The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair Read online

  Does Billy know?

  Billy knows. You know. I’m all around you. I’m in the air and in the raindrops. I’m in the rustle of the trees and the ocean. I’m in every living thing. You already know that. You can speak to me any time because I am everywhere. You don’t need to say goodbye to me. You never did. Can you catch the air in your hand?

  I know you can’t.

  Can you hold the ocean in your palm?

  No.

  Can you hold memories in your heart?

  I know that you can and when I try to smile Mum looks behind me and as I spin around in the water I see Billy. His eyes are closed, his face a pale moon. His hand floats towards me, ghostly white, and I desperately need to reach it to give it a squeeze, but the more I flick and flap my body, the further apart we are.

  Mum, I do need to say goodbye. I really do.

  Why?

  You have to say goodbye. It feels like the story has no ending if you don’t say goodbye.

  Maybe the story should never end, my son.

  When I try to ask Mum what she means, she’s gone. I spin back again towards Billy and then I see them, together. Mum and Billy, Billy and Mum. Small bubbles of life float from her mouth to his and his eyelids flutter like butterfly wings.

  Exploding like a shaken bottle of fizzy pop, I break the surface of the water, gasping, with Billy clenched under my arm. The sky is grey now and as endless as for ever as I stare into it. I can hear the wailing of seagulls. As I stare upwards they circle overhead and I think about how I might have stayed with Mum a moment longer, how I should have said goodbye but I blew it again. THE GOODBYE LIST has been totally useless. A warm tear eases from my eye and joins the saltwater of the sea and you’d never know which was which.

  I pull Billy to where the water meets the sand and Knuckles helps drag us up the beach. Billy’s like a sodden sponge of ice and he collapses on the sand, with me joining him. Knuckles quickly takes off his blazer and puts it over us to keep us warm but I already know that it’s not going to help because Billy’s not breathing properly.

  Once, a long time ago, Dad took us to a waxwork museum and although they looked real their skin had a funny colour. That’s how Billy looks now. Knuckles and Nevaeh are standing over us, both of them hardly able to move. I bend down to check if Billy’s breathing and I can’t hear anything except my own breath, which is thundering.

  Heart massage – I know how to do it. Although even after reading loads of medical books and watching it on TV, I can’t move. Marvin never mentioned this in his medical manual; how your fear of losing someone can be so big, you can’t move your muscles.

  The seagulls are properly weeping above me now.

  I can’t save Billy.

  I’m afraid.

  I’m afraid he’ll die.

  I know what it feels like to lose those you love.

  Inside my head I hear Mum saying she has just slipped around the corner. I’m not to be afraid. It feels as though Mum might be watching me now, urging me on. Without thinking, I lean down and place my hands on Billy’s chest. It’s cold. I retreat, my heart a galloping horse. Then I bend forward again, pushing down, exactly as I saw it done on the TV.

  Live, Billy. Live, Billy.

  I try again. I feel a tiny movement beneath my hands. A twitching; like a goldfish out of water. Billy’s breathing again.

  When I’m sure he’s okay, I roll him onto his side, to the recovery position, and I fall back onto the velvet sand. Above me, the clouds are shaped like teardrops.

  My fingers feel their way across the sand until they reach Billy’s hand. I give it a squeeze.

  Billy’s hand twitches slightly in mine but he doesn’t squeeze back.

  Nevaeh crouches down beside us. She must have called an ambulance because I can hear its sirens and they’re close now; then I hear the paramedics talking and covering us in tinfoil. I want to say we’re like frozen turkeys going into the oven, but the words don’t come out.

  “Look after them,” shouts Nevaeh as we’re lifted into the ambulance. “It’s my best friend and his brother.”

  We’re taken to Eden General Hospital and I won’t let the doctors separate us, even though they want to. I’m not leaving Billy. They take away our wet clothes and put us in gowns and we cling to each other, not even enough room between us to fit a sliver of tissue paper.

  “Billy,” I whisper, thinking about what he said last night when he was pretending to be Brian. “Is this all because you thought you should go away so I could have a mummy? I don’t want a mummy if it means losing you.”

  Billy’s voice is hoarse and dry. “Nope, I went to the sea for Brian.”

  “Brian?” I’m confused.

  “I brought him to school with me because I wanted to show him around. Then he disappeared, but I found him again in the garden patch. When you weren’t at the school gate, I was telling Brian the armchair story and he wanted to see the beautiful creature from it.” Billy gives me a little smile. “I only went to show him the surface of the ocean, but he jumped in saying he was a diver and then I lost him, so I was leaning over to see if I could find him again. I’m not as good a diver as Brian, Becket.”

  I pull Billy tight to my body and say that I’m sorry about Brian diving into the sea like that, but he shouldn’t lean over the water again because it’s dangerous.

  There’s a small knock at our door and the doctor enters and says we’re very lucky. There’s nothing seriously wrong with either of us and it’s a good thing we had friends that helped us and called the ambulance so quickly. “It was Nevaeh and Knuckles who rang them,” I explain to Billy. “My mobile phone is still in the water somewhere and I dropped the envelope with the cranes too.”

  “Since you had no identification on you, could you please give us your mother’s number,” says the doctor, preparing to write it down. “We will contact her now so she can come and get you.”

  “She’s dead,” says Billy.

  The doctor says he’s sorry to hear that, but a guardian’s number will suffice. His nostrils flare a little and I can see the hairs inside his nose that filter germs.

  “We’ve got Dad,” I say, my voice tight like a stretched catapult. I give the doctor the number and he disappears out the door, before returning five minutes later. Apparently, Dad didn’t answer. He’s probably still at Pearl’s art exhibition, I tell the doctor. Maybe he’s got his mobile phone switched off.

  “I want Dad,” whispers Billy.

  The doctor says he’ll get a staff member to keep trying. In the meantime, he asks if I have any other relatives that could come and get us if we were discharged, but I say there isn’t anyone. We’re on our own. It was a mistake saying that, I know it the second the words spill from my lips. The doctor makes a grunting noise before leaving.

  Half an hour later the doctor is back and fussing about how it is still impossible to contact our father on the number that I’ve given him.

  This time when he leaves, I tell Billy we’ve got to get out of here. When Billy asks me why, all wide-eyed and trusting, I tell him I imagine Dad is missing us. Billy seems satisfied with my answer. Trouble is, the real reason we need to do a runner is because I think the hospital staff are getting suspicious about why they can’t get hold of anyone and why no one is coming to get us. What if they ring social services? I heard about something like this happening on the news once, only in that case the mum ran off and didn’t come back for her kids. Social services came for them instead and they were going to look after them.

  The doctor looks back in through the glass porthole in the door, smiles and then moves on. Dad must still be at the art exhibition. Maybe Pearl is persuading Dad they’re a perfect match, or maybe they’re talking about what I thought I saw in the hallway the other night.

  I explain to Billy that we have to go on another SNOOP secret mission: escaping the hospital without being seen. Billy says he doesn’t have his balaclava and I say it doesn’t matter this time. Anyway, I don’t
have my sheep hat either.

  Staring through the glass porthole, I see a nurse at the far end of the corridor, but she’s busy writing notes and looking at her computer. She hasn’t been in our room yet, so she probably wouldn’t recognize us if we slipped away and went back to the flat by ourselves. Even if Dad’s not there, I can look after Billy until he turns up. I did it before when Billy was sick. I can do it again.

  I can make everything right.

  Slowly I ease Billy’s soggy shoes on, put a heavy blanket over his hospital gown and I put my soggy clothes back on. They’re freezing and make my teeth chatter. I tell Billy to be ready to run when I say so. First, I’m going to go out and check the coast is clear. Billy nods and his jaw is set firm. He promises me he’ll be the best spy I’ve ever known. Since I don’t know any, the level isn’t set that high.

  There is no sign of the doctor outside so I grab Billy’s hand and drag him, feet squelching, down the corridor and then turn into another. There are signs for everything: cardiology, oncology, gastroenterology, haematology and neurology – but no exit sign. I’m lost in the hospital maze and I’m dragging around a boy who looks terrified but determined (since he’s on a secret mission). A few people turn to stare at us but I brazen it out. If you hold your head up and match their stare, they usually look away first. Hurrying down the corridors, I’m glaring at every person we meet. Until I turn the next corner. Our doctor is in the distance and talking to a police officer.

  We’ve been rumbled. The SNOOP secret mission is going to be over before it began. The police officer is going to take us away if I don’t think of something fast.

  I think of something fast.

  To start with, I pull Billy’s blanket as far over his head and mine as I can and mutter to him that the blanket is the new balaclava, and then I open the first door we come to. It’s a cleaner’s closet – otherwise known as SNOOP’s new den until the coast is clear again. It’s not much of a den and Billy’s not impressed. It’s full of mops and brushes, buckets and bottles of pine-fresh disinfectant. We crouch down on the floor as I tell Billy we just need to be quiet for a little while and when the doctor buzzes off we can escape properly and go back to the flat. But Billy has other ideas and wants to know why we can’t just go straight home. As I’m trying to tell Billy we wouldn’t be good spies if we marched out and everyone saw us, a paper crane falls softly from the blanket.

  We stare at it.

  We stare at each other.

  “Maybe it stuck to me when I fell in the water. I mean, I dropped the envelope of cranes into the ocean so perhaps this one was tucked into my clothes.”

  Thing is, my clothes are completely wet and it’s completely dry.

  Billy says he’ll hold the crane while I tell him what happened to the beautiful creature, because I didn’t finish the story. There’s nothing much else to do in this cupboard, so I pull the blanket closer around us and say I’m going to tell him the ending.

  “Close your eyes. This is what really happened to the two boys and this is how they got through the storm and took the longest journey of their lives.” I take a deep breath. “The beautiful creature said it was time to go back to where they belonged. The storm was gone and the seas calm once more. She had enjoyed swimming with them, she had drawn them pictures, sang to them, showed them sparkly fish, coral plants and starfish brighter than any stars in the sky. But she said now was the time they must leave. One boy asked how they could say goodbye when they loved her so much. She said, ‘I drew my goodbyes, I planted them, I whispered them on stars, I spelled them out in sparkly fish.’ One of the boys said he didn’t realize they were goodbyes so how could they count? She told them that each time she did something with them they thought of her and they smiled, and so each one counted. Each smile, each memory, she would leave with them. But one boy was not satisfied.”

  “Why?” asks Billy, his little body shivering until I snuggle up closer to him.

  “He thought goodbye was more important than all the times they’d spent together. He thought saying it would make a proper ending to everything. The beautiful creature shook her head. ‘Saying goodbye will not make you happy,’ she whispered. ‘What will make you happy is remembering the times we had and keeping me alive in your heart. There is no ending.’” Tears are prickling my eyes now. “She was right, and at last the boy understood because her words danced inside his heart and he knew, he just knew. At that moment the two boys held hands and were propelled back to the ocean surface. The armchair was still waiting for them and they climbed back on board, thinking of the beautiful creature who they’d shared happy times with. The storm had passed and the travellers saw them now and waved because they weren’t invisible any more. Each and every person made it safely to shore, and began happy lives in the new land. But the two boys never forgot the beautiful creature. And she never forgot them.”

  “I wish I’d seen the beautiful creature when I fell in the water.”

  “I think she saw you,” I reply.

  “What was her name? You never told me.”

  “It was Rebekah.”

  “But that was Mummy’s name.”

  “I know.”

  After that, I think we must have fallen asleep. Next thing we know, we are being guided from the darkness of the cupboard and into the light of the corridor by the police officer. I don’t know what time it is but I do know that the lady police officer is now asking if I’m Becket Rumsey and if this is my brother, Billy.

  I nod.

  Billy nudges me and says spies don’t give their real names. I tell him we don’t need to be spies any more because we’ve been caught.

  “We thought you’d left the hospital and we’d lost you,” says the police officer. I squint up at her, expecting her to tell us we’re in terrible trouble and we will have to go into a home.

  “Dad didn’t turn up for us,” I whisper, clutching Billy to my chest. He’s shaking again and his cold fingers are gripping my wrist like a vice. “I think he’s with Pearl.”

  “But not Naked Man,” says Billy even though I try to shush him.

  “And this would be…” The officer flips open her notebook. “Pearl Kinnerton, formerly of 22 Cavalier Approach and now residing at 40 Carlton Terrace.”

  “Yes,” I say meekly. “That’s her. She’s an artist.” Clearly, I’ve given up on being a spy and all the information is spilling from me like beans from an upturned tin. The officer looks at her notebook again and makes a small smacking noise with her lips. Bet she has information that Dad attacked Pearl and she’s probably thinking he might attack us and we’d be safer without him. I half expect a social worker to appear in a puff of smoke behind her and then whisk us away to an orphanage, like the ones in Victorian novels.

  “Let’s get you double-checked by a doctor,” says the police officer. “You’ve clearly been hiding in that cupboard for a little while. You’ve got strange marks on your cheeks.”

  “Bristles,” I say.

  “I’m not sure you’re old enough to have bristles.” The officer smiles at me, pleased she’s made a joke. I smile back. Billy does too. I don’t think he understands though, he smiles at a lot of daft things. Billy’s hospital gown is filthy and covered in fluff and we smell of pine disinfectant and salty seawater. The officer tightens the blanket around Billy and he asks if she’s going to be his new parent. She clears her throat. “I’m sure that would be very nice but you’ve got your own father for that, Billy.”

  “Dad?” I swallow. Did she just say we’ve still got Dad? Are we not being taken away and put into care? Doesn’t she know our dad was in prison for attacking his girlfriend? I bet it’s on record. Surely, she thinks we won’t be safe with him. We trail after the police officer down the corridor and I ask millions of questions, but the officer tells me to shush until we’re settled in our room.

  “You are not being removed from the hospital until a lady comes to get you. I’ve just had confirmation, I’ve got her name here somewhere…”
The police officer looks at her notebook again. “Here it is, Cat—”

  “Cat Woman!” says Billy.

  “Well, that’s not—”

  “Cat gives us lasagne.”

  “Okay.”

  “And she does fancy orange chips too, Becket said so.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think she gets the picture, Billy,” I say.

  “Well, this Cat Woman, who sounds like a great cook, is on her way to pick you up. Apparently she will take care of you until your father is finished at the police station.” The officer shows us back to our room.

  I blink. Until Dad is finished at the police station? Nothing is making sense. The officer asks us to sit on the bed and she says that Dad was involved in an argument. My eyes start to fill up. “Don’t worry,” says the police officer. “We’re just finishing talking to him and he’ll be back with you again soon.” The officer looks at her notebook again.

  “Did he attack anyone?” I can hardly ask the question but I have to know. “He was going to an art exhibition.”

  “Attack anyone? Not that I know of,” says the officer. “And I hope not. There was a little incident at the exhibition, an altercation.” I want to ask what an altercation is but the officer continues, “All the paintings got ripped and destroyed and someone called us out because there was a lot of shouting coming from the church hall.” The officer closes her notebook again.

  “Did the paintings of the Naked Man get ripped?” Billy asks; his face is all crunched up like used tinfoil.

  I’m not thinking of Naked Man though. An icy chill goes through me as my mind trots back to the moment when Pearl and Dad were in the hallway. I saw them arguing then too. I ask the officer if it was Dad who destroyed the paintings, was he the person shouting? The officer shakes her head and says all we need to know is that Dad is fine and will be released without any charge. Pearl on the other hand…

  If I was writing up SNOOP notes now, I would write:

  SUSPECT: Ms Pearl Kinnerton.

  MOTIVE: Unsure. Could it be jealousy? Was Pearl so angry that Dad had a life before her with Mum, and did Pearl think he had another girlfriend after her, even though I texted to say Camille wasn’t his girlfriend? Did she not believe the text?