Will I film the car park? Astrid asked.
No. Film them, Amber said looking at the people standing with their arms folded across the road.
When Astrid started filming them one of the boys started coming across the road, probably to get her to stop, and Amber stood right behind Astrid with her hands on her shoulders, but the man called him back and the boys and the man went inside the chip shop and shut the door.
Died 1681. Astrid touches the hot heart with its word and numbers etched into it.
We lost that footage when the camera broke, she had said to Amber one evening in a whisper so nobody would hear and remember about the camera.
What footage? Amber said.
The footage of the local high spirits, Astrid whispered.
Amber shrugged.
Did you want to watch it again? she’d said. I didn’t. Ugly little bastards.
Didn’t it prove something? Astrid said.
What would it prove? Amber said.
It proved we were there, Astrid said.
But we know we were there, Amber said.
It proved we saw them, Astrid said.
But they know that we saw them, Amber said. And we know that we saw them.
It proved the thing we actually saw, Astrid said.
Who to? Amber said, and knocked her hand on Astrid’s head. Knock knock, her hand went.
Who’s there? Amber said.
Amber is really good at questions and their answers. That day in Norwich, after Astrid had filmed the closed-circuit camera in the station for the full sixty seconds on her camera’s second-counter, she had looked up from the eyepiece and seen, behind Amber, that a man in a short-sleeved shirt and tie had come out of a door further down the platform and was watching them.
He watched them when they went to film the next camera across the station by WH Smith. Halfway through Astrid filming the third one, in the entrance hall, he was standing there next to them.
I’m going to have to ask you to stop that, he said to Amber.
Stop what? Amber said.
Stop filming, the man said.
Why? Amber said.
It’s not permitted, he said, for members of the public to record details of our security system.
Why not? Amber said.
For reasons of public safety and security, the man said.
Why are you asking me? Amber said.
I’m asking you to stop filming, the man said.
Not what, why, Amber said. Why are you asking me? I’m not filming anything.
He folded and unfolded his arms. He put his hands on his hips id est he was getting really irate.
If you wouldn’t mind asking your little girl to stop filming, he said.
He kept glancing up at the camera above them like he knew he was being recorded.
She’s not a little girl, Amber said. And she’s not mine.
It’s for my local researches and archive, Astrid said.
The man looked at Astrid in total surprise, like he couldn’t believe anyone who was twelve could speak never mind would have a reason for saying anything out loud.
It’s for a school project on security systems in train stations, she said.
Amber smiled at the man.
I’m afraid, I imagine, you’ll need to get written permission from the proprietors of each station for something like that, the man said to Amber, ignoring Astrid.
You’re afraid or you imagine? Amber said.
What? the man said.
He looked bewildered.
Afraid or imagine? Amber said.
The man glanced again at the camera and wiped the back of his neck with his hand.
And are you congenitally unable to talk to her, so you have to refer everything to me, like I’m your secretary or a special sign-language interpreter for her, like she’s deaf or dumb? Amber said. She can speak. She can hear.
Eh? the man said. Look, he said.
We are looking, Amber said.
Listen, the man said.
Make up your mind, Amber said.
You can’t film here, the man said. That’s final.
He folded his arms at Amber and kept them folded. Amber looked right back at the man. She took a step forward. The man took two steps back. Amber started to laugh.
Then she linked her arm into Astrid’s arm and they went out of the entrance hall into the town bit of Norwich.
Did you see, Astrid said as they walked into the sunlight at the front of the station, how that man was really sweating under his arms?
Yeah, well. Not surprising. Pretty hot today, Amber said unlinking, and strode off ahead towards the bridge.
Astrid walks home from the village again in the sweltering heat. She swings her arms out from her sides as she walks. That’s how Amber walks, with her arms kind of swinging out, as if she knows exactly where she’s going and though it’s quite far and you might not know where you’re heading to, it’ll be worth it, it’s going to be really really amazing when you get there.
It is a really long day, then Amber gets back from wherever it was she went.
By the way, she says when Astrid is clearing the table that night after supper. While I was away I sorted something out for you.
Like what? Astrid says.
You’ll see, Amber says.
Astrid is in bed in the horrible room on the hottest night so far. Tonight on the news it said this was the hottest day ever, since heat records began. Everything in the room smells fusty, hot. It is just before she goes to sleep.
She sees in her head Amber sitting by herself on the train to Liverpool St with the countryside going so fast past her then the train pulling into the station and Amber getting off the train and going through the little turnstile and across the concourse and down the steps and the escalator and getting on the tube and sitting on it then getting off the tube again and walking the rest of the way from the station up past the deli and the shops and across the park and up the road then all the way up Davis Rd to the junction and across it to outside Lorna Rose’s mother’s house. But what if Lorna Rose wasn’t in? What if she was at her father’s? Amber knocks on the door but there is no answer. So. So she goes to Zelda Howe’s house and rings the bell and someone comes to the door and it is actually Zelda Howe and Amber slaps her hard across the face.
Surprise, Amber says.
Then maybe Amber goes to Rebecca Callow’s house and knocks on the door and a woman answers, probably their au pair, and Amber says she is Rebecca’s teacher from school come about something so the au pair lets her in and shows her through the house and into the big back garden where Rebecca is sitting in the white swing chair they have in their garden and another girl is in the garden too doing a headstand on the lawn and doesn’t see Amber coming in and the first thing Amber does is get her by the legs like she is helping hold her up and the girl says who are you? And Amber says to her are you Lorna? And the girl says yes and Amber says then believe me I am your worst nightmare welcome to hell and swings her legs so she falls over. Then she goes to Rebecca, who is watching with her mouth open, and she gets hold of either side of the swing chair and pushes it hard backwards so that Rebecca falls out of it on to the lawn. Then while Rebecca goes running inside she gets Lorna’s mobile out of Lorna’s hand–she is sitting on the grass looking dazed trying to phone someone–and she says now watch this very carefully and she puts it on the path and she stamps on it hard so it breaks into pieces. Next time, she says to Lorna Rose, it’ll be your hand I do that to. And then she goes through the house and Rebecca Callow is in the kitchen crying on the phone to someone in a real state of fear and the au pair is in the hall on another phone and Amber pulls Rebecca’s long hair once really hard and says how do you like it, being treated like that? and the au pair is still in the hall shouting in her Croatian or whatever accent and Amber walks round her giving her a really wide berth and lets herself out the front door and lets it slam shut behind her.
Then Amber goes to a research place wh
ere you can find out where people are for other people who need to know. She says to the lady behind the counter, I need to trace the whereabouts of, and then she writes down his name on the form.
The lady behind the counter nods. It won’t take long, she says, because this is a quite unusual name. Can I ask if you are a next-of-kin?
No, Amber says, but I am acting on behalf of a next-of-kin person who needs to know where he is so she can legitimately contact him.
Then Amber slips the lady two hundred pounds in neatly folded cash over the counter like in a film or drama.
It’s a family matter, Amber says.
The lady looks all round her to see that nobody has seen this happen.
Certainly madam. I won’t be long, the lady says.
She disappears through the back where the computers are which have all the details on them of everybody, like where they are in the world and what it is they’re doing there.
Astrid dreams of a horse in a field. The field is full of dead grass, all yellowed, and the ribs are showing on the horse. Behind the horse an oilwell or a heap of horses or cars is burning. The sky is full of black smoke. A bird which almost doesn’t exist any more flies past her. She sees the shining black of its eye as it flashes past. It is one of the last sixty of its species in the world. All over the field at Astrid’s feet people are lying on the yellowed grass. They have bandaged arms and heads; there are drips attached to some of them. A small child holds out a hand to her and says something she can’t understand. Astrid looks down at her own hand. There is no camera in it.
She is nearly asleep in the stifling hottest-ever heat when she hears a door across the hall open and close, then hears her own door open and someone come into the room and the door close again.
She pretends to be asleep. There is someone there in the dark, someone not moving so you can’t be sure, but some different filled kind of silence definitely there in the room.
Astrid knows the scent, clean, like clean leather and a little like oranges, clean skin, talcum powder, maybe wood, pencil shavings, a pencil that’s just been sharpened is what she smells like.
She stands over the bed for a long time before she moves. The bed shifts as she gets into it. Astrid keeps her eyes shut. She pulls in closer, slides in close to Astrid’s back. She blows warm breath into Astrid’s hair, right into her head. She wraps her arms one around Astrid’s middle and the other over her shoulder round her front, and breathes the same warm breath into the back of Astrid’s neck.
Astrid feels her own bones underneath the warm breath, thin and clean there like kindling for a real fire. She thinks her heart might combust right out of her chest id est the happiness
the middle of dinner with everybody there listening she says: if you’re going to give anybody a hard time, give it to me.
Then she winks at him, right at him, right in front of his mother, right in front of Michael, who haven’t a clue. A hard time! Give it to me! Then winks right at him. Magnus feels the reddening rise of his prick thickening against his jeans, his heart a hot hole into his chest, his head burning, his face, a burning feeling all up the back of his neck.
Magnus, his mother says a moment later. You’ve really caught the sun today.
Uh huh, Magnus says. He can hear himself mumble. He sounds like a stupid child. Too much in the sun, he says.
Ha! Michael says as if Magnus has said something very clever. His mother says he’ll go a nice shade of brown tomorrow. Astrid doesn’t say anything, is being quiet so as not to attract attention to herself. Magnus knows the tactic, she learned it from him. Look at them all. They know nothing. A minute ago they were arguing about something pointless, Astrid losing a camera that cost a lot of money. But Amber covered for her. It is what Amber is like.
Amber = unbelievable.
He can’t look over at Amber or he will go an even worse colour of red.
He looks at his mother instead, who is telling Amber about when she was a girl again. His mother has been twittering all evening like one of those little birds that people who live in Mediterranean countries keep in cages outside their windows, the songbirds that start singing when the sun hits their cages in the afternoon or the early evening. We sang I Love To Go A-Wandering, we sang Had a little fight with my mother-in-law, Pushed her into the Arkansaw, Little old lady, she could swim, Climbed right out to push me in. We were a generation of girls strung between these types of expression. One minute it was Calypso Christmas carols, the next it was nymphs, shepherds, Flora’s holiday, I actually used to imagine someone called Flora packing her case for going on holiday when we sang This is Flora’s ho-li-day.
Ha! Michael says again like everything’s a great in-joke. Amber is leaning on her elbow at the table. She yawns without covering her mouth. His mother = small bird blinded by sunlight into forgetting it’s still in a cage.
It makes Magnus feel something, to think this. The feeling is equivalent to a kind of sorry. He feels it too, though he doesn’t know why, for Michael sitting forward in his seat, peeling back the petals of that small salad flower so carefully. He feels it for Astrid sitting next to him, lost. But she isn’t lost at all–she’s right here. There’s nothing wrong with her. But something feels lost. He can’t explain it.
He puts a piece of bread in his mouth. He wishes he could put a stone or something in his mouth, something that wouldn’t just dissolve, that wouldn’t alter because of humans having digestive juices that rot everything, something he could concentrate on without it changing. But stone = Lapidary Club = the sorriness dwarfs him, towers up out of him, as big as what? as a lighthouse on a rock with a glare of light coming out of it hitting each of the people at the table. Magnus has to look away because of what it lights up.
His mother = broken. There is something broken about the way she says what she says, the way she leans forward so brightly at the table saying it’s such a lovely night, it’s been such a lovely day, it’s such a lovely supper. Michael = what? His glasses are on squint. His body is at an awkward angle. He looks dated. He looks like an Airfix model put together by a boy not concentrating properly, so a wing got stuck on a little crookedly, a wheel got superglued out of joint with the others; dull blobs of too much glue on it in all the wrong places.
Magnus glances at Astrid.
She looks back at him, right in the eyes.
What? she says.
Astrid isn’t totally broken yet. But if a window could throw a brick at itself to test itself that’s what she’ll do, she’ll break herself, Magnus thinks, then she’ll test how sharp she is by using her own broken pieces on herself. Everybody at this table is in broken pieces which won’t go together, pieces which are nothing to do with each other, like they all come from different jigsaws, all muddled together into the one box by some assistant who couldn’t care less in a charity shop or wherever the place is that old jigsaws go to die. Except jigsaws don’t die.
Magnus’s stomach starts to really hurt.
What? Astrid is still saying, making a face at him. What? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what?
Astrid, Eve says.
What? Astrid says.
Amber laughs. Eve laughs too. Stop it, she says.
Stop what? Astrid says.
Everybody laughs except Astrid.
I didn’t actually do anything, if anyone actually cares, Astrid says. It’s him who was looking at me funny.
In a funny way, Astrid, Eve says.
What? Astrid says.
Looking at me in a funny way, Eve says.
I am not, Astrid says. It was him looking at me.
No, not at me, I mean the way you said it, Eve says. You said: looking at me funny. You should have said: looking at me in a funny way. Ask Michael.
Amber puts the flat of her hand on top of Astrid’s head, takes it off again. Astrid sinks back in her seat, rolls her eyes, sighs. It is Amber who makes things okay. If Amber is a piece of broken-up jigsaw too, Magnus thinks, then she is
several pieces of blue sky still joined up. Maybe she is a whole surviving connected sky.
Idiom, Michael says suddenly like a mad person, looking up from the flower on the end of his finger. He shrugs. Attic, he says. He shrugs again. Amber smiles a lopsided smile at Magnus over the table so that he can’t not think about her broken-open mouth moving there above him next to his own eyes, then his own mouth, open too, totally amazed at what the rest of himself is doing below, pressed hot right into her.
You’re very quiet, Saint. What are you thinking about? Amber says across the table. (In front of everybody.)
Nothing, Magnus says.
What exactly were you thinking about it? Amber says.
About what? Magnus says.
About nothing, Amber says.
Everybody laughs.
No, Magnus says. I was thinking, um, lighthouse. If you wanted, for instance. I was trying to work out, to measure the total inside area in cubic metres it would be really difficult because of the changing size of it as you went further, uh, further up inside.