Just Joshua (4 page)

The sun came up over the horizon, bright and
powerful
, throwing shafts of light across the clearing and catching Robert’s head and shoulders in its glare. He was standing outside Joshua’s window, a pebble in his hand.

A shaft of sunlight passed through the window and lit up Joshua’s foot where it lay outside the sheet. The foot jumped suddenly as Robert’s stone hit its target, and Joshua sat up with a start. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and peered out of the window. There was Robert, his arm raised, about to launch another missile.

‘Get up!’ Robert hissed at him. ‘The fishing boats are coming in!’

Joshua looked across the room. His father was
snoring
in snorts, the way he did shortly before waking up. He turned back to the window and waved. ‘Coming!’

He scrambled out of bed. He picked his shorts and shirt off the chair where he had left them the previous night and shook them. A beetle dropped to the floor and scuttled away. He shook them again. Satisfied that no more insects were lurking in the folds, he put them on.

He was almost at the door when he thought of the snake. Perhaps he would show it to Robert after all. For a moment he dithered. Then he went back and
scrabbled
in the box under his bed for the carving. Tucking it under his arm, he ducked beneath the cotton curtain that covered the doorway and clasped hands outside with Robert.

‘I have something to show you,’ he whispered, opening the paper bag.

‘Can’t it wait?’ Robert was impatient to get going.

‘No,’ Joshua said firmly. Now that he’d decided to share his find, he wanted to do it straight away. ‘Look.’ He held it out.

Robert gazed at the snake. His eyes widened. One hand reached out. ‘May I hold it?

‘Okay.’ Joshua shrugged. He watched anxiously as Robert examined the carving, turning it over in his hands and tracing the coils, just as he had done
himself
. And he felt relieved when Robert handed it back all in one piece.

‘Where’d you get it?’ Robert asked.

‘Wait,’ Joshua said. He tiptoed back into the room. His father was still snoring. He put the snake under the bed and went outside.

‘Where did you get it?’ Robert asked again.

‘At the hospital. Where we were looking the other day. I went back. I reckon the mountain man threw it
out to try to tell me something.’

‘Really?’ Robert looked intrigued; this was much more exciting than the fishing boats. ‘So let’s go there now. Maybe there’s another one.’

At the hospital they searched the ground under the mountain man’s window, inch by inch. They used their hands as much as their eyes, turning over stones, uprooting straggly weeds. They ducked underneath sweet-smelling oleander bushes and scrabbled among the drifts of dried blossom and leaves on the ground. There was no sign of a carving.

‘Hey!’

They turned. Millie was running towards them.

‘Shh!’ Robert hissed at her, his finger to his lips.

She skidded to a stop in the sand and looked
questioningly
at them.

‘Mountain man.’ Joshua spoke in an undertone,
jabbing
upwards with his thumb.

‘We think he’s trying to speak to us. Well … not speak, but communicate,’ Robert explained.

Millie looked puzzled.

‘He threw me a carving, you see,’ Joshua told her.

Millie didn’t see at all, but she nodded as if she did. She must tell Tom and see what he made of it.

Joshua felt that nothing would happen while the three of them were there. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

‘No!’ Robert’s firmness seemed to surprise even
himself. ‘We mustn’t give up so easily. He just doesn’t know we’re here. Maybe we can communicate with him. Let’s spread out.’

He gestured to his left. ‘Millie, you stand over there,’ he ordered. ‘And you stay here,’ he said to Joshua, ‘I’ll stand between you.’

Millie looked uncertain. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ she asked.

‘Look up,’ he urged her.

Robert might be right, Joshua thought. If they all looked up, it was three times more likely that the mountain man would try to get in touch. ‘Think hard,’ he whispered across to Millie. ‘Make him hear your thoughts.’

Nothing happened, and after a while they went away.

They came back the next day. And the next.

On the fourth day Joshua had to help his father in the shop. By the time he reached the hospital, Robert was already there. So were Millie and Tom, as well as Robert’s sister, Miriam. They grinned at each other briefly, not speaking.

Joshua joined their semi-circle in the shade of the oleander bushes where the ground was still cool. He looked at the open window above their heads. The sun
bounced off the whitewashed hospital walls, almost blinding him. He screwed up his eyes and stared intently, trying to throw his thoughts out to the
mountain
man inside.

The white habit of a nun flashed past the window, distracting him. He glanced away. When he looked back, the ceiling fan had been turned on. Its blades clanked, spun, gathered speed and whirred. Watching it spin made him dizzy. His concentration was gone. He ground his left heel into the sand and rubbed his right toes against his ankle where an old mosquito bite
suddenly
itched. His stomach rumbled.

Tom and Millie had their heads together and were whispering. Joshua took a step towards them.

‘Hey, you three!’ Robert hissed. ‘You’ve got to think!’

Tom, Millie and Miriam obediently resumed their staring. Joshua scowled. If it hadn’t been for him, they wouldn’t even be here now, he thought resentfully. But Robert always had to be in charge of everything.

He looked up at the window, the sun blinking back at him from the walls. In the background he could hear the waves breaking on the beach. He must concentrate. He forced himself to picture the mountain man as he had seen him being led in to the hospital. He
remembered
how the man had stumbled, saw again the fear and the appeal in his eyes. Holding that image in his mind, he tried to force his will through the open
window to the patient lying inside.

Now he was able to shut out his friends, the sea, the sun, the building, until all that was left in the world was Joshua and the mountain man.

Something came flying out of the window and fell right at Joshua’s feet, kicking up a little puff of dust as it landed. None of his friends moved, but he could feel their eyes on him. Joshua stooped and picked up the blue-grey stone, placing it carefully in the palm of his left hand.

Slowly he transferred it to his right hand and
polished
it on his tattered shorts. Then he held it up and the others gathered round to admire. The figure had four legs, horns on its head, and the lines etched on its back and sides suggested a shaggy coat. Joshua didn’t know what it was. Like the snake, it too was flawed; one of the legs had snapped off at the knee and only a stump remained of the left horn. Millie reached out to stroke the carving.

‘Careful!’ Joshua said.

‘I
am
being careful,’ she answered, delicately
running
her fingers over its head. He watched her jealously and pulled the carving away as soon as he could. All of a sudden he didn’t like her touching it. The carving was clearly meant for
him
. He wished he had never shared his secret.

In the early darkness cockroaches converged on a piece of fish that had fallen to the ground. They
clambered
on top of each other in their haste to get at it, antennae waving wildly. Footsteps approached. The greedier ones, busily gorging, didn’t notice until it was too late and a large foot landed on top of them.

Robert felt a crunchy squelch beneath his toes. ‘Ugh.’ He rubbed his foot hard on the earth to clean off the mess. Round the corner of the shop he could hear water gurgling. He found Joshua at the standpipe, scouring a pan under the tap. Robert stuck his foot under the running water. ‘Hello.’

‘Oh, hello, big feet.’ Joshua picked up another
handful
of earth and scrubbed it into the pan until it was clean. Satisfied, he rinsed it out.

‘Want to come and watch the tourists from the ship?’ Robert asked.

‘Sure,’ he said.

But Robert wasn’t listening. He was staring at Joshua’s father who was seated on a bench in a pool of light, whittling away at a piece of wood that he held
jammed between his knees.

‘What’s he making?’ Robert asked.

Joshua shrugged. As far as he knew, his father had never finished a carving.

Robert went over to him and gazed at the knife, moving rhythmically backwards and forwards,
scraping
and shaping the wood.

‘Please, what are you making?’ he asked politely.

There was no answer. Joshua’s father didn’t seem to notice that he was there.

Robert touched his shoulder and repeated the
question
, more loudly this time, ‘What are you making?’

The knife stopped moving and Joshua’s father looked up.

‘Making?’ he asked.

It was as if he was waking up, Joshua thought, watching. He never interrupted his father when he was carving. He had always felt that he shouldn’t. And by now he had become accustomed to his silence in the evenings.

‘I’m practising,’ Joshua’s father answered at last.

‘What for?’ Robert was polite but persistent.

This time he got no answer. The butcher’s head was bent over the wood. Backwards and forwards went the knife, quietly whittling.

Robert beckoned Joshua out of the light and around the corner. ‘Why won’t he tell me what he’s making?’ he
asked, sounding a little annoyed. ‘He must be making
something
.’

‘Why must he? He just carves.’

‘But he carves every night, doesn’t he?’

Joshua nodded, bored. ‘Most nights.’

Robert looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps he carves because he hasn’t got any friends,’ he said.

‘Yes, he has,’ Joshua retorted.

‘Who, then?’

‘Well, Leon, and … Oliver.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And … er … Samuel.’

‘They’re just people he has to know for his business. They’re not real friends,’ Robert said, a bit scornfully. ‘I mean, you don’t see him playing cards and dominoes with them in the evening –’

‘He doesn’t like games!’

‘– or drinking with them,’ Robert carried on, ignoring Joshua’s interruption. ‘And they don’t come to see him, do they?’

‘When the shop opened, everyone came,’ Joshua pointed out, hurt.

‘Of course they did. Nobody wants to miss a party, even at the meatseller’s.’

Joshua stiffened.

Robert’s hand flew to his mouth. ‘Oh Joshua, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I just meant … well, he does sell meat, after all.’

Joshua turned on his heel.

‘Hey, Josh, where are you going? Aren’t you coming to watch the tourists?’

Joshua shook his head and walked away from his friend.

Under the low circular roof of the millhouse a grey donkey trudged round and round. It was blinkered and harnessed to a long shaft that was connected to the big, flat millstone. On and on it walked, even though there was no one there to make it, not pausing, not slowing down. As the donkey continued in its circle, the mill turned and ground maize into flour.

Joshua kept pace alongside the donkey. He hadn’t gone to see Robert at all yesterday, nor had Robert called round to see him. He didn’t care! How dare Robert call his father names!

He jumped up to sit astride the shaft close to the
animal’s
neck. Round and round he went too.

The millhouse was where Joshua liked to come to think. No one would bother him here and the farmer wouldn’t be back to unhitch his donkey before lunchtime.

Sandwiched between the low roof and the shaft, Joshua could just see a segment of his surroundings as he was carried round in an unceasing circle: here the trunks of coconut tree, there a clump of low-growing
bushes. At the opposite curve there was a slice of blue – the sea. Green, blue, bush, sea, round and round they went, calming him and making him drowsy.

A pair of legs appeared in his line of vision. The knees were familiar. And the skirt – Millie. ‘Hey.’ He was awake at once.

Millie ran over and jumped on the shaft beside him. ‘I thought you’d be here. We’re going over to Cascas Bay with Dad. You can come if you like.’

‘Now?’

‘Now.’ Millie jumped down and Joshua followed her. He loved going anywhere by boat, especially as his father didn’t have one. The world spun. He stopped and waited for his head to clear, then ran after Millie to the jetty.

‘Hurry up if you’re coming,’ her father called to them from the boat. Tom was already there. They ran down the steps and Tom cast off almost as soon as they were seated. Out they went. Millie’s father stood in the stern, dipping and raising the oars in short, sharp movements. After a while Tom took over. Slowly they moved
parallel
to the coastline, heading for the point.

‘Have you seen Robert today?’ Joshua asked Tom, as casually as possible.

‘No,’ Tom answered.

Joshua shrugged, as if neither the question nor the answer mattered. He looked back towards the island.
Seen from this distance it was a mass of green. The only buildings he could identify were the few stone houses near the jetty and the hotel a bit further along. Above them, the green grew darker and colder, leading to the jagged, black mountains. Somewhere up there lived the mountain people.

‘Josh! Hey, Josh!’

Millie was slapping him on the arm. ‘Do you want to row?’

‘Can I?’ he asked eagerly.

‘I just asked, didn’t I?’

Johua stood up in Tom’s place and took the oars. He tried to manoeuvre them the way he had seen Tom do it. But they were heavy and awkward and he got
confused
about how he was supposed to move them. The water seemed to be fighting him.

He lost his balance and toppled over. Millie burst into peals of giggles while her father grabbed for the oars and caught them just before they fell ino the sea.

‘Millie, you show him,’ her father instructed. Seeing Joshua’s embarrassment, he turned away, adding, ‘I won’t look.’

‘Put your hands like this,’ Millie advised, placing Joshua’s hands into the correct position, high up on one oar. Then she clambered round and stood in front of him, grasping the other oar. ‘Copy me,’ she commanded.

Joshua watched the way Millie worked the oar and tried to mimic her movements. It began to get easier, and eventually he fell into her rhythm; push in, pull up, out, in, push …

‘Let him try again on his own,’ her father suggested.

Millie sat down, handing the second oar to Joshua. He did his best, but he soon got hopelessly muddled and had to be rescued again. He felt he hadn’t learned a thing.

Millie’s father had seen enough.

‘Tom, you take over,’ he ordered.

He patted Joshua on the shoulder. ‘Never mind, Joshua,’ he said, sympathetically. ‘With your blood, you can’t help it.’

Joshua surrendered the oars to Tom and sat down. He wondered what Millie’s father had meant by ‘your blood’. What was wrong with his blood? Perhaps it had something to do with his father, and the fact that he wasn’t a fisherman. He pictured him as he had been the night before, lost in a world of his own, carving.
Carving
like the mountain man carved. Could there be some kind of link between his father and the stone carvings? That would explain why the mountain man’s carvings had come to him …

‘Here, Josh!’ Millie was thrusting a rope at him.

‘Stop dreaming and tie up the boat to the buoy,’ her father told him.

They had reached the point and the yellow buoy that marked the position of the fishing baskets. Tom and his father pulled on a rope and hauled up the baskets, which were constructed of split bamboo. They made perfect fish traps; the fish swam in through the top, but once they were in they couldn’t get out again. Today’s catch was a good one. They all helped to empty the flapping fish into the boat and then lowered the baskets back into the water.

On the journey home Joshua’s thoughts returned to the mountain man. If the carvings had been meant for him, was there something he was supposed to do with them? Or perhaps they had been meant not as a sign but as a gift. Maybe his father would have an explanation.

When he got back, his father was outside their hut, squatting in front of a large log, knife in hand. Curls of wood lay on the ground, gouged out by the sharp blade.

‘Dad.’

His father did not respond.

Joshua moved closer. ‘Dad,’ he repeated.

Still the knife went on, the movements passionate.

Joshua gazed down at his father’s head in its battered hat and thought about how he spent every night
carving
. Robert was right, he realised suddenly, no one came to visit.

To his surprise, Joshua saw that a shape was
emerging
from the block of wood. Perhaps his father really would make something, this time. He moved round to get a better look at the carving.

His father frowned at the shadow cast on the wood, looked up and saw him.

‘I’m hungry, Dad,’ Joshua said. ‘I’ve been out on the boat with Tom and Millie. Can we eat?’

His words seemed to break the spell. His father pushed the log to one side and got to his feet.

Soon there were two pieces of pork sizzling in the pan.

‘Pass me the salt,’ his father said, intent on his cooking.

Joshua picked up a jar and gave it to him.

‘Now the plates. And give me the toddy.’

Joshua did as he was told. His father forked meat on to the plates and handed Joshua his. Joshua sat crosslegged on the ground with the plate on his lap.

His father unscrewed the jar of toddy and poured some into a tin mug. He took a mouthful of the drink.

‘Dad,’ Joshua had a new question for his father.

‘Mmm?’

‘Why haven’t you got any friends?’

A look of surprise crossed his father’s face. ‘Who says I haven’t?’

‘Robert.’

‘Ah.’ He looked thoughtful. His eyebrows came together in the way they did when he was worried or concentrating on some problem. He set down his plate and patted a place on the bench beside him. ‘Come and sit here with me.’

Joshua took his plate and sat close to his father; so close that he could feel the steady beat of his heart through the thin shirt.

‘Not everyone needs friends, Joshua. I’m happy enough without.’

Joshua digested that. It didn’t answer his question. ‘But
why
haven’t you got any?’ he persisted.

‘Because I’ve got you, silly.’ His father put an arm around his shoulders and squeezed him hard. ‘You’re all I need. Now, finish your dinner before it goes cold.’

Next morning Joshua was sweeping the floor of the shop when Robert came in.

‘Hello Robert,’ his father greeted him. ‘Come to do the table for me?’

Joshua barely looked up. He still felt a bit cross with his friend.

Robert brushed past. ‘Hi,’ he said.

Joshua moved aside to let him by. Out of the corner of his eye he watched him sprinkle sand on the table,
dribble
water over it, pick up the hard brush and begin to scrub. Joshua’s father whistled away as he worked, not noticing the awkward silence between the two boys.

When Joshua had finished the floor he began to polish the counter with a soft rag. His father went out. For a while all you could hear was the squeak of clean cloth on glass and the rasp of Robert’s brush on the table.

‘I’m bored with this,’ Robert said, throwing down the brush.

‘No one asked you to clean it.’

‘Your father did.’

‘Well, okay,’ Joshua conceded. ‘But you didn’t have to come in the first place.’

‘Look, I said sorry.’

‘You insulted my father.’

‘Didn’t you hear me? I said sorry. Your father’s okay. I wouldn’t come here if he wasn’t.’

‘Why did you come, anyway?’ Joshua knew he sounded rude, but couldn’t seem to change the way he was behaving.

‘If you must know, I came to tell you about the mountain man.’

‘Well, what about him?’ Joshua asked, trying not to sound interested.

‘He’s dead.’

‘What?’ Joshua stopped polishing.

‘He died last night.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I heard Leon say so.’

‘How did he know?’

‘Maybe from one of the porters.’

‘Why didn’t you come and tell me?’ Joshua felt cheated.

‘Come on, Josh, I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’

But Joshua hadn’t waited for his answer. He was out of the shop and running across the clearing.

‘Josh! Wait!’

He stopped for Robert to catch up, then set off again.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Where do you think?’ Joshua retorted. He ran straight up the steps when they got to the hospital, Robert at his heels, and barged into a porter at the top.

‘Hey! Where do you think you’re going?’

‘The mountain man,’ Joshua panted.

‘What about him?’

‘Is it true he’s dead?’

The porter just looked at him, not answering.

A nun appeared from behind the porter.

‘Is it true?’ Joshua appealed to her.

But it was the porter who answered. ‘Yes.’

‘But he … I mean –,’ Joshua stammered.

‘Now calm down. What’s it to you? He was only a mountain man, for goodness sake.’

‘John!’ The nun was shocked. ‘We are all equal in the sight of God, John.’

‘Of course, Sister. I didn’t mean it.’

‘You may return to your duties,’ she dismissed him.

He turned on his heel and left, not without first pulling a sour face at at Joshua.

‘When did he die?’ Joshua asked the nun.

‘In the night. It was a peaceful death. Now, I have patients to attend to, and I’m sure you two have
something
better to do than hang around a hospital.’ She bustled them out.

The boys walked back in silence. ‘What about the carvings?’ Joshua said as they drew near the shop, thinking of the stone creatures under his bed.

‘What about them?’

‘I mean what should we do about them? I’ll go on keeping them, shall I?’ After all, Joshua thought, they felt as if they were his.

‘Sure,’ Robert answered airily. He went back to his scrubbing. He said something that Joshua couldn’t hear above the noise of the brush.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘I said we’ll collect some more next time a mountain man’s brought in.’

‘And they’ll go on being a secret.’

Robert looked shocked. ‘Of
course
,’ he said
passionately
. ‘They’re important, aren’t they? Who knows, maybe they’re some sort of magic.’

‘Maybe,’ Joshua agreed.

They grinned at each other, and began to feel friends
again. That night and over the next few nights, Joshua’s father carved more purposefully than before. A
creature
began to form. Its flanks were firm and strong, its snout was stumpy, its tail short and curly. Joshua loved watching it emerge, loved seeing the warm, intent expression on his father’s face as he worked on the carving. It was becoming a pig.