The One Safe Place (3 page)

The girl sidled behind the two friends she'd brought home. She was twisting a toggle of her duffel coat so hard that moisture oozed out of the cloth. "I'm getting mam."

"You get her," Darren said over the whine and tish of the earphones. "Tell her Darren Fancy's in your yard and all he's after is a hold of Bugs, and see if she wants to get on the wrong side of us."

All he wanted was to stroke the animal, the way Mrs. Morris had let him. His hands were remembering how soft its fur was, except that having to argue was mixing up the sensation with the muffled spiky throbbing at his neck. He ran the bicycle at Henry, and the boy backed away, tripping over the prop of the clothesline which sagged between the corners of the yard. As Henry sprawled on his arse on the concrete and began to howl like a factory siren, his sister dashed out of the gate. "I never touched him," Darren said, not for the first or the dozenth time in his life. "Don't you two be saying I did him when I never. I'm holding Bugs and then you can if you want."

He let the bicycle drop against the fence and stooped to the hutch, tearing open the wrists of his gloves and pulling his hands free. Bugs thumped one paddle-shaped back leg and retreated into the section of the hutch that was boarded up like a derelict house. Henry's howls were making Darren's fingers feel as if he hadn't taken off the gloves. "Shut it, you twat, or I'll stick one in your gob," Darren told him, so savagely that Henry gulped himself silent, and then Darren's fingers were able to turn the wooden catches of the hutch.

As soon as he groped into its nest, the animal fled into the larger compartment. Darren left one hand in the straw sown with hard round turds and reached around with the other to try and stroke the rabbit's ears flat, the way it kept them when it was calm. "Eh, Bugs, you know me. It's Darren from last year."

He'd managed to flatten one ear when the rabbit struggled from under his hand and fled for its nest, then at once dodged aside, having found 
Darren there too, and leapt out of the hutch. Darren fell back, banging his knuckles on the wooden underside of the roof. Henry was lying on the concrete as though scared to move until he was told, but he scrabbled backward away from the rabbit, faster when Darren lunged in his direction. Then Darren's hands were around the animal, which was so large that they barely encircled its torso, and lifted it onto his chest.

Its blunt twitching nose pushed under his chin, and he thought it was going to nestle there. Instead it dug its claws into his chest so hard he felt them through his shell suit and hauled itself onto his shoulder. It was going to leap over the fence. "Come here, you dick," Darren growled, squeezing it with all his strength. He felt its ribs crack before it wriggled out of his grasp and sprang over his shoulder, missing the fence and landing on the concrete with a loud slap.

He'd broken it. It lay there shaking with its legs stretched out, and Darren was about to grab the evidence and shove it in the hutch when it grunted. Gathering itself, it performed a tentative hop. As he moved to head it off it hurtled past him, out of the gate.

He couldn't run that fast. He seized his gloves from the top of the hutch and digging his hands into them, swung the bicycle away from the fence and vaulted onto it. Henry had sprinted into the alley, grabbing at his own face in dismay and stretching out his hands and grabbing his face again. One of Darren's handlebars clubbed him in the kidney, knocking him out of the way. Bugs was hesitating at the end of the alley which gave onto one of the patches of grass the planners seemed to have left because they couldn't think what else to do with the ground, and Darren thought it might feel at home on the grass. As he aimed the bicycle to send the rabbit that way so that he could ride around it until it tired, however, it dodged into an alley which led to a road which bordered the estate.

Darren skidded after it, yelling, "Stop, you fucker." He was hoping his shout might bring someone out of a yard to head it off, except people on the estate knew better than to intervene or even to look if they heard anything like that. In seconds Bugs was at the far end of the alley, where it faltered, panting, perhaps confused by the heaps dogs had left on the pavement. But as Darren raced down the alley the rabbit dashed onto the road and froze halfway across. Darren pedalled furiously, having heard the car. He emerged from the alley just in time to see a black Rover travelling at twice the speed it was supposed to on that road. Its right front wheel struck the rabbit, and the thud turned into a muffled pop.

The car was out of sight before Darren bumped over the curb. He made several circuits of the expanded rabbit, which was now more red than white. He was less disturbed by the mess that had spilled out of it than by the color of the innards, a duller red than they ever were in videos. He was fumbling the earphones over his ears when Henry saw him along the alley and ran toward him.

"It's your fault, you selfish little shit," Darren hissed, and rode at Henry, feeling fast and powerful as the Rover. Henry gaped at the rabbit and drew breath for a howl, then read Darren's expression and turned tail. As he fled onto the no man's land of grass Darren was at his heels, and would have ridden him down except that Henry's mother came flustering out of her alley, a glass of what Darren guessed was gin shedding drops over her wristful of tarnished bracelets. The music hammering his ears wanted him to go for Henry anyway. Instead he veered around the boy as Henry and his mother competed to see who could make the highest noise, and sped across the sodden grass and down his alley to the front of Handel Close.

His house was on the corner. Whenever he heard it called the Fancy house it sounded like a joke which everyone but he was afraid to laugh at. Except for having some grass that went around three sides of it, no broader than a hallway along the windowless side, it was much like any house on the estate. He lifted the gate, and the slouching fence with it, so as to open it across the cracked concrete path, and wheeled his bicycle through the mud overgrown with scraps of paper. There was just room for the bicycle among the spare bits of car in the shed. He sneaked to the back door of the house, but as the key turned in the first of the locks one of his uncles had put in, his father's head reared up beyond the window next to the kitchen. By the time Darren finished letting himself in his father was waiting in the hall, scratching the veins of his folded arms with the black crescents of his fingernails and chewing whatever had left wet crumbs in the stubble around his mouth. "Where've you been?"

That meant before the rabbit, Darren guessed. He'd been somewhere for his father. He fumbled with the earphones, which had slipped down his neck, in case they might help him remember. "Eh?" his father shouted.

He'd begun to pinch his eyes with one hand as if to rub them even redder and was pounding the wall rapidly as a pneumatic drill with the side of the other, which was getting ready to punch Darren. "Delivering?" Darren said.

"I know that, you defec. What kept you?"

"Had to wait?"

There was nothing Darren could think of to say that would save him from being knocked down while his father was in this mood. But his father sent his bloodshot glare past him and finished chewing. "Better not do it twice," he muttered, apparently not about him, then stared hard at him. "See anyone we don't know?"

"No?"

After a pause during which Darren felt the music clamping itself to his neck his father said, "Well?"

Darren tensed himself to run as his father's gaze drifted down his body, and then he realised it mightn't be the best place to punch him that his father was looking for. He tore at his wrist and succeeded in dragging off the glove so as to unzip his pocket. "Here, da. It's all here."

"Better fucking be." His father lurched forward so violently that Darren thought he was going to punch him for luck, but only snatched the wad of crumpled grubby notes. He poked between his teeth with one thick finger before using it to leaf through the notes, counting more or less silently. Four hundred and forty, and sixty, and eighty... He pinched his eyes harder and went through the notes again while Darren tried to sidle away unnoticed, but then his father finished counting and grimaced, not so much satisfied as frustrated at having no reason to hit anyone. Eventually he said, "Want a tab?"

It occurred to Darren, as it seemed to have quite a few times, that those might be making the hole in his brain where his memory ought to be. "Still got some."

"Suit yourself," his father said, stuffing the notes into the back pocket of his jeans, which he yanked up over his stained Gucci shirt before pulling the belt a notch tighter. "Just stay out. We're talking."

"Where's mam?"

"The old bastard pissed himself again," his father said, turning away as though Darren was no longer there, and let himself into the mutter of male voices in the back room.

Darren retreated to the stairs in case anyone accused him of listening. Lamps which someone, probably one of his parents, must have grabbed for support hung off the walls, exposing their wires. As he hurried upstairs, peeling off his jacket that felt as soaked inside as out, he heard his mother in his grandfather's room. "See what you done, you dirty old sod.

Should be in Bellevue with the rest of the animals." Darren listened outside the door in case there was worse to hear, but the only further sounds were his mother's dramatic groans as she lifted the old man and his grandfather groaning louder as she did, and so Darren crossed the thin rucked carpet to his room.

These days he never knew how large it was going to seem. Today it was bigger, despite the new computer in its box, and the hi-fi and television and video recorder and video game console. He threw his jacket and the Walkman on his unmade bed, and listened to the drip of water sneaking in through some part of the roof, then he tore the box apart to get at the computer which he'd begged when his father and his uncles had had nearly twenty of them in the back room.

Once he'd emptied the box he shoved the screeching polystyrene under the bed with the packing from the other items in his bedroom. He snapped the rubber bands that held various leads, which he pushed into the sockets that appeared to be shaped for them, even if he had to force a couple in. He plugged the computer into the wall socket, which he had to steady with one hand because he'd borrowed one of the screws for some purpose he couldn't remember, and switched on. Though a corner of the keyboard gave him a green light, the screen stayed blank.

He picked up the monitor and shook it hard, then did the same with the keyboard, and jiggled the plugs in their sockets. Nothing helped. At last he picked up the instruction manual, though even the thought of trying to read it made his skull feel squeezed smaller. He flattened the manual on his knees and set about reading the first page, dragging a fingertip under the words. When it became clear to him that he'd spent fifteen minutes in reading how much he was going to enjoy the computer, he flung the manual at the wall and wrenched the leads out of the keyboard and attempted to plug them in different sockets. One plug was determined not to come out, and when he yanked it back and forth to dislodge it he felt a snap as it pulled loose. He'd broken off two of its pins in the socket.

He tried to pretend it didn't matter. He replugged the leads in as many ways as he could think of, but the screen remained blank. The green light winked at him as sweat ran into his eyes. His attempts to pry the pins out of the socket only split his fingernails. Suppose his parents tried to sell the computer if they ran out of money? It wouldn't be the first time they'd taken something from his room when they needed to buy themselves a dose. He switched off the computer and ran to the nearest refuge he could think of—his grandfather's room.

He'd heard his mother go downstairs, and she'd shut the door tight so it would be harder to hear the old man. Darren poked his finger in the hole where the handle used to be and pushed the door open. First he saw the stuff which occupied nearly all the room and kept out most of the light from the slit of a window—rolls of leftover carpet, old photographs covered with broken glass, bulging suitcases with rusty locks, toys Darren had grown out of that weren't worth selling, ornaments nobody wanted, videos nobody watched. When no sound from the bed greeted him he crept into the room.

His grandfather was lolling against the purple plush headboard, his knobbly hands gripping the discoloured quilt above his waist as though ensuring that nobody uncovered him. Several buttons were missing from his pyjama jacket, which was held shut at his throat by a large safety pin, and Darren thought he saw a new bruise on his chest. Above the cables of the neck, the old man's face looked like an elongated mask of perished whitish rubber, cracking at the forehead and too loose below the ears. Most of his remaining hair sprouted from his nose, and Darren knew without having to venture within reach that his grandfather's breaths would be sucking it in and out. He tiptoed to the end of the bed and squeezed the old man's feet hard.

"Ow, you—" his grandfather wailed, and added something full of syllables, though it was mostly saliva that emerged. One hand groped over his chest and made him wince, then fumbled at the safety pin before eventually locating his eyes, which he flicked open with his nails. The eyes looked drowned. "Who is it?" he mumbled. "Are we there yet?"

For a few seconds Darren only watched, queasily fascinated by what his grandfather might say or do next. When the eyes began to retreat behind their lids he said, "It's Darren, granda."

"Dandy? Thought the Jerries got you."

"Darren." The boy felt as though he was shouting to find himself. "Dee ay ar ee en."

"Oh, Phil's lad." The old man had discovered one of his ears and cupped a hand behind it. He succeeded in focusing on Darren, but not for long. "Sending boys to fight Jerry now, are they? Expendable, that's us, and never even asked who we want to fight for. Sent soldiers to put down the workers, old Two Fingers did. At least Adolf wants to share the money round a bit and take it off them as shouldn't have so much." His eyes narrowed, squeezing trickles of moisture down the channels of his face. "Who did you say you was?"