Advent (2 page)

Gavin Stokes fidgeted
in his seat and willed the train to move.   Outside the window his mother stood on the platform, waving and smiling weakly. He was worried she was about to cry.

 
He didn’t mind the actual crying; he was mostly used to it. What he was afraid of was that if she fell apart right at this moment, she might change her mind about letting him go. His father had taken their trolley and was already heading off towards the Heathrow Express platform. Gavin saw him turn his head and say something to her over his shoulder, something that made the corners of her mouth tremble even more, and just at that moment, soundlessly, the world outside the window twitched and began to slide away.

 
‘Take care of yourself, Gav, love,’ he just about heard her shout. She took a few steps along the platform, but she couldn’t catch him now. ‘I love you!’

 
‘Love you, Mum,’ he mouthed back, without saying it. His father was out of sight already. A moment later and she was gone as well. The train was leaving them behind, gathering speed as if it too couldn’t wait to get away from them and all the rest: home, school, London. It was taking him about as far away as you could go without leaving England altogether.

 
He pulled his bag down onto the table and dug through it until he found the envelope he’d taken that morning from his mother’s desk. The night before, he’d dreamed that he’d gone into her room, opened a drawer, dug around and pulled it out. That was how he’d known where to find it.

 
She had torn it open. He unfolded the two sheets of paper, briefly surprised to see the tiny, thread-like handwriting. But of course Auntie Gwen wouldn’t use a printer; she wouldn’t have one.

My dear Iz,
[there was no date or anything]

Hope you can still make sense of my writing, I know it’s been a while. I’m truly sorry to hear about your troubles, but so, so glad you wrote to me! I think about you all the time, believe it or not, really I do. Being able to help now is like a gift to me. I’m really sorry I just can’t come to London for a whole week with work and things here
but
I have another idea, please listen, I really want to do this for you and Nigel and for Gavin too. Why doesn’t he come to stay with me down here while you two are away? Think about it. Please! He’s nearly grown up now, probably more nearly than I am (guessed what you’re thinking didn’t I Iz?)
[Here she’d drawn a little smiley face, and drawn it very well: it had Auntie Gwen’s rather long chin and longer hair, and was winking.]

I’m sure he’ll manage the journey down. You said he seems just the same as always so there can’t be anything to worry about for a few hours on a train. I can meet him at the station in Truro so he won’t even have to tune in enough to do the change.

I’d be just so delighted to have him stay here and maybe it will do him good to get away for a bit.
[He grinned. Neither Mum nor Auntie Gwen could have begun to imagine exactly how good he was feeling.]
This is the kind of place that really might be perfect for him. And he and I always got on well. I know it’s been a while since I’ve been up but I still send him those postcards sometimes so he won’t have forgotten all about me.
[The grin turned to a frown. He’d never had a postcard from Auntie Gwen, or not for years anyway.]
It’s not the ends of the earth here, there are good people around to help if anything happens. I know how much you and Nigel must be looking forward to your trip, really, why not let me do this and you can just not worry for a few days?

To be honest there may not be anything to worry about anyway, you and I know what Gav is like, it’s probably just something the school people hadn’t seen before but for us it would just be Gav being Gav! Wish they’d told you what it was though, that seems so unfair, it makes it so much harder for you. Iz I really wish I could be there and just give you a big hug. Please try not to get upset, I know, easy for me to say, but I’ve always known there was something special about your boy, in a good way, the best.
[Gav paused and for a while thought of nothing at all, while the city’s weed-strewn margins swished by.]
Anyway, please think about it, no I mean please
do
it, give yourself a rest and me the pleasure of seeing my nephew and Gavin a break too. It’s a bit short notice but it’ll work, all you have to do is write back to let me know and just tell Gav I’ll meet him on Monday at 16.48 at Truro station. It really isn’t that easy for me to get to a phone – you and Nigel must find it hard to believe – but anyway, the post
does
work fine
[here the writing reached the end of the second sheet and had to cramp itself even more and turn up the side of the page.]
oops no room, I love you Iz, peace to N and G, write back quickly! XO G

The cross-stroke of the last ‘G’ was lengthened out into something like a tiny dragon’s tail, its arrowheaded tip just squeezed into the top corner of the sheet. He was staring at it but not seeing it.

 
It had taken him a lot longer than weird Aunt Gwen to work out that there was ‘something special’ about him. For all but the last few of his fifteen years he’d had no idea. The special thing, it turned out, was that some of the things that happened to him weren’t supposed to happen. Some bits of his life were allowed – nobody minded them. Others weren’t.

 
Learning the difference between them had been a miserable experience. He’d had no idea there was anything wrong until everyone started telling him about it, and even then it didn’t really make any sense to him. Distressingly, it was apparently the parts of his life he liked best that shouldn’t actually have been happening. He’d begun finding out about this a few years ago, around the time he’d switched schools. The first symptoms of the change were in the way his parents talked to him. Instead of ‘Oh, really?’ (with a smile), it became ‘Oh, come on, Gav’ (with a frown). Then it was ‘Gavin, I think you’re too old for this now.’ (For what? he’d asked himself. For what?) Then it was ‘Look, Gav, you’ve got to stop all this’, and then ‘I don’t want to hear about this rubbish and frankly neither does anyone else’, and then worse, until the night he’d thought his father was actually going to hurt someone. That night was when he’d finally grasped that the rules of his life had changed for good, without warning, without anyone asking him or telling him why.

 
He’d got up that night and gone along to his parents’ room because Miss Grey had told him Mum was dead.

 
Miss Grey hardly ever said anything at all. Never, really, unless you counted when he was asleep, and even then the things she said were a bit strange and confusing and hard to get hold of, the way dreams are, though he always felt he understood what she meant. But that night, for once, the words had been quite clear:
The sun rises on your mother’s grave
. He woke up straight away, worried. He knew his mother couldn’t actually be dead or have a grave because she’d been listening to the radio as he dozed off – he’d heard it downstairs – but he couldn’t help feeling anxious. He sometimes dreamed things before they happened, and those dreams always had Miss Grey in them. So he went along to their bedroom and opened the door.

 
‘Mum?’

 
Rustling bedclothes and then Dad’s head popped up abruptly. ‘Gavin? What the bloody hell are you doing?’

 
‘Is Mum OK?’

 
‘What? Christ, what time is it?’

 
‘Mum?’ But his mother hadn’t answered, and he couldn’t hear her breathing. All he could see was a dark lump in the duvet, like a mound of earth. He panicked and switched the light on.

 
‘Ow! What are you . . . ?’ Bleary and blotchy, his father cringed from the light, but for a horrible few moments Mum hadn’t moved at all and Gav had been utterly certain he’d dreamed the truth again. His first thought was that now he’d be living alone in the house with Dad, an idea of such deadly horror it made him screech.

 
‘Mum!’

 
And then of course the lump had moved and she had pushed herself up, messy and fogged with the confusion of sudden waking. ‘Gavin? What’s wrong?’

 
He started to cry.

 
His mother sat up and beckoned him, smoothing her hair. He climbed over the bed to her. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ his father grumbled, and she kept saying, ‘What’s wrong?’ halfway between anxious and exasperated. ‘What’s wrong now?’

 
‘I thought you were dead.’

 
‘Jesus Christ.’ His father fumbled for the bedside clock, pulled it to his eyes, groaned.

 
‘What? Gav, Gav! Silly boy. Whatever gave you such a horrible idea?’

 
And because this had all been four or five years back, and he hadn’t yet learned what he wasn’t allowed to say, and also because he’d been scared witless for the awful seconds before she’d woken up, the truth came out.

 
‘Miss Grey said. She said my mother was dead.’

 
His father slammed the alarm clock down on his bedside table hard enough to break it and shouted, ‘I’ve fucking had enough!’ which was terrifying because until then Gav had thought swearing was just a naughty joke. Even more terrifying was his mother’s reaction. She’d frozen, gone white like someone caught in a searchlight, and then instead of holding her arms out to Gavin, she sort of shrank in on herself, her eyes inexplicably fearful. His father was bellowing at him to get out, bellowing and swearing and thumping the table, and as Gav scrambled back to his own room he heard the shouting go on behind him beyond the slammed door, until in the end Mum shrieked, ‘I haven’t! I haven’t!’ so loudly that they must have realised the racket they were making because they stopped, leaving Gav sitting bolt upright in his bed, perched stiff as if trying not to fall.

 
Even before that night he’d begun to understand that his parents didn’t like him talking about Miss Grey. It annoyed them that they couldn’t see her. That was fair enough once he thought about it, though they needn’t have felt bad since no one else could see her either, as far as he could tell; but then that had always been true, so he didn’t see why it should bother them all of a sudden. When he’d been smaller, he’d often listened to them laughingly explaining about his imaginary friend, if he’d happened to mention her to someone. ‘Oh, that’s his imaginary friend.’ It was, he learned, the proper term for someone like Miss Grey. Other children had imaginary friends, or at least some of them presumably did, although he soon found out that he didn’t know any. Also, none of the kids he did know liked being asked about the subject, though that made sense to him because he didn’t like being asked about Miss Grey either.

It was a bit tricky explaining about her since she didn’t behave at all like other people. He guessed this was probably the point about imaginary friends. They were secret, special. The only person he’d ever known who really liked to talk about her was Auntie Gwen, and Auntie Gwen liked it so much Gavin found her eagerness a bit embarrassing, and usually tried to change the subject.

‘Is Miss Grey her real name?’

Um, it’s just what I always call her, you know, like the people who look after you instead of Mummy at the school were called Miss Sandra or Miss Mara so I thought she was like that, except she didn’t say her name so I made up Miss Grey ’cos she’s quite grey.

‘What games do you like to play with her?’

Um we don’t really play games, we just sort of—

‘Does she tell you stories?’

Oh yes! Well, sort of.

‘What kind?’

You know. Funny things. Um anyway it’s not really like telling stories. Can we get an ice cream before we go home?

‘Can you see her now?’ (Miss Grey smiled a little and shook her head.) No. I like plain Magnums.

After the horrible night with the shouting and banging, Gavin became much more wary of mentioning her to anyone. He was angry with her, for the first time. He thought she’d lied to him about Mum, which made the shouting her fault, not his. It was weird and disturbing, anyway, because he was used to her being right about everything. Also, something had happened between his parents, not just the screaming. Even the next morning he could feel it wasn’t right. When they spoke to each other the silences between had a funny crackle to them.