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 owon 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 looklike 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 walkedhere 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 youdown 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 yougoing?”
“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, “ Twocod 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 booomof 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.”