by Emlyn Rees
Slumped against the wall of the Wreck just now, Jimmy had drunk as much Smirnoff as fast as he’d been able to without making himself sick. And with each bitter swig he’d pictured Verity kissing Denny in the Memorial Hall. So much for her having been confused … If she’d needed time to think, she’d had it, and she’d chosen not to be with Jimmy.
Everything he had, everything he’d shown her … his heart … his mind … what he liked … who he was … the plain truth was that she hadn’t wanted any of it.
A low branch swept out of the night at Jimmy like a pinball arm. He ducked, pressing his head flat against the petrol tank. The scrambler kicked sideways beneath him. Fighting to straighten the handlebars, he forced himself back upright. He faced front again and the wind tore into his eyes.
Drunk was better than sober. He knew that now for sure. Just as riding like this with every nerve ending in his body screaming for him to stop was better than feeling dead. Dead was how he’d felt when he’d heard the news about his gran this morning. Dead was how he’d been feeling all year since Ryan had died. Only Verity had made him feel alive. But dead was how he’d felt when he’d seen her kissing Denny.
Everything ended, didn’t it? Everything you gave a damn about finished sooner or later. So what was the point of caring in the first place?
Jimmy saw his gran’s face for an instant, smack here in front of him as the bike hurtled on. Her eyes were closed, her mouth clamped shut. They’d have done that, made her look nice – the nurse or Dr Kennedy, or whoever else had taken her pulse that morning only to find that she no longer had one. They’d have done it to make it easier on Jimmy and Rachel when they’d gone in to the William Bentley Hospice after having been told on the phone what had happened.
As then, here in his mind’s eye now, Jimmy’s gran looked serene, at rest, asleep, at peace. Those were the clichés, weren’t they? That’s what he was meant to believe, wasn’t it? That his gran had found peace at the end? There’d been no sign of suffering. There’d been nothing but the faintest trace of a smile on her still lips, as if death – the punchline of life – had been worth the wait after all. There’d been nothing scary about her face at all.
Not like Ryan’s. No one had been there to close his eyes. He’d died with them open, wild and full of fear. And no one had been there to close his mouth. It had been as wide as the night sky, and it had been screaming Jimmy’s name.
Jimmy pulled back harder on the throttle, challenging the bike now, daring it to show him what it was capable of. Once more he switched gear and once more the bike jolted. The needle on the speedometer flickered past forty-five.
‘I’m gonna live for ever!’ he bellowed up at the heavens, as Ryan had done a year ago today.
But at the same time he knew he wasn’t Ryan. He wasn’t dead. Not yet. Not him. Not Jimmy Jones.
The bike’s engine was screaming like a cornered animal. Brambles cracked down hard on Jimmy’s hands and legs. The suspension shuddered over another series of ruts and stones. Jimmy’s whole body vibrated and his teeth clattered together as though they were about to drop from his mouth like so many dice. The speedometer needle was fixed on fifty-five.
Up ahead, the path widened out into the clearing in the gorse. Jimmy knew the place – Christ, did he know it! The tractor lane branched off to the left, leading back into the heart of the Appleforth Estate. And there to the right was Lost Soul’s Point.
Who’s not taking any risks now? he wanted to ask Tara.
Only she wasn’t here.
Better than drugs, he wanted to agree with Ryan.
Only Ryan was dead.
The path was fast running out and Jimmy aimed the bike at the cliff-side edge of the clearing, wondering how near he’d get before he slammed on the brakes, wondering whether he’d slam them on in time to stop himself from flying over the edge, wondering whether he’d slam them on at all.
‘For ever!’ he shouted again.
Only this time it wasn’t the throttle he pulled back on but the brake. Because there, straight in front of him, was Verity Driver.
Switch to slow motion: Jimmy cutting the throttle; Jimmy tightening up on the brake; a crazy wish entering Jimmy’s head that he’d taken his bike test and knew what to do; Jimmy and the bike closing in on Verity now; Verity frozen to the spot; the noise of the engine dropping off; the sound of the bike’s wheels hissing and grinding; the dirt rising up; a glimpse of the moon and the stars, but the angle all wrong; the bike skidding wildly now, on past Verity, over towards the edge; but Jimmy righting himself, heaving with all his might, his stomach muscles feeling like elastic bands about to snap; the bike veering away from the cliff –
Then smash.
Everything speeded up again: the sound of branches cracking; the hiss of leaves rushing by; the heat of the engine on Jimmy’s legs and the smell of burning oil.
Then stop.
Jimmy found himself surrounded by foliage, but it was a miracle: he and the bike were still upright and the scrambler’s engine was still running, not deafening any more, but low and easy, idling – so much so that Jimmy could hear shouting behind him.
‘Jimmy!’ It was Verity.
Jimmy tried to turn round to see but his hands wouldn’t relinquish their grip on the handlebars, like they’d become autonomous and didn’t trust the rest of his body’s judgement any more. Jimmy looked about, left and right, but all he could see was half-dead bracken and fern, and the sinewy leafless limbs of some plant he couldn’t name.
‘Jimmy!’ Verity called again. ‘Are you all right?’
Jimmy jerked at the handlebars, trying to pull the scrambler backwards; it wouldn’t budge. But he was thinking more clearly now. He switched off the engine, listened to it sputter and die, and then he clambered off.
He shook himself, waiting for pain to spear him, waiting for the realisation of a broken limb or rib to drop him to his knees. But instead he felt nothing, like this was a dream, like he could dive head-first off a fifty-storey building and pick himself back up the moment he connected with the street. It occurred to him that maybe none of this mattered: action and consequence, life and death and love. Maybe it was all just in the mind and he’d been crazy to give a toss about any of it in the first place, Jimmy lifted up the scrambler’s back wheel, then hauled the bike backwards out of the thicket.
Which was when reality bit back, as he became suddenly aware of Verity at his side – nothing but a familiar silhouette – reaching out to touch him. ‘Don’t,’ he told her, ducking out of her way, turning the bike round. He didn’t want her here. He didn’t want to see her ever again.
‘But –’ she began, reaching for him again.
‘But nothing!’ he snapped, climbing on to the motorbike. ‘Leave me alone.’
Verity stood with one foot either side of the bike’s front wheel. She seized the handlebars, gripping her hands on top of his. ‘You’re drunk,’ she told him bluntly, glaring into his eyes. ‘Get off the bike.’
He shoved the bike towards her, trying to start it but getting no response. ‘Move.’
Verity shoved back, standing her ground. ‘You’re going to have to run me over first,’ she told him.
He stared at her. Her hair was tied up, but some of her curls had escaped and hung down now at her shoulders. She was still in the long black dress she’d been wearing at the concert. Her make-up was smudged like warpaint beneath her eyes. He looked down at her high-heeled shoes that were making her so tall. Everything about her – from the way she was speaking to him to the way she was dressed – struck him all of a sudden as adult and unattainable. ‘Go back to your stupid concert,’ he told her. ‘This has got nothing to do with you.’
‘What hasn’t?’ she demanded. ‘You deciding to run yourself off the cliff?’
‘I wasn’t –’ he started to deny. But then he stopped. What had he been about to do? He wasn’t sure. He was confused, disconnected, light-headed, shifting between reeling drunkenness and cold sobriety.
>
‘What you saw,’ Verity said. ‘What you saw between me and Denny just now … it wasn’t anything.’
What did she think he was? Stupid? But there wasn’t any point in talking this through with her. He’d made enough of a fool of himself already. And he wasn’t going to let her make this all about her. He wasn’t going to throw the blame at her. He’d been teetering on the edge all year. All she’d done was give him that final push.
‘Fuck Denny,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a shit about that. And fuck you, too, Verity.’
She stared at him in disbelief, but then something in her expression altered, softening into compassion. ‘I know about your grandmother, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘Tara told me what happened and, if that’s what this is all about, then we can talk. Whatever it’s about,’ she added with increased urgency, ‘we can still talk.’
Again, the image of his gran flashed up before him.
‘She was a good woman,’ he said, staring into Verity’s eyes. ‘I loved her. She didn’t deserve to die, not like that: on her own in the dark.’
‘I know, Jimmy. I know.’
‘No,’ Jimmy snapped, ‘you don’t know shit. You don’t know the first thing about her. Or me. Or this … Or …’
Suddenly he became aware of Verity’s hands tightening round his. ‘I want to help you, Jimmy.’
‘You don’t get it,’ he said, shaking her off. ‘You weren’t there. You didn’t see what happened. You didn’t see what I did.’ His words were coming out in a rush now, like they’d burst through a dam inside him.
You’re in control, a voice inside him screamed. No one can see inside your mind. No one can make you speak about the things you saw or tell about the things you did.
But he wasn’t in control. He couldn’t keep it all inside him any more. He couldn’t face it on his own. He wanted to tell it to someone. He wanted to share it, to be told that he wasn’t bad. He wanted to hear that from her.
His breath was shallow now, coming in gasps. ‘All those people at the concert … None of them know what really happened …’
‘What?’ Verity asked.
‘The night Ryan died!’ Jimmy shouted.
He got off the bike, kicked it to the ground, careless of whether it hit Verity or not. He pushed past her and walked towards the centre of the clearing. ‘Here.’
Verity moved towards him, but he wasn’t looking at her any more.
He was staring up the tractor lane which led away from Lost Soul’s Point. ‘It was an accident. Ryan didn’t want to die. It was a game,’ Jimmy said. ‘Just a stupid fucking game.’
‘But I don’t understand. How can you –’
‘Because I was there all right!’ Jimmy voice dropped to a whimper. ‘Because I was fucking well there …’
He pictured the stationary stolen Mazda MX-5 down the track the night Ryan had died and, even as he did, the image blurred as tears welled up in his eyes.
Ryan had boosted the Mazda convertible from the car park of the George Inn, not ten minutes after he’d shouted ‘For ever!’ up at the sky. He’d been wasted, but not so wasted that he hadn’t managed to wire the car and drive it up to the Appleforth Estate without being spotted by the cops.
It was a beautiful car all right: alloy wheels, an aluminium interior finish and heated brown leather seats. The top was down and its titanium-coloured paintwork seemed to shimmer and flow like mercury in the light of the moon. ‘What a machine’ Ryan announced as he switched off the engine and let the car roll to a halt on the farm track that led to Lost Soul’s Point.
Jimmy was sitting beside him in the passenger seat. His hair was shorter then and he scratched at his head, itchy from the open-topped ride. He looked around them, nervous as hell about being in a stolen car so near to home. He’d felt sick every yard of the journey up here from the town, paranoid about getting busted, terrified at how quickly his future (his way out of the flat and this tiny corner of the world, his film school ambitions, the rewards of the work he’d started putting in at school) might be snatched from him. His stomach was a yo-yo. He wanted to throw up. He couldn’t deal with this shit any more. Driving around wasted in other people’s cars no longer gave him a buzz. But Ryan was his best friend and he didn’t want to let him down.
Almost as if he’d sensed Jimmy’s turmoil, Ryan leant towards him, his breath heavy with booze fumes. He studied Jimmy through olive-black eyes. ‘I think we’ve earned ourselves a joint,’ he said, turning the Eminem CD down so low that it was barely audible. ‘Shall I do the honours?’ Without waiting for Jimmy to answer, Ryan pulled his gear from his jeans pocket and started to skin up.
The silence that followed was almost overwhelming for Jimmy. He tilted his head back and stared up at the night sky, breathing out with relief at the lack of any sound of pursuit. But even though the danger had gone, he remained drunk and the world felt unsteady beneath him, and the sensation of seasickness wouldn’t go away. ‘Hey, Ryan?’ he asked, forcing himself to talk, forcing himself out of the sickly confines of his skull. ‘Do you remember that time we swam out on to that motor boat moored out in the middle of the bay?’
‘Kevin Watson’s cruiser …’ There was the click and whirr of a cigarette lighter being struck. ‘Shit, yeah,’ Ryan said with a chuckle. ‘How old were we? Eleven and twelve? Thirteen tops? Bloody crazy, that was.’
‘I was eleven,’ Jimmy said, locating the Plough just before an ominous black cloud extinguished its seven-starred outline point by point.
‘Yeah, but you swam as strong as if you were way older, didn’t you? We both did.’
‘We had to,’ Jimmy reminded him. ‘Otherwise we’d have drowned. It must have been half a mile out to that boat and half a mile back. And it was freezing. If we hadn’t done it so fast, we would have seized up and that would have been the end of it. They’d have found us washed up on the shore, bloated and chewed on and dead.’
Ryan snorted with laughter. ‘Christ, you’ve got some imagination, Jimmy. I’d have got you back safe and sound, you needn’t have worried about that.’
Jimmy didn’t comment, knowing that Ryan meant what he said, knowing that he’d risk his life for Jimmy, the same way Jimmy would risk his life for him. He felt Ryan nudge him in the ribs and looked across at him and accepted the spliff. Ryan’s black jeans were ripped over his right knee and his left nostril was caked with freshly dried blood from where he’d slipped and fallen flat on his face, after chasing Tara up and down the street outside the George, before she’d had to go home. His bright-orange top was streaked with mud and the peak of his white Nike baseball cap drooped low over his brow, soaked from where it had landed in a puddle.
‘What made you think about that?’ Ryan asked, stroking his thumb thoughtfully down his left sideburn, which he’d trimmed long and triangular, like a knife.
‘Seasickness.’
‘What?’
There was the sound of thunder to the east, close and loud.
‘Never mind,’ Jimmy said.
Jimmy pictured him and Ryan climbing up the boat’s anchor chain like a couple of skinny, exhausted rats. It had been a bright March day and seagulls had whirled above them in the white-blue sky, screaming like famished babies. Jimmy and Ryan had flopped down on to the pleasure boat’s deck in their soaking boxer shorts, and had stared back at the beach. In the distance, Jimmy remembered seeing Carl, waving at them as he’d guarded their clothes. Carl had been their other great mate back then, but he’d moved with his family to London later that year and had never come back.
‘We talked about the future,’ Jimmy said, handing the spliff back to Ryan. ‘There on the boat, while we were catching our breath before swimming back to shore. We talked about what we’d be doing by the time we reached the age we are now.’ A spit of rain splashed off Jimmy’s nose.
‘I don’t remember,’ Ryan said. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘I said that I wanted to have a boat of my own. I told you about what my dad had told me, about sai
ling off to see the world. I told you that if I could get myself a boat by the time I left school, then my dad would be happy to spend time with me, and I could sail away with him and my gran and we’d never have to worry about anything again.’
‘And what did I say?’
‘You said that you wanted a big house on a hill and a job in a city, but only so long as you could still have fun.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Ryan said.
Jimmy cut the subtle approach. ‘But don’t you get it, Ryan?’ he said. ‘You never talk about the house or the job or the city any more. All you care about is the fun.’
‘Stop being so bloody serious.’
All Jimmy wanted was to tell Ryan the truth: that he didn’t find this fun any longer. He was trying to tell him that he’d grown up this last year and he wanted out, out of the car and out of this way of life. He was trying to tell him that he wanted them both to walk back into town together. He was trying to remind Ryan of the people they’d once hoped to be. ‘I was just –’
But Ryan didn’t ‘want to know. Well, just don’t, OK?’ he said. ‘I don’t need anyone lecturing me. Ambitions change, Jimmy. You get older and then you realise that you’re not going to get everything you want just because you want it. So you make the most of what you can have, OK? And don’t go telling me it’s any fucking different, because it’s not.’
‘But what if I want more?’ Jimmy protested.