AROUND FOUR O’CLOCK I get to a strip of shingly beach by a wooden groyne thing sloping into the river. I take my Docs off. There’s a doozy of a blister on my big toe, like a trodden-on blackberry. Yum. I take my Fear of Music LP out of my duffel bag, roll my jeans right up, and wade in to my knees. The curving river’s cool as tap water and the sun’s got a punch to it, but not as hard as it was when I left the crazy old woman fishing. Then I frisbee the LP as hard and far as I can. It’s not specially aerodynamic, and flies upwards till the inner sleeve with the record in drops out, plops into the water. The black album cover falls like a wounded bird and floats for a while. Tears, more tears, seep from my aching eyes and I imagine wading over to where the record’s spiraling down now, down the slope of the riverbed, strolling through the trout and perch to the rusty bicycles and bones of drowned pirates and German airplanes and flung-away wedding rings and God knows what.
But I wade back to shore and lie down on a bed of warm shingle, next to my Docs. Dad’ll be upstairs with his feet up on the sofa: “Reckon I’ll go and pay this Costello feller a call, Kath,” he’ll be saying. Mam’ll drown her cigarette in the cold coffee at the bottom of her mug. “No, Dave. That’s what Her Ladyship wants. Ignore her Big Statement long enough, and she’ll start appreciating just how much we do for her …”
But, come tomorrow evening, Mam’ll start fretting ’bout school on Monday, ’cause once school asks where I am and why I’m not sitting the exams, she’ll be a whole load less snotty about my Big Statement. She’ll march round to Vinny’s house, all guns blazing. Mam’ll tear strips off of Vinny—good, ha!—but she still won’t know where I am. Decided. I camp out for two nights, and then see how I’m feeling. So long as I don’t buy any cigarettes, my ￡13.85 in coins is enough for two days’ worth of chip butties, apples, and Rich Tea biscuits. If I get to Rochester I could even take some money from the TSB and extend my little vacation.
A massive freighter heading downstream blasts its horn. STAR OF RIGA is written in white letters on the orange hull. Wonder if Riga’s a place, or something else. Sharon and Jacko’d know. I do a huge yawn, lie back on the clacking pebbles, and watch the wash from the massive ship lap the shingle by the shore.
Christ, I’m dead sleepy all of a sudden …
“SYKES? YOU ALIVE? Oy … Sykes.” The afternoon breaks in and it’s Where am I? and Why am I barefoot? and What the hell is Ed Brubeck doing touching my arm? I jerk it back, get up, and scuttle a couple of yards while the soles of my feet go ow ow ow on the hot pebbles and then I bang my head on the wooden groyne thing.
Ed Brubeck hasn’t moved. “That hurt.”
“I know it bloody hurt. It’s my bloody head.”
“I only wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.”
I rub my head. “Do I look like I’m dead?”
“Well, yeah, a second ago, you did, a bit.”
“Well, I’m bloody not.” I see Brubeck’s bike lying on its side with its wheel still spinning. His fishing rod’s still strapped to its crossbar. “I was just … snoozing.”
“Don’t tell me you walked here from town, Sykes?”
“No, I came by space hopper but the fecker bounced off.”
“Huh. Never had you down as the great-outdoors type.”
“I never had you down as the Good Samaritan type.”
“We live and learn.” A bird’s singing, a loopy-loony-tweety one, a mile up. Ed Brubeck pushes his black hair back from his eyes. His skin’s so tanned he could be Turkish or something. “So where are you going?”
“As far away from that shit hole as my feet can carry me.”
“Oh dear. What’s naughty Gravesend done to you now?”
I lace up my Docs. My blister hurts. “Where are you going?”
“My uncle lives thataway.” Ed Brubeck waves an arm inland. “He’s not too mobile these days and almost blind, so I go and keep him company a bit. I was cycling off to Allhallows for a bit of fishing when I saw you and …”
“Thought I’d died. Which I haven’t. Don’t let me keep you.”
He makes a suit-yourself face, and climbs up the embankment.
I call after him, “How far is it to Allhallows, Brubeck?”
He picks up his bike. “About five miles. Want a backie?”
I think of Vinny and his Norton and shake my head. He mounts his bike, poser-style, and he’s gone. I scoop up a fistful of stones and fling it over the water, hard and angry.
A SPECK-SIZED ED Brubeck vanishes behind a clump of pointy trees way up ahead. He didn’t look back. Wish I’d said yes to his offer, now. My knees are stiff and my feet are two giant throbs and my ankles feel like they’ve been attacked with tiny drills. Five miles at this rate’ll take me forever. But Ed Brubeck’s a guy, like Vinny’s a guy, and guys are all sperm-guns. My stomach growls with dry hunger. Green tea’s great while you’re drinking it, but it makes you pee like a racehorse, and now my mouth feels like a dying rat crapped in it. Ed Brubeck’s a guy, yes, but he’s not a total tosser. Last week he got into an argument with Mrs. Binkirk, our RE teacher, and got sent to Mr. Nixon for calling her “Bigot of the Year.” A grown-up insult, that. People are icebergs, with just a bit you can see and loads you can’t. I try not to think about Vinny, but I do, and remember how only this morning I dreamt of starting a band with him. Up ahead, from behind the clump of pointy trees, comes a speck-sized Ed Brubeck, cycling back my way. Probably he’s decided it’s too late to fish, and he’s heading back to Gravesend. He grows bigger and bigger until he’s life-sized, and does a show-offy skid-turn that reminds me he’s still a boy as well as a guy. His eyes are white in his dark face. “Why don’t you get on, Sykes?” He slaps his bike saddle. “Allhallow’s miles. It’ll be dark before you get there.”
We wobble along the track at a decent clip. Whenever we go over a bump Brubeck says, “You okay?” and I tell him, “Yeah.” The sea breeze and bike breeze slip up my sleeves and stroke my front like a pervy Mr. Tickle. Sweat’s gluing Brubeck’s T-shirt to his back. I refuse to think ’bout Vinny’s sweat, and Stella’s … My heart cracks again and goo dribbles out and stings, like Dettol on a graze. I grip the bike rack with both hands, but then the track gets rucklier so I steady myself by hooking one thumb through a belt loop on Brubeck’s jeans. Probably Brubeck’s getting a hard-on from this, but it’s his problem, not mine.
Fluffy lambs are nibbling grass. Ewes watch us, like we’re planning to serve up their babies with sprouts and mash.
We scare birds on stilts with spoony beaks; they skim off across the river. Their wing tips touch the water, sending out circles.
Here the Thames is turning into the sea and Essex is turning gold. That smudge is Canvey Island; farther on, Southend.
The English Channel’s Biro-blue; the sky’s the blue of snooker chalk. We judder across a footbridge over a rusty creek, half-marsh, half-dune, inland: WELCOME TO THE ISLE OF GRAIN.
It’s not a real island, mind. Once upon a time, perhaps.
That loony, loopy, tweety bird’s followed us. Must of.
ALLHALLOWS-ON-SEA’S BASICALLY A big holiday park spilling up to the shorefront from a nothingy village behind. It’s all rows of caravans and those oblong cabins on little stilts they call trailer homes in American films. There’s half-naked kids and totally naked toddlers all over the shop, firing water pistols and playing Swingball and running about. Half-sloshed mums’re rolling their eyes at sun-pinked dads burning bangers on barbecues. I try to eat the smoke. “Dunno about you,” says Brubeck, “but I’m starving.”
Too enthusiastically I say, “Just a bit,” so he parks his bike at the fish-and-chip place, next to Lazy Rolf’s Krazy Golf. Brubeck orders cod and chips, which is two pounds, but I just order chips ’cause it’s only fifty p. But then Brubeck tells the bloke at the counter, “Two cod and chips, please,” and hands over a fiver, and the bloke glances at me and gives Brubeck that nice-one-son look that men give each other, which pisses me off ’cause me and Brubeck aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend and we’re not bloody going to be, however many battered cods he gives me. Brubeck gets us two cans of Coke too and notices my face. “It’s only fish and chips—no strings attached.”
“You’re damn right there’s no strings attached.” It comes out spikier than I meant. “But thanks.”
We walk past the last cabin and on a bit to a concrete shelter, just on the lip of the dunes. A whiff of wee leaks through the slitted window but Brubeck climbs onto its low, flat roof. “This is a pillbox,” he says. “They were machine-gun posts during the war, in case the Germans invaded. There’s still hundreds of them around, if you keep your eyes peeled. This is peace, if you think about it—machine-gun nests being used as picnic tables.” I look at him: You’d never dare say something that clever at school. I scramble up on my own and take in the view. Southend’s across the wider-than-a-mile mouth of the Thames and the other way I can see Sheerness docks on the Isle of Sheppey. Then we open our Cokes and I peel off the ring carefully to put in the can after. They slice open dogs’ paw-pads. Brubeck holds his can towards me so I clunk it, like it’s a wineglass, but I don’t meet his eyes in case he gets any ideas, and we drink. My first gulp’s a booom of freezing fizz. The chips are warm and vinegary and the batter’s hot in our fingers as we pull it back to get at the fat flakes of cod. “It tastes great,” I say. “Cheers.”
“Not as good as a Manchester chipper,” says Brubeck.
A stunt kite writes on the blue with its pink tail.
I FILL MY lungs with one of Brubeck’s Dunhills. That’s better. Then I think of Stella Yearwood and Vinny smoking his Marlboros in bed, and suddenly I have to pretend I’ve got something in my eye. To distract myself, I ask Brubeck, “So who’s this uncle of yours, then? The one you visited earlier.”
“Uncle Norm. My mum’s brother. Used to be a crane operator at Blue Circle Cement, but he’s stopped working. He’s going blind.”
I take another deep drag. “That’s awful. Poor guy.”
“Uncle Norm says, ‘Pity is a form of abuse.’ ”
“Is he completely blind, or just partly, or …”
“He’s lost about three-quarters of his sight in both eyes, and the rest’s going. What gets him down most is that he can’t read the papers anymore. It’s like searching for your keys in dirty snow, he says. So most Saturdays I cycle out to his bungalow and read him pieces from the Guardian. Then he talks about Thatcher versus the unions, why the Russians are in Afghanistan, why the CIA are taking down democratic governments in Latin America.”
“Sounds like school,” I say.
Brubeck shakes his head. “Most of our teachers just want to get home by four and retire by sixty. But my uncle Norm loves talking and thinking and he wants you to love it too. He’s sharp as a razor. Then my aunt makes a big late lunch, and my uncle nods off, and I go fishing, if the weather’s nice. Unless I see someone from my class at school lying dead on the beach.” He stubs out his cigarette on the concrete. “So. What’s your story, Sykes?”
“What do you mean, what’s my story?”
“At eight forty-five I see you walking up Queen Street, ducking—”
“You saw me?”
“Yep—ducking into the Indoor Market, but seven hours later the target is sighted ten miles east of Gravesend, along the river.”
“What is this? Ed Brubeck, Private Investigator?”
A little tailless dog that’s all waggling bum comes up. Brubeck chucks it a chip. “If I was a detective, I’d suspect boyfriend trouble.”
My voice goes sharp. “None of your business.”
“This is true. But the tosser’s not worth it, whoever he is.”
Scowling, I drop the dog a chip. He scoffs it so hungrily I wonder if he’s a stray. Like me.
Brubeck makes a funnel out of his chip paper to pour the crispy bits into his mouth. “You planning on going back to town tonight?”
I abort a groan. Gravesend’s a black cloud. Vinny and Stella and Mam are in it. Are it. My watch says 18:19 and the Captain Marlow’ll be cheerful and chattery as the evening regulars drift in. Upstairs Jacko and Sharon’ll be sat on the sofa watching The A-Team with cheese thingies and a slab of chocolate cake. I’d like to be there, but what about Mam’s slap? “No,” I tell Brubeck, “I’m not.”
“It’ll be dark in three hours. Not a lot of time to find a circus to run away with.”
The dune grass sways. Clouds’re unrolling across the sky from France. I put my jacket on. “Maybe I’ll find a nice cozy pillbox. One that’s not used to pee in. Or a barn.”
Here come seagulls on boingy elastic, scrawking for chips too. Brubeck stands up and flaps his arms at the gulls like the Mad Prince of Allhallows-on-Sea to make them scatter, just for the hell of it. “Maybe I know somewhere better.”