Twenty-Four Hours. Margaret Mahy
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voice in the back of his head. I really am!
“I am going to be an actor,” Simon had also declared last year, casually but quite definitely. And then, later … “Forget acting! I’m into sex these days,” he had said when Ellis, excited by the prospect of the Shakespeare Fantasia planned for the end of the year, had auditioned successfully for the part of Claudio in a scene from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. But, only two weeks after saying this, Simon had killed himself. He had, after all, been into something much more dangerous than sex. He had been in love, and love had failed him.
Somewhere behind him in Foley Street a clock struck the quarter-hour with a soft but significant chime. “Now!” that final fading stroke seemed to declaim. “It begins now!” And, as it faded, almost as if its echo had triggered an event in the outside world, Ellis caught sight of himself in a looking-glass, framed by blue tiles, linking two shops. He saw, before he strode past, the long oval of his face smiling out of a halo of curls. Not bad! he thought, glad that the quickly-moving reflection had seemed to belong to someone so much older than seventeen. Yet, almost at once he felt discontented, for he did not want to look quite so wholesome – quite so new.
But now, out of nowhere it seemed, a huge wind came funnelling down the street towards him. Abruptly, the air whirled with leaves and rubbish, some of which danced higher and higher, lifting over the street lights, zigzagging, twisting, before tumbling away across roofs on the opposite side of the road. One piece of screwed-up red paper spun upwards as if it were about to go into orbit. A blackboard, advertising café meals, tumbled towards him like a square wheel, first one corner and then another striking the pavement. Ellis dodged it. The wind punched his face, at the same time stinging him with grit. Angry voices filled his ears, and a gliding figure, apparently lifted by the storm, leaped from the pavement on to a narrow empty strip designated as a bus stop. The skater swung so dangerously close to the line of slow-moving traffic that one or two drivers tooted their horns in outrage, and a passenger lowered his window to shout angrily, “What do you think you’re playing at, you bloody fool?” But the gliding man simply flung out his left arm, in a gesture both graceful and confident, and extended a single, insulting finger.
Another gust of wind tilted advancing pedestrians back on their heels, and the skater, perhaps taking advantage of their uncertainty, jumped from bus-stop space to pavement. Suddenly, Ellis and the skater were face to face.
For the first time that evening Ellis had recognised someone, and was sure that he, too, was recognised. The skater’s expression changed. Sliding past Ellis, he turned into a shop doorway, spun around, and then darted back again. He seemed to move without any effort at all … a young man in an ancient camel-hair coat, both elbows worn through, one of them blackened as if the wearer had casually leaned among red-hot coals.
A name came into Ellis’s head. Jackie, wasn’t it? Jackie Kettle? No! Not quite! A voice from the past spoke softly in his memory. “Funny name, isn’t it? It’s a fair cow.” Jackie Cattle! That was it. Jackie Cattle.
“Yay!” Jackie was shouting, circling Ellis. “How’s it going?”
“Jackie!” said Ellis, proud of remembering the name and anxious to reassure its owner. “Oh, well! OK! You know!” He waggled his fingers, vaguely suggesting that things were just what anyone might expect them to be … a bit of this, a bit of that, good and bad mixed.
Raised unnaturally high on his roller blades, Jackie was staring down at Ellis with friendly interest, but Ellis could easily see that something indefinable was going on behind those beaming, blue eyes … some sort of guess was being made. He knew he was being assessed. And now he remembered that, years ago, Jackie Cattle, a confused victim for the most part, touched by some oddity that Ellis had never really defined, had also had moments when he could seem quite sinister.
So he gave a hasty smile – a nod, a shrug – half-offering to move on. But Jackie smiled back at him – a smile bright with unconvincing innocence, revealing a clownish gap between his two front teeth. He grabbed Ellis’s arm.
“Long time no see, mate!” he shouted, the wind snatching at his words.
“I’ve been away,” Ellis shouted back.
“What? Inside?” Jackie asked with a sort of confused incredulity. “Jail?” Then he flung up his hands in a gesture of apology. “No! Of course not! Not you! Sorry!” All the time his eyes were flitting over Ellis with the attentive curiosity of someone planning to paint a portrait from memory. “So! Where the hell have you been?”
Automatically, Ellis was piecing together a memory portrait of his own. Before he had been sent to St Conan’s he had attended a small state school across the road from his home. Jackie Cattle had also been a pupil there, a boy at once exotic and pathetic, a year ahead of Ellis and old in his class. He must be nineteen by now, thought Ellis. Twenty, perhaps. In some ways he hadn’t changed much. He still had the same round, childish face, the same heavy-lidded eyes, the same sly, sideways smile.
“School!” Ellis yelled into the storm without thinking.
“School!” exclaimed Jackie, bending forward as if he could hardly believe what he was hearing. He sounded much more astonished at the thought of school than he had been at the possibility of jail.
“I’m out now,” said Ellis. “What about you?”
“Cross my heart, you wouldn’t want to know,” said Jackie, pulling a face.
He certainly looked disreputable – had always looked disreputable – and yet, for all that, he spoke with an accent that was almost elegant. His family had been well-to-do, hadn’t they? Adults had exclaimed over the contrast between Jackie and a clever, older sister. Anyhow, the contrast between the tattered camel-hair coat and the smooth way of speaking made Jackie hard to place. Ellis found he was not quite sure how to talk to him.
“Oh, well, see you around!” he said, knowing already that Jackie was not going to let him walk away. And sure enough, Jackie’s grip on his arm tightened a little.
“No! No, wait!” he cried, while his eyes ran over Ellis yet again with that same persistent speculation. “What are you rushing off for? You’re not meeting a girl or anything, are you?”
“No,” said Ellis a little aggressively, because Jackie had sounded so completely certain that Ellis would not be meeting a girl.
Jackie beamed.
“Well, that’s OK then! Let’s mingle! Be part of café society. I’ll buy you a beer.”
Why not? thought Ellis. I might as well find out what’s going on.
“Why not!” he said aloud. “I’ll pay,” he added, remembering the money in his back pocket.
“Even better!” said Jackie fervently. He twitched his battered coat into place as carefully as if it had been freshly cleaned and pressed and there was some reason for looking after it. Then he pointed backwards over his shoulder with his thumb.
“Follow me,” he said, spinning on the spot as he extended his arm, pointing dramatically. They moved off together, Jackie gliding at Ellis’s right shoulder like an escorting angel.
“So! School!” he reminisced. “School!” he repeated as if he were mentioning something so peculiar he couldn’t quite believe in it any more. “And what now? Got a job lined up?”
“I’m going to be an actor,” said Ellis, feeling he could safely practise this announcement on someone like Jackie. It came out well – crisp, assured and unapologetic.
“Crash hot!” said Jackie, though Ellis suspected Jackie would have said the same thing if he had announced that he was planning to be an accountant.
“I only got home last night. I’m