by Tom Fletcher
‘I think maybe it has become constant,’ Taylor says.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Maybe it’s getting worse.’
Later. I’m staring at Jennifer. I drink her in. Absorb her. Like she is liquid. And I am soft, blank paper.
The six of us get back to the house. We are standing in the road. It is a quiet road: a cul-de-sac. The rain is heavier now. The sky is throwing it down like it doesn’t want it any more. Go on, the sky is saying. Get down. Get out of me. Go. The sky is black.
‘Come on, Graham!’ Erin says. She is wearing Taylor’s long coat. Shivering.
‘Yeah, hang on,’ Graham says. He is looking in his shoulder bag. ‘It’s just in here. Can’t see it because of all these receipts. This whole bag is just full of fucking receipts. So many fucking receipts. Who’d think there are so many fucking receipts in the world? It’s somewhere under all these receipts. Just a minute. So many fucking receipts. Hang on. Here it is.’ He holds up the key. ‘We’re in.’
JACK
We woke to the sound of the alarm clock on Jennifer’s phone, and it was wonderful, some sort of slow violin music that seemed to rise gently, lifting us out of sleep along with it.
The room was still dark, but that kind of darkness through which you can still see things, a darkness alleviated by dim light filtering in through the curtains. I sat up on the edge of the bed and looked for the glass of water that I had put on the floor the night before. Finding it seemed to take me an age. I took a drink to wake my mouth up.
My room was quite large and the walls were painted blue and the bed was low, snuggled into a corner, with a plain orange bedspread thrown over it. Against the opposite wall was a desk, above which I had a framed The Lord of the Rings poster from the sixties, which had been a present from an uncle. The wall to either side of the desk was given over to bookshelves, and I also had books stacked up against the wall all the way around the room.
‘What day is it?’ I asked.
‘Sunday,’ murmured Jennifer. She was lying on her front, the bedcovers gathered down around her waist. ‘Fucking Sunday.’ She pushed herself up, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and stood and groaned and sat back down. She was wearing plain white knickers and a small white vest. I battled the urge to reach over and touch her; bring her back into bed with me. She might have let me, but I wanted to save it – save the first experience of her nakedness for when we had time to enjoy it fully.
‘I’ll get up now as well,’ I said.
‘Why? You’re not working, are you?’
‘No. Just thought I’d make you something to eat. Give you a lift to work. Do some reading.’
‘You just wait until you stand up and the hangover hits you. Won’t be considering such gentlemanly behaviour then, I bet.’
I stood up and it was like something popped inside me. Suddenly I was weak and I wanted to be sick. My head was aching, and felt like a huge raw egg. The thought of raw egg worsened my nausea and I sat back down.
‘You’re right, of course,’ I said, but the words came out thick and muffled.
‘Yep,’ she said. ‘Sleep it off. Don’t worry about me, I can just get some toast or something.’ She got up again and moved over to the radiator with a grace that was remarkable considering the hangover she must have had, and picked up a towel and turned to me, the towel in one hand, and a strip of early morning light from in between the curtains fell across her body, warping over her glorious curves and colouring her skin in such a way as to make me think of pale blue milk. She smiled.
‘Come to my house tonight,’ she said. ‘It’s my turn to host.’
‘Will do.’ I brought my knees up in order to hide my burgeoning erection. ‘Will do. But no alcohol.’
‘Have you got an erection?’ she asked, still smiling.
‘What? No! I mean, oh, not that you don’t look nice. You do. But I haven’t. Haven’t got one. Nope.’
‘I know you have,’ she said. ‘It’s OK, you know. I want you to have one. I like that you haven’t tried it on while I’ve been staying, though. Most men would have.’
I looked down at my hands and saw that I’d knotted them together while she’d been talking. ‘I wanted to,’ I said, still looking down. ‘When we were kissing on the first night. Well, every time really. Every time we’ve been in here. All the time, Jennifer.’ I laughed, nervously. ‘All the time.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I want you to want to.’
‘You wear such tiny things at night,’ I said.
‘It’s all part of the fun,’ she said and stretched, extending her legs so that she was standing on her toes and lifting her arms up above her head. She leaned backwards and her little top rode up to reveal the undersides of her breasts and I saw, through the fabric, that her nipples were erect.
I realised that she was regarding me from the corner of her eyes as I was staring at her body. Immediately I looked away, at the wall, the curtains, the floor, my hands, and she laughed, her teeth flashing.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s better than OK. It’s a turn-on. Knowing that you’re holding back. I like it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, but I didn’t know why.
‘Don’t you say sorry,’ she said. ‘Don’t you say sorry at all. Just don’t get carried away with that cock of yours. Wait for me.’
‘I will,’ I said. My face felt red. My whole body felt hot.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you tonight, then.’
‘See you tonight,’ I said.
She picked up the bag that contained her work clothes and slowly walked from the room, looking back over her shoulder, smiling that wonderful incendiary smile.
After she had gone I breathed out. How did I end up with a girl like her? But no. I had to remember, she didn’t do monogamy. I was seeing her but she was not mine, even though she now owned and controlled every last drop of me, every last sweat-gland, synapse and skin cell, every bodily part of me that was physically real and every soulish part of me that was only hypothetical, owned and controlled them completely and utterly and eternally – she would never be mine.
I heard the shower start up in the bathroom, which was adjacent to my bedroom, and I imagined her rolling that vest up over her head and the steam from the hot water dampening her lips and every other part of her. But I wouldn’t let myself get carried away, as she put it, so I gingerly rolled out of bed, the hangover still ugly inside me, and started to get dressed so that I could walk her to the bus stop. Better not drive in that state.
I enjoyed the walk back to the house after the bus had taken Jennifer away. The air was crisp, and my breath misted, but the sun was bright, and I felt my hangover shrinking, and the sky made me think of the Enid Blyton books I used to read when I was little. There was a simile she used in lots of her stories – something like ‘the sky looked like the rain had washed it clean’. I couldn’t see a clear sky without thinking of Enid Blyton, which would have bothered some people I guess, what with all the racist accusations.
I walked a short distance down a quiet street lined with big terraces – they were like our house, but they felt like they were owned by real adults, real people, and lived in by families, people with mortgages, and long-term plans, and gardens. The houses were well maintained and well defined and livened up with newly painted window-frames and greenery, whereas ours looked a little dilapidated in a minor, roguish sort of way.
I turned off this street on to another with similar houses lining one side of it, but a long fence of spiked, black railings on the other – cast iron – and beyond the fence was a huge expanse of neatly trimmed grass, punctured by the giant crossbars of a rugby pitch. And then beyond the playing field was the school that owned it – a long, low, old building that looked like it was a long way away. I remember one warm night a couple of summers ago when we had walked back from some club in town and stopped there.
‘Ten pounds to the naked person who touches the school first,’ Taylor had said.
/> Graham hadn’t needed any encouragement, of course, and he’d stripped off drunkenly, left his clothes and shoes here on the pavement, struggled over the fence in such a way as to hang above us all with his legs wide open – Francis, Taylor, Erin and myself all laughing and not knowing where to look – fell down the other side, narrowly missing leaving his scrotum behind on a spike, and then dashed clumsily across the grass towards the shadowy building in the distance. Too shadowy to really even see. It seemed to take forever before we could discern him coming back to us, but I remember our conversation stopping as the pale shape of his body materialised from the darkness. With his long, messy hair, and his big wild beard, and his nakedness, there was some primal aspect to his appearance, something a little intimidating. We fell silent and watched his approach.
‘Ten quid, then,’ he had said, panting, after dropping back to the ground on our side of the railings.
‘Sorry,’ Taylor said. ‘We can just about see the building, but it’s too far away for us to be able to tell if you really touched it or not. In fact, we couldn’t even tell if you ran all the way there. For all we know, you stopped somewhere in the middle and lay down to rest.’
‘What bollocks!’ Graham shouted. ‘What absolute bollocks! I can’t believe you bunch of fucking arseholes! You lot are like a bunch of grapes, but made out of arseholes instead of grapes!’
‘Will you put your fucking clothes on, Graham?’ Erin said, laughing.
‘Also,’ Francis said, quite seriously, ‘a hole isn’t a physical thing that you can join to another hole. It’s just the absence of something else.’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ Graham said, and tripped over his jeans as he tried to put them on.
It was all quite funny at the time, but it felt like things had changed. Even though Taylor and Erin had only been together a few days, I doubted Taylor would be suggesting any naked games with the rest of us, and likewise, I didn’t think I’d want Graham exposing his frankly massive manhood in front of Jennifer. Even though she was not all mine. I had to remember that.
I had never been a jealous person. I had never really had a proper relationship to get jealous about, but I thought I could feel it there now, inside me, even though I’d only been seeing Jennifer for a couple of days. I wanted her all – it was that simple. I wanted all her attention, all her mind, all her beauty, all her body.
Tonight, maybe, and I smiled again, and felt a lightness in my chest.
I never wanted to let Jennifer out of my sight and that was the truth. As soon as I realised it I knew it was wrong to want to possess another person so completely, but it was still the truth.
I turned away from the school. As I did so I saw a figure dart behind a tree at the end of the street and I paused, momentarily, then walked briskly towards it. I turned off on to another side street before I got there. Then I picked up my pace and started to feel hot despite the cold air. I looked behind me and sure enough there was somebody there, a misshapen figure, wrapped up in a thick grey winter coat, loping after me, no longer trying to hide. My first thought was that it was Kenny, but they were a little too tall, and also, I realised, slightly hunchbacked. I started to run properly, trying to ignore the grotesque moaning that the person was making, like a man with no tongue trying to shout. When I got to the next corner, I risked another look behind me and saw that they seemed to be struggling to try and take their coat off, which made no sense to me in the cold. Maybe they were ill in some way, and maybe they weren’t dangerous, but all the same I ran full pelt down the next couple of streets, stopping only when I reached our house and threw myself through the front door.
I hated living in this blasted city.
FRANCIS
When I look up, the sun is bright beyond the bay window. The outside world is washed-out and white, with nothing but vague patches of shadow to give shape to things. On this side of the glass the room is big and empty. Two brown sofas, and a glass coffee table. And a brown footrest. And a small TV, and shelves full of books and DVDs and games and even some old videos. There is an empty fireplace and various empty candleholders on the hearth. Used once but never refilled. Erin is sitting next to me and Jack is standing in the doorway. Erin smells like limes. Jack is red-faced and out of breath. He leans on the doorframe. ‘You OK, Jack?’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Well, kind of. I walked Jennifer to the bus stop and then, on my way back, I thought someone was following me. Well, they were following me. Chased me home.’
‘Jesus, Jack,’ Erin says. ‘Do you know them? Do you need to call the police?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘No. Just some weirdo.’
‘You’re not the type to make enemies, I guess,’ I say.
‘Not usually,’ he says. ‘I think I may have made one in Kenny Hicks, though.’
‘Why’s that?’ I ask.
‘Oh, erm, he seems to have a bit of a thing for Jennifer,’ Jack says.
‘Right,’ I say, nodding. ‘You don’t want that.’
‘Any decent person is naturally Kenny’s enemy anyway,’ Erin says. ‘It wasn’t him outside, though?’
‘No,’ Jack says. ‘No. It wasn’t him. Just be careful if you leave the house.’
There is an Adbusters calendar on the wall beside the doorway in which Jack stands. The photograph for this month – October – is of a blank billboard. The walls of the room are painted white. The floorboards are bare.
‘Mum rang just now,’ I say. ‘Dad’s got the date for his operation.’
‘That’s good then,’ Erin says. ‘It’ll all be over before you know it.’
‘I guess,’ I say. ‘Yeah. I hope so.’
I have a bottle of red wine in the kitchen, so I take it upstairs with me along with a glass and one of our many corkscrews. Once in my bedroom I push all the books and magazines off my bed and sit on the edge. I uncork the wine and throw the cork at the far wall. I pour some wine into the glass and look across at the bookcase that’s full of books by Stephen King and Robert Rankin and Dean Koontz and Anne Rice. The Anne Rice books are Erin’s, really. Also, there is the big yellow brick of The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Standing out like a lit window at night. I drink some of the wine and inhale some of it in a cough.
My room is square with a desk. And a computer, and a CD player, and a chair and a bed and a TV. And a window and a bookcase and lots of posters and the floor is covered with CDs and DVDs. There is not much wall visible in my room. It is mostly covered in posters. I choose a CD to put on – As the Roots Undo by Circle Takes the Square – and press play. I turn the volume up and let the noise wash over me. Fast-moving bricks. Certain words snag in my consciousness but mostly it’s just beautiful noise. I sit back down again and drink some more wine. I fill the glass up again. I down it. I fill the glass up again. I turn the TV on and choose a DVD to watch. I find the complete boxed set of The Outer Limits and pick a disc at random.
I’m about five minutes into an episode. I haven’t seen it before. For some reason I can’t tell what’s going on. Then I realise that I’ve still got the music playing, so I turn the TV up louder so I can hear it. It’s all too loud, though, so I turn the music off and then turn the TV volume back down again. I watch the bar on the screen shrinking as the sound gets quieter. I put the bottle of wine down. As I do so I see my notebook. I pick it up and let it fall open at any page. On the page that it falls open at, I’ve written a list entitled Fears.
Car accidents
Earthquakes
Tidal waves
Being stuck in love
Not getting in love
Making someone pregnant
The list goes on and on. For pages. I skip to the end.
Sharks
I don’t even remember thinking sharks are that scary. I reach inside my boxer shorts and start checking my testicles for lumps. I flip to the beginning of the book and look in the inside cover. There it is.
To Francis, on your eighteenth birthday – Many Happy Returns! (For recording wh
at you see!) Love Dad.
He gave me this book years ago. And I’ve only filled half of it. His handwriting is the same as mine. I guess maybe I could go watching for UFOs with him after all. Take this book. Show him that I use it. I mean, I still don’t believe in UFOs, but just to spend some time with him. Except he’s not going to die, so I shouldn’t go acting all weird. That would almost be as if I’m wanting him to die. Acting like he’s dying. No. I won’t do that.
Blue static fills the TV screen. I’m on my side. The glass and the bottle are both empty too.
JACK
Erin and I remained in the living-room after Francis had gone upstairs.
‘He was just sitting here when I got back from the shop,’ she said. ‘Completely still.’
‘Poor Francis,’ I said. ‘It’s not what he needs.’
‘No,’ Erin said. ‘Not what anybody needs.’
‘No, but you know what I mean. Francis is a bit low at the best of times.’
‘He’s just one of those types,’ she agreed. ‘Melancholic. Will you get in here, out of the doorway? You’re making me nervous.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, shrugging off my coat and sitting down on the other sofa. ‘Where are Taylor and Graham?’
‘Taylor was on an early this morning. Left ages ago. Be back soon, actually. Graham’s still in bed.’
‘Taylor’s on an early? God. I don’t know how he does it.’
‘He doesn’t really get hangovers. It’s magic.’ She brushed some hair away from her face. ‘Is that Graham I hear emerging?’ She cupped her ear.
Graham’s room was next door to the living-room, with a window that looked out of the back of the house. Sure enough, we heard the sound of his bedroom door opening accompanied by the blunt chords of some crap band’s music. He shambled through to join us, wearing a blue T-shirt that bore the words ‘I Facebooked your mum’.
