Another World

  ‘It was off the record. I promised I’d destroy the tape.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I just want to know whether I’m dealing with a senile delusion or –?’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘If it is a delusion, it’s still his reality.’

  ‘Yes, but it doesn’t have to be mine. For God’s sake, Helen, I spent part of last night crawling on my hands and knees across bloody No Man’s Land.’

  Load of pretentious crap, he thinks a second later. He’d been nowhere of the sort.

  Helen says, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘All right,’ he says, standing up. ‘I will.’

  ‘Have you time for a coffee?’

  ‘No, I’d better be getting back.’

  She nods. As he walks back to his car, he calls over his shoulder, ‘I don’t believe you destroyed the tape.’

  On the drive back he’s chasing possibilities round and round his mind. Everything from a persistent delusion sparked off by survivor’s guilt to actual murder. What better place for that than on the Somme? Though he doesn’t believe it for a second, he knows Geordie too well.

  Fran’s just setting off for the shops when he gets back, and hands Jasper over to him with relief.

  ‘You been a bad lad?’ Nick asks, nuzzling his neck. Jasper smiles shyly and hides his face.

  ‘No, he’s all right,’ says Fran. ‘It’s Gareth, I don’t know what’s got into him.’

  The shoe box lies in the back of the cupboard, old sweaters piled on top of it, out of sight, buried.

  But Gareth knows it’s there. It’s a bit like Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Ark’s in the hold of the ship and everybody’s laughing and talking, but then it starts humming and burns a hole in the crate. Gareth wouldn’t mind if the shoes burnt a hole in the box; be even better if the box burnt a hole in the shoes.

  At the back of the cupboard, there’s a carrier bag full of old toys, soldiers, Action Men, Robocops, Terminators. He doesn’t play with them any more – though there is one he still likes. A clockwork sniper: you wind him up and he crawls across the floor. If you lie with your cheek pressed against the carpet he looks like a real soldier, because you can’t see how small he is.

  Gareth rolls on to his back and looks at the ceiling. Eleven days to the start of term. For weeks he’s been telling himself it won’t happen. In the middle of August it seems possible the school holidays will last for ever. But then suddenly it’s nearly September and the days disappear like water down a plug hole. He sees himself, the same size as the sniper, whirling round in the current, shouting, drowning, nobody looking, nobody listening.

  Because it’s intolerable to be on his own, he goes down to the kitchen and mooches about there. Nick’s still not back, his grandad’s ill or something. For the millionth time, Mum says, ‘Why don’t you go out and play?’ And for the millionth time he opens his mouth to say, ‘We don’t “play”.’ Only there is no ‘we’. He closes his mouth, and revolves round the kitchen, turning round and round along the wall, dislodging spoons and skewers and fish slices as he whirls. He knows he’s doing it, he knows it’s terrible, he can’t stop. He revolves up the stairs and through the hall till he gets to the front door, where he stops, breathless and dizzy. Mum’s followed him, but she just stands there looking angry and frightened, so he has to go out just to spite her.

  He decides to go to the school, and makes himself run all the way there. It’s raining, it’s been raining all night, part of the running track outside the school’s flooded. The drive must be a mile long, it’s much longer than it looked from the car, and eleven days from now he’s going to have to walk up it. With two tanks on his feet.

  Gripping the railings, he feels trickles of wet run down his wrists and under his sleeves. When he takes his hands away his palms are crossed by broad pink bands with white ridges on either side. He splits a flake of rust with his thumbnail. ‘You’re getting it out of proportion,’ Mum says. ‘You’ll enjoy it once you’re there.’

  He knows more about things than Mum does, some things anyway. About this estate for a start, about the kids who nick off from school and shove petrol-soaked rags through the letter-boxes of empty houses and drop matches on them. And then they call the fire brigade and stone them, and when the police come out to protect the firemen they stone the police too. Mum doesn’t like him walking through the estate, because she knows about the gangs, but when she talks about the school it’s, ‘Oh, you’ll soon make friends.’ Where does she think the kids at school come from? They’re not being bussed in from Mars.

  He’ll go home that way, across the estate. If he has to come to this school, he might as well start getting used to it.

  The streets are deserted. Too early for the kids: they come out later, streaming across the waste land, past the burnt-out cars, past the charred houses, to the recce or the chippie or the wall outside the pub. There’s glass on the road, shiny like a river. He crunches through it, looking at his feet. And that’s why he doesn’t see the kid till he’s almost on top of him. He’s playing on a sort of trolley thing, going ‘broom broom’ like Jasper does. Dead cool now, zero cool, Gareth drawls out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Hasta la vista, baby,’ and kicks him.

  Then he looks up. A girl’s standing on the base of the next lamp-post, frozen in the act of swinging round it. She’s got a white top on that shows her tits, though she’s only about twelve, and she’s looking at him with a sort of slow anger. She’s in no hurry about this, she’s enjoying it. It’s the sort of feeling Gareth knows well, like when you want to shit and you won’t let yourself. Behind her are three more girls, but they’re waiting for her to do something first, because this kid’s her brother.

  Gareth knows the worst thing he can do now is to look frightened. He daren’t turn and run. She lets him get level before pushing her clenched fist into his chest. ‘So what’s he done to you?’

  It sounds entirely reasonable, but it isn’t. He can see the excitement on her face and on the faces of the other girls crowding in behind her. They watch him go past, but it’s just like cats letting a mouse escape, as soon as he’s gone a few yards they start following him. He walks faster. They walk faster. He runs, they run. Two at the front, the big fat slag and the little one who’s skinnier though still bigger than him. He darts down an alley between the houses and realizes he’s trapped himself, because it’s harder to run here, the cobbles are slippery, he skids and nearly falls and then they’ve got him. ‘What do you want?’ he says when he feels the first girl’s hand on his anorak. He hasn’t got any money, if he had he’d throw it at them and run. ‘Show us what you’ve got,’ the fat lass says. ‘I haven’t got any,’ he says. He only realizes what they mean when they shriek with laughter. He tries to run, but they’re on to him, dragging at his shorts, and he’s fighting them. Clutching, clawing, trying to keep himself covered up. The skinny one punches him in the guts and when he bends the fat one knees him in the face, and he lets go of the shorts. He can’t look, his eyes are streaming, he keeps them tight shut, but he knows from the feel of the air on his skin that they can see everything.

  ‘What do y’ call that?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, I’ve seen bigger on a budgie.’

  ‘You want to watch a bird doesn’t see that.’

  ‘Ooh, look, at him, Jackie-no-balls.’

  He feels the shorts pulled further down, and doesn’t resist because nothing worse can happen now.

  ‘Skid marks!’

  It’s true. He sees it himself, the brown streak in his pants, as he pulls the shorts up.

  ‘Skid marks! Skid marks!’ they shout after him, as he runs crying down the alley and out into the street.

  The strange thing is that though they soon stop following him, he can still hear them shouting, even when he’s running up the drive and into the house.

  They’ll go to the same school, they’re the same age as
him, a year older perhaps. Even if they don’t know where he lives they can easily find out. He wonders why he was ever bothered about wearing the wrong shoes because this is fifty, a hundred times worse, and all the time inside his head there’s a voice shouting, ‘Skid marks! Skid marks!’

  THIRTEEN

  Miranda lies on the lawn at the back of the house, sunbathing and listening to her Walkman. She sees herself, long and pale, with big sunglasses that look like insects’ eyes.

  A cloud moves over the sun. The shadow starts at her feet and moves upwards, chilling her body inch by inch, until at last the orange glow behind her closed lids dies to a dull purple. She opens her eyes and watches the shadow creep over the garden, encroach on the terrace until it reaches the house and every rose is quenched.

  The night Dad left, the house was full of bangs and shouts and screams and slammed doors. Then silence. Miranda stood covering her face with her hands in a corner, then, when she couldn’t bear it any longer, ran across the landing to Mum and Dad’s room. Dad had a suitcase open on the bed and his back was turned. She crept round the door, not knowing whether she was wanted or not. As soon as he saw her, he picked her up and hugged her tight enough to hurt. And then she looked over his shoulder and saw his suits and shirts and ties in the case, and a row of socks rolled up in pairs, all along one side, like a litter of dead puppies.

  Dad said to her once, ‘You know, I wouldn’t blame you if you were angry.’

  But she’s not angry. She’s never angry.

  Dad calls, ‘Miranda?’

  They must be nearly ready to leave. Reluctantly, she gets up and goes back into the house to find the usual chaos of preparations well advanced.

  ‘Miranda?’ Fran says. ‘Could you go into the living room and get Jasper’s bye-bye? I think it’s in there.’

  His bye-bye’s a yellow blanket with a satin binding that he stuffs into his mouth and strokes whenever he’s tired. Most of the time he just ignores it, but if it’s missing when he wants to have a nap all hell’s let loose. She’s sick of fetching and carrying after Jasper, but she doesn’t say anything. Fran’s got Jasper and Gareth to cope with, and half the time Dad’s not here. It’s no wonder she grabs every bit of help she can get.

  Miranda goes into the living room. It’s bright sun outside and the blinds are half closed, making a pattern of yellow and black wasp stripes on the floor, but she sees the bye-bye straight away, draped over the back of a chair. She’s just stretched out her hand to pick it up when she realizes she’s not alone.

  There’s a girl at the french windows, shielding her eyes to peer through the slats of the blinds into the room. If it had been a man Miranda would probably have screamed, but because it’s a girl she’s not frightened. Though there is something horrible about this girl, the way she moves up and down along the window, scanning the room, her movements quick and eager, like a stoat outside a rabbit’s cage.

  Miranda takes in very little about her appearance. Partly the blind obscures her, partly Miranda’s almost too shocked to register anything. She takes one step towards the window, intending to challenge her, then, realizing it’s locked, tears out of the room and races down the side of the house on to the terrace. Quick as she is, the girl’s gone before she gets there. She must have gone through the side entrance out into the road, though by the time Miranda opens the gate she’s already turned the corner, and there’s nobody in sight.

  Miranda returns to the terrace and, on some obscure impulse, presses her own face against the window, peering into the room with shielded eyes, trying to see what the girl saw.

  The door opens and Jasper comes trotting in – he’s probably decided to get his bye-bye himself. He runs towards it and then, exactly as she’d done herself, seems to realize he’s not alone. He raises his eyes to the figure on the other side of the glass, gazing in at him, and screams and screams and screams.

  Miranda steps back, feeling as guilty as if she’d frightened him deliberately, then walks round into the house. Fran’s got there first, scooping Jasper up into her arms, where he sobs and clutches his bye-bye.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Fran asks.

  ‘There was a girl at the window.’

  Gareth’s on to it at once. ‘What sort of girl?’

  Miranda shrugs, furious with herself for mentioning it, because now Gareth’ll say she’s afraid of ghosts, like he did the night they found the painting. ‘Just a girl. I chased her, she ran away.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Twelve. Thirteen.’

  ‘Fat?’

  ‘I don’t know, Gareth. I only got a glimpse.’

  She was wearing a long skirt, and her hair was long, but that doesn’t mean she was a ghost. A lot of girls wear long skirts, some of the time; nearly all the girls in Miranda’s class have long hair, including Miranda. She’s not going to say any more, because Gareth’ll only twist it. Though he doesn’t look capable of twisting anything at the moment. He’s so white you’d think he was car sick and they haven’t even started yet.

  Two hours later, after Sunday lunch in a pub, they’re trudging across a car-park with the sun on their backs.

  ‘Are we going home now?’ Gareth asks.

  ‘No,’ Fran says. ‘We’re going to the seaside.’

  Fran’s got prickly heat on the backs of her thighs, Nick’s shirt has sweat moons in the armpits. It takes them ten minutes to get Jasper into his seat. Gareth walks up and down the car-park, kicking an ice-cream carton. They’re always so patient – it never seems to occur to them to give the little bugger a good slap. When he’s finally strapped in, wailing, miserable, red in the face, pulling at his ears, Gareth slides in beside him. The plastic glues itself to the backs of his thighs. He winds the window further down and looks out, wincing at the glitter of sunlight on bumpers and windscreens.

  They have to queue to get out on to the main road. Jasper cries. Miranda sits hunched up, ignoring Jasper, who flails his fists and hits her repeatedly on her bare arm. Whenever this happens, she gives a sickly smile. She always pretends to like Jasper – another reason why Gareth can’t stand her. He stares at her tits – not as big as the fat slag’s, but you can still see them. Once the car gets going on the main road and there’s air blowing through, Gareth shuts his eyes and forgets about her and Jasper.

  That girl Miranda saw must have been the BFS, as he’s started to call her – Big Fat Slag. She’s found out where he lives.

  He opens his eyes and sees tall fields of wheat on either side of the car. Further away there’s a field of stubble, with those big shredded-wheat shapes scattered all over it. Jasper’s gone to sleep. He pongs. When they get to wherever they’re going Mum’ll have to change him. Miranda’s been sunbathing in the garden for the past week, though her skin’s the wrong sort of skin, anybody can see that. It just turns pink and flakes. She’s scraping a tiny flake of skin off her shoulder now.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Mum says automatically, catching sight of her in the mirror. ‘I’ll put some cream on it when we get there.’

  Miranda flushes and doesn’t say anything. Gareth looks at her sideways, thinking she’s only two years older than he is and it’s stupid of her to pretend to be grown up, though she does it all the time, she thinks she can get away with it. He used to be able to frighten her, but now he can’t. She just smiles in a sort of tired way, like Nick, or gives him a long considering stare. He’s never liked her, but not being able to get at her any more makes him feel lonely.

  The car goes over a bump. Jasper wakes suddenly and starts to cry. Mum twists round in her seat with a bottle of water in her hand and tries to reach his mouth, but the seat belt digs into the bulge, she can’t get anywhere near him. ‘You give it to him, Gareth.’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t hurt you,’ Nick snaps.

  Gareth looks up and sees Nick watching him in the mirror. He takes the bottle. Jasper’s lips shoot out towards it, he’s so eager, like a sea anemone, wet and
pink and disgusting.

  ‘Tilt the bottle more,’ Mum says. ‘You’ll give him wind.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ says Miranda, angling the bottle properly so the area behind the teat fills with water. Jasper’s mouth slackens, his eyes flicker upwards like a doll’s. Gareth aims a kick at Miranda’s shins, misses, hits the back of Nick’s seat.

  ‘Do you mind? I’m trying to drive.’

  As if being the driver gives him a licence to be bad-tempered. He’s always more horrible in the car than anywhere else.

  They’re just turning into another car-park. Nick drives up and down the aisles looking for a space. Gareth sees Mum notice one, open her mouth to point it out and shut it again. Nick hates backseat drivers. Gareth hates everybody. He doesn’t see why you have to have families at all. It’d be much better if people just spawned like frogs.

  This is a place they often come to. Once you leave the car-park and walk across the road to the beach, there are miles and miles of pale sands, with the sea a narrow brilliant line far out, and grass waving on the tops of the sand dunes. Further along there are cliffs.

  Gareth fidgets while Mum changes Jasper on the back seat, and Nick fumes because he’s fed up with it all, and Miranda mooches about four or five car lengths away, not talking to anybody, and Gareth suddenly thinks, Suppose somebody sees me? It’s true nobody’s likely to see him, but suppose somebody did? Walking down to the beach with a little boy and a bucket and spade. They might think he was going to make sand castles. And Miranda. Somebody might think she’s his girlfriend. Gareth goes hot and cold with the horror of it, and starts walking along the path, ahead of the rest of the family, trying to look as if he isn’t with them.

  Mum and Nick sit down in a sheltered part of the sand dunes. Mum’ll go to sleep straight away, she always does these days. And Nick’ll pretend to read the paper, but really he’ll go to sleep too and Jasper’ll play with his bucket and spade. And batty Miranda’ll just wander about. He’s got to get away from them as fast as possible; he’s got to make it clear he’s not part of it.