Everlasting Lane (4 page)

‘Are you standing there all day?’ asked Anna-Marie, her voice gentler than before. I sat down. She flicked the hair from her face and smiled. Her teeth were white and straight, and two deep dimples burrowed their way into her cheeks. I felt a flicker of electricity.

‘Are you clever?’ she asked. ‘At school, I mean.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I have an excellent vocabulary,’ said Anna-Marie. ‘They did a test. But I have a blind spot for numbers. I don’t let it bother me. Maths is boring. There’s no … variety. Everything’s either right or wrong. There’s no grey areas.

‘I like English: reading and writing, but don’t get me started on children’s books.’ I shook my head. ‘All those animals running around in hats and jackets with their bottoms hanging out,’ she said. ‘I mean, why do they even wear clothes? They should at least wear them properly, I mean trousers, don’t you
think?’ I nodded. ‘And what about their names: Mr Toad, Badger, Rabbit? I mean, what are all the
other
rabbits called?

‘Anyway, I don’t read kids’ books. I read grown-up books like Agatha Christie and Frances Hodgson Burnett. I like mysteries. I love books where anything can happen,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘don’t you? Like somebody says they laughed their heads off or it’s raining cats and dogs. I used to write stories myself and … Well, in a story that can happen. It could really rain real cats and dogs. Literally. That’s much more interesting than normal rain.’

I smiled.

‘The impossibilities,’ she said, ‘are endless.’

‘What’s your school like?’

Anna-Marie wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s all right, I suppose. The teachers don’t like me much and the headmistress is awful, but I’m going to secondary soon anyway. And I’ll be glad to go. I’ve had enough of baby school.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’

Anna-Marie gave me a withering stare. ‘Oh, please,’ she sneered. ‘What’s this: ‘Conversation for the Under-Fives’? You are such a child.’ She plucked a tuft of grass from the lawn and brushed it against her cheek. ‘In fact,’ she said, ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’

‘A teacher?’

‘Yes, and I know what you’re thinking but I don’t mean like a normal teacher. I mean a good teacher. Do you know that game
Consequences
?’ I didn’t. ‘We play it in school sometimes. Well, it’s like that. Children don’t know anything about consequences. They think they can just do any old stuff and that’s all there is to it. What they need is someone to teach them about the consequences of what they do. Do you know what I mean?’

I didn’t.

‘I want to be an astronaut,’ I said.

Anna-Marie snorted. ‘Your chances of ever becoming an astronaut are about the same as mine of growing an extra head.’ She glanced up at the cottage. ‘Sorry about the window, by the way. I didn’t know anyone was living here, obviously.’

‘We keep ourselves to ourselves,’ I murmured.

Anna-Marie gave me a funny look. ‘Oh, you do, do you?’

‘Who used to live here?’ I asked.

‘Well, when we first moved here there was this little old woman—Mrs Whatnot or something. She was nice enough. She used to say I was an angel and give me sweets and stuff,’ Anna-Marie smiled, ‘until they carted her off. I don’t know much about it, to be honest. You know what adults are like. As if I cared.’ She touched her bruise again. ‘Cockaleekie soup,’ she murmured, and then, ‘You’ve probably never heard anyone swear like that before, have you? Properly I mean. I’m the best swearer in school. My mum hits me whenever I do it but it’s funny ’cause I learnt them from her in the first place.’

She closed her eyes with a sigh, her face smooth and peaceful like a china god. We sat in silence, listening to the breeze rippling in the trees and somewhere the rusty joints of a child’s swing. White sheets rippled on the Liddells’ washing-line like a sailing ship. The cat crept closer and wrapped its slinky back about my neighbour’s arm. ‘This is Kitty,’ she said. I fiddled with the buckle of my sandal and watched Anna-Marie, waiting for her to speak again.

‘Pillock,’ she said.

‘What’s a non-entity?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she shrugged. ‘Besides, you may not be one. Time will tell.’ She caressed her shin one last time. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Come on,’ and she leapt to her feet, grabbing my hand and pulling me up. ‘You’re coming with me.’ My heart thrilled to her dry, determined grip.

‘Peter!’ It was my mother. ‘I’ve put some cardboard in the window,’ I mean Kat, of course, ‘cleaned up the glass,’ calling from inside, ‘and I’m going to phone a man in the village about,’ stepping from the back door onto the patio, ‘the gar—Oh,’ she said, seeing Anna-Marie for the first time. ‘Hello. Who’s this?’

‘It’s Anna-Marie.’

‘Anna-Marie Liddell,’ said my new friend, smoothing the creases out of her dress.

‘Oh, well, I hope Peter’s not bothering you.’

‘He seems harmless enough,’ laughed Anna-Marie.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ said my … said Kat.

‘Can I go out?’ I said. ‘We were going to—’

‘Well, I’m hardly keeping you a prisoner, am I? I want you to look around,’ she said. ‘See what you can find. It’s baked beans with cheese on top—just how you like it—for tea, so make sure you’re not back too late.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Anna-Marie. ‘I’ll look after him, Mrs—’

‘Kat,’ said Kat. ‘With a “K”,’ and then she smiled at me just like an aunt would and said, ‘’Bye, Peter.’

And I said, ‘ ’Bye, Kat.’ It was new and strange but it was kind of nice.

As Anna-Marie and I walked along I nearly began to believe what Kat had said about my having lived there before because nothing I saw seemed entirely new. Hadn’t I once hidden beneath that willow tree waiting to spring out on my mother as she hung the laundry? Wasn’t that pothole the one I had tripped on whilst chasing a pigeon and skinned my knee so badly that Daddy had had to bathe it in
Dettol
? Why did the low branches of that tree remind me of hiding myself among its green leaves and giggling as my parents bellowed out
my name below? But if it was true why was I not sure? The memories were more like dreams than things that had really happened.

‘So,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘that’s the notorious aunt, is it?’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Kirrins’.’

I remembered when my dad, sat up in bed waiting for the nurse to come, was telling me about that funny feeling French people get when they’ve been somewhere before when they haven’t really. Now that I could remember quite clearly: the sickening warmth of the room, the smell of medicine and Daddy’s dry voice saying, ‘Sometimes the mind likes to play tricks on people, Peter. Just like you do.’

‘What’s
Kirrins
’?’

‘It’s a shop.’

‘Why? What are we going to do?’

Anna-Marie smiled. ‘Something reprehensible.’

By the time we reached the sign that welcomed us to Amberley, wedged tightly into a wall of yellow bricks, I had decided that it was Kat who was playing the trick. After all, if we had once lived here, why had we left?

Along Hayes Road, the road that wound through the village itself, were rows of tiny cottages with black roofs and white walls wrapped in vines and creepers, their small front gardens brimming with flowers and shrubs. Anna-Marie hop-scotched along the pavement, the loose rubber of her plimsoll flip-flapping. Occasionally she paused, frowning with concentration, to slip her hair back behind her ears before tossing her stone and skipping off again in pursuit, me trotting to keep up.

We passed the village green, the yellowing grass revealing the brown earth underneath, and the pond, scum collecting in the bottom, the dry bed rising to meet the water level. We passed
The White Hart
, where a row of old men, skins dark and
cracked, sat muttering and drinking, squinting at the sun; and beer, Coca-Cola and cheese and onion wafted across the road.

Anna-Marie said: ‘Where did she get that limp?’

‘What?’

‘Your aunt. She’s got a limp, hasn’t she? I mean I’m not saying she’s Long John Silver or anything but you can see it.’

We left the pavement and crossed the road towards a pokey shop: trays of shrivelly fruit and buckets of droopy flowers lay outside and in its window a plastic sheet protected the insides from the glare of the sun. Above the door a sign, its black and white paint all scratched and peeling, read:
KIRRINS
’
GENERAL STORE
.

‘She should use a walking stick or something,’ said Anna-Marie as she took the handle and leant her bottom against the door.

‘What’s “reprehensible”?’

Anna-Marie sighed. ‘ “Reprehensible”: naughty, wrong, blameworthy, disobedient, wayward, mischievous, impish. Anto-nym,’ she added with a wink as she pushed against the glass panel, ‘good.’

Oh. Well, that was all right, then.

A bell rang and a man’s voice called out: ‘Greg! Shop!’

Anna-Marie nudged me. ‘That’s
him
!’

‘Who?’

‘Sssh!’ she said. ‘Come on.’

Down the central aisle, tins and packets of food to one side and powders and soaps to the other, she led me to a shelf of old-fashioned toys and games: bat and ball sets; compendiums of snakes and ladders, Ludo and chess; colouring books featuring teddy bears in dresses and cardigans; whistles and yo-yos, and beside each item a little Christmas fairy holding a small piece of card on which was written the price. The fairies looked uncomfortable and sweaty in their glittery, ruffled dresses and lacy butterfly wings.

‘Aren’t they sweet?’ declared Anna-Marie with a sigh. ‘Each one’s painted differently,’ she went on. ‘This one’s got curly red hair and this one’s got short blonde hair and green eyes and this one’s got jet-black hair and the one with the wand here, look, that’s my favourite, she’s got long blonde hair and blue eyes and freckles: just like me!’

It did look a little like Anna-Marie. But not much.

Next to Anna-Marie’s fairy was a box of jewellery with different necklaces in it and bracelets with little love hearts
hanging off them, and I noticed this one thing: a ring. It had a big jewel on it, like a diamond or a ruby, but it was orange. With a ring like that, I thought, people would think Kat was the Queen of England. I wondered how much it would cost.

‘My dad tried to buy it for me once,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘but they’re not for sale,’ she meant the fairies, ‘just the crappy toys next to them.’

And then, like a Venus fly-trap, her hand shot out, grabbed her favourite fairy—snap!—and stuffed it into
my
pocket, where it lay, the point of its wand stuck into my leg. Anna-Marie winked again. ‘Well, Peter,’ she said loudly as she escorted me to the shop counter, ‘unfortunately those dolls are not for sale, so we’d better just buy some sweets.’

A tall man with a large stomach and dark patches beneath his armpits had appeared.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Kirrin,’ said Anna-Marie. ‘How are you today?’ Her smile sparkled. Mr Kirrin only grunted and wiped a handkerchief across his pink forehead. His snowy white eyebrows remained fixed.

With a finger to her lip, Anna-Marie studied the sweet jars that lined the high shelf like something out of ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’, comparing pear drops with liquorice allsorts; wine gums with pineapple chunks. And what about sherbet lemons? Mr Kirrin’s face grew redder and his head shinier. Eventually Anna-Marie was decided and delivered another smile. ‘I’d like a quarter jelly babies, please.’

Mr Kirrin struggled to reach a decision of his own, glancing at me from time to time as if for help until he turned and bellowed towards the back of the shop: ‘Norman!’ There was no response. ‘Norman!’ The voice we’d heard as we’d entered the shop remained silent.

The shopkeeper fetched a small stepladder. He was tall but still needed an extra inch or two to reach the required jar. He
walked, I noticed, a bit like my mother—I mean Kat—and just snapping the stepladder into shape caused him to wheeze like a hamster’s squeaky wheel. As he climbed the two or three steps necessary, each breath made me wince.

Anna-Marie smiled.

He grabbed the jar and held it to his chest with one hand whilst using the other to come down. The ladder creaked as it took Mr Kirrin’s weight. He placed the jar on the counter before us. He frowned at Anna-Marie. She smiled at him.

They were like David and Goliath about to have some ancient battle, with rules written deep in the desert sand that whipped about them. Mr Kirrin looked like some old boxer who’d been knocked out so many times he must have wondered whether he shouldn’t just lay down and save his opponent the trouble.

He was a desperate man. Of course he was. It was hardly a fair fight.

Whatever strength he had left Mr Kirrin drained it as he twisted the top from the jar. Sweetness burst into the air. I breathed in feeling my toes tingle. Hefting the jar at an angle, Mr Kirrin emptied a fistful of jelly babies into a bowl—they rattled like gravel—and then a couple more—plink, plink—as he guesstimated a quarter.

He balanced weights and nudged the scales with his pudgy forefinger, before turning to Anna-Marie and addressing her directly for the first time that afternoon: ‘Just over.’ His voice rasped with defeat.

‘That’s fine,’ said Anna-Marie.

The bowl on the scales had a kind of lip, like with a jug, and Mr Kirrin tipped the jelly babies into a small paper bag. He twisted the corners into tight knots and placed the bag in front of Anna-Marie. His great knuckles leant upon the counter and a single drip of sweat fell from his upper lip. The
hot patches beneath his arms had begun to sag. Anna-Marie waited just a moment before her hand jumped into my pocket and, to my alarm, produced the fairy.

‘And this, please.’

Mr Kirrin’s face was a sky full of storm. He snatched the tiny doll, clutching it deep in his fist. ‘I have told you before,’ he said, his temper bubbling, ‘they are
not
for sale.’

Anna-Marie’s lip was stiff, every bit as cross as Mr Kirrin. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’d better just have the jelly babies,’ but then: ‘Oh, shoot,’ she said, ‘I haven’t got my purse. Peter, could you lend me … Sorry, how much is it? Maths isn’t my strong suit.’