by Zoe Strachan
Excuse me, he said as we squeezed past him.
Yes? Luke said.
Are these my feet?
Oh my god, I whispered.
Yes, I think they are, Luke said, quite kindly.
Very good, the boy said and then, waving his hand in dismissal, Thanks.
His head slumped back against the green-painted wall of the entry and we continued up the stairs. Luke reached out to bang on the door of the party flat – which bore a brass nameplate engraved ‘Cowley, Farquarson and Green’ – but it opened at the first impact of his fist and we pushed our way through a hall sweaty with people into the kitchen, where we scraped together two mugs and some sticky lemonade to dignify our vodka.
What next, I wondered, lurking by the microwave while Luke went to the bathroom. My shyness was like a badge, an indication of something off-putting, or worse, infectious. At least I had his drink to hold, to prove I wasn’t alone. Hoots and shrieks emanated from the front room, the source of the flashing disco lights we’d seen from the street. I deduced that dancing had already started. Resisting the urge to smile like a loon at the pairs and trios hovering at the table or standing guard by the fridge, I convinced myself that standoffish was in. And it’s true, friendliness was not the done thing at all. No one introduced themselves, people stood and stared and chatted to their friends … but perhaps I’ve given myself away: there was nobody there that I could call an acquaintance, never mind a friend. My invitation had come courtesy of Luke, via somebody in his literature class. I didn’t want him to come back and think that I wasn’t worth taking anywhere because I had nothing to say for myself. Spotting a girl struggling to open a bottle of wine with a waiter’s friend, I offered to help and attempted some casual chitchat to render myself less conspicuous. After ascertaining that she was studying History of Art and living in halls, I asked where she was from.
My parents live in Chichester, she said, playing along nicely. But actually my mother has family in Scotland.
Oh yes?
They live in Perthshire. Is that posh? I’ve heard it’s posh.
Well, I said, I suppose some of it is.
How funny! She grimaced, as though the existence of a familial bond with posh people strained her credulity, then said, I’m Katie, by the way.
Hello Katie by the way, Luke said, suddenly appearing at our side. I’m Luke. And I guess you’ve met my friend Richard already.
Hi … she said, smiling more at him than at me, but then one of her friends came by and tugged Katie by her glossy pigtails into the front room to dance to some Britpop anthem. We followed them through and I stood beside Luke as he leant against the doorjamb, watching as she twirled, her strappy cheesecloth smock top billowing around her. Pristine white except for an edging of mirrored beads and embroidery, it whispered rather than shouted her desire to be seen as bohemian.
So, he said, his lips close to my ear. What do you think?
I’m not really qualified to say, I replied, scanning the beery boys in their drab t-shirts for a tell-tale flash of auburn hair.
You could venture an opinion.
She’s all right, I said. If you like that sort of thing.
Hmm, he said. Maybe I do.
I’d hesitate to say that I had an idea of perfect womanhood, but I made easy aesthetic judgements all the time. Didn’t think much of the snobby blondes in their jeans and ankle boots, appreciated the effort of bird of paradise hair and the flicker of heavy lashes. And I just didn’t see the appeal of this insipid in-between. Hazy memories of the first night that Luke and I had been out together swirled through my mind, conversations coming back to me as I climbed towards a similar level of drunkenness. Boys, I’d said when he asked what seemed such a mature, daring question. I prefer boys.
That’s a very … delicate way of putting it.
His eyes had been smiling, and he kept his gaze wrapped around mine for long enough that I hadn’t been sure if he was flirting or not. Until he laughed and said,
Well. I prefer girls.
Now, still watching Katie, Luke edged round the dancers towards a couch by the window where there was space for us both to sit. More so when the sole occupant sprang to his feet and enveloped his friend in a laddish sing along to the Happy Mondays.
Mad for it indeed, I commented, as Luke reached out to a shelved recess beside us and withdrew a medical textbook. He extracted papers from his cigarette packet then dug deeper in his pocket until he found a large lump of sticky resin. As he began to skin up a little ripple of curiosity seemed to traverse the room.
Would it be awfy cynical of me to think that this is the party trick I was invited to perform, he said.
Shocking imputation on our hosts, I said. Whoever the fuck they are.
Oh well, he said, first one’s just for us I think.
He wasn’t a stoner, not really, though since I’d been hanging around with him I’d got a lot more into that kind of thing, liking the masculine chumminess it lent to our evenings, the rambling discourses it provoked. By the time we were finished the second joint I found myself looking at all the boys and girls, their faces drifting past the coloured bulbs and pulse-programmed fairy lights that decorated that bay-windowed room, wondering if you distinguish those who were merely playing and those whose dissolution had struck some deeper seam. I must have wondered this aloud, because Luke was scrutinising their faces too.
The shadows on their skin, he said.
Yes, I agreed. The expression in their eyes.
Something, he said. Some tiny clue that says …
I shrugged. I don’t know … I’m real, I suppose. I feel things.
I think real thoughts, he said. They keep me awake at night.
It wasn’t much, but it seemed to me like a connection. Something as valid as the lines we were searching for on the faces of our smooth-skinned contemporaries.
I wonder, he was saying, if Katie there has had many sleepless nights?
He smiled towards her and held out another joint. She was over in a flash, settling herself beside us and chattering away about her boyfriend who’d gone to Durham and how surprisingly rough it was there, and they usually saw each other every fortnight but this weekend was his best friend’s birthday, and anyway she couldn’t miss Sara’s party, now could she?
Is she Cowley, Farquarson or Green? Luke asked.
Katie laughed and said, Green! – as though astonished that we weren’t already familiar with Sara – We’ve been bessie mates since we were about five years old or something. I mean, I just couldn’t not come, could I? Even though it means not seeing Adam for absolutely ages.
At first I didn’t recognise this elaborate abdication of responsibility for what it was. By now, most of those so-called serious relationships that had seemed the sine qua non of school society were faltering, prey to handsome strangers and one last drink and the light touch of a hand on a tender, ticklish thigh.
Did you know that Richard? Luke said.
What? I’m sorry, I was miles away.
Yeah, good stuff, isn’t it?
I nodded and he laughed, patting my shoulder as though I was a child who’d just done something silly and endearing.
Katie was just telling me that we have royalty in our midst.
I looked at the people dancing. Well, I said, I’m sure some of those moves wouldn’t be out of place in Annabel’s.
You been reading the Daily Mail again Richard? Go on Katie, tell Richard what you told me.
She leaned forward so that she had to lean against Luke’s arm and said, You know Guy from Philosophy?
Not to speak to, no.
Oh really? He’s sooo nice. Well, he was telling Sara that he’s actually like, in line to the throne. Isn’t that hilarious?
Mmm, I said.
His family have a massive house in London and an estate in Oxfordshire. Absolutely pots of cash, according to Sara. And don’t say anything, promise?
We nodded.
Okay, well I think she’s
totally hoping he’ll ask her out.
When you say in line to the throne, I said, how far down the line is he?
Yah, well obviously he’s never going to be like, king or anything. Well, not unless there’s some freak accident.
Luke laughed. We can live in hope …
Yes, I said. The French had it right, didn’t they?
Mind that old Billy Connolly gag about Sawney Bean: in Scotland we don’t steal from the rich and give to the poor, we steal from the rich and then eat them? It’d be nice if we could redistribute a little of Guy’s wealth.
Or eat him, I said before I realised how it sounded. Luke gave me a nudge in the ribs but Katie didn’t seem to notice that my face had turned scarlet.
Well I wouldn’t recommend it, she said. Because he’s been given the personal phone number for the Chief Constable of the area.
Luke pulled an incredulous face. Did he really tell Sara that?
Guides’ honour, she said, muddling her attempt at a salute. He was joking that if any lecturers gave him bad grades he could get them arrested for drunk driving or something.
What a dick, Luke said. Another drink anyone?
We both nodded and handed him our glasses.
So, does he have a girlfriend then? Katie said, watching as he wove his way in between the dancers and towards the door.
Not that I know of, I said, noticing the way his shoulder blades moved under the fine material of his shirt.
When Luke returned, I watched as Katie gradually got drunker and looser and louder. I wasn’t sure what the form was; when to go away and leave them to it, whether to rescue him from her clumsy advances. Perhaps I was underestimating him, how capable he was of laughing in someone’s face.
And so I sat there, with not even a glimpse of my pretty lit student to distract me, while Katie nestled up against Luke, all giggles and flicks of her pigtails, absurdly obvious brushes of her chest against his arm. He leant over and whispered to me, Is Calum here this weekend?
Yes, I said. Why?
Just wondered. So’s bloody Max. Never mind. I’ll take her to the beach. She’ll think it’s romantic.
I thought of my teenage encounter with Wendy, of other things too, and tried to imagine what it must be like to be so confident in your actions, so ready to take charge. He was going to have sex with her, I was sure, and I couldn’t help being jealous. A single slavering snog with a bi-curious show-off in the Union one night, that had been my lot. At this rate I’d end up hanging around the golf course, risking being branded a toilet trader. But now here Luke was, and there Katie was, and I was still sitting there like a spare prick. I got up to leave, she melted into his arms. As I turned to wave goodnight to him, he looked over her shoulder at me and smiled as if to say: look what I can do.
5
Distance and the bevelled glass of the French door made the lights over on the island look as if they were flickering, generated by candles rather than an undersea cable and the wind turbine up by the holiday chalets. There were lights too on the fish pens in the bay, faint green ones that would have invited a far more romantic interpretation if it wasn’t for their regular positioning. Stars of the sea, perhaps, or the jewel-like eyes of Sirens. Richard drew the curtain, wondering if even in the dark the salmon heaved into the air, snapping their bodies like whips to shake the lice from their scales.
He sat in his office chair, fingering the envelope Stephie had given him and wishing he kept whisky in his desk drawer, like some film noir hack. Manila, foolscap, something more than just a sheet of paper inside. Almost certainly another appeal, he told himself, despite that handwritten address. The more personal touch; like when that ever-so-friendly-and-charming arts student had telephoned him – his parents having passed on his new number – to conduct a survey on career paths post-graduation. He’d had to admit that he didn’t graduate, or did diplomas from other colleges count? Oh well, the student had said blithely, I shan’t send you out a card saying how lovely it was to speak to you and could you possibly consider making a small contribution to the library appeal. And Richard had laughed, and said that the library was not his most vivid memory of his student years, realising that he was flirting not with the boy on the telephone but with his past self.
What was it Stephie had asked earlier? Whether he ever wished his brain was more like a computer.
‘What,’ he’d said. ‘So I didn’t always forget what I went upstairs to get?’
‘No, that the inside of your head was actually laid out like a computer.’
‘That would certainly be more logical, Mr Spock.’
‘God, you’re just wilfully misunderstanding me,’ Stephie had paused for a gulp of wine. ‘What I mean is, imagine how great it would be if you could look inside your head and see all the files stored there, and just delete all the stuff that clutters things up. Then once a month or whatever you could empty the recycle bin and they’d be gone. All the crappy memories that you can’t quite shake would disappear forever.’
‘Nice idea,’ Richard had agreed. ‘But there’s always a trace. You might think you’ve deleted a file, but there’s still a shade of it there. Someone could delve in and retrieve it.’
Now he adjusted his Anglepoise, straightened the postcards pinned to his shelf of software reference books, thrust his scattered pens and pencils back into their jam jar. Nestling beside them he found the brass letter opener he’d been obliged to purchase from the village hall car boot sale, at which he’d earned both kudos and notoriety by donating the entire Grand Theft Auto back catalogue plus various other freebies. The old dears manning the stalls were delighted by his generosity, the mothers of the local primary sevens somewhat less so. Richard picked up the letter opener, smoothed its blade with his index finger and used it to slit the seal of the envelope, then probed with his fingers, withdrawing another envelope, white this time, and an abrupt letter from some jobsworth in Alumni Relations explaining that they had forwarded the communication on this occasion only and could not handle any response. Richard wondered about his own response, if he himself would be able to handle it, with or without the aid of p.p. Andrew McMasters.
He couldn’t go back to the kitchen to get a whisky without offering it to Stephie as well, without stopping to chat. And then she might notice his agitation, initiate one of those threatened conversations. All of a sudden he remembered the goodie bag from the last industry conference, that it had contained a miniature of Johnnie Walker Black Label. ‘For the Japanese,’ Rupe had said, knowingly, but to Richard it was something his father used to drink at Christmas and Hogmanay, a bottle brought out to celebrate family events or football wins, occasions to which Richard felt he had never made a satisfactory contribution. No girlfriend to introduce to his aunties, no manly whoops at Ayr’s derby victory. As far as Richard knew the bottle was still in the lurid free laptop bag along with a copy of a book about the Second Life phenomenon that he supposed he should read one day – ‘Games within games,’ was Rupe’s comment on that, delivered with a suggestive nod, as if Richard should already be on the case. A bit late to be proud now, he decided, retrieving the bag from the cupboard. Holding the tiny bottle in his hand, he looked for the first time at the envelope that had been forwarded to him.
He didn’t waste time deciding if the handwriting in which his name was scrawled was familiar or not, just ripped the envelope open without the aid of the letter opener, his eyes flicking to the signature before he read anything else.
With best wishes, Calum.
Richard exhaled, telling himself how relieved he was whilst knowing full well that the twinge in his chest was disappointment. Odd that he’d been searching the internet for Calum so recently, but it was habit rather than premonition. Something slightly shameful, like Richard’s ghost presence on Friends Reunited, a site he occasionally scanned so as to rank himself amid the successes and failures of those who’d been his peers at school, his gaze filtered through the layers of cyberspace. Calum had searched the int
ernet for him too, it seemed, hoping for an easy email address that hadn’t been forthcoming.
… wasn’t sure if it was the right Richard. If so, it sounds like you’ve made an interesting career for yourself. As you can see from the headed paper, I never managed to leave uni, for my sins! Anyway, my excuse for getting in touch after so long is that …
The whisky was sitting uneasily with the wine Richard had drunk at dinner, and it seemed to him as if the letter comprised of fragments, each one carrying with it a sharply palpable memory: the glow of sunlight on grey stone, the iodine tang of seaweed after a storm, velvet mornings in sweat-stale rooms when his waking thought was an elated, what now?
… and I had always meant to drop you a line …
Richard felt his eyes swimming. He’d skimmed the letter too quickly, forgotten what had come before.
… he asked particularly to be remembered to you …
The fragments of memory coalesced into one clear moment, a scene that felt as vivid while Richard replayed it as if it had happened only that morning. Luke had put his hand on Richard’s forearm, clasped it tightly and said, ‘When I feel hollow, I’d do anything to fill the space inside me. Anything.’ And Richard had nodded, the words appealing to his taste for melodrama, making him wish he’d thought to say them first. At the time the sentiment felt as much as though it belonged to him as it did to Luke, and only now could Richard pick away the artifice and taste the kernel of truth. He had buried it deep, ignored it, but that sense of emptiness had never really gone away.
0
We kept walking, Luke and I, along the back road out of town and right past the Haste ye Back! sign under which someone had scrawled in Magic Marker: Not fucking likely. It was late in the autumn, grey and breezy, the sun unwilling to commit to sweeping the clouds aside, but it felt good to be outdoors and heading away from the town; an antidote to the surfeit of late nights and new acquaintances. I watched as a tractor chugged slowly across a dark brown field, a flurry of birds squabbling in its wake. The landscape wasn’t so different from home, but without Jojo the dog to drag me along, it soon felt like we’d been walking for ages.