‘OK. So, you’ve got me there. She’s my mum. But it’s still our field.’
‘She said we could have some water. She told my dad we could help ourselves.’
‘Fair enough, I suppose. Glad we got that sorted out,’ he said and held out his hand. It was thin and bony and more like that of a woman than a boy.
I took his hand and gave it a faint squeeze, dropping it before the shake had really finished, so he was left with his hand in mid-air. He looked amused, quizzical, and I felt myself sweating even more, watching him as he took me in: my cropped ginger hair, my face on which freckles and spots competed for space, the sodden t-shirt which clung to me, outlining the shape of barely-there breasts.
He was wearing jeans and a denim jacket. No t-shirt. Around his neck hung a camera, one of those new, expensive Polaroids. The sort that prints out a photo straight away, while you’re waiting. He eyed the ground for a moment, his eyes tracing over the earth around the well, and up the hill, as if assessing it. Then he jerked his head up at me.
‘C’mon. I want to show you something.’ He didn’t wait for me to answer, but started walking up the bank behind the chapel. He didn’t look back.
I followed him up the hill, walking about three feet behind him. Even though it was a steep climb and it was the hottest part of the day, he kept on walking, silent, stopping only once to take his jacket off and tie it around his waist. Even then he didn’t look round at me. I was gratified to see beads of sweat starting to appear from under his hair, and soon there was a trickle down his back, running snakelike between the bony contours of his shoulder blades. His skin was pearly-white, almost translucent.
By the time we got to the top of the hill, sweat was running into my eyes and I’d counted to 297. For the last couple of minutes, I’d had to lean forward into the gradient to find the strength to carry myself up the slope, seeing nothing but the scratchy yellow grass and the curling brown of dead bracken, so when we finally reached the top and I turned around, what I saw came as a complete surprise to me.
Laid out below us was the bottom of the valley, a patchwork quilt of fields, stab-stitched here and there with houses and barns, lanes and clusters of trees. From up there I could see the back wall of the chapel, devoid of windows or any form of adornment, set hard up against the bank with only a narrow pathway separating the grey wall from the scraggy grass. I could make out the well, with its piece of plywood and the blue bucket, and I could see the little house next to it, tiny and squat and grey, where I’d seen my dad talking to the woman earlier. There was our house, over the lane from it and further down the slope. The road carried on to the right, dotted with houses, and it curved round and rose slightly where the bridge went over the stream. Then the war memorial.
Like a brown worm the stream ran the full length of the valley, and following it with my eyes I found the place by the oak tree, the place where the boy had seen me naked. I risked a glance at him.
‘The village. Lesson one,’ he said, still not looking at me.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’re new here, and you’re going to need someone to show you the ropes, right? That’s me.’ He turned to look at me then and his eyes were half closed, dark behind long lashes. ‘I can show you everything.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like who you should talk to and who you shouldn’t. Like where’s the best place for getting booze and fags. Like where’s the best place to go for a swim.’
I knew I was blushing and he seemed to be enjoying it.
‘Like where’s the best place for seeing girls with their kit off.’ He threw a grin at me and then sat down. He unhooked the strap from around his neck and placed the camera on the grass next to him. Despite myself, I sat down, my knees bent in front of me, and I leant my damp chest against my legs.
I started fiddling with the lace of my plimsoll, but then I remembered the cigarette and the match box in my back pocket and pulled them out. The match flared, the flame almost invisible in the brightness of the sun, and I took a deep pull on the fag to get it to light. It was a bit crumpled, but I took a couple of puffs and held it out to the boy. He didn’t say anything at first, just took the cigarette from me between his finger and thumb and put it in his mouth. He took a long drag and let the smoke curl out of his nostrils. Then he spoke.
‘So you found it then.’ It was less a question than a statement.
‘Found what?’
‘The gift. I left you a present. I was worried the Christians might get there first.’
I didn’t look at him but I could tell he had turned to face me, his elbows resting on his knees in front of him.
‘You left it? The bird skull? That was you?’
He didn’t say anything but in my peripheral vision I could see him nodding. Then he turned to look at the valley once more. For a few moments, we sat there in silence, both of us surveying the landscape that lay beneath us.
‘Why?’ I couldn’t help asking. ‘Why did you leave it for me?’
The cigarette sat between his fingers, the ash long and drooping. He shrugged.
‘Because we’re the same. You and me. We’re on the same team. I knew that as soon as I saw you.’
I took the cigarette from him, and my fingers brushed against his. We looked at each other for a second and then I looked away and took a puff on the fag, conscious of the clamminess of my hands.
‘What sort of bird is it?’ In my mind’s eye, I could picture the creamy smoothness of the mound of the skull, the dark voids of the eye sockets.
‘It’s a crow. It’s not one of my best. My best ones are the ravens. But it’s still pretty good.’ He was looking out across the valley, his face blank.
‘Why? Why do you want me to have it? We don’t even know each other.’
He shrugged and turned to face me. The smudges beneath his eyes appeared darker, if anything, in the harsh light of the sun, and his pupils were shrunk to pinpricks, the irises a pale tawny brown.
‘You’re different. You’re like me. We don’t belong. We’re outsiders. We need to stick together. Form an…allegiance.’
‘An allegiance against what?’
He gestured with his hands towards the valley that lay in front of us.
‘Them,’ and that was all he said.
We sat quietly for a few moments, passing the cigarette back and forth. The nape of my neck was prickling in the heat. I looked across the valley, at the sun-scorched fields on the opposite side, bleached and baked, and at the tiny dots of white, clustering towards the bottom of the valley, which I knew were sheep, their instincts telling them to search for water.
My eyes started to sting from the sweat running down from my forehead and it was a relief to close them and block out the incessant light for a few seconds. Silently, in my head and to myself only, I recited the incantation. Robin’s egg, magpie’s egg, duckling bill and bone. Blackbird’s egg, feathers of wren, the skull of a crow. That was it. It was complete.
I wiped my eyes on my t-shirt and when I looked again at the valley below us, I could make out a collection of people clustering around the war memorial. They weren’t dressed in the dark sobriety of the chapel-goers from that morning, but wore bright t-shirts and short skirts. I couldn’t see very well from up there, but I thought it was the same group of girls I’d seen when we’d driven into the village the night before, and that the tallest of the girls down there was the one with the greasy ponytail and the scrunched-up face.
The boy had seen me looking.
‘That’s Tracy Powell and her crew,’ he said and passed the cigarette back to me.
‘Who’s she?’ I tapped the ash off the end of the fag and took a couple of quick drags.
‘She’s a bitch, that’s who she is. Her mother runs the pub. Local bike, but ugly as fuck.’
He looked sideways at me and I knew I was blushing again. I took another puff on the cigarette.
‘See the fat one? Her name’s Denise.’ One of th
e girls was noticeably bigger than the others, short and wide and violently clad in fuchsia. ‘Guess what they call her?’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Fat Denise. Clever, eh? She’s the size of a house and twice as thick. And her grandad’s her mum’s cousin. Think about it.’
‘I think I saw them before,’ I said. ‘Last night, when we arrived. They were hanging around the war memorial then.’
‘The what?’
‘The war memorial. Down there. Where they are now.’
‘Ah. That’s not a war memorial.’
‘What is it then?’
He tilted his head to the side and looked at me through half-closed eyes.
‘I’ll show you. Tomorrow. I’ll come and call for you and I’ll take you there and I’ll show you what it is.’ He ground the cigarette out on the sole of his trainer and chucked the stub away into the bracken. He hauled himself to his feet and grabbed the camera and looped the strap around his neck.
‘And that was lesson one on the village. Lesson two tomorrow morning.’ He started walking backwards down the hill. ‘And bring some fags.’
He turned and started running, the momentum carrying him all the way down. At the bottom, when he was only the shape of a boy next to the blue bucket, he turned and stood facing up the hill, the pale skin of his chest gleaming. His hair stood out in a haze around his head, but I couldn’t make out his features at all.
Six.
My mother kept a photo on her bedside table, propped up against the lamp, the edges curling. At the front of the photo was Lorry. He was sitting on my dad’s lap and he was looking at the camera. He wasn’t smiling and he had his thumb jammed into his mouth. My dad was looking at my mother, who was sitting next to them. It looked as though the photo had been taken a split second too soon, and my dad had just turned to face the person holding the camera but he was still looking at my mother. His mouth was open and he was half-smiling and it looked like he was in the middle of telling a joke.
My mother was looking straight at the camera. She was sitting with her back straight and her shoulders held up. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and even though the photo was in black and white, I knew that she was wearing lipstick, and her mouth was glossy and smooth and full. Her eyes were bright and she looked confident and beautiful, and there was a curve to her cheek, a fullness to her chin. On her lap was Petra. My mother had her arms wrapped around her waist. Even though they were twins, Petra was a lot bigger than Lorry. She was wearing a party dress and she had her hair in bunches. In the middle of my mother and my dad there was me, gawky and freckled. In the background you could make out the Christmas tree, the strands on the tinsel reflecting little points of brightness from the fairy lights, like glitter.
I couldn’t remember what Petra’s face looked like, whether she looked like my mother or my dad, or like me or like Lorry. The photo didn’t help. Where Petra’s face should be, there was only a big white smudge, about the size of a thumbprint, where the picture had been worn away. I knew it was the place my mother’s lips found when she woke in the night.
Seven.
Monday 2nd August 1976
Toast for breakfast again. I pushed the plate over to Lorry who grabbed a piece and sniffed it suspiciously. The butter had gone off so it was just toast scraped with jam. He took a tentative bite and then jammed the whole piece in his mouth and sat there, chewing noisily.
My mother and my dad were getting ready to go out. They had to get my mother registered with a doctor in town so she could get her prescriptions. The doctor at home had refused to give her a supply of Valium to last her for the time we’d be in Wales, and the unspoken suggestion was that she might stockpile them and top herself. My dad had said they would find a supermarket on the way back and stock up on food.
I’d had the dream again the night before, and I’d woken in the early hours when it was turning from night into day and the light that lit up the little arched window in my bedroom was still pale and fragile. I’d lain there, trying to remember what I’d dreamed, thinking that perhaps, if I could remember it, I’d know for sure how Petra had died.
I knew that there had been an accident in the bath, and I knew that she had drowned, and that it had been my mother’s fault for leaving her when she went to answer the phone, but any more than that I couldn’t remember. I didn’t know who had been on the phone, or why it was so important that my mother left Petra on her own while she went to answer it. The dream, and the memory of the dream, had slipped away, and the more I tried to grasp it, the more it wriggled out of reach.
I’d fetched the relics from the altar and taken them back to bed with me and put them on top of the sleeping bag. I’d laid them out in the correct order and said the incantation four times. I’d tried rubbing the crow’s skull with my thumb while I said the incantation but still nothing. That was the thing about the Creed: it didn’t make everything obvious straight away. It made me work things out for myself. Only by trying different things, experimenting, would I discover its secrets. In the end, I decided this approach wasn’t going to work, and I gave up and put the relics back on the altar. At some point, I must have fallen asleep again, because my mother and my dad were already dressed when I went downstairs. It was a couple of days since I’d seen my mother in anything other than her dressing gown, and she looked different in her clothes.
She hadn’t said anything else about Petra since our first night at the cottage. She still spent most of her time in her bedroom on her own, or if she came down for meals she would sit and fiddle with the hollow at the base of her throat, where her crucifix used to hang. But this morning she was different. There was a new lightness to her, something indefinable which suggested that the darkness was starting to lift.
She was wearing jeans that should have been tight around her hips but which were held up with one of my dad’s belts. The blouse she was wearing I recognised as the one she’d had on in the photo, the Christmas photo with Petra. The last photo we’d taken as a family before the accident. The blouse was made from a thin, silky material and it used to cling to her breasts and the curves of her stomach. Now it hung like a shroud.
My dad said a few things about not leaving Lorry on his own and being careful not to annoy the neighbours, and then they went, leaving it up to me to make Lorry his breakfast.
‘Don’t eat with your mouth open,’ I told my brother. He looked up at me, and chewed-up toast spilt from the corners of his mouth.
Sunlight pushed its way through the grime on the window. My dad had cleaned it yesterday, but hadn’t done a proper job of it and the glass was smeared and streaked and made everything outside appear blurred. He’d looked around the house to see what jobs or repairs he could do to repay his colleague for letting us stay there. He’d started a list, with things like fix roof, and repair pointing, but later he’d crossed these out and replaced them with little jobs: repaint kitchen window, clean gutters, dig up concrete. Already he’d made a start on removing the old paint, and had scraped a neat pile of white shavings onto the path outside.
I started clearing the breakfast things and put the plates and tea cups in the sink. I hefted one of the gallon bottles up onto the side of the sink and poured water on top of the crockery. I could smell myself as I worked, each movement causing another wave of my scent to rise to my nostrils. I lifted the collar of my t-shirt over my nose and took a deep breath and relished the animal sourness.
A sharp tap on the window made me jump—I spun round and there was the boy from yesterday, the boy from the stream and the well, his face blurred by the smears on the window. I found myself blushing, feeling like I’d been caught out, and I wiped my hands on my shorts and went into the hall. The little mirror there told me I was still ugly, still freckly and spotty and spiky and ginger.
When I opened the door, the boy stepped straight in without saying anything. The Polaroid camera hung from his neck and it bounced against his chest as he walked. I stood back, on impulse, and he
went straight past me and through the doorway to the kitchen. Lorry was still chewing his toast, and he looked up, worried. The boy went over to my brother and crouched down on his haunches so he was at eye level with him.
‘Hey, little feller. What’s your name?’ he asked.
Lorry looked suspicious, and put both hands over his face.
‘It’s OK. I’m good with kids.’ I didn’t know if the boy was talking to me or to Lorry, but then he stood up and took a ten-pence piece out of the pocket of his jeans.
‘Hey, look,’ he said, and Lorry took a hand away from his face, leaving one eye uncovered.
The boy put the coin between two of the fingers on his left hand, and with a rippling motion, passed it over his fingers, up and over each of his knuckles, until it had come to settle next to his little finger. He turned his hand over and repeated the trick, sending the coin scurrying across the undersides of his fingers, his palm upwards and open.
By then Lorry had taken the other hand away from his face and was looking at the boy in wonder.
‘Magic, Nif,’ he said, and he beamed at the boy.
‘It’s not magic, Lorry,’ I said. ‘It’s a trick, that’s all.’
‘Don’t believe her, Lorry. It’s magic alright, and I’m a magician. Mally the Marvellous at your service,’ and he clicked his heels together and gave a little bow.
Lorry was clapping his hands in excitement and saying, ‘More magic, more magic.’
The boy put his hand behind Lorry’s ear and produced another ten-pence piece, which he gave to my brother. Lorry turned it over in his hand and looked at the boy very seriously.
‘Magic man,’ he said.
‘Lorry,’ I said, ‘It’s not really magic. Real magic is…I don’t know…turning people into animals and making things disappear and stuff, not just chucking a coin around.’
‘I don’t think your sister likes me very much,’ the boy said to Lorry in a theatrical whisper, and he ruffled my brother’s hair.
Water Shall Refuse Them Page 6
