by Judy Waite
'What are you getting at?' Courtney's face is a mask of cold stone.
Alix sweetens a smile at her. Do it. Just do it. Fern isn't going to understand, and she can work on her later. 'I wondered if you fancied being around? We could make them an offer they couldn't refuse.'
'Is Aaron coming with them?' Fern has flushed pink, the words rushing out of her. Alix can see she's following a different agenda. Good. 'No. Just Tom and Dale.'
Fern's face takes on an odd expression, and Alix can't decide if she's disappointed or relieved. 'I couldn't have been there anyway – I've got English Wednesday afternoon. I'm not allowed to miss it.'
'Oh. Shame.'
Courtney is staring at Alix.
Alix meets the look. 'It could mean REALLY good money,' she says.
* * *
FERN works in the old boathouse, rolling out slabs of clay. Today, in college, they did figure drawings, and now she wants to make figures of her own. She's got an idea that won't go away – strange images in her head. In these images there are people struggling through slime. They are not quite human. She sees them as mud dwellers, lost in a world that lies trapped beneath the undertow.
She keeps the door open to give herself the best light, although it is a grey afternoon. Misted rain fuzzes up the boats and the river. The days are shrinking now, so even though it's still unseasonably warm, it gets dark early. The electrics don't work – last year's floods ruined them – and their insurance didn't cover the outbuildings.
Dad says – used to say – that he'd get the wiring sorted and safe again, but it won't happen now.
She takes the first slabs, rolling them into legs and torso. It's going to be a crouching figure, with clumsy slab hands covering the head.
Always be aware of danger.
Beware, beware, the undertow.
Her hands smooth the clay tenderly, the way a mother strokes a child. She is working through touch and instinct now, hardly needing the feeble light. She loves to work like this, feeling her way to the heart of what she's doing. She never uses wheels, or coils, or any of the normal potter's tools.
And when she's working properly, when it's all flowing, everything else just falls away. Nothing matters – except getting it right.
Maybe the undertow is a kind of angered God. Maybe He wants to punish people for hurting the weather and changing the ways the currents flow, so he drags poor souls down through the dark sucking mud. Maybe the dragged-down souls dream about the world above the river. The world above the river is their vision of heaven.
Outside, a cormorant shrieks across the darkness.
The rain grows heavier, tinning down onto the roof.
She dips her hands in a bowl of cold water, sluicing off the excess clay, and then turns back to the workbench to roll slabs for the head.
'Fern, sweetheart – how are you doing?'
Fern almost screams as she jolts round, startled and disorientated, the way she always is when people appear suddenly when she's lost in her work. Mum is by the door, pulling at the front of a tired grey cardigan, wrapping herself into it. Her hair is drizzled with rain.
Fern takes a breath. 'I'm doing OK.'
Mum comes closer and squints at the slabbed body parts. 'It's . . . it's very different. Not like the things you usually do.'
Fern feels a scraping of irritation. 'I can't get the face right,' she mutters.
Mum tilts her head, stepping back to try and gain a longer view. 'It's so gloomy in here – it must be hard to work in all these shadows.'
The irritation scratches through Fern again. Without answering she twists a handful of fresh clay from the bag on the bench and begins to roll it very thin, twizzling and squeezing it between her fingers.
'What's that going to be?'
'It's hair – but sort of seaweedy.' Fern doesn't look up. 'I want it to look all matted and ugly.' There is a silence, and Fern knows Mum is thinking about mermaids and A star grades and the sorts of things guests might like to buy for Christmas.
'I really came down to tell you it's dinner time,' says Mum. 'Dad's got a doctor's appointment this evening, so I need to get through everything early. And you shouldn't really be out here now it's late. Anyone could be walking past on the path. It's not safe.'
Fern does look up now, and is suddenly ashamed. Even in the shadows she can see that there are folds beside Mum's mouth and her eyes are hooded; the face of someone much older. 'I'll just finish this bit, and then I'll be in. Don't worry about the tidying up after dinner though – I'll sort it out.'
'You're a sweetheart. My little star.' Mum hugs Fern, kissing her hair. 'Five more minutes,' she says. 'Otherwise I'll be in here nagging at you again.' She walks back outside and away.
Fern wets the single strand of seaweedy hair, and moulds it to the slabbed head. Then she covers the whole figure with a moistened cloth before swishing her hands round in the water. She wipes them dry on her jeans.
A sweetheart.
A little star.
She wishes Mum would stop calling her things like that.
She wishes Mum could see she's growing up.
* * *
Alix opens the door and she doesn't think she's going to be able to do it. The Dale and Tom of last weekend have become hazy and vague. She has built new ones in her head instead. She has had conversations with the new Dale and Tom, told jokes, flirted and set tiny traps hidden behind giggled questions. They always answer perfectly, laughing in the right places, saying exactly what she needs them to say.
These two are real, and she had forgotten about them being spunk hunks. Why would gorgeous spunk hunks want to pay?
'Come in.' She stands back, wondering now if she just looks too obvious in the short red skirt and lacy black top. She is a fake. Two dimensional. They probably won't even fancy her.
'You look good.' Dale hugs her. If he's embarrassed about last Saturday, it doesn't show.
'Amazing.' Tom is standing behind him, nodding.
She meets his eye over Dale's shoulder and remembers the gold flecks and the to-die-for smile. This whole idea is going to explode in her face. She doesn't have to go through with it. 'You – you remembered how to get here OK?' Stupid stupid question.
'How could I forget?' Dale squeezes her shoulder then hugs her again.
Tom is still doing the smile.
These are nice guys. Her brother's mates. With not too much work, either one of them could end up as her boyfriend for a while. Why doesn't she just settle for some nice meals and clubs and weekends away in Sussex?
'Your phone's all ready.' Stupid stupid. Again. She's made it sound as if she's washed it and polished it all ready for collection. 'Do – d'you want a drink?'
'Sure.'
'Sounds good.'
They are in control and her grip grows looser with every passing second. She's never going to be able to see this through. 'I've got a mate here. Courtney. You might remember her from Saturday?' It sounds false, rehearsed. Which it is.
Dale and Tom glance at each other. She sees questions in the glance, as if they are passing thoughts telepathically. Is her friend there to protect her? Or is she offering something even more exciting than Saturday night? The glance hardens the mood in her. They are, it seems, here for something. Not just nice guys. Not completely.
Courtney comes down the stairs. Her face is masked with a creamy pale foundation, her eyes ringed in dark liner. She is dressed in black. Of course.
'Courtney. My mate.'
'Hi.'
'Good to meet you.'
Dale and Tom smile at Courtney and then pass the look to each other again. Which one do you want?
Alix wonders, suddenly, if they always work as a team. The idea seems to slide in under her skin. If this is true, she has been easy prey.
'Come on.' Her smile is bolder now as she leads them through to the kitchen. 'Beers for the boys.' She pulls two bottles from the fridge. She and Courtney have already washed their nerves with vodka but the effect, whic
h gave her a rush of courage twenty minutes ago, seems to have evaporated. 'I think I'll do a Breezer,' she says brightly to Courtney. 'You want one?'
'OK.' Courtney shrugs. She seems tense and won't meet Alix's eye.
Alix gets the bottle opener and flicks off the lids. The second one pings out of control, bouncing down onto the floor. Dale bends to get it. Alix feels as if her legs are blushing. Is he staring up her skirt? 'Let's go through to the front room. I'll find some music.'
With the CD started up, her awkwardness returns. Dale and Tom sit either end of the sofa, legs stretched, filling all the space. Alix has seen this pose before. Guys in charge. Her own legs are crossed but she doesn't have much choice, not with the shortness of her skirt. She tugs at it with one hand. It isn't her and she hates it. She will never dress like this again.
Courtney, her legs tucked underneath her, is on the floor by the window, staring across at the opposite wall. She is clearly avoiding making eye contact with everyone.
Alix has set candles burning but she left the curtains open – she didn't want to look too up for it – and the wispy flames are almost invisible in the day-bright room. The guys are bound to see through her naïve scene setting. They are probably laughing. Telepathically.
'So – you had a good birthday?' Tom lifts his beer to his lips.
Alix can't tell if the question is loaded or not. Does he mean the day itself – or the part he played in it? She needs to sound encouraging, to lace her answer with innuendo. 'Yes, fantastic. Some things went much better than I'd expected. Thanks.'
The music is the Blades. Aaron's CD. Alix bets Aaron doesn't know these two are here. Shared secrets.
Courtney is still staring straight ahead. There is a candle behind her, on the window ledge. Its nervous light tips the edges of her spiked-up hair, giving her the look of a girl in a dark fantasy, touched with powers. Alix wonders whether dark power is a seductive force for guys.
Alix drinks more, and tries to relax into the music. This whole moment feels unreal now, like a badly acted scene in a play.
Dale glances at Alix, then back at Tom. 'We can't stay too long. We've got a couple of things to do before we head back.'
Tom nods, swills his bottle, checking the contents. 'Sure. I'm nearly done on this.'
Alix hears the game behind the words. Of course they can stay. Why else would they have come? But they've got the dice, and they keep rolling out sixes.
She should just let them go. Forget the whole insane rubbish idea. But when she thinks of this, a flatness seems to level across her, like arriving at the fairground to find all the rides have packed away. She uncrosses her legs, sits with her knees pressed together, and leans forward with a smile. 'I've got more beer,' she says.
'Yeah, sure.'
'Why not.'
Both still casual. Playing her. But not for long. Soon she's going to start rolling sixes on her own dice. She gets up and goes into the kitchen, opens four new bottles, then carries the drinks back in. 'The sun's in my eyes,' she announces. 'Anyone mind if I close the curtains?' She moves a candle to over by the CD player, and then shuts out the day. The atmosphere in the room seems to thicken. As if it is waiting. She smiles round at everyone, and then sits on the floor beside Dale.
Courtney jolts a glance at them both. She starts on her new Breezer and shoots a tight, strained smile across to Tom.
Tom gets up. 'I'll try a new CD. I'm sick of hearing this.' It takes him ages. 'This tuning.' He shakes his head. 'It needs sorting.' The music crackles up, then fades. Crackles and fades. He is down on his knees, his shadow in the flickering light grown huge, half-filling the room. A sultry instrumental sound seeps out. Lulling. Luring.
Alix can tell he has chosen this carefully. It is music for moonlight. Music for lovers.
He doesn't come back to the sofa. He goes to the window and sits on the floor next to Courtney.
Alix feels Dale's hand rest on her shoulder, and her insides knot up. This is a crucial point. She has to get her timing right.
Leaning against him, she turns slightly. 'The thing is, Courtney's here for a reason. We've been looking forward to it. To seeing you – I've told her what good company you both are.'
Dale's hand is massaging her shoulder now, a confident movement, the touch of someone who is sure he isn't going to be brushed away.
Alix turns to look at Tom. 'We wanted you to have a fantastic time with us. Me and Courtney. We thought we'd – you know – help you a bit. If you'd help us.'
Tom's gold-flecked eyes rest on Dale's hand for a moment, then rise up to meet Alix's. 'What sort of help do you want?'
She shifts sideways slightly, manoeuvring herself away from Dale's easy reach.
Courtney shifts too, her back now straight and rigid against the wall.
'We're – we're trying to run a business. We're having a bit of a cash crisis and we're offering a service . . . '
Alix forces herself to stay looking at Tom. She has to make it look like she knows what she wants. She sees him raise his eyebrows. Sees him send a thought to Dale.
'How much . . . ' asks Dale's voice from behind her. 'How much do you want for your . . . service?'
She smiles then, and tries not to punch the air. It's going to be easy after all.
* * *
FERN is dizzy from staring at the dancing words. She has the yellow sheet to lay over them which is supposed to pin them down but they still shift and flicker; taunting black squiggles that she battles to understand.
The concentration has made her eyes ache.
She looks up, blinking out of the English room window and across the sports fields. Autumn is pushing in properly now, the trees that edge the grounds leafed in brown and russet and gold. She wishes she was outside.
'How goes it, Fern?' Rob Perry is standing beside her.
'I, uh – OK.'
'You're not using your acetate?'
'No.' She doesn't try to explain. She gave up explaining things a long time ago. She remembers how, when she was younger, she thought reading was this hard for everybody. She didn't realise that for most people letters stayed fixed on the page and they could follow them from left to right – and that the squiggles told them something that made sense. Or is it right to left? She gets muddled with that too sometimes.
Rob Perry bends down, sliding her worksheet round for a better view.
While he checks it through, she stares at his ear. There is a small gold stud pinched into the lobe. She likes Rob Perry. He never fusses too much. He's nice looking too. Alix even said once it would be all right to be a 'special' if it meant you got Rob Perry helping you out.
'It's pretty good.' Rob Perry slides the worksheet back to her, straightens up, and smiles. 'Just keep going. Make sure you check through for punctuation.'
Fern keeps going. She checks for punctuation, even though checking for punctuation is a guessing game.
Rob Perry says she shouldn't try to understand it – she should just learn the rules and keep on doing them until they stick. She tries to do that. She can see it makes sense. Except, even though she's learnt the rules, the writing shifts and shakes and won't stay still long enough for her to be sure she's done it right.
It is like that now, staring down at her sheet, the words trembling up at her.
The only writing she's ever really coped with is short texted messages, or sometimes internet chat rooms. No one seems to care about rules and punctuation then.
She wonders, suddenly, if Khaki Steve had guessed she was stupid from her spelling. Maybe he picked her out carefully.
'OK, everybody.' Rob Perry is cleaning the whiteboard, pushing papers into a baggy brown briefcase and checking his watch as he stands at the front of the room. 'We'll wind up for today. See you again on Friday.'
Wind up for today.
Fern thinks of herself as a kind of clock, internal hands ticking away her seconds and minutes and hours. Everyone could be a clock, she decides. Babies must be no later than one o'clock
. Students her age must be around four in the afternoon – about now, in fact. Old, old people are gone eleven. But then, she thinks again, it doesn't quite work. Some people run on too fast. Some people's lives just don't end when they should. She doesn't want to think about what time Dad might be telling.
Outside the English room she makes her way through the corridors. They are clogged with students. Books, bags and chatter.
'Oh my God – guess who sat next to me in history?'
'You getting the bus, Janie?'
'Me and Karl have got tickets for The Breakdown tonight.'
Everyone is with someone. Arms linked, hands held, pressed together in groups.
Fern doesn't see Alix or Courtney, and out in the car park there is no sign of Alix's Mini.
And then she remembers they were doing something – meeting up with Aaron's friends to give one of them back his mobile.
She feels a graze of pain as she thinks about Aaron.
Alix and Courtney will probably end up going out with those two friends. They can't be coming back all this way just for a mobile phone, and anyway Alix could have posted it if it was really that important. If Alix gets together with someone, Fern is certain she won't be asking her to go shopping, or inviting her round to share the dregs of her chilli, anymore.