by Zoe Strachan
Luke returned with my pint of cider, and tried to distract me from my financial worries with tales of minor scams and shoplifting sprees, pals who pinched money from their mother’s purse when she came home drunk. He was lucky, he said; his mum had given him a bung now and then, one of the perks of not having a dad.
My parents were big on me learning to work, I said. As if I hadn’t been sitting there studying for all those exams for years.
What did you do? Luke asked.
You’re going to love this, I said, remembering how I’d felt when I’d discovered that my dad had finally taken matters into his own hands.
Tell Richard the good news then, Mum had said one evening as we sat down to our tea. She’d seemed particularly twittery when I was helping her carry the plates through so I should’ve known something was up, but my interest in whatever good news I was about to hear was commensurate with the interest a sixteen year old boy shows in anything his parents say. I continued picking the fat off my lamb chops, until my dad puffed himself up and announced:
I’ve got you a job. You start on Saturday. Nine sharp.
Isn’t that great, my mum said, twittering again. Aren’t you going to thank your dad?
I don’t know what I’m going to be doing yet, I said. With suitable foreboding, the theme for the six o’clock news blared from the television.
It doesn’t matter what you’re going to be doing, Dad said. What matters is you’ve got a job.
But how will Richard know where to go to work if you don’t tell him?
Good girl Steph, I thought to myself, you tell them.
In a minute, my dad said, and recognising the prompt I said thank you, prodding a disc of carrot with my fork and hoping that whatever the job was, it would pay enough for me to go to the record shop in Ayr and buy the kind of band T-shirt I usually only managed after a particularly remunerative birthday or Christmas.
So what is it I’m going to be doing? I asked.
Mowing grass, weeding, raking gravel, a bit of planting or pruning maybe.
It’ll be good for you Richard, my mum said. You spend too much time cooped up in your room.
Yeah, I thought, that’s because we live in the shitiest town in the world and there’s fuck all else to do. Being cooped up in my room meant reading, enamelling my Warhammer figurines, furtively contemplating the Hunks of the Week I’d liberated from Stephanie’s discarded teen mags.
And what’s more, Dad said, it’s council wages.
That’s more than they get in the Co-op, Mum said. And I know because I met Vivienne McHarg the other day and she was saying …
I nodded, my mind turning to Joey Connelly from the Catholic school, all round cool kid and seasonal attendant in the stoner’s paradise of the pitch and putt hut in the municipal park. He did all right out of a council job, didn’t he? So he supplemented his wages by selling ready rolled joints to younger kids, but he was a responsible enough employee to insist that they paid for a game of pitch and putt first. My mind raced as I navigated a mental map of the town, trying to figure out where I might be posted. It had to be the park. Where else was there?
You know Mr Walls that plays cornet in the band?
I nodded, still envisaging what being colleagues with Joey Connelly would do for my street cred. Then I stopped nodding.
Mr Walls that works in the cemetery? I said.
Exactly, my dad said, triumphant.
Mr Walls the gravedigger, I said.
Don’t worry, Mum said. You won’t have to dig graves, will he Kenneth?
My dad told her not to be stupid, but nevertheless, I lay awake in my bed that night, turning the combined mileage of poof and gravedigger, grave robber, ghoul over and over in my mind. It could run and run. Small comfort in the fact that necrophiliac was probably too big a word for Andrew Gemmell and his snide little cronies. I couldn’t wait until I left school. Until then though, I was going to have to find a way of living with being the grave digging poof.
The next Saturday I scuffed my feet all the way to the cemetery but still arrived at the gate at nine o’clock sharp, if not brimming over with enthusiasm then at least possessed of a deep awareness that any reticence on my part would be reported back to my dad at the next meeting of the social club brass band. Of course I wasn’t going to be a gravedigger, that was Mr Walls’s responsibility and he shouldered it with a kind of sombre pride, even when he was using the mechanical digger. My first task was mulching manure into the rose beds, which was every bit as strenuous and smelly as I could have imagined, had I ever imagined myself doing any physical labour that involved shovelling shit. The only thing that kept me going was toting up my hourly wage and the prospect of countering my dad’s assertion that I’d ‘never done a hand’s turn’. My mum had put the water on so I could have a bath when I got home, but even so, the next day I was aching all over. But at least nobody from school had seen me.
The next week was better. My lying time was almost up and the record shop in Ayr was exerting its call. I caught myself enjoying clipping the long grass from around the headstones; it gave me a chance to read what they said, to scout for familiar names and ones that seemed more exotic than any I’d heard in the present day town. Not that it was much of a cemetery, no memento moris, nothing going back much further than the industrial revolution. By the time I volunteered to go up a ladder and scrub the bird shit from the Celtic cross, old Mr Walls was entirely won over, anticipating spending less time supervising and more inside his cottage drinking tea and watching the racing.
When the weather got warmer the far right hand corner of the cemetery became a sheltered little suntrap where I’d sit and eat my packed lunch, watching a pair of chaffinches carrying morsels to their chirruping nest deep inside the clematis that shrouded a trellis arch over one of the headstones. I’d repainted the bench myself, thick brushstroke after thick brushstroke.
Bugger that for a game of soldiers, Mr Walls said when I asked if I should strip it first. You’ll have every wee tyke for miles in here if you bring out the solvent or the burner. Just sand it down a bit and slap fresh stuff on.
Although I didn’t tell Luke the whole story, sitting there in the student union, nursing my pint of cider and worrying about money, the images flashed through my mind. How the paint had formed hot and comforting blisters as I lazed there during that last summer, before I left the town behind me for good.
12
Waking in the morning after a bottle and a half of wine, with his muscles still aching from the drive and the run, Richard had a numb pain in his head and throbbing sinuses. He could hear Stephie mumbling something on the landing, as she and Loren crossed paths outside the bathroom, and he remembered Stephie turning down the music on her iPod when he’d walked into the kitchen the night before, the way he’d felt like somebody dressed for a wedding who’s ill-advisedly gone on to a nightclub. And then opening more wine as Stephie apologised and said the chicken would be ready in just another ten minutes, and then another. He wouldn’t have cared about food when he was her age.
‘Richard,’ he heard her say at the door. ‘Are you awake?’
I am now, he thought, swinging his legs out the bed and going to see what she wanted.
‘Morning,’ Stephie said, looking brighter than he felt she had any right to, given that when he’d retired the cork was popping from yet another bottle of wine. ‘Bit rough, are we?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, wondering how long Loren would take in the shower.
‘Ha, I’ve never seen you stubbly before,’ she said. ‘So, we’re going to get the boat today like you said, so you’ll have peace to work on your elves and goblins.’
‘Infantrymen and officers,’ he said, guilt starting to niggle him already. He should have been at his desk earlier.
‘Whatever. Anyway, I thought we’d maybe go into the village after that and get something to eat in the pub, okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘But I can ring you and let you know wher
e we are in case you get fed up and want to come and meet us.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll be able find you if I want to,’ he said. ‘But thanks.’
He opened the blinds in his bedroom and flopped back down on the bed until at last he heard Stephie and Loren leaving the house, their voices outside mingling with the cries of the seabirds. After he’d showered and shaved he pushed open the door to the spare room that they were sharing. Duvets hastily pulled up over both beds, clothes swinging from chairs, bottles and tubes and compacts mushrooming along the dressing table. He remembered pushing his trolley round Ikea, assembling the room in his mind. Collecting white throws for each bed, a sheepskin rug for the floor between them, long gauzy curtains. Despite his efforts, the residue of the holiday cottage the house had once been remained: the floral drawer liners, the abundance of satin-covered clothes hangers, the crocheted antimacassar on the chair. Lucky for him that the owner had got a job overseas and wanted an easy long term let rather than the hassle of arranging weekly cleaning and linen changes.
Richard made coffee and took it to his desk, opening the French doors and taking a few deep breaths to help clear his head while his computer started up. The boat was already halfway across to Tanera Mhor, though it would loop round the other islands before returning to dock there, allowing the tourists close up views of the seal colony and the nesting birds. If Stephie and Loren were on the starboard side looking towards the mainland they’d see the house now, although they’d be too far away to make out Richard standing in the doorway. He watched the boat for a few moments, then wandered down to the mailbox by the gate. Phone bill, the new edition of Game Developer, nothing forwarded by his mother, nothing bearing the university crest. He was on the patio before he heard the phone ringing and ran towards his study, where the answering machine was absorbing an apparently pointless stream of consciousness from Rupe.
‘Pick up please Rich. Where are you at this time on a Sunday, church? Bollocks. You’ve probably been gored by a Highland cow or something but if not, please call back. You’ll get me at home until let me see, two or so, then I’m heading to the airport …’
Richard lunged for the phone, ‘Rupe, sorry … I was in the garden.’
‘I hope you’ve washed your hands. You do have running water up there, don’t you?’
‘I’ve told you before Rupe. The toilet is inside, the septic tank is outside.’
‘Septic tank. Marvellous. I love it. Sooo, did you enjoy our little social the other evening?’
‘Great thanks Rupe. Though I heard you had a bit of bother later on.’
Using light keystrokes that wouldn’t be picked up by the telephone mouthpiece, Richard typed the word ‘wanker’ four times in a row as Rupe spoke.
‘Oh … yah. Bloody Chris from Sony, I told him that lapdancing isn’t what we go in for at DaCapo but he was like a man possessed.’
Surveying the row of ‘wankers’, Richard punctuated it with a ‘dickhead’, then deleted the whole thing. ‘You’d think he’d know that kind of thing can be actionable,’ he said.
‘Actionable?’
‘Mmm,’ Richard said, experimenting with a ‘bawbag’.
‘God, I didn’t think … but no, Lise was there, can’t be discrimination if there’s a woman present.’
‘I think that’s kind of the point, Rupe.’
Rupe snorted. ‘No, Lise is a good sport. Not chippy. Not like Tuula,’ he said darkly. ‘Must be a Nordic thing.’
‘Anyway,’ Richard said, ‘what can I do for you?’
‘The thing is Rich, I’m worried.’
‘Uhuh?’
‘Yep. What we’ve got here with Somme is effectively a first person shooter. I mean, everyone’s going to play the officer, aren’t they?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Richard said. The strategy elements of the game were compromised by established character relations, resulting in limited options: to follow orders or not, to face court marshal or go AWOL. The most satisfying dynamic was team play, your comrades around you.
‘Okay. But it’s set in the First World War, Rich. Are we too old-fashioned to be cutting edge? The really big markets are out east. Think of China. They like fantasy scenarios there.’
Richard sighed. Rupe’s nerves always tended to kick in around pre-production. ‘WWI is totally underdeveloped, we know that. In terms of visuals, speed and playability this is going to far exceed the games that are already out there. So let’s just wait for the play-testing. That’ll highlight any tweaks that need done.’
‘I know this is your baby, but as it is, we’re not sure it’s enough.’
‘We?’
‘Yep, that’s from Lars as well. It’s got to get edgier. Ex Soviet bloc’s still cool. So’s organised crime and hunting for war criminals.’
‘Electronic Arts is already running with all that, I’m afraid,’ Richard said. His sinuses felt like they were going to burst.
‘Just get on the case, Richard. Lars has been in touch with Hamburg. He’s interested in what they’ve done over there.’
‘It’s the same game, Rupe. They’re just working with the opposing POV.’
‘Well, apparently they’ve taken it up a notch. Look, we both want this green lit, don’t we?’
‘Obviously,’ Richard said.
‘Great. I’m back Wednesday pm,’ Rupe said. ‘Get some thoughts to me by then. Ciao.’
Fuck, Richard thought. He felt like returning to his bed and sleeping off the remainder of his headache, lying there on smooth sheets as he’d done as a child with flu, his duvet a buffer against the outside world. Instead he went to the kitchen, filled the expresso maker with water and tamped ground coffee down in the sieve. ‘There’s no place for the auteur in game design,’ or so Bill, his favourite lecturer, used to say. ‘It’s teamwork all the way.’ Richard might have pitched the idea but he wasn’t doing the graphics or writing the dialogue or pulling it all together into one complete entity. The bottom line was that if Lars wanted edgy, he got edgy. His employees referred to him as ‘God’ in their private correspondence; not God the creator, God the publisher.
When the pot started hissing Richard poured out a stream of tarry coffee and added extra sugar. He had to kickstart his brain somehow. Deciding another blast of fresh air would help, he went outside, where the atmosphere was annoyingly sleepy and Sunday-feeling, a day for lounging with the paper and looking at the view. When he’d told Andy from his course that he’d found a great house up north and was going to head up there to finish his first commission, Andy had been appalled.
‘Don’t you understand? We don’t go and live in the countryside. We stay in cities! And then years later, when we get civil-ized, we find a house in Prestwick or Troon and get big, butch dogs. Wear matching outfits and allow ourselves to put on a few extra pounds.’
Richard had laughed. ‘Another small town? God forbid. I’d rather be in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Just as long as it’s the arse end of nowhere, eh?’ Andy had said, with a camp cackle that made Richard feel embarrassed that they’d slept together, even if it had just been the once, after their final projects had been handed in.
Remembering this embarrassment, allowing it to return, generated enough anxious adrenalin to propel him back to his desk. He clicked open every file relating to Somme, watched the icons chase each other along the task bar. How were you supposed to make war edgier than it already was? With mercenaries, black markets, abuses of power? He began to pick through his flowcharts and mock-ups, highlighting each point where a decision could be altered, a wild card played.
By the time the light started to fade outside, he felt he was losing sight of his ideal of OFFICER, being press-ganged into making the character less complex, less moral, than he had been in prototype. Richard remembered quiet times late at night when he was studying at Dundee, the hours spent learning how programming could create new worlds, how whorls of code could twist and turn into three-dimensional characters capable
of speech and action. Music playing in the background, his anxiety at his change of direction dissolving as he immersed himself in his first attempts at level design and embraced his inner geek. Was that really how it had been? Or had he been waiting, subconsciously perhaps, for the knock at the door, for the suggestion of something more exciting, more real?
0
Did you ever think you’d end up here, Luke said. There was an edge to his voice that made me think he wasn’t talking about loitering in a bedroom at a party, once again courtesy of Cowley, Farquarson and Green. We were leaning against the wall by a bay window while around us fellow students cradled bottles and six packs with jealous intent. Next to me was a desk with a computer and an shelved alcove full of smooth-spined textbooks. I’d queued for an hour that morning to type my essay at the undergrad cluster, after waiting a week for the books I needed from the library. And when I got them someone had underlined even the most banal quotes with a blue biro.
There’s simply no point in renting a flat, said an authoritative voice close to us. You’re throwing money down the drain every month and ultimately you have nothing to show for it.
I know, said Sara, our hostess. Have some Prosecco. My parents sent a case for my birthday party, but it didn’t arrive on time.
That’s a very good excuse for another party, I said to her when she reached Luke and I with her Prosecco.
She patted me on the arm as if I was a favourite pony rather than just a pet homosexual, then leaned in closer and whispered to Luke, Guess what?
What, he said, smiling and raising his glass to her.
Katie split up with her boyfriend! Quite right too, if you ask me. No point in a long distance relationship.
Maybe we should just finish the bottle for you, Luke said, guiding her hand to top up his glass again. She fluttered her eyelashes, just a little, as if flirting on behalf of her friend, and called out, Guy darling, be a sweetie and open another bottle for me, will you?