The Swap Part 1

THE SWAP.

by Antony Moore.

Prologue: Cornwall, 1982

'Superman One?' The 'odd boy' turned his face, never completely clean, towards the school building and Harvey watched his nose wrinkle as to a bad smell. 'Why would I want that?'Harvey gave a deep, exaggerated sigh; it wasn't as if he needed the deal.'I don't know. Who cares? I'll swap with someone else. It's just not my sort of thing really. Superman Superman's not so sharp, yeah? I like the Silver Surfer Silver Surfer. This is so old, it's the first one . . . Kids' stuff really.''So why would I swap?' The odd boy was plaintive and Harvey sighed again. Did he need to explain? Because you don't have friends to play with; because you want to be in with me; because it breaks up the tedium of the school day; because this'll give you something to carry and show to people that won't make them laugh at you, that'll actually be halfway acceptable in the cla.s.sroom between eight forty-five and nine o'clock when everyone is just killing time, usually by killing you. Any of these things would be easily said, except when you are twelve even if you are sort of thinking them. So Harvey just shrugged and waved his hand. 'Up to you, in't it?''And you want this?' The odd boy put his hand to the thin piece of plastic pipe that he was wearing round him like a bandolier.'Not really. But I'll swap.' Harvey had seen the odd boy slashing the gra.s.s with it as he walked up the track from the road towards the school, seen the way it lopped off the heads of the gra.s.ses, sending the seedbags spinning into the air. He liked that: neat, even balletic destruction. Every boy's idea of beauty.'And if I say yes, that's it. I can't have it back?' The odd boy was being odder than usual and Harvey was losing interest fast. He wasn't a bully but he wasn't a b.l.o.o.d.y nanny either.'Of course not. Once you swap, you swap, you can't undo it.' He turned and began to make his way up the track that led to the back entrance to the school, a cart track really, overhung with great, untended cedars. 'But forget it, it's not worth it really. Who cares?' That was an expression Harvey was growing into. He'd started saying it last year when it had sounded unnatural and he had always expected someone to say 'well, you do of course'. But they never did, so he was growing into it. He felt that by next year, the start of his teens, it might suit him rather well. He had those sorts of feelings. And he sensed they set him apart: he kind of antic.i.p.ated how things were going to be, he could see where he was going. Certainly he was different from cla.s.smates like Bleeder, the odd boy, who now trailed behind him up the path. Bleeder because of the nosebleeds and the scabs that always seemed to bedeck his body. Odd, for obvious reasons.'No, hang on. I'm not saying I won't.' Harvey heard the bleating need for a normal interaction in the odd boy's voice, the instant nostalgia for being treated with respect. He wondered vaguely if he'd done wrong. Mean to get his hopes up.'Look, you f.u.c.king freak, do you want to swap or not? 'Cause if you do let's get it over with. I don't want to be seen talking to you at school.''OK, don't . . . don't . . .' The odd boy's voice made no real change as he took the verbal blow. This, after all, was what he was used to. 'I just. I stole it like.' He looked at Harvey, who had turned to regard him without sympathy, and for the first time their eyes met. 'I stole it and it's difficult to give it to you.'Harvey ignored the bait; what did he care where he got it? 'So don't swap then.' He turned again and made, with some relief, for the farm gate that separated school grounds from the surrounding fields. This was the last time he bothered with the deadbeats, he'd done it before, talked to freaks and got caught up in things that really didn't interest him. Sod it, it wasn't worth it. He was on his way out of this, out of small-town life and into the city. He'd been to London admittedly with his Auntie Kate but he'd been there and it was where he was going, that was his future. All this rubbish, it didn't matter a d.a.m.n.'Here, here, let's do it.' The odd boy was scrambling to get in front of him, brushing through the nettles that lined the path. Harvey wondered vaguely if his bare knees were stung. The odd boy gave no indication of pain and put his back to the gate, unwrapping the plastic tubing from his shoulder. 'It's yours now. Don't tell where you got it from.'He held it out eagerly and Harvey gazed at it wonderingly: why on earth would he want it? He actually shook his head but then caught the hope in the odd boy's eye and sighed again. G.o.d, it was ridiculous. He opened his satchel, a rather cool army surplus, canvas bag, on the flap of which he had painted the face of Donald Duck with a cigar in his beak. The painting was good. He pulled out the magazine, wrapped in the plastic sheath he put round all his comics.'Sure?' he asked with heavy irony.'Yeah, OK.' The odd boy held out the length of plastic and Harvey took it but the boy did not let go.'Give me the comic.' His voice was taut for a moment and Harvey glanced up surprised.'Yeah, all right,' he said. 'I'll just take this plastic cover off. Only collectors use these.' He tried to slip the liner away but the odd boy s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him.'No' he said. 'I want it as you offered it to me.' He let go of the plastic wire and held the comic against him tightly, as though ready to defend it from attack.Harvey shook his head and raised his eyes with practised disbelief. 'You f.u.c.king freak,' he said, and pushing the odd boy aside, clambered over the gate. He walked away, slashing the gra.s.ses to left and right, all the way up to the point where the wild world was tamed and blended into the edge of the rugby pitch. As he walked, the odd boy's eyes did not leave him. Clutched in his hands, the Superman One Superman One was pressed to his chest, tightly held, but also unwrinkled: guarded against harm. was pressed to his chest, tightly held, but also unwrinkled: guarded against harm.

Chapter One: London, the present

The sigh had become a feature of the man. And when he sighed it signified no special existential despair, only an acknowledgement of the fact that another day has come and the coffee that he was drinking was no better than it had been yesterday. He sat in unsplendid isolation at the counter of his shop, his back to the rows and rows of stands that ran away from him towards the front door. Each stand was thick with plastic and in the harsh strip lighting it was hard to see that each piece of plastic contained a comic.'All right, Harvey? Make us one, I'm freezing.'How long had it been from his own arrival until Josh tapped him playfully on one shoulder while walking the other way? The coffee cup was still warm in his hands. He looked up. 'You're late.' He hadn't actually checked the time but he liked to start each working day by registering a complaint, preferably to Josh.'What's up? We open, are we?''Of course we are open. We keep business hours, or at least, I do.''Well, the sign doesn't say Open.' Josh went back to the door and turned a rather grubby picture of Thor G.o.d of Thunder saying Closed to an identical one of him saying Open. 'You wonder why we don't get any customers, but you have to turn the sign round, Harvey.' Giggling, Josh made his way behind the counter and through into the back room where they kept the coffee. 'You might have been swamped with customers by now if you'd remembered that simple rule.' Josh's voice was m.u.f.fled by the sound of water being run into a kettle.But not m.u.f.fled enough.'f.u.c.k off.' Harvey rose from his seat at the counter and moved to the front of the shop to avoid Josh's voice, which now began painfully to accompany music on XFm from the back room. He opened the door and walked out into a February wind that made him lift his shoulders and narrow his eyes.If only.Some days it was worse than usual, the memories, the wondering. It had never left him. Ever since he moved from Cornwall, made his way to the big city, he'd sort of expected it to go, to withdraw into some back room of his mind, but every day it had seemed stronger. He breathed deep of the icy air and contemplated the empty street. Few customers here, no pa.s.sing trade. The sigh was a part of him, as much as the hunch of the shoulder and the reach for the cigarettes from the inside pocket of his denim jacket. He struggled to light up in the hectic wind, failed, swore vaguely and made his way back into the shop to sit once more behind the counter on one of the two high stools. After a few moments he stabbed out the b.u.t.t with a hard vicious motion.'Turn that s.h.i.t down, will you, Josh!''OK, Harvey, OK. You don't need to get nasty.' And Harvey put his head in his hands and felt the way his hair was disappearing, leaving him: abandoning ship.'What I could have done.' It was one thirty and the Queen's Head was full. But they had been there for over an hour and had a prime seat. It was a pub without noticeable character or appeal. But it was located midway between one set of office blocks and another and had accepted the benefits of fortune without complaint. It was also the closest place to get a drink to Inaction Comix.'What might have been.' Harvey was making a song of it, an ironic little play for Josh's benefit. What else could he do? He'd told the story too many times.'Yeah.' Josh's mind and his gla.s.ses were on the fruit machine and more specifically the T-shirt of the pretty blonde leaning against it. 'Yeah, you could have been in Tahiti or something.''New York.' Harvey didn't like his fantasy to be made commonplace. No lottery winner's confusion for him. He knew what he'd have done. 'A little coffee house downtown with murals on the walls, Spider-Man Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four Fantastic Four, you know, cla.s.sy but trashy, and I'd still have collected but just for fun.''Yeah, cool. A Superman One Superman One would have got you that, no problem.' Josh smiled hopefully at the blonde who turned away to her less desirable friend with a grimace. 'You could have been a contender.' He put on a comedy-Brando to cover his not unantic.i.p.ated failure and tried to catch the friend's eye. would have got you that, no problem.' Josh smiled hopefully at the blonde who turned away to her less desirable friend with a grimace. 'You could have been a contender.' He put on a comedy-Brando to cover his not unantic.i.p.ated failure and tried to catch the friend's eye.'Yeah, I could have been a contender,' Harvey pulled on his third pint 'but Bleeder is the contender now. He's out there somewhere with a Superman One Superman One. And good luck to him.'The blackboards above the bar described the almost risibly limited selection of foodstuffs that the pub had to offer. He examined them with the eyes of one who has read them before but seeks distractions.'Maybe he's sold it, but maybe he chucked it away the day after you gave it to him.' Josh found his attention caught, as it often was, by the topic of Harvey's loss.'No, he hasn't sold it: they only come on the market every blue moon and it's always in the press when they do. I've sat and watched its value increase for twenty years. Every year I look in Overstreet and every year it's another few thousand dollars. A few thousand a year for twenty years . . . So yeah, maybe he chucked it out with the trash. Or maybe he just likes reading it too much to part with it.''What did you swap it for again?' Josh wasn't usually malicious, that's why Harvey liked him, or tolerated him at least. He picked up his pint and finished it in a long mouthful.'f.u.c.k off,' he said.'So, have you decided about going to the reunion?' Josh was struggling to keep pace and his fourth pint was making him slur a little. Harvey had strict standards about alcohol consumption: don't get silly until the fifth pint, but he politely ignored Josh's faux pas.'I've thrown the letter away,' he said, making sure he enunciated clearly. 'I just don't see the point really. What could I possibly say or do to interest those people?'The letter had arrived in the Sat.u.r.day post and Harvey had been expecting it. It offended everything in his nature that he was expecting it, indeed he had tried very hard not to expect it, which is a difficult trick to perform. Every year they came, and every year he attempted it. And every year the trick failed. When it arrived he had a debate with himself and this too was a repeat of one he'd been having for twenty years. The debate involved two levels. The first was the 'I'm not going to go' level. The second was the 'I'm not going to let my going or not going mean anything in a feeble, shallow way about where my life has got to' level. The letter was an invitation to a reunion at his old school in Cornwall, and at both levels he usually lost.This year was particularly pressing as it was twenty years and would be a more formal affair. Twenty years since they had sat their O levels together in the draughty school hall, the same place they would hold the reunion. And now O levels were an historical relic, as meaningless when trying to impress the younger generation as boasting of your high-score on s.p.a.ce Invaders.'So tell them you run a comic shop.' Josh managed to make it sound like a good thing to say.'Mmm, you mean tell them exactly what I told them the last time I was down two years ago, and the year before that and five years ago, and ten?''Well, yeah.'Harvey sighed his sigh, and flicked cigarette ash into a metal tin on the ugly little table that the pub grudgingly allowed its customers to sit at. 'Admit that in the years since I last saw them I've not got married, or had any children, or had a promotion, or inherited a fortune . . . That what I've done is exactly the same things I was doing last time I went?''Well, tell them you've expanded.''They'll see that for themselves.''In the shop, tell them you're doing really well and planning to open another branch, something like that.''Lie to them?''Yeah.''It's a thought.' Harvey dropped the stub of his cigarette into the tin tray and watched it lying there smoking by itself. 'But if I'm going to do that why not tell them I've won the lottery and am moving to New York to open a coffee house with superheroes on the walls? I mean, if I'm going to lie why not make it something exciting?'Josh grinned to announce a joke: 'Tell them you found a Superman One Superman One.'Harvey closed his eyes for a long moment. Then he sighed. The fact that he did it a lot didn't mean it was only a habit.

Chapter Two

'The thing about reunions is that they bring out the old you.''So don't go.''But that's the point, I like the old me. I like the me that I was at school. Believe it or not, I was cool. In with the in-crowd. Comics gave me that. That's why I've stuck with them. But whereas it was cool at school it kind of gets less and less cool as you get older. To the point where it will, very soon I suspect, become ridiculous. And then what do I do? Go for a job at a bank or somewhere, and they'll ask: 'Experience?' and I'll say: 'Adding up the cash register after selling a Fantastic Four Number Six Fantastic Four Number Six.''What condition?''Never mind.''It's a big price difference. I mean if it was mint then, to be honest, I would think any bank would be impressed.' Josh spluttered into his drink. 'And I guess for you it's especially poignant, going back.''Why?''Because that was a time when you weren't bitter and twisted.''What the f.u.c.k do you mean?' Harvey demanded, knowing exactly what he meant. 'Who's bitter and twisted?''You are, about the Superman One Superman One. But you didn't know it was valuable then, so it's the one time in your life you weren't thinking about what you might have had.'Harvey looked for a while into the bottom of his gla.s.s. It was an occasional habit of Josh's to speak a devastating truth unexpected and unlooked-for. Harvey had once taken, very briefly, to wearing a cape to work. It had been long and black with a red velvet lining. As he walked from the tube one morning he had caught sight of his reflection in a shop window and had tried hard to place what he saw. When he arrived, Josh was waiting outside the shop and Harvey had asked him what he thought. 'You look like the Frog Prince,' Josh had said simply. And Harvey, for all he had told him to go f.u.c.k himself, knew at once that he was right; and the cloak had been quietly put at the back of the cupboard against the unlikely event that he was ever invited to a fancy dress party. And Josh was right again: that time was special because he hadn't carried the burden that he always denied he carried now. That time did appear somehow blessed and he always seemed to be looking for some way back to that. All roads for a long time had seemed to lead backwards. So he told Josh to go f.u.c.k himself.'So maybe you'll go back and you'll meet Bleeder there.' Josh smiled encouragingly, making Harvey grimace, not least because it saddened him to think that his shop a.s.sistant knew this boy's playground nickname from his schooldays well enough to use it in conversation without pausing to think. They had had this conversation before. But not for a while and Josh was suddenly animated. 'I mean, he hasn't been back to any of the other reunions, has he? But this one is twenty years. People get more sentimental as they reach middle age, maybe he'll feel the time is right.' He spoke with all the wisdom of the young and Harvey shook his head, wincing slightly at the words 'middle age'.'I doubt it,' he said. 'You really don't listen, do you? Bleeder had a s.h.i.t time at school, I've told you that. Every day of every term he had a s.h.i.t time. Everyone took the p.i.s.s, all the time. That's how it was. Why would he want to come back and see everybody again? He'd have to be mad.''Well, why did you pick on him?' Josh blushed, making Harvey wonder, not for the first time, if perhaps he had suffered at school.'Because he was odd. I've told you before. He was weird and everybody knew it. He didn't have any clothes other than these sort of weird mismatches from the charity shop. And his hair was cut short by his mum. And he talked funny, sort of high-pitched and freaky, like a kind of girlish voice. And he wasn't into anything. He didn't know music, or comics, or sport, and, of course, he didn't stand a chance with the girls 'cause of, well, all of the above. And to top it all he was ginger. And gingers are by definition fair game. In fact, in some parts of the world they are legally hunted.' He sipped the last drops from his gla.s.s and noticed that Josh wasn't smiling. 'Look, he took s.h.i.t, OK? Every school has one and he was ours. I didn't like it, didn't do it much, didn't encourage it in others. If I thought about it, which I didn't very often, then I thought it was harsh. But it happened. And if it had happened to you would you go back to see all those lovely people who made your life h.e.l.l for a get-together? No, of course you wouldn't. So that's why he's never there.'He spoke clearly and with confidence, but in his mind there was already forming a picture of Bleeder standing in the school hall where the reunions always happened. He was looking a bit downtrodden and sad and pathetic but Harvey was going up to him and shaking his hand. And Bleeder was smiling and saying there was no hard feelings and then he was telling Harvey: 'Oh that old comic, oh no we burned that years ago' and the two of them were having a laugh about those strange times and that strange day of the swap and that funny length of plastic that Bleeder was carrying and Harvey was saying 'If only we had that comic now we'd both be rich' and they were laughing and shaking their heads over the inequities of fate and then it was over and Harvey was getting on with things, getting on with his whole life, in fact, without thinking about something as pathetic as this all the time.That it was such a fully realised fantasy sweeping so swiftly through Harvey's mind is explained by the fact that it had done so many, many times before. 'I'd love to see him,' he said meditatively now, 'just talk it over with him once. I've thought about phoning him a million times. Or phoning his mum anyway, getting a number for him, a.s.suming he isn't still living at home.' He sn.i.g.g.e.red before remembering that Josh lived with his mother. 'Getting hold of him and just having a chat, you know. Seeing what he's up to, how he's doing ...''Seeing if he's still got the Superman One Superman One. Seeing if you can have it back'. Josh was not in forgiving mood.'No. Well, yeah, why not? Who knows what people keep, you know? Half the world doesn't know the value of what it's got in its attic. I've probably got a Rembrandt, or a rare stamp or some other junk. He might have a Superman One Superman One. I'd love to just check.''And rip him off. Offer him 50p for it, say you want it back for sentimental reasons. And then flog it for a couple of hundred grand. Something like that?''Er, yeah.' Harvey didn't like it when people he considered intellectually inferior to himself read his mind. 'Something like that.' And he laughed, but without much enthusiasm.'Well, why don't you just ring him then? If his mum still lives in Cornwall why not just get her number from the directory and ring her up. For all you know he committed suicide as a result of your cruelty and you've been dreaming of ripping him off all these years for nothing.'This was so outrageously over the top that Harvey snorted with laughter and Josh was forced to join him. 'It might happen,' he said, trying to remain angry. 'Anything might have happened in twenty years, you don't know.''Yeah, he might have had twenty years of therapy and be ready to forgive me. Maybe he'll even give me the comic to prove he's cured.''So why don't you, you b.l.o.o.d.y git?''Why don't I ring him?' Harvey was sn.i.g.g.e.ring in antic.i.p.ation. 'I'll tell you why, shall I? I don't ring him because I can't remember his f.u.c.king name. All I know is that he was Bleeder the odd boy.' He laughed so loud he caused heads to turn in the pub and drowned out Josh's spluttery cackle. 'Oh Jesus,' Harvey said, 'I really ought to remember his name, after what we put him through.'

Chapter Three

On the journey down from London, Harvey again tried to remember his name. He could see the pale, unhappy face before him but all he could think of was the odd boy. Bleeder the odd boy. It brought a vague and, in truth, fleeting feeling of guilt that he couldn't come up with any more than that. In the carriage of the 10.05 from Paddington to Penzance he prepared with what he considered military precision (but what was actually closer to civilian sloth). Lounging with a pen in one hand and a fake-leopard-skin-covered writing pad one pound for two from Quidbusters, Lewisham in the other, he planned his past. Josh's suggestion of lying had impressed him and, once he had decided to attend the reunion, he had spent some time toying with mysterious women friends, unexpected side careers, and even, for a dangerous moment, MI5. However, he had settled, as Josh had suggested, on a sense of heightened reality. Nothing too unlikely, just a mention of other departments at the shop; buying trips actually to Bristol and Manchester extended, more by implication than direct statement, to include New York and Vancouver; Josh multiplying, splitting amoeba-like into a mult.i.tude of a.s.sistants; hints about cars, property. Harvey jingled the keys in his pocket and thought for a while about the house in Hampstead they might belong to. He really could picture it: nothing too flashy, one of those cottagey jobs up by the park. Was he married? No, that was too much. But he was involved. Kind of in love: who wouldn't love her? But he wasn't sure he was ready. How do you ever know for sure? That was his problem. He actually chuckled out loud at the trickiness of the situation: how could a man in his position ever be really sure someone better wouldn't come along? She wanted kids, but, you know, he wanted to wait until he could see something of them, and that meant waiting till the pressure was off, and that could be a long wait. As the train entered a tunnel he found his own reflection looking back at him in the window. He saw the shaved head where once dark hair had been tied back in a ponytail shaved, not to look like David Beckham so much as to stop him looking like his dad as it fell out of its own accord. He saw the stomach bulge underneath the black T-shirt with StanTheManLee written across it in green. He did the sigh. It was hard when people only saw you once every few years. How could that be anything but a punishment? The only consolation was that it was mutual. He thought for a moment about old Rob's battle with cancer and then hated it when he found himself smiling. s.h.i.t, that was not how he'd meant to end up. And that was the problem, of course: this was all about how you'd ended up, but he never felt like he'd ended anywhere really. He always felt, somehow, that he was about to begin.And that took the guilt about forgetting Bleeder's name away. It was all so distant now, so meaningless. Why should he remember something from that far back? Who he used to be was disappearing into the image in the gla.s.s, as if he could see the person he had once been fleeting away from him in the racing landscape. What did it matter what Bleeder's real name was?*'Charles Odd.' The man in the smart suit rather too smart for these surroundings held out his hand and Harvey shook it with wonder in his eyes.'How are you?' Harvey felt the hand in his, firm and dry. The voice was strong, rich, without a trace of Cornwall in it.How do we recognise people? It's an unanswered question. Harvey had once read an article on psychology that said we plot the face like a computer scanner, remembering the tiniest nuances of singularity. Well, he had scanned this face long ago and it was fixed. He had sighted it from across the floor where he stood surrounded by most of the old crowd: Jack, who had got into heroin for a while after college but now was clean and living in Wales with his 'old lady'; Rob, who played lower league football for three years after school and then did a bit of coaching and now, following cancer treatment, worked in a sports shop in Ealing . . . ('We should get together, H, I'd like to see your shop . . .' Slight panic there, partly at the idea of someone witnessing the reality of his carefully constructed fantasy life, and partly at being called H again a name that was so cool it hurt at school, but which now made him think of that t.w.a.t out of Steps); Susan, who used to go out with Jack but who was now married to a man in the navy who was away a lot (Harvey noticed Jack look at her with a mixture of nostalgia and possibility); and Steve, who'd stayed in town, stayed in little old St Ives all this time, and ran a beach shop. That had led to the usual humorous remarks: 'Not far to come then, Steve?'; 'Well, you've spread your wings, you must have flown at least two hundred yards,' etc, jokes which were genuinely funny at that first get-together, fifteen years ago, which was a less formal affair when everyone was still optimistic, and when the town seemed like a deadly snare rather than something troublingly like what they were looking for.And the man whose face he'd scanned all those years ago had come over and smiled. 'It's Harvey, isn't it? H? I'm sure I remember that face.' And Harvey had swallowed, like a child meeting a policeman, and had grinned and felt a ludicrous blush spread over his cheeks. 'Er, yeah, and I know you ...''Charles Odd. I was in your cla.s.s, actually, though I don't think we moved in the same circles, did we?' He laughed. 'It's good to see you though. How's things?'Harvey wanted to scream. Indeed, he felt some sort of cry welling up inside and had to actively repress it. Bleeder. Bleeder Odd: not just odd but Odd. f.u.c.k, he should have remembered that. Bleeder was here. Exactly as he had dreamed it. As he had seen it in his mind's eye. Except here he was dapper and smiling, not the shuffling, miserable deadbeat that Harvey had created. But here he was. A man he had thought about every day of his adult life. And never without regret and desire, pity and self-pity, guilt and bitterness, avarice and anger. Here was that face: the pinched eyes grown clear: the long, pointed nose, drawn back by the fleshing of the cheeks: the narrow, frightened mouth, full-lipped and open to show perfect teeth in an almost constant smile. All the singularity altered, yet recognition was instant and indubitable. Harvey tried to focus on psychology. He couldn't take much else in.'This is my first time back in St Ives for ages,' the clear voice said as if telling him something small and of little interest, not something he had wondered about for twenty years. 'I don't get down much and I'm not so sure about reunions, it's a funny business, isn't it, meeting up like this? But this time I happened to be here anyway so I thought I'd drop in.' He glanced round with polite interest at the school a.s.sembly hall, taking in the long pa.s.sageway that ran off it where the boys' toilets were: toilets in which Harvey knew for a fact Bleeder had been beaten senseless more times than he could remember. Harvey felt he was inhabiting a dream. Like fantasising all your life about meeting Lou Reed and when you finally do finding that he chats about soft furnishings. He hadn't really ever fixed in his mind what they would talk about, except of course for the Superman One Superman One. But he had a.s.sumed it would be significant, emotional, meaningful, that it would matter. Now here he was, here was Bleeder, and he just happened to be here and was exhibiting every sign of finding it a bit dull and of preparing to leave. 'Have you been before?' Bleeder asked politely.'Er, yeah, yeah once or twice.' Looking for you. Only looking for you.'And are they always like this?''Like what?''Well . . . a bit sad?''Mmm. I guess so.' Harvey could feel the top of his head beginning to lift, as if his brain was about to make its own way out of the situation. He put his hand up and scratched hard.'So, what are you up to now?' This was a question that he and the old crowd had actively and specifically banned when they came back for that first ever get-together. It was sort of a joke, so now they said it with irony and it actually meant 'this is boring, let's move on' sort of thing. But now Harvey said it and realised that it was The Question, it was what he had wanted to ask every day for two decades.'Oh, I do a bit of work in the City.' Bleeder smiled. 'Maths was always my thing, I guess.' No it wasn't, you didn't have a thing. You never had a thing.'Yeah, I remember.''So I set up a little company a while ago and it worked out quite well. I sold out last year, but I still do some consultancy work, a few days a week, here and in New York. It keeps me busy, without the stress.' He smiled again and Harvey found himself smiling back. He reached desperately for his pockets and remembered that it was no-smoking this year for the first time. He also remembered his leopard-skin notebook from Quidbusters, might Bleeder have one too?'Really, the City, cool. So finance, huh? Interesting.' It wasn't quite what he'd planned to say, but it was as good as anything else.'Yes, mostly at Reiser and Watts.' Bleeder produced a card and handed it to him. 'Do you know them?''Um, no, I just ...''. . . or perhaps you're not in finance?''No, no not finance.''OK.' Bleeder glanced round the room as if looking for someone more interesting to talk to. 'So, what are you in?''Comics.' Harvey found his cigarettes and got the packet out. If he couldn't smoke he could d.a.m.n well fiddle with the box a bit. Attached to the packet, as if melded by his bodily emissions, was one of his own cards, with a picture of Betty Boo on it and his address. He pa.s.sed it back.Bleeder was laughing. Bleeder was laughing at him. The realisation of how far this was from the fantasy picture he had painted was enough to make him want to join in.'Comics?' Bleeder was gazing at the card.'Yeah, funny really.' Harvey tried to smile. 'I just sort of carried on being interested after school.''Jesus, yes, you were the comic king, weren't you? Always swapping and bartering. You were a real wheeler-dealer. You should have ended up in the City really.' He laughed again and Harvey felt his scalp give another skip. Always swapping? Christ, do you really have no idea?'Er, yeah, so I just sort of stuck with it. Stick to what you're good at.' He made a vague phrase, for no reason discernible to him. 'I've got a shop, in London, in Old Street.' He should have added something about departments and a.s.sistants and foreign trips, but somehow it got lost.'Right.' Bleeder nodded and gave a longer, more searching glance around the room. 'Well, I guess if you like something ...''Exactly.' And Harvey saw his chance. He could just ask. So much build-up, twenty years of build-up was making it harder than it needed to be. He could simply ask straight out and be done with it. It would be over. Unexpectedly an enormous rush of adrenalin shot up his spine and sealed his mouth shut. If I ask it will be over. If I ask I will have to hear an answer. He looked down and saw that the cigarette packet was trembling in his hand, trembling so much that the cellophane wrapper that he had left round the box was making little crinkling sounds. He raised his head and took a deep breath.'Oh, there he is.' Bleeder was looking past him at a crowd gathered in the corner where the bar was. 'I've got to have a word.' And before Harvey could stop him, before another word could escape him, Bleeder had moved off into the crowd. Harvey found he was panting as if he had been running. And he wanted to run, to race after Bleeder, grab him by the shoulders. He had been so close to a new life, a new start. As he stood breathing heavily and pushing the cigarette packet in and out of the cellophane he looked at the group by the bar. Bleeder had joined it and was talking to an old man Harvey didn't recognise. Could he just go over? Demand that they continue the conversation? But he needed Bleeder alone. Perhaps he could drag him bodily outside. Who was that he was talking to? What could be more important than this conversation?Rob and Steve came over.'Bleeeeeder!' Rob hissed. 'Having a nice chat, H?''Mmm, well, yeah . . .' Harvey was still gazing after Bleeder, as if watching a departing unicorn. 'Who is that?' he asked. 'Talking to him, the old bloke?''That's Mr Simes,' both Steve and Rob answered together. 'Taught me physics,' Steve added, 'but also took maths. Top-stream maths. Not our cla.s.s. Out of our league. Swot division. Hey, did Bleeder have your comic? The one that's going to make you rich?' Sometimes Harvey regretted his openness with his friends.'Er no. Don't think so . . . Was Bleeder in the top stream?' He moved the conversation on quickly to a point that caused him genuine surprise. 'I thought he was, well-''Just there to be kicked?' Rob finished for him. 'He was, he liked being kicked. But occasionally, just for a change, he did maths. Not much of a change really. I'm not sure I wouldn't have preferred the beatings myself. Touch and go.''Simes liked the maths swots,' Steve added. 'Bleeder was probably his pet. Kept him in a basket in the corner, fed him on bones.'Harvey realised they were sn.i.g.g.e.ring and forced a smile. 'How old are you again?' he asked. This was another regular phrase, again getting less funny as the years pa.s.sed.'Yeah, but he's Bleeder, H,' Steve said, grinning. 'He's Bleeeeeeder.''I know.' Harvey found a sharp note in his voice as he said it. 'I am fully aware of that.''Uh-oh, sense of humour failure. You need a drink, mate.' Rob patted him on the back and moved off towards the bar, which consisted of a long table with many plastic cups full of warm white wine on it.'We all need a drink.' Steve followed Rob down the room, leaving Harvey watching Bleeder with Zen-like focus. The old man he was talking to was hunched in a suit that could only belong to a retired teacher, grey and stained by a thousand chalk accidents. Mr Simes. Harvey tried to remember if he had been taught by Mr Simes at all. Perhaps he could go over and join in the conversation, mention algebra, for instance, or fractions. He didn't remember much else from maths and he didn't think he'd ever had Mr Simes. Once he would have known without having to think. Bleeder was animated now, waving his arms. People in the group were glancing round; looks of vague surprise that anyone could talk excitedly about anything at a reunion seemed to flicker across polite smiles.What is he doing? Harvey wondered. What is going on?But whatever it was ended and Bleeder at once moved away towards the door. Harvey saw that the old man was tempted to follow him. He made a move in the same direction as Bleeder's departing back, but then stopped as if uncertain. At that moment one of the group by the bar came over to the teacher. 'So still doing sums for a living, Simmo?' he asked loudly and got a small laugh from the crowd. Harvey shook his head, he'd done all the get-the-teacher-back stuff years ago. He turned and saw Bleeder stopped in the doorway, he was having to squeeze past someone that Harvey didn't recognise but wished he did. She was red-headed and nicely rounded with a clever, pretty face covered in freckles. She wore a long patchworked dress and her hair was tied back under purple silk. He noticed that much as he moved quickly to follow Bleeder. And as he pa.s.sed her the woman spoke: 'I'm sorry, am I in the right place? I'm looking for Cla.s.s of 1986.''Er, yeah.' Harvey liked her voice, it was sort of husky and mellow at the same time, like Mariella Frostrup after a Lemsip. 'It's in here, are you a graduate?''No, not me.' She smiled and he liked that too. 'My husband,' d.a.m.n d.a.m.n 'is Jeff Cooper, I don't know if you know him?' Harvey did. Big heavy f.u.c.ker with a tattoo, liked rugby of course one of Bleeder's most persistent tormentors in the old days. 'is Jeff Cooper, I don't know if you know him?' Harvey did. Big heavy f.u.c.ker with a tattoo, liked rugby of course one of Bleeder's most persistent tormentors in the old days.'Yeah. I think he's down by the bar.''That would be Jeff.' And her voice carried just enough weariness and even disgust for Harvey to feel suddenly happier. He glanced out into the hallway and found Bleeder was still there, looking at the inevitable stand of old photographs: always the same pictures.'I'm not sure it'll be much fun if you weren't at Trehendricks,' Harvey said kindly. 'It's a bit of a sad bunch getting nostalgic. I can't say I go for it myself,' he added quickly.'Oh, I don't know.' She smiled again. 'I think there's something rather sweet about doing it. Our past is who we are isn't it?' Harvey nodded thoughtfully, it certainly was for him. There were times when he thought that was all he was.'Mmm, scary thought,' he said. She smiled dutifully and he wished he'd said something more intelligent, so he tried again: 'I guess I'm never sure whether I'm trying to get away from all this or get back to it, you know?' He wasn't sure what he meant actually, but she reacted and looked him in the eye for a moment.'Yes, I do. And I feel very much like that a lot of the time. Recently especially . . .' She looked over Harvey's shoulder into the hall without enthusiasm. Harvey turned and found that Jeff Cooper was standing just behind him.'Chatting up my wife, Briscow?' He stabbed Harvey in both ribs with his fingers. Harvey managed not to squeal.'Trying to,' he said through his wince, 'but you're interrupting.'Cooper laughed at that. 'Cheeky f.u.c.ker,' he said and attempted another dig but Harvey blocked with his elbows.'He was very kindly helping me,' she said, giving Harvey a rueful, almost fraternal smile.'Yes, you left her stranded in the hallway, Jeff,' said Harvey, 'and I was being gallant, in case you know what that means. The least you can do now is introduce us.''If you like.' Cooper moved gracelessly round and took his wife by the arm. 'Maisie, this is Harvey Briscow; Harvey Briscow, Maisie Cooper, my lovely missis. And now I'm removing her so she can meet somebody interesting.' He guffawed and began to move away but found she wasn't coming with him.'I have already met someone interesting,' said Maisie Cooper deliberately, 'and I thank him for his help.''No problem at all,' Harvey muttered and was appalled to find himself blushing again. He moved quickly on into the foyer, and she allowed herself to be steered off by her husband. Not looking back, Harvey took several deep breaths and gazed for a long moment at a photograph of a 1980s hockey team. It was only after he had realised just how un rewarding this was that he noticed Bleeder had gone.'s.h.i.t.' Without any noticeable change in mood, Harvey knew what he wanted to do: needed to do really. He ran out of the two sets of double doors that fronted the school and into driving rain.

Chapter Four

The school had allowed the weekend visitors to park their cars along the forecourt and the drive that led down to the road. One of these cars was revving and its lights were on in the gathering afternoon gloom. Harvey ran to the car, heedless of the fact that he had left his coat behind in the foyer, and tapped on the window. Bleeder leaned across and wound down the window. 'h.e.l.lo,' he said. 'Need a lift?''Yeah,' Harvey had to shout against the wind, 'thanks.' He grabbed the door of what he realised was one of the nicest cars he'd ever entered, and climbed aboard.'Thanks,' he said again. 'I came without a coat. It was all right earlier.''Yes. Cornish weather.' Negotiating the driveway, Bleeder seemed to have other things on his mind. They sat in silence for a few moments until the car had pulled out of a difficult blind turn and onto the main road. Then came traffic lights, which were red.'Which way are you heading?' Bleeder broke the silence and Harvey waved his hand vaguely.'Oh, into town. I just wanted to get out of there really. It's a bit . . . I don't know.''Yes, there are better ways to spend an afternoon.' Again, Harvey was astounded by the change from boy to man. He was articulate, precise, engaging, competent. All the things he hadn't been at school.'I guess for you it's very hard.' Harvey only realised he'd said this aloud as he heard it echo to the backbeat of the rain.'Me, why?''Well, I guess you had a rough time here. At school, I mean. I mean, didn't you? I seem to remember you getting a bit of stick and stuff . . .' A bit of stick.Bleeder smiled, he actually grinned. 'Did I? Yes, I suppose I did, though I was hardly aware of it at the time. I had other things going on in my life.' He put this last sentence in slightly ironic parentheses and then added with even greater emphasis: 'I had issues.''Right, yeah. Well, I guess we all do at that age.''Do we?' Bleeder looked across at him with genuine interest. 'Did you?''Er, well, yes, I guess.''What were your issues?' Jesus Jesus. Harvey had the strange sensation of suddenly wanting to get out of a conversation he had been waiting twenty years to have.'Um. Well, you know, teenage stuff and home was, you know, tricky.''Yes? Can you say more about that?'Christ. 'No, no not really . . . I mean, it's kind of my stuff, I guess, water under the bridge and so on.' What was he supposed to say?'OK. I can understand that.' Bleeder was nodding. 'But it can help to talk that stuff through a little bit, engage with it and let it sort of unpick itself, don't you think?''Oh sure, yeah, I talk about it a lot. I just don't really want to now.' 'Sure, that's fine.''Thanks.' Harvey found himself literally mopping his brow with his sleeve, though whether it was rain or sweat he wasn't sure. He went on quickly, 'I mean, so, you know, what's up with you being here? I mean, you said inside that you just happened to be pa.s.sing. But, I don't know why, I don't get the impression you pa.s.s through town that much or that often.''No I don't.' They were driving down the main road to St Ives, and suddenly caught a glimpse of the sea. The rain was blowing from that direction, buffeting the driver's side of the car as they pa.s.sed the lines of hotels and guest houses, mostly empty so early in the year and poignant with that special decay of a resort town in winter. 'I'm only here now to sort out Mother.''Sort her out?' Harvey was dying for a cigarette but didn't like to ask if he could light up in this extraordinarily civilised car. The seats were deep cream leather, the dashboard a riot of technology, set, with the typical obscenity of the engineer, in wood-look surround. It was warm and Harvey could sense underchair heating, which, after the rain, made him feel just a bit as if he had wet his pants.'Move her. She's reached an age when she can no longer rattle about in the old house. Do you remember my old house?' He shot a glance across at Harvey and Harvey ducked. He did remember the house. He had been inside only once, but had bicycled past it many times. Indeed he and his friends sometimes used to ride past and sing at the same time. And what they sang was: 'Bleeder Odd, super-bore, looks like a spastic and his mum's a wh.o.r.e'. To the tune of 'Jesus Christ Superstar', of course. Sometimes they had sung it twenty times or more before Mrs Odd, 'Old Mrs Odd' as she was even then, had run out screaming at them, her hair always a mess of tangles, her clothes weirdly smart but filthy. Screamed words of such obscenity that secretly Harvey had been terrified. But he had laughed and ridden off, yelling insults with the rest. So yes, he knew the house. It stood alone, a white, child-architect's square box, in the land that was slowly being colonised by the new estates spreading out from St Ives, not far from the school. And with that, he realised that Bleeder was driving directly away from his own destination.'Yeah, I remember the house, and er, sorry, am I taking you out of your way?''It's OK. I'm glad to have a look at at the place again. It's so long since I was down and I only got here last night. Meetings going on till lunchtime, then a long drive. Pretty c.r.a.p day, actually.''Right, right.' Something was itching in Harvey's brain. Something was niggling.'You say you're moving your mother,' he said deliberately.'Yes. The social services have found her a place in sheltered accommodation. Three rooms, private bathroom, but part of a community. It's up near St Ia's Church, so it's a lot closer to town. She can't manage the bus so well now.'Harvey flapped his hand at this extraneous information as at a mosquito. 'So you must be throwing out a lot of stuff?''Oh G.o.d, yes.' Bleeder shook his head. 'She's been there for ever. You would not believe some of the stuff . . .' He stopped, as though reminded of something. 'There's so much stuff.''Must be. I wonder . . .' Harvey stopped.'It's amazing what you acc.u.mulate. Over the years. It's amazing what you manage to keep. Bits and pieces.'Harvey looked across at Bleeder who was speaking slowly and with an uneasy precision.'Lot's of things from your schooldays, sort of thing? Stuff from when we were kids?''Oh stuff from forever. From way back, before I was born, things of my dad's. She's been packing for weeks with someone from the social services helping her. They've thrown loads out but there's still boxes and boxes. I'm supposed to be going through it, things the social services woman thought might be mine . . .''They've thrown loads out,' Harvey repeated slowly.'Yes, gave it to Oxfam and the other thrift shops, I think, what was salvageable. But a lot of it just went to the dump.''But your stuff,' Harvey was staring at Bleeder intently, 'you haven't gone through it all yet?''No, I haven't started. Couldn't face it last night and today I had the reunion. Tomorrow we might get a bit done but Mum's going to see her sister, Auntie Flo, who lives in Pad-stow and she insists she's got to go through everything herself. So it'll be tomorrow night and then all day Monday.' He sighed. 'I'm not sure I can even be bothered really. Maybe it's just better to get rid of everything, you know. I haven't needed any of this stuff for twenty years. Why would I suddenly need it now?''Right.' Harvey nodded hard. They had driven well past the turn to his parents' house. The long row of shops that led them into the town centre had been pa.s.sed without him really noticing at all and they were now following the road that skirted the centre itself and led out along the harbour wall and up to rejoin the coast road beyond. 'It's funny,' he said, 'but talking about old stuff, I was wondering if you remembered something.''Oh?''Yeah. It's nothing really, just a memory that came back to me just now.' Harvey felt his voice beginning to rise as if in panic. He coughed and cleared his throat. 'Excuse me. It's just, ages ago, back at school, you know, there was a day: we were walking up to school and we swapped something I think. Yeah, that's it, we did a swap. Do you remember at all? We exchanged something.''A swap?''Yeah, yeah. I remember it because I swapped a comic I think. That was it, wasn't it? I swapped a comic with you. Do you remember that?' The twenty years of thinking about this moment hadn't misled him, it was just as hard as he'd ever imagined it might be.'A swap? A comic?' Bleeder was narrowing his eyes as he turned left and followed the road away from the harbour towards the hill that led out of town. 'A swap. I do remember something. You gave me a comic.''Yeah, some c.r.a.ppy comic.' Harvey was very sure it was sweat that he was feeling now and wished he could turn the wet pants device off. 'You wanted it and I let you have it. Something like that. Remember?''I do. I sort of do.' The road was busy as people drove out of town from shopping and there was a traffic jam up the hill towards the lights. Bleeder brought the car to a halt. 'I wanted your comic and you let me have it. It was a swap.' His voice was far away from the car and the traffic, even from the rain and the wind.'It's just . . . It's funny, I was just then wondering what happened to it. The comic, I mean. 'Cause I run a comic shop as I told you and I was just thinking: I wonder what happened to that old comic. I don't even remember what it was, what kind. But I do remember swapping. I wonder if it might be with your stuff, the stuff you're going to go through on Monday.''Yes, a comic. I do remember but it was so long ago. We did a swap, you swapped a comic. What did I swap?''If you are going through your old things, I just wondered, if you found it you might let me have it back. 'Cause comics are kind of my thing. You never know, it might be worth a few quid now. I might buy it from you for a couple of pounds, just for nostalgic reasons, yeah?' Harvey laughed a weird and, to his ear, raspingly unattractive laugh, a skull's laugh. He was gazing out of the windscreen now, staring forwards, watching the raindrops splash and splinter the red lights and then be swept aside over and over again.'I'll, I'll think. I'll have a think.' The lights changed and Bleeder engaged the engine. 'I'll have a think, but it may be gone. It's probably gone.' He pulled forward as the queue began to move. 'Where am I dropping you, by the way? I can't remember where you-''Oh, actually, anywhere's fine. I need to go to the shops and so on. Thanks.' The car came to an immediate halt, bringing a horn's cry of outrage from behind.'So, there you are,' Bleeder said.'Oh right, yeah, cheers.' Harvey, surprised by the suddenness of his arrival, fumbled with his seatbelt and tried to open the door. The horn sounded again and Bleeder reached across him to grab the handle. 'You have to push it like this'. His voice was as clear and precise as when they first met but when Harvey looked for a moment into his eyes they were wild and staring, as if Bleeder had seen something terrible, something unthinkable. And the hand that opened the door for him, Harvey couldn't help noticing, was trembling.

Chapter Five

The road was eerily familiar. Tired bare trees led the eye from the end of a row of cheap prefabs directly past the house, as though the planners had intentionally wanted it not to be noticed. Harvey could see their point. The estate had encroached a little more perhaps. A few extra buildings, but indistinguishable from those that had marked the end of the estate in his day. There were even some boys riding their bikes up and down the road, using the kerb as a mini-jump to perform wheel spins. The boys gave Harvey a look-over and pa.s.sed some inaudible but apparently hilarious remark, and then carried on. None of them was singing. Harvey was glad of that.The house itself sat with its same grim disinterest back from the road behind a garden that had the look of somewhere that had been beaten up. It was as though someone had stepped into the matted nature and slashed about them with a scythe until there was a semblance of desolate order. Harvey stood uncertain outside the peeling white gate in the peeling white fence and looked at the windows. There were net curtains at all four of them, grey net curtains. Then he walked, whistling casually until he realised he was whistling 'Jesus Christ Superstar', at which he stopped abruptly along the road past the house. He a.s.sumed Bleeder must be out, for no handsome silver car adorned the road in front. 'If I had a car like that I wouldn't leave it here,' Harvey muttered to himself and then realised the implications of that. 's.h.i.t, what if he's parked down on the main road and is even now watching me through the netties.' Harvey himself had parked his father's car ('Now don't go scratching me paintwork, I know you'; 'p.i.s.s off, Dad') about half a mile down the main road from the town. Now he stomped on through the estate, past the boys who stopped their play to stand and stare at him, their mouths agape. 'b.l.o.o.d.y inbreds,' he said. But he said it very, very quietly.Last night had been a long one. He had returned home early, his mind so full of Bleeder and the conversation in the car that he had forgotten the dangers of family life. It was only as he crossed the threshhold and heard that oh so familiar phrase, 'Is that you, dear?', filled with hope and joy and eagerness, that he had realised his peril.'Yes, it's me, Mum. Who else is it going to be?' Funny how fourteen is still lurking in even the most full-grown of men: the words had come as naturally as breathing. He had attempted the surly stalk upstairs to his room. But what had worked in youth seemed to have lost its power. Maturity had emasculated him. That or his mother had grown braver with age.'Come in and have a chat while I make you something to eat. Your father's in the garden and we can have fresh salad with the stew. There's football on later, your father said, and we might get the Scrabble out. Could we play and watch at the same time? I know how you men like to watch football and not be disturbed . . .' and on and on. And it was either use the absolute sanction, the 'f.u.c.k off, you old cow' option, or come on the Reds and double-word scores. Harvey had done the sigh and accepted that you couldn't go for the absolute on your second night in town: second of four. So he had gone in and listened to his mother's voice talking about her church meetings and her friend's bad leg and the tourist who drowned in the bay and the bad weather and anything else that floated into her mind. And while she spoke he sat and went over and over the conversation with Bleeder, picking it clean of meaning, stripping it, trying to tear his way to an answer he could accept. At some point his father had come in clutching a handful of spring onions and started being boisterous. 'Come along, come along, where's my dinner, woman? I'm back from the hunt and ready to eat.''Oh yes, you must be starving, darling, and Harvey is too, aren't you, dear? Two big hungry bears . . .' Harvey had sat smoking at the breakfast bar, into which, if he looked closely, he could see 'Johnny Flame' carved in his own childish hand. He tried not to look closely.'Starving, are you? Good man. Need a bit of real cooking. Not that rubbish you eat in those fancy restaurants, eh? None of that nouvelle cuisine? s.h.i.te cuisine I call it.''Donald!''Well, it is. Not enough on a plate to feed an Ethiopian. Real food, that's what we want, eh, Harvey?''Mmm.' Harvey wondered vaguely if perhaps one day, a long time ago, someone had laughed at one of his father's jokes, someone other than his mother, of course, who was now t.i.ttering distractedly. Harvey wondered if it might be possible to find that person and punish them in some way. After all, the past did piece itself together sometimes. Pieces that seemed unlinkable, knots that seemed unpickable . . . sometimes the past can surprise us. And so back to Bleeder.After Scrabble ('I'm sure "quark" is a word, dear, but I've never heard of it so we can't count it: that's our house rule, remember . . .'), and after Match of the Day Match of the Day ('They're overpaid and should respect the referee!'), when he was finally allowed to get away and up the stairs into the one true sanctuary he had ever known, Harvey lay very still in his bedroom and blew smoke at the ceiling. What had Bleeder said? 'I'll think, but it's probably gone,' something like that. What did 'probably' mean? Well, it meant it might be gone. And that would be all right. As he smoked, Harvey had nodded to himself, unsurprised by this fact. If it had definitely gone sent off years ago to some kids' charity, or burned on the bonfire or whatever then that was OK. On the other hand, if it had only been given away in the last couple of days . . . that wasn't OK. Where would it have been given to? Oxfam, Bleeder had said. Could he go trawling round the second-hand shops of St Ives hunting for a comic? Did charity shops even sell comics? He'd been in enough but couldn't remember ever seeing any. What if the charity shop owner knew enough to enquire about a first edition? What if the headline in the local paper a week from now was 'Charity Shop Owner Strikes It Rich (And Opens Superhero-themed Coffee Shop In Downtown New York)'? That very definitely wouldn't be all right. But Bleeder's stuff hadn't been gone through yet. That was the point. That was, in fact, a very key point. Harvey had sat up and looked around his room for a while. It was a room unchanged since his childhood and that, of course, was typical in families like his. What was less typical and slightly more troubling was that it bore a close resemblance to his current rooms in London. The old bedroom posters were of ('They're overpaid and should respect the referee!'), when he was finally allowed to get away and up the stairs into the one true sanctuary he had ever known, Harvey lay very still in his bedroom and blew smoke at the ceiling. What had Bleeder said? 'I'll think, but it's probably gone,' something like that. What did 'probably' mean? Well, it meant it might be gone. And that would be all right. As he smoked, Harvey had nodded to himself, unsurprised by this fact. If it had definitely gone sent off years ago to some kids' charity, or burned on the bonfire or whatever then that was OK. On the other hand, if it had only been given away in the last couple of days . . . that wasn't OK. Where would it have been given to? Oxfam, Bleeder had said. Could he go trawling round the second-hand shops of St Ives hunting for a comic? Did charity shops even sell comics? He'd been in enough but couldn't remember ever seeing any. What if the charity shop owner knew enough to enquire about a first edition? What if the headline in the local paper a week from now was 'Charity Shop Owner Strikes It Rich (And Opens Superhero-themed Coffee Shop In Downtown New York)'? That very definitely wouldn't be all right. But Bleeder's stuff hadn't been gone through yet. That was the point. That was, in fact, a very key point. Harvey had sat up and looked around his room for a while. It was a room unchanged since his childhood and that, of course, was typical in families like his. What was less typical and slightly more troubling was that it bore a close resemblance to his current rooms in London. The old bedroom posters were of Batman Batman and and Spider-Man Spider-Man rather than rather than Darkman Darkman and and Tomb Raider Tomb Raider, but they weren't posters he would find unacceptable in his grown-up world. He sometimes tried to argue that this was because he had always had good and adult taste. It was an argument entirely with himself, and was another that he rarely felt any confidence of winning.Sleep had not come that night, not until the morning was advancing. This was unusual. Harvey was normally a good sleeper, beer having a pleasantly narcotic effect. But this time there was a reason for insomnia. Deep in his heart he already knew that he was going to rob Bleeder's house. He couldn't pin down when that decision was made. It was as if he had always known it. Perhaps it had formed as an inevitable somewhere in those twenty years of waiting. You can't care this much about something so particular for this long without some sort of action, however ineffectual, becoming necessary. Harvey knew that he owed it, as it were, to the next quarter of a century, to do everything he could do. It was as simple as that: his future self depended on it.Which didn't make it easy, of course. As he strode rapidly away from Bleeder's house, he thought of how impossible crime could seem. He sometimes liked to think of himself as a bit of an outlaw: the tin under his bed with the lump of Black in it; the car with the 'applied for' sticker in place of a tax disc; the 'adult graphic novel' section of his bookshelves. But somehow this had nothing to do with breaking and entering. The house looked so solid. The walls and windows such tangible, physical proofs of right and wrong. It was as if, for a moment, as he walked purposefully away in the wrong direction, he could see the very tablets of the Old Testament reformed and reconst.i.tuted into solid whitewashed walls.

Chapter Six

Breaking a window with a brick is actually quite difficult.After a swift walk through the estate, intended to give the impression that he was late and going somewhere important, Harvey had made his way round to the cul-de-sac that ran along the bottom of Bleeder's garden. The road had no houses on it and came to an end in a thicket of half-grown trees and burned-out cars, with only a muddy track running off it. Harvey recognised the track as the one he used to walk up to school. At other times he might have stopped for a brief bout of nostalgia, characterised by the words: 'Thank Christ I don't have to do that any more.' But today's business was too serious for such indulgences. From the path, Mrs Odd's back garden looked worse than her front. No wild threshing had happened here. Thick nettles and brambles were intertwined with long gra.s.s and piles of rubble. Bits of unknowable things emerged from bushes. This was comforting to Harvey. Clearly no one had been up Mrs Odd's garden for a very long time.After traversing the hedge and the jungle of the undergrowth with only a scratched hand and a slightly twisted ankle sustained in an encounter with a deflated but still smiling s.p.a.cehopper, Harvey had found himself standing, SAS-style, to one side of the kitchen window, as if about to burst in shooting. Glancing down and observing his beer gut heaving in a way that looked frankly unhealthy, he forced himself to breathe more easily. He was in the garden of an old friend, it was hardly a capital offence. The brick in his hand was less easy to explain.He tried tapping at the window, just to check that the Odds weren't having a quiet afternoon in, and then with the mixed air of fear and interested experimentation, he walked to a safe distance and slung the brick at the central gla.s.s panel in the kitchen door. Plan A was that there would be an explosion of gla.s.s and a nice brick-shaped hole would appear for him to put his hand through. Luckily, Plan B was to run like a deer as soon as he threw it because, in the event, the pane merely split in an ugly and deafening crack up the middle and the brick landed at his heels.After a pause for thought, spent standing on one foot ready to flee at the slightest sound, Harvey returned from his position in the undergrowth, removed his denim jacket, wrapped the brick in it and began to bash away at the cracked pane. This proved more productive as well as oddly satisfying and within a minute he had made a neat hole for his hand to pa.s.s inside. After admiring his handiwork for a while, Harvey dragged himself into the danger of the moment, reached inside and fumbled for a latch. That it was reachable was entirely a matter of good fortune, but reachable it was. And with a troubling sense of this action being both easy and impossible, Harvey found himself opening the door of a stranger's house and stepping inside.He had been inside the house only once before and it had been a mess. The first impression now was