Everlasting Lane (35 page)

‘Miss Pevensie.’

‘Who’s she? A teacher? At school?’

I nodded. ‘She’s trying to tell me something.’

Slap! I felt the hot sting of his hand upon my face and blinked in shock.

‘Peter,’ Doctor Todd smiled at me with his woodland teeth, ‘thank goodness. I thought we’d lost you there.’ He took his
red pen and wrote in his blue notebook. As he did so, he said, ‘Look around you.’ He had the same notebook as that man Craig from
The Copper Kettle.
‘Do you know where you are now?’ He looked up at me. ‘I said, do you know where you are now?’

I nodded. ‘The lounge.’

‘That’s right, Peter,’ he said. ‘Well done. Well done. Now, I want you to tell me who else is in the room with us. Can you do that?’

Of course I could. I turned around. The narrow space between the curtains, drawn against the bright morning, produced a slice of light that cut the sofa in two. They were sat on opposite ends like reflections of each other, clutching identical tissues to their faces, eyes red-raw like devils’ eyes. They sobbed as if their tears were a scratchy record, its needle jumping in and out of the dusty groove.

‘Mummy,’ I said, the inside of my chest echoing to the throb of my heart like Mr Waterberry bashing the school water-tank with his big rubber hammer, ‘and Kat.’

‘I see,’ said Doctor Todd. He scrunched the end of his cigar against the lip of the ashtray and it sat there hanging by a thread of smoke. ‘Let’s play a game, shall we?’ he said suddenly. ‘See if you can tell me what I’m holding in my hand?’

‘A pen.’

‘Good. Can you describe it to me?’

‘It’s red.’

‘Yes. Good. Anything else?’

‘It’s got a little silver thing to hang in your pocket.’

‘That’s good. Now, what about this hand?’

‘Nothing.’

‘That’s right. Good. Now, pretend I have two pens. Can you do that?’

Of course I could. That was easy. I did so and watched as he juggled them between his hands.

‘Now,’ he said, stretching out his palms, ‘which is real?’

I raised my hand ready to point but hesitated. It was hard. They looked just the same.

‘I see,’ said Doctor Todd. Popping both pens into the pocket of his jacket he slipped another cigar from its thin box and lit it sucking thoughtfully on the end like a hungry calf. The tip glowed like a precious red jewel. ‘Now, there’s no need to be shy, is there? Why don’t you come and sit down?’ He patted the cushion beside him. ‘We’ve got a few things to talk about, you and I, haven’t we? And I want you to tell me everything. Your mother wants you to tell me the truth. Remember?’

I shuffled forwards until I was standing right in front of him. But I didn’t sit down.

‘I’ve been looking through your scrapbook,’ said Doctor Todd. And he was telling the truth. I could see it sat on his lap beneath the notebook. I could see the corner of the cover poking out with Norman’s sign on it:
Trespassers will be Persecuted.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘It’s really the most astonishing piece of work. A
ston
ishing.’

I was about to say that he couldn’t’ve read it. I wrote it all backwards, you see, so that nobody could. But he held up that little mirror and smiled at me with jagged teeth. It was broken—the mirror I mean.

‘You’ve had quite a time it seems,’ he said. ‘All these adventures. Goodness me! This Mr Merridew: what an extraordinary character. Extraordinary. And this is a gruesome series of pictures,’ he went on. ‘
Very
gruesome. Who is this poor chap?’

‘Tommie Winslow.’

‘And what’s happened in this picture?’

‘He’s been hit by a ball.’

‘Goodness, what a lot of blood. And this one?’

‘He’s been hit by a stick.’

‘And this one?’

‘He’s been shot.’

‘Shot?’

‘With arrows.’

‘Oh, they’re arrows. I see. And who
is
this Tommie Winslow? Is he a friend of yours? You’ve certainly created a lot of unhappy fates for him. Is he someone you know?’

‘He’s a friend of Anna-Marie’s.’

‘Ah, that name again.’ He flicked through the pages. ‘Ah, yes, here we are: a wholly different set of pictures. My, what an incredible imagination you have. In
cred
ible.

‘Tell me, Peter, did anyone ever read you the
Alice in Wonderland
stories when you were younger?’

‘My daddy.’

‘Ah, I see. Of course. But the interesting thing about
Alice in Wonderland
was that it was all a dream, wasn’t it? In fact, you’ve written it here.’ Again he flicked through the pages. ‘Ah, yes,
All that Alice-in-Wonderland
 …’ and he wrinkled his snout as he mouthed: crap. ‘All of it locked away in little Alice’s head. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, Peter? I mean the stuff that we lock away in our heads. The trick is to know what’s inside our heads and what’s outside, isn’t it, eh? Can you see the difference? Because,’ went on Doctor Todd, ‘well, you like to make up stories, don’t you?’

I shook my head. I hadn’t made up anything. It was all there: Tommie’s napkin, the shredded remains of my class work, the game of
Consequences
I’d played with Norman Kirrin. They were all there. And more. Stuck in. And they were all real.

‘What I mean is it’s more like an impression, a picture of what the real world, your world, is like. It’s like—’

‘A picture of a tiger.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s it. In fact, I was just admiring your own
picture. The black and orange stripes. Very vivid. And those jaws. Argh! I could quite feel myself breaking into a sweat.

‘And, of course, the story of Alice—I mean
Alice in Wonderland
—was make-believe. A man called Lewis Carroll made it all up but her adventures can seem very real because, like you, he had such a
viv
id imagination. Now, Lewis Carroll was real, of course, but that doesn’t mean Alice was real, does it? How could she be? Think about all the strange things that happen. How could it be true?’

‘Alice thinks it’s true.’

‘Ha! She does. You’re quite right. But isn’t that because she’s dreaming? When she wakes up she knows it was all just a silly dream, doesn’t she?’

‘But …’

‘Yes?’

‘But she’s not real,’ I said, ‘so she can’t dream, so she can’t not know what was real and what wasn’t when none of it was.’

Doctor Todd stared at me. ‘Exactly.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Absolutely. But putting that to one side for the moment, I think what I’m trying to say is that there’s a line to be drawn between what’s real and what’s not but, maybe for some people, maybe for you, Peter, it’s not always clear exactly where that line should be.’

I frowned. What Doctor Todd didn’t understand was that sometimes something that wasn’t real could be as real as something that was.
That’s
what I’d been trying to say to Anna-Marie, of course. It was like, I don’t know, sometimes you’re dreaming but you think you’re awake.

‘Yes,’ said Doctor Todd, ‘but then you wake up and realise that it was all a dream, don’t you? In retrospect. Like
Alice in Wonderland.
’

Well, I thought, sometimes you do. Maybe.

‘What I’m trying to do, Peter, is to find the words to help
you understand,’ said Doctor Todd. ‘Your mother has difficulty … relating to you, doesn’t she, Peter? Have you ever wondered why? All the stuff in your scrapbook: all that stuff about Alice. Haven’t you been wondering what happened to Alice? The real Alice I mean. Have you never wondered why your mother feels the way she does?’

‘That’s why she has a doctor.’

‘Oh, Peter,’ said Doctor Todd. ‘No. I’m not your mother’s doctor. I’m yours.’

I blinked in surprise. What did he mean? There wasn’t anything wrong with me. Was there?

‘Let’s talk a little bit about your grandmother, Peter. I understand you paid her a visit the other day.’

I nodded.

‘Why did you attack her?’

‘I didn’t. I …’ If anything she’d attacked me. ‘I didn’t know who she was,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hurt her.’

‘Unfortunately, Peter, that’s not strictly true. Not strictly. She doted on you when you were little, of course, like any grandmother would but she could never forgive you for what you did to your mother; for what you did to Alice.’

‘She tore me out of that picture.’

‘Well, that’s right. You can imagine, I think—after all, you have a very
pow
erful imagination—how she felt when you turned up out of the blue yesterday and—’

‘But I didn’t—’

‘Now, now, Peter. What I would like you to focus on—really focus on—is the truth.’

‘Like a secret?’

‘No, Peter, this isn’t a secret. Do you remember when I came to visit you at your house,’ I nodded, ‘and you threw your bowl on the floor? And then you broke that watch I bought you, didn’t you?’ I nodded again. ‘That lovely watch.
And then I understand you hit this poor boy with a cricket ball.’ He nodded down at my picture of Tommie. I’d used lots of red for the blood but there hadn’t been any blood really. ‘And then that poor dog. And the vase, of course, from your sister’s grave. And then there was today’s little, ahem, altercation at the school gate. Isn’t it fair to say, Peter, that sometimes you … ah … let your emotions get the better of you? That sometimes you get so cross you forget what you’re doing?’

I didn’t know what he meant. He had me all confused. It was like he was one of those magicians on TV and his words were like card tricks, pretending to be magic. I didn’t hit that cricket ball, did I? It was Mr Gale, I thought, but I couldn’t remember for sure. And the Beast? Crunch! That was Crunch! That was Mr Merridew.

‘All these incidents,’ said Doctor Todd, ‘they’re not
co
incidence, are they?’

No, I wanted to say, they weren’t. Even I knew that. They were consequences just like in the game. But I didn’t say anything. You see, I wasn’t sure what they were consequences of.

‘Let’s talk about Alice,’ said Doctor Todd. ‘The real Alice. Tell me what you know about her.’

‘She used to live here,’ I said. ‘She had a nursery.’

‘Yes, that’s right, she had a nursery but she never lived in it, did she? Do you remember why?’

I shook my head. ‘She was my sister.’

‘That’s right, Peter.’ Doctor Todd nodded slowly. ‘That’s right but Alice was never born, was she? Your mother brought you here to help you remember why. Do you?’

‘Mummy had an accident. That’s why she has a sore knee.’

‘That’s right. Well done, Peter. Splendid. But do you remember the accident? Do you remember exactly what happened?’

I studied the door, peering at the hinge and then the lock. I reached out and touched it, placing first the pad of my finger and then the palm of my hand against it as if measuring the temperature.

‘Where are we now?’ asked Doctor Todd.

‘Outside the kitchen.’

‘Good. Now, in you go.’

The only sound was my breathing. I put the key in the lock and turned it. I felt suddenly hot and cold. I pushed the door open and looked inside. I saw myself sat at the table cutting random shapes, like lop-sided stars, with round-bladed scissors, dollops of glue setting hard on the table-top.

‘Now, who’s with us?’

‘Daddy.’

He was soaking paint brushes, white spirit tinged with pink from the nursery walls. Spicy ginger was rising in the oven; milk was bubbling in the pan. My lips could already taste the creamy ring of chocolate.

‘Where’s your mother?’

‘She’s upstairs.’

She was cleaning up after Daddy and his painting, her belly
all swollen with my little sister, her Hoover clickety-clack against the skirting board of the room above.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Funny.’

The skipping rope tied clumsily across the top of the stairs. It was only a joke. Would she see it? Would she not? She’d always wanted a little girl.

‘Oh, Peter,’ said my father, ‘you’ll be the death of me,’ as he picked at the blobs of hardened glue. ‘Anyway, do you want your cake now or will you save it for later?’

I stared at Doctor Todd. My mouth was sticky and dry. My tongue rasped over my lips.

‘What happened next?’

‘She fell.’

‘That’s right. She fell, didn’t she, Peter?’

Yes, she fell. I could see her limbs flying and tumbling like a woman at the circus which was kind of funny because, of course, I didn’t see it. I only heard it. Her body like a bag of bones, clumpety-clumpety-clump. And her cry: frightened, yes, but soft like a mouse because there was nothing she could do. And then the clumping came to a final thud, her leg broken, the white bone peeking through the red skin, blood in her lap, and then there was a pause—I giggled at my father’s face—and then the screaming started.

‘Peter!’ My father leaping to his feet. ‘What did you do?’

I’d never heard him scared before. My father’s face: I’d never seen him scared. Pretend-scared, yes, if I was playing at ghosts or being a monster but not properly-scared. All the way through the war without a graze—Tobruk, Sicily, Rome—but he died right there. Just like Alice. The cancer killed him in the end but really he was already dead. I mean, not really but … Sometimes it’s hard to be sure.

I stopped giggling.

‘Peter, what’s happening?’

And yet he forgave me when my mother never could. Why couldn’t she forgive me? It was my fault but … I didn’t know anything about consequences, you see. I’d never even heard of them. ‘Peter?’ I didn’t know things happened in chains. ‘Peter!’ I thought they happened in bubbles.

I felt Doctor Todd’s palm again, sharp on my face. I stared at him. His pen, the real one, tappety-tappety-tappety-tap on the corner of his notebook. The room was full of smoke. I could hear tears flowing but I couldn’t tell whose.

‘You’ve reached an age, Peter,’ said Doctor Todd, his voice sounding cross, ‘when—how can I say this?—you need to grow up. You can’t keep hiding from the truth. You can’t keep evading responsibility for the things you do. Karen—your mother—has, well …’ His glasses glinted at me and then flashed right through me to the hazy shapes on the sofa. ‘You have been terribly over-indulged.
Terr
ibly.’ It was a strange expression—on his face I mean: half anger and half that look Melanie got sometimes when she wanted her story marked now but Mr Gale would only point to the top of the pile. It was like facing an invisible wall you could never climb. ‘Isn’t it time to take your place in the real world, Peter? To be a real tiger, perhaps, eh? And then, I dare say, you will at once begin to recognise how,’ he jabbed his cigar at the air, ‘how frustrating your peccadilloes have been.’ With white knuckles he ground his cigar into the ashtray ’til the sparks nipped at his fingers.