But with Dinny and Henry it was different. We’d gone up to the barrow to test-fly the model airplanes we’d spent all morning making from brown paper and ice pops. We needed a good launch site, was the verdict-proper thermal updrafts, Dinny said. Meredith was stirring trouble in the village, as ever. She’d forbidden the estate’s tenant farmers to give work to any kind of itinerant worker, which left the farmers without the help they needed and could afford, and the Dinsdales without the summer jobs that they relied upon finding here. That was her aim, of course-although I’m not sure of that now. She must have known she’d have to back down eventually. I think she just did it to remind them. Remind them that she was there, and that she hated them. There were all sorts of arguments at the house, and we’d overheard a lot of them. And so had Henry, of course. He followed us up to the barrow with this as his ammunition.
“Shouldn’t you be out begging? Your whole family will have to go out begging soon, I expect; or thieving of course.” Sneering at Dinny; no preamble. “There’s no way you’ll be able to buy any food. Not if you stay around here.”
“Shut up, Henry! Go away!” Beth ordered, but he curled his lip at her.
“You shut up! You can’t tell me what to do! And I’m going to tell Grandma you’ve been playing with the dirty gyppos!”
“Tell her! See if I care!” Beth cried. She was rigid, as taut and straight as a javelin.
“You should care-if you’re friends with him then you might as well become a gyppo too. You already smell like one. You’re stupid enough to be one too, I suppose…” He was breathing hard from running up the hill to us; spite made his neck mottle. Dinny glared at him with such fury that I launched my paper plane in anxious desperation.
“Look! Look-look how far it’s going!” I cried, jumping up and down. But none of them looked.
“What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you learnt to talk yet? Are you too stupid?” Henry taunted Dinny. Dinny stared at him, knotted his jaw, said nothing. His silence was a challenge, and Henry didn’t back down. “I saw your mother just now, actually. She was looking in our dustbin for your supper!” Dinny flew at him. So fast that I wasn’t aware he’d moved until he cannoned into Henry and they both went staggering down the hill.
“Don’t!” Beth shouted, but I don’t know which of them she was talking to. I stood stock-still, rooted with shock. This was no playground scuffle, there was no coat pulling. They looked like they wanted to kill each other. I saw bared teeth, fists, young muscles straining.
Then Henry landed one lucky punch. Truly blind luck, because Dinny was clawing at his face so his eyes were shut. Henry flailed his arms, raining blows, and got lucky. His fist cracked Dinny’s nose and knocked him down. Dinny sat for a second, astonished, and then a rush of bright blood poured from his nose and began to drip from his chin. Beth and I were mute with horror. That Henry had won. That Dinny was bleeding so much. I had never seen blood like that. So red, so quick. Not like the dull smears on the butcher’s block when I went shopping with Mum. Dinny cupped his hand under his chin and caught the blood as if he wanted to keep it. It must have hurt. Tears welled in his eyes, slipped mutinously down his cheeks to join the blood. Henry, when he realized what he’d achieved, stood over Dinny and grinned. I remember his nostrils flaring whitely in triumph, how haughty he looked. He walked away with a swaggering step. Dinny watched him, and I watched Dinny. His eyes blazed, and for a long moment Beth and I were too afraid to go near him.
New Year’s Eve is a Wednesday and it really just feels like a Wednesday. None of the old excitement. It was always excitement tinged with dread anyway, I can tell myself now. The buzz and riot of the fireworks over the Thames, the grim knowledge of how long it would take to get clear of the crowds afterwards. Now it’s just a Wednesday, but with an encroaching deadline of another kind. Beth said she would stay until the new year. That’s what I begged from her-just until the new year. Tomorrow. There’s only one thing that I can think of that might make her stay longer, and that’s if she won the argument with Maxwell. If Eddie is coming again before school starts, then she might stay.
I am excited about something, of course. Excited about the announcement I plan to make this evening. It’s wild outside. I turn the radio up to drown out the moaning wind, harrying the corners of the house. It took a long time to convince Beth to come to the pub-I had to lie, say it might be the last time she sees Dinny before we leave. The wrenching sound of the wind might be all it would take to dissuade her.
“Hair up or down?” I ask Beth as she comes into the bathroom, holding my hair up in a twist to show her, then dropping it, shaking it out. She considers me, tips her head to one side.
“Down. We’re only going to the pub, after all,” she says. I rake my fingers through my hair.
“Yeah, I’m only going to put jeans on,” I nod. She stands behind me, bends to put her chin on my shoulder, peers at her own reflection. Can she see? That the bones of her face are so stark, compared to mine? That her skin looks too thin, too pale?
“I know it’s New Year’s Eve. But I just… I just don’t really feel like going out. We don’t know these people…” she says, moving away again.
“I’m starting to-you would, if you came out more. Please, Beth. You can’t just stay in on your own. Not tonight.”
“Why are you so obsessed with spending time with him, anyway? What good will it do? We don’t know him any more. We live utterly different lives! And soon we’ll have left and we’ll probably never see him again anyway.” She paces the floor behind me, agitated.
“I’m not obsessed,” I murmur, drawing silver powder across my eyelids and examining the effect in the mirror. I can feel her looking at me. “It’s Dinny,” I shrug. “He’s about the most important person from our childhood. Look,” I turn to her, make her look at me. “Let’s just not even think about any of that this evening, OK? Let’s just go out, drink the new year in and have a good time. OK?” I give her a little shake. She takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment.
“OK! You’re right. Sorry,” she relents. She sounds relieved, and smiles a little.
“That’s better. Now, go and pour us some whisky. Lots of whisky,” I command.
“Here you go,” she says, as I come down to the kitchen.
“This should get us a bit more in the party spirit.” I smile and take a glass from her. We clink, and drink. Beth’s smile looks a little forced, but she is trying. “How was Maxwell? Is Eddie coming back to stay?”
“What, here? No,” she says. “I want him to come and stay with me at home for the last weekend of the holiday. Max says they’re going to his parents… I don’t know,” she sighs. “I always feel like the one who has to fight to get the better slots in the timetable.”
“Well, we did have him for Christmas…” Disappointment bites me. Nothing will keep her here now. Something scrambles inside me, twists, tries to find a way to hold on to her, to hold on to our time here. I am not finished. I am jittery with need.
“A few days out of a four week holiday! It’s hardly fair.”
“A few pretty important days, though,” I argue, my voice high. I have lost track of the conversation. I should be urging her to fight harder, to get Eddie back-back here to his friend Harry. Beth sips her whisky. I watch the cartilage in her neck move as she swallows.