by David Almond
MY NAME IS ERIN LAW. My friends are January Carr and Mouse Gullane. This is the story of what happened when we sailed away from Whitegates that Friday night. Some people will tell you that none of these things happened. They’ll say they were just a dream that the three of us shared. But they did happen. We did meet Heaven Eyes on the Black Middens. We did dig the saint out of the mud. We did find Grampa’s treasures and his secrets. We did see Grampa return to the river. And we did bring Heaven Eyes home with us. She lives happily here among us. People will tell you that this is not Heaven Eyes. They’ll say she’s just another damaged child like ourselves. But she is Heaven Eyes. You’ll know her easily. Look at her toes and fingers. Listen to her strange sweet voice. Watch how she seems to see through all the darkness in the world to the joy that lies beneath. It is her. These things happened. January, Mouse and I were there to see them all. Everything is true. So listen.
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Thanks for the support of Southlands School
MY NAME IS ERIN LAW. My friends are January Carr and Mouse Gullane. This is the story of what happened when we sailed away from Whitegates that Friday night. Some people will tell you that none of these things happened. They’ll say they were just a dream that the three of us shared. But they did happen. We did meet Heaven Eyes on the Black Middens. We did dig the saint out of the mud. We did find Grampa’s treasures and his secrets. We did see Grampa return to the river. And we did bring Heaven Eyes home with us. She lives happily here among us. People will tell you that this is not Heaven Eyes. They’ll say she’s just another damaged child like ourselves. But she is Heaven Eyes. You’ll know her easily. Look at her toes and fingers. Listen to her strange sweet voice. Watch how she seems to see through all the darkness in the world to the joy that lies beneath. It is her. These things happened. January, Mouse and I were there to see them all. Everything is true. So listen.
We are damaged children. Each of us has lost our parents. That’s why we live in this home called White-gates, which is in St. Gabriel’s. January, for instance, was left as a day-old baby on the steps of a hospital. He’s called January because that’s the bitter month in which he was found. The place was Carr Hill Hospital, and that’s why he’s called Carr. You will not see January here now, and you’ll know why when you come to the end of the tale. Mouse is an abandoned boy. His mother died, like mine did, and then his father disappeared. Mouse will tell you that his father’s in Africa, but even Mouse isn’t certain that this is true. He’s named Mouse because of the pet he carries in his pocket, which he used to say was his one true friend. This pet is called Squeak, because he squeaks.
Whitegates is a three-storied place with a garden paved over in concrete and a metal fence around it. The home is run by a woman named Maureen. Before we sailed away that night, her heart had been disappointed by years of dealing with children like ourselves. She used to tell us we were damaged. She said that, right from the start, our opportunities were more limited than those of other children. She said we’d have to work very hard to make our way in the world. She smiled and stroked our shoulders. She said that if we cooperated with her, there was no reason why we shouldn’t turn out to be the finest of folk. Sometimes we saw in her eyes that she really wanted to believe this. Sometimes we saw that she yearned to believe. She gazed from the windows and watched us whispering together in the concrete garden. She stood in the doorway of the poolroom and watched us with her fingers on her cheeks and the yearning in her eyes. She has an apartment behind her office and she was often heard whimpering in there. She found it difficult to sleep in those days. Sometimes we saw her wandering the corridors in the dead of night with tears running from her eyes. There were many tales and rumors about her: She’d never been able to have children of her own; yes, she did have a child, and it was very beautiful, but it died as a baby in her arms; there were several children, but they’d been snatched away by the father and had never been seen again. No one knew the truth, but we made up the tales and told them to each other and tried to explain the strange mixture of love and bitterness we saw in Maureen’s eyes. Those eyes so often were cold, cold, cold. Those eyes wanted to love us and trust us, but so often they saw us as simply damaged, and beyond repair.
A dozen or so children live here. Some of us, like Maureen, are filled by sadness, or eaten up with bitterness. Some of us have broken hearts and troubled souls. But most of us love each other and look out for each other. We always knew that if we cared for each other, we could put up with the psychiatrists who came, the psychologists, the social workers, the caregivers, the play therapists, the drug counselors, the health workers, the welfare workers. We knew we could put up with Maureen and her assistants. We could put up with her questions and her coldness and her circle times. We knew that we could find a tiny corner of the Paradise that we’d all lost.
Sometimes we were asked to go back to that Paradise. We were asked to try to imagine how things were for us before we were in Whitegates. We had circle times. We sat together in the lounge. Maureen told us what was known about each of us: who our mothers were, who our fathers were, what happened to separate us from them. For some of us, of course, very little was known. She asked us to tell what we remembered. Her assistants, Fat Kev and Skinny Stu, paced the floor behind us and encouraged us to speak. Maureen asked us to imagine the things that weren’t remembered or known. She said it was important that each of us could tell the story of our life, even if it was a mixture of fact and memory and imagination. Each of us had a Life Story book with photographs, drawings, facts and stories in it. Some children played this game very well. They could imagine a different story every time. Their books were filled with possible stories and possible lives. Some children were sullen and would not play, and their books were almost empty.
January quickly became one of those who wouldn’t play. But once he told the story of a frantic woman in a stormy winter night. She was very young and very beautiful and very desperate. She carried a tiny baby wrapped in blankets in an orange crate. She loved the baby very much but knew she couldn’t care for him. She kept in the shadows as she approached the hospital. She waited for deepest night, trembling with cold, with pain, with love. Then she hurried through the storm and laid him on the wide doorstep before rushing back into the night.
“That was beautiful,” Maureen said.
She reached out and stroked his brow.
“It could well be true,” she whispered.
January stared at her. His eyes were glittering.
“She loved me,” he said. “She left me there because she loved me. But she was young, and poor, and desperate. She knew she couldn’t care for me.”
“Yes,” said Maureen. “Yes. It could well be true.”
She smiled at us all. But there was the tiredness in her eyes, like she’d heard all of this before. She told us to thank January for sharing so much with us. Then she asked him if he had imagined his father, too. He lowered his eyes. He shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“It may be helpful for your progress,” she said.
She looked at us, like she wanted us to help January in his task. We said nothing.
“No,” said January. “He didn’t love her. He didn’t love me. That’s all th
ere is to know.”
His eyes were sullen. She smiled gently. She nodded.
“And she’ll come back for me,” he whispered.
“Sorry, dear?”
He stared at her.
“She will. She’ll come back for me.”
Fat Kev spat breath. He rolled his eyes.
“She will,” said January. “She still loves me and wants me. One day she’ll come back for me.”
Maureen nodded again. She smiled again. We saw it in her eyes: Damaged, Beyond Repair.
Mouse Gullane is a gentle and timid boy. He wants to please everyone, so he always tried to play the game. His mother died soon after he was born. His father cared for him for a few years. He showed the photograph of his father playing soccer with many other men in overalls on the banks of the river. Sometimes he pointed to one of the men and said this one was his father. Sometimes it was another of the men. The men in the photograph were so small that he couldn’t be certain. He said his father went away because he couldn’t care for him.
“He loved me,” he said. “He must have.”
He showed the blue words his father had tattooed on his arm before he went away.
“See?” he said. “He was worried about me, even though he knew he was going away.”
Then Mouse just cried and cried.
As for me, I didn’t need to play. Maureen said I was stubborn, that if I didn’t change, my heart would harden and I’d be filled with bitterness. Once, when I refused to share my memories with her, her eyes glared, her smile disappeared, her voice sharpened. She told me that if I didn’t change my ways I’d turn out just like my mum. And I didn’t want that, did I?
“Yes!” I spat at her. “Yes! Yes!”
I yelled that she knew nothing about my mum, nothing about her strength and tenderness. I ran out of the room, out of the house, out of St. Gabriel’s. Behind me I heard Maureen at the gate, calling my name, but I took no notice of her. I ran to the river and sat there among the ruins of the past and watched the water flowing toward the sea. I burned with happiness. Despite everything, I burned with happiness. Yes, I know about pain and darkness. Sometimes I go so far into the darkness that I’m scared I’ll not get out again. But I do get out, and I do begin to burn again. I don’t need to imagine my life. I don’t need the stupid circle times. I don’t need to build a stupid Life Story book. My head is filled with memories, is always filled with memories. I see my mum and me in our little house in St. Gabriel’s. I feel her touch on my skin. I feel her breath on my face. I smell her perfume. I hear her whispering in my ear. I have my little cardboard treasure box, and at any moment I can bring my lovely mum back to me.
IT’S EASY TO RUN AWAY from Whitegates. Most of us have done it at one time or another. They’re always telling us that it’s not a prison here, that it’s not their job to lock us up. You just sling your backpack on your back and stroll out and say you’re off for a picnic or something. Mostly we get a few hours of freedom, till hunger or a wet night drives us back again. Sometimes somebody manages a week or more away till they’re brought back in a police car, and they wander back inside half-starved, with bags under their eyes, and with a big grin on their face.
My running-away friend was always January Carr. We’d gone off a couple of times together. Once we spent the night across the river in Norton. We bedded down at the back of a restaurant in cardboard boxes, and ate cold pizzas we found in a trash bag there. Another time we wandered right up the riverbank toward the moors and slept on the heather beneath the glittering sky. We saw shooting stars and talked about the universe going on for ever and ever. We talked about wandering for years like this, two vagabonds, free as the beasts and birds, keeping away from the city, drinking from streams, feeding on rabbits and berries. No reason why we couldn’t, we whispered to each other. No reason why. We woke next morning with a police dog licking our faces, and a policeman standing there with his hands on his hips, shaking his head.
“Come on,” he said. “Come on, silly kids.”
We use different methods for getting away. Usually it’s just walking. But there’s hitchhiking as well. There are buses and trains. There are cars that can be taken and driven till the tank’s empty. January’s new idea was different, though. Nobody had tried going off on a raft before. Only crazy January could come up with something like that.
He came into my room one morning. He crouched in the doorway, grinning.
“A raft?” I said.
“Aye, a raft. We’ll sail away on the river and leave all this behind.”
I laughed. I thought of the dark deep river, the powerful currents, the danger.
“You’re mad,” I said.
His eyes were wide and excited.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “I swiped some doors from one of the old warehouses. I nailed them to planks.” He giggled. “I’ve even varnished the bloody thing.”
“You’re mad,” I said again. “It’ll sink. We’ll drown.”
“Drown! Where’s your spirit of adventure?”
I sighed. I could already feel the river running underneath me, pulling me away.
“Imagine it,” he whispered. “Just me and you and the raft and the river. Freedom, Erin. Freedom.”
I imagined it: the moon shining down on us, the city’s lights shining on the banks, the water running through my fingers.
“Wow,” I whispered. “Wow!”
“Aye,” he said. “Just imagine, eh?”
Then Maureen shouted from downstairs.
“January! January Carr! I hope that’s not you I can hear in Erin’s room.”
He stood up quietly.
“Just you and me, Erin, sailing away to freedom. Just imagine.”
He winked and tiptoed out.
For weeks afterward, I felt the river flowing beneath me. I imagined the rocking raft. I dreamed of the journey. I knew I’d go with him.
THE FRIDAY WE LEFT, we had circle time again. Maureen had this green silky dress on with white shoes and she held a hand against her face and looked fondly at us all. Fat Kev and Skinny Stu were strolling at our backs. Jan kept grinning when I caught his eye.
Maureen gave us the usual rubbish: how this was a safe place, how we all cared for each other, how we could say anything we wanted and it would go no further.
“We want you to be frightened of nothing,” she said. “We want to heal your scars and wash your cares away.”
She made us do some visualizing stuff. We had to imagine we were in a warm dark place, floating in warm dark water. Our minds and bodies were still. There was no future, no past, no trouble. The water that I imagined was icy cold and running fast. Moonlight shining down, the raft spinning and rolling. Freedom. Freedom. I opened my eyes and grinned at Jan and saw the river and the moonlight in his eyes as well. Then Maureen told us to bring our minds into the room again. Straightaway she started going on about trouble, about damage, about unhappiness. I looked around at all the faces. I looked at Maxie Ross chewing his fingers and hoping desperately she wouldn’t start on him. I looked at Fingers Wyatt, at her beautiful green eyes, at the scalds and burn marks on her throat. I looked at Wilson Cairns, so fat that his hips spilled down over his chair, who sat motionless, staring blankly at the wall. Wilson. He was one of the few who never tried to run away. He was so fat he could hardly walk, never mind run. He came here carrying a tiny suitcase, a bag of clay and some modeling tools. It was said that he’d almost died at the hands of his parents. Whitegates was a place of safety for him, a place where he could dream, work with his clay and imagine his own astounding world. Maureen had long since given up trying to get him to talk during circle time. He wore thick bottle-bottom glasses that made his eyes look huge. He hardly spoke at all, even to us. But it wasn’t shyness or fear. Behind his glasses, beneath his fat, Wilson roamed the limits of his imagination, and he worked magic with his pudgy fingers. When he spoke at all, it was in an effort to make us understand his strange adventures, to make us see his magi
c. I looked at timid Mouse and at January lounging with his legs splayed, chewing gum, sighing like he was just bored with everything. I looked at everyone and thought of the great times we had together: whispering in somebody’s room at midnight, eating pilfered sweets and smoking pilfered cigarettes and swigging pilfered sherry; running riot down by the river in the old warehouses; sitting at dusk in the concrete garden together, whispering our real secrets, speaking our real dreams. We were so different when we were gathered in here like this. It was like Maureen knew nothing about us. Nothing.
“You look anxious today, Sean,” she said.
Sean was the real name of Mouse. He jumped like a scared cat. He blushed, and tears came to his eyes.
“What’s troubling you? Would you like to share it with us?”
“N-nothing,” he said. “N-n-nothing’s wrong.”
She leaned forward and smiled.
“Sean. We know all about your troubles. Come on, tell Maureen and your friends. Is it your dad again?”
Poor Mouse. Such an innocent. I’d told him lots of times: Don’t tell her the truth. Make something up. Anything. Tell them a pack of lies, Mouse. But he fell for it every time, and there he was again, trembling and sobbing and showing the tattooed words on his arm again while Maureen cooed and pulled the tale out of him and Fat Kev stood behind him scratching his big belly.
“Leave him alone,” I said.
“Pardon?” said Maureen.
“She said leave him alone,” said Skinny Stu from behind me.
Maureen tilted her head and gently clicked her tongue. She composed a smile for me.
“You’re angry today, aren’t you, Erin?” she said.
“No, I’m not. Just leave him alone.”
I looked through the wide window at the buildings outside. The sun was pouring down. I could just see the river sparkling beyond the redbrick houses and the blocks of apartments. I felt the varnished raft beneath my fingers. I tasted sour river water on my tongue. Maureen was watching me.
