When I came downstairs after changing my clothes again it was a quarter past six. Jane’s parents lived twelve houses away on my side of the street. Since I had finished my preparations forty-five minutes early, I decided on a walk to kill time. The street was in shadow now. I hesitated by the front door, thinking of the best route. Charlie was across the road repairing another car. He saw me, and without particularly wanting to I walked over to him. He looked up without smiling.
‘Where you off to this time?’ He spoke to me as if I were a child.
‘Taking some air,’ I said, ‘taking some evening air.’ Charlie likes to know what is happening in the street. He knows everyone along here, including all the children. I had often seen the little girl out there with him. The last time she was holding a spanner for him. For some reason Charlie held her death against me. He had had all Sunday to think about it. He wanted to hear my story, but he could not bring himself to ask direct questions.
‘Seeing her parents, then? Seven o’clock?’
‘Yes, seven o’clock.’ He waited for me to go on. I circled round the car. It was large, old and rusty, a Ford Zodiac, the kind of car you get in this street. It belonged to the Pakistani family who ran the small shop at the end of the street. For their own reasons they called the shop ‘Watson’s’. Their two sons were beaten up by local skinheads. They were saving money now to return to Peshawar. The old man used to tell me about it when I went to his shop, how he was taking his family home because of violence and bad weather in London. Charlie said to me from the other side of Mr Watson’s car,
‘She was their only.’ He was accusing me.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know. Great shame.’ We circled round the car. Then Charlie said,
‘It was in the paper. Did you see it? It said you saw her go down.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Couldn’t reach her, then?’
‘No, I couldn’t. She sank.’ I made my circle round the car wider and edged off. I knew Charlie’s eyes were on me all the way down the street, but I did not turn round to acknowledge his suspicion.
At the end of the street I pretended to look up at an aeroplane and glanced back over my shoulder. Charlie was standing by the car, hands on hips, still watching me. There was a large black-and-white cat sitting at his feet. I saw all this in a glimpse and turned the corner. It was half past six. I decided to walk to the library to use up the remaining time. It was the same walk I took earlier on. There were more people about now. I passed a group of West Indian boys playing football in the street. Their ball rolled towards me and I stepped over it. They stood about waiting while one of the younger boys collected the ball. As I edged past them they were silent, and watching me closely. As soon as I was past, one of them threw a small stone along the road at my feet. Without turning and almost without looking I trapped it neatly with my foot. It was an accident I did it so well. They all laughed at this and clapped and cheered me, so that for one elated moment I thought I could go back and join in their game. The ball was returned and they started to play again. The moment passed and I walked on. My heart was beating fast from the excitement of it. Even when I came to the library and sat down on the steps I could feel the thumping of my pulse in my temples. Such opportunities are rare for me. I do not meet many people, in fact the only ones I talk to are Charlie and Mr Watson. I speak to Charlie because he is there when I leave my front door; he is always the one to speak first, and there is no avoiding him if I want to leave the house. I do not talk to Mr Watson so much as listen, and I listen because I have to go into his shop to buy groceries. To have someone walking along with me on Wednesday was something of an opportunity, too, even if it was only a little girl with nothing to do. Although I would not have admitted it at the time, I felt pleased that she was genuinely curious about me, and I was attracted to her. I wanted her to be my friend.
But I was uneasy at first. She was walking a little behind me, playing with her toy and, for all I knew, making gestures behind my back the way children do. Then, when we came to the main shopping street, she came up to my side.
‘Why don’t you go to work?’ she said. ‘My dad goes to work every day except Sunday.’
‘I don’t need to go to work.’
‘Have you got lots of money already?’ I nodded. ‘Really lots?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you buy me something if you wanted to?’
‘If I wanted to.’ She was pointing at a toyshop window.
‘One of those, please, go on, one of those, go on.’ She was hanging on my arm, she was making a greedy little dance on the pavement and trying to push me towards the shop. No one had touched me intentionally like that for a long time, not since I was a child. I felt a cold thrill in my stomach and I was unsteady on my legs. I had some money in my pocket and I could see no reason why I should not buy her something. I made her wait outside while I went in the shop and bought her what she wanted, a small, pink, naked doll, moulded from one piece of plastic. Once she had it she seemed to lose interest in it. Farther down the same street she asked me to buy her an ice cream. She stood in the doorway of the shop waiting for me to follow. She did not touch me this time. Of course, I hesitated, I was not sure what was happening. But I was curious about her now, and the effect she was having on me. I gave her enough money to buy ices for both of us and let her go in and get them. She was obviously used to gifts. When we were a little farther down the street I asked her in the friendliest way,
‘Don’t you say thank you when someone gives you things?’ She looked at me scornfully, her thin, pale lips circled with ice cream:
‘No.’
I asked her her name. I wanted our conversation to be amiable.
‘Jane.’
‘What happened to the doll I bought you, Jane?’ She glanced down at her hand.
‘I left it in the sweet shop.’
‘Didn’t you want it?’
‘I forgot it.’ I was about to tell her to run back and get it when I realized how much I wanted her to stay with me, and how close we were to the canal.
The canal is the only stretch of water near here. There is something special about walking by water, even brown stinking water running along the backs of factories. Most of the factories overlooking the canal are windowless and deserted. You can walk a mile and a half along the tow-path and usually you meet no one. The path goes by an old scrap yard. Up until two years ago a quiet old man watched over the pile of junk from a small tin hut outside which, chained to a post, he kept a large Alsatian dog. It was too old to bark. Then the hut, the old man and the dog disappeared and the gate was padlocked. Gradually the surrounding fence was trampled down by the local kids, so that now only the gate stands. The scrap yard is the only thing of interest in that mile and a half because for the rest of the walk the path runs close to the factory walls. But I like the canal and I find it less of a confinement there by the water than anywhere else in this part of town. After walking with me in silence for a while Jane asked me again,
‘Where are you going? Where are you going to walk?’
‘Along the canal.’
She thought about this for a minute. ‘I’m not allowed by the canal.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because.’ She was walking slightly in front of me now. The white ring around her mouth had dried. My legs were weak and I felt suffocated by the sun’s heat rising off the pavement. It had become a necessity to persuade her to walk along the canal with me. I sickened at the idea. I threw the rest of my ice cream away, and said,
‘I walk along the canal nearly every day.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s very peaceful there … and there are all kinds of things to look at.’
‘What things?’
‘Butterflies.’ The word was out before I could retrieve it. She turned round to me, suddenly interested. Butterflies could never survive near the canal, the stench would dissolve them. It would not take her long to find that out.
&n
bsp; ‘What colour butterflies?’
‘Red ones … yellow ones.’
‘What else is there?’
I hesitated. ‘There’s a scrap yard.’ She wrinkled her nose. I continued quickly, ‘And boats, too, boats on the canal.’
‘Real boats?’
‘Yes, of course, real boats.’ Again this was not what I had intended. She stopped walking and I stopped too. She said,
‘You won’t tell on me if I come, will you?’
‘No, I won’t tell anyone, but you have to keep close to me when we’re walking along the canal, understand?’ She nodded. ‘And wipe the ice cream off your mouth.’ She trailed the back of her hand vaguely across her face. ‘Come here, let me do it.’ I pulled her towards me and cupped my left hand round the back of her neck. I wetted the forefinger of the other hand, the way I had seen parents do it, and ran it round her lips. I had never touched another person’s lips before, nor had I experienced this kind of pleasure. It rose painfully from my groin to my chest and lodged itself there, like a fist pushing against my ribs. I wetted the same finger again and tasted the sticky sweetness on the end of it. I rubbed it round her lips once more and this time she pulled away.
‘You hurt me,’ she said. ‘You pressed too hard.’ We walked on, and now she kept close by me.
To get down to the towpath we had to cross the canal first by a narrow black bridge with high walls. Half way across, Jane stood on tiptoe and tried to look over the wall.
‘Lift me up,’ she said, ‘I want to look at the boats.’
‘You can’t see them from here.’ But I placed my hands round her waist and lifted her up. Her short red dress rode up over her backside and I felt the fist in my chest again. She called over her shoulder to me,
‘The river’s very dirty.’
‘It’s always been dirty,’ I said, ‘it’s a canal.’ As we walked down the stone steps to the towpath Jane moved closer to me. I had the feeling she was holding her breath. Usually the canal flows north, but today it was completely still. On the surface there were patches of yellow scum, and they did not move either because there was no wind to push them along. Occasionally a car passed on the bridge above us and beyond that there was the distant sound of London traffic. Apart from that it was very quiet by the canal. Because of the heat the canal smell was stronger today, an animal rather than a chemical smell given off by the scum. Jane whispered,
‘Where are the butterflies?’
‘They’re not far. We have to go under two bridges first.’
‘I want to go back. I want to go back.’ We were now over a hundred yards from the stone steps. She wanted to stop but I was urging her along. She was too frightened to leave my side and run back to the steps by herself.
‘Not far now and we’ll see the butterflies. Red ones, yellow ones, sometimes green ones.’ I abandoned myself to the lie, I did not care what I told her now. She put her hand in mine.
‘And what about the boats?’
‘You’ll see them. Farther up.’ We walked on and I thought of nothing but of how to keep her with me. At certain points along the canal there are tunnels under factories, roads and railway lines. The first of these we came to was formed by a three-storey building which connects the factories on either side of the canal. It was empty now, like all the factories, and all the nearer windows were broken. At the entrance to this tunnel Jane tried to pull back.
‘What’s that noise? Let’s not go in there.’ She could hear water dripping from the roof of the tunnel into the canal, it echoed in a strange, hollow way.
‘It’s only water,’ I said. ‘Look, you can see through to the other side.’ The path was very narrow in the tunnel so I made her walk in front of me and kept my hand on her shoulder. She was shivering. At the far end she stopped suddenly and pointed. Where the sunlight entered the tunnel a little way there was a flower growing from between the bricks. It looked like some kind of dandelion, growing out of a small tuft of grass.
‘It’s coltsfoot,’ she said, and picked it and put it in her hair, behind her ear. I said,
‘I’ve never seen flowers along here before.’
‘There have to be flowers,’ she explained, ‘for the butterflies.’
For the next quarter of an hour we walked in silence. Jane spoke once to ask me again about the butterflies. She seemed less afraid of the canal now and let go of my hand. I wanted to touch her but I could think of no way of doing that without frightening her. I tried to think of a conversation we might have but my mind was blank. The path was beginning to widen out to our right. Round the next bend of the canal in an immense space between a factory and a warehouse was the scrap yard. There was black smoke in the sky ahead of us, and as we came round the bend I saw that it was coming from the scrap yard. A group of boys stood round the fire they had built. They were some kind of gang, they all wore the same blue jackets and cropped hair. As far as I could tell they were preparing to roast a live cat. The smoke hung above them in the still air, behind them the scrapheap towered like a mountain. They had the cat tied up by its neck to a post, the same post the Alsatian dog used to be tied to. The cat’s front and back legs were tied together. They were constructing a cage over the fire made up of pieces of wire fencing and as we came past one of them was dragging the cat by the string around its neck towards the fire. I took Jane’s hand and walked faster. They were working intently and in silence, and they hardly paused to glance up at us. Jane kept her eyes on the ground. Through her hand I could feel her whole body shaking.
‘What were they doing to that cat?’
‘I don’t know.’ I looked back over my shoulder. It was difficult to see what they were doing now because of the black smoke. We were leaving them far behind and our path was once more along the factory walls. Jane was almost crying, and her hand was only in mine because I I was holding it hard. It was not necessary really for there was nowhere she would dare run by herself. Back along the path past the scrap yard, or forwards into the tunnel we were approaching. I had no idea what was going to happen when we came to the end of the path. She would want to run home, and I just knew I could not let her go. I put it out of my mind. At the entrance to the second tunnel, Jane stopped.
‘There aren’t any butterflies, are there?’ Her voice rose at the end because she was about to cry. I started to tell her that perhaps it was too hot for them. But she was not listening to me, she was wailing,
‘You said a lie, there aren’t any butterflies, you said a lie.’ She started to cry in a half-hearted, miserable way and tried to pull her hand free from mine. I reasoned with her but she would not listen. I tightened my grip on her hand and pulled her into the tunnel. She was screaming now, a piercing continuous sound echoing back from the walls and roof of the tunnel and filling my head. I carried and dragged her right into the tunnel, about half way. And there, suddenly, her screams were drowned out by the thunder of a train going over our heads, and the air and the ground shook together. It took a long time for the train to pass. I held her arms at her sides, but she did not struggle, the din was overpowering her. When the last echoes had died away she said dully,
‘I want my mummy.’ I unzipped my fly. I did not know if she could see in the dark what was stretching out towards her.
‘Touch it,’ I said, and shook her gently by the shoulder. She did not move, so I shook her again.
‘Touch me, go on. You know what I mean, don’t you?’ It was quite a simple thing I wanted really. This time I took her in both hands and shook her hard and shouted.
‘Touch it, touch it.’ She reached out her hand and her fingers briefly brushed my tip. It was enough, though. I doubled up and came, I came into my cupped hands. Like the train, it took a long time, pumping it all out into my hand. All the time I spent by myself came pumping out, all the hours walking alone and all the thoughts I had had, it all came out into my hand. When it was over I remained in that position for several minutes, bent up with my cupped hands in front of me. My mind was clear, m
y body was relaxed and I was thinking of nothing. I lay on my stomach, reached down and washed my hands in the canal. It was difficult to get the stuff off in cold water. It stuck to my fingers like scum. I picked it off in bits. Then I remembered the girl, she was no longer with me. I could not let her run home now, not after this. I would have to go after her. I stood and saw her silhouetted against the end of the tunnel. She was walking slowly along the edge of the canal in a daze. I could not run quickly because I could not see the ground in front of me. The nearer I got to the sunlight at the end of the tunnel, the harder it was to see. Jane was almost out of the tunnel. When she heard my footsteps behind her she turned round and gave a kind of yelp. She started to run too, and immediately lost her footing. From where I was it was difficult to see what happened to her, her silhouette against the sky suddenly disappeared into the black. She was lying face down when I reached her, with her left leg trailing off the path almost into the water. She had banged her head going down and there was a swelling over her right eye. Her right arm was stretched out in front of her and almost reached into the sunlight. I bent down to her face and listened to her breathing. It was deep and regular. Her eyes were closed tight and the lashes were still wet from crying. I no longer wanted to touch her, that was all pumped out of me now, into the canal. I brushed away some dirt from her face and some more from the back of her red dress.
‘Silly girl,’ I said, ‘no butterflies.’ Then I lifted her up gently, as gently as I could so as not to wake her, and eased her quietly into the canal.
I usually sit by the library steps, I prefer it to going inside and reading books. There is more to learn outside. I sat there now, Sunday evening, listening to my pulse slow down to its daily rhythm. Over and over again I ran through what had happened, and what I should have done. I saw the stone skimming along the road, and I saw myself trap it neatly with my foot, almost without turning. I should have turned round then, slowly, acknowledging their applause with a faint grin. Then I should have kicked the stone back, or better, stepped over it and walked casually towards them, and then, when the ball came back, I would be with them, one of them, in a team. I would play with them out there in the street most evenings, learn all their names and they would know mine. I would see them in town during the day and they would call out to me from the other side of the street, cross over and chat. At the end of the game one of them comes over to me and grips my arm.