Gang War

by Graham Johnson

  Dylan tells him the story about buying the insurance.

  ‘Eleven grand,’ says Dean. ‘Just like buying a toaster from Comet and them trying to sell you a five-year warranty on it. You were ripped there, lad.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Dylan tells him, both of them laughing.

  Dylan heads for a travel agent, one he’d seen earlier on a buzzing street near the hotel, to book his train ticket back to The Dam. He thinks about getting a sleeper to Germany first, then bouncing back to Holland through Belgium, either on a bus or in a hire car.

  The travel agent woman is lovely. She’s in an air-hostess-style uniform and a white shirt. Dylan blimps her bra through the see-through cotton. A silk scarf is tied around her neck and she’s wearing a fruity perfume. She clocks Dylan perving off her, so he looks away at a poster on the wall, a picture of an old church on a hill with the word ‘Lacoste’ underneath. ‘Is that where they make Lacoste shirts?’ he asks, covering up his cherry-on at being caught blimping her.

  ‘No,’ she smiles, holding his gaze. ‘That’s a little village in the southern part of France. Are you familiar?’ Dylan shakes his head. ‘It’s in a very beautiful, touristic place. But still very quiet. Most of the town is owned by an American university.’

  Dylan’s tummy rolls over. Her dad had mentioned an American college. ‘A what?’

  ‘They have an art school there. The town is very beautiful.’

  Dylan knows that’s where she is. ‘How far is it?’ he asks, his impatience showing in his voice already.

  ‘A few hours on the train. I’ll check. There’s a high-speed link to Avignon. Then it’s a branch line.’

  Dylan throws 200 euros on the counter. ‘Get me on the next one down there.’

  CHAPTER 33

  LACOSTE

  Dylan’s on the branch-line train in rural France. Wheels shuddering, night blackening, sky sparkling up. Deep blue-black space studded with crystal-clear diamonds. Star Wars on Earth.

  The train clanks along the tracks, the polished wood and brass lampshades glinting. Dylan’s crashed on a worn, bare bench. The only other person in the carriage is an old woman in a cardi, knitting. Dylan gets up and takes his tea out of his rucksack. He hasn’t eaten since early this morning in Paris. Fresh baguette, big fuck-off block of cheese, two big brown bottles of foamy French beer. He cuts up the cheese with his kukri on a square of wax paper on the bench. He smiles at the loveliness of it, letting on to the auld biddy with his chunky sarnie, the first fuzzy glow of the ale kicking in beautifully.

  He has a little kip until the train pulls up at a village called Rustrel. Dylan jumps off. He’s decided to find somewhere to get his head down. In the warm night air, crickets are buzzing and pylons crackling.

  Dylan follows a sign for a campsite, walking down the hill, out of town, through a trail of sandy bushes. The campsite’s next to an old ochre quarry. Huge red and yellow cowboy-film rocks shoot up, glowing against the night sky. The girl in the reception shack says there are no small tents. Dylan pulls 200 euros off a wad and asks for a massive family tent that’s already been set up. She smiles and walks him down the grass paths with a torch. Threw his bag on the metal-framed bed, then heads for the open-air restaurant. Even after the sarnie, he’s still famished, the anticipation hollowing out his insides.

  The night’s full of promise and freedom. Ropes of fairy lights are hung like bunting around the restaurant. Dylan blimps the drop-dead French girls chatting with their families, playing cards, sipping Oranginas, scratching their arms. One comes over while Dylan’s eating his pizza. Honey skin, sun-bleached hair, pale-blue shorts. ‘How come you’re alone?’ she asks in perfect English, fearless, bursting with confidence.

  Dylan’s blown away. How can you just walk up to someone like that? Wondering where a girl like that might have come from, to have no fear. ‘Better, isn’t it?’ he answers. ‘Being on your tod.’

  She laughs. ‘Your tod? What’s “tod”?’

  Dylan laughs, tells her that he’s just passing through, ‘backpacking round the place’.

  Her name’s Agathe and she’s 18. Dylan likes the fact that she still goes on holiday with her ma and da and younger brothers and sisters. Dylan just looks at her. The cooling night air’s catching her nips, gently poking through her thin, white cardi. She doesn’t look away.

  ‘Bye-bye, funny English boy,’ she says, turning round, giving him an extra-good blimp: sandy dust on her boyish shorts, dirt on her bare heels. She smiles and gets off.

  The next morning, Dylan’s up early for the final leg. He jumps in the open-air swimming pool, taking three run-ups to pluck it up for the freezing water, laughing at himself. Then he’s cutting silently through the calmness, only dead mosquitoes bobbing on the surface for company.

  The wooden gate clicks behind someone and he looks up. It’s Agathe, a small white towel over her shoulder, wearing a brown, well-played-in nylon bikini. Dylan clocks the yellow waistband, almost loose across her waifish stomach. But her bikini top is a different story. The piping trim is stretched to the max, barely holding the weight of her plump tits. She’s giving him a full-on view of her profile, throwing her hair over to one side, showing off a full hand’s length of neck. Then she pulls her hair back and dives in like an athlete. Dylan knows it’s all on, but he gets out, a semi-on clearly visible under the dripping, long black Valencia shorts.

  He’s off to the little bakery, a washed-out blue clapboard shed with a sign saying ‘boulanje’, to get some croissants and a loaf. He’s decided to walk the rest of the way. He fills his flask with coffee, buys a map and gets off with his backpack on, his old green Peter Storm wrapped around his waist. He waves at the French family packing up their car. Agathe comes out of the shower block, hair wet, fruity conditioner, skinny jeans showing off her tummy, faded top showing off her tan. She kisses Dylan on both cheeks and says goodbye. Later, their black Audi estate passes him on the dirt track. Agathe turns around and smiles at him, waves and mouths ‘take care’, her eyes lingering out of the back window. A possible future gone.

  He makes his way up and down the wooded hills. It’s so beautiful it makes him slightly nervy, almost angry. Reaching a small town, washed out in ochres and purples, he walks through a little market, helps himself to handfuls of cherry tomatoes, five or six different colours in boxes all lined up. He steers well clear of the tourists in linen suits and white hats, pervs off the slim, elegant Frenchwomen.

  It’s midnight when Dylan reaches the hilltop village of Lacoste. Silence. The old buildings silhouetted tall and black against the dark-blue sky. He can hear his shoes chafing quietly on the calade stone as he walks.

  He’s dusty after a day on the road and sweaty after the climb up the hill, cold droplets running down the bond-melted inner seams of his Peter Storm. He stops for a rest by the fountain, the bubbling noise breaking the silence, the spray twinkling under the stars and moonlight. He sits down in the shadows, breathes slowly, satisfied with the dust on his boots and glad to have the rucksack off his back.

  He doesn’t have any soap but he’s bought a Grolsch bottle full of smelly stuff for a tenner from an old farmer woman in a battered red pick-up truck at the side of the road. Turns out it’s lavender oil. He dips his head in the fountain, shuddering as he cups the cool liquid to his armpits. He rubs the oil in his hair to give it half a wash, rinses his head under the faint stream of water, feeling better.

  It’s too late for a café or a hotel now. He finishes the last of his coffee off, then creeps down a narrow street towards some lights. Something brushes across his face. Instinctively, he falls back out of the way, scared in the darkness. Then, again, something brushes delicately over his cheek. He stands still, letting his eyes adjust, trying to catch the moonlight. He realises there are washing lines across the street with squares of coloured gauze and bits of lace hanging from them. He lets them tingle across his face while he susses out the scene.

  Along one side of the street, a handful of grottos, l
ike dungeons or caves dug into the ancient walls, are brightly lit up from the inside. The first one is completely lined with futuristic plastic sheeting, cream with a pearly sheen. The word ‘Afterglow’ is written on a wall and there’s a little golden globe glowing in the dark. Coming through sunken speakers, Dylan can hear waves, then people speaking randomly: words, colours, shouting. It’s on a loop. It reminds Dylan of The Dark Side of the Moon.

  The second grotto is refrigerated. Clear ice blocks line the walls. It’s like a crystal igloo. There are ice sculptures of a living room, with two smooth ice mannequins watching an ice flat-screen telly. There’s an ice ready meal in the ice micro, and ice iPod in the ice woman’s ear. Dylan reads the display card. Everything in the room’s made of ice except for the ice cubes in the ice man’s highball glass. The ice cubes are made of human shit. From the person who made the room. Frozen cubes of it. Dylan laughs out loud.

  The next one’s called ‘Sleeping Beauty’. The grotto’s lit up with fairy lights. It smells musty and damp. The old walls are exposed and cobwebbed. There’s a pink fairy tale-style bed to one side, with a heart shape carved out of the headboard and a patchwork quilt. A wooden Pinocchio is crashed on a rug, chasing with the foil off a Kit Kat and a two-quid throw-away lighter. On the other side, there’s a shelf with a row of dildos on it, some with peabs still stuck to them. Dylan gets into the bed and crashes.

  The sense that someone’s there wakes him. It’s daylight now, morning. He must have been asleep for hours. All he can see is the black outline of a girl, in pin-sharp definition, silhouetted against the strong light beaming through the low archway. A tumble of curls corkscrewing over her shoulder, looking black in the backlight, a few stray strands swaying from the outline. A top that puffs out slightly at the waist. As his eyes adjust, Dylan can make out the crinkles in the stiff material around her sides and a slightly reflective ribbon. Her jeans are skinny, tight around the crotch. There’s a perfect arch of light between her legs, the silhouette so sharp he can even make out the seam of the denim.

  ‘Elizabeth? That you?’

  No reply.

  ‘Is that you? Elizabeth?’

  The dark figure turns around and is gone.

  The air inside the grotto is heavy and hot now, like a tent. Dylan can smell his breath reflecting back off the heavy quilt. Cheese, coffee and sweat. He gets out of the bed and runs outside, trying to get his trainers on fast. A Japanese tourist steps back shocked. A middle-aged American woman wearing a green golf visor thinks he’s part of the installation.

  For half an hour he tries to find her. He looks out of place, scares the students eating their breakfast in the café. ‘Do you know an English girl? Her name’s Elizabeth.’ But they fuck him off. He tails off as they look away, embarrassed and awkward. They’re startled by his scruffiness and his urgency. He’s unwashed, with his laces half undone. Then he goes into the college and looks around an exhibition room. No one. Nowhere. Not her.

  Can’t do nothing until he’s got himself together. He gets a room in a hotel, cleans his teeth, takes a shower, puts some new gear on. His impatience overtakes him. He’s still wet when he pulls on his last pair of fresh kecks.

  Then, carefully, he digs it out from the bottom of the rucksack. The thing he’s been keeping all this time, waiting until he met her once again. He scoops out the green Lacoste top, brushes it down, inspects the row of pinhole burns. Other than them, it’s pristine.

  He shoots off into the slopey streets, heads through the ancient fortified gates. He plots up outside a bar called the Café de Sade. Her kind of place, he’s half thinking: faint pink walls, ivy falling over the crumbling plaster. But no show. After four hours, he’s seen no sign of her, and Lacoste is a small place. There’s not that many places to go. His stomach begins to turn over. She’s got off. For sure. He just knows it. He goes over it in his head. She ran away to here to get away from everything. Then a blast from the past turns up out of the blue. No wonder she’s fucked off. Who wouldn’t?

  Would she want to see the lad who’d got her shagged up the arse by four rapists, who’d been responsible for fucking her life up completely? Dylan shakes his head. How could he have been so fucking stupid? Coming here, just like that, thinking it would all be back on, like the soft cunt that he is.

  This is a nightmare. He’ll have to get off fast or he’ll cause her even more grief. Then he spots it. The library. Savannah School of Art and Design Library, says the sign. It’s an old shop that’s been converted. He opens the low door quietly. No bell goes off. It’s a small room with two red leather armchairs in the middle and a big silver ’60s lamp arching over. On the table are some massive books of photographs. And there she is. Alone, her back turned to him, putting some books on a shelf. Just like she was the first time he saw her, at The Place.

  Fear and love rise within him at the same time. Without turning around she knows he’s there. But she refuses to face him. Embarrassment and humiliation, Dylan guesses. Maybe, but what the fuck does he know about getting raped and all the shit that goes with it? She deffo isn’t playing the victim, however. Her back’s straight, her stance confident.

  Without turning, she suddenly speaks. ‘What did you come here for?’

  ‘Cos I had to see you.’

  Elizabeth says nothing at first, picks up a book and slots it into place. ‘Why do you want to see me?’

  ‘Because I have to. I don’t know why.’

  ‘But we hardly know each other.’

  For a moment, Dylan’s thrown off. Has he read it wrong? He feels awkward, like he’s been caught stalking her. She’s right, after all – they don’t know each other. A few nights together, a long time ago. Then he’d got her raped. Hardly the fucking big romance, was it?

  It’s a good move by her, the ‘we don’t know each other’ line. A fucking pearler, to be fair. Leaves him nowhere to go, lost for words. But she moves slightly, almost nervously. Is she blagging it? Does she want him to continue?

  He carries on, fronts it out. ‘I needed to see you. That’s all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cos I fucking love you. Is that e-fucking-nough?’

  Elizabeth turns around. She’s still beautiful. No one could deny it. Dylan feels ashamed. He’d half-expected her to be disfigured, defiled in some way. But she hasn’t changed. In fact, she looks better. Strength shines out of her eyes. But still she’s not having any of it. ‘It’s not enough, Dylan, I’m afraid.’ She pushes past him and gets off, saying over her shoulder, ‘I want you to leave, Dylan. I don’t want you here.’

  He starts to tramp back towards his hotel. A first rumble of thunder snaps loudly, racing in from nowhere. Dylan’s on edge and angry, and it startles him. Within seconds, the rain is heavy. He can see lightning breaking in the distance, like a faraway battle. Suddenly, he turns around and runs back after Elizabeth.

  When he catches up with her, he grabs her arm and swings her round.

  ‘You can’t just leave it like this,’ he tells her.

  ‘Why did you stop calling me?’

  ‘Because it was my fault they raped you. That’s why.’

  She looks blankly at him. Dylan knows that she already knew but she wanted to hear it from him. Her hair’s drenched flat now, the stiff cotton of her top wilted.

  ‘I felt ashamed. I was as good as guilty of it. They raped you to get at me.’

  ‘If you knew that, why didn’t you come to tell me? Anything would have been better than nothing.’ Dylan has fuck all to say. ‘I knew it wasn’t you who raped me, Dylan. Of course I did. But when I didn’t see you, it felt like that. It felt like you were standing by whoever it was. By them rather than me.’ The skies blackened now, except for a bruised sun tussling with clouds and lightning on the horizon.

  ‘Do you know how that felt Dylan? Not only had I been raped but I thought I’d been betrayed as well. As good as raped again. By the person I’d just fallen in love with. Dylan?’

  Dylan rolls with the blows,
taking hope from her admission of love. But then she turns on him, furious. ‘You destroyed my life, Dylan. You fucked it up completely. Like the way you . . . you people fuck up everything you touch. I played with fire getting involved with you, Dylan. Thought I was being some kind of . . .’

  She turns to one side, then looks back at him again. ‘Do you know how much you fucked me up, Dylan? D’you really want to know how much damage you did? I’ll fucking tell you anyway. For a year, I couldn’t even go near a man. And then when I finally did, only when I was blind drunk, d’you know the only thing that turned me on, Dylan?’ Her voice tails off. She doesn’t bother telling him the rest.

  It’s like a bad trip. He has his head in his hands by now.

  ‘What? Don’t you like it, Dylan? Your perfect vision spoiled, your little posh girl fucked up. Thought you could come here . . . Fuck you, Dylan.’

  * * *

  When Dylan gets back to his digs, his head’s wrecked and his stomach’s knotted up. He spews all over the fresh white sink, his head spinning. He can’t get over the way she spoke. His head’s burnt out by it.

  He packs his gear, pays the bill in advance, telling the woman that he’s leaving early doors to catch a train. But the next day, she’s waiting outside for him when he leaves.

  ‘Listen,’ Elizabeth says, ‘what I said last night was true. Every single word of it. But it’s how I felt at the time, Dylan. It’s not how I feel now. Or rather it’s not how I think. It all came out again. Because I’ve been waiting since the day it happened to see you, Dylan. There’s not a day that’s gone by, not a fucking hour, when I haven’t thought of you. Of hating you. And loving you.’

  Elizabeth tells him that a few months after the rape she vowed to herself that she wasn’t going to be a victim, that it wasn’t going to make her bitter or hard either. She was living back with her mum and dad. ‘For a few months, I lost all my confidence. I lost all trust with people. I was a wreck, Dylan. Defeated.’

  ‘Not surprised, girl,’ says Dylan, trying to make her feel better. Anger’s welling up inside him now. He wants to torture Nogger.