Everlasting Lane (34 page)

And she was off again

‘Aaaow!’

It was a funny noise to make, I know, but right then I just wanted to box her ears but I don’t mean box them like Muhammed Ali floating like a, well, a butterfly. I mean I wanted to cut them off and put them in a box and then take the box somewhere secret and private well away from her mouth like, maybe, the pill-box where I met Norman Kirrin that first time or deep in the woods. And when I was there I’d open the box and scream at the ears and they’d
have to listen and her mouth would be too far away to interrupt.

‘But that’s what you used to say,’ I called after her. ‘You used to say it might be magic: the lane. I remember.’

‘Used to!’ I heard her shout. ‘That’s the kind of crap kids say!’

I didn’t think
Amberley
had ever seen anything like this. Anna-Marie, head down, as she stormed along. Me shouting like I didn’t care who heard. I remembered that first day when I’d followed her hop-scotching from square to square and look at her now. How had this happened? What had I said? What was I trying to say? I was trying to make things right but it was like whatever I said came out the wrong way to make Anna-Marie understand.

Tommie and me were running again. We passed the village green and all the little cottages that overlooked it. The grass hadn’t seen rain in months and the ducks that had once paddled in the pond had given up and disappeared weeks ago. Anna-Marie had stopped to wait for this car to reverse into the mouth of Fugler Lane. This time I jumped right past her so we were face-to-face.

‘But Kat said that magic
is
real,’ I protested. ‘Listen: a secret is another word for finding out what’s true, isn’t it?’ Tommie was nodding. ‘And a secret is just a mystery like in Sherlock Holmes.’ It was like he had a bee buzzing about his head he was nodding so much. ‘And magic is, well, it’s like a mystery that you don’t know the answer to but once you find it out what you find out is true.’

It was like that bag of sand again but now it was a big saucepan full of words, all bubbling to the top. Words like ‘secret’ and ‘true’ and ‘magic’ and ‘mystery’ and, of course, ‘consequences’ all juggling around in my head and me trying to put them in the right order so that Anna-Marie would understand.

‘You know how you …? Do you ever pretend things? I mean do you sometimes pretend something is true when it isn’t?’

Anna-Marie glanced at Tommie and raised her eyebrows. ‘What sort of things do you pretend, Peter?’ Her face was all quivery she was so cross.

But it was hard to answer. I couldn’t think of anything right then. But maybe that was the thing with pretending. I mean sometimes, if you pretended strongly enough, it was hard to remember what was real and what was only pretend. Sometimes it was better to just forget there was a difference.

‘When I play football,’ said Tommie, bouncing his ball on the pavement, ‘I pretend I’m Martin Chivers.’

‘That’s right,’ I said.

Thank you, Tommie, I thought again. I nearly could’ve kissed him. Well, not really but, well, you know …

‘My dad says—’

But she was already gone. It was driving me mad. Every time I tried to explain she was always stomping off and not listening to a word I said. But then she would stop and I couldn’t get the words in my head to catch up with my mouth. I wanted to say how sometimes I could pretend something so much that it was almost like it was true. And sometimes I could pretend something so much that it was like my dad
was
alive. Just like she did when she said her dad was in sales. And, well, it was like in a story. You know, like cats and dogs and laughing your head off. If you really wanted, then you could make it true if you … It was like in my scrapbook—

We passed the church just as the bell began to chime: nine times, school time. I saw again that blue vase sat on a distant gravestone—do you remember?—except now I knew whose grave it was and now I knew whose vase and why Anna-Marie had told me not to go to that part of the graveyard.

But if I’d seen it that day, would I have understood? If I’d seen it that day in the graveyard, would I have realised? In the distance I could hear the school-bell monitor—ring-a-ding-ding—sounding the end of morning play. The children would be lining up; the teachers opening their registers, pens at the ready. If I’d seen it though, would it have made any difference?

We caught up with Anna-Marie at the school-gate. I grabbed her, feeling her tight waist beneath my fingers, the material of her T-shirt. But before I could think of what to say, she screamed: ‘Have you listened to yourself?’ and pushed me so hard that I stepped back into the road. ‘Good Lord, you’re like an infant.’ She was crying now. ‘Have I wandered into the chimpanzees’ tea-party? What are you talking about, Peter?’

‘But you said …’ I almost wanted to cry too. I put my head in my hands. I felt like I was running ten laps round the school field with Mr Gale going: ‘Come on, Lambchop, get your arse in gear!’

‘Don’t you remember?’ I said. ‘When you told me your dad was in sales? I thought it was true. I mean, it
was
true. It was true to me. And it was nice, wasn’t it? That someone thought he was alive. And, when you told me that, because I believed it, it must’ve been like it was true. Even to you. I mean that’s why you said it. And if it’s like it’s true, why isn’t it?’

‘Because it isn’t, Peter! What are you saying? You’re saying this means this and that means that as if it’s all true but—’

‘But …’ I wanted to scream. ‘But …’ I really did. Why did everything have to be so hard? ‘It
was
true and if I was telling someone about it they’d think it was true too. So to them your dad was alive and they would think he was away on business and they might never even think to themselves: Oh, I wonder
if he’s dead instead. And to those people it would be true. It
would
be.’

‘But it wouldn’t be true to me and if it wasn’t true to me then it wasn’t really true at all, any more than you and your mum … Like magic: magic isn’t true.’

‘But Kat said—’

‘It doesn’t matter what Kat said. Everlasting Lane isn’t magic just because—’

‘But the magic
is
the name,’ I pleaded. ‘And the name is true. It’s like if you were driving down this road and you saw a sign like Everlasting Lane you’d think, well, that’s a funny name and you might start to think about it like at night when you’re supposed to be sleeping and about who might live there and are there children or families or something? And then it would be like throwing a match into Mr Finch’s cornfield—
whooosh!
—or doing that thing with a magnifying glass, you know? And you’d be thinking, well, what sort of houses do they have in Everlasting Lane? Are they just like normal houses or would they be a bit magic? Because the name is like a magical thing, isn’t it? And you might think there was a dog like the Beast and a funny man like Mr Merridew and you might wonder about what the trees would be like and always, always you’d be thinking, well, what’s at the end? What’s at the end of an everlasting lane? And in the end you’d have to know because otherwise you might never get to sleep again.

‘Don’t you want to find out?’ And then she hit me.

It was funny because, of course, she was always hitting me. And Tommie too. But she’d never
really
hit me before. Not like she did then. My whole ear went kind of numb and echoey.

‘I’ve told you before!’ she screamed and there were tears running down her face. ‘There’s no magic!’ she cried. ‘Don’t
you remember what Mr Merridew says? There’s only chaos. Nothing means anything. There’s no point.’ Her face was moving around like a sheet on a windy washing line. She was cross because she didn’t believe what I was saying was true.

And then she hit me again.

And then she swung her satchel round until it whacked me in the face.

And then she hit me again.

She was screaming: ‘So, what, Peter? I just squeeze my eyes and pretend that my dad is still alive? That he tucks me in at night? I mean I can pretend but pretend doesn’t make it happen. You can write it all down in a story but that wouldn’t make it true. I mean, even if I did pretend it still wouldn’t be true.’

All that time, Anna-Marie carried on hitting me. The last straggling children had stopped to stare. I could just about see their feet as I tried to turn away from the blows. I was bent over, my hands covering my head as punch after punch, slap after slap came down upon me. Every now and again I felt her satchel again. It was like she had a million hands.

I could hear Tommie saying, ‘Anna-Marie,’ and, ‘Anna-Marie,’ and, ‘Anna-Marie,’ in lots of voices—soft and loud—but it didn’t make any difference.

‘Do you know, Peter,’ she was yelling, ‘I think you may be the stupidest, stupidest nine year old I’ve ever met.’ Ten! I was—ouch—ten! ‘Think about it: don’t you think if I could change things about my dad I would? Don’t you think I would change about Alice? Yes, I could write a story and maybe if you read it you’d think it was true but—’

But she was getting it all wrong. I wanted to say about that man, that man in
The Copper Kettle,
when he said it was like living in a different world or something. He’d said it was nicer there, hadn’t he? Apart from the food, he said. That’s what I
meant: that she could pretend and it would be better. And, maybe, if she pretended hard enough, it’d be true.

‘If you’ve done something wrong,’ she sobbed, ‘it stays wrong; it doesn’t suddenly get right because you do something else. The things that happen stay happened. You can’t change things, Peter. You can’t change what happened to Alice, whatever it was. And I can’t change what happened to my dad. I miss him but all the pretending in the world isn’t going to bring him back.’

And the funny thing was that after a while all the punches, pinches and slaps stopped hurting. Well, not literally. I mean they still hurt but I didn’t mind and once you don’t mind something then it hurts a lot less than it would do anyway. I thought about that thing, you know, about if there’s hurricanes and floods and if your daddy dies, then who are you supposed to get angry with? Well, I thought, if there’s no God then perhaps all you really need is someone else who doesn’t mind you being angry with them. But then, maybe that’s what God is for anyway.

‘Listen, Peter, you could walk from one end of Everlasting Lane to the other and back again and it wouldn’t make my dad be alive or your dad or Tommie’s dad and mum get married again. Everlasting Lane is just a road. It’s just a road with a funny name. The name doesn’t make it magic. A name is just what something is called.’

All my world was made up of feet and ground. Tommie’s dirty scuffed shoes and Anna-Marie’s black plimsolls, a flapping sole and thread hanging loose; the dry pavement on which they stood; my bag and the
Mousetrap
box and all the little bits of coloured plastic. And then the rows of shoes stood by the school-gate, staring. And then I saw this other pair of shoes: brown, large and laced-up, shiny.

And then I smelt this smell. This smell that I’d smelt before.

And then the brown, laced-up, shiny shoes said, ‘Now, now, young lady, I
think
that’s quite enough for one day, don’t you?
Quite
enough!’

That voice: I couldn’t think where I’d smelt it before.

I turned my head to see Anna-Marie still crying and … Well, I’ve run out of different ways to say she was walking away again, shuffling through the school-gates.

But that smell. A smell that reminded me of—

‘Well, Peter, it looks like I found you
just
in time.’ A voice that twisted me like a Chinese burn. ‘Peter?’ And that smell again except now I remembered where I’d smelt it before. ‘Peter!’ The smell of a cat. ‘Peter!’

A dead cat.

‘Ha!’ cried Doctor Todd as I looked up. ‘At last! Excellent to see you, Peter. Excellent.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Well, you
have
been in the wars, haven’t you? Anyway,’ he said, ‘ahem, we’ve got a bit of catching up to do, I hear, haven’t we, eh?’

‘That’s it,’ said Doctor Todd. ‘A deep breath … and out. Again … and out. That’s it, Peter. Good boy. So, tell me, where are we now?’

‘On the swing.’ A gentle breeze lifted my hair and the seat creaked as I moved back and forth, the loops of chain cold in my fists.

‘The swing? Which swing?’

‘The one at school,’ I said, squinting across the playing field, brown and thirsty, to the school buildings. I could see Miss Pevensie, hair bunched at the back of her head, pinning pictures to the classroom wall. Otherwise, the building seemed deserted like on a weekend.

‘Can you describe it?’

‘It’s sunny.’

‘No. The swing.’

‘It’s red.’

‘Okay, and this is where you come to—’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘we’re not allowed to play on it; to sit on it I mean. It’s broken.’

‘Broken? How is it broken?’

‘One of the seats is missing.’ I wiped my eyes. The smoke from Doctor Todd’s cigar was making them all prickly.

‘Oh, I see. There are two seats.’

‘No,’ I insisted, ‘one of them’s missing.’

Miss Pevensie had glanced up and seen me. She came to the window and waved. I waved back.

‘How long has it been broken?’

I shrugged. ‘Always.’

‘Of course,’ said Doctor Todd. ‘I see. So no one sits on the swing? Peter? I said, so no one gets to sit on the swing? Is that right?’

‘Anna-Marie does.’

‘Anna-Marie? Oh, yes, of course: the young lady with the flying fists. So why does she get to sit on the swing?’

Miss Pevensie was at her classroom door, the one that opened onto the playground, and tugging at the handle.

‘It’s not like she’s going to kill herself,’ I said.

‘But doesn’t she get punished?’

‘Who?’

‘Anna-Marie.’

‘Oh. She doesn’t care.’

‘I see.’

‘Peter.’ Miss Pevensie was half-walking, half-running across the field and calling my name. ‘Peter.’ I slipped guiltily from the swing-seat to stand on the dusty ground still gripping the chains behind me. ‘Peter?’ It was Doctor Todd now, his voice poking me like a knife. ‘Peter? Are you aware that you’re waving? Who are you waving at?’