The Traveller and Other Stories Page 2

  Mum didn’t say bye-bye. No kisses or anything.

  “She left,” Dad said.

  Barry had come downstairs after waking up. Normally, Mum would come and get him, but not that morning. So he had walked into the kitchen, still in his pyjamas, the floor cold on his bare feet. Dad was sitting at the table. He looked like he’d been crying. He had taped some tissue to his hand, across his knuckles. The paper was stained reddish brown.

  There was broken glass on the floor. Barry was careful not to step on it as he moved farther into the kitchen.

  “Where’d she go?” he asked.

  Dad didn’t answer, so Barry asked again.

  “To the mainland,” Dad said.

  “On the ferry?”

  “How else would she get there?”

  “When’s she coming back?”

  “Dunno,” Dad said. Then after a while, he said, “Soon.”

  Dad smelled funny. He always smelled of beer and cigarettes, but that morning there was something else. Something Barry couldn’t name. He had dark stains on his shirt.

  “You want breakfast?” Dad asked.

  Barry nodded.

  “Toast? Cornflakes? What?”

  “Mum gives me Weetabix,” Barry said.

  Dad got up from the table, fetched a bowl and spoon from the dish rack, placed them on the counter. He opened one cupboard after another before asking, “Where are they?”

  Barry pointed to the cupboard beside the washing machine.

  Dad found the box, put two biscuits in the bowl, took a bottle of milk from the fridge.

  Barry opened his mouth to tell Dad he always had warm milk, but it was too late. Dad poured cold milk into the bowl, dropped the spoon in, then set them on the table.

  “Can you turn the TV on yourself?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah,” Barry said.

  “I’m going back to bed. Don’t make any noise.”

  Dad left him in the kitchen to eat.

  Barry thought about Mum. He wasn’t surprised that she’d left. Not really. The way Dad hit her when he was angry and had been drinking beer. Sometimes he hit Barry too. Dad’s hands were hard and heavy. They sometimes knocked Barry off his feet.

  It happened more often now that Dad didn’t have a job anymore. Barry used to like the mornings when Dad was out working on the fishing boat. He and Mum had the house to themselves, and they would cuddle and read stories, and Barry would touch her bruises and kiss them better.

  Why didn’t she say bye-bye? It was okay that she left because she didn’t want to get hit anymore, but why didn’t she say bye-bye? Why didn’t she take Barry with her? He supposed it was because she left late at night and didn’t want to wake him up.

  But the ferry didn’t go in the middle of the night, did it?

  When he finished his breakfast, Barry dressed himself and left the house without telling Dad. He went out the back door, which was never locked, and walked around the house to the patch of gravel and weeds that was their front garden. He knew the way to the ferry slip, so he didn’t need Dad to take him. Not that he would, even if Barry asked.

  It felt like a long time, that first morning when he walked there alone. Old Man Gove asked if his parents knew he was there, so Barry lied and said yes. He remembered the things Mum would say while they waited for the ferry: Is she coming in on time? The weather’s good. Nothing to hold her up. And Old Man Gove grunted the same replies.

  Barry knew the library van wouldn’t be on the ferry that morning because it had been just the day before, so he didn’t bring his books. But anyway, that wasn’t really why he walked to the slip. He went there in case Mum came back. If she came back, he knew she would be happy that he was there waiting for her.

  But she didn’t come back. Not that morning, or the next, or the one after that. He had gone to Mum and Dad’s bedroom while Dad lay snoring and gathered up the books she had borrowed. One of them had her favourite bookmark still stuck between the pages, so Barry slipped it out and put it on the bedside locker. He took the books and put them in a plastic bag along with the ones he’d borrowed and carried them all the way to the ferry slip. This was the third morning he’d done that, and they were so heavy, but he did it anyway because he wanted to bring them back to Josie so she could read some more to him.

  The first morning he carried them, the plastic bag’s handles cut into his palm and fingers, and he cried. The next time, he put them in a backpack he found under the stairs. That was easier, though it did hurt his shoulders.

  Now he watched the ferry approach, and he could see the cars and one small bus on its bottom deck, a few passengers leaning on the rails of the top deck. He lifted his hand and waved. Some of the passengers waved back, smiling.

  The library van wasn’t there. Mum wasn’t there.

  Barry said goodbye to Old Man Gove and headed home.

  Dad wasn’t there when Barry got to the house. He looked in the cupboard and found the last slices of bread. There was no more butter in the fridge, so he ate them dry along with water from the tap. That done, he took the backpack up to his bedroom and removed the books. He set Mum’s aside and opened the first of his own.

  He’d borrowed this one before and he knew nearly all the words from memory. The pictures of the little boy in his bed, then falling.

  “Did you ever hear of Mickey, how he heard a racket in the night?”

  Barry worked his way through the book, touching the words, saying them out loud. Almost like proper reading. He did the same with the others, though he didn’t know them so well.

  He hoped the library van would come tomorrow so he could get some new ones. He hoped Mum would come back soon and take him away.

  Sometime later, Barry heard Dad arrive home. He went to his bedroom door, opened it a little, and listened. Keys dropped on the table. The rustle of plastic bags. Things getting put away. The snap and hiss of a beer can being opened.

  Barry went back to his books.

  His belly grumbled louder as the day went on. He heard bad words and stumbling from below, then crying.

  “She’s a demon,” Dad said. “A demon.”

  Barry wondered if he should go down there and tell Dad it was all right, Mum would be home soon to look after them. But he knew when Dad was like that he would be angry, and he might hit. So he stayed in his room until he smelled something bad, a burning kind of smell.

  He opened his door and the smell got worse. He saw wisps of smoke in the air. The stairs creaked under his feet. From the hall, he saw Dad in the kitchen, his head resting on his forearm, spit hanging from his lips. Rows of empty cans on the table, and a half full bottle with an orange label. Dad always called it wine, but Barry thought it wasn’t real wine, not like people drink on TV.

  Smoke billowed from a pot on the stove. Two slices of charred bread stood up in the toaster. An open tin of beans on the counter.

  Barry went to the cooker. He thought he should probably turn it off the way Mum did when something was getting too hot. One of the big knobs on the front was turned all the way round. He turned it back until it clicked. Still, the beans in the pot burned, more smoke filling the air. It made his eyes water, and he wanted to cough.

  He reached for the pot handle to lift it away. His fingers released it before he felt the burning heat, and the pot clattered on the floor, spilling hot beans across the tiles.

  Dad’s head jerked up, his eyes wide, his mouth open.

  Barry put his hands up, backed away, saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean it, sorry.”

  Dad blinked at him, then coughed, waved the smoke away.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Barry said, the tears coming. “I didn’t mean to spill it. It was an accident. I’ll clean it up, I promise.”

  Dad looked at the mess. He looked at Barry.

>   “The beans were burning,” Barry said. “I lifted the pot off but it was too hot and I dropped it. I’m sorry.”

  Dad crossed the room and Barry backed as far into the corner as he could go. He held his hands up, crouched down, made himself small, saying, sorry sorry sorry . . .

  Dad got down on his knees, took Barry’s hand, and pressed his lips to the hot palm. Barry felt the stubble of his chin, saw tears fall from Dad’s eyes. Then Dad wrapped his arms around him, pulled him in close, hugged him for the first time he could remember.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Dad said. “I’m so sorry. I did a terrible thing and I can’t take it back. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  And Dad held Barry like that for a long time, so long that Barry had to push Dad’s arms away. Then they cleaned up the mess together. Later, Dad made them both toast, and opened more beans, and they ate them cold straight from the tin.

  After they’d finished, and they’d been sitting quiet for a while, Dad started to cry again. It occurred to Barry that he should hold Dad’s hand, even though he knew how hard and heavy it could be. He did it anyway. Dad squeezed Barry’s fingers between his.

  “I should end it,” Dad said as his eyes gazed at something very far away. “I should just end it, but I’m too scared.”

  “End what?” Barry asked.

  Dad didn’t answer. He let go of Barry’s hand, stood up from the table, and fetched another can of beer. As he drank it, staring out of the kitchen window, Barry left him there and went to bed.

  “Everything all right, son?” Old Man Gove asked.

  He hardly ever looked at Barry, but he did this morning, his eyes small and watchful.

  “Yeah,” Barry said.

  “You sure? I saw your dad yesterday afternoon. He didn’t look too well.”

  “He’s been sick,” Barry said, not sure if it was a lie.

  “Where’s your mum these days?”

  “She left,” Barry said.

  Old Man Gove’s face went loose. He looked away and said, “Sorry to hear that, son.”

  He didn’t say anything else.

  It had been three sleeps since the night Barry and Dad ate together. Barry had hardly seen him since. Only heard him staggering and bumping into things, and the cursing and shouting, and the crying, saying, demon, demon. So Barry had eaten dry bread, and Weetabix from the packet, and drunk water from the tap once the milk was done. Each morning, he washed his face at the bathroom sink, even brushed his own teeth. He’d been wearing the same clothes since Mum left, but he did change his underpants one day because they had gotten stained and smelly.

  He didn’t see Dad at all yesterday, and hadn’t heard him since the evening. The back door had slammed sometime after dark, and that was all.

  The house had felt empty as Barry came downstairs this morning and into the kitchen. A piece of paper lay on the table, some writing on it that he couldn’t read.

  “Is she coming in on time?” Barry asked.

  “Aye,” Old Man Gove said.

  “Good weather today.”

  “Aye.”

  “Nothing to hold her up.”

  “No.”

  “She’ll not be long.”

  “She’ll not be long.”

  And there she was. The Sapphire, gliding across the water. Barry felt hope in his chest, just like he’d done every morning since Mum left. And every morning, as the ferry had come closer, he’d felt the hope wash away when he saw no library van on the bottom deck. And his Mum never waved at him from the top deck because she wasn’t there.

  But maybe this morning.

  He shielded his eyes from the sun, but its reflection on the water made him squint. The ferry appeared as a black shape against silver, nothing Barry could make out. As it came closer, he saw the forms of people on the upper deck, but still the lower deck remained obscured by the glare. Then a cloud passed across the sun, and he saw the reds and blues of cars, a white delivery van, and there, to the back, the bright splashes of colour on the library van.

  Barry couldn’t help but giggle. The smile felt strange on his mouth after so many days without. He found himself jumping on the spot, a dizzy feeling behind his eyes like when Mum would spin him around, his hands clasped in hers.

  Then a dark feeling pierced the joy.

  Mum should be here too.

  Old Man Gove trudged down the slip as the ferry’s apron ramp lowered. The metal met the concrete with a clang and clatter, and Old Man Gove waved the first of the cars off the boat. Barry waited by the railing at the edge of the car park, the vehicles passing him one by one.

  At last, the library van climbed the slip, up and into the car park, to the far side where it would stay until the ferry made the return journey that evening.

  Barry ran to it, the backpack full of books slapping against his shoulders. He reached the side door and knocked it hard enough to hurt his knuckles.

  The door opened, and Barry’s heart felt like it might burst when he saw Josie on the top step, smiling down at him.

  “Hiya, Barry,” she said. “Up you come.”

  She reached down, took his hand, helped him up and into the van. Rob the driver already had his newspaper open on the steering wheel and was pouring himself a cup of tea from his thermos.

  Josie looked past Barry, out into the sunlit car park, the smile falling away from her lips.

  “Where’s your Mum?” she asked.

  Barry shrugged the backpack off, unzipped it, and emptied the contents onto the floor. “I brought her books back. Mine too.”

  Josie hunkered down in front of him. “Barry, where’s your mum?”

  “Can you read my books for me?” Barry asked.

  Josie got on her knees and took hold of Barry’s arms. “Tell me, where’s your mum?”

  He didn’t want to tell her, but she looked him in the eye.

  “She left,” he said.

  And then it all came out. All the worry. All the pain. All the fear. It gushed out of him along with the tears he’d been holding back. He collapsed into her arms, and she gathered him up, and he cried and cried as she rocked him, saying, “Oh sweetheart, oh darling . . .”

  The van rattled and juddered along the road to Barry’s house. Rob drove, his newspaper stashed into a pocket in the door. Barry sat on Josie’s knee, the seatbelt strapping them both to the passenger seat. She had insisted they come here. Rob had argued, said they couldn’t leave the car park, but Josie had shouted at him, and Rob had said, okay, okay, don’t get your knickers in a twist.

  The engine grumbled as the van climbed the steep lane to the house before the ground flattened out. It occurred to Barry for the first time that it wasn’t a nice house. It was small and old and dirty looking with a garage that had never had a car in it.

  “You wait here,” Josie said to Rob. “I’ll find out what’s going on and then we’ll head back, all right?”

  “Just don’t be long,” Rob said.

  Josie helped Barry climb down from the van and onto the gravel with its tufts of moss and grass. She held his hand as they walked to the front door.

  “Will your dad be home?” she asked.

  “Dunno,” Barry said. “I don’t think so.”

  She knocked on the door and listened to the quiet. After a while, she asked, “Do you have a key?”

  “No. But the back door’s open.”

  Josie took his hand again and said, “Lead on, then.”

  She glanced back at the van where Rob watched and waited. Barry brought her around the side of the building, and she sniffed at the air as they passed between the garage and the house.

  At the back, the door was shut. Barry pressed down on the handle, and it swung inward. He stepped inside first, and Josie followed, his hand still in hers. The kitchen smelled bad. He hadn’t really noticed before, but
now that Josie was with him, in his house, he felt embarrassed and sad.

  Josie looked around at the dishes piled in the sink, the stack of dirty clothes on the floor by the washing machine, the rows of empty cans and bottles on the counter.

  She squeezed his hand tighter and he saw a glisten in her eyes. He knew she felt sorry for him and it caused hot anger in his heart. Even though she was being kind, it made him feel small and stupid, like a baby. He let go of her fingers, shoved his hands down into his pockets.

  “Mr. Whittle?” she called.

  No one answered. She tried again.

  “I don’t think he’s here,” Barry said. “He went out last night. He left that.”

  Barry pointed to the piece of paper on the table.

  Josie approached it, leaned down so she could read the words. He watched her lips move, his anger forgotten.

  “Oh Christ,” she said, then she covered her mouth with her hand. She looked to the back door, still open, then at Barry. “Stay here,” she said.

  Josie rushed out through the door, into the back garden. Barry went after her, out onto the step. She glanced back at him, told him to stay there.

  He didn’t. He walked along the back of the house, keeping her in view. She opened the side door of the garage and stumbled back, her hands over her nose and mouth. Flies, black and fat, tumbled through the air around her.

  Josie looked back at him once more. “Stay there,” she said. “Don’t come any closer.”

  She stepped into the dark.

  Now Barry stopped. He watched the dim throat of the doorway, listening hard.

  Josie screamed. She lurched out into the light and fell to her knees. Vomit spilled from her mouth and nose.

  Barry stood still, unsure what to do. He wanted to go and help her, tell her everything was all right, but he was too scared to move. So he stayed there just like she’d told him to, even as she wept and threw up and spat, even as Rob came running from the van.