The Facts of Life and Death

20

IT WAS COWBOY Night and Mummy and Daddy were both out, and so was the sea. Ruby couldn’t see it from the house because the big limekiln on the beach blocked the view between the cottages, but she knew in her gut that the tide was low. It made her feel calmer to know that it was far away, and not pounding the cliff or surging up the slipway.

Once, when she was little, a storm had driven water all the way into the square between the cottages. The limekilns had been waist-deep, and she’d held on to Daddy’s trouser leg at the garden gate and watched the sea sigh across the cobbles towards them. She remembered the stink, and the rat that had been washed from its nest in one of the kilns, scuttling frantically about at the water’s new edge, sitting up now and then to stare anxiously out to sea for its lost babies. Daddy had crept up behind it and Ruby had tensed almost unbearably, but the rat hadn’t seemed to care – even when he’d hit it with a spade.

Ruby rolled on to her side on the spider rug.

Her chest hurt. It could be cancer or something, but Mummy still didn’t care because of the letter from the headmistress.

Daddy wouldn’t make her go to school.

‘I wouldn’t make you go,’ he’d said. ‘But women always stick together. Like your Mum and Miss Bossybritches.’

‘Miss Bryant’, Ruby had giggled, and Daddy had winked. ‘That’s what I said.’

She rolled back on to her elbows and sighed down at Pony & Rider. Despite the big, exciting headline PLAITING MADE EASY! the article made plaiting look incredibly difficult. Ruby had triple-checked the numbered photos, but there still seemed to be one missing. One minute the pony’s mane was all tufts and fingers and dangling thread, and the next it was a perfect little hair rosette, with all the ends tucked in. Instead of reassuring her, the article had only increased Ruby’s anxiety that when the time came, she would be found wanting in the plaits department.

Somebody knocked at the front door, and Ruby’s head snapped up.

Mummy and Daddy had keys. They never knocked. Nobody ever knocked because strangers never came to Limeburn – not even Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A pedlar had passed through once.

A goose walked over Ruby’s grave.

She tiptoed carefully across the room. She pressed her ear against the door. There was a knock right on it, and she squeaked in surprise.

‘Ruby?’

She stared at the door. The person who was knocking knew her name. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

‘Ruby?’

‘Yes?’ she whispered.

‘It’s me.’

She frowned. ‘Adam?’

‘I have something for you.’ he said. ‘Open the door.’

Ruby hesitated. She wasn’t supposed to let anyone into the house when her parents weren’t there. But they didn’t mean Adam, she was sure. And he had something for her. So she fumbled the key into the lock and let him in, along with a faceful of rain.

Adam was wearing the same red hoodie he’d lent her that day in the haunted house.

‘All right?’ he said.

‘Hi.’

They stood and looked at each other for a moment.

‘You OK?’ he said. He seemed nervous.

‘Fine,’ she said. Ruby was nervous too. She didn’t know why. They talked all the time when they were up on the swing or in the haunted house. She didn’t know why this was different, but it was. Maybe because it was night and she was alone, and because Adam had never been in her house before, and this seemed like a strange time to start.

‘It’s raining really hard.’

‘I know.’

Adam looked around the room and Ruby was acutely aware of its every shortcoming – the old stained sofa, the threadbare carpet, the dark patch of damp in the corner of the ceiling. Adam’s house was fresh and clean, and had one chair so old and precious that no one was allowed to sit on it.

‘Your house smells of fish,’ said Adam.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Daddy catches them in the Gut.’

He nodded.

‘Sometimes he sells them to the hotel,’ she continued, just to fill the air. ‘They’re worth loads but he only gets ten pounds.’

‘That’s bad business,’ said Adam sagely. ‘He should speak to my dad. He knows how to make money for people. That’s what he does.’

‘That’s a really good job,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but he’s away a lot.’

Ruby already knew that. Mr Braund was a tall, well-fed man who wore suits and drove up and down to London every week, in a different car each year.

There was a longish silence.

‘Do you want a custard cream?’ Ruby said.

‘No thanks.’

‘OK,’ said Ruby, then she asked, ‘What have you got for me then?’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ Adam handed her a smallish packet wrapped in blue tissue paper. He kept his other hand in his jeans pocket, as if he didn’t care.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Open it,’ he shrugged, ‘and find out.’

Ruby parted the tissue cautiously. Inside was a little plastic donkey. It was covered with grey flock, with beige around its eyes and muzzle, and hitched to a small wooden sledge that had Clovelly painted on the side.

Ruby felt a wave of something so warm and special flood through her that she almost cried.

‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘It’s… amazing!

‘It’s nothing really,’ said Adam.

It wasn’t nothing. It was something. More than something.

‘Did you get it in Clovelly?’

‘Yeah. I remember you said you wanted a donkey, so…’ Adam tailed off. Then added, ‘I walked all the way there and all the way back. It rained the whole time.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘That’s OK,’ he said.

‘But it’s not even my birthday.’

‘It’s not a birthday present. It’s just… you know, for any old day.’

‘It’s the best present I ever had.’ Ruby meant it; she couldn’t think of a better one right at that moment.

Adam went red but he looked very pleased.

‘I’m going to call him Lucky,’ said Ruby.

Adam moved closer so that their heads almost bumped. He touched the sledge. ‘I thought it would be pretty funny to put some carrots in here; like, behind the donkey.’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Ruby. ‘That would be pretty funny.’ She didn’t know why, but she totally agreed.

‘Thank you,’ she added.

‘No problem.’

They stood together for a moment, looking at the donkey. Then Adam said, ‘Anyway, I’d better go. Got tons of homework.’

‘Me too,’ she said.

‘Mine’s Roman roads and aqueducts,’ he said.

‘Mine’s a diary,’ said Ruby. ‘We have to write something every day.’

‘That’s harsh.’

‘I know. I usually just do it all on one day.’

He nodded at the donkey. ‘Well, today you can write about that.’

‘I will,’ said Ruby.

‘Night,’ he said.

‘Night.’

She closed the door behind Adam and locked it, then took the key out.

Ruby went upstairs to bed, even though it wasn’t even nine thirty. She made a space on her bedside table, carefully sweeping a spot clear between the mugs and the sweet wrappers and the books, and put the donkey there.

They didn’t have any carrots so she got a potato from the sack in the kitchen and put that in the sledge for now, like a big pale-brown boulder.

She wrote FRIDAY in her diary.

Ruby tried to stay awake, straining to hear Daddy’s car pull up on the cobbles, but instead she fell asleep, looking at Lucky.

John Trick was late home because someone had cut off Tonto’s tail.

Most of the Gunslingers had already meandered their way down Irsha Street by the time he and Shiny and Nellie helped Whippy outside to his steed.

The old horse was tied to the drainpipe where Whippy had left him, chewing on a complimentary sachet of Heinz Salad Cream.

They got a chair for Whippy to sway on, and guided his boot into the stirrup, then Hick and Nellie pushed, while Shiny ran round the back to stop Whippy tumbling straight off the other side. It had happened before.

‘Hey,’ said Shiny, but the other three were puffing and grunting too hard to hear him.

‘Hey!’ he said again, and rejoined them. ‘Tonto’s tail’s gone.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Nellie.

But it was true.

They helped Whippy out of the stirrup and off the chair and then the Gunslingers stood and stared at the rough bob, which was all that was left of Tonto’s wavy white tail.

Sometimes people shouted that they were wankers. Sometimes kids threw pebbles at them. But this was much worse.

‘Bastards!’ shouted Whippy. ‘Bastards!’

Hick Trick shook his head. ‘First Blacky’s car gets keyed, and now this.’

They peered under wooden tables and even crawled about between chair legs – as if finding the missing tail would rectify the situation.

But Tonto’s tail was gone for good.