Martin blinked in the bright sunlight, and coughed up water.
His mother eased his position, holding him so that he could breathe easily.
‘Is the girl all right?’ Martin asked when the spasm was over.
His parents glanced at each other.
‘She’ll be fine,’ his mother said, smiling down at him.
Martin tried to raise himself. ‘Where is she?’ he asked.
His mother gently restrained him. ‘She’s been taken care of. Don’t worry.’
‘You see, Martin—’ his father began.
‘Not yet,’ Mrs. Phelps said as lightly as she could. ‘Later.’
Her husband turned away. ‘I’d better get the car and take you to hospital, old son,’ he said.
Martin said, ‘I told you it was there, Dad, didn’t I?’
Mr. Phelps peered across the empty field hidden from his son by his wife’s cradling body.
‘You did,’ he said.
‘And I got the position exactly on the map.’
‘You certainly did. Well done!’
Mr. Phelps looked down at his son and stared into his eyes for the first time in months. And the boy’s gaze, looking frankly back at him, as though somehow he now knew all there was to know about his father, caused Mr. Phelps to shudder.
Mrs. Phelps observed her husband’s discomfort and felt his pain. But there was nothing she could do to help him. The time for that had passed. And their holiday too was over.
‘We ought to get him away from here as soon as we can,’ she said gently.
Mr. Phelps took a deep breath and braced himself. ‘I’ll only be a jiffy,’ he said, and set off towards the lane at a steady jog.
Mrs. Phelps watched him go and suddenly felt utterly exhausted. The sun was scorching her back, but she knew she mustn’t move. The warmth reminded her that Martin had said how cool it had been near the tower. It certainly wasn’t now. And all around grasshoppers rasped. She listened. There was also plenty of bird noise and the loud skirl of passing flies and bees. None of the strange silence he’d mentioned.
Martin broke in on her thoughts. ‘Am I badly hurt?’
‘Not badly,’ his mother said, brushing scorched hair from his forehead.
‘Was I out for long?’
‘Long enough.’
‘Has the tower burned down completely?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘That’s a pity. It was a nice place. But the girl’s OK?’
‘I’m sure she is,’ Mrs. Phelps said with utter conviction. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘And I will see her again, won’t I?’
‘Would you like to?’
‘Wouldn’t mind.’ Martin grinned sheepishly at his mother. ‘She was quite pretty really.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs. Phelps said, struggling against tears. ‘I expect she was.’
after work as junior shelf-fillers at a local supermarket. A schoolgirl in sports outfit walks by and sits down on the next park bench.
Greg: She looks up for it.
Josh: Yeah, she’s up for it.
Greg: Definitely up for it.
Josh: I’m up for it as well.
Greg: You’re always up for it.
Josh: You can talk.
Greg: So when did you last have it?
Josh: I’m not talking about having it.
Greg: No. But when?
Josh: I’m talking about being up for it.
Greg: But when did you last have it?
Josh: When did you?
Greg: Last night, as it happens.
Josh: Last night?
Greg: I had it last night.
Josh: I was with you last night and you didn’t have it when I was with you.
Greg: But I wasn’t with you all of last night, was I?
Josh: Who then? Who did you have it with when I wasn’t with you last night?
Greg: Her from Panini.
Josh: Her? Her from Panini? From behind the counter at Panini?
Greg: Yeah. Her. So?
Josh: She’ll have it with anybody.
Greg: Have you had it with her?
Josh: No! No, I have not. Wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.
Greg: What about you, then? When did you last have it?
Josh: I wouldn’t have it with her from the Panini, no sweat.
Greg: Come on then. When?
Josh: Her over there.
Greg: You haven’t had it with her.
Josh: No, course not!
Greg: What about her, then?
Josh: She hasn’t done nothing.
Greg: True.
Josh: Not one glance.
Greg: Not a glance.
Josh: I don’t think she’s up for it, d’you?
Greg: Nah. Not up for it at all, she ain’t.
Josh: Too stuck up.
Greg: Too nose in the air.
(Pause)
Josh: You up for a panini?
Greg: Yeah, wouldn’t mind.
Josh: Panini then, yeah?
Greg: Yeah, OK. Panini.
SCENE ONE
in the school garden. They have just been taught about debating by their English teacher.
Hamish: Do you miss your mother?
Henry: No.
Hamish: Your father?
Henry: Not really.
Hamish: Who do you miss?
Henry: I miss God.
Hamish: God?
Henry: Yes, God.
Hamish: Who is God?
Henry: I don’t know.
Hamish: How can you miss someone you don’t know?
Henry: I don’t know. I just do.
Hamish: But you know your mother?
Henry: Yes.
Hamish: And your father.
Henry: Yes, of course.
Hamish: But you don’t know God.
Henry: No.
Hamish: And you miss him.
Henry: Yes.
Hamish: Why?
Henry: I don’t know.
Hamish: How do you know you miss God, then?
Henry: Because I think about him.
Hamish: How do you know God’s a he if you don’t know who God is?
Henry: I didn’t say God was a he. You said he was a he. You said and I quote, God’s a he if you don’t know who God is.
Hamish: Well, you know what I mean.
Henry: No, I don’t. Actually, I don’t really know what I mean either.
Hamish: But you miss God.
Henry: Yes.
Hamish (peeling a banana): Is there anything I can do to help you, then?
Henry: You could stop talking.
Hamish: How would that help?
Henry: Then I could think.
Hamish: What would you think about?
Henry: I’d think about God.
Hamish: But you’ve said that when you think about him you miss him so how would that help?
Henry: Well, I feel closer to God when I miss God than when I don’t think about God. So if you wouldn’t mind—
Hamish: I don’t mind.
Henry: That’s the difference probably.
Hamish: The difference?
Henry: Between you and God. You and everyone, my mother, my father, between everyone and God. God minds.
Hamish: I mind.
Henry: You’ve just said you didn’t mind.
Hamish: I meant that I didn’t mind not talking.
Henry: Good. Well, as I say, that would help. You not talking.
Hamish: All right, then.
SCENE TWO
Hamish: Better?
Henry: Yes, much better, thank you.
Hamish: Have you found God yet?
Henry: No, but I feel better.
Hamish: I don’t.
Henry: That’s because you like talking all the time.
Hamish: No, I don’t.
Henry: You do. You just said you didn’t mind being quiet a little while ago.
Hamish: I don’t.
H
enry: Well, do then.
Hamish: Do what?
Henry: Be quiet.
Hamish: All right.
SCENE THREE
Hamish: Better?
Henry: Yes, a bit better now. Quiet is good, isn’t it?
(Pause)
Hamish: It has a peace about it, you’re right.
Henry: It’s you who’s right this time. Peace is the word.
Hamish: Peace is good, don’t you think?
Henry: Better than my mother, at any rate. And my father, thinking about it.
Hamish: Peace.
Henry: Peace.
(Pause)
Henry: Perhaps that’s what God is, then?
Hamish: Sounds about right.
(Pause)
Hamish: I’m hungry now. Are you?
Henry: Yes, starving.
Hamish: Not too hungry for God to eat?
Henry: Course not.
SCENE FOUR
Cook: You’ve missed lunch. Twenty minutes too late. Everything’s been cleared away.
Hamish: But we’re starving.
Cook: You know the rule. It’s your responsibility to be on time for meals.
Henry: But it’s not God-given, is it?
Cook: Is what?
Henry: The rule. About being late.
Cook: What about the rule? I haven’t a clue what you’re jabbering about.
Henry: What I mean is, if they’re not God-given, they’re only human and they can be changed, can’t they?
Cook: I don’t know about God but I do know the school rules. I don’t make them. The Head does. You want them changed, go and talk to him.
Hamish: Can’t we have even a sandwich?
Cook: We’re clearing away now.
Hamish: You said everything had already been cleared away.
Cook: It has.
Henry: But if you’re still clearing away, how can—
Cook: Enough! We’re busy and you’re late. End of story. Skedaddle!
SCENE FIVE
Hamish and Henry return to their bench in the school garden.
Henry: Blast!
Hamish: Well, you shouldn’t have gone on about God!
Henry: I was only telling you that I missed him.
Hamish: Well, now we’ve both missed lunch.
Henry: Never mind, there’s always the tuck shop.
Hamish: Closed.
Henry: Back to God then.
Hamish: I’m sick of God.
Henry: I’m not sick of him. I’m God-sick. Two different things.
Hamish: You’re definitely sick anyway.
Henry: No, I’m not. I say though, what happened to that banana you had earlier?
Hamish: Oh, that. Yes. Sorry. Ate it while I wasn’t talking so you could think about God.
her again.
On past experience, probably not.
Shyness, he thought, not for the first time, should be treated as an illness. For years people had been telling him he’d grow out of it. Now, almost seventeen, he still hadn’t. In fact, he suffered worse than ever.
Another wasted opportunity, he told himself with familiar self-punishing anger. Like the one last week in the High Street with Sue Pritchard, and the one before that in the drama studio with Ellen Mitchell (who everyone said was a doddle to chat up), and the one before that with Jane Carpenter in the underpass when there wasn’t even anyone else around to put him off, and the one before that and that and that.
He slammed the back door behind him and instantly, blushing as usual, regretted it. If she were still there she’d hear, think him a blunderer, and laugh.
Had she not taken him by surprise (or, more accurately, he taken her), he’d never have spoken to her at all. He didn’t know she was lying there sunbathing. He’d only climbed the tree to dismantle what remained of his childhood tree house, something his father had been on about for weeks.
‘You don’t use it now,’ his father kept saying.
‘You’ve grown out of it. The damn thing’s an eyesore, especially in winter. And it’s dangerous as well. If any of it falls on someone next door I’ll be sued for damages.’
That morning his father had given an ultimatum.
‘Take it down pronto or you don’t get the new laptop for your birthday.’
So after his parents had left for work he took a hammer and climbed to the rickety platform and began bashing at the slats of the tree house walls only to hear startled cries from below, on the other side of the fence. Peering through the high-summer foliage, he saw her sitting on a beach towel and staring up at him in alarm.
‘Sorry,’ he called. ‘Didn’t, didn’t know you were, were there.’
‘What!’ She jumped up, her arms crossed over her chest, but was blinded by the sun and had to raise a hand to shade her eyes. ‘Who are you? What are you doing?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘What?’
It was then he dropped the hammer, which hit a branch, bounced, clipped the top of the fence, and landed with a dull thud at her feet.
She screamed and jumped back, tripped and fell.
‘Just my ham, hammer,’ he called, already scrambling down, and swung from the lowest branch, as he used to when he was a kid, into the next-door garden to retrieve it. Only then did he think this might not have been the best way of dealing with the situation.
He held the hammer, showing it to her, grinning, in what he knew must seem an inane fashion, while she stood on the other side of the towel trembling, crossed hands holding her upper arms, staring at him.
‘I’m from next door,’ he said, the stupidity of which struck him even as he said it. He pointed the hammer, with equal stupidity, at the tree. ‘Taking down an old, an old tree house.’
His throat seized up.
They were both speechless.
At last she said, not without difficulty, ‘I was sunbathing.’
He nodded, aware of her unclothed skin, of all her body, almost in reach. He even thought he could feel warmth coming off her. She seemed to glow. The sight was dumbfounding. Waves of shyness engulfed him, the old enemy. He dropped his eyes, shuffled his feet, could think of no savvy way to stay or go.
Hating himself for his pathetic affliction, he turned, awkwardly climbed the fence, went into the house, slamming the back door.
For the rest of the day embarrassment jailed him inside.
The picture of her, seen from the tree, came back to him in bed that night, provoking an agony of yearning. He rewrote reality. Now she did not sit up startled, but lay in the sun, inviting him to join her. He craned down smoothly to the ground. She stood to greet him. He tracked into close-up. Hands on her hair. On her face. On her body. Looking at her mouth. Her eyes. Her eyes said yes.
No question, he had to do something about her. Couldn’t go on forever, never, not with anyone. He’d go mad. But do what?
The thing was to make some sort of contact, anyhow, so long as it didn’t require him to speak first. Somehow make her come to him, speak to him. That would be a start, another chance at least. But how?
He was quite good with words, everyone at school said so. As long as they were written down. If he had to say them to people he didn’t know, and especially to girls he fancied, he couldn’t get them out or they came out bumbled. At worst, he stammered.
But on paper . . .
Next morning, after his parents had gone, he put his night-formed plan into action.
He wrote:
He wasn’t sure about the opening. Not knowing who the girl was—he had never seen her before; she must be a visitor—he didn’t know what to call her. And there wasn’t much contact between the two houses, both sides pretty much keeping to themselves—polite and cooperative when necessary, but not what anyone would call close neighbours except in the geographical sense. So he hadn’t heard about her coming.
The note would have to do, he couldn’t waste all day on it. He slipped it into an envelope and addressed it to .
The ne
xt problem was delivery. He knew that the Bells, who lived there, both went out to work. But if he pushed it through the letterbox himself, she might see him, come to the door and ask what he wanted, and he couldn’t handle that. He considered the possibility of keeping watch to see if she left the house and delivering the note then. But what if she didn’t go out? Or to see if she went into the garden—to sunbathe perhaps—and nipping round then. But the thought of her sunbathing revived his nighttime fantasy of their sunbathing together and made him desperate to be in touch.
It was then he heard the postman, thought of a solution, sprinted to the door before he could consider what he was doing and called the postman back.
‘Wrong address?’
‘I’ve got a letter.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘I mean, would you take it?’
‘Only deliver, don’t collect, sorry, son. Put it in the box.’
‘For next door.’
The postman laughed. ‘Take it yourself.’
‘. . . a surprise.’
‘Some sort of gag?’
‘Just a note. Don’t want her to see, to see me.’
‘Oh, like that, is it! You’re sure it’s nothing nasty?’
‘Just a note.’
‘Yes, well—OK, this once.’
The postman took it, tutting and shaking his head.
The rest of the morning was miserable. Nothing happened. He prowled between his parents’ upstairs front bedroom, from where he could keep an eye on any comings and goings next door, and the back landing window, which overlooked their garden. She did not come out. The sun stayed in. Now and then he wandered into his own garden hoping she might come and speak to him. But no. Neither sight nor sound. The place might as well have been deserted.
While he was scoffing beans on toast about one o’clock the telephone rang.
‘Hello? This is Rosie Bell... The girl in the garden?’
‘Oh—yes!’
‘About your letter . . . I won’t be out today . . . There’s no sun. As you probably noticed.’
‘No. I me, mean yes!’
‘So it’s all right to do your tree house.’
‘Thanks.’
‘OK . . . Bye.’
The dial tone sounded before he could reply. He slammed the receiver down and swore. If only he’d known she’d do that, he’d have prepared something to say. Now he’d messed up another chance. Damn, damn, damn.