Breakdown (6 page)

I

'm off the racetrack, in a changing room. Smoky oil lamp, dry floor. I huddle down into a corner.
Can I trust him?
He drove Kaylem off, but  … 

Tarquin sees my shrinking now we're alone. ‘You're safe with me. I'm not Kaylem.'

And I'm not stupid. Nan taught me:
Never trust a man and you'll never go wrong.

I keep my distance from him.

‘I want to help you.'

I press myself further into the corner and wait.

‘Is there anyone I can tell outside?'

‘Anyone who'll pay, you mean?' I say.

‘I can't help you if you won't trust me.'

‘Trust you? I trust you, all right. As soon as I tell you about anyone, I trust you to go and rob them.'

‘I won't rob them.'

‘You went to rob the shoe boat.'

‘I won't rob them.'

‘There isn't anyone.'

Tarquin squats and looks at me. He seems to be searching for something. ‘There really isn't, is there?'

I shake my head.

‘We don't have anyone either, me an' Len.'

Does he think I'm like him, then? That we're the same? Am I supposed to spill my heart out and cosy up to him and share our aloneness?

I narrow my eyes. ‘You've got Careem and Kaylem, and all of Games City.'

He sits down next to me. ‘No I ain't.'

There's something in the way he says it that makes me sorry. I try to imagine life in this place – the squalor, the violence.

‘I understand,' he says. ‘You've been half drowned and nearly raped and you don't trust nothing. I don't blame you. But you can trust me. An' I'll show ya you can.'

His eyes are dark and liquid. His face is kind. He did rescue me. But I'm not ready to let go of Nan's advice.
Men only want one thing. That's the way they are. Don't ever trust them.

And he can't seem to take his eyes off me. Instinctively I pull Nan's coat tighter.

‘I'll be outside,' he says. ‘You're still frightened. You ain't gotta be frightened of me too. I'll be around though. I'll make sure you're OK. I'll send Len in to keep you company. He don't frighten you, do he?'

I just watch him. His voice soft, caring, with a slight trace of something foreign. He lifts his hand as if to touch me. Then lets it fall.

‘You got reason to be afraid, though,' he says. ‘You really have. I ain't never seen nothing as beautiful as you.'

Lenny is here. He strokes my hand. ‘I'm sorry, Miss, 'bout Kaylem.'

I press my lips together.

‘I'm really sorry. I shouldn'ta left you.'

I squeeze his hand.

‘But I ran and fetched Quinny.'

‘Thanks,' I whisper.

‘You ain't gonna die, are ya?'

‘If I don't eat something, I might.' I try to make light of it.

‘I ain't got much food, Miss,' he says, ‘but you can share mine.'

Lenny pulls a bit of meat off a bone he's been picking at. Hands it to me. It's only the tiniest bit and it'd scarcely feed a cat. I'm grateful though. I take it. I haven't tasted meat in a long time. Nan and I lived off our back yard. And that was all vegetables – it's only one snap with my molars and a little bit of pushing up and around with my tongue and it's swallowed. My throat's sore now. The meaty greasiness remains in my mouth.

‘What kind of meat is it?' I say, a sudden horror rising up in me.

‘Dog,' says Lenny.

OK. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Dog. Maybe I just ate the dog that ate Nan.

‘More?'

Lenny holds out another tiny piece. I'm so hungry and my belly's growling and the smell of grease on my fingers is torture, and it's like the morsel I've tasted has woken months of starvation in me.

But I look at Lenny – so skinny, like he hasn't eaten well for weeks either. I shake my head. I haven't got the heart to take it off him.

‘No, I'm OK.'

Lenny looks at me; a little worried crease starts up around his eyes. ‘You gonna be OK, Miss?' he asks.

I shrug.

‘It's being here, ain't it?'

It's so many things.

‘It's the big picture, ain't it?'

‘The what?' I say.

‘When it gets really bad here, I go there,' says Lenny.

‘Where?'

‘To the big picture.'

I look at him, puzzled.

He nods. ‘I do.'

I wait for the next extraordinary thing he's going to say. But instead he runs off, right out of the locker room, his short little legs and ragged shirt flying.

And I sit there and wonder about him, such a funny, skinny little kid. But before I'm through wondering he's back, all panting and flush-faced in the lamplight.

‘Look,' he says. He holds something out at me. A book. An ancient, tatty kid's book with a hardback cover that's half hanging off. I don't even want to touch it.

‘It's the other place,' he says. ‘The little farm in the north, the one with the big picture you can go to.'

‘No you can't,' I say.

But he isn't listening.

‘When I grow up I'm going there,' he says. And he sits down beside me and snuggles up to me.

I don't know what to do.

For a start, he smells. He smells of pee and of this place, and secondly I'm not used to kids. And I'm not sure I trust them, either, so I push him away.

Nan told me.

Children are tricky. They can spy through stuff. They can reach right inside you. They can see the real thing even when you can't. They can catch you out and suddenly blurt out something you've no idea was there. They can ask you a question that you have no answer for.

‘Look,' says Lenny, moving right back up next to me. He flips open the book's front cover and points. It's hard to see because it's so dark. Some kind of picture.

‘What is it?'

‘The other place,' he says.

I peer down, but I can't see anything. ‘It's just a book,' I say.

‘But books tell the truth, don't they?' says Lenny.

That's one of those questions I don't have an answer for. I don't know if books tell the truth or not. So I just puff out some air and say, ‘It's a book. There's no “other place”
you're
ever going to get to.'

I didn't mean to say it so harsh.

Lenny goes quiet. He doesn't cry.

‘I guess not,' he says.

He sits there blankly, biting his bottom lip.

I didn't even give him a chance. I want to say something to make it better.

‘Well,' he mutters, all ancient before his time, ‘maybe I ain't going yet. But you're wrong about the other place. It is there.'

And I see that if I don't back off, as like as not he'll get upset. So I don't say anything. I just sit there for a bit and Lenny looks at me, like I'm going to say something important.

But I just carry on sitting there trying to think of something to make it better.

And I remember how Nan and I used to sit together and how she'd stroke my hand and tell me of Mount Olympus and the story of the boy, Zeus, and how the nymph, Melissa, fed him milk from the goat, Amalthea, and how one day a horn broke off the goat and became the great horn of plenty, the cornucopia of the Gods, from which all good things flowed in abundance.

And Lenny and I sit there. Like Nan and me. Like Melissa and the boy Zeus.

The cornucopia from which all good things flowed in abundance.

And I look around. And it's obvious there's not much abundance flowing here. And I think maybe I could make some up, tell him a story full of good things – like Nan did for me? I wonder what kind of abundance he'd like. Maybe I could make up a story about this secret place he's so keen on.

So at last I say, ‘Maybe it's true. Maybe there is a secret place. But you haven't got any right to go around talking about it like that, or it won't be a secret any more.'