Smack

by Melvin Burgess

  Then I went. This bloke—I didn’t even know his name—he was waiting for me with a little crowd. They were the real thing. What they were dressed in probably didn’t cost a tenner all added together and there were about ten of them, girls and boys. I could see them all watching me and watching Tar. They were real nasty punk, you’d think they’d slit your throat but I knew already they weren’t like that. It was just a show, right? Just a style…

  One of the girls winked at me.

  I got in among them and they closed around me. I walked out of the door into the night air. They all started talking at once, laughing. Someone said something to me and I answered back. I was feeling happy again. I hitched up my bag and stuffed it under my arm. Tar’s present was still in it.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said.

  I ran back into the hall. Tar was still standing at the bar. I ran up to him and grabbed him.

  “Over here,” I said. I shoved the present into his hands and then I dragged him to the back of the hall and pushed him out of the door at the back and followed. I don’t know why I did it. I was really made up to go with that crowd. They were my crowd, I knew they were my crowd. It was almost like they’d been waiting for me.

  We ran off down the road. When I was sure we couldn’t be followed, I stopped him running and we stood there looking at each other.

  “You should have seen your face,” I told him. Then we started laughing and laughing. As if the whole thing was funny. As if the whole thing was set up as a joke. But if I hadn’t found the present, I would have done it to him.

  I regretted it afterwards. Not going, I mean. I wanted to. But I couldn’t do that to Tar. Not to Tar, could I?

  We never talked about it but we both knew I’d nearly gone, and we both knew I could do it again, any time. He was very tender and loving. I suppose he thought he could make me want him like that but of course I hadn’t nearly gone off because he wasn’t nice enough.

  I put my torn tights and skirt and stuff away. It was party gear, you know? Maybe I’d wear it at the housewarming, maybe it just wouldn’t be that sort of do. But I was going to wear it again, some time. Some time soon.

  Vonny

  My feeling was it was important to get her back home before she really took off. You could see that she was going to go over the top. Just as walking down the street, you could see her peering over heads at anyone she thought might be interesting, fighting her way to a shop that looked her sort of place. Poor old Tar didn’t stand a chance in hell to find out what sort of person he was, of course, and he was the one who really needed to.

  That’s what really annoyed me. She had all the time in the world. She didn’t have problems, not real ones. Tar had lived in that horrible family for so long, he was so open, he was trying so hard. Now that he was out of it he needed a bit of space. But you didn’t get any space when Gemma was around. She filled it all up.

  But I did like her. I just wished I’d known her ten years further on, that’s all.

  I was furious with her when she came back from that bop dressed in leather and all the rest. We’d been feeding her, paying her bills, we’d even been supplying her with fags.

  She said, “It’s my party clothes,” and went into this model-girl pose. I was obviously supposed to be charmed but I wasn’t. I was on the dole. I was paying out of my miserable thirty quid a week so she could eat, drink and smoke and all the time…

  “This isn’t a party,” I told her. “And I’m not your mother.”

  She pulled a face.

  The trouble is, she obviously needed one. A mother, I mean.

  Jerry of course was totally useless. He liked having a young girl around to get stoned, that was about as far as it went. Actually, she really brought things to a head between me and Jerry. All he wanted was to enjoy himself, nothing else meant anything. Not even me when it came down to it. Well, I like to have a good time but I just think there’s more to life than that.

  Richard knew she wasn’t doing anyone any good, certainly not poor Tar. The trouble with Richard is, he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. He was responsible, you know, but he thought somehow it all ought to be fun. As soon as the hard decisions had to be made he’d pull a face and go, “Politics.”

  Tar was important. He was in trouble. People had one of two reactions when they met Tar: you either wanted to mother him or fleece him, usually both—just like his real mother had. Gemma did it too. She wasn’t exactly manipulating him, she wasn’t that sort of person. But she was just so full of herself, she might as well have been.

  After she got herself punkified she thought she’d found The Only Way To Be. Of course, being Gemma, she got right in it up to her eyeballs. She came home that night with a ring in each ear and two in her nose. She had three more two days later. She’d got Tar to do it with a sterlised needle. She borrowed the needle off me.

  “I can never go home now, I can never go home now,” she kept crowing. She was going to get her tongue pierced as soon as she could afford it. Yuk. Although, come to think about it, she might have just been shocking me.

  Then it was Tar’s turn. She shaved his head except for a really long Mohican stripe in the middle. Then she dyed it green and red, and used loads and loads of gel to make it stick up. It was hilarious! We were all laughing, but it was cruel, because it didn’t suit him at all. He was prepared to try anything once, or even twice. Come to think about it, Tar was willing to try anything as long as it kept coming, but this really didn’t suit him. He’s this long gawky-looking kid, and there was this long skinny neck and then this creased, worried-looking, spotty head poking out of the top, and the mouth full of ivories and that blinding red and green crest on his head. He looked like some sort of parrot.

  “You’re not going to leave him like that, are you?” I begged, wiping my eyes.

  “I think he looks great,” said Gemma. I could see Tar tensing up and clenching his teeth and trying to convince himself he wanted to look like that. He was like one of the things you see on a postcard for tourists. Of course Gemma was just teasing. She clipped him down and toned down the dye. He still looked ridiculous though.

  I was dreading the party. So far Gemma had been in the house most of the time, but once Gemma found the Chapel she was raring for it. Fortunately she didn’t have any money but she spent the next week trying to find some casual job as a waitress or something. She didn’t have any luck, thank God.

  Meanwhile I was working on Richard. He was reluctant to do anything but it was just so obvious. I mean, Tar was one thing. Even he should have been at home with his family, except that his family was so awful it was impossible. But Gemma…I didn’t want the responsibility and I didn’t want to have to watch what she was doing to Tar. And let’s face it—I didn’t particularly want to have her around in the first place.

  We had it out with her the night before the party. I more or less had to do it all on my own. I was barely speaking to Jerry by this point. And Richard pissed me off. He’s quick enough to take the lead if it’s anti-authority, but when it comes down to being responsible, he just sits in the corner looking miserable.

  She knew exactly what was coming.

  It was fair. A week’s notice, if you like—give her time to get used to the idea. She’d had her fun, she could stay for the party. But after that…

  It wasn’t fair on us. She was only fourteen and it wasn’t as though she was being knocked around like Tar was. All right, her parents were obviously making life unnecessarily hard for her.

  “Unnecessarily hard? I can’t do anything…” she whined.

  But running away from her problems wasn’t going to solve them. Basically, it was time for her to start arranging to go home after the housewarming party.

  I expected a scene, of course. And we got one. Tar sat there looking miserable. Gemma was furious. It really made me sympathise with her parents. If it wasn’t what she wanted, here, now, then and tomorrow, it was unbearable. We were doing it as nicely as we could. S
he’d stayed two weeks already. I even offered to speak to her parents myself but she refused to give me their telephone number.

  “I wouldn’t trust you with a roll of toilet paper,” she sneered. Which was really unfair. We’d done everything we could for her, but for Christ’s sake! It was highly illegal. We’d fed her, hidden her, everything. But that didn’t give us any right to suggest anything. Not to Gemma.

  I tried approaching Tar afterwards, to try and get him to talk some sense into her. He could see the point. He was uncomfortable with the fact that he’d encouraged her to come but he really didn’t want her to go. I tried to get her number out of him, but he was too loyal.

  “Don’t ask me that,” he said. I didn’t press it.

  Well. What more could we do?

  I think Richard was feeling guilty about giving her her marching orders. He went around afterwards arranging for her to have a good time at the party but he made a big mistake in my opinion. He came in one teatime beaming all over his face and announced that he’d invited a few people their own age round.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know,” he said, grinning like a cat at the air. “That bunch on City Road.”

  A vivid picture of a girl in a net and a boy with no front teeth came flashing into my mind.

  “The ones you introduced me to?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Richard!”

  “What?”

  I just glared. I couldn’t believe it. That bloke had no alarm bells.

  “Have you ever looked into their eyes?”

  “Why?”

  Of course, Richard never looked anyone in the face.

  I didn’t know what those kids were on, but they were on something. I certainly didn’t think it was a good idea to put them and Gemma in the same room together.

  Gemma

  It was so typical of Vonny to give me the news just before the party. I was really looking forward to it. I got out my party stuff and dyed my hair, I was really looking the part. And in comes the posse. It was horrible. She’d got Richard on her side, that was bad enough. But even Tar started agreeing with her.

  “I don’t want you to go, you know I don’t want you to go,” he kept saying.

  “Then what are you on about?” I hissed.

  And he just ducked his head and muttered, “But they’re right…”

  I went right off Tar after that. I mean, what was the point of all that I love you stuff, if he just teamed up with them and sent me back home?

  Thanks, Tar.

  And I’d done everything for him, I’d done it all for him. I’d never have gone away if it wasn’t for him. I might have thought about it but I wouldn’t have done it. Now I had and there he was telling me I belonged back at home. Great.

  I gave him a bit of the old cold shoulder after that. You’ve got to have a bit of stand-by-me. I was getting fed up with him anyway. Now he was trying to be Mr. Responsible, he could find someone else to hold on to at night.

  That was Friday. On Saturday we got ready for the party. I was really determined to have a good time; it might be my last day of freedom. We spent all day making food and clearing out the rooms and getting the sounds wired up. Jerry locked himself in upstairs with Richard’s sound system, making a party tape. Vonny and Tar and me were making salads and stuff, and Richard was running about baking bread—olive bread, olive oil bread, cheese bread, all different sorts. I stuffed myself. But I got fed up when he left to do an hour or so in the bicycle shop so I went upstairs to help Jerry while Tar and Vonny stayed downstairs and played House.

  I got too stoned with Jerry, I suppose. I was all excited about this party but when it came…I dunno, I just wasn’t in the mood. Basically Auntie Von had put the spokes in as far as I was concerned. I just couldn’t help thinking how they all thought I was a kid and no one liked me.

  The other three went to the pub, but me and Tar of course had no money so we just hung around at home glaring at each other. Or rather, I glared at him while he slunk about trying to be nice. But not nice enough to back me up about staying on at the squat.

  We sampled the wine they’d bought in, ate some of the food. Before he went out Richard gave us some cookies he’d made—hash cookies. I was waiting for the lights to start twinkling or something, but nothing happened so I had some more but still nothing happened. I thought he hadn’t put enough in. I was still waiting when they came back.

  Richard said he had some people our age coming round but as far as I could see it was just the squat crowd and a few friends of theirs. They were all standing round in groups, talking about, I dunno, how to run your car on rice salad or something. I mean, you spend all those years being Little Sammy or whatever, you leave school, get out there on your own and what do you do? You turn into Big Sammy…

  If that lot grew their hair a bit and put on suits it could have been a party at my parents’ place. Here it was animal rights and anarchism; back home it would have been the Church jumble-sale and the local Conservative Club, but that was about the only difference. They wore the clothes and they had the haircuts but…well, put it like this, their parents really did a good job on them, that’s all.

  Things began to liven up as more people came. I had a few smokes. Tar kept coming and going. At one point he turned up—I was by the salad bowl stuffing myself—and he turned up all excited and said that they’d hatched this plan to go and open another squat.

  I said, “What for? We’ve got one.”

  “No, you don’t understand, it’s just to free up as many properties as we can find.”

  It turned out one of Richard’s friends had spotted this place and it was a big old house, just perfect. Of course Richard got really excited about it, like he does, and Tar had volunteered, like he does. They were actually planning to go and open it up that very night.

  I said, “We’re having a party!” I mean, why spend all day making salad and hash cookies, and then go out? What for all that beer and wine? My last party on earth and they go and wreck it by opening a squat!

  Tar was lost. He was beaming and smiling and I suddenly thought, Something was happening to him. His face seemed to be stretching out and it looked as if his teeth were escaping out of his mouth and his eyes were rolling around.

  “You look really weird, are you all right, are you all right?” I said, but he dashed off to organise a squat committee or something.

  I started stuffing more salad and thinking to myself, This is unreal, this is a squat, and they’re running away from their own party!

  Then Tar started to follow me about going, “Is anything wrong? What’s the problem, Gemma?”

  And I was going, “Oh just shut up, why can’t you leave me alone?”

  I was going much too fast, smoking joints and pouring booze down my neck just because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Later on more people turned up and it livened up more and I began to feel a bit better. Someone made up a punch. God knows what they put in it…and whoa! Everything got very fast very quick then and…well, I could tell I was going to be really ill if I carried on like that.

  The place filled up suddenly. Suddenly you couldn’t move. Everyone was screaming and shouting and dancing. I was feeling so strange. I had a dance but my head was still spinning faster and faster. Then I had a couple more joints and…and…So I went upstairs and sat in the loo for a bit. Then someone wanted to come in so I went into a bedroom and lay down for a few minutes on the bed until my head settled down.

  It was horrible—like someone was stirring my stomach with an electric spoon faster and faster and faster and faster…

  I lay there for ages waiting for it to stop. When I felt able to sit up again the music was still thumping away downstairs but I had no idea how late it was. I still felt extremely…well, extremely extremely. I didn’t feel drunk or hung over, but there was still this horrible tight bubble in my stomach and it felt like at any minute it was going to swell up and
go…Pop!

  I got up and looked out of the window. All I remember is, everything was orange and it looked like cats and weasels and things were creeping round out of sight behind the dustbins and lampposts. I don’t mean I could see them but they were there out of the corner of my eye. I looked around the room and all the things—the wardrobe and the chest of drawers, even the window frame—they all seemed to be looking back at me, like they were alive. I was thinking, What’s going on? And I suddenly realised—I’m stoned! That’s what it was, I was stoned out of my tree.

  I thought, Hash cakes! The cookies, of course. Richard had told me not to eat too many and I thought he was being wet because he looks wet, but he wasn’t. I’d eaten ten times too much and now I was absolutely flying.

  I thought, Wow, this is something, although I wasn’t enjoying it all that much.

  I went down to see what was going on.

  Downstairs was half empty. Little groups sitting on the floor talking, odd people sitting in chairs, crashed out. I looked about but Tar was nowhere to be seen. I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. I had a mouthful of rice; it tasted so good I started eating and eating and eating and eating. When I’d finished it all up I had another glass of punch and went back into the sitting room.

  A couple of new people had turned up. There was a guy standing talking to a couple of people from the squat. He looked different from the rest. And there was this girl.

  She was dancing. I mean she was doing things and dancing at the same time. She’d go and put on a new cassette, or find a better track on the old one or just look through what was there, then she’d go over and pinch a fag or a joint off someone, or tidy up fag ends or paper cups or something…and all the time she was moving to the music, dancing, swaying her head, just really going with the music. She just couldn’t stand still. She was smiling all the time, not at anyone, just to herself and the good time she was having. Her mouth was even wider than mine and her eyes turned into two black, happy little gaps in her face when she smiled. She was beautiful.