Fossils, page 2
You can take it off here. She looked at him, an expectant expression on her face.
He hesitated, looking in both directions along the canal. If you see my face, you’ll be a witness. You should buzz off now. Don’t wanna be getting mixed up in this.
How ungrateful. She folded her arms and leaned against the barrel of the bridge. Three ducks appeared, swimming idly near to where they stood. Sherrie-Lee watched them, waiting.
He crouched down near to Sherrie-Lee, his elbows resting on his thighs. He chewed at his thumbnail.
Well, Sherrie-Lee said.
I am grateful. It’s just not safe. You should go home. He looked about him again, anxious to get rid of this weird kid.
I don’t have a home, she said, looking down in a contrived pose of forlornness.
He seemed to pause and look thoughtful for a minute. He was tiring quickly as the adrenaline dissipated. She was a skinny runt of a thing, with badly cut hair, fluffed up a bit at the back from lack of brushing. How old are you anyway?
Twelve.
Shouldn’t you be in school?
School’s over for the summer, she said. I’m already mixed up in it, by the way. I helped you, remember. I’m what’s called an accessory to the crime.
He looked at her. She was making it up as she went along. How do I know you can be trusted? he said, falling into the game.
You don’t.
What’s your name, anyway?
Zadie. What’s yours?
He hesitated, then said, Bob.
I had a cousin who was called Bob.
Was? Where is he now? He asked the question automatically; he didn’t really want to know. He’d become used to the idea of it as a fake name and he couldn’t imagine anyone having it for their real name.
I don’t know. We haven’t seen him for a long time.
Things kept rolling as though he had no control over them. Like he was trapped in some film. He was in it but had no say in what was happening. It started to feel as though he was already stuck with this kid. She wasn’t going anywhere. He stood up and stepped towards the edge of the canal. In the shadow of the bridge, he could see about a foot into the depths, and could make out the outline of a clear plastic builder’s bag half-submerged in weeds. Looking down, the balaclava obscured part of his vision and rubbed against his lower eyelids. He was overheating and felt claustrophobic inside it. He pulled and rolled the balaclava upwards and wiped at the sweat on his reddened skin. His brown hair was flat and damp and pressed against his head. He stuffed the balaclava into the pocket of his jeans.
You walk out first. In case a camera picks you up on the next stretch. They’ll be looking for a man and a girl. I’ll catch you up.
Not if I can help it, he muttered just under his breath, and he moved off.
She watched him as he strode away. She thought that she would count slowly to fifty and then follow him. That would leave enough of a gap between them. The canal looked narrow as it stretched ahead. It reflected the blue of the sky and the shapes of all the clouds. The surface was small and yet what it reflected was huge. A whole lot bigger than itself. The whole sky was reflected in its surface. Only at the edges, where the shadow of the side protected its surface from the light, did it show its true colour.
2
They walked by the old mill that bordered the edge of town, with its broken windows reflecting fragments of sky in sharp angular shapes. Its walls were stained a dark green in places, where the guttering was missing. Buddleia clung to the sides, roots penetrating the spaces between bricks. Into the scrubland, they passed a car with wheels and doors removed. Bindweed climbed and twisted into it. Further on, travellers’ caravans, the old type and modern ones, were parked up on the verges, on their way to or from Appleby Fair. The old caravans were rounded and painted with flowers and patterns. Their piebald horses grazed in the field next to them. A man carried a large see-through plastic container of water to the back of one of the caravans. Each of them observed all this as they passed. They had gone into their own silences and Sherrie-Lee had stopped trying to make conversation.
Sherrie-Lee thought about the name Bob. You could just about bet that this was as likely his real name as Zadie was hers. What did it matter, anyway – nobody’s name ever really fitted anyone. Her sister was called Grace, for fuck’s sake, and she was about as graceful as a bag of potatoes, with a mouth on her that was even less deserving of the name. And if that wasn’t enough, Grace’s boyfriend, Luke, had a smelly bulldog whose name was Pearl. It sometimes made her smile thinking of Luke with his dog called Pearl and his girlfriend called Grace. She hated too her own name, Sherrie-Lee. She had a particular hatred for double-barrelled names. She had noticed that people with double-barrelled surnames were always quite posh. One name wasn’t enough for them. They were too important for that. People wanting to push their poshness in your face so you’d know they were better than you. But the opposite was true with double first names. They were always poor people’s names. Silly and sad, they seemed to Sherrie-Lee. The way people said them out loud, the last syllable raised or drawn out, and you would know how someone felt about you just by hearing them speak your name.
The sky was blue. An all-one-colour-blue all the way to the edges. A sky blue. No messing about. No dithering about what colour it was. A summer sky for a summer day, like you get on a postcard. If she’d gone to school she wouldn’t be getting all this fresh air and feeling the sun on her face. That was much better than learning about Henry VIII and all his wives. She was quite good at school stuff when she put her mind to it, but it tried her patience, most of the things they had to learn. The irrelevance of it all. History was just the history of rich people: there was never any history about ordinary people, as though they weren’t important enough, or as though nothing ever happened to them. Only when history touched World War One and World War Two did it look at ordinary people, because then they were needed as soldiers, as cannon fodder. History was the subject she found most annoying. The one that could be the most interesting but wasn’t. Refusing all the things that could be interesting, for some reason of its own.
The sunlight caught the bottom edge of a tin can stuck into the ground and reflected back into her eyes. She had a visual flash of being in the bank. A rush of postponed fear surged inside her and was gone, though it left her with thoughts of what might have happened. What might have happened to the others they left behind. Leaving with one of the bank robbers. Almost like going to the heart of it was a way of conquering that fear. Even though it seemed from the beginning that it was Prince Charles who was the one you needed to keep an eye on. The one to watch. Not just because he was the one with the gun. There was something shifty about him. All these thoughts were squashed through Sherrie-Lee’s mind, like playdough through a press. Changing shape. Existing briefly, then disappearing.
Her legs had started to ache. She kept it to herself. Instead, the word ‘traipsing’ came into her head. That was what she was doing. It was a funny word if you thought about it. Various sentences attached themselves to her thoughts. She traipsed across the fields behind Bob. Bob led the way as they traipsed over the field. Traipsing across the fields, one behind the other. It was like in those comprehension tests they did at school, which she never fully understood, where you had to choose the correct sentence to fit in the gap, but all the sentences meant the same thing and whichever one you chose ended up being the wrong one. It didn’t bother her getting these wrong because she was good at almost everything else. It was the kids that got everything wrong that she felt sorry for. The pointlessness of the exercises just seemed like a trap to catch them out. Green marking scrawled on their work; green dots and crosses filling their answer sheets and exercise books. It was pitiful even for Sherrie-Lee to see.
On a long street, Bob turned off the pavement and sat down on the step, watching as Sherrie-Lee caught up with him. The twenty or so paces that had grown between them made her seem even smaller. She squinted at him in the glare of the sunlight and plonked herself on the step beside him. Are we there, then? she asked.
Where?
Is this where you live? Looks nice. She looked up at him, and then looked down at her trainers, straightening her feet so that they were parallel to each other on the step.
Look, you can come in for a tea and a bite to eat, he relented. He wanted to get inside his flat, get out of the sunlight. Since you’ve tagged along all this way. Then you’ll have to leave. Okay?
Even as the words were exiting his mouth, he was thinking against it. He now regretted saying it, feeling that just the fact of letting her through the door would mean that the whole thing was going to drag on, that she would be shadowing him for longer. Though it was true enough what she had said an hour or so ago. The cameras would have picked up her face, would identify her and trace her. She needed to hide out for a day or two. They had not spoken since, though he kept coming back to her reasoning as his mind skated in and out of what had happened: the bright light of the bank through the prickled heat of the balaclava, the adrenaline, the gunshot, the look on the teller’s face.
They had walked for miles, through a convoluted route, turning a two-mile trek into five or six. He was only vaguely aware of his surroundings in all that time. He thought she would tire of it and get lost, but she kept on following like a needy puppy. Now she knew where he lived too. He had kept telling her to go home, but the poor kid didn’t seem to have anywhere to go home to. Seemed mad in this day and age, but then he thought of all the people he’d met inside who had lived like that as kids. One man he knew left home at ten years old and lived under an upturned boat in the same village as his parents, way out in the sticks. People used to put food out for him, the way you would for a stray dog. But that was a good few years ago. The guy had been older than he was now when they first met. He had even envied him at the time. Envied his freedom from other people. He didn’t have the love of a mother to disappoint. It was easier for men who had nobody on the outside. They just had themselves to think about, they didn’t have to feel bad for the people they’d let down. They could live entirely on their own terms.
Putting his key into the lock, he felt like an animal about to enter the refuge of its cave. And at the same time, he was conscious of himself, in a nagging way, of everything catching up with him, like he was entering some narrowing tunnel and was not sure when or if he would come out of the other side.
Not much of a place, is it? she said as she moved from the living room to the doorway of the small kitchen.
You didn’t have to come in.
He walked to the window and drew the curtains and then spent a few minutes looking out of the window from behind the edge of the curtain. There were a few parked cars outside, but they were all empty and he felt they were familiar to the street. None of the others knew where he lived, or anything about him, but still he felt like someone could turn up. It wouldn’t be hard to find him if they really wanted to. Though it wouldn’t be yet. They would wait it out in case he was tailed, by someone other than this weird kid. It calmed him when he reasoned like this. Calmed the surface of things. And for a minute after his thoughts had stopped articulating themselves came a calm that spread out like the stillness of water. Then the doubts would blow in again, agitating the surface. There was always some unforeseen thing. One doubt laid itself on top of another. Still at first, then tapping against each other. Faster and faster. Like divining rods going at it. Demented. Reaching over the source of water.
He felt drained. Another reason why it would’ve been better to be alone. He could’ve just crashed out on the sofa. Not thought about anybody else. Pass out. Not think. That’s what he really needed to do.
She sat down on the armchair, looking about the room. Bob glanced out again behind the edge of the curtains. They were thick and heavy and the room was cast into semi-darkness. There was only a dim orangey light coming through them, and two bright lines at either side where the light still got in. And from the other side of the room came a little light from the small kitchen window, otherwise it was all shadows.
Bob turned on the TV and went through a set of wooden, saloon-style doors into a kitchenette. Checking the kettle had water in it, he switched it on, and when he turned round Sherrie-Lee was behind him.
Cool doors, she said, swinging through and turning to admire them. They’re like cowboy doors. You know – in the films. Got anything to eat, then? She looked past him, towards the fridge.
Not much. Do you like crackers? He opened the cupboard above the kettle. There was the sticker his girlfriend, Gina, had stuck on the inside of the door. A smiling apple, skipping. The sticker read, Have you had your five-a-day?
She looked into the fridge. Not much of a cook, are you?
Nope.
There’s not even any cheese. What are we supposed to have with the crackers?
A bit fussy for someone who has nowhere else to go, aren’t you? He took out the crackers from the cupboard and put them on a plate. Then he pulled out a tin of sardines and a bottle of hot sauce.
Here. Have these with them. I don’t like cheese. He handed her the sardines and hot sauce and she carried them the short distance to the table. He passed her a plate and her tea and sat opposite her.
Do you have sugar? she asked after taking a sip of tea, grimacing at the taste.
He shook his head automatically, not really paying any attention.
Everybody likes cheese. Anyway, there’s lots of different types you know, you just have to find one you like. A cheese for every taste. Blue cheese, green cheese, red cheese.
Nope. I just don’t like cheese. Full stop. He rubbed his face with his hands and looked towards the curtained window, exhaling slowly.
There’s even a cheese made of maggot poo.
No way.
Yep. I read it in a book. Maggots eat cheese and they make more cheese out of the maggots’ poo.
He pulled a face, but felt that, if it was true, it was as good a justification for not liking cheese as any. Sometimes he got tired of having to explain it to everyone, as though not liking it was something he chose just to provoke people. Beneath all the chattering and the complaints, Zadie seemed quiet and on edge, the way she looked around the room, taking in every detail. She sometimes bit her lip like she was deep in some anxious thinking, and she looked at him as though she was unsure about something or was in the process of making an important decision. Perhaps she was one of those people that talked a lot to hide nervousness or shyness or quietness, or whatever it was she wanted to keep hidden. The light thrown from the kitchen window reached up to where she was sitting at the kitchen side of the table. She had thin light brown hair that held limply against her head, and freckled, pale skin. Even her skin was thin. You could see the small blue lines of her veins beneath her eyes and at her temples. It showed all different colours underneath, purple blotches, a salmony colour too, on her cheeks. Almost like you could see the flesh underneath. Sometimes her eyes looked a kind of brown, then in a different light they looked green. Her nails were bitten down to the quick, and the nail beds bulged with a red soreness from too much biting at them. The cuffs of her thin grey jacket were scuffed and layered with dirt.
You shouldn’t really walk off with strangers, you know. Didn’t anyone ever tell you?
She darted him a look, lowering the hand that had been about to put a cracker to her mouth.
You’re alright here. I’m not one of those creeps.
She looked directly at him as though weighing him up and then glanced towards the TV and resumed eating the cracker.
She seemed hungry, the way she spooned on the sardines and ate the crackers. She had already had four before he had eaten his first one. She didn’t touch the hot sauce.
Do you think the other guy got away? She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, smearing a cracker crumb to her left cheek.
Which guy? he said without thinking. They hadn’t talked about what happened at the bank the whole time they had been walking around. Not about the details of what happened.
Hmm, let me see. The real Prince Charles maybe, or the other one in the bank? Duh, the other bank robber. Stupid.
I don’t like to be called stupid.
She looked down, embarrassed. In the afternoon light, Bob could see how her forehead and neck reddened, but her cheeks remained the same blotchy mismatch of colours. She said sorry after a minute or so.
He probably left too.
Do you think he shot anyone? Her eyes widened and there was red sauce on her chin where the sardines had dripped.
No. The bullet hit the glass, and then probably went into the wall at the back.
But there was another shot. As we were leaving.
I didn’t hear no more shots. He frowned at the possibility, feeling the edges of it curl up from the hollow of his stomach.
There was. How come you didn’t hear?
He shrugged, impaling a piece of sardine on the end of a knife. He tried thinking back, but he didn’t remember hearing another shot. He thought the hollowness had been from hunger. He had been too nervous to eat breakfast. But he wasn’t hungry anymore.
He a friend of yours?
No. I don’t know him. Called himself Dom for this job. It was organised by someone else. I met him yesterday to go over the plan. Everyone had a false name. No one knows anything about anybody. That way, someone gets caught, they don’t know nothing about anybody. He thought also that was why he could just leave like that, he didn’t even know the guy. Didn’t owe him anything.
