The Drowning of Arthur Braxton. Caroline Smailes
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Название: The Drowning of Arthur Braxton
Автор: Caroline Smailes
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780007479399
isbn:
I get to the metal gate and I can see the main man-healer, Martin Savage (General Zod), sitting on the stone steps leading up to the Males 1st Class entrance. He’s got a cigarette in one hand, a bacon butty in the other and the zip of his shell-suit top’s undone, showing off his hairy belly.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Hi,’ he says. He smiles and I’m thinking, Kneeeel before Zod.
‘I’ve come about the job,’ I say, handing him the advert that my mum’s ripped off the corkboard in the butchers.
‘You’re not what I expected,’ Martin Savage says. ‘How old are you?’ Martin Savage asks.
‘Fourteen,’ I say.
‘You got a boyfriend?’ Martin Savage asks.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Got any experience?’ Martin Savage asks.
‘No,’ I say. ‘But I learn fast,’ I say.
He smiles (Kneeeel before Zod), then he flicks his ciggie butt onto the pavement, stands and walks up the steps and through the open wooden door into The Oracle. I don’t know what to do so I start kicking the tips of my DMs against one of the steps.
‘What’s your name?’ a voice asks.
I look up and the woman one, Madame Pythia, is standing at the top of the steps, all elegant and mysterious. She walks down the steps, without making a sound, so I reckon that she must have no shoes on, but her violet dress is long and flowy.
‘Laurel,’ I say. ‘I’ve come about the job,’ I say.
‘So Martin tells me,’ she says, she stops. She looks me up, she looks me down. ‘You’re pretty,’ she says.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘Can you start now?’ she asks and when I nod she begins telling me all that I need to know about my hours and expected duties at The Oracle.
‘I’m to work every night after school, from four until eight. Madame Pythia reckons that’s the busiest times. They open at two, but they’ve got their cleaner, Maggie, covering until I get there,’ I tell Mum.
‘What about weekends?’ Mum asks. Mum’s sitting on the sofa, a can of Diamond White in one hand, a ciggie in the other.
‘They’re open from two until eight, but then I’ve got to do full days and nights three days every month when Madame Pythia is “absorbed of everyone’s sins”,’ I say.
‘You what?’ Mum says.
‘I’ve no idea, the woman’s cuckoo, Mum,’ I say. ‘I’m to take money, check appointments, sit at a desk in the Males 1st Class reception and pretend like I’m hard as nails and scary.’
Mum laughs. She pushes her ciggie butt into the almost-empty can.
‘Piece of piss, our Laurel, and you get paid for doing it. Don’t know how I’ll manage with the kids without you, though,’ Mum says.
‘We can give it a go for a bit, Mum, see how it all works out. Two pounds fifty pence an hour, cash in hand, that’ll really help out,’ I say and Mum nods. Mum’s all about the money.
And I reckon that the pay’s okay for the job I’m doing. I mean I don’t tell Mum, but really I think that working at The Oracle is going to be better for me than being at home looking after my brothers. The youngest is two, Sammy he’s called, and he’s a proper handful, into everything, and I spend all my time running after him and stopping him from climbing out windows. Madame Pythia even said that she’s okay with me doing my homework at my desk in reception. ’Course I don’t tell Mum that, mainly ’cause I don’t want her thinking that I’m having it too easy, and ’cause it’s almost too good to be true. I’m going to be able to do all my homework while I’m at work. I’ll be able to read books and hear myself think. I reckon it’s possibly the best job in the world.
When I get to really thinking about it, I don’t even know how I got the job. Mum reckons it’s fate, that it was meant to be, but I don’t even know if I believe in all that sort of stuff.
It doesn’t take long before I realise that most of the people who come to The Oracle are desperate, I mean proper desperate. It’s only my second day, I mean I’ve only been at my desk for fifteen minutes and I’m trying to figure out algebra, but Elsie Hughes has turned up sobbing. My mum and Elsie used to be best mates, before Mum shagged Elsie’s brother and got pregnant with our Sammy.
‘I don’t have an appointment, Laurel,’ she says.
‘Who do you want to see?’ I ask.
There are three pools, Males 1st Class, Males 2nd Class and Females, and each of the water-healers works from one pool. Men or women can go in the male pools, it’s not strict, just has them labels ’cause they’re carved in stone over the entrance doors. I think it used to be a lot stricter in the old days. Only Madame Pythia’s pool has water direct from the spring in it, the other pools have a mix of local water and seawater and magic water. That’s why proper poorly people tend to go to Madame Pythia for healing.
‘I need to see Madame Pythia,’ Elsie Hughes says, wiping snot on her red coat sleeve. Elsie’s a bit plump and her hair’s all scruffy, with some of it still in rollers. She’s holding a plastic bag with a blue towel not quite fitting in it.
I look at Madame Pythia’s appointments, I shake my head.
‘Soz, Elsie,’ I say. ‘She’s booked solid for the next two days.’ I turn the pages and look at Silver’s bookings. ‘Silver’s got a cancellation in fifteen minutes,’ I say.
She stops her crying. I think she might have been holding her breath.
‘Okay,’ she says, sighing. Then she moves to stand outside. I see her taking a ciggie from a blue packet and cupping her hands round it. She’s trying to light it but her whole body’s proper shaking.
I watch her. I mean I’m supposed to be doing my homework, but something about the way she shakes, something about how desperate she is to light that ciggie, something about the way she stares down to the stone steps, makes me want to cry with her. I’ve never seen anyone that sad before. I mean Mum’s been in floods of crying, especially after one of her loser boyfriends has dumped her, but there’s nothing deep about her tears. I’ve always known that she’ll be out down The Swan on the pull the following night. Mum’s bed’s never empty for long. But with Elsie Hughes, her pain’s different. It’s like it’s all the way around her and covering her like a shower curtain. I think she might be trapped and I think she might be desperate for someone to make her better.
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