o0o
Not far from the seafront we came to a roundabout, where the road that hugged the coast met the Coast Road, the main dual carriageway from town. Not a massive roundabout, but not mini either: just perfect for my needs just now. We pulled up like good boys at the white line, giving way to the right; and I called across, “Jamie, stick with me! What I do...”
What I do, you do. Other kids called the game follow-my-leader, but we always had to be different from other kids. They were cattle, we were family; and this game we’d played not only as children on foot or on furniture, but also as teenagers on bikes. He nodded, found a grin from somewhere. Tight and challenging, that was. Make it good, it said.
What in fact I did or seemed to do was make it funny, make a joke of it, make Uncle James madder than hell. I drove onto the roundabout when traffic permitted, Jamie beside me and all the parade behind; and all I did was not select an exit, I just kept going round. The Ranger followed us, everyone else followed the Ranger, and as I’d hoped, as I’d figured there were just enough cars in the line to bring us up neatly to the rear of the last. We made a traffic-choking daisy-chain, bringing the whole junction to a halt.
After a lap and a half I looked innocently back over my shoulder, and pulled a where-do-you-want-us-to-go? face at Uncle James. He gestured furiously, and the Ranger peeled off onto the Coast Road. I waved obedience; the other cars all followed him, and we tagged on behind, the pack reshuffled to put us at the bottom of the deck. He would never have let us set off this way, he’d have stopped in the car park to put us somewhere in the middle, but it would be beneath his dignity to pull up on the hard shoulder now.
He’d be checking the wing-mirror, though, or having his driver do it; so I drove a mile or so practically in the gutter, where I was sure he could see me. Then I drifted a little wider, tucking in behind the last car in line, where I was sure he couldn’t. Jamie joined me, yelling something I couldn’t hear; I pulled a face to say so, and held up three fingers.
As we passed the next junction, a slip road leading off to another roundabout, I held up two. He nodded.
The next junction, one finger; another nod, and a thumbs-up in reply.
o0o
We knew this road, as we knew them all. When the junction came, we were ready. Wait for it, wait for it—I waited until the car ahead had passed the hatchings on the road, too late for them to follow even if they were watching for this and I very much hoped they weren’t. Then a twitch of the handlebars and a squeeze of the throttle and I was away, my tyres scraping the kerb that divided the main carriageway from the slip road; just a second behind me, Jamie had to bump over the grass to make it, but his bike was designed for rougher rides than that and he wasn’t about to be jolted off, not my bro.
Up the slip road to the inevitable roundabout, three-quarters of the way around that and over the bridge that spanned the highway; I didn’t look down but I could hear blaring horns below me, the rear car trying to warn my uncle up front that we were gone. Well, nothing they could do now even if the message got through. No chance of a U-turn on the dual carriageway, until the next slip road and the next bridge across; if they did double back, we’d be well away before they got here.
o0o
One fast mile through a housing estate, to be certain sure they’d lose us; then Jamie overtook me, made a slow-down gesture, and pulled up in a lay-by.
I drew up beside him, wondering what the problem was. He already had his phone out, and was punching numbers.
“Sweets? Me again... No, listen. Grab a jacket and get out of there, right now. Move, move... Well, turn it off. My dad’s on his way, and he won’t be happy when he gets there. You shift, I’ll explain later. Meet us at the Blue Boar, yes? ... Good girl. I love you.”
He switched off and put the phone away. I was seriously proud of myself when all I said and all I thought was, “Good thinking, Batman.”
o0o
“Did you know, all the Blue Boars in the country used to be white? The White Boar, they used to be. That was Richard of Gloucester’s badge, Richard the Third, and he was a popular man. Besides, it was good policy. So they all named their inns sort of in tribute, yeah? Only then he gets killed at Bosworth, there’s a new king, Henry the wossname, Seventh? Yeah, Seventh, and suddenly the White Boar is not such a good idea, right? So they all change overnight. But it’s easy, because the white paint they used then, it was pretty much blue anyway; so you call yourself the Blue Boar, you don’t even need to repaint the sign, see? Easy...”
“Ben.”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
Okay. You can race, but you still can’t hide. I wasn’t even that drunk; actually I wasn’t drunk at all, I only wanted to be, no more than that. I shut up.
We were sitting in what had been a favourite pub once, bloodied by the years but stubbornly unbowed: bad décor and lousy turnover but good music, good beer and a pretty good clientèle also. Hell, we went there, didn’t we? So by definition, good clientèle. Also the landlady used to supplement her income by selling dope and dancing drugs pretty much across the counter, which endeared her to us no end. Poppers she actually kept literally on the counter, right there on the bar-top in their little bottles. Figured she’d wait a long time for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to sue her for selling medicines without a licence; and right she was, too.
But that was then and this was now, and as usual things were different. The place had been bought up and done out, they’d wrecked a genuinely old pub to create an artificial version: lino was out and polished boards were in, the traditional lounge and public bar had been knocked into one big room and then divided into nooks and alcoves and booths with many wooden partitions.
I hated it like this, we all did. But it did have two advantages, which had made it Jamie’s first thought for a rendezvous. It was a sensible bus-ride from Laura’s flat and a lengthy drive from anywhere in town, a three-in-one advantage: no one was going to be looking for us out here; we weren’t likely to run into any chance-met family member or fellow-traveller so far from the power-base, so dangerously close to the border where the real world overlapped; similarly we weren’t likely to run into the opposite kind of trouble, the radical rebels who’d stir up a riot at the sight of a Macallan nose dipping into a pint glass.
The second advantage was provided by that web of partitions. Loathe them we might and did, but no denying they did make for private conversation and easy plotting.
Jamie and I had had to loop right around the town to get here, and we’d probably stretched the journey further than we needed to, being extra careful not to attract any beady and curious eye. As a consequence Laura had been here already when we arrived; and that she’d moved so fast on Jamie’s word said a lot, I thought, about her relationship with her, what, her father-in-common-law?
Smart girl, she’d clearly got to know him well.
o0o
She wasn’t showing so smart just now, though. She’d had time to stew, obviously, sitting flustered and sweaty watching the door for our arrival. There’d been no kiss for Jamie though he took one anyway, no smile for either one of us. She’d sat and listened a mite frostily, if someone so visibly hot and bothered can be frosty also, and I thought she could; and now that we’d told her the tale, from cousin’s death to uncle-and-father’s confusion, our triumph on the roads, she was fidgeting with the glass of blackcurrant-and-lemonade that seemed to please her no better than our story, and she was asking foolish questions.
“What, and you had to go and do that, did you? You just had to piss him off that way?”
“I think so, yes.” Jamie glanced at me for support in this, got a nod and a shrug in return, of course we did, what’s her problem? He went on more gently than I thought he wanted to, more sharply than ever I could have spoken to Laura: “I suppose you’d rather I was back in his pocket and out on the streets tonight with the lads, taking revenge? Is that what you want? It’s what he wants.”
&nbs
p; “No, that’s not what I want. You know that.” That’s what she’d taken him away from. Me and her between us, perhaps—but no fooling, it had mostly been her. She’d had most opportunity, after all. “But I’d rather you didn’t go out of your way to fight with him, either. Not now.”
My lip twitched, and she was onto me like a shot. “Well, what? What’s funny?”
Actually, I’d just experienced a moment of unadulterated happiness. We’d been so close just then, Jamie and I, to catching each other’s eye and sharing a single indivisible thought, ah, it’s a baby thang; and I’d felt the stillness in him that said he wasn’t going to do it, and I’d known he was feeling the same in me, and so I’d smiled.
Fortunately a second thought had ridden in on the back of the first, I was wrong, she doesn’t know him so well after all; and I could justify myself with that, and let her feel only a little patronised. “You don’t have to go out of your way,” I said, “to fight with Uncle James. He’s very biblical on that score. He that is not with me is against me, yeah? You either knuckle under and do just what he wants when he wants it, or you’re in opposition and he’ll do anything he can to screw you. You can’t be neutral, and you can’t come to an understanding with him. He wouldn’t understand.” I smirked a little, pleased with that; Jamie applauded, Laura scowled.
“You don’t have to wind him up, though,” she said, dragging us back from the general to the specific. “That’s just childish, it’s stupid. If you didn’t want to go with him, why couldn’t you just say so?”
“We did, but...” But I’d thought Jamie was weakening, only I couldn’t say so, I couldn’t betray him that way. Not to her. “He doesn’t listen,” I went on, a little lamely. “He’s a bully, you know that.”
She snorted. “He just needs standing up to.” Meaning, If I’d been there, I’d have stood up to him. I’d have said no, and meant it. Which she would have done, she admitted no more compromise than my uncle; but if she’d been there, he’d have had his men pick her up and carry her to his car, and then Jamie and I would have had no choice but to go along. I wasn’t going to say that either, though. Which of course left me with nothing to say.
“Anyway,” from Jamie, “we did it, it’s done now...”
“And we can’t go home, as a result.”
“No, we can’t.”
Not tonight, at any rate. There’d be someone watching for us. And Jamie wouldn’t use his talent against family, that went without saying; and probably whoever his father sent would have no such inhibitions. He’d be under orders to do so if necessary, to bring us in. Uncle James hated to be defied.
“So what do we do now?” Laura demanded.
Camp out with friends was the obvious answer, but the way they were looking at each other, I had a sudden doubt. There was an unspoken question between them, who can we go to?, and neither one of them was coming up with a solution.
My heart ached briefly, for them and for myself. I’d seen this before with couples, how they could turn inward to each other so strongly that they let old friendships, sometimes all their friendships drift and ultimately die of neglect. Jamie of course had suffered from the usual Macallan complaint, too few friends outside the family. Laura had been the compleat student, a social animal par excellence; but that was a picture two years old, and from the uncertain face of her I guessed that it no longer applied.
“Keep away from your own circle,” I said, more to help them out with an excuse than by way of genuine advice. “Just to be safe. He may have been keeping tabs on who you hang out with, especially if you’ve been in his bad books recently. He never lets anyone go.”
“Who, then?”
I looked down at my hand and said, “Give us your phone, Jamie.”
He passed it across; I called the number that was scribbled on my skin. It rang half a dozen times, and I was just getting anxious when the phone was picked up at the other end.
“Yes, hullo?”
“Hi, is that Janice?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Um, this is Ben. Sorry I ran out on you like that...”
“That’s okay.” For someone who’d tasted what was likely her first experience of Macallan magic that morning, when I’d smashed the bar window, she sounded admirably cool. “How’s it going, are you all right? We’ve been worried about you.”
“I’m fine. Only, we’ve got a problem. Can I impose on you again tonight?”
“Of course. The bed’s there, it’s not an imposition.”
“It may be, this time. There’s three of us.”
“Three in a bed?” she suggested sweetly.
Ouch. And double ouch, as I realised how inevitable the sleeping arrangements were. “I’ll take the sofa,” I said. “If you don’t mind...”
“Ben, we don’t mind. You come. Have you eaten?”
Lunch was a long time ago now. “We’ll pick something up on the way. For you, too. For you two too. Indian or Chinese?”
“Indian,” definitely. “Please,” added just for form’s sake. And “Veggie for me, though,” with no hesitation, no anxiety about being awkward.
o0o
Laura rode pillion behind Jamie, though she’d have been a lot more comfortable with me. She and I were helmetless, in defiance of good law and good sense; I looked in my mirror more often than I needed to as I led them by devious ways through the dusk light, saw how her hair was being blown into rats’ tails, and saw in my head how she’d sit on the floor at Jamie’s feet and curse his clumsiness while he gently teased it out with fingers and comb.
Food came first, though, geographically and chronologically and otherwise. I thought this was a hopeful sign, that I could watch them together and imagine them at play and still feel hungry. I never used to eat, when I was grieving over Laura. Not unless she was watching, when I would eat and eat, not to let her know that I was grieving.
The city had changed, but not this much: not that I should drive down a certain cobbled alley in a certain shady quarter and fail to find the Hole. Technically Al-Halal, we knew it by many names, Halalujah and Halal on Earth and The Black Halal of Calcutta, but mostly it was just the Hole. It was dark, it was dingy, you descended many steps to find it and you didn’t like the look of it when you got there, what little of it you could see; but it produced the best Kashmiri takeaway this or any other side of the Karakorams.
High summer, few students, no queue. In twenty minutes we left with a warm, steaming and remarkably heavy box—well, there would be five of us; and besides, Jamie had paid—which Laura had to balance across her knees because my panniers were still full of my junk and it wouldn’t balance itself across the queen seat behind me.
o0o
On to the flat, and to the welcome due anyone bearing such gifts. Myself I thought it might be a poisoned chalice we carried in with such pomp, we might be playing the Greeks here, beware of us; but I was weary of being a Jeremiah. I could worry later about antidotes. Right now I made brisk introductions—“Jon, did you meet Jamie or Laura? I don’t remember. If not, these are they; and this is Janice, you two”—while the others ran around clearing space on the floor, finding plates and forks and pickles while Jamie cursed and slipped out again, up to the offie to fetch the essential cans.
We made a little ceremony of opening and unwrapping and passing around. I guess we always had. And with that ceremony came a renewal of the old unspoken law, no shop in the mess; it seemed to follow naturally, that you didn’t spoil ceremony and good food and self-indulgence with conversation that dug too deep or turned up sour flavours.
So while we ate I did most of the talking, because I had the most to talk about that wasn’t to do with the town. I told them about taking a TEFL course and teaching my way across Europe; and to give them a giggle I told them what else I’d been doing, though I didn’t tell them why.
“Bit of journalism on the side,” I said.
“Oh, yes? Who for?”
“Oh, Fortean Times,” very casually. “Intern
ational Enquirer, that sort of stuff. Any paper with a weird-and-wacky column.”
“What,” from Laura, “alien abductions and my-dog-made-me-pregnant, like that?”
“Actually, that was ‘my husband’s ghost took possession of the dog and made me pregnant’,” I said sternly. “Very important ground-breaking story.”
“Hey, I read that!” She looked delighted, but I wasn’t at all surprised. We used to read them all the time but she was the most addicted, it was usually Laura who paid out for them. She loved the medical stories.
“Ben?”
“Jamie?”
“Why?”
Of all of them, he should have been able to answer that himself. He wasn’t thinking; and no shop in the mess, I couldn’t answer him. Not truthfully, at least.
“Pocket money,” I said. “Something fun to do, when you haven’t really got a home to go to. And I met the best people. Vampires? I can do you vampires. And a were-bear, and three women who take musical dictation from Mozart, don’t know why they’re always women but they are, and any number of poltergeist babies...”
I kept them going with stories like that for a while. Then when I was tired of talking and wanted a chance to eat, I said, “Jamie, I know you’ve still got the jeep, I saw that; but what happened to the sports jobs?”
He’d had two or three that I remembered, one to drive and the others to store in a barn in a kind of serial monogamy; but it was his father’s barn, and Uncle James was good at grudges.
“Sold ’em,” he said. “What do you think bought dinner?”
“We’re living off the proceeds,” Laura confirmed. “Carefully.” Which was what I’d really been asking, and here it came. “Looks good on the bank statements, but I’ve got to take a year out from school for the baby, so we can’t go wild. It’s capital, really. I want Jamie to go into business. If we can figure out anything he can actually do...”
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