Sea Change (2 page)

Looking back,
it seemed to John that what had happened was a natural thing, as
inevitable as the sun rising, something that could no more be
avoided than you could stop the earth turning. At the time though,
it was just another day to get through, head down, eyes downcast,
looking for no trouble. But always finding some.

The morning had
passed without incident, and John had managed to spend the
lunchtime in a quiet corner of an empty classroom, reading. He had
long persuaded his mum to allow him to have packed lunches rather
than school dinners; it meant that he could eat anywhere, and
wasn't forced into a daily routine of confrontation in the dinner
hall, thick dirty fingers stuffed into his lunch, his chair pulled
from under him, worse. He often spent break times with two or three
others, Ben and Paul and sometimes Alex. They weren't really
friends, but had become united by their common enemy. It was a
strange relationship. They offered each other support, but at the
same time felt a resentment towards each other that was borne out
of shame.

John knew that
they all thought the same thing: if I were stronger, I wouldn't be
in here with you. If I weren’t afraid, I wouldn't be in here with
you. I look at you, and I don't like what I see, because I see me.
But they didn't say any of this, and there were many times that
they were glad of each other's company, even if sometimes this was
just because it lessened their chances that they would be the
one.

Alex was the
odd one out of the group of odd ones out. John and Ben and Paul
were just too bookish, or too slightly built, or like Ben stammered
when nervous. They weren't disliked by the rest of the school, just
generally ignored. Alex though was different. He had a habit of
talking to himself, quiet mumbling that made no sense to anyone
else, and even in class he would twist and fidget the whole time, a
boy in perpetual motion, shrugging and finger clicking and sniffing
and drumming his feet. Then there was his stare. Alex would look at
you for too long, too intensely, as if he had access to some secret
knowledge about you. It annoyed everyone, and regularly prompted
violence against Alex, but he would not stop. Everyone agreed that
he
could
not stop. Alex was too distant, too strange, to be
liked, but John felt sorry for him, and ashamed too. Ashamed that
he and Alex had something in common.

It was getting
near the start of afternoon classes, and he realised that he didn't
have the book that he needed for English that afternoon. He
wandered down to the long narrow corridor behind the classrooms
that was lined with battered metal lockers, from the wooden swing
doors at one end to the locked external door at the other.

John took the
book from his locker, and was about to close the door when someone
closed it for him, with enough force to make it slam shut and then
bounce open in his face. John stood very still, not looking round.
He didn't have to look round. He knew who it was.

Then sleep
came, and took the memory from him.

He woke once in
the night, his heart thumping. He had dreamed of a voice, old and
quiet, whispering close to his ear, and John fumbled for the light
switch in panic, thinking that he could still hear the voice even
though he was awake. But then a dog barked somewhere out in the
streets of the village, and John found the switch, and there was
nothing but the distant sound of the seas.

Chapter
Three

John didn't
wake when Laura crept through his bedroom on her way downstairs,
but the smell of frying bacon stole into his sleep and he woke up
hungry and lost. He stared in confusion at the sloping ceiling for
a few seconds, and then remembered where he was. He sat up in bed
and pulled back the curtains, but a low fog had rolled in over the
village and he could not see the sea.

After breakfast
Laura suggested that he spend the morning exploring the village.
"Get to know the place," she said. "It's not that big, but there's
so many twists and turns I don't think even I've seen half of it.
I'd come with you, but the shop..." She tailed off, embarrassed.
There always would be the shop, but John didn't mind, he knew that
before he came. She couldn't shut her business down to spend time
with him. He'd heard mum and dad's muttered conversations about how
she was still struggling to get out of the debts that Steve had
left her with. "I close half day on Mondays, and don't open on a
Sunday outside of the main season, so we'll have time then, and in
the evenings." He could hear the worry in her voice.

"No problem,"
he said. "Really it's not.”

"I've got a
good friend here, Alan, he runs the bookshop you passed on the way
down here—well, the bookshop's his dad's, really, but Charles's got
too old to run it, too unwell. Alan might look after the shop for
me, let us have a day out. "

"Stop worrying
about me," John said. "Seriously, stop it. I'm fine."

Laura looked at
him across the table. "I do worry though,” she said. “You know,
after everything that happened. Mum and Dad..."

"Yeah, I know.
They told you. That's why I got invited up here all of a sudden,
isn't it, get me out of myself a bit."

Laura looked
hurt. "Not just that, John, do you think I've not wanted to have
you up here before now? Just to have you here?"

John shrugged.
"It's been over a year." His hurt was in his voice, he'd been
saving this up for a long time. He'd always been so close to Laura
when she'd been at home, stuck up for her when she went to live
with Steve, argued the toss with mum and dad to defend her on
anything, everything.

"Yeah," Laura
said. "It has been a year, don't I just know it." All of John's
indignation crumbled and he felt sorry and stupid, and wishing that
you could unsay words that had been said.

"I'm sorry," he
said. "I was being selfish."

Laura turned
away, brushed a hand across her face as if to move her hair from
her eyes, although John knew that it was not. "S'okay," she
said.

"No, it's not,"
John said. "I wasn't thinking. Stupid."

"It's not that
I didn't want you to come up. I've been looking forward to this for
so long. But I didn't want you to be here if I wasn't...if I
hadn't...I needed time. To get myself back. To be me again. After
Steve. I wouldn't have wanted you to see me like that, I wasn't
good to be around. I'm sorry love, but that's taken a year. A year
out of my life."

"I'm sorry
too," John said again, only this time he wasn't talking about what
he had said, he was talking about everything and both of them and
the way the world worked and always would.

#

By the time
John left the house the sun had come out. Little stray fingers of
fog still clung to the streets and sneaked around corners, but they
were fighting a losing battle. He stood outside the cottage for a
moment, and then decided to head off up the hill, get onto the
cliffs above the village, have a look around, and then work his way
down to the harbour. From there he could walk round the
harbourside, and find the road that led back up to Laura's
shop.

The road was
steep, and soon John was forced to slow down by the burning feeling
in his legs, and the panting of his breath. If nothing else, he
thought, I'm going to be fit by the end of my time here. As he
thought the words he felt a wash of sadness, then muttered crossly
to himself. It was his first full day here, he was here for weeks,
and he wasn't going to spoil it by thinking about the day when he
would have to go back home again.

He trudged up
the road, and the houses spread out, the jumbled bustle of the
lower village being replaced by space: house then garden then house
then small field, another house, then nothing but fields. John
found a narrow path that led off towards the cliffs.

The path led up
to the cliff top, and then ran alongside it, a safe couple of
metres away from the edge. John ventured off it once, stepping
cautiously to within a couple of paces from the edge, but the grass
gave way to the yellow of freshly crumbling rock, and the beach
below was covered with loose lumps of cliff, so he returned to the
path, having performed the ritual of demonstrating to himself that
he was brave.

As he got
further from the village, John took in the great sweep of the bay.
He could still see the red roofs of the houses in the upper
village, clinging to the slashed gap in the rocks like limpets in a
sea-washed rock pool. Out at sea, the waves moved in towards the
land in relentless rows, like an invading army. On the opposite
cliff, John could see lines of orange tape fluttering in the breeze
around a raw scar in the earth.

The horizon
seemed a long way off, and the world was bigger than the one that
John was used to. I don't mind that, he thought. I could stay here,
where it is open and wild on the cliff tops and close and
reassuring in the village, and be happy. Then he his mood crumbled,
because he knew that was just hiding away from his problems, and
then he wished that he had not thought about hiding, not thought
the word at all, because suddenly he was back in the corridor,
staring into his locker, the smell of floor polish and sweaty
clothes all around him.

"Where you been
hiding then?" He would remember the exact sound of Parker's voice,
always.

"Not hid well
enough though, has he." Stevens' excited whine, sucking up to
Parker as always, desperate to impress and keep on impressing and
flattering and wheedling in case the violence ever turned on him.
"What you hiding from, loser? How comes you’re not with your freak
friends?"

John stared in
front of him, into his locker, the door still swinging to and fro
on its hinges. He thought of running, but then remembered that the
door at the end of the corridor was locked, and that the only way
out was through the swing doors. Parker and Stevens stood in the
way, and probably two or three more of Parker's little disciples,
the pilot fish swimming around the great white shark, looking for
scraps. John held on to his English book, stared at the red and
white pattern on the cover as if it was very important.

"You've left
something in your locker, Johnny." Parker said.

John shook his
head, made a vague gesture with his book, no thank you, this was
all he needed.

"Oh, I think
you have. Can't you see it? It's at the back there." Sniggers. John
continued his stare at the grey metal. He knew what was coming.
After a while, nothing was new. The back of his locker was damaged,
the grey surface peeling away from the rusted metal underneath. On
the little shelf was a screwed up packet of Polos. I don't remember
bringing those in, John thought, I don't even really like Polos.
When did I bring those in? Then there were hands on him, and he was
being pushed face first into the locker, pushed hard into a gap
that was far too small for him, the sharp corners of the metal
pressing hard into his skin, the pain nothing compared to how he
felt inside, the feeling that this was all there was, this was all
that there would be, this was all that he was worth. But then,
something happened that made the hands release him. Something that
in the end, was far, far worse.

When the
village was completely out of sight, hidden by the land that
swelled in great waves of rock, John decided to turn back. There
was still all the village to explore, and the morning was fast
disappearing. He followed the path back until it became the track
again, and then the track until it became the road again. This time
though, he turned off the road well before Laura's cottage, taking
the first turning that he passed.

John found
himself in a world of twisting alleyways and towering walls, houses
leaning in towards each other as if they wanted to touch, steps up
and steps down, promising passageways leading to blank dead-ends.
There were strange baskets propped up outside some of the houses.
John thought that they were something to do with lobsters. Or was
it crabs? He wasn't sure. After a while, he was totally lost. He
enjoyed just walking, exploring, the sense of being alone despite
being in the middle of all of these houses.

John looked at
his watch, and decided that he ought to head down towards the
harbour if he was going to find his way back to the shop for lunch.
A passage sloped up between two rows of cottages, and rather than
retrace his steps he headed along it, hoping that at some point it
would turn out on to one of the roads that led back down to the
sea.

The passage
turned to the right, but ended at the back door of one of the
houses. He turned back, and as he did he thought that he saw
someone disappear around the bend of the alley. He wasn't sure, as
he had just seen it out of the corner of his eye, and the more that
he thought about it, the more that he thought that maybe it wasn't
a person after all, just a large dog.

He wandered
back to where he had started, and looked both ways, but there was
nothing there but the empty alleyways, a couple of hanging baskets
swaying gently in the breeze. John looked up at the windows,
feeling as if someone was watching him, but no-one was there. He
turned to the right and followed the alley along, stopping once,
because he thought that he heard somebody behind him cough, a dry
rattling rasp, but it did not come again so he walked on. He could
not hear the sea, or any sound from the village at all.

John walked
between teetering rows of cottages, brightly-coloured curtains at
their narrow, lopsided windows, and then out into one of the small
streets of the village, barely big enough for a car to pass along,
but a major highway compared to the alleys. The street ran
crossways though, not up and down the hill, so John paused for a
moment, trying to decide which way to go, and as he stood there he
felt a peculiar sensation, as if someone were standing a couple of
steps behind him, staring at him. He turned, quickly, but there was
no-one there.