Being Small by Chaz Brenchley Page A

her working hours. Now she was on shifts, they were necessarily more various. Today was Friday; I was sixteen and one day old. We listened to Woman’s Hour on Radio Four, that was sacred and inviolable, while I put together our infinitely adjustable shelving system, white-glossed bricks and scaffolding planks that we’d collected through the years. Then we both unpacked books, while I told her about glass: its chemical properties, its history and uses, the craft and the science and the art of it. That was an easy lesson. When I was eight, we’d lived next door to a man who worked with stained glass. I spent a lot of time hanging around his studio, learning from him, making little boxes with off-cuts of glass and lead and storing treasures in them. Sealing them up afterwards, folding over the seams of lead and storing them away. I had them still, as safe as the memories. I’d unpack them later, put them in a dark and private corner and never stop to wonder what was inside each, why I’d valued it then or why I kept it now. Treasures can be as secret as you like, and still have secrets of their own.
    I ought perhaps to have tested my mother later, to see if the lesson stuck. She made such a point of keeping nothing, though, there’d be little point. Why should she hold on to this? Knowledge was my baby; I was hers. We both were, Small and I together, her specialist subject.
    We lunched among the empty boxes, pasties and milk. Then she said, “I’ve got a shift at three. I just need to hunt out my work clothes, and that’s me done for the day. Why don’t you go for a run, get a feel for what’s new around here? Take your key, I’ll be gone before you’re back. Then you can sort your own room out. You and Small will have to look after each other tonight; it’s my turn to be back late, not till gone midnight. And Michael, I do mean look after yourselves. Don’t go bothering Adam tonight. I know it’s not a schoolday for him tomorrow, but nevertheless. He’s got exams coming, he needs to buckle down. No point winding his parents up, or rubbing his nose in your freedom. Last night was a special occasion; don’t try to repeat it.”
    I only grunted at the lecture, but my heart leaped at the idea of a run. It was what I was aching for, all thick head and restless legs, the least worst residue of the night before: less than I deserved, but I was dragging heavily through the day. Just as well that she’d asked for a lesson I could give without thinking. My temper was as brittle as glass, and I guess my mood was as transparent. A morning of my mother’s close company was enough; I needed space and time alone, fresh air and better exercise than shelves and books and boxes.
    I pulled clothes out of bags almost at random till I found singlet and shorts and running shoes. Homer went into a pocket and I was away, turning my face into the wind, my feet up the hill. That was almost deliberately perverse; downhill and downwind, there were parks from here to the river. I could have done laps on grass, with no traffic to watch out for. But I didn’t want soft going, underfoot or in my head. This was better, hard pavements and hard work, legs and eyes and all my attention given over to the thing itself, the running. Hot suburban afternoon, there was none too much traffic, cars or people; I didn’t always have to wait at street corners and I didn’t always have to keep to the kerb, I could drop down and run on the road for stretches. Even so there were strollers and buggies and bikes on the pavement, there were parked cars and driven cars, occasionally a motorbike; there were traffic-lights and roundabouts where I had to keep aware.
    And there was a map to make, to rediscover, to refresh: street names and grids and where the shops were, where the cops were, where the bus-stops and the cafes and the pubs. What had changed since last we lived this side of town, what was still the same and what eternal. I learned that little was