Graveyard Shift (4 page)

“He probably didn't mean it like that.”

“What else would he mean?”

“Where you work. It's a bit of a dive. He probably thought you must be hard up to work there.”

“Hmm.”

“That's probably all he meant.”

“Probably. But still. All the same.”

 

We felt stuffed after the meal, and I told her my day had been a good one without explaining the reasons why. I did mention the squirrel but not the four-leaf clovers, and I mentioned the girl in the canal but not Mr. October's part in what happened. I even told her I'd had a hot dog for lunch but not where I'd gotten it.

She seemed satisfied by my story, anyway, and by the time I'd cleared the plates from the breakfast bar she was nodding over the table, close to sleep.

Another day's waitressing had worn her out, and I felt sad that she'd been so happy over a lousy fourteen pounds. By the time I'd washed up, she'd crawled from the kitchen to the living room sofa and was drifting away in front of the TV.

Upstairs, I opened my sketch pad for the first time that day and began to draw, just doodling at first. I was trying to picture the faces Mr. October had shown me on Lamb Lane, but now they all merged into one. The only one I could see clearly was the dark-eyed pirate type with the slicked-back hair and silver tooth.

The sketch didn't turn out well — it didn't look anything like him — so I put the pad and pencil aside and rolled back on the bed with my hands pillowed under my head. I wouldn't tear up the sketch, I decided, even if it wasn't much good. It was the only memento I had from the day to prove that any of it had really happened.

That and the four-leaf clover chain inside my shirt pocket.

T
he hottest days passed and the air became breathable again. One night, the equivalent of a whole month's rain fell in a hundred minutes. Torrents and droughts. Life was like that. One day with Mr. October had opened my eyes, and then came day after day of nothing at all.

Every morning at seven o'clock sharp, a wiry gray-haired man in army fatigues and scruffy sneakers came rummaging through the trash bins outside our building. If he found anything of interest among the cat litter and rotting fish heads in the bins — old clothing, an unfinished bottle of wine — he would stuff it into the pack he carried on his back. Then he would continue along Lansdowne Drive and turn into the Blackstone Estate.

Watching from my window, I wondered if he might be one of Mr. October's many personalities. In the end I decided he
wasn't, but Mr. October might turn up again anywhere, anytime, with a different face. I might have seen him ten times on the streets without knowing it. That day by the canal seemed so distant, I might've dreamt it up, and as the days spun out I began to think I'd seen the last of him.

And then there was school.

Monday morning — my first day at Mercy Road School near De Beauvoir Town. Mum bustled around the maisonette, twice as flustered as usual. The only thing worse than her being late for work was my being late for school on day one.

“Tickets. Money. Passport. Apple for the teacher. Are you sure you haven't missed anything?”

“Yeah, I'm sure.”

“Then off you pop.” She smoothed out her clothes, checked her face in the living room mirror. “Do I look OK? Will I pass?”

“Does it matter when you work in a greasy spoon?” Seeing her hurt look, I quickly added, “Fine. You look fine, really great.”

“No need to be facetious,” she said.

She'd been preoccupied since the previous Friday when the businessman had again entered the café, ordering a sandwich and latte and leaving another large tip. She'd gotten it into her head that he fancied her, and she didn't know how she felt about that or how Dad would've felt if he'd known.

“But Dad's been gone four years,” I reminded her, following her down the stairwell. “Don't you think he'd want you to be happy?”

“You're just a kid. You wouldn't understand.”

“Then explain and I'll try to.”

“One day I will. This isn't the right time.”

It was never the right time.

We exited the building and stood on the path outside. By the cold light of day, the worry lines and dark circles around her eyes were more obvious, but she didn't need to hear that from me.

“Right, then,” she said. “Do your best, try to make friends, and if the teacher asks what you do in your spare time, don't mention graveyards.”

“OK.”

She straightened my tie and picked a few invisible specks of dust and fluff off my blazer.

“What's up?” she said.

“Nothing.” I shrugged. “I just wish you'd talk about . . . you know what. I don't like seeing you sad. I might be able to help. I'm a born helper, you know.”

“You're funny. Now get along before I clip your ear.”

 

The school was an old Victorian building whose red bricks had darkened almost to black over time. From the outside it looked cobbled together, with turrets and cupolas and windows too dim to see through. It was easy to imagine ghosts hiding inside. The playground was narrow and long with jungle gyms at one end but no athletic field like I'd had at my last school.

Inside, the classrooms faced one another along two dark corridors which crisscrossed at the center of the building. The rooms were small, divided by newly painted partition walls, with desks crammed closely together. The ceilings were low, the fluorescent lights hurt my eyes, and by the end of first period, I was suffocating.

We began with attendance in our homeroom, classroom 8C, then had algebra with Miss Neal, a large and matronly woman with impatient, small eyes and a slow, booming voice. Through most of the lesson, I stared out the window at the small gray chapel across the street. A sign outside advertised cheap lunch specials downstairs in the crypt.

By midafternoon I'd decided I didn't care much for the other kids in 8C. There were two in particular, twin brothers Dan and Liam Ferguson, whose cold stares and sly smiles made me think they were sharing telepathic jokes about me. There was Tommy Farley, a red-haired kid with permanently encrusted snot on his upper lip like a silver-green alien mustache; Raymond Blight, who whispered “Fish” behind my back and spent most of English flicking tiny paper balls at other students whenever Mr. Glover looked away; and Mel Kimble, a girl who finished every other sentence with the word
innit
.

“Mel, you can kick us off by reading the first page,” Mr. Glover said at the start of the period.

“‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,' innit?” Mel read.

Mr. Glover blinked at her over his half-moon spectacle
lenses. “Sorry to interrupt, but I think you'll find that's a spurious word not found in the original text.”

“Just reading what's on the page, sir, innit?”

Mel wasn't so bad. That was just her way. Some of the others were probably OK too, but on day one none of them said hello or otherwise did anything to make me feel welcome.

There was a gang of six who sat together in every class, stayed together during break, and ate together at lunchtime — Matthew, Ryan, Curly, Devan, Kelly, and Becky. They were the smartest and best-looking in 8C, and they seemed to know it. They never fussed for attention or argued or bickered or made much of a noise.

They didn't speak to me, either, but sometimes I caught them looking my way as if trying to decide whether I was animal, vegetable, or mineral. Matthew was long and lanky and constantly grooming his fingernails. Kelly was dark and icy, looking straight through me but never at me.

Becky Sanborne was the most interesting one, I thought. She had a round cherub face with cool green eyes and a lightly freckled nose. She never stopped chatting and smiling except when she looked at me, and then she became serious and silent. Once I thought she was mouthing something across the class to me, but that turned out to be a yawn.

At lunchtime I went to the crypt. The cool, dark space was full of warm-coated senior citizens who'd claimed all the tables. Their chatter and the clink of their spoons amplified off the stone walls under a low, curved ceiling. I bought a hot dog at the counter and ate it outside on the chapel wall across
from the school. The hot dog was tasty, but not nearly as tasty as the one Mr. October had given me.

In the afternoon, French with Mrs. Radcliff was followed by social studies with Miss Whatever. At least, that's what the other kids called her. Her real name was Whittaker. Jolly and energetic, she had a habit of going, “Now, children,” in a way that made everyone squirm, which was the worst you could say about her. But during her class, our last of the day, something happened — something that turned my first day at Mercy Road from a bad day into a disaster.

We were doing an assignment she called From the Headlines. Miss Whittaker explained as she handed out newspapers that we should each choose one story to present to the class. Later we would have to research these in greater detail and write essays on our subjects for next week.

Raymond Blight chose a football story from the
Daily Mirror
. Mel Kimble spoke about a pop star's arrest for drunk driving. Matthew from the gang of six preferred a more sober story about the current economic climate — the latest unemployment figures had just been published — while Becky found a bizarre one in the overseas section of
The Independent
. “
42 DIE IN FIGHT OVER WRISTWATCH
,” the headline read.

No one believed it, not even Miss Whittaker, until Becky showed the paper to the class. What began as a dispute over the ownership of a watch between neighbors in a small Afghani village had soon escalated into a full-scale riot between rival gangs.

“Remarkable,” Miss Whittaker said.

“Worst fing I ever heard,” Mel said.

“Incredible but true,” Becky said, “and it's worse that the story's only a small piece on page nineteen. It should've been on the front page, but it isn't, because it didn't happen here.”

As Becky returned to her seat, Miss Whittaker signaled me to the front. The story I'd found was closer to home, from page three of the
Metro
. I opened the paper on Miss Whittaker's desk, stooping over it to avoid eye contact with the class.

“By the way, I believe you're new here,” Miss Whittaker said. “Have you met Ben, everyone?”

“Nnn.”

“Hmm.”

“Uh.”

I'd never liked speaking in public, let alone in front of strangers. Standing there, I felt like an exhibit, a curiosity at a circus sideshow. Taking a breath, I began to read.

Three mornings earlier, after Mum had left for work, I'd done what she'd been encouraging me to do and taken my sketch pad to London Fields. The first of the barbecues was already smoking and more were being set up. My idea was to capture the park, the trees, and houses beyond before it became too busy.

It was a fine morning, still warming up, and the air had a golden glow. Even the wisps of barbecue smoke would add something to the picture. I took an empty bench and set to work, roughing out the scene on an empty page. Sometimes it felt good to draw just for the sake of it; the subject didn't
have to be anything special. After half an hour I stopped and looked up, wondering if Mr. October would appear if I waited long enough.

The barbecues were multiplying. Already there were twice as many as when I had begun. Sun worshippers spread towels on the ground, threw Frisbees and played cricket with tennis balls and plastic bats. I watched with the smell of smoke clinging to my nose and listened to the sudden rise and fall of a siren a few streets away.

The newspaper story brought it all back. It seemed so vivid, I could smell the smoke right there in the classroom.

About the same time I was opening my sketch pad in the park, Kevin Willow, 36, and his wife, Hannah, 33, were locking up and leaving their second-floor apartment on Henryd Street five minutes away. They'd planned to leave the building just long enough to buy bread from Gossip café on Broadway Market and stamps from the post office. They didn't know as they set off that a small fire was kindling in the apartment below theirs. They didn't know it would spread so quickly, tearing up through the complex like a ravenous beast. They didn't know that safety regulations had been overlooked in their building and the fire escape outside was hazardous.

Why they decided to stay at Gossip for coffee instead of going straight home was anyone's guess. Instead of taking five minutes, their outing ended up taking thirty. By the time they turned the corner onto Henryd Street, the place was ablaze, thick black smoke billowing around and above it.

The fire department was already on the scene.

Two engines had arrived together, a minute or so before the ambulance, and almost ten minutes before the Willows.

Ten minutes too late to save the two children trapped inside.

Molly, 6, and Mitch, 4, perished from inhalation of smoke while they slept. The emergency services did all they could, but were hampered by the loose and rusting fire escape and a stairwell between floors where the worst of the blaze had taken hold. They managed to lift the children out through an upstairs window, but neither brother nor sister survived as far as Homerton Hospital.

“‘An investigation is under way,'” I finished. “‘An electrical problem on the ground floor is suspected.'”

I closed the paper and looked at the class. No one spoke or moved. A chair scraped somewhere near the back. Raymond Blight stared, bored, out the window.

And still I could smell the smoke.

“'Orrible,” said Mel. “Them poor kids.”

“So sad,” Kelly whispered to the gang of six.

Becky stared misty-eyed at the floor.

Miss Whittaker cleared her throat. “Indeed. And what will you do, Ben, with a story like that? There doesn't seem to be much to add.”

“Dunno, miss.” I shrugged. “It just makes me think.”

“About what?”

“I suppose about me being in the park around the corner
at the time.” I paused. It was hard to explain. “All those barbecues, all that smoke. If they hadn't been there, someone might've seen the smoke from the house and done something about it in time.”

“See what you mean, Ben,” Miss Whittaker said. “It'll be interesting to see what you come up with next week.”

“You can still help,” a small voice said at the back of the class. It sounded more like rustling leaves than a voice.

“Help how?” I said.

“Help us. Help
them
.”

I hadn't noticed them there before. They must've just entered the class. The way the light angled across the room from the window, the three figures were in semidarkness, seated together at a desk-table near the door.

“I don't understand,” I said, leaning forward for a better view. “Is there something I should do? Something I should've done?”

“Not before, but now,” the voice answered. “Help now. We're still in the fire.”

“Ben?” Miss Whittaker's voice was barely audible. “Ben, is everything all right? Look at me.”

I was inside a tunnel, all soft and dark at the edges. All I could see was hazy light at the end and the three figures waiting there for me.

Three chairs scraped back at once. Three figures stood up.

“Who are you?” I said. “Tell me and I might be able to help.”

“You know who these two are. Help them first.”

It was the tallest of the three who'd spoken, the one with the rustling voice. Standing behind the desk was a man about six feet tall, blackened and scarred from head to foot, his charred clothing hanging off him like rags.