by David Almond
“You have such a faraway look, Erin,” she said. “Tell us where you are.”
“Nowhere.”
She clicked her tongue.
“I do wish you’d cooperate,” she said.
“Do you?”
“We’re only trying to help you all.”
I shrugged. I smelled the sea on the icy breeze. I closed my eyes. Freedom. Freedom.
“You have to understand,” I heard her say. “Children like yourselves …”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Children like ourselves?”
I opened my eyes. She looked sadly at me. She sighed.
“You know what I mean, Erin. Children who have difficulties in their lives. Children without the benefits and advantages that others take for granted. Children who will have to struggle always to keep up. Children who through no fault of their own …”
She dabbed her lips with her handkerchief.
“It gives me no pleasure to say so,” she murmured. “But you are children who will never be the world’s favorites.”
I felt my body rocking on the raft. I stared at all the faces.
“Look at us,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with us. We can do anything we want to do. Anything.”
Maureen smiled. You could see what she was thinking: Damaged child, wild mind, thinks she can do anything but she’ll come to nothing. Nothing. Just like that useless mother of hers.
“We’re thinking of your happiness,” she said. I felt the river spray on my face.
“But I am happy,” I murmured.
“Pardon?”
“She says she’s happy,” said Skinny Stu.
Maureen pursed her lips. She glared. I saw it in her eyes: How can you be happy? How can you be?
Then she waved her hand bitterly in the air.
“Session over,” she said. “We’ll try again tomorrow when we’re all in a better frame of mind.”
We filed out of the room. As I left, Maureen took my arm.
“Erin,” she said.
“What?”
“Why do you oppose me so much? What’s wrong with you?”
I clicked my tongue.
“What’s wrong with you, you mean.”
She pursed her lips.
“You seem so hard sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know how to talk to you.”
“Hard!”
“You can cause a lot of pain.”
“Pain!”
She watched me. Tears shone in her eyes.
“Yes, pain. And you’re such a strong bright girl. I used to think that, of all the children here, you’d be the one …”
“The one that what?”
She shook her head. She lowered her eyes.
“The one that could help me, I suppose. The one that could help me to help the others …”
It was hopeless. Ever since I’d come to Whitegates there’d been something between us, something that filled us both with anger. I turned away from her.
“I always thought…,” she whispered.
“What?”
“That if I’d had a daughter …”
I waited.
“What?” I said.
“That if I’d had a daughter … she would be like you, Erin.”
I turned and glared at her.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I said. “If you’d had a daughter, you’d have looked after her better than my mum did! If you’d had a daughter, she wouldn’t have ended up in Whitegates! If you’d had a daughter, you wouldn’t have been useless and gone and died like my mum did! Say it. Go on, say it! You’d have been better than my mum!”
I ran out of the room. I found January in the poolroom.
“This afternoon,” I whispered.
He grinned like a devil.
“This afternoon.”
I WENT UPSTAIRS AND STARTED TO PACK. I pulled the little backpack from under my bed. I stuffed in some clothes and some food I’d saved for this: cans of Coke, bags of chips, a packet of cookies. I put in the knife and flashlight I’d bought last time we’d run off. I put in some soap and shampoo and a little towel. I counted my money, three pounds twenty-seven. I reached into the back of a drawer and took out my cardboard treasure box.
I loosened the ribbon that was fastened around it and I lifted off the lid. I took out the lock of Mum’s hair, her parrot earring, the creased photograph of us in the garden of our little house, the photograph from the hospital that showed me growing inside her, her lipstick, her nail polish, her final bottle of perfume. I laid these things on my pillow. I put a thin layer of her Sunset lipstick on. I touched the nail polish—Black Tulip—onto my little fingernail. I tipped up her bottle of Dark Velvet perfume onto my fingertip, then pressed my fingertip to my throat. I lay on my bed in the shadows. A gentle breeze flowed in from an open window. I closed my eyes.
“Mum,” I whispered. “Mum.”
Nothing.
I breathed deeply, drawing her scent into me.
“Mum!”
I thought of the little house where we’d lived together so happily. I thought of the way she used to laugh, the way we used to play. I remembered how fierce her eyes were when they faced the world and how they filled with tenderness when they turned to me. She’d known so much grief and trouble in her life, but she used to say it didn’t matter what had happened in the past and it didn’t matter what might happen in the future. Our time together in St. Gabriel’s would always be her Paradise.
“Mum,” I whispered. “Mum! Mum!”
I thought of all her stories. The story of how she met my father. She was just a few years older than I am now. He was some bum from a foreign trawler that had come upriver to shelter from a storm at sea. He enticed her with a seaman’s tales of adventure and charmed her with lies about love. They spent a night together in a cheap bed-and-breakfast place above the quay. She woke next morning all alone. She looked out of the window to see his boat dancing daintily back toward the sea. She said that as she stood there at the window she already felt the new creature—me—trembling and burning with life inside her.
“Mum,” I whispered. “Mum!”
I breathed deeply. I opened my eyes. I gazed at the photograph they took at the hospital of me growing inside her. There I was, a tiny thing, swimming, floating in her, waving my arms and kicking my legs. There was the cord that joined me to her. Her food was my food, her blood was my blood. I remembered her stories of how she prepared for me, how she bought my crib from the Salvation Army, how she stuck pictures of angels and fairies on the wall of the bedroom we were to share, how her excitement grew as I grew inside her, as her Paradise approached. She used to hold her belly gently. She already whispered my name: Erin, Erin. She already sang songs to me, and told me how wonderful it would be when I was born and we were together in the world.
“Mum,” I whispered. “Mum.”
I pictured her brilliant green eyes, her red hair that grew like fire around her pretty face. I saw her parrot earrings dangling. I saw her brightly colored lips, her glistening dark fingernails. I imagined her touch, her voice. I remembered the days in St. Gabriel’s, how we were as much like best friends as like mother and daughter. We were so happy. We needed no one else. But sometimes we did talk of what might happen if she met a good man. We did talk of the other children that might come along—my brothers, my sisters. Would you like that? she used to ask me, and I used to answer, Yes. Oh, yes. And in my dreams I saw them, those brothers and sisters, so tender and so lovely and so filled with joy.
“Mum. Mum.”
I remembered her in the hospital. I was ten, only ten. They gave her higher and higher doses of morphine to blot out the pain. She moved in and out of reality and dreams. I remembered how she leaned from the bed toward me and cradled my face in her hands. She whispered that she couldn’t help herself. She felt as if she was being carried away on water. She told me not to cry. She said she’d be with me always. Always. I held her hand and it grew colder, colder, colder.
&
nbsp; “Mum. Mum!”
And at last she came, and she whispered, “Erin. Erin.”
I felt her hand on my shoulder, her breath on my cheek. I heard the smile in her voice. I felt her arm around me. She cradled me like she did when I was small. I lay against her.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“I know that. And I love you, Erin. I’ll always love you. Always.”
“I’m going away on January’s raft.”
She giggled.
“I know.”
“And you’ll be with me?”
“I’ll be with you always, Erin.”
We lay there for a time. I was no longer in White-gates. We were together in our little garden outside our little house at the edge of St. Gabriel’s. The garden was filled with bright flowers and fattening gooseberries. Seagulls were screaming above the river that flowed below.
Mum pressed little mints into my hand. She gently sang into my ear:
Bobby Shaftoe’s gone to sea,
Silver buckles on his knee;
He’ll come back and marry me,
Bonny Bobby Shaftoe.
Then she touched my brow with her lips and we were back in Whitegates, in my little room. We lay there. I knew she’d leave me soon. I dreamed of the raft, the river, of floating away. Would I ever come back again?
We smiled when the bird came in. It perched on the frame of the open window for a second, nodding its head as it looked in at us. Then it flew into the room. It was a small dark bird with quick wings, a curious sparrow on its way back to its nest. It flickered over our heads. It circled the room several times.
“A bird!” I said. “Look! A bird!”
We laughed.
Then it went back to the window, perched, looked back for a second and launched itself into the air above the houses.
I sat up straight and followed it with my eyes.
We laughed again.
“Funny thing,” I said.
“The bird of life,” she said.
“Bird of life?”
“We come into the world out of the dark. We haven’t got a clue where we’ve come from. We’ve got no idea where we’re going. But while we’re here in the world, if we’re brave enough, we flap our wings and fly.”
I thought about this.
“You understand?” she said.
“I think so.”
She smiled, and just whispered my name time and again.
“Will it come back again?” I asked.
“Who knows? Maybe now it’s found this place it’ll come back time and again.”
We heard the noise of children in the house.
“Go on, Erin. Go on down. January’ll be waiting.”
“You’ll be with me?”
“I’ll be with you. Go on. Don’t stay here in the shadows with me. Flap your wings. Fly away.”
Then she was gone, and there was just the sound of a television on the floor below, and somebody sobbing upstairs. I gently put my treasures back into their box. I tied the ribbon. I put the box into the backpack, took a deep breath and went down to find January.
I BURST OUT LAUGHING WHEN I SAW HIM. He was wearing his running-away clothes: black jeans and a black fleece jacket, black sneakers with a red flash on them, a black knitted skullcap. He was in the poolroom, playing with Hairy Smart. His backpack was leaning against the baseboard. He winked and sank a last ball and told Hairy he’d have to stop. Everybody could tell what was going on. Hairy grinned and winked. Fingers slipped to my side.
“You will come back?” she whispered. “Won’t you?”
We gave each other a quick hug.
“Course we will,” I said. “They won’t let us get far before they find us and bring us back again.”
I grinned, but I wondered. How will they bring us back from the bottom of the river or the bottom of the sea?
Wilson Cairns sat facing the wall. He was at a little table, working with his clay again. It was his obsession. He did it every day. Maureen said it was helpful for him, it let him re-create some of the childhood he had lost. He had a big ball of the stuff and a basin of water. His hands and the tabletop were filthy. He had made a little group of muddy people. He held one of them up to his eyes and breathed over it. Then he walked it across the tabletop. I touched his shoulder and said we’d see him soon.
“It is possible,” he said.
He didn’t move except to keep the figure lumbering across the tabletop.
“Sorry?” I said.
He turned his head as he walked the muddy figure. He stared through the thick glasses. He didn’t blink.
“It is possible,” he whispered.
He took his hand away from the clay figure and it stood there.
He stared at it.
“Did you see it move?” he whispered.
I stared.
“No.”
He looked at me again, like he looked right through me to something astonishing behind me.
“You have to keep watching, closely, closely. Or you’ll miss it.”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll keep watching.”
I was about to turn away from him.
“I listened to you,” he said.
“Eh?”
“To you. You said we can do anything we want to.”
“Yes.”
“I know that. I know that as well. We can do anything.”
His eyes changed. They focused on me. It was so rare for him to focus clearly on any of us, so rare for him to speak like this to any of us. His fingers ran across the clay figure.
“Anything,” he said. “Even me. Me, here, facing the wall, playing with clay and water. I can do anything.”
I touched his shoulder again.
“Yes. I know that.”
“Even me. Even me, Wilson Cairns. Thick fat ugly Wilson Cairns.”
I smiled.
“You’re lovely, Wilson,” I said.
“You’ll come back,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll watch for you, Erin Law. I’ll keep thinking of you.”
He caught his breath.
“Did you see?” he hissed.
“What?”
He held the figure. He gazed down at it and breathed over it. Did I see it move? Did I see a clay arm reach out like it was alive? Did I see the figure lean forward as if to step away from Wilson? Or was it just the way the light fell on it, the way Wilson’s hand trembled? Was it just because I wanted to see?
“I’m not sure,” I said.
He peered through his thick distorting glasses.
“You will,” he said. “I’ll watch for you coming back. It’s easy to go away. The magic thing is to come back again.”
I touched his head. I bent down and smiled at him.
“I’ll see you soon, lovely Wilson Cairns.”
“Keep watching,” he whispered.
“I will. I’ll keep watching.”
“Good. Then come back and watch again.”
I moved away from him and went to January. Fat Kev came into the doorway.
“Hope you two’s not planning somethin’,” he said.
“As if we would,” I said.
“As if we would,” said Jan.
Kev swiped his fist across his nose and shook his head. He shrugged. It wouldn’t matter to him what any of us did, as long as he didn’t have to lumber after us, and as long as he got his pay and his big free dinners. I looked at him and giggled at the thought of the way his belly squashed against the table, the way he snuffled as he shoved the food in. He stared back with his piggy eyes.
“Little madam,” he said, and I thought of the way he was with the scared ones, the way he pushed his face so close to theirs, the way he said he knew ways to fix them if they didn’t learn any manners.
“Pig,” I whispered.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
He turned his face away and muttered some filth about me and went out again.
“P
ig,” I breathed. “Pig, pig, pig.”
I kissed Maxie Ross and then Jan and I headed out. Skinny Stu was leaning on the house wall, hiding a cigarette in his fist. He had his shirt open and his skinny rib cage glared in the late-afternoon sun. He shoved his greasy hair back.
“Oh, aye?” he said.
“Aye,” said January. “We’re off for a little picnic.”
“Be back for supper, Stu,” I said.
Stu flicked his ash. He pointed into the sky.
“Hey, you see that?”
“What?” said January.
Stu laughed his dry rattly laugh.
“That flying pig there, son.”
He took a drag.
“See you for supper, then,” he said.
I turned and looked back as we went through the iron gate. I wanted to see Maureen watching us. I wanted to see her weeping as we left. But there was only Wilson. He watched from the poolroom, leaning close to the panes, staring at us through his glasses, or at something far beyond us. The sun was falling toward the rooftops. We headed through the houses. We came to the street above the river where I’d lived with Mum. We passed by our house. The garden was all overgrown. The front door was covered in scratches from a dog or something. Music was screeching from inside. I turned my eyes away and we hurried on. On the other side of the river, the city roared. The bridges gleamed in the sunlight. The river glistened. We moved into the waste ground outside St. Gabriel’s where all the warehouses and terraced streets had been knocked down.
January clenched his fists and thumped the air. I kicked the ground and sent dust dancing around us.
“Freedom!” we shouted. “Freedom!”
We started running and skipping down toward the river. Then we heard Mouse Gullane.
“Erin! January! What you doing? Where you going?”
HE WAS SITTING ON AN OLD CURBSTONE, digging in the dirt with a battered spoon.
January cursed.
“Not him,” he said. “Come on. Take no notice.”
Mouse jumped to his feet.
“Erin! January!”
He came running toward us. His hands were filthy from his digging. His face was all smudged. Squeak was balancing on his shoulder.
“Look what I found, Erin,” said Mouse.
