Light Errant Read online

  I was dreadfully uncertain, though, about many things, and her motives were top of the list. Was this generosity, or curiosity, or what? There was gossip, I knew, about the benefits and revelations of sleeping with a Macallan man. Not to boast, but the experience was irrefutably different. Maybe that’s what she was after. Or just another scalp and it didn’t matter whose? Jon had said sleeping was a religion with her; maybe he’d been unnecessarily delicate, maybe he meant sleeping around?

  Questions not voiced, impossible of asking. I went the other way instead, questioned my own potency. “Janice, I’m drunk, I don’t feel good, I don’t know if I can...”

  Her fingers drummed a warning tattoo on my ribs. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. You can say no, but you can’t wimp out on me.”

  “No threats, you said.”

  “Merely an observation,” and she proved it, skin slipping over skin, hers over mine; and no, there wouldn’t be a problem there, she wouldn’t be left frustrated. “You going to turn me down, then?” she asked sweetly, pulling away with delicious timing; my arm moved way ahead of my thoughts, reaching to draw her close again.

  “Janice...”

  “Yes?”

  “...Oh, fuck. I don’t know.” More doubts, more unaskable questions: is this kindness or pursuit of kudos, or do you really fancy me, or what? was what they all boiled down to. I’d forgotten the terrors of insecurity, the years I’d been away; now here I was, home for barely more than twenty-four hours and pulling on discarded attitudes like a boy caught naked in a public place, grabbing at anything to cover his bits.

  “You know,” she said, “a girl could begin to think you didn’t fancy her.”

  An echo of my own thought, except that she blatantly didn’t mean it. No craven self-doubting for her. Even so the suggestion needed dealing with, it demanded a response. Actually, I thought, fancying someone was never much of an issue once you’d got or been brought this far, into bed in the dark; but that was not the point.

  As she knew damn well, and she wasn’t really offering me any choice at all. No might mean no, but there were ways and ways to gag a man from saying it.

  Whatever. What the hell, I thought, and turned my head and kissed her. She tasted smoky from the thin fags she made herself, tight twists of paper round a pinch of tobacco; that was no hardship, I was well used to it. Continental girls smoke like crematoria and taste like Lapsang, like Laphroaig. Eventually. Once you’ve trained your tongue to think that way, think positive...

  “If we roll around,” I said, “I’m going to be sick again.”

  “No rolling,” she promised, and already her leg was slithering over mine, implicit instructions, you lie still and leave the active stuff to me.

  “And I might pass out yet,” I added, deliberately a beat too late. “You said I could, that was one of the alternatives...”

  “Not any more, boy.”

  o0o

  And she had fingers and fingernails, muscles and teeth to ensure it; but she was gentle, mostly, laughingly respectful of my invalid status for as long as I remembered it, which was not long at all.

  And afterwards we lay tightly tangled in the sweat-sodden sheet, lightly tangled with each other; and I think I murmured, “Fuck,” and I think she whispered, “What, again?” and I might even have managed a breath of “Later,” before I slid willingly into a thoughtless, dreamless dark.

  o0o

  I woke to daylight, a monstrous headache and a tugging sensation, which was Janice trying to unknot herself from the sheet and me. I did my best to help, but my leg was still sleeping where the rest of me was not; in the end she had to lift it for me, to work herself out from under.

  “Sorry,” she said, laughing, hitching herself over to the far side of the bed.

  “Doesn’t matter. Where are you going?” The words were slurred, my mouth was furred and foul. “Come back.”

  “I need a pee.”

  “Unh.” So did I, but I wasn’t doing anything about it. I stretched and groaned, feeling an ache in the hollows of my bones. “Come back after?”

  “Maybe,” she said, picking up her robe and slipping her arms into the sleeves, wrapping it around her. When she opened the door, though, we both heard voices, the clink of empty bottles being collected; and she said, “Maybe not,” which was fair enough in the circs. “Coffee?” she suggested in lieu.

  “I guess. Yeah...”

  o0o

  The voices had been male, Jon and Jamie; I roused myself more quickly than I wanted to, carrying my hangover and a half-drunk mug through to the kitchen, hoping desperately that Laura would still be sleeping.

  No such luck. She was there with Janice, with the lads; and they were laddish and conspiratorial, slipping me winks I didn’t want, while she watched me neutrally from behind the shelter of a steaming cup of tea and talked exclusively to Janice, exclusively about being pregnant.

  o0o

  Coffee and Ibuprofen, juice and coffee and toast; we ran out of bread, inevitably. Jon went to buy more and came back to say that there was no news, no gossip on the street, nothing had happened overnight.

  “So what do we do now?” Janice asked, looking at me.

  It was Jamie who answered her. “Sort things out,” he said, also looking at me, as if I was some kind of hero ex machina, brought back to the city to do just that. “We’ve done it before.”

  Yeah, right. Thanks, Jamie.

  To be sure, we’d done it before; and last time it had cost us all so much, and no way would it be any cheaper this time around. Someone else’s turn, I wanted to shout at him. Actually I wanted to get on my bike and leave again, I wished I’d never come back in the first place.

  But of course there wasn’t anyone else, only we few, we happy few, we band of siblings. Heirs and graces, I thought we were; and the three graces could choose for themselves and I hoped they’d choose sensibly and stay the hell out of it, though that didn’t seem likely, but Jamie and I were doomed by our blood as we always had been, and there could be no running away for either one of us.

  Seven: Gangsters’ Moles

  How have you done it before? was the question Janice conspicuously didn’t ask, nor would I have expected her to. This was home, and not everything had changed. Gossip was currency, Macallan gossip was sterling; she’d have been brought well up to speed her first term here, her first week of her first term. And this last year of course she’d had Jonathan, with all his added kudos of knowing me; he’d have filled in the gaps for her, if any gaps there were.

  But the only other question anyone could ask was, how do we do it this time? That one had us all stymied, we were all asking it of ourselves and no one brave enough to lay it on the table, for fear of getting no answer. So we sat and crunched yet more toast as Jon made it and laid it before us, in lieu of questions. I nursed my head just as Laura nursed her hidden baby, as Janice nursed her loudly-purring cat, each of us cupping gentle hands around our personal concerns. It was Jamie, perhaps for lack of anything to do with his big competent hands, who finally found a positive suggestion to offer. That it ran contrary to my own private hopes and probably his also was just the way things worked, the entirely contrary way the world was put together. Life’s a beach, I thought bleakly, my mind spinning back only a couple of days to Spain, to sea and sand and a wholly different life. Life’s a beach, I thought, then you get melanoma.

  “What we need,” Jamie said, “is information. Somebody’s got to know where the hostages are being held. A lot of people, not just the ones who took them. The town’s not that big, that you can hide half a dozen prisoners and not have anyone guess. We need to be out there sniffing around, asking questions. Only...”

  Only Jamie and I, the two of us who were really involved here, we couldn’t do that. We were known, we were the enemy; and even those who didn’t know us would see easily what we were. A suntan and a couple of years’ absence was no disguise for me, I carried my heritage too plainly stamped on my face, bred in my bo
ne. Which left it to the others to be our spies, Laura and Janice and Jon. I couldn’t ask them to risk that, and I was amazed that Jamie apparently could.

  Not easily, he couldn’t, that was clear; but Laura made it as easy as she could.

  “Only you need us,” she said for him when he failed to say it for himself. “Of course you do. I’ll go sniff around at the hospital, everybody knows my face there but I’m just another student, they don’t know who I’m shacked up with. And they’ll all be talking, with another body turned up. I’ll just put on a white coat and listen in, no bother.”

  “Okay, good. I’ll come with, though, I’ll just sit in the jeep and wait for you...”

  “No, me,” I said instantly. “Daylight out there, remember?”

  He glared at me, for the suggestion that I could protect his girl and his unborn child where he could not. I did my best to look neutral, and Laura just laughed at us both, the kind of laugh that’s only one stage short of throwing things.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Neither one of you’s coming, and we’re certainly not taking the jeep. For one thing, it’s back at the flat and one of your moron cousins will be watching it; for another, I said, I’m trying to be anonymous here. And one of you wants to sit outside the door in a jeep that you’ve been driving all your life, Jamie, with your big nose sticking over the windscreen sniffing for trouble? Do me a favour.”

  Actually Jamie’s nose was not so large by family standards, but this really wasn’t the time for either one of us to point it out.

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” he said almost sulkily. “You’re not that anonymous. ’Specially if you start asking questions.”

  “She’s not going alone,” Janice said. “I’ll be with her. You and me, Laura, right? We’ll do the hospital first, then try the police. I’ve got friends at court,” winking or possibly wincing at the pun, “they’ll tell me if there’s any rumours round the cells.”

  “See?” Laura said to Jamie, triumphant. “All fixed, not a problem. And you two don’t go playing boy racers while we’re gone. You stay right here, where we can get you. You’re our liaison. If there’s a phone. Is there a phone?” She glanced at Janice, got a nod of confirmation. “Good. You stay, we call you.”

  “You could call the mobile,” Jamie pointed out.

  “Nuts. We’re taking the mobile. Then you can call us too, if you need to.”

  And she did, unclipping it from Jamie’s belt without waiting for permission; and he just sat there and let her, and I didn’t even try to keep myself from grinning.

  o0o

  So that was it, they had their plans and we not our marching but our sitting-still orders; and an onlooker might have thought we’d all forgotten that there were five of us in the room, Jonathan had been so thoroughly left out.

  He’d been neither invited along with the girls nor told to stay with us, and both of those omissions were right, I thought, proactive and sensible; he’d only be in the way, on either side. But what else could we ask him to do? An art student, an ex-window cleaner, he had nothing to offer that I could see, and I couldn’t think how to tell him.

  And didn’t need to, because he made a move himself, and this time not to bring us toast. We all of us watched him, with more or less guilty eyes, all of us more or less relieved that he wasn’t waiting to be told; and when he reached the door he glanced back—right at me, it seemed, which hardly seemed fair to me—and said, “I’ll ask around too, some of my old friends. If there’s any word on the street, they’ll know.”

  Who, I wanted to ask him nastily, the window cleaners, the street sweepers? The housewives you dunned for coins?

  And perhaps he read the thought on my face, or else I was broadcasting so loud he picked it up mind-to-mind, perhaps I was shouting at him as silently, as clearly as my sister used to shout at me; because he was, he was definitely looking straight at me as he went on, “I wasn’t just a windler, not all the time. There wasn’t the work. I did other things, when I really needed money.”

  To my shame, I couldn’t figure what he meant.

  o0o

  He left, though, before I could ask. Perhaps he didn’t want to tell; or else he thought I ought to know, it ought to be easy. Perhaps it was, and I was stupid.

  He left, at any rate, and the girls left too. Which left Jamie and me on our own again as so often before, and this wasn’t like any of the other times that I could remember. A lifetime—no, two, his and mine both—of being alone with each other, being bloodbrothers and cousins, friends often and occasionally great foes; and still there were surprises, there were new ways for two young men to be together. There was a feeling of impotence, of being utterly in other people’s hands now, that was endlessly familiar to me, but I couldn’t conceive how Jamie would begin to handle it.

  He stretched his legs under the table, cocked his head to one side and smiled self-mockingly, said, “You know, if they hadn’t taken the mobile, I could have phoned my father.”

  “Why?”

  “Find out what he’s up to, of course. He’s got to be doing something.”

  Sure. Frowning momentously and uttering threats, if I knew Uncle James. Waiting for the dark, when his threats might have some value. But, “There’s a phone in the hall,” I said.

  “If I use that, he can trace the call. Dial 1471, and some helpful machine will give him this number; and he’s got friends enough, even now, someone’ll find the address for him. There’s another code you can dial first to stop 1471 from working, only I can’t remember what it is; and I wouldn’t trust it anyway. He’s probably got someone at the exchange who’ll cough regardless.”

  Never mind machines, my family always had people just where they wanted them. I shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell you anything useful. You’ve signed up with the enemy, remember?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  There’s nothing useful you can do, Jamie, was on the tip of my tongue to say, nothing useful for either one of us to do, till Laura phones. But then I remembered a promise from last night, and didn’t say a word; I just got to my feet and rummaged till I found a bucket and a J-cloth. Filled the bucket with steaming water, and carried it and the cloth to the front door.

  Jamie followed curiously, just what I didn’t want him to do. But I opened the door regardless, and yes, there below the step was the wide pool of my vomit, dried at the edges now and crusted all over. One heelmark had broken the crust and skidded a little; Jon’s, most likely. I could see Janice clearly in my head, remembering and skipping over it, with Laura shadowing her and both girls laughing, perhaps, as they headed off down the street, Janice perhaps telling her about how she’d found me, not needing to say what she’d done with me after...

  The same sunlight that had baked that broken crust was working its familiar magic on my skin, but there was no magic to fix this. Only me to get down on my knees with cloth and water while Jamie watched; and I didn’t need to look up to see his smile. Poor Ben, can’t take his liquor.

  I heard him walk away, didn’t look up even to see the back of him; but he came back a minute later, while I was still dabbing with the cloth and thinking I needed another, maybe several more, the way this one was abrading on the concrete and still not shifting the stain.

  “Not like that, Ben,” he said, above my head. “Like this. You slosh, I’ll scrub.”

  And he dangled a stiff broom before my eyes, and he was so obviously right I tried to swear in disgust at myself and ended up laughing instead. And standing up and hurling the remains of the J-cloth into the gutter, and sloshing water while Jamie scrubbed with all the energy of conspicuous virtue, I didn’t even make this particular puddle and here I am doing the hard part, and fetching fresh water and sloshing and swilling to be certain of pristine purity of pavement; and by the time we were done his boots and my deck-shoes were splattered and soaked respectively, I hoped only with cleanish water, and we’d sloshed and scrubbed a path from door to gutter that you could have seen from the en
d of the street.

  We kicked off our footwear and left it to dry in the sun on the step, though I could have done that in a moment with a weave of light and fire; I might be home but I still wasn’t thinking Macallan, thought it likely I never would. And we went inside grinning and matey, fetched a couple of glasses and what was left of Laura’s Coke from last night, and kicked bedding off the sofa to make slumping space for two in the living-room.

  “Aah. That’s better. That’s good. Coke was invented as a hangover cure, did you know? Think about it, it’s got everything you need: caffeine, sugar. Cocaine. Well, it used to have cocaine. And it’s carbonated, so it gets into your bloodstream quicker...”

  “Yes, of course I know, moron. It was me told you.”

  “Never was. Was it?”

  “’Course it was. I taught you all you know.”

  “Ah, right. They keep telling me I’m ignorant. That’ll be why, then...”

  And actually I’d been wrong before, this was just like a hundred other mornings tasted and tested and tried again, ten years ago. I’d forgotten the aimlessness of teenagers without an immediate target, nothing to fill the next hour’s awful void. There might be an added tension underlying us today, a sense of waiting for something more crucial than lunch, but you’d never have known from watching and even I had to jerk myself consciously into remembering. Too easy to forget, to let the years slip, to be suddenly fifteen again and so much closer to something that I used to think of as happy.

  Jamie picked up a remote control, and thumbed buttons. Daytime TV, morning TV—it was like being back in Spain again, any time, day or night. Colours too bright, volume too loud and I simply didn’t see the point. Why would people want to watch cookery competitions or asinine quizzes all day, or listen to ineffectual strangers exposing their fascist opinions or else their most intimate problems?