“Does that say Massive Attack?”
“Yeah. It’s their album. Blue Lines.”
“With Unfinished Sympathy on it?”
“Yeah.”
I kept turning it over and over in my hands.
“You can have one record each,” Ora said, appearing out of nowhere.
“But it isn’t our birthday.”
“Well, there doesn’t have to be an occasion,” she smiled.
I clutched the tape to me, in case she might take it away. My whole body fizzed at the thought that I now owned a tape, just like Jazz.
The fairground was near a beach. The beach was wide, like our beach, but it was crowded with people. I was glad to leave it and go to the fairground, where familiar beats thumped and coloured lights spun. Jazz scuffed his feet along the ground.
We went on a ride with seats that spun around. Above my head, lights flashed and swirled. My face was frozen into position, yet I was flying. A man came over to our seat and pushed it, so that it went even faster. Laughter poured out of me; my stomach clenched and tears streamed out of my eyes. It was only when we stopped that I realised Jazz wasn’t laughing.
“Didn’t you like it?” I said.
“I don’t feel so good.”
His voice was thick.
“Will I mop your fevered brow?”
That was what people always did in books.
“Don’t be an eejit.”
His voice didn’t sound as cross as his words.
“Never mind. It’s not spinning any more. You’ll recover in a moment.”
I squeezed his hand. His fingers felt cold and damp. We got out of the seat. My legs were shaking. There were steps just ahead of us. I misjudged the steepness of the first one and started to pitch forward. Jazz took hold of my elbow, steadying me. His touch was light, a butterfly’s wing brushing against my sleeve. But it was enough.
We sat on a bench for a while. Jazz drank some water and said he felt better. I still craved speed. We passed a racing track full of cars that buzzed and spun in endless circles.
“Could I go in one of those cars, Ora?”
There was a silence. Perhaps Ora couldn’t hear me over the roar of the engines.
“Please?”
“The bumpers are better,” said Jazz. “You can crash into people.”
I followed them to the ride with the bumpers, my mind still full of the buzzing cars. The bumpers didn’t make any noise. They glided along the floor and crashed into each other with a thud. When it was our turn, Jazz allowed me to drive. He showed me how to use the steering wheel and how to avoid the cars that tried to crash into us. But I decided crashing into other cars was more fun. And I was intrigued by the way my driving matched the beats in the background. When we finished, Ora said it was time for something to eat.
“Do you want chips?”
“Okay,” said Jazz.
That was what Jazz always said when people asked him questions.
“What about you, Astrid?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you like chips?”
“I never ate chips before. Matthew says they give you high cholesterol.”
Ora laughed.
“I don’t think you have to worry about that just yet.”
We went up to a white van, where a man gave us white plastic boxes filled with plump golden potatoes cut into fingers. They were soft and a little damp to the touch. As I bent over the box, the smell of hot fat and vinegar filled my nostrils. My mouth watered. We ate the chips with little plastic forks, sitting on a bench which faced the sea. When I tried to spear them with my fork, their skins broke apart and white puffs of potato spilled out. It was easier to eat them with my fingers. They melted in my mouth, explosions of salt and fat. Towards the bottom, the chips became thinner and darker in colour. When I finished, I stabbed the bottom of the box with my fork, trying to scoop out the last crumbs.
“Did you enjoy those?” Ora said, smiling.
“They were ambrosial. Could I have some more?”
“Well, I think you’ll definitely have high cholesterol if we let you have more. We’ll have some ice-cream instead.”
We went to another white van, where Ora bought ice creams for Jazz and I. The ice-cream came in towering cones, with a tall piece of chocolate at the side. Jazz’s ice cream was soon demolished, but the mountain of white swirls defeated me.
“Don’t you like it?” Ora asked me.
“No. You can have it.”
“Oh, I’ll put on at least a pound if I eat that.”
“You can’t put on a pound just from one ice-cream.”
“That’s true,” she said, laughing.
After the ice-cream, we drove to the cinema.
“Why is the film called Hot Shots!” I asked Jazz as we queued for tickets.
“I don’t know. Because of all the battles, maybe. It’s like Top Gun. Did you see that?”
“No. I was never at a cinema before.”
“No way! You’re so weird sometimes.”
“Geoff, that’s not nice.” said Ora.
“Sorry,” Jazz muttered.
After a day in the sun, the cinema was pitch black. Ora and Jazz disappeared. My feet hovered on the edge of a step. I tried to grab the wall, but it was too far away. My feet wobbled. Then I felt the butterfly touch on my elbow again. It was light enough for me to swat away, but instead I let Jazz’s hand propel me forward.
We took seats near the front. Ora said it was easier to see the film from there. Jazz had a box of popcorn. He let me try some. It tasted like pieces of paper dipped in salt water. I swallowed it with difficulty and didn’t reach for any more. The screen lit up and people moved across it. There was loud music which I didn’t recognise. It wasn’t euphoric, like the beats in the DJ Shack; it just growled.
“Is that the film?” I said to Jazz.
“No. They’re trailers.”
“What are those?”
“They show you other films.”
“Why?”
“So you know which ones to watch. You’ll have be quiet now, the film’s about to start.”
The screen became busy with activity, people were everywhere. It was hard to keep track of the constant activity. I kept asking Jazz who the people were and what they were doing. Behind us, people asked me to be quiet. Jazz became impatient.
“Astrid, you have to watch the film. That’s how you know what’s happening.”
The planes wheeled overhead, trying to shoot each other out of the sky. One of them did a complete loop.
“Let battle commence!” I said.
“Sssh!” someone said again.
“Why do they keep telling me to be quiet?” I asked Jazz.
“It’s a film. You’re supposed to be quiet in the cinema. It’s like, you know, a library.”
The hush of libraries was familiar to me. I settled down in my seat and tried to concentrate. But my eyes grew heavy. My head drifted downwards and landed on Jazz’s shoulder. It was wider than I expected. My head fit into the hollow near his neck.
I was woken by the sound of seats clicking back into place.
“We’ve to go now,” Jazz was saying. “The film’s over.”
I rubbed my eyes and blinked myself awake. My eyes were accustomed to the darkness by now, so I didn’t need Jazz to hold my elbow on the way out.
“Thank you,” I said to Ora. “That was a most interesting experience.”
She and Jazz laughed. I didn’t know why.
When September came, Jazz went back to school, but he and Ora still came every weekend, even though Ora’s brochure was finished. Other people wanted Ora to take pictures for them. Sometimes they telephoned our house. At first, Matthew was cro
ss, but then he said in a gruff voice that he was pleased with her success. Sometimes he went with her when she was taking pictures. I stayed in the DJ Shack with Jazz. Now that winter was coming, the wind rattled the DJ Shack so much that it threatened to tip over. But we kept the wind at bay with our beats, which were filled with the permanent sunshine of summer.
One day, rain and wind lashed against the house. I made a heroic attempt to access the DJ Shack, putting on my rain slicks and wellington boots. But as I prepared to push through the sheets of rain, Ora intercepted me.
“I’m afraid the shed’s not looking like an option for you today.”
I followed her inside, dragging my feet. Reading held no appeal; I was in that vacuum between finishing one book and starting another. I sat on the window seat, hugging my knees. Jazz sat at the kitchen table, reading a comic. Now that his reading habits were sanctioned by Matthew, he no longer felt the need to hide them. After a while, he stopped reading and stared into space.
“Well, I never saw two such long faces in my life,” Ora said, laughing.
We didn’t reply. Ora clapped her hands.
“I know what we can do. We’ll make a sponge cake. That’ll cheer us up. I’ll just see what ingredients there are.”
She scrabbled in our presses. Whenever she did that, they always yielded a cornucopia of food. I never knew our presses held such bounty. Jazz got up to help her look.
“Come on, Astrid. It’ll be fun,” Ora said.
I dawdled over to the worktop, where Ora was mixing all the ingredients in a bowl. She gave me a spoon and guided my hands as I pushed it through the mixture. The spoon made squelching sounds. Bits of mixture clung to my fingers and I licked it off. In spite of myself, I began to thaw. Matthew appeared at the door.
“I hate to intrude into this hive of industry but that man from the Historical Society has tracked you down. Wants to talk to you about a photograph for their next event. They have someone worthy coming. An expert on the holy stones of Wexford, if you can imagine anything so spurious.”
“Oh, all right,” Ora said, going to the sink to wash her hands. “I’ll just be a moment. Keep stirring. We’ll start putting it all together when I come back.”
Jazz was at the sink, whipping cream. His turned back made him a target. A grin leaked onto my face as I crept towards him, my fingers loaded with cake mixture. I flicked the mixture onto his shirt.
“Hey!” he said.
I danced away, but not fast enough to avoid the gob of cream that splatted onto my face.
“That’s mean,” I said, in half-hearted protest.
“You asked for it.”
I went back to my bowl for more ammunition. Soon, cake mixture and cream flew in all directions. At last, we leaned against the sink, our breath coming out in ragged gasps, our energy spent. Ora was still talking on the telephone.
“We’d better clean up,” Jazz said.
He picked up a sponge from the side of the sink and ran it in warm water.
“You’ve cream all over your face,” he said. “I’ll wipe it off for you.”
He rubbed my face with the sponge. Maybe it was the warmth of the water that caused my cheeks to tingle. Or maybe it was friction from the tea towel he used to dry my face.
“I think it’s all gone now,” he said. “Oh, wait.”
His fingers brushed the hair that covered my left ear. They stayed there longer than they needed to, travelled along the strands. The tingle spread through all the hairs on my head. I knew hair carried static electricity. When he removed his hand, I could still feel his touch. It was bizarre.
“There was another blob of cream, you see. Just by your ear.”
His voice was thick. I listened to the crash of the waves. The wind made them louder than usual.
“Your hair feels like silk. I never knew. I didn’t mean...”
His face was red. I brought my hand to my face and touched the strands of hair. The static electricity was gone.
“I must inform you that our plans will be rather different this New Year,” said Matthew, as I caught up with him at the top of the cliff path.
I stamped my feet on the unyielding ground; my toes were still numb from our swim. Matthew made no allowances for frigid December weather.
“Ora has invited us to come and visit. We will be staying overnight.”
“Could I stay up until midnight?” I asked.
“I don’t see why not.”
I hadn’t seen Jazz in more than two weeks, because of Christmas. As I traced the route to the cottage on a map, my stomach began to fizz.
On the way to Ora’s cottage, Matthew was derailed by a signpost pointing in the wrong direction, so in spite of his expertise with maps, we became lost. The journey was punctuated by bellows of rage and sudden twists and turns. But we found the right road in the end, after Matthew stopped to study the map again.
The cottage nestled at the bottom of a mountain. Plants grew along the white walls. As we got out of the car, Ora appeared at the door. She held a teatowel in her hands.
“Welcome, welcome, did you have an awful journey?”
She kissed Matthew. Then she kissed me, her lips leaving a wet imprint on my cheek.
Inside, most of the space was taken up by soft furniture. All the chairs were covered in scarves. There was a large television in a corner of the room. It was hard to find a path through it all.
“I’ve made some coffee,” said Ora.
“Good. I’m in dire need of it,” said Matthew.
“Geoff’s in his room, Astrid, if you want to go into him. It’s just across the way.”
I was already negotiating the obstacle course of chairs and small tables. The corner of one table tugged at the denim of my jeans, one of the pairs purchased during the summer shopping expedition. An ornament threatened to topple onto the ground. The grating sound of china on wood alerted me and I retrieved it in time. I waited for Matthew to reprove me for my clumsiness, but he wasn’t there. He was in the kitchen with Ora.
The door of Jazz’s room was festooned with stickers and a sign that said ‘Keep Out’. I ignored the sign and pushed open the door. Jazz was sitting on his bed, twiddling with a device made up of wires and tubes. He looked up as I stepped into the room.
“Hi,” he said.
“What’s that? It looks peculiar.”
“It’s a radio. I made it myself. Mum got me a kit for Christmas.”
He returned to his twiddling. I sat on the bed beside him and looked around the room. Every corner was covered in posters of monsters and men holding weapons. Stacks of comics and tapes lined the shelves; there weren’t any books. A camp bed was wedged in the space between Jazz’s bed and the wardrobe. Jazz pressed a button on the radio and it emitted shrieks and buzzes.
“Are you receiving signals from Mars?” I asked him.
“Power FM have a rave on tonight. Sometimes you can get the pirate stations in Dublin. I’ll try it again later. If you stick a coat hanger on it, it works better.”
I sat beside him and listened for beats through the crackle of static. He showed me how the radio worked, putting my fingers on the buttons so I could distinguish one from the other.
We ate one of Ora’s big dinners. It was an orange stew which tasted nicer than it looked. After dinner, Ora suggested we play a game called Cluedo.
“You’ll like it, Astrid; it’s just like all those detective books you read.”
She was right. It was a mystery in the style of Sherlock Holmes, with clues scattered throughout a house that we had to follow. We played in teams, because Ora and Jazz knew how to play and we didn’t. I played with Ora; Jazz played with Matthew. Ora and I emerged victorious, which added to my enjoyment. Matthew grumbled that our victory was a matter of mere chance, but he smiled as he said it, so I knew he
was enjoying it too.
Afterwards, Ora switched on the television, because we were using it to tell us when it was New Year. I sat on a big armchair, the one closest to the television. It enveloped me. People on the television were cheering and talking in loud voices. There was an hour and a half to go. I was determined not to miss it. But my eyes had other ideas. They kept closing against my will. Matthew touched my shoulder.
“Come on, Astrid. No point in fighting the inevitable.”
“No. Not tired,” I mumbled, forcing my eyes open. “Have to stay up for New Year.”
Matthew leaned close to me. He smelled of wine and coffee.
“It’ll be New Year in the morning, little one.”
He never called me that any more. We walked to Jazz’s room, his hands on my shoulders. I lay on the camp bed and sank into oblivion.
The mattress jolted. I sat up in bed. It was still dark. I rubbed my eyes.
“Sorry. I hit off your bed.”
The sound of Jazz’s voice startled the rest of the sleep out of me.
“Is it New Year yet?”
“Yeah. Just about.”
Ora and Matthew’s voices rumbled in the distance. They weren’t in bed yet.
“You think the rave is still on?”
I pulled myself up and made my way over to Jazz, still wrapped in the sleeping bag.
“Course. Those things go on all night,” said Jazz.
Jazz attached the coat hanger to the radio and fiddled with the dials. This time, we heard beats through the crackles. There was a hole in the radio for inserting headphones. I put one in my ear and he put one in his. We sat close to each other. Our hands rested side by side; his little finger rubbed against mine. Jazz switched on the lamp beside his bed. It spread yellow-brown light all over the room. The beats made my ears hot. Our shadows danced on the wall in time to the rhythm. His was chunky, a bear cosy in his cave. Mine was a reed swaying in the wind. We listened until white noise swallowed up the beats.
The Pink Cage Page 15
