Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,61
live in a normal house.” He waved a loose hand to punctuate his statement.
“So would I.”
“What, you don’t live in a house, either?” He seemed excited, as if he’d been longing to find someone else who lived in a situation as strange and different as his own.
“I do, but it’s not a normal house. It’s falling apart. My dad says he’s going to fix it up, but I don’t think he’ll be able to. He’s not very good at those sorts of things.”
“I just wish my dad would move us into any kind of house. Four walls, a roof, a real foundation—I’d settle for that. But he’s stubborn, is my dad. Once he gets something into his head, well, he just won’t give up. But fighting the North Sea—well, that’s a bit stupid in anybody’s book.”
“I suppose so,” I said, thinking of my own father. In some ways, he was just as stubborn. While this boy’s father had set himself up to battle the inexorable erosion of the coastline, my own father fought the forever-shifting tide of my mother’s moods. And the house he’d bought, supposed to be a bastion that would keep us safe, was falling apart, crumbling, as surely as those clay cliffs lashed by the relentless waves of the North Sea.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked.
“Jesse, Jesse Bennett. What’s yours?”
“Malcolm Clements. I’m thirteen. How old are you?”
“I’m thirteen as well.”
“So where do you live, then, thirteen-year-old Jesse Bennett?” He folded his arms across his chest. “I just moved to Midham.”
He laughed. “Well, no wonder you think it’s exciting here in Reatton. Midham’s even deader than it is here.”
He slapped at the air, and I realized that I’d never met a boy who made such wide and unrestrained gestures, whose hands moved so animatedly with his words. There was something almost girlish about Malcolm—his soft and energetic features, his bright and uncontained voice, the way he amplified everything he said with a gesture or a look. I rather liked it, and found myself enthralled by the drama he put into his conversation. And he seemed so eager to talk, willing to tell me about himself. Boys generally weren’t like that; they hid themselves behind bluster and bravado, seemed to think they were somehow better than girls. But Malcolm was different.
“I’m sorry you ended up there,” he continued, pursing his lips. “If they gave awards for the most boring place on earth, it would probably go to Midham.”
“I’m going to move to London when I’m older,” I said.
“Really? Oh, my God, so am I,” Malcolm said, making his eyes big and round. “London’s where everything happens, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yes. Have you ever been there?”
He huffed. “I wish! I’m stuck here most of the time. Farthest I’ve ever been is Scunthorpe. And, believe me, that wasn’t worth the trip. I’ve read all about London, though. The history, the buildings, all about the different areas, about the River Thames. I got a whole stack of books about it from the main library.”
“You go to the main library?” I asked. The main library was seven miles from Midham, in Bleakwick. Given the mobile librarian’s avid disapproval of everything they sent from there, I imagined it stacked, floor to ceiling, with deliciously illicit reading material.
“My dad takes me there when he has to go into Bleakwick,” Malcolm said. “While he goes to the bank and the shops, I go there and get my books.”
“Do they let you take books from the adult section?” I asked, scarcely able to contain my excitement.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t they?” he said, Then he laughed. “Oh, no, you’ve been using the mobile library, haven’t you? You’re wasting your time there, having to put up with that old battle-ax. Anybody would think she was born in the bloody Stone Age, the attitudes she has. Did she tell you not to read stuff because it was pornographic?” he asked, grinning.
“Yes. She wouldn’t let me take out Jane Eyre.”
Malcolm rolled his eyes. “She’s off her rocker. You ask me, she spends far too much time in that van by herself. You can’t borrow anything worthwhile from the mobile library. Even if you can find any decent books there, she’ll make sure you don’t get them out the door.”
“Actually,” I ventured, “I found out how to borrow good books from the mobile library. It’s just that the librarian doesn’t know.” I explained to him my new strategy of sneaking books from the librarian’s slush pile out under my anorak. Malcolm seemed impressed.