by Simon Mason
She hesitated, but only for a moment.
‘Right. And the second term?’
‘ Wait, I get it now. The limit’s 1. Each term’s closer by a smaller and smaller amount.’
‘That’s it.’
‘Third and fourth terms are and . I’d already got those. Fifth term’s ’
‘Yeah. Closer to the limit by then by then then then …’
‘Then The fifth term. Which is smaller than
‘So N equals 5.’
‘So bingo.’
She was looking at him now with undisguised interest.
He said, ‘You’d’ve got it if you hadn’t decided to go walkabout.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Anyway, look. If I don’t make a mess of this a bit faster I’m going to get shouted at.’
She looked at him. Smiled again. ‘All right, maths boy. You better get to it. Oh, by the way.’
‘What?’
‘Saturday night. Party time. Place in Battery Hill. Cross Keys House, Turnpike Road. Take your mind off the fencing for a bit.’
He looked at her impassively.
‘Think you might make it?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Got an excuse for not making it?’
‘Could have. I could forget the address.’
‘I get the feeling you’re the sort of boy who doesn’t forget anything.’
‘I might make an exception.’
‘I think you’d be making a mistake.’
‘Five Mile kid with all the posh girls? What would your mother think?’
‘Can we stop talking about mothers? The one shocking thing about me going off is that my mother actually noticed. I didn’t think it would register. I’m pretty sure the only reason she contacted the police was to get at me. Thing is, Dr Roecastle FRCS doesn’t actually need a daughter. She’s got her work.’
He watched her as she went down the lawn, something fluid, almost jokey, in the way she walked, like a cartoon fawn picking its way through cartoon scrub, fearless for all its delicacy.
Smudge materialized at his shoulder.
‘Got to say I’m impressed. Never known you move so quick, Garv.’
‘I didn’t move at all, Smudge.’
‘No, but she was over here like a ferret up a drainpipe.’
‘I’m doing the fencing, Smudge. She goes for fencers, van drivers, kids from Limekilns and Five Mile. In other words, she likes to piss off her mother.’
‘Sounds good. I do fencing and I like vans. Do you think I’m in with a shout?’
‘No doubt about it, mate.’
‘Did she say anything about me?’
‘Yeah, she did actually.’
‘What?’
‘Invited you to a party Saturday.’
Smudge’s face fell. ‘Can’t make Saturday. Still.’ He grinned. ‘It’s the thought that counts. Say anything else about me?’
‘Not that I remember. But maybe she was thinking about you.’
Smudge smiled modestly. ‘You reckon? I saw her sneaking a look from time to time.’
‘Only natural, you being stripped to the waist.’
Smudge took hold of some of his belly. ‘Some girls like it big,’ he said. ‘That’s what I heard. Tell you something else about girls.’
And he would have done if his brother hadn’t appeared to tell them something about fencing.
On his own again, Garvie smoked a cigarette, looked at his watch, settled at last to creosoting, though his thoughts were elsewhere, with Amy Roecastle, a girl with a sharp mind and a beautiful mouth and a sense of humour, a posh girl, a rebel – and a liar.
26
Cross Keys House, a big brindle-coloured stone building, had been a farm once. It ranged in sections alongside Turnpike Road at the junction to Froggett between a row of cottages and the open countryside. At the country end a tall solid wooden gate, shut and locked now, gave on to a gravel drive, which curved round the house to the garden at the back, a declining sweep of lawn to a dry-stone wall and, beyond that, water meadows, newly mown, a pale shaved green under the dark night sky.
Mrs Brighouse had gone away and left her daughter in charge. Eighty decibels of hip-hop ripped the air as Jay-Z and Kanye West smacked the house around. About thirty kids danced barefoot on the quaking lawn with glasses of Pimm’s in their hands. Some lay on the patio or in the bushes.
Amy and Sophie stood together by the marquee. Sophie was wearing an electric blue backless halter from Selfridges, and Amy was wearing a black plastic mini, fishnets and a biker top with studs. It was nearly midnight.
Sophie said, ‘I haven’t talked to you all evening. How are you feeling?’
She put out a hand and touched Amy’s, and they exchanged a look.
‘I’ll be OK.’
‘Not in the mood for a party?’
Amy looked around the garden and sighed. ‘Don’t you ever want to be needed by someone? I mean, really needed. Someone who thinks only you will do.’ She made a gesture. ‘No one here needs me. They’re just the usual suspects. The guys we see all the time. The dancers and the drama set and boys from Abingford’s.’
‘There’s a rugby team from Dylan’s said they’d come. They’re real party boys, apparently. And fit.’
‘Not exactly out of the demographic, are they? Dylan’s is like the most expensive school in the county.’
‘Well, who did you want to come?’
But before Amy could answer, Sophie turned excitedly towards the house. ‘Oh my God, they’re here. The Dylan crew. I can hear them breaking stuff in the kitchen.’
Twenty boys carrying a mannequin lacking a leg paraded out of the back door and across the patio singing high-class smut, and began en masse to gyrate suggestively with the doll. Sophie ran towards them and was soon lost among the semi-naked bodies, leaving Amy to sip her margarita alone, looking around at everyone. She knew them all, knew everything about them. She knew their Abercrombie and Fitch, their Ralph Lauren, their Comme des Garçons T’s and trainers; she knew their excitable voices, their innocent manners, their habits, dreams and pets.
Then she saw him. He was standing on his own in the entrance to the marquee, looking as if he’d been there all evening, though he must have only just arrived. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and nodded briefly. Something about him – not just his ordinary black jeans and scuffed zip-up leather jacket, or his oddly beautiful face, or his abstracted expression – made him look so different from everyone else that a zone of exclusion seemed to have formed around him and left him on his own.
She crossed the lawn.
‘You remembered the address then.’
‘Yeah, well. I’m the boy who doesn’t forget.’
‘It’s good you know who you are. In a minute someone’s going to come over and ask you.’
‘They done that already.’
‘Well, I hope you had ID on you.’
‘I told them I’ve got my name written in the back of my jacket. They seemed to think that was good enough.’
They stood there.
‘These your friends then?’ he said after a while.
‘Yes. These are my friends. This is my life, right here. This is me, in fact.’ She made an impatient gesture that took in the lawn, the marquee, the house, all the people in view. ‘Me, me, me, multiplied I don’t know how many times.’
‘Forty-seven.’
She looked at him curiously. ‘You counted how many people are here?’
‘I just sort of noticed.’
‘How weird is that?’
‘You told me I should stick to numbers.’
She looked at him slyly, slantwise. ‘All right, maths boy. Forty-seven people here. Party kicked off at ten o’clock. Twenty of them drink at a regular rate of a shot every twelve minutes, ten people at a rate of six shots an hour, seven people at a rate of three shots an hour, six people a double every other quarter of an hour, and four people a shot every ten minutes for the first hour, a shot every twenty minutes for t
he next hour, and a shot every forty minutes after that. If it takes ten shots to get drunk, how many people are still sober at one in the morning?’
‘Seven.’
She thought a moment. ‘Correct. The ones drinking three shots an hour.’
‘But by half past everybody’s drunk. Sounds about right by the look of it.’
She was looking at him curiously. ‘You’re a bit of a freak, aren’t you?’
He just shrugged.
The boys from Dylan’s had removed one of the mannequin’s arms, in which was hidden a stash of weed, and people gathered around them in excitement on the patio. There was some shouting. On the lawn generalized dancing was going on unrelated to the music. Someone came out of the house carrying several bottles of expensive liquor from Sophie’s mother’s drinks cabinet and Amy took one.
‘How about it? Want to get drunk?’
‘I’m all right, thanks.’
‘Mind if I do?’
He looked at her a moment. ‘She’s not here, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘Your mother. She’s not here to see you piss her off.’
‘Maybe I like getting drunk.’
He shrugged.
‘Maybe I’m wild. Maybe you should be getting nervous.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
She put the bottle to her lips. ‘Any minute now I could get unpredictable.’
He watched her calmly as he smoked.
‘That’s my reputation,’ she said. ‘People can’t work me out. Do you think you can work me out?’
‘I can’t even put up a fence panel. How could I work you out?’
She laughed then.
Still smoking, he looked past her towards the house and said blandly, ‘Here comes your ex. Now you’ll be able to ask for your photograph back.’
She turned. There was a commotion by the French windows, some pushing and shoving. The boys from Dylan’s had formed a police guard around the mannequin, and a blonde girl was trying to calm people down, and out of the crowd Damon eventually emerged with his grin a little battered and came erratically towards them.
He nodded at Garvie. ‘Hey.’
Garvie nodded back. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Starting to happen, man.’
He went past him towards Amy, who stood staring at him in horror. The blood had drained from her face.
‘Babe,’ Damon said to her. ‘Listen. It’s cool. I worked it out. I know what you got to do.’
As if snapping out of a trance, Amy stepped forward and caught hold of him.
‘What?’ he said, but before he could say anything else she hustled him round the side of the marquee out of sight, leaving Garvie on his own, smoking thoughtfully.
The party was turning out to be more interesting than he’d thought.
After a while the blonde girl came to talk to him. She had a soft, lisping voice, and she used it on him until he actually started to feel dizzy. She was very blonde. It was fascinating how blonde she was. She didn’t seem very interested in what he had to say but she had a pretty way of talking.
‘You know what?’ she said.
‘Probably not.’
‘I think she likes you. Amy.’
‘Only till she finds out I know nothing about vans.’
As soon as the blonde girl had gone Damon appeared again. He was no longer smiling. He looked confused.
‘Listen,’ he said and fell quiet.
Garvie waited. ‘Still listening,’ he said after a while.
‘What? Oh yeah. Listen. These people.’
‘What about them?’
‘Mental, innit?’
Garvie nodded. ‘Yeah. Like Market Square the other night.’
‘Yeah. That was bad. Like the Wild fucking West or—’ He bit his tongue and scowled at Garvie. ‘Told you before,’ he said. ‘I’m getting out till it blows over.’
‘It has blown over. She came back. No one thinks you did anything.’
Damon frowned. ‘Going anyway. Not sticking round to get a misjudgement slapped on. Know what I mean?’
‘Not really.’
‘Always me gets the blame. I been stupid, trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted. Got my stash. I’m clocking out. And once I go, I told you, I’m gone, no one finds me then. Not even you.’ He grinned a great grey grin, and squeezed Garvie’s shoulder. ‘Get what I’m saying?’
‘Look the other way.’
He half turned. ‘What? Oh. Yeah, that’s it. You got it.’ He grinned. ‘Cheers, then.’
‘Cheers, Damon.’
Then he was going, weaving his way stiff-legged across the lawn.
Garvie lit up another Benson & Hedges. Amy hadn’t come back. It was two in the morning; time to go. The party had mellowed through several stages of numbness from Daft Punk to Kanye West to Taylor Swift and had finally stalled in a general air of dazed apathy. He picked his way across the bodies on the lawn, and went into the house, through the kitchen and down the hall towards the front door. And that was when he saw her, in a large room full of big old furniture, standing on her own in front of the television. She was watching a feature on the 24/7 news channel about the Market Square riot and its aftermath.
As he hesitated by the doorway, she looked across and he lifted a hand.
‘Just off. Thanks and everything.’
She leaned down quickly and switched off the television. Something in the way she moved made him pause.
‘I’m not drunk,’ she said.
She came over, moving the ways drunks move, hardly at all, then all at once, and sat down suddenly on the convenient arm of a sofa.
He thought about that. ‘How are you getting home?’
‘Walk.’ She made walking gestures with her fingers.
Garvie watched her and she watched him back.
‘OK. Let’s go.’
‘You don’t have to come with me.’
‘Think of it as a favour to your mother. Seeing you don’t get not-abducted again.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep mentioning my mother.’
They went together out of the house and crossed Turnpike Road, and onto the path that ran through the woods.
It was very dark among the trees, and they went slowly through the silence broken only by brief bird noise here and there and the sound of their breathing. Bits of moonlight coming through the leaves picked out the studs on her biker jacket. Her plastic mini made squeaky noises as she walked. Occasionally they bumped together on the narrow path. Once she stumbled, and he caught her round her waist and held her up, and for a moment her hair was in his face, soft and scratchy, and he put her down and they went on again without speaking.
He could feel her looking at him.
‘Tell me about you,’ she said at last.
‘Nothing to tell.’
They went on in silence.
‘Now it’s your turn to ask me to tell you about me,’ she said.
Garvie thought about that. He said, ‘Tell me about Damon.’
‘Nothing to tell,’ she said at last, shortly.
‘Seems to me the most interesting person around,’ Garvie said. ‘Mostly I like him. He’s a bit on edge, of course.’
She didn’t say anything to that.
‘Can’t always hold it together, I bet.’
She made an ambiguous noise.
‘Gets mixed up with the wrong sort of people.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘People let him down. He mentioned it.’
She said nothing to that either, and they went on again in silence.
‘Scared of him?’ Garvie asked.
She came to a dead stop. ‘Why would I be scared of him?’
‘Posh girls get mixed up in dangerous stuff sometimes.’
‘Damon’s not dangerous.’
‘How do you know I’m talking about Damon?’
She bit her lip and they climbed on in silence, out of the shadows of the trees into moonlight and the
open path towards her house.
Garvie spoke again. ‘You’re soul mates, right? You and Damon.’
‘Actually, I don’t want to talk about Damon any more.’
‘But you had a big bust-up recently.’
She looked at him confused.
‘In fact, you let him down. Big-time. He needed you and you blew him off.’
She came alive then, her voice clear and sober and outraged. ‘I did not!’
‘Now that’s interesting,’ Garvie said. ‘That’s the most interesting thing you’ve said.’
She was almost shaking, staring at him angrily. They were standing together on the path near the back fence of ‘Four Winds’. When the echo of her voice died away it was very still and quiet. Garvie could hear her breathing fiercely as she looked at him.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘See you around.’
‘You leaving me here?’
He glanced down the path. ‘It’s approximately fifteen seconds to your back garden. I calculate the chances of you being abducted in that time are small.’
‘How am I going to get over the fence? You put it up again.’
‘You did it before.’
She swayed as she looked at it. ‘I’m not sure I can climb over any of it just now,’ she said helplessly.
Garvie looked at her, nodded. ‘You’d have a real problem if you were drunk,’ he said. ‘But,’ he added softly, ‘you’re not actually drunk, are you?’
Then he was going, and Amy stood on the path alone, looking after him thoughtfully before scaling the fence and fluently vaulting over into her garden.
27
Monday was yet another great day for fencing. But not for Garvie. Smudge’s brother had sacked him.
‘Why?’ his mother asked when she came in that evening.
Garvie shrugged. ‘Something to do with fence posts. Or string lines maybe.’
He was slumped at the kitchen table. Looking at him, his mother wondered if he’d been sitting there all day. He was capable of doing absolutely nothing for long periods of time.
She went over and sat down with him. ‘Garvie, do you and me need to have a talk?’
‘Thought we’d finished with all that stuff.’
‘I mean, do you need pepping up? Look, you’re all grown up. You’re out there. And what you’ll find is, there’re a lot of things in this world you’re going to have no use for. That’s natural. But you always got me, OK? You might not think it, might not always want it, but it’s true. Listen, I’ve got some spending money you can have. Why don’t you go out with your friends, have a few laughs?’