There’s no Joe in school the next day either, and at lunchtime I cut out too. Today is one of my ‘leeway’ days, and now I’m having less of them it feels like I’m on holiday. I walk through the shopping lanes and buy tea and sausage rolls for Banks. The black make-up is still visible even though I washed last night. It’s lined my eyes in a smudgy grey and this morning before I left I put on lip gloss as well. I feel pretty good.
I text Joe: ‘Where r u? Hate it w/out u…’
After a time, the answer comes back: ‘cant tell u. but im ok.’
I find Banks beneath the iron columns that run along the seafront. He sees me and lurches out into the road, forcing a line of three cars to stop violently. The first driver bips his horn and Banks slaps his hands on the bonnet, leaning forward to stare through the windscreen as if into a fishbowl.
‘Hey,’ I call. ‘Banks!’
He stops, turns his head towards me and pushes himself away from the car.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘What’s up?’
I take the sleeve of his coat and pull, so that he stays on the pavement. The man in the car looks out at me and drives off, shaking his head.
‘Can I let go?’ I say. ‘Will you stay out of the road?’
Banks doesn’t answer, just begins to roll a cigarette and we walk together. It’s really cold today and he looks pinched and sick. He doesn’t want the tea and sausage roll when I hold them out, which isn’t like him. There are no cuts and bruises visible and he smells all right, but he gives a horrible cough then spits downwind.
‘You could have been run over,’ I say. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘Are you my mother now?’ Banks says, and walks off, leaving me to follow in silence. When we reach the concrete in front of The Mansion, the old man with the Santa Claus beard is standing outside, shuffling from foot to foot. He has a bottle in his pocket and I wish I hadn’t annoyed Banks because now he might go off and share the disgusting thing – putting his lips on the top of it and swigging where the old man’s dribbly, scabby mouth has been.
Banks looks from me to the old man and back again, then sighs. ‘I don’t feel too good,’ he says. ‘Sorry. You wanna stay, you’ll have to come inside.’ Then he smiles. ‘You showed me your house, I’ll show you mine, right?’
The Mansion is a weird building. Its flat roof is a terrace where you can sit looking down, with another storey built into the tall sea wall that leads on up to Marine Parade. It’s weird to know there are cars and buses going past overhead. It’s like the promenade and the sea below are another world – a tank in the aquarium where we are the fish. Even with its peeling paint and gaping doors you can see how it must once have been – a bit like Banks. You could still just about put him in clean clothes and feed him up and he’d be like he always was; almost. He leads the way now and I have to follow. Foolishly, I feel like I should have brought wine or flowers – isn’t that what you do when someone takes you home?
We go in the black opening and as my eyes adjust I can see there’s a smaller room beyond littered with bottles and cans. Further back there are some coats, a sleeping bag and a giant cardboard box opened out. Banks sees me looking at it. I’m hoping he doesn’t sleep on it, it’s so disgusting looking. On another pile the old bearded man is now lying, in a long coat, grey trousers and a blue knitted jumper that is mostly holes. His feet have no socks and are squashed into a pair of trainers, which have the toes out. Sleeping, his skin sags downwards like melted candle into a thousand lines and crinkles that are brown like a Batik pattern. His lower lip dangles showing a red gum and two yellow teeth, and his horrible stomach spills over his trouser button, covered with white hairs like those on a dog’s chin. I realise I’m staring when I turn to see why Banks is so quiet. He’s waiting for me to stop looking.
‘That’s Old Man Harry,’ he says, sitting down on an oil drum in the central room. ‘He’s always drunk. Sometimes he sings, sometimes he cries, but he’s all right. He knows everywhere to go – the flops, the crashes and the restaurants that will give you food. First Christmas I was here, he took me along to the Salvation Army for the dinner. Without him I’d have just sat here.’
It’s sweet the way he’s trying to make me like the old man, but useless – he just makes me want to be sick. I can’t imagine him ever being a boy, or someone with a job. It seems like he must have always been like this. I sit down next to Banks and shiver. ‘Don’t you get cold?’ I ask him.
‘Sure. Wouldn’t you? Winter, we have a fire sometimes but still…’
‘Why do it then? It must be awful. Can’t you go to the council and get a house or something?’
Banks carries on looking out to sea as if he hasn’t heard me, then sniffs and makes a face. ‘I had places. Well, rooms, you know, but something always went wrong. No rent money, or trouble, you know, of some kind. The places aren’t nice… for people like me.’
‘You said you had a house once, though. With your wife and baby – why can’t you again?’
‘That was back then. I was different; had a job an’ that.’
Behind us the old man shifts and belches. I worry he’s getting up.
‘She and me… she was really pretty was Lilyn… she got fed up with me.’
I look at him. He’s staring out across the concrete where a man with a little dog stares back.
‘There’s never only one way to go,’ I say, quietly, so the old man won’t hear.
‘She kept Jack y’know. Took him away to Scotland where her mother lives.’
I think of Banks kissing a wife goodbye, changing a baby’s nappy, leaning over a cot with the smell of toothpaste and coffee on his breath. His hair would be shorter; his fingers clean as they stroked the back of his wife’s head before work.
‘Couldn’t you call her?’ I say. ‘Or you could go to see them.’
‘Too far,’ Banks says. ‘I don’t see him now.’ He takes out his tobacco tin as if that’s it.
‘My brother had a job,’ I tell him. ‘He had a few. He’d always get drunk and screw things up –’
Banks sniffs and nods his head. ‘Yeah.’
‘– then Dad paid for all these courses. Trying to find something he’d stick at.
Didn’t matter how much money he wasted, or how many times Sam gave them up, there was always money for another course.’
Banks smiles to himself and blows out a cloud of smoke.
‘It’s true,’ I say, ‘always. Another training course – and a car when he was doing this gardening…’
Banks perks up. ‘He was a gardener?’
‘No. Not a gardener. Well, he worked for a man who was landscaping – you know? When Sam died, we found all these little seeds in matchboxes. He couldn’t remember to brush his teeth, but all those seeds were labelled – in Latin too. Can you imagine? Latin!’
Banks grins. ‘Yeah. I know Latin. You don’t know what I know. You use Latin to classify things. You should plant them.’
‘I don’t know where they are or what happened to them. I can’t remember a lot about it.’
This time, it’s me who stares out of the entrance. Banks takes out a little bottle and swigs. He hands it to me then immediately takes it back. ‘Sorry,’ he says.
‘Actually, I don’t want to talk about it.’ I look up – afraid because the funny feeling is coming back, like I’m going to be executed at dawn or something. Banks leans forward and looks into my face. His breath is fumy but nice.
‘It’s going to be a year –’ I find myself saying ‘– since he died. In a few weeks they’ll want me to go to the grave, but I won’t. I haven’t since the funeral. They can’t make me.’
I wait for him to say something. Something perfect to make the pressure go out of me like steam, but he doesn’t.
‘Watch out,’ he says suddenly. ‘Alec’s here.’
I look up from under my fringe and see the red-headed man. He’s trying to walk in a straight line but it’s as though he’s on board ship. His hair is still in wild corkscrews, but this time there’s a silly little hat perched on top of it. His pink face is covered in golden stubble and he leers at me as he comes closer. He stands there swaying, and I can smell the drink oozing out of his pores.
‘Whaaasaa doing Banksssy? Whaasis girl here?’
I move closer to Banks as Alec crashes down on a box next to us. His eyes are a very pale blue like a baby’s; the pupils not more than tiny black pinpricks.
‘I saw God,’ he says, leaning in close to my face. ‘Ssssaw God and he said I am his avenging angel!’
He stands up suddenly and laughs in high-pitched shrieks, swiping the air around him as if it was filled with wasps or bats. He twists one way and then another, looking at something we can’t see. Banks takes my elbow and we get up, walking without looking back. ‘Get going,’ Banks says. ‘Get off home. You don’t want to be around him. He takes stuff with the drink, and it’s done his head.’
‘What about you though, Banks? Will he hurt you?’
Banks laughs. ‘He tries. I can handle him. Go on now; quick.’
Behind him Alec is watching us, hands balled into fists, his whole body shaking. ‘Banks,’ I say. ‘He scares me. I think he’s dangerous.’
‘He’s my mate,’ Banks says. ‘Only one I got.’
‘But if you knew he was… hurting people… you’d say, right? I mean, there’s things going on. The police came to our school…’
‘He doesn’t do that.’
‘But if he did?’
‘Go home,’ Banks says.
I walk home through the lanes again, looking in the shops. One window is lit up and filled with bags shaped like teapots, big lips, and tiny shoes made of felt and satin. I stand staring at them for a long time. Everything feels fractured.
A pregnant woman is turning over some tiny felt pumps, one hand on her stomach, gently stroking. In her belly the baby is lying like a little plant. I can see in her face the bright future she is seeing for it, that starts with these little felt shoes. I bet she doesn’t see it finishing in a ruined building, raving about God into empty air.