Six Stories

by Matt Wesolowski

  —Oh yes. I couldn’t forget them. Partly because they were their final GCSE pieces before that summer in 1996, partly because they’d both done the same thing. They were these monsters, or witches or something, rising out of water – all claws and teeth. It was just so … so off for those girls to do something like that.

  —What did you think?

  —I honestly didn’t know. Maybe it was like a private joke or something.

  I mention these artworks to Eva, but she passes it off; says she doesn’t really remember, that it was probably, like her art teacher says, a private joke. What I think is that both Anyu and Eva were paying tribute to a place and people – a person – that made them happy. Nanna Wrack was a figment of Charlie Armstrong’s imagination. It is clear that both girls looked up to him. Maybe there was more. Eva has indicated that there was someone that Anyu liked; maybe that was Charlie. It’s strange how these things work.

  There is one more school-related incident that is important to mention at this point. Dorothy Whetworth tells me about another time she noticed something different about Eva.

  —It was after Christmas: January 1996. Here’s another thing about schools: that term – the one after Christmas – is always the worst. It’s cold; Christmas Day is long gone, and there’s really nothing for the kids to look forward to, so they’re understandably a bit glum when they come back. But Eva … Eva was just … it was like someone had carved out her heart.

  —Wow. So the total opposite to the previous spring then?

  —Yes. That’s what I thought at the time. In the spring, Eva came in just glowing; and now, after the Christmas break, she comes back, well, as if something had been sucked out of her. Like a little piece of her spirit had gone missing.

  I can’t find the words to ask Eva why, more than twenty years ago, she came back into school feeling happy, and another time came in sad. Maybe it was nothing. Like the paintings of Nanna Wrack, maybe it was just yet another layer to Eva’s life. What does link these two events, however, is that in each school holiday, Eva visited Scarclaw Fell.

  Crucially, Tom Jeffries was not there in May 1995; but he was in December.

  My final interview with Eva is a few days later. I email her, explaining that I will be asking her questions about Tom Jeffries and to prepare herself.

  When we speak, Eva seems stronger somehow; as if resigned to getting all of this out – exorcising some old ghost. I ask her about the time when Tom Jeffries joined Rangers. And that’s when she calls him a dickhead and tells me how much she hated him – the clip I played at the beginning of this episode.

  —So, what was it about Tom that you didn’t like?

  —Oh, everything. Just everything. He was gobby, you know? Like the kids in school who sit at the back, always shouting stuff out. He was always going on about weed the whole time, in front of the adults, too. I think my dad had a word with him at one point.

  —Was it always like that? I mean, even at first?

  —Yeah, he came in with that attitude. You know what the very first thing he said at Rangers was – after his mum dropped him off? He looked at us all – Charlie, me, Anyu, Brian – and said, ‘Hippies, eh? I like hippies cos they smoke the herb.’ What a twat!

  —Yet he was accepted. He integrated himself into the group with a degree of ease.

  —That’s right. God, if I could go back in time … I just … I don’t know how or why, but he was suddenly Charlie’s mate – his best bloody mate! They were suddenly off together and the rest of us didn’t get a look in.

  —And Charlie had been your best friend since…

  —Since we were kids; babies even. Then this little … this lad came in, and, poof, off they went.

  —You still seem angry about this.

  —Ha. Yeah, I am a bit. I mean, me and Charlie, we’ve not been in touch since. I’ve not been in touch with any of them, if I’m honest. But Charlie … we went way back.

  —Why do you think it was? Why did Charlie suddenly just allow Tom in like that, instead of someone like Brian, who had been part of the group for much longer?

  —Oh, it was the drugs and drink and stuff. Tom had the gift of the gab; he had an edge to him. Charlie loved all that.

  —You said before that they used to ‘go off’ together. Do you mean that literally?

  —Yeah. And I mean it figuratively as well. Sometimes Charlie and Tom, they used to just disappear off together when we were on trips.

  —What do you think they were doing?

  —Smoking. There wasn’t anything sinister about it. They just used to go off and smoke together.

  —But didn’t you all smoke? You, Anyu, Brian?

  —Yeah, we all did. I don’t know. I think Tom just wanted Charlie all to himself. We all looked up to Charlie, remember. He was like … an enigma or something.

  Here we can see how the dynamic of the group shifted – as Eva’s dad, Derek, alluded to in episode one. The arrival of Tom Jeffries plunged Eva – and, I’m guessing, the others – into uncertainty. Why was their leader suddenly so taken with this new person? What is clear is that Tom’s removal of Charlie’s attention really affected Eva. I ask her about the others’ reactions to having Tom Jeffries in the group.

  —Well Anyu, she was so chilled, she was virtually horizontal, and she just went with it. I think Tom found her difficult. He never really spoke to her. I actually can’t remember those two ever having a conversation.

  —And Brian?

  —That wasn’t very nice, really. You know Tom and him were at the same school, right? That private one. They didn’t hang about together or anything. But Tom … he was … he just wasn’t very nice…

  —You sound like you want to say more.

  —Yeah, I guess I do, but, it feels weird. Not weird – it feels bad, because, I guess I wish I would have done something about it. But I was so fucking angry that Tom had come along and just whipped away my best friend like that, as if I didn’t even matter. I was so wrapped up in that, I just kind of ignored what he did to Brian.

  —What he ‘did’ to Brian?

  —Oh, it was just stupid stuff, you know. So whenever, like, my dad or someone called out Brian’s name when they were doing the register at a meeting: ‘Brian Mings,’ Tom would shout, ‘Does he?’ in front of everyone. Soon, all the younger ones were doing it and it was just annoying, you know? Stuff like that.

  —So there was other stuff?

  —Well … we all knew that Brian liked Anyu. But he was nice about it, like I said. He wasn’t too heavy or stalker-y. He was just like a little lost puppy sometimes, following her about, But Tom, god, he used to make such a fucking issue about it: ‘What you doing, Brian? Why are you sitting there, you’ve not got a chance!’ All that sort of thing. Just to embarrass him in front of everyone. He just went on like that all the time; just chipping away.

  —How did Brian take it?

  —He didn’t really do anything. I sometimes wanted to tell him to stand up for himself or something. But I was just too focussed on what was going on with Tom and Charlie to really notice.

  —Do you think Brian hated Tom?

  —No, I don’t think so. I would have done. If I was Brian, I would have wanted nothing to do with him but, despite all the ribbing, Brian was always trying to impress him – just like he used to do with Charlie.

  —That seems odd.

  —It was more sad. Brian was that desperate for approval, I think he thought, if he could impress Tom, he’d finally be in with Charlie.

  There was this one time, when we were away at Scarclaw. We were all smoking in the mineshaft, and Brian just … he just used to say things, stupid things, and we always wanted to tell him to shut up, but you didn’t, you know, because that was Brian, that was just how he was. Anyway, we’re there and he comes out with something like, ‘Yeah, I smoke every day. My mum wishes I would stop.’ Remember we were about fourteen or fifteen. Anyway, Tom just looks at him and says, ‘You’re not even inhaling properly.’ B
rian went all red and we looked – Tom was right, Brian was just taking the smoke in his mouth and puffing it out again. I mean, you just couldn’t write this shit.

  —Teenage posturing, right?

  —Yeah, that’s all it was. Just harmless stuff. But Tom couldn’t just let it go. So him and Charlie showed Brian how to inhale properly – like right into his lungs – and, god, I thought Brian was going to throw up. He was coughing and his eyes were streaming. Tom and Charlie, they were in hysterics, just screaming with laughter. Brian didn’t speak for the rest of that day. He just stayed quiet, walked behind us all the way back to the centre.

  —To me that sounds like bullying.

  —Yeah, looking back on it now, I suppose it…

  There was one other time as well. And this was really bad … Jesus. It was when we used to have meetings in the church hall. Sometimes we’d get there before the adults and we’d have the place to ourselves. We usually just hung about or smoked cigarettes around the back. Anyway, one of these times, Brian came in with this new coat on – one of those ‘bondage’ ones with these detachable straps across the back. It was too big for him, but he was trying so hard to be different – like Charlie. Tom and Charlie, they were just … they just gave each other this look. It was horrible, just sort of mean and clever at the same time … wolf grins…

  Brian just sort of stood there. Charlie and Tom go over to him, pretending to admire his coat. Asking him to turn around and all that. Well, Brian thought it was great at first, but then they started unhooking all the straps across the back, and you could see Brian getting all wide-eyed, his face going red. That’s when Charlie grabbed him, held him down and they just tied him up with the straps off his coat. Tied him up and pulled his shoes off, chucked them out the window. It was horrible, you could see he was nearly crying. And Charlie and Tom they were just laughing, like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.

  I waited till Brian had got himself free and had gone outside to try and find his shoes, and I asked Charlie why he’d done it. Said that he was being a dick. But just as he opened his mouth, Tom was like, ‘Come on, mate, let’s go for a spliff.’ And off they went, just like I wasn’t even there. It was like it wasn’t Charlie anymore.

  —You think that was Tom’s influence?

  —Right. It’s hard to explain, but it was all about power with Tom. He had this … this way of, like, getting into your head. He was sort of able to…

  —To exert power?

  —Sort of.

  —To seduce you, almost?

  —Yeah … that’s a … that’s an appropriate word…

  —Go on…

  —I … Look, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Everyone in the world will know it when it goes out, but … I don’t know…

  —Maybe just say it. Let it come. Don’t think too much…

  —Oh fuck it. You know what? It feels like getting this stuff out is a good thing; like, finally, I can. It’s been hanging about inside me for so many years that it just needs … expelling. So, yeah, that winter, that time when it snowed and we went to Scarclaw…

  Eva is talking about December 1995, the first time Tom Jeffries visited Scarclaw with the rest of the group.

  —At first I was really dreading it, all because Tom and Charlie had been such … such dicks at the meetings in the weeks we were planning that trip.

  —How so?

  —Oh, it was stupid. Like they’d regressed, become twelve again. Kept giggling and whispering and nudging each other.

  —It sounds like they had some secret … something like that?

  —Yeah, well, maybe they did. I don’t know. Maybe they had some plan.

  —Did you have any idea what it was? An inkling?

  Eva pauses for an inordinate amount of time. Then she takes a breath as if steeling herself.

  —It’s weird. It’s like I knew something was going to happen. I knew it, but I still couldn’t do anything.

  —What sort of thing do you mean?

  —That’s just it, I don’t know … but something. It started in the minibus.

  —On the way to Scarclaw?

  —Yeah. My dad used to pick everyone up. And when we picked up Tom, it was like I was ready – to stand up to him this time, to assert myself, I guess; to actually try and stop Tom and Charlie just going off without me again.

  But when he got in the bus, it was like … well, I actually thought Charlie had had a word, you know, because Tom was just, nice. He was … he wasn’t like Tom!

  —You’re shaking your head.

  —Yeah, I know. I just can’t believe I was so stupid. So naive.

  —Go on…

  —So, Tom was talking to me loads – really talking, you know? Like a normal human being. I wish I could have trusted myself back then, because I knew, I knew what he was doing. He was just laying groundwork. But I guess, I was only, like, fourteen. How could I really be sure?

  —‘Laying groundwork’. That doesn’t sound good. It sounds ominous.

  —Yeah, well, as I say, I was young. I wasn’t that experienced … with boys, I mean.

  —What about the others? Anyu, Brian, Charlie – had they noticed Tom’s change in behaviour?

  —All Charlie seemed to care about was getting my dad to put his bloody cassette on the knackered old minibus stereo – that horrible screaming music he loved. Me and Tom, we were right at the back. Anyu and Brian, they were like musical bloody chairs. Brian would go and sit next to Anyu, so Anyu would go and try and sit next to Charlie, round and round, while me and Tom just sat at the back … talking.

  —Can you remember much of the conversation you had?

  — I think I did most of the talking, in fact. Just babbled on. That was probably how he managed it – just let me talk, pretended he was listening. It’s funny, because now I sort of see where Brian was coming from.

  —How do you mean?

  —Well, that whole thing about trying to impress Tom – that’s how I felt – like I had something to prove to him. How does someone just have that? It’s so weird.

  Anyway, I knew Tom’d brought some weed with him. Him and Charlie, they were smoking a lot of it, and I hadn’t really tried it properly – just a couple of drags off a joint – but Tom would have been on about it, how it made you feel, all that. I remember he was showing me these things he and Charlie had been making – ‘lungs’ he called them. They were the top half of a plastic bottle with a plastic carrier bag taped to them. There was a little metal gauze thing on the spout bit, and you burned the weed in there, then pulled out the bag to suck in the smoke – like an actual lung, you see?

  —And Tom and Charlie, they’d made them specially: for that night at the centre?

  —Yeah, that’s right.

  —Can you remember that night?

  —I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to forget it. So why I’m suddenly telling you about it here, now, is … I dunno … Like I say, it’s cathartic or something. Therapeutic.

  We all got wasted that first night.

  —On weed? Tom’s weed?

  —Yeah … and booze. Me and Anyu, we’d brought booze. Charlie had, too – like, far too much vodka. We stashed it all outside. We had a dorm to ourselves in the centre, us older ones. There was this window – a dead old one; all flaky paint – and it opened onto this sort of old porch thing round the back of the centre. So you could just sort of hop out if you wanted to and you were in the woods. We just hopped out that window and shoved our stash in this huge black rucksack thing that was Brian’s. We used to push that rucksack right under the building. You could crawl underneath it. We’d done that the summer before, when we were nailing in insulation. Anyway, we kept our stuff outside and that window closed just in case, like, my dad or Sally or someone came in.

  —Would they have searched you, do you think?

  —Oh yeah, they would have. After it all happened, people thought my dad was just this old hippy who didn’t give a shit, but it wasn’t like that
at all. In fact, I think we were more worried about, like, abusing his trust. Everyone, including me, we had a lot of respect for my dad.

  —And Sally?

  —Her, too. Yeah. We were respectful kids. We would have been mortified if they’d caught us. The booze thing … they knew what we were doing; they weren’t daft. But they were hands-off about it. But my dad, he would have taken us home, all of us, if he’d found out we were smoking weed. He would have lost his biscuits with me – I know that! If anything had happened, he would have taken the rap for it. We all knew that. I guess that was the thing that upset me most – Charlie just didn’t seem to give a shit anymore; even about my dad.

  —So I think I know what happened that night … with you and Tom…

  —Yeah. It was just … he was so fucking sneaky about it. That’s what made it so, just, ugh. He was even being nice to Brian…

  —Did that raise your suspicions at all?

  —See, in any other context it would have. But not at Rangers, not at Scarclaw. We just weren’t those sorts of people. That’s how he managed it. The little fucker.

  I notice at this point that Eva is not looking at me, she’s staring down into her lap. She’s clearly embarrassed about what she’s about to say. I also wonder if she realises she’s contradicted herself: earlier she said she knew that Tom Jeffries was ‘laying the groundwork’. My view is that Eva knew all along what was going to happen – right from the bus journey, probably – and a part of her wanted it; a part of herself she’ll never admit existed and that she’ll always regret. Retrospectively, I sympathise; when you’re that age, sometimes you know what you want, but the reality of going through with it feels just too much. But you end up doing it anyway, even though you know it’s probably a bad idea. It’s like that craze for ‘tombstoning’ – taking a running jump off a cliff and into the sea in the summer: kids Eva’s age just take the plunge.