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All the voices
145
It was this awareness
of coming back which,
strangely, was what had
first of all attracted me to
Craig. Craig my cousin, the
one laughing that time the
other side of the hedge.
Craig and hedges. Well,
I’ll tell you more at some
point. Anyway Craig’s a big
boy now. He’s twenty four;
I’m twenty five. We were
supposed to be friends, or
enemies, at the very least
to understand the same
viewpoint; we weren’t
supposed to be indifferent
to one another. Trouble
is we’ve always been
coming from distinctly
different mental places.
The main difference is
Craig’s involvement with
things
. I, on the other
hand, can say with a hand
on my heart, that I’ve
never cared that much
about
things
one way or
the other. I could take
them or leave them.
Craig is all bound up
with the taking of things.
Which isn’t to say he’s a
thief, although I don’t
know about that for sure.
It isn’t something Auntie E
would have let on about.
She was a close one when
it suited her and Craig the
apple of her old rheumy
eyes. From this it should
be apparent that she had
never seen her son clearly
– what mother does? But
Craig wouldn’t have let on
if he was a thief, either,
would he. Anyway, what I
mean by taking is that he
liked to take things and
then hide them whereas
me, I only cared about
hiding myself. And he liked
to bring the things back
again when you’d given up
hope of ever seeing them
again. That was what he
was up to for most of his