Bright Stars

by Sophie Duffy

  It was strange going home for the holidays. A whole month back in Edinburgh with my father and my brothers in the old house, with its leaky roof and rising damp, its familiar smells and mess and stuff I’d not ever considered until I’d been away and returned with fresh eyes. The sunburst clock above the mantelpiece in the front room. The Ercol coffee table with Mum’s cork coasters (chaos everywhere, but no tea rings). The brushed cotton sheets on my bed, washed in my absence, the fluffy feel of them, rough and soft at the same time, like being a child again. Edward in the other bed, sleeping for Scotland.

  And then a letter from Bex, just after Hogmanay. I’d been convinced she’d forget me once down south but she wrote six sides of A4 in her slanting scrawl, squashed between the narrow lines, circles for dots over her i’s which seemed artistic and exotic to me, an all-boys’ school education behind me, brothers, and a father. She only referred to Tommo fifteen times. Obviously I’d had no word from him. Or from Christie, who’d flown back to Canada for the holidays. But Bex’s letter heralded a good start to the New Year. I was surprised at how much I was looking forward to us all being together again. Apprehensive too, like the first day in a new class after the long summer holidays.

  I waited in my campus room, hashing out my history essay, due in at the beginning of term, for the tutor with the bushy eyebrows who terrified me, especially as she was a woman. I’d caught the train a couple of days early; studying at home was a challenge, the usual mayhem plus boozy relatives dropping by for seasonal cheer, itching to see how I was getting on with university life. We’re so proud of you, Cameron. Are you eating properly, Cameron? Do you have a girlfriend yet, Cameron? I loved my family but I was loving my independence more.

  I wanted to see my friends.

  A quote from Brideshead Revisited flitted into my head. I hadn’t read the book but I’d seen it on the telly. Charles Ryder’s pompous cousin, visiting him when he arrives at Oxford. ‘You’ll find you spend half your second year shaking off the undesirable friends you made in your first.’

  I swatted it away.

  Christie hunted me down on her return, battering my door. ‘Are you in there, Cameron?’

  I opened up to see her standing in the corridor, in her coat and boots, not quite her usual tidy self.

  ‘Christie? You’re back. Is something wrong?’

  ‘Is something wrong? I’ve travelled thousands of miles, I’m exhausted and stressed, and I can’t face my damp, depressing room on my own.’

  She still had her suitcase with her. A suitcase the size of my wardrobe at home, far away and empty now except for my ghostly school uniform and some old gym shoes.

  ‘Do you need a hand with that?’

  ‘No, I don’t need a hand with this. I’ve got bigger muscles than you, idiot. I want your company.’

  So I followed her meekly, gratefully, up the Spine, across Alex Square and along to Bowland, to her room. People nodded, smiled, said hi to her. She was Ms Popularity. I was a nobody. Mr Nobody. But I was a somebody with her. Well, the friend of a somebody. And I was dead chuffed.

  After she’d unpacked – tipping the contents of her suitcase onto her ‘totally crappy single bed’ – she announced: ‘I need some liquor so I don’t go crazy.’

  We headed back to Fylde bar.

  ‘Two pints, please, Ron.’ She beamed years of expensive orthodontic treatment at him and Ron morphed back into the boy he’d possibly been all those years before. Two pints were speedily placed delicately in front of her, alongside a rare smile.

  ‘Thanks, Christie,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I can manage a pint of this stuff but I’ll give it a go.’

  ‘Sure you can, Cameron. You’re a big boy.’

  ‘And you’re an angel. You rescued me from an essay on Science, Reason and Enlightenment.’

  ‘Just call me the Ice Princess,’ she said. ‘No, scratch that. Call me the Ice Queen. Because I will be one day, you know. Call me the Queen of Freaking Everything.’ Then she sunk back her warm, frothy beer. ‘I hate to say it, but this stuff is kind of growing on me. Like a nasty rash.’ She smiled her beautiful smile and I missed Bex in that moment more than anything. More even than Mum, though I didn’t want to think like that.

  We sat companionably in the JCR, catching up, comparing Christmas traditions, stuffing crisps and steadily drinking till I felt my shoulders relax and Christie’s smile slipped sideways across her bone-white, glossy teeth. We cracked bad jokes and laughed a lot and I felt I could do this whole student thing, even though the work was already creeping up on me.

  ‘So when are you getting out that kilt of yours?’ She raised her pale, groomed eyebrows. ‘I’ve heard all about it…’

  I shed my scarf.

  ‘I’m not teasing.’ She tried to reassure me, put her hand on my thigh.

  I shed my sweater.

  ‘I have Scottish ancestry and I’m proud of it. We even have a Scottish shop where I live in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It’s really neat. I just love tartan.’

  ‘Did you know your Armstrongs were reivers?’ I had to focus on our conversation, to sound like I was present there in that moment, in those words, in those sounds escaping from her foreign, moistened, blushed lips.

  ‘Reivers?’ She looked puzzled.

  ‘Raiders,’ I informed her, waiting for her reaction.

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Like me?’ And she grabbed my packet of crisps and scoffed a handful. Then she flexed the biceps on one of her arms and made me squeeze them. Rock hard. Strong. Arm strong.

  ‘Wow,’ was all I managed. Then I pulled myself together; I could do better than this. ‘Do you have a kilt?’ I asked her.

  And she looked at me in what I believe was a flirty way and said no, but she intended to put that right. Then before I could respond, she’d leapt up and bought more drinks.

  Christie was telling me about the time she lost her virginity at a party in the basement of her friend’s house when she was sixteen. I was mortified. Partly because I was still waiting for that particular rite of passage to happen, naturally. Mainly because I’d never talked about this stuff with a girl. Or anyone for that matter. Especially someone who wanted to maintain eye contact throughout.

  My modesty was saved when Bex staggered in, ruffled and pale, wild hair cascading over her old man coat, dragging a body bag of a rucksack.

  ‘Eight hours on a stupid, wee-stinking, sick-inducing coach. Newton Abbot. Exeter. Bristol. Birmingham. Manchester. Preston. And everybloodywhere in between.’

  She slumped down next to me, right next to me, stretching out her long legs and resting her boots on her bag. Christie leant over and gave her a hug – squashing me back against my seat so I couldn’t breathe – then strutted to the bar to fetch more drinks.

  I couldn’t think of anything clever or witty to say, so I said nothing. Nor did she. I wasn’t anything as quick in life as I was in my daydreams. I felt sick. I felt ecstatic. Then Christie returned with our drinks.

  ‘Slàinte,’ Christie said, raising her glass.

  ‘Slàinte,’ I said back, impressed.

  Bex gave us both a look. ‘Cheers,’ she said. ‘So how was Canada?’

  ‘Cold.’ Christie took a sip of her Barcardi and coke.

  ‘Okay… so how was Scotland, Cameron?’

  ‘Also cold.’ I glugged back my pint and wiped my mouth as some of it dribbled out the side.

  ‘How was Dartmoor?’ Christie and I asked at the same time, egging each other on, so Bex looked put out. The odd one out. Over and out.

  Bex crunched her knuckles. ‘Dartmoor was cold. Obviously,’ she snapped. ‘A damp, clingy, miserable cold. I spent a week in bed with flu and another week recovering and I’m still not over it.’

  I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was being stupid. Here was Bex and I was teasing her because no better words could find their way out of my big fat gob. I felt awful. So did Christie. She fussed around Bex, saying we’d help her back to her room. We’d make her a cup
of tea, some beans on toast. And Bex cried because she said it had been such a long time since anyone had wanted to mother her like that. Because Bex was motherless too.*

  ‘Dad left me to it,’ she said. ‘Worked overtime as it was Christmas, to give families a chance to spend it together.’ She sniffed a snotty sniff. ‘So what are we?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t we a family?’ And she cried some more. Tough, forthright Bex.

  Christie – the only one of us to have a full set of parents, alive and under the same roof, albeit thousands of miles away at that moment – held Bex’s hand and steered her towards the door. ‘Grab her bag, Cameron,’ she called over her shoulder and I did as I was told, determined to make it look easy though the heaviness bent my spine in two like a pipe cleaner.

  Back in Bex’s cold room, Christie ordered her into bed while she turned on the heater and I made a hot water bottle. Once we were done with faffing around her, we squashed together on the bed, limbs overlapping, sipping tea and eating our way through a packet of Rich Tea.

  ‘Thanks, guys.’ Bex smiled. ‘You’ve really helped.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Christie said. And then, more thoughtfully: ‘So what does your dad do?’

  ‘He’s a prison officer.’

  ‘Oh, wow, cool.’ Christie looked impressed. ‘We call them correctional officers back home.’

  ‘That’s a nicer name,’ Bex said. ‘A better ethos. The hope that criminals will somehow be made better before they’re allowed back into society, rather than just punished, the key thrown away.’ A pause. ‘God, do I sound like a middle-class do-gooder?’

  A shiver shimmied up my body, a ghost walking over me, stepping up each vertebrae of my crushed spine. They carried on talking but I didn’t want to think about it, being locked up. I busied myself making more tea.

  Bex put on a Lloyd Cole tape and we chatted, Christie explaining the ins and outs of wine-making and then I ventured an Edinburgh ghost story, which had them hooked only then there was an almighty, unmistakeable knock on the door.

  Tommo.

  And Bex whispered, terrified and in awe: ‘I think I love him.’

  I think I love him.

  I thought my brittle heart would snap and crackle into tiny, tiny pieces.

  ‘Christmas was shite. Always has been ever since I can remember but I’ve learnt the hard way to keep my expectations low, that way I don’t get flattened with disappointment.’ Tommo took a breath. We said nothing. Waited for him to carry on which he did at some length, my ghost story all but forgotten.

  ‘It’s not just the presents – they’re usually pretty good, no expense spared, though obviously bought and wrapped by someone other than my parents which would be all right if Christmas day itself was all about family but my mother’s in the south of France with the Knob and my father thinks having business colleagues round for caviar and Champagne is a good substitute, expecting me to dress up smart and make small talk, picking at the disgusting nibbles, hankering after Wotsits, until it’s finally time for lunch.’

  Another breath.

  ‘One thing about being an adult is that I can say no to all that crap. So this year I did that, I just said no.* Instead, I stayed in my room, played records, wrote a song, smoked and drank.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like shite to me,’ Bex said. ‘Better than being in bed with flu, on a wind-blown moor with just a shaggy dog for company.’

  ‘Poor you,’ said Tommo and he pulled a sad baby face that made Bex blush. ‘I should’ve come and seen you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m scared of your dad.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course I’m scared of your dad. I come from Hampstead. I wear mascara. He’s a screw. I’m in love with his daughter.’

  I’m in love with his daughter.

  And I was bereft.

  Tommo slurped the tea that Christie made him, wincing. ‘You make crap tea.’ He heaped in more sugar, leaving a trail over the floor, then finally he looked at Bex who was lying back on her pillow, all blocked up and snotty, her dark hair shrouding her porcelain face like a consumptive Victorian, taking in the words he had just uttered. Bex blinked at him with those cow eyes and it hit me how much I’d missed her and how little she’d missed me. She only had cow eyes for Tommo.

  ‘Time we were making tracks, eh.’ Christie escorted me out of the room and the door clunked shut behind us.

  _________________________

  *Tommo was pretty much motherless too. She lived in the south of France but he hadn’t seen her in five years because he hated her new husband, the Knob.

  *He was possibly quoting Nancy Reagan’s tagline from her anti-drugs campaign. Grange Hill was yet to produce their pop song of the same title. That would come later in the year.

  Tutorial

  It was a coat-hugging day, a pathetic sun hovering behind clouds up in the wide sky above campus. I was wearing my Fylde scarf, a naff accessory, but it annoyed Tommo. Annoying Tommo was becoming a wee game so I reckoned I might as well play it properly.

  I was meeting Christie for a coffee in Bowland JCR before our Marketing lecture.* The warmth hit me as I stepped inside, smoke all but asphyxiating me. I tried to pick out that bright blonde hair through the fug, found her at a corner table, a scowl on her face.

  ‘You okay, Christie? Can I get you something?’

  ‘Sit down.’

  I sat down. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Act like we’re deep in conversation.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  I did it, forcing myself not to work out who she was avoiding.

  ‘You can relax now. They’ve gone.’

  ‘Who’s gone?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who.’

  ‘Right, well, shall I get us a coffee then?’

  ‘Sure, go ahead. That would be great.’ And she changed that scowl to a smile.

  But I was getting to know her now. There was something going on. I might not be the sharpest knife, but that kind of look usually involved someone of the opposite sex. And it clearly wasn’t me. It would never be me. I didn’t want it to be me.

  I went to get the coffee, elbows at the ready. When I glanced back at Christie, the scowl had returned and looked all set to stay. But whatever was wrong with her right now, she would sort it. She’d get what she wanted. True to her ancestors, she was a reiver.

  We stayed there drinking coffee after coffee until Christie was whizzing and I was stuck on the dirty ceiling and the lecture was all but forgotten. She had the band’s progress all mapped out, she said. She’d found a practice room and penned in two evenings a week. Hyper would have to forget his pool league, Dave would have to shear his Brian May hair, and Carl would have to quit his nasty habits. She might have been freaked when she’d first heard them, but not as freaked as she’d made out. She could see there was talent.

  I nodded. Wondered where she was going with all this.

  ‘They’re solid musicians and Hyper’s awesome on the keyboards. But…’ She bent a beer mat in half for dramatic effect. ‘Tommo is our weapon. He might be a jerk but he has it all going on. The looks, the presence, the voice, the technical ability.’

  I neither agreed nor disagreed.

  ‘But does he have the stamina and perseverance?’ She continued, as if she were addressing a studio audience or a courtroom. ‘He’d better pull himself together when it’s time to perform. It’s kind of like cheerleading. You have to train and train but it’s only in competitions, when the adrenaline’s cruising through your blood that you peak. You perform to your potential and I know Tommo will respond to a crowd of girls screaming and making eyes at him. But he has to keep his stick on the ice.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘His stick on the ice,’ she repeated.

  I must have looked baffled. I was baffled.

  ‘Geez, Cameron. Keep up. It’s a hockey term. Figure it out.’

  I tried to figure it out. But something was
distracting me, bothering me. ‘Christie, it might sound intrusive but… can I ask you a question?’

  ‘Sure.’ She looked at me expectantly, ready and willing to field this question from the floor.

  ‘Do you like Tommo?’

  ‘You mean like-like?’

  ‘Yeah, I mean like-like.’

  ‘No. I don’t like-like Tommo. He’s an idiot. An ass. I mean, I can see his appeal to other girls and all. Though I’m kind of surprised Bex is so into him. I wouldn’t have thought she’d go for a pretty boy like that.’

  ‘So…’ I tried again. ‘Do you like-like anyone?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Let’s just say he’s a man, not a boy. A lecturer in the Marketing department.’

  ‘You’re having an affair with a lecturer?’

  ‘Geez, Cameron. Pipe down.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say an affair. A fling, maybe. Whatever you want to call it. He’s pretty cute for an older guy.’

  I was shocked, I have to admit. Shocked. But intrigued, like when you drive past a road accident and you don’t want to peek but you can’t help yourself. ‘How did you get involved?’

  ‘He touched my butt when I bent down to pick up some papers I’d “dropped” on his office floor at the end of our initial getting-to-know-one-another tutorial. It wasn’t an accidental brush-up. It was a full-on handful.’ She paused long enough to give me an image of this handful. ‘And I looked up at him, into his hazy green eyes, and I thought, hell, why not? This is a year for experience. And yeah, I know, I’m living a cliché but I’m in control. I’m always in control.’ She sleeked down her hair with her delicate fingers. ‘This is what Bex’s feminism is all about. I don’t get why she hates Mrs Thatcher. Your prime minister is a woman in control. She gets what she wants, whatever the cost.’

  ‘Was that who you saw just now then?’

  ‘Mrs Thatcher?’

  ‘Your lecturer.’

  ‘No. That was his wife.’

  _________________________

  *As well as taking English and History as minors, I was also doing Marketing along with Christie.