LITMIR.BIZ

       2

      It had been agreed that Jonah could go to the Martins straight from school, rather than traipsing all the way home to go with the others in the car. The thought of the journey cheered him up. He hadn’t travelled into London alone before. On the train, he put his backpack and his trumpet case in the luggage rack, shrugged off his blazer and sprawled across two seats, luxuriating in his independence. They’d been playing the ‘Summertime’/ ‘Motherless Child’ medley in band practice, and the interweaving tunes played on in his head as he gazed through the fast-moving glass at the slow-drifting clouds. Cumulus humilis. He had been obsessed with clouds that summer, had learnt all their names. He saw the white sheets rising again, Dora’s huge sunglasses, her yellow dress, the straggly hair in her armpits.

      Dora Martin. Quite a famous artist these days. She had written the invitation, in her elegant, spiky slant, on a postcard featuring one of her paintings: ‘It’s that time again, and I’m so hoping you’ll join us.’ He noticed that the creature – a kind of trapped emotional density – was awake again, and he shifted himself sideways, resting his head on his bent arm. It would be nice to see Emerald, who’d been in his class and would have updates on Harold and all the other Haredale kids. Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone. He closed his eyes, letting the sleepy, mournful tune weave with the rhythm of the train.

      He dreamed he was high above London, among the cool, silent clouds, looking down at the glittering sprawl. You were our home. He felt a leap of hope and dropped closer, looking for a sign of welcome, but the cranes rose and tilted, like slingsmen, the river shone like a ribbon of foil and, to the west, an acrid plume of grief rose from a blackened finger. He dove down like Superman, circling his old familiars: the Cheese Grater, the Shard, the Knuckleduster. Down further, between the chimney pots, into the grime of the centuries, and then southwards, along arteries and veins. The high street now, their high street: Chicken Cottage, Hollywood Nails, We Buy Gold. Left up Wanless Road, low under the bridge, the car repair yard, that smell from the warehouse. Dropping to the ground, he was his nine-year-old self now: bare feet on the warm pavement, fingers dragging along the fence. Opposite, the four shops, asleep, their metal shutters pulled down. And on the corner, there it was, their house, so familiar, but long forgotten. There was someone looking out of the sitting-room window, someone waiting for him. Mayo?

      The train entered an urban canyon, sound waves bouncing off concrete and glass. He sat up straight, wiping the drool from his chin, and leant his forehead against the window. The tall buildings had fallen away, and the clouds were towering. Cumulonimbus. He suddenly remembered the clouds poster, Blu-tacked to his and Raff’s bedroom wall, and the dream flooded him: the cool vapour, the eerie silence, the dizzying drop down; and their old house, right there, the scruffiness of it, every tiny detail. He hadn’t seen it since they’d left; they had never gone that way in the car: but now, he realised, he could go and have a look at it, on his way from the bus stop to the Martins’ house. A very short detour, to travel back five years. The shift again; the creature, wordless and sightless, like a blind baby seal, as his brother Raff’s voice came to him, clear as a bell, down the years. ‘We need a time machine.’ The two of them, in that messy kitchen, trying to work out what to do. Hands on his belly, he noticed his own face in the glass, his two eyes merged together. Then the train slid onto the bridge, and the breath caught in his throat. The million-year-old river, brown and glittering, full of boats, and the towers like giant androids, gazing glassily towards the future.