by Rhys Thomas
We were lying on my bed, her head on my chest, and I was playing with her hair. We always did stuff like this – it didn’t mean anything. We were watching television on silent whilst listening to Damien Rice. It was like a perfect moment in heaven.
‘I saw the way you were looking at me in the yard today,’ she said softly. She’s got a brilliant accent. Quite posh, but also lazy, like she doesn’t care.
I didn’t reply.
She turned her body over and in an instant, like she had been there all along, she was straddling me. Her face came in towards mine, her black hair blocking out the light, and she kissed my cheek.
This was strange. Clare was very capable of playing cruel games with boys and I didn’t know what she was doing. All I really knew at that moment was that my body was telling me that it wanted to have sex with her. That was my base feeling.
Her hair was touching my face. She kissed my forehead, and then my nose, and then my lips. Gently, softly, like in a novel. But it was real. She brought her hand up and, with index and middle finger, placed her flopping hair expertly behind her ear, tracing the line from her temple to the back of her neck. Silhouetted against my bedroom light was the outline of an out-of-focus landscape – a jawline leading to a dark, blurry ear.
She wasn’t getting off with me, she was just kissing me. She pulled back a little and her eyes were massive with dark-purple eye liner that was simply perfect. And then she said something in a quiet voice that came out just right.
‘You’re gorgeous,’ she said.
I couldn’t bear it if she was playing with me. I had no reason to think it, but something at the back of my mind was saying, You be careful now, Rich.
She started kissing my face again and with her right hand she grabbed the top of my arm, sliding up underneath my T-shirt. I started thinking about the birthmark on the back of her neck that nobody ever mentioned – the aesthetic taboo. I loved that she had it because it meant that she was vulnerable and I love that in people, especially girls. Her touch was amazingly smooth.
This wasn’t my first time with a girl. I’d been with a few girls to varying levels of sexual activity which I don’t like to divulge because it’s crass, but I had never actually had sexual intercourse. And I knew that I wouldn’t be having it tonight either. It just wouldn’t be right.
I didn’t kiss her back, I just lay there. With her free hand she went for my belt but I grabbed her wrist.
‘What?’ she said, her eyes closed. ‘I want to see what I’m doing to you.’
I turned my head dramatically to one side. The truth is, I didn’t want her to see what she was doing to me. We were friends.
‘I don’t think I can do this with you,’ I said.
Her eyes opened and I thought she was going to take my face off with a cleaver. She would have if she’d had one. And then, with extreme undercurrents of violence, she stabbed at the air with her finger, pointing at me.
‘You are a . . .’ She mouthed the next two words as if to emphasize her anger. ‘Fucking prick.’ There was a noise actually, but it was so quiet you could barely hear it.
And then she did something that I could not believe. It had never happened before and I didn’t actually believe that things like this happened in real life, but here was the living proof. She stormed out the room! Left the house! I couldn’t believe it. I was completely dumbstruck by the sheer, audacious DRAMA of the girl. It was glorious.
A sudden swell of guilt came into me but I don’t know why because I had done nothing wrong. I was being a good person by stopping it because it could have jeopardized our friendship and, at that moment, I didn’t really know what was going on. It had all happened so fast that the screen doors went up. Clare hated herself anyway. That’s why she tried to give herself to me. She always went too far with boys who liked her. She used to think that if a boy liked her she’d have cold sexual intercourse with him and then leave him. She lost her virginity when she was thirteen. Thirteen! That’s insane. And she was never sexually abused by her father or anything either. She was just weird like that.
The next thing I did was a bit off. To be honest, I wasn’t actually handling things as well as I would have liked. I hate the way I let people get to me because I wish I could be aloof. I like to think that I could have risen above the whole Clare thing, but she had penetrated my walls. She was in. And that was bad because I like to think that my defence mechanism (ha) is pretty sturdy. I admit that my mind was scrambled and the next thing I did was not the smartest. I picked up my phone and texted her: You’re a weirdo. Apostrophes, the lot.
3
AS SOON AS Clare left the phone started ringing, which jolted me back to reality. I wanted to pretend that I didn’t feel hurt and so I answered it enthusiastically.
‘Holoha,’ I shouted, even though the call could easily have been for my mum or dad. Which it wasn’t. It was Johnny, a boy with whom I had gone to primary school. After we left I went to private school and he went to the regular comprehensive. We stayed in touch, but not very often. It was always something I regretted, but that’s life.
He was calling because his band, Atticus, were playing in the local pub. It was pretty much the only time I got to see him nowadays so I said I’d be there, although inside I got that creeping feeling of worry in my gut. I didn’t like going into pubs. I was too young and it was quite obvious. Lots of kids my age got really drunk every weekend, but I didn’t feel the need to do this. I don’t hate drinking or anything, I like it. I just don’t want to get off my face all the time.
Also, some of the kids from the comprehensive school would be there. They hated us private-school snobs and loved to pick fights on us.
And I hate fighting. I’m pretty good at it because I’m a good sportsman with lots of coordination and I never lose my head. I’ve had a lot of fights in my time and I put up a pretty good show for the most part. But I hate punching people in the face. I know from experience how much it hurts and inflicting that sort of pain on other people bothers me.
But you can’t live your life in fear and that’s why I said I’d go.
When I hung up, I immediately went back to thinking about Clare. I kept re-running the events in my head thinking how it could have gone. I should have had sex with her. It would have been easier. My world would be different if I’d done that. But I didn’t. I didn’t love her enough to have sex anyway. Not yet.
At seven I went downstairs. My parents were in the living room, out of sight. ‘Mum,’ I called.
‘Hi, honey,’ she said with a massive smile. She was holding a spoon.
‘Hi. Good day at work?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she replied.
‘Do you know if a CD was delivered today, by any chance?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Then her brow furrowed. I could see that she was about to say something about Craig. I had to get away.
‘OK. I’m going out.’ I headed for the front door.
‘You haven’t had your tea.’
‘Don’t want any.’ And I was out.
It was quite a walk to town, about a quarter of a mile, but I didn’t mind making it. I’d stick my headphones in and lose myself completely.
I love music, probably more than anything else in the whole world. It’s about the only thing that can really get inside me and rummage around. What gets me about it, I reckon, is not the actual music, but what’s left at the end, when everything else has been stripped away, when all the music has gone and all that’s left is what the bands mean. A lot of the time you strip everything away and there’s nothing left and the music is soulless but sometimes, when there’s something special, the meaning is the exact same thing that drives the very centre of you, that tiny pearl of energy that’s so delicate that even if you just think about it you get the shivers. Sometimes you connect with music on such a deep level that you can’t really describe it in words, you know? It’s just there, in you. It’s like the bands pop their heads around a curtain
and say, ‘Hello, your soul. You’re not alone.’ And that’s the sort of music I’m into. The stuff that ties itself around my life.
Anyhoo, when me and my friends go out, we always meet at the war monument. It has steps all around it and we can sit there and mess around. Because it was winter, the sky was pitch black apart from the stars twinkling on and off, and the shop lights beamed out on to the pavements like they were full of angels or something – colours all over the place.
There weren’t many people there, just Matthew, his American girlfriend Jenny, and someone with their back to me and hood up. Jenny had moved to the airbase a few years ago and had been going out with Matthew pretty much from the second month she got here. She was such a sweet girl. Being from California she had a big, bright, wide-eyed optimism for the world that some people hated for being so in-your-face, but I loved it.
I took out my headphones and sat down on the lowest step, trying to get a look at who was under the hood. To my horror it was Clare. She was staring vacantly at the passing cars, assumedly ignoring me.
‘Hello, Matthew,’ I said. I was the only person who called him that. Most people just called him Matt.
‘Richard,’ he replied.
‘Hi, Richie,’ said Jenny cheerily, in her American accent.
I smiled at her. ‘Hiya.’
‘Don’t I get a hello?’ said Clare suddenly, her head turning towards me, the vacant look washed clean away, replaced by a fake smile, as if she’d just made a decision. She was trying to act like she hadn’t almost just had sex with me.
I looked at her.
‘Hi,’ I answered awkwardly.
‘You’ll never guess who’s out.’
I thrust my hands into the pockets of my hoody. ‘Who?’ I asked, really amiably.
‘Freddy.’
I didn’t know who Freddy was at this point.
‘The new boy who saved Craig’s life,’ she said, like it was obvious and it was actually offensive that I wouldn’t know his name.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s gone to the shops.’
I looked at her. Although we were in the middle of a mental battle, I noticed, not for the first time that day, just how devastatingly pretty she was. I think maybe I was starting to fall in love. Or maybe not. Who knows?
‘Isn’t he a boarder?’ Boarders weren’t allowed out of the school on Fridays after ten, even though at that point it was only half seven.
‘Yeah, so?’ she said. Her words were suddenly barbed, like a switch had been flicked, and the normality that she had just shown was gone. I’m sure Matthew and Jenny picked up on the tension.
I caught Clare’s eye for a second but she looked away. Awkward. I needed to speak to her, on her own, to try and explain.
I’d like to say that at that point a cold wind suddenly swept down the high street and the air changed, the clouds rolled in front of the moon and everything went dark. Then I could say as soon as it happened Freddy came into my life. But none of that stuff did happen. The world stayed the same when I met Frederick Spaulding-Carter properly for the very first time.
It was dark but we all saw him as he bounded across the road to us, nipping between the car headlights like a spectre or something. And he had the Californian Girls with him – a definite tick in the right box. These were the attractive girls from the airbase that hung around in one beautiful group. They weren’t all from California, despite their nickname – they had just always been called that. They weren’t very nice people and were often bitchy but I guess the way they did it was so over the top that it was quite funny, as long as they weren’t targeting you. They rarely befriended the boarders though, who tended to be a little too upper-class English, even for us. We kept it real. As if. So for them to have latched on to Freddy was strange.
‘Freddy!’ called Clare, beckoning him over.
‘Yeah?’ He came over, full of energy. His shoulders were heaving up and down because he was slightly out of breath.
My cynical side told me that I didn’t like him because there was something off with him, like his mind and his body didn’t quite match up. You know how binoculars can sometimes show two different images because the distance between the two lenses isn’t right for your eyes? Well, Freddy’s body and mind were a bit like that – not quite flush.
However, I try not to listen to my cynical side because it’s negative, and being negative is complex and intricate, and if you want to live a happy, normal life there’s no room for cynicism. Cynicism doesn’t sit well on the human soul.
Clare was introducing Freddy to Matthew, who jerked his head backwards as an approving acknowledgement.
‘And this,’ she said, not even looking at me,’ is Richard.’
As our eyes met a beam of light swept over him from a passing car. His cheeks had gone red in the cold but the rest of his face was very pale. I always thought there was something romantic about the way some people go pale in the cold. He had small bags under his eyes that were also a little red, which looked immensely cool, like he was exhausted and running on fumes. The skin was tight on his face so that you could see the shape of his skull and in truth I felt a little jealous at how his little face-eccentricities made him look better not worse.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘That was awesome what you did this afternoon.’
He laughed a little. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘Oh my God,’ said one of the Californian Girls. ‘I couldn’t believe how brave that was.’ And she touched his arm.
‘I wouldn’t exactly say it was brave,’ I said. ‘It was good, but it was hardly pulling him out of a burning oil rig, was it?’ It came out really harsh-sounding, but that’s not how I meant it. Many of my jokes misfire and I end up sounding really arrogant and horrible. There was an awkward silence.
But then something happened. Freddy laughed. And I suddenly connected with him, all my doubts obliterated like an exploding planet. If he got my jokes, he must have been up on my level. As far as I was concerned, he was now my friend.
‘Don’t laugh at him,’ said one of the girls, who was insanely good-looking, just ridiculous. ‘He’s not funny.’
‘Hey,’ I said, genuinely hurt. I hated how the Californian Girls were so hurtful to people. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
She tilted her head to one side and pulled a face like a smile, even though it was definitely NOT a smile.
We wandered up the long high street towards the pub where Johnny’s band were playing, past all the bright shop-fronts that always seem so light when the dark nights first close in.
My town is an old market town where farmers used to take their animals, though that part of its history is long gone. But the pretty, higgledy-piggledy houses with old bricks and alleyways running through to windy back streets are still there. They’ve been converted into these ornate little shops with big, wooden-framed bay windows and hanging baskets and general community-spiritedness. Most of the shops are old antique shops or bookshops or flower shops or coffee shops or clothes shops that sell things like corduroy trousers and tweed jackets – you know the sort of thing.
There’s a little bridge about halfway down the high street which goes over this small, shallow brook and in the summer people throw bread to the ducks that hang around there.
It’s the sort of place that people come to from miles around wearing their comfiest, nicest clothes. They wander around and have a cup of coffee and then go back home and say, ‘Oh what a lovely day we’ve had.’ I’ve never really understood this because yes, it’s a nice enough place, but it’s incredibly boring.
I hung back as we made our way to the pub, partly because I wanted to avoid Clare, and partly because Jenny and Freddy were bringing up the rear of our little group and I was interested to learn more about him. It was icy cold but I loved it as that type of air makes the world come alive. The sky was completely clear and you could see the stars up in the sky very clearly. I was half a step behind Jenny and Fre
ddy. Her blonde hair looked really smooth and awesome.
‘So what were you thinking when you saw Craig like that?’ she said. Jenny has one of those really sweet-sounding American accents and it’s not too nasal, like most of the other Californian Girls, whose voices are quite grotesque. She wasn’t really like them at all, apart from she was from the same country as them.
‘I don’t know,’ I heard him say. ‘I just saw him and then I was up and next to him. It was a bit weird really.’ I couldn’t place Freddy’s accent. It was the sort of accent that could have come from anywhere.
‘You probably saved his life.’
‘I don’t know about that.’ I could see the breath coming out of his mouth. ‘Why do you think he did it?’
Jenny shrugged.
‘I hardly know the guy. Richie knows him much better than I do.’ She turned her head around a little, bringing me into the conversation. ‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘It’s weird to think that I used to know him really well and I’ve been in some of his classes and stuff, but I just haven’t really known him at all for years. It’s like I don’t know anything about him any more. And never did, you know?’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ said Freddy. ‘Kids who you know when you’re young just drift away and you don’t even realize.’
What an odd remark to say out loud, I thought. And yet very eloquent.
‘Yeah,’ I sort of stuttered.
‘Do many people like him?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘He’s a bit of a freak.’
‘Rich!’ Jenny shrieked, slapping my arm.
Freddy smiled.
‘I don’t mean in a bad way,’ I retorted, defending myself. ‘Now that it’s happened I guess it was obvious. Before, you’d never have known how fucked up he was.’
‘Ah, hindsight,’ said Freddy, out of the blue, and in a mock-dramatic tone. ‘The cruel mistress who arrived too late.’
Jenny and I laughed loudly. The mood was very light all of a sudden.