‘Tell me a secret, Nif.’
We were lying on the bank by the stream. Lorry was sitting with his legs in the water, giggling as the shallows lapped at his thighs. He’d been in a foul mood all morning, scratching away at his legs then crying when the blood started showing through his bandages, but he’d perked up when Mally appeared at the window after lunch. Now he was content, and the water was soothing the sores on his legs.
It had taken quite a bit to persuade me to go to the stream, but Lorry had begged, had clutched at Mally’s hand, and he’d seemed so happy that I gave in.
‘Tell me a secret, Nif.’ Mally was lying flat on his back, his arms behind his head, eyes closed. I sat with my legs crossed under me, facing the stream, feeling gangly and awkward. With the sun in my eyes I was squinting, but I could still see Mally. He looked fuzzy through my eyelashes.
He’d taken his shirt off as soon as we got to the river bank, and the skin on his chest was smooth and hairless. He was pale and wiry and his chest was slightly concave. Pigeon chested, my dad would have said. Three small moles were strung in a line across his stomach, like Orion’s Belt. His jeans were tattered and ripped at the knees, and the frayed hems were cloaked in dust.
I bit my lip and tried to think of a secret to tell him. I thought of the girls at school and how they’d all wanted to befriend me after Petra died, how they wanted an association with death that would perhaps bring it closer to them while also keeping it at bay. Not yet. It was too soon to tell him about Petra.
He sat up, propping himself up on his arms. Light danced from the ripples that Lorry was making in the water.
‘You do have secrets, don’t you, Nif? I mean, everyone has secrets.’
‘I suppose so. What about you? What’s your secret?’ I focused on my hand, the fingers pinching at the dried grass, pulling it up in tiny bundles.
He laughed softly. ‘I already told you my secret.’
The skulls appeared in my mind, lined up on the shelves of Mally’s cupboard, gleaming in the sunlight. I carried on pulling at the grass, clearing a little patch of dusty earth. Lorry was still standing in the stream, splashing and giggling to himself. I could sense that Mally was lying down and I risked a glance. He had his forearm resting over his eyes, shielding them from the sun, and that half-smile had formed on his lips.
‘What kind of a name is Nif, anyway?’ he asked.
‘That’s rich, coming from someone called Mally.’
He snorted out a laugh. ‘It’s short for Malcolm,’ he said. ‘I know. It’s a shit name, isn’t it?’
‘My real name’s Jennifer,’ I said, and suddenly I realised that I hadn’t called myself that for months. ‘Only the teachers call me that, though.’
‘Are you going back to school in September?’ he asked, rolling over onto his side and looking at me.
‘Dunno. Probably not. I don’t want to go but my teacher, Mr McPherson, thinks I should sit my O-Levels.’ I thought I’d said too much, that I might have to tell Mally about not going to school because of Petra, but he didn’t ask and rolled over onto his back again. ‘What about you,’ I said. ‘Where do you go to school?’
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been to school in years. My mum’s taught me everything she knows. All the rest I get from books and telly and stuff. There’s no need for school. Pointless.’
We sat in silence for a few moments, enduring the sun’s heat. It was the hottest part of the day. People said that midday was the hottest, when the sun was directly overhead and the rays were more direct and the light wasn’t diluted by the atmosphere as much. But I knew that it was now, in those couple of hours in the early afternoon, after the sun had spent the morning baking the ground and boiling the air, that was when it would get so hot that there was nothing else to do but stay as still as possible and wait for the sun to go down.
Lorry knew this too, and he got out of the stream and came and lay on the grass with us, placing himself at a right angle to Mally, his head resting in the curve of Mally’s back, his clown doll lying on his stomach. I was dozing, when Mally’s voice dragged me back to consciousness.
‘I think I might get pissed tonight. You up for that?’
‘Maybe.’
I’d been drunk before, of course. After Petra’s funeral, we’d had a wake at our house. My mother hadn’t been able to go to the funeral and had stayed at home, sedated, with one of the nuns to keep an eye on her. I remembered standing with my dad outside the church, him with one hand on my shoulder, the other on Lorry’s, none of us saying anything. I remembered Lorry, his bandages coming undone and trailing absurdly from the hems of his too-short trousers, the only trousers he had that were a vaguely dark colour. I remembered Father Declan muttering in Latin as the coffin was carried down the aisle, the sweet heady smell of incense furring up my nostrils. And I remembered the tiny coffin, white and impossibly small, being lowered into the ground.
Mrs Akhar made fish paste sandwiches for the wake. It was mostly people from the church, and a couple of my teachers who’d turned up out of obligation and then sat around on the periphery, fidgeting and trying to think of something to say. Mr McPherson came and looked awkward, not knowing what to say to me or my dad. He hadn’t stayed long. My dad just wandered around, shaking hands and accepting condolences, all the time his mouth set in a blank line.
There was a make-shift bar on the dining table, but no-one was really drinking much. I nicked a bottle of whisky and smuggled it up to my bedroom. I remembered sitting on the bed and twisting the lid, the tiny cracking sound as the metal tabs broke. At first the smell alone had made my stomach churn, and when I took a gulp I’d gagged on the taste, sweet yet bitter at the same time. But then I’d got used to it, and carried on swigging, throwing my head back and chucking the stuff down my neck. The last thing I remembered was Ziggy Stardust gazing down at me from my bedroom wall, and his lightning streak zooming in and out of focus.
When I woke up the next morning I was lying on top of my bed. The sheets were rancid with vomit. That was the first time I had woken with a sense of déjà vu, that nagging feeling of having experienced something important while I slept, but not being able to pin it down.
Much later, when I went downstairs, I knew I was red-eyed and stank of alcohol, but my dad didn’t notice anything different about me. He had my mother to look after.
I half opened my eyes and looked at Mally through my eyelashes. ‘Go on then. Why not? Let’s get pissed.’
He looked pleased, and shuffled forward conspiratorially.
‘So where are we going to get the booze from?’ he said, in a theatrical whisper.
‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘My dad drank the house dry last night, and I reckon your mum’s probably done the same thing at yours.’
‘Leave it to me. Mally the Marvellous will make some booze appear as if by magic.’ He clapped his hands and bizarrely, for a split second, I expected something to appear, a bottle or some cans or something.
He sprang to his feet and grabbed his shirt.
‘See you tonight. Nine o’clock. At the plague cross. I’ll see if there’s anything in the house my mum hasn’t drunk.’
He tied his shirt around his waist and ran off across the field without looking back.
I recognised the car as soon as we got back to the cottage and saw it parked outside the chapel. A dark blue Austin Allegro, spotlessly clean and devoid of the dust that seemed to be everywhere, the chrome bumpers glinting blatantly in the sunlight. It had been the first car to arrive on Sunday when the villagers had congregated at the chapel. The little brown and white terrier was sitting on the back seat, and when it saw me and Lorry it jumped up, teeth bared, and made high-pitched yipping noises which escaped from the crack where the window had been left open. I went closer and tapped on the glass and the dog went berserk, throwing itself against the window, quivering with rage and frustration. Lorry started looking agitated, twisting his clown doll between his fingers, so I gave the dog a middle finger salute and we walked over to the cottage and down the stone steps.
The sun was still high in the sky and sweat was trickling down my chest and pooling under my breasts. I was clammy and my throat was dry and parched. What was left of the lawn at the front of the house had been desiccated even more by the sun, and there were now little bare patches where it refused to grow at all. I made Lorry sit down on the patch of concrete and went to get him a drink of water.
The front door was already open and there were voices coming from the kitchen. I stood in the hall and through the crack in the kitchen door I could just about make out the side of a man’s face. Clean-shaven, pale, a chin that disappeared into a wattled neck. The beetle man.
‘It’s not appropriate.’
‘With all due respect, I don’t think it has anything to do with you.’ My dad’s voice was quiet and calm but there was a waver in it, and I knew he was struggling to keep his temper under control.
‘But they’re impressionable. Especially your daughter. Who knows what ideas that boy’s filling her head with?’
‘She’s a sensible girl.’ Again, my dad was trying hard to keep his voice low and steady. ‘She won’t do anything silly.’
‘It’s not only her I worry about, Mr Allen.’ The beetle man’s voice, which had been pleasant and light, now took on an insistent tone. ‘There are others here who are in danger of…’ When he paused, his little pointed tongue darted out and licked his bulbous lower lip. ‘In danger of succumbing to certain…charms.’
I heard my dad make a huffing sound, and then there was silence. A chair scraped and I could see my dad through the crack in the door. I guessed he was standing with his hand on the latch.
Another chair scraped, slower this time, as if the occupant was taking their time standing up.
‘It’s just a friendly warning, Mr Allen, that’s all. Nothing more than that. I would hate for your time here to be spoilt by any…unfortunate circumstances.’
‘Thank you for your concern, Mr Vaughan, but I’m sure we’ll all be fine.’ My dad’s voice was clipped, but the tremor was still there.
‘We’ll pray for you then. We’ll have our usual service on Sunday and our minister, Mr Beynon, will ask the congregation to hold you in their thoughts. To hold you in their hearts, to keep you safe. We’ll ask God to cherish you.’
A third chair screeched and I realised with a start that there was another person in the kitchen. My mother. When she spoke, her voice was raw and brittle.
‘You’ll not ask your god for anything on our behalf, Mr Vaughan,’ she spat. ‘We don’t need your god. What use was he when my Petra died? Did he “cherish” us then? No, he did not. He took my daughter from me and gave me no comfort, nothing, so don’t you come here telling me about your god.’ My mother took a deep intake of breath, as though talking for so long had exhausted her of air. Through the crack in the door, I could see my dad raise his hand to his eyes and rub them. Then my mother spoke again, and her voice was cold and clear.
‘Get out of this house. And take your god with you. Neither of you are welcome here.’
I only just managed to dart up the stairwell before Lyndon Vaughan marched out of the kitchen and into the hall. My dad went after him and caught him by the arm as he was stepping over the threshold. The beetle man swung round to face him. He was even paler than usual.
‘It’s the medication,’ my dad said. ‘It makes her say things, things she doesn’t mean. I’m sorry.’
The beetle man stared at him for a few moments, then his little pink tongue darted out again and slid across his lower lip.
‘Mr Allen.’ I was surprised at how calm his voice was. ‘You’re new here and I can understand that there is a certain…naivety to your actions. However, we have a way of doing things that I think you should bear in mind. I’m sorry that I asked you to escort her home. That was foolish of me. I would strongly advise that you and your family have nothing to do with Janet White and her son.’
My dad stood watching as Lyndon Vaughan left, the only sound in the stagnant air the squeal of the gate.
A silence descended on the cottage. My mother put herself to bed, claiming that the confrontation had exhausted her. My dad escaped to his studio and didn’t appear until much later, his face grey and lined, his hands clagged with clay.
I lay with Lorry on the patch of concrete and together we drifted off to sleep.