Arcadia (10 page)

“I don't know. Perhaps you did the right thing.”

“But you've made up your mind?”

His mother nods.

“It's going to be terrible for us,” Molly says, in a very small voice.

“I'm not sitting around waiting for Them to take Rory as well. I'm just not. Oh, Mol.” Molly's bent over and scrunched up her eyes again. “I'm not saying that's what you did. Oliver was a teenager; it's different. You never had the choice. Rory's just a little boy.”

“I know.”

“You mustn't blame yourself.”

“No. I'll try not to. It's just . . . Maybe you'll feel differently by the spring.”

His mother lets go of Molly and sits straighter. Her face has gone hard as rock.

“I'm not waiting till spring.”

“What?” Molly's changed in an instant, shocked out of her ­misery.

“I'm not waiting. We can't.”

“But . . . Six months can't make any difference?”

“It might. I read that boys are getting to puberty earlier. Anyway, there's lots of calm days still at this time of year.”

“But won't it take time to get ready?”

Rory's not really listening to them. He's too busy trying to get them to go away using just the force of his mind, not to mention the horrible squeezing distraction of his urge to pee, but for a moment he thinks:
Ready for what?
What's his mother talking about?

“Ready for what?” his mother says bitterly. “Whatever we find, it can't be much worse than this. I'll take my chances.”

Molly turns away, abashed. “It could be. Mary's was worse.”

“Maybe.”

“It was. Last summer was worse here. At least we're at peace now. We're safe.”

“Safe until They show up and flash their boobs at our children.” Molly goes completely limp. His mother as good as has to catch her. “Oh no. Oh, I'm sorry. Mol, don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm saying anymore. I lie awake all night only ever thinking about me and Rory. Mol, please, I'm sorry.” She rubs Molly's back clumsily. The look on her face is resigned irritation. “Come on now. It's doing you no good sitting here. Let's get you some food. You've got to eat, you're wasting away.” She pulls Molly upright. “You've got to think about yourself now. For him. Oliver wouldn't have wanted you to . . .” The sentence peters out. Ol wasn't very nice to his mother, everyone knows that. Rory's not interested in what his mother's saying, though, beyond the fact that she's trying to get Molly to leave, which at the moment is the one thing he cares about in the whole world.

A squeaky shout comes from outside: “Rory?”

The feeling in the room changes instantly. Both women sit up and look out the door.

“Rory!”

“That's Pink,” his mother says.

“She and Rory went foraging in the Borough woods.”

For a moment neither of them move, and Rory can hear what they're thinking just as if it was written in cloudy bubbles above their heads like in the comics:
Rory must have gone off on his own.
The moment ends and they both scramble downstairs. Rory's beyond guessing how deep a hole he's in or how he's going to get out of it, but at least he can stand up now and stretch his legs.

“Pink!” his mother shouts.

“Connie?” Pink's amazingly loud. She must be at the edge of the woods but she sounds like she's right under the bedroom window. “Where are you?”

“In the house!”

Pink's in a total panic. Rory picks up the bags and then stops. He still can't go anywhere. The women are just by the front door. He's going to have to pee very soon, he can't help it.

“What's wrong?” he hears his mother shout. “Where's Rory?”

“He went off!” Pink shouts back. Molly says something, but her voice is naturally quiet and he can't hear. Pink comes scrambling up to the house.

“Where's he gone?” They must be just inside the front door. Rory can tell by the sounds that they're not outside. Pink's panting. His mother's voice is crisp with rising panic. “You were supposed to stay together.”

“I tried but he wouldn't!”

“Where did he go?”

“He said to wait but I was on my own and I got worried—”

“Said what? What did he say?”

Oh no,
Rory thinks.
Oh no. Please don't, Pink.

“—and I did wait but it was ages so—”

“Pink!” It's like a slap. “Where is he? Where's Rory?”

“I dunno! It's not my fault!”

“What isn't? What's wrong?”

“He said he was going to Them!”

Oh no
.

“Who?”

“He said, he was boasting and I said he never could but he swore he'd show me, he was going to find Them—” The women are trying to talk but there's no stopping the frantic babble now. “And he said wait here and he'd come back and he went off to talk to Them, that's what he said, I swear he did, I swear!”

There's another small moment of silence. Then they're all off running down the road, shouting together like the gulls. Rory stands at the window where Ol used to stand, wondering whether it would be better for him now to be underwater where it's quiet, being led along by a white hand. Then he grabs up the bags. He only just remembers to stuff a pair of shoes in before he bolts down and out of The Larches at the fastest sprint he can manage.

  *  *  *  

He runs along the road on the east side of Home, the ruined side, looking across to even more ruined Martin. The road here's full of rubbish as well as being overgrown. No one usually comes down this way, but he's not worrying about what'll happen if someone sees him. That's the least of his problems now.

He's going to have to say that Pink made it up. They'll believe him. Some of them will, at least. Pink likes saying things to get people into trouble, everyone knows that. Pink will know, though. She'll always know that he lied. Just like Ol will always know that Rory could have stopped him drowning but didn't.

He's feeling a bit teary. For no reason that he can pin down, his life has spun out of control. Running faster helps a bit. If only he could run away for good.

At the smashed-up houses by the Old Harbor and the Hotel he turns inland, swinging past the School towards the church and Parson's. He hasn't been here for a while. The weeds have grown so tall none of the fields he remembers look like fields anymore, they're jungles of knotted green. There was a playground behind the school. It's vanished completely under bramble and bindweed.

“Boy!”

He'd only turned his head to look at where the playground used to be for a moment. Before that moment it was just him and the Lane and the weeds everywhere. Now, out of nowhere, there's a man. Rory skids to a halt.

The man's bald and very short, with a weird thin nose between fierce-looking and outsized eyes. He's wrapped in a big tartan blanket which looks exactly like the one they keep in the barn to help slide heavy things across the floor. His feet are bare, and a length of bare shin shows below the blanket. His toes are slightly curled. Rory notices all these things at once because this is the first new person he's seen for a year and a half: the first new person in the world. It's as utterly astounding as an alien invasion.

“This is food?”

It's the stranger, the shape in the dark. He's got that foreign voice. He skips forward. He moves bewilderingly suddenly and deftly, more like dancing than running. He looks left and right, swiveling his head like a bird. His scalp is pockmarked under a shadow of brown stubble. His face is scratched and rough. He's compact, hard, tense, entirely unlike every other person in the world. The air around him's almost vibrating with danger.

He snatches the bags like they're prey and pokes around in them.

“Is good,” he says, and looks at Rory. His eyes are a bit too big for his face, and his head is in turn a bit too big for his body. His gaze is inexplicably overwhelming. Rory backs away as the man rifles through the bags. “Good,” he says again. He picks out an apple, sniffs it, takes a quick bite. His teeth are stained ­barley-brown.

“You want?” he says, holding the apple out, and grins.

Hot, still panting, feeling the sweat around his neck, Rory's trying to make all of this come together. This stranger—a man—here on the road just down from Parson's; his mother, Pink, Molly; the trouble he's in; his life on this island, this world he inhabits. It's not working. It won't fall into place.

The man's grin disappears.

“This you say to no one.”

This is audibly a threat, but Rory doesn't mind that, because there's no possible way he could put into words what's happening, not even to himself. He swallows and nods.

“Or,” the man says, and hops forward and puts two fingers across Rory's neck, a knife. Neatly, he draws them from one side to the other. “You know?”

What he means is,
Do you understand?
Adults are always saying that to him. He never does actually understand, least of all now, but the right answer is always—

“Yes.”

“Good.
Domani
. Day after this one. You bring more food. You bring,” he points down behind Rory, towards the wreck of the Hotel, “there.”

“Tomorrow,” Rory says.

“
Ecco
. Tomorrow.
Domani
.” His whole face changes when he grins, like he's just got a joke. He bobs down and collects the bags. Even the way he does that isn't like anyone else in the world. The women pick things up slowly, laboriously. This man's fingers peck the plastic bags off the road like he's plucking an insect out of the air. “
Va
bene,
” he says. “Go.” He points the other way, up the lane towards Parson's.

“How did you get here?” Rory blurts out.

He can't believe he said anything. His face goes red. The man stares at him. Then he laughs. It's hardly actual laughing, more like a single squawk—
ah!
He pounces and grabs Rory's shoulder, but before Rory has time to be frightened the man turns him around and points up at the sky. A gull's circling, one of the big black-backed ones.

“Like this one,” the man says, and squawks his laugh again. He spins Rory back to face the church and gives him a hard shove in that direction. “Go!” Rory stumbles forward. As he's collecting himself he's suddenly unsure what exactly he's supposed to be doing tomorrow. He turns back, saying,“But—”

The man's nowhere to be seen.

T
hey find him not long afterwards. Or he finds them. He's gone up past Parson's, over the crest of the Lane, and he's walking down towards the Pub when he hears Libby shouting, “Rory? Rory!” so—as if nothing's happened at all—he trots around the corner to where she's standing on the wall overlooking the Beach and says, “Hi.” She almost falls off the wall.

“There you are! Thank God.”

“Why?” he says. You'd think it would be easy acting like nothing had happened, because it's just nothing after all, just being normal, but he's finding it almost impossible.

“Where have you been?”

“Nowhere,” he says. That doesn't sound good. “Having a poo.”

“Is that all?”

“Yeah.”

Libby looks exasperated, but not with him. “Your mother's got the whole bloody island out looking for you.”

“Oh,” he says. “That's funny.”

Word gets around quickly. Soon there's a little cluster of people standing around him there in front of the Pub. They're joking rather nervously with each other and with him. Eventually his mother comes running and all the chatting dies away. The cluster dissipates so she can tell him off in private. Libby and Fi give him sympathetic looks as they slink away.

He's been readying himself for the telling-off for a while, and anyway it's not like it's the first time. He stands with his eyes half down (except when she says “Look at me,” which is often), and lets it roll over him. He mouths monosyllables when he has to. It's only difficult when she makes him tell her what he said to Pink. “Nothing,” he tries, and “Don't remember,” but she's not having that, so in the end he thinks of how Pink was bugging him and driving him crazy and he starts shouting back at her about that as if it's all Pink's fault, which, if you think about it, it really is, sort of.

“I don't care!” his mother shouts. She's getting breathless and shaky now. “You never, ever make a horrible joke like that! It's a horrible thing to say.”

“She tried to make me kiss her.”

“I said I don't care about what Pink did! Stop trying to blame her for everything!”

“She wasn't letting me pick anything!”

“Rory!” She shouts right in his face. “Oliver's been gone less than a week. Don't you understand you can't tell lies like that? How do you think Molly would feel about it?”

Viola appears, which means they have to stop shouting and pretend to be a bit calmer. She's escorting Pink, whose face is blotchy and puffy and downtrodden. Viola takes one look at his mother and comes over to hold her by the arm.

“It's all right, Connie,” she says. “No harm done.”

Out of her aunt's sight Pink gives Rory a furious glare. Rory returns it.

“You two,” Viola says, “had better stop squabbling. I mean it. We can't afford it.”

Hate you,
Pink mouths. Rory can't mouth it back because they're all looking at him.

“Say sorry, Rory,” his mother says.

“Sorry.”

“Like you mean it.”

“Connie,” Viola says. “It's all right. They're just children.”

“She wanted to kiss me!”

“I never!”

“Stop it!” both adults yell simultaneously.