Pat Barker - Another World

The sun’s mercilessly hot against the cliff face. There’s no escape, no shadow. Jasper’s shadow’s like a black rag fluttering round his feet. He’s coming towards the cleft in the rocks where the stream is. Gareth nearly calls out, but then decides he won’t. It’s more fun watching what Jasper does, without being seen.

Jasper’s trying to throw the lolly sticks into the stream — he wants them to be boats — only his idea of throwing’s to put both arms behind his head and bring them forwards together. He doesn’t know when to let go, so either the lolly stick lands on the ground at his feet because he’s held on to it too long, or it drops behind him because he’s let go too soon. He does it again now and topples over. He’s not hurt, but he cries anyway and then when Mum doesn’t come running he stops and tries again. This time he gets the stick into the stream and squats on his shadow, watching it bob along. Then he gets tiny little pebbles and throws them at the stick. Now he’s got his boat he wants to sink it. Gareth leans forward to see what he’s doing and in the process sends a small stone skittering down the cliff face, starting a little avalanche of other stones as it falls. Jasper looks round — too late, and in the wrong direction — but bombing the lolly boat’s too fascinating and he quickly goes back to that.

Gareth keeps very quiet and still while Jasper’s looking round, searching. The sun’s hurting his eyes, he feels sick. Part of him wants to join Jasper by the stream, to show him how to sail the boats, they could have a whole fleet and sink the lot, but something, some desire to spite even himself, makes him stay where he is. He’s sweating all over. Sweat stings his eyelids, he closes them for a moment and immediately the voices start. Skid marks! Skid marks!

Further along the beach, Fran mutters in her sleep, Nick turns towards her, but doesn’t wake.

*

Gareth claws up a handful of small stones and starts throwing them into the water, Plop, plop, plop. The plops attract Jasper’s attention, he keeps turning, but never in the right direction. He doesn’t have the sense to work out where the stone’s coming from. It’s like playing with an ant, it’s so easy to make him do stupid things. The stones start to get bigger, make bigger plops. Jasper’s nearly spinning round, looking first one way, then another, but never up at the cliff. Gareth throws faster, reaching for stones and clumps of hard earth at random, but he’s not doing anything wrong because he’s not aiming at Jasper, he’s throwing to miss.

Suddenly the back of his neck feels as if he’s being watched. Pressure. He looks up and sees Miranda on the cliff above him. The grass and her skirt and hair are all waving in the wind. She must have seen him, but she says nothing, just stands there, black against the brilliant sky. He can’t see her face. He waits for her to speak, she must have seen him throwing stones, but she doesn’t say anything. He turns, his tongue huge and dry in his mouth, and throws again.

Jasper looks up, sees the bright air turn solid and black and hard and come hurtling towards him. A flash of sunlight reveals a dark figure on the cliff and then his head bursts open, explodes in pain and wetness, and he falls backwards, water rushing in at his mouth and nose, blood in his eyes and on his tongue.

He comes up again, hair plastered to his skull, T-shirt draped in green slime. He doesn’t look like Jasper now, he’s crying and his head’s bleeding and Gareth’s terrified of him, terrified of what he’s done, so terrified it’s easier to go on than to go back. He feels Miranda behind him, not speaking, watching, and throws again. He didn’t mean this. The stone catches Jasper on the side of his head, knocks him over and yet still he gets up. He’s got to make him stay down, stop crying, stop making that awful noise. He picks up a bigger stone, draws back his arm to throw again, but Jasper’s screaming has woken Fran.

She’s standing up, shouting ‘Jasper?’ at the top of her voice. Nick’s on his feet too, dazed with sleep, running blindly in the direction of the screams. Gareth puts the stone down, sees Jasper lying among the rocks, bleeding, then turns carefully and starts climbing down, hand over hand, holding on to clumps of grass. Once he stops and looks up, but there’s nobody on the path.

Nick runs faster than Mum, so gets to Jasper first. Gareth stands by the stream, smelling the cool dank smells, and watching Mum stumble across the pebbly sand and catch the wet bloody body into her arms.

They don’t look like real people, Gareth thinks, they look like actors on the telly. Their mouths open and shut but either no sound’s coming out or he can’t hear it. Water and blood from Jasper’s head make a big pink patch on Mum’s dress just above the bulge. When the sound comes back it comes in a burst, hurting his ears.

Nobody asks him what happened, but he tells them anyway. ‘He slipped, he slipped and hit his head on the rocks. I told him they were slippy.’

But they’re not listening, they’re too busy trying to decide what’s best to do. Jasper’s crying. There’s a lot of blood, it’s in his eyes, he looks awful. Nick probes the cut and says, ‘It’ll need stitches.’

Gareth doesn’t understand this. He can’t understand why Jasper’s crying. From the moment the first stone hit his head Gareth’s known he was dead. He was dead already after the first stone, it’s just that he wouldn’t lie down. He’d thrown the other stones out of despair because he wouldn’t stay down. He’d wanted it to be over quickly.

‘We need something to press on it,’ Nick says. ‘Gareth, can we have your T-shirt?’

He pulls it off and watches them press it against Jasper’s head. Red spreads all over the white, it takes no time at all. Gareth hugs himself, shaking in the heat, his arms goose-pimply, his nipples little wizened currants.

Miranda appears from somewhere — not down the cliff — and they all walk back to the car. Nick wants to run, Gareth can see him wanting to, but he goes slowly and steadily, and on the T-shirt wrapped around Jasper’s head the red goes on golloping up the white. In the car-park people cluster round, asking questions, giving advice, but nobody can do anything.

They get into the car, Mum sits in the back with Jasper, Miranda in the front and at last Nick can go fast. They turn out of the car-park and on to the road in a spray of gravel, and nobody nags Gareth about fastening his seat belt as they generally do.

He looks at Miranda, but she won’t look back.

Outside the casualty department there’s a notice that says: AMBULANCES ONLY PAST THIS POINT. Mum gets out with Jasper, who’s stopped crying but looks very white. He’s been sick, there’s a yellow patch on Mum’s dress now as well as blood. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ Nick says.

They find somewhere to park. It’s not difficult, there’s a space just round the corner. Nick pulls on the hand-brake. The car smells of sick. Three nurses walk past in stripy dresses and black lace-up shoes.

‘Do you want to come in?’ Nick says. ‘Yes,’ says Miranda. And Gareth says he does too, because it might look peculiar if he didn’t, and anyway he doesn’t want to be alone.

Jasper’s in a small room with a number on the door. Number four. Miranda and Gareth sit on plastic chairs in the waiting room and pretend to look at magazines. They’re facing each other. Once Gareth looks up and sees Miranda staring at him. A long hard cool stare.

She’d seen everything. She knows Jasper didn’t fall, she’s just waiting for the right moment to tell.

Gareth sits stiffly on the plastic chair, no longer pretending to look at the magazines. He puts his hands under the backs of his legs and his skin feels strange against his skin. He waits for them to come out and tell him that Jasper’s dead.