Stones

I leave them behind and walk until I’m halfway to The Mansion, then stop to look out across the grey water. It’s because the wind is in my ears and my mind’s far away that I don’t hear the scrunch of feet until they’re right behind me. I whirl round, remembering the red-headed man, slipping on the loose stones in panic. For a moment I think perhaps it’s Joe, but it’s not. I glimpse a dark coat and long hair and recognise him – the tramp with the pale face who saved me from the shouter. I turn back, heart thumping, waiting for him to go past, but he doesn’t. Instead he comes over to me and sits down right at my feet.

‘Hi,’ he says, but I don’t answer. I can feel him there and worse – I can smell him. It’s the stink that alcohol makes when people take it like food until it oozes out of their pores. A smell that makes me feel sick and afraid.

Just down towards the water is a little pyramid of stones someone has left, and the man starts to pick up pebbles and lob them at it: chunk, chunk, chunk.

‘I wanted to say sorry,’ he says, ‘for what happened with Alec. He’s a mad bugger, but he shouldn’a done that. I notice people who come around and I see you lots, walking on your own. I told him to lay off.’

Maybe it’s his voice, which is unexpectedly calm and gentle, but instead of walking away, I answer him as if he’s just a regular person.

‘Why do you notice?’ I say. ‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’

He throws more pebbles. I can see his hand sticking out of a black coat sleeve – long, knotty fingers, dirty with an oily grime. Across his knuckles is tattooed ‘Lilyn’.

I already know the answer to my question. Of course he doesn’t have anything better to do, because he’s a tramp; an alky that soaks himself in booze until he can’t stand up. He probably makes someone else’s life a misery too, unless he’s done the decent thing and disappeared. He stays quiet and I feel awkward, as if he can hear my thoughts.

‘Why are you always down here then?’ he asks. ‘Don’t you go to school? You gotta get an education.’

I feel like laughing. ‘An education? Like you I suppose?’

He doesn’t answer, just sends a big, grey stone crashing into the pyramid, tipping it sideways.

‘I do go,’ I find myself saying, ‘but I’m allowed leeway.’ I use that word a lot – leeway. It’s what the headmaster said. It means I’m allowed to do things other people can’t, because I lost my brother in difficult circumstances. Stupid words – like we got separated in a storm or something – when Sam was the difficult circumstances.

‘They don’t want me to freak out,’ I say, ‘or do something weird – like I am right now, talking to some… tramp.’

I look at him to see whether he minds what I said, but he’s smiling at me. He’s waiting for the answer to a question I didn’t hear him ask.

‘I said, do you want what’s in that bag?’ he repeats. ‘’Cos if not, I’ll have it.’

He grabs the bag when I hold it out and folds a croissant into his mouth in one go, chewing it up while staring out across the grey water. I take the chance to have a good look at him. He’d have an okay face if it wasn’t so tired looking. It’s criss-crossed with little cuts, all bright red on the white skin, as if someone’s cleaned round them. His hair would be a reddish brown if he washed it, but now it’s greasy and hangs in long waves to his collar. His eyes, despite being weary and watery, have green flecks running through them, like gemstones. I guess he’s about thirty – a grown man – and suddenly that worries me. I glance around and see we are alone. I shouldn’t be here.

He’s finished the croissant and is rolling a little cigarette with one hand.

‘I like it down here,’ he says. ‘It’s quiet – know what I mean?’

I do, but don’t answer, keeping my eyes instead on a big gull which struts up and down, eager for crumbs, its legs doing a nervous dance closer and closer. I step towards it and it takes off, only to drop down again not far off, waiting. I watch it for a moment then turn back. ‘I have to go,’ I say, and start to walk before stopping again. ‘But thanks for keeping that man off me.’

He doesn’t answer. He’s lying back now, eyes shut, one arm across his forehead blocking out the light. The cigarette has dropped from his fingers. He’s sleeping.

4.

Thought Diary: ‘A whole lot of nothing.’ Me.

I feel rude for leaving him. He might wake up and wonder where I am, but I can’t just stay and watch him sleep. I walk away and think of him still lying there, long eyelashes on his cheek, snoozing as if he was on cushions. It’s not till I reach the promenade that I remember the other one – his mad mate – and then as if my thoughts have conjured him, he appears, weaving across the path towards me. He comes right up and stands there, nose to nose, almost touching. He stinks, and his lips are outlined with a grey scum which flies out as he speaks. I keep my mouth closed.

‘I told you,’ he says. ‘Gotta message for you – stay away! Don’t wanta see you.’

I’d love to go, really I would, but he doesn’t move. The rank smell from his clothes is disgusting. I can’t hold my breath for ever.

‘I know what you want,’ he tells me. ‘But you can’t touch me – I’m telling you.’

His hands come up close to my face so the black nails are in front of my eyes. I could tell him right now if he’d listen – the last thing I want to do is touch him!

His mouth curls open again and he spits at me, ‘Get!’

I don’t need to be told twice. Pushing sideways, I dart away from him and walk fast, refusing to run. When I glance back he’s still there, unmoving. I let my breath out in a long sigh.

I go to school on Monday. I wasn’t going to, but I do. Maybe it was the idea of seeing Joe – that he might be thinking the same and turn up too – but from the moment I woke up I felt sure I could do it.

Dad says nothing when he sees me in my uniform. Maybe he doesn’t want to break the spell. He looks crumpled and hopeful, searching for something in my face. ‘You look nice,’ he says. ‘Have a good day.’ His eyes blink rapidly and the side of his thumb is bitten down. I have a sudden vision of him from long ago when his hair was longer and his smile was like a lightning flash. He’d juggle eggs before cracking them into the frying pan, never dropping a single one.

I nod at him. ‘I’ll try.’

I missed weeks of school after Sam died, and then there was the summer break. Since then it’s been hard to feel part of things. It’s like a roundabout you jump off when you’re little, that’s spinning too fast for you to get back on. There’s a sense of not knowing what’s changed, what happened while you were away.

I walk to school on my own, joining the clumps of other students heading the same way, and it doesn’t take me long to wish I hadn’t bothered. Not a single person talks to me and I’m so far behind in lessons it’s embarrassing. The nervous feeling coils in my stomach but I sit still through three lessons, and then it’s lunchtime. I find Joe in the canteen. He’s sitting alone, but when he sees me the expression on his face brightens and he waves me over. I sit and watch him eat chips – dropping them into his mouth so they don’t touch the sides and sipping his Coke soundlessly. Neither of us speaks, but it doesn’t seem to matter, and gradually the scared feeling dies down.

‘Not eating lunch?’ he asks me suddenly, and I shake my head.

‘You ought to,’ he tells me, and I say I will – next time. He shrugs and nods, chewing as if he has something important to say and the food’s in his way. I wait while he swallows the last chip and gets up, slipping his bag over one shoulder.

‘I think,’ says Joe, ‘that we were meant to meet. That you and I will make things happen.’

I look at him, and a shiver goes through me. ‘Hope so,’ I say.

Joe smiles. ‘Ready for the afternoon?’ he asks me, and I think I am.

I make it through to Friday, including a meeting with my History teacher, Mrs Rutland, who’s worried about me. She’s a tall woman with joints as knotty as balls of rope and legs so thin you think they’ll snap if she runs on them. The grapevine says her husband left her for someone else, and her eyes have that look about them that says she’s only holding things together by the fingernails. I know that look from my own mirror.

Because she seems to care, I talk about coursework and catching up, but it’s a relief when I see Joe waiting outside the window and she lets me go. He comes all the way to the bottom of my road again and then goes off, his flash of blonde hair bobbing up and down like a buoy on the ocean.

‘Log on,’ he calls after me. ‘Give me fifteen minutes.’

I watch until he disappears and then run to the top of the road, not even noticing the slope. The sky is a whiteness that seems to suck me upwards as if a lid’s been taken off the world. I take a huge gulp of it and hurry indoors, skipping past the inner shop door where Mum’s talking to a customer. I dash upstairs, turn on the computer and wait:

‘Hey Coo’

‘Hey Joe’

‘How’s it going?’

‘It’s going good, at least since I met you.’

‘It’s the same for me. I really like you.’

‘Want to go out sometime?’

‘Sure yes. That would be great.’

‘Why don’t we just get married now?’

‘Ha ha.’

Well, that’s how the conversation goes in my head. Stupid, I know, and sure enough, I wait for half an hour and he doesn’t log on. People never do what they say they will. In the end I shut down and go for dinner – sausages, onion gravy and a chocolate pudding that sticks to my mouth and still tastes afterwards.

‘I’m glad you came straight back,’ Mum says. ‘There are some nasty things happening. I don’t think you should wander about alone just now, especially after dark.’

‘Why?’ I say. ‘What things?’ But she says nothing, just clears the plates, while Dad finishes the pudding, glancing up after every mouthful to smile at me. I don’t know why it annoys me but it does, so I tell them I’m going upstairs to do my homework. Dad’s face falls. I wish I knew what he wants me to do – smile back? Climb on his lap and ask for a cuddle? Sometimes I wish I could, but tonight’s not one of them. I go up and take out my books, but I can’t face it. Instead I just sit, thinking about ‘nasty things’ as if we haven’t all seen enough of those to last a lifetime. In the end I give up and go to bed, lying awake for what seems like half the night listening to the muffled sounds from downstairs and outside. It’s always like this.

In the morning, when I turn the computer on for a quick check before I leave, there’s a message for me after all:

JoeSteen says:

Hi. It’s midnight – cdnt get on b4. U there?’

JoeSteen says:

Guess not. Sorry

JoeSteen says:

See you 2morrow?

It’s nothing much, but it shows he didn’t forget. I feel a surge of energy and when I reach the kitchen, I’m smiling. ‘See you tomorrow?’ he said, and that meant today.

5.

Thought Diary: ‘Clinical Psychologists aim to reduce psychological distress and enhance psychological well-being. They deal with mental and physical health problems including anxiety, depression, addiction and relationship problems.’ From the Cardwell Clinic welcome pack. I think that covers everything!

Thanks to Joe’s message it’s the first weekend for ages I haven’t wanted to be somewhere else, but after breakfast Dad bursts the bubble. It’s my day to see the psychologist and I’ve forgotten.

‘It’s on the wall diary,’ Dad says. ‘I couldn’t make it easier for you.’

He could make it easier by cancelling the whole thing, but I don’t say so. I send Joe a text saying ‘have 2 go out. Maybe later’ then trail upstairs and get the Thought Diary from under my bed – where the most recent things I’ve written look so completely stupid she’s bound to know I haven’t been keeping it properly. I call her the ‘Shrink Woman’ because that sounds less scary; less like I’m actually crazy. She’s meant to help me deal with how I feel about Sam dying, but it’s a waste of time.

My phone buzzes in my pocket as I go downstairs. It’s Joe. ‘Let go of the past – the fall is not as far as you think.’

For a moment I wonder how he knows where I’m going, but he can’t of course. He’s just a bit mad, like me.

‘Good to see you smiling,’ Dad says as we drive away, so I wipe the smile off in case he thinks I’m happy.

We never speak on the journey there. Dad listens to the radio and I sit with my head turned to the window with my eyes half-closed, trying to think of nothing while the fields drift by, dotted with horses and isolated buildings. The clinic used to be a house, I think. A big building with carved gables and gardens, but it’s no house now. When you go in and see the smart reception desk and the people sitting around in chairs, you know where you are.

On my first appointment I didn’t say a word – nothing at all. I just sat there looking at a patch of brown stuff on the carpet and a cat outside the window as it played with a bird. Seeing the struggle and the flapping and the blood made talking seem pointless. Anyway, I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t like those other people crying into their handkerchiefs. I wasn’t crazy.

‘No one here is crazy,’ Dad’s always insisted.

‘Only you,’ I’d say, ‘paying all this money for nothing. You’re the biggest nut of all.’

The psychologist is very glamorous, like she should be in a movie or something. Piled up silver hair, huge blue eyes and what they call ‘good bones’, which means she’ll always look wonderful, even when she’s ancient. I suspect she changes clothes between clients like some kind of chameleon woman. Buddhist for the middle-aged trendies, prim for the nervous and clip-on dreads for the alternative types. Whenever I go it’s all African jewellery and joss sticks; I watch the smoke curl like ghostly snakes up the white walls and listen to her questions, which I never answer. They’d only lead to other questions and so we sit there – her in one armchair and me in another with a view of the garden. Poor old Dad, he pays all this money and she just looks at me and waits, and I look at her and make her wait some more. Until today that is, when she picks up the Thought Diary and to distract her I blurt out: ‘I saw a tramp. He talked to me. He was a bit like Sam.’

She doesn’t move, just lifts an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes?’ she says.

‘Yes. He came over and sat down. He could have been anyone – a vampire even, but I didn’t care.’

‘That’s an interesting choice. Why a vampire?’

‘I dunno; only that he could have been anyone.’

We look at each other.

‘Tell me something about him,’ she says, and I think.

‘He had really nice eyes.’

She smiles. ‘I’m surprised you noticed.’

Outside, the trees dance in the wind.

We’ve broken the silence now and she glances at my folder, at a piece of paper where I wrote stuff down before my first appointment.

‘And how is the other thing?’ she says. ‘The Pit.’

I consider The Pit. This is the term I use to describe the way I used to feel all of the time, but less often now.

It’s like one of those holes you dig on the beach. The ones you spend all day on when you are a kid. In the end it’s home time, and there you are standing at the bottom. It’s probably not very deep to anyone else, but to you it’s almost Australia. The sides are steep and narrow and cold, and right down at the bottom is a pool of smelly water. Here is where you’ve been sitting.

The frightened feeling comes back again and I clench my fists together, then apart and then together again.

‘What?’ she says. ‘What is it?’

But of course, if I knew that, I wouldn’t need to be sitting here, would I?

We drive home through slow traffic. The Thought Diary is on the back seat. The Shrink Woman wants me to write in it at least once a week, but I doubt I will.

The radio’s on and Dad hums tunelessly under his breath. He stops halfway home at a café and the warm air and clatter of knives and forks makes things all right again. There’s something so normal about cheese on toast. You can’t imagine traitors eating it for a last meal, or ordering Earl Grey tea with lemon-not-milk to go with it as we do now, trying not to swallow too loudly and watching the other people come and go as if we’ve only been shopping or something. I wonder what the Shrink Woman made of what I said; I wonder why I brought it up at all. I wonder what the tramp is doing now and how long it is since he had cheese on toast, so hot that it comes to his mouth still bubbling.

Dad nods at me across the table. A little lump of cheese sits on his top lip.

‘You all right?’ he asks me, and the little lump drops onto the table cloth.

I don’t say anything. Not because I can’t, but because I don’t want to. Dad waits a minute and then looks away, transferring his little smile from me to the waitress. Then we go home.

6.

Thought Diary: Graffiti in the town: ‘I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason.’ Glinda, Wicked (the musical).

There’s something going on with Joe. He gives me a call on Sunday morning to say he needs to get out of the house, and then again an hour later to say he can’t. It’s obvious he has his hand over the phone, but I can still hear shouting and his voice is pulled tight as a fishing line.

‘I can’t come. Sorry … ’

‘Are you okay? What’s all the noise?’

‘…Yes. That’s right. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you.’

I wait, but there’s nothing more, and then the line goes dead and I’m left in silence. I wonder if he’s changed his mind about meeting and didn’t want to say so, but then I remember the way his voice sounded, and the yelling in the background. People don’t yell for nothing.

Mum’s in a strange mood too. I catch her standing outside Sam’s room with the laundry basket – as if she’s forgotten there is no more laundry. She turns as I pass and jumps like she’s seen a ghost, then goes inside and shuts the door. I stand outside and listen, holding my ear close – careful not to touch it – just like I used to when I needed to check if Sam was in or not. I can’t hear a thing though, except for my breath in its careful whisper against the wood.

I leave her to her ghosts and go downstairs, but the house is silent. Through the kitchen window I see Dad in his garden shed. He’s in overalls and obviously busy. I watch as he drags out bits of rubbish and old cans of paint. His face is relaxed and his movements easy, but then it changes. He comes through the shed door slowly, something red cradled in his arms. It’s an old three-wheeled bicycle. Sam’s I think. He stands holding it for a long time, and I don’t move even though he can’t see me. I hold my breath until I can’t stand it any more and have to let it go in a huge burst. When I look up, the bike is lying on the rubbish pile and Dad isn’t moving. Then he goes into the shed and shuts the door.

I take my coat off the hook and go out.

The promenade is crowded as usual. Mostly families again with kids made fat by bobble hats and puffy jackets, and dads skimming pebbles across the water. A little boy falls down and his mouth opens in a wide circle of rage. A girl runs across the promenade, screaming like a seabird, flapping her arms while her mum chases after her in a low crouch. I hurry on, eager to escape.

When I’ve gone almost as far as the nudist beach, I see the homeless man from yesterday. He’s standing on the hump of pebbles, staring at the sea, while a cloud of smoke bursts from his face to disappear into the air. He seems to be alone but I hesitate in case Alec the Shouter is around. It would be best to just leave, but I don’t. Instead I walk over until he can hear my feet on the stones.

‘Hi again,’ I say.

He twists, loses his balance and lurches sideways. One hand goes down and hits the pebbles hard, but it saves him. He stands up tall, trying to pretend it didn’t happen because he’s drunk, but I know better. I’ve seen it all before.

‘Hello,’ he says, ‘what brings you back then?’

I don’t know, so I can’t say. Instead I bend down and pick up a handful of pebbles. There’s a tin can down towards the water and I throw them at it.

‘I like the fact it’s stones here,’ he says, picking a couple up and rolling them in his palm. ‘If it was sand, it would get everywhere, and it’d be crawling with kids an’ that.’

I glance around. Of course he’s right; I’ve just never questioned it before. Stones aren’t much good for lying on or building sandcastles.

‘Why is it, though?’ I ask him. ‘Why not sand?’

He throws me a startled look and rubs a hand across his mouth.

‘You don’t know, do you?’ I say. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Actually,’ he says, sitting down with a crash, ‘there is sand, when the tide goes out, but stones are more meaningful anyway.’

I hesitate. I feel stupid standing over him like this, but I can’t just walk away, can I? I drop down next to him; we’re so close that the sound of the wind cuts out. Now, sitting as we are on top of the rise, it seems like the sea is just below us and we’re on the edge of the world. I look at him sideways: long lashes, stubble; a nice face. Not a dirty, mad face like the other man.

‘Meaningful how?’ I say. ‘Aren’t pebbles just pebbles?’

‘Dig your hand down,’ he says, ‘pull some up. You ever think how many there are? Like people – millions of ’em and not one the same.’

I push my hand down, like I must have done a hundred times before, but this time I look properly. All the colours are different and some have shapes or patterns like scales, or holes that bore right through them. The tramp is looking at me, smiling.

‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘you find a stone that’s like a message – you know?’

I realise I’m meant to answer, but what can you say to something daft like that?

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘really. If you got something on your mind or you don’t know what to do, you make a decision, and then you wait. If it’s the right one you’ll find a stone. Then you know.’

I stare at him. ‘Then you know what?’

‘If it’s the right decision, it’ll be a special stone, not just any stone.’

‘Good,’ I say, ‘because who’d notice an ordinary stone here, right?’

He catches my eye and we laugh. ‘Try it,’ he says, then drops his head and gives a little sigh.

‘I think it sounds nice,’ I say. ‘Something helping you out – what would it be, though, that made you find it?’

‘I dunno… Maybe God…’ He must see my face because he looks down again, ‘or maybe the devil. I told you, I dunno.’

I don’t know what to say. He doesn’t seem the type for God. He smells like he’s been drinking something heavy, and he looks tired and rough. I should leave, but I don’t want to. There’s something about him that makes me feel warm.

‘They say,’ he goes on, ‘that in Heaven there’s a stone for everyone. Underneath, it has a new name for you, so all this… doesn’t matter any more.’

His hands tremble in his lap. I can’t stop looking at them. He laughs and I know he’s embarrassed. ‘Take no notice,’ he says. ‘Tell me your name.’

My muscles tense with the scared feeling and I should just get up and walk away.

‘It’s Coo,’ I find myself saying, ‘short for Corinne.’

He puts out his hand and I have to shake it. ‘Banks,’ he says. ‘If you come again, bring us a cup of coffee would you?’

‘Sure,’ I say, and then my mouth goes on, ‘I’ll come in the evening if you like.’

He smiles, lets go of my hand and I get up. ‘You be careful,’ he says.