by Zoe Strachan
‘When did you get so sensible?’ Stephie asked. ‘You’re positively parental.’
Richard sighed. ‘I have to drive us home. Unfortunately.’
‘And to think you told me a story about drunk driving in a stolen car.’
‘Shh.’ It seemed almost inconceivable now, looking at the lazy evening scene, feeling the warmth on the back of his neck. And yet after he’d told Stephie, he’d lain awake in his bed, his veins tickling as though in involuntary recollection of the adrenaline that had enlivened them that night. ‘Anyway,’ he said quietly, ‘Luke didn’t seem drunk. I can’t remember what we’d been doing beforehand.’
‘Even so. You could’ve had an accident.’
He bowed his head, a half acknowledgement.
Stephie put on a pleading voice. ‘Can’t we stay here for a while and then get a bus or something?’
‘There only are two a day, and the last one’s gone. Anyway, I’d have to come back for the car.’
‘So? You don’t need it until Saturday.’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t help us get home tonight.’ Stephie let out a crow of laughter. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘There. You said it.’
‘What?’
‘That doesn’t help us get home tonight. You’ve decided, haven’t you?’
He groaned. ‘No. But I just remembered something.’
‘What?’
‘Rab. Plays pool at the Albion every Tuesday. It finishes about half ten. So, if that’s a late enough night for you, I suppose we could hitch a ride with him.’
She looked at her watch. ‘Sounds fine to me. Or do you want to go and play pool with him?’
‘No, I don’t like it much.’
‘Okay. So, do you want a proper beer this time or another nancy drink?’
‘A proper beer. And less cheek.’
Stephie swung her legs out from under the picnic table and picked up their empty glasses. As she turned to go into the bar, Richard said, ‘Wait a minute.’
‘What?’
‘What about Loren?’
‘What about her?’ Stephie shrugged. ‘She can’t grudge me some time alone with you.’
0
Sunlight stretched through the plate glass windows, just reaching the library desk at which I was sitting, new fine-nibbed biro in hand, trying to forge through the problems that had been set for my logic seminar. Half my body was bathed in warmth, the other cool and shaded. I felt footsteps quivering through the floor, and then Luke hunched down beside me, looking unkempt and pleased with himself.
Have you been home? I asked, pretending to be stern.
He shook his head, then announced: I love these public school girls.
Really, I said.
Mmm.
I looked down at the truth-table I was trying to construct. I’d been enjoying myself, reaching clear answers. Everything T or F, nothing in between.
Must be that all the public school boys are shirtlifters, he said. Turns them into nymphos.
There’s a fundamental distinction between truth and validity, I told him.
Would you mind belting up? The boy at the desk in front of me turned to face us. I’m trying to study.
Sorry Freddy, I didn’t see you there, Luke said. I’m sure there was nothing of that nature at that school that you and Max went to, what’s it called, Wykeham.
The boy scowled. I wouldn’t know, he said. But if anyone did try that kind of thing, they gave it up after school. Winchester – he elongated the first syllable of the word – was not a breeding ground for pooves.
Better cancel your train ticket then Richard, Luke said with a wink. Freddy flashed me a look and returned to his books. He had the good grace to blush; I could see his earlobes turning pink.
I’ve got to go and type my essay, Luke whispered. Won’t take that long. I’ll see you at home, maybe about two? I need you to do me a favour.
I nodded and returned to my truth-table.
It was nearer three when Luke got back to Herrick. He found me in the kitchen, chatting to Sheng from my maths class as I ate more of the inevitable chicken-flavour instant noodles. I would’ve stayed longer in the library, but I knew Luke was planning to go away for a day or two and I didn’t want to miss him.
Hey, I said. Get your essay done?
Yep, handed in. How did you get on?
I’ve not really broken the back of it yet.
Started the Euripides one for Mendelssohn?
Kind of. Haven’t got very far though. So, what’s this favour you want me to do?
Oh, nothing, eh? It’s cool.
He put his finger to his lips and nodded towards Sheng, who had his back to us as he filled the kettle. We declined a cup of tea, I rinsed my bowl and fork and Luke and I went upstairs.
I hope Max isn’t in, he said as we approached his door.
Wednesday, I said.
Oh yeah, rugby. Luke stood on his tip toes so that he could reach his Yale key to the lock without taking it off the key chain. Just go to your room if you want, I’ll be along in a minute.
I went in and laid my books out on the desk, glanced at the problem I’d been about to start before I left the library. I scrawled modus tollens next to it to remind myself where to begin. There was a tap and the door and Luke came in, holding something behind his back.
You know how I said I was going away for a couple of days?
Yes.
Well, can you keep this for me? He handed me a padded envelope. Don’t want Max to find it if he’s rooting about when I’m away.
Sure, I said. The envelope felt heavier than I’d expected. When I squeezed the bottom of it I could feel solid lumps, but when I peered in the top there was a polythene bag containing shiny magazine wraps of what I assumed was speed. There must have been a dozen of them at least.
Oh hang on, I’ve forgotten something, he said, and dived out the door.
It hadn’t taken Luke long to garner a reputation as someone who might bring something along, someone who might be able to sort you out. In the first week of term he’d been scruffy and stand-offish, not speaking to anyone as we stood in the corridor waiting to go into the Classics seminar room. Was he really poor, you could see them wondering, as he stuffed his notes into a carrier bag after lectures. By the time we were dressing up for the Union and being invited to parties, they’d decided he added an edgy bit of rough to their try too hard hedonism. Helped of course by the way he always had some hash, or if it wasn’t hash it was grass, and if it wasn’t grass it was speed, and if it wasn’t speed it was ecstasy.
That’s a lot of gear, I said, when he bobbed back into the room and dropped a small poly bag into the envelope.
A dozen pills, like.
I meant the rest.
Not really, he said. This and that for other folk.
Friends?
Yeah. And friends of friends.
He must have seen something in my face, nerves perhaps, masquerading as disapproval, because he said:
I’m skint Richard, even with my grant I’m skint. This is just a way of making life a little easier.
Okay, I said.
Distributing a few eighths round Herrick House hardly makes me Pablo fucking Escobar.
Yeah, I know that, I said, forcing a laugh. It’s just that …
Oh come on Richard, get out my face, eh? If you don’t want me to leave it with you I’ll give it to someone else. It’s no big deal.
He walked over to the window, pressing his face up close to the glass to peer down into Herrick’s concrete back yard, with its rows of dustbins and washing lines that nobody ever used. I wonder if that’s when I noticed that with a casual phrase, a change of tone, he could cut me to the quick. My oversensitivity had ebbed but never truly disappeared. I looked at the floor, scuffing my feet against a curled carpet tile, trying to get it to lie flat.
It’s fine, I said at last. Calum’s still at home so it’s no problem.
He spun
round, bright and smiling again. Thanks man, I really appreciate it.
Mind and bring me back some Edinburgh rock.
He leaned over to read the time from Calum’s alarm clock. Tell you what, I’ll get you a present in advance. A pint on my way to the bus.
As we walked into town together I wished I’d put a jumper on under my jacket. The crisp sunshine of earlier in the day had been replaced by grey, and the damp sea air was coalescing into melancholy wreaths of mist in the vennels and courtyards.
Aye, I said. The nights are fair drawing in.
Luke smiled and held the door of the bar open for me. This’ll warm the cockles of your wee Ayrshire heart then.
So what are your plans then, I asked him, knowing I had to study but not relishing a weekend without him.
Stay with my mum tonight, then I’m off to visit a friend. Back on Sunday night I think. I’ve got a ten o’clock on Monday.
What about the pal you’re visiting, does he live in Edinburgh?
Kind of. Near, anyhow. But I’m just going to meet him in town, like. He frowned. What about you?
Staying in. I’m skint too. Don’t know how I’ll manage until the end of term.
He nodded, then thought for a moment and said, Richard, what can you get out the bank?
Dunno. Haven’t looked. I’ve maybe got a hundred left.
He leaned in closer. Look, I’ll tell you what, if you give me what you can, fifty say, I’ll treble it for you. Promise.
What, have you got an infallible gambling system now?
No-o. But I was going to replenish my supplies anyway. So if you give me that, and I put in the same, I can get the stuff cheaper. Shift it no problem.
I suppose, I said.
Nothing heavy, just a wee bit hash, grass if he’s got it, some more pills. They’ll go for three times what I can get them for and we’ll be providing a much needed public service.
We finished our drinks and I went to the cashline by the cinema to get the money. I pressed it firmly in his hand, as though I was placing a daring bet – 22, red – not sure that lady luck would see me through.
So will you get the stuff from this friend you’re meeting? I said.
Him? Nah. Not really his thing. There’s a guy on the other side of my mum’s courtyard. He’ll sort me out.
Doesn’t he have a name?
Yeah, Spanish Tony. Except his real name’s Frank.
I meant your pal.
Oh. Dan.
D’you know him from school?
Nah.
Luke ran ahead, jumped up on the first of a row of bollards, then hopped to the next one and on along the others. When he reached the end he waited a second for me to catch up, and said, still standing balanced above me, We’re going to have a good time Richard. I know we are.
Walking back from the bus station without him, in the early darkness and the haar, this seemed unlikely. While I was buying biscuits in the Co-op I bumped into Rebecca from Herrick, who asked if I wanted to go to the cinema with her and Marc, but I pleaded my logic problems and waved my orange Viscounts as evidence of how seriously I intended to study. The haar turned to drizzle as I walked on, and on impulse I ducked into a call box and dialled my parents’ number. I pictured the phone on the hall table, ringing out. There was no reply.
When I reached my room I put one pound fifty into the heater, as if to anchor me there for the evening. By ten o’clock I’d finished the logic exercises – and most of the Viscounts – but I still felt gloomy. Herrick was quiet, as though everybody was either out or sleeping. I drifted to the kitchen and made a cup of tea, considered going to the television room in search of company but couldn’t really be bothered. Slumped on my saggy bed, listening to the same music I’d played in my bedroom at home, it seemed that the images I’d nurtured of my future had been two-dimensional. Once again I was alone in my room, with Calum away and Luke off with other friends, better friends, and only the thought of my half-written analysis of attitudes towards moral obligation in the characters of Euripides to distract me.
If I admitted it, I’d thought classics at university might attract others of a Greek persuasion. It hadn’t. Philosophy had sounded fun to me, a bookish sort, and Maths was my only concession to proper, practical study.
But will it get you a job son? my father had asked, as I toiled over my UCAS form.
Oh yes, of course it will, I said, and in a flash I was gone.
In fact university had been on the cards relatively early on, for me and anybody else that could be swept off the unemployment chart that way. My teachers, though put upon, were decent enough. Smart kids did eight O grades, three sciences, but it didn’t do to exhibit too much aptitude; the line between doing well and getting above yourself was needle thin. Four or five Highers, maybe a Sixth Year Certificate or two, and those from the bought houses were out. Up, up and away: the doctor’s daughter went to do medicine; the solicitor’s son, law.
The non-academically minded weren’t as lucky. Tolerated as troublemakers, expected to dog off or bring knives into the playground, they fulfilled their destiny as Christmas leavers, YTS candidates. At fifteen Lizzy Maxwell had to follow the words on the page with her finger and couldn’t pronounce deciduous, no matter how often Mrs Boss repeated it. Wee Sammy McGuire with the bruises couldn’t read at all, as far as I could see, and I don’t think anyone gave a flying fuck. When he joined in chanting ‘poof’ at me, whilst clearly having no idea what it meant, I can’t say I gave a flying fuck either.
When I was about twelve, I remember, my mother and sister and I went on days out with my gran. Tearooms in Troon, flower shows in Ayr, a National Trust country house. Ooh, how the other half live, Gran bleated, as we passed through room after luxurious room of gilt-edged porcelain and glistening mahogany. We spent longest in the kitchen and the servants’ quarters though. I imagined it was because my mother liked cooking and my gran was interested in seeing the butter patters and wool carders and whatever else they had when she was a girl (when had she grown up, I wondered, the 18th century?), but later I became convinced that it wasn’t that but a forced feeling of unworthiness. Afraid the tread of their shoes would soil the hand-knotted oriental rugs in the rooms above or their fingertips sully the silken wallcoverings, they took comfort in the low ceilings and institutional paintwork below stairs.
17
Richard peered out the window of Rab’s car, trying to judge where they were. The tartan blanket he was sitting on smelled of dogs, and whenever they took a sharp turn the sack of pony nuts with which he was sharing the back seat jostled against him. Rab had two Border collies but no pony as far as Richard knew. Perhaps they were for the sheep. He’d been unable to get the seatbelt to fasten, and couldn’t help thinking of young Davy Guthrie, the sickening swerve as the car lost the road, its final slump into the dark water of the loch. Though Davy had been well over the limit, or so Richard had heard, and Rab was teetotal. Teetotal, but a fast driver, turning his head to talk to Stephie as his foot eased down on the accelerator.
‘Aye well, it’s no the winning it’s the taking part,’ he was saying. ‘But we’ll thrash them the next time.’
After several glasses of wine Stephie had the kind of joie de vivre Richard remembered from the first day of the school holidays, as she quizzed Rab about the politics of the local pool league. Rab’s anecdotes stirred distant memories of trick shots and penalties, gleaned from Richard’s few frames in the student union or the late night snooker club in Dundee. He envied Stephie her social ease while also feeling proud. He didn’t know if it came naturally or if she had to pretend confidence until she convinced herself of it.
Gorse bushes and rocks flashed by outside, and he thought again of the joyride with Luke, wondered if he should have told Stephie about it or not, if he had hoped it would provoke a similar confession from her. He remembered the sensation of abandon, of not caring, felt an answering twinge in the pit of his stomach. What kind of car was it? Had Luke been drunk? Vital poi
nts seemed to have drifted away from him, while the details remained etched on his mind as if it was a drypoint plate, poised for the next printing.
At Richard’s insistence, Rab dropped them at the track that led to his own house, and they walked on up the hill. The sky was still light, although it was past eleven, and the half moon shone palely against it.
‘That was fun,’ Stephie said. ‘It took me out of myself.’
‘You’re a bit evasive,’ Richard said before he could stop himself, ‘about why you might need taken out of yourself.’
‘That’s quite something coming from you,’ she said, but he could hear the smile in her voice. Across the water the lights on the island were small and wavering, fragile-looking although he knew the houses themselves were robust.
‘I know. I’m sorry. About disappearing on you.’
‘Yeah, I know. You’ve said that before. But I should have got my act together to leave.’
‘When I first went to university I got a grant and cheap digs. I scraped by. Second time I got a career development loan because IT was the next big thing. I was lucky. It isn’t like that now.’
‘But if I’ve painted myself into a corner, that’s my own fault.’
Their voices disturbed a ewe lying in the ditch by the side of road. She lurched to her feet and ambled away, followed by two lambs who looked back as though they might be missing out on something.
‘They’re so cute,’ Stephie said. ‘I should be a vegetarian again. I should leave Leckie and become a vegetarian. That’s not much of a life plan, is it?’
‘You’re young,’ Richard said.
‘But if I’m not careful, I could get stuck there for life. I’m serious. Do you know, I actually chat to the girls that used to give me a hard time at school?’
‘I didn’t know you had a hard time at school.’
‘Just the usual. I thought I’d never see them again, and now I meet them on the bus back from Ayr and we have the same banal conversations every time. I have to pass this fucking course, and I have to get a placement and get to Glasgow.’