‘But it depends on you, doesn’t it?’ said Anna-Marie. ‘Whether you mean to be cruel or kind.’
‘What are my good intentions worth if they result in unhappiness for Peter? Who is to judge? Peter? You? From where do you derive the authority to convict or acquit? Only those with the self-righteous morality of children would dare to pass judgement based on such absolutes.’ He looked at me, his eyes cold dark craters. ‘You are so cock-sure that you are right and I am wrong, yet without God neither even exists. There is only chaos.’
‘No,’ protested Anna-Marie. ‘The world isn’t like that. There are consequences. You’re a scientist. You have laws—’
‘Was a scientist,’ snapped Mr Merridew with a sharp flick of his hand. ‘Was. Until I grew sick of the halls of academia bulging with myopic fools: passing their laws, sacrificing their principles as if you could simply trap chaos behind the bars of a chart; just as historians dress cavemen in suits of clothes and call it civilisation. Yes, perhaps if you look with your eyes closed,’ said Mr Merridew, ‘and if your scope is sufficiently narrow you might discern order in anything; but open them wide and you will see only chaos.’
‘But if that’s true,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘what’s the point in even living?’
He chuckled.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I lack the courage of my convictions. But, if life is meaningless then death is also. It is not superior to life. It matters not if I live or die or if I have never lived; that is not, in itself, reason to proceed from one state to the next.’
‘But what about the dog?’
‘The dog,’ he said slowly, ‘was in pain. Life may or may not be pointless, but life in pain is intolerable; certainly when compared to death free of pain. Don’t you agree?’
Mr Merridew didn’t talk like any other grown-up I’d ever met. He didn’t pretend that everything was all right. I felt I was being shown something dreadful, like a stone being lifted to reveal all the wriggling creatures underneath. His words were even more brutal than the death of the Beast. As I sat and listened his voice became quicksand and I had to fight to keep all the hope from being sucked out of me.
‘But being alive is better than being dead,’ protested Anna-Marie. ‘Surely.’
‘Is it? And how do you know?’
‘Well,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘say there’s this girl: Alice.’
Alice? At last!
‘A friend of yours?’
‘Yes,’ without a pause. ‘She went to the college. Did you know her?’
Mr Merridew shrugged. ‘If I ever did, I have already forgotten. My very point.’
‘But she doesn’t want to just live like nobody’s even noticed. Nobody wants that.’
‘My dear, I suppose you would have me reassure you and pat you on the head and say that we live on in the memories of others. Pah! Nonsense!’
‘But what about in books, say?’ said Anna-Marie. ‘We met this man, didn’t we, Peter? And he said when you make up people and things they do in books and stories it is like they could last forever. You can make them real. I mean in the books and the people who read—’
‘Anna-Marie,’ said Mr Merridew, and he leant forward to take her hands from her lap and hold them between his own like a sandwich, ‘I do understand,’ and he kind of looked at me as he said it. ‘Your determination is nothing if not endearing but this girl—this Alice—is no different from you or I or … or anyone else. It gives me no pleasure to crush you like this bar the satisfaction of telling you the truth—’
‘But you said truth was—’
He silenced her with another wave of his hand.
‘I suggest, my dear, that you visit the graveyard for a more realistic perspective.’
‘The graveyard?’
‘You will find it littered with corpses any of whom may have imagined they had some claim to renown. Who tends to them now?’ cried the old man. ‘Who fashions the carpenter’s coffin? Who digs the gravedigger’s grave? There is nothing: nothing after; nothing before. Eternity after eternity, eons of vacuum, of nothingness, interrupted only by the briefest flash of sentient consciousness.’
‘But that’s what it’s about!’ pleaded Anna-Marie. ‘Surely! That flash! Isn’t that what makes the emptiness bearable?’
‘No,’ said Mr Merridew darkly, releasing her hand. ‘The emptiness makes the flash intolerable.’
‘Well,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘I can’t speak for Peter, but I would rather be alive than dead even if there isn’t a God. I like the world how it is: when the sun comes up in the morning, and the wind. I like watching the butterflies. You know, and when it snows. That’s why people believe in magic. That’s why people hope tomorrow will be better than yesterday.’
Mr Merridew sighed, irritated I thought.
As I sat there I began to remember the world outside: the sun on the lane, the leaves and the cracked old branches. It was all such a long way from that dreadful little room in that dreadful cottage. It was like when you suddenly remember a dream you had the night before and you start trying to remember all the bits that you hadn’t even realised you’d forgotten. My eyes looked into the fire crackling in the grate. I so missed the light. It had all but ceased to exist since we’d been trapped in Mr Merridew’s home.
Anna-Marie sat straight-backed and cleared her throat. ‘Thank you for the milk, Mr Merridew,’ she said. ‘It was very kind but I think we’d better go now.’ My limbs felt so heavy I couldn’t move. ‘Come on, Peter,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘it’s time to go home.’ My head was swimming and my eyes struggled to stay open. ‘Thank you for the milk, Mr Merridew,’ said Anna-Marie again. ‘Peter, come on!’
We left the house. Leaving the darkness, I was so dazzled by the sudden burst of summer’s afternoon that it took me a moment to realise that Anna-Marie hadn’t turned towards home at all but back down the lane, back towards the woodyard, back towards the Beast.
‘Where are we going?’ I said, struggling to keep up with her long strides.
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘For all I care you can just toddle off home like a good boy.’
‘But I don’t want to go home,’ I lied.
You see, Everlasting Lane was different than it was before. The air was still now like a heavy cloak and the birds were silent. But I don’t think Anna-Marie even noticed. She was walking as fast as she could and she didn’t slow down or even turn to look as she passed the body of the Beast, a steady pool of blood oozing from beneath its still body.
‘Are you going to the end?’
She gave an irritated sigh.
‘Anna-Marie?’
The lane was twisting and turning now, wriggling like the Beast beneath the blows of Mr Merridew’s stick. As we rounded each bend we held our breaths as if we were bound to find out the truth but each time all we could see was another bend up ahead and then another and another.
‘What if there isn’t an end?’ I said.
‘Everything has an end, Peter,’ sighed Anna-Marie. ‘Didn’t you listen to a word Mr Merridew said?’
I shuddered. ‘Yes, but …’
And then we finally turned a corner and stopped in amazement. But it wasn’t the end: it was something worse. Anna-Marie swore and then she said, ‘Go on, Peter. Make yourself useful. You choose.’
Right in front of us Everlasting Lane did something neither of us had expected or even imagined possible. It split in two. One fork turned to the left and the other, of course, to the right. I hesitated. Why did I have to decide? Anna-Marie stood waiting, tapping her foot and I stood there until I wished I could just tear myself down the middle and send half each hopping off in different directions. If only that was possible.
‘I could go one way,’ I said, ‘and you could go the other.’
But I didn’t want to go alone and I don’t think she did either. And, anyway, that didn’t even solve the problem. You see, we could go down one but we couldn’t go down both. I mean, not at the same time. Not together. It was one or t
he other: like a choice. And if we went down one, say, we went down the right hand one, then we might never know what we might’ve seen down the left hand one. And if we went down the right hand one then all the things we saw and thought about would be different from what we would’ve seen and thought if we’d gone down the left hand one. Or the other way round.
‘Well?’
It kind of made your head all swimmy.
‘Peter,’ said Anna-Marie crossly, ‘which way?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. And then, ‘I want to go home.’
And so we walked back home in silence. You see, I’d been scared that whichever one I chose would be the wrong one and that I wouldn’t even know; not even if the one I chose seemed like it had been the right one because, when you thought about it, I would never know for sure. And then—
‘Oh, Peter, bog off!’
And she didn’t talk to me again for a week.
16
If I’d squinted I could have just about imagined that, despite her scrawny face, it was Anna-Marie, not her mother, who cowered in the kitchen doorway of their cottage peering at me with bitter blue eyes. Anna-Marie had never invited me into her home. It was wintry cold and I could see dirty plates piled high in the kitchen sink. A peculiar sweet smell rose from the grimy rugs which laid a path through their house.
Mrs Liddell, yet to speak, raised her broomstick a second time and pounded again on the ceiling. In answer I could hear a flurry of footsteps overhead.
‘What is it?’ came the crabby response. ‘What is it?’
I concentrated all my attention on the only picture hung on the hallway wall: a man, tall and stocky, embraced his wife and tiny daughter, and all three smiled as if they didn’t know how to stop.
A door slammed and Anna-Marie’s white socks and sandals appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘I told you: I don’t want to …!’ they roared as they stomped their way down. ‘Peter?’ I looked up into Anna-Marie’s horrified eyes. ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘bog off!’
But even Anna-Marie couldn’t stay mad at me forever. Forgiveness arrived as I left the school gates on the last day before the half term holidays in the shape of a stone. ‘Ouch!’ Right between the shoulder blades. A small stone, yes, but, well, even so. A second pebble clipped my ear. ‘Hey, stupid,’ shouted Anna-Marie just to make clear that these missiles were meant to be friendly, ‘wait for me!’
I waited.
‘Listen,’ said Anna-Marie, seizing me by the arm and pulling me along the grass verge, ‘you’re not going home yet, okay?’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve got a job for you: that’s why. Come on,’ and she was off, towards the church. I had to trot to keep up. ‘I’ve been thinking about Kat,’ she announced. ‘Why is she always bringing flowers up here? What does she do at the church? Does she ever come to church on Sundays?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘That’s what I mean. She’s not really the Christian-type. She’s nice enough but in a normal way. Nice to talk to I mean.’
I shrugged.
‘Heavens-to-Betsy, Peter, without me you’d end up in the soup with the rest of the veg. I mean there must be a reason.’ She meant all that stuff about consequences again, but what if there wasn’t any reason? Surely, sometimes things just happened. Sometimes people just took flowers to churches, didn’t they?
‘I want to know about the nursery,’ went on Anna-Marie, ‘and Alice and I would like you, if it’s not too much trouble, to have a look round and see what you can find.’
‘But what am I looking for?’
‘Clues, of course.’
‘What sort of clues?’
‘What sort of clues?’ she repeated in that voice she did that always made me sound like a twit. ‘If I knew that I’d find them myself.’
‘But why the graveyard?’
‘Crikey, Peter, have you forgotten every word Mr Merridew said?’
Forgotten? Of course I hadn’t. Not a thing. Even my dreams had been riddled with Mr Merridew’s words. Try as I might I couldn’t quite put the stone he’d lifted back into place; I couldn’t quite keep those squirmy, twisty worms out of my brain.
‘But what are you doing?’ I said. ‘Aren’t you looking for clues too?’
‘I’m busy,’ she answered and again began to walk off.
I was struggling to keep up with her. ‘But where are you going?’
‘To the church hall.’
‘Why?’
‘Are you being sponsored?’ asked Anna-Marie. ‘Ten pee for every idiotic question. If you must know,’ she sighed, ‘I’m going for my ballet lesson.’
Looking both ways, we crossed the road, out of the cool shadows into the warm sun. As we walked along, I dragged my hand over the railings of a fence enjoying the ripples in my fingers.
‘What’s ballet like?’
‘It stinks!’ said Anna-Marie.
‘Why do you go, then?’
‘Don’t you ever get fed up poking your nose into other people’s business?’ I shook my head. ‘My mother makes me. I mean, you’re the expert when it comes to doing everything your mother says.’
Well, I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean.
‘Can I watch?’ I said.
Anna-Marie looked appalled. ‘Can you watch? No!’
‘Why not?’
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘It’s stupid. It stinks. Besides Miss Drew would probably have a spasm.’
A dozen or so girls, too young for school, stood on one side of the church hall door, protected by their mothers. Half as many girls, including Melanie Finch, had already walked up from Dovecot and were gathered to the other side chattering in a bunch. Anna-Marie stood alone. The Dovecot girls, falling silent, swapped shifty glances and stared at their shoes. Anna-Marie ignored them right back.
And then, ‘Hello, Peter,’ said Melanie smiling. ‘How’s Tommie?’ One or two of her friends giggled. ‘Are you coming to ballet?’ and they all exploded into laughter.
Anna-Marie winced. And I didn’t feel very comfortable either. Here’s why:
‘Woah!’ Mr Gale had exclaimed, waving his hand in front of his nose. ‘Who let that one off? Crikey, that’s ripe! Was that one of yours, Smelanie?’ Melanie, busy designing her fourth poster for the school fair, didn’t say anything. ‘Ha, ha,’ said Mr Gale. ‘Only joking!’
Melanie’s ears burned so redly that I could see little whispers of steam escaping. She reached into her pencil case. She had drawn this picture of a fortune-teller and needed a yellow to do the gleam in the gypsy’s eyes as they peered into the crystal ball. Melanie’s pencil case was a wonderful, decorated thing, all loops and twirls and pictures of kittens and rabbits, and all the work of Melanie and her fine blue cartridge pen. But that day I spotted a new doodle: a love-heart shape with ‘MF for PL’ written inside.
It made me feel kind of odd. I only half understood what it meant. Melanie spent more of her time chasing me in the playground and hitting me than anything that might deserve a love-heart. I discovered, however, to my surprise, that I wasn’t completely unhappy about it—whatever ‘it’ was. And my heart went kind of pitter-pat with a chuckle in my tummy whenever I thought about it. I mean about her.
I mean Melanie.
As soon as I’d seen the pencil case she’d pulled it from our table and tucked it into her lap. Her felt-tipped pen squeaked across the paper and Melanie’s ears grew so red they were purple. I scraped my chair backwards afraid that her head might shoot off and swallow the entire room in embarrassment.
Later on, when I was putting my reading book in my drawer I found an envelope. I recognised Melanie’s handwriting straight away. I looked up to see her watching and this time we both blushed. And at lunchtime, when we all played chase, she caught me and hit me harder than ever before.
‘Hey, hey, hey,’ said Anna-Marie punching my arm. The ballet girls had begun to shove their way through the now open doors. ‘Planet Earth to Peter: what are you
thinking about?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh, wow!’ said Anna-Marie as she pushed her way crossly through the crowd. ‘Sorry I missed that.’ Just before she entered the hall she turned to face me. ‘Get on with it!’ she hissed. ‘Just the main part. Don’t go beyond the oak tree.’
‘Why?’
She looked exasperated. ‘Just because. Now, get on with it! I’ll meet you here in half an hour.’
As the last girls shuffled their way into the village hall I turned away and headed for the graveyard. I really didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for so I wandered lost among the headstones. Many of the graves were decorated with flowers: bluebells, big bushy chrysanthemums, tulips tied with ribbons; wreathes of daisies and buttercups; pink roses in a painted glass—
‘Kitty!’ I cried. ‘What are you doing here?’
She lay on the low stone wall, watching me with arched eyebrows, and gave a loud meow. She didn’t seem surprised to see me and allowed me a tickle behind her ear. Then she slid to the ground and swaggered homewards. She didn’t even look back.
Alone again I poked my head around the corner of the church. The road was deserted. The girls had entered and the doors had been shut. I darted from the pavement and hid behind a tree, emerging a moment later to creep around the outside of the building. I sneaked along the pavement, hiding in shadows and looking everywhere but my destination: the church hall. I hummed a tune.
I was James Bond.
I rattled the doors. They were locked and the windows were beyond hopping height. The deadly assassin, I continued around the back of the building to where two dustbins stood. Ignoring the smell, I pocketed my Walther PPK, left my satchel on the ground and clambered up. Perched on my toes, I could see over the window ledge and, using the sleeve of my black tuxedo, I cleared a porthole through the slime and grime. The window, bordered by its blistering frame made the room like a painting: lit by the dusty afternoon sun slicing across the room and the wide brush strokes polishing the halos that shone around the assembled girls.
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