Winterton Blue (9 page)

Lewis snorted, jabbing his foot so hard on the accelerator that Manny jerked forward in his seat.

After all what time? said Lewis, It's stopped still for her. For a minute, I thought it was Errol standing there.

Errol, said Manny, clutching the seatbelt across his chest, Which one was he?

When we first moved round yours. Errol came to look for us. You took us to the hospital, remember?

Manny stared out of the passenger window, nodding his head.

Gary wouldn't do anything to hurt her, he said, turning to look at Lewis, He's soft as butter, that one.

Thought you didn't know him, said Lewis, his words tight in his throat, Only, sounds to me like you two could be mates.

I told you to leave it, said Manny, You won't heed a warning, that's your trouble. Always has been, always will be.

I see, said Lewis, That's my trouble. So, what would you warn me to do now?

Go home. Forget it. Get on with your life. That's my warning, chief. Do you hear me?

Loud and clear,
chief,
said Lewis, pulling up in front of Manny's house, I believe this is you.

As Manny stepped out of the van, Lewis wrenched the plastic skeleton off the mirror.

Give that to your mate when you see him, he shouted, throwing it at Manny's back, Tell him that's
my
warning!

Get on with your life, Manny had said. But this is his life, sitting on a wall in Clapham high street and staring at the window of the Café Salsa; this is his elastic, inescapable joke of a life. The buses come and go, blocking his view, unblocking it, and the people get on and new queues form around him, and still he sits on the low wall, hugging his kitbag. He had left Cardiff in rage and panic: he wasn't thinking straight. Lewis shuts his eyes, trying to block out the street noise all around him, trying to think in a direct white line. A metal grind of gears fills the air, a man's sudden swearing, a long blast on a car horn. Unbidden, an image swims into Lewis's head: of the night they went to recce the house. There were himself and Carl in the front of the van, Barrett poking his head between the seats, and Carl, reaching down into the footwell. Lewis had kept his eyes on the road, but now, as the blackness clears from his vision, he sees Carl again, surreptitious, examining something in his hand, and talking, all the time talking, driving Lewis insane with his talk.

He didn't see what it was. It happened so fast, a blur of trees lit up white in the headlights, a sudden, dense blackness, and, finally, the heart-shaped lake appeared before him, opening out in a spill of cold moonlight.

Biting on his lip, Lewis reaches into the side-pocket of his kitbag, feels beneath the split bag of beans for the black felt
pouch where he keeps Wayne's bracelet. He knows, without removing it, knows by its weightlessness, that it's empty.

He couldn't have known, the first time he saw the bracelet—the first time he had ever coveted anything his brother had—that he would eventually be its keeper.

His mother was late home from work again. Lewis was preparing their tea in the kitchen while Wayne watched
Top of the Pops
in the next room, letting out exaggerated boos and whistles whenever a band was featured that he didn't like. Lewis had peeled and chipped a stack of potatoes, and was washing up when he tuned in to the sound of voices. In the living-room, his mother was kneeling on the floor next to the couch, while Wayne sat, hugging his knees, at the far end. He looked upset, but Lewis couldn't see why, at first, because there was his mother, looking worn and lovely, holding out a silver bracelet and saying, Just like the one Mr. T wears, love. Look, the links are dead thick, aren't they?

He wears
gold,
said Wayne, staring at the television, And he don't have crap written on it.

Seeing Lewis in the doorway, his mother got up off her knees and handed him the bracelet. Lewis felt how heavy it was, and how cold.

Smart, he said, reading the inscription. On the front plate,
Wayne
had been inscribed in a swirling flourish.

Yeah, said Wayne, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice, Until you turns it over. I'm Wayne on the front and retard on the back.

Lewis flipped the plate: in large capitals, the word epileptic was etched. In the kitchen, his mother was firing the spark gun repeatedly at the gas ring, talking to herself.

You does your best . . . I don't know. I asked the man about it down the market, and he said a bracelet was the thing, yeah, because they checks the pulse first? And they knows to look? But he—she gestured with her head to the
other room—He won't have it, will he? I can't take it back now it's been engraved. What am I gonna do with him, babes?

She had her back to him, she hadn't even taken her coat off. Lewis didn't want to hug her, or speak to her, even. He wanted to say, What about me, like a petulant child, What did you get me? Anything? Did you get me a
single thing
? But instead, he hung the bracelet on his wrist and waited for her to turn round to face him.

It's a bit loose on me, even, he said, not looking at her, Say you takes these links out, makes it a bit tighter so the name don't flip over, like . . . ?

His mother called Wayne, who dragged himself into the kitchen like a deep-sea diver emerging from the depths.

What?

Your brother's had an idea, she said, About the bracelet. We'll make it tighter, see, so only you'll know what's on the back.

I'm not wearing no bracelet, he said, his face purple with shame.

It's called a
chain,
said Lewis, That's what Mr. T calls them; he calls them his slave chains. Says they're to remind him of his ancestors, and what they had to go through.

Yeah, but who's my slave? muttered Wayne, fingering the chain despite himself.

I am, said his mother, I'm shackled to the pair of you. Now. Is it sausages or burgers, my masters?

The memory is so close he can taste it. He would've liked a ring with a skull's head on it, like the ones in the window of the Oriental shop. He would have been content with a cross and chain, even if it wasn't silver or gold. In the end, he was happy to have nothing, because the bracelet was only to keep Wayne safe; and in the end, he was unhappy that he got the chain, after all. He got his very own slave chain.

Through the jumble of thoughts in his head, another emerges, sudden and hot as chip-fat: the therapist had suggested that what he wanted was to be invisible. She said he wanted to be invisible and empty. Lewis had bought the theory, until now: if that was the case, he argued, then he'd got quite far on empty. The new knowledge comes like a wash of light inside him: No, she was wrong. He doesn't want to be empty, that's just how he
feels.
That's the very thing he doesn't want. He isn't running away from anything, now—he's running to. He's running to wherever Carl is headed, and he'll get his brother's chain back, with interest.

Thick as proverbials, said Manny. The edge of the world, he said, Over east. Doing a
fun run.

Lewis gets up from the wall and walks. He'll go over east, then, and he'll find Carl. And this time, when he gets hold of the slippery little bastard, he'll bait him, and land him, and gut him like a fish.

Anna doesn't know what to take. Brendan keeps reminding her that Yarmouth is only a couple of hours away, and she has calculated the mileage for herself in the road atlas spread out on the kitchen table. It just feels to Anna like a very distant world. She senses that she ought to take everything. So far, she's packed a couple of boxes with bits of work she has to finish, her camera, a pile of unread books taken from a larger pile of unread books—the remainder of which she kicked under the bed—and a hot water bottle. She runs her hands over her collection of glass in the dining-room. It's a motley group: two large jagged cuts that look like pieces of an iceberg, a row of misshapen paperweights, unearthed bottles in blue and green and brown, fragments of leaded lights from a Victorian window. Anna decides to leave them be. Her mother would think them ugly.

You'll need clothes, you know, says Brendan, seeing her struggling along the hall with her computer and following her like a handmaid with the trailing leads, As I have it on good authority that they
do
wear clothes in Strangerland.

Anna tries to ignore him. Normally, she would enjoy the banter, and even make fun of the situation and her place in it: noble and selfless daughter going to look after mad old widow in the middle of nowhere. They could have had some
fun with that. But Anna can't begin to fathom her place in this situation, let alone mock it. Her final trip to the car is with two armfuls of clothes swept off the rail in the bedroom. She dumps them in the boot, on top of the boxes, the books, the computer, and the map, which Brendan retrieves for her, causing a subsidence of clutter in the back. They stand in the yard and scan the houses opposite. No one else is on the street. Anna runs her hand along the ridge of the open car door, feeling the stickiness of the rubber sill under her fingers.

What did you tell Marie? she asks, searching for a last way out, Did she give you time off, just like that?

Brendan grins.

I told her that I've got to look after my elderly mother for a while. Well, it's nearly true!

And she'll keep your room for you?

Brendan waggles his head to mean maybe, maybe not. He sighs.

Of course she will. No one understands her like I do. We have a
bond.

So that's it, says Anna.

That's it.

No excuses.

Nope.

I feel sick, she says.

It'll be the thought of driving all that way, says Brendan, fanning her with the road atlas, You just take it easy.

And you look after my squirrels, she says, feeling tearful and ridiculous.

It's for a few weeks, Anna, he says, They won't even know you've gone. I promise I'll give them breakfast
before
they have their shower.

Anna ignores this renewed attempt at levity.

Have you packed some CDs? he asks.

A few, she says, scowling, I think they're in the boot.

He hands her a plain paper bag with a CD inside.

Well, here's a new one. Something to get you through the wilderness, he says.

I don't know if I can do this, she says.

Brendan comes close and holds her, squeezing her tight. He doesn't say she can.

I'm travelling in some vehicle,
sings Anna, and, jabbing the pause button before the next line of the song, pulls into the car park. Situated on a stretch of asphalt, propped up against a ramshackle garage, is a low, rendered building advertising itself as an All-Day Eatery. It's the first stopping place Anna has seen since she got lost coming off the A14.

And I'll be sitting in some bloody café any minute now, Brendan. Thanks for nothing, she says, so loudly that two lorry drivers standing in front of their trucks stop their conversation and stare at her.