My Name Is Mina (skellig) Read online

“Yes,” I said. “Like you.”

  Mum came back. We thanked Malcolm and Mrs. Milligan for our day. Karl came and drove us homewards.

  “So,” he said. “Was there much yak yak yakkity yak?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “And did you attack anybody?”

  “Nobody at all.”

  “Well done.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Pelé.”

  Mum put her arm around me. I was occupied with myself, filled with memories of the day and thoughts of what I’d do tomorrow.

  “Well?” she said. “Did you settle down? You were being very strange when I left this morning.”

  “Just uncomfortable, I suppose.”

  “But you settled down.”

  I sighed.

  “Yes,” I told her. “The people were very nice. I had a good time. I …”

  I hesitated, looked out at the traffic. For some reason, there was no way I could tell her about my vision.

  She smiled.

  “But it’s not for you?”

  I shrugged.

  “No. I’m sorry, Mum.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, Mina. I didn’t really think it would be, somehow. Come on, cuddle in.”

  I cuddled into her. I told her about Steepy and Malcolm and the others. I saw Karl smiling at us through the driver’s mirror. I closed my eyes, and saw Dad again inside me, standing in the crackling sunlight. One day I’d tell her, but not yet. When I look back now, I suspect that Mum had her own secret that afternoon. I recall how happy she felt against me. I remember seeing her smile to herself as we drove back across the river. Was it Colin Pope? Had she taken the chance to be with him that day, freed from her weird daughter? I suspect she had.

  And so I leave the tree, and go back into the house. Mum’s sitting at the table reading a book about the Antarctic.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hi.” I take a breath. “I do remember Colin Pope,” I say.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. And I remember he seemed very nice, Mum.”

  She smiles.

  “Good. He is.”

  “And,” I said softly, “I think you’re very brave.”

  She laughed.

  “I’m not,” she said. “But thank you, love.”

  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

  On the next page is the story I created at Corinthian Avenue. It’s an empty page, no words at all. It’s like Steepy’s back, waiting for tattoos. It’s like an empty sky waiting for a bird to cross it. It’s as silent as an egg waiting for the chick to hatch. It’s like the universe before time began. It is like the future waiting to become the present. Look at it closely, and it can be filled with memories, with dramas, with dreams, with visions. It’s filled with possibilities, so it isn’t really blank at all.

  Chicks, A Lethal Cat & Limplessness

  The black beast is on the prowl. Be very wary. Because the black beast really is a black black beast. It’s a pretty purring pet called Whisper but it’s also a wild thing that will kill if we give it the chance. That’s because the eggs have hatched! There are three pretty sticky feathery things inside the pretty nest! And the parent birds are flying back and forwards with fleas and flies inside their mouths, with worms dangling like fat spaghetti from their beaks. I’ve climbed carefully, quietly, just high enough to look down and see the extraordinary pretty things. And the parents squawked at me – Squawk squawk squawk! – and tilted their heads as they looked at me.

  Don’t you dare! they squawked. Keep away! Squawk! You’re danger! Squawk!

  But the real danger’s down below. The black beast’s prowling in the garden. It’s slinking along the pavement. It tries to look casual and unconcerned, but it hesitates and listens. I see it turning its head, turning its ear towards the nest. And it looks up at me with O so pleading eyes.

  Hello, Mina, purrs the black black beast. I’m your special friend, aren’t I? I’m your lovely little pet. Why don’t you let me come up there to keep you company?

  I glare back down, and I point my finger.

  Don’t you dare, you black black beast! Keep away! You’re danger!

  I wave it off and it turns in a huff and prowls haughtily away. It’ll soon be back, making eyes at me, and licking its teeth at the thought of crushing the pretty little things inside its mouth.

  I sit still in the tree. I tell myself I’m the Guardian of the Chicks. But I’m not really. In truth, the chicks are safe inside the nest. They’re out of Whisper’s reach. He couldn’t climb up here. And even if he could, he couldn’t climb out to where the nest is. It’s built on branches far too thin to hold him. So he prowls below, listening, watching, waiting. The real time of danger will come when the chicks are fledged, when they’re out of the nest but not able to fly well, when they’re hiding in the hedges and the shadows and the parent birds are still feeding them.

  It’s safe to close my eyes. I stop being the Guardian of the Chicks and I try again to imagine being inside an egg. I imagine the sticky feathers and wings growing on me. I imagine peck peck pecking at the shell with my little pointy beak. I imagine pecking my way out the blue-green darkness of the egg into the blue-green light of the tree, just like the chicks have done. I imagine testing my tiny chirping voice for the first time. And I make tiny, almost-silent tweets and squeaks, pretending that my throat is a bird’s throat and my mouth is a beak and …

  And then I hear my name spoken.

  “Mina? Mina?”

  I open my eyes. I look down. There’s a girl standing just underneath me. She’s wearing a St. Bede’s sweatshirt.

  “Mina.”

  I can’t speak. I make a rather silly-sounding tweeting noise. I bite my lip.

  “Do you not remember me, Mina?”

  I nod. Of course I do. It’s Sophie Smith, the girl from school, the girl that was my friend for a while.

  “Yes,” I squeak at last.

  “Just thought I’d come and say hello,” she says. She smiles. “Hello.”

  “Hello,” I squawk.

  She smiles again, looks up at me in my tree. Blue eyes, blond hair, pale face. Just like she was, but older. The blackbirds are squawking in alarm at this new visitor.

  “They’ve got chicks,” I cheep.

  Sophie smiles.

  “Just being good parents,” she says. She widens her eyes. “I won’t harm them!” she whispers up towards the birds.

  Squawk! go the birds. Squawk! Squawk!

  “Brave things,” says Sophie. “And soon they’ll be brave enough to let their babies fly away.”

  Then she flaps her arms and jumps and jumps.

  “Look!” she says. “I had my operation!”

  “That’s good.”

  She strides in a confident small circle on the pavement.

  “It’s not totally fixed yet,” she says. “But it is nearly.”

  “That’s fantastic. Did it hurt?”

  “Yes. And still does, a bit.” She strides a circle again. She kicks her feet and sways her hips. “But it was worth it.”

  “That’s great, Sophie.”

  My voice sounds so small, really like a little chick’s.

  “Did you have yours?” she says.

  “Pardon?”

  “Your operation. The destrangification operation. Remember?”

  “O. Yes, I remember. No, I haven’t had it yet.”

  “Still strange, then?”

  “I suppose so.”

  She smiles.

  “That’s good. You might still come back, though?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You might come back to school? I often wonder about you.”

  I look at the leaves around me. I suddenly feel so stupid up here. I feel so small and so inarticulate. She wonders about me? I haven’t a clue what to say.

  “I don’t know,” I mutter. “No, I don’t think so. I think that schools are …”

  My voice trail
s away. I can’t even finish the sentence.

  “Even Mrs. Scullery said it might be nice if you came back again,” says Sophie.

  “Scullery? You’re joking!”

  “No.”

  “Huh!”

  Someone calls Sophie’s name. I look along the street. Three girls are there, at the far end, sitting on a low garden wall.

  “Sophie! Come on!”

  “I have to go,” she says. She laughs. “You’re crackers, aren’t you?”

  Again I hardly know what to say.

  “Am I?” I squeak.

  “Yes. But you’re nice. And I’m crackers as well in my way. So are lots of us.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  I bite my lip again. I stare down at her, then I glance at the girls along the street. Can it be true?

  “Well,” says Sophie. “Maybe we’re not quite as crackers as you are. But crackers anyway.”

  “Sophie!” they call again.

  She shrugs and smiles.

  “Nothing wrong with being crackers, is there?”

  “No,” I squeak.

  “If you did come back, I’d help you.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  “Anyway,” she says. She does a couple of jumps on the pavement. “I just wanted to show you my limplessness!”

  She jumps and jumps again.

  “Limplessness,” I whisper. “Limp-less-ness!”

  “Not bad, eh?” says Sophie.

  “No. Not bad. Very good.”

  “And I just wanted to say hello. And now goodbye.”

  Then she’s gone. I say goodbye after her. I want to jump down and run after her and grab her and tell her she’s nice, too, and that I’m very pleased for her, and that … But I don’t. She goes back to her friends. I close my eyes.

  “Stupid Mina!” I squeak to myself.

  “She wonders about me,” I squawk softly.

  “She says I’m nice,” I whisper.

  “Limplessness,” I murmur, and I slowly write two lovely words in my book.

  There they are, two brand-new words brought into the world by Sophie Smith and written in my book by me. So maybe she is crackers, too, as she says she is.

  She’s gone from the street with her friends.

  I write again, so shyly, so timidly.

  Sophie’s nice. I wish she had stayed a little longer. I wish I had asked her to stay a little longer. Silly silly Mina!

  I think about what Sophie said about Mrs. Scullery and this gets me to thinking about Mrs. Scullery and I write again.

  A CONFESSION. OK, maybe Scullery wasn’t quite so horrible and screechy as I made her out to be. And maybe THE HEAD TEACHER wasn’t quite so thick. And maybe they both showed a bit more understanding than I said they did. But when you’re writing stories, sometimes you just have to do these things. You have to EXAGGERATE, otherwise there wouldn’t be any DRAMA. It’s just what writers DO!! OK?

  Weird, how I can feel so frail and tiny sometimes, and other times so brave and bold and reckless and free, and … Does everybody feel the same? When people get grown-up, do they always feel grown-up and sensible and sorted out and … And do I want to feel grown-up? Do I want to stop feeling … paradoxical, nonsensical? Do I want to stop being crackers? Do I want to be destrangified? O yes, sometimes I want nothing more – but it only lasts a moment, then oh I want to be the strangest and crackerest of everybody, to be … O stop it, Mina! Sometimes I just think too much and ponder too much and … Stop it, I said!

  Then there’s no time to squeak or squawk or wish or wonder anything else because a great big white van pulls into the street and stops outside Mr. Myers’s house. Then the blue car pulls up behind it and the family gets out. The mum has the baby all wrapped up in white in her arms.

  “Already?” I whisper.

  She looks along the street. She holds the baby close like she wants to protect it from the world. The dad moves close and hugs them both. I hear the baby crying. She carries it inside. I imagine them in there, in the still-half-dilapidated house, the brand-new baby, the ancient neglected place.

  Then the doors of the van open and the dad and two burly men start carrying furniture into the house.

  The boy stays all alone, glaring at the earth, glaring at the sky. He holds a football under his arm.

  “What do you wish?” I whisper to him, and of course there’s no way for him to hear.

  The new boy looks nice, I tell myself. Will I be brave enough to tell him that? Does he go to school? Of course he does.

  He bounces the ball, once, twice. He kicks it against the garden wall, once, twice. He glares at the street as if he hates it. Then he does follow his family and the furniture inside.

  I keep on watching. Then Mum’s below me, smiling up at me.

  “I see the newcomers have arrived,” she says.

  We look along towards Mr. Myers’s house, which is no longer Mr. Myers’s house.

  “And the baby,” I say.

  “The baby? Already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh dear. I suppose they hoped to be more prepared. But they come when they come.”

  “And the eggs have hatched as well,” I say.

  “So it’s the right time. It’s a day of chicks and babies!”

  She reaches a hand towards me.

  “And listen to me, my baby.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think maybe you’re too much up there in your tree.”

  “Too much in the tree?”

  “Yes. You should come down into the world a bit more. And you should come down and come for a walk with me.”

  “A walk to where?”

  “To wherever our feet might take us.”

  “OK.”

  I drop down, out of the tree. Then I put my finger to my lips.

  “Listen,” I whisper.

  “To what?”

  “Just listen. If we listen closely we’ll maybe hear the chicks cheeping in the nest. Maybe we’ll even hear the baby.”

  We listen closely, closely, closely. We stretch upwards, turn our heads towards the nest.

  “Hear them?” I say.

  She shakes her head.

  “Me neither,” I say.

  We grin at each other.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” I say. “Take us somewhere, feet.”

  Walking, Pizza, Stars & Dust

  We walk out of the street into the park. She says this is an educational walk with educational content. Palaver and Trench have asked for a report on what we’ve been up to. So she will tell them about my writing, my research into birds, our artwork etcetera etcetera etcetera etcetera. She will tell them how even walks in the park can be deeply educational.

  “So let’s walk,” she says, “and think about a theory about walks by Paul Klee.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “One of the great artists of the twentieth century. He said that drawing was taking a line for a walk.”

  I thought about that, about the way a pencil point moves across paper as you draw.

  “So if drawing is like walking,” I say, “then walking is like drawing.”

  “Yes, and if you think of it like that, it allows you to wander and to roam and to explore.”

  I smile at the loveliness of that. I imagine our feet leaving a drawing behind us. I swerve and skip to add curves and interest to our drawing.

  “People said that Klee’s paintings looked like they could have been done by a child,” she says. “Some people hated them. The Nazis, for instance. Burn the lot! they said.”

  I listen, and I think some more.

  “Maybe writing’s like walking as well,” I say. “You set off writing like you set off walking and you don’t really need to know where you’re going till you get there, and you don’t know what you’ll pass along the way.”

  She smiles.

  “So writing’s like taking some words for a walk,” she says.

  “It is.”

  We wal
k on, close together, our feet moving in rhythm with each other’s. I imagine each step as a syllable, and I breathe the words as I step along.

  Each word is a step a-long the way to I don’t know where

  “Picasso loved Klee’s work,” Mum says. “He said it took years to learn how to paint like a master, and a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.”

  It’s so strange: grown-ups trying to become young, young ones trying to grow up and all the time, whatever people want, time moves forwards, forwards.

  I walk the words.

  A life-time to learn to paint like a child

  A life-time to learn to paint like a child

  “Wordsworth used to write as he walked,” she says.

  “Did he?”

  “Yes. He said that the rhythm of walking. helped him to find the rhythms of his poetry.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “It does.”

  To write is to take some words for a walk

  The words foll-ow the rhy-thm of the feet

  The feet foll-ow the rhy-thm of the words

  To write is to take some words for a walk

  “And walking’s also a kind of meditation,” she says.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Meditation’s often about sitting very still and keeping the mind very still.”

  “Like I do in the tree sometimes?”

  “Yes. But there is also walking meditation. You concentrate on every step. You think of nothing else. You do nothing but walk. You hope to become clear and calm.”

  We try it. We walk side by side along the pathway through the park. Now I don’t think about words or lines. I try to think of nothing but taking one step then another step then another step. We breathe slowly and regularly.

  “Now think about nothing,” she says. “Just walk while you walk.”

  But as we walk through the park, I suddenly can’t help thinking of the tunnel underneath and I get agitated instead of calm. Mum knows somehow. She stops. She looks at me. She waits. I find myself telling her about the day that I ran out of school and went down there all alone and saw the man and the dog. I tell her I thought I’d be able to go down there and bring Dad back, that I was trying to do what Orpheus was trying to do. I manage to laugh about it as I tell her.

  “I must have been so stupid,” I tell her. “I must have been so young.”