As a small child, Stet, on his very first fishing trip, could remember having caught a fish right away. He had hooked it in the hard palate and had screamed and screamed to have the slimy, scaly thing taken from him. ‘Beginner’s luck,’ his father had said in cheery commendation. ‘Hey, what a big one.’ But for Stet, that fish, so slippery, so twitching, had become the enemy by dint of being the victim. The moment of Stet’s victory had become the moment of his defeat. He had been cheated of the conqueror’s joy.
Now, as he loathed and feared the girl for the alien apparatus into which he had coerced himself, he began, without warning, to throw up.
For Marty and Pongo the spell was broken. Humorously, Marty groaned out his disgust. He thumped Pongo on the shoulder.
‘Urgh,’ he said. ‘The bugger’s puking. Come on!’
When Stet heard the footsteps of his comrades retreating from the churchyard, he knew that he would have to go at once. He could not be there alone with Pam, who was now all the more disgusting for having been the recipient of his malodorous, oral emission. He rose unsteadily, stumbling over her, like a person rising from bed. He wiped his mouth on his bandaged arm and tucked away his penis as he loped along anxiously behind his two friends.
‘Wait for me,’ he called like a plaintive child. It made Marty and Pongo want to tease him. ‘Hold on,’ Stet called. ‘Shit, you guys, wait. I need to pee again.’ In response, the fleeing pair gave out a penetrating wolf call. They were wishing to goad their adventurous but laggard friend with the Werewolf’s menacing proximity. Then, magnanimously, they paused and allowed him to catch up. They were all three of them still drunk enough to think the thing rather a prank.
Pam’s only conscious emotion was relief. Her only thought was not to breathe, not to inhale, not to swallow, until she had wiped the filth from off her face. Stet’s vomit, issuing as it had done, through the rasping, discoloured suck-hole, had loomed so much larger in her mind than the bungle of his entry between her thighs, that she still felt predominantly abused by mouth.
She did not attempt to rise until she heard the sound of the revellers retreating well beyond the boundary of the churchyard. When she heard the Werewolf howl, it was with relief as a measure of their considerable distance from her. Then she sat up and used the hem of her skirt to wipe her face and neck. She dampened sections of hemline with spittle and wiped again and again. All over her shirt front, and beside her on the ground, lay a mess of food clods and enzymes in a foul, beery wetness.
Pam took off her shirt, opening the buttons with difficulty. She took off her camisole. She balled the garments together and tied them in a bundle by the shirt-sleeves. Then she took off her underpants. She used them to wipe between her breasts. Having done so, she buttoned her jacket over her naked torso, shivering as the chill of the lining made contact with her skin. She got up and gathered her things.
Two items still evaded her. The church key had resolutely obscured itself and the torch had disappeared with Stet. But never mind, she thought. She’d find her way to the cottage all right and the key would turn up quickly enough, in the light of Sir Peregrine’s hurricane lamp.
Pam, unlike her sister, had taken on board the ideology of Christian forgiveness. She was infused with its demanding tenets and was formed by its powerful symbolism. She knew that if her enemy took her coat she was to give him her cloak also. She knew that it was not enough merely to love her friend. She was required to love her enemy. The stripped garments and the crown of thorns were a part of her visual baggage. And, right then, a recurring phrase had begun to invade the blank space that her mind had, for the moment, protectively made of itself. Its monotonous, humdrum rhythms beat out the pace of her stride.
‘Marty and Pongo and Stet,’ intoned the phrase, ‘are all part of the body of Christ.’
Once Pam had made it to her singing teacher’s house, she knew that she did not want to see anyone. Most of all, she did not want to speak. Could not. If Lady Vanessa were to come to the door, then no words would come out of her mouth. She would need to bathe and gargle and scrub and soak before her speech would issue forth.
So she could not knock on the cottage door. Instead, she sat down and opened her music bag. In the light of the porch lamp, she took out a pencil and the score of the Purcell Te Deum. On the back of the score, she wrote a message.
‘Dear Vanessa,’ she wrote, and then – as she thought – she went on to explain about the old man asleep in the church and about the oil lamps and the key, which she had regrettably, but only temporarily, mislaid. She signed the letter and pushed the score through the flap. When she heard it fall into the letter-box, she rang the bell and ran off swiftly into the covering darkness.
She paused for a moment, and turned to see that the door was opened and the letter recovered. She saw that Sir Peregrine peered out briefly, holding the score in his hand. Then the door was closed again and, with relief, she went on. Even in the considerable darkness, it took her no more than a few minutes to span the distance between the cottage and the school. Once there, she took a long, hot bath and washed Stet’s vomit from her chest and out of her mouth and out of her hair.
Sir Peregrine, together with his wife, had been lingering over his supper when he heard the sound of the letter-box flap followed by the sound of the bell. He made his way into the hall where he picked up the Purcell Te Deum and noticed that Pam’s writing was on the back of it.
‘Something for you, Vanessa,’ he said, and he handed it to his wife.
Lady Vanessa glanced it over. ‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘It’s from Pam. But it’s really very odd.’ She gave it back to her husband who began to read the letter out loud. ‘ “Dear Vanessa,” ’ he read, ‘ “Marty and Pongo and Stet are all part of the body of Christ. Marty and Pongo and Stet –” ’ He stopped and looked up.
‘She’s written it over and over,’ Lady Vanessa said.
Sir Peregrine sniffed the air twice. Then he put the score to his nose. ‘Pah,’ he said. ‘It stinks, Vanessa. Reeks of stale beer and God knows what. I am, of course, aware that there has been some junketing in the vicinity. Sounds of youthful merriment. Do you suppose – it is possible – that your two young friends have been imbibing?’
Lady Vanessa enjoyed the idea. She smiled at him. ‘Could be,’ she said. ‘Oh, I do hope so. It really is about time that the dear things began to let their hair down.’ Then they washed their supper plates and dried them and listened to the radio news before retiring to bed.
When Jago approached the churchyard he could not believe what he saw. He paused on the verge and trained his eyes with some difficulty upon the figure of Stet. Could it really be that Stet was doing the business, right there, with a female person? There, in the light of the church porch? And that Marty and Pongo were actually standing by and watching? What bloody next! And who, he wondered, was the itinerant tart in question? Where on earth had they picked her up?
Jago found himself in that moment disinclined to intervene. His sense of privacy prevented it and forced him into the uncomfortable role of voyeur. He resented it; found it gross.
Christ, he thought, what made it worse was that Stet appeared to be pumping his stuff through the bloody bandages and all. Oddly enough, it was this small detail that caused him his most fastidious recoil. To be doing it in your clothes, he thought, it was so bloody low; so bloody rank. It was like that oafish gardener in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Forever unbuckling his trouser belt and then buckling it up straight afterwards. With half of himself, Jago wanted not to watch and with the other half he could not stop. He could see the whiteness of the mummy cloth unmistakably in the dull glow. He could also see the whiteness of the woman’s exposed left thigh.
And then, before he could dwell upon the matter, bloody Stet had actually begun to throw up. The sound of his retching was unmistakable. Stet, Jago reckoned, incredulous, must be hurling his vomit right into the poor tart’s face. Christ, but it was the foulest thing. Gross, but to a degree. Ja
go found that his whole body tensed and cringed against the sound of it. And why, in fuck’s name, was Stet behaving like that? Why was he not even trying to lean sideways and chuck the vomit clear?
Then, just like that, the episode was over. Marty and Pongo had gone prancing off and then the trio of drunken ghouls was whooping it up, merry as you please, through the woodland and back towards school. Stet had simply climbed off the woman and left her there, lying on the ground. What the fuck was going on inside his head? Why hadn’t he waited for her? Why had they all just run off like that, like kids playing Postman’s Knock?
Jago, to his own annoyance, found that he was shaking. He was longing for a smoke. A coldness was spreading over the surface of his skin. Could it be – oh, Jesus Christ, please not – that Stet had actually been coercing this wretched female person who had, it seemed, made no sound of protest at being so disgustingly abused? The woman’s silence unnerved him. And Stet – was he completely off his head to be doing such an appalling bloody thing?
At that instant, Jago’s speculations were interrupted by the Werewolf howl. His sense of shock was something akin to an arrow shot through the shoulder. For some moments he felt dizzy.
‘Oh, no,’ he said, though his voice made no sound. ‘Oh, please God, no.’ And he gnawed at a shaking index finger.
Shortly thereafter, Pam sat up and Jago drew in his breath. The sound he made was mingled with the quiet suspiration of surrounding trees. He watched, appalled, as the girl began, carefully, purposefully, to wipe Stet’s vomit from her face. He saw Pam remove her shirt and her camisole. He saw her wipe the gunge from off her chest. He saw her get up and put on her coat and shiver.
Jago, as he watched her, was overcome with wonder. More than that, he was overcome with a wild, extravagant conviction. He was suddenly, completely sure that there, in Pam, in the violated girl, reposed the guardian and stronghold of all his better self. Yet, at the same time, he was quite certain that she had become, through this foul act of Stet’s, unreachable. The groupies were – had been – God damn them, his friends. That very night they had positively been his zombies. He, Jago, was rooted there, hopelessly, within the enemy camp. To approach Pam, even in her hour of greatest need, was altogether unthinkable. Between the topless towers and the enemy encampment; between herself and himself, lay the widest darkest plain. And the plain had become unbridgeable.
For the first time in his life, Jago found himself on the edge of selflessness. He was also very much on the edge of tears. Yet still he held himself back. He would not reveal himself to the girl and risk implication in Stet’s assault. Too much was at stake here and not only with regard to the girl’s response to him.
Jago felt that here could be the end of his reputation; the end of his glittering future. And as he became increasingly transfused with unease at his own unworthiness; his own inability to stride forth and play the rescuing knight, Jago began to focus angrily upon Peter. It was Peter who had let the girl down. Where the fuck was he? He’d been rehearsing with her, had he not? In the church. This church. The one church that had not come to mind. So had Peter simply abandoned her? Had he run off, just like that, when Stet had come breezing along? How pathetic!
All the while, Jago ached with concern for Pam. Beautiful Pam. He wondered, was she all right? He wondered, could she walk? Was she weeping? But Pam seemed to him quite remarkably composed. He saw her gather together her sheet music. He saw her begin to walk the short distance towards her singing teacher’s house.
Jago conceived the idea that he would follow her at a distance. He needed to make sure that she was all right. He saw her stop at the cottage and sit down to write her letter. He saw her post the score and then walk on. He followed until he saw her pass through the small, eastern gate of the school, after which he saw her take the path for the Girls’ House and go in.
Then he turned back and retraced his steps until he was once again in the churchyard. There, by extraordinary good luck – if any luck there was on such a night as this – he almost fell over his clipboard which had been abandoned on the outermost edge of the church lamps’ dull glow of light. He continued his journey until he had reached the lower road. On the verge, in the light of the car-park lamps, he paused to pick up one of the keys to the school gardener’s padlock. Then, having torn up and pocketed the list of bogus patients on the clipboard, he went off to find Christina.
She was not the sister that he longed for. She was not the object of his profound, extraordinary love. But he needed her, then, rather badly. He found that he was fond of her for the first time in his life. He valued her, with the utmost sincerity, for her nearness to the beloved and for the power she possessed, thereby, to anoint his multiple wounds.
Christina was sitting in the window-seat of the pub when Jago finally came back. She had taken off the mask which now lay beside her on the table, along with an empty lemonade bottle and a glass. She was wearing the wheelbarrow chain and padlock like an ornament around her neck.
‘You were ages,’ she said, when Jago appeared. She spoke in sympathy, not in reproach. ‘And did you find your groupies?’
Jago avoided the question. ‘They were pretty quick,’ he said. ‘It was dark.’ He stopped. He saw that Christina was carefully studying his face. ‘God knows,’ he said, and he sat down.
He was looking dreadfully sad, Christina thought. Really sad. Wistful. Alone. She had never before seen Jago look anything like that.
‘They’re not worth it,’ she said. ‘That’s if you want my opinion.’
‘Right,’ Jago said. ‘Quite right. Listen. How keen are you on going to this party? What I mean is, would you really mind if we just gave it a miss? What I mean is –’ He stopped.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Chris,’ Jago said, ‘how would you feel if I offered you a lift back to school in a wheelbarrow?
The Floating Boy and the Falling Star
It was difficult to know who had had the worst time of it, Pam or Peter. Peter had gone that day, before lunch, to visit Roland’s parents – his dear, adopted grandparents whom he knew as Grandfather and Grandmother. He had gone by train and then by bus. After that, as he always did, he had walked the quarter-mile from the little sub-post office, passing a rural intersection where, on this particular occasion, he had happened unexpectedly upon Grandfather who was out walking with Serious Syrius the Star Dog.
Syrius was, as usual, off his lead. Grandfather, who was wont to vouch for his reliability with a most loyal and enduring intransigence, was inclined to walk the dog without putting him on the lead – though this had always been against Grandmother’s better advice. And he was indeed a most excellent, obedient little dog, except that he adored his master’s grandson and had not expected to come upon Peter, so suddenly there, in the wrong place.
Syrius was doubly unlucky that day in that not only had he recently begun to lose his hearing but, in the main, there were very few vehicles passing that way. When one did, at that moment, Syrius was hurled, yelping and twitching, into the air. Then he fell, inanimate, on to the road.
The driver stopped some ten metres away and got out and retraced the distance, as Peter bore the little creature gently to the hedge. Then he turned to make contact with his grandfather.
Peter noticed right away that something unpleasant was happening to Grandfather. All in a moment, the old man grimaced and tried to mouth words. He was clutching at his shoulder and staggering to his knees. Then, almost immediately, he collapsed into the road.
The driver had broken into a run. ‘For God’s sake, boy, leave the dog,’ he yelled. ‘And help me get the man into my car.’
Peter left Serious Syrius lying on the grass verge. Though he felt very foolish in doing so, he struggled, quick as lightning, out of his sweater and threw it over the dog. Then he dashed to where Grandfather was lying.
He sat in the back of the driver’s car with Grandfather’s head in his lap. The driver was possessed of a carphone which had proved m
ost useful for making contact, both with the ambulance service and with Grandmother, who was to meet them at an appointed local hospital. The ambulance driver, who would liaise with them along the way, had already alerted the medical staff.
The afternoon was a most gruelling affair, as he and Grandmother waited anxiously for nurses to bring news of Grandfather’s condition. Roland was summoned, and Gentille too. They drove down as soon as they could manage it. And all the while, as Peter worried for Grandfather and fetched his grandmother plastic cups of tea, he was grieving in duplicate, remembering the little dead dog so precipitously abandoned on the verge.
Grandfather’s heart attack had unfortunately been followed by a stroke, which had taken away his powers of speech and had left him completely paralysed down one side of his body. The decision, as the evening wore on, was that Grandmother and Roland would stay on at the hospital and that Peter would accompany his mother on the arduous drive home to Ellen and Lydia.
It is probable that, had Peter been travelling with Roland, he would have felt quite able to explain his need to return via the intersection where Serious Syrius lay on the verge. As it was, he knew that he could not possibly do so. His mother was not an ‘animal person’. She never would have understood. To have mentioned the dog at all, in the circumstances, would have been perceived by Gentille as a serious affront, both to the old man and to the family’s anxiety
So Peter allowed himself, lamely, to be driven back to school. As he did so, he grieved, not only for the dog; not only for the sick old man, both of whom he loved, but also for himself. He grieved for his own apparent lack of clout; for his reprehensible ineffectuality. He grieved for his weightlessness and for his inclination towards invisibility.
It was only Pam, he reflected gratefully, whose timely, lovely friendship had saved him from floating away altogether; from vanishing into cloud vapour. In the circumstances he yearned for Pam’s company. He was sorry so to have stood her up that evening but, really, it was a very minor transgression in the context. And Pam would certainly understand. Pam was always understanding. And, given that she had not freaked when his feet left the floor without warning, she was hardly likely to freak at a single missed rehearsal. Pam was his dearest friend. Come to think, now that Serious Syrius was dead and Grandfather was fading, she would soon be his only friend.
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