“But he went yak yak yak?”
“Aye. He had more of a snarl in it, though. So it was like more vicious. Yek yek yekkity yek! That kind of thing.”
“Did you attack him?”
“Naah. He was a great big bloke, and I was just a titch. He had a hell of a temper, and all. So I just shut me lugs and let him get on with it. Yek yek yek yekkity yek.”
“Pity. Anyway I’d had enough of Mrs. Scullery and her yak yak yak, so I done her.”
“With the pen.”
“Aye. I done her good, with the pen.”
“Murder?”
“Not quite. She’ll survive.”
I looked down at the water that flowed beneath us toward the sea. I said,
“Are you as good as Pelé, Karl?”
He grinned.
“Aye,” he said. “In fact, I’m even better.”
“Really?”
“Really. You should have seen the goal I scored in the park last week. Breathtaking.”
We grinned at each other in the mirror.
“So why are you driving taxis?” I said.
“Cos I love it. Who’d want to travel the world and make a million quid and be adored by all them fans? No, it’s journeys to Corinthian Avenue for me! And look, here we are, safe and sound.”
He stopped the car and opened the door to let me out.
He pretended to flinch as I stepped out. He put his hands up as if to protect himself.
I laughed and he grinned.
“Keep them pens under control today,” he said.
“I will.”
“See ya, Miss. Savage.”
“Bye-bye, Mr. Pelé.”
He winked at us and drove away.
And there it was, a redbrick house surrounded by Tarmac and a steel fence, and tubs with blue hydrangeas in them.
I pause. I need to mess about before I go on. I’ll play with words for a while. I’ll do a single sentence and a single word. Good games to play while I gather my memories of that day.
Sometimes when I’m at my table or in my tree and I want to write I start a sentence to see if I can write a whole page before I need a full stop which at first can seem rather difficult but which is really quite easy, because a single sentence could go on forever just like numbers could go on forever, which is difficult for little children to understand because they believe that a number like 100 is so huge that there can be nothing higher until someone says there’s 101 and 102 and 103 and they say O yes and so they begin to understand that numbers have no true end and can go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on until the end of time, if there is an end of time which I think is maybe impossible because if numbers go on forever maybe time does too, but as I get closer to the foot of the page I know that this sentence must stop very soon which now makes me wonder if I am like God when I am writing and makes me wonder whether God could put an end to time if he decided he has had enough of it and whether one day he will speak the single simple cataclysmic word STOP and everything will simply stop.
A SINGLE WORD
THIS MORNING THE SKY
HAS ONLY
A SINGLE BIRD IN IT.
THIS MORNING MY PAGE
HAS ONLY
A SINGLE WORD ON IT.
SKYLARK
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
Write a sentence which fills a whole page.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
Write a single word at the center of a page.
OK. The Corinthian Avenue Pupil Referral Unit.
We … No. Not we. Not I. Third person, Mina. She. They.
And so one day our heroine, Mina, who thought she was so clever and strong, arrived at Corinthian Avenue. As Karl’s taxi drove away, Mina walked hand in hand with her mum towards the glass doorway.
As they stepped inside, a woman came to them.
“I’m Mrs. Milligan,” she said. “And you must be Mina!”
“Yes, I suppose I must,” said Mina.
“She is,” said Mina’s mum, “and I am Mrs. McKee.”
Mrs. Milligan smiled kindly, and led them into a small and brightly lit office. She filled in a form and asked Mina’s mum to sign. She opened a file from St. Bede’s. Mina sighed and scowled.
“Relax, Mina,” said Mrs. Milligan. “We’re not here to judge you. We’re here to help.”
She closed the notes and smiled.
“Didn’t really fit in, did you, dear?” she said.
“Hardly.”
“One system can’t fit us all, can it? We know that here, Mina.”
“Do you?”
Mina wanted this woman to be like Palaver or Trench. She wanted her to be like Scullery or like THE HEAD TEACHER. But she was like none of them.
“We know you’re only here for a visit,” said Mrs. Milligan. “But perhaps you’ll like us enough to stay a little longer.”
“Or perhaps not,” responded the girl.
Mrs. Milligan smiled sweetly. Mina’s mum flashed her eyes at Mina. Mina looked away. She was trying to be careless and free, but she was confused, and she was trembling inside. and she felt weirdly quiet, weirdly shy. She wanted to run away.
Mrs. Milligan showed them where the toilets were and where the lunchroom was. Everywhere was neat and clean. There was a cooling smell of lavender. There were lots of books on lots of shelves. There were kids’ paintings on the walls. There were stories and poems hanging beside them.
Soon other kids began to arrive in taxis and minibuses. There were adults in T-shirts and jeans with their names on tags that hung around their necks.
Mrs. Milligan took them to Room B12, a room with woodblock flooring, a window with white net curtains on it, tables and red plastic chairs in a ring. One of the walls had a mural painted on it – a huge rain forest with monkeys and snakes and butterflies and frogs. The names of the artists were painted along the bottom edge: Daniela, Eric, Patrick, Steepy …
“We do a lot of art here,” said Mrs. Milligan. “Malcolm’s an expert at it. He’ll be here soon.”
Mina shrugged.
“I hear you’re something of an expert, too,” said Mrs. Milligan.
“Expert!” grunted Mina.
She rolled her eyes at her mum, who whispered,
“Mina!”
Then Malcolm arrived. He wore blue jeans, a red shirt, a silver bracelet on his wrist.
“I’m Malcolm,” he said.
Mina said nothing. Mina’s mum nudged her:
“He’s Malcolm. You’re …”
“And you must be Mina,” continued Malcolm.
“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
Mina lowered her eyes. She shuffled her feet.
She felt her lips curling downward like on a cartoon face.
“I’m so sorry,” said her mum. “She’s not usually so …”
“That’s all right!” said Malcolm. “First day, new place, bit shy. She’ll be fine once she gets to know us. Ah, Harry! Come and meet Mina.”
Harry was a short boy in a blue anorak, with lank hair and perplexed eyes. He came towards them. He nodded shyly at Mina. He held a book out to Malcolm.
“I b-brung it,” he said.
“It? Ah, Buddha! Thank you!”
He took the book and fanned it open for Mina.
“One of the first great graphic novels,” he said. “As good as they say, Harry?”
“A-aye, Malcolm,” stammered Harry. “Aye!”
Mina turned away, as if she disapproved.
“Personally, I prefer the complexity of words,” she said. She hated herself even as she was saying it. She had read the book in Malcolm’s hands, and she liked it a lot. But she couldn’t stop herself from blathering on and showing off and trying to show she was something special, and nothing like the people here.
“The complexity of sentences,” she said, “Paragraphs, pages …”
“Oh, Mina!” said her mum.
Malcolm closed the book.
“May
be you can make recommendations to us, Mina,” he said. “Now, Mrs. McKee, why don’t you leave Mina with us, and …”
“Yes, I will,” said Mrs. McKee.
She gave Mina a hug. She told her to have a nice day. She told her she’d be back to pick her up that afternoon.
As she walked away, Mina wanted to weep like a four-year-old. She wanted to cry, “Take me away, Mummy! Take me away!” But she just stood there, like a stone, silent and bereft.
And other children started to arrive, and so the day began.
Among the others, there was Wilfred, who looked so angry, whose brow was furrowed, who clenched his fists, who looked nobody but Malcolm in the eye. His nails had almost been bitten to nothing and two of his front teeth were gone. He smelt of dog.
There was Alicia, who took a liking to Mina and sat by her all day. Alicia was like a little creature. Her hands trembled, ever so slightly. Her fringe hung down over her eyes. She kept leaning forward so that her hair hung all around her head like a curtain. She spoke in little whispery breaths. “I like you, Mina. Can I sit with you at lunch, Mina?” She stayed silent mostly, but sometimes Mina would hear her humming a low slow tune.
And there was Steepy, a skinny boy dressed all in green whose hands were covered in cuts and grazes. “Bloody roses, Malcolm,” he said. “Covered in bloody thorns, Malcolm. And bloody brambles. Like bloody knives, Malcolm.” He grinned at Mina. “It’s me bloody garden, Nina.”
“Mina,” said Malcolm. He winked. “It’s Steepy’s aim to have the most abundant allotment in the land. It’s also his aim to get a swearword into every sentence.”
“Bloody right, Malcolm,” said Steepy. “Couldn’t write a sentence to save me bloody life, but when it comes to swearing versatility … And when it comes to works of bloody art …”
He lifted his shirt. There was a whole garden tattooed on his chest: hedge, trees, dozens of flowers, butterflies, birds.
“That’s just the bloody start. I’ll get a bloody forest on me legs, mountains on me back, bloody sky on me bloody head.”
Despite herself, and her determinationto stay cool and distant, Mina leaned forward wide-eyed.
“But you’re just a boy!” she heard herself saying.
“Aye, and I had it done when I wasn’t even twelve. Me uncle Eric done it. He’s a proper tattoo artist. They wanted to lock him up but they didn’t cos he’s all I’ve got. But he can’t do no more tattoos on me till I’m sixteen. Then I’ll get the rest.” He lowered his shirt again. “We’re messing up the bloody world, Mina. We’re gonna burn it, blow it up, destroy it. We’re killing everything. Every lovely living thing’ll be extinct. But it’ll all be on me, Mina. I’ll be a bloody monument to everything that’s gone.”
“He’s not as pessimistic as he makes out,” said Malcolm. “Otherwise why bother with all the gardening?”
“For love,” said Steepy.
“Bloody love, you mean,” said Malcolm.
“Aye. For bloody love.” He looked at Mina.
“What’s your story, then?”
Mina shrugged.
“What’s yours?” she said.
“You’ve had it. What’s the point of school when there’s bloody gardening to be done?”
“What you doing here, then?”
“Hanging out with me mates. Like Malcolm. And Wilfie there.”
Wilfred glared. He bared his teeth. Steepy raised his hand.
“Down, boy,” he said. “You are me bloody mate, Wilf, whether you want to be or not.”
Wilf went on glaring, looking nothing like a mate of anyone’s at all.
Steepy winked at her.
“He’s OK,” he whispered. “As long as he keeps taking the pills.”
“The pills?”
“Aye. They wanted to put me on them as well. No bloody way! I said. Bloody pills!”
Despite herself, she wanted to be his mate, too. She did want to tell him her story, and to hear more about his, to talk about his garden and his tattoo, and to ask him how a bird that was born for joy could sit in a cage and sing, and to tell him about charms of goldfinches. She wanted to tell him about playing with words on a page, and about the words she used to write on her own skin. And she wanted to tell him that they’d wanted to put her on pills, as well. But she didn’t. She went back to being distant. She turned away from him to Alicia, who smiled and touched her arm and softly hummed.
“So,” said Malcolm. “That’s getting to know you time over. Time for Maths. Sorry, Steepy. Bloody Maths.”
They did worksheets at the tables. A couple of assistants came in, Chloe and Joe. Chloe sat with Mina and guided her through the problems. “7 × 6 is the same as 6 x __.” “123 × 9 is the same as 9 x ___.” They were easy. She heard Wilfred curse out loud and fling his pen across the room. He stood up and stormed to the window waving his fists. She saw Malcolm gently guide him back to his task again. She heard Steepy speaking the answers to Malcolm and saw Malcolm writing them down. Alicia sat beside Mina and whispered how she always found sums so hard. Mina helped her and she saw the tears turn to smiles as the solutions appeared to her. She also saw the thin scars on Alicia’s forearms. She touched one of them gently. Alicia flinched, then whispered very softly, “I used to cut meself, Mina. Not no more, though.” Mina looked through Alicia’s hanging fringe into her eyes. She wanted to tell her about the day when she was in her tree, carving words into the bark with her knife. She had rested the blade on her own skin. She was almost at the point of carving a word into herself. She didn’t tell her, though.
Alicia smiled sadly.
“I seen sense,” she said.
“Me, too,” whispered Mina. “Let’s do more sums.”
Mina went on helping Alicia with her work. She kept glancing around the room, watching these people she had found herself with. A bunch of misfits in a place that accepted them as misfits. She knew them, she understood them. It was so weird. The kids she was with all had trouble fitting in anywhere, but here in a place of misfits they were accepted and they all kind of fitted in and for a few hours in the day they weren’t misfits anymore. And there were other rooms with other misfits all around them. Troubled, damaged, shy, scared children. Kids with pains and problems and yearnings. She tried to stop herself thinking it, but she couldn’t stop herself. She recognized these kids. In some way, they were just like her. But she kept on trying to stay distant.
At lunchtime, she ate macaroni cheese and chocolate cake. She walked around the concrete playground in the sunlight with Alicia. She stood at the fence and stared towards the city that she’d come from. She wondered about her mum, where she was, what she was doing. She found herself thinking about what Steepy had said, that one day everything she saw would be destroyed. But could that be true? There couldn’t be total destruction, there couldn’t just be nothing. Yes, maybe one day the human race would be extinct just like the dinosaurs. And our cities would crumble into dust. We’d destroy the Heaven we’d helped to make. But there’d be survivors.
The birds flew over her, sparrows and finches and crows: light-boned, beautiful creatures. They were fragile-looking things, but maybe they were really the strongest and the bravest of all. Surely they’d outlast us, like they outlasted the dinosaurs. They’d keep on flying, building their nests, singing their songs, laying their eggs, tending their young in the ruins of our cities and in our rampant woods and fields. A new wild world would grow around them. And maybe they’d be the ancestors of marvelous creatures that we could have no notion of. She imagined a future world, a future heaven, inhabited by marvelous birdlike creatures, and she was glad.
Malcolm came to her and asked if she was enjoying herself. Yes, she told him. He said they’d be writing stories that afternoon – her kind of thing, he thought. She just shrugged again and said nothing. He told her he had a secret that hardly anybody knew. He’d written a novel and he was trying to get it published. He said how scary it was, like he was exposing himself to the world and it made him f
eel really stupid and young.
“Know what I mean?” he said.
She shrugged.
“Yes,” she said.
“But I’ve just got to be brave about it,” he said. “Haven’t I?”
“Suppose so.”
He smiled gently at her. She looked away.
“I think you’re brave,” he said. “I think all of you are brave, coming to places like this, trying to grow up. It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Trying to discover how to be yourself.”
She nodded.
“There’s many ways to do it, Mina. A different way for each and every one of us. And you know what? It goes on all your life.”