Home Boys (18 page)

Veronica didn’t speak her reply. Instead she walked around the fire and took Dougal in her arms.

‘Happy birthday,’ she grinned, when he pushed her away.

‘Right then,’ he replied. ‘Best we pack up quickly.’

‘
W
HICH way now then?’ Dougal asked. The morning had been overtaken by afternoon, and despite their speed — they’d been going for over two hours — Colin was sure they hadn’t travelled far. Most of that was Dougal’s fault. If he’d let Veronica take the lead, then they wouldn’t have had to stop so often, as they did now. But it wasn’t Dougal’s way, to let somebody else make the decisions.

‘Um, keep going through there.’

‘It’s too thick.’

‘Well around it then.’

‘Which way around it?’

The more Dougal let his impatience grow, the more Veronica seemed to pause over her decisions, as if it was a game they were playing. And enjoying it too, that much was plain, and seeing it made Colin happy. Happy that they should be together, all three of them. Happy and together. It should be possible, a thing like that. It had to be possible.

‘To the left. No, your left. We’re heading that way.’

‘That’s taking us backwards.’

‘It’s taking us to the cave.’

‘There is no cave.’

‘So why do you care which way we’re going then?’

‘I don’t. I just don’t like going in circles.’

‘You just think we are.’

‘I can see where the sun is. That’s not thinking see, that’s knowing. You should learn the difference.’

Veronica didn’t say any more, just turned back to Colin, who as always was close behind her, and rolled her eyes. That was why she hung back this way, Colin told himself, when she easily could have kept up with Dougal. So she could be with him. So they could share these moments.

‘He’s just daft,’ Colin told her, and said no more than that. It was the technique he had settled on, for now. Saying a little but no more. Avoiding anything that might make today wrong, when getting it right had taken so much effort.

The rain of the day before stayed away and then, teasingly at first, the sun began to shine, heating their backs, their faces, their left sides and then their right; for Colin suspected Dougal was quite right when he said they were going around in circles. And it kept Colin from being happy, or as happy as he should have been, on such a day, with two friends and a direction and only themselves to spoil it. A happiness you could see, watch it take shape in the form of Veronica, the lines of her forearm when she grasped at a branch, the way the smell of the air changed as she passed, but it was a happiness that wouldn’t settle. Because Colin knew Dougal. He knew the fierce stubborness that held Dougal’s mind in place. A deal was a deal was a deal. If there was no cave then there was no them. Veronica would go, and there would be nothing Colin could
do about it. Or if there was a cave; if set beneath them, deep down in the damp earth that took the weight of their every step, beneath the shiny-backed beetles and wind-tattered leaves, was a calling only Veronica could hear, then it was enough to keep his mind from happiness too.

The lower the sun sank the more obvious it was to Colin which way his happiness would stumble. The cave was real. It wasn’t that he believed in it, any more than he believed in his dreams. It wasn’t a matter of belief. It wasn’t believing that made a thing real, in the same way that choosing not to believe could keep a thing from being. Believing had no place here. As Colin walked on he realised he could feel the cave too, and that feeling didn’t come from belief, it came from the place where dreams sat.

‘Come on then. Which way?’

Again Dougal demanded it. Colin looked at him, and noticed how different Dougal looked from the first time they had met. He was taller perhaps, certainly heavier, stronger looking, and his pale skin was hidden by the freckles a life in the wild had drawn upon it. The expressions hadn’t changed though. The same look of certainty, that there would never be a person he’d meet he wouldn’t know more than, and that special look of fear he had, when he didn’t know he was being watched. That hadn’t gone either. In fact, now that they were away from the village, it came more often.

‘Wait.’ Veronica paused, but made no show of it. She didn’t close her eyes or sniff the air, or put a hand to ground. Just a moment of uncertainty, a cloud passing over her face, that you’d only see if you were used to watching her. And used to imagining her, when you weren’t.

‘That way.’

‘It’s real isn’t it? There is a cave,’ Colin said to her, when Dougal had taken his direction and was forging ahead again.

Veronica stared at him and a smile took her mouth, but the top lip stayed curled under it, like beneath the thought was a sadness that couldn’t be left alone. She nodded and took his hand, and although her grip was strong and she squeezed it hard, Colin still felt the trembling of her fingers. Up ahead Dougal had encountered gorse and was making his displeasure known.

‘How can it be your magical powers can see caves but they can’t see gorse?’ his unseen voice demanded.

‘The gorse isn’t calling us,’ Veronica shouted back.

‘Then why are we in the middle of it?’

‘It’s only you who is.’

‘I’m only going the way you told me.’

‘I didn’t tell you to go with your eyes closed did I? I think you should go left again, up that bank.’

‘I’d already worked that out, actually, and I don’t have no magical powers.’

Veronica turned back to Colin again, and this time there was no part untouched by her smile.

‘Your friend’s funny you know. You both are. You make me laugh. Perhaps I’ll take you both with me, and then when I need cheering up, you’ll always be there. What do you say to that?’

And Colin was so uncertain how that made him feel that he didn’t trust himself to answer, lest the wrong part of him might speak.

‘How close are we?’

‘Closer than this morning.’

‘We will find it though, won’t we?’

‘I hope so.’

What was left of the day took them farther north, mostly following the curve of the narrow central range, and at one stage dropping back to the east where they once again caught a glimpse of the sea. It was then Dougal’s doubt was the loudest, and looking down at the cold grey of waves, foaming white where an evening change in the weather pushed them hard against the shoreline, Colin shared his uncertainty. But then, so did Veronica. She walked on ahead and signalled back with her hand that they should not follow. At a slight rise, still in view but out of earshot, she covered her eyes with her hands and her outline stood motionless in the gusting wind.

‘Ah, look at her now,’ Dougal mocked. ‘Playing up to it, like she thinks we’re stupid.’

‘We still have to follow her though, ’til tomorrow. That was the rule.’

‘I know. Not saying it isn’t. I’m just saying she’s stupider than her mother, and maybe more dangerous than her father. That’s all.’

‘You like her,’ Colin said. ‘I can tell.’

‘Didn’t say I don’t, did I? Look, she’s decided again.’

Veronica waved them on and the boys ran shoulder to shoulder to reach her.

They walked until it was dark, back down into the bush. Proper trees this time, tall and proud, not the thick tangle of regenerating scrub to the south. Dougal chose the sleeping spot and refused to go back on his decision not to put up the fly, even though the air had turned cold and was flecked with misty rain. He also decided which of the food they could afford to
eat, cold and not enough, and the order in which they would complete their watches. Veronica suggested a fire and he quashed that too, because he could.

‘But we could sit around it and tell stories,’ Veronica argued.

‘Perhaps we’ve had enough of your stories,’ he replied.

‘It’ll keep us warm while we’re on watch.’

‘Cold’ll keep us awake. I’m not going to make it that easy for your father you know. Don’t think I will.’

‘He isn’t following us. I’ve already told you.’

‘Same as you’ve told us there’s a cave.’

‘Tomorrow.’

Dougal took first shift, leaving Colin and Veronica to lie together beneath the token protection of a bent fern. Colin waited for Veronica to start the talking, sure that she would, but all he heard was her breathing. And when he tried to think of a way of starting it himself, no words came, only pictures. Her hair, her smile, the taste of her kiss, the curve of her breasts, the lift of her step and the sparkle in her eye, when an idea visited. And you can’t build a sentence out of pictures. It was made no easier by how close she lay, so their warmth mingled, even if their thoughts didn’t.

‘It’s not like this in London,’ he finally started, when the line of silent seconds grew too long, each one a chance slipping by forever.

‘What isn’t?’ Veronica asked. A reasonable question to which he had no answer.

‘Everything.’

‘No, I don’t suppose it is,’ she replied, puzzled.

‘Shut up will you?’ came Dougal’s voice out of the darkness; redundant, for the conversation had expired without him.

‘Why?’ Colin shouted back, glad at the chance to stop a new silence from descending.

‘You’re supposed to be sleeping.’

Colin, already angry at himself, had no trouble turning on his friend.

‘Excuse me please,’ he whispered to Veronica. ‘There’s things need saying.’

He stumbled the ten dark yards to Dougal’s vantage point, atop a waist-high rock.

‘What are you doing with all your commands?’ Colin demanded of his friend.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You do. You’re not the only person who can have an idea you know. You can’t tell me when to sleep. I’m not letting you.’

‘Someone has to make the decisions. It makes sense doesn’t it? If you talk you don’t sleep. And then you’ll be asleep during your watch, and then there isn’t any point having a watch is there?’

‘There isn’t any point any way. I don’t know what we’re meant to be watching for.’

‘Her father. I’m only trying to protect you. You’re the one he tried to drown.’

‘She says he isn’t following us and I believe her. That’s two against one.’

‘She doesn’t get to vote. She’s a guest. And we’re blood brothers, so we can’t disagree.’

‘Okay, but it isn’t your birthday tomorrow. Remember that.’

‘I’ll wake you when it’s your turn.’

‘I’ll go, but I’m not sleeping,’ Colin told him. ‘No one can make me sleep.’

‘It’s good she’s going tomorrow you know,’ Dougal replied. ‘She’s making you soft in the head.’

‘It’s not just me,’ Colin said, and the words didn’t mean anything until he heard them out loud, and the quiet that followed them like an exclamation mark.

‘Just go.’

‘Sorry,’ Colin whispered, bumping into Veronica’s back with his knee as he lay down, at once certain he wouldn’t be able to find the comfortable position he had left. ‘He just gets a bit funny sometimes. That’s all.’

Veronica said nothing in return, and Colin grew a little braver. ‘He said you make me soft in the head, but I think he’s just jealous, that you and me can talk like this, and he can’t.’

Colin stopped and listened for her reply, but none came. Only the rise and fall of sleep. Dougal had won again, the way he always did. Colin wriggled his hip to make a cavity in the dirt, but the stones moved with him and only grew harder. He tried to clear his mind and take dreams of Veronica to sleep with him, but his thoughts remained sharp-edged and agitated. He could imagine Dougal sitting up, alert to his discomfort, smiling.

Sleep, when it did come, was thick and unimaginative, and when Dougal’s foot found his back two hours later Colin woke feeling tired and grumpy.

‘What is it?’

‘Your turn.’ Dougal made no effort to speak quietly.

‘Sssh. You’ll wake her.’

‘I already am,’ Veronica said, with the false certainty of one
who has only just woken. ‘Is it my turn to watch?’

‘No, it’s Colin’s.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘No, but I do,’ Dougal told her. ‘You stay sleeping.’

‘I don’t mind,’ she repeated. ‘Colin, I could do it with you if you like. We can talk and keep each other awake.’

‘And keep me awake as well,’ Dougal complained.

‘We’ll be quiet,’ Colin told him.

‘There’s no point being on watch, if the people you’re watching for can hear you.’

‘Get some sleep,’ Veronica told him. ‘So you’re not so miserable in the morning.’

Colin was glad his friend couldn’t see his smiling.

‘What do you want to talk about then?’ Colin whispered, when they had settled into their watching position, sitting close, knees drawn up, each with their forearms rested across them, touching at their hands, and where their backsides splayed against the cold rock. Happiness had returned, warmer than the night was cold, lighter than the darkness was heavy. And it would last until the light came. Morning was his only enemy.

‘Remember when we were collecting seaweed, and we told each other secrets? Tell me another one. Let’s both tell each other one more secret.’

‘Does it have to be true?’

‘Course it does. Otherwise it’s not a secret is it?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose not.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘All right then. Let me think.’

But it wasn’t a time for thinking. It was a time for instincts, for opening his mouth, and trusting the sounds it makes.

‘There’s my dad. He’s why I’m out here. He’s not right in the head.’

‘Like Mary?’

‘No, not like Mary. Different. Like he’s simple. He wasn’t always like that, that’s what Mum said, but then Mum went away, when I was up north. I think it was the war that did it. They met before the war. The Great War, not this one, you know. I came back from up north and there was only Dad, and he wouldn’t tell me where she’d gone, and I don’t think I want to know.’

‘So what was it like, up north?’ Veronica asked.

‘It was grand. As grand as this almost…’

And the story floated, the way a good story does. Through the whispers which snagged on the wind, and had to be untangled, through the tears that flowed, and the hand that moved up his arm and squeezed his bicep tight, and later found its way around his back, and pulled him even closer.

‘I’m sorry,’ was all she said, when the war had finished and his mother gone and he was on the ship again, ready to dream of Gino, and the story was as finished as it could be. She didn’t ask any more questions, or try to add anything useless.