Boy A (16 page)

So they went on, from hour to day to year, until the baby was a boy. A boy, she knew, who imagined everything was all right. Who couldn’t feel the tension that was sometimes in the house. They had a lot to be grateful for, more than most in Stonelee. And it’s easy enough to ignore a little, when you have so much.

It just seemed better to play along, and hope that everything would turn out for the best. That’s what she’d always done. That’s why she pretended not to see the damp and street-dirt on their slippers, as they handed her the tray for Mother’s Day. And those years of practice helped her to carry on as normal, when the CCTV images were on the nightly news. She washed up, and cleaned and made packed lunches for five days. While inside she shrieked and screamed and wept. Until, at last, the detectives came to the door. They didn’t say what the call was about, they didn’t
have to. After she’d asked them in, she went upstairs to fetch her son. Then, holding hands, on trembling legs, they came down together; and a second boy was created, on the same steps as the first.

They’re going to Alton Towers. Chris and Steve the mechanic are discussing the merits of the new A50 dual carriageway, on which they have sped from the M6. Jack is listening in the middle. It’s odd to be in the van on a Saturday. The windows are open, and he can smell the dust and dirt, whose scents have been awakened by an earlier light rain. Chris is taking it slowly now they’re on these little country lanes. It’s only days since the accident. It’s still on Jack’s mind too. But the air is fresh out here. The skies are clear. The sun is shining through the trees, scattering strip-lights on the road before them. And they’re going to Alton Towers.

They pull in, past the big purple billboards, along the park’s road. Which has a single unbroken dividing line, to show you are in a different world now. Chris continues straight on, when the way splits, to the branch marked ‘hotel’ not ‘entrance’. Jack waits a moment or two before he says anything. Hoping that Chris or Steve the mechanic will notice they’ve gone wrong. He doesn’t like to point out mistakes in others, particularly in Chris, who rarely takes a bad route. But there is no getting round it, they have certainly missed their turning.

‘Chris,’ he says, ‘I think we might have gone past the entry back there.’

Chris laughs, ‘Don’t worry, Bruiser, we’ve got a special way in. I told you we could do this on the cheap, didn’t I?’

Jack suffers a slight sinking feeling, but the unstressed grins on Chris and Steve the mechanic’s faces tell him there is nothing to worry about.

‘It’s mostly public footpath where we’re going,’ Steve the mechanic says. ‘It was there before the rides.’

There’s a big brass statue of a flying machine in front of the building. Jack would quite like to look at it, but Chris swings the van into a parking space beside a gleaming people-carrier, almost hidden from the hotel. They walk together down the gently inclined field that flows down the left-hand side. Steve the mechanic says the slope reminds him of a hill he used to go sledging on, when he was little. But the field is too lushly green for Jack to picture it covered in white, and he tries but fails to remember the crunch of snow under his feet. Here the ground bounces with the thickness of the grass. At the pasture bottom there is a barbed-wire fence. Jack finds barbed wire repellent. He saw someone trying to climb razor wire once. He’ll never forget that.

Over a stile they go, into a wood. Sure enough there is a small green sign that says ‘Public Footpath’ and points along a beaten hard mud path, which they follow. It’s quite beautiful in the woods. He wishes Michelle was here. Jack feels close to nature somehow along this path, with trees all around. Like a woodsman. Like Davy Crockett. His dad took him to see the film once. When the other boys had played cowboys and Indians he had often played Davy Crockett on his own. Watching the cavalry and the Comanches fight, out of sight, not quite one thing or the other. Living on the frontier.

The path ends abruptly at a border of green mesh fence, though Jack can see it continues on the other side.

‘What now?’ he asks.

‘A quick shimmy, and we’re in,’ Chris says. He pulls at a section of the fence, by the bottom of the post nearest the path. It lifts to produce a gap just bigger than required to squeeze under.

‘They keep trying to fix it,’ Steve the mechanic says. ‘You can see the new wire, but it’s always been cut again when I’ve come here.’

‘I reckon they figure that not enough people know about it to matter. They must make millions anyway. Go on then, get in there, Steve.’

While Chris holds up the fence, Steve the mechanic drops down to a press-up position, and pushes one leg through the gap. Then, careful not to get dirt on his clothes, he eases his whole body past it.

‘Come on, Bruiser, your turn.’

Jack can’t see what else he can do. He can’t get home without them. Is this illegal anyway? They’re only going under a fence. Other people made the hole. The sign said public footpath. Fuck it.

It’s only when Jack and Steve the mechanic are holding up the mesh from the far side that they see the spying camera mounted behind a tree above them.

‘Bugger,’ Steve the mechanic says. ‘That wasn’t there last time I came. Hurry up, Chris.’

Chris gets up, and sees what they’re looking at.

‘It’s probably for catching the guys doing the cutting. But we’d still better get lost in the crowds pretty quick.’

And that’s it. They’re all belting along the path. Jumping over logs and puddles. Arms raised to knock branches out of their way. Running for it once more. Jack tells himself that he’s never going out with these two again. But he knows that he will. He has to, they’re his only friends. Chris runs ahead of him, sure-footed like an Indian scout. From behind him he hears Steve the mechanic let out a rebel yell, as he
clears a fallen tree. And Jack finds that he’s laughing. How could he not go out with them again? It would be like never seeing Shell again. He couldn’t bear that.

The trees finish and the three of them drop to a trot on concrete, among ornamental gardens. There are no security guards to be seen, but they file into the midst of the largest group of people, and keep pace with them up to a ride of giant, swirling, chintzy-china teacups. It looks about as adrenalin-packed as a cup of tea. But there is no queue, so the three climb aboard a blue and white cuppa to keep their heads down and get their breath back.

An hour later and they have forgotten all about caution. They are in the heart of the park, in the throng of thousands, indistinguishable from any other group of jean-clad lads. They ride the Black Hole first. Chris and Steve the mechanic talking about how they used to be scared of a ride that seems so tame now. Jack is not as complacent. Even the astronaut on the way up is unnerving: hanging there, suspended in the emptiness of space. Where’s his ship? Is his lifeline severed? Is he just floating, waiting for his oxygen to end? When the ride has wound itself to the top, it plunges. Whirling downwards with bewildering speed and the clatter of rickety-sounding steel wheels. Like hundred of ambulance trolleys.

As they go out, they look at their photos, digitally delivered to the exit to entice. Chris and Steve the mechanic are laughing, in the picture; Jack looks pale like a ghost, like his own negative. He’s glad he was a carriage back from the other two.

Three is a bad number for the park. One is always odd. Jack tries to be that one, so the others won’t see his reactions, but sometimes Chris or Steve the mechanic volunteer. The rides get easier anyway. Quickly Jack finds that he enjoys the sense of fear that they provoke. It is foundationless fear, after all. And it leaves no space inside
him for the very real fears with which he normally has to contend. He understands why people love these rides. There is something liberating about being terrified and still safe. Chris says that amusement parks are like drugs: they give highs to people who will never feel them through achievement; they give lows, without the need for real danger or despair.

‘Imagine coming to Alton Towers on acid, then,’ Steve the mechanic says.

Jack doesn’t want to.

The Oblivion ride is as close as he wants to go. This is what it’s like to fall, to finish. This is what it’s like in his darkest hours, and in his dreams of release. They are in the front row as the car rolls forwards on its gleaming twin tracks. It tilts towards the brink, and over it. But stops. Holds them there. People are screaming all around. Even Chris shudders. But Jack feels utterly calm. This is what it’s like in mid air.

The drop, when it comes, is a true drop. A vertical, terminal velocity plummet into a void. A smoking black pit that looks like a wall. Looks like the end. But you don’t end. Even though your body screams that you must. Even though evolution tells you, you are dead. Genes produced by billions of successful breeds say that you have failed. You haven’t. Not yet. The pit catches you, changes you and sends you somewhere else. Takes you to the end of the line. Jack is smiling when the ride is over. No more than two minutes from when it started. He is alive. It’s everyone else who looks like ghosts.

Sunday is spent in bed. Except when they get up to have a bath. The water sloshes over the side with their two bodies’ movement. She looks perfect to him like that, with soap suds not quite concealing the pink of her nipples. When he tells her this she says: ‘You can take a photo if you like.’

Jack laughs.

‘I’m serious,’ she says. ‘There’s a camera in the top drawer of the dressing table; I’ll give you the shot when I get it developed. But I keep the negatives.’

Jack hesitates before he gets out of the water. Slick with oil and coated in soap suds, he drips to the drawer. He feels more naked when she is not. Embarrassed, even though she has explored every nook of him. The camera is where she said, next to a teddy bear worn eyeless with love and two books:
Demystified Accounting
and
The One-Minute Manager
. Before he touches the camera, he dries his fingers on his T-shirt, lying where it was thrown, at the bed’s end. Incongruous in the neat room. He has noticed that all clothing migrates to the bed’s end, part of some law of motion. Jack studies the camera, trying to familiarize himself with its workings. It’s a disposable; there’s only a winder, flash on/off and the button for taking the picture. Long-termers, like himself, were allowed to have two pictures a year taken by the screws, to send to friends or relatives. He usually didn’t bother, thought it safer the fewer shots there were of him. Once he sent one to his dad, and one to Terry. Terry still has it in his wallet, Jack’s seen it. Who knows what his dad did with his one. Probably threw it away. He never got a reply to the letter.

‘Come on, Jack. What are you doing?’

He slides back, flat-footed, so as not to slip on the wet wood-laminate flooring of her bedroom.

‘So how d’you want me?’ She giggles.

‘Just like you are.’ He raises the Kodak to his eye.

‘You don’t want these in it then?’ She lifts her breasts out of the water, holds them together like the calendar models’.

‘What?’

‘Just take it, Jack. I’m saying I trust you not to show it to those
little boys
at work. Or don’t you think it’s sexy?’

He uses up the rest of the film on her. He can see that she
enjoys it. She’s a natural actually, a lens pleaser, she
is
Monroe. Or maybe Madonna in her Monroe phase. She takes Jack in her lips for the last shot. Gazes up wide-eyed while he looks down at her through the steamy plastic viewfinder. He tells her to smile, and she bares her teeth around him. Like an animal showing it can bite. She says something. It sounds like ‘trust me,’ but could be ‘fuck me,’ it’s hard to tell with her mouth full.

Jack’s Monday-morning-tired. It’s raining. Raining so hard the wipers don’t ever clear it.

‘’Bout time too,’ Chris says. ‘You haven’t had a proper taste of Manchester weather yet. It’s been practically tropical since you’ve been here.’ But he swears a lot on the way to the base, and peers through the windscreen like an old lady.

Jack always calls it the ‘base’ now. ‘Unit’ feels like it needs ‘secure’ to be whole; ‘yard’ smacks of ‘exercise’. ‘Base’ is cool; it’s got a military feel, it makes their missions important. The crack DV Deliveries team, with their precious cargoes of chocolate and charcoal.

‘Dave wants to see you two,’ the yard manager grunts at them, when they enter the building.

Chris tucks his shirt in as they walk to the office. Dave Vernon is the owner/MD of DV Deliveries. It’s amazing that anyone who lacks the vision to even make up a proper name for their company can keep it going. He’s a mole-like number-cruncher. Most of the lads slate him non-stop behind his back. Jack kind of likes him. Maybe Jack’s more grateful for his job than the others, respects the trust he’s been shown. Even though his background’s invented, the legend lists plenty of prison time.

Dave’s office door is open; it usually is. ‘Hi, it’s the heroes of the hour,’ Dave says, ushering them in. He’s a bit too eager to ingratiate himself, slightly slimy. Jack’s noticed it before, but it’s in spades today. There’s another man in the
office. He’s sat down, with a coffee from the exclusive pot that permanently percolates in here. Everyone but Dave has to drink instant, or go to Café Costa on their break. Shell says the smell drives them all mad.

‘This is Felix,’ Dave says, gesturing to the man in a way that is slightly effeminate, and seeming to realize this, correcting it to a more manly posture. ‘He’s from the
Evening News
. They’re going to run a short piece on your quick thinking and bravery. And DV Deliveries.’ He turns to look at Felix, as if to check that this last point is correct. ‘Felix is going to take some shots of you.’

Jack sees that there’s a camera on the desk, by Felix’s elbow. It’s a fierce-looking, futuristic piece. Long-barrelled and deadly. It looks like it could blow holes in people, spaces you could fit your fist in.

‘Look,’ Jack says, ‘why don’t you just take Chris? He’s the real hero, he’s the one that thought of the pry bar and phoned the ambulance.’