Last night it happened again. Amy had gone upstairs for a pee and heard a noise from the bathroom. She found Julian was slumped against the airing cupboard. When he noticed her in the doorway, he became agitated and started to mutter about fairies in the garden stealing her vegetables. She had resisted the temptation to slip away and leave him. It was all a bit tedious and if she was honest, a bit scary.
‘Sit up, Julian, are you alright?’ Amy tried to pull him into an upright position. He was pale and sweaty.
Then Simon appeared in the doorway and she felt such relief. ‘What’s the silly s-s-sod done n-n-now?’ he said.
Together they manhandled their friend into an upright position with his legs out in front. Simon draped a towel down Julian’s jumper and balanced a basin on his lap.
‘I think he’s a little smashed,’ Amy whispered. ‘I think you’re r-r-right,’ he whispered back.
They sat companionably with Julian pinned between them. She likes chatting to Simon; about the garden, what she’s thinking, anything that comes into her mind, really. He’s funny, too, but you have to listen for it because he isn’t bothered to claim his space in a conversation if others want to dominate. Like the friends of Seymour or Julian do and say loud things in loud ways. She’s the same, really; unwilling to voice opinions that might sound naïve when they’re about. And the women they bring are always glamorous or intimidating; usually both. She’d rather pad about making tea, hoping her silence suggests deep reflection. Perhaps Simon is quiet because of his stammer. She must insist the boys stop mocking him about it. Maggie’s right; his stutter is attractive. ‘When I first met David, I was just a schoolgirl starting my ‘A’ levels.
A bit proper actually. I used to blush terribly when I first heard him swear. I wasn’t used to it.’
‘I’ve only g-g-gone out with a few w-w-women.’
‘How’s it going with Maggs?’ A few nights ago Maggie had confided in Amy saying she still hankered for the French man Emile; exotic and strange. She wasn’t sure Simon was the man for her. He was too…kind.
‘She’s g-g-great, you know. She just l-l-likes to have her s-s-space.’ Julian was beginning to fidget.
‘If he’s s-s-sick he’ll feel b-b-better,’ Simon said, and as though he had heard the comment, Julian began to heave. An arch of yellow and green bile splattered energetically into the bowl. The stink of vomit and alcohol filled the bathroom.
‘At least he hit the target,’ said Simon, opening the window. Slithering to one slide, Julian snorted as though amused.
‘Let’s g-g-get you to b-b-bed.’ Simon tried hauling Julian to his feet.
Amy took the other arm. ‘David says that it’s good for the soul to get smashed,’ she said.
‘I’m not so sure it’s g-g-great for your b-b-brain, though,’ said Simon, and between them they helped Julian to weave towards his bed.
I will always have a fireplace in my bedroom, Maggie decides; a fire brings romance alive. She hugs her knees, kisses each one individually, as she remembers her boyfriend’s fingers strutting across her tummy and slipping down her thighs. The creak of the bed springs as their bodies flicker in the firelight.
On the walls that she’d scumbled yellow hangs a painting she found in the barn. Brooding clouds under which a man rowed a cloaked woman across a lake of mottled waters. She watches it as her boyfriend makes love to her, imagines it is she and him in that dramatic landscape, heading away towards the mountains.
Some nights she does not sleep with Simon. Life on the farm can be perplexing; the expectations, the rules she contravenes unknowingly, the currents of emotion she cannot fathom. The narrow bed and white walls of her room are her route to composure. The figurine of a Hindu god that her mother gave her this Christmas helps her meditate.
Maggie skips down the staircase. She should help prepare for tonight’s party. She wanders over to the farmhouse. The kitchen table has already been dragged into the field and straw bales are in a circle around an open fire over which is suspended a pole. It’s been rammed through the mouths and anuses of two little pigs. She looks away. The dogs whine as the smell of roasting meat drifts around the party field.
It tantalises the taste buds of those pitching tents or shaking out sleeping bags in anticipation of inebriation reducing their competency later in the evening. Others, less concerned about their sleeping arrangements, are hoping perhaps to occupy a sofa or the floor. They sit about drinking and chatting. If Julian has slipped them a little white pill as they arrived, they might already be responding to the chemicals reaching their brains. Seymour’s friends, fresh from bath or bed, drift from the house clasping glasses of good wine. Some carry a cushion or a rug so they can get comfy on the ground.
When the country ballad that booms through speakers is replaced by The Velvet Underground, the party begins.
Few notice that the sun is setting. But Amy does. Soft light caresses the contours of the garden. She wanders between rows of vegetables. Try as she might, she is not in the mood for socialising. There are going to be people at the party – she has seen them already when she peeked from her bedroom into the yard – whom she hasn’t seen since her mother died. It bothers her that they won’t mention Shirley’s death. She is already hurt and angry about something that hasn’t happened.
She had tried to explain her turmoil to David. But he had taken speed and it always makes him snappy.
‘Come on Ames, not now! You’re being neurotic and just a bit staid.’ He pushed her on the bed and slid his fingers into her knickers. Being ‘staid’ was the worse insult anyone could receive, at least in David’s eyes. ‘We’re having a party tonight and no one wants to talk about things like that at a party now do they.’
She wiggled out from under him. Perhaps he was right; who could be miserable on such a beautiful evening?
Amy watches David weave his way round groups of people they know and many they don’t, making jokes and poking fun. Offending people, perhaps, and she’ll feel beholden to make amends. I’ll do it later, she thinks, picking up a bottle of wine, or perhaps I won’t bother. I haven’t seen Seymour all evening. Where is he? She wanders over to a spot where the fire’s light fails to reach and decides to get quietly drunk.
‘Hallo Amy. Do join me. Do you want either of these?’ Gerald is sitting in the shadow propped against an upturned box. He offers a bottle of whisky in one hand and a cushion in the other.
‘Just the cushion, thanks. I’m drinking wine.’
She doesn’t want to sit with Gerald, not when she is sober anyway. She is never as tongue-tied with anyone else. Despite this she settles on the cushion and makes a fuss of his dog. ‘Jackson is so elegant and cool. Does he like parties?’
‘He does if his master can secure sufficient drink. I was born a few drinks behind most people,’ he says, swigging from the whisky bottle, ‘so I have to level the playing field.’
He’s told her this before.
Friends and guests flicker in the firelight like they’re on stuttering celluloid.
Gerald continues: ‘So how do you like living here in Seymour’s hippy hideaway? Being pranksters. Are you having a good time?’
‘We are, yes, it’s wonderful. I want to live here for, I don’t know, forever. In harmony with nature, close to the land, grow food, tend animals…’
‘You’ve become quite the country mouse. I couldn’t live anywhere else either. London’s fine for a day or two but…’
‘We’ve just got to find a way to make it work. To be fully self-sufficient. I mean, we can bake bread and brew beer but we’ll…’
‘Start a little business? You wince but you could always grow, I don’t know, cannabis. Seymour’s got outbuildings, hasn’t he? Rig up some special lighting and heat. Amy, the girlie dealer. Has a certain ring about it.’
‘Business – not me? A co-operative, maybe.’ She’s a little drunk now. She cackles. ‘I do have green fingers, though. What would Seymour think? Where is he, anyway?’
A cheer goes up. She slips unnoticed past Julian and David who stagger under the weight of the pole of pigs they have lifted off the fire. They flop the charred bodies on to the table. Party guests gather round, fascinated by the spectacle of crackled skin being hacked off the roasted bodies, even those whose appetites are suppressed by chemicals. Others salivate, eager to cram the meat into their mouths.
Lynn is standing in the shadows. Spotting a space, she slips in beside David. He wields a large knife with exaggerated bravado, providing entertainment for anyone watching his carve.
‘Lynn, hallo,’ David grins. ‘Let me give you some of this.’ He pinions a piece of meat on the tip of the knife.
‘The music kept me awake so reckoned I might as well see what was happening. Mother can sleep through a storm. Thanks, I will have a bit.’ Lynn’s eyes flutter as David slides the pork between her lips. Painted red with lipstick, the pig grease makes them shine.
Last time she’d seen David, he’d come to the office to query a charge made on some building supplies. She’d had to find the paperwork. Rifling through the filing cabinet, she watched him talking with Aaron the Oaf, as she called her boss. David was confident and relaxed; he commanded the space as if to say: I know what I want and I’ll get it.
‘Delicious, eh?’ He offers her another piece. Taking the meat in her fingers, she pushes it in her mouth, looking at him as she chews. Slowly, she licks her fingers.
The party ratchets up a level; everyone is hard at it now. No one cares that the speakers buzz or that broken glass is being ground into the grass or that night is turning into morning. People are in the mood for intoxication. They drive for the place where rules are determinedly abandoned.
Impulses judged prudent are cast aside; it would be illogical to resist temptation. It’s summer, it’s a party, it’s beholden on people to be fun and have fun. Alcohol and stimulants make bodies ricochet and brains race. Someone dumps an armful of straw on the fading embers; the fire flares into life like the flames of passion. There’s a roar and a cheer. No one notices who’s doing what with whom. If one of the hosts disappears into the shadows who is there to ask what he is up to? Who cares?
20
‘You are the sexiest girl I’ve ever been about to ravage.’
Seymour’s muffled voice leaked from under Amy’s dress. He pooled his tongue in her belly button. She ignored the stones of the wall gouging into her back and arched herself in offering. Seymour peeled down her leggings, exposing her white thighs and the nub of her sex.
‘It’s chilly,’ she squealed as quiet as a mouse in a trap. ‘I’ve missed you, Seymour, I want you…’
‘I’m going to have you now, my lovely girl, I’ve been thinking about you all night …’
Their love-making was frantic. It had to be. It was the day after the party and David and Julian would be returning from taking back the hired wine glasses and plates. Simon was chopping wood. The sound of his axe on wood ricocheted like gunshot round the buildings, while Maggie was, perhaps, sleeping off a hangover. They didn’t care.
As is the wont of lovers in the dangerous first flush of an affair, their drive to be together overwhelmed any scruples that might linger. Thrilled they had torn time from the fabric of life, frustrated it must be brief, they were tantalised by what they had yet to discover about each other. They hurried to the safest place they could think of, the barn. With his hand clamped over her mouth to smother her cries, they fucked against the stone wall.
Amy slithered to the floor, sated. Seymour re-arranged his clothing and watched her crawl, giggling and bare-bottomed, to collapse on a pile of hay.
‘Seymour! It’s the phone for you!’ Maggie’s shout came from the house.
‘I’m coming!’ Winking at her over his shoulder, Seymour disappeared, leaving her weak with laughter.
This was second time she had slept with him in 24 hours. Last night, sneaking away from the bonfire and up to Seymour’s room, she had the best sex she’d ever dreamed of right across the corridor from the bedroom she shared with David. What would happen if he found out? David always talked about wanting an open relationship. Now he had one. She pulled up her leggings, straightened her dress and headed for the house. It was time to make soup. It always helped her to think straight when she chopped vegetables.
‘So help me, dearest Amy.’ Julian’s eyes narrow against the smoke that curls round his head. ‘He’ll never find it growing. He says he likes the farm but does he ever actually go around it?’
Julian was right. Seymour sometimes asked Amy what she was growing in the garden. He praised her for the vegetables and fruits she produced for the table. Complimented her on the delicate aroma of early broad beans, the delight of dousing artichoke leaves into melted butter and scraping off the tender flesh, the joy of nibbling new potatoes cooked with mint. But how often did he walk along the rows of beetroot and spinach, cabbages and carrots that she hoed and weeded? Once he had helped her pick the runner beans that dangled so profusely from the trellis that it had partially collapsed. But then the phone rang and he slipped away.
He was very unlikely to visit her greenhouse though the warm air, laden with the intoxicating scent of ripening melon would have enthralled him. Why would he ever suspect cannabis sativa plants might be growing there, too?
Seymour would not be happy about Julian growing grass, of that she was sure. Occasionally he mentioned a concern about the amount of dope his son was smoking. Once he said that having the four of them living at the farmhouse meant Julian was less likely to get out of his head. Clearly Seymour was unaware of what they all got up to. Amy felt their presence fuelled Julian’s habits.
That afternoon, Amy and Julian pressed seeds into little pots of soil and set them at the back of the greenhouse. Something in her hopes they will not germinate. But within weeks, delicate serrated leaves appear and the marihuana starts to grow.
The steel cord attaching the metal box to the tractor snaps. The fastening whips through the air with a hiss like a snake under attack. Twisting past Simon’s eye, the metal bolt slices into his curved brow. A fine line of red blooms; the scar gives him a rakish look, Maggie later teases him.
They are collecting hay bales from the top field. David is chucking them onto the trailer while Maggie and Amy struggle to lift and stack them. It is back-breaking work; the bale strings cut into fingers and the dried grass slices uncovered skin. But it’s glorious to be out on the Common where the air is fresh and the view is of a green and gold patchwork fields that slope down to the coast. Simon’s holler of pain shatters the peace.
‘What’s happened?’ Blood is pouring down Simon’s cheeks. ‘Oh my God, it’s not your eye, is it?’ Maggie cries out.
Jumping up onto the tractor footplate, she begins to dab his face with her skirt.
‘Be careful…’ Simon’s voice is muffled by her ministrations.
‘Here, use this!’ Amy hands over her scarf.
It had been chosen carefully this morning to complete the ‘peasant girl’ Amy was after. The long skirt, the lace of a petticoat peeking out at the hem, the knotted shirt revealing just a flash of belly, the little boots. Amy studied herself in the mirror knowing Seymour would like it. He was expected back around tea time having been in London with Julian buying food he said was not available locally; fresh coffee beans, mozzarella, spices and virgin olive oil. David suggested cynically that the real reason was neither man could face the hard work involved in bringing in the hay. Amy said he was being mean. She wondered if he was right.
‘I think it’s only a deep cut. Thank God, he could have been blinded! The wire wasn’t fastened on properly. Was it you that fucked up?’ Maggie looks at her brother accusingly.
‘I’m f-f-fine, honestly.’
David says bullishly: ‘H
e’s alright, isn’t he?’
‘But it might have been worse. You have to been careful around machinery, you fool.’
‘Okay, okay. Don’t worry about what might have been, dear sister. Be ‘in the moment’. Isn’t that what your guru teaches?’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ she hurls back.
‘Calm down, big Maggs. Why not do something more useful like fetch a plaster or something? Simon, you alright, man? Do you want me to take over?’
‘No, I’m c-c-cool. I’ll d-d-drive this load b-b-back to the barn.’
‘Honestly, Simon, I don’t know why you’re not furious with that git.’ Maggie glares at David as she and Simon whirr past.
Amy and David follow behind on foot.
‘It’s Seymour’s crap machinery that’s the problem,’ David says. He passes her a joint. ‘Try this, babe. Gerald brought it over the other days. It’s amazing grass, get you high as the hills.’
‘Perhaps you didn’t secure the fitting properly. You…you weren’t smoking this morning, were you?’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Amy, you sound so po-faced. You sticking up for Seymour again?’ he snaps.
‘Why are you always getting smashed?’ she shouts back.
In the distance, Andrew Bishop is on a tractor winnowing the cut grass in another one of Seymour’s fields. Turning it over speeds up drying and makes the hay dry more quickly. More nutritious, he explained to her. His family had farmed in this valley for three generations. His father, Michael, bought land from Seymour when he wanted rid of a marshy field. Mr Bishop had never met a man who preferred owning a sports car to land. But London people were a strange breed. Once drained, the land provided fine grazing while Seymour’s metal possession disintegrated in the yard. Michael will hire out his son’s services if Mr Stratton will pay. The cash will buy a new concrete floor for the pig pen.
Wyld Dreamers: a gripping drama about secrets from the past Page 11
