Turquoiselle (9 page)

As
he unlocked the central door of the shed, something flew suddenly up from a
tree beyond the back wall. After dark that was uncommon. But then again, the
light of the shed might have deceived the bird, as neons and streetlamps might
elsewhere.

Carver
shut and relocked the shed door from inside. He glanced from the night-blind
four back windows to the front seven.

How
alien, he thought, his house looked from here, a retro smartish ‘80’s, ‘90’s-ish
erection, with certain, now-dated kinks of structure. Its stark lights made it
a target.

Carver
turned to look around him.

The
effect of snow-heaps, that had always struck him about the things stored in the
cupboards of the chain of flats when he was a boy, lessened here, on closer
inspection. There was more room to lay them out, these trophies. More space for
individual or group identity.

The
glow rising from them – blue-green like the two Lower Alert colours duly mixed,
Aquamarine and Emerald – what caused it? He had never noticed such an effect anywhere
in the tarpaulined, scaffolded building in Trench Street, let alone the supply
stores – the ‘stationery cupboards’. Carver though did not believe any longer
his imagination was to blame. His imagination did not work in that way at all.
It was no doubt his
imagination
that sometimes made the glow seem a little
less
.

Without
prelude, a bolt of crucial tiredness struck him a soggy blow. He did not
frequently experience such draining energy-slumps. He would have to, he
concluded, go back at once and sleep, even though, now, less than three hours
could be scrounged before he should resume his watch on the woods, assuming he
meant to keep it.

He
ran his hand swiftly, less a regulation plain caress than an obligatory
contact
, over a row of
the stolen things. Enough.

He
moved instantly back towards the central door of the three, the one that could
open and close. And halted. Behind him – what? – to the rear side of the shed
only the four windows, facing the garden wall and the woods. And one of these
windows as his periphery vision had told him – Carver turned.

Outside
the window,
inside
the wall,
something stood, upright and solid and very close.

It
was black, viscous
rubbery
black, and the
head was composed of the same material, having no features: a sculpted blob.
But then – as if the turquoise gleam in the shed had flared – Carver saw after
all one feature. Eyes. Black and shiny, in-and-unhuman. Splitting the mask of
darkness. A pair of eyes in a faceless face, looking, looking,
looking
into his own.

Carver was not
amazed. As he would not have been amazed if nothing had happened. He had
tempted them in the lane, walking back, dawdling under the isolated and mostly
unlighted lamps; now by walking out here, the house lit like a beacon behind
him.

He
went directly to the door he had not fully locked, and opened it quickly and
jumped straight down on to the concrete apron, turning as he did so to the
figure, where it pressed close to the shed.

And
something now really did happen. Something changed. The sky – was very bright –
somewhere, far off, a sound – Carver was no longer there. Nothing was.

Eight

Just before he
was meant to start at the secondary school at Sucks, (as Andy called it), Sara
and he had to move again.

The
new place was another flat, a partial clone of the previous several they had inhabited
since escaping his father. Found for them, and with Sara getting assistance
with the rent, (and to bolster that, working her endless hours cleaning), they
were still inside the zone they had occupied, by then, for two years. And Andy
was still enlisted, at first, and if seldom in situ, at the primary school in
Potters Road.

In
the future he would wonder if Sara had ever, during that time, been informed
of, or threatened about, his truanting.

If
so she never relayed the experience. She might, worn out and edgy as she was,
even have forgotten it. He himself
had
been informed, threatened, and bawled
out on the matter, which meant nothing to him. It was no longer legal in
schools to beat kids up over their misdemeanours. Accordingly he did not care.

After
the move, which had also meant little to him, or even probably to his mother,
Andy went to the school one day because he felt like it. (The novelty,
perhaps.)

The
midmorning break came nevertheless, and found Andy in the school yard, with
some as ever non-personal items he had thieved in his pockets, already having
lost interest and thinking of leaving. But the sun was warm, and he leaned on
the brickwork, being a lizard and absorbing it as lizards did, apparently, in
hot, still noonday countries – Brazil, Spain, the Caribbean.

Lizardlike,
motionless, his soulless eyes swivelled in his static scaly frame. And soon he
saw Heavy up near the rain-shelter, with the two bullies, Cox, (who had
not
lost a tooth)
and E-bone, looming over him.

Andy
had not come across Heavy since their encounter in Station Road. There was no
reason he should have done.

Cox
had kept out of Andy’s way too, since Andy had thumped him. And E-bone was a
moron, Andy had long ago deduced, a muddy-coloured, black-white spite-fuelled
boil, inert but able to burst when given a cue.

The
lizard watched.

Some
of the other ‘young people’ – as custom was coming to title them – did too.

“I
wonder if he’d just fall over,” said Cox. “Yeah?”

“Go’won,”
said E-bone. “Pushim.”

“Shall
I push him?” Cox, raising his face to the sky, asked God.

Seemingly
God concurred it was feasible.

So
Cox set his big hands on Heavy’s big fat shapeless torso and pushed.

Heavy
did nothing. He looked at Cox, as if not sure what Cox was. Heavy did not
appear frightened. But he was very big, a blubbery consolidated mass that
rocked a bit but did not give.

“It’s
a
game
,” said Cox to
Heavy, determinedly. And this time he drew back, considered, and slammed
himself against Heavy, and E-bone laughed, and some of the others who watched
sniggered in chorus, glad it was not them being attacked by Cox.

Heavy
seemed to go over only after an interval, and very slowly, like a too-large and
wrongly-made doll. He swung backwards, not resisting, his face even now without
any dismay, let alone panic. Too thick to drop easily, somehow defying gravity
all the way down.

When
he hit the ground, the hard concrete below the edge of the rain-shelter – also
concrete, chipped and grazing, and his huge unwieldy unsightly head banged down
too, and the smack of the impact sounded, or seemed to sound – even then he did
not really react. And after it, he lay there, as unmoving as Andy the lizard
against the warm brickwork. But Heavy’s expression did slowly change. It
became one of the vaguest surprise. Brainless, Heavy. What peril could there be
for
him
in having his
skull smashed on the ground?

Then
he got up, and it was a marvel. A sort of jumbled upward
flight
– Why had Cox
and/or E-bone not put the boot in? Laughing too much maybe. They also missed
the curious beauty of Heavy’s getting up, the cumbersome grace –
agility
–

Heavy
anyway was again on his feet. Gracefully he shambled forward, across to them.
He did not look as if he had been hurt.

Abruptly
Andy noticed he had unpeeled himself from the hot wall. He was not a lizard. He
was a human, and wide awake.

“It’s
a game,” said Heavy, to Cox and E-bone.

“Wan’
notha go?” asked E-bone.

“It’s
my turn,” said Heavy, with gentle logic.

And
reaching out, effortless – like a gigantic fuddled swan— he too
pushed
with his two
flails of arms that were wings. Cox and E-bone simultaneously, astounded and
howling, fell backward. In due season,
their
bodies hit the hard and bitter earth,
their heads smacked –
crack
,
crack
– on the
concrete.

There
was not much noise now in the yard, which once had been called by the name “
Play
ground”.

Then
there came the sounds of Cox puking, and E-bone crying.

Rather
oddly, Andy remembered right then someone had said E-bone’s father had been killed.
Perhaps this was not true. Or it had been long ago. But in E-bone’s sobbing
misery, Andy unnervingly heard somehow his own helpless lament, his mother
lying by the cooker after the advent of his father’s fist, and he curled up
against the wall, waiting for the next onslaught
“
Shut
up you little cunt
–”

“Shut
up, you little cunt,” said Andy, under his breath.

And
as he did so, Heavy, who could not have heard him, turned to gaze his way. And
then Heavy was bending over Cox and E-bone. Heavy murmured, sadly, “It’s just a
game, you didn’t ought to play with it, if it makes you unhappy.”

He
was halfway up Hawthorne Road, (his new route home) before he realised Heavy was
again, as once before, shambling along in his wake.

Andy
ignored him. Last time telling Heavy to fuck off had not worked after all. But
in a short space the fumbly stupid sound of Heavy’s feet and shoes annoyed Andy
enough he did turn round.

“
What
?”

“Isn’t
the sky blue,” said Heavy.

“No.
It’s orange. Piss off,” Andy added, despite the redundancy. It would not work,
nor did it. As Andy resumed his journey back to the new flat, Heavy fell in
beside him.

How
completely weird he was. You knew it, obviously, but then you sort of really
looked at him, and
really
knew it. And it
was much, much worse than you had ever reckoned.

“I
saw an oransh sky once,” said Heavy, meditatively. “Something was on fire.”

“Your
fucking brains.”

“Oh,no.
Old houses.”

Andy
glared at the passing traffic. Cars, buses. Congested. Fast.

“And
in a film,” said Heavy, “I saw.”

Andy
said, “Look, shove off, would you?”

Heavy
did not seem to know what had been said. He kept on walking at Andy’s side, and
smiling up into the sky.

“There’s
a bird,” said Heavy, with soft pleasure.

Evidently
birds had just been invented, and were still a rare phenomenon.

Andy
thought about Heavy pushing both Cox and E-bone over, and how someone had gone
for the nurse and then, while somebody else asked E-bone, who was still crying,
if
he
had pushed Cox over, E-bone said he had not meant to, they had
just been playing about was all. Heavy had already ambled off, but it appeared
E-bone was afraid of Heavy now and would not incriminate him. Cox, who had
stopped being sick, had been taken to lie down.

Andy
wondered if
he
could get the better of Heavy in a fight. Surely he
could? He could not picture, however, Heavy fighting him. Heavy’s plasticky
skin was impervious. How ugly he was. So ugly it was not actually ugly, but
some other type of visual shock.

Andy
was staring at Heavy. Andy moved his eyes away.

As
they turned up Lodge Road, Heavy said, “What’s it mean, your name?”

Beyond
the traffic lights, Andy could see the off-licence on top of which was Sara’s
new flat. This was far enough. He stopped, angled round and looked at Heavy.
Andy thought,
He’s
like a punch-bag
. If you hit him he would come back at you. Like he
did with Cox and E-bone. It was not a defence or a reflex, not anger, but a
built-in
mechanism
.

“Look,
man,” said Andy in a level grown-up voice he had heard his mother use, and some
of the people with the social services, “I need to be on my own. All right?”

Heavy
looked at him. Heavy’s round eyes were the colour of mud, or slime.

“I
had an apple in my lunch,” said Heavy. “I like apples. Some people don’t like
apples, like in the By-bell.” (He meant Bible, Andy knew that from some class
when they were being taught things from the Bible and Heavy pronounced it as he
did, and seemed unable to alter this, so the teacher gave up.) “That was why he
gave it her.”

Perhaps,
Andy thought, he could just take to his heels like last time. He would soon
outrun Heavy. But he heard himself reluctantly say, “Who did?” And did not
know why he had.

“The
serpan. He didn’t like apples so he gived his one to that woman in the garden.”
(Oh. he meant Adam and Eve, What the teacher called a Parable, or something.
Some senseless fairy tale–) “And she liked the apple, but she shared it with
her boyfriend, because she liked him too and wanted he should have some. And
then that other one came and he was angry. But the serpan was only not wanting
to waste it and she was only being kind. My moth–ah told me. She tells me
stuff.”

“You
are,” said Andy, slowly and precisely, “off your fucking nut. Now fuck off or
jump under a car, whichever you’d like best.”

“I’d
like best,” said Heavy, with a sudden dreamy energy, “to
fly
–” And spreading
out his two bolsters of arms, he spun away, careering off along the pavement,
laughing in a drainlike gurgling, and here and there jumping up the half foot
that was all his bulk and discoordination seemed to allow.

Andy
too ran for it, the other way, dodging in behind the shops before Heavy could
think better of flight and try to rejoin him.

She had mixed
race too, as E-Bone did, Sara, his mother. Sara’s father, for protection from
racial prejudice, had changed the family name to its anglicised version,
Carver
, which Andy
then at birth received, as he was a bastard, (or born out-of-wedlock, as no one
any longer said... did they?) E-bone’s mum’s dad had not altered their family
name, and so E-bone received that, as he too was a bastard boow. Andy did not
remember this name, though it had something to do with islands, he believed. E-bone’s
proper first name was Ebony. His mother perhaps had been making some statement,
rather an out-of-date one, if so. It might have been an OK name, but not when
you were eleven. Nor, at any rate in England, would Andy’s
real
first name have
been. Andreas. Which probably would get pronounced Anne-dria, or Andri-arse.
Andy was the easier option.

E-bone
meanwhile had a dead father, maybe killed, or only dying young. And Andy had no
father, for that monstrous thing was gone from their lives too, Sara’s and his.
Heavy’s mother (or moth-ah) was definitely dead. Some of them had been told this
early on, by a teacher trying to protect Heavy from them. Yet, as Andy had
seen, he always referred to her in the present tense.

But
Heavy was mental. Went without saying. You could not look like that, and not
be.

“The
leaves that are left are leaving,” said Heavy.

“You
shouldn’t try,” said Heavy, “to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted
it.”

Heavy
said, “That girl has a lake in her eyes.”

Heavy
said, “Look how the wind runs backward.”

Heavy
said, “A tortwas can’t change its shell.”

“Shilt,”
said Heavy.

“
Shit
.”

“Shilt,”
Heavy agreed.