‘Actually,’ he says, sitting down with a crash, ‘there is sand, when the tide goes out, but stones are more meaningful anyway.’
I hesitate. I feel stupid standing over him like this, but I can’t just walk away, can I? I drop down next to him; we’re so close that the sound of the wind cuts out. Now, sitting as we are on top of the rise, it seems like the sea is just below us and we’re on the edge of the world. I look at him sideways: long lashes, stubble; a nice face. Not a dirty, mad face like the other man.
‘Meaningful how?’ I say. ‘Aren’t pebbles just pebbles?’
‘Dig your hand down,’ he says, ‘pull some up. You ever think how many there are? Like people – millions of ’em and not one the same.’
I push my hand down, like I must have done a hundred times before, but this time I look properly. All the colours are different and some have shapes or patterns like scales, or holes that bore right through them. The tramp is looking at me, smiling.
‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘you find a stone that’s like a message – you know?’
I realise I’m meant to answer, but what can you say to something daft like that?
‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘really. If you got something on your mind or you don’t know what to do, you make a decision, and then you wait. If it’s the right one you’ll find a stone. Then you know.’
I stare at him. ‘Then you know what?’
‘If it’s the right decision, it’ll be a special stone, not just any stone.’
‘Good,’ I say, ‘because who’d notice an ordinary stone here, right?’
He catches my eye and we laugh. ‘Try it,’ he says, then drops his head and gives a little sigh.
‘I think it sounds nice,’ I say. ‘Something helping you out – what would it be, though, that made you find it?’
‘I dunno… Maybe God…’ He must see my face because he looks down again, ‘or maybe the devil. I told you, I dunno.’
I don’t know what to say. He doesn’t seem the type for God. He smells like he’s been drinking something heavy, and he looks tired and rough. I should leave, but I don’t want to. There’s something about him that makes me feel warm.
‘They say,’ he goes on, ‘that in Heaven there’s a stone for everyone. Underneath, it has a new name for you, so all this… doesn’t matter any more.’
His hands tremble in his lap. I can’t stop looking at them. He laughs and I know he’s embarrassed. ‘Take no notice,’ he says. ‘Tell me your name.’
My muscles tense with the scared feeling and I should just get up and walk away.
‘It’s Coo,’ I find myself saying, ‘short for Corinne.’
He puts out his hand and I have to shake it. ‘Banks,’ he says. ‘If you come again, bring us a cup of coffee would you?’
‘Sure,’ I say, and then my mouth goes on, ‘I’ll come in the evening if you like.’
He smiles, lets go of my hand and I get up. ‘You be careful,’ he says.
‘Careful of what?’
‘Just careful. There’s bad things out there.’
I don’t know what to say. Bad things again. Bad things everywhere.
I tell Joe about it on the way to school next morning and he gives me a sideways look. ‘Which one is it?’ he grins. ‘The one who was shouting at you? I told you he fancied you.’
I give him a jokey swipe around the head and he ducks like lightning. His expression changes like cloud shadow on the grass and he walks on without waiting for me.
‘Joe? You okay?’
‘Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘I dunno. You just…’
He sniffs and wipes his coat sleeve across his face, then in an instant he’s all right again. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Tell me about your alky – is he crazy too?’
‘Get out, don’t be mean. He reminds me of Sam.’
‘Sam?’
‘My brother,’ I remind him. ‘That was his name.’
‘Oh yes,’ says Joe. ‘But that’s not good is it, to remind you of your brother?’
‘I guess not, but Banks is different.’
‘He’s still a tramp, Coo. Not really the best of company.’
‘At least he’s there, and he listens to me.’
Joe says nothing, but the look on his face says it all. I remember my meeting with Banks and wonder if I’m losing it. Perhaps I shouldn’t go again, but I know that I will.
All the time we’re walking, I think about Sam. Lots of people lose brothers, but the usual noises of sympathy are no good to me. I lost mine a long time before he died, and I hated him and loved him like two sides of a sheet of paper. There are also the secrets. The secrets Sam told me when he was drunk and desperate, which I carry inside me like dark stones. Only someone like Banks could listen and not find them strange. He must spend all his time in dark and dirty places – my secrets would mean nothing to him.
It wasn’t always like that – hiding things and being scared. The change came slowly, like a dark stain in clear water. I was a late baby. There were eight years between me and Sam so I didn’t realise he had problems at school or that he was skipping it. Then, one day, there was a huge row between him and Dad, and after that, there was little else. He started hanging round with older people, and maybe he felt better with some booze inside him – more confident, more equal – but it didn’t stop there. You wouldn’t think a little thing like a drink could do so much, but it did. In just a few years it turned Sam into a monster. When he came home our house became a frightened place, and at night I lay in the darkness with a desk pushed across my bedroom door. How do you tell most people a thing like that?
Thought Diary: ‘Here we go gathering nuts in May!’ Nursery rhyme.
Now I’ve started talking to the Shrink Woman, I can’t seem to stop. I tell her on Tuesday evening that I’m planning to leave home. I don’t say ‘run away’ because that sounds stupid, like something little kids do then turn up at teatime. I tell her I’m packed and ready to go, which feels good because I know she can’t tell anyone because of patient confidentiality. I doubt she believes me anyway.
I also tell her I have two new friends, and this seems to cheer her up because she nods and makes a little note on her pad. She smiles when I talk about Joe. Her eyebrows wiggle about and she leans forward just a tiny bit, but she’s not so happy to hear that the other one is Banks. Her body language changes at once; even her feet want to tell me it’s all wrong, and the eyebrows stop wiggling and bunch together in the middle like two caterpillars.
‘He sounds a lot older than you,’ she says. ‘Is he?’
‘I guess so. I think he’s about thirty, but it could be his skin.’
‘His skin?’
‘Yes. People who drink a lot have old looking skin. It changes the way they look. It puts ten years on them and makes them smell bad, like old cheese. If they keep on doing it, they can’t even stay living in a house with other people, and in the end it usually kills them.’
She nods. ‘I thought you didn’t like to be around people who drink.’
‘I don’t mind Banks,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t drink