And, apparently, an elephant. You’d think somebody would notice that, wouldn’t you?
The big barn is to the side of the cluster of buildings. Jared hangs back, looking around him as though he’s trying to picture everything as it was before. It’s hard. The concrete steps going up to the doorways are cracked and chipped, with straggly grass growing out of them. There are big ruts in the drive where wheels sank into the mud at some point, now long-dried by the hot summer. Sheets of dust blow across the driveway, chased by a few curled brown leaves. Steffan slaps his hand on one of the railings and the metal rings out in the silence, making me twitch. It reminds me uncomfortably of a funeral bell. He’s looking at his palm, and pulls a face: the blue paint has flaked all over his skin. He brushes his hands together, but instead of the flakes coming off, they simply spread to cover both his palms.
“Can we go?” Jared’s voice is low.
“But—”
“Lim, I can’t be here.”
“Why?” I turn to face him properly.
“You know why.” He won’t meet my eye. Steffan’s rubbing his hands together furiously, utterly oblivious. Maybe a little too oblivious.
“Because your dad did this?” I wave at the emptiness. It breaks my heart – both the desolation in his face and in the deserted space. There’s a shrivelled brown bush in the corner of the yard that I think used to be a rose. Now it’s just a dead weed. “You’re not responsible for him, for what he does. Don’t you dare think you are, Jared.”
“He ripped all those people off – all these people off.” His wave mirrors mine, but just like a reflection, they mean different things.
“Exactly. He did that. Not you. You’re his kid, not his keeper. You are never responsible for your parents’ actions, Jared. Never.”
“Neither are you.” This time, he looks straight into my eyes; straight into me. And he holds my gaze and I hold his, and I could almost swear—
“Looks like we’re not the only people here,” says Steffan – and I tear my eyes away from Jared’s to see a man in cut-off denims and a faded orange T-shirt rounding the corner of the yard. He doesn’t look thrilled to see us, but on the other hand he’s not brandishing a shotgun, either. (You laugh, but it’s not funny when it happens. Honestly, we were only taking a short cut back across the field. Talk about an overreaction…)
“Lost, are you?” he calls, scratching his head. He’s watching us carefully.
“Nah.” Steffan’s the one who answers.
Whatever it was that passed between Jared and me, he missed it. And there was something, wasn’t there? I don’t think I imagined it. There was.
Steff nods back towards the river; towards the car and the campsite and a time, only seconds before, when I knew exactly where I stood. “We’re from town, you know? Camping. Heard the…”
“You want to meet Piggy?” The man’s suddenly all smiles.
“Piggy?”
“Come round. He loves company.” And with that, he vanishes back round the corner.
Steffan blinks. “Piggy? They called the elephant Piggy?”
“Well, they called you Steffan,” Jared says with a shrug as he slides past me without even a second glance.
I don’t know what the hell is going on any more.
There are some things, I’ve learned, that manage to take you completely by surprise no matter how you think they’re going to go. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad…sometimes it’s just different. This is one of the Just Different times.
There, in the middle of a shed which was only really designed to hold cattle, is a small elephant. Piggy. He looks pretty happy to see the random guy we’ve just bumped into, and I realize that this must be who’s taking care of him. After all, someone has to feed him, don’t they? And muck out his shed. But there’s no way Random Dude is a zookeeper, or even remotely qualified to look after something like an elephant – little or not. In fact, I’m almost certain I’ve seen him around town on market days, which would make him one of the local farmboys and would probably mean that the closest he’s ever been to any kind of exotic animal would be if he had a pet budgerigar when he was a kid.
He answers my question before I’ve even asked it, leaning over the pathetically flimsy metal barrier – again, meant for sheep, cows, the occasional pig at a push… “They’re trying to find a zoo for him. Had a couple of the keepers from Cardiff come and spend a few days down here when the place went under, have a good look at him. They can’t take him, but at least they gave me a few pointers to tide us over. The RSPCA pop in, but it’s a bit out of their league, really. I heard the lot in London are keen – and apparently there’s some Russian fella after him for his daughter’s sixteenth birthday.” He shakes his head at the idea. “It’s a whole different world, isn’t it?”
Piggy the elephant scuffs at the straw on the floor of his barn with a foot the size of a dinner plate. Steffan eyes him carefully.
“What if he, you know, goes psycho? They do that, don’t they? I saw a thing about it once.” A half-hour documentary on when elephants attack is, in Steffan’s eyes, enough to make you an expert on the subject.
“Then we’ll have a problem, won’t we?” Random Dude shakes his head again. “I tell you what, there’s no way I’m chasing him through the woods if he gets out. No thank you. I’ll feed him and that, but I told them I’m not responsible for him, no.”
When I glance over at him, Jared’s eyes are like ice – cold and bright as I’ve ever seen them as he watches Piggy – which is just marvellous, really, because now on top of everything else, Jared apparently feels responsible for an elephant’s imminent nervous breakdown.
I thought I wanted to see this, but I don’t. I can’t bear the sight of it. The poor thing is stuck here, with no choice but to stay put and wait for someone to want it. Everything about it is wrong – even its name. Piggy. Who calls an elephant Piggy? Trapped by his name, trapped by his circumstance…just trapped.
I feel like if I don’t leave now, I never will.
Steffan’s obviously feeling the same. He catches my eye and nudges Jared, who snaps out of his daze. There’s something about Steff’s expression, though; something in the way he’s looking at Jared. Something I don’t recognize, something so strange and unfamiliar and so not like him…
“Listen, d’you mind if we take a look around before we go?” Jared asks the guy.
Random Dude ticks his head from side to side. “All the same to me either way. Watch, mind – some of the buildings are a bit dodgy these days. Guru never was very into health and safety.” He says it with a laugh that suggests he approves. Which wouldn’t surprise me: most of the farms here have been in the same families for generations, and they like to do things the way they like – even if that means fixing the radiator of a tractor with gaffer tape and a bit of string (and yes, I’ve seen worse than that driving along the back roads). Being a bit cavalier about maintenance is seen as a badge of pride.
Random Dude and Piggy have lost interest in us, so that’s that. Thank god. A depressed elephant is not what I had in mind for today. But what I want to know is why Jared suddenly doesn’t want to just get the hell out of Dodge.
“Because I want to see it. While we’re here. I want to see what he’s done.”
“But what for?” I ask.
“So that one day, I can tell him that I’ve been here. I can tell him how much damage he’s done.” Jared’s voice is measured and calm; so measured and calm that few people besides us would be able to tell just how angry he really is. I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve seen him get angry, and I can count the number of times I’ve seen him actually lose his temper on just one.
Once. That’s it.
Steffan, his mood apparently improved, is balancing on the lower bar of a set of railings (he’s also seen a couple of shows about parkour – naturally, this makes him not only an authority on it but a world-class practitioner; I give it two minutes before he lands on h
is head) and listening to Jared impassively. When he finishes, Steff coughs and says: “Mate, why don’t you just tell him he’s a wanker and leave it at that? He couldn’t exactly argue with you, could he?”
Jared appears to be considering this…and then, just like that, his scowl cracks into a grin and he laughs. “Fair point. I’ll keep that as my backup.”
The clouds that were gathering clear away, and suddenly I feel better. And I realize that it wasn’t this place that was making me feel so edgy, it was Jared’s mood. It infected us all without us even noticing.
Steffan swings himself over the railing and drops down to the yard beside me as Jared – still grinning – wanders on ahead. Steff drapes his arm around my shoulder and ruffles my hair affectionately with his knuckles (which he knows I hate). “Boy’s alright. You’ll see.” Then, with a smart rap on the top of my head, he cackles and steps aside. Hands in his pockets, whistling, he strides into the sunshine after Jared.
There’s a stack of oil drums beside a building on one side of the yard. The wall next to them is stained with rust where water has been dripping from a cracked gutter and litter has collected between the drums, trapped by a mass of spider webs. But behind the building…behind the building more than makes up for it.
Sitting at the base of the hill, and marked out by the omnipresent blue railings, there is the most beautiful pool I’ve ever seen. It’s not a swimming pool – not at all. It’s a miniature lake. It’s shallow and wide, and the walkway which surrounds it is overhung with lush trees whose branches tumble towards the surface of the water. Fish glint in the sunlight as they flit about. On a little concrete island in the middle, cast to look like rock, there’s a gold statue looking…shiny. Above us, the sky is a perfect shade of summer blue – it’s too early in the day yet for it to bleach to heatwave-white – and reflected in the water, it makes me think of the sea.
This is one of the temples.
“Woah.” That’s Steffan. He’s stopped dead in his tracks. “Wasn’t expecting that.”
He’s asking for it. I duly oblige. “What were you expecting?”
“I dunno. More sheds. Just…not that.”
The three of us stand there, side by side, staring at it; this place, this temple, this unexpected, unanticipated thing. A few minutes ago, I was kicking myself for insisting we go looking for the elephant – but now I’m glad we did. I’ve never been in a temple before but I suppose I imagined it would be kind of the same as a church, and it’s not at all. Not even close. I thought it would feel the same, all stern and reverent and sensible; weighted down by history and solemnity and purpose. But this? It’s joyful.
The dents, the rust, the flaking paint…they’re not pretty but they can’t hide the fact that this place meant something. It still does. A few knocks can’t take that away from it.
“It’s still here, Jared.” I don’t know whether I mean to say the words aloud, but I do anyway.
“What?”
“Look. It’s still here. Whatever else he did, this is still here. It’s just waiting. It’ll be okay.”
“You’re right. Back to calling him a wanker, then.” He nudges me, and my heart tumbles over itself beneath my ribs.
Jared’s going to be alright.
twelve
Steffan makes himself scarce when I finally pull out my phone to call Amy back. It’s like he thinks that me seeing him and my phone in the same place at the same time will cause some kind of massive temper-flashback and before he can defend himself I’ll have pinned him down on the ground and be beating him about the head with a log. I consider the mental image for a moment, before accepting the sad fact that there’s no way I could keep him pinned down. He weighs more than I do.
Jared, who is carrying the tents back to the car, walks past. “Stop fantasizing about maiming him, Lim. Move on…”
“Was it that obvious?”
Without breaking his stride, he shifts the weight of the tents to his shoulder, spins around so he’s walking backwards and nods, before laughing and spinning back around again.
If I play my cards right, they’ll have got everything back in the car by the time I’m done with Amy.
Amy answers her phone on the second ring. She’s been waiting for me, hasn’t she? Do I get a hello, a good morning, a how-are-you-on-this-glorious-day? No.
“Finally!”
“Look, Amy, can we just…” I rub my hand over my forehead like I’ll find the right words stuck to it. (I don’t.) “You’re pissed, I’m sorry, can we leave it at that?”
Her voice is reproachful. “You were supposed to call me…”
“I’ve been trying to! The reception here’s terrible. I’ve spent the last twenty minutes looking for a good enough signal.” The lie trips gently, cheerfully, off my tongue. The fact is that I just didn’t want to call. Not because of her (although that’s how she’d take it if I told her the truth) but because while I’m here, I can imagine that this is any other summer. Any summer at all but this one. And that when it’s over, everything will carry on just the same as it always has. At the other end of the phone, Amy either believes me or she doesn’t. It doesn’t really matter.
“I just want to make sure you’re having a good time.”
“You just want to make sure I’m staying out of trouble, you mean.”
“That too. Don’t hate me for it.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re fine? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” I pause, hold my breath, listen. I almost don’t want to ask the question. “How’s Dad?”
There’s a sudden change in the sound coming from the other end of the phone, and I can hear birds singing; an aeroplane passing overhead. She’s taken the phone out into the garden. So that’s how Dad is.
“He’s…okay.” She considers the word very carefully. “The doctor’s coming at ten.”
“I thought he was coming yesterday?” I think back to the noise in her voicemail.
“No, that was someone else.”
“A different doctor?”
“Something like that.”
“Who exactly? If the GP’s coming today…”
“Not the GP. It’s a hospital doctor.”
“What for?”
“It’s nothing for you to panic about, okay? Your dad’s just…well, you know he’s struggling. Everything that’s happened…your mum. It was just too much, and I’m worried about him – I know you are too. It’s one of the reasons I thought you could do with a couple of days away from here while he gets himself together. While we get him some help. We’ll talk—”
“I’m coming back. I’ll tell Steffan I need to come home.”
“You don’t need—”
“I’m coming back…” I talk over her, covering her words with my own.
“I can’t take care of both of you,” she snaps, loud enough to stop me.
“I don’t need taking care of.” My voice is barely even a whisper, and at first I’m not sure she heard me. But then she sighs.
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant, and I shouldn’t have said it. I just…I want you to have a break, to be with your friends. To have some time.”
“Steff is moving. To America.”
“I know.”
“Oh.”
She knew. She knew that Steff was going, and she didn’t tell me. And then I realize that this was why she was so fine with us doing this, why it was okay for me to just pack a bag and promise to call. So unlike it would have been with my mother. Amy knew. She wanted me to say goodbye.
More secrets. I’m so very tired of them.
Did Steff tell her himself? I wonder. Did his dad? Or did she pick it up through hearsay and gossip and whispers in the queue at the post office? Does everyone else in town already know? How long has Amy known about this? I ask myself, as I half-listen to the rest of what she has to say: things about wanting to protect me, to give me a break. Being worried that I was finding life tough enough right now…
Bullshit. The lot of it. Secrets get out – they always will. It’s what makes them so dangerous, so toxic. A secret is like a tumour, an infection; something lying hidden beneath the surface, but always, always spreading a web of telltale poison lines across its keeper’s skin. You can cover them up, you can paint over them…but you can never really hide them.
Like with Mum. I saw – eventually. Amy saw. My father saw. We are all guilty. We are all to blame.
Steffan and Jared both saw, I know. Becca saw, as I know all too well. (And god, I hope she’s got a bruise where I smacked her one. A great big puffy purple bruise. It’s the least of what she deserves.) And if she saw, then everyone saw. What’s the point of pretending, of keeping a secret which was never mine to keep, and which everybody already knows, however quiet we tried to keep it? To protect a dead woman? What for? She’s already dead. She saw to that.
It takes a long time to drink yourself to death. To really and truly, properly drink yourself to death, without turning to a razor blade or a bottle of pills in a particularly low moment. It takes dedication. Years of training.
Some people train their whole lives to become athletes or astronauts.
My mother spent hers training to become an alcoholic.
thirteen
“Functional” is a shitty word.
Computers are “functional”. The bathrooms in motorway hotels are “functional”; their three-quarter-length baths anything but.
When I was nine, my mother bought me the ugliest pair of school shoes I’d ever seen, instead of the ones with the hidden key in the sole. I don’t know why I wanted them so badly, but I did. They were magical. They had a hidden thing in them. The shoes I got were, on the other hand, dull and boring and black with a buckle.
Functional.
Shoes. Computers. Cheap hotel bathrooms.
The Last Summer of Us Page 9