MY WATCH SAYS it’s one o’clock. Far behind me, stick-men are fishing in the shallows off Shornemead Fort. Up ahead’s a gravel pit, with a big cone of stone and a conveyor belt feeding a barge. I can see Cliffe Fort, too, with windows like empty eye sockets. Old Mr. Sharkey says it used to house antiaircraft batteries in the war, and when people in Gravesend heard the big guns, they knew they had sixty seconds—tops—to get into their air-raid shelters under the stairs or down the garden. Wish a bomb’d fall on a certain house in Peacock Street, right now. Bet they’re scoffing pizza for lunch—Vinny lives on pizza ’cause he can’t be arsed to cook. Bet they’re laughing about me. I wonder if Stella stayed over last night. You just fall in love with each other, I thought, and that’s all there is to it. Stupid. Stupid!I kick a stone but it’s not a stone, it’s a little outcrop of rock that mashes my toe. Pain draws a jagged line up to my brain. And now my eyes are hot and watering—where’s all the water coming from, f’Chrissakes? The only water I’ve drunk today is when I cleaned my teeth and the milk on my Weetabix. My tongue’s like that oasis stuff they use for flower arranging. My duffel bag’s rubbing a sore patch on my shoulder. My heart’s a clubbed baby seal. My stomach must be empty, but I’m too miserable to feel it yet. I’m not turning round and going home, though. No bloody way.
BY THREE O’CLOCK, my whole head’s parched, not just my mouth. I’ve never walked so far in my life, I reckon. There’s no sign of a shop or even a house where I can ask for a glass of water. Then I notice a small woman fishing off the end of a jetty thing, like she’s sort of sketched into the corner where nobody’ll spot her. She’s a long stone-throw away, but I see her fill a cup from a flask. I’d never normally do this but I’m sothirsty that I walk down the embankment and along the jetty up to her, clomping my feet on the old wooden planks so as not to scare her. “ ’Scuse me, but could you spare a drop of water? Please?”
She doesn’t even look round. “Cold tea do you?” Her croaky voice sounds from somewhere hot.
“That’d be great, thanks. I’m not fussy.”
“Help yourself, then, if you’re not fussy.”
So I fill the cup, not thinking about germs or anything. It’s not normal tea but it’s the most refreshing thing I’ve ever drunk, and I let the liquid swoosh all round my mouth. Now I look at her properly for the first time. Sort of elephanty eyes in a wrinkled old face, with short gray hair, a grubby safari shirt, and a leathery wide-brimmed hat that looks a hundred years old. “Good?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “It was. Tastes like grass.”
“Green tea. Lucky you’re not fussy.”
I ask, “Since when’s tea been green?”
“Since bushes made their leaves that color.”
There’s a splish of a fish. I see where it was, but not where it is. “Caught much today?”
A pause. “Five perch. One trout. A slow afternoon.”
I don’t see a bucket or anything. “Where are they?”
A bee lands on the brim of her hat. “I let them go.”
“If you don’t want the fish, why do you catch them?”
A few seconds pass. “For the quality of the conversation.”
I look around: the footpath, a brambly field, a scrubby wood, and a choked-up track. She must be taking the piss. “There’s nobody here.”
The bee’s happy where it is, even when the woman stirs herself to reel in the line. I stand off to one side as she checks the bait’s still secure on the hook. Drips of water splash the thirsty planks of the jetty. The river slurps at the shore and sloshes round the wooden pillar things. Still seated, and with an expert flick of the wrist, the old woman sends the lead weight loopy-looping away, the reel makes its zithery noise, and the weight lands in the water where it was before. Circles float outwards. Dead calm …
Then she does something really weird. She takes out a stick of chalk from her pocket and writes on a plank by her foot, MY. On the next plank along she writes, LONG. Then on the next plank, it’s the word NAME. Then the old woman puts the chalk away and goes back to her fishing.
I wait for her to explain, but she doesn’t. “What’s all that about?”
“What’s what about?”
“What you just wrote.”
“They’re instructions.”
“Instructions for who?”
“For someone many years from now.”
“But it’s chalk. It’ll wash off.”
“From the jetty, yes. Not from your memory.”
Okay, so she’s mad as a sack of ferrets. Only I don’t tell her so ’cause I’d like more of that green tea.
“Finish the tea, if you want,” she says. “You won’t find a shop until you and the boy arrive at Allhallows-on-Sea …”
“Thanks a lot.” I fill the cup. “Are you sure? This is the last of it.”
“One good turn deserves another.” She turns a crafty sniper’s eye on me. “I may need asylum.”
Asylum? She needs a mental asylum? “How d’you mean?”
“Refuge. A bolt-hole. If the First Mission fails, as I fear it must.”
Crazy people are hard work. “I’m fifteen. I don’t have an asylum, or a, uh, bolt-hole. Sorry.”
“You’re ideal. You’re unexpected. My tea for your asylum. Do we have a deal?”
Dad says the best way to handle drunks is to humor them, then dump them, and maybe the doo-lally are like drunks who never sober up. “Deal.” She nods and I drink until the sun’s a pale glow through the thin bottom of the plastic.
The old bat’s gazing away again. “Thank you, Holly.”
So I thank her back, and return to dry land. Then I turn around and go back to her. “How do you know my name?”
She doesn’t turn round. “By what name was I baptized?”
What a stupid game this is. “Esther Little.”
“And how do you know myname?”
“ ’Cause … you just told me.” Did she? Must’ve.
“That’s that settled, then.” And that was Esther Little’s final word.
· · ·
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 MusicLP 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 Ј13.85 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.