Mountains of the Moon (12 page)

“When is my birthday?” I arsts.

“September the 19th, darling,” she says. “I remember the day you were born.”

She rummages in her bag and finds her diary, got sunflowers on it. We find September. We int sure what day it is today. Auntie Fi works it out.

“It was yesterday, darling,” she says.

Loverly; eleven, I spects, is better than ten.

“Auntie Fi?” I says.

She’s stops with her wine on the stairs.

“Yes, darling?”

“Can I wash your car?”

I has to go indoors to fill up the buckit. Mum and Auntie Fi is talking in the kitchen now. They gave up on Baby Grady, he’s still screaming upstairs. Wishes I could get him but I can’t, not yet, got busy-ness to do.

“You must be doing a fine job, Lulu,” Auntie Fi says.

I has been washing her car all day.

“Uh-huh.” I try to look like not sweating.

They don’t know. I int washing the car, not proper. Stead I run over the road and pull stuff up in the beech trees quick; got towing ropes from Auntie Fi’s car. It int easy. I has to be fast case somebody sees where my new camp is; kids come home from school soon. I got planks up, don’t know how many. Tinker said I could have the wood and the wavy tin, they was overgrowed with brambles behind the stables. He reckons I
more than earned the planks for helping him with his horses. Don’t think nobody seen me pulling stuff up in the trees.

“We’ll do something for your birthday tomorrow,” Mum says. “Where do you want to go? And don’t say
Grandad
, we aren’t going to Grandad.”

My face does thinking; don’t know what else there is sides from Pip and Grandad. I wonders if to say Pip. Last time I went to school I seen the map in geography class, Powys int in France, it’s in Wales which is good cos you don’t need a boat. Still, I spects it’s a thousand pounds in gas. Sunbeam Rapier, we can’t get no where; sides, saying Pip is probably a
treachery.
Mum is waiting. My fingers knit and my tonsils grow. I wonders if tomorrow is really Thursday, and if after dinner, is still Miss Connor. Don’t know if to say it, case of a
disloyalty
. My face is trying on ideas.

“Where do you want to go?” Mum’s airy-ated.

“Could go to school,” I says, “it won’t cost nothing.”

Mum does despairing.

“I’ll think about it,” she says.

I has to get Baby Grady, has to, cos his crying is so terrible sound, case he thinks he is the last person live on the earth. I get him and the buckit and take them out the front. Has to bandon the tree camp today. Looking up you can’t spect all the stuff is up there ready. Now I wash the Cortina proper, got too many bubbles. Baby Grady stands on the driving seat.

“Brum, brum, brum brum brum brum,” he says.

Auntie Fi comes out in her gray bear coat, looks like going. I get her car keys ready for her.

“I’m just walking down to the shop, darling.” She knocks three times on the gate post. Sometimes she gets halfway home to Ealing, then members she never knocked and has to come all the way back. Now I always mind her fore she drives way, case. But now she’s going down the shop. She walks like the land of the giants and her shadow goes all the way to Merrylands. Wonders if she’ll get me an I-Spy book. Don’t know if she will, they is thirty pence.

I shine the car mirror and sees her coming back. Uh-huh.

“Happy birthday, darling.” She gives me the little brown paper bag.

I-Spy Hedgerows.

“Int never seen a stoat, Auntie Fi,” I says.

Or a red mushroom called fly agaric. It’s important to know what’s poisonous, case one time you wants to kill yourself.

Good thing, I can get Baby Grady easy up in the trees. I has to tie him on me tight so he don’t fall out. He don’t mind cos he stays still, cept sometimes he gets cited, bounces up and down, “Monkey oo-oo-oo,” he shouts, makes me wobble. It’s a long way up and then cross to Africa camp. I got planks for the worstist bits. Surprises me, I made a floor where there weren’t one fore, up in the beech tree over the road. People walk and drive long underneath. No one thinks as high up as us. I jumped up and down and tested the edge. Strong. At the jumble sale Saturday, I got a strappy leather thing for walking toddlers. Fits Baby Grady nice, he can’t fall off, the rope int long enough. He bounces up and down on the floor.

“Oo-oo-oo.”

“
Shush
,” the beech trees say. “
Shush.
”

Tree Camp is the bestist, I spects I could live in it. Done me a bed with sacks and straw. Pip would climb up easy. He’d sit down on my bed and smoke his cigarette. I got one for him, case, and if it rained we wouldn’t get wet. I got the skull of a crocodile and lions’ claws hanging on fishing line, and spoons that jingles together. Baby Grady would bash out six-eight time and Pip would play the spoons, I spect, and whistle a happy tune. I could learn them the warrior song.

Pip int coming.

Three times he was coming but then he never, cos Mum’s titled to change her mind. Don’t spect he even knows that we got a Baby Grady brother. Now he sent my birthday parcel I got his address in Powys, now last can write him a letter. I done a rummage under the stairs and found a photo for him. Mum don’t know the photographs in plastic bags under
the stairs. All of her pictures is in the album or framed up on the piana. I reckon Pip took the picture with the camera Grandad give him. Sheba’s doing a creamy swirl but Bryce is stupid, on his hands and knees, wagging with a stick in his mouth so I fold the photo nice and careful, tears him off. Sheba looks like smiling. In my scrapbook I write
dead
to see how it is.
Dead
don’t seem like the proper word. I does
dead
big letters, then small copperplate, I does
dead
curly and swirly joined up. Dead. Don’t know if to tell Pip, cos of when they came to take him way.

“Please, Mummy, please, Mummy!” He was on the doorstep crying and hanging on to Sheba’s neck.

“We could take the dog.” Pip’s new mum was crying.

Pip’s real dad looked surprised.

“We can,” he said. “We can take the dog. The dog could come. It’s a farm, Joan, the dog could come.”

“Malcom, you’re such a wanker,” Mum said. “The dog stays here.”

Then she went back in the house. Bryce dragged Sheba in the alley and closed the gate. Then he dragged Pip cos he was kicking and screaming and throwed him in the car. Cept Sheba got over Mr. Baldwin’s fence and come out the front gain and cos the car was driving way she tried to jump in through the winder. Pip’s new sisters was screaming. Don’t spect Pip’s got a photo of Sheba so can send him this. Baby Grady sits on my bed. I give him some paper and a crayon to eat. Letters int no trouble. Grandad learned me how to make a story so that anything can happen.

I sees Dolly sitting on my box. She likes the spoons jingling. First I thought she was a mouse, cos scared me, but she int. She’s a little jenny wren but I call her Dolly, stead. Surprises me, so little she is, but she sings BIG with her hands on her hips.

I like making letters. I make one for Big Chief I-Spy, Wigwam-by-the-Green, 382–386 Edgware Road, London W2 1EP, arsts him if there’s any chance of me being Africa Masai tribe. Tired.

“Shush,” says the beech trees.

The beech trees is hushing and gentle nice rocking. Baby Grady has gone to sleep. Spoons stir music in to my mind. Lulla-by. Grady’s face is still wrung out, from crying all afternoon. And probably he’ll cry tomorrow. Only if I go to school. I take off my red cloth and lay it on him. Sometimes scares me, he don’t seem like breathing, so small it is.

So hush, little baby, don…’t you cry.

I kisses the end of his fingers, don’t know how come.

I’m at the bank when it opens. The cheque for eight thousand pounds has cleared. I go directly to Trailfinders. She adjusts her tinsel halo.

“Hello,” she says. “Have a seat. What can I do for you today?”

I sit in the chair and tell her. She taps on the keyboard in front of her.

“December the 15th is the earliest, a week today.”

I see me outside, nose and palms squashed up against the glass.

“Ten fifteen in the morning,” she says. “Two hundred and fifty-four pounds.”

I nod.

“What name?” she says. It takes me several minutes to recall who I am.

“Catherine Clark.” I stand up and count the cash in twenties on to the desk, put the rest away, then show my empty hands to the CCTV camera and her colleague. Dip, suddenly faint. Locked elbows are holding me up; see myself in the shine on the desk.

“Are you all right?” the woman says.

“Spending power,” I say, “nearly knocked me over.”

The drumming is so loud and so clear.

In
Cash-Converters
small valuable items are displayed in glass cabinets. The staff are all busy, converting in electric-blue shirts.

“Do you know about cameras?” I ask a man beside me.

“Well,” he says, “a bit.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Well,” he says, “it depends really on what you want the camera for and how much you want to spend.”

I tell him. He points through the glass at the pros and cons. He’s very earnest. The assistant comes with a key and opens the cabinet. My man detects sand in one lens and a scratch on another. He turns them over, literally weighs them up.

“This is good, this is very good, this Pentax body,” he says. “Before you decide we could look over the road and see what they’ve got.”

We look at all the options on the Gloucester Road; nothing too fancy to make me a target, nothing too heavy. Zoom and wide-angle; polarizing filter; aperture; shutter speed: it’s an education. He’s been with me all morning, this wise adviser. I remember I’m rich and offer to buy him a coffee. In the cafe he writes a list on the back of a receipt, to make sure I’ve got everything.

“So now it’s just a matter of whether you want to carry a tripod.”

“What sort of thing might I need it for?”

“To keep the zoom or the camera still, for low-light situations: dawn, dusk, night shots, dark places, caves; dancers around a fire.” He’s been stirring his tea for fifteen minutes. “Fireflies, but then a tripod is a pretty cumbersome thing.” He clasps his hand on the table and awaits my thoughts.

“Will I be all right?” I ask him.

“Definitely,” he says. “Just try and hold the camera steady; your biggest problem will be overexposure.”

To malaria. Dysentery. HIV.

“Just watch out for your aperture.” He gives me his phone number in case I need to ask him anything else. He’d love to see the photos when I get back. Nice man. He has to go.

“You’ve got everything you need,” he says.

I thank him. He waves from the door. I look at the scrap of paper he’s given me. That was
Tony Gloucester Road
; I’ve no idea what he looked like.

At the health center, the nurse is a nurse. A December bluebottle is caught in a vortex above her head as she prepares the vaccinations.

“I’m a bit queer with needles,” I tell her as she tightens the tourniquet.

“It will soon be over. Clench your fist for me, Louise. That’s lovely.”

The fluorescent light strip is everywhere, painfully clean, liquid in the white floor, solid in the black window, curving on the metal kidney dish, in the arms of the chrome tubular chair, turning lethal off the needle. Brilliant light, Armageddon white has finally come to take me out.