Not As We Know It (11 page)

I cried in the car all the way back, through Weymouth, along the road next to Chesil Beach, up to Granddad's bungalow. Granddad told me I wasn't to worry. He told me Ned was in good hands. But I knew what Ned had said—
“nothing helps.”
He was flotsam, helpless, bobbing on the vast sea.

All day I cried and Granddad talked. Ned had pneumonia, he told me. He'd be in the hospital for a while. I cried and Granddad tried to make me eat. I managed a few chips. I cried and watched TV.

In the evening, Dad came. They whispered again. I was left out of another conversation.

Dad took me home. Mr. Taylor had left Ned's bike out by the front door so I wheeled it round to the garage. The door stood open, and I pushed the bike in and leaned it against a wall. I stood in the still and quiet and watched the calm water in Leonard's tub.

I thought about the moment I turned at Officer Taylor's call. Did Ned fall? Did he jump? Or had the creature that we'd sheltered pulled my brother in?

I kicked the tub and it filled the garage with a low-ringing note. The water swirled.

After a time, some unknown length of time, Dad called me in again.

We talked in the kitchen, with bowls of tinned ravioli growing cold in front of us.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” I said.

Dad scratched his neck and frowned. “Jamie,” he said, “you did your best. Right?”

I swallowed on nothing and stirred the orange sauce with my fork.

“You heard Tony. He wouldn't have found Ned without you.”

I lifted the fork and stared at the pasta speared on the prongs.

“It's not your fault.”

It wasn't? Maybe if I'd not kept Ned's secret, if I'd shown that little merman to Granddad on that first day or to Mum or Dad, or if I'd told the policeman even, when he came looking…? Maybe Ned would not have gone alone. Maybe I'd have been there to hold him back. But then again, no one could stop Ned when he had a plan.

“What's gonna happen?” I said.

“The doctor…,” Dad began. “The doctor says he hopes…He's gonna be OK.”

The next morning, when we went in to see him, Ned didn't seem OK. Wires and tubes still connected him to bleeping machines.

Dad had brought clean clothes for Mum. He pulled her away from the bed and took her to shower and change. She gave me a brief flicker of a smile as they left me with Ned.

I thought he was asleep, but as soon as the door closed his eyes cracked open.

“Jamie,” he said with a thin grin.

“Ned.”

“You should have been down there. It was amazing.”

“What?”

The door opened and we turned as a nurse came in. She carried a clipboard and a jug of water.

“Morning,” she said. She looked at the machines and wrote on her clipboard. Then she took a jug away and left the full one.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Down there with Leonard. It was amazing.”

“Ned, did you…?”

The door opened and Dad returned. “There's my boy,” he said. “How are we feeling?” He took Ned's hand.

“I've been better,” Ned said.

When Mum came back, her hair slick and her dirty clothes bundled under one arm, she grabbed me in a hug. “Well done, Jamie.” Her voice was tiny and just about disappeared as she went on. “I'm so glad you're both…both…here.”

I didn't get to ask Ned any more about
down there.
Granddad came to get me before lunch. Mum squeezed me in a hug.

“Can you bring me the Walkman, Jamie?” Ned asked.

I frowned at my brother.

“With that tape we were listening to.”

There was a strange rhythm over the day that followed. Familiar things felt anything but.

I spent the afternoon with Granddad. Dad came to get me for dinner. I sat in the quiet, in the dark of the garage, watching the still water.

Sometime in the evening, I fetched my bike. It had been moved off the path and rested on a prickly bush. The front fork was bent, the paint cracked, the metal showing through. When I tried to ride it, I found the wheel had pushed back against the frame. Dad called it a “write-off.”

In the morning, we returned to the hospital with clothes for Mum and things from home for Ned. I took the Walkman and a determination to get the truth from my brother.

Mum worried about the food—Ned wasn't eating enough and there wasn't enough fresh fruit. She worried that he wasn't comfortable—“Fetch his duvet from home, Charlie.” She complained that someone had opened Ned's window in the night—“He has pneumonia, for goodness' sake.” Mostly she cried.

As usual no one spoke to me about what was wrong. I caught snippets of whispered conversation.

“…lungs are not recovering as we would hope.”

“…not responding to the treatment…”

“…not looking positive…”

Half the morning was gone when Dad took Mum to get a coffee and have a break and my moment came to ask my brother what was happening. If this was the end, I wanted to know.

Ned had other things on his mind. “He couldn't hear me,” he said as the door shut.

“What?”

“Leonard,” Ned said. “He can't hear it. I'm too far from the sea.”

“You opened the window?”

Ned scrunched his face. “Of course. But he can't hear it. He can't hear the song. I tried to sing it again. But he can't hear it.”

I didn't know what to say. I did not want to think about what he was doing or why he did it.

“Jamie,” my brother said, his eyes tugging at mine, “I thought it was time.”

“Time for what, Ned? I thought Leonard was here for you. I thought…I thought he'd fix…fix everything. Make you better. But he didn't. He hasn't.”

Ned sighed. He looked deep in my eyes. “Jamie,” he said. “In the stories, in Granddad's stories, no one got better.”

I stared back with my jaw set, holding in the tears. “Atargatis…her children,” I said. “They looked after people.”

Ned nodded. “They did. They do. But maybe that looking after isn't what we think, what we'd guess, what we'd want it to be. Leonard
was
here for me.”

It was silent for a moment; then fear crashed over me in a huge wave.

“In the stories, Jamie—Mathew Trewella, Perla, the Japanese captain—they didn't get better. The stories ended another way.”

I shook my head at Ned. I couldn't hear this. I thought I wanted to know. But I did not want to believe this.

I simply said, “No…,” and threw Ned's Walkman down on the bed.

When they returned, with coffees for them and hot chocolates for us, they brought Granddad with them. He came in holding a battered cardboard box.

I did not feel like games. I don't suppose any of us did. But Ned said we should play.

“This is the day I win,” he said.

Ned and Dad made one team, me and Mum another. Granddad went alone.

Granddad and Dad set the questions between them. Ned and Dad made a fearsome combo. Dad knew everything, and Ned attacked like he had nothing to lose.

After they'd won, it was time to go.

Mum and Dad and Granddad whispered in the corner again.

“Jamie,” my brother said. “Come here.”

I moved in a little closer.

“Here,” he said, putting his arms out.

I leaned toward him and put my arms around his tiny frame. He was smaller than ever, all bones. His little limbs wrapped around me.

“This might be it,” Ned whispered into my ear. “I can
feel
it coming now.”

Tears filled my eyes and dropped onto Ned's thin hospital gown. I wanted to say something more, but all I managed was “Ned…”

“Thanks for being my big brother,” he said.

I squeezed out another “Ned…”

“Come on, then,” Granddad called from the door.

Ned let me go with a grin and wink. “This is the day I win,” he whispered.

Over the years, Ned had spent a long time in hospitals, under the eye of doctors. When he was gone overnight, I always felt his empty space above me.

Our room was colder. I was colder.

Every time before, though, I'd known he'd be coming home. I'd known he'd fill the house again. That night was different.

In the evening, the storm came. I imagined Ned watching the same lightning I did, watching it crack across the sky. He loved the way it stained your eyeballs, its imprint still there long after its death.

“Rough out there,” Dad said.

We hadn't talked much. He'd collected me from Granddad with a tight grin and red swollen eyes. We'd eaten our frankfurters in buns silently.

Like Ned, we both knew the storm was coming.

“What's gonna happen, Dad?” I said, not taking my eyes from the rain and stormy sea. I never asked. I was never told. But if there was ever a time for asking, this was it.

I heard Dad cough. I heard his silence. Then, “It's…it's…it'll be all right.”

“OK, Dad,” I said.

I knew he was lying. I'm sure he knew I was too.

The TV went on behind me with a crackle and fizz. I recognized the voice of the host of
A Question of Sport.

I didn't really like sport. Ned had always been the physical one, as much as he could be. He watched
A Question of Sport
with Dad, while I read. If the Risk questions had been about sports, Ned would have always won.

David Coleman, the host, was asking Daley Thompson,
“Who won the silver medal in the fifteen hundred meters at the Moscow Olympics in 1980?”

Daley couldn't remember
“for the life of him.”

Dad was making a “hmm” noise.

“Was it Allan Wells?” I said.

“He's a sprinter,” Dad said. “Fifteen hundred is middle distance. I think it was the German…er…Straub.”

“The fifteen hundred meters silver medal was won by Jürgen Straub,”
David Coleman said.

“One–nil to me,” Dad said.

I turned to him with a grin.

“Come here,” he said.

I pulled myself away from the window and sat with Dad where Ned usually did. Dad put his arm around me.

By the end of the show, the score was eighteen–three. Dad said it was a good effort. He kissed me on the top of the head and said, “Bed, I reckon.”

The bedroom was filled with Ned's absence. I replayed Ned's words again and again.
“The stories ended another way.”
My mind was filled with those stories of mermaids. I tried to see what Ned saw.

And still the storm raged outside.