Pat Barker - Another World

The door opens and Jasper comes trotting in — he’s probably decided to get his bye-bye himself. He runs towards it and then, exactly as she’d done herself, seems to realize he’s not alone. He raises his eyes to the figure on the other side of the glass, gazing in at him, and screams and screams and screams.

Miranda steps back, feeling as guilty as if she’d frightened him deliberately, then walks round into the house. Fran’s got there first, scooping Jasper up into her arms, where he sobs and clutches his bye-bye.

‘What happened to you?’ Fran asks.

‘There was a girl at the window.’

Gareth’s on to it at once. ‘What sort of girl?’

Miranda shrugs, furious with herself for mentioning it, because now Gareth’ll say she’s afraid of ghosts, like he did the night they found the painting. ‘Just a girl. I chased her, she ran away.’

‘How old?’

‘Twelve. Thirteen.’

‘Fat?’

‘I don’t know, Gareth. I only got a glimpse.’

She was wearing a long skirt, and her hair was long, but that doesn’t mean she was a ghost. A lot of girls wear long skirts, some of the time; nearly all the girls in Miranda’s class have long hair, including Miranda. She’s not going to say any more, because Gareth’ll only twist it. Though he doesn’t look capable of twisting anything at the moment. He’s so white you’d think he was car sick and they haven’t even started yet.

Two hours later, after Sunday lunch in a pub, they’re trudging across a car-park with the sun on their backs.

‘Are we going home now?’ Gareth asks.

‘No,’ Fran says. ‘We’re going to the seaside.’

Fran’s got prickly heat on the backs of her thighs, Nick’s shirt has sweat moons in the armpits. It takes them ten minutes to get Jasper into his seat. Gareth walks up and down the car-park, kicking an ice-cream carton. They’re always so patient — it never seems to occur to them to give the little bugger a good slap. When he’s finally strapped in, wailing, miserable, red in the face, pulling at his ears, Gareth slides in beside him. The plastic glues itself to the backs of his thighs. He winds the window further down and looks out, wincing at the glitter of sunlight on bumpers and windscreens.

They have to queue to get out on to the main road. Jasper cries. Miranda sits hunched up, ignoring Jasper, who flails his fists and hits her repeatedly on her bare arm. Whenever this happens, she gives a sickly smile. She always pretends to like Jasper — another reason why Gareth can’t stand her. He stares at her tits — not as big as the fat slag’s, but you can still see them. Once the car gets going on the main road and there’s air blowing through, Gareth shuts his eyes and forgets about her and Jasper.

That girl Miranda saw must have been the BFS, as he’s started to call her — Big Fat Slag. She’s found out where he lives.

He opens his eyes and sees tall fields of wheat on either side of the car. Further away there’s a field of stubble, with those big shredded-wheat shapes scattered all over it. Jasper’s gone to sleep. He pongs. When they get to wherever they’re going Mum’ll have to change him. Miranda’s been sunbathing in the garden for the past week, though her skin’s the wrong sort of skin, anybody can see that. It just turns pink and flakes. She’s scraping a tiny flake of skin off her shoulder now.

‘Don’t do that,’ Mum says automatically, catching sight of her in the mirror. ‘I’ll put some cream on it when we get there.’

Miranda flushes and doesn’t say anything. Gareth looks at her sideways, thinking she’s only two years older than he is and it’s stupid of her to pretend to be grown up, though she does it all the time, she thinks she can get away with it. He used to be able to frighten her, but now he can’t. She just smiles in a sort of tired way, like Nick, or gives him a long considering stare. He’s never liked her, but not being able to get at her any more makes him feel lonely.

The car goes over a bump. Jasper wakes suddenly and starts to cry. Mum twists round in her seat with a bottle of water in her hand and tries to reach his mouth, but the seat belt digs into the bulge, she can’t get anywhere near him. ‘You give it to him, Gareth.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t hurt you,’ Nick snaps.

Gareth looks up and sees Nick watching him in the mirror. He takes the bottle. Jasper’s lips shoot out towards it, he’s so eager, like a sea anemone, wet and pink and disgusting.

‘Tilt the bottle more,’ Mum says. ‘You’ll give him wind.’

‘I’ll do it,’ says Miranda, angling the bottle properly so the area behind the teat fills with water. Jasper’s mouth slackens, his eyes flicker upwards like a doll’s. Gareth aims a kick at Miranda’s shins, misses, hits the back of Nick’s seat.

‘Do you mind? I’m trying to drive.’

As if being the driver gives him a licence to be bad-tempered. He’s always more horrible in the car than anywhere else.

They’re just turning into another car-park. Nick drives up and down the aisles looking for a space. Gareth sees Mum notice one, open her mouth to point it out and shut it again. Nick hates backseat drivers. Gareth hates everybody. He doesn’t see why you have to have families at all. It’d be much better if people just spawned like frogs.

This is a place they often come to. Once you leave the car-park and walk across the road to the beach, there are miles and miles of pale sands, with the sea a narrow brilliant line far out, and grass waving on the tops of the sand dunes. Further along there are cliffs.

Gareth fidgets while Mum changes Jasper on the back seat, and Nick fumes because he’s fed up with it all, and Miranda mooches about four or five car lengths away, not talking to anybody, and Gareth suddenly thinks, Suppose somebody sees me? It’s true nobody’s likely to see him, but suppose somebody did? Walking down to the beach with a little boy and a bucket and spade. They might think he was going to make sand castles. And Miranda. Somebody might think she’s his girlfriend. Gareth goes hot and cold with the horror of it, and starts walking along the path, ahead of the rest of the family, trying to look as if he isn’t with them.

Mum and Nick sit down in a sheltered part of the sand dunes. Mum’ll go to sleep straight away, she always does these days. And Nick’ll pretend to read the paper, but really he’ll go to sleep too and Jasper’ll play with his bucket and spade. And batty Miranda’ll just wander about. He’s got to get away from them as fast as possible; he’s got to make it clear he’s not part of it.

The path from the sand dunes to the beach winds down among huge blocks of concrete. Tank traps — ‘dragon’s teeth’ — left over from the last war. Some of them are buried in the sand, with only three or four inches showing above ground. When he first came here, he was only a year or two older than Jasper, and jumping along the line of dragon’s teeth had been a triumph. Not that they were very far apart, but the sand was fine and silky and every surface you landed on was slippy.

Further along the beach, where winter storms have eroded the shore, there are the massive blocks that stand out uncompromisingly square and bleak. Narrow slits of machine-gun emplacements look out over the shelving sands towards the sea. When Gareth was little he used to like playing in them, though you nearly always hurt yourself, clambering over the rocks that choked the entrance, and even when you got inside there were only chip cartons, beer cans, a smell of piss. Condoms too, though he didn’t know what they were then. He picked one up once and ran back with it to Gran, trying to blow it up because he thought it was a balloon. Gran nearly had a fit.