Stones

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Across an expanse of grass, there are some swings and a climbing frame dotted with little kids who flit like birds from one thing to another, their voices fluting in the air. They are the bright beginning and the men on the benches are their worst nightmare futures – the ones their parents dream up late at night when they get the first bad school report or worrying news from the doctor.

The men are all wearing several layers of ill-fitting clothes and I can smell them from where I’m sitting. One is old with a Santa Claus beard and a fat gut barely covered by his fraying jumper. He clutches a can of beer and sways backwards and forwards, head lolling on his neck like a dandelion on a broken stalk – his beard a thick fluff of seeds that never seem to blow away. Next to him is a thin wiry man who has no teeth. He carries on a muffled conversation with the man next to him who does nothing but nod and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, you were right, you were really right…’

The fourth man is Alec, the red-headed shouter, and he’s glaring at me from his pale, flickering eyes. I move closer to Banks because I know he’ll look after me. The thought makes me feel warm inside.

Banks sees Alec looking and gives me a little nudge. ‘Found her in town, didn’t I?’ he tells him. ‘Couldn’t let her wander round on her own, could I?’

The red-haired man spits on the ground and stands up. It isn’t till Banks hands him a beer that he sits again, snapping off the tab and sucking it down, still staring at me over the rim.

‘She helped pay for that,’ Banks says. ‘Dinner money!’ He starts to shake with laughter and the ripples of it come all the way through his coat, pressed as it is against my body.

I have a beer of my own and though I don’t like it, I sip at it now, feeling the cold liquid all the way down to my stomach. I wasn’t sure what to do when Banks gave it to me and for a while I just held it.

‘If you don’t want it…’ he’d said, and I didn’t want to turn down the gift, because that’s what it was really, coming from him. Then, as we walked, we kept getting these looks from people in town – staring from me to Banks and back again. I hoped someone I knew would see me, and wonder what I was doing, and that’s when I opened it and swigged at it as we went along. It felt good somehow.

I sip at the beer again and Banks grins at me. It doesn’t taste so bad now and anyway, it’s only one can of beer. I won’t even finish it.

After a time, Banks relaxes. His face is quiet, eyelids drooping. I huddle a bit closer to him and stare at the red-haired man, steadily and without blinking. At first he stares back, flaring his nostrils as if that will scare me off, but I keep on going until he starts to twitch. He gets up, then sits down again, sucking and sucking at his can and muttering. I wait. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ I mouth at him, but that’s too much. He launches himself forward with a growl, flinging the can hard. It slams into Banks, who springs into life, grabbing hold of the nutter just as he reaches me.

It’s all over in a moment. Banks has pushed him away and they scuffle into some bushes, snapping and cracking the twigs like the bones of some animal. There’s no sound but for their grunting and puffing. The old man wakes with a start and stares wildly round in the direction of the playground while the others shout their odds like punters at a boxing match. The bushes explode outwards and only Banks comes out. Alec is rolling on the ground, corkscrew hair caught in the twigs, snarling like a mad dog.

Banks comes over and drags me away, holding me by one arm and stumbling slightly. Behind him, when I turn my head, I see Alec rising up, one hand rubbing and rubbing at the scratches on his face.

‘Thank you,’ I say to Banks. ‘You saved me.’

He says nothing until we get further into town and can see the line of the sea ahead of us.

‘What did you do to get Alec going?’ he asks me. I shrug my innocence but I’m scared now. Banks is angry with me, and I’ve made the nutter hate me even more. Banks will protect me, I know that now, but he won’t always be there. I shake my head at Banks. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing.’

‘You must have,’ Banks says, ‘and what are you doing here anyway, instead of being in school? And what’s with the bag?’

I look at it, all hugged tight in my arms, and shrug.

‘What you got in it – school stuff?’

‘No! Why would I hump that about? What’s it to you anyway?’

Banks shrugs and turns towards the promenade.

‘If you must know,’ I tell him, ‘it’s my bag of stuff – for when I leave.’

‘Oh yeah?’ he says and then just nods.

‘I want someone to say they’re sorry,’ I blurt. ‘No one ever says they’re sorry.’

Banks looks at me, nudging a strand of hair out of his face with a flick of his head. He’s made himself a roll-up and smoke streams from the side of his mouth.

‘Sorry about what?’ he asks, and he’s smiling.

‘About me,’ I say. ‘Sorry about me. Everyone goes on about how terrible it is that Sam died, and I know it is! But it’s like nothing he ever did matters now – as if he’s become a saint or something.’

I realise how stupid I must sound, but if Banks laughs at me now, I think I’ll die.

A long time passes and then he puts out his hand.

‘Gimme the bag,’ he says. ‘I’ll keep it for you.’

I look at his grubby hand; at the bare wrist disappearing into his sleeve. I’m not sure.

‘I won’t nick anything,’ he says. ‘I just want to be sure you talk to me first.’

‘I don’t even know where I might go,’ I admit. ‘London, I thought.’

Banks makes a little noise that might have been a laugh, but when I look at him he’s not smiling.

‘Yeah, yeah, London,’ he mutters. ‘Then what? When you’ve been missing for a while, the police will find you and bring you home, and your mum and dad, who’ve been out of their heads with worry, will be really sorry? Is that it?’

I flush to the roots of my hair, and look away, but Banks keeps staring.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I tell him, ‘you don’t know what you’re on about.’

I remind myself he’s a stinky tramp. If I shut my eyes and think back, it could be Sam standing there, smelling of alcohol and stealing my life away.

I try to take back the bag, but Banks has hold of it. I get so mad I hit him across the shoulders with my closed fist twice but he still doesn’t let go.

‘Keep it then,’ I scream at him. ‘Steal it; do what you want. You think you know everything but you don’t. Look at you.’

He has the bag in one hand, and the other comes out of a pocket holding a round pebble. He stands gazing down at it, turning it round and round in his yellow-stained fingers like a marble egg; a kid playing with a tiny world. I turn my back on him and go.

‘And stay clear of Alec,’ Banks shouts after me. ‘I’m telling you!’

9. (#uce819c4a-cfbe-5ded-a5ac-1e6fdc8bae2d)

Thought Diary: Dictionary: ‘Alchoholic: Pronunciation [al-kuh-haw-lik, -hol-ik] adjective: Of, or pertaining to, or of the nature of alcohol. Containing or using alcohol.’ Long-winded explanation for getting pissed too often. No chance with beer – it’s vile!

By the next evening I’m starting to feel bad about hitting him. When the streetlights come on, Mum draws our heavy curtains against the cold and sweeps off to the kitchen. We’re having a dinner party. Mum is cooking a curry from scratch and Dad is shutting the back windows. It’s too cold to use the garden anyway.

The year is on the turn for sure – it was freezing first thing. I’d left my bedroom window open and the chill woke me up before it was properly light. I didn’t mind in the end because when I checked my phone, there was a text from Joe:

‘Be yourself,’ it said. ‘You can’t be anyone else.’

The silliness of it made me laugh and I texted back in the chilly darkness:

‘Be someone else. Anything’s an improvement.’

To my surprise, he sent one straight back: ‘Love you just the way you are.’ And there we were, in our separate bedrooms before anyone else was awake, miles apart, but just a fingertip away.

I got up when I heard Dad go downstairs and we sat in the kitchen eating toast. I tried to imagine Joe thirty years from now, but I just couldn’t. Dad looked like he’d been grown up for ever.

Dad spent the morning sorting the back yard out, but had to give up. There’s all this timber out there from ages ago when he had an idea for a sort of awning we could sit under. Sam had been in one of his ‘good patches’ where he didn’t drink as much. He’d talked about getting a job or moving away, and when he came into a room I didn’t immediately look for the quickest way out of it. He’d been really keen to help Dad with the awning. Mum had in mind lights and rambling roses, but it never happened of course. It stayed a pile of wood under a blue tarpaulin. Sam started drinking again, and soon the ‘good patches’ stopped for ever.

In the end the evening is okay. Ben and Matt come round and we eat at a new table Mum has just bought for the shop. It’s noisy and enough fun that the knot in my stomach unwinds. Mum is laughing – she’s had a glass or two of wine – and she leans into Dad’s arm, which encircles the back of her chair.

Afterwards we play cards, and then let the chill air in from the garden while Dad makes coffee. By the time I see Ben and Matt off, it’s almost two in the morning.

‘Nice weather for polar bears,’ Matt jokes. ‘Good thing we’re just across the way.’

He peers into my face. ‘Here if you need me,’ he says, and I open my mouth to tell him… but I don’t know what.

‘Yes,’ I say instead. ‘Yes, I’m all right.’

I smile and watch them go, but when I glance down as I shut the door I see three cans right outside under the shop window. A stain runs from them into the gutter. A chill goes through me and I almost call out to Matt, but it’s late and what would I say that wouldn’t make him ask too many questions? Then he’d want to tell Mum and Dad, and they’d ask more. No. It’s probably nothing. Lots of people drop cans around here – they could belong to anyone, but somehow I know they don’t. I nudge them aside with my foot and they roll crazily across the pavement with a sound like Chinese gongs.

It’s freezing in the hall now and I think of Banks. How does he keep warm? How does he wash or go to the toilet? What does he do for food? It feels wrong going back to the warm kitchen to scrape leftover food into our big bin. The table still holds dishes of creamy dessert and wineglasses with dregs of red wine. All Banks has is whatever nasty stuff he’s drinking. I wish he could have been here tonight, but let’s be honest, even sober, he’s not the sort of dinner guest Mum would have in mind.

‘Are you all right, Coo?’ Dad says as he feeds the dishwasher.

‘Yes. I’m just thinking,’ I say – and I am. I’m hatching a plan that’s making my heart beat faster with excitement. I’ve just remembered that tomorrow is Sunday, and Mum and Dad are going on a buying trip. It will just be me here. It’s the perfect time.

My scheme almost goes wrong first thing, when Mum asks if I want to go with them. She stands in the doorway of my room looking awkward, more like a guest than a woman in her own home. ‘We wondered,’ she says, ‘if you’d like a trip out with us.’

I look at her long fingers stroking the wood of the doorframe, at her hair where it’s come loose from its clip, and her eyes as they search mine. They’re creased at the corners but the wrong way up. Not laughter lines, that’s for sure.

‘I’d rather stay here,’ I tell her, but I wonder what I’d have said if I hadn’t got my plan. Whether I’d have gone with them and tried to mend the chasm that’s widened between us without any of us noticing until now.

She goes to say something but then stops and just nods her head and goes. I hear her feet on the stairs and then the click of the front door. ‘Bye, Mum,’ I whisper.

The silence in the house seems to rise like air pressure, and I hurry out, slamming my bedroom door behind me.

I smuggle Banks in by the main front door like a fugitive, and he stops dead just inside so I have to push him to get the door closed. Even then he just stands there, sniffing the air like an animal brought indoors, checking out the danger spots. I squeeze past him then lead him by the hand into the kitchen where I make coffee as if I do it every day. When I press down the plunger on the cafetière and turn round, I notice, with a lurch in my stomach, that he’s disappeared. I want to trust him, and I do, but it is Mum and Dad’s house after all, and I know what they’d think. I dash out of the kitchen in a sudden panic, but he’s only in the hall, peering through the inside door that leads to the shop.

‘Lotta nice stuff in there,’ he says, squinting past the lace curtain

‘Yeah, I guess so. It does okay. It’s Mum’s thing really.’

‘Lots of that Japanese looking stuff.’

‘Mostly pine – boxes and that. They used to keep blankets in them but now people use them as coffee tables.’

‘Can we go in?’

‘It’s closed because Mum’s not here. She locks it.’

He sighs. ‘Okay then,’ and straightens up, twisting his head so he’s looking right up the stairwell. ‘How many floors?’ he says.

‘Three. You want to see?’

We go up the first flight and he stops to look at the claw-footed bath before we work our way up. It feels odd to see him tiptoeing through my parents’ bedroom. He picks things up from the dressing table, examines Dad’s book by the bed and even opens the wardrobe like the snowman in that cartoon – he’s certainly no less weird. I know he shouldn’t be here. I’ve made a mistake but now I have to see it through, so I follow him like an estate agent while he pokes about. He looks at everything, even the flock wallpaper on the upper landing – running his hand up it to feel the texture.

When we come to my room I push ahead in case there’s anything out that shouldn’t be, like knickers! There isn’t, but an old diary is on the floor and I kick it under the bed. I don’t use it any more – I got tired of shouting from the end of a biro, but it’s pink and embarrassing somehow.

Because he’s there, it’s like seeing my room for the first time. Teddies on the bed and little kid curtains still up at the windows; even an old poster on the wall behind the door. He must think I’m a right baby. He’s certainly not saying much.

‘I feel funny with you being in here. We should go down.’

‘Sure,’ he says, ‘if you like.’

We go back downstairs, feet muffled on the carpet. ‘What’s in there?’ he says as we reach the first floor again. We are outside my brother’s room. The door is plain stripped pine like all the others, except for a square of wood in the centre that’s a different colour. Banks runs his hand over this as if puzzled by it, fitting his fist into the outline as if measuring for a boxing glove. He says nothing. ‘Sam’s room,’ I say, moving to the staircase. ‘Or it was. Shall we go down?’

As we start, however, I have the best idea.

‘Why don’t you have a bath?’ I say. ‘Wouldn’t you like that?’

He looks at me and then at his feet, and I realise how rude that must have sounded.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean because you’re dirty! I just thought…’

He shakes his head. ‘No, no. I am. I haven’t had a bath for ages; showers sometimes, yeah, but not a bath. If you think it’s okay, that would be good.’

He goes to the front door to get a little bag he left there, and I start filling the bath. It’s one of those old ones that Mum rescued from a house demolition; big, deep and free-standing, with lion’s feet legs.

I empty in loads of bath foam and little soap petals until the whole room is steamy and smells of roses. When it’s done, I get towels from the wall safe – big, fluffy white ones – and pile them on the wicker chair. Banks has taken off his jacket and shirt and his hands are on the hem of another layer. I’m not straightened up yet and from the corner of my eye I see bare skin appear as he peels off his T-shirt. Compared to his arms and face it’s dead white, and a little fluffy line runs down from his tummy button into his jeans.

‘Wait!’ I laugh. ‘Let me get out first. I’ll make some sandwiches. When you’re done, just come down – there’s no rush.’

My heart is pounding and a little snake of disquiet squirms in my guts. What the hell am I doing? He could kill me and leave, and who would ever know he was here? How could I ever have thought this was a good idea?

I finish making the coffee and put it on the table in chunky blue cups with some flapjacks and biscuits. When he still doesn’t come, I find some corned beef in the fridge and make sandwiches with brown bread and rocket, then sit staring at the clock. In the end, I go to the bottom of the stairs and look up, but the bathroom door is ajar and it’s silent, as if no one else is here.

‘Banks!’ I shout. ‘Come down. Coffee’s getting cold.’

At last he comes. I hear feet on the stairs and then he’s in the kitchen, wearing some new clothes that I don’t recognise. He grins.

‘Sally Army,’ he says. ‘Men and women in funny hats. They give out food ’n’ clothes, you know.’

I don’t really, but it doesn’t matter right now. I’m too stunned by this new person that’s come into the kitchen and too busy pretending I haven’t noticed.

Banks now has golden brown hair that falls in waves to his shoulders, and his face is clean and much younger looking. He seems to feel awkward too because we sit down and don’t speak. He sticks his nose over the mug of coffee I’ve made him and breathes in, ‘Snnnfffff’ like he’s smelling roses, then stuffs half the sandwich I’ve made into his mouth, chewing with his eyes closed. I get up and put his old clothes in the washing machine like a regular housewife. He’s brought them down in a little pile, with the stuff from his pockets in a paper bag. As they go round in the machine we sit watching the water turn black, like it’s a television. Banks laughs and tells me to change the channel. ‘This one’s too mucky for a girl your age,’ he says, winking.

He starts to peel an orange with his strange, new fingers – so clean you can imagine the person they could have belonged to – a Banks who’s married, with a job and a house. His eyes, without the oily lines round them, look wider and brighter and he doesn’t smell any more. I like this Banks, even if it’s only a ‘good patch’.

‘Now you’re all clean and not totally drunk, why don’t you find a job and somewhere to live?’ I suggest. ‘I mean, you must feel better, right? You could come here for Sunday dinner. My dad could introduce you to some people. You could make a fresh start.’

Banks looks at me over his coffee mug and doesn’t speak. I blush and feel like a kid again, a stupid kid who should know better.