Billy Christmas Page 8

  Billy moved to walk past Katherine. Her falling face stopped him. This was ghastly, she was going to hate him, but Robert was on the move. “I’m going to have to do something awful. There are very good reasons for it.”

  He could manage no more. He barged past Katherine, forcing himself to avoid her eyes. He must take on Robert now. It was a matter of twenty feet before Billy had put himself between his enemy and the tuck shop.

  Robert looked up, both surprised and amused. “Got a problem, Billy?”

  “I do actually.” Billy looked down at him, at his black eye and his gormless, gap-toothed grin.

  Robert spat out a laugh. “It’s your lucky day, Christmas. Trust you to want to have a pop when I look like an easy target.”

  “I’ve got a problem with you,” said Billy.

  “I’m sure you do. I’ve had quite a bit of attention today, and I know that has got to disappoint you. But I’m in a hurry. I’ve got to get through that queue. So get lost.”

  Robert pushed one of Billy’s elbows hard and spun him out of the way, walking off towards his friends. The tuck shop queue had become quieter, sensing some potential in the air. Billy saw their faces, a mixture of kids, several looking scared at having been shoved backwards by Robert’s mob. This had to end.

  Forgetting the weapon waiting in his pocket, Billy ran at Robert and hit him hard, with both palms, square between the shoulder blades. Robert’s head snapped back; he’d not heard him coming. His feet tripped and he lurched forward as though his legs had been hacked by the axe. Billy stumbled forward, stamping on Robert’s calves and thighs and adding momentum to the fall. It also meant that he was perfectly placed to hear the sickening crack as Robert’s outstretched jaw connected with the tarmac. Then silence. Billy, heart pounding and fists poised, stood over him. The tuck shop queue, stunned and silent, already knew what Billy could not see. The fight was over.

  “Robert?” said Billy. “Robert, get up.”

  He leant further over him and his red mist dissolved as he saw blood pouring from Robert’s mouth. “Oh, please no! Get up…”

  But Robert wasn’t getting up; he was motionless and pale against the red tide flowing from his face. Billy began to shake and fell to his knees, stroking Robert’s greasy hair away from his vacant open eyes.

  “Please, please. I’m sorry.”

  He looked about the playground in horror. “Please!” His newer, older voice abandoned him for a shrill and fearful one.

  There was a rustle behind the tuck shop queue. Mrs. Herringate pushed through the rows of children, alarmed by the silence; the worst sound possible on a full playground. She saw Billy, and then she saw the blood. Her face descended into cold fury.

  “Get away from that boy.”

  Tears were streaming down Billy’s face. He hadn’t wanted to do this, had he? Not like this. He was sorry, wasn’t he? Robert was going to be all right, wasn’t he? His mouth opened and shut, but the words wouldn’t come. People were looking from him to Robert and back to him. Then from the corner of his eye he saw Katherine, her face ashen, her arms closed. At that, his mind left him, and engaged some automatic mode, which took him from the playground to the bike shed, onto his bike and out of the school gates.

  Katherine’s scream sounded acute, and the silence that followed terminal. He raced to her side, seeing she had been struck, though he wasn’t sure by what, it had moved so quickly. When he dived to the ground, it was clear she wasn’t breathing and her neck was at a terrible angle. His own screams overtook his memory of her last…

  * * *

  The sky had already turned black when Billy realised he’d been dreaming. Relief that Katherine’s screams were not real seeped into his cold body. He was shivering violently. Some far-off memory stabbed at his brain but couldn’t quite be acknowledged. He was in Higginson Park, at the feet of the statue of Sir Steve. What was he doing here? Where was his bike? Behind the statue; he had cycled here. Then the memory surfaced, and suddenly he wasn’t shaking from the cold any more.

  Billy retched, throwing himself forward on the grass, but his stomach was empty and nothing came up. Had he killed Robert? Why had he left without making sure he was OK? Billy was confused and disorientated. He needed to know what had happened to him. He pulled out his mobile phone; he had a missed call. He never had missed calls. It was Katherine; one of the four numbers on his phone. But Katherine was only allowed to call her father, no texts or calls to friends. Why had she broken this strict rule? Was it to tell him that Robert was dead?

  He forced himself up and began to march a path from the statue to the river, stamping hard so as to be able to think about nothing but the pain. As his shivering began to subside, Billy forced himself to look over his options; a habit he had got into when his mother first began to deteriorate. He had to find out what had happened to Robert. He knew where Robert lived, but thought his would be the last face his family wanted to see. He could go back to school—certain suspension of course—but at least he would know how Robert was, if Robert was; there had been so much blood. He looked at his mobile for the time. It was gone five o’clock. He’d been in the park for close to four hours. How was that possible?

  There was not much memory past the blood and Mrs. Herringate and Katherine. The school would certainly have called his mother about this. Possibly the police. Probably the police; this was assault at least. Billy thought for a moment about the amount of pain that Robert had dished out, unnoticed by the world. Then he remembered that he didn’t know if Robert had survived at all. His best bet was to face his mother. They would have to talk about this. He just hoped he wouldn’t be kept from the Tree, that he would not be prevented from carrying out the remaining tasks. Billy got on his bike. He thought about slapping Sir Steve’s bronze backside, decided he didn’t deserve the luck, then paused and gave one for Robert, just in case.

  For once, Billy was glad of the dark. Normally he hated the clouds killing the gentle light from the moon. Somehow that seemed to make cars approach faster, and pass much closer to him. Tonight he welcomed the anonymity it afforded as he cycled back the faster route by road. He began to feel a degree of guilt for his mother. How could she be expected to cope with this? His appearing to go off the rails wouldn’t help her recovery at all, dog or no dog. And Katherine, where was she at that moment and what had she made of his behaviour earlier? In the space of a week, she had seen him brought to school by the police, make an uninvited pass at her and now randomly attack a kid at school. He’d never had the knack of impressing girls, but he was fairly certain this would be listed under marks against Billy. She was going soon anyway, well out of this madness.

  He turned into Marlow Bottom. The roads were quiet, which was odd. It was Friday afternoon, and they should have been busy. Billy approached the last corner before his house and slammed on both brakes, skidding sideways.

  Blue flashing lights ricocheted off the surrounding trees: the police. His heart sank through the road beneath him, and his arms twitched as if about to start shuddering again. Billy doubled the strength of his grip on the handlebars. If the police were there, then they were speaking to his mother. He couldn’t let her stand up to that alone. He peddled on around the final corner.

  The blue lights blinded Billy as he approached his house. They’d brought a police van; how many officers did they think they needed to arrest him? As he approached his house, the van started its siren and pulled off at speed. Billy jumped off his bike, assuming they had spotted him, but as it roared past he could see it was actually an ambulance. But it had definitely been parked outside his house. His mind began to race.

  “Billy!”

  A tall man in corduroy trousers and a shabby burgundy jumper was calling his name. Still blinded by the ambulance’s lights and deafened by the siren, he peered towards him.

  “Billy, it’s me…”

  His heart gave a huge thump. Had he found his own way home? “Dad? Is that…?”

  “It’s Katherine’s fat
her.”

  His heart sank as he saw that it was indeed the General. He was younger than Billy remembered, but looked bleak. Something bad had happened.

  “Where’s Mum?”

  “I’ve taken her back inside. Don’t worry, I’ve dealt with the police. You have to come with me to the hospital.”

  “Is Robert still…”

  “Robert,” said the General, “is at home with a sore lip.”

  Billy’s heart took a further, tentative leap. Much more of this and he thought he might pass out again.

  “Who is at the hospital?”

  “Katherine!” said her father, with the exasperation of one who is more used to asking questions than answering them. “You just missed the police, they wanted to speak to you. She’d cycled over to let you know that Robert was OK. A car hit her as she got near your house.” He paused for a moment, blinking. “She flew twenty feet.”

  Remembering his dream in the park, the world went quiet. Billy saw tears form in the General’s eyes, and despite his own coming on fast behind, he couldn’t look away.

  “She’s going to be fine, thanks to you, Billy. If you hadn’t destroyed that fence, the police said it definitely would have killed her. Your mother said you burned it down the other night. Why did you do it?”

  Billy stood, bewildered and blinking. “It had to come down.”

  “You’re telling me!” said Katherine’s father with a shaky grin. “Let’s go, shall we?”

  Billy didn’t need telling twice. He ran to the shed with his bike and slung it in without locking it, before sprinting back down the front path. To his right the charred remains of the fence were smeared across the snow. It had to be where Katherine had landed.

  “Come on, Billy,” said the General.

  * * *

  It was a short trip to the High Wycombe Casualty Unit, but the General broke the silence almost as soon as they were under way.

  “I had been trying to get Katherine to bring you over for some time,” he said. “We talk about you almost every day.”

  He looked over at the General in surprise.

  “I’m not that interested in hearing what the girls in the playground have been gassing about. I’d wanted to tell you, before all this happened, what a great job I think you’ve been doing.”

  Billy looked down; he had been through so many emotions today that he wasn’t sure how to take this praise. Only ten minutes ago he thought he might have killed someone, albeit without intending to.

  “I had wanted to offer support, though Katherine told me how proud you were. She wouldn’t let me come to the hospital without finding you first, she knew how upset you’d been about this Robert boy.” Katherine’s father stopped the car, pulling in abruptly.

  “I don’t know the details, Billy, but it seems to me that someone like that is going to find the end of the road at some point. There is never a good time for these things. You have done so much to keep your family together. Working on your own, keeping your head down. Using your instincts to make it through each day, without anyone to let you know whether you’re on the right track.”

  Not knowing where to look any more, Billy turned to Katherine’s father. How could he know so much about these things?

  “I know you’ve been through the mill today,” he said, matching Billy’s gaze, “but I want to thank you. Your intuition has probably saved my daughter’s life. Don’t stop trusting it. In your situation, I believe you should trust that part of you over anything else.”

  Billy looked out towards the front of the car. This was as close as he had got to fatherly advice for some time, and the warmth was overwhelming.

  “How was Katherine when you saw her?” said Billy.

  “The ambulance had already got her on a gurney, or rather a stretcher, when I arrived,” said her father. “They said ‘walking wounded,’ but I need to be sure before I can relax.”

  The General drove back out onto the road for High Wycombe. Billy let the unfamiliar motion of the car shuffle the tension out of him. It had been almost a year since he had last been in one.

  “There is one more thing Katherine had to tell you,” said the General.

  Billy turned back to him. “What’s that?”

  “You’ve been suspended from school till next year.”

  Billy laughed in surprise, and the General joined in. They both knew it wasn’t a laughing matter, but at this point it just felt right.

  * * *

  “You can go in now, but only for a couple of minutes,” said Katherine’s father, looking much brighter for seeing his daughter. “The doctor wants her to rest as much as possible.”

  Billy nodded and walked into the ward. The curtains were drawn around the other beds. Further up and to the left a sidelight was on and the curtain left partly open. Walking as quietly as he could, Billy approached the gap and popped his head in. Katherine was sitting up in bed, already disobeying the doctor’s orders, with a huge grin and a black eye that was even worse than Robert’s.

  “Come here!” said Katherine, full of impatience.

  Billy hesitated, remembering the look Katherine had worn in the playground, but her smile hadn’t lost any of its magic, and it drew him in.

  “It’s OK, and I’m fine,” she said. “How did you know about the fence? And I want to know the truth, Billy.”

  “It had to come down,” said Billy.

  “It’s very bad to lie to patients!”

  “Is it?” said Billy, feigning nonchalance. He sat on the edge of her bed. “Look, I’ve had a bit of an…episode. I don’t remember much after, well, after I left school. What happened to Robert?”

  “Head wounds always bleed like crazy,” said Katherine automatically. “A lot of it was you rocking open the gap where he’d lost that tooth. The school called an ambulance in, but they just cleaned him up and sent him home. He didn’t even go to hospital. I tried to call you.”

  “I know. I was really out of it. I wish you had sent me a text, avoided all this.”

  “I thought it would be better if you heard it straight from me.”

  “Are you really going to be OK?”

  “I’ll probably be pretty stiff. They want to run two more tests. If they’re OK, I’ll go home tomorrow,” said Katherine. “Hoped I might get the rest of term off at least. No one to cycle in with now.”

  Billy smiled. He’d already forgotten the suspension, though he was gutted to be missing their daily cycle. “Sorry about that.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what’s going on, are you?” said Katherine.

  “Would you believe I’m on a magical quest?” said Billy, calling her bluff.

  Katherine smiled, seeming to expect Billy to break back into a grin. He didn’t and just looked exhausted. “Are you OK, Billy?”

  He remembered the doctor’s orders and smiled.

  “I’m fine, and you need to rest.”

  Then, following his instincts, he leant in and planted a kiss on her right cheek. She leant in slightly against his mouth. It was enough. They had made it through this horrible day. Billy went back out to find the General, wondering again whether kisses on the cheek counted for the task.

  * * *

  Walking in through the kitchen, Billy almost tripped over his mother, who was looking tear-stained and tired. The deerhound was nosing her palms in concern. Billy closed the door behind him. Time to start explaining again. Instead his mother held both her arms out, and he fell into a tight hug.

  “I’m so sorry, Billy,” she said, to his complete surprise. “You’ve been so brave. So very brave.”

  “Mum?”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “No.”

  “I’ve hardly been here, and now you’ve been suspended.”

  It occurred to him that in the last year they had barely touched, perhaps terrified that the other might disappear on contact, leaving them alone. Billy shifted away from the hug, and held her by the shoulders. “You’re going to have to trust me f
or a while longer. This is all happening for a good reason.”

  His mother looked at him thoughtfully, as if assessing someone she hadn’t seen in some time. “When did you get so tall?”

  December 20th

  BILLY WOKE UP TO HIS mobile’s alarm, and headed downstairs. The light was casting shadows that danced about the living room. As he opened the door, the Tree turned to him. It was on fire, and dying. He dashed forward to try to help, but it ignited fully in a fierce shower of white flames, its sap crackling as it boiled in the branches. Looking up, he could see the precious candle had melted over the last green needles at the top of the Tree…

  * * *

  Billy sat up in bed with his mobile whistling. Another bad dream. He’d never felt so exhausted. With legs and arms that wouldn’t answer, he knocked over the chair and fell to his knees by the end of his bed, his hands landing only inches from the exposed blade of the axe. He shook his head, grabbed his dressing gown and headed downstairs.

  The Tree was already out of its bucket, pacing around the room, deep in thought. Billy walked into the room and flopped into the chair. He used to think it’d be fun being grown up and able to stay up past midnight every night; an entirely overrated pastime, he now concluded.

  “How did the fight go?” said the Tree, without breaking its stride.

  “Smitten, or smote,” said Billy, “job done, suspended from school of course, and Katherine’s in hospital. Otherwise a perfect day.”

  The Tree turned to Billy. “I’m dying.”

  Billy’s tiredness evaporated.

  “What? How do you know that? No one knows when they’re going to die.”

  The Tree branched Billy a withering look. “Lots of people know when they’re going to die. Please don’t start being foolish. I wasn’t certain on my visit to Agnes, but it’s quite clear to me now.”

  Not knowing what to say to this contradiction to the other night, Billy simply looked at the Tree. It had already shaped his life so much, and yet he felt he didn’t really know it at all. How many centuries had it seen? Was it possible that this would be its last time on Earth?