With Your Crooked Heart Page 22

  The dark folds round them again.

  ‘What was the dream?’ Her voice comes so calmly out of the dark, like part of it. And then he can’t see her. It makes it easy to speak.

  ‘I was in Africa somewhere, reporting for TV because there was a famine. I was in this room with a nun, staring at her bed.’

  ‘I bet she was pleased.’

  ‘She didn’t even see me. The sheets were all over the place because she’d just woken up and jumped out of bed. Then there were five little baskets on the floor, with five babies in them. She was kneeling down on the floor, looking into one of the baskets. Suddenly she grabbed this baby and then we were rushing through big doors, like church doors. I knew the baby wasn’t breathing right, and a priest was running along behind us, a great big fat bloke speaking German, running along trying to help with the baby.’

  ‘What was all that about then?’

  She feels him shrug. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It was your dream. You could know if you wanted to.’

  ‘Yeah. But I wasn’t the right person to be dreaming it, was I?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve never done anything like that for anyone, have I? What would I have a dream like that for?’

  ‘You had too many talks from those mission priests when you were a kid.’

  ‘I was in the way,’ says Johnnie. ‘I got in their way. They couldn’t get past because I was stood there blocking the doorway. And this nun was small, like a bird, and she wouldn’t even let the priest push past me. They weren’t angry. They were just — too busy with important stuff for that. They didn’t even see me. Not really. It was like I was invisible. There wasn’t enough of me to make up something they could look at. I tell you how I felt. I felt threadbare.’

  ‘It was a dream.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But it seemed real.’

  ‘Was the baby OK?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’

  ‘You know, Johnnie, you’d make a good TV reporter.’

  He laughs, unwillingly. ‘It makes you not want to go to sleep, when you have dreams like that.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound so terrible to me.’

  ‘It’s not what happened. It’s what it made me feel.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like crap. Like I really am.’

  ‘You mustn’t say that.’

  ‘Don’t you ever feel that?’

  ‘I feel all sorts of things when I’m in the mood, but I don’t take it for the Gospel truth.’

  ‘You think I’m crap really, don’t you? Paul does. He can’t hide it. He wants to put barbed wire round my life to stop me screwing it up.’

  ‘He loves you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that,’ he says, his voice brushing it away.

  ‘He loves you more than anyone.’

  A sigh, a gasp of breath in her ear that hits her harder than a fist.

  ‘I know that,’ he says again, and this time it’s all there, the lostness of things that can’t be changed, the knowledge that what he’s made of himself is what he is.

  ‘All I’ve done is fuck people up,’ he says.

  ‘He’s your brother, Johnnie. He loves you. Where you are, that’s where he wants to be. That’s not so bad. All he wanted was to help you, when he knew you were in trouble.’

  ‘It was more than that. I can’t move without him knowing. I can’t even breathe. Everything I’ve done, he knows. Everything. It’s been the same all my life and I’ve never been able to stop knowing how much he wants me and using it to screw him up.’

  ‘Here, I’m going to put the light on. I’ll peel us one of those oranges. I don’t know what your mouth’s like, but I need something to get the taste out of mine. You turn over and hide your eyes if you don’t want the light in them.’

  ‘I don’t mind the light.’

  She gets up and rummages in her carrier bag. A spray of orange hits his hand as she digs into the fruit and starts to peel it.

  ‘Do you want more water? I’ve got another bottle in here.’

  She’s got oranges, biscuits, a block of chocolate, a bottle of whisky. She peels the orange, shucks out the baby inside its navel, divides the fruit and offers half to Johnnie. It’s sweet, cool, ripe. He eats his half eagerly, then asks if she’s got any more.

  ‘I’ll do you another. They’re wonderful oranges, have a whole one this time; it’ll do you good. And I bought some nuts and raisins.’

  The nuts are salted almonds, the raisins plump muscatels. She’s bought them separately, to mix. That’s like Lou. She never buys pre-packed rubbish. Or she didn’t use to, until she started drinking. He eats the whole orange, thirstily, then swigs from the bottle of water.

  ‘It dries you out, that schnapps,’ she observes.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nearly four.’

  ‘It’ll be morning soon.’

  ‘We don’t get in till seven in the evening. We might as well go up for breakfast, then come back to bed.’

  ‘I don’t like walking round the ship.’

  ‘You walked to that bar fast enough.’

  ‘It was stupid. It was taking a risk for nothing, like us going down the pier.’

  ‘There’s no one on this boat, Johnnie.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Even if someone did see us in Brighton, they’d never have been able to follow us here.’

  ‘What about the car?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The car. I went to Charlie Sullivan’s garage. They know me there.’

  ‘You told me that already.’ The words make her so tired she can hardly get them out of her mouth. Because he’s done it again. He’s set himself up, the way he always sets himself up, and then he lies there and looks at you, knowing himself, daring you to know him. You watch a fish rise to the surface. Johnnie’s finger tickles its velvety sides.

  ‘I could lift it out, just like that. It wants to be caught.’

  It’s when they come off the Tube that David first feels frightened. Anna stands there looking lost while people part round her as if she’s no more than a metal pole. It’s rush hour and the smell of all the people jammed together makes him feel sick. He doesn’t like the tiled white walls. Then Anna seems to wake up. She glances round, taking her bearings, and moves towards the yellow WAY OUT sign. He goes after her, but she is quickly swallowed up in the crowd, and he can’t see her any more. He tries to push through, but the wall of backs and legs won’t give way. Suddenly he’s panicking, knowing she’s moving away from him while he’s forced to shuffle at the same nothing speed as everyone else. She’ll be on the escalator already, thinking he’s right behind her. He’ll never see her again.

  ‘Anna!’ he shouts. ‘Anna! Wait for me!’

  And there she is, astonishingly, right beside him, as small and pale and cool as ever. She’s walked on the spot back to him, letting the bodies flow past her. She’s doesn’t mind the crowd any more than trout mind a current.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

  ‘It’s OK. It’s always like this at rush hour. I’d have waited for you by the exit.’

  But he knows already that there is more than one exit. He could see himself running from one to the next, sweating, out of place, desperate.

  ‘I’d have found you,’ she says. Then, even more surprisingly, he feels her hand take his. She looks so cool, but her hand is warm. ‘Let’s hold hands,’ she says, ‘then we can’t lose each other.’ They go up the escalator side by side, squeezed in on the right-hand side, the kitten’s basket held in front of Anna so it won’t get knocked. The kitten mewed a lot in the train, but now it’s silent. It’s been quiet for ages.

  He wants to look back to see how far they’ve come, but Anna stares quietly ahead. She doesn’t seem excited, even now they’re nearly there. He wonders what it would be like if it was his mum, waiting there, and he’d been the one who’d said, ‘I’l
l stay for a while,’ and known that was all it could be. Anna says her mother can’t help herself, because it’s an illness. There are clinics, Anna talked about them on the train. She knows about them. They work, but they cost a lot and her dad says it’s not worth it, not unless someone has the will-power. He says her mum would be all right for a couple of months, then it would all start again. But Anna doesn’t think it would. When Anna has the money, when she has her own life, she’ll get her mother to go in for treatment. But no one takes any notice of you until you’re grown up. They’ll have to wait.

  Anna’s had to go far ahead of him in her thoughts. He still can’t imagine leaving his parents, even though he’s done it.

  They come out into grey, warm daylight. There are papers blowing about, and it looks dirty. Maybe Anna lives in a poor part, he thinks. He looks up the street, at the red buses and black taxis. There’s a stall of postcards and he catches himself thinking of buying one for his mum and dad.

  ‘Is is far to where your mum lives?’

  ‘No, you go down here, then you turn right and go on a bit.’

  He wants to ask if she’s sure, because although she’s walking like she knows where she’s going, her face is empty. He feels a bit stupid holding her hand now they’re out in the daylight, but there’s no one here who knows him. No one for hundreds of miles who knows him, or any of the Ollerenshaws. The faces flip past, hundreds and hundreds of them. More people are talking into mobile phones than to each other. Suddenly there’s a flower stall. He stops, pulling on Anna’s hand.

  ‘I ought to get something for your mum. Which flowers does she like?’

  ‘You don’t need to get her a present.’

  ‘Well, it’s not a present, is it, seeing as it’s her money.’

  Anna cracks a smile. ‘She likes freesias. Those ones. Do you know, my mum told me most men can’t smell freesias, even though they’ve got such a strong scent.’

  He bends to the bucket of freesias and snuffs the white and cream waxy flowers. The scent is strong and deep, and he can smell it. They’ve put a bit of fern with the bunches, to make them look nice, and a curl of ribbon round the wrap. Funny to think the first time he ever buys flowers, they’re for someone he doesn’t know.

  ‘I’ll have these ones.’

  He pays with a ten-pound note. He’s only got two twenties left in the new wallet he bought on Leeds station. The rest of the money is spread out, in his backpack, in his jeans pockets, in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  The next shop they pass, he looks in the window. He scans the prices quickly and realizes there’s not one thing in the window he couldn’t buy if he wanted to. Not that it’s his money, he knows that. But it makes you feel different, when you know you could have anything you want. You’re just choosing not to.

  When they come to the house it’s narrow and creamy-white, a bit like the colour of the freesias. Anna’s mum lives in an end terrace with a high wall around the garden at the side. It’s right on the street, no garden in front, no garage, no car-port. Just a flight of stone steps leading up to the front door, with black railings on either side. He can’t even see a bell. But he knows already that he was wrong about this being a poor part, so far wrong that he’s glad he didn’t open his mouth.

  Anna lets go of his hand, and mounts the steps. She turns what looks like a screw beside the front door, and deep inside the house he hears a bell ring. The noise of the bell dies away but nothing happens. After half a minute, Anna rings again, but he knows from the set of her back that she doesn’t think anyone’s going to answer.

  ‘She’s maybe gone to the shops. Does she leave the key anywhere when she goes out?’

  ‘No.’

  Anna rings again, but before the sound’s finished she’s already turned away. She picks up the basket with the kitten, and comes back down the steps. ‘She’s not there.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’re we going to do?’

  ‘Can you not get in another way?’

  ‘No. She’s got locks on all the windows.’

  ‘What about the garden? Can we get over the wall?’

  She frowns. ‘There’s a gate at the back, from the alley, but it’s always locked. Mum never opens it. There’s stuff growing over it.’

  ‘We could try.’

  ‘It won’t be open.’ She sounds angry, agitated. As if she doesn’t want it to be open. As if now they’re so near, she wants to get away again. But they’ve nowhere to go. Hotels don’t take children on their own.

  ‘We might as well have a look,’ he says carefully. ‘I’m good at climbing.’

  Silendy, she leads him round the back, down the alley where the bins go. The door’s half-covered with creeper. Black dust comes off on his hands when he pushes it aside, and suddenly Anna says, ‘People sleep here sometimes, only they get moved on.’

  It doesn’t look like a door that’s ever opened, but there’s a handle, there under the creeper. The handle turns, and though the door’s stiff, he has a sudden, sure feeling that it’s only the stiffness of swollen wood. There is no lock. It’s going to open.

  ‘Give us a hand. Quick, before someone comes.’

  He knows it’ll open, like his dad knows sometimes when he’s watching a race. Dad’ll spot a horse ten lengths back from the leaders, coming up on the outside. ‘Keep your eye on Polygon Lad,’ he’ll tell you. He never says that unless he knows the horse is going to do it, and he can watch you watch it fly to the finish like a kite going straight up, as if all the jockey had to do was let it go. On TV you can’t see the sweat and you can’t hear the thunder, but he’s been with Dad to the races and he knows what it’s really like. The lather flies off the horses and hits you like spit. The horse that’s been in the lead all the way is struggling now and the jockey’s up on his heels, arse high, whip coming down in choppy swipes because he knows how he’s made the running and he’s cursing himself now because the horse is running his heart out but he might as well be standing still. He glances round and sees Polygon Lad still gaining and he knows he’s got as much as he can from the horse but maybe there’s an ounce more to be pounded out as they come round the last bend and go into the straight. And as he flails and flounders Polygon Lad floats past them. He wins as if that’s what God fixed from the moment the race began.

  Thirty-three

  They are in the garden. Light strikes back from the white walls and David blinks. It’s warm in here, and still, and secret. Anna’s smiling as she goes to crouch by a little pool. She scoops her hand through the water, and brings it up dripping.

  ‘There used to be fish in here, when I was little. And there’s a fountain that lights up at night.’

  ‘Can you turn it on?’

  ‘No. The switch is inside the house.’

  They turn to look at the house. It stares back blankly through its closed windows. The blinds are half-drawn, too. David goes to the French windows, and tries one of the catches.

  ‘Don’t do that! You’ll set off the alarm. Someone’ll come.’

  ‘Where do you think she is?’

  ‘I don’t know. She doesn’t usually go out.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s gone on holiday, do you?’

  Anna is at his side, peering into the house. They can see plates and glasses on the little table, and a heap of newspaper has collapsed off the other arm of the sofa. She’s not very tidy, thinks David. His mum wouldn’t go away leaving the house like that. There’s even a wine bottle lying on the floor. It looks like the Queen’s Head on a morning after, with fag-ends everywhere, and sticky rings of drink.

  ‘We’ve got to get some more milk for the kitten.’

  Yes, he thinks, and something for us and all. ‘Is there a shop round here where they don’t know you?’

  ‘They won’t remember me after all this time. I don’t look the same.’

  ‘Isn’t there a supermarket we could go to?’ Supermarkets are safer. People don’t look at you when you buy things there. They
don’t notice a kid with a twenty-pound note, the way a corner shop would.

  She thinks. ‘I can’t remember. Mum never took me. I don’t think she goes to supermarkets.’

  ‘We’ve to find somewhere to stay, Anna, if we can’t get in the house.’

  ‘We can stay here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the garden. It’s not cold. We can sleep under the bushes. I used to make houses there, when I was little, and the rain never came in.’

  And they’d be hidden. No one can see over those walls. They can make a litde house and pull creepers over the bushes until they’re quite hidden. As long as they don’t give themselves away, no one will ever know they’re here. They look at each other, the idea glinting from one to the other. A camp. A secret place. They can live here, and no one’ll ever know.

  ‘We can buy food,’ says Anna.

  ‘Yeah, but it gets cold at night. What’re we going to sleep on?’

  And then it hits him again that they’ve got money and they can do what they like with it. They can buy sleeping-bags. They can even buy a tent, and one of those gas stoves you cook on. It doesn’t matter how long Anna’s mum is away, because they can make their own camp out here, in the garden.

  It’s dark. The kitten sleeps in its basket, wedged at the back of the tent. They’ve left the tent-flaps tied back and the orange flush of streetlight picks out the pallor of Anna’s face, the black stain of her hair. She sleeps on her back, with her mouth open. David sleeps too, curled on his side. His face is wrinkled with dreams; hers is calm. Overhead there’s the steady thud of a police helicopter, but they hear nothing. Once or twice the helicopter’s searchlight crosses the garden, though it’s not looking for them. It touches the bamboo, the buddleias with their unfolding leaves, and a zinc bucket. It sweeps across the little pond. Then the light swings off elsewhere as the helicopter rises and beats its way north-east, towards Finsbury Park. Anna stirs. She throws out an arm over David’s body, frowns, leaves it there.

  David wakes, hours later. He knows straight away where he is. He’s not frightened, he’s not confused. He thinks of Mum and Dad in their bedroom, fast asleep, waiting for their Teasmade to wake them up. No, he’s not even homesick. He doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t want to be waking up to go to school with Billy and Jack and Johnjo. He’d like to see his parents, of course; at least, he thinks he would. But they’re far away and that’s where he wants them. They would soon put a stop to the way his life’s stretching, making new shapes. If they were here they’d have him out of the tent and down the road and on to that Leeds train in five minutes flat. And back to where he came from. All they’ve ever thought about Anna is that she’ll soon be off, back where she came from. She doesn’t count. They don’t even need to say that they think it’ll be a good thing when she’s off and gone. It goes without saying, at home. People must have something wrong with them if they can’t be satisfied but they have to go traipsing about here and there, picking up whatever they can get like a fiddler at a wedding. He hates it when his dad says things like that. He’s never seen any fiddlers at weddings, though he’s been to plenty. He gets dragged along, for fear of causing offence. You’re coming with us, David, like it or not. I’m not falling out with the Arkinstalls. He’s never seen anything, he thinks, huffing the down sleeping-bag round his shoulders. And there are things they’ve never seen, either.