Trey knew about the camp the same way all kids knew about it when the first fence went up two years back. It was on the TV and the radio and in the newspaper that wrapped his chips on a Friday. The place that all the bad kids got put and the only place in Cornwall for a boy like Trey: Camp Kernow. The place where his parents’ killer got to rule over the kids with an iron rod. Talk in the towns and villages was never far from speculation about the camp good and bad, but when he overheard a conversation between his foster carers and a community policeman, he knew who it was they were talking about.
Trey remembered sitting outside on the back step, the kitchen window swung wide because of the warm spring weather and the adults talking freely, gossiping the way they did when they thought kids weren’t around. At first it was just chat and words and whatever. Trey was waiting for them to take their coffee into the front room so he could steal a cigarette from the carton on the top of the cabinet and he whispered for them to hurry up and he played impatiently with his lighter.
Sitting there now in camp he couldn’t recall when the conversation that was nothing more than idle chalk-dust talk became flint-thrown words. He couldn’t remember the exact moment when he heard the headlines that made up the story of his life: coastal village, double murder, killer never found. It was a story that had no memory of the poor orphan kids and that was one thing in Trey’s favour, that and the words he heard next: Camp Kernow, safe haven for the murderer.
It was enough to start him wondering, but, when he read in the local paper about the camp that taught hard work and Christian values to the wayward, wonder was replaced by fact. The group photo of the masters and the Preacher all smiles with a bundle of kids under each of their arms; Trey knew this was his destiny.
He worked his idea into a job-done plan and he marked the day when everyone was out working or scallying or whatever. An early summer morning with a calm smile slapped straight across it, an unsuspecting good old-fashioned country day. It was a Friday; the others would have the weekend to sort things out in the aftermath.
The fire part was the easy part. Cans of red diesel stored in a barn were all Trey needed for the job and he was mindful to catch every corner of every room with the spill.
He remembered the smell like it was sweet-shop heaven sent. The diesel and then the flick-clip flame and the deep-heat Taser tang that fizzed his taste buds and peeled his nostrils wide.
It took everything in him not to stand too close to the rising pyre, be taken in by his own handiwork, his might.
He stood outside with his bag of silly sentimental things, the one good photo and the only photo of his family gripped firm in his fist and Dad’s watch double tight on his wrist, waiting for the sirens and the scolding, waiting for the cleansing that followed destruction.
Trey knew his future lay in the heat of those attention-grabbing flames, but it also existed in the cool, slow rising ashes.
When the sun pushed close he tucked himself into a thin wedge of shade and his thoughts wandered towards Kay and he looked over at the girls’ dorm. Just to see her from afar would have been something to lift his spirit. She wasn’t a push-shove kid like the rest of them; she was built of stronger stuff, there was detail in her lining, her fabric, and Trey knew he could learn from that.
He stubbed his toes and made patterns in the sandy earth and when he saw Lamby heading his way he dug his eyes into the ground. Something in him rattled with guilt for not standing up for the lad yesterday and he supposed he wanted to apologise, shame was he didn’t know how.
‘Howdy, partner,’ the boy grinned. ‘Wondered where you’d got
to.’ He blocked Trey’s view and put his hands on his hips. ‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Well what?’
‘Where’d you get to?’
‘Here.’
‘Here what?’
‘I got to here, sittin here.’
‘You int comin for breakfast? You’ll get more’n you ask for at breakfast.’
‘Really?’ Trey stood up and stretched. ‘Like what?’ His stomach started to grumble.
‘Prayers.’
Trey sighed. ‘Not again.’
‘You’re funny. Int you noticed were stuck behind sacred bars?’
‘Fence.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We’re stuck behind a fence. So where we eat anyway?’
‘Dint you see that old circus tent when you arrived?’
‘The marquee?’
‘Whatever you wanna call it, that’s the food tent.’
They walked towards the tent and Lamby told Trey about the chaplain that gave morning prayer.
‘He’s a good old boy by all accounts. Bit quirko but int we all.’
‘I met him.’
‘You did?’
‘Yesterday, int he to do with pastoral or whatever they call it?’
‘Spose. Bit of a pushover but he means well, more’n others, he does.’
They entered the tent and sat on benches where told and Trey watched the others get filed and pushed the same.
‘Don’t the Preacher give the prayers?’ Trey asked.
‘Course not.’
‘Ever?’
‘Never, he’s too busy runnin things.’
‘What things?’
‘Jeez, questions.’
‘Just askin.’
‘He’s the head of the church, the boss. Don’t worry, you’ll probably never meet him.’
Trey sat with his back hunched against the canvas wall and he closed his eyes to shut in the confusing anger and he listened to the racing wind outside. He felt it claw at his shoulder blades and finger his ribs and he leant into it to feel its power.
The sudden thought that he might never find his parents’ killer had him burn bush-fire wild. Naively, he had thought revenge would be exacted in three easy steps: find the man, kill the man and escape. He hadn’t spent much time working out the detail of step two and three, but here he was stumped at the first.
The Light That Gets Lost (Shakespeare Today) Page 4
