The Accidental (14 page)

It is too hot sitting here in the sun. The sun is a huge red eye. Astrid gets up. She looks at the war memorial, with its faded old fake flowers on the two wreaths. She touches its stone ledge, so hot from the sun that she can’t touch it for long. Since this war memorial was new the sun has heated it up every summer.

She tries the door of the church. It is locked. There is a notice on it saying who to ask for the key, Mr something who lives in the street at the second junction (there is a map).

Churches are usually locked. It stops vandalism.

But what if you were a vandal? You could just go and ask for the key.

But then they would know it was you who was the vandal.

But what if you said you’d had the key and dropped it somewhere, say, and that a vandal must have found it and gone in and done the vandalism?

Or–what if the person who
owns
the key is a vandal, and decides to do some vandalism and then just make up afterwards that someone else came and borrowed the key and wrote with spraypaint on the walls or broke the seats or whatever’s in there etc.?

It is actually not true that not a single thing happened in that minute she counted just now. There were the birds and things like insects flying. Crows or something probably cawed in the heat above her. They are doing it now. There is the tall white plant over behind the wall, cow something it is called. In sixty seconds it probably moved a bit in the air and it must even have grown but in a way that can’t be seen by the human eye. There are bees etc. everywhere in the shade, working in and out of the flowers, on their way home to their hive where the drones still have their legs because it’s still summer, all happening in its own world which exists on its own terms in this one even if someone like Astrid doesn’t know about it or hasn’t found out about it yet. A heart-shaped stone next to the door says on it Died 1681. There really is someone under it who died in 1681 id est once he or she was alive like this and now he or she whoever it was (there is no name on it, just the date of it, and no month, just the year), what is left of him or her, has been under there for more than three hundred years, and once he or she lived and was actually alive in this village. The sun has been hitting that stone every summer all that time, right the way through the perpetual summers up to the ecologically worrying ones of now. Astrid has never really noticed how green things are before. Even the stone is green. The wood of the locked church door is brown-green, has a kind of sheen of green on it from it just being there in weather etc. It is a really bright colour. If she had her camera she would have just filmed the colour for a whole full minute and then later she would be able to see what it really looks like, that colour.

She sits down in the shade by the door and looks hard at the greenness of the green. If she looks hard enough she will maybe know or learn something about greenness or whatever.

But those people who died in those wars last century and the person under the stone shaped like a heart, is it the same thinking about them as it is about that boy who ran past the Peckham library or that girl they found in the woodland dead last year? Or people right now in places in the world who haven’t enough to eat so are dying right now as Astrid sits here thinking about a colour? Or animals in countries where there’s not enough food or rain so they die. Or the people who are in that war that’s supposed to be happening, though not very many people seem to have died in it, not as many as in a real war.

Died 2003.

Astrid tries to imagine a person, a child maybe, or someone Astrid’s own age, in the dusty-looking places from tv, dying because of a bomb or something. She imagines Rebecca Callow on a hospital bed in a place that looks like it has no equipment. It is quite hard to imagine. And at school teachers are always going on about the environment and all the species of things that are dying out etc. It is all everywhere all the time, it is serious, animals with ribcages and children in hospitals on the news with people somewhere or other screaming because of a suicide bomber or American soldiers who have been shot or something, but it is hard to know how to make it actually matter inside your head, how to make it any more important than thinking about the colour green. The Curry Palace i.e. it was easy to make
that
matter because here it is, right here in front of them. But when she and Amber went and asked the Indian man he shook his head and said it was just local high spirits having a bit of fun and not vandalism at all and certainly not racist and there was definitely nothing he wanted them to film and asked them to go away. The whole time he did he was looking over their shoulders at the boys standing watching them outside the chip shop across the road from the Curry Palace. Amber looked across at them and said she thought those boys were the local high spirits. The Indian man went away back into the Curry Palace. A man came out of the chip shop and stood behind the boys, watching her and Amber.

Will I film the car park? Astrid asked.

No. Film them, Amber said looking at the people standing with their arms folded across the road.

When Astrid started filming them one of the boys started coming across the road, probably to get her to stop, and Amber stood right behind Astrid with her hands on her shoulders, but the man called him back and the boys and the man went inside the chip shop and shut the door.

Died 1681. Astrid touches the hot heart with its word and numbers etched into it.

We lost that footage when the camera broke, she had said to Amber one evening in a whisper so nobody would hear and remember about the camera.

What footage? Amber said.

The footage of the local high spirits, Astrid whispered.

Amber shrugged.

Did you want to watch it again? she’d said. I didn’t. Ugly little bastards.

Didn’t it prove something? Astrid said.

What would it prove? Amber said.

It proved we were there, Astrid said.

But we know we were there, Amber said.

It proved we saw them, Astrid said.

But they know that we saw them, Amber said. And we know that we saw them.

It proved the thing we actually saw, Astrid said.

Who to? Amber said, and knocked her hand on Astrid’s head. Knock knock, her hand went.

Who’s there? Amber said.

Amber is really good at questions and their answers. That day in Norwich, after Astrid had filmed the closed-circuit camera in the station for the full sixty seconds on her camera’s second-counter, she had looked up from the eyepiece and seen, behind Amber, that a man in a short-sleeved shirt and tie had come out of a door further down the platform and was watching them.

He watched them when they went to film the next camera across the station by WH Smith. Halfway through Astrid filming the third one, in the entrance hall, he was standing there next to them.

I’m going to have to ask you to stop that, he said to Amber.

Stop what? Amber said.

Stop filming, the man said.

Why? Amber said.

It’s not permitted, he said, for members of the public to record details of our security system.

Why not? Amber said.

For reasons of public safety and security, the man said.

Why are you asking me? Amber said.

I’m asking you to stop filming, the man said.

Not what, why, Amber said. Why are you asking me? I’m not filming anything.

He folded and unfolded his arms. He put his hands on his hips id est he was getting really irate.

If you wouldn’t mind asking your little girl to stop filming, he said.

He kept glancing up at the camera above them like he knew he was being recorded.

She’s not a little girl, Amber said. And she’s not mine.

It’s for my local researches and archive, Astrid said.

The man looked at Astrid in total surprise, like he couldn’t believe anyone who was twelve could speak never mind would have a reason for saying anything out loud.

It’s for a school project on security systems in train stations, she said.

Amber smiled at the man.

I’m afraid, I imagine, you’ll need to get written permission from the proprietors of each station for something like that, the man said to Amber, ignoring Astrid.

You’re afraid or you imagine? Amber said.

What? the man said.

He looked bewildered.

Afraid or imagine? Amber said.

The man glanced again at the camera and wiped the back of his neck with his hand.

And are you congenitally unable to talk to her, so you have to refer everything to me, like I’m your secretary or a special sign-language interpreter for her, like she’s deaf or dumb? Amber said. She can speak. She can hear.

Eh? the man said. Look, he said.

We
are
looking, Amber said.

Listen, the man said.

Make up your mind, Amber said.

You can’t film here, the man said. That’s final.

He folded his arms at Amber and kept them folded. Amber looked right back at the man. She took a step forward. The man took two steps back. Amber started to laugh.

Then she linked her arm into Astrid’s arm and they went out of the entrance hall into the town bit of Norwich.

Did you see, Astrid said as they walked into the sunlight at the front of the station, how that man was really sweating under his arms?

Yeah, well. Not surprising. Pretty hot today, Amber said unlinking, and strode off ahead towards the bridge.

Astrid walks home from the village again in the sweltering heat. She swings her arms out from her sides as she walks. That’s how Amber walks, with her arms kind of swinging out, as if she knows exactly where she’s going and though it’s quite far and you might not know where you’re heading to, it’ll be worth it, it’s going to be really really amazing when you get there.

It is a really long day, then Amber gets back from wherever it was she went.

By the way, she says when Astrid is clearing the table that night after supper. While I was away I sorted something out for you.

Like what? Astrid says.

You’ll see, Amber says.

Astrid is in bed in the horrible room on the hottest night so far. Tonight on the news it said this was the hottest day ever, since heat records began. Everything in the room smells fusty, hot. It is just before she goes to sleep.

She sees in her head Amber sitting by herself on the train to Liverpool St with the countryside going so fast past her then the train pulling into the station and Amber getting off the train and going through the little turnstile and across the concourse and down the steps and the escalator and getting on the tube and sitting on it then getting off the tube again and walking the rest of the way from the station up past the deli and the shops and across the park and up the road then all the way up Davis Rd to the junction and across it to outside Lorna Rose’s mother’s house. But what if Lorna Rose wasn’t in? What if she was at her father’s? Amber knocks on the door but there is no answer. So. So she goes to Zelda Howe’s house and rings the bell and someone comes to the door and it is actually Zelda Howe and Amber slaps her hard across the face.

Surprise, Amber says.

Then maybe Amber goes to Rebecca Callow’s house and knocks on the door and a woman answers, probably their au pair, and Amber says she is Rebecca’s teacher from school come about something so the au pair lets her in and shows her through the house and into the big back garden where Rebecca is sitting in the white swing chair they have in their garden and another girl is in the garden too doing a headstand on the lawn and doesn’t see Amber coming in and the first thing Amber does is get her by the legs like she is helping hold her up and the girl says who are you? And Amber says to her are you Lorna? And the girl says yes and Amber says then believe me I am your worst nightmare welcome to hell and swings her legs so she falls over. Then she goes to Rebecca, who is watching with her mouth open, and she gets hold of either side of the swing chair and pushes it hard backwards so that Rebecca falls out of it on to the lawn. Then while Rebecca goes running inside she gets Lorna’s mobile out of Lorna’s hand–she is sitting on the grass looking dazed trying to phone someone–and she says now watch this very carefully and she puts it on the path and she stamps on it hard so it breaks into pieces. Next time, she says to Lorna Rose, it’ll be your hand I do that to. And then she goes through the house and Rebecca Callow is in the kitchen crying on the phone to someone in a real state of fear and the au pair is in the hall on another phone and Amber pulls Rebecca’s long hair once really hard and says how do you like it, being treated like that? and the au pair is still in the hall shouting in her Croatian or whatever accent and Amber walks round her giving her a really wide berth and lets herself out the front door and lets it slam shut behind her.

Then Amber goes to a research place where you can find out where people are for other people who need to know. She says to the lady behind the counter, I need to trace the whereabouts of, and then she writes down his name on the form.

The lady behind the counter nods. It won’t take long, she says, because this is a quite unusual name. Can I ask if you are a next-of-kin?

No, Amber says, but I am acting on behalf of a next-of-kin person who needs to know where he is so she can legitimately contact him.

Then Amber slips the lady two hundred pounds in neatly folded cash over the counter like in a film or drama.

It’s a family matter, Amber says.

The lady looks all round her to see that nobody has seen this happen.

Certainly madam. I won’t be long, the lady says.

She disappears through the back where the computers are which have all the details on them of everybody, like where they are in the world and what it is they’re doing there.

Astrid dreams of a horse in a field. The field is full of dead grass, all yellowed, and the ribs are showing on the horse. Behind the horse an oilwell or a heap of horses or cars is burning. The sky is full of black smoke. A bird which almost doesn’t exist any more flies past her. She sees the shining black of its eye as it flashes past. It is one of the last sixty of its species in the world. All over the field at Astrid’s feet people are lying on the yellowed grass. They have bandaged arms and heads; there are drips attached to some of them. A small child holds out a hand to her and says something she can’t understand. Astrid looks down at her own hand. There is no camera in it.