by Stuart Evers
Lee fumbled under his seat. Threw over two T-shirts, both dry, both white.
‘Are you sure?’ Carlie said.
Lee held out two more T-shirts under his seat, fresh in cellophane wrapping.
‘Be prepared,’ he said. ‘That’s my motto.’
*
Sandbach Services was a holding pen; ravers hanging around for news of a party like unemployed stevedores on docks. Kids sitting on bonnets drinking Coke, still wired, tricked-out cars booming beats from inset bass cones.
‘You’re lifesavers,’ Carlie said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Keep safe,’ Jon said and pulled away.
The two of them were together, said so as soon as they were out onto proper roads. He wondered if they knew Billy. Whether he had been in the same clubs as them at some point. Billy with the sad eyes and the thin wrists, the swank apartment and jutting chin, the racks of clothes and credit cards. Billy with whom he lived a shadow life, for a time, but knew there would be goodbyes sooner rather than later. Different to Pete’s goodbyes. More formal. He knew that the first time Billy called off a Friday night because he had to go to a dinner party.
Carlie had guessed somehow, seen it perhaps in the way he danced with men. He’d confessed to her, after she’d asked. Yes, he’d been with a man. Just once. A lie, but plausible. He was high. It had made her excited. She’d been with a girl, she said, just the once. It was good to explore sexuality, to be open to new experiences. A few weeks later, she stuck her finger in his ass for the first time. It confused him. Was unsure whether this was something all couples did, or whether it was specific to him; a way to keep him happy, though he’d never been as happy, never once. Not with Pete, or with Billy. It unsettled, but it passed.
They went inside the service station and bought coffee, sat in the cafe to warm. She looked beautiful in the harsh light, her make-up wrecked and wearing a T-shirt advertising a Toyota car dealership.
‘You know,’ she said. ‘There’s no other place I’d rather be right now. I’m cold, we’re miles from home, but still no other place than here.’
‘Me too,’ he said.
She sipped at her coffee, she opened up the packet of cigarettes they’d just bought. She passed one to him and lit it with a match.
‘How are we going to get back?’ she said.
‘Someone’ll give us a lift. There’ll be someone you know hanging around.’
She nodded. ‘Smoke these and then we can go hustle?’
‘Smoke then hustle,’ he said.
*
He blew the man and swallowed. He tasted old and musty. There was no velvet to his cock. At the bottom of the track to the house, right there. Risky business, with the sun rising and his father probably already out in the sheds, but Nate had to be sure he’d take him all the way home. The man groaned. Nate saw he’d left a little blood on the man’s thigh. Nate touched the side of his head. A small cut that would bruise up bad. The man pulled up his trousers.
‘You’re sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?’ the man said.
‘You ask me that now?’ Nate said.
The man opened the door. Nate got out. Standing there with bloodied knuckles, his blood and Jay’s blood. Both now on the man’s thigh. The man did not say goodbye, just drove away, got what he came for. Lucky man.
Nate walked up the track, the short shadow of him. The look on Carlie’s face. So happy inside the service station; so angry after, so angry it lit her up beautiful.
Out to hustle and they’d seen the Maestro, Jay sitting on its bonnet. They went over and Carlie started at him, and Jay was trying to explain, poor reappeared Jay, but whatever he said wasn’t enough and so Nate hit him. Full force. Jay got a couple of punches off, Nate letting him have them for free, before he set to him. Fists and knees and Carlie somewhere a thousand miles behind trying to haul him off Jay, but it taking five blokes to stop him. Jay on the ground, battered and kicked and punched. The shock on Carlie’s face. The horror. Her dragging Jay up with the help of some of the blokes, lying him down on the back seat, her getting in front, crunching the car into gear.
‘Psycho,’ she’d said through the open window. ‘You’re a fucking psycho.’
Then off. Onto the motorway. Nate abandoned twice in one evening.
In the service station bathrooms, cleaning himself up, the man had asked if he needed a ride. Why not. What else to do now? Knowing what he would need to do in return.
He sat down at the end of the track. Once he’d thrown knives at the oak tree opposite. Once he’d got the knife to stick in the bark. The thrill of that. The dead sound of the blade in the trunk. Chris Birch. There was a tear in the new trousers, a rip where Jay had tried to stop him from kicking. Nothing going to stop the kicking. Once he saw him, nothing stopping that. Not the ecstasy. Not Carlie. Nothing to stop that, once it started. A train on the move, all doors locked.
September
Wednesdays she opened the library alone. The same men each morning waiting for her to unlock the glass doors. Five came every day, there on the nose and out when then pubs opened. Of late, a young man called Silas too. At nine, his watch pinged the hour. Everyone looked at him, as they did every hour he was there.
Around half past, the first set of mothers arrived. A smile for them, the long-suffering mothers, and a smile for the kids; the women blear eyed from lack of sleep, the kids toddling off to throw books on the floor. Sometimes it reminded Gwen of mornings with Annie in the library: the books they read, the way they’d laughed at the strangeness of English language, its innumerable inconsistencies. When Gwen first skipped a period, she thought she was pregnant. She thought she was pregnant and thought of another Annie in her arms, another little Annie-moo, her reading Mr Rabbit and the Lovely Present; or Nathan inside of her, plump and untroubled.
‘These are new in today,’ she said to the woman taking off her jacket.
‘Thank you,’ the other woman said. ‘Nothing like fresh books, is there, Hannah?’
The child looked up, ringlet hair and smudge brown eyes.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
How to melt a heart, young lady. How to melt a heart.
Gwen allowed herself to be pregnant for a month, drank no wine or coffee. In a medical textbook, she looked up vasectomy and it said there was a slim chance of being able to conceive after the operation. The next period she skipped, she allowed herself to be pregnant for another month. She wondered about names, she wondered about how she would cope, how they would both cope, with a new life to nurture. The third came along as though returning from a holiday. A grande vacance around Mitteleuropa. She cried in the bathroom, the water running in the tub, cried as blood lapped into an expanding wad of cotton. You’re fifty-one years old, she’d told herself, what did you expect? What were you thinking?
She sat down and picked up Mrs Dalloway. A new edition she’d read twice straight through. Just to spite Old Nick, his bilious hatred of Woolf: her tin ear and outmoded aristocracy.
‘Don’t read her,’ he’d once said. ‘Woolf is the enemy of fiction. The enemy of everything that fiction stands for. It is bloodless, limp, dazzled by its own self-importance.’
She remembered Nick’s rant against Woolf, the alarming biographical note – she drank her own urine, he’d said with a lemon-wince mouth – and the real reason for his ire: a spiky comment from Virginia about his appearance at a literary dinner. Had Gwen read Mrs Dalloway back in the late fifties, she would have agreed with him, she would have dismissed it as being shallow and without a shred of dirt under its fingernails. She would have been wrong.
A ping from Silas’s wristwatch. A grandmother with her two young grandchildren, bundling one into a buggy, the other carrying the books they would take out.
‘This is a good one,’ Gwen said, holding out The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
‘I can make a noise like a tiger,’ the boy said.
‘Not in a library,’ the grandmother said. ‘Now come on, time for home.’
You can roar in here, she thought. Just once, I’ll let you roar.
She went back to Dalloway, she served the last customers, then closed the library. On the tick of twelve, proud of that. Errands to run, then home.
*
The Lion and Bell was the town’s pub for underage drinkers; which left it dead in the day, lacking purpose. She ordered a glass of wine and took her drink to the back room. No nerves until seated, no nerves at all, not even thinking about it. Not happening. Easy to dismiss. What chance this happening. No chance this happening. No worries, because not happening.
Ray walked into the bar; the same face, same slender body, hair seasoned with the merest dash of grey. She stood. They embraced. An aftershave she did not recognize; something adulterous about that.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Ray said.
‘You haven’t changed,’ Gwen said.
‘Neither have you.’
‘I was glad when you wrote,’ he said. ‘Surprised but glad.’
She’d wanted to many times, wanted to when she read his profiles of the striking miners, the travel books he’d become known for, seeking out fanatics across the world, interviewing them, giving them voice. Hard to believe the same man she had abandoned. Or he her. Difficult to remember the exact manner of the parting. No matter either way. Two decades past, time having brushed their shoulders, not blown hard on their faces.
‘You could have come to me sooner,’ he said. ‘I would have helped.’
‘You know it’s not as simple as that.’
He nodded. ‘Still, I’m glad you came to me. There are things—’
‘It was a whim,’ she said. ‘Desperation, really. I almost did years before, but Drum was dead against it. Said I’d break my own heart. He made me promise I wouldn’t. But I need to know. I couldn’t wait it out any longer. It had to be you. I couldn’t pay anyone. Drum controls all the money, you see.’
‘Same old, Drum,’ he said.
‘Don’t say anything about him,’ she said. ‘That’s my fault. I only ever told you the bad stuff. Wasn’t likely to tell you all the good, was I?’
‘I like to think I’m good at reading between the lines.’
‘What you like to think and what’s true are two different things, Ray.’
She sipped her wine. Some old anger there, sepia-toned, turned autumnal.
‘If I hurt—’
‘That’s not why we’re here,’ she said. ‘That’s not why I’m here, at least.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Of course, I know.’
From his leather briefcase he took a manila folder. It had been months; an investigation he said would take a matter of weeks. He’d insisted she meet him, only then would he show her his findings.
‘She lives in London with her boyfriend. This is them.’
He handed her a photograph, the two of them walking through a park, hand in hand, her girl, certainly her, defiantly her, looking her age, as tall as her boyfriend; her boyfriend like an African prince, she thought. Like from that television show. Don Warrington. Her daughter dressed like the mothers in the library, those high-waisted jeans and fat-tongued trainers.
‘His name is Robin Adebayo. He runs a youth group that has chapters over London. She’s a social worker.’
She looked at the picture again, the lives led in the face, the lives behind smiles. How many photographs had he taken? How many developed and this one chosen? The happiest one, the one in which they are in love, unvarnished and unaware of eyes watching.
‘Are there children?’ she said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It looks like she had a stillbirth three years ago. There’s a death certificate.’
Still holding the photograph. Three years. The stopped periods that came back. Building things now, building ideas.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Are you sure you don’t want the address?’
‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘I just needed to know.’
‘Will you tell him?’ he said.
She laughed, and together they laughed, all the times they had laughed and no one to know, no one even suspecting that they laughed together.
‘Did you ever tell him about me?’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing to tell.’
‘I came for you, you know?’ he said. ‘To the library. Wanted to whisk you away from it all.’
‘How very romantic,’ she said.
He looked around the tired bar, looked like he missed cigarettes for a moment, something to do, something other than flipping a beer mat.
‘Don’t you ever think what might have been?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Sometimes, once in a while.’
On good days, she contented herself that her life was the product of endless tests and extrapolations, that she had for centuries been changing small details of her life to see the ramifications before concluding this was the best outcome. On bad, she weighed the decisions she had made and could not see how they could be worse than what she had endured. There were few of these days. Fewer and fewer of them now.
‘Jenny and I split up in seventy-two. She has two kids now, married some environmentalist or other.’
‘Are you married now?’ she said, feeling the clumsiness of the question. It’s leading tone.
‘Was for a time,’ he said. ‘It didn’t work out. No kids either.’
‘Just the world as your lover,’ she said. ‘All those far-flung places.’
‘I never meant for that to happen,’ he said. ‘Just got the taste.’
‘Always sounded like a death wish to me,’ she said. ‘All those war zones.’
He drank more of his beer.
‘How do you feel?’ he said. ‘Now you know?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s like shock. Nothing has changed. She’s still missing even though she’s found.’
She laughed.
‘Though I’m surprised. She always professed to hate London.’
‘People change,’ he said.
‘Some stay the same,’ she said. ‘However much we change, we all still think we’re bloody teenagers.’
She wondered what his behind would feel like in her hands, how heavy he would be upon her. There were rooms at the Swan, at the Bull’s Head. No one would ever know. Does he not deserve favour? Does he not deserve reward?
‘I’m staying in Manchester tonight,’ he said. ‘I’m often up around this way. Perhaps I could see you next time I’m around?’
‘I’m not sure—’
‘I’ll check in on Annie before I come. Keep you updated.’
She paused. What would she give for that? Herself, perhaps. A gradual erosion. Every so often, him landing and them sitting at this table, talking of his expeditions and looking at pictures of her daughter.
She picked up the photograph of Anneka and Robin. She looked at it closely. Her daughter’s eyes, the eyes of her boyfriend. Pregnant those eyes. Pregnant that belly. Tell by the look on their faces, a baby coming, a baby to come. A mother always knows.
The pub clock tolled the hour. She finished her drink.
‘I think that would be okay,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think we can do that.’
THE SECOND SUMMER OF LOVE
We didn’t realize we were doing anything especially groundbreaking back then. The raves were in the moment, they were very much present tense. You didn’t think much about them, you just looked forward to the next one. The gay scene was different. It had history, it had nostalgia for the hedonistic past, it had a death toll, and it had importance. When they merged, when they came together, as they did, it changed things. Straights coming along because the homos had all the best parties. Before E, you wouldn’t have got one of those boys coming into those clubs, now they were coming in droves, happy to kiss each other to get in.
Ecstasy changed people’s lives, it changed everything. I think it was Boy George who said that the difference between gay and straight, in his experience, was a couple
of pints and two tabs of ecstasy – we certainly saw that on the scene. Lads who had never thought of it, suddenly loved up and fucking anything that moved. I fell in love with one of them. Not a great idea.
Had it not been for rave and for E, I probably would never have met him, and he would never have broken my heart. It sounds dramatic, but I think that music showed the world the right direction. Those years, between eighty-eight and ninety-one, they were the best years of my life. The possibility, the end of history, the breaking down of everything, the collapse of all the rules. The old queens were dying, yes, I know that. I should have cared but I didn’t. I had this muscled boyfriend, beautiful and sweet, who was always there, when he was there. Until he wasn’t.
He was a fighter. He liked to brawl. He liked to fuck and he liked to fight. He told me he’d fallen in love once, but it hadn’t worked out. On account of his temper. Lucky for me, I said. Not lucky, as it turned out. He punched me once. It came out of the blue. I told him to get out and he did. The last time I ever saw him.
But the way it turned, the way he turned on me, that was like what was happening elsewhere. It had gone sour, it had been an act, this illusion of the future. The party was coming to an end. The police were raiding all the raves, the establishment was biting back. There was the Gulf War, there were gay bashings, there was still Section 28. With that punch, I cried not just for losing the man I loved, but for the world that was disintegrating around me.
Billy Lewis, The Second Summer of Love: An Oral History, ed. Lissa Capel (Influx Press, 2015)
October
In his hand a cassette, held as prize or reward; Carter standing by the open driver’s-side door, shaking the case, the cassette inside rattling.
‘A little stroll down memory lane,’ Carter said.
Drum opened the passenger door into the perfume of relaxed luxury, the words ‘touring car’ on his lips. Memories of when he still read the motoring magazines, the photos of the large beast cars, the cream leather interiors, the width and breadth of them; sleek tanks, boots that could accommodate more possessions than Drum owned.