Nicola Barker - Wide Open

“Lily? You think so?”

“Lily. That’s pretty.”

“Yes. I’ve always liked it.”

Lily growled into her text book. She hated her fucking name.

Sara was holding a bucket and a cloth. “It’s mainly just her age. You know? Hormones.”

Lily growled again. Oh how she would make Sara suffer for this! She was seventeen, for heaven’s sake. Seventeen !

“When I was thirteen,” Ronny said, “I remember that things seemed very confusing.” He didn’t add that they still felt that way.

“She’s actually seventeen,” Sara said, wringing out the cloth and applying it to the banister.

“Really?”

“Yes,” Sara grunted slightly as she rubbed, “Lily’s a late developer. She’s always beerrslightly taller than average but very gawky. It’s taken her a while to mature physically…I mean as quickly as other girls of the same age.”

Lily squealed. She threw down her book, pulled on a T-shirt, some jeans, yanked on her trainers, flinching, slightly, when her sore toe clashed with the fabric interior, then ran into the hallway. “Let’s go! Let’s go!” she yelled, facing her humiliation head on, butting it aside, taking the stairs two at a time, pushing past Sara and her bucket of soapy water, grabbing Ronny by the arm and dragging him, dragging him towards the front door.

“Come on !”

♦

The fire was blazing. Jim was preparing a Fray Bentos chicken pie. It was steaming in the kitchen. He sat on the sofa, a pen in his hand, a pad of paper on his lap. He wore no hat. Light from the bulb above glanced off his bright pate. He was fleshy, like a sea anemone. He was bare.

Jim swapped the pen into his right hand. Dear Nathan , he wrote, in shaky print, and then he stared at these words for a long, long time. Eventually he glanced up, into the fire.

Red flames. Red hair. Hot. Hot. Hot . It took him right back. He remembered his brother and the last time he ever saw him, in his father’s house. Nathan. All tough, and bullish and twenty-four, with a regular job and a bedsit and everything.

“You can sleep on the sofa,” he’d said, his eyes dense and glossed with earnestness, “and you can stay just as long as you like. That’s a promise.”

Little Ronnie, who was now Jim, sat on his bed, his arms around his knees, barely there, really. Eventually he whispered, “It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late,” Nathan smiled, “never. You’re fifteen. Fifteen! You can do anything you want with your life.”

“I don’t dare think about it,” Little Ronnie mumbled, “there’s just too much stuff…”

He gazed around at his dank, grey room, his few books, his posters, his chemistry set, his bed, the notches in the wall from the bedposts, and the scratches in the plaster he’d made himself with a compass. Little pictures and lines and notes and messages in baby code. His scratches. This was everything, wasn’t it? These were all his possibilities.

“I’ve got the car. It’ll be two trips, that’s all. Two stupid trips.”

“But there’s all these arrangements , Nathan. Things I can’t get out of.”

“I want you to come with me.” Nathan was insistent.

“I can’t.”

“I’m begging you to come. I’m begging you.”

Little Ronnie looked up into his brother’s kind eyes. “Force me.”

“No.” Nathan would not be drawn. He was better than that, he was bigger than his father, he was decent. “I can’t force you. It’s your own decision. You’re not a child any more.”

“It’s just…”

Little Ronnie was tugging at his hair. His thin hair, which was worn and patchy like an old animal pelt.

“Don’t be afraid of him,” Nathan exclaimed, “he’s just a stupid, stinking old man.”

“I’m not afraid.”

Oh God, he was.

“Then what is it?”

“I can’t make the decision.”

Help me, help me, help me, Little Ronnie was thinking. Help me.

Nathan grew impatient. He was offering the world.

“Is your suitcase still packed and tucked away under your bed?” He suddenly spoke like an ally. Because this was their past, their pact, their sweet secret he’d rejuvenated.

“No.” Little Ronnie shook his head.

Nathan squatted down and glanced under. “I see it.”

He put out a hand to grab it.

“Not the suitcase!”

Little Ronnie tried to stop his older brother, but Nathan pulled out the case anyway, and Ronnie bent to his will like a strand of corn, a straw.

“Always packed,” Nathan said, “like when we were kids, remember? And I promised I’d take you away the very first time?”

He was only eight years old when Big Ron returned from his long trip away. But even then he’d longed to escape. He’d planned to.

Nathan opened the case, expecting to find the little shirts and little shoes, the baby clothes that he’d packed himself when Little Jim was still a toddler and he’d yearned so much to save him. But he recoiled at what he saw instead, and then his expression dulled and his eyes glazed over like the eyes of a fish too long out of water.

In the case lay a collection of polaroids, some self-assembled newsletters, a camera, some rope, a knife, a hot water bottle, a roll of thick brown sticky tape, other stuff. He slammed the case shut. Something inviolate had been violated.

“What’s going on?” he asked. His voice was heavy-vowelled. He was sticky-throated. Little Ronnie scratched at his cheeks like a limp, long-limbed baby monkey. He said nothing. Nathan fastened the locks on the case and picked it up. He wouldn’t leave it. No bloody way.

“Are you coming?”

He was rough now. Little Ronnie shook his head. It was too late. It had always been too late. Even breathing implicated him. Even blinking.

“This is the very last time,” Nathan said, his voice creaking, “that I’m going to ask.”

Little Ronnie huddled up.

Nathan felt his heart judder inside his rocky chest like a pebble on the thick-set surface of an icy pond. He wouldn’t crack. He couldn’t. He inhaled. Deep, deep. He exhaled. He turned. He went. And that was the end of everything. Because when Nathan left his father’s house, all decency left with him.

He was sick four times. The first time, up against the back wheel of the green Volvo.

“Yuk.”

Lily watched him.

“Is it food poisoning?”

“Nope.”

“Then what?”

“Misery.”

“ Shiiiiit !”

Ronny straightened up and began walking down the farm’s long drive. It was dark and the moon was high.

“Why don’t you take the car?” She limped along next to him.

“I don’t want to.”

“Why the hell not?”

He glanced at her with something approaching bewilderment. She was so angry . After a while he said gently, “So we’ve all appreciated the joke now, Lily.”

“What joke?”

She scowled at him.

“That I walk a little strangely.”

Lily stopped short. “I didn’t even notice,” she said, all stiff-necked huff, “and if you actually want to know, I’ve injured my foot.”

While she spoke, Ronny was sick again, up against a wire fence. “I’m sorry about this.” He wiped his mouth.

“It’ll merge in. This is a farm. In the country every-fucking-thing merges.”

“Sick doesn’t merge,” Ronny muttered hoarsely, “it’s always synthetic-looking, don’t you think?”

“Synthetic? How?”

Lily peered at his vomit in the darkness. She was a farmer’s daughter with a cast-iron stomach. She saw nothing amiss.

“The colour,” he said, “the texture .”