Читать книгу The Hungry Ghosts - Anne Berry - Страница 10

Mr Beecham carried me in his arms, holding me like a baby.Although I felt woozy and my eyes kept closing, there were little flashes that I recall, like going to see a play and not watching it all the way through.That’s it, each time they opened I found myself in different scenes.

In the beginning there were his curls, the grey of the clouds moments before the rain comes, and the tips of his upper teeth, tinged with a yellowy-brown, digging into his lower lip, and the specks of sweat breaking out on his large nose. I could feel him panting as well, with the effort, feel his lungs pushing against the weight of me. And the jolt, jolt, jolt, of my body held in his arms as he went down the steps, the several flights of them that ran from the playing field to the school building. But mostly I remember his eyes flicking down at me and what was in them.You see, it was fear, I’d recognise it anywhere. We were old friends.Then, in the middle, there were the blocks of blue sky that seemed to go on and on, and the glitter of the sun making my head throb and my skin prickle. And lastly there was the medical room, and me being laid down so carefully on the bed, how firm it was, how solid. You knew, just knew, that bed wasn’t going to let you down. It was cool in there after the scalding sun, and quiet too. Like walking into the St John’s Cathedral on a hot morning.

‘Harry? Harry? It’s Mr Beecham.You’re going to be fine, Harry. You’ve had an accident but you’re going to be fine.’ Mr Beecham’s the deputy head. He takes me for English. He’s kind, doesn’t make me feel stupid when I can’t answer the questions, the way some of the teachers do. He smoothed my brow as he talked. I could feel his fingers tickling back my damp hair, smell the faint trace of tobacco that clung to them.

And the way he said it, I knew it was true. I was going to be fine. Then he said the doctor was coming and that was alright too. He said the doctor would make it all better, make me well again. I wanted to believe him, that someone, anyone, really had the power to do that.To make it all better. Only when he told me my mother would be here soon, I laughed. Of course it was in my head. I couldn’t let it out. It would have hurt too much with my head pounding so hard. Besides, that would have been telling on Mother, on them. I’d never do that, not even if I was dying.

You know what I thought then, in that cool, still room, where other faces were appearing now, like masks hung on the white walls. I thought that if I was really lucky it might be true. I might be dying and then it would be over. I wondered if Alice would come and join the other masks, but then I remembered that she’d had an upset tummy that morning and stayed home. Sometimes my sister Alice doesn’t eat for ages. Mother says that’s why she gets stomachache so much. Mother said she does it to get attention, starving herself. But I’m not so sure. Still, imagine being able to go without food for an entire day. Amazing!

‘Fatty! Fatty! Blubber boy! Harry is a blubber boy! Nah, nah, sweaty Harry! Nah, nah, smelly Harry!’

It was Keith, Bobby and Andrew that morning. Following me around the playing field. They’re like the wasps you get on picnics that just won’t go away. Every few seconds one of them would dash forwards and push me, or try to grab the roll of fat that shows when my shirt rides up, or they’d run ahead of me, spin round and poke me in the tummy. It isn’t so bad. It doesn’t really hurt. Sometimes I even like it, because…well…because it makes me feel alive, the pain.Anyway, they usually get bored after a while and go away. I can read the signs, clear as the time on a wristwatch.The jeering is loud as can be to start with, like a football flying in the air and everyone screaming cos they think it’s gonna be a goal.Then, after a bit, their voices start to drop, as if they know this next shot is going to miss. I name it ‘the game-over slump’, wait for it, cos I know it will come, eventually. After that, with a few more feeble taunts, they slouch off.

Nah, I don’t mind them really, the boys. It’s the girls that make me go burning red, and want to cry so bad that it takes everything I have to hold it in.They never touch me.They don’t have to.Their bright eyes slide over me, over my pockets of fat, over my thick arms, my wobbly tummy, my plump legs, my big bottom.Then they snatch little sneaky glances at one another and smirk. It’s like a knife going in, that shared smirk.

I used to imagine it you know, a knife sliding into a slab of my flesh. I used to watch Ah Dang in the kitchen slicing the fat off some huge piece of dripping, bloody meat, and I used to dream that someone could do that for me. Lie me down on a chopping board and trim the oily fat off me, slash, saw, slash. And then I’d get up all slim and lean, and I’d have muscles, and one of those bellies that was hard and dipped in like the other boys’.Then, when we changed for PE, and I pulled on those bright green shorts, shrugged on that white cotton T-shirt,no one would giggle.They’d say stuff like,‘Hey Harry, want to be in our team?’ or ‘What about being our goalie today,’ or ‘We’re sure to win cos Harry’s batting for our side,so there!’Sometimes they’d row over me. They would. In my head, they’d squabble and say,‘It’s not fair, you had him last week. This week it’s our turn with Harry.’ Instead of me standing alone in the playground cos no one wants to pick me, with them all rushing to get into pairs, into groups, into teams, just in case they get landed with the fat pig, Harry Safford. And then I’m paired up with the teacher, who makes it worse by pretending to be really pleased about it.You know,‘Lucky me,I get to be with Harry.’ Oh yeah, sure! Nobody wants me. It’s as if I stank or something. Ah, who knows, maybe I do.

Anyway, it was after the boys got bored and left that the accident happened.There was this roller thing in a corner of the field. I think they use it to flatten the grass. There was no one over there, and it looked kind of peaceful. The roller was all gritty-brown and grey, flecked with pearly-white too, like slithers of soap shining in the sunlight. Attached to it was a thick black handle, balanced up against the playground’s surrounding wire-mesh fence. Round about were tufts of tall green and yellow grass, like it hadn’t been moved for ages. So I wandered over. It was more impressive close up, bigger somehow, sturdier. I touched the handle. Ran a finger along the uneven surface. It was metal, iron I think. Then, for a while I just circled the roller, not all the way round cos of the fence you understand, but nearly, and then back again. It looked so heavy, like you’d need a giant or something to shift it. After a bit I sat down on it and stared out at the kids in the field, all playing their games, skipping and chucking tennis balls about, shrieking and laughing too, like they were having a really good time. And the girls’ hair was flying all about, brown and black and blonde, and their white socks were glinting in the sun.

The roller felt very warm under my backside, through my grey flannel shorts.Not so hot you couldn’t stand it,just kind of comforting. The flesh of my thighs spread out against it, like a cushion. I squinted up at the sun, right at it, something Mother says you should never do. ‘Because if you do, you’ll go blind, Harry’, she liked to sing at me. But I didn’t care.Then there were dark spots rushing at me and I was so dizzy. It was the way you get when you spin round and round with your arms stretched wide, and you have to throw yourself down on the grass, and the world just carries on spinning, tilting under you. That’s when I decided to do it, stand right up on that roller, plant my feet squarely on the warm curve of it, and see how things looked then. I know it’s daft, but I wondered if it might be different up there. Perhaps I’d pick out something I’d never seen before, and seeing it would change everything.

I hauled myself up on the hot hump of stone. It was quite difficult actually, higher than you might think. I had a few attempts before I managed it. At first my back was to the playing field, and I was balancing with my arms out. It was great. Just like I’d imagined it would be. Only I couldn’t see the field, just through the wire fence and across the slope of road. I glanced back over my shoulder. I couldn’t help it, cos I wanted to see if any of the girls were watching me. Especially June Mullery. She is so pretty, June, with pale, yellow hair and soft eyes. She never teases me, and once I was sure she smiled at me. At least I think it was me. I suppose it might have been her friends behind me, but anyhow it felt as if it was for me. Her face lighting up and her eyes so sweet and kind. It made it hard for me to swallow, seeing her smile like that…At me.

So I tried to turn round but something blinded me, something like a bit of the sun glaring at me from the field. I lost my footing, and I was falling, falling back, and without thinking I made a grab for the iron handle propped up against the fence. Only it just fell away with me, like seizing a stick of bamboo in a landslide. I tumbled backwards on the field, and the metal bar chased me, the way the jeering boys had earlier.The long horizontal handle at the top of it, the thing they grip to push it about with I guess, came crashing down across the brow of my head.Then it was pitch black, with the sound of the bar striking me, tolling inside my skull, a great underwater bell clanging on and on. When my eyes opened next Mr Beecham was carrying me down the steps.

I didn’t die.The doctor came and went. Mother took me to Queen Mary’s for X-rays and that was quite fun. And the doctors there said I was going to be okay as well. That’s when the laugh came back.

‘You’re not very good doctors then, are you?’ came the cheeky voice I hear sometimes in my head, the voice that longs to speak out loud, but I know never will.

We’re back at the flat now. Mother’s fussing loads and kissing me, so that I have red marks from her lipstick on my face, and have to rub hard to get them off. I can smell her perfume as well and that’s nice, warm and comforting, like the roller before it flattened me. Then later she smells of something else, something sour, the whisky I guess, and that isn’t so nice, because then she gets a bit sloppy. She looks good. If anyone was watching they’d say, ‘There’s an excellent mother, a mother who really loves her son.The way she strokes and pets him! Oh my, and can you hear the lovely things she says to him.’ But what they wouldn’t know is that it’s not real. It’s pretend. Like acting. And you know before long the performance will be over, or the show will be cancelled because the actress doesn’t feel very well, and has to go and lie down.

As it happens Mother does have to lie down after a bit. Dad is away, or working late or something. ’Course Mum said she rang him straight away. She said he was terribly worried, but very relieved later to hear his only son was going to be fine. She’s always calling me that. ‘Only son!’ As if that makes such a big difference to how much I’m worth to them. Like, if there were more sons, if say Alice had been a boy, they couldn’t possibly have loved me as much. Who knows, if she had been, perhaps they wouldn’t have had me at all?

‘Harry, you have to know your father would have raced home if it had been serious,’ Mother says, staring straight into my face and looking all grave.

And I understand what she means. That if I’d been going to die or if I had died even, he’d have come; my father would have come then, no question.

‘He was frantic, Harry,’ she tells me, her finger stroking the side of her glass.‘You know how much he loves you.He wanted to come, darling, of course he did. He’s so busy. Important, clever men like your father always are. But I told him you were being a brave little man, our brave little man, and that there was no need.’

She puts down her drink, then gives me one of those funny hugs of hers, a bit awkward, as if she doesn’t quite know where to put me. It lasts longer than normal of course, on account of the accident. By then she’s on her second drink. Afterwards she holds me at arm’s length.

‘I’m so proud of you,’ she tells me smoothing back my hair, careful not to touch the raised purple line, where the bar struck me. ‘My precious only boy.’

‘If it had been really bad, you’re sure Father would have come?’ I want to know. I can’t meet her eyes. I might cry if I did, like with the girls at school, might make a big baby of myself. Hmm… Mother would hate that. She doesn’t like you to show feelings, not real ones in any case.

‘Of course he would have, darling!’ she says now, her eyes, that glow amber like a cat’s sometimes, wide open. ‘You know he would have, Harry.’

I want to say that it might have been too late, if I was dying or worse, already dead. If he’d come then, after I’d died, after my heart had stopped beating and I was all white and icy, well…there really wouldn’t have been much point, would there? But Mother has turned away by then and the drink is in her hands again.We’ve had supper but that doesn’t matter. I’m still hungry. I’m always hungry.

They’ve got this creepy festival here—actually they’ve got lots of weird festivals on the island, but this one is the spookiest.Yue Lan. The Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. It’s the end of May now, so I guess it’ll soon come round. Anyway, for a few weeks in July the Chinese believe that hungry ghosts, the ghosts of their dead ancestors, and people who’ve been murdered, or died at sea, or in a war and haven’t had a funeral or been buried properly, will come tearing back to earth. And these ghosts who swarm back down here at Yue Lan, they’re are not just hungry, they’re starving, ravenous even. All the stuff they didn’t get in life, like marriage and children and love, and all the money and food and houses and cars, and junk like that, for these few days you see they’ve just got to have them.You know, like nothing will stand in their way.

Sometimes at night, lying in bed watching the orange stripes of light slide across the ceiling as a car drives by on the road below, I picture them, the hungry ghosts. It’s bit like the stampedes you get in cowboy movies, the image in my mind. Hordes of ghosts charging towards you, the air thick with the dust their trailing misty feet are stirring up, and their mouths gaping wide open, like the mouths of caves. Gigantic, black, frozen, empty caves, with those gleaming icicle things hanging down and reaching up at the opening, rows of razor-sharp teeth, waiting to gobble you up, to gulp down your blood. They save your still beating heart for last, a special treat.Then crunch up your bones until all that’s left are a few splinters.

I expect they’d be delighted to find me, Piggy Harry, oink, oink; that I’d make a really tasty meal, keep them going, well…for a bit anyway. I see their eyes in my nightmares sometimes, like balls of fire, and the whites of them showing, only they’re a dirty green colour, rolling about and all wild and scary in their smoky heads. I understand their hunger, like there’s a living thing eating away at them, like they have to feed it, have to! Cos I feel it too, feel I can never cram in enough, that no matter how much I stuff into my mouth, chew and swallow and chomp and gnaw, it’ll never stop the hunger, it’ll never fill up the hole.

The Chinese do some neat stuff to frighten them away though: they make these brilliant paper models, like three-dimensional kites of all those things you need in life. Then they pile them on huge bonfires and burn them to ashes. They say you have to be careful for a whole month, but that the days in the middle are the most dangerous. They steer clear of the sea as well, stay indoors, and get the kids home early, in case the ghosts jump out and get them. Beaches are especially dangerous over Yue Lan.The spirits lurk everywhere, in the curl of a breaking wave, and in the currents that pull swimmers out of their depth, and in whirlpools that swallow up boats.They leave them food and pray, and burn joss sticks, but as far as I can tell they do that all the time anyway.Those joss sticks really smell if you ask me. Make my eyes water. As if that would satisfy them, with the kind of hunger they’ve got growling in their tummies. It wouldn’t satisfy me, that’s definite.

Mother is miles away now, on the phone to Beth next door, making her voice all dramatic, the way she does, describing what happened to me. She’s talking about me but…well…the crazy thing is I feel left out, like I’m not really part of her story, that it’s another ‘only son’. I mooch into the kitchen and tell Ah Dang I’m hungry, and can she fix me something. She likes that. Makes her feel all needed. She always grins and wags her head, as if she understands the appetite I’ve got, what a beast it is, and her gold teeth glitter sort of magically.

While she’s getting a plate together, Alice comes in. Up till then Mum’s kept her away. She’s always trying to do that, keep Alice and me separate.You’d think Alice was some kind of snake full of poison. And it’s true, my sister goes into these fits sometimes, yowling and moaning, and you do tend to feel a bit jumpy about her, cos you don’t know what’s gonna come next. But I get it. I know where all that noise comes from, all that rage. I’m jealous of Alice cos I want to scream too, scream until they all cover their ears, and screw themselves up. But I can’t. I just can’t.

‘How are you feeling?’ Alice asks then, and she smiles in that shy way she has.

‘Oh not too bad,’ I mumble, glancing back at her. I don’t think Ah Dang put very much butter in my sandwich and it’s bothering me.

‘Ah Dang can I have some more butter please?’ I ask. I’d like to talk to Alice, but if I take my eyes off Ah Dang, even for a moment, who knows what she might skimp on?

‘Ai ya, ai ya!’ mutters Ah Dang, peeling back the top of the sandwich and starting again. She isn’t really angry. She fakes it. She tosses her head, making her plait whisk all over the place, and her hands fly about, and she gabbles in Cantonese, but you can tell. In her eyes she’s still smiling.

‘That’s some bruise you’re going to have, Harry,’ Alice says.

I guess she must have seen it when I turned round.Ah Lee appears then through the back door. She sees all the food out, and me looking worried, and Ah Dang slamming things about. And she gives one of her silly hysterical giggles.

‘Ai yah! Ai yah!’ she echoes Ah Dang, and pinches my bare arm. ‘Fei zhai! Fei zhai!’ she squeals, and she’s off again.

I know what she said. Fat boy. I hear it lots. The Chinese can’t resist my chubby arms. Can’t stop themselves from pinching me. Even strangers. Pinching me and grinning, ‘Fei zhai, fei zhai’. I might as well be back at school.You know what it makes me think of.The story of Hansel and Gretel. When the witch locks Hansel up in a cage and every day she brings him lots of food, because you see she’s fattening him up. Fattening him up for the day of slaughter, when she’s going to kill him and chop him up, and pop him into her huge cauldron, and cook him over her roaring fire till he’s all tender and delicious. I like closing my eyes and imagining the witch’s cottage, imagining being with Gretel, deep in the heart of the dark forest, then suddenly the two of us coming upon it. I think about how hungry we’d both be, our bellies rumbling, hungry and tired, with nothing to eat but dandelions and grass. Then we’d step into this clearing and together we’d gasp.

My cottage isn’t made of gingerbread though, because I don’t really like it. It’s built of cake bricks, chocolate, and plain sponge flavoured at least six different ways, toffee and orange, and lemon and mint, and strawberry and coffee. And the bricks are cemented together with butter icing, and jam and cream. The windows are huge glacier-mint squares framed with marzipan. The front door is made entirely of caramel,and the doorknob is a shiny ball of liquorice. As for the roof, it’s tiled in thick slabs of chocolate, milk and dark and white. There’s even meringue smoke coming out of a butterscotch chimney. The biggest problem we have is where to start. I run up to it and take the most enormous bite off a corner brick of rich, moist chocolate. Gretel, she walks nervously up to the door and starts licking it, as if it’s a ginormous lollipop. In my version we’ve virtually polished off the entire building before the witch appears; there’s only a few spadefuls of cake crumb rubble, and some broken chocolate tiles left.While Gretel and I are clutching our stuffed stomachs, the witch throws back a hatch in the floor, made, incidentally, of royal icing, and pounces.

‘Fei zhai, fei zhai,’ squeaks Ah Lee again. Pinch, pinch.

And I want to ask, in that voice inside me that never speaks up, ‘Am I ready now,Ah Lee? Am I ready for the pot? Is my flesh plump and juicy enough yet? Are you sharpening your knives ready to slice me up? But I don’t of course. I glance at Alice. In the story Gretel saved her brother, made him hold out a twig to the short-sighted, croaky, old witch instead of his finger, so when she pinched it she thought he was still all thin and stringy. Still, that’s a story isn’t it? Not real life. Not like it is here in the flat on The Peak, where none of us can do anything to put off what’s coming. I think Ah Lee’s finished her pinching now. She’s wiping down the sink.

‘Hmph!’I grunt.Ah Dang’s only put one slice of ham in my sandwich and barely any cheese at all. At this rate I’ll never be ready for the pot. ‘Ah Dang, I’m hungry!’ I wail. I try to imagine what a hungry ghost would sound like.‘I’m really, really hungry! HUNGRY! There’s not enough filling in my sandwich, Ah Dang.’

Then Ah Dang’s cursing me in Chinese and pounding her drum tummy, and picking up the butter dish and hurling it back down, and going at the lump of cheddar as if she’d like to murder it. I look back at Alice and our eyes meet. And Alice gives a ‘hup’ of laughter, and then she claps a hand over her mouth and tries to stifle it.Well, that only makes it worse than ever, because now I’m laughing too, a great boom of a laugh that make my tummy jiggle about under my shirt, like it’s alive and it wants to escape. Alice falls back against the fridge and she’s helpless now, arms limp, head tipping about, and that makes me lose it completely. I shuffle over to her, and my sides are really splitting, my shirt busting at the seams, and Ah Dang’s screaming and brandishing the knife with the butter on it, like she’s going to stab us both. And just for a second I let my throbbing head rest on Alice’s shoulder, and the peals of laughter rock from her into me and back again. It’s good, so very good laughing like that with my sister Alice that I want to sob.