by Tim Orchard
Si patted her back and made sympathetic noises as she cried. She cursed and ranted and made useless threats. Finally, when Petal had talked herself out, he comforted her as best he could. His arm was around her, her head on his chest. They shared a spliff, they exchanged tentative kisses, and they were very sweet, and Petal thought of what D.C. had said about kissing. It was a small intimacy that had been a long time coming. Later, when it seemed right, they touched each other but not too severely. Emotions were involved here, and Si, unknowingly striving for new manhood, trod carefully. For Si, Petal was where she should be—he had loved her since childhood—and he didn’t have to rush into anything.
They lounged on a couch, Si made a fire in the grate, and they listened to music.
Si said, “I’ve dreamed of this since we were—well, it seems like forever.”
Petal gazed at his handsome, guileless face. “You didn’t say. Why didn’t you say?” For her, coming from a family who seemed to have to say everything, always, Si seemed so quiet and self-contained. She reached out, pulled him toward her, kissed his neck, and whispered, “Ah, Si, we’ve known each other for years, we went to school together. You should have said, you should have told me.”
Embarrassed, he said, “I didn’t know how. You and Dick seemed…” He stopped for a few seconds, then continued. “Because I’m quiet, that doesn’t make me weak. Because I don’t try to grab everything I want doesn’t make me a fool. I’ve always known what I think and feel. In the past, you’ve accused me of letting people take advantage of me, but if they do, it’s because I let them, do you get me? I let them—they aren’t taking advantage. But when what I want comes my way, then there’s no half measures.”
That was probably the most Petal had heard him say in one go, ever. Something deep and comforting was running through her bloodstream and it made her feel strange. The flickering light from the fire seemed to touch his face and hair with a golden haze. He looked beautiful. She bit her lip as tears pricked behind her eyes. Crying again—she didn’t think so, but she did anyway—and the tears didn’t hurt, they were tears of happiness. They slept spooned together. No sex. Slowly, slowly.
Dick knew he was being stupid. Love, especially the instant kind, can make people do strange things. He didn’t know where she came from or why she was there, but the desire to share whatever he had with Amber was overwhelming, and regardless of what he’d agreed to with the others, he couldn’t, didn’t, want to keep the secret. Wrapped together in the sleeping bag by the resurrected fire, he felt closer to Amber than he’d been to anyone in his life. He said, “I’ve got something to show you.”
When she’d left London, Amber had been focused, money on her mind. If she’d had a plan it was basic: arrive, schmooze a few carrot crunchers, discover where the grass was hidden, tell her dad, disappear back to the city, and collect the cash he’d promised her. How hard could it be? But whatever she’d been expecting, meeting Dick had altered her trajectory. Not that she’d forgotten the reason she was there; it was a dilemma pushed, for the moment, to the back of her mind, but it was there and she knew her dad wouldn’t wait forever. “What have you got? What are you going to show me?”
Eyes wide, Dick kissed her and grinned. “You’ll see. Like I said, fingers in pies and all that. Come on, let’s have a little midnight walk.”
The night sky was star strewn, the moon yellow. Although they didn’t need it, Amber brought the flashlight along. She turned it on and off as they walked, hand in hand, across the fields. At the Newmans’ farm, the yard dogs gave a desultory bark as they recognized Dick, then sidled up tails wagging to sniff at Amber. The barn door wasn’t locked, but Dick was careful, quiet, as they slipped inside.
They stood in the cavernous dark and Dick flashed the flashlight over the bales. Amber’s heart sank. When he spotted the one with the hole in the plastic, he pointed with the flashlight. “Just put your hand in there.” She didn’t need to do that. She knew already what the bales represented. When she hesitated, Dick said, “Go on, put your hand in and pull a bit out.”
Back at the tent, fire stoked again, Dick explained about the council cutting the ferry and about the way the island was and how the loss of the ferry would kill the place. He didn’t bother muddying the water with mention of Petal. Nor did he bother with all the old Stick stuff about how his family went back to fuck knows when. None of that mattered anymore. History is for the dead. What Dick wanted with Amber was a brave new world. After he’d explained about the island and the ferry, he explained about how they planned to sell the dope back to the dealer and save the island.
Love and love collided in Amber. Here was a boy, there was a father. She wanted to go with the boy. She imagined leaving the island with him, bringing him back to London. Then she asked him if he felt isolated on Stickle, and he quoted D.C., who’d said one time, “We ain’t that isolated. We ain’t St. Kilda, we don’t eat puffins.”
That got Amber so good. She didn’t know St. Kilda from a cream egg, but for some reason, the idea of eating puffins made her laugh, but while she was laughing, she thought of her father and wondered then exactly what she was doing. She thought about the way people talked about family and talked about blood ties, but when it came to family, they didn’t talk about right and wrong. She didn’t like what she thought, but despite her feelings she still couldn’t say, couldn’t explain to Dick why she was there. Couldn’t talk. Blocked. Unable. Instead she kissed him and kissed him and told herself she would explain later.
After a while, Dick said, “I’m hoping maybe to get some of the money from the dope, so I can go to London and get something going.” And, nervously, he continued. “It’s just a dream really. I’d—I’d like to get into music but like I’m not musical.” He twisted his mouth, hunched his shoulders, smiled. “Don’t laugh, but like I’d like to maybe start some sort of a music club, you know?”
Amber didn’t laugh. She came forward slightly from where she sat and stared into his eyes. “Really?” This was like more than fate, more than kismet. She kissed him, very seriously, and said, “Now, don’t you laugh! That’s what I want to do too!”
This minute, this hour, this day, this year, love needs confirmation and the idea of a future, however hazy. Love looks forward, and Dick was already in the future. He opened up. “Look, I know we have only just—” He stopped and ran the palm of his hand gently down her arm, got shy, and then he came back. “But I was thinking about what you said, you know, about new music, new styles. Made me think. Maybe something like that. Maybe if we could get the money, maybe we could do it together?”
It was late when they finally fell asleep, but it was early when Dick left the tent. Amber slept on. It was Friday.
Although he may have just fallen in love, a farm was still a farm, ticktock it didn’t stop. But the young man was so loved up, nothing touched him. Everything was one step beyond. Even some of the questions he should have asked. It was a kind of dreamy remote control. He did everything he needed to do, but all he thought about was Amber. Nevertheless, he managed to keep one eye on the coming night and the moving of the bales. Whatever else was on his mind, he was determined Henry would be on the morning ferry.
Father and son ate early bacon sandwiches around the Rayburn and decided on the glass and other things they needed on the mainland. There was a trailer load of soft fruit and other produce to take to the wholesaler, which Dick had made ready and hitched up to the Land Rover. While they ate, Dick explained about the tent in the field. Not exactly of course. Henry hated having anybody unnecessary on his land. When he questioned his son on what she wanted, what she was doing and why she was there, Dick lied. He told his dad she was on a field trip from her school, a project about shipping traffic in the Channel. Henry moaned and grumbled that no one in her right mind came to Stickle, but to no avail. What could he do? Dick had learned years ago that if he wanted to do anything he knew his father would disagree with, it was best to present him with a fait accompli.
/> He explained, “You were asleep—I didn’t think you’d mind. She’s a nice girl, no trouble-like. I told her she could use my shower and toilet. So, no problem.” He nodded his head as though every word was the God’s honest. Henry muttered on about strangers on the land for a bit more, and Dick smiled and shrugged. “Don’t worry, Dad, all she’s doing is counting ships. Go to Dymchurch, have a good time. No worries. I’ll see you Saturday night when you get back.”
Later, after Henry had left, Dick supervised the pickers and packers, but by midday, he was back at the tent. Amber fried sausages and eggs. After they had eaten, they went down to the beach and swam. The sea was blue and chill with little whitecaps that slapped them in the face and made them laugh. They had showers at the house and then they spent time playing Dick’s records, exchanging little confidences and body fluids.
Henry went off in innocence and did what most people do throughout most of their lives, nothing much. He went to the glaziers and the builders’ merchant, the fruit wholesalers, and he went to the café and then the pub. He ran into a few people he knew. They went for food, then to another pub. Nothing untoward—a few laughs with the men and a bit of mild flirtation here and there with women he’d known casually for years. He was relaxed, happy. When asked about Dick, it was easy to say everything was all right, good, the boy was doing well. It struck him, as it had in the past, how merely crossing the narrow stretch of sea between Dymchurch and the island made a difference to his way of thinking and behaving. Again, he thought of change and what it would be like and wondered if he should just give Dick the money he had put aside for him so the lad could leave guiltfree, and they could both get on with new lives. It would be hard, but his mind had begun to turn and it felt good. Later he slept justified in a nice attic room above the pub, near the quay. In the morning, someone would call him and give him a big fried breakfast, and then he would spend the rest of the day drinking around the town, before catching the afternoon ferry back home to Stickle.
25
Everything Dick had done since he’d walked out of the post office the previous afternoon was like a movie run over and over, until all the colors had leached and blended into Amber. It had been an intense, almost sleepless twenty-four hours for both of them. By late Friday afternoon, Amber, who had her own concerns, went back to her tent and lay on her sleeping bag and wondered what she would tell her father. Dick, due to help move the bales after dark, was weary and crashed out on his bed.
Evening came around. A sound roused Dick. The falling of the backdoor latch or the click of the hall light switch, and then, through sleep-washed eyes, he saw Petal hesitate on the bedroom’s threshold. She stood in the doorway, a dim halo of creamy luminescence highlighting her pink hair. She still looked good, she was still the same person. That was the trouble. He’d changed.
As she came over to the bed, Petal reached out to touch him, and he recoiled a fraction. It was the very smallest of movements but, for Petal, a moment of truth. It was all she needed. Petal was like her dad: calm, collected, volatile, and sometimes all at once. She half crouched over him. “What’s up?”
He felt the chill and tried to smile, to behave normally, but that wasn’t going to happen. Even he knew the truth. Petal had him bang to rights.
The truth was it was all she could do to restrain herself from hitting him. Through gritted teeth she said, levelly, “Where have you been? Haven’t seen you. Are you all right?”
Somewhere, a bit of her wanted him to try to explain. She wanted to hear him say how he’d made a stupid mistake. Apologize on bended knee or something like that. She wanted to laugh at him while he tried to explain that what she thought was happening wasn’t happening, and it was all a big mistake, and he was helping the poor girl find something in the dark and they were lying down because the tent was quite small. She’d let him talk himself up a mountain and then kick him off.
All of a sudden, a splurt, a little cameo of her cuddled in Si’s arms, shot into her brain. Snapping straight, she said, “It’s over. Keep her away from me. We’re meeting at the Newmans’ to move the bales.”
Outside the shop, in Stickle’s lone phone box, Amber talked to Carter. The first mistake she’d made was telling him where the barn was. Carter was pleased and chuntered on, told her it was good work. Amber didn’t want to hear, only half listened and wished Dick had never shown her the bales of grass. She wished she didn’t know that the barn doors weren’t locked, wished she didn’t know how easy it would be for Carter to come down and just take everything.
Meeting Dick had changed things. She liked the way he looked, she liked the way he talked, but what had touched Amber’s heart was that Dick wanted her enough to put everything at risk like that, in innocence. Amber saw it like the truth of a person opened out for you to see, and Dick had reached her deep down, and she wondered about herself. What kind of person would hurt someone like that? Then she remembered she was supposed to be talking to her father and tuned back in.
She tried to explain about saving the ferry and the other stuff Dick had told her, but Carter was never a bleeding heart. He told her he’d offered ten grand to D.C. and that was that. Nothing more.
Amber said, “Can’t we negotiate? These people aren’t like you, you don’t have to come down heavy, please.”
Never. He had a business to run and that was the offer. He didn’t care about some bloody little island. If she could get it at that price, she’d get her ten as well. As Carter pointed out, fair’s fair.
The second mistake Amber made was trying to reason with him. Because she’d always had everything, because he’d always been generous to her, the way he viewed money was something she didn’t understand. For him it was essential. It made him tick. Every pound was personal. He remembered having to rob and steal just to eat. As he’d told her a while ago, “You don’t go back there.” No, Carter didn’t look back, he looked to his money. In this deal, Carter saw only money lost. Cash down the toilet. The Colombians may have written it off as an act of God, but Carter didn’t believe in God or any other motherfucker, and even his daughter couldn’t reason with him on that.
Even though Amber thought she had her father wrapped around her little finger most of the time, men are just men and sometimes they shout, and even though he loved Amber, that was what Carter did. “I thought you were the one that wanted to make some money! What’s up? One way or the other, I’m coming down on Sunday and I’m taking those bales back with me. Tell those fucking carrot crunchers to stay out of my way. I’ll have the ten grand with me and some of the boys, so tell them it’s pay or play.”
Amber closed her eyes, held the phone like a hammer in her hand and tapped it gently against her forehead.
Carter smacked the phone down. What was the matter with these people? They get to a poxy little island and lose half their brain. Simp was still wittering on about the place—how it reminded him of being a chavvy and how he’d like to spend time there, get back to nature and all that fucking shit—and now Amber was on the same tip. Wanted to save the world with his money! No fucking chance!
Night crept over the island. The tent was lonely. The fire was out. Unsure, confused, Amber built another fire. It was a weak, wispy thing, neither of use nor comfort. She sat beside it and poked it with a stick, which didn’t help. She waited. Dick had told her there was some job or the other to do, and he’d meet her when he was finished. Her head was full of Dick, in the nicest possible way. Dick and more Dick, and she realized, sometimes the person you thought you were, the person who’d do anything to get what you wanted, didn’t actually exist, and somehow your heart had become so full you didn’t know what to do with it. It was a 180-degree thing. It took time to adjust. She worried about what her father would do. What the islanders would do. What Dick would do when he found out who her father was. Even though she hardly admitted it to herself, Amber knew she couldn’t sell Dick out, but she didn’t know how to tell him the truth either.
The sheep were hudd
led all together in the gloom, their little red-and-white eyes staring. Were they looking at her? When she’d read Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, she’d made sure her windows were shut at night for months after. The book had ended up with so many vampires, they’d resorted to drinking animal blood. If a vampire drinks sheep’s blood, do the sheep become vampires? It was a question the book never really answered.
The dark, the quiet, the wide-open space, the sheep, the crap fire, Dick, her dad—too much was zipping around in her mind. What she needed was a little room with a lock on the door where she could sit with her head in her hands and think.
She walked off toward the house. She wanted to see Dick, to say something, nothing, just to see him and use the toilet. There was engine noise off up the other side somewhere, and she assumed now, in the modern world, farmers were like everybody else and went 24-7. Lettuce doesn’t grow itself.
The granddaddy flat was deserted, but she went through into the living room and back to the toilet. It was old school with nothing but the bare necessities: toilet paper, a flush toilet, a bolt on the door. It was painted green and white, and there were pictures of punk performers torn from Sniffin’ Glue and NME stuck to the walls. It could have been a real nice respite—all quiet, locked in a little room, a chance to collect her thoughts—but it wasn’t. There was a rumbling down below and it wasn’t her stomach. Some of the tractor-type noises she’d heard on her way in now seemed right below her. Backward and forward. What was going on? She pulled herself together and went to have a look.
Around the corner of the house, a light from a spot on the front of the tractor bathed the back of the building in chopped-up chunks of bright glare and deep shadow. The engine rumbled. A bale of grass was on the forks of the tractor. There was a girl and a big guy in the tractor’s cab. On the ramp leading down into the cellar, waving the tractor forward, was an older guy with long hair. No sign of Dick. It was easy for Amber to guess what was happening and it was a bit of a relief. Probably wouldn’t do Amber any good in the long run, but the idea that her father would hare down to the island on Sunday and find absolutely nothing tickled her at that moment.