Bucket Nut (16 page)

‘I thought you'd like to know,' she said, very steady, very clear, ‘Calvin is alive. He was crushed, under the rubble for three hours. He has lost one eye, and half of his face, but he is alive. I thought you'd like to know the result of what you did.'

It was worse than I'd ever imagined it would be. There was absolutely nothing in her eyes. It was horrible. It was like looking at a dead animal.

She stood in front of me with her hands by her sides and said, ‘Marsha's dead. Val's dead. Micky's dead. They were friends of mine. You know that, Eva?'

I could only shake my head.

‘But you did know Calvin,' she went on, very steady, very clear. ‘You saw him. You saw he was beautiful. You heard him sing. You watched him dance.'

‘They tried to kill me too,' I said uselessly. ‘The bomb was supposed to kill me too.'

‘But it didn't, did it, Eva? You got away with a few scrapes and bruises. Do you think that makes up for Val, Micky and Marsha? Do you think that makes up for Calvin's eye? You'd have to die several times over to make up for that, Eva.'

She never even raised her voice. She turned away and walked out of the pub.

At first I couldn't move. It felt like she'd kicked the guts out of me. Then I got up and ran after her. Well, I had to try, didn't I?

I caught her just as she was going to cross the road. She wasn't looking right or left.

‘Goldie!'
I shouted. ‘You'll get yourself run over.'

I grabbed her arm.

‘Listen to me,' I shouted. ‘You've got to listen. You know I wouldn't do what I did on purpose. You
must
know. We're friends.'

She didn't look at me. She said, ‘I wouldn't be friends with you if you were the last person on earth.'

And she set off across the road looking neither right nor left. Cars screeched to a stop, bikes swerved, drivers leaned on their horns. She walked straight across the road and disappeared into the crowd of shoppers on the other side.

I tried to follow her, but none of the traffic stopped for me so by the time I got to the other side she was gone and I didn't even know which way she had gone. First I ran one way, and then the other. I searched at the bus stops, I even went down the tube to see if she was catching a train. But London had just opened its great big mouth and swallowed her.

In the end I went back to Sam's Gym. Mr Deeds was there, the Julios were there, and another tag-team called the Icemen, but, even though I looked in the showers and the ladies' lavatories, Goldie was not there.

By then, I didn't expect she would be. It was as if something that
had happened before was happening again. I knew I wouldn't find her. Don't ask me how. I just knew it.

I had to keep trying. Well, you do, don't you? But I knew I'd lost her. I was racing my motor. I was scrabbling around like a rat in a trap, but I had to keep going because there was nothing else to do.

There was nothing for it but to go back to the yard. I thought, maybe she'll go back there too. Then I thought, of course she'll go back there. After all, everything she owned was in the Static – all that new clobber she'd bought. For certain she would go back to the yard.

So I ran out of Sam's Gym. But I couldn't for the life of me remember where I had parked the Cortina. While I stood dithering on the pavement I saw Harsh go by, walking towards the tube station and I remembered that I wanted to talk to him. Now more than ever, except I couldn't quite remember what I wanted to say. So I watched him walk by.

He walked so easily. He carried his kit in a cricket bag slung across his shoulder. He did not dawdle. He did not hurry. He covered the ground perfectly balanced and ever so graceful. And I thought how astonishing it was that you could tell just what he was like by watching him walk.

I raced after him.

‘Harsh!' I yelled. ‘Harsh – wait.'

He stopped and turned back.

‘Harsh!' I said. I was out of breath, sweating. ‘Harsh,' I said, ‘I've lost Goldie. I can't find her. She's gone.'

‘Yes?' he said politely. He did not know how much it mattered.

‘She's gone, Harsh, really gone. She won't forgive me because of the bomb. And there won't be anyone to look after her. They'll try to kill her the way they tried to kill me.'

‘Eva,' he said. ‘I do not understand what you are saying. Nor do I understand why you have chosen to say it to me. But if you will listen for a moment and stop jumping up and down, I will tell you something which may help.'

He was so totally calm that I did stop jumping up and down.

‘Eva,' he said, ‘again you are allowing your emotions to hurt you. You are like a thing blown in the wind. At the moment the wind is
blowing you against a wall. The wall is hard. It will not be broken. You will not break the wall. The wall will break you.'

I knew it was important because he spoke very seriously. But I didn't understand a single word. Or rather I understood every single word, but I didn't know what he meant.

‘But what about Goldie?' I asked. ‘I've got to find Goldie.'

‘No,' he said. ‘You do not have to find Goldie. What you have to find is peace. When you have found that you will no longer be blown in the wind. Then you will find Goldie or you will not find Goldie. Either way, you will not hurt yourself because trivial things will not matter.'

Did I ever tell you that Harsh has the thickest, most beautiful black eyelashes in the world? And that sometimes, although he is very dark, he reminds me of an angel? I'm telling you this because just then it seemed as if he was talking from a long way away and very high up.

He went on down to the tube station and left me standing like a wattock on the pavement. I didn't know what to think, but I found myself wondering if he talked like that to Soraya. And if he did, how had he lived so long? But maybe Soraya understood him. Sure as eggs I didn't. I wished I did because I had the feeling that he had said something very helpful, but I didn't know what.

Harsh is awfully wise, but there's not much point being wise if no one understands you.

Back in nineteen eighty-something Simone and I were at a place called Burlington House. It was a short-stay home. Because it was nearly Christmas there was no school, so the girls there spent all day raking leaves, mopping floors and polishing windows. There was a bell to get up with, a bell to tell you it was breakfast and a bell for however the bastards who ran the place decided to break up the day. You said grace before and after every meal. The only time you got out was on a Sunday morning to go to church. You could watch telly for an hour at night if you had been good. If you were bad you were refused privileges, which included telly, margarine on your bread, sugar in your tea, a proper bed.

Small punishments which added up.

Somehow, I was never good enough. We'd only been there a couple of months when I was eating dry bread, drinking sugarless tea and sleeping on the floor in the hall with no telly for comfort. It was a way of life, and it really pissed me off.

Simone never toed the line any more than I did but she always looked as if she did. It was a talent, a real talent. If it was bottled, I'd spend a fortune trying to buy it.

But one day, one of the screws found some cigarette butts on the ground outside Simone's dormitory window. I don't think it was actually Simone smoking. She always said it wasn't. She said she always shredded her butts and flushed them down the bog, and I believe her – she wasn't careless.

But the other slags in Simone's dorm fingered her, and she found herself sleeping out in the hall with me. It was very cold that year. In the mornings you found ice formed
inside
the windows. Simone wasn't used to it and she was very upset and uncomfortable that night. Even worse, because smoking was such a sin and a crime at Burlington House she was going to get the strap in the morning. It had never happened to her before, and she was scared stiff.

I told her it wasn't too bad, but she was shivering and crying so much that I couldn't comfort her.

‘It wasn't me,' she kept saying. And I felt really bad for her.

The funny thing was that I was always being fitted up. Well, not even fitted up. If something happened, the screws always looked at me first. I'll never know why. Probably I've just got that sort of face. But anyway I was done as many times for stuff I didn't do as I was for stuff I did do. It didn't matter much. Like I say, it was a way of life.

But Simone was different. She was pretty and delicate. People liked her. She was used to being treated well – or as well as anyone got treated in places like Burlington House. She expected it. I expected it. So it was almost as bad for me as it was for her when she was fingered and made to sleep on the floor knowing she would be strapped in the morning.

I couldn't understand why she'd been fingered. As I said, people liked her. So I asked her why. And it turned out that there was this girl called Rosie Price and her special friend was called Sheena. You have to be a bit careful about people with special friends in places like Burlington House. Special friends are rather like married couples. I never had one myself – except for Simone – but a sister doesn't count. Well, anyway, Sheena liked Simone. Simone liked Sheena. Simone liked nearly everyone and nearly everyone liked her.

But Sheena spent too much time with Simone and Rosie Price got choked. She thought Sheena was going to leave her. Probably this was not true because Rosie Price was a big girl, and there were advantages to having a big special friend in a place like Burlington House.

According to Simone, this was what was behind it all. She told me that when the screws found the fag ends and busted the dormitory, Rosie Price stood straight up and pointed the finger at Simone. Simone said that while Rosie Price was doing this she was staring at Sheena, facing her down, daring her, making her choose there and then. Sheena didn't dare choose Simone. She backed up Rosie Price. And then the other girls in the dorm backed
her
up because, as I say, Rosie Price was a big girl for her age.

You can't blame them. Stuff like that happens all the time at places like Burlington House.

I tell a lie. I say, now, you can't blame them. Now, I have a relaxed
mental attitude and loads of self-discipline. But then, I blamed them and I was really bitter against Rosie Price. Really bitter.

I told Simone. I told her we should go in there to Rosie Price's dorm and duff her over. But that made Simone cry even harder. She said if we did that Rosie Price would get her alone and make her pay for it. She said all she wanted was to get back in the dorm, like normal, and show Rosie Price how nice she was. She didn't want anyone to hate her, see.

But I knew different. I knew girls like Rosie Price. They never let up. Once they've got you down they keep kicking. And the trouble with places like Burlington House is that you can't get away from girls like Rosie Price.

So I did it by myself. I filled a jug with cold water and I went along to Rosie Price's dorm, and I tiptoed up to her bed. I threw the water all over her and her bed and when she woke up screaming I shoved the wet pillow over her face and hit her with the jug. I hit her three times, as hard as I could, and then I tried to leg it before the others could get up and turn the light on.

But one of them did manage to turn the light on before I could get out of the door, so they all saw that it was me. And I saw that I'd got the wrong bed. I'd poured water all over Sheena by mistake. Rosie Price was bone dry and madder than a wasp's nest.

So I did a runner. I grabbed Simone and we went and hid in the boiler-room in the basement. Which wasn't a bad idea, because as I say it was nearly Christmas and very cold, and it was warmer in the basement than it was in the hall.

Rosie Price didn't find us.

I suppose we were reported missing at morning roll call but it didn't much matter. We went over the wall while everyone else was at breakfast.

I told Simone it meant we'd be home for Christmas, and so we were. But Ma wasn't too pleased to see us, and Nan thought we'd only get ourselves into more trouble. Simone never said anything much but she must've been pleased because when they caught up with us they didn't send us back to Burlington House. They sent us somewhere more secure and it wasn't any better than Burlington House but at least Rosie
Price wasn't there. And at least we'd got home for Christmas even if we weren't very welcome.

When that happened I was nine and Simone was ten.

So, you see, right from when I was a little kid things have had a habit of not turning out quite right. Sometimes they don't turn out too wrong, but either way they never go exactly as I mean them to. Mostly I get myself out of one hole and fall into another one even deeper.

Maybe it was like Harsh said. Maybe I was a thing blown in the wind. But how do you persuade the wind to stop blowing? Tell me that.

I'd hoped Harsh might've told me what to do – like when he showed me how to weight-train with no weights – how to use my own weight or my own force as the resistance to push against.

But he didn't. All he did was make me think about the old days and about how stuff in my life has never turned out quite right. And although I try to look on the bright side, like how we
were
home for Christmas and
didn't
get sent back to Burlington House, the bright side was never very bright. It was a lousy Christmas and the new place was just as bad as the old. What's more we were marked out as absconders which made things even more difficult next time.

Harsh hadn't helped at all. He'd just depressed the shit out of me. But, looking on the bright side again, he had reminded me of a simple very important fact – there was nobody on my side now. I was on my own, and I had to be even more careful.