Summer of '76

by Ashdown, Isabel

  Since that last phone call a couple of weeks back, Luke hasn’t seen or heard from Martin at all. He couldn’t bring himself to broach the subject of the parties with his parents, not so soon after the trauma of Kitty’s disappearance, and so for now he pushes it away, glad to go on acting as if none of it ever happened.

  Sweat-soaked work days come and go in a blur of mops and buckets and crisp white sheets, with many an afternoon spent with Tom and Gordon, sunbathing beneath the tamarisk trees of Woodside beach. Samantha seems to join them less and less, as her relationship with Len Dickens blossoms elsewhere, away from the intense glare of Luke’s jealousy.

  On Saturday Luke has a rare day free, and he passes much of the morning sleeping off his hangover, waking groggy to the sound of Mum cranking up the carpet cleaner in the hall beyond his door. She’s still on this obsessive cleaning kick, and yesterday she hired an industrial-strength machine, which she’s been flogging to death before it has to be returned to Hopkinson’s at the end of the day.

  Parched, Luke heads for the kitchen, waving a sleepy hand at Mum, who’s now moved into the living room, where all the furniture is pushed back against the walls and windows.

  ‘Can you take your shoes off when you come in and out, Luke?’ she shouts over the noise of the cleaner as he pauses in the living room doorway. ‘And I’ll want to get in your room at some point later today.’

  In the kitchen he runs the cold tap, downing a pint of water before filling his glass again and slumping back against the sink, listening to the sounds of the household. Kitty is out in the back yard, poking around the weeds and seeded buddleia, collecting up green caterpillars in a crumpled old Ski yogurt pot. He can hear the clack-clack-clack of her wooden stick as she taps it along the wall and fence panels. ‘I’m on the top of the world,’ she sings, repeating the same line over and over again. This is his first day off in weeks, and yet he has nothing to do, nowhere to go. Gordon and Tom are both working today, and Martin’s disappeared off the face of the earth. He thinks about bloody Len Dickhead kissing Samantha Dyas, and the strip of brown thigh he glimpsed when she stepped into Len’s car after work yesterday; how she turned and blew him a secret kiss when she knew Len wasn’t looking.

  Luke wanders back out into the hall, where he props himself against the doorframe to the living room, watching Mum. A trickle of sweat runs down the side of her face as she manhandles the heavy machine across the carpet. It grinds and whirrs, sucking grubby water back up its hose and into the clear plastic tank. Beyond Mum, through the open patio doors, Dad sits in his deckchair, bare legs crossed in the sunshine, the rest of him hidden behind his Saturday newspapers. So far, he’s kept to his promise of seeing less of Simon, and, while things are hardly perfect between them, there have certainly been fewer arguments than before. Dad flips his newspaper over and lets it drop to the lawn as he folds his arms idly and closes his eyes for a nap.

  ‘Lazy git,’ Luke mutters, returning to the kitchen to search for food.

  Shortly after lunch, Mum drops a hastily wrapped present into Luke’s hands, and asks him to walk Kitty to a party at the village hall while she carries on with the living room carpet. Kitty’s wearing a new frock that Mum made up from some fabric offcuts she’s been saving, and she dawdles on the path with her little chin jutting out, annoying Luke every time she stops to twirl and shout, ‘New dress! Ta-daaa!’

  All along the way, Luke notices the scorched lawns and dying plants, mentally noting those gardens he suspects are being covertly watered under cover of darkness. Like most of their neighbours the Wolffs have been emptying their dirty dishwater into the flowerbeds, but recently Mum’s been complaining that the tea roses are starting to smell. Last night she dragged him out into the garden and made him sniff the plants, pressing him for his opinion. He’d stood there for ages, inhaling away, until he finally came up with the answer: macaroni cheese – they’d had it last Wednesday. Mum was delighted that they’d cracked the code, and decided that in future they’d only water the garden with bathwater.

  Luke and Kitty turn the corner into the village hall car park, where pink and yellow balloons bob against the fire escape bars of the open double doors. Parents and children come and go in the bright sunlight, and Luke chaperones Kitty inside to look for Mrs Forest, the mother of the party girl. It’s cool inside the hall, and a dozen or more children noisily clamber and run across the central wooden stage, while a group of parents cluster around the noticeboard amidst much animated chatter. Kitty spots Mrs Forest at the edge of the group, and she drags Luke over to let her know she’s arrived.

  ‘It’s not a particularly flattering shot,’ one of the fathers laughs, peering in to get a closer look at the noticeboard.

  Kitty holds the present high up above her head, waving it under Mrs Forest’s nose until she gets her attention. The mother takes the gift and points Kitty in the direction of her little friends. ‘The girls are in the Wendy house,’ she calls after her, and she glances back towards the noticeboard and lowers her voice to a confidential tone. ‘God only knows who saw fit to post it up in the village hall, of all places. Where just about anyone can see it.’

  ‘Surely that’s the whole point!’ the man guffaws. Whatever’s up on the board has clearly tickled him. ‘Someone’s certainly got it in for the poor fella.’

  Luke rises up on to his toes in an attempt to see what they’re all looking at, and the group shifts, giving him a clear view of the photograph pinned to the centre of the board. Full-frontal and entirely naked, the figure on the dried-out grass lawn appears to be posed mid-dance, his arms thrown wide in the bright lamplight. His wavy hair and sandy moustache look lighter in the shot than in real life, and his eyes are concealed behind a black Zorro mask. But still, despite the small disguise, it’s clear to all standing around the noticeboard that the man in the mask is local headmaster Simon Drake.

  The two-minute jog back home is frantic, as Luke tries to find the words to tell Mum and Dad what he’s just seen. His mind is a jumble; he can’t let on that he knows about the source of the photos – but neither can he let this just happen to them. He stops in the front doorway, bending down over his knees while he gathers his thoughts, feeling his lunch swilling in his stomach as he wipes the perspiration from the back of his neck and tries to regulate his breathing. Inside, Mum has moved into Kitty’s bedroom with the carpet cleaner, and she looks up and smiles at him as he passes. He strides through the house, intending to tell Dad, to force the issue, but in the event he finds he’s lost for words. Out in the leaf-dappled warmth of the garden Dad’s sleeping peacefully in his deckchair, his arms draped across his lap, hands hanging loosely against the denim fabric of his shorts, a rare, contented ease lingering at the edges of his mouth. Luke stands in the shade of the willow tree, looking down at his father, and he doesn’t know what to do. What is there to do? It’s already out there. What use is there in him saying anything?

  Defeated, he returns to the hallway and picks up the phone receiver, irritably bobbing his head at Mum, who pushes the bedroom door shut to muffle the noise. He dials Martin’s number and waits. Hollowly, it rings at the other end of the line, competing with the sounds of Mum’s machine bumping up against the bedroom door.

  ‘Answer,’ Luke urges, chewing on a loose corner of thumbnail as the phone at Martin’s end rings on and on. Finally he hangs up. ‘Mum?’ he yells through the closed door, pushing it open and peering round.

  She’s working at a small ink stain in the corner of Kitty’s carpet, feverishly pushing the brush head back and forth over the same spot, her brow furrowed in concentration. She looks up and switches the machine off, running a wrist across her shiny temple. ‘Did you say something, Luke?’

  He can’t tell her. ‘Couldn’t Dad give you a hand with that?’ he asks. ‘It looks like heavy work.’

  She looks around the room distractedly. ‘He only just broke up for the holidays a week ago – the last thing he wants to do is clean the house!’

&nbs
p; Luke chews on his lower lip.

  ‘Is there something else, Luke? You look a bit worried, sweetheart.’

  He blinks hard. ‘Me? No, I’m fine.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yep! What time does Kitty’s party finish? I’ll collect her if you want.’

  Mum picks up a small wicker stool and places it on the bed alongside a mountain of cuddly toys. ‘Actually, I’ve got to get the machine back to Hopkinson’s around the same time, so I’ll pick up Kitty on my way back.’ She gathers up her unruly hair, twirling it round in one easy movement, repinning it in a loose knot. Dropping to her knees, she reaches under the bed and feels around, eventually pulling out a pair of slippers and Marty the elephant. She stops to gaze at the little toy for a moment, before throwing it on to the pile and turning away to restart the machine.

  Next door in his own bedroom, Luke opens all the windows, and closes the curtains so that they flutter and billow in the warm salt breeze, shutting out the endless glare of sunlight and heat. He places Martin’s Young Americans album on the record player and turns the volume high, flopping back against his pillow, to sink deep inside himself. He clutches at his hair, trying to shift his thoughts away from Martin’s reel of film, and thinks about Samantha and Len, about Mark Bolan and David Bowie, about poly and Brighton and London and America; about any place but here. He thinks about Martin and his father and his long-dead mother; he thinks about the swallow that killed her, about the high grass of their garden path and the grief that hides in the shadows beyond their cloudy front windows. And eventually, he sleeps.

  Tom beeps his horn for Luke the following day, to drive them up to the holiday camp for work. It’s mid-morning, and Luke drains his mug, pausing to kiss Mum goodbye as she sits at the kitchen table nursing her cup of tea.

  Last night the phone rang non-stop, the first call coming from Simon Drake, quickly followed by John McKee and a couple of callers Luke didn’t recognise. Dad took all the calls, waving Mum away as she stood beside him in the hallway, making knots of her fingers and avoiding Luke’s questioning gaze. When Mike Michaels came striding in unannounced as darkness started to fall, it took everything in Luke’s power to keep from punching his smarmy face.

  ‘Richard!’ Mike boomed, dropping heavily on to the sofa and waving a cupped hand at mum, by way of requesting a drink. ‘Time for crisis talks, methinks!’

  Mum broke down again and shut herself in her bedroom for the rest of the evening, until she rose this morning, pale and puffy-eyed.

  Now, Luke throws his bag in the back of Tom’s car and slides into the passenger seat.

  ‘Alright, man,’ says Tom. His sun-bleached hair looks as though he’s been hacking at it with a pair of nail scissors, and it stands out in crusty little peaks up and over his head.

  ‘I like your hair,’ says Luke as they pull away. ‘How’d you get it to stick up like that?’

  ‘Hair gel.’ He pats the front carefully with the palm of his hand. ‘So,’ he says, tapping the steering wheel with his thumbs. ‘My lot are in a right two an’ eight. Seems to me there’s a whole load of shit going down in our neighbourhood.’ He winks at Luke with a cluck of his tongue.

  ‘Can we just leave it, Tom?’ Luke replies with a worn out sigh. ‘It’s boring.’ He puffs a short breath between his lips, and turns to look through his passenger window at the streets and houses that whizz by, wondering why no one’s answering the phone at Martin’s house. Last night, in between all the incoming phone calls, he’d tried reaching him again and again, without success. He kept trying, right up until midnight, then once more this morning, but still there was no reply.

  ‘Tom, mate – do us a favour and swing a right here, will you?’

  Tom pulls up at the kerb where Luke indicates.

  ‘I’ve just got to sort something out. Wait here – I’ll only be a couple of minutes.’ He leaves Tom propped up against the bonnet of his car, rolling a cigarette in the sunshine. Luke pushes open the dilapidated gate and navigates his way through the nettles and weeds that wilt and clutter the path to Martin’s house. He stops at the faded paintwork of the front door, where a livid red splash radiates from the central panel. Above the letterbox in dripping red capitals is the word ‘NONCE’.

  The sun hits the dirty front windows directly, making it impossible to see inside, and Luke knocks once with his knuckles, loudly, dropping back from the doorstep to wait. He’s about to knock again when the door opens, and Martin’s long, sallow face peers around the frame.

  Luke frowns hard, holding his palms up.

  ‘I had to call round, Mart. I couldn’t get through on the phone.’

  ‘We’ve had a few nuisance calls,’ Martin replies, keeping his voice low, moving out to stand on the step. ‘We unplugged it in the end.’

  The awkwardness between them is excruciating. ‘Mart, what did your dad say about all that police business the other day?’

  Martin gives an involuntary jerk of his head, a tiny movement that betrays his fear of being overheard by his father. There’s a fading bruise across one side of his face, along his cheekbone and up over his temple.

  ‘Have you reported this?’ Luke points towards the graffiti.

  Martin shrugs. ‘There’s no point. We gave up trying to wash it off after the third time.’

  Luke looks back down the path to check that Tom’s still out of earshot. ‘Listen, man, we need to talk about those photos. One of them has turned up – stuck up in the village hall of all places. It’s Simon Drake – stark bollock naked.’

  Martin stares at him, unblinking.

  ‘Mart? Don’t you get it? If someone’s got pictures of him, they could have some of my folks. It must have come from that reel of film the police took off you.’

  There’s a loud clatter from an overhead branch as a wood pigeon takes flight through the trees. Martin nods his head briefly.

  ‘So? Have you remembered if there are any of Mum and Dad on that film?’ Luke shoves his hands into his shorts pockets, kicking his foot impatiently against the doorstep.

  Martin runs his finger down the length of his nose, his irises moving like clock hands as he retraces his thoughts. ‘Well, the first film, the one I put in my pocket – that was a whole reel of the party. I remember that. Then I loaded a new film and only took a few more on that one before we left. That was the one the police took out of my camera when I got arrested.’

  Luke rolls his eyes. ‘Mate, they didn’t arrest you. They took you in for questioning, that’s all.’

  ‘It felt like I was arrested,’ Martin replies, kicking at the angry patch of red paint that clings to the edge of the doorframe.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Luke. He rubs his hands over his face, pushing his hair back off his eyes. ‘So, mate, have they returned the photographs yet? I mean, they’re still your property, aren’t they?’

  ‘Well, that’s what was funny. PC Paley came round, yesterday.’

  ‘Funny? Why?’

  ‘Because he wanted to apologise, about the photos.’ He nods at Luke, like he should know what he’s on about.

  ‘Apologise for what?’

  ‘For losing the photos.’

  ‘What?’ Luke’s heart pounds in his chest. ‘They’ve lost them? Fuck. Fuck.’

  ‘Well, they don’t actually develop them themselves at the chemist’s – they send them away. And on that day, he said, some of the photographs seem to have got mixed up, and they couldn’t find mine at all. Someone else must have been given them by mistake, he said.’

  There’s a creak as Tom rattles the broken gate at the end of the path. ‘Luke! Come on, man. We don’t wanna be late!’

  Martin looks alarmed; he takes a quick pace back from the doorstep, into the shadows. Luke gives Tom a sharp shake of his head and turns back to Martin, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘Listen, Mart. It’s really important that you remember – were there any pictures of my folks on that film?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t remember.’ He shak
es his head, confused.

  ‘Well, you’d better just let me have that other one, then –’ Luke glares ‘– and I’ll destroy it.’

  Martin turns again to listen back into the house.

  ‘Mart!’

  ‘I can’t,’ Martin whispers. ‘I’ve lost it. Well, I haven’t lost it, but I can’t think where I put it. I know I put it somewhere safe when I got home – but I just can’t remember where.’

  Blood rushes into Luke’s face. ‘Christ, Martin! You’d bloody well better find it.’

  ‘But I don’t know where it is.’ His Adam’s apple shifts like a blockage.

  Tom beeps his horn. Luke leans in, pressing up close to the doorframe, keeping his voice low and controlled. ‘Do you understand the damage this could do, Martin? Stop being such an idiot! I’m fed up of sticking up for you, you know? It’s embarrassing.’

  Martin blinks, and starts to back away. Luke stomps down the path, pausing to look back though the branch-dappled light of the overgrown hedges to where Martin watches, almost hidden behind the remaining crack in the door. He points a finger at him, alarmed by the menace in his own voice. ‘Martin, I’ll keep coming back here until you find it.’

  As he closes the gate and starts to walk away, Martin’s subdued voice trails after him.

  ‘I want my Bowie album back, Luke. Young Americans? I want it back.’

  ‘Not until I get that roll of film,’ Luke replies, and he clicks the gate shut and returns to Tom’s car.

  After work, Luke waits for Tom at the front entrance, so that they can go for a swim before they head back home. He’s felt nauseous all day, lurching between anger and shame as he tried to stop thinking about the way he spoke to Martin earlier.