Why I Went Back Page 3

  ‘“At your service,” you said.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Keep your mouth shut then.’

  ‘Mum’s the word.’

  ‘I mean it. Forget I was ever here.’

  ‘Already done.’

  Out in the corridor I turned back to look at him. ‘What’s so important, anyway – that they’ve got you chained up like that?’

  Haxforth pulled the blanket tighter against the morning freeze. ‘They think I know how to find something they want. Want badly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He smiled grimly. ‘I never give anything away for free. Especially information.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ I closed the storeroom door, trying at the same time to shut down that part of my memory where he lived already. Then I locked the padlock and put the key back behind the piece of loose plaster. I really didn’t want anyone knowing I’d been there.

  I pushed the bike towards the rusting machines on the factory floor.

  All I wanted to do right then was get the hell out as fast as I could.

  Chapter 8

  The school gates, bright blue and bright yellow, the kind of colours they think will make you feel happy. Blue sky above, better. Real. No more clouds. Cold and sunshiny.

  The clock – the lopsided clock in Miss Tuckett’s classroom window – said 8.20. Almost nobody about. The car park full and all the teachers inside planning the latest tedium. One or two kids kicking around, none I was interested in though.

  He better get here before I nod off, that’s all.

  I sat on the low wall by the gates, wanting to think everything that had happened through clear and methodical but the only thing my brain would focus on was the new bike. It might be a bit rusty but it worked fine, brakes and gears and chain. And so thin. A racer, not a mountain bike like my proper one. The wheels about the width of my thumb and the saddle so small and sharp I thought it’d cut me when I first sat on it.

  First sat on it. When? Two hours ago? Wobbling like I’d never been on a bike before.

  It was safe at home now. Locked up and hidden where Dad wouldn’t see it. The last thing I wanted was for him to be asking questions about where the Pacific Blue had gone. But there’d been no time for the letters today. No time to clear the Big Bag. Please please please don’t let Dad bring home as much today as he did yesterday.

  Fat chance, what with Christmas coming.

  8.25. Kids arriving now, drifting in. They saw me sitting on the low wall and crossed the path to avoid me. Good. One or two I knew, one or two I’d done in the past but not today. Too tired today.

  Thinking how I’d got the bike out of that old factory. There hadn’t been any other way but the way I’d come in. Bike on the shoulders, up the stairs, wheeling it onto the flat roof. And then overhead that sudden blue sky. Strange how the clouds had cleared so fast. In that moment I’d felt free of everyone and everything. If only I could find a way of jumping into the blue and never coming down.

  Bike on the shoulders, the rungs slippery and cold. One by one by one. Much harder going down than up, you wouldn’t think that would you.

  Riding away, legs made of marshmallow.

  ‘Here,’ said a hesitant voice.

  I looked up. ‘Morning, stupid,’ I said.

  ‘Take it, then.’

  ‘I will. Thanks very much.’

  I pocketed the two pound coins while Daniel Cushway looked at me with the same unhappy face I’d seen every day for the past two weeks. Round and pale, with a yellow pus-filled spot on the side of his nose. A face that if it caught you in the wrong mood was asking to be punched.

  ‘That’s a beauty, Daniel,’ I said, pointing to the spot. ‘You want to get your mum to pop that for you.’

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Oh yes – yes …’

  I glanced over my shoulder, wondering if any teachers were watching. Way off in one of the buildings, behind a first-floor window, Mr Eaton was staring out with his arms folded. But he was too far away to see exactly what was going on and anyway I shifted my body to block his view.

  ‘I don’t think I can do this tomorrow,’ Daniel Cushway said. ‘Mum’s asking questions. About why I need so much money every day. She’s not stupid, she knows how much school dinners cost. She called up the school to check.’

  He kind of gulped as he said all this.

  I flexed my hands. The stone-hard fist-blocks were coming back, the clanging head. I wanted to smash him in the face right there right then only it was too risky, too public. I wanted to shout at him, What about my mum, don’t you know what’s happening to her, don’t you know how she hears voices in her head that drive her crazy and now they’ve put her in Tredegar House which is only where the worst of the nutters go and they’re pumping her full of drugs that’re turning her into a zombie and why should I GIVE A TOSS about your mum or her bloody dinner money?

  Too risky. Too public.

  I smashed him in the face anyway.

  Then kids were gathering around and shouting and a whistle was blowing and I saw Mr Eaton flying out of a distant door, charging towards me.

  I gazed up into the blue sky and waited for the arms to haul me away.

  Chapter 9

  ‘We do our best to accommodate everyone here at St Stephen’s, but there are limits beyond which we as a school community cannot go. You know that as well as anyone, Aidan.’

  The headmaster’s office. Again. The scratchy brown carpet stuffed with static electricity and the framed certificates on the wall and the picture nobody could think was any good.

  And the headmaster. Old Mr Sandifer. Red-faced and red-nosed, with a great thick red neck and a poppy in the breast pocket of his suit even though Remembrance Sunday was weeks ago.

  ‘Aidan?’

  I didn’t say anything, just looked straight past him out the window.

  ‘It always seems to be you, doesn’t it? Why is that? Can you give me an answer?’

  ‘Isn’t just me, sir.’

  ‘No? Who else then? Daniel Cushway? What exactly is going on between the two of you?’

  A long silence till I said, ‘Nothing. There’s nothing’s going on.’

  ‘Is everything OK at home? Any problems?’

  I glanced at him. He was leaning back in his chair, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth, staring right at me. Did he know anything about those whispers in the schoolyard?

  ‘If there are, just say and we might be able to help you …’

  I closed my eyes, tried to shut out the world. Thinking, You don’t know anything about what’s going on at home and you wouldn’t understand even if I told you, which I never will.

  ‘Because you’re treading a very fine line now. We can’t have any more of these distractions. You’re extremely fortunate that none of the teachers saw exactly what happened. But let me assure you that another incident like this and I will contacting your parents, at the very least. I may also have to involve the police and we could be looking at another suspension.’

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ I said quietly.

  I meant it, too. I didn’t want the police poking around, because of Dad, because of what Dad was doing.

  ‘Please make sure that it doesn’t. You can go to your class now.’

  I stood up, feeling the static cling of the carpet. At the door Mr Sandifer asked me to wait and he came over and put a big red hand on my shoulder. ‘You know, Aidan, I hate to say it, but there are always people worse off than us. Either of us. Try to give some thought to them.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, as the door closed.

  I padded along corridors. Through a window I saw steam coming from the boiler room, saw beyond it the new science block someone had tried to burn down last year. I thought what a bad job they’d done, how I’d go about it if it was me. Grey pipes hung overhead, benches and bags and posters on the walls, the white metal bells waiting for their next time to howl. Pens scratched like mice behind doors, teachers talking, k
ids listening. Kids learning. Learning and listening, smiling and laughing and joining in.

  My door. I didn’t bother to knock, it’d seem too pathetic. Straight in, straight into history with Miss Tuckett.

  Everyone stared at me. Nobody spoke. Down at the front I saw Daniel Cushway with something white, something hygienic, smeared across his mouth. Miss Tuckett coughed like she was embarrassed. She was new and nervous. I walked to the back of the classroom and sat down in my regular seat. I didn’t have my books but somebody handed me a pen and a blank piece of paper. I said Thanks then folded my arms flat on the table and put my chin on them.

  ‘Aidan?’

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  ‘Homework. I’ve got everyone else’s.’

  ‘Left it at home, miss.’

  ‘You’ve had two weeks to do this, Aidan,’ she said, trying to sound stern.

  I shrugged.

  ‘See me at the end of the lesson.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  I knew they’d been having meetings about me. I knew she was worried about what I’d do next.

  ‘Now, back to our subject. I asked you all to re-read chapter 7 of The Romans and After. Has everyone done that? Hands up, please.’ Miss Tuckett waddled around, looking to see who had and who hadn’t. Mine stayed down and she pretended not to notice.

  ‘Fine. Good. Let’s get something up on the board. You should know all this, so let’s whizz through it quickly. The Romans. You’ve spent your whole life living under them, living by their rules, being protected by their armies, and then suddenly they’re gone. You don’t know why, but they’re gone. Everything around you is changing. Let’s try to imagine what that was like.’ She took a marker pen and wrote on the whiteboard, The Dark Ages.

  ‘Write that down, please. The period after the Romans is often known as the Dark Ages. Why is that? Anyone?’

  ‘Because all the lights went out,’ somebody said in a bored voice.

  ‘In a way,’ replied Miss Tuckett. ‘Although of course there wasn’t any electricity at the time. Electricity wasn’t invented until the nineteenth century.’

  ‘Discovered,’ Daniel Cushway said. ‘Electricity wasn’t invented, it was discovered.’

  I rolled my eyes. He really was an idiot.

  ‘Thank you, Daniel.’ Miss Tuckett made an effort to smile. ‘But let’s stick to the Dark Ages. Now, the Roman army. We know all about them, don’t we? It was their discipline that kept them winning on the battlefield, but once they’d invaded a place they acted more like a police force, protecting the towns, guarding the roads and the food supply. So, what would it be like if one day all the police just disappeared. What do you think would happen?’

  ‘There’d be loads of fights,’ Gemma Shaw, over by the window, said. ‘People’d go round helping themselves to stuff.’

  ‘Good.’ Miss Tuckett wrote Breakdown of Law and Order on the whiteboard. ‘Copy that down. Anything else?’

  ‘The Roman roads would fall apart,’ called out Suzanne Dartnell.

  ‘Excellent.’ Miss Tuckett wrote Roads Gone, No Easy Transport on the whiteboard and we copied that down too.

  ‘… And if other people tried taking over, there wouldn’t be anyone to protect you and you might end up having to be their slave, or even being killed.’

  ‘Thank you, Suzanne. That’s right. Especially people from abroad, invaders. And who were the first people to invade Britain after the Romans left?’

  ‘The Vikings?’ someone said.

  ‘Actually it was the Anglo-Saxons. The Vikings came later. Although I can think of several people here who must have been Vikings in a previous life.’

  One or two laughed at that, but not me.

  ‘It still hasn’t answered my question, though. OK, yes, life was a lot harder, but that’s not really why it was known as the Dark Ages. Any more ideas?’ Miss Tuckett looked around the class. ‘No? Well, it’s because nobody wrote anything down. Or hardly anybody. The Romans loved to write and they had plenty of leisure time in which to do it. So there are lots of different sources and from those we can get a pretty good idea of how they lived. Remember our sources? Important for when it comes to exams.’

  Everyone nodded, wrote Sources in their exercise books.

  ‘But after they’d gone, nobody had the time. They were too busy trying to survive to leave records. And remember not very many people could write in the first place, only certain educated members of this new society. OK. So the Dark Ages are called the Dark Ages because we don’t know very much about them. To us, here in the twenty-first century, it’s a period of darkness. Write that down.’

  ‘Miss?’ I said, putting up my arm.

  ‘Yes, Aidan?’ Miss Tuckett said warily.

  ‘How do we know anything about them at all then?’

  ‘Good question – although we did cover this earlier in the term. Well. There are bits and pieces. We know there were different kingdoms and we have a little of their writing and we know some of their legends. One is a poem called Beowulf. In fact, that’ll be your homework over Christmas, everyone, to read the translation of Beowulf that I’ll be handing out at the end of the lesson. I want you to find out what sort of life the person who wrote it might have led.’

  Groans.

  Miss Tuckett smiled. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a love poem. It’s one for all you invaders out there – about kings and witches and monsters. Believe me, if you lived in the Dark Ages, things like that were just as real as a mobile phone is to you or me today.’

  I pushed my chair back and tried to get my head comfortable on flattened arms. It was a double lesson so there was plenty more of this stuff to come. What did I care about things that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago? Loads of it was probably guessing anyway. What I really needed was some sleep. That’s what school’s for. They’re happy with that. Let poor old hateful old Aidan Hale go to sleep and leave the rest of us alone to get on with our learning and listening and smiling.

  Except it wasn’t proper sleep, not like night-time. More like drifting. Thoughts and images going round and round my head. The latch on the gate lifting and falling. Christy talking in the dark, flicking cigarette ash. The door on the factory rooftop hanging open. An old white hand rattling a chain.

  You know, Aidan, there are always people worse off than us. Try to give some thought to them.

  He was right, old Sandifer. I wanted to see Haxforth again.

  I needed to find out what was really going on.

  Chapter 10

  Dad first though.

  Knowing how it was going to be before I even opened the door.

  TV on, not too loud. Royal Mail coat hanging in the hallway. A bag of chips open on the kitchen table, next to the fruit bowl with the shrivelled apple and the red bill from the gas company. A little polystyrene tub of curry sauce.

  The house cold. Midwinter. In half an hour it’d be dark.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, jabbing my toe into the place where the carpet was coming away because I had to do something like that and couldn’t think what else.

  ‘Hi, Aidan,’ he said, not looking up.

  ‘Hi.’ I couldn’t think of a single other thing to say.

  ‘Watching the game tonight? It’s the Arsenal.’

  ‘Might do,’ I said, knowing I wouldn’t.

  ‘Chips on the table for you. Couple of quid too, dinner money for tomorrow. Sorry I forgot about today.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘They don’t let you starve though, do they?’

  ‘No.’

  He was slumped back on the brown sofa, boots still on, his best friends a can of lager and the remote control. Curtains closed. This was one of his three places. The other two were the kitchen table for eating and the bed for sleeping. He hadn’t had a bath since Mum left. By the light of the TV his face looked green, like a bad chip.

  ‘Did you go to work today?’ I asked quietly.

  He nodded, only half listening.

&nbs
p; I looked out towards the shed, disappearing into the dark. Thinking, What a liar you are. You might have gone to work, but did you do any work?

  ‘Visiting time’ll be over in a couple of hours,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not going tonight.’ He glanced at me, eyes hooded, not wanting to be seen. ‘They said not to. I went yesterday and they said leave it a couple of days, wait till she’s over the worst of it.’

  ‘Next time you go, can I come?’

  He shifted on the sofa. For a moment I thought he might even stand up. The volume on the TV went down a fraction. ‘Look, Aidan, this is going to take time. It’s not like getting over a cold …’

  ‘I know that,’ I said, jabbing my toe harder into the carpet. ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Nobody’s saying you are.’

  ‘I just want to know what’s going on.’

  ‘They’ve got her in there for assessment. Stabilisation. They’re the experts.’

  I looked over at the mantelpiece, the two photographs. One of me as a baby, a pink bundle of do-nothing. The other, Mum and Dad on their wedding day. Dad looking like the cat who’s got the cream, and you can see why because Mum is so beautiful. Blonde and young and thin, not like she is now. But even there, even among those wedding-day smiles, there’s something in her eyes that says, I don’t know exactly what’s going on or really who these people are at all.

  Dad now, here, watching telly. The cat who lost the cream, whose paw got mangled up instead.

  ‘Watch the football with me,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t.’ I gave the carpet a final kick. ‘Got homework to do.’

  ‘Course. Homework’s important.’

  I went upstairs. Behind me, the volume on the TV edged up.

  Chapter 11

  Dawn outside the derelict factory. A peeling sign I hadn’t noticed before said Brace Brothers in swishy-type lettering. No clue about what the Brace Brothers ever did inside.

  The Big Bag was empty. It had gone OK today. The old racing bike might look weak but when you got used to it it was fast and light and the brakes were brilliant. No incidents, nobody up and about and asking awkward questions when I poked their letters through. No heavy parcels, no rain. Every door silent and locked against the winter. The start of the Christmas rush. Just about keeping on top of it.