The Great Blue Yonder Read online

  I’m sorry that Harry’s dead, because it means I can never make it right now. I can never be mates with him or say I’m sorry for the times I was nasty. And I can never forgive him either for the times he was nasty to me. Maybe he wouldn’t want me to forgive him, maybe he wouldn’t want to be my friend anyway, not ever. I don’t know. But just because someone’s not your friend, that doesn’t mean you aren’t sorry when they’re gone. I did like Harry really, he was very funny at times and good at football and he understood things a lot quicker than I did, and he was quite clever and he made me feel like a dozy lump, though I’d never have told him that.

  If Harry could come back now, I’d go up to him and put my hand out and ask him if we couldn’t let bygones be bygones and try and leave each other alone in future, even if we could never be friends.

  So I’m sorry that Harry’s gone, I am really, and that’s true, I’m not just saying that. And funnily enough, I think that if it had been the other way round, and I’d had the accident, Harry would have been sorry in the same way too. And the worst part of it is that I can never make it right now. That’s the bit that’s hardest of all. So, I’m sorry, Harry, but I just want you to know that it was my idea about the tree. The tree was my idea. And that’s my way of trying to make things up. Bye, Harry. All the best.

  And then it was signed J. Donkins at the bottom.

  What do you say? Where do you go to? How do you begin? I had to sit down. Not that I really could, of course, but I had that have-to-sit-down feeling, so I went and sat on the edge of Mrs Throggy’s desk, and tried to take it all in and to make sense of it.

  Me? Not like Jelly? It was the other way round, surely, right from way back. He’d started it, hadn’t he, calling me beanpole and stuff, and so I’d retaliated by calling him Jelly. But I’d never picked on him, not once, ever. It was him who’d picked on me. And it wasn’t true that I wouldn’t play football with him, I would have done loads of times, only he always went on about how it was his ball. And as soon as he started losing or if he ever got a kick on the shin, he’d go and pick his ball up and say, ‘That’s it, I’m not playing now.’ And we’d say, ‘Come on, Jelly, be a sport, at least let’s finish the game,’ but he wouldn’t let us because it was his ball, and if he couldn’t play with it, then nobody could.

  So it wasn’t my fault. It never had been. It wasn’t my fault at all – was it? And yet all the same, you couldn’t help but wonder. It made you think, right enough, it did.

  I went back over to my memorial wall and I reread his essay about me all the way through. Then I went and stood behind Jelly himself, as he sat there at his desk, trying to come to terms with negative numbers. I looked at the splodgy biro that he held between his podgy fingers. Was it true that he’d sort of liked me really and had almost laughed at my jokes? Or had he just said that because I was dead now and because you’re supposed to say nice things when people die? Then I thought of the last bit he wrote, about how the worst thing of all was that he could never make it right now, he could never patch it up with me because I wasn’t there to patch it up with. And I could understand that, because that was how I felt about my sister Eggy, that I could never patch it up with her. And I felt that me and Jelly both knew what it was to have unfinished business.

  I put out my hand.

  ‘Friends then, Jelly?’ I said. ‘Shake on it?’

  He went on with his workings-out. He was getting the sum that Mrs Throggy had set them all wrong. Even I could see that. And what I knew about negative numbers could be written on the back of a very small stamp.

  ‘Friends, Jelly, OK? No hard feelings? All right?’

  But he just stubbornly went on with his calculations, smudging blobs of greasy ink all over himself and his bit of paper, mucking it all up and getting it all podgy and wrong, just like he always did. In fact, that was what used to annoy you so much about him – him getting it so podgy wrong and being so clumsy all the time.

  ‘Friends then, Jelly? OK?’

  If only I could make him hear me. If only there was some way I could make a noise, even if only inside his head, where he alone would hear it, like some kind of telepathy or thought transference, like bending spoons and stuff.

  ‘Jelly, it’s Harry, I’m sorry about us not getting on. No bad feelings now, eh?’

  I thought it at him as hard as I could. I watched his face for some flicker of understanding, but no, nothing. He just went on getting his sums wrong, his chubby cheeks set in place like two big jellies in a mould.

  ‘Jelly!’ I tried to shout into his head. ‘Jelly! It’s me, Harry! I’m here right next to you and I’ve just read your essay in the memorial corner. I haven’t come back to haunt you, Jelly, or to go boo in your ear and give you nightmares or to get you started back on the bed-wetting again. I just wanted to say I’m sorry too, Jel, that we didn’t get on while I was still alive. I thought you didn’t like me, Jel, and it seems you thought I didn’t like you. I think we just had a bit of a misunderstanding, Jel, that’s all. Do you understand? Just a misunderstanding. So don’t feel bad about anything, and I won’t either. That’s us evens now, Jelly, OK? Even Stevens. All right? OK, Jelly, OK?’

  But no. Nothing. I may as well have been trying to communicate with a big hamburger, sitting there in its bun. And as I looked at Jelly, I thought that was just what he looked like, like a great big undercooked hamburger with a piece of tomato on top for a head, with a bun for clothes, and with two chips sticking out where his legs should be.

  And I began to get annoyed with him all over again, just like when I was alive.

  ‘Jelly! You great nit!’ I thought at him. ‘Can’t you pay attention when I’m forgiving you here and trying to make things square all round! What’s up, haven’t you got any brains or something!’

  But he just went on, getting deeper and deeper into trouble with his Maths. He’d be lucky to get zero out of ten the way he was going on. In fact Mrs Throggy would probably give him a negative number for his negative numbers, like minus six out of ten. Mind you, knowing Jelly, he’d probably be proud of that and think it was rather good.

  I was just about to give up on Jelly when I remembered Arthur and the fruit machine again, and how he’d got the line of strawberries to come up. And I thought about the leaf I’d shaken from the tree. So obviously it was possible to alter things if you concentrated on them hard enough. I directed all my thoughts towards Jelly’s biro, and tried to influence its movement.

  ‘Minus six, minus minus six, equals minus sixty-six . . .’ he was writing.

  ‘Hello, Jelly, it’s Harry here,’ I willed the pen to write. ‘It’s Harry, it’s Harry, it’s—’

  And then, without warning, Jelly’s biro suddenly flew out of his hand, shot halfway across the classroom and landed with a clatter on Bob Anderson’s desk (my desk as was).

  ‘’Ere!’ he shouted. ‘What’re you playing at, Jelly! Stop mucking about!’ And he picked the pen up and went to throw it back, only Mrs Throggy stopped him.

  ‘I’ll take that, thank you.’

  She took it over to Jelly.

  ‘Whatever are you doing, John?’

  ‘Sorry, Miss,’ Jelly Donkins said, ‘I was concentrating and it must have just sort of jumped out of my hand. Maybe I was pressing it down too hard or something. Sorry.’

  ‘Never mind. Just be more careful next time, that’s all,’ and she gave Jelly back his pen. ‘Just try and be more careful.’

  Times I’d heard that – ‘Be more careful next time.’ When I think of all the narrow escapes and close shaves I’d had in my life, all the times I nearly came a cropper, all the times I nearly fell off things or almost did myself a serious injury.

  ‘You were lucky then, Harry, be more careful next time!’

  Trouble is, it’s never the same the next time, no matter how careful you are. It’s always a different accident in a different way. And while you’re being careful not to have the old accident again, you just go and have a new one instead
. That’s what happened to me. Once, about a year ago, I’d got the lace from one of my trainers caught in the chain of my bike. It had got wrapped all around it and the whole gubbins had seized up. So the bike had stopped, and wallop! – there I was lying all over the pavement covered in dents and bruises.

  ‘You were lucky it wasn’t much worse, Harry,’ my dad said. ‘You could have been killed. Always make sure that your laces are done up properly before you get on to your bike. Don’t let it happen again.’

  So I hadn’t. I’d always done my laces up really carefully after that, and if they were still long, I’d tuck them down into the sides of my trainers, especially so’s they wouldn’t get snagged round the chain or the spokes.

  And so there I was, cycling along, when suddenly it feels as if my right trainer lace has worked loose. Well, I don’t want to have another accident, do I? Not in view of my past experience. So I just glance down for a moment, just to check that the lace is all right. I only take my eyes off the road for a fraction of a second, no more than that, but it’s enough for me to lose control a little, and I start to veer out into the middle of the road, and I’m maybe wobbling a bit. And the next thing this huge lorry comes round the corner, way out in the middle of the road too. Not that it should ever have been there, as it’s a residential street and lorries aren’t supposed to come down that way. And the next thing I know—

  And there you are. So much for being more careful next time.

  Jelly sat there looking at his pen as if it had gone a bit mad.

  ‘It just jumped out of my hand,’ he kept muttering. ‘Just jumped out of my hand. I was sitting here holding it, and it jumped right out of my hand.’

  ‘Come along now, John,’ Mrs Throggy said. ‘Do try and finish the exercise.’

  I tried a few more times to move Jelly’s pen and to make it write out what I wanted it to. But I couldn’t. It just didn’t work. Maybe making the pen jump out of his hand had just been a fluke, a one-off. Maybe my mental energies were exhausted. Maybe it had had nothing to do with me anyway, and Jelly had done it himself through pressing down on it too hard, like he’d said.

  Either way I couldn’t seem to communicate with him to tell him that I’d read his essay about me and that I hoped we could be friends now and that there’d be no bad feelings on either side.

  As it seemed I couldn’t change anything, and as I’d seen all that I had come to see, then maybe it was time for me to go.

  ‘Goodbye, everyone,’ I said. ‘Bye, Pete, bye, Olivia, bye, Mrs Throggy and everyone else. Bye, Bob Anderson, whoever you are. I hope you look after my desk and my peg and the space for my lunch box. I certainly shan’t be needing any lunch any more. So bye, everyone. Thanks for everything. It was good to see you again, and thanks for all the nice things you wrote about me. Bye now. I’ll always remember you. I’m sorry I won’t be growing up with you all and going up to the next class and then to the bigger school. But good luck anyway. Maybe I’ll see you all again some day. Who knows. Bye, everyone, bye.’

  And then I left.

  I didn’t look back, as I think it’s best not to look back too much or too often. Looking back can upset you. It doesn’t do to dwell too much on what was and what might have been and what never will be now. So I pressed on down along the corridor, heading out for the playground and Arthur.

  I paused on the way to look at the football fixtures list and to see who was playing in my old position in the team, and just as I’d suspected, it was Bob Anderson, there he was, in my old midfield spot. He seemed to be quite taking me over. And the team had won their last three matches as well. So they were getting on all right without me. Yes, a lot of things were getting on all right without me, and I remembered then what Arthur had said when I told him I wanted to pay a visit to my old school.

  ‘Don’t expect too much, Harry. Don’t expect too much of people, and then you won’t be disappointed.’

  And maybe I had expected too much. Though in some ways, maybe I had expected too little too.

  As I walked out of the school, I remembered something that Jelly Donkins had written in his essay about me, one of the last things he had said, something about a tree, and how it had all been his idea.

  They must have planted a tree for me then. I wondered where it would be. I walked around the back of the school, looking for signs of new trees and earth having been dug up recently. I found it over by the nature corner. I must have walked straight past it earlier, when I was looking for my worms. It was a sapling, surrounded by a sort of protective fence to keep the squirrels and the mice and the little kids off it.

  There was a little engraved metal plate there, stuck into the ground next to it.

  For Harry. From everyone in his class. With love.

  And it gave my dates and how long I’d been in the school.

  I stood there, contemplating my tree. Then I remembered Arthur and thought that he must be getting really fed up by now and that it was rude to keep him waiting and that I’d better get a move on.

  ‘I see they did you a tree, Harry.’

  I turned and there he was, standing right next to me, looking at my tree.

  ‘Do you know what it is?’ I asked him, because I was never big on trees. Racing cars I know a bit about, but trees, no, not really.

  ‘It’s an oak, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Is it? I dunno. It’s difficult to tell when they’re little.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘They live a long time, don’t they, oaks?’

  ‘Hundreds of years,’ Arthur said. ‘Can do.’

  ‘Hundreds of years, eh?’

  That made me feel quite good. I thought of my tree, growing and growing. I thought of all those hundreds of years going by. I thought of all the people who would come and go and who would shelter under my tree – from the rain in the autumn and from the sun in the summer. I thought of all the people who would read the little engraved plate stuck in the earth next to its roots. I thought of them thinking of me, wondering who old long-ago Harry was, and telling each other the story of me and my bike and the lorry and how my friends had all had a whip-round to buy me a tree. And maybe they’d remember too that it was all Jelly Donkins’ idea, and maybe it would make them feel warm inside, and think that it wasn’t such a bad world after all.

  Maybe.

  I turned to Arthur.

  ‘It’s a good tree, isn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Very nice,’ he nodded. ‘Very nice indeed.’

  Then a thought came into my mind.

  ‘Did anyone ever plant a tree for you, Arthur?’ I asked.

  He looked a bit uncomfortable and adjusted his hat on top of his head and scratched it a bit (his head, not his hat) which was a sort of nervous habit he’d got.

  ‘Eh, yes,’ he said. ‘’Course they did. Quite a few to be honest. More of a small wood, really, than a tree. Something of a forest, in fact. Quite a big one. The “Good Old Arthur Memorial Forest” it was called. Only it got chopped down – for firewood. Otherwise I’d take you round to see it.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘that was a pity.’

  I wondered if he was exaggerating. But then I thought that maybe he felt a bit jealous of my tree, and was only trying to keep his end up so as not to appear totally tree-less, as though no one had ever cared for him. So I didn’t press him on whereabouts this forest of his had been and just went along with what he’d said.

  I looked away and studied my tree again. I wondered how long it would last. Maybe it would get chopped down for firewood too. Or a bulldozer would get it for a road-widening scheme. Or maybe it would die of Dutch elm disease. Or Dutch oak disease. Or measles – tree measles, that is. Or maybe a flying saucer would land on it or—

  It didn’t bear thinking about, all the things that could happen to my tree. I put them out of my mind. Why imagine the worst? I thought. The worst that can happen is that you’ll die, and I had. So I might as well look on the bright side now. And maybe my tree would last f
or hundreds of years, and maybe it wouldn’t. I could only hope that it would do its best. That’s all you can hope of anyone or anything, that they’ll do their best. Because trees are only sort of human, after all, in their way.

  The Cinema

  ‘Where to now?’ I said to Arthur as we crossed the yard and walked away from the school. ‘What’ll we do? More haunting?’

  Arthur shrugged. ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘I’m not bothered,’ and he took the ghost of an old-fashioned watch out of the ghost of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket, and he gave it the ghost of a look, and then he put it away again.

  ‘Shouldn’t stay out too long,’ he said. ‘Ought to get back – you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Ought to get back for—’

  And do you know, what I nearly said was ‘ought to get back for tea’. Not that I was hungry. Not that it was even teatime. Not that even if I had been hungry and even if it had been teatime it would have made any difference, I still wouldn’t have got any. There was no tea to be had up in the Other Lands. Nor down here, really. You could watch other people eat their tea, I suppose, and sort of eat it along with them, but it wouldn’t be the same. More like watching a film of people eating than actually doing it for yourself.

  Arthur seemed a bit far away, like his mind wasn’t on haunting or on tea either. I suppose that when he’d been alive they’d have had meat pies for tea and a pint of beer for breakfast. I was sure I’d read that somewhere, or done it in history. But I guessed that Arthur was thinking about his mum again, and he probably didn’t like to stay away from the Other Lands for too long in case she turned up and he missed her. I could just picture them meeting each other. There she’d be, with that ghost of a button missing off her blouse, and there he’d be, with that self-same ghost of a button in his ghost of a hand. And they’d meet and match and be reunited at last, and all the unfinished business of theirs would be settled, and off they could go to the Great Blue Yonder, to whatever was there, and be at peace, and they’d not have to restlessly wander for ever like—