by Ed Siegle
He retraced his steps to the woods. Near the path, three kids were smacking a tree with bits of iron. There was a small kid of about twelve, Joel’s age, and two taller ones, of fourteen or fifteen. They were stringy boys with pale faces and ripped T-shirts and one of them had a biker jacket which was far too big for him, and his hair set in rigid spikes. Joel’s heart started to beat faster as this kid caught sight of him, set his top lip into a snarl and whacked the tree harder. As Joel drew level, the other tall one stopped, spat close to the path then carried on whacking. As Joel passed, the small one said, ‘Cunt.’ The hairs on Joel’s neck stood up as he waited to feel the slash of rusty iron.
In the following months, Joel kept thinking about those kids. He went back a few times, until, one summer’s afternoon, he found the small one smoking a cigarette and trying to start a fire with a magnifying glass. Joel trapped and torched a beetle, and the kid told him his name was Liam. Joel smoked his first fag and hated it, then smoked another, inhaling after a scornful tutorial. He bought cigarettes, which Jackie confiscated having smelt smoke on his clothes. She told him off. Hypocrite, he thought.
Through the winter of ’78 and into the summer of ’79, Joel hung around at Liam’s where they listened to punk, smoked fags and watched Death Race 2000 or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For his fourteenth birthday Joel asked for a Samurai sword or some Japanese throwing stars. Jackie asked a man she’d been seeing in secret to help, introducing him as a boyfriend of Miriam’s. Mack had been in a band which had once supported Free on tour. He talked to Joel of backstage bacchanalia and roadie lore. They clashed over the merits of punk against the blues, but bonded through a hatred of disco. Joel spent less time in his room and spoke to his mum with a positive lilt to his voice. Mack taught him how to drive in his Spitfire 1500 on a friend’s farm, joking that Joel was a proper little James Hunt. Sometimes Mack gave Joel advice and he considered it. One day Mack came round and they talked about going on holiday to France, just the three of them. Joel wondered why Miriam didn’t seem to be in the picture. Mack knew of a hotel not far from Mont St-Michel. Mack wasn’t taking Miriam. Joel could have his own room. Mack and Jackie in one room, Joel in another. Mack and Jackie in one bed. Mack and Jackie, Mack and Jackie, Mack and Jackie.
Joel had run out of the house and down to the beach. There was a sharpness to the skin of the sea, as if lifted from beneath by blades, and white horses seemed rigid as they grated across the advancing membrane. Fuck Mack and his fucking car. Shaven skulls and sick-green hair. Pins through disinterested skin. Back home that night Joel ripped the sleeves from his T-shirts and practised spitting at his face in a smashed mirror on his wall. Fuck Brazil. England was it. Joel sprayed jagged Js on the walls of multi-storey car parks, puked Merrydown cider on pavements in the early hours. He wanted to form a band called Dog Shit, but his voice could only handle ballads, a fact he kept secret. He hated his mother, hated Miriam.
‘Do you really hate her?’ asked faux-deathly-looking girls who hung around the littered parks where he and his songless band lurked.
‘Fuck off,’ he would reply.
In the summer of 1980, Liam’s mum went away and he threw a party for Joel’s fifteenth birthday. The taller lads were there, and Joel brought some of his own mates. They drank cider, Cinzano, vodka. They started a fire in the woods on the side of the hill, scattering when the fuzz arrived. Later a girl called Debbie turned up whom Joel had seen around. Ian, one of the tall lads, had the keys to his dad’s car. Debbie wanted Ian to take her for a ride but Ian puked. Joel said he’d take her. Debbie’s legs in the passenger seat seemed the longest, smoothest things he had ever seen. She blew smoke rings as he swerved the car round the bends of Whitehawk. Her skirt rode up and he saw her white knickers. He took a swig of cider and pressed his foot on to the pedal. He’d never felt so good, he thought amid the exhilaration of acceleration. He lurched the car on to the main road, careful to keep to the left. In France they drive on the right, Mack had said. But here it wasn’t right to drive on the right – wasn’t that it? He thought about Mack and shoved his foot down. The wires in his veins made him grip the steering wheel until his knuckles were white peaks. Debbie was rubbing his leg, thighs parted, a delicious grin on her lips. Life could not get any better than this – life would not get any better than this. Here was a perfect answer to the question of his life – he saw it now through the enlightenment of cider. It was only a matter of time before they met another car. Dad was waiting, watching, willing. Death was smiling with a gap in its teeth. Two white eyes flickered ahead, shining with approval. He turned to Debbie, their eyes met and their lips parted in the arriving light. He jerked the steering-wheel clockwise, the car filled with whiteness and metallic thunder slammed him towards his destiny.
At first he could only hear noises far away and imagined he was a whale making whooping sounds at the bottom of a dark sea. After a while the noises gained a grain, until he recognised the twitterings of Miriam and his mum, Liam talking to him about a gig, the lame jokes of a teacher he’d never liked but who ‘took an interest in him’ (the weirdo). At first their conversations were hard to grip, like episodes from a quickly forgotten cartoon. Then light started to appear and he found he was sitting up in a hospital room watching his mum weeping with a blend of happiness and despair. For a while he kept his eyes stationary. He felt warmly frozen. He wondered if he wanted to stay this way. The idea was not without appeal. Jackie squeezed his hand and wept and he wanted to squeeze back but didn’t. Debbie came to visit and showed him her plaster cast, which she’d covered in her drawings – though Liam had got her in trouble with her mum by scrawling ‘slag’ bang slap across the middle. Ian had drawn a cartoon of a punk rocker. Ian’s dad wasn’t cross with Joel about the car, Debbie said, and the other motorist had escaped with minor injuries. When Jackie left the room Debbie kissed Joel full on the lips and he felt a pop of happiness.
One day Jackie sat by his bed and held his hand and told him how much she loved him and begged him please to come back to her and said that without him her life meant nothing. From his Adidas sports bag she pulled out his shoebox and showed him pictures of his dad and swore that from that day on they’d talk about him whenever Joel wanted and that all she wanted was to have him back, and as she put her arms round him and he felt her tears on his cheeks he found himself putting his arms round her and crying and crying and crying and crying and saying he loved her too, that it was all right now, that he was OK, that it would be OK and that he loved her, loved her, loved her…
Joel and Debbie left the Palace Pier behind, heading west, as they nearly always did, walking along the promenade by the road, watching the goings-on below: kids springing in the giant bouncer, couples whooping on the merry-go-round, three shot rallies on the volleyball court, pink heads and lager at shiny tables. Up ahead, clouds towered above Hove. Joel and Debbie passed the slumped West Pier and the rusted Edwardian bandstand, reaching the wide tarmac between Hove Lawns and the sea. They found a bench overlooking the shingle beach and sat down.
‘Do you ever think about the crash?’ asked Joel.
‘A novel way to get a girl’s attention, I’ll give you that.’
‘Yeah, sorry about that.’
‘I guess it beats your typical first date,’ said Debbie.
‘Probably wasn’t the best omen, though, was it?’
‘Is that what we came here to talk about?’
Joel looked at the sea and shook his head. ‘I’ve got some news,’ he said.
‘So I hear.’
‘Yeah, I thought she might have told you.’
‘So, the old bugger’s alive, you reckon?’ Debbie asked.
‘I take it you don’t believe it either, then?’
‘I haven’t seen the clip.’
‘I thought you might take my word for it,’ said Joel.
‘You’re joking, aren’t you? What was it Jackie told me Gilberto said? “The first time inside they take bits of you; the second time
they take the rest.” His words, not mine.’
‘Yeah, but maybe they didn’t kill him that second time inside. Perhaps he escaped. Or maybe they let him out when the climate changed. There were plenty of survivors. Perhaps he didn’t want to contact us because he knew we’d have rebuilt our lives, or –’
‘So how come Jackie’s so sure?’ asked Debbie.
‘She doesn’t want to see it, does she? It’s the last thing she wants.’
‘And you do want to see it, don’t you?’
‘Maybe I do,’ said Joel. ‘I don’t know. But it looks a lot like him – and that’s good enough for me.’
The wind had died and the sea was grey-blue and slightly luminous – a colour befitting a warmer clime, Joel thought. Where it met the shore it hardly made a ripple now, as if it was resting, perfectly balanced, its head on the pillow of the beach, its breath almost imperceptible. It seemed incredible that such a powerful being – embodied by giant oceans, its limbs stretching around the globe – should lie here with such stillness.
‘Look,’ said Joel, ‘I didn’t come here to row about it.’
‘So what’s the punchline, then?’
‘I just wanted you to hear it from me.’
‘That you’re going out there?’ asked Debbie.
‘That too, yes. I’m going to stay with Liam for a couple of weeks. See what I can find.’
‘Booked the flight, all set?’
‘Leaving on Friday,’ said Joel.
Debbie looked at him, then shook her head and laughed. ‘It’s just bloody typical,’ she said.
‘What?’ said Joel, a little puzzled.
‘All those years together and now you’re bloody going to Rio.’
‘Crappy timing, I know.’
‘Staying with your best mate, a block from Ipanema beach!’
‘If you came along you’d only wind each other up.’ Joel smiled.
‘How bad could it be on a lounger by the rooftop pool?’
‘We can go and lounge next year.’
‘I’ve heard that one before,’ said Debbie. ‘Anyway, I’m not in the habit of going on holiday with exes.’
‘Maybe we’ll patch things up.’
‘Don’t bet on it.’
‘You won’t be wanting a present, then?’ sad Joel.
‘Oh, yes, please – that would solve everything.’
‘How about a snow globe? I believe they’re your weapon of choice.’
‘I should watch out if I were you. I might aim a lot better next time.’
They walked back towards the piers. The shutters of shops and cafés were closed in the red brick wall of the seafront, though drinkers still lolled beneath yellow Lipton Tea umbrellas. They said goodbye beside the merry-go-round, exchanging peculiar kisses on the cheek, consolidated with a hug. Joel watched her walk away – she didn’t turn round and wave – then strode up a ramp on to the promenade, past the pier and over the road into a narrow street, his feet slaloming between two men holding hands, a bloke kick-starting a Vespa, a girl sitting against a wall with a cardboard sign between her feet. He walked up the hill into Hanover, pausing every now and again to look back towards the sea. When he arrived home he started to pack.
Liam’s flat was on the fourth floor of Tiffany’s, a twenty-storey aparthotel with a pool on the roof. From his balcony, between a gap in apartment blocks, Liam could see a slice of beach, sea and sky – white, blue, blue. He ate a breakfast comprising a cafezinho and chunks of tropical fruit: mango, papaya and one the name of which he’d forgotten, that he’d bought from a street stall. It amused Liam to think that growing up in England there had essentially been three fruits: apples, oranges and bananas. Perhaps pears, if you were posh. Here, Liam tried to eat a fruit he’d never heard of every week. He’d been in Brazil eight months and there were dozens more to try.
He watered the hibiscus he’d bought to make the balcony more homely. There was a roof terrace opposite with dozens of hibiscus bushes and Liam had watched hummingbirds flit in and feed. There were three flowers on his struggling shrub, hardly a feast for a hungry bird, but he lived in hope.
Liam put his cup and saucer in the sink and wondered if washing them up would undermine his maid’s working rights. Having Betty to clean for him was one of a million wonderful things about this stint in Brazil, but involved a whole new etiquette he failed to comprehend. He washed, but didn’t dry.
There was a buzz at the door and he opened it. Betty – pronounced ‘Betchy’, she had led him to understand – was short and black with straight shoulder-length hair and a golden tooth. She wore a blue uniform with a white pinafore. She laughed after most of his attempts at Portuguese and he understood almost nothing she said, except for the words namorada, filho and Deus: girlfriend, son and God. Liam had worked out that Betty wanted him to find the first, that the escapades of her son were the bane of her life, and that she thought God ought to be doing a better job on both counts. Today was the day the agency paid her for the month, and Liam wondered if she’d come early because he was supposed to tip her.
Betty said, ‘Bom dia,’ very slowly, then, ‘Tudo bem?’
He said, ‘Tudo…’ then hesitated because he could never remember if it was ‘tudo bem’ or ‘tudo bom’ or if it really mattered. She said something he didn’t understand, laughed and disappeared into the kitchen.
Liam loitered in the living room wondering about the tip. The agency said people often did and often didn’t. Eva, the office manager at work, shrugged and said it was up to him. He’d even tried asking Betty, but the only words he’d understood were ‘God’ and ‘wishes’. Joel would probably tell him to leave her a big fat tip. He took out his wallet. Would ten reais do? Not much more than three or four quid but enough for a couple of bottles of cachaça or a slab of steak to treat the family. Ten should do it, he thought. He accosted Betty in the kitchen. She pointed at the cup he’d washed and wagged a finger. Liam held out a note and said, ‘Para você, obrigado’ – for you, thank you.
Betty looked a bit puzzled, frowned, then smiled and took the money with an ‘Obrigada’ – leaving Liam no wiser. ‘Something something Deus, something something namorada,’ said Betty with a laugh and a shake of the head.
Liam took the lift to the ground floor and said, ‘Oi!’ to the men on the desk. He stood in the street and waited for a yellow cab to appear down the stretch of Rua Prudente de Morais. The Ipanema streets always made him think of Joel. It would be interesting to see what he made of it after all these years. Back in Brighton everybody knew him as the boy from Brazil. In their teenage years and beyond it had given Joel a twist he’d played to effect, when it suited him. He’d done the drum band thing, and hosted a Latin night for a while at a club beneath a seafront colonnade. One summer, Liam and Joel had tried to run a beach bar down near the volleyball court, selling vitaminas and caipirinhas to beach bums and wannabe surfers stranded on Brighton’s pebble shore. Liam wondered if these groups had equivalents in countries which really did have sun, surf and sand: were there kids in Bondi decked out in parkas, assuming a cockney lilt, dreaming of drizzle? The bar wasn’t making any money – it was hard to make a profit selling cheap caipirinhas when cachaça cost £15 a bottle – so they’d driven to Portugal in a van and filled it with bottles of Velho Barreiro. Customs and Excise had not taken kindly to their interpretation of personal consumption and had seized the lot. The bar died gasping on the shore.
It was odd to think of Joel arriving without Debbie. Whenever Liam had thought of them coming he’d thought of them coming. All of Joel’s stories had Debbie written into them. She’d been in the drum band, taken money on the door at the Latin night, lent them half the cash for the cachaça run. Liam wondered what the story was – he’d only heard it second-hand from people who wouldn’t really know the truth. One way or another, Joel had lost the best thing that had ever happened to him in favour of someone who might not even be alive and who seemed to have done his life little but harm. Perhaps it wasn
’t quite as simple as that. Liam wondered what line he should take on Gilbertogate. Jackie would have denied it was him, Debbie would have given it to him straight, and everyone else would have taken the news with a fair degree of public sympathy and an equal amount of private concern. He wondered if there was any point in trying to set Joel straight.
A taxi spotted Liam’s raised arm, veered across the road and pulled up in front of Tiffany’s. Liam got in, told the driver the address – that much he could say – and slouched in the back of the taxi. He loved the way the tint of his shades graded the blue of the early morning sky. It was a twenty-minute ride to his office overlooking Botafogo beach. Along a stretch of Ipanema, past tanned joggers and skaters, to the long curve of Copacabana with its palm trees and volleyball courts and air of dated paradise. The beaten black leather in the back of the cab felt good. The caress of conditioned air on his slightly sunburnt scalp felt good. His suit felt as loose as his limbs. It certainly beat the Northern Line.
The car slowed to a halt at some lights and two black kids stepped in front of the car and started juggling tennis balls. Alone then together they conjured the balls in triangular arcs, mixing in a spin here, a clap there. As engines started to rev, they passed to the side of the car and Liam reached for his wallet, wondering about the correct amount. As fingers reached to tap the smoky glass the car rolled forward. Liam stroked his wallet and determined to be quicker next time.