His forehead furrowed in slight confusion. “I think you mean the BAFTAs. With Sienna right?” Then his face broke into a smile. “That was a fucking night that was.” I thought for a moment he was going to tell me about it, but he lapsed back into silence.
“She’s nice. Sienna I mean,” I said. “I mean she looks nice.” I got flustered since he knew I hadn’t met her, and I thought he might be thinking I meant she was good for jerking off over or something like that. My face began to burn red.
“Yeah. She’s OK.” he said and then seemed to think about it for a while. Eventually he went on.
“You got yourself a bird yet Jesse?”
“Nah. Not really.”
“No?” He looked over at me, one eyebrow raised.
“I mean yeah, loads of birds, just nothing serious. You know?” I took a risk and tried a hint. “I mean there’s nothing tying me down here, is what I mean.” After I said this he looked forwards again and didn’t speak for a while, and I wondered what life would be like working with John in London. I thought of myself with a girl like Sienna. There was one of her friends I saw her with in lots of pictures, a dark-haired girl. I liked the thought of her.
“I was just back to see Dad.” he said at last, still staring forwards out of the windscreen. He put his hands on the padded steering wheel like he wanted to get moving. The arm of his suit jacket slipped back to reveal this really expensive watch. I was reading the situation so wrong I was still thinking how in just a few months maybe I’d have a watch like that.
“Yeah, I’m sort of hanging out, waiting to see what comes up.” I tried again.
Then his phone rang and he looked at the screen. He made this clicking sound as an apology, then he answered it and had some pointless conversation with someone called Brad.
“Sorry mate, that was just Brad,” he said when they’d arranged to do lunch when he was next in town.
“No worries.”
“So, you’re doing well then? That’s good. That’s good to hear.”
“Yeah. Real good.” Suddenly it occurred to me I had to reassure him - remind him - just how trustworthy I was, how I could be relied upon in a crisis.
“I’m just, you know, keeping an eye on things. Making sure no one does anything stupid. You know, Darren or whatever.”
His eyes narrowed. “Keeping an eye on what?”
“Making sure Darren doesn’t, you know, doesn’t mention anything to anyone.”
He didn’t say anything but then he raised one of his fingers to his lips and shushed me and really gently shook his head.
I gave him a grin. “Hell yeah sorry. There’s nothing to mention is there?”
We both fell quiet and he put both hands back on the wheel. Then he sniffed loudly like there was something stuck in his throat.
“And Darren? You still see much of him?”
Before I could answer his phone rang again.
“Shit,” he said this time, then: “Jesse mate this one’s a business call. I gotta take… Would you mind?”
“No, I got it. I understand.” I opened the door and stepped outside, and John didn’t start speaking until I’d shut the door again. There was a little wall by the car so I sat down on it, thinking he’d invite me back in when the call was done. As I sat there I even wondered if he maybe wanted me out cos he was going to ask whoever it was on the business call where I could be given a job. I mean clearly we hadn’t finished speaking, and that’s how fucking deluded I was at that point. But then about five minutes later the engine started and he revved it up hard and then he just drove away. He just left me there, sitting on the wall and fucked off again. I couldn’t see him because the glass was all blacked out. But I’d been inside. I knew he could see me sitting there.
thirty-eight
I KNEW THEN that John was never going to call for me. I had to give up the little fantasy that had grown in my head, that someone was going to save me and take me away from my life. And the ironic thing was, once I’d stopping thinking that was going to happen, it did.
It was maybe seven years since we brought the Hanging Rock down, and I couldn’t believe all that time had gone. All I’d really done was hang around the campsite. Even Darren was getting ahead of me, he’d done some exams through the garage, he was qualified now. And Mum had been nagging me for years to get out and do one of those adult education courses, or do anything really. Just to get on with my life. So after that time I met John, something made me sign up.
There’s a bigger town a few miles inland, and the courses were there, in the draughty basement of the council offices. Most of the students were old, you know, in their thirties or forties, a right bunch of fuck ups really. The teacher told us to call him Paul. I think this was to make it seem different to a school, but whether that was for our benefit or his I’m not sure, since Paul wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in a real school. He was really skinny and he spoke with a girl’s voice. He had a beard, maybe to make him look more manly, it hadn’t worked. Paul was such an obvious wuss I’d have walked out if I hadn’t sat myself so far from the door. But then I’d have missed her walking in.
She had long red hair. Bright red, not ginger, the sort that’s dyed rather than natural. She was wearing this horrible long skirt with embroidered flowers and leaves on it, and big lace-up Dr Martin boots. She sat down near the front of the classroom and at first she ignored me, but after Paul made everyone introduce themselves to the class she kept turning around and glancing back at me. She was pretty too. I mean not really pretty, John wouldn’t have looked twice at her, but she had nice eyes, and she could smile a nice sarcastic smile. I would have walked out that class if she hadn’t walked in, but with her sitting there, something made me stay.
It wasn’t till after the lesson that she spoke to me. I was waiting for the bus back to Llanwindus, and I was thinking adult education probably wasn’t for me when she came walking past pushing this old bicycle.
“Hey you,” she said. It was only me there, so I guessed she meant me. I nodded back.
“You’re that moody guy who was sitting at the back and didn’t talk to no one.” She pushed her hair out of her face. She had brown eyes, up close they still looked pretty.
“Yeah maybe.”
“Hi moody guy.” She raised a hand from the bike and waggled her fingers.
“Hi,” I said back.
She watched me for a bit.
“Angel.”
“What?”
“That’s my name. I’m Angel.”
“Oh. Hi Angel.”
She stood again just watching me, until I realised.
“I’m Jesse,” I said.
“I know. You said so in class, remember? When our class leader got us to introduce ourselves.” That was what he’d called himself, instead of a teacher. She smiled the same sarcastic smile I’d seen earlier.
“Doesn’t sound like you were paying much attention.”
“Well it was a bit boring.”
“Paul’s a twat isn’t he?”
“He looks like a twat.”
“Everyone there’s a twat.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and I thought she was going to walk on, but she didn’t.
“Do they make you come here too?”
“Who?”
“Dole Office. I have to attend the whole course or they stop my benefits.”
“Really? That’s shit,” I said.
“Very shit. So do they send you too?”
“No,” I said. I thought about saying my mum sent me, but that didn’t sound very cool, and then I was saved by the bus coming.
It wheezed to a stop a few steps in front of us but I didn’t move.
“That your bus then?”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna get on it?”
“Yeah probably.” I was struggling for something to say, something memorable. But nothing was coming. Fortunately Angel was a bit more straightforward than me.
“Or y
ou could come to mine and get wasted? It’s just down the road.”
I had to struggle to keep the shock off my face. “Yeah OK,” I said with a locked jaw.
The bus stayed empty and the driver gave me a dirty look as we walked away, her rusty bicycle clanking away between us.
We went back to her place. As we were walking along I was pretty sure ‘come and get wasted’ meant the same as what people in films meant when they say ‘come in for coffee’, so when we got into her crowded little hallway, I wondered if I should just jump on her there. But she’d brought her bike in with her, and that would have made it pretty awkward. Then she showed me into the little lounge and I saw she really did mean ‘come and get wasted’.”
We sat on her little sofa and she pulled out this plastic bag with cloudy yellow crystals in it and she chose a couple to put into her pipe. Then she put the lighter to the bowl and lit it, while pulling the smoke hard into her mouth. It was almost all gone when she passed it to me and the smoke was sitting at the top of the room like a cloud. I wasn’t even sure what it was, but I figured I had to do some too if I still wanted to be staying there that night, so I took the lighter and copied what she’d done. Within seconds the room, the whole fucking world melted away as if my eyes were gas-torches and everything I looked at burnt in front of me. I don’t know if it was seconds or minutes later I managed to speak.
“What the fuck?” I coughed.
“Isn’t it amazing?” She leaned in towards me. “It makes you go for ages.”
I just sat there panting with the room coming and going whenever it wanted. Then she leaned over and put her hand on my cock. I tried to put my hands onto her, to feel for her breasts but my arms were moving real slowly, like I was swimming though honey. Then there was a noise in the hallway and this head appeared round the door while I still held my arms out, like I was pretending to be some sort of zombie.
“Hi Angel - Oh hi.”
“Hi Meg. Jesse, this is Megan, my housemate,” Angel said. She’d slipped back across to her side of the sofa and her voice still sounded normal. I wasn’t even sure if Megan was real or a hallucination. But I nodded hello to it and managed to get my arms back down.
“I’m going to cook some pasta, do you want some?” Her eyes took in the meth pipe which had found its way onto the coffee table, and I thought I saw a slight frown pass her face.
“No thanks. We’re alright here aren’t we Jesse?”
Megan walked through to the kitchen and started banging around before I could answer, and when I looked back at Angel she gave me a naughty smile then started fishing about in her little bag, hunting for another good-sized rock.
I can’t remember how many we ended up smoking but I was way too fucked up to have sex with Angel after that. Megan came in for a bit and ate her pasta from a bowl on her knees, she didn’t seem to notice I was basically comatose. When I woke up it was the morning and I was still on the sofa. Alone.
My head hurt and my mouth felt like someone had laid carpet on my tongue and nailed it down. But worst of all I assumed I’d blown it with Angel. I forced myself up and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. I thought I’d sneak out quietly. I’d ditch the course and go back to working at the campsite. I couldn’t come to town again. But then Angel came in. She was barefoot, wearing a big t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on the front and nothing else but a pair of orange pants. I saw them when she bent over to get something from the fridge. I don’t know if she meant it to be sexy but it sure as hell was. When she straightened back up and I’d dragged my eyes back to her face she was holding half a joint, and her eyes twinkled with success. She lit it up and then holding it in her mouth she took my hand and she led me out of the kitchen. We edged past her bike in the hallway and went up the narrow stairs and into her room. It was like a weird purple cavern, filled with stuff, feathers dangling from the ceiling, candles, trippy psychedelic posters and purple cushions and teddy bears everywhere. Everything smelt of joss sticks. I stood for a moment feeling lost then she kissed me and blew smoke deep inside me. When the joint was finished she undid my belt and pushed my trousers to the floor. Then she pulled her t-shirt up over her head and she had nothing on underneath but those orange pants and she grabbed my hands and put them on her tits.
The meth hadn’t totally worn off and she was right. I did last for ages. We fucked on her single bed against the wall, at first we were surrounded by all these teddies, but one by one, thrust by thrust if you like, they fell off and onto the floor, till it was just me and her, with her legs spread so wide they nearly touched both walls of the room at once.
Angel confused Darren. She and me were together a lot after that, and he didn’t understand why I suddenly wasn’t in the caravan when he turned up every evening, plastic bag of beers in hand. Darren confused Angel too. He was too slow to follow her caustic comments when she came down to visit. She liked to get stoned in the sea air, she just didn’t see why we had to wait until Darren had finished his six pack before we could pull the little bed down and get the old van creaking. I thought at first there might be some future in Darren and Megan, it turned out she wasn’t a hallucination, and she was ugly and Welsh enough to be just Darren’s type, if he really had a type. But when I mentioned it to Angel she just lifted her eyebrows and said “Megan? Darren?” and I knew I’d got that wrong. And slowly Darren got the message and didn’t turn up every night, and I could sense the balance of my life had shifted. I’d started on a new path.
And who knows? If things had just stayed as they were for a little while longer my whole life might have got established on this new path. A path that had nothing to do with Darren and John and all the shit that had happened at Hanging Rock. Maybe if I’d stayed on it long enough I’d have got to a point where there was no way back. But fate wasn’t having that. It played its ace card. It made something happen that forced me right back onto the path that led ultimately to John. Maybe I’m kidding myself now if I thought there was ever any other way.
It seemed to me to come out of the blue, but when I thought about it Mum had told me lots about the pains she was having in her armpit. When she finally went to the doctor he had her drive right to the hospital in the city that same day. They told her the lump in her breast was the biggest they’d ever seen. I think they were quite impressed in a way. The scan showed the cancer had already spread to her lungs, her heart and her kidneys. They asked if she wanted a prognosis and when she said ‘yes’ they told her she had a thirty percent chance of being alive in six weeks.
She’d always said the women in her family were tough but didn’t last long. Her mother was dead by sixty, her mother before her too, so I suppose Mum had lived her life expecting it. It still came as a shock though. Two months later she would be dead.
And the funny thing was, while Mum was dying, it was Darren who understood, not Angel. She thought me and her smoking a big bowl of crystal meth would sort things out. But Darren came and talked to Mum. He sat with her and talked about times when we were kids. The times she’d shouted at us for ripping up the grass skidding our bikes. The times we’d brought flatties back from the pier and she’d cooked them. And when he talked like that she smiled through the pain. And even I, fucked up on the dope like I was a bit then, I could see that was a good thing.
It was Darren’s idea to tell John. He convinced himself that John would want to know, because of the way they’d always got on through the years. At first I said no. I was still pissed off with him for what happened in the Range Rover, but in the end I agreed. Mum did always like John, it might be nice for her to see him one more time. But then I didn’t have any contact details for him, so I had to go to his dad’s house to get them. Then for a few weeks I just sat there with John’s address written on a scrap of paper in my room. By the time I got to sending him a letter, it was a bit late to ask him to come and see Mum before she died. Because she was already dead.
thirty-nine
ANGEL STAYED OVER with me at the campsite the ni
ght before the funeral. It was the first time she slept in the house instead of the caravan. That bit was alright, but Darren turned up before breakfast, and right from the off they were getting on each other’s nerves. We spent the day killing time, the two of them bickering and dipping into Angel’s big bag of grass.
The church was depressing. It wasn’t quite just the three of us, but we didn’t even fill half of one side and the vicar didn’t know who we were. There were a few ladies from the village that Mum had got to know. Gywnn, the old surfer with the longboard came as well, but that was it. John didn’t come of course. I kept looking towards the back of the crematorium in case he was going to come in late, but he never did.
It didn’t matter. Even in his absence, it was John we ended up talking about back at the house. I had the fire lit and Angel was curled up on the sofa, her long skirt stretched tight over her legs, and just her orange socks visible. Darren was in the armchair, his face both angry and sad, watching the logs as they burnt. It was Darren that brought the subject up.
“I really thought he’d come,” he said, not taking his eyes off the fire. “Or send flowers or a note or something? You’re meant to do that at least. Why didn’t he do that?”
I shrugged and joined Angel on the sofa, letting her rest her legs on my lap. Normally I’d have liked this, but her legs felt heavy, I thought about dumping them on the floor. “We’ve not seen him in years. What did you expect?”
“After what you did for him Jesse? I expect a bit more than this.”
The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller Page 24