The One Safe Place (2 page)

As he raised his aching head the dog came for him. Its large broad sawed-off face met his, and it opened a mouth that looked and smelled full of blood. He heard its owner calling "Shemp" again, much closer than the trees had made him sound before. As it set about licking his forehead clean, he wrapped his arms around the barrel of a torso and muttered, "Sic them, Shemp. Enemies. Kill."

His bare arms began to tingle with the dog's low growling. Otherwise the animal stayed still, having closed its jaws and peeled its snail-coloured gums back from its stained teeth, and Marshall had time to wonder if, since it had never seen him before, it might turn on him. At least the three had halted some yards away, and he hugged the dog tighter, lending more of an edge to its growl. When it tried to pull away he held on. His arms had started to shake when a man dressed only in sandals and shorts jogged into sight on the path beyond the dog, and stopped at once. "Whatever you're trying to do, son, don't," he called, barely audibly. "Let go of him slowly and then stay absolutely still."

It wasn't just the thought of being robbed of protection that made Marshall hang on, it was the unfairness of his being suspected of maltreating the dog. "I was trying to save him," he protested, losing the struggle to keep his voice even. "They were throwing cans at him, look."

"That's not the case, sir," George S. said. "If you want to know—"

"We were only having a bit of fun," Max interrupted.

"With his little brother," Vic added.

"Just so you leave my dog out of it. Now, son, I told you once—"

"They're lying," Marshall cried so shrilly he could barely stand hearing himself. "They would have hurt Shemp."

At the sound of its name the clog swung its head toward him and opened its mouth. Lunging at him, it knocked him onto his back and planted its front paws on his chest before panting hotly in his face as a preamble to licking his chin. "He knows who his friends are," the man said. "I'd advise you three to be making tracks before he decides he's in a hunting mood."

"Sir, I give you my word—"

"Can't use it. All I need is not to see you three around here again, ever."

"Come on," George S. ordered after a pause. "It isn't over."

That might have been intended for Marshall or for the dog's owner, who held up one hand in a gesture that made Shemp tense and the three retreat hurriedly as Marshall let go, stretching out his arms on the hot sand. When the sounds of branches being snapped were lost among the trees the man paced forward and stood looking down at him. Marshall saw the weave of the black hairs on his legs and torso, and the bulge of his denim crotch. The dog had lifted its head to its master, its tongue lolling, its paws still pinning Marshall down. "If you know my dog I should know you," the man said. "Whereabouts do you live?"

"Along from the 7-Eleven," Marshall said as loudly as the dog's weight would allow.

"Shemp." The man patted himself between his legs. "I should run home if I were you, son, before your friends come back to use you for whatever they were going to use you for. Me and the beast, we'll be behind you."

He had to pat himself again before the dog responded by floundering off Marshall, who sat up gingerly, rubbing his spine where the can had struck it. "Did he bruise you? Let's take a look," the man said. "It's just that we like to play rough."

Marshall shoved himself onto his knees. The exertion and his sudden closeness to Shemp's owner filled his nose with the oily scent of the man's suntan lotion. "I'm okay. I have to run now," he said, springing to his feet despite a surge of dizziness.

"Illegal in Britain, you know."

When Marshall glanced at him the man pointed at the dog. "Keep us in mind if you want a romp."

He'd meant the breed was illegal, Marshall decided. "Thanks," he called over his shoulder.

He was settling into a rapid stride homeward when the dog crashed after him through the undergrowth. It seemed content to keep bounding across his path and back to its master, until a shout of "Shemp," more distant than Marshall would have expected, took it away for good. By now Marshall was almost home. He rounded the last pond and clambered up the bank which separated it from the canal by the lake. Someone had removed the log which bridged the canal.

It didn't matter, he could jump. He'd told himself he would one day, and this was it. He wavered at the top of the nine-foot slope, telling himself he mustn't close his eyes, just count to three, no, ten. His foot slipped, and he was slithering toward the canal, and a heavy branch flew past him and smashed into the opposite bank. "Should've been his head," Max said. "Your throw, Vic."

They and George S. had sneaked out of the trees above the pond and were standing at the top of the slope. Marshall's left foot plunged into the canal. The sun pierced his eyes, turning Vic into a silhouette which swung at him an arm several times the length it ought to be. He staggered aside barely in time for the thick branch to miss his scalp and scythe past his ear with a low whoop. Then Vic lost his grip on the weapon, which thumped down the slope and stood on end before falling across the water. The current pivoted its far end toward Marshall, who sloshed into the canal and trod on the branch as it reached him and sprang onto the opposite bank. His fingertips scrabbled at the hard earth as he began to slide downward, scraping his knees, and George S. said,"Time to stop playing. This is a gun, Marsh. Get your ass over here."

Marshall had often heard shots fired in the woods, and once he'd found bullet cases beside a path. He knew that George S.'s father had taught him how to use a gun, but would he let the boy take one out with him? Maybe he didn't know George S. had. Marshall peered over his shoulder, pain jabbing his neck, and saw a dark gun-shaped object glinting in George S.'s hand.

Even if it was a gun he wouldn't dare shoot it at him, Marshall tried to think. They wanted to prevent him from reaching the safe ground in sight of the houses, and if he let them head him off... The prospect sent him scrambling up the bank.

Sunlight fastened on his back. Earth dug under his fingernails and stung the quick. The strap of one sandal slid down over his heel, and he thought he'd lost the sandal. He flung up his hands as if he was surrendering, though only to seize the ridge, and missed, and skidded down the bank. "I warned you," George S. called. "You take one more step..."

Marshall pressed the raw palms of his hands against the earth and hitched himself upward, and straightened his legs as the toes of his sandals dug into footholds so shallow he was afraid to look down, and then his head was above the ridge, insight of the lake and the rear of his house at the far end of it. He rammed his chin into the stubbly earth, and heaved himself up until his forearms were over the ridge. He levered himself onto his knees and rolled down the far side of the bank.

He was lurching to his feet when he heard two thuds behind him, followed by a splash and a curse as Max failed to achieve the leap. Marshall only had to run, because he was within a hundred yards of the nearest house. Although there was nobody to be seen, he only had to shout for help if he needed to, assuming that the roar which the latest plane was draping over the suburb didn't blot out his voice. He sprinted through the thick grass toward the end of the fences, on the lakeward side of which someone had abandoned a length of hosepipe whose random curves gleamed black. He heard his pursuers thudding up the bank, and glanced painfully back to see George S. storm into view, brandishing the piece of wood which no longer even looked the color of a gun. Marshall put on speed, hunching his shoulders up and ducking his head to present less of a target. Then the hosepipe lifted its head and extended its forked tongue and came writhing fast at him.

His ankles bruised each other as he stumbled backward. He heard Vic arrive at the top of the bank with a snarl of triumph and Max labour after him, cursing with ever)' breath. He couldn't let them drag him back. He launched himself at the three-foot snake, and in the moment of jumping he saw it was farther away than the canal was wide. He felt himself falter in mid-air, legs waving frantically. Then his feet snapped grass several inches beyond the snake, and kept running, but only until George S. shouted, "Run while you can, Marsh. You won't be able to run away from us much longer."

Marshall swung around and held onto the picket fence while he filled his sandpapered lungs with air. The snake was less than a foot away from him, and stretched across the margin of the lake almost as straight as a line he might have drawn with his heel. "Yes I will," he said, and raised his voice. "We're going away today and never coming back."

George S.'s chin wagged from side to side with frustrated rage, and Marshall burst out laughing. He didn't move when his enemy slid down the bank, spraying the grass at the bottom with dust. If George S. wanted to come for him now, let him come and take whatever consequences he stirred up. But Vic yelled, "Watch out, snake."

George S. saw it, and skated to a halt on the grass. He brandished the piece of wood as though it was a wand whose use hadn't been fully explained to him, then pointed it at Marshall like the gun he'd wanted it to be. "Pray to die if you're lying, Marsh. And if you're not, I'll pray that worse than us is waiting for you where you're going."

Marshall turned and walked away, refusing to be panicked into running. He didn't look back until his lungs had ceased to ache. George S. was watching from beyond the boundary of the snake while his cronies lurked behind him. "So long, Georgette," Marshall said. "Mumble away, Maximum. Hasta la vista, Victim." By now he was facing away from them and waving to his mother, who had come to their fence. The sight of George S.'s face, moving its chin like a goat chewing on frustration, had convinced him that leaving was the right choice—made it seem like the start of an adventure he couldn't begin to imagine.

*

Darren Fancy was cycling through traffic on one of the roads into the centre of Manchester when he forgot where he was and where he was going. A gush of sunlight through the low muddy clouds had confused him, and the rash which had broken out on the faces of the drivers made him want to rip open the wrists of his gloves to examine his own hands. He could only cycle while he tried to understand, weaving expertly between two side mirrors in fat black plastic housings and kicking another against a Volvo to give himself more room. As the electric window of the Volvo began to hum open he jabbed an open-legs sign at the driver and saw that the spots were crawling over her pudgy pale infuriated face. They were shadows of raindrops on the windscreen, but that didn't help him put any more thoughts together. The lights of the traffic signals at the junction ahead extended from red to amber and then, as if the weight was too much, dropped to green, and Darren veered in front of a Jaguar whose driver was pressing a car phone against the bottom of his turban and jerked the bicycle over the curb onto the smashed pavement. He shook his head until the earphones of his Walkman fell around his neck, but that only let the blurred sounds of the stampede of traffic at him. Then he caught sight of the sign for the probation centre and realised he was nearly home.

He couldn't tell whether his forehead was hotter outside or in. The sun looked as though someone was trying to poke the end of a telescope through the clouds in search of him. Surely he'd already been wherever he was supposed to go. He hoisted the Benign Lumps concert into place over his ears and pedalled fast onto the waste ground occupied by workers' cabins, which was the start of the quickest way home through the council estate.

The cabins weren't much narrower than the houses of the estate. Inside were bare metal desks with pens locked up in them, filing cabinets stuffed with paper, graphs on the walls—nothing worth breaking in for. They weren't even a challenge like the new and supposedly unbreakable park benches. A man carrying a clipboard and wearing a pen for a necklace came out of one cabin to watch Darren with an expression like the one all the teachers at secondary school turned on him, especially when they thought he wasn't looking. Darren considered performing a wheelie to spray him with mud, then contented himself with his best spit, which travelled at least twelve feet and spattered the open door of the cabin. A shout of "You dirty little—" was blotted out by the Benign Lumps as he sped off between the backyards, his teeth chattering with mirth.

He could see over the fences by standing on the pedals, but there wasn't much to see except kitchens and back rooms repeating themselves beneath tiny bedroom windows like spyholes for watching out for the police. Where the gutters were clogged with windblown litter, the walls under them looked spongy with January rain. He saw a toddler trying to climb on a car engine covered with a tarpaulin in one yard, a needle and bloody syringe in the next, where the grass straggled like a dosser's beard. A woman toothy with several colours of plastic clothes-pegs glared out of her yard at him as he raced behind Mozart Close, a Doberman snarled at him from behind a fence of Mendelssohn. He spat over the fence and screeched left behind Haydn, feeling as if he'd become the pounding drums and the guitars and singers trying to outshriek one another, and saw several children from his old school blocking the alley ahead.

It wasn't seeing them which made him brake—he would have enjoyed watching them scream and cower against the fence—but in the yard into which they were trooping he'd seen a white rabbit in a green hutch from his last year's classroom. Bugs was the class pet which Mrs. Morris had never let Darren look after during any of the holidays and weekends, though she used to call Darren her little ray of sunshine as if they were sharing a joke, not like any of the multitude of teachers at his new school, none of whom seemed to know or want to know him. He jumped off the mountain bike and ran it into the yard and shook the headphones off. "Eh, whosit, give us a hold of Bugs."

"Don't, Henry. Mam said nobody but us was to."

"Tell your sister to shut her hole, Henry. It's not yours to say who can hold it. Give the bugger here."