So I had no choice. I had to stay to find someone to pay.
‘Augustin Moans has run away!’ A nurse with broomy hair ran slap bang into me. ‘The soup was piping hot, but he couldn’t be found!’
‘Are you talking about,’ I swallowed, ‘the man in the woods? The man with the bees? He’s over there,’ I gestured in the right direction, ‘back on the bridlepath. I can show you if you want.’
‘Augustin Moans!’ Now she looked at me properly. ‘How could you?’
‘No, you’re mistaking me for someone else. My’ (Hangman stopped me saying ‘name’) ‘I’m called Jason.’
‘Do you think I’m one of the crazy ones? I know exactly who you are! You, who ran off on your infantile quest, the very day after our wedding! For that idiot Ganache! For a playground promise! You swore you’d loved me! But then you hear an owl hoot in the firs so off you go, leaving me with child and – and – and—’
I backed off. ‘I can pay for the squash, if…’
‘No you don’t! Look!’ This nightmarish nurse clasped my arm, tight. ‘Consequences!’ The woman shoved her wrist in my face. ‘Consequences!’ Hideous scars, really hideous scars, criss-crossed the veins. ‘Is this love? Is this cherish, honour and obey?’ Her words spattered spittle on my face so I shut my eyes and looked away. ‘What – gave – you – the right – to inflict this – on anyone?’
‘Rosemary!’ Another nurse walked up. ‘Rosemary! I’ve told you about borrowing our uniforms a hundred times if I’ve told you once, haven’t I?’ She had a reassuring Scottish accent. ‘Haven’t I?’ She gave me a calm nod. ‘He’s a bit young for you, Rosemary, and I doubt he’s on our official guest list.’
‘And I’ve told you,’ Rosemary snapped, ‘ten thousand times if I’ve told you never. My name is Yvonne! I am Yvonne de Galais!’ This real live lunatic of Little Malvern Towers turned back to me. ‘Listen to me.’ Rosemary’s breath was Dettol and lamb. ‘There’s no such thing as something! Why? Because everything’s already turning into something else!’
‘Come on now,’ the real nurse coaxed Rosemary like you’d coax a scared horse. ‘Let the laddie loose now, shall we? Or shall we have to call the big fellas? Shall we, Rosemary?’
I don’t know what I expected to happen next, but it wasn’t this. Up wells a wail from inside Rosemary, cracking her jaw open, wider and louder than any human cry I’ve ever heard ever, rising like a police siren, but much slower and so much sadder. Instantly, every nutter, nurse and doctor on the lawn stands still, turned into statues. Rosemary’s wail climbs blastier, scorchier, lonelier. People’ll be hearing it a mile away, two miles most like. Who is she howling for? For Grant Burch and his broken wrist. For Mr Castle’s wife and her huddled Nerves. For Moran’s dad on his poison bender. For that borstal kid Badger fed to his dogs. For Squelch, who came out of his mum too soon. For the bluebells the summer’ll demolish. And even if you’d torn through massy brambles, clawed loose crumbly bricks and’d clambered into the lost tunnel, in that booming hollowness, deep beneath the Malvern Hills, even there, for sure, this tail-chasing wail’d find you, absolutely, even there.
Rocks
Nobody can believe it.
The newspapers weren’t allowed to say which of our warships’d been hit at first, ’cause of the Official Secrets Act. But now it’s on BBC and ITV. HMS Sheffield. An Exocet missile from a Super Étendard smashed into the frigate and ‘caused an unconfirmed number of serious explosions’. Mum, Dad, Julia and me all sat in the living room together (for the first time in ages), watching the box in silence. There was no film of a battle. Just a mucky photo of the ship belching smoke while Brian Hanrahan described how survivors were rescued by HMS Arrow or Sea King helicopters. The Sheffield hasn’t sunk yet but in the South Atlantic winter it’s just a matter of time. Forty of our men are still missing, and at least that many’re badly burnt. We keep thinking about Tom Yew on HMS Coventry. Terrible to admit it, but everyone in Black Swan Green felt relief that it was only the Sheffield. This is horrible. Till today, the Falklands’s been like the World Cup. Argentina’s got a strong football team, but in army terms they’re only a corned-beef republic. Just watching the task force leave