WE’RE CYCLING ALONG a proper road again. Big fields in the pancake-flat arse-end of nowhere, with long black shadows. Brubeck’s being all mysterious ’bout where we’re going—“Either you trust me, Sykes, or you don’t”—but he says it’s warm, dry, and safe and he’s stayed there himself five or six times when he’s been out night-fishing, so I’ll go along with it, for now. He says he’ll head off home after Gravesend. That’s the problem with boys: They tend to help you only ’cause they fancy you, but there’s no unembarrassing way to find out their real motives till it’s too late. Ed Brubeck seems okay, and he spends his Saturday afternoons reading for a blind uncle, but thanks to bloody Vinny and Stella, I’m not so sure if I’m a good judge of character. With night coming on, though, I don’t have much choice. We pass a massive factory. I’m ’bout to ask Brubeck what they make there when he tells me it’s Grain Power Station and it provides electricity for Gravesend and half of southeast London.
“Yeah, I know,” I lie.
THE CHURCH IS stumpy with a tower that’s got arrow-slits and it’s gold in the last light. The wood sounds like never-ending waves, with rooks tumbling about like black socks in a dryer. ST MARY HOO PARISH CHURCH says a sign, with the vicar’s phone number underneath. The village of Saint Mary Hoo is up ahead, but it’s really just a few old houses and a pub where two lanes meet. “The bedding’s basic,” says Brubeck, as we get off the bike, “but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit handle security, and at zero quid a night, it’s priced competitively.”
Does he mean the church? “You’re joking, right?”
“Check-out’s seven sharp or the management get shirty.”
Yes, he means the church. I make a dubious face.
Brubeck makes a face that says, Take it or leave it.
I’ll have to take it. The Kent marshes are not dotted with cozy barns full of warm straw, like in Little House on the Prairie. The only one I’ve seen was a corrugated-iron job a few miles back, guarded by two Dobermans with rabies. “Don’t they lock churches?”
Brubeck says, “Yeah,” in the same way I’d say, “So?” After checking no one’s around, he wheels his bike into the graveyard. He hides it between dark brushy trees and the wall, then leads me to the porch. Confetti’s piled up in dirty drifts. “Keep an eye on the gate,” he tells me. From his pocket he digs out a leather purse-thing and inside’s a dangly row of spindly keys and an L-shaped piece of thin metal. One last look at the lane, then he pokes a key into the lock, and jiggles it a bit.
I feel a lurch of fear we’ll get caught. “Where did you learn to break into buildings?”
“It wasn’t footy or repairing punctures that Dad taught me.”
“We could get done for this! It’s called, it’s called—”
“Breaking and entering. That’s why you keep your eyes peeled.”
“But what am I s’posed to do exactly if somebody comes?”
“Act embarrassed, like we’ve been caught snogging.”
“Uh—I don’t think so, Ed Brubeck.”
He does a half-hiss half-laugh. “Act it, I said. Relax, you only get nicked if the cops can prove you picked the lock. If you don’t confess, and if you’re careful not to bugger the mechanism …” he feeds a skeleton key into the keyhole, “… then who’s to say you didn’t just happen along, find the door left ajar, and go in to satisfy your interest in Saxon church architecture? That’s our story, by the way, just in case.” Brubeck’s got his ear against the lock as he’s twizzling. “Though I’ve stayed here three Saturday nights since Easter and not heard a dickie-bird. Plus it’s not like we’re taking anything. Plus you’re a girl, so just sob your eyes out and do the ‘Please, Mr. Vicar, I’m running away from my violent stepfather’ bit and, chances are, you’ll walk away with a cup of tea and a Penguin biscuit.” Brubeck holds up a hand for hush: a click. “Got it.” The church door swings open with the perfect Transylvanian hinge-creak.
Inside, Saint Mary Hoo’s Church smells of charity shops, and the stained-glass gloom’s all fruit-salady. The walls’re thick as a nuclear bunker and the thunk when Brubeck shuts us in echoes all around, like a dungeon. The roof’s all beams and timbers. We walk down the short aisle, past the ten or twelve pews. The pulpit’s wooden, the font’s stone, the organ’s like a fancy piano with exhaust pipes. The lectern-thingy must be fake gold, or a burglar—Brubeck’s dad, for example—would’ve swiped it long ago. We reach the altar table and look up at the window showing the crucifixion. A dove in the stained-glass sky has spokes coming off it. The Marys, two disciples, and a Roman at the foot of the cross look like they’re discussing whether it’s starting to rain or not. Brubeck asks, “You’re Catholic, right?”
I’m surprised he’s ever thought ’bout this. “My mum’s Irish.”
“So do you believe in heaven and God and that?”
I stopped going to church last year; that was me and Mam’s biggest row till this morning. “I sort of developed an allergy.”
“My uncle Norm says religion’s ‘spiritual paracetamol,’ and in a way I hope he’s right. Unless God issues personality transplants when you arrive, heaven’d mean a never-ending family reunion with the likes of my uncle Trev. I can’t think of anything more hellish.”
“So Uncle Trev’s no Uncle Norm, then?”
“Chalk and cheese. Uncle Trev’s my dad’s older brother. ‘The Brains of the Operation,’ he says, which is true enough: He’s got brains enough to get losers like Dad to do the dirty work. Uncle Trev fences the merchandise if the job’s a success, does his Mr. Nonstick Frying Pan when it goes belly-up. He even tried it on with my mum after Dad got sent down, which is partly why we moved south.”
“Sounds a total scuzzball.”
“Yep, that’s Uncle Trev.” The psychedelic light on Brubeck’s face dims as the sun fades. “Mind you, if I was dying in a hospice, maybe I’d want all the spiritual paracetamol I could get my hands on.”
I put my hand on the altar rail. “What if … what if heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you’re dying of thirst, or when someone’s nice to you for no reason, or …” Mam’s pancakes with Mars Bar sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, “Sleep tight don’t let the bedbugs bite”; or Jacko and Sharon singing “For She’s a Squishy Marshmallow” instead of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it’s not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. “S’pose heaven’s not like a painting that’s just hanging there forever, but more like … like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you’re alive, from passing cars, or … upstairs windows when you’re lost …”
Brubeck’s looking at me like he’s really listening.
And, feck it, I’m blushing. “What’re you looking at?”
Before he can answer, a key rattles in the door.
Slow-motion seconds lurch by me, like a conga of pissheads, and Brubeck and me are Laurel and Hardy and Starsky and Hutch and two halves of a pantomime horse, and he bundles me through a wooden door I’d not noticed behind the organ, into this odd-shaped room with a high ceiling and a ladder going up to a trapdoor. I think it’s called a vestry, this room, and the ladder must lead to the bell tower. Brubeck listens through the door crack; there’s no other way out, only a cupboard thing in the corner. Coming our way are at least two men’s voices; I think I hear a third, a woman. Shit. Brubeck and me look at each other. Our choices are: Stay here and try to talk our way out; hide in the cupboard; or squirrel it up the ladder and hope the trapdoor opens for us, and whoever’s coming doesn’t follow. We probably wouldn’t make it up the ladder now. Suddenly Brubeck’s bundling me into the cupboard, then he gets in too and pulls the door shut the best he can. It’s smaller than it looked from the outside; it’s like hiding yourself in half a vertical coffin—with a boy you have no interest in being crushed up against. Brubeck pulls the door shut …
“But the man believes he’s the Second Comin’ of Fidel soddin’ Castro!” The voices enter the vestry. “Love Maggie Thatcher or loathe her, and there’s plenty who do both, she did win an election, which Arthur Scargill hasn’t. He didn’t even ballot his own union.”
“None of that’s the point,” says a Londoner. “This strike’s about the future. That’s why the government’s using every dirty trick in the book—MI5 spies, lies in the media, no benefits for miners’ families … Mark my words, if the miners lose, your children’ll be working Victorian hours for Victorian wages.”
Brubeck’s kneecap in my thigh’s giving me a slow dead leg.
I swivel a bit; his ow ow ow is quieter than a whisper.
“We can’t keep dying industries alive forever,” the yokel’s arguing back, “that’s the point. Otherwise we’d still be forkin’ out for castle builders or canal diggers or druids. Scargill’s arguing for the economics of Fantasy Island and the politics of Bullshit Mountain.”
I feel Brubeck’s chest, rising and falling against my back.
“Ever been to a mining town?” asks the Londoner. “You can’t go now ’cause the fuzz won’t let you near, but when the mine goes, the town dies. Wales and the north ain’t the south, Yorkshire ain’t Kent, and energy ain’t just another industry. Energy’s security. The North Sea oil fields won’t last forever, and then what?”
“A quality debate, gents,” says the woman, “but the bells?”
Feet clop up a wooden ladder; lucky we didn’t choose the bell tower. A minute goes by. Still no sound from the vestry. I think all three’ve gone up. I shift a fraction and Brubeck gasps in pain. I risk whispering, “Are you okay?”
“No. You’re crushing my nuts, since you asked.”
“You can adopt.” I try to give him more room, but there isn’t any. “Think we should make a run for it?”
“Perhaps a silent creep, once the—”
The stuffy darkness booms with bells. Brubeck opens the door—fresher air floods in—half hobbles out, then helps me climb out. High above, two chubby calves are dangling down through the hatch. We tiptoe to the door, like a pair of total wallies from Scooby-Doo …
ME AND BRUBECK leg it down the lane, like we’ve escaped from Colditz. The bells sound sloshy and shiny in the blue dark. I get a stitch so we stop at a bench by the village sign. “Typical,” says Brubeck. “I want to show off my ‘How to Survive in the Wild’ skills, and it’s the Invasion of the Wurzels instead. I need a fag. You?”
“Okay. Will they be ding-donging for a while?”
“Guess so.” Brubeck hands me a cigarette and holds out a lighter; I dip the tip in the flame. “I’ll let you back in when they’ve gone. Yale locks are a cinch, even in the dark.”
“But shouldn’t you be getting home?”
“I’ll call my mum from the phone box by the pub and say I’m staying out night-fishing after all. Little white lie.”
I need his help, but I’m nervous ’bout a price tag.
“Don’t worry, Sykes. My intentions are honorable.”
I think of Vinny Costello and flinch. “Good.”
“Guys don’t just think ’bout getting off with girls, y’know.”
I fire a beam of smoke straight at Brubeck’s face, so he has to squint and look away. “I’ve got an older brother,” I tell him. We’re by an overgrown orchard, so when we’ve finished our cigarettes we climb in and scrump a few unripe apples. There’s a brick wall to clamber up. The apples are tart as limes, but good after an oily dinner. Lights blink on the power station we passed earlier. “Out thataway,” Brubeck chucks an apple core in the general direction, “past them hazy lights on the Isle of Sheppey, there’s a fruit farm, Gabriel Harty’s. I worked the strawberry season there last year and made twenty-five quid a day. There’s dorms for the pickers, and once the exams are over, I’m going back. I’m saving for an InterRail in August.”
“What’s an InterRail?”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“A train pass. You pay a hundred and thirty quid and then you can travel all over Europe, for a month, for free. Second-class, but still. From the tip of Portugal to the top of Norway. Eastern-bloc countries too, Yugoslavia and places. The Berlin Wall. Istanbul. In Istanbul, there’s this bridge, right. One side’s in Europe and the other’s in Asia. I’m going to walk across it.”
Far away, a lonely dog barks, or perhaps a fox.
I ask, “What do you do in all these countries?”
“Look around. Walk. Find a cheap bed. Eat what the locals eat. Find a cheap beer. Try not to get fleeced. Talk. Pick up a few words in the local lingo. Just be there, y’know? Sometimes,” Brubeck bites into an apple, “sometimes I want to be everywhere, all at once, so badly I could just …” Brubeck mimes a bomb going off in his ribcage. “Do you never get that feeling?”
A bat flaps by, like it’s on a string in a naff vampire film.
“Not really, if I’m honest. The furthest I’ve ever been’s Ireland, to see my mum’s relatives in Cork.”
“What’s it like?”
“Different. It’s not all checkpoints and bombs like up north, though the Troubles are still in the air a bit, and it’s best to shut up about politics. They hate Thatcher ’cause of Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers. I’ve got this one great-aunt, my mam’s aunt Eilísh—she’s brilliant. She keeps hens and has a gun in her coal hole, and when she was younger she cycled all the way to Kathmandu. Really, she did. She felt that wanna-be-everywhere boom thing, for sure. I’ve seen photos and newspaper cuttings and stuff. She lives on this long headland near Bantry—the Sheep’s Head peninsula. It’s like the edge of the world. There’s nothing there, no shops or anything, but”—there’s not many people I’d admit this to—“I really loved it.”
There’s a moon sharp enough to cut your finger on.
We say nothing for a bit, but it’s not an awkward nothing. Then Brubeck says, “D’you know ’bout the second umbilical cord, Sykes?”
I can’t make out his face anymore. “You what?”
“When you’re a baby in the womb, there’s this cord—”
“I know what an umbilical cord is, thanks. But a second one?”
“Well, psychologists say there’s a second umbilical cord, an invisible one, an emotional one, which ties you to your parents for the whole time you’re a kid. Then, one day, you have a row with your mum if you’re a girl, or your dad if you’re a boy, and that argument cuts your second cord. Then, and only then, are you ready to go off into the big wide world and be an adult on your own terms. It’s like a rite-of-passage thing.”
“I argue with my mam, like, daily. She treats me like I’m ten.”
Brubeck lights another fag, takes a drag, and passes it to me. “I’m talking a bigger, nastier fight. Afterwards you know it happened. You’re not the kid you were.”
“And you’re sharing these pearls of wisdom with me why?”
He lines up his answer carefully. “If you’re running off because your dad’s a petty crim who beats your mum up and throws you downstairs when you try to stop him, then running away’s the clever thing to do. Go. I’ll give you my InterRail money. But if you’re sat on this wall tonight just because your umbilical cord got snipped, then, yeah, it hurts, but it had to happen. Cut your mum a bit of slack. It’s just a part of growing up. You shouldn’t be punishing her for it.”
“She slapped me.”
“Bet she feels like shit about it now.”
“You don’t even know her!”
“Are you sure you do, Sykes?”
“What’s that s’posed to bloody mean?”
Brubeck lets it drop. So I let it drop too.
? ? ?
THE CHURCH IS quiet as the grave. Brubeck’s asleep in a nest of dusty cushions. We’re up on this gallery thing along the back wall, so we won’t be spotted if any Satan worshipers drop by for a black mass. My calves are sore, my blister’s throbbing, and my mind keeps rewinding to the scene with Vinny and Stella. Wasn’t I good enough at sex? Didn’t I dress right, talk right, like the right music?
22:58, glows my Timex. The maddest minutes of the week at the Captain Marlow are right now: last orders on a Saturday night. Mam, Dad, and Glenda, who just works weekends, will be going full pelt; a roaring wall of drinkers flapping fivers and tenners through the fog of smoke and the racket of chatter, shouts, laughs, curses, flirting … Nobody’ll care where Holly’s ended up tonight. On the jukebox “Daydream Believer” or “Rockin’ All Over the World” or “American Pie” will be booming through the building. Sharon’s fallen asleep with her flashlight on under the blanket. Jacko’s asleep with people murmuring foreign languages on his radio. Up in my room, my bed’s unmade, my schoolbag’s slung over my chair. A basket of washed laundry’s just inside the door, where Mam puts it when she’s pissed off with me. Which is most days now. The big glow of Essex at night’ll be shining orangy light across the river, through my undrawn curtains, over the Zenyattà Mondatta and The Smiths posters I scavved from the Magic Bus. But I’m not going to start missing my room now.
No fecking way.