Graveyard Shift Page 4

  We were doing an assignment she called From the Headlines. Miss Whittaker explained as she handed out newspapers that we should each choose one story to present to the class. Later we would have to research these in greater detail and write essays on our subjects for next week.

  Raymond Blight chose a football story from the Daily Mirror. Mel Kimble spoke about a pop star’s arrest for drunk driving. Matthew from the gang of six preferred a more sober story about the current economic climate — the latest unemployment figures had just been published — while Becky found a bizarre one in the overseas section of The Independent. “42 DIE IN FIGHT OVER WRISTWATCH,” the headline read.

  No one believed it, not even Miss Whittaker, until Becky showed the paper to the class. What began as a dispute over the ownership of a watch between neighbors in a small Afghani village had soon escalated into a full-scale riot between rival gangs.

  “Remarkable,” Miss Whittaker said.

  “Worst fing I ever heard,” Mel said.

  “Incredible but true,” Becky said, “and it’s worse that the story’s only a small piece on page nineteen. It should’ve been on the front page, but it isn’t, because it didn’t happen here.”

  As Becky returned to her seat, Miss Whittaker signaled me to the front. The story I’d found was closer to home, from page three of the Metro. I opened the paper on Miss Whittaker’s desk, stooping over it to avoid eye contact with the class.

  “By the way, I believe you’re new here,” Miss Whittaker said. “Have you met Ben, everyone?”

  “Nnn.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Uh.”

  I’d never liked speaking in public, let alone in front of strangers. Standing there, I felt like an exhibit, a curiosity at a circus sideshow. Taking a breath, I began to read.

  Three mornings earlier, after Mum had left for work, I’d done what she’d been encouraging me to do and taken my sketch pad to London Fields. The first of the barbecues was already smoking and more were being set up. My idea was to capture the park, the trees, and houses beyond before it became too busy.

  It was a fine morning, still warming up, and the air had a golden glow. Even the wisps of barbecue smoke would add something to the picture. I took an empty bench and set to work, roughing out the scene on an empty page. Sometimes it felt good to draw just for the sake of it; the subject didn’t have to be anything special. After half an hour I stopped and looked up, wondering if Mr. October would appear if I waited long enough.

  The barbecues were multiplying. Already there were twice as many as when I had begun. Sun worshippers spread towels on the ground, threw Frisbees and played cricket with tennis balls and plastic bats. I watched with the smell of smoke clinging to my nose and listened to the sudden rise and fall of a siren a few streets away.

  The newspaper story brought it all back. It seemed so vivid, I could smell the smoke right there in the classroom.

  About the same time I was opening my sketch pad in the park, Kevin Willow, 36, and his wife, Hannah, 33, were locking up and leaving their second-floor apartment on Henryd Street five minutes away. They’d planned to leave the building just long enough to buy bread from Gossip café on Broadway Market and stamps from the post office. They didn’t know as they set off that a small fire was kindling in the apartment below theirs. They didn’t know it would spread so quickly, tearing up through the complex like a ravenous beast. They didn’t know that safety regulations had been overlooked in their building and the fire escape outside was hazardous.

  Why they decided to stay at Gossip for coffee instead of going straight home was anyone’s guess. Instead of taking five minutes, their outing ended up taking thirty. By the time they turned the corner onto Henryd Street, the place was ablaze, thick black smoke billowing around and above it.

  The fire department was already on the scene.

  Two engines had arrived together, a minute or so before the ambulance, and almost ten minutes before the Willows.

  Ten minutes too late to save the two children trapped inside.

  Molly, 6, and Mitch, 4, perished from inhalation of smoke while they slept. The emergency services did all they could, but were hampered by the loose and rusting fire escape and a stairwell between floors where the worst of the blaze had taken hold. They managed to lift the children out through an upstairs window, but neither brother nor sister survived as far as Homerton Hospital.

  “‘An investigation is under way,’” I finished. “‘An electrical problem on the ground floor is suspected.’”

  I closed the paper and looked at the class. No one spoke or moved. A chair scraped somewhere near the back. Raymond Blight stared, bored, out the window.

  And still I could smell the smoke.

  “’Orrible,” said Mel. “Them poor kids.”

  “So sad,” Kelly whispered to the gang of six.

  Becky stared misty-eyed at the floor.

  Miss Whittaker cleared her throat. “Indeed. And what will you do, Ben, with a story like that? There doesn’t seem to be much to add.”

  “Dunno, miss.” I shrugged. “It just makes me think.”

  “About what?”

  “I suppose about me being in the park around the corner at the time.” I paused. It was hard to explain. “All those barbecues, all that smoke. If they hadn’t been there, someone might’ve seen the smoke from the house and done something about it in time.”

  “See what you mean, Ben,” Miss Whittaker said. “It’ll be interesting to see what you come up with next week.”

  “You can still help,” a small voice said at the back of the class. It sounded more like rustling leaves than a voice.

  “Help how?” I said.

  “Help us. Help them.”

  I hadn’t noticed them there before. They must’ve just entered the class. The way the light angled across the room from the window, the three figures were in semidarkness, seated together at a desk-table near the door.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, leaning forward for a better view. “Is there something I should do? Something I should’ve done?”

  “Not before, but now,” the voice answered. “Help now. We’re still in the fire.”

  “Ben?” Miss Whittaker’s voice was barely audible. “Ben, is everything all right? Look at me.”

  I was inside a tunnel, all soft and dark at the edges. All I could see was hazy light at the end and the three figures waiting there for me.

  Three chairs scraped back at once. Three figures stood up.

  “Who are you?” I said. “Tell me and I might be able to help.”

  “You know who these two are. Help them first.”

  It was the tallest of the three who’d spoken, the one with the rustling voice. Standing behind the desk was a man about six feet tall, blackened and scarred from head to foot, his charred clothing hanging off him like rags.

  From what I could see of his face, there wasn’t too much of it left. Most of the flesh on its left side was gone. Half of his hair had been singed away, leaving a scorched black scalp.

  Standing on either side of him, holding his hands, were the two children from the blazing building I’d read about, Mitch and Molly. It had to be them. They looked the right ages. They weren’t in the same terrible shape as the adult, but their little round faces and clothing were sooty and smudged.

  The girl wore a pale yellow nightdress and clutched a rag doll to her chest. The boy had on blue pajamas and held a teddy bear. They had the same shiny fair hair and sleepy blue eyes. They could’ve been twins.

  “I need to sleep and I don’t know how,” the boy murmured, rubbing his eyes.

  “We’re lost,” said his sister. “We’re locked in and can’t get out.”

  “And you,” I said to the burned man. “Were you in the building too? How come there’s no mention of you in the newspaper?”

  “Ben?”

  Miss Whittaker again, still a murmur, even farther away.

  A distant sound of stifled laughter. The gas
p of twenty-four students catching their breath.

  Across the room, the threesome began slowly backing up to the door. “Help us,” they said, all three together. “Help us sleep.”

  “But how? Tell me how. I don’t know how!”

  Uncontrollable tears filled my eyes, throwing everything in front of me out of focus. I took a step around the desk, meaning to follow them. The sudden pressure of a hand on my shoulder brought me back.

  “It’s all right,” Miss Whittaker was saying. “Whatever you saw isn’t there now. Come with me.”

  She took my arm, guiding me past the desk to the door. I couldn’t look at the others as we passed.

  I didn’t need to, either. I knew they were staring at me in openmouthed wonder.

  Sniffing back tears, I wiped my eyes with a forearm and followed Miss Whittaker out.

  “This way, Ben, this way.”

  She ushered me out to the dim corridor, her hand still holding my arm.

  “We’ll get you to the nurse,” she said.

  “I don’t need a nurse.”

  “Let her have a look at you all the same, just to be sure.” Poking her head back inside the classroom, she said, “Now, children, no noise. Matthew, you’re in charge while I’m gone.”

  As she closed the door, I glanced inside the room. The man and the children were gone. She’d been right about that, even if she hadn’t seen them herself.

  There was a dark patch on the varnished floor more or less where they’d been sitting. Ashes, maybe, or a fragment of burned clothing. Or maybe only a scuff mark caused by the friction of chair legs scraping back and forth over it all down the years.

  Through the closed door of the nurse’s bright but small office, I could hear them whispering out in the corridor.

  Miss Whittaker said it must be first-day nerves, a little migraine perhaps. She said I seemed to be highly strung.

  The nurse, dark-haired with a thin, unsmiling face, shone lights in my eyes and checked my throat and took my temperature. Temperature was a tad high, she said, but otherwise I was well enough to go home.

  She scribbled something in a notebook, gave me an aspirin with water, and sent me on my way. It was a waste of time, and I didn’t dare imagine what the others thought of me after what had happened back in the classroom.

  But I knew what I’d seen.

  Before going home I cut around from Middleton Road onto Henryd Street. If anyone had asked why I’d gone there, I wouldn’t have known how to answer, except to say I needed to.

  Above the fence that had been erected to protect the remains of the building, I could only make out the very top of the roof. Blackened and slimy, with smoke still rising faintly above it, it looked ready to crumble apart. The air still hung heavy with the stench of soot.

  A TV antenna was still in place up there, warped out of shape by the heat. A raven perched on one of its conductors, staring straight down at me.

  It sat there a minute or so, not moving. Then something disturbed it — the slam of a car door up the street. The bird took off above the rooftops, heading for London Fields.

  Around the side of the block, the top of the fire escape was just visible. It had blistered and broken loose and now hung slack against the wall like a busted limb.

  I turned toward home. I didn’t feel like looking anymore, and I didn’t know what I’d expected to find. It must’ve been the thought that Mitch and Molly might come back here. Then again, if they were lost, how would they know where to go?

  Mum was still at work when I got home. In the kitchen was a note she’d left in a shaky hand reminding me not to eat too much; she’d treat us to more takeout tonight. I poured a glass of milk and drank it on the balcony, watching workmen at a house they were refurbishing across the street. From there I could see barbecue smoke drifting above the park, and a handful of urban ravens above that.

  Up in my room, I tried to sketch the two children from memory. They were still fixed clearly in my head, and I caught their likenesses much better than I had Mr. October’s. At first their eyes came out too dark, so I softened them by dabbing away with a small round of Blu-Tack. Soon I was staring into the same sleepy gazes I’d seen in the classroom.

  But I found I couldn’t do the man at all. His injuries were so severe, there weren’t many features to draw. What I didn’t understand was what he’d been doing there, what connection he had to the children.

  Maybe he’d been in one of the other apartments and they hadn’t found out about him yet. Or maybe he’d been in another fire at another time.

  Born helper. That’s what Mr. October had called me. And now I was being asked for help and I didn’t know where to begin.

  Help how? I thought. Help who?

  Days two, three, and four at Mercy Road weren’t much of an improvement. The word about me had spread, and it wasn’t only 8C who kept their distance now, watching me for signs of another meltdown. Kids from other years gave me a wide berth in the yard and corridors. Teachers spoke to me in hushed tones, the way you might speak to an elderly relative at the funny farm.

  They all treated me with respect — the kind of respect that comes out of fear.

  All of them except Raymond Blight, who didn’t care either way.

  “Weirdo,” he whispered behind me during algebra on Tuesday morning. “Crybaby. Space cadet.”

  At lunchtimes I went to the crypt across the street. No one else from school went there, so it seemed the best place to avoid them. Midmorning and afternoon breaks I spent in the library. I went back there each day after school, killing time until I could be sure the other students had left.

  Sometimes when other kids see you as different, especially when that difference makes them afraid, they tend to pull together against you. They keep you outside. Sometimes they even attack.

  No one had attacked me yet, except Raymond, and he’d only done it with words. It was only a matter of time, though, I thought, before things got worse.

  I couldn’t talk to Mum about it, couldn’t tell her truthfully how things were at school or about the fire children or anything else, just as she couldn’t talk to me about Dad.

  On Thursday night we ate supper in silence and watched an hour of TV. Afterward I lay awake in bed till the early hours, unable to settle, dreading the first light of Friday.

  Three things happened that Friday. Three things that turned the week around, that in the end turned my whole life around.

  The first involved Becky Sanborne from the gang of six; the second, Mr. October, just when I’d given up any hope of seeing him again; the third, a red-haired woman in a green dress throwing a tantrum on a street corner in Soho.

  I would never be any kind of hero, not in 8C or anywhere else, but by the end of day five at least I wasn’t a zero anymore. And I’d begun to understand what my true calling was.

  The art room at Mercy Road was upstairs and faced due south, so the lighting there was the best in school. At the start of last period, Mr. Redfern explained the day’s assignment. He would divide the class into pairs, with each pair sketching a portrait of their partner using pencil, Conté crayon, or any other drawing medium of their choice.

  Then he moved around the class, naming names. “Raymond and Mel. Curly and Tommy . . .”

  Chairs scraped and crashed as students flitted between tables.

  “Dan, you go with Liam. Matthew with Ryan. Becky with Ben.”

  Everyone stopped at that. You could tell from their faces that Becky had just drawn the short straw. She’d landed the weirdo.

  I picked up my things and started toward her desk, but she was already on her way to mine and motioned me to sit. Her face was pink with embarrassment. Slapping her bag on the desk with a sigh, she looked back at her friends as if pleading for help. She took pencils and an eraser out of her bag and set right to work.

  Becky had a hard-set expression, which I preferred not to draw. It wasn’t a natural look, but I couldn’t think of how to make her relax. A joke might’v
e helped, but I’d forgotten the punch line of the only joke I could think of. It wasn’t that good a joke anyway.

  On a clean page of my sketch pad, I roughed out the general shape of her head and shoulders, then softened the lines with my thumb. After ten minutes her outline seemed about right and her features were coming together. It felt strange, though, having to draw someone while she was drawing me. All I got were concentrated frowns, plus Becky had a habit of poking her tongue from the corner of her mouth, which I decided not to include. It didn’t flatter her.

  As the period went on, she spent more time checking what I was doing than focusing on her own work. Her lines were too clean and precise, and although I was seeing it upside down on the desk, I could tell the portrait looked nothing like me.

  “Very good, Dan,” Mr. Redfern said, moving between desks. “Too harsh, Kelly. You’re not supposed to carve it into the page.”

  Apart from Mr. Redfern, you could’ve heard a pin drop. Everyone was engrossed in their work. For once there were no blank stares, no whispered insults from Raymond.

  “Raymond,” Mr. Redfern went on. “You’re a budding Picasso. Nose on one side of the face, eyes on the other. Intriguing. And Mel? Some advice if I may. Look closely and you’ll see Raymond has two eyes, not just one slap-bang in the middle of his forehead. Observe!”

  Then he stopped behind me. My pencil faltered over the page. I heard the whistle of his breath above my shoulder, but he didn’t comment before moving on.

  I was close to finishing. All I had to do now was correct the light in Becky’s eyes, soft white orbs, which I managed with a tiny ball of Blu-Tack, dabbing it around them. I did the same to lighten the freckles on her nose. Becky watched in wonder as if she’d never seen a blob of Blu-Tack before in her life.

  The portrait looked as close as I could make it. I put down my pencil and turned the sketch pad around to show her.

  She flushed, not looking at me as she spoke — which was the first time she’d spoken to me at all.