They Do the Same Things Different There (32 page)

“I love her,” said the little girl in a whisper.

“You think I don’t?” said Father. And his jaw moved, as if for other words to come out, but they didn’t, not immediately. “You think,” he said at last, “you think I
want
to hurt her?”

The little girl said she didn’t know.

“I never wanted to hurt her,” said Father.

The little girl dared to hope. Deep inside. That maybe this meant he’d stop spraying her with acid.

“I wanted this to be a fresh start,” said Father. He wasn’t looking at her now, he was looking anywhere else, he was looking up at the sky. “I tried. You’ve no idea how much I tried. A new town, a new house. But you can’t run away from who you are. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. Wherever you go, you’re always there. You’re too young to understand.”

They both stood there silently for a while, in the garden, father and daughter.

“I could do it with you,” said Father. “If it were just you. I’m sure I could. I know it. We could run away, just the two of us, and everything would be different. What do you say?”

“No,” said the little girl, and went back indoors.

Later that night the little girl climbed out onto the roof for the last time. The cracks in the sky’s side were weeping something thick and gloopy. “I asked you never to leave me,” she said. “But I was wrong. I love you. I love you very much. And I need you to go whilst you still can.”

The next morning the sky was gone. What it left behind was nothing, really, nothing at all.

Father was delighted. He called the sky installation engineer. The man arrived and looked upwards, and frowned. “What’s been going on here?”

“The sky’s gone.”

“Dismantling a sky is a careful process, mate. This one has just been ripped out. Look at that. It’s an eyesore, that is. It’s just . . . it’s just
void.”
”

“So when can my new sky be fitted?”

“You’re not listening, sunshine. You can’t have a new sky. Not now. There’s nothing there to fasten a sky onto. The whole thing’s ruined.”

Father got cross. And then began to plead. Surely there was something that could be done? And the man whistled through his teeth, and it was the most dismissive whistle of them all. “I take patches of sky and fix them to the heavens,” he said, “I don’t work miracles.” He jerked his thumb straight up. “You’re stuck with that, mate.”

Father raged around the house. He smashed plates. He overturned tables. The little girl and her mother had to lock themselves in the little girl’s bedroom. They didn’t come out, no matter how much Father demanded, no matter how much he beat upon the door with his fists and called them both bitches. And, at last, in the night, they dared to open up, they turned the key and pushed the door ajar quietly, so quietly—there seemed to be peace, the beast was sleeping.

“Come with me,” said the little girl. Mother shook her head. “I can’t just abandon him, I can’t.” And she gave her daughter a big cheerful smile. “Don’t you see? I
chose
him.” “I didn’t,” said the little girl, and she took her rucksack, filled it with food, and left.

The little girl went looking for her sky. She didn’t know in which direction it had fled, nor how fast a sky could run. She just had to hope she was going the right way, and her little girl feet could catch up with it. And she walked with her head straight up, and that hurt her neck a bit, and meant the blood kept rushing from her brain, and she kept bumping into things.

Within a few days the food in her rucksack ran out. She got hungry. Sometimes people took pity on her and offered her something to eat. But the little girl had read enough fairy tales to know you must never accept gifts of food, you could be trapped in the underworld forever. So she always refused. She had to steal her food instead. She got good at running. The sky, her patch of sky, that must have been good at running, she could never overtake it, but she, she got good at running too—and as she ran, as she dodged the security guards at the supermarket and
ran
, she hoped that somehow the sky was looking down on her and was proud.

She’d sleep on park benches, in shop doorways, underneath bushes. In the summer it would be warm, it’d almost be comfortable, but then other people would sleep in the same places, and she didn’t like that, she didn’t want to be around other people. In the winter it would be cold, sometimes freezing, sometimes she’d cry against the frost of the night. But at least she’d be alone.

Presently she came across a deep forest.

She’d heard once that dying animals hide themselves away, as far from their pack as they can get. She wondered if that was true for skies as well.

The deeper into the forest she went the darker it became, and the denser the crush of trees blocking her path. She looked above her and all she could see were thick branches and treetops, she couldn’t be sure there was any sky there at all. All there was to eat were berries; but the berries here had never been picked by human hand, never been threatened by another living thing, they grew large and unchecked, they were the kings of the forest—ugly and oozing and the size of the little girl’s fists—and as she snapped their stems and put slices of them into her mouth, she was afraid that the surviving berries would marshal their forces, that they would bite back.

And, one day, just as she thought the trees were so tightly compacted her little body wouldn’t squeeze through, and that the berries were so wild that they had grown arms and legs—one day, suddenly, she found herself in a clearing. And there, in the middle of it, was her sky.

It was very sick. Most of it wasn’t in the air at all now. Most of it was draped listlessly across the grass. Its boils were now sunken like old tomatoes. Its liver spots now merged into one.

It gave a faint rumble, like distant thunder, when she approached.

“I just wanted to say goodbye,” said the little girl.

And she was really so very tired. So she wrapped the folds of the sky around her as a blanket. The fur was so very threadbare now she could barely feel it at all, it was as if she were hugging onto thin air. And she made the sky her pillow too, she pressed her ear right against it, and she heard its heartbeat, so thin and hesitant, and it seemed to chime with the hesitancy of her own.

It smelled wrong. The sky smelled all boxy and cardboardy. And she wondered whether this patch of sky was really her patch of sky after all. And then she decided that didn’t matter. She loved it anyway, and she’d stay with it, and care for it as long as it needed her. She kissed it. And she went to sleep.

When she woke the next morning she was cold. The sky around her was dead. She cried for a little bit, and then resolved never to cry for it again.

She’d have liked to bury it, but that was silly, how can you bury the sky? So she gave it a final hug, and she walked on. She didn’t know in which direction, deeper into the forest or not, she reasoned that even the deepest forest had to come to an end eventually. And so it did.

You’re worried about the little girl. She was fine. She was fine. Don’t worry.

The little girl grew up, as all little girls do. As most little girls do.

And she found happiness. Oh, she was lonely for a while—but we’re all lonely, aren’t we, for a while? And she softened her heart enough that she fell in love. In fact, she fell in love several times. Not all these men and women were worthy of her love, and some of the break-ups were hard and messy. But somehow the experience of every single one of these loves left her better off, and better equipped to deal with the next. She had a little girl of her own, and she loved her too, and the little girl loved her back, it was very uncomplicated, that.

She travelled. Staying in one place too long made her uncomfortable. She’d come to rest under many different patches of sky. And she never loved any of them. Because, at the end of the day, loving the sky is a last resort. We’d all rather settle for anything else. Even if they don’t smell right, or they’re the wrong shape, even if they say bad things and hurt us sometimes. Even if we sometimes doubt they ever really love us at all. Still better than sky. Really, loving the sky, that smacks of desperation.

The little woman held hands with her lovers, on beaches, on bridges, on towers so tall they scraped the sky’s belly. And she’d kiss them, and she’d swear undying love to them, even if she didn’t believe it, and they might swear right back, even so. And, happy, or unhappy too, either way—she’d never look up, she’d never do that, she held on tight to what was in front of her. She’d never look up, and above her head the skies swam, and danced, and died.

So, was the house haunted? Probably not; but it certainly had some peculiar quirks, and Mrs. Gallagher always felt obliged to tell her guests of them. She’d warn those taking the box room that they might be able to hear weird whispering sounds in the night—but there was no doubt it was simply an effect of the wind coming in off the North Bay, sometimes in the winter the wind off the coast could be pretty fierce. There was a spot in the breakfast room, she said, upon which if you stood for too long you’d get a chill right down to your very marrow; I never found that spot, although I looked hard enough, I might have felt a chill in any number of different places but never anything that touched my marrow even closely.

And there was the staircase, and that was harder to explain. There were fifteen steps leading up to the first floor, the first nine straight up, the tenth curving around to the left as you ascended. They were covered with a thin shag carpet, and supported by wooden bannisters. Fifteen steps in all—but if you went downstairs in the dark, there, at the bottom, you would find a sixteenth.

It only happened in the dark. If you put the lights on to count, there’d always be the fifteen, looking perfectly ordinary. If you took a candle downstairs with you, the sixteenth couldn’t be found, and nor on nights when the moonlight was pouring in neither. But if it were pitch black, if when you looked down you couldn’t see your feet or where they might be leading, then that extra step would be waiting for you. And only as you went downwards, never on the way up.

It was a strange thing, but not especially unnerving. Mrs. Gallagher told her guests of it only so they wouldn’t stumble, not so they should feel spooked or scared. Especially in the holiday season, she said, when the arcades were open late, and the sea was warm enough for night time paddling, guests might come back once she’d gone to bed, and she didn’t want anyone waking her if they tripped. They’d be fine if they went straight to bed themselves, of course; it would be if they came down afterwards for a glass of water, say, that they might run into problems.

You’d get guests trying it out, of course. Especially the young ones: newlywed husbands trying to show off to their wives, squaddies on leave egging each other on. We could tell the sort. We could tell that, first chance they’d get, they’d brave it for themselves. We were smart. We’d encourage them to get it out of the way on the first night, we’d do it before anyone had gone to bed so it wouldn’t disturb. We’d turn out all the lights and pull the curtains and let them have their fun. Down they’d come, counting off the stairs as they did so, maybe laughing a bit, maybe trying to scare each other. They’d reach the sixteenth step, they’d laugh a bit more, they might even kick at it to make sure it was real. We’d give them a minute or two, and then they’d lose interest, and we could turn the lights back on and get on with more important matters. It wasn’t as if the extra step
did
anything once you’d found it; it was just a step, after all.

George and I tried it too, the first night we arrived. Mrs. Gallagher asked whether she should turn off the lights so we could check for ourselves, and George smiled in that charming way he sometimes had and said he was quite sure he didn’t need to put her out. Even I was fooled, I assumed he wasn’t interested. But late that night, once he’d had his business with me, and we were lying in the dark, he said that we should go down the stairs and see what this extra step palaver was all about. I couldn’t sleep either, the waves were noisy; in years to come I’d realize there was no more reassuring sound in all this world, but I wasn’t used to it yet. I was a bit afraid, and I told George so, but he pooh-poohed that; he said it would all be nonsense anyway.

George was in his pyjamas, I was in my nightie, and I remember neither of us wore slippers. He held onto my hand, and told me to count the stairs off with him. I was frightened, yes, but it wasn’t a bad frightened, and I told myself it was like all those things at the funfair on the beach, this was the dodgems and the ghost train, all rolled into one. George was even whispering jokes at me, and he had a nice voice when he whispered. We reached the fifteenth step, and George said, “Shall we go on?” And I was going to say no, let’s not, let’s turn back and go to bed, but he was only teasing, of course we went on; he took another step downwards, and he pulled me after him. We stood on the impossible step. “It has to be a trick,” said George, and he sounded a bit angry, the way he did when he thought the foreman was cheating him. My bare feet were cold. The carpet had run out at the fifteenth step—this one beneath seemed to be made of stone. But then, no, not stone, because it wasn’t so hard as all that, and it was getting smoother, like it was old mud breaking under our combined weight or even loosening to our body heat, it was getting softer, even liquid now, and I was sinking into it, and yet it was still so very
cold
.

I tried to pull away, but George was still holding me. So I pulled harder, I wrenched myself out of his grip, and that’s when I stumbled. I felt myself beginning to fall and I couldn’t stop myself, and all I could see was the black and I didn’t know how far away the ground might be.

It was just a few feet, of course, and I was more shocked than hurt. And there was suddenly light, and there was the landlady, holding a candle, and leaning over the bannister down at us. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Sorry.”

“I did warn you. Please go back to bed.”

She stayed on the stairs so she could light our way. As we passed she didn’t bother to hide her disapproval. “Sorry,” I said again. George didn’t say a word.

George was cross with me that night. I told him about the cold step, but he said he’d felt only carpet, just like on all the other steps, and that I was being stupid.

You asked me for the truth. And this is the truth as I understand it.

George was not a good man, but he was not a bad man either, not entirely. Mrs. Gallagher would say I was justifying again. She said I did a lot of justifying, and I suppose she was right. But I know what’s fair, and I want to be fair to George. I’ve known some bad men. There’s no tenderness to bad men, and George, he could sometimes be tender.

He said what we did wasn’t theft. We’d come into town, and would stay at a little hotel, a bed and breakfast maybe, nothing grand. And then when it was time to move on, we’d sneak away without paying. He said that proper theft would have been if we’d taken the silver with us as we went, but we never did that, George had too much pride. But the idea was there in his head, wasn’t it? He’d spoken it out loud. With George, I knew, if it was in his head, if that little seed of an idea was planted, it was the beginning of everything.

But for the time being it wasn’t theft, not really—we would come to a town, and George would spend the days out looking for work. He’d go to the factories, he’d go to the warehouses. He said that as soon as he got a job he’d return to the bed and breakfasts, every single one, and he’d pay them back. I’m sure at the start he even meant that.

George would come back to the hotels and tell me there was no work to be found—but he’d heard talk of work a few miles away, the next town along, just over the hill, just across the moors, wherever. And off we’d go chasing it. I hated it when we had to move on, but George always looked so much happier, he’d suddenly beam with hope, and that made up for it. He might carry my bags as we walked; he might even sing.

One day we reached the coast. And there was nowhere farther for us to go, not unless we changed direction.

“I could be a fisherman,” George said. “I would enjoy catching fish all day long. Good honest work. It’s all going to work out. You’ll see.” As far as I knew, George hadn’t been inside a boat his whole life, but it was wiser not to say anything.

There were lots of bed and breakfasts to choose from. It was a holiday town, but off-season, everything was empty. I don’t know what brought us to Mrs. Gallagher’s. Fate, I suppose. Who knows why things happen, they just do.

George rang the doorbell, and doffed his hat, and gave that smile he was good at. I did my best to look like the respectable housewife on holiday that I always wanted to be.

Most landladies would ask for a deposit. We had to hand over the deposit without appearing to mind, as if there were plenty more where that came from. Sometimes it was the hardest bit of acting I had to do. Mrs. Gallagher didn’t want a deposit.

“No deposit?” said George. “Well, well.” And he smiled wider, but he also frowned, as if suspecting he was being conned.

“No deposit,” agreed Mrs. Gallagher. “All my guests pay when they leave.”

She told us about the whispering in the box room, but the hotel was empty, we could pick any room we wanted, and I was glad George allowed us a room that wouldn’t scare me. She told us about the strange chill in the breakfast room. She told us about the step you could find only in the dark.

In the morning she served us breakfast. She didn’t mention the night’s disturbance, and nor did we. She asked us how we wanted our eggs. “Fried and runny,” said George. I told her I’d like mine poached. She gave a curt nod, then went into the kitchen.

She brought us out plates of sausage and bacon and fried bread. I had a poached egg. “Where’s my egg?” George demanded to know. Mrs. Gallagher said she had only one egg, and apologized.

George glowered. He managed a few bites of sausage, then pushed his plate away. I knew how hungry he must be, but he had such pride. He lit a cigarette, stared at me through an ever-thickening cloud of smoke. I pretended not to notice. I wanted to eat as much of my breakfast as I could. I hoped that, if I ate fast enough, he wouldn’t say anything until I’d finished.

“You enjoying that?” he said too soon, softly, dangerously softly.

I knew there was no right answer. I looked at him. I tried to keep my expression as neutral as possible.

He took my plate. He held it up, as if to inspect it closely, as if to ensure it was fit enough for his queen. He spat on it. Then he put the plate back down on the table, and ground out his cigarette in the middle of the food, in the middle of the egg.

“I’ll be back later,” he muttered, got up, and left.

I was still so hungry. But I didn’t want to eat from my plate, even though the spit was only my husband’s, and I loved my husband. And I didn’t want to eat from his, in case he came back.

Mrs. Gallagher took away the plates, and if she was surprised they were still heavy with food, she didn’t comment.

I stayed the day in the bedroom.

That evening George came back and he was all smiles. He said maybe he’d found a job after all—a fisherman had said he would take George out on his boat in the morning, try him out for size. He’d brought back a couple of bottles of beer, I don’t know where he’d got them, and he let me have a little bit. When that night he did his business, he was kind and quick.

The next morning he left early. I got to eat my breakfast on my own. It was delicious.

That same night George came back to the hotel angry. The fisherman hadn’t waited for him. It had all been some bloody big joke. I asked him where he’d been all day, and that was a mistake. Later that night he apologized. He said the fisherman had waited for him, he’d gone out in the boat. But the waters had been very rough, and he hadn’t been well. The fisherman found it funny. He supposed it was funny, come to that. I mean, he’d get used to the sea if he had to, but in the meantime, it was funny. Didn’t I think it was funny? It was all right, he said, he didn’t mind if I did, we could laugh at it together, like we used to laugh at things. I gave him a kiss, and that made him feel better.

He said he’d try his luck again. Maybe another fisherman would take him out. Maybe the first fisherman wouldn’t have told all the others. We had breakfast together. Mrs. Gallagher asked how we wanted our eggs. He said he wanted his fried, but runny. I said I’d have mine poached. She brought me a plate of sausage, bacon, and a poached egg. She brought George a plate of fried eggs, and nothing but fried eggs, the yolks all broken and pooling thickly into one another. George stared at the plate, and didn’t say a word.