“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 sawme?”
“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 wasa 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. Areit. 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-Teamwith 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.”
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 thinkso, Ed Brubeck.”
He does a half-hiss half-laugh. “ Actit, I said. Relax, you only get nicked if the cops can prove youpicked 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 thunkwhen 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.”