Authors: Katy Moran
“I’m fine, really,” I replied. “Just tired, like I said.”
She must have felt it was OK to move in for the attack. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”
“We haven’t been together that long.”
“Bethany doesn’t go to your school, does she? I don’t think I’ve heard Sam mention the name.”
I shrugged. “She’s at St Agnes’s. She’s really nice, Yvonne. Really up for helping out, too. I promise.”
“I’m sure she’s nice. She’s very pretty. Natural-looking, unlike most of them nowadays. Bad liar, too.” Yvonne shook her head and I flinched. Lucky for Sammy that Yvonne’s cool. You really couldn’t get anything past her. If she was all uptight and strict about stuff, it’d be a nightmare. “Is Bethany going to be OK with you three boys, though?”
“Yeah,” I said, “we’ll be fine. Honestly.”
Yvonne gave me that look again. “What I mean is, Jack, that I hope you’ll be careful. Sensible.”
Ugh, God, what was she on about? What did she think I was going to do, lose my virginity in a tent full of baked bean tins with Jono and Sammy as company? Classy.
I nodded, handing her the box of teabags. “Don’t worry, Yvonne. We’ll be OK.”
Just as I said it, the lights went out and someone yelled from the kitchen tent, “Yvonne! The urn and the fridge have gone off, too.”
“Bugger,” said Yvonne in the darkness. “See you later, Jack. Just don’t do anything stupid, will you?”
Then she yelled, “Coming!” I was off the hook.
Bethany and I managed to lose Jono and Sammy outside the cinema tent. There was a little bonfire with hay bales laid out around it and we sat down on one of the bales.
“It’s powered by a bike!” Bethany grinned, teeth white in the darkness. “A cinema powered by a bike. Thanks for bringing me, Jack. It’s amazing.” She passed me the pint of cider we were sharing, taking a long draw from a joint. But then the smile disappeared and she stared down at the ground, already scattered with plastic pint glasses and greasy paper plates. It was meant to be a green festival but that didn’t seem to have stopped everyone chucking stuff all over the place. “I was really scared, you know,” she said quietly. “When we nearly got caught, I was terrified.”
I smiled at her. “It’s all right. Me too. Only a bullshitter like Jono would pretend they weren’t.”
She passed me the joint, blowing out a long coil of smoke, staring out at the mayhem unfolding around us. “If Mum finds out I’m here, she’ll go mental. She’ll go on and on about how I shouldn’t upset Dad and she’s right.” Bethany shut her eyes a moment. “I don’t know how she does it but she can make me feel … worse than anything. So guilty.”
At first, I didn’t know what to say.
“Listen,” I told her eventually, gripping her hand. “We’re here now. It’s like we’re walking on a tightrope between two skyscrapers. We can’t look down. Even if we do get caught – which we won’t – what’s the point if we haven’t had a good time, OK? So don’t think about it. And anyway, you deserve a break. Your dad’s been really ill – you’ve moved house, gone to a new school. It’s a nightmare. Have some fun.”
I passed back the joint. Bethany smiled uncertainly but said, “You’re right.” She shrugged. “Jesus, I thought it was bad enough when Mum and Dad said we had to leave London because of his job.” She shut her eyes.
For a moment we just sat there, holding hands, her fingers squeezing mine. What could I say to her?
Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right?
I don’t make promises I can’t keep.
“Thanks for coming.” I kissed her again; we both tasted of tobacco, burnt weed. I probably shouldn’t have even been smoking the stuff. Maybe I had the same switch in my brain that Herod did. A switch just waiting to be flipped, opening a door to strange places. Letting the Creature in.
Stop it,
I told myself.
Stop thinking about that.
The psychiatrist said it was most likely Herod’s gigantic skunk habit that had scrambled his mind, along with what he called “the pressures of late adolescence”, and there I was anyway, smoking Buggy’s sticky like there’d be no tomorrow. A gambling man.
“Jack,” Bethany said “Are you OK? You were miles away. I’m not going to go on about this or anything, but who was that guy outside the caravan? Don’t say if you don’t want to.”
I watched as a crowd of girls stumbled by, faces painted with glitter that shone in the firelight. An old hippy with a beard walked past wearing a tutu and a top hat, smoking a pipe, arm in arm with a lady who had long grey plaits down to her waist.
“He’s my brother,” I said. “Owen. He left.” I didn’t really want to think about it, to be honest.
Bethany waited, edging slightly closer. The night was getting chilly, and we wrapped our arms around each other’s shoulders, close together. She was a good listener. Didn’t force stuff out of you. Just waited.
“I haven’t seen him for five years.”
“Oh,” said Bethany, and gripped my hand in hers. I loved that about her, the way she just let me talk, not pushing.
I’ve been pressured into talking about private stuff too many times. I’m sick of it.
“But don’t you want to find Owen now you’re both here?” Bethany asked after a while. She didn’t say anything about why he’d gone: it was as if she just knew not to go there. “Five years is like, wow, a long time.”
Owen. I couldn’t believe I’d actually seen him.
I wondered if Bethany’s mum had passed on the gossip-version of Herod and Owen’s story – all that bullshit about crack she’d heard in the hospital
I shook my head. “What would I have to say to him? Mum was gutted when she realized he was never going to bother with uni. First of all he kept saying he’d deferred. But it never came to anything. He’d got into Oxford, too. Now all Mum goes on about is me getting ridiculously good marks in everything.”
“So you’re meant to do what Owen didn’t. That’s a load of crap. Honestly.” Bethany shrugged. “What about your dad? What’s he like about it?”
“He’s not around.”
She didn’t go there, either. Good move.
Bethany just accepted what I told her, without asking too much. Still, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d given away a piece of myself, even though it was just a fragment of the story. I hadn’t told her why Owen left, had I? Was that how she’d felt talking about her dad, that she was giving too much away? I’ll always remember the look she gave me on the train – so
grateful
.
It isn’t your fault
, I’d told her.
Bethany passed me the cider. I finished it and was about to chuck the plastic pint glass away when I remembered what she was like with her fag ends.
“Come on.” I grinned at her. Bethany had risked a lot for this. “Let’s find a bin and another pint.”
Bethany and me stumbled around the site, drinking and laughing and smoking, hand in hand. I couldn’t believe my luck: that I was there with her. Even so, my mind kept wandering down some pretty strange pathways, as if seeing Owen had unlocked doors kept shut for years. Or maybe it was Bethany, and the way I felt like I could tell her anything. Either way I thought about stuff probably best forgotten; I couldn’t seem to stop myself. It was like going back in time – I could see it all so clearly.
I’m sitting in the doorway of the shed at the bottom of our back garden. There’s nothing on TV so I’m watching Herod work instead. He’s meant to be doing pottery coursework, but Herod is an artist. He would be doing this even if school didn’t make him.
I’m not sure if he minds me sitting on the step, or if he just hasn’t noticed I’m even here. It’s late on Sunday afternoon. Light slants across the tangled garden. Mum and Louis have had friends over for lunch: I can just hear their laughter drifting down through the mess of flowers and overgrown bushes, the clink of wine glasses too.
Herod is standing at the workbench where, in the spring, Mum sows lettuce seeds in trays and pokes tiny tomato plants into pots of compost. With total calm and patience, Herod is turning a lump of pale grey clay into a rose. All this takes place inside a plastic salad bowl. He uses damp sponges to prop up the petals as they are formed, keeping them from squashing against the sides of the bowl. His fingers move fast, then slow again, patting, pressing, stroking. The rose is about the size of a football, and perfect – each petal is really growing, unfolding from the tight hard bud of clay. It is as if some bright, hot part of Herod himself passes through his grey-stained fingertips into the clay, bringing it to life.
Every few minutes, Herod pauses, picks up a roll-up from the terracotta plant pot he is using as an ash tray and takes a draw, breathing out a cloud of sickly sweet smoke – it’s one of the kind he makes himself. I think it might be weed, the stuff Mum and Louis’ friends smoke around the kitchen table late at night when they’ve drunk a lot of wine and they think I’m asleep in bed. Sometimes Herod takes a swig from the cup of tea Mum got me to bring out half an hour ago: I don’t even think he realizes it’s cold. He missed lunch but Mum knows as well as I do that Herod won’t eat till this is finished. When his work is over for the day, Herod will walk into the kitchen, boil a pan of pasta and eat a huge plate of it with cheese and ketchup, then drink two cans of Coke from the fridge and fall asleep on the sofa for an hour.
“Oh, well,” Mum said last time. “At least he can cook. Well, sort of.”
“She’s done it again. Bitch.”
I turn and here is Owen, his hair wet from the shower. He’s got a couple of dreadlocks and beads of water cling to them.
I think he stayed at someone else’s house last night. He came in through the front door early this morning when I was the only one up, watching Herod’s
Lost Boys
video. Owen slumped down next to me and watched till the end. His face looked all weird – his jaw kept kind of jumping and twitching.
After a moment, Herod looks up, wiping his hands on his jeans. A frown crosses his face but clears when he sees it’s Owen. “What?”
“Dad. Next weekend. It’s not happening.”
Sadness crashes through me: it’s like being hit in the belly with a football. I haven’t seen Dad since before I was eight and I’m almost ten. We were meant to be going to London to see him. My eyes feel all hot but I’m not going to cry, so I stare down at my hands, dusty with dried clay. Herod gave me a piece to play with when I brought the tea but I couldn’t make it do what I wanted, so now it sits at my side – a dried-up lump of earth.
I’m so angry. I’ve been looking forward to London for ages, spent hours imagining what it will be like to see my dad again. And then there’s all the cool stuff from America he promised he’d bring: Levis, loads of Oreo cookies. Now it’s all ruined. This is not fair.
“Why?” Herod asks, simply. He takes another swig of tea, swallows, pulls a face and ditches the rest out of the door; Owen ducks out of the way, moving faster than a cat. Herod’s out of his trance now. Noticing things, like cold tea.
“A bullshit excuse about next week. From her, not him.” Owen frowns, and I know that when Mum and Louis’ friends have gone, there will be another argument.
Herod shrugs and turns back to his clay. “I don’t really blame her,” he says, “after what he did.”
“She needs to get over that,” Owen replies, leaning over me to pick up Herod’s joint. He relights it, sitting on the step next to me, taking a long drag. “It’s her problem, not ours. Poor Jack,” he says, patting me on the head like a dog. I don’t mind. “You’re going to be so royally fucked up by this.”
“Why don’t we just go anyway?” I say. “Mum doesn’t have to know. We could lie – make something up. She’ll believe Herod.”
Owen and Herod both turn to stare at me. And Owen laughs.
* * *
I didn’t see Owen again that night after Bethany and me left the cinema tent, although I can’t deny that I couldn’t help scanning faces in the crowd, looking over the little groups of people sitting around in the café, wondering if he’d be there. But he never was. If Jono and Sammy hadn’t seen Owen, too, perhaps I would have convinced myself that I’d imagined the whole thing.
We had a good one, though – Jono, Sammy, Bethany and I. Drank too much cider, smoked a lot of Buggy the Dealer’s lovely sticky. I think everyone threw up at least once and Sammy chucked a proper whitey. We worked for Yvonne the graveyard shift on Saturday night (midnight till six) and it was a laugh – frying up veggie burgers in a massive industrial-sized pan, mixing salad in plastic crates, cutting up banana bread, making salad dressing, laughing at the casualties who came lurching in at three in the morning. Even Jono and Bethany seemed to be getting on OK, which I was relieved about because at first that had worried me a bit; I thought Jono might get embarrassed that Bethany had been the one who talked him down from the fear and start acting like even more of a prat than usual.
Sometime before four, Sammy and Jono went off to buy more Rizlas, so for a while it was just me and Bethany, working together like a machine. We were a team; again, I felt like I’d known her for years and years. We hardly spoke, didn’t need to. She didn’t say anything else about Owen: she didn’t try to pry. I’d told her and that was it. At five o’clock Sammy returned to donate a pint of cider, guilt-ridden and off his face. Bethany and I swigged the cider, chopped tomatoes, unwrapped huge slabs of cake and cut them up, plunged endless jugs of coffee. As the night tipped towards morning, the burger orders dried up and we sold acres of banana bread and endless cups of tea to people with the munchies.
At half-past five, Sammy’s sister Leila came in with some of her friends. I used to quite fancy Leila, obviously knowing that I didn’t have a chance, considering that she’s twenty-one and really hot, just out of uni.
“Jesus, Jack,” she said, leaning on the bar. She’d let her hair grow into an Afro and painted silver streaks through it. “Are you OK? I saw Sammy and Jon over by the cinema. They’re absolutely munted, but he said you and your girlfriend had it all under control.”
Cheeky bastards. My girlfriend, though; my girlfriend
. I grinned. “We’re all right,” I said. “Bit knackered.”
And then Leila leaned closer and said, “I’m not sure if I… Listen, Jack, I saw your brother. Owen. Did you know he was here?”