Heartland Page 3

  My family came to the door. They stood behind us. They stood on the little patch of front garden in front of the kitchen window.

  Nobody spoke to my mother.

  It was like an anxiety dream, the kind where I pissed myself. The police had steady eyes. They didn’t look at anyone or at anything.

  Dad kneeled, to make sure my anorak was zipped to the neck. It wasn’t raining. He cupped my face.

  He said, ‘You look after yourself, Nipper.’

  I said, ‘Okay.’

  And that was that.

  I walked away. I took my suitcase to the car and got in. It smelled new because it was a hire car; after you handed it in, they washed it. I said hello to the man at the wheel. Then Mum got in the front passenger seat. She closed the door. She was looking through the windscreen.

  The man at the wheel started the engine. The car pulled away from the kerb. I turned in my seat. My family stood on the doorstep of 92 Bifield Road. They waved. I waved back.

  I saw that the policemen had relaxed. One had already taken off his hat, and the other was saying something into his radio. They got smaller and then we turned a corner and they were gone.

  The first few minutes of the journey were silent. Mum and the man stared through the windscreen. Bristol went past. Then Mum turned in her seat. She smiled. It was shaky at the corners.

  She said, ‘Neil, this is Derek.’

  He looked over his shoulder and he smiled too. His eyes narrowed and crinkled at the edges. It was a nice smile.

  He said, ‘Hello, Neil.’

  His voice was posh.

  I said, ‘Hello.’

  He returned his attention to the road.

  He said, ‘What’s that in your lap?’

  ‘A book.’

  ‘A book? Do you like books?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He drove for a bit.

  He said, ‘Well, then. We’ll have to stop off on the way and buy you some.’

  That was good. I watched Bristol go by.

  I said, ‘How far is it?’

  He said, ‘About four hundred miles.’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘About eight hours.’

  ‘Is that further than Dawlish?’

  A silence.

  ‘A little bit further,’ said Derek. ‘Yes.’

  Mum began to tell me about our new house, about the lovely park across the street and the lovely school a little way up the road. It sounded all right, but I would rather stay at Stockwood Primary School. At break time, Clive Petrie and I would clamber and hang on the multicoloured climbing frames that we called the apps, short for apparatus. And later we would walk home past the fierce dog on Coape Road, which came lumbering and barking and slavering to the flimsy gate whenever a frightened child walked by.

  On the back seat of the car, I nodded. I said, ‘Okay.’

  On the way, we pulled in at the motorway services. The sun had shone pleasantly hot through the car windows and the wheels had hissed a rhythm and I’d fallen asleep. Saliva had dried to a flaky crust between the corner of my mouth and my chin. It was like rice paper.

  We parked at the services and got out of the car. It was here, with the wind cooling my sleep-sweat, that I properly met Derek Cross. Until then he’d been a posh voice, the back of a dark head, some twinkling chestnut eyes in the rear-view mirror.

  He was short and portly, but elegant in a way that made me think of a field marshal. He wore fawn slacks and a green, ribbed sweater with epaulettes and patches on the elbows. His hair was very dark, combed into a parting that fell in a lick across his broad forehead. His smile was transforming. When he smiled, I thought he was very handsome.

  He took me–just me and him–to the little newsagent inside the service station. We approached the magazine rack.

  He stood at my side, looking at the magazines. He said, ‘What sort of books do you like?’

  ‘I like dinosaurs and pirates.’

  ‘Ah. Dinosaurs.’

  He scanned the ranks of magazines. I could feel his concentration. He stared at the shelves. Then he selected the closest he could find to a book on dinosaurs: a glossy-covered magazine about cavemen. It was full of words, and on every second page was a line-drawing of a big-jawed Neanderthal, dressed in raggedy deerskins. There were Neanderthal families in caves, sitting round fires; Neanderthal men surrounding a rearing woolly mammoth, prodding at it with spears. The blades were bound to the shafts with strips of leather. It was a big boy’s book. All those words.

  Derek looked at me.

  I told him it was just the thing. I felt him relax.

  I cast yearning glances at the rack of comics.

  He smiled, like someone might at a dog who has returned a stick. He said, ‘You like these, too?’

  I nodded and blushed. I was ashamed.

  ‘Which ones? The Beano?’

  I nodded. He stooped to take The Beano from the low shelf.

  ‘The Dandy?’

  I nodded. He took The Dandy too.

  ‘Whizzer and Chips?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He tucked them under his arm like a swagger-stick. He turned to face me. He smiled.

  He said, ‘I’ll tell you what; when we get home, we’ll subscribe to these. Then you’ll get them every week. How do you feel about that?’

  I nodded, not sure. I walked with him to the checkout. He bought a bag of barley sugars for the glove compartment.

  We went out again. We joined Mum on the grass verge. She had gone for a walk to stretch her legs, but now she was back. She had brought some drinks from the café. They were on a tray.

  Cars bucketed by on the motorway. They seemed much faster when I was standing still, watching them. Mum gave me a glass of Coca-Cola.

  I took the glass and swigged. I bit down on the rim and the glass shattered in my mouth.

  Coke frothed between my lips and jetted through my nostrils. It splashed as a pale foam on the ground, like at the edge of the dirty sea. I stood with my shoulders hunched and my head projected forwards. My mouth was crammed with sharp ends. They poked my gums and my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I could hear them. I was scared to breathe.

  Derek kneeled. We were beside the car. He put his hand to my mouth. He inserted a thumb and finger between my upper and lower jaw. He exerted pressure, like a tyre jack. He kept my mouth open as far as it would go.

  He said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t swallow.’

  He tilted his head and looked inside. Then he began to pick broken glass from my mouth, shard by shard. His hand was steady. When all the big pieces were gone, he said, calm but urgent, that there were still tiny bits of glass inside my mouth. If I swallowed them, they might cut up my insides and that would be very bad. So I kept my mouth open. It flooded with saliva. It gathered at the top of my throat. It kept trying to swallow.

  Derek led me to the public lavatory. My mouth was agape and my head was projected forward like a caveman. The floor of the lavatory was tiled white and pooled with grey water. There were soggy scraps of toilet paper.

  Derek took me to the sink and ran the cold tap. He stood at my shoulder and made me use the water like mouthwash, rinsing and spitting. He didn’t let me swallow until I’d spat clean a hundred times. Even then, he crouched and put his hands on my shoulders and watched my face as I let my throat work. He waited to see if blood came gurgling up from inside me, but none did. I hadn’t even cut my tongue.

  Derek didn’t want me to dry my face on the loop of filthy towel that hung from the dispenser, so he led me through the swinging door with my hands and my mouth wet. Outside, the air made them cold. As we walked, he lay a hand across the base of my neck, the way a doctor might. He wasn’t angry.

  We rejoined Mum at the car. Derek told her I was fine. They looked at each other. Then he clapped his hands, once.

  He said, ‘Right. Chop chop.’

  We got into the Morris Marina and drove on to the motorway, headed north. I lay The Beano, the W
hizzer and Chips and The Dandy on the seat next to me and opened the book about cavemen. I looked at all those words on the page, crowding the line drawings, bracketing the colour spreads.

  ‘You’ll get a headache,’ said Derek. ‘Reading in the car.’

  I said, ‘I’m okay. This is interesting.’

  Mum said, ‘Your teacher told me you were a good reader.’

  I said, ‘I read The Purple Pirate in one go.’

  But I wasn’t really reading the book about cavemen. I was looking at the pictures. I hoped Derek could see me in the mirror. Every time I looked up, he was looking at the road. But I could tell by a feeling in my scalp that he kept looking back, and that he and Mum kept looking at each other, and I furrowed my brow and looked studious. I turned the pages, flicked back as if to check something, turned the page again, and my eyes grew tired and it was warm in the car and I fell asleep.

  Mum woke me to celebrate passing the sign that read ‘Welcome to Scotland’ but I didn’t stay awake for long. I only woke when we entered the Edinburgh city limits.

  I sat up in the back seat, gummy mouthed, and looked at it. It was different from the butter-yellow and concrete city I knew. It was lower and darker, and it rose higher and stonier. The air smelled different, biscuity.

  We passed the Haymarket railway station and went down Dalry Road. Grey-black buildings lined the road. There were shops on the ground floor, flats above.

  ‘That’s your new school,’ said Mum, as we turned.

  I looked at its strange, lowering brow, its metal gates, its concrete playground. I missed Clive Petrie.

  We turned right at the school, on to a cobbled street. On either side rose high Georgian terraces. They were grey stone, gone black with age. Some stood dignified and austere, others were shabby, with weeds growing in cracks. At the bottom of the street, we turned right again, on to Duff Street.

  We parked outside number 30. The block across the way, where two terraces had met on a corner, had long gone: once again, the Luftwaffe had mistaken a place I’d one day live for a target of strategic importance. This time, the bomb had missed the Leith docks. The shattered blocks had never been rebuilt; instead, some climbing frames and a spinning globe had been erected. The paint was peeling and they were psoriatic with rust. The ground was sprinkled with broken glass and half-bricks. There was graffiti on the walls.

  I stared at it as Derek took my stuff from the boot, a suitcase. At my feet, faded caramel pats of horseshit melded with the polished cobbles. The pats were imprinted with tyre-tracks.

  Derek took my bag and we stepped through the main door. The stone hallway was painted two tone, cream above and chocolate below. It smelled of chip fat and old piss. On a mat outside the ground floor flat cowered a black and white mongrel. As we passed, she bared her teeth–a pointy mesh basket.

  Mum said, ‘That’s Suzie. She’s harmless.’

  I paused to look. Suzie cowered still lower and growled from the root of her throat. As I took the stairs, I could feel her fearful eyes on my back.

  The stairs were bare stone. A pale grey hemisphere was worn into the edge of each by the passage of many feet over many years. The banister stood on metal rails, and was made of cracked, dark, varnished wood. The stairwell looked up to a great glass roof, metal ribbed.

  Our flat was on the third floor, behind a blue door. Beneath the letterbox was a plaque, about the size of a cigarette packet. It read CROSS, white letters etched into a glossy blue background.

  The door opened on to a hallway. It ran to a narrow bathroom with an opaque glass door. The first internal door, on my right, led to my new bedroom. The second door on the right was the living room and kitchenette. At the bottom of the hallway on the left was Mum’s bedroom. The flat had a funny smell, not unfriendly or unwelcoming, but vegetal and old, undercut with gas and hairspray.

  We bustled through to the living room. Derek set down my bag in the corner. I put my coat on a chair. It was a stripy deckchair, like you saw at the beach. It was a strange thing to have in a room. The other furniture was normal. At the end of the room, under the windows, was the kitchenette. It was a strip of linoleum, a sink, a cooker and a fridge.

  I looked around the room. Nobody knew what to do. Mum gave me a hug. But it felt stiff. I asked if I could watch TV. I was tired.

  Derek said, ‘You can do what you want. This is your home.’

  I said, ‘Do I have to go to school tomorrow?’

  Something passed between them. It was anticlimactic. Two years in court, fighting for this. And now here I was, just a little boy they didn’t know, asking to watch TV.

  Derek stood in front of the TV. He put his hands in his pockets and stood there, rocking on the balls of his feet.

  He said, ‘We thought you’d like to spend a few days settling down, first. Get to know the place.’

  I said, ‘Okay.’

  He said, ‘Okay, then,’ and turned on the TV.

  They watched me, watching TV. I could feel them.

  Mum said, ‘You get some funny words here.’

  I looked at her.

  ‘When I first got here,’ she said, ‘I was on my way to the shops. And an old lady said to me, “Are you away for your messages, hen?” And I thought, “who are you calling hen? You old cow.”’

  I kept looking at her.

  ‘“Messages” means shopping,’ said Derek. ‘It took us a while to work that one out.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘And they call each other “hen”, like we call each other “love”,’ said Mum.

  ‘And they don’t say “yes”,’ said Derek. ‘They say “aye”.’

  I began to sob.

  Mum kneeled.

  She said, ‘Love, whatever’s wrong?’

  I said, ‘Do I have to say it?’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ said Derek. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’

  I nodded. I wiped my nose. I thought about my bedroom. It was eight hours away, four hundred miles, down a winding road then a long motorway. Past glass-in-the-mouth services, past the edge of Bristol. Through Broadmead, along the Wells Road: up Sturminster Road, past the Top Shops, past Stockwood Primary, where the red and yellow apps stood in the playground.

  I tried to stop crying. There was just the sound of the TV.

  The room was half-lit. It was dark outside. The window-panes were black mirrors. And I could still smell the flat. The scent of it hadn’t faded the way the smell of strange houses usually did. It was in the walls and carpet.

  Mum said, ‘Would you like to see your room?’

  She led me by the hand down the hallway, to the box room. She was excited and nervous. In the room were a bed and a wardrobe. On the walls, Mum and Derek had hung some pictures. They were proud of them. The pictures showed animals; swans, deer, ponies. They were girls’ pictures.

  They had gone to the shops, because they were looking forward to me coming to live with them. They had selected these proud stags and pretty kittens. Then they’d walked home with the pictures in a carrier bag, and they’d talked about me as they hung the pictures on the walls of my new bedroom. Mum told Derek how much he was going to like me. And now here I was. The pictures made me sad for them.

  High on the wall above the bed was a small, square window. It looked on to the stairwell and admitted some light, second-hand, via the massive glass ceiling. The window was frosted, so nobody could see in. Mum had hung an orange curtain there, and a square of net. It looked naked, an orange square set high on the wall.

  I told them I liked the room. I was very tired. I got my comics and my book about cavemen. Mum found some pyjamas in my bag. She tutted and made a fuss about the state of them, as she had tutted and fussed about the state of my anorak, torn with all the white padding spilling from inside it, short at the wrist and tight under the armpits.

  I changed and got into bed. They said goodnight. I kissed them. Mum tucked me up. She kissed
me on the head. Then she waited in the doorway for a while. She said goodnight again. Very quietly, she began to cry. Then she left.

  Under the noise of the TV, I could hear their voices. They were murmuring. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I lay face down on my caveman book and pretended to sleep.

  After a while, they sneaked into my room. Mum moved closer to the edge of the bed. Her voice sounded different.

  She said, ‘Look at him. Asleep on his book.’

  She lifted my head and Derek slipped the book from under my cheek. I could tell that I had dribbled on it. Mum and Derek laughed, softly. Derek closed the book and lay it on the floor, next to the bed. Then they left the room again.

  That night, I had a dream. It was a dream that came back again and again until I grew up. In the dream, I was lost and alone in a vast forest. I knew a witch was somewhere in the trees, hunting me. She could smell me, just like the Child Catcher. Sometimes, I could hear her feet, breaking dry twigs. The forest was still. No birds sang.

  Eventually, I found a clearing and in the clearing was a cottage. It was made of Battenburg cake. I knew I would be safe inside. So I crept down the garden path–it was full of dead grass and black twigs that poked out of the soil. I let myself in through the door. The cottage had a low ceiling. It smelled like an old, empty cake tin. In the kitchen there was a rough wooden table. On it were haphazardly piled hundreds of rusty knives.

  I knew I would be safe in the house. I put boards on the windows and a giant mousetrap at the door. In the dream, I stayed in the cottage for months and months.

  I woke on my first morning in Edinburgh believing that I’d been gone for a long time. I looked at my new bedroom, the new hallway, with a strange nostalgia, as if I was seeing them for the first time in many years. I walked, barefoot, to the living room. The radio was on: Jimmy Young.

  Mum was doing something in the kitchenette. She heard me. She jumped and turned round and screamed. I thought she was surprised to see me, because I’d been gone so long. But it was just that she didn’t hear me get up, because Jimmy Young was on the radio.

  She hugged me very tight. She kissed the crown of my head. She made me some breakfast; fried eggs on toast and bacon and a cup of tea. She took a little table from a nest of three and I ate my breakfast on that. The room was too small for a proper table.