Pat Barker - Border Crossing

‘Can we turn now to the day it happened? Do you remember how you were feeling that day?’

‘Weird. It was the day after the vicar came round, and Mum had her great attempt at beating me with Dad’s belt. I ran out of the house. I ran miles.’

‘And next morning?’

‘I lay in bed. She didn’t say: “Are you getting up?” or anything like that. 1 knew everything had changed. I’d kicked away the ground under my feet. I got up, she wasn’t in, and I just wandered off. I seemed to be floating and when I came round I was in the lane by Lizzie’s house, and she was coming out, going to the shops. She had this old shopping bag with her. I watched her. I don’t know why I watched her, I just did. She got to the corner of the street, and then she turned round and came back, shook the door handle and then set off again. I suppose her memory must have been starting to fail a bit. She came right past me, and instead of saying “Hello”, I stepped back into the alley and she didn’t see me.’

‘Did you know what you were going to do?’

‘Yes. I knew where the key was. All this going back to check the door was locked, and then she left a spare key under a plant-pot in the backyard. As soon as she’d turned the corner, I walked up the alley, got the key and went in.’

A long pause, but the time for prompting was past.

I’d been in the house before. Once when she went to hospital for a few days for her cataract operation my mother said she’d feed the cats, so we used to walk down together and do that. I went into the living room and looked round. There weren’t any cats in sight. Then 1 saw one ginger one at the top of the stairs, but it ran away when it saw me. There were all kinds of rumours about how much money she had, she was supposed to have masses stacked away. When I went with my mother she looked in the fridge, and there were all these cod steaks, but my mother said they weren’t for her, they were for the cats. I think she spent all her pension money on the cats. She used to have a handful of dry cornflakes for her breakfast, that was all. You’d see her on the front doorstep when you were walking to school, eating these dry cornflakes, and my mother used to say, “That’s all she ever has. She’s not feeding herself.”‘ He paused. ‘She was a tiny little woman. Just skin and bones.’

Danny seemed to be losing his way. At the same time, Tom thought this detailed re-creation of Lizzie had its own value. He waited, but there was nothing else. ‘So there you are in the house,’ Tom said. ‘What happened next?’

‘I started looking for money. I found some loose change on the mantelpiece, couple of quid for the insurance man, and then I went upstairs and started looking round her bedroom. There was a musty smell, and some sort of peach-coloured powder on the dressing-table top. I rubbed it between my fingers, and…’ He seemed surprised by the banality, the emptiness of his own recollections. ‘I just stood, looking in the mirror, and the face didn’t look like mine.’

Under his normal voice, a child’s piping treble was faintly audible, growing clearer by the minute. Danny was producing this sound without sign of strain, without a hint of falsetto, and seemed to be unaware that he was doing it. Tom felt a prickling at the back of his neck.

‘I don’t know why she came back, because she’d already checked that she’d locked the door. Perhaps she was checking she’d turned the gas off. Anyway, I heard the key turn in the lock, and she’s corning in. I look round for somewhere to hide…’ His eyes were closing. ‘The bed’s a divan, I can’t get underneath, I have to get in the wardrobe. I push the clothes along, and I get right in the back and close the door. It’s pitch black, everything stinks of mothballs, and fur. My face is pressed into fur, and there’s something on my cheek. It’s a fox’s nose, a real fox with glass eyes, and its paws are dangling.’

Danny’s hair was damp with sweat. Tom said, It’s not happening now, Danny.’

His eyes opened, the pupils huge, glutted on darkness. ‘No, I know. I pushed it away from me, and the wardrobe banged against the wall. I’m like, don’t come up, don’t come up, but she must have heard the bang. The living-room door opens — opened — and I know she’s standing at the foot of the stairs, listening. I go very quiet. I can’t breathe, the fur’s up my nose, and, you know, I… I can’t, I can’t, I’ve got to breathe, so I push my way out, and she’s coming up the stairs. So I run — ran — on to the landing, she didn’t hear, she didn’t look up. There’s a parting in her hair, a line of pink, and I know there’s only seconds before she looks up and sees me. I’ve got to get out. So I run down the first four stairs to the half landing… And she’s seen me. She won’t back off, she says: “What you doing, you little bugger?” I’ve got to get past, so I put my hands on the banisters and kick her in the chest, and she falls backwards. Slowly, ever so slowly, but she can’t have done, can she? It can’t have been slow.

He was staring at Tom, as if the answer to this question might change everything.

‘And then the next thing is she’s lying at the foot of the stairs. Her face has gone all red because her legs are halfway tip the stairs, and a! the blood’s drained down into her head. Her eyes are closed, just little slits of white, and I–I don’t know what I thought. I’d got beyond thinking. I —’

‘Danny,’ Tom said again. ‘It’s not happening now.’

Danny widened his eyes with the look of somebody waking from a long sleep, and blinked several times.

‘Do you want to stop?’ Tom asked.

A deep sigh. When he spoke again his voice was deeper, but then shaded up again into a treble. ‘No. I’m looking down at her. One of her shoes has come off and it’s lying next to her face. She doesn’t move, I can see right up her nostrils, and I’m like trying to get past without touching her.’

‘She’s unconscious?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He sounded dazed. ‘I thought she might grab hold of me as I went past, but she didn’t.’

‘What happened next?’.

‘I’m kneeling beside her, I put the cushion —’

‘Where did the cushion come from?’

A blank stare. ‘From the living room. It must have done, mustn’t it? I must’ve gone into the living room and got it. I put the cushion over her face, and pressed…’

‘Do you know why you did that?’

He’d gone very white. ‘I don’t want to see her eyes. I don’t want her looking at me.’

‘You could go away.’

No answer.

‘Are you frightened because you know she’ll tell your mother?’

Danny’s thumbmoved up to his mouth and, under the pretext of biting his nail, he sucked. ‘I suppose so.’

‘What were you feeling when you did that? Can you remember?’

‘Just peaceful. Deep water, no buzzing. Quiet.’

‘Was there ever a time when you thought you should stop?’

‘No.’

‘And you weren’t frightened? Or angry?’

‘No. I was later, frightened, but not then. I lifted the cushion off and she’d been sick. I think I remember her thrashing about, because I thought she was trying to get away, and I pressed down harder, but it can’t have been that, can it? She must’ve been…’

Tom waited and waited until, at last, the word popped out of Danny’s mouth, as improbable as a toad.

‘… dying.’

‘And what did you feel then?’

‘Nothing. Just tired.’

‘When did you start… when did you realize what you’d done?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I did. I was dazed.’

‘Frightened?’

‘I suppose so, I don’t know. I don’t know whether I’m thinking I must’ve been frightened, so… I don’t know. I’m scared shitless now.’