“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 isreal, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you’re dyingof 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 reallylistening.
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 didwin 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 owis 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 justthink ’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 bethere, 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?”