by Zoe Strachan
Somebody forgot to fasten the lock, he said. Keep an eye out, will you?
Okay, I said, my heart beating faster as I turned to face the stretch of grass in front of the castle. I hadn’t realised how elevated it was, what a prime position, green sweeping down to woodland, and in the distance, heavier sky bearing down on the sea.
This might make a wee bit of noise, Luke said, and with another creak, much louder this time, I heard the window shoot up in its frame. He reached under and tried to pull it up further, but it wouldn’t budge.
Can you fit through there?
Maybe. I measured my shoulders against the frame. Yeah, no problem. Those bodybuilding steroids haven’t kicked in yet.
He turned and made a last scan of the grounds behind us. Okay, he said. You first then.
The opening was mid-thigh height on me. I bent down and leaned in the window, fingertips stretching towards the floor. I might have been slim, but I was also clumsy, and very conscious of Luke behind me as I wriggled through. My hands reached the carpet and I half-crawled, half-slid until my legs and feet followed. For a moment I stood looking at him, his face blurred through the dirty glass so that I couldn’t make out his expression. Then he dropped his rucksack through the opening and eased his way after it until he too crumpled into the room. He’d hauled himself upright by the time I held out my hand.
Now what? I asked.
He went over to the door, turned the handle slowly.
It’s locked.
Oh.
But it’s not a mortise, Luke said. In fact – he squinted along the edge of the door – I think someone’s just put a bolt on the other side.
He pushed against the door again.
And, he said, I think you and I might be stronger than their screws.
It wasn’t that easy. Putting our shoulders to the door and shoving was no use, so we had to go outside again, find a narrow piece of wood to slide into the gap behind the bolt, and a half brick to whack it with to force the bolt off the other side of the door.
Is there a law of trespass when you’re inside a building? I asked.
Of course there is, he said. You need some laws, don’t you, or we’d just descend into anarchy.
The door led onto a wide passageway with green glazed tiles from floor up to shoulder height, then whitewash and old metal light fittings above.
Is this below stairs? Luke asked.
I think so, I said.
Funny, I always imagined an understair cupboard, like in my mum’s maisonette.
I looked at him.
Not really, he said. I was just kidding.
From there we tried door handles at random, ducking in and out of unlocked rooms. Most of those on the ground floor were sealed or empty, apart from a kitchen which appeared to have been installed in the 1960s and not cleaned much since. We proceeded along the corridor until we came to a large door, which with some hesitation Luke pushed open.
I give you … the entrance hall, he said.
Here was wood panelling and stained glass, just like I’d imagined for Herrick House, and surging behind it a host of fantasies of weekend parties and shiny leather riding boots, whisky sloshing into crystal tumblers. We crept up the main stairs, stripped of their carpet, then followed a circuitous route through wistful bedrooms where we savoured the pathos of small abandoned items: a bottle of Timotei upended in an en suite bathroom, three cravats rumpled in a cupboard, coat hangers pinched from the Hydros at Crieff and Peebles. As the bedrooms grew smaller they seemed not so many million miles from rooms I’d known, rooms I’d lived in. The ceilings were higher and there were wooden shutters on the windows, but still. Our voices grew louder and we opened doors with less apprehension as gradually we relaxed, playing at being the rightful heirs.
At the end of the passageway we found another staircase, and descended to the first floor, trepidation returning as we ventured onto the dusty parquet of the ballroom. The mirrors above the fireplaces showed rooms within rooms and I caught myself staring deep into the reflection, as if I might catch sight of ladies in fine dresses and the men in sleek suits who’d whirled them across the floor. I pictured a 1930s heyday, the 50s and 60s spent clinging to the past, then a slow decline into final demands from creditors and shutting off rooms.
They sold everything then, I said.
Mmm. Apparently they couldn’t even pay their paper bill, Luke said.
How do you know?
Old Mr Théodas of Théodas & Théodas. Said that when he was a kid he used to bike up here at the crack of dawn every morning to deliver the papers but Lord Whatsit always had some excuse about not settling up. In the end they stopped delivering.
You have been doing your research.
You know me, he said. Enquiring mind.
Or good at charming old men.
Fuck off.
He walked away, out the door, and after a second I followed him, not sure if he was pissed off or just restless and eager to move on. The hallway was dark, except for where a door lay ajar and sunlight poured round it, highlighting a wedge of white paintwork. I went over and pushed it open, entering a drawing room, or at least I suppose that’s what it was. Luke was standing by the window, looking out. In the middle of the floor stood one of the rare pieces of furniture not scavenged by the hungry dealers and souvenir-seekers: a chaise-longue with burst upholstery that oozed horsehair and legs that looked as though they had done many years’ service as Moggy’s favourite scratching posts. A blue ticket, number 574, was Sellotaped to it, and although it was a wreck I was surprised nobody had bought it to restore and sell on. Luke walked away from the window and threw himself down on it, stretching out his legs.
They got The Sun, apparently, he said, which I took as a peace offering.
Bill can’t have added up to much then, I said. But I guess rich people are mean.
Yeah, how else would they stay rich? Luke said.
I prodded the chaise with the toe of my trainer, finding the stuffing slightly distasteful close up.
Comfy? I asked.
Not so bad. Look in my rucksack. I’ve got a surprise.
It wasn’t that much of a surprise, given our student-wastrel lifestyle, but it was welcome: a bottle of cheap whisky and two chipped glasses he must have whipped from the kitchen when I wasn’t looking.
Do you think we’re okay here? I said, breaking the seal on the bottle and dispensing healthy measures.
Okay?
Safe, I mean.
Who’s going to disturb us, he said. They’re meant to be converting it into a hotel or something but I don’t reckon they’re going to start work this afternoon, do you?
Cheers then, I said.
Slàinte.
He reached for the bottle and refilled the tumblers which we’d both knocked back in a one-er, then tilted his glass in the light, sweeping amber refractions back and forth across his thigh. The skin around his nails was ragged, I noticed, as though he’d been picking at it. After a while he said,
Tell me something about yourself, Richard.
What kind of thing?
Anything. Something from your past.
I rolled my glass between my palms, trying to think of a story that would paint me, its main character, in a more impressive light.
Okay, he said. Tell me something about where you come from. Your teenage years. The worst thing you’ve ever done. Whatever.
Truth or dare?
Something like that, yeah.
I don’t know if I was trying to show off when I told him about Wendy, whether I thought it would make him respect me more or just make him laugh. But that was the first of a meagre handful of autumn afternoons spent in that corner drawing room, taking turns to sit on the floor or sprawl on the rackety, broken-down chaise-longue. In the end I found plenty to say, and eventually he told me a thing or two as well.
7
Stephie’s settling in fine, Richard said when he emailed their mother. Since his sister’s arrival he’d found him
self caught up in a gradual process of colonisation. Cosmetics sprouted around the bathroom, citrus and bergamot drifted through the house as she bathed or showered. Unfamiliar music blared from the iPod dock in her bedroom. Her bedroom, not the spare room; after only three days it had acquired a new name. Richard chose his words carefully: She seems to be getting on well with her work. The promised study schedule was Blu-tacked to the wall in the kitchen, and small piles of notes and books migrated around the room, according to whether she was reading on the couch, note-taking at the table, or sitting on the porch and gazing into space, stirring only when her mobile quivered with an incoming text message. As if to convince himself that she really was working, Richard wandered through to the kitchen.
‘Want a coffee?’ he said.
‘Oh god, I didn’t hear you come in. You gave me a fright,’ she said. He saw her slip her phone to one side. ‘Yeah, coffee would be great, thanks.’
‘So how’s it going?’
She leafed through an A4 jotter as though it was a flick book. Richard was relieved to see it filled with her sloping handwriting, flashing into bullet points and formulae as she skimmed through the pages.
‘Okay, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Boring.’
He nodded. ‘I know the feeling.’
‘I thought your work was fun. I mean, you get to play, don’t you.’
He waited until the kettle had gone off the boil then moistened the coffee in the filter. ‘Sometimes. But there’s screeds of code to get through first, and that’s where I’m at just now.’
‘Well, I’m still willing to bet it’s better than endless fucking statistics.’
‘Perhaps it is. But it’ll all be worth it one day, when you’re qualified and practising.’
‘Working in the Vodafone call centre more like. You’ve got to do a postgrad to practise – at a proper university, not a glorified college – and I’ve already had one false start.’
‘Sugar?’ Richard asked. ‘Good for the brain cells.’
‘No thanks.’
He brought her coffee over to the porch table and set it down beside her. Her phone vibrated, rattling against the painted tabletop, but she ignored it.
‘You were right to leave nursing though,’ Richard said. ‘If you didn’t want to do it.’
‘Don’t suppose there are any biscuits left,’ Stephie said.
Richard went back to the kitchen, opened the cupboard and shook the tin.
‘You’re in luck. Last one. Here, catch.’
He threw a Caramel Wafer over to her.
‘Ta,’ she said, placing it carefully beside her notebook. ‘Dad went mental, you know.’
He stood at the door, sipped at his coffee but it was still too hot. ‘Yes. Mum said they were … disappointed.’
‘Every bloody day, I’m not kidding, Margaret’s daughter does bank shifts in the private hospital, Margaret’s daughter’s just back from Sharm el-Sheikh . . it’s like Mum’s totally fixated on money.’
‘Old habits die hard. Dad was lucky to get another job after they closed the pit.’
Stephie blew on the surface of her coffee. ‘Just as well. Imagine you going down it. Muddying up your fancy Japanese trainers.’
‘Who knows, might have made a man of me.’
‘Well, the bottom line is that nursing was a waste of two years. And now I’m still living with them and I can’t for the life of me figure out if this course is going to get me anywhere.’
‘Psychology sounds great though. Really interesting.’
‘Don’t patronise me Richard. Just because you got away.’
She grabbed a textbook and skimmed through the contents, then selected a chapter and pointedly started to read. Who invited you here, Richard wanted to say, who said you could barge in to my life with your moods and your outbursts? But instead he closed the door quietly behind him, and went back to his study. He could have said no, he supposed. Claimed he was too busy for Stephie to visit.
Rupe, he wrote, without preamble. When I said we shouldn’t sanitise the trench scenes, I didn’t mean we should turn it into a George A. Romero movie. Are the rats mutants? They’re larger than some of the soldiers. And has Solange even seen a picture of a bayonet? Some of the infantrymen are ‘packing’ what appear to be AK-47s …
He heard a knock at the door and minimised the email window.
‘Yes?’
The door creaked open and Stephie peered in.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘You have the last biscuit. I don’t want it after all.’
‘Thanks,’ Richard said. As she turned to go he called, ‘Stephie …’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said and then, pointing at his pinboard, ‘What’s that?’
‘A histogram.’
‘Oh right,’ Stephie said. ‘But what’s it a histogram of?’
‘It’s for one of the levels in the game. Trenches on both sides, Allied and German, No Man’s Land in the middle. The gloomy colours on the left hand image indicate poor visibility and an emphasis on stealth manoeuvres, all the red and yellow on the right is meant to show how the look and tactics change if a firefight ensues.’
‘Cool. So, gin at six thirty again?’
‘Great,’ he said, as she closed the door behind her.
He leafed through the designs again. The avatars themselves were shaping up reasonably well, he had to admit. Solange had taken his notes about uniform on board. Although Rupe was allowing him enhanced character input he still wasn’t allowed to name anyone and so had to make do with titles: OFFICER, INFANTRY, COLONIAL, WOMAN. WOMAN’s disguise wasn’t really going to fool anyone, he reckoned, but never mind. And ever since she’d done the drug dealers in Favelados Solange had exhibited rather a tendency to inflate the muscles of black characters to farcical proportions. COLONIAL was meant to be a white-collar man fighting for his motherland. Richard looked at OFFICER again. A slimmer, more subtle uniform, clean shaven rather than stubbly. For once, the art department had broken free of the stereotypical Serb look that had dominated Caucasian characters since Niko Bellic. OFFICER was approaching the young Jeremy Irons that Richard had pictured. He deleted the email he had written and started again.
Hi Rupe. I love what Solange has done with the characters! Fantastic, absolutely spot on. Just a couple of minor concerns about the trench scene …
After firing off a revised email rich in subtext, he stretched until his shoulders clicked and walked over to the French doors, throwing them open to a blast of air which, while fresh, wasn’t enough to blow away the knowledge that Luke might also be listening to the harsh cries of gulls as he looked out over the sea. To the east rather than westward, back in the university town from which he’d walked away so lightly first time around.
0
Tell me a story. Truth or dare. So I unravelled my memories and found Luke a story, something about back home, about me. And even if I changed the slant to conceal some of my more fragile feelings, what I offered him was true.
Come along, I’d been told. Bring a carry out. Of course they didn’t want me there enough to press the point, we were not going to meet up and go to the offy together, hatching plots about where to hide our cache of cider and vodka and blackcurrant cordial; nothing like that. So few of us were left in Fifth Year that it was hardly worth the bother of excluding anyone apart from the folk that had to go to the Unit at lunchtime. So I jumped at the chance and went to the swing park by the river that night, never guessing how it would end up.
I walked down the cracked tarmac path where I sometimes brought Jojo before school, the path along which my mother and I used to take him at dusk before I got frantic that anyone would see us out together. There was something odd about blurring the boundaries, an implication of sullying a place of innocent activity with something else, something darker. A sweet smell filled the air, from some plant or tree I couldn’t name. As I tried not to stumble in the potholes I entertained fantasies, of them laughing at my jokes (what jokes?), slapping me on the back
like an old pal, accepting me. Liking me. These idle imaginings soon gave way to something akin to terror as I saw the group, felt the smoke from the fire in my nostrils, heard their laughter drifting towards me. Laughter which made me shrivel inside though who knows if it was directed my way or not. About fifteen of them were gathered in a loose circle: Andrew and Craig already loud and drunk on cheap lager (though what we considered drunk then wouldn’t hold a candle to drunk later in life); Aileen and Greg all smug and smoochy, their relationship acknowledged as adult and enviable; a click of girls, whispery and close; Wendy near the fire as if she was cold.
I had no ulterior motive in sitting next to her. She was moody, sure, but there was a gap and it seemed simpler than trying to infiltrate one of the tighter little knots. Besides, we were acquaintances, we’d spoken a few times in Seccy the year before. You had to do secretarial studies or tech, and I’d been off sick so tech was full. I would have got a slagging for it, but luckily Gary Simpson was in the same boat having been suspended, and he wasn’t hearing a word against the manliness of learning to touch type. I offered Wendy some of the cider I’d brought and she nodded, gulping it from the bottle in a practised way.
What’ve you been up to? I asked.
Nothing much.
Yeah, same here. Exams coming.
I’m going to fail.
You don’t know that.
Yeah I do, she said, fixing her gaze on the fire. ‘Specially my fucking English re-sit. Want some Mad Dog?
I swigged from the pink bottle she offered me, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth afterwards to hide my grimace.
How come?
She shrugged, but after finally spluttering out one sentence about hating her teacher she became verbose, as if she wasn’t used to anyone listening. Then equally suddenly she turned snappy, like she was annoyed at her own weakness. I moved on to safer subjects, if whatever song it was would stay at number one, had she heard about Mr Blackie’s nervous breakdown. Just as she was becoming animated again there was a shout from Craig, about whether someone I hadn’t heard of had managed to get the cock up her. The phrase sent embarrassment shooting from my stomach through my chest.