We Used to Be Kings Page 8

I think so.

  But we didn’t mean to kill it.

  No.

  We run out of the barn and back into the yard.

  Our eyes sting in the light.

  Our throat is sore.

  We hear the sound of an engine. A farmer comes towards us on a tractor with smoke pouring out the back. We run out of the yard and into a field. Our legs turn to jelly as we stumble and roll down a hill – over and over – face the sky, face the dirt, face the sky, face the dirt. We stop at the bottom by a water trough. Our heart is thumping, our head is so dizzy that the cows spin on the hills around us. We put our hands on the side of the trough and pull ourself up. Blood thumps through our palms, our body is shaking. We lean over the trough, see the sun in the water and ourself reflected with our mouth wide open. Blood drips off our hand into the trough.

  We’re bleeding to death!

  —

  We put our arm in the water – what looks like a deep cut washes away to a scratch. We think about where we might have done it, that the dogs might find it and follow our scent. We can’t let them catch us. We can’t let them take us back.

  —

  We look back up the hill and listen.

  Are they coming?

  —

  Are they coming?

  I don’t know.

  —

  We look back down, see our reflection shimmering in the water. Our mouth hangs open, our eyes are bulged wide. The clouds rush behind us. Suddenly we feel small because the world is so much bigger now we are outside.

  We take our bag off our back, put it on the ground and look back up the hill. A plastic bag blows in the wind, our book is open beside it with Dad’s letters scattered between the cows. We don’t want to go back but we can’t leave everything behind.

  Because the dogs will sniff our scent?

  Because people won’t be able to read our story.

  We walk back up the hill. Our trainers are covered in cow dung, the cow dung is covered in flies. We pick up the letters one by one, put them in our book and go back to the trough to check for damage. The corners of our book are crumpled, the picture on the front is smudged. We open it and check inside.

  The outside might be damaged but the first words we wrote have survived. Mum was with us when we wrote them in the kitchen. She said it was nice but not grammatically correct.

  ?

  . . . It didn’t make sense.

  Didn’t it?

  Not then.

  But it does now?

  Yes. Dad told us one day everything would make sense.

  Even his letters?

  I think so.

  Can we read one now?

  —

  Can we read one now? Beep.

  I heard, I just think we should keep going.

  But Dad’s letters aren’t very long.

  We look over our shoulder to see if anyone is chasing but the only thing that follows us are our footprints through the dung.

  OK.

  Good.

  But only one.

  OK.

  We flick to the back of our book and open a letter from the moon.

  17th June 1971

  Dear Jack. Dear Tom.

  Today I am sitting by the window in the sun but no matter how many times we spin I can’t get warm.

  Georgi says Brrrrrrr!

  Sorry about the writing. Viktor has lent me his gloves but there are no holes for my thumbs.

  Viktor says Brrrrrrr!

  Tom, sometimes I look out the window and in the middle of the oceans I see all the islands. You would love them, they are the footsteps of giants.

  I will keep searching for the giant.

  Jack, I haven’t seen your monster.

  Got to go, Viktor wants his gloves back.

  Love, Dad.

  And Georgi. HA

  And Viktor. HO

  —

  —

  We read the letter again in our head and think about Dad, how it was weird that he was cold even though he was sitting in the sun.

  And we think about the monsters.

  —

  And the giants, and their footprints around the earth . . .

  A shadow swoops across the ground towards us, the light flashes as it crosses the sun. We look up and see a bird hovering in the air above us.

  We think it might be a hawk.

  We think it might be a spy.

  —

  It rises and falls before it lands on a telephone wire.

  We put the letter back in the book.

  —

  —

  Tom?

  —

  Tom!

  What?

  I think we need to keep running.

  Me too.

  And we need to keep reading.

  I know.

  Summer 1971

  Dad’s army uniform was hung on the banister at the bottom of the stairs. The collar was dusty and the sleeves were creased. It had two medals on the front, above the chest pocket, and three silver numbers on the shoulder. 606. That was Dad’s army number. He told us once that it was a palindrome, that it would come in handy if ever he had to march backwards.

  What’s a palindrome?

  It’s a word or a number that reads the same whichever way you look at it.

  Like Exeter?

  ?

  Like Exeter?

  No, that’s just got lots of ‘e’s in it.

  Oh.

  It was Dad’s birthday. Me and Jack were sitting on the bottom stair waiting for him. We’d been there for an hour but in the week since he’d started his new job it was getting later and later before Dad came home. We didn’t know what he was doing, he seemed too busy to tell us. I thought he was a postman. Jack thought he was a milkman. They were the only jobs we could think of where you had to get up earlier than the sun.

  I climbed up two stairs and looked into the sitting room. Mum was sitting on the settee with the cake she’d made for Dad on the table. I put my head between the spindles of the banister.

  ‘How much longer?’

  Mum checked her watch with the clock on the mantelpiece and turned around.

  ‘I don’t know, Tom.’ She looked down at the cake and the card that me and Jack had made. ‘I don’t know, but it shouldn’t be long now.’

  I bumped back down the stairs and sat next to Jack.

  ‘I don’t think Mum knows what his job is either,’ I whispered.

  Jack shrugged, rested his head against Dad’s jacket. I leant against the wall and we sat in silence and stared at the door. I thought maybe if we watched it long enough it might make Dad come home quicker, like when we waited for a bus with Mum. My feet got cold, Jack got fed up and went in and joined Mum watching TV in the sitting room. I looked at the door; the glass at the top was beginning to turn dark and Dad still hadn’t come home.

  Jack was asleep on the settee when Dad’s key finally turned in the lock. I put my hand on his legs and shook him awake while Mum turned the sound down on the TV. My heart started to beat faster as the cold night air came through the hall. Dad closed the door. I waited for him to shout ‘Anybody in? . . . Everybody out?’ like he always did, but all I heard was a shuffle and a rustle as he slipped off his shoes and put his coat on the hook.

  Jack picked up our card. I picked up the matches and went to strike one but stopped as Mum put her hand on top of mine. She shook her head.

  I turned and saw Dad standing in the doorway. His head used to nearly touch the top, now it was rested on the side like he was going to go asleep against the frame.

  ‘Are you all right, Steve?’ Mum asked.

  Dad looked at the cake and muttered something, it sounded like he was talking backwards. Then he shook his head slowly and walked back into the hall. I put the matches down on the table. Mum told us to stay still as she got up off the settee and followed Dad out into the hall. I wanted to find out what was wrong but when I heard them whispering in the kitchen I could tell they were talking about
something they didn’t want us to hear.

  I lay back with Jack on the settee. We couldn’t listen but we couldn’t think of anything to say either. We sat together and watched the TV screen flicker. I remember seeing the start of Panorama. I remember thinking I wanted to go to sleep.

  Mum made me jump when she came back in and sat down beside me. She said Dad had gone to bed, that he was sorry he’d not opened his card and that he’d open it in the morning. She yawned and her eyes started to water. I tapped Jack on the leg, told him it was time for bed, but he just made a grunting sound and rolled over. Mum put her hand on my knee.

  ‘Tom,’ she said, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ Her voice was soft and slow like she was too tired to talk. I wondered why she was asking. I thought maybe someone had called from school, that Mr Giles had told her I hadn’t done my RE homework or I’d been late back from break.

  ‘Have I done something wrong?’ I asked.

  Mum smiled. ‘No, I’m just asking.’ She rubbed my knee. I felt the warmth of her hand go through my pyjamas.

  ‘But you know,’ I said. ‘You know I want to be a writer.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ she said. She leant forward and reached under the settee. I watched as she slid out a plastic bag and put it on the table.

  ‘It’s for you,’ she said.

  I opened the bag. Inside was a book, it was bigger than my exercise books at school but smaller than my encyclopaedia. I took it out and flicked through the pages.

  ‘There’s nothing in it,’ I said.

  Mum smiled. ‘You’re the writer,’ she said.

  ‘But what do I write about?’

  ‘Everything. Just write about the things you do every day.’

  ‘At school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And with Jack . . . and Dad?’

  She nodded. ‘Everyone,’ she said.

  Jack wriggled beside me. I flicked through the book again; there were hundreds of pages. I wondered how I could write enough words to fill them and how, even if I could, I didn’t think enough would happen in my life for people to read it. I saw Mum looking at me.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘You’ve got all summer.’

  Jack sat up. ‘Can I help?’

  I looked at him. He shrugged. I thought he’d been asleep but he’d been listening all the time. ‘I could draw pictures,’ he said.

  ‘You can do it together,’ Mum said. ‘You can write what you like as long as it’s true.’

  ‘Like the Bible,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, like the Bible, and you two can be my disciples.’

  I wanted to get up early the next morning to give Dad his card but I only woke up when I heard the front door slam. I thought of just letting Dad go and giving him his card when he got home, but as I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling I remembered what Mum had said to us the night before. I sat up on my bed and saw my book on the table beside me. Now I had a book to write I had to follow Dad wherever he went.

  I ran to the landing window and looked out. The sky was empty. Without the moon or the sun I couldn’t tell if it was blue or grey. I looked down at the ground. Dad was already walking down the path past the electricity substation at the end of Auntie Jean’s garden. I turned to go and get Jack but he was already by my side putting his slippers on. I put mine on and we ran down the stairs, out onto the path and into the back lane. Dad had reached the bottom, gone past the wire fence of the football ground, and was turning a corner at the end. We ran after him as fast as we could, jumping behind lamp posts, hiding between cars. We watched Dad like detectives, with imaginary cigarettes between our fingers and smoke puffing from our mouths.

  When Dad reached the chip shop he started to run. I started to run again but the faster I ran, the further away Dad got. I heard a shout and turned round. Jack was bent over trying to breathe. Dad had got too fast for us since he’d swapped his uniform and boots for his red tracksuit and trainers. I ran back to Jack.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He started to cough and his eyes filled with water. ‘Have we lost him?’

  I put my hand on his back. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll watch him from the hill.’

  We walked back home. Jack got his inhaler, I got my binoculars and together we walked up the hill.

  We stopped halfway up and I took my binoculars out of their case. Jack told me to hurry. I told him I had to be careful. I flicked off the dust covers and cleaned the lenses like Dad had shown me, then held them up to my eyes.

  I scanned across the rooftops, down towards the river and on to the main road as it headed into town. I saw a man walking with a briefcase, an old lady with two dogs and the milkman putting the bottles back in his van. I scanned ahead, past the milk yard and the petrol station. I found Dad running along the pavement just before it ran out under the railway arch.

  He disappeared into the dark. My binoculars went blurred, my head went dizzy as I searched ahead and waited for him to come out the other side. Jack tugged my arm, said he wanted to look. I pulled the lenses wide apart so that we could share and we watched as Dad ran out of the tunnel, past the petrol station and started to slow down by the park. He stopped and checked his watch.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Jack whispered.

  Our heads bumped together.

  ‘I think he’s waiting for the bus.’

  We looked back along the road, saw a red one travelling towards him. But when we looked back for Dad he was already off and running, cutting his way through the park, getting smaller and smaller until he was just a little red speck weaving in and out of the shadows of the trees.

  My arm started to ache. Jack took the binoculars and pushed them back together to fit his eyes.

  ‘I can see him,’ he shouted. ‘I can see him . . . but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But now he’s gone.’

  ‘Where?’

  Jack took the binoculars down. He had a look on his face like he was stuck with his maths. He lifted up his arm and pointed.

  ‘In there,’ he said.

  I put my head by the side of his and followed the line of his finger as he pointed to the tall building with big glass windows on the other side of the valley. We looked at each other. We’d never seen Dad go there before.

  I was painting a Hawker when Dad came home at the end of the day. Jack was on the floor watching TV and playing with his Lego. Dad sat beside me on the settee. His face was white, he had black rings around his eyes and his hair was standing on end. He pointed at my plane, told me I’d missed a bit between the bombs and the fuselage, but I didn’t really care, I just wanted to know where he’d been all day.

  He lay back against a cushion and yawned. I saw water glisten in his eyes. He held out his arm and I lay back against his body. He smelt different, like he’d swapped his aftershave for disinfectant. I sniffed. Dad looked down at me and frowned like he was stuck on a crossword.

  ‘Got a cold, Tom?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just that you smell different.’

  Dad laughed, lifted up his arm and sniffed the back of his hand.

  ‘It’s just soap, Tom,’ he said, ‘where I washed them at work.’

  I put my head back on his chest. I smelt the soap again. It wasn’t just on his hands, it was all over his body. I went to speak again but stopped as Dad put his arm back around me and I felt him rest his head on mine. I felt it get heavier and heavier.

  Jack stood up and picked a piece of paper off the table.

  ‘I’ve drawn you a picture,’ he said.

  I felt Dad jump.

  ‘Ah, the little man.’ He held out his hand. ‘What have you drawn me – another monster?’

  Jack shook his head. Dad took the picture, turned his head one way and then the other.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the tall building on the hill . . . where you work,’ Jack said.

  ‘We watched you,’ I said, ‘through my binoculars.’ />
  His head twitched twice, then he blinked five times, slowly, like a pigeon. He’d spent all day in the building but still didn’t seem to know what it was.

  He mumbled something and I asked him what he’d said. He looked out the window, then towards the front door.

  ‘It’s a secret,’ he said. ‘They might be listening.’ He put a finger in front of his lips.

  Jack sat down beside me. Dad nodded at the picture.

  ‘It’s the cosmodrome . . .’ he whispered. ‘It’s where I learn Russian . . . It’s where I do my training.’

  I told him we’d watched him from the hill and that we’d waited for him to come out. He pointed at one of the windows in Jack’s picture and told us that was the room he’d been in, that whilst he was running on a machine he’d waved because he knew we were watching. I told him that we hadn’t seen him and wondered if there was something wrong with my binoculars. He told me to go and get them.

  I ran upstairs and found them in their case under my bed. As I went back down the stairs I looked through them the wrong way. The front door was so small I felt like a giant and when I got to the living room Jack looked like a dwarf waving at me on the settee. I laughed and waved back, then scanned along past two orange cushions and found Dad with his eyes closed. I had so many questions to ask him about the cosmodrome, what he did there, who else worked there with him, but I couldn’t ask him now because as I looked through my binoculars it was like he was asleep at the end of a long tunnel.

  Dad had been asleep for ten minutes when Mum came in and said dinner was ready. He opened his eyes, said he wasn’t hungry, that he’d eaten lots of energy food and pills. Mum turned the TV down, went back out into the kitchen and brought our dinner in on trays. Me and Jack started eating, Dad picked up his fork and tapped it on his knee. And when Mum went back out to get the salt he mashed his potatoes and hid the liver underneath.

  ‘Sporry wurry sputnik,’ he whispered.

  I didn’t understand. I pushed my head closer to his and he put his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Sporry wurry sputnik . . . I learnt it today.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just learnt how to say it, they tell me what it means next week.’