Authors: Aidan Chambers
‘But he didn’t.’
‘With no thanks to you. You ran off and left me, after all I had done to help.’
‘I was nearly naked. How could I hang about?’
‘You had clothes in your bike.’
‘Yes. But I forgot about them till I was nearly home. I was in a state of shock.’
‘You were also in a shocking state!’
We both laughed, even though the joke was not
that
funny.
‘I will forgive you a little bit,’ Kari said, ‘because the experience was so awful.’
‘I wish we hadn’t done it.’
‘It was you who said it had to be done.’
‘I know.’ I looked at her for a while. ‘Now there’s something else.’
‘I think I do not want to know.’
‘Yes, you do. You’re dying to know.’
‘You’re not supposed to say such things. You’re supposed to persuade me to listen till I give in.’
‘Let’s pretend we’ve been through all that, eh?’
She eyed me suspiciously. ‘Just this once. I don’t like being taken advantage of. It makes me angry, which brings me out in spots.’
I told her about going to Barry’s grave and what happened to me there. When I finished she shook her head and shrugged.
‘This is terrible, Hal,’ she said. ‘Worse than the morgue.’
‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘I could understand the morgue, why I had to see him, even if it turned out to be the wrong thing to do. But this . . . I don’t understand. I thought you might.’
She shook her head again. ‘I don’t know . . . Perhaps it was guilt. Feeling guilty for his death.’
‘I thought of that. But it didn’t
feel
like that.’
‘Then how did you feel?’
‘Sad. Angry. I don’t know. All mixed up.’ I thought some more. There was something I wasn’t saying and I didn’t know if I could. I had to gather myself together, force myself to say it. ‘Like I was trying to hit him.’
We were both silent for a long time, not looking at each other. Kari kept her eyes fixed on her feet. Mine flicked here and there, taking her in now and then, watching for some kind of response.
‘Hit him?’ she said at last still not looking at me, and her face giving nothing away.
‘Yes. And trying to reach him.’
‘Trying to reach him so you could hit him?’
‘I suppose. Sounds mad, doesn’t it? Said like that. But I felt both those things. Not like you said them though.’
‘Now I’m confused!’
‘So am I! I mean, I didn’t feel I wanted to reach him in order to hit him. One thing connected to the other, see? Not that. They were separate. I wanted to reach him. And I wanted to hit him. Just like I was angry with him, and sad at the same time. Different things mixed up.’
She was looking at me now, searching my face as if there was something to be found there that wasn’t in what I was saying.
‘Does any of that make sense to you?’ I said.
‘Yes . . . and no,’ she said.
‘Great!’ I said. ‘We’re certainly making progress!’
‘It isn’t so easy,’ she said. ‘People are too complicated
for anything like this to be simple. Just one thing. Something you can explain in straightforward words. You read too many books that make it seem possible to sort life out and know about it.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do. You think there is an answer for everything. A reason you can find and know about. You want everything to be clear cut, like some silly maths formula you can then go away and live by. You keep on looking for somebody who will—O, I don’t know—make you know how to live your life.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do. All that childish nonsense about a bosom friend . . . If you want to know what I think . . .’
She stopped dead in her tracks, glaring at me. And me glaring back at her.
‘Mrs Grey will be wondering where I’ve got to,’ she said, standing up. ‘I should go.’
‘Not now,’ I said.
‘Yes. We shouldn’t argue when you are ill.’
‘I’ll be a lot iller if you go now.’
‘No, you won’t,’ she said, laughing. ‘You’re ill because you are upset at your friend’s death. That’s natural.’
‘It’s more than that and you know it. These headaches. They aren’t only about Barry’s death. They’re about me.’ All this was coming out without my having thought it before, as though something had just punctured a membrane and these words came spilling out through the rupture. ‘I get them when I try to think about Barry and me and what we did . . . No . . . what we
were.
That’s it, what we
were.
What happened at the grave was only part of that. I thought you might help me but all you do is—’
Silence. Kari stood by my bed looking down at me. She was frowning. ‘You tell friends what you really think,’ she said, ‘the truth about them and—well, they resent it.’
She sat by my side on the edge of the bed, looking closely at me.
‘Try me,’ I said, a touch too defiantly.
She smiled. ‘You are very nice, Hal. But you do want to eat people.’ She lifted a hand and held it over my mouth without touching. ‘Don’t speak. I might not be able to say any more if you do. It is difficult, you see. I have thought about you and Barry. About everything you told me the other day. I can see why you liked Barry, wanted to be his friend. He was exciting. I liked him too. He was full of life. Full of energy. He enjoyed himself. Had a lot to say. But with you, I think there was something more.’
She paused, considering what she wanted to say, I guess, or maybe deciding whether to say it or not. Anyway, she was frowning again.
‘I said you like eating people. Perhaps that is the wrong way round. Perhaps I should have said you like being eaten. What I mean is you liked Barry because he—’ She checked my face for a reaction, judging how right she was to be saying this’—Because he made you come alive. He made you do things you wouldn’t have done on your own. You wouldn’t have dared. He decided everything for you, didn’t he? Everything important. Where you should go, what you should do, how you should do everything. He even told you what to wear, how to comb your hair, what to eat. When he wasn’t with you, you waited for him to be there again. When you were with him you did whatever he wanted.’
She paused. I almost held my breath. I wasn’t liking what I heard, but couldn’t help wanting her to finish saying it. Like the doctor two years ago telling me I had a grumbling appendix and would have to go into hospital and have an operation. I’d tried not to think why I was being sick and had such a stomach ache. I told myself it was just wind, or nerves at moving, or something bad I’d
eaten. But all the time I knew there was a worse cause. And when Mother finally called in the doctor and he said I had to have the op. I held my breath the same way, knowing I might as well face the truth and get it all over with as soon as possible. The same now with Kari: she was saying something I knew was true but hadn’t admitted, and I didn’t dare interrupt in case she stopped before everything was said.
She waited in silence. I knew she wanted me to say something.
‘Go on,’ I managed to mutter.
She sighed, not wanting to. ‘For a while, I’d guess, Barry enjoyed you depending on him like that. Enjoyed being your teacher, showing you about life, about yourself. I think he got a thrill out of playing your big brother, and your lover, and your boss, and your guru all at the same time. But, being Barry, he’d get tired of it after a while, because what he liked most was the beginnings of things. You know what I mean? He got pleasure out of making people like him, and give in to him. He liked to be in charge. But once people had given in to him, the challenge was over, you see, and he dropped them. Got bored with them. Like he did with you. That’s why he had no close friends. He didn’t, did he?’
I shook my head. ‘Not that I ever met, or heard him talk about.’
‘He was exciting, but he liked excitement rather too much. And no one can ever be exciting all the time. Not even him. You just thought he was because for you, everything you did with him was new, different. He liked sailing and motorcycles because they were always exciting. They can always be dangerous. He could always get a new thrill out of them by pushing himself close to disaster whenever he wanted to.’
She got up from my bed and sat down on the chair
again. I felt I should say something, but didn’t know what.
‘If you really want to know what I think,’ she said after a silence, ‘I think you went a little wild and beat on Barry’s grave because he wouldn’t be here any more for you to lean on. For him to take care of you. You couldn’t face being on your own again, responsible for yourself, having to make your own decisions. All along it wasn’t Barry you wanted. It was your
idea
of Barry you wanted. Because the truth is that Barry wasn’t what you thought he was. Really he was just as scared as you are. Or as I am. Or, I think, as scared as most people are. He just pretended he wasn’t. Put on a rather good performance. As much for his own benefit as for yours. I think the truth is, Hal, that you fell for a face and a body and then put the person inside you wanted to find there.’
‘You’re saying he was just a figment of my imagination,’ I said, trying to laugh.
She smiled. ‘Maybe he was.’
‘Rubbish! He was there. I’ve been with him. Slept with him. So have you. You know he was there.’
‘Yes, someone was there. But not the person you believed was there. Or even maybe the person I believed was there.’
‘You’re saying we invent the people we know. That’s daft!’
‘But perhaps we do. Perhaps we even invent ourselves. Make ourselves appear to be what we want to be.’
I nodded. Shrugged. There was another silence, a long one this time, while we looked at each other across the length of my bed. Then Kari suddenly blushed, as if from embarrassment, the way people do when they think they have said too much, and she looked away, stood up, fidgeted with her clothes.
‘I have to go,’ she said.
I was speechless. Not tongue-tied, just without words to say.
She said, ‘You asked. That’s my opinion, Hal.’ She was trying to be her jaunty beach self. ‘I expect I am wrong.’
I nodded. ‘Ask a silly question—’
‘It wasn’t silly!’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘just a saying—’
An awkwardness. Neither of us wanting to part. She hesitated with a hand on the doorknob.
‘Hey,’ I said, my turn to try breezy friendliness. ‘I really am grateful for helping me the other day. The morgue.’
She grinned, taking my cue. ‘Any time,’ she said. ‘What are friends for if they can’t get you into the morgue.’
She was gone before I could play the flip side of her joke.
37/When Kari had gone I slipped into a sort of stillness. My headache was properly gone for the first time in days. I meant to chew over what she had said. But instead I very soon drifted into a deep, undreaming sleep—also for the first time in days, or nights. I half-woke some time later, vaguely aware that someone—Mother, I expect—was rearranging the bedclothes around me, and then plunged deep again.
I finally came to suddenly, lying in the Corpse Position. My watch said nine thirty-five; morning light filtered through my curtains. No rampaging rhino; no agonybag scurl of the vacuum.
I stirred, my body cosily stiff from being too long in one place. Immediately Kari was in my mind. Snatches of what she had said replayed.
The bathroom. I needed to pee.
‘Is that you, love?’ Mother called from below as I crossed the landing.
‘No, sweetheart, it’s the milkman,’ I called back.
As I came back I realized I was walking without any trouble from my ankle. I stopped and looked. The swelling had gone down.
‘How you feeling?’ Mother asked from the bottom of the stairs.
‘Okay. I’ll get up.’
‘Take care, pet,’ she said, hesitantly climbing a couple of steps so she could look through the banister. ‘Your dad thought you should get plenty of rest.’
‘Makes a change,’ I said, but not acidly, only amused.
‘I’ll get your breakfast,’ she said, retreating.
I spent most of the rest of the day brooding on what Kari had said and scribbling in my diary.
38/That Monday night I waited, knowing I would dance as I had promised this time.
By ten-thirty my patience ran dry. I wanted it over.
The same pretext: I was going out for some fresh air and to give my foot some exercise.
‘You in training for a job on the night shift?’ Dad said. ‘Or is it that bird again?’ He had been chirpy ever since coming in from work, twitting me at every opportunity about Kari.
The same way into the cemetery (though being earlier there were more cars to dodge and one or two people on the road). The same path to the Jewish section.
I paused at the hedge, looking for movement among the graves. Saw nothing. Pushed my way through the divide and went straight to Barry’s grave.
At once, as I approached, I saw that his father’s headstone had been re-erected, firm and square now, and the hole I had dug had been filled in and the soil
smoothed over. A new number plaque was staked at the foot.
The thought flashed through my mind: If they’ve repaired the damage maybe they’re on the lookout for me. But I paid no heed. Since then, I’ve wondered whether I wanted to be caught. Like they say criminals often want to be caught and punished for their crimes, and even unconsciously leave clues to their identity, and return to the scene and make themselves conspicuous.
Well, I was conspicuous enough that night. I just stood there at the foot of his grave, nothing clear-minded going on in my head, and my torch shining like a spotlight on the oblong heap of his deathbed in front of me. I was quite calm; none of that anger and madness of three nights ago. Tears started down my face again, but I wasn’t heaving or distressed at all, but making, I think, a kind of farewell. Letting him go.
After a few moments like this, I heard in my head the funny little tune that Laurel and Hardy films always begin with.
Tum-ti-tum, tum-ti-tum, tumpetty-tum, tumpetty-tum . . . cuckoo! . . . cuckoo! . . . cuckoo
! The Cuckoo Song. Ridiculous, sad; always makes me smile. It wasn’t exactly music I’d have thought of dancing to on someone’s grave. Not that I’d ever thought of dancing on anyone’s grave till now. But it was all I could hear. So I picked up my feet to its gawky rhythm and set about a knees-up as best I could. And soon the music faded and the beat became something of my own, quickened in pace and vigour, a tattoo In Memoriam of Barry’s needless death and in celebration of what he had been to me, which no one else could ever be again.