Trash - Andy Mulligan [37]
Soon we got to a line of huge trees, whose branches came down low. They were brushing the grass, and it was a good place to be – it was cool, and we were hidden. We were squeezing through to the other side and looking out – that’s when we saw it.
Raphael said, ‘Boy.’
I just looked at it, lost for words.
‘How many people live there?’ he said.
I laughed. I laughed for some time, and finally said, ‘Do you know, I bet it’s just him! I bet it’s just one big man, walking around all day, looking at his money, scared to death someone’s coming to get it.’
‘How rich do you have to be?’ said Raphael. ‘Just look at it …’
‘Look at the towers, man – it thinks it’s a castle. It thinks it’s in a fairy tale.’
I was drinking it in, too amazed, because I had never seen anything like it. The man had chosen his spot, I’ll say that for him. He’d bought up the prettiest bit of woods in the land, and just where the grass ran down nice and flat, he’d built himself a palace, for the king he thought he was. It was all black and white wood, like stripes and crosses, with so many windows you wouldn’t want to count them, let alone clean them. It was all stacked up in layers, and there was a golden dome in the middle, catching the sun – like halfway through, the builders had said they ought to try making a cathedral, just for the fun of it. At each end stood a tower with battlements, and our country’s flags were waving proudly, and everywhere else were fussy little spires and statues. There was a great big fountain too, jetting up right in the front, shooting up even now, in the dry season, with nobody to look at it except us.
As we watched, coming up the drive we saw a police car. Then, just behind us – just as we drank it in and wondered – a low voice very close said: ‘What are you wanting, boys?’
I cried out and swung round – but poor old Raphael was just running. He ran straight out onto the grass, then stood, not knowing what to do, like some kind of stranded cat. I held my ground and shouted: ‘Stop! It’s OK!’ Sometimes you just know there’s no danger, in a split second, and I knew the main danger was Raphael getting seen in the open.
The man’s voice was calm.
The man who’d spoken wasn’t angry with us. He was under a nearby tree, just back from ours, and we simply hadn’t seen him – he hadn’t even meant to scare us, I was sure of that. He was crouching so low and still that we’d gone right past. I could see a pair of grass-cutters in his hands, and a wide hat to keep off the sun, and it was obvious he was just a lowly old gardener, one of the hundreds they must need to keep the place so neat.
Raphael sidled back and got behind me, shaking and panting.
‘You looking for anything in particular?’ said the man.
‘No, sir,’ I said.
‘Oh, just passing through. Maybe you just came to laugh?’
‘What’s there to laugh about?’ I said.
The man smiled at us both. He could see Raph was in a state. ‘I thought you must have heard, and that’s why you’re here. Sit a moment,’ he said. ‘Have a smoke. The boys at the gatehouse say we’re getting a lot of people coming by, asking if the papers are true.’
‘We’re just roaming,’ I said. ‘What’s in the papers?’
The man smiled again, and took off his hat. His face was so creased it looked like an old fruit – he was totally sunburned, and all I knew was, he was old as hell. A laugh came from deep down in his guts and rattled on until he was coughing, so he pulled a cigarette from somewhere and lit up, offering the pack.
‘It’s only been in some of the papers,’ he said. ‘But no one knows for sure. They don’t want to admit it, that’s what I think – but what are all the police cars for? That