The Shell House

by Linda Newbery

The phone rang downstairs; she went down to answer it, spoke briefly, then came back up to the bedroom. ‘It’s all right—that was his dad again to say sorry for bothering us so late. Jordan got in just after.’

  ‘That’s OK, then.’

  ‘I’m cooking bacon in about ten minutes. Come down if you want some. Oh, and Faith rang last night as well. Said she’ll see you at the Hall today.’

  She left him to get dressed. Greg lay back and stared at the ceiling.

  Last night. God, what a mixture! He was dizzy with memories: jealousy, longing, relief, anger, resentment, bewilderment, frustration, lust, ecstasy, triumph—he’d been through the lot, on fast-forward. And now? He was a washed-out wreck, with a head that felt as if six radio stations were playing simultaneously.

  He had done it. With Tanya.

  Seen Dean Brampton in Intensive Care. Been harangued by his Scud Missile of a Mum.

  Quarrelled with Jordan. Walked off and left him.

  He shoved all but the first of these out of his head. He had done it. Pulled. Scored. Proved himself not a poofter.

  After the pub closed, to a steady roar of motorbikes away from High Beach, Gizzard and Sherry found they had urgent business to conduct under cover of the trees behind the Conservation Centre. ‘Can you two amuse yourselves for half an hour or so?’ Sherry said, giggling.

  ‘I’m sure we can think of something.’ Tanya’s fingers were already intertwined with Greg’s; she was paddling his palm, as Greg had read somewhere. ‘Greg’s too much of a gentleman to clear off and leave me waiting on my own.’

  ‘See you soon,’ Sherry called suggestively.

  And for the second time Greg found himself being led away purposefully by Tanya. She was seeking not the cover of trees but the open hillside, a dip of ground some distance from the road. She went straight to it, making Greg think she had used the place for the same purpose before. ‘It’s better in the open. You going to play this time? Might as well, there’s nothing else to do.’

  ‘Wait—are you serious? I haven’t got a—’

  ‘Don’t worry, I have.’ She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a condom in its packet, which she dangled in front of him. ‘You ought to be better prepared. You never know how things’ll turn out.’

  No, you never did.

  She had to win her bet, Tanya explained afterwards. She won it spectacularly: taking charge, guiding his hands, doing the most breathtaking things with her own. No clothes, she insisted, chucking his jeans and underpants away down the slope, throwing her own after them; you feel more naked in the open, beds were for prudes, she said. True, he had never felt so stripped naked: the cool air and the darkness, the sweep of her long hair brushing his skin, her teasing fingers touching him everywhere, all stirred him to a pitch beyond his imaginings. His erection was a salute to the night sky. ‘Don’t forget this,’ Tanya said, tearing open the condom packet with her teeth, fitting it for him with practised deftness while he almost burst with restraining himself. She pulled him over on top of her, reversing their positions, and parted her legs and guided his fumblings and there was no need for restraint, all rational thought swept out of his head by the urge to thrust, the bloodheat inside her, her body writhing beneath his, her sharp teeth nipping his ear, her hands clawing his back and oh oh oh oh ohhhhh — a spasm of mindfuzzing cockthrobbing limbtingling delirium.

  He lay still, breathing hard against her hair. Stu f you, Jordan! he thought, when capable of thought. Get out of my head.

  ‘Mmmm,’ Tanya went, a sound he took for approval; then she laughed. ‘Not bad for a beginner.’

  ‘You could tell?’ he said shakily, his mouth in her hair.

  ‘Guessed. Doesn’t matter. I won’t tell Gizzard, don’t worry.’

  They found their clothes, brushed grass and leaves off their skin, dressed. In Greg’s case rather drunkenly, they made their way back to the pub car park. Tanya, now that the intimacy was over, was brisk and matter-of-fact. She zipped her leather jacket right up to the neck; they walked without touching.

  ‘Well?’ Sherry was already in the front seat of her car, Gizzard beside her, grinning at Greg man-to-man.

  Tanya held up five fingers of one hand and two of the other; then, considering, flicked up a third.

  ‘Not bad, then,’ Sherry said approvingly.

  ‘You owe me.’

  In the shower, Greg looked down at himself with new respect. A major initiation had been passed, after all, and quite creditably. But even now Jordan was irritatingly inside his head. You have to be sure what you want. It’s too important to be thrown away at the first chance. It ought to mean something.

  Fuck off, Jordan.

  Jordan would say that, wouldn’t he? Greg was all too aware of what Jordan wanted: an exclusive blood-brotherhood, a soul-baring two-in-one, a let’sdiscuss-everything openness, a binding tie. Jordan had offered to share the sea and the stars, darkness and dawn; Tanya had offered only sex, but for the moment sex was enough. Jordan wanted love; he had as good as said so. More than Greg could give, or take.

  Greg had been sure what he wanted, and last night he had wanted Tanya. What about Jordan’s will to live? The will to live had never been more rampant, and Greg had followed where it led. Jordan couldn’t have it all ways.

  He got dressed, went down and ate his bacon, and wondered why he felt suddenly morose.

  ‘You going to the Hall, then?’ his mother asked, assembling flour, eggs and sugar, going into Julie’s Party Cakes mode. ‘You don’t seem in much of a hurry.’

  ‘No. Don’t feel like it today.’

  ‘Faith’s expecting you.’

  ‘Thought I’d just go out on the bike for a bit.’

  ‘Why don’t you go with Dad to the golf club for a change? It might cheer you up, and you know how chuffed he’d be.’

  Greg shook his head; his mother darted an anxious glance at him. He knew she knew there was something wrong, but she did not pursue it. Fifteen minutes later, cycling away down the road, he saw another cyclist coming towards him through early mist. He looked, did a double-take. Jordan. He was angered by the thump of pleasure in his chest, swiftly converting it to irritation.

  Blast! Not knowing how to avoid him, Greg pulled over to the kerb. Jordan swerved across the road and stopped with the bikes head to tail. He looked at Greg, looked down at his foot on the pedal, and back again, quizzically.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about yesterday.’

  Greg shrugged in a way calculated to annoy. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Where d’you get to last night?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Where did you?’

  ‘Went to the pub with Gizzard. Met up with that girl I told you about. Tanya.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jordan said flatly. ‘And?’

  Afterwards, Greg didn’t know what made him answer as he did; in that instant he wanted to hurt Jordan, and see him hurt. The words came readily. ‘You really want to know? Scored. Screwed. Shagged.’

  Jordan’s eyes met Greg’s, searching his face as if to ascertain whether he was joking; then he looked down, studied his hands gripped on the handlebars, scuffed a foot on the road. ‘Oh,’ he said again. ‘I hope it was—a good experience.’

  ‘That’s the understatement of the millennium. You ought to try it. Get yourself sorted out.’

  Later, when Greg replayed this conversation again and again in his mind and heard the hard, taunting note in his voice, what he most remembered was the way Jordan had betrayed neither anger nor shock, though he must surely have felt both, but had gazed steadily towards the end of the road as he said, his voice calm: ‘OK, Greg. I get the point—no need to hit me over the head with a sledgehammer. I suppose you haven’t read my email?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I sent you one last night—this morning. But I’d prefer you not to read it after all. The problem with e-mails, you can’t unsend them, can you?’

  And you can’t unsay. Greg had plenty of time, lat
er, to wish his words unspoken. He watched Jordan turn his bike round and head back fast the way he had come. Greg, who had not expected the conversation to end as abruptly as this, considered following; but while he was considering, he sat on his bike by the roadside, and Jordan receded into distance, turning the corner out of sight. Greg shivered. It was much colder today, clammed with dampness, the mist hugging the ground, the air breathing the first hint of approaching winter. It seemed unbelievable that a few hours ago he’d been naked on a hillside, and still hot.

  And now there was nothing to do but go back home and download that message. Indoors, he hurtled up the stairs and into the study, and logged on. He could do what Jordan preferred and delete the message unread. Or he could read it.

  He clicked the mouse.

  From: JMcA@zoom.com

  Date: 6 October 2002 02.45

  To: greghobbs@mercury.com

  Subject:

  Greg,

  I can’t sleep and can’t phone you in the middle of the night, so I’m doing this instead.

  After you left the hospital I went home for my bike and went up to Graveney Hall. I thought you might have gone there, but you hadn’t, so I stayed there for a while by myself, by the Panless statue, where we talked. That was only on Friday but it feels like about two years ago. I wanted to go down to the lake and find that grotto you told me about, but it was too dark and I couldn’t find the way through the bushes and trees. So I went back to Pan’s place.

  I can remember everything we said on Friday. Most of it came from me. I was talking and talking about everything except what I most wanted to say. It took Dean Brampton and his horrendous mother to bring that out. More about that in a minute. I was thinking of what you said about the power of wishing. (Doesn’t seem to work for me. More often it has the opposite effect.)

  According to the fictional God we should love our neighbours. That would mean we have to love Dean Brampton, mouth and all. I’m not saintly enough to do that. You did better than me. You tried to break his fall, even though you could easily have got injured yourself. And you knew how to look after him. You did those things instinctively. That’s a kind of loving your neighbour, a practical kind. And I’m glad you did, because I wouldn’t have been so sure what to do or not do.

  Since you asked, I’ve been wondering if I’m really, genuinely sorry about what happened to him. It was a shock, it would be if it happened to anyone. But I’m only as sorry as I would be if it were something I read in the paper—basically a what-if-it-were-me response. It doesn’t mean anything. Going to the hospital was only to make myself feel better. Which it certainly didn’t, as things turned out.

  Perhaps the fictional God thinks that giving Dean Brampton a fright and sticking him in a hospital bed might turn him into a better person. But that’s too neat, isn’t it? All the evidence suggests that luck and bad luck are dished out at random. I might possibly have been a Christian if I lived a couple of hundred years ago, but for me the First World War and the Holocaust and Hiroshima and the World Trade Center have finished off all that. My dad told me this—in the concentration camps, the rabbis held a trial. God was the one in the dock, for cruelty and neglect. They found him guilty. Human wickedness wasn’t enough to account for what was happening.

  What’s worse? For there to be a God, but one who didn’t care, one who could watch that happen and turn his back? Or for there not to be a God at all?

  I’d rather there was no God.

  So—I don’t blame any made-up God for Dean’s accident but I don’t blame myself either. We can’t be responsible for other people’s actions. Our own are enough trouble. I prefer Gaia and the will to live, which leaves guilt out of it. If Dean is a survivor, the will to live will keep him going.

  I wish you hadn’t walked out. I wish we could have talked for longer. I wish I’d explained things better. Perhaps I’ll get the chance. I don’t think what I said could have been a total surprise to you, but I’m very sorry if it was. Thanks for reading this, if you have.

  Jordan

  Greg read the message, too fast, and a second time more slowly. His first thought: Jordan on his own at Graveney Hall last night. If Greg had thought of going there, then what? Reconciliation by moonlight? No. It couldn’t happen. Whatever Greg wanted from Jordan, it was less than Jordan wanted from him. It must have been eerie, the solid slabs of the house frontage broken by its black eye-sockets. No-one there but Jordan and whatever ghosts might haunt the place. Had he been afraid?

  His second thought: Jordan going down to the lake, alone in the darkness. It made him uneasy. In case he fell in? But Jordan of all people was unlikely to get into trouble in the water . . .

  His third thought: Jordan did not want him to read the message, not now.

  He returned a single word: Sorry. But it was too late for sorry. He thought of the two bikes aligned in the road, himself wanting to hurt, succeeding; saw the horrible smug smile that had twitched at the corners of his mouth while he flung crude words at Jordan. It made him want to throttle himself, to choke off any more brutal things he might find himself saying.

  I made it happen, he thought. I wanted to know, and now I do know. I wanted Jordan to tell me, and he did tell me. Why did I want it? So that I could chuck it back in his face.

  The phone rang downstairs. He listened, held his breath. His mother called up, ‘Greg? Is that you up there? It’s Faith.’

  Disappointed, relieved, Greg clumped down.

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’ Faith’s voice said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘Look, I can’t make it today—’

  ‘Please come. Now. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

  Faith

  Photograph from the local paper, black and white: a group of elderly people standing around a birthday cake on a table. All are smiling. The cake bristles with lit candles. At the centre, seated in an upholstered chair, is a very old man. He is smiling fiercely: an almost toothless smile.

  Greg found Faith near the grotto, hacking with a curved blade at brambles and suckers that trailed over the path. When he called, she put down the sickle and walked slowly towards him. She had on a fleece jacket, bright red, which suited her so well that Greg stopped for a moment to look at the picture she made: dark hair flowing over scarlet, against a backdrop of berried shrubs. Focus, click. He was surprised she wanted to see him, after Thursday.

  ‘Hello,’ she said—rather aloofly, he thought. ‘Dad asked if we’d clear the path round the lake. They want to bring visitors down next Sunday, on the guided tour.’

  ‘Visitors? Down here?’

  ‘I know. I don’t like it either. It’s mine—ours—this place. I don’t want other people, with their noise and chat. But it’s only for one day.’ She fetched secateurs and a pair of long-handled loppers from the bench in the grotto. ‘Will you help? I’ve got a flask of coffee, so we can stay down here all morning.’

  ‘OK. All the way round, though? It needs one of your dad’s chain gangs.’

  ‘I’ve made a start,’ Faith said. Greg saw that she had already cleared a few metres of path, throwing the cut grasses and brambles onto a heap on the bank. ‘I’ll slash, you chop up the tougher stuff, then we can swap when my arms ache.’

  ‘What are we going to do with all that?’ Greg nodded towards the heap of vegetation.

  ‘Burn it, later.’ Faith began swinging the blade again. ‘I haven’t even seen you since the accident to that boy. What an awful thing to happen! Horrible to think about. Dad says you were heroic,’ she added.

  ‘What, for doing what anyone else would have done?’

  ‘You took charge. You knew what to do.’

  ‘Could hardly clear off and leave him, could I?’

  ‘Dad went to the hospital again this morning with some books and sweets for Dean. Poor thing—fourteen and never likely to walk again. How terrible! I know it was his own fault, and he shouldn’t have been here, and there are plenty of Danger notices and all that,
but all the same it’s tragic, isn’t it? We’ve been praying for him at home . . .’ She stopped; Greg saw an expression of pain flicker over her face.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He looked at her; she swished her blade fiercely. He picked up the loppers and severed a few elder saplings that were too near the path, then dragged them to the pile. When he returned, Faith said, ‘I wanted to say sorry for the other day. You know. I made a fool of myself, didn’t I?’

  ‘No,’ Greg said, embarrassed. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘It was wrong of me to throw myself at you like that. I got what I deserved,’ Faith said. ‘You were just . . . being kind, that’s all. You’re too nice to say Leave off, I don’t fancy you. But don’t worry. I’m not going to humiliate myself like that again. And what makes it worse is that I was using you.’

  ‘Using me how?’

  ‘I wanted to—to be like other girls. I wanted a boyfriend. And I didn’t really tell you the truth before. I didn’t lie either, but I let you think I’ve been out with boys.’

  ‘You haven’t,’ he stated.

  ‘No.’ She looked at him. ‘With parents as strict as mine, and going to a girls’ school, I just don’t meet boys. People’s brothers sometimes, but hardly ever a boy I really like. Even if I did, Mum and Dad would never let me stay out late or go to parties, the way most girls at school do. I know it’s because they care about me, and I know it’s not right, the things some of the others do, but honestly, Greg, it’s hard being a girl! All the time, everywhere you go, there are magazines and adverts telling you how you should look, what you should wear, how you’re nothing if you don’t have boys flocking round you. And the stupid thing is I don’t even believe it! I know it’s wrong, and manipulative, and turns people into anorexics. But when it comes down to it, I want—wanted — to be a Christian and a normal teenage girl. And when I met you, and I thought you liked me a bit, and I liked you—I just wanted to see if I could be. It was wrong and stupid, and I’m sorry.’