Summer of '76

by Ashdown, Isabel

Martin doesn’t answer. Luke hears the back of the camera snap shut, and the click and wind of Martin taking another photo.

  ‘Can you see my mum and dad?’ Luke asks, as he tugs on Martin’s trouser leg, his voice growing more insistent.

  ‘I got some pictures of them a minute ago, but I can’t see them now.’ Martin slowly eases his long body back out of the hole. He stands over Luke, fiddling with the shutter. ‘I only took a few more on that second film. Didn’t want to get caught.’

  ‘What happened?’ Luke asks, his voice betraying his growing sense of panic as he pushes up to standing.

  Martin starts to pack his camera into his rucksack, taking the used film from Luke and sliding it into the front pocket of his corduroys. ‘I took some photos.’

  ‘Jesus, mate! I know what happened with you. But what happened in there? What happened when they counted down to one?’

  ‘Oh. They threw their masks off.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No.’

  Luke can tell Martin’s doing it on purpose; he doesn’t want him to know. ‘Oh, my God, Martin! So they threw off their masks, and then what?’

  Martin tugs at the straps of his rucksack, pretending to check them. Dropping to the ground again, Luke pushes himself back through the hole in the fence. He feels the remains of the acid wine sloshing inside his stomach, pulsating against the cool gritty earth, and a sharp intake of breath catches in his throat as he takes in the scene in the McKees’ garden.

  There must be eight or ten people in the garden now, the others all having moved inside. Of those remaining, five are in various degrees of undress. Three of them are dancing, while the other two lie on the lawn, concealed beyond the rockery, only their tangled legs visible from his vantage point. The light from the lanterns is strong enough that Luke can clearly see the dark hairs of the man’s tanned legs, and the smooth coral toenails of the woman’s feet. Two fully dressed men stand on the patio, holding glasses of scotch and ice, chatting naturally, as if they were at a business dinner party. Luke scans the garden again; Laura Drake is one of the undressed ones, dancing with two other women he doesn’t know. She turns towards the house and beckons someone over, and Simon – Uncle Simon, walks across the lawn, stark naked, and starts to dance too, his hairy gonads swinging in time with the music.

  ‘Hey!’ Laura calls over to the couple behind the rockery. ‘Come on! There’s plenty of time for all that. Come and dance!’

  The woman stays in the shadows, but the man sits up so that his head and shoulders are visible in the lamplight. It’s Dad.

  ‘In a minute,’ he replies, dismissing her with a good-humoured wave. He reclines into the shadows, his feet nuzzling lazily around the ankles of his companion.

  Luke’s horror rises, like a rush of adrenaline, as his mind flips and whirrs at the nightmare scene before him. He takes a deep breath, and before he knows what he’s doing he screams through the hedge at the top of his lungs. ‘FUCKERS!’

  The two pairs of legs disappear behind the rockery as if magicked away; one of the men shouts, pointing at the hedge, and the naked dancers shriek and run across the garden towards the cover of the house. Clumsily Luke scrabbles back out of the hedge, stumbling to his feet, grabbing on to Martin in the darkness. Panting and wide-eyed, they run at speed, along the unlit stony coastal path, towards the rising tide and the safety of the dark shore below.

  7

  Met Office report for the Isle of Wight, early July 1976:

  Maximum temperature 87°F /30.7°C

  In the week following the party, a strange, airless mood saturates Luke’s world. Barely able to sleep in the incessant heat, he finds his nights disturbed by jumbled thoughts and images, his days a tangle of anxiety from which he distracts himself with longer work shifts and afternoons drinking with his new friends. He can’t bring himself to contact Martin, ashamed as he is about what they witnessed together that night in Bembridge, and yet he knows Martin is the only friend he has in this, the only other person who might understand. At home, he watches at a distance as Mum busies herself with overdue domestic jobs; clearing out Kitty’s old clothes, bleaching the mildewed grout in the bathroom, cooking up excessive batches of sultana-filled rock buns. Luke finds it hard to even look at his dad as he comes and goes from work in loaded silence, and for a full seven days barely a word passes between Joanna and Richard Wolff.

  At work on Sunday, after he finishes his final job of mopping down the poolside showers, Luke stops by at the managers’ office to meet up with Tom, who’s just completed a trial day in the kitchens. Gordon and Samantha finished an hour earlier, heading over to the beach at Woodside on foot, telling Luke to follow with his new friend when he’s done.

  As he arrives outside the office he’s met by Tom, bouncing down the steps, tugging at his belt buckle. He gives Luke a smarmy wink and drops his shades over his eyes.

  ‘Just firming up details with Suzy,’ he smirks, jangling his keys from one finger as they walk to the car together. He’s only an inch or so taller than Luke, but he walks with such a confident swagger, leading with his hips as if he couldn’t give a toss about anything.

  ‘So, did she give you a job, then?’

  Tom unlocks the driver’s door and slides in, reaching over to open the passenger side for Luke. ‘She gave me a nice little job, as it goes.’

  Luke stares at Tom as he checks his reflection in the rear-view mirror. ‘She gave you the kitchen job?’

  ‘Yep,’ Tom replies. ‘And the rest.’ He sticks a new matchstick between his teeth, hitches up his jeans and starts the engine.

  Luke blinks. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  ‘It seemed to be the deal-breaker. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’ Tom shoves Luke’s arm with the back of his hand, laughing at Luke’s stunned expression.

  The shaded greenery of Woodside is still relatively lush, protected from the sun by its canopy of trees and cool shade. Luke watches the houses and gardens pass by as Tom chews on his matchstick, the warm breeze blowing through their hair and ruffling their shirts. He notices Tom’s shoes: American Converse. He should get some of those when he goes to college. He should get a new look.

  ‘You got a girlfriend?’ Tom asks, breaking into his thoughts.

  Luke thinks about Samantha in the pool the week before last, how she clung to him when she heard about Len, how hopeful he’d felt back then. ‘Not at the moment,’ he replies, turning to look out of his passenger window.

  Tom pauses at the junction, waiting for a small procession of horse-riders to pass by, before parking alongside a high hedge, just a road back from the beach. ‘My dad reckons your mate probably cramps your style a bit. Martin, isn’t it?’

  ‘Bloody hell. I don’t know what he’s got against Martin. He doesn’t even know him.’ He frowns, waiting for Tom to say something.

  ‘I dunno. He just said he’s a bit of an oddball. A bit slow.’ He taps his temple.

  Luke tries to wind up the window, giving the handle an irritable thump when it sticks. ‘That’s crap, man.’

  ‘Hey!’ Tom complains, leaning into his glove box to bring out a small pouch of tobacco. ‘Don’t take it out on the love machine! I don’t know, do I? I’ve never even met the bloke – I’m just telling you what my old man said.’

  ‘Well, your old man is out of order.’

  They take their towels from the back seat along with the two bottles of Mum’s home-made wine that Luke stashed there this morning. They follow the path to the shore in heavy silence, Luke squinting against the sunlight as he suppresses his anger.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, man,’ Tom finally says, turning to face Luke. He holds out a hand. ‘I know my dad can be a bit of a dick. Sorry.’

  Luke pauses, bites down on his lip and considers it, fleetingly wondering what would happen if he just told him to sod off. But Tom pushes his sunglasses up over his head, and he looks sincere. Luke accepts his hand and shakes it once.

  To
m drapes his towel over one shoulder, replaces the shades and runs his fingers through his tufty fair hair. ‘Look, some of our shifts are bound to be the same – we could drive over together some days? Hang out round the pool a bit, check out the birds after work?’ He curls his lip suggestively, and when Luke spots Samantha in the distance, bikini-clad and dipping her toe at the water’s edge, he can’t help but return his smile.

  By nine o’clock it’s getting dark and the group are the last people on the beach. They lie in a loose formation on their towels, skin still warm from the afternoon sun and the wine that now flows through their veins. Luke’s eyes follow the patterns of stars as they start to appear, blinking hard as they flicker in and out of view. Samantha lies on the towel beside him, while Gordon sits at his feet, cross-legged and bowed in concentration as he rolls yet another joint.

  ‘Man, this island has got more going for it than I realised,’ says Tom, sweeping his arms wide as he surveys the moonlit water, the last few inches of wine swilling brightly in the bottle. He’s the only one standing – the only one fully dressed, Gordon and Luke having changed into swimming trunks as soon as they arrived. Tom throws back his head and drains the last of the wine, dropping the bottle to the sand with a soft thud.

  Luke gazes at Tom, cast as he is in silhouette, at his lean frame and shimmering hair, and he envies him. He envies his certainty, his devil-may-care attitude; his ease. ‘You should try living here,’ he says, sitting up and taking the joint from Gordon.

  Gordon nods agreement. ‘Everyone leaves in the end.’ It’s the most he’s said in an hour; Luke can tell from his heavy eyelids that he’s already completely stoned.

  ‘But it’s beautiful, man. The sea – the sky – the wide open sky. Man, you should try London for a week in this heatwave, and then try telling me this isn’t better.’

  Sam sits up and curls her feet beneath her, so that her bare back forms a perfect curve. In the moonlight, she looks like a silver statue. ‘So, what’s it like, Tom? What’s it like to live in London?’

  She passes him the second bottle of wine and he drinks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and passing it on. ‘It’s cool. Of course.’ He grins knowingly.

  Sam sighs. ‘I’ll live there one day.’

  She rolls over on to her front, reaching over Luke to stroke Gordon, who has now slipped quietly on to his own towel, curled up beside Luke in a foetal position. Luke reclines between them, his head pleasantly muggy and soft against the sand.

  ‘We should be flatmates, Sam,’ Gordon says sleepily. ‘And you, Lukey-baby. We can all live together, in perfect harmony. You, me and Sexy Sam.’ He pats Luke’s shoulder with floppy fingers.

  Tom hands the wine bottle to Gordon and stoops to pick up stones, which he throws out across the placid water.

  ‘What about Len?’ Luke asks, turning to face Sam, his words harsher than he’d intended. ‘Won’t you be busy playing happy families with Lenny?’

  Gordon sniggers, and Sam’s eyebrows knit crossly as she glares at Luke. Their faces are so close as they lie side by side on their towels that for a moment he thinks she might just slap him. But instead her mouth forms a smile, and in an instant she’s upon him, astride him, tickling him hard, her bare thighs squeezing firm against his ribcage, the fleeting brush of her warm breasts exquisite against his chest. He yells and laughs, gasping for breath between tickling grabs, reaching up to encircle her small waist and inflict the same in return. But she pauses, radiant in the water-reflected light, and looks down at him from her position of power. In this sharp moment of clarity, Luke has no doubt that she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen; that never again will he feel anything quite like this.

  Sam rises up, and stands over him, her hand held out to help him to his feet, her sparkling blue eyes never leaving his. ‘Who’s for a skinny-dip?’ she asks, breaking contact to beckon Tom and Gordon with mischief. In moments, they’re stripped to the skin in the pale moonlight, all four of them running like children, hurdling the waves, laughing and, for a short while, carefree.

  8

  Met Office report for the Isle of Wight, mid-July 1976:

  Maximum temperature 76°F /24.2°C

  For the first half of July, Luke takes every measure he can to avoid his parents, continuing to put himself forward for as many extra shifts as work will give him, and stopping off to take a meal with Nanna every now and then. Daily weather updates continue to report on the interminable drought, and the beaches and resorts around the island swell with worn-out locals and wilting holidaymakers. Dad has found himself a new project, converting the garage into a gym, and every afternoon, on his return from school, he fetches himself a cold beer and strips down to his shorts before setting to work. To Luke’s embarrassment he’s managed to pick up a stripy headband, just like Björn Borg’s, which he now wears whenever he’s doing any fitness-related activity, including planning his gym. Wherever Dad is, Mum is sure to be elsewhere, and Kitty runs from one parent to the other, fretfully chirping at them in a bid to restore normality.

  One Saturday morning Luke fills an hour before work playing with Kitty in the garden, helping her to make a log house for the little elephant Martin gave her. They’re decorating the floor with willow leaves and yellow rose petals, which attract a swarm of ladybirds that gradually threatens to take over the garden.

  ‘Out! Out!’ Kitty tells them, flicking them away one by one.

  Luke stretches out on the scrubby grass while Kitty runs across the path to fetch a container from the kitchen. Even this early, it’s too hot. He should be happy, but the novelty’s worn off now, after weeks of this endless heat. Maybe he’d feel differently if he had a girlfriend to share it with, someone like Samantha. But he knows he’s got no chance with Sam; even after all that’s happened, she’s still with Len. Bloody Len Dickhead.

  ‘There,’ says Kitty, poking his face to make him look inside the wooden cigar box she’s pinched from the kitchen. Already the box is half full of writhing ladybirds. ‘Can’t go in the house now.’

  ‘Clever girl,’ Luke says lazily, listening to the sounds of her pottering about, humming and chattering to herself as she stoops to work on the log house beside him.

  ‘Love you,’ she whispers, and Luke opens one eye to see her kissing the little elephant and laying it down inside the new house.

  ‘Ahh,’ says Luke. ‘Ellie looks comfy, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Marty,’ Kitty replies with a scornful look. ‘He’s called Marty.’

  Luke laughs. ‘Oh, yes, that’s right. Marty.’

  She covers the elephant with a few more leaves before lying down beside Luke, nestling her small head beneath his armpit. ‘Isn’t Marty your friend now? Big Marty?’ she asks.

  ‘Martin? Yes. Of course he is.’

  She reaches up to slide her finger inside his nostril. ‘He don’t come no more. Maybe he’s got Dutch elm disease?’

  Luke bats her finger away. ‘No, he hasn’t got Dutch elm disease, Kitty. I’ve told you, it’s just trees that get that, not people.’

  ‘Beth at nursery school got Dutch elm disease.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. It was going round.’

  He smiles. ‘I think that was German measles, wasn’t it? Anyway, Martin’s fine. It’s only because I’m working a lot at the moment, Kitty.’

  ‘Did you break friends?’

  ‘No. He’s still my friend.’

  ‘Then he should come round and play.’

  ‘I know. Maybe I’ll phone him later on, see what he’s up to?’

  ‘He can come today!’ She jumps up on to her knees and claps her hands together.

  ‘Not today. I’m going to work.’

  ‘But he can come and play with me?’

  Luke sits up and brushes his hair from his face. ‘No, Kitty, he’s a big boy, isn’t he? He comes to play with me. But he really likes you too.’

  ‘He gave me Marty-ellie,’ she says a little sadly, stroking the eleph
ant’s soft fur head. ‘I want Marty to come here.’

  Luke gives her shoulder a squeeze and leaves her in the garden while he goes to get ready for work. In the kitchen, Mum and Dad are in the middle of a serious-looking conversation, so Luke decides to hang around for a minute to find out what it’s about. He’s not hungry, but he lays out the bread board and starts to make a sandwich, nice and slowly.

  Dad huffs irritably. ‘Do you have to do that now, son?’

  ‘I’ve got to go to work in a minute,’ Luke replies, without looking up. ‘So yes, I do. Pretend I’m not here.’

  Mum snatches up the house keys. ‘I told you about this weeks ago, Richard. How often do I get a bit of time to myself? And anyway Diana’s calling for me in a minute, so I can’t let her down.’

  ‘But it’s the Olympics!’ Dad complains. ‘It’s the first day of the bloody Olympics!’

  ‘You don’t have to watch all of it, do you?’

  ‘No, but I don’t know the order of events yet. I’m an athlete, Jo – it’s in my blood – you know that.’

  ‘You’re a PE teacher, Richard,’ says Mum.

  Luke lets out a small scoff.

  ‘You might laugh, Luke. But I could’ve taken my pick of sports – they had me tipped as a competition-level swimmer at one point. It might have been me out in Montreal instead of David Wilkie, if my coach hadn’t told me to concentrate on field sports instead.’

  Mum sighs heavily. ‘Yes, well, it seems there are lots of things you “nearly did” in the past. Surely you can look after Kitty and watch the television at the same time?’

  Luke chances a quick look at them. They’re standing either side of the cooker; Mum’s dressed up in one of her favourite frocks, and Dad’s shirtless as usual, still wearing those grubby denim shorts. His skin is now so dark he looks like an extra from Swiss Family Robinson. Mum is rubbing her temple, looking worn out.

  ‘It’s not much to ask, is it?’ Dad says. ‘I’ve already agreed to spend less time with my friends, just to keep you happy.’