Light Errant

  Copyright © 1997 Chaz Brenchley

  ISBN: 978 1 61138 064 4

  Book View Café

  May 24, 2011

  One: Fair Spanish Ladies

  Summer in Spain: beach sports, sex and slaughter in the sun.

  Well, actually the slaughter was from someone else’s schedule. Some malign god (if gods there be) had scribbled it down on the list with a bloody finger, my punishment for not paying attention.

  Me, I was wholly occupied with what came first on that list, and what I’d planned for later. And why not, what else should a young man be doing or planning to do in the heat and freedom of a Spanish summer Sunday?

  The sky was clear, the sea was cool and calm, as we were not: a dozen lads laughing, gasping, sweating in the hot light as we chased a plastic ball, tackled and shoulder-charged and tried to foul each other monstrously with bare feet in soft sand.

  I was wearing swim-shorts and nothing, my regular outfit these baking, undemanding days. And shorts and skin both might be sticky and crusted now but skin could be showered and soaped clean, shorts could be shed—soon, soon—and meanwhile my blood fizzed and sparkled under the sun’s lash and I could do anything on such a day, no limits.

  And this was a grudge match, staff against students, and we were losing by a single much-disputed goal; and the repugnant cheat Luis who’d claimed that score had the ball again and was all too certainly going to pass it to his equally-vile kid brother Ramon to share the honours around the family; and what chance our corpulent, sand-blind and chickenhearted goalkeeper making a heroic dive to snatch the ball from the boy’s disgusting feet...?

  Precisely zero chance, I reckoned. Which meant it was up to me, last line of defence and no way, no way were these two monoglot morons going to waltz past me this time in arrogant defiance of the offside law and my infinitely superior status...

  I watched Luis’s eyes, made pretence to back off, listened for the thud of feet on sand behind me; and mirabile dictu, it really did work. I saw his intention a moment before he moved to make it so, nor was he selling me a dummy. His eyes flickered to find his brother, his foot slid the ball across the bumping sand—and I was already stretching to intercept, catching it atop the arch of my foot and sending it almost straight up into the air. And taking it on the chest as it came down, and momentum carrying us both forward together, me and the ball, so that it looked for all the world as though I had trapped it neatly and brought it under instant control.

  And now I was running, dribbling, dodging tackles with phenomenal skill or laughable ease, depending; and my team-mates’ cries filled the air from left and right of me, screaming for a pass; but this was my moment, I could feel it, and I wasn’t sharing it with anyone. Luis and Ramon had an elder sister, and I hadn’t looked to find her but she should be here by now, she should be watching...

  So I skittered and dodged and somehow—for the first, the only time in my life—came through all the traffic with the ball still at my feet, and now it was mano a mano, just me and their goalie and oh God, surely, surely I couldn’t screw this now...?

  No more than ours was he a dive-at-their-feet hero; he scuttled forward crouching, spreading arms and legs as wide as possible, hoping mostly that I would miss, I guess. And I grinned and toe-poked a shot straight forward, straight between his legs, sweetly nutmegged him and was already punching the air in triumph as I saw the ball falter in its rolling, as I saw it die a foot short of the excavated goal-line, just not enough power to carry it over this soft, sucking sand.

  Only a moment I had, before the twisting, sprawling goalie’s hand would reach it; only a moment to cheat, to break at least the implicit rules of the game, and in doing that also to betray myself and my honour, two years’-worth of oaths sworn and clung to. But, hell, they’d cheated too, their goal had been blatantly offside and they knew it; the rest was my own concern, and what did my honour mean against the crucial matter of Staff vs Students?

  Sun on my back, on my shoulders and legs, doing far more to my blood than just warm it: my eyes on the ball, I reached mentally for a long-neglected skill, I gripped the world and nudged it, just a touch...

  And the ball kicked, a fraction ahead of the goalie’s desperate fingers; it skipped, slowed, trickled to another halt, this time a sweet foot’s length the yonder side of the line.

  And I whooped, heedless and happy, and spun on my heel to dance my celebration under the eyes of Marina, beautiful big sister of my two star students. I could hear her voice already, crying applause from the sidelines. I hoped I could hear her thoughts too, I hoped she was thinking siesta as I was, thinking of a wide bed in a shuttered room, a cool bottle of rosado and a long hot afternoon, soft voices and hard breaths...

  And my eyes found Marina in her gold-brown skin, and plenty of it; her tumbling hair, plenty of that too and only a couple of shades darker; her shades, her baggy sleeveless T-shirt, her tormenting shorts. And her long arms were waving to salute me, and like a print-boy she had armpits like chalices, if chalices are hairy; and her longer legs were swinging where she sat on the wall above the beach; and right beside her and also slightly, tightly waving was Sallah. So much shorter, so much darker, so very much not supposed to be there...

  My feet faltered on the sand, my throat stifled my delight. Forget the siesta, Ben. Forget the bed, the rosado, the slow sex in fugitive bars of sunlight. These girls, I thought, were not here to offer me a threesome.

  These girls, I remembered, were not supposed to know each other at all. Certainly not to know about each other and me. Ach, and I’d been looking forward so much to what was left of the summer. I’d even had a line fit for a postcard home, I’m a well-loved man, and I’m carrying the bruises to prove it.

  I’d been so keen to use that, good lines come so rarely: more rarely even than my postcards home. Little enough chance of it now, I was afraid. Little chance of its being honest, at least. I might use it regardless. I had more reasons than one for wanting to send that card, and the important ones didn’t require honesty.

  o0o

  At my back the game was going on, but I was still standing rooted, seeming to have stepped without moving into something totally else. Another game? Perhaps; but my understanding of girls—based on limited experience, and a lot of listening to cousins—suggested that when they got together this way, when they ganged up, all the points would be scored on their side and the only goal was retribution.

  Might as well get it over, Ben boy. Someone behind me yelled my name, calling me back to help in a desperate defence; I barely glanced around, waved an apologetic hand and abandoned them. Walked off the field of play and poked my toes into sandals half-buried in the sand, kicked at nothing to work them free of the clinging beach and trotted up concrete steps to face my fate.

  Briefly, it didn’t seem so bad. Marina kissed me where we met, leaping from the wall she sat on and showing a lot more enthusiasm than I could manage in the circumstances. Lips to lips and tongue to tongue she greeted me, much as I’d pictured this moment in anticipation; and only I was spoiling my own picture, almost flinching away from this tall, tender, teasing girl where I should have been wrapping my arms around her, knocking heads with her, setting my eyes against her shades to squint the best I could through to the dark heart of her...

  Not Sallah kissed me, no. When Marina untangled at last her fingers from my hair and let me look, I saw her dark companion—hers? Mine, had been and should have been, mine only and shouldn’t have been anywhere near me this day—on her feet and silent like a shadow but making no shadow-moves else, not moving to shadow Marina’s pleasure in me.

  So I went to her, bravely to one lover under the watchful eyes of another I went, put my hands on her narrow shoulders and kissed her in greeting as
the Spanish do, chastely on the cheeks; and felt more than heard her sigh, felt the bone-deep tension in her, read something close to panic in her eyes; and sod it, I did the arm-wrapping thing regardless of its being the wrong girl I wrapped. I held her close and tight, what mute comfort I could offer in my confusion, and saw Marina’s approval as I did it and understood nothing except that this was not after all retribution.

  Sallah’s head in my shoulder, and me too muddled to move: it was Marina again who broke the tableau at last, gripping one of my wrists, one of Sallah’s. I startled at her touch, like a guilty thing not at all surprised; but she only smiled, and peeled us gently apart.

  “Sallah has troubles,” she said, in the English I was teaching her: no longer broken but not fluent either, not yet a seamless whole. Patchwork, I suppose. “We can go and talk now?”

  “Yes, of course.” I had troubles also, these two together still troubled me greatly; but there are troubles and troubles, and as I looked at Sallah the phrase ’hill of beans’ attached itself inexorably to mine. I should count myself lucky, probably, to be apparently getting out of this with a whole skin and the privilege of someone else’s burden. If my plans for the summer—my tipsy and delicious plans, slip-sliding from one girl to the other, from happy tumbling to soul-shaking erotic intensity—if those plans were the only victim here, likely we would all be getting off lightly. “Where do you want to go?”

  “To your room, please. Where we are private.”

  “Um, I came down on the bike...”

  A shrug, a smile, “So we go back on the bike. Sallah is little, we will—accommodate ourselves?”

  “Fit,” I suggested.

  “Si. We will fit. Sallah in between, so my hair does not bite her face.”

  “Sting.”

  “Sting is a singer.”

  “Sure, Sting is a singer; but sting is what your hair does, not bite. It hasn’t got teeth,” though it felt sometimes as though it had, whipping in the bike’s wind. When I let her drive, I took the helmet for protection: put it on her head if she’d wear it, or on my own with the visor down if she wouldn’t.

  o0o

  That day I drove, with both girls stacked behind me. Short-haired Sallah was the meat in our sandwich, and actually I thought Marina’s hair only the excuse, not the reason. There were hugs inherent here: Sallah was cosseted by definition, with someone to hold to and someone holding her, the pressure of bodies fore and aft, no danger of feeling alone even for five minutes, even in transit.

  Glad of that she was or seemed to be, the way she clung. Me, I was glad of it also, and not for the feel of her fingers on my bare and cooling skin, not that, not now; rather for the extra weight changing the bike’s balance as we swung around the curve of the bay. No one could challenge my right to this bike. It was registered, taxed and insured, all in my name, and many thousands of miles it had carried me, the last two years; but still I was always neurotically glad of passengers. One was good, two I thought was better: this bike was full. No room for anyone or anything to ride my back, ride my mind, rowel me with memory.

  No room for my sister’s ghost to reclaim what had been hers. Sometimes I felt her there despite all the years and all the miles I’d laid down between us now; sometimes there were hard fingers laid over mine, cold breath on my neck and an indomitable will set against me, hissing mine!

  Only if I were alone, though, never with company riding pillion. If I were feeling fatuous, I might claim hence the two girlfriends: to double my chances of escaping a haunting, each time I drove. I seldom went anywhere on the bike these days, after all, without one girl or the other; and quod erat demonstrandum, the effect obviously explained the cause, the end justified the means. Of course it did.

  No doubt I also ate garlic only to keep the vampires away. It worked, after all; the vampires were keeping many leagues away from me, lurking back in Transylvania. I knew, I’d interviewed a couple of their victims...

  o0o

  Actually, of course, I believed in ghosts no more than I did in vampires, and my sister did not, did not ride at my back even when no other girl did. It only felt that way when my mind slipped a gear, when I forgot to remember that I was a free spirit these days, not at all bound to the past or to the sad, fucked-up boy I used to be. Born a twin, I was a singleton now, all alone in a wide, wide world; and if I chose to double up on lovers, it was a choice I’d made and a risk I’d taken for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with what lay so far behind me.

  A risk come home to roost now, seemingly; but not seemingly with malevolent intent. Only because there was a need, Sallah had a problem and Marina thought maybe I could help, though God alone knew why or how. Sallah I guessed had demurred, Marina insisted; and I knew myself, Marina’s insistence was not a thing to be lightly put aside. Nor, though, was Sallah’s ordinarily-strict demurral. Hence the two of them here together, Marina making sure of an uncertain victory. Otherwise no doubt they’d have kept apart and let me go on dating each in turn, thinking in my naïvety that neither one knew about the other...

  Had they been going in for comparative studies, I wondered: dark head and darkly golden bent gigglingly close in a café, murmuring about my misdeeds and making wicked recommendations, each to the other?

  Maybe they had, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was here and now, both girls on the bike behind me, Sallah in trouble and something perhaps that I could do to help. Never mind about the past—never ever—nor the future either, which of the girls if either one would keep me. Their choice, I thought it would be, and me no more than an acquiescent; I hoped it wouldn’t matter too much to me, which way they chose. Doubted that, but hoped none the less. Best I could manage: but what more can anyone proffer to the future, what more convincing than hope?

  o0o

  Home—where we were heading, this risk realised, with roosting on its mind—was a room in the centre of town, ten minutes’ walk from anywhere that counted, ten minutes’ drive from work. Six months I’d been there now, or a little longer. The house actually belonged to a senior lecturer at the college; he usually let the room to a student, but I’d landed lucky with this as with the job: a contract not honoured, an unexpected vacancy after Christmas and suddenly there I was, free, capable and willing. I hadn’t signed up for the next year’s teaching yet, but I thought that probably I would. I liked it here. Great food, great people, north coast so no tourists but sun enough for anyone, even sun enough for me who fizzed and sparkled in the light but lost it all at nightfall...

  Even with my quiet deceits exposed, I still thought I might stay. If the girls would let me.

  In all truth, my landlord probably hadn’t noticed too much difference between letting to me and letting to a student. The college boys puttered around on mopeds for the most part, where I thundered on a big BMW; that aside, young men are young men, and I still had some catching-up to do. I played music at antisocial hours, I had rowdy room-parties, I brought girls home for the night or more often for the siesta (it made for less trouble at home, they said; privately I suspected they preferred it, for the tingle they could catch off my skin even in broken sunlight, that just wasn’t the same after dark) and I came into school sometimes looking more bedraggled and hung over than my charges. No one had complained, though—yet—and they had at least offered me that second year, so I had to be doing something right.

  o0o

  The town filled a headland with bays on either side. Deep water to the west gave it a harbour for the fishing fleet, a massive freezing-plant, other industries throwing muck into the heavy, sweaty air; to the east was the long curve of the beach with the promenade above it, open-air stalls and a funfair at the end, also the college campus just beyond.

  Squeezed between the two, the old town was all narrow streets and high stone walls, dark shopfronts and no pavements, unexpected corners and sudden surprises.

  As where I lived, which might not surprise the locals but still got me every time, known and anticipated and
none the less startling. On a street like all the others, tight-arsed and dingy and unforthcoming, making no promises, there was a jeweller and a baker and a gloomy ungated arch to separate them. I turned the bike under the arch, saw the light at the end of the tunnel; eight, ten yards of murk and dazzle and we came out the other side into a courtyard bright with flowers in earthenware tubs, hard with light and shadow on the whitewashed walls.

  The girls slipped off as I held the bike steady for them, each of them knew this routine; then I parked in the cool, or the best approximation I could find, the corner that would get no more sun today. Gave the bike a little rub on its petrol tank, not so much a polish as a caress or a touch for luck; and it still seemed strange to me sometimes that I’d never thought to give it a name, we were that close, we’d been so far together.

  I stood in the shadow, the girls were waiting in the sun; and as I came back to them both reached for a hand to hold, and this too was routine, only that there were two of them here today and barely enough hands to go around. Even Sallah’s mouth twitched into something of a smile as she caught Marina’s eye, as they sorted out silently between them who went left and who went right.

  Sensitised to it now, I felt the little kick in each of them as they touched and clung, as my sundizzy blood passed on its charge. Sometimes I could feel maybe a little resentful, that they loved me for my side-effects and not myself; but smarten up, Macallan, what’s personality if it isn’t the sum of our side-effects? And besides, they didn’t love me at all, and it really didn’t matter. I didn’t love them either. We were just good bunkmates, nothing more...

  Had been just good bunkmates, or so I’d thought. So I’d thought I wanted. Today, obviously, was nothing to do with bunking. Something more there was, then, after all; I had an uncomfortable feeling in my gut that they were about to call in a presumptive debt, and what could I do but pay up?

  o0o

  My room in the house had its own entrance, at the top of an iron staircase that spiralled up one corner of the courtyard. There were geraniums in pots on every step, which made climbing it a hazard in the drunken dark, and an exercise in strict single file even now. We went up hand in hand, though, Marina leading: and this was how it always was with either girl individually, we went up linked but she led me and always I led Sallah.