by Zoe Strachan
Fuck off, Wendy shouted, grabbing a stick from the fire and throwing it at him. Red sparks sprinkled where it hit his jeans – Pepes, I think they were – and Andrew started laughing at him and mimicking his whining until everyone else joined in and Craig couldn’t retaliate without looking like a dick.
I hate him and all, she said in a low voice, gesturing towards Craig with the neck of her bottle before taking another slug.
So do I. He’s such a stupid prick.
I couldn’t believe I’d said it out loud, risked her shouting, oi Craig, Richard says you’re a stupid prick. We both laughed, and I inched my arm behind her, not around her, just touching her back a little, as though making myself comfortable. She didn’t flinch.
The fire died down and it started to get cooler. Wendy was still leaning back, warm and solid against my elbow so that although I had pins and needles in my hand I knew I couldn’t move and break the contact. Finally she shifted, and with a soft, apologetic noise sat upright again. My shoulder, released, stopped aching and I flexed my fingers briskly to get the sensation back. I remember, for a split second, feeling disappointed. I admit it. Wendy reached for the cider bottle and held it upside down, scattering the last droplets over the grass.
None left, she said. I’m going home.
Yeah me too. Want me to walk you along?
It was as if someone else had spoken, but the words had come from my mouth.
Okay.
And although I didn’t recognise what lay ahead as we got up and scrunched across the weed-scattered blaze of the football pitch, I felt as if my path was all mapped out for me. Looking behind me to check that our departure had been noticed, sure enough there was Craig nudging Andrew, and did I hear the word poof float through the night air towards me or was it my imagination? Andrew caught my eye, and I saw him curl his left hand into a fist, move his right index finger in and out. He was smiling rather than laughing at me, as though we were men together and it was us against them.
As we walked along the path by the river Wendy nudged into me a couple of times, until I got the message and reached for her hand. She held mine tight and pulled me towards her, and I knew I was supposed to kiss her but just kind of froze until the next thing I knew her tongue was squirming unpleasantly in my mouth.
Come on, she said, I’ll show you somewhere.
I think she meant to be flirtatious, swinging her hips as she clomped along the path ahead. Even in the dim light I could see her school shoes, thick soled black slip-ons with hefty heels, chafing the backs of her bare ankles. She clambered over the two bar fence then picked her way down under the bridge, where burnt patches and crushed cans and plastic bottles suggested the kind of den I’d have been too scared to use myself. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I followed.
8
Richard propelled his wheelie chair towards the French doors and looked out. A flash of blonde hair caught his eye. Although he’d told her to use the landline, he could see Stephie down on the road, her mobile clamped to her ear. He didn’t know if she had a boyfriend, he realised, as he wheeled himself back to his desk.
Rupe’s leave situation had morphed into an entirely new level, the design for which was taking shape in coloured pen on Richard’s drawing board: field hospital, mess unit, village houses commandeered as billets, café bar, outposts for other Allied forces, brothel. Uncorroborated reports from Neil in the office suggested that the Hamburg studio had gone overboard on the Reeperbahn, with soliciting prostitutes and crazy sailors’ bars galore. That, Richard thought, probably would constitute dilution of his ‘vision’. After months of structuring car chases and drug busts – all featuring walking Miami Vice suits who spouted clichés like ‘Eat lead, motherfucker’ and pneumatic girls designed to drive powerful motorbikes clad only in bikinis – Richard had been striving towards something a little more serious. Arranged on a large pinboard next to the images Solange had created were his original character notes:
OFFICER is brave sometimes to the point of recklessness and he’ll risk his own life to protect his men. The product of public school, he’s patriotic and used to an all-male environment. Potential tensions: if he discovers that one of his infantrymen is in fact an infantrywoman or his sense of superiority rubs his men up the wrong way. He may have problems following orders, characterisation should reflect a free-thinker, with the potential to desert if/when he thinks he knows better than his commanders. Solange – his uniform is tailor-made so he should look more svelte than typical troops: almost, but not quite, dandyish.
How would OFFICER fare in this new environment, created exclusively to give the characters chances to get drunk/start fights amongst themselves and their allies/get laid? Richard began a half-hearted flowchart, starting with BAR and ending in ESCAPE ROUTES FROM MILITARY POLICE. He drew three large question marks after this, and tried to concentrate on plausible options: on foot, in a stolen MP vehicle, on horseback … His eye drifted to his in-tray, and possible sources of distraction. An invite to the ‘wrap party’ for a movie spin-off game DaCapo were about to publish resting on top of a bundle of unpaid bills and other papers. Rupe expected him to go, he knew, and it might be a chance to quiz Neil about what Hamburg was up to. He slid it out and RSVPed by email as directed. Only after he’d hit send did he wonder what he’d do about Stephie, given that the party meant a night in Glasgow.
Now, where the invitation had been, he could see a folded piece of thick white paper; Calum’s letter. Richard supposed he should email, express an interest in his former roommate’s academic life. Reassure him, because he detected from the tone of the letter that a hint of reassurance was needed. Don’t worry Cal, he could say. Water under the bridge. The past is a foreign country and all that. The things we did there were like child’s play.
One day perhaps a game would exist that keyed into the memory of the player, and replayed it in the virtual world. You would be able to teleport within your own mind, go back to school to best the bullies who’d reduced you to ill-concealed tears after every PE class. Special powers of strength and speed would guarantee escape from unpleasantness and danger. One night stands could be rejected at the first approach, the objects of unfulfilled crushes become lifelong loves (or the target of cruel rejections). The dead could come back to life. Until the player became as immersed as a Korean teenager in Lineage and derived sustenance only from a fridge that automatically re-ordered from a computerised warehouse. Because who was to say that real life consisted of that which took place externally, through clumsy action and resonating error.
Sorry it’s taken me so long to write, what with one thing and another …
They’d met on the street, Calum said, sometime before Christmas. Richard pictured the last leaves of autumn turning soggy on the pavement below their feet, the dull cast of the buildings as the town eased into winter, the cries of the birds from the rookery by the church. The murmur of the sea growing more persistent, heralding those few weeks without students and holidaymakers when the wind and the ocean whipped at the rough edges of the town with bleak joy.
He’s completing his degree, living in one of our new postgrad flats I believe, which must be a step up from old Herrick.
A double Luke emerged, like a distortion in a hall of mirrors: sharing with studious, determined postgrads and chatting casually with Calum in the street, one of the same streets Luke and Richard had walked down together. College Street, for instance, where Luke had punched through one of the windows on an old red phone box, then leant bleeding against a wall and said, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll never come to that.’ College Street, where it had come to that, and Luke and his real friends had turned and walked away without looking back once to where Richard was left standing with his parents.
So now Luke had returned – and not just to any university, to that one, where a little wrought iron memorial bench chastened the Philosophy courtyard – and it was no business of Richard’s. He too had gone back into education, done another course, selected
another life. Richard scrunched the letter up in his fist. He wondered why Calum had bothered writing, wished he’d just carried on watching Buffy and breeding and looking for di-quarks or whatever it was he did and forgotten all about it.
There was a bang and Richard felt the vibration of the side door slamming. He looked at his watch. Stephie was late for her G & T, but then again, she’d been on the phone for a good half hour rather than hard at work. Not that he was exemplary on that score. He smoothed Calum’s letter out again, then folded it in half and shoved it and the party invitation into the recycling box on his way through to the kitchen.
‘Hello there,’ Stephie said. ‘How’s it going?’
She was wearing a floral crepe top that looked good with her blonde hair and faded jeans, and didn’t seem to have the demeanour of someone who had just slammed a door behind her. Perhaps it had just caught in the wind.
‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘I’m worried they’re trying to undermine my original concept for this game. Like the blouse, by the way.’
‘Cheers. Primark,’ she said, brandishing two avocadoes at him. ‘I made a five mile round trip earlier to buy these.’ She placed them on the chopping board and selected a knife from his Sabatiers. ‘Anyway, tell me about your concept.’
Richard took glasses and cutlery from the dishwasher and began to set the table. ‘I pitched this game as exciting because of rather than despite its historical accuracy and they were right behind me. They’d had some bad press and here was a game that they could say actually had educational content. I mean, it’ll still be certificate eighteen, but nobody really believes that makes any difference.’
‘What kind of bad press?’ Stephie pushed her fingers into the flesh of a halved avocado and extracted the stone, then began to strip off the skin.
‘A release that was denied a certificate.’
‘Because it was too violent?’
‘Kind of. It wasn’t one of mine, by the way. The Board condemned it on grounds of taste and decency and said that the graphic depiction of mass murder had no redeeming qualities in terms of story, character or morality.’
‘Ouch.’
‘DaCapo argued that the qualities were aesthetic, but they didn’t buy it. And to be honest, it was kind of naïve of them to imagine that Suicide Bomber would hit the top of the Christmas charts so soon after the London bombings.’
‘Ah, I’m beginning to see how historical accuracy might not ring their bells. Let me guess, the point of that game was to blow things up then die.’
Richard nodded. ‘The awful thing is, it was kind of fun to play. You train as a pilot, then coordinate a squad of bombers, but you get to do the most spectacular bombing yourself. So you delegate them to hit trains, buses, airport security queues, all that, then you go for a really major target like the Houses of Parliament – even the Golden Gate Bridge, which was quite an aesthetic choice.’
‘And I guess you’re a Muslim,’ Stephie said, mashing the avocadoes with a fork. ‘Got any chilli left?’
‘Hang on.’ Richard rummaged in the vegetable drawer of the fridge and handed her a gnarled red chilli. ‘No, it was totally equal opportunities. You could also be Far-Right Christian and do abortion clinics and stuff, or an animal rights campaigner, Tamil Tiger … there was even a Tibetan Buddhist option. The graphics were awesome.’
‘Sounds like there was some kind of moral aspect to it then.’
‘Well, not really. You just chose an umbrella cause and blew things up, and as all the characters die so quickly, they’re totally two-dimensional.’
He opened a bag of tortilla chips and ate one.
‘Oy, leave them until this is finished,’ Stephie said, squeezing half a lime in her fist until the juice ran out into the guacamole. ‘But you didn’t work on this suicide game?’
‘No, and I’m not involved in the redevelopment either. They’re inverting the concept so that instead of being the bomber you’re part of an international squad trying to catch terrorists, but that’s always going to be seen as the poor relation of the first game. Rogue copies of which are now collector’s items.’
‘You should stick to your guns – if you’ll excuse the pun – about your historical accuracy.’
Richard smiled. ‘You know what else was kind of cool? They did these amazing scenes of heaven or paradise or wherever you ended up at the end. Trance soundtrack and all these little chirpy birds and butterflies and flowers. Or virgins, depending. But I was less keen on those.’
‘What about the Buddhists?’
‘Reincarnated into a new Lama. Monks come to your village to take you to a big palace amid much jubilation.’
Stephie shook her head and handed him the bowl of guacamole, then walked out onto the porch with her glass and the crisps. Richard followed her, and they sat side by side at the picnic table.
‘It’s still warm,’ Stephie said, getting up and wandering over to the edge of the patio. She lowered herself onto the slabs where a patch of sunshine remained, waving at the Egg Man – as she’d christened John Anderson who kept the hens – as he walked along the road with an escapee flapping under his arm.
‘Fine evening,’ he shouted.
‘Grand,’ Richard called back.
When the Egg Man had gone Stephie looked at him and said, ‘Grand?’
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
After a moment Richard said, ‘Would you be okay on your own here for a night?’
‘Why?’
‘There’s this thing I’m meant to go to, in Glasgow. I’d totally forgotten about it. It’s on Friday night.’
Stephie was looking over towards the islands. Someone was out fishing in a little boat, Richard noticed.
‘A work thing?’
‘Yeah. I mean, if it’s a problem I can make an excuse.’
She shook her head. ‘Nah, it’s all right. I mean, I’ve got to study anyway.’
He picked up her glass and went inside to refill it. The neighbours’ number was written on a piece of paper stuck to the fridge with a magnet; he’d point it out to Stephie. When he went back outside she was standing at the top of the drive, watching a ewe and lamb tilting their heads through the gate to reach a clump of long grass.
‘Cute,’ Stephie said, going for a closer look. Richard sat back down at the table.
‘The things you were asking me yesterday,’ he said, but she had crouched down and was murmuring babytalk at the lamb.
‘The things you were asking me yesterday,’ he said again.
‘Hmm,’ she said, looking round at him.
‘Well, I had this friend, you see.’
‘Hang on,’ Stephie said, scrambling over the grass and back to her sunny patch on the patio. ‘Do you mean a friend or a friend?’
‘Enlighten me on the difference.’
‘Well, was it just a platonic friendship or something else.’
‘Platonic? I suppose it was in a way,’ he said. ‘Or at least I thought it might be.’
‘But this friend was gay, right?’
Stephie took a sip of her wine and adjusted her position to keep her legs in the sun. Richard wondered where she picked up those American inflections, the raised pitch at the end of a sentence, the use of ‘right’ to signify a question to which she presumed the answer was a forgone conclusion. Television, probably.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t gay.’
‘Dad said he was.’
Richard laughed. ‘What does he know? Mind you, scientists haven’t given up on the gay gene yet, have they? Maybe Dad knows more about that kind of thing than he lets on.’
‘Oh don’t be grotesque Richard,’ Stephie said. ‘Not that I mean what you do’s grotesque … well, actually it is kind of grotesque because you’re my brother, but it would be even more grotesque if it was Dad.’ She paused. ‘It’s a family thing, not a gay thing, right?’
‘Hmm,’ Richard said. The fishing boat was coming in now, he saw, the sailor rowing in the
direction of the old jetty. Hard work, he imagined, although the water wasn’t rough. ‘So tell me Dad’s expert opinion then.’
‘You could tell he was queer as soon as look at him.’
‘My god, did he say it in a northern accent as well?’
‘No, I added that for effect,’ Stephie said, getting up and moving back to the table, where she sat alongside him. ‘But he did say queer, which I thought was very modern of him.’
‘I doubt that he meant it in the empowering we’re here, we’re queer sense. Anyway, I thought my … difficulty wasn’t a favoured topic of conversation.’
‘I just overheard him talking to Mum about it.’
‘Nosey.’
‘Yeah, well I felt I’d missed out on all the excitement at the time.’
‘You were too busy. O Grades and boyfriends, if I remember correctly.’
‘Aye, a heady combination. More crisps?’
Richard nodded, and she went inside. A people carrier passed, bicycles strapped to the roof, a small boy pressing his nose against the glass of the back window. Stephie returned with the bowl, losing a couple of tortilla chips on the way.
‘Don’t worry,’ Richard said. ‘It’ll be a change for the birds.’
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘You were telling me about this friend who wasn’t gay. How come I didn’t meet him but Mum and Dad did?’
‘They came up to see me at uni.’
Stephie dipped a chip into the guacamole and crunched it noisily. Richard winced.
‘Oh yeah, so they did. And once while they were away I had folk round to the house and someone burned a hole in the carpet and Jason managed to fall through the back door and smash the glass. The row was apocalyptic.’
‘I don’t remember hearing about that.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear Dad shouting on the other side of the country,’ Stephie said, smiling and shaking her head. ‘Mum grounded me and I had to give them half my wages every week for months to help pay for it. Total nightmare.’