Friendly Fire

by Patrick Gale

  Lucas, she realized, was watching her reaction through one of them. Someone else was moving around beyond the one to the other side of her and she was not about to take a closer look. Using a scrap of scratchy council loo paper so her fingers would not come into contact with anything, she unlocked her door and ran out, startling three men who were using the urinal. Even with hair so short, no one could mistake her for a boy.

  She was halfway up the street when Lucas caught up with her.

  ‘Wait!’ he shouted.

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ she said. ‘How can you? And it stank!’

  ‘Yes, it stinks. But where else can I go?’

  ‘Why d’you have to go anywhere? Just …’ She was fighting tears. ‘Just … Why can’t you just wait?’

  ‘I only found it by accident, Phi. But it’s kind of fascinating. All these different types. Not just Telescope Boy but that funny traffic warden with the built-up shoe. They’re all at it. I don’t do anything. I only watch.’

  ‘And that’s better?’

  ‘I thought you’d think it was funny. I couldn’t believe it. I was in there and suddenly in comes Telescope Boy, carrying an M&S bag as camouflage. I nearly introduced myself, then I remembered we’d never actually … What? Wait!’

  ‘Just fuck off,’ she said. ‘You’re disgusting. You’re all disgusting. Don’t follow me or I’ll tell Heidi.’

  That stopped him, or she was pretty sure it did. She didn’t look round once until she was home.

  She had a mound of reading to catch up on but she neglected it to spend the evening using two greasy old packs of cards to teach kalookie to Tam, a new girl, a twelve-year-old who had been so abused she would still not come out of her room for fear of meeting one of the male residents. She was even terrified of Kieran, the world’s least threatening male. Tam wore a grubby pink sunhat to hide the scabs where she had been systematically pulling out her own hair in an effort to make herself less attractive to her father and brother. Sophie didn’t need to visit public conveniences for proof that men were animals.

  The next day André asked her to help him out at the cash and carry. It was hardly glamour shopping – three-kilo bags of mix for pastry, chocolate sponge and scones and crates of canned black cherries and long-life cream guns – but any excursion was welcome that took her out of the itchy pit the restaurant was becoming. A ride in any car beyond the city boundaries was a treat and a ride in André’s especially so as he drove a tarty, mustard-yellow Triumph Stag with white leather bucket seats and a booming stereo. They listened to Donna Summer and she lit his St Moritzes for him. She said nothing of her argument with Lucas but couldn’t resist asking him if he ever went to a cottage.

  ‘As in away for the weekend or down on my knees before a married man?’

  She blushed to the roots of her feather cut. ‘The second,’ she muttered, leaning on the shopping trolley. ‘Do you?’

  He laughed so loudly people in the other checkout queues looked their way. ‘No, doll. I have standards and I hate the smell of wee. And, for the record, the correct usage is I cottage, you cottage, he cottages. It’s intransitive. Yes, that’s right. I learnt some grammar before I got into hair.’

  On the way back into town he made a detour to a small back-street garage. ‘Just got to see about booking a service,’ he said and left her in the car in a yard crowded with vehicles. It took her a second or two to recognize the man with the oily face who was beaming at her as he rubbed his hands clean on a filthy rag.

  ‘Wilf?’ She got out of the car.

  ‘Soph? You look great. The hair suits you.’

  ‘Thanks. How are you?’

  ‘Great. Busy. Mum’s back at her beautician work. Doing it from home, mind, for neighbours and stuff.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He fell quiet and she realized he was taking in the tart car.

  ‘It’s André’s, my boss. I’m working in Ratty’s again. And I’ve been helping him at the cash and carry.’

  ‘Ah. Do you fancy going out one night, Soph?’

  ‘Sure. Give me a ring.’

  ‘Okay. Friday, maybe?’

  ‘Yeah. Okay.’

  André was coming out of the office chatting to Wilf’s boss. She saw his eyes slide over Wilf and then back for a rapid second appraisal but without a word. Only as they pulled up at the next set of lights did his nail-tapping on the wheel reveal his curiosity.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Friday night. If I’m free.’

  ‘There’s something about a man with engine oil under his nails.’

  ‘Oh, shush!’ She slapped him playfully with a bag of dried mixed fruit. ‘Thanks, though.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, vrooming away from the lights to attract the attention of a scaffolder’s mate who was dangling his nut-brown legs off the back of a nearby truck. ‘Just remember me next March twenty-first.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘Not all mothers are women, Soph.’

  Wilf took her out on the Friday night. He bought her a pizza then took her to see Alien. They saw each other again on the Sunday, when he took her home for lunch with his mum, Elsa, who was at once much younger looking and more battered than Sophie had expected. She loved Wilf simply and frankly. She always called him William with a touching hint of respect, and wasted no time in telling Sophie he was a good boy, ‘far too good for most of those tarts he’s been seeing.’ She admired Sophie’s haircut, said it would look even nicer ‘frosted’ and offered her a free leg wax if ever she felt the need. But still Sophie kept imagining her shooting a policeman.

  That afternoon Wilf drove Sophie out to Wumpett Woods and they made love in the back of his van, listening to the Top Forty.

  For the five long weeks that remained of the holidays, she had a boyfriend. They tended only to meet up at weekends, because each was left so tired on working days. Egged on by Elsa, Sophie experimented with make-up and let him buy her presents. This last seemed to give him intense pleasure. He bought her singles, bits of cheap jewellery, bottles of scent. Now that he had money to spend and had worked his way through a few girlfriends, Wilf was becoming a bit of a peacock and liked to celebrate Saturday, the first of each week’s non-oily days, by taking extra care over his appearance and shopping for clothes which he would wear that night. It frustrated him that she usually worked on Saturdays until five but André sometimes took pity on her and set her free at three so that Wilf could take her shopping, consult her opinion and, usually, buy things for her too. They went for a meal, either a burger in the new pseudo-American diner that had just opened, or a pizza, then to a film. Then they went to Bogart’s, the city’s disco. From there, after a slow dance had got them all steamed up, they drove out to the countryside somewhere and had sex in his van before he dropped her off.

  It was having sex, not making love. She was firm about that, at least to herself. Wilf had a way of turning dreamily sentimental afterwards but before and during it was fun. He had cheekily fitted a mattress in the van’s rear.

  The Monday after their first date, Margaret said, ‘We need to get you kitted out,’ and drove her to the family planning clinic for the Pill. She was calm about it – inured by generations of early developers passing through her care, and knowing better than to attempt to dissuade a girl happily in the grip of raging hormones. All she said was, ‘Remember he’s a bit older than you. He may want a bit more than you’re ready for. Emotionally, I mean. Don’t let him put you under pressure.’

  André saw himself as godfather to the liaison and required details as his due. He repeatedly told her to ‘just have fun, doll, or it’ll get all heavy’ and as a result of a hint she dropped about a difficulty she was having with oral sex, gave her more graphic instruction on male sexuality than she had ever managed to glean from Lucas, Charlie or Mary Renault.

  She kept it light and it was fun. Normality for a change. She relished the unusual sense of belonging to the greater tribe, the easiness of it.
She liked it when they were out clubbing or waiting in a cinema queue and Wilf slung a possessive arm about her from behind, his chunky identity bracelet pressing into her collarbone.

  But she had moments of ambivalence, as when Wilf, coming, groaned that he loved her and she felt unable to respond. She liked the bruised, sleep-starved, slightly sleazy way she felt on Sunday afternoons but also she discovered an appreciation for the cool sobriety of her midweek nights when she retired early to her room to study.

  On one of the Saturdays where she was let off early, she and Wilf were walking up the High Street towards Miss Selfridge when she saw Mr Compton coming down the pavement towards them. He was directly ahead, on his own, carrying a bag of groceries. Genuinely happy to see him, she smiled, preparing to say hello and introduce him to Wilf. But he looked straight through her.

  ‘Stuck-up git,’ Wilf said afterwards and she concocted some excuse about him having chronic short sight.

  Mr Compton hadn’t cut her dead, she sensed. He simply hadn’t seen her; by joining the tribe of the ordinary, she slipped through into a sub-world that barely registered on his senses.

  Later, buoyed up by an extended snog in a changing cubicle, she led Wilf down towards the river and made him go inside the gents’ to have a look at the graffiti.

  She had underestimated how he would react. She thought simply to impress him with a piece of adult knowledge he might not share or perhaps, exhilarated from their zip-straining kiss, to turn him on by revealing a glimpse of her lack of innocence as another woman might discreetly reveal that she had sexy underwear on or none at all.

  For half an hour after he came out he was itchy with disgust. He truly had never been in there before – he was instinctively fastidious – and nothing she said could defuse his directionless anger.

  ‘I can’t believe he goes there.’

  ‘It’s only to watch.’

  ‘Huh! That’s what he says. Kids could be in there. Christ! I might have gone in for a slash and … Christ!’ He kicked out at a drinks can, sending it skittering into the river.

  Perhaps because she found herself obliged to take Lucas’s part, defending what she still thought indefensible, perhaps because that evening’s film turned out to be Cruising, she had trouble sleeping that night. Whichever way she lay, with two pillows or one, with the duvet on or off her shoulders, she kept smelling Wilf’s sweat and Blue Stratos on her hands and forearms and picturing the horrific things somebody might do to Lucas if he ventured down by the river on the wrong night or unlocked his cubicle to the wrong man. For she was sure he did unlock it. He only said he just watched once he saw how shocked she was.

  Wilf was a man now, a young, independent, working man. He could watch horrific films as pure entertainment and without a moment’s real fear because it was impossible to imagine him ever being a victim. Lucas, by contrast, seemed suddenly no more than a boy, a trusting, seductive, crazily foolish boy.

  She spent her Monday at work with dark stains under her eyes and went around to Tinker’s Hill as soon as she could.

  It was a beautiful, golden evening, the air full of swallows, pigeon calls and the scent of baked grass. There were no cars in the drive and the garage was shut. The Behrmans were on holiday.

  Rebuking her stupidity, she was turning her bike around when she heard a splash and saw ripples in the small slice of swimming pool visible from the front. She drew closer to be sure it was him then watched him for a while swimming a self-absorbed crawl. He had no application when swimming and could rarely stand to stick to one stroke for long. Sure enough, he reached the near end and flipped around into backstroke.

  He was so pleased to see her, so delighted to have a caller for whom to mix gin and tonics like a grown-up, she found herself telling him about Wilf. The friendship between them was strong enough for him to suggest and her to accept the lie that she had been keeping away because she was amorously occupied. She paid a friend’s dues in offering up every detail he wanted, even things she had refused to tell André, and realized as she did so that she was robbing Wilf to pay back Lucas, objectifying the one in order to resecure her attachment to the other.

  ‘And what about you?’ she asked, once they had established that Heidi and Simon had gone to a dinner party in London. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘I’ve finally learnt how to do this,’ he said and demonstrated a risky backwards dive off the pool’s metal board.

  ‘And?’ she asked.

  He grinned, flicked water out of his ears. ‘Oh. You know.’

  ‘It’s so dangerous, Lucas,’ she said. ‘You could get arrested.’

  ‘I’m too young.’

  ‘You’re old enough for borstal, trust me.’

  ‘You’re not going to start this again,’ he said.

  ‘No. Sorry. No, I’m not. Just promise me you’ll do one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whenever you feel tempted to go down there, you’ll leave a note.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Gone cottaging. Back soon.’

  She flicked his nearest nipple. ‘Not like that. A message in code. So if you go missing or something bad happens, I’ll be able to tell people.’

  ‘Isn’t this a bit melodramatic?’

  ‘Yes. But promise me.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll think of something. So. Do I get to meet him?’

  ‘No. Absolutely not. You’ve got nothing in common.’

  ‘Isn’t it …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A bit like sleeping with your brother?’

  ‘How would I know? Probably. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy.’

  ‘You’re looking well on it. Tired but well.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You might have to go soon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ve got me all steamed up about him. I might have to go upstairs and thrash around.’

  ‘Lou!’

  ‘Well, you’re a big, sexy girl now. You can handle it.’

  ‘Sixth-form in two weeks.’

  ‘Don’t. Do you feel grown-up yet?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I’m going to be a prefect. So’s Charlie. It’s grotesque.’

  ‘Did you hear from him, Lou?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Me neither,’ she admitted. ‘They’ll have been in Cornwall with the Vanillas. Do you mind? Not hearing from him?’

  ‘Nope.’

  His expression made her laugh. Was he lying? She realized she could not read him as easily as she used to. She wondered if this was part of growing up and whether her expressions too were becoming opaque as she gained practice at discretion.

  For what felt like the first time they talked honestly and seriously about UCCA forms and Oxbridge and gap year plans and the suddenly not quite so distant adult future, a conversation she could not possibly have with Wilf.

  MICHAELMAS TERM

  (sixteen years, eleven months)

  A ferocious gust of wind all but tugged Sophie’s bobble hat off her head. She swore and pulled it hard down over her eyes then turned to lug her potato sack a few yards on along the wall to where she had just moved her ladder. It was heavy, filled with fat candle stubs. All year Chapel, Chantry and the three churches in the parish saved their candle stubs for this evening. Burned too short for use in candlesticks, they remained ideal for the hour or so’s burning time that Illumina required of them. The building of the giant bonfire was the groundsmen’s job but filling the hundreds of little niches in the flint and limestone walls around Schola Field fell, by custom, to the bell-ringers. Perhaps it was thought that they would miss out on the party atmosphere otherwise, since they were required to spend the celebration ringing out Christmas carols. Perhaps there had once been a feudal perk attached to the task, like a baron of beef or a tray of honeycomb but, if so, it had long passed into quaint history, like the Quiristers’ contractual beer ration. What was left – lugging ladders and sacks of candle stubs around the perimeter wall of an icy playin
g field – felt remarkably like a punishment.

  The bonfire used to build up over a couple of weeks, a mounting promise that the end of the year’s longest, darkest term was drawing near. Last year there had been an ugly scene however because someone had concealed a firework in the pile which flew out into somebody’s face, nearly blinding them. So this year the groundsmen had been commanded to gather the wood in a separate location and only pile it up at the traditional spot on the day it was needed. The wood was the usual assortment of a year’s worth of pruned or wind-torn branches from the hundreds of trees about the place, broken banisters and chairs, a much painted door, part of a rebuilt cricket pavilion, even, near the top like a throne, a schoolroom desk that had finally succumbed to time or woodworm.

  She took another handful of stubs and walked up and down placing them in the blackened alcoves she could reach then took another, filling her pockets, and worked her way up the ladder, reaching out to right and left. The Bell Captain had assigned each ringer a fair stretch of wall to work on. By chance, Sophie had the piece that linked the War Cloisters to the first classroom block of Brick Quad, the piece that included the rear entrance to Mr Compton’s house. Distributing her second pocketful of candle stubs she rose high enough to see over the wall and across his jungly garden. The palm court where he entertained visitors was forbiddingly dark. Just one window was lit up, showing an expanse of yellow wall and a cluster of pictures in one of the mysterious upstairs rooms. A room Charlie would know intimately by now.