The Bone Clocks, Page 3

  Which was what I ended up believing. Voices are one thing, but women in gowns, sitting there? The next morning I went to school as usual, and didn’t see Susan Hillage. Nobody else did, either. Our headmaster hurried late into school assembly and announced that Susan Hillage had been hit by a van while she cycled to school, that it was very serious and we had to pray for her recovery. Hearing all this, I felt numb and cold, and so much blood left my head that the school hall sort of folded up around me, and after, I had no memory even of hitting the floor.

  THE THAMES IS riffled and muddy blue today, and I walk and walk and walk away from Gravesend towards the Kent marshes and before I know it, it’s eleven-thirty and the town’s a little model of itself, a long way behind me. The wind unravels clouds from the chimneys of the Blue Circle factory, like streams of hankies out of a conjurer’s pocket. To my right, the A2 roars away over the marshes. Old Mr. Sharkey says it’s built over a road made by the Romans in Roman times, and the A2’s still how you get to Dover, to catch the boat to the Continent, just like the Romans did. Pylons march off in double file. Back at the pub, Dad’ll be hoovering the bar, unless Sharon’s doing it to get my three pounds. The morning’s gone muggy and stretched, like it does in triple maths, and the sun’s giving me eye-ache. I left my sunglasses in Vinny’s kitchen, sat on the draining board. Fourteen ninety-nine they cost me. I bought them with Stella, who said she’d seen the same sunglasses on Carnaby Street for three times the price so I thought I was getting a bargain. Then I imagine myself strangling Stella and my arms and hands go all stiff, like I’m actually doing it.

  I’m thirsty. By now Mam will’ve told Dad something ’bout why Holly went off in a teenage strop, but I bet a million quid she will’ve twisted it all. Da’ll be joking ’bout “The Girls’ Bust-up” and PJ and Nipper and Big Dex’ll nod and grin like the shower of tossers they are. PJ’ll pretend to read from the Sun. “It says here, ‘Astronomers at the University of Bullshitshire have just found new evidence that, yes, teenagers really are the center of the universe.’ ” They’ll all cackle, and Good Old Dave Sykes, everyone’s favorite landlord, will join in with his you’re-so-witty-I-could-wet-myself laugh. Let’s see if they’re still laughing by Wednesday when I haven’t shown up.

  Up ahead, in the distance, men are fishing.

  WEIRD SHIT, LAST Act. Even as I was half carried to the school nurse’s room, I could hear the Radio People were back. Hundreds of them, all whispering at once. That freaked me out but not as much as the idea that I’d killed Susan Hillage. So I told the nurse about the Radio People and Miss Constantin. The old dear thought I was concussed at best and nuts at worst, so she called Mam, who called our GP, and later that day I was being seen by an ear doctor at Gravesend General Hospital. He couldn’t find anything wrong, but suggested a child psychiatrist he knew from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London who specialized in cases like mine. Mam was all “My daughter’s not mental!” but the doctor scared her with the word “tumor.” After the worst night of my life—I prayed to God to keep Miss Constantin away, had the Bible under my pillow but, thanks to the Radio People, I could hardly sleep a wink—we got a call from the ear doctor saying that his friend the specialist was due in Gravesend in one hour, and could Mam bring me up right now?

  Dr. Marinus was the first Chinese person I ever met, apart from the ones at the Thousand Autumns Restaurant, where me and Brendan were sometimes sent for takeaways if Mam was too tired to cook. Dr. Marinus spoke in posh, perfect English, quite softly, so you had to pay close attention to catch everything. He was short and skinny but sort of filled the room anyway. First he asked ’bout school and my family and stuff, then moved on to my voices. Mam was all, “My daughter’s not crazy, if that’s what you’re implying—it’s just concussion.” Dr. Marinus told Mam that he agreed, I wasn’t remotely crazy, but the brain could be an illogical place. To help him rule out a tumor, she had to let me answer his questions on my own. So I told him about the Radio People and Susan Hillage and Miss Constantin. Mam went all jittery again but Dr. Marinus assured her that auditory hallucinations—“daymares”—were not uncommon in girls my age. He told me that Susan Hillage’s accident was a big coincidence, and that coincidences even of this size were happening to people all over the world, right now; my turn had come, that was all. Mam asked if there was any medicine to stop these daymares, and I remember Dr. Marinus saying that, before we went down that route, he’d like to try a simpler technique from “the Old Country.” It worked like acupuncture, he said, but it didn’t use needles. He got Mam to squeeze a point on my middle finger—he marked it with a Biro—then touched a place on my forehead, in the middle, with his thumb. Like an artist putting on a dab of paint. My eyes shut …

  … and the Radio People were gone. Not just quiet, but gone-gone. Mam knew from my face what’d happened, and she was as shocked and relieved as me. She was all, “Is that it? No wires, no pills?” Dr. Marinus said, Yes, that ought to do the job.

  I asked if Miss Constantin’d gone forever, too.

  The doctor said, Yes, for the foreseeable future.

  The End. We left, I grew up, and neither the Radio People nor Miss Constantin ever came back. I saw a few documentaries and stuff about how the mind plays tricks on you, and now I know that Miss Constantin was just a sort of imaginary friend—like Sharon’s Bunny Bunny Boing Boing—gone haywire. Susan Hillage’s accident was just a massive coincidence, like Dr. Marinus’d told me. She didn’t die, but moved to Ramsgate, though some people’d say it’s the same difference. Dr. Marinus did some sort of hypnotism thing on me, like those cassettes you can buy to stop yourself smoking. Mam stopped saying “Chink” from that day on, and even today she’s down like a ton of bricks on anyone who does. “It’s ‘Chinese’ not ‘Chink,’ ” she tells them, “and they’re the best doctors in the National Health.”

  MY WATCH SAYS it’s one o’clock. Far behind me, stick-men are fishing in the shallows off Shornemead Fort. Up ahead’s a gravel pit, with a big cone of stone and a conveyor belt feeding a barge. I can see Cliffe Fort, too, with windows like empty eye sockets. Old Mr. Sharkey says it used to house antiaircraft batteries in the war, and when people in Gravesend heard the big guns, they knew they had sixty seconds—tops—to get into their air-raid shelters under the stairs or down the garden. Wish a bomb’d fall on a certain house in Peacock Street, right now. Bet they’re scoffing pizza for lunch—Vinny lives on pizza ’cause he can’t be arsed to cook. Bet they’re laughing about me. I wonder if Stella stayed over last night. You just fall in love with each other, I thought, and that’s all there is to it. Stupid. Stupid! I kick a stone but it’s not a stone, it’s a little outcrop of rock that mashes my toe. Pain draws a jagged line up to my brain. And now my eyes are hot and watering—where’s all the water coming from, f’Chrissakes? The only water I’ve drunk today is when I cleaned my teeth and the milk on my Weetabix. My tongue’s like that oasis stuff they use for flower arranging. My duffel bag’s rubbing a sore patch on my shoulder. My heart’s a clubbed baby seal. My stomach must be empty, but I’m too miserable to feel it yet. I’m not turning round and going home, though. No bloody way.

  BY THREE O’CLOCK, my whole head’s parched, not just my mouth. I’ve never walked so far in my life, I reckon. There’s no sign of a shop or even a house where I can ask for a glass of water. Then I notice a small woman fishing off the end of a jetty thing, like she’s sort of sketched into the corner where nobody’ll spot her. She’s a long stone-throw away, but I see her fill a cup from a flask. I’d never normally do this but I’m so thirsty that I walk down the embankment and along the jetty up to her, clomping my feet on the old wooden planks so as not to scare her. “ ’Scuse me, but could you spare a drop of water? Please?”

  She doesn’t even look round. “Cold tea do you?” Her croaky voice sounds from somewhere hot.

  “That’d be great, thanks. I’m not fussy.”

  “Help yourself, then, if you’re not fussy.”

  So I
fill the cup, not thinking about germs or anything. It’s not normal tea but it’s the most refreshing thing I’ve ever drunk, and I let the liquid swoosh all round my mouth. Now I look at her properly for the first time. Sort of elephanty eyes in a wrinkled old face, with short gray hair, a grubby safari shirt, and a leathery wide-brimmed hat that looks a hundred years old. “Good?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It was. Tastes like grass.”

  “Green tea. Lucky you’re not fussy.”

  I ask, “Since when’s tea been green?”

  “Since bushes made their leaves that color.”

  There’s a splish of a fish. I see where it was, but not where it is. “Caught much today?”

  A pause. “Five perch. One trout. A slow afternoon.”

  I don’t see a bucket or anything. “Where are they?”

  A bee lands on the brim of her hat. “I let them go.”

  “If you don’t want the fish, why do you catch them?”

  A few seconds pass. “For the quality of the conversation.”

  I look around: the footpath, a brambly field, a scrubby wood, and a choked-up track. She must be taking the piss. “There’s nobody here.”

  The bee’s happy where it is, even when the woman stirs herself to reel in the line. I stand off to one side as she checks the bait’s still secure on the hook. Drips of water splash the thirsty planks of the jetty. The river slurps at the shore and sloshes round the wooden pillar things. Still seated, and with an expert flick of the wrist, the old woman sends the lead weight loopy-looping away, the reel makes its zithery noise, and the weight lands in the water where it was before. Circles float outwards. Dead calm …

  Then she does something really weird. She takes out a stick of chalk from her pocket and writes on a plank by her foot, MY. On the next plank along she writes, LONG. Then on the next plank, it’s the word NAME. Then the old woman puts the chalk away and goes back to her fishing.

  I wait for her to explain, but she doesn’t. “What’s all that about?”

  “What’s what about?”

  “What you just wrote.”

  “They’re instructions.”

  “Instructions for who?”

  “For someone many years from now.”

  “But it’s chalk. It’ll wash off.”

  “From the jetty, yes. Not from your memory.”

  Okay, so she’s mad as a sack of ferrets. Only I don’t tell her so ’cause I’d like more of that green tea.

  “Finish the tea, if you want,” she says. “You won’t find a shop until you and the boy arrive at Allhallows-on-Sea …”

  “Thanks a lot.” I fill the cup. “Are you sure? This is the last of it.”

  “One good turn deserves another.” She turns a crafty sniper’s eye on me. “I may need asylum.”

  Asylum? She needs a mental asylum? “How d’you mean?”

  “Refuge. A bolt-hole. If the First Mission fails, as I fear it must.”

  Crazy people are hard work. “I’m fifteen. I don’t have an asylum, or a, uh, bolt-hole. Sorry.”

  “You’re ideal. You’re unexpected. My tea for your asylum. Do we have a deal?”

  Dad says the best way to handle drunks is to humor them, then dump them, and maybe the doo-lally are like drunks who never sober up. “Deal.” She nods and I drink until the sun’s a pale glow through the thin bottom of the plastic.

  The old bat’s gazing away again. “Thank you, Holly.”

  So I thank her back, and return to dry land. Then I turn around and go back to her. “How do you know my name?”

  She doesn’t turn round. “By what name was I baptized?”

  What a stupid game this is. “Esther Little.”

  “And how do you know my name?”

  “ ’Cause … you just told me.” Did she? Must’ve.

  “That’s that settled, then.” And that was Esther Little’s final word.

  • • •

  AROUND FOUR O’CLOCK I get to a strip of shingly beach by a wooden groyne thing sloping into the river. I take my Docs off. There’s a doozy of a blister on my big toe, like a trodden-on blackberry. Yum. I take my Fear of Music LP out of my duffel bag, roll my jeans right up, and wade in to my knees. The curving river’s cool as tap water and the sun’s got a punch to it, but not as hard as it was when I left the crazy old woman fishing. Then I frisbee the LP as hard and far as I can. It’s not specially aerodynamic, and flies upwards till the inner sleeve with the record in drops out, plops into the water. The black album cover falls like a wounded bird and floats for a while. Tears, more tears, seep from my aching eyes and I imagine wading over to where the record’s spiraling down now, down the slope of the riverbed, strolling through the trout and perch to the rusty bicycles and bones of drowned pirates and German airplanes and flung-away wedding rings and God knows what.

  But I wade back to shore and lie down on a bed of warm shingle, next to my Docs. Dad’ll be upstairs with his feet up on the sofa: “Reckon I’ll go and pay this Costello feller a call, Kath,” he’ll be saying. Mam’ll drown her cigarette in the cold coffee at the bottom of her mug. “No, Dave. That’s what Her Ladyship wants. Ignore her Big Statement long enough, and she’ll start appreciating just how much we do for her …”

  But, come tomorrow evening, Mam’ll start fretting ’bout school on Monday, ’cause once school asks where I am and why I’m not sitting the exams, she’ll be a whole load less snotty about my Big Statement. She’ll march round to Vinny’s house, all guns blazing. Mam’ll tear strips off of Vinny—good, ha!—but she still won’t know where I am. Decided. I camp out for two nights, and then see how I’m feeling. So long as I don’t buy any cigarettes, my £13.85 in coins is enough for two days’ worth of chip butties, apples, and Rich Tea biscuits. If I get to Rochester I could even take some money from the TSB and extend my little vacation.

  A massive freighter heading downstream blasts its horn. STAR OF RIGA is written in white letters on the orange hull. Wonder if Riga’s a place, or something else. Sharon and Jacko’d know. I do a huge yawn, lie back on the clacking pebbles, and watch the wash from the massive ship lap the shingle by the shore.

  Christ, I’m dead sleepy all of a sudden …

  “SYKES? YOU ALIVE? Oy … Sykes.” The afternoon breaks in and it’s Where am I? and Why am I barefoot? and What the hell is Ed Brubeck doing touching my arm? I jerk it back, get up, and scuttle a couple of yards while the soles of my feet go ow ow ow on the hot pebbles and then I bang my head on the wooden groyne thing.

  Ed Brubeck hasn’t moved. “That hurt.”

  “I know it bloody hurt. It’s my bloody head.”

  “I only wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.”

  I rub my head. “Do I look like I’m dead?”

  “Well, yeah, a second ago, you did, a bit.”

  “Well, I’m bloody not.” I see Brubeck’s bike lying on its side with its wheel still spinning. His fishing rod’s still strapped to its crossbar. “I was just … snoozing.”

  “Don’t tell me you walked here from town, Sykes?”

  “No, I came by space hopper but the fecker bounced off.”

  “Huh. Never had you down as the great-outdoors type.”

  “I never had you down as the Good Samaritan type.”

  “We live and learn.” A bird’s singing, a loopy-loony-tweety one, a mile up. Ed Brubeck pushes his black hair back from his eyes. His skin’s so tanned he could be Turkish or something. “So where are you going?”

  “As far away from that shit hole as my feet can carry me.”

  “Oh dear. What’s naughty Gravesend done to you now?”

  I lace up my Docs. My blister hurts. “Where are you going?”

  “My uncle lives thataway.” Ed Brubeck waves an arm inland. “He’s not too mobile these days and almost blind, so I go and keep him company a bit. I was cycling off to Allhallows for a bit of fishing when I saw you and …”

  “Thought I’d died. Which I haven’t. Don’t let me keep you.�
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  He makes a suit-yourself face, and climbs up the embankment.

  I call after him, “How far is it to Allhallows, Brubeck?”

  He picks up his bike. “About five miles. Want a backie?”

  I think of Vinny and his Norton and shake my head. He mounts his bike, poser-style, and he’s gone. I scoop up a fistful of stones and fling it over the water, hard and angry.

  A SPECK-SIZED ED Brubeck vanishes behind a clump of pointy trees way up ahead. He didn’t look back. Wish I’d said yes to his offer, now. My knees are stiff and my feet are two giant throbs and my ankles feel like they’ve been attacked with tiny drills. Five miles at this rate’ll take me forever. But Ed Brubeck’s a guy, like Vinny’s a guy, and guys are all sperm-guns. My stomach growls with dry hunger. Green tea’s great while you’re drinking it, but it makes you pee like a racehorse, and now my mouth feels like a dying rat crapped in it. Ed Brubeck’s a guy, yes, but he’s not a total tosser. Last week he got into an argument with Mrs. Binkirk, our RE teacher, and got sent to Mr. Nixon for calling her “Bigot of the Year.” A grown-up insult, that. People are icebergs, with just a bit you can see and loads you can’t. I try not to think about Vinny, but I do, and remember how only this morning I dreamt of starting a band with him. Up ahead, from behind the clump of pointy trees, comes a speck-sized Ed Brubeck, cycling back my way. Probably he’s decided it’s too late to fish, and he’s heading back to Gravesend. He grows bigger and bigger until he’s life-sized, and does a show-offy skid-turn that reminds me he’s still a boy as well as a guy. His eyes are white in his dark face. “Why don’t you get on, Sykes?” He slaps his bike saddle. “Allhallow’s miles. It’ll be dark before you get there.”