Multitudes

by Lucy Caldwell

  I try to say it in a way that lets her off the hook, if she really is scared of her dad. ‘It doesn’t look like there’s much going on anyway.’

  ‘Wise up,’ she says. ‘We’re not going anywhere. I paid for the carry-out, remember? It’s a total waste of it if we just leave now.’ Then she says, ‘Are you sure you’ve done this before?’

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘I said, are you sure you’ve done this before? With Susan Clarke. Like you said.’

  She is smirking, and I am suddenly raging. I’m raging at her. I’m raging at my parents. I haven’t let myself think about Susan for weeks, but now I’m raging at her too. We’d promised we’d do everything together. We’d promised. I don’t want to be getting drunk and seeing fellas with Jacqueline Dunne. I don’t want to know about Jacqueline’s dad. I don’t want to be the one she confides in. I don’t want to have to do everything with her, for the rest of the year, for the rest of school. I don’t even like her. It isn’t fair. It just isn’t fair.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Jacqueline says.

  ‘No,’ I say. She’s taken aback at that.

  ‘Here, I’m sorry, like,’ she says, after a moment or two. ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I need another drink,’ I say.

  ‘We don’t have any more drink.’

  ‘Duh. I’m not stupid.’

  She blinks at me. ‘I didn’t mean you were,’ she says. ‘I just meant … we could go back and get some more, if you want?’

  ‘I’m not walking all the way back to the offy and back.’

  ‘I’ll go, if you want.’

  I look at her, her big moony face and wide eyes, and I realise that she’s scared. She’s scared that she has gone too far, that I will just walk away. She’s scared that she needs me more than I need her after all. The realisation makes me weirdly tired. This is my life, this moment, here, right now, on a rainy November Saturday night in Cairnburn Park with Jacqueline Dunne.

  ‘I’ll pay,’ she says. ‘I mean, I don’t mind paying.’

  ‘Let’s just ask someone,’ I say.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  There are three fellas standing nearby with a six-pack of tins. ‘Come on,’ I say, and set off towards them.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I hear Jacqueline saying. ‘You can’t just do that. What are you doing?’

  But I’ve already decided that I’m going to take myself down. ‘All right,’ I say to them, and point at the six-pack. ‘Can we have one?’

  ‘Aye, but it’ll cost yous, but,’ the fella nearest says.

  ‘How much?’ I say.

  ‘Don’t be a dick,’ another of the fellas says. ‘Give the wee girls a tin.’

  The fella with the six-pack yanks one free and hands it over.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, and peel open the tab. I take a swig and almost retch. It’s sharp and warm and rancid-tasting.

  ‘Would you look at the hack of her,’ I hear Jacqueline saying. ‘She can’t handle her drink. It’s embarrassing.’

  The fellas laugh.

  I ignore them: take another gulp, then another.

  ‘Leave me some,’ Jacqueline says, getting into her stride. ‘And I don’t mean the last ten per cent. I don’t want your slabbers.’ The fellas laugh again, and the tallest one, who has black hair in curtains, says, ‘What’s your names?’

  ‘I’m Brooke,’ Jacqueline says, ‘and my friend there’s Winona.’

  ‘Winona?’ I say.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re too drunk already to know your own name,’ she says.

  ‘Winona?’ the fella with curtains says. ‘Like Winona Ryder?’

  ‘My name’s not Winona,’ I say. ‘I don’t know why you’re calling me Winona, Jacqueline.’

  She glares at me.

  ‘So your name’s not Brooke either?’ Curtains says.

  ‘My middle name’s Brooke,’ Jacqueline says, shooting me another dirty look.

  ‘You’re mental, the both of yous,’ Curtains says, but he and his friends are laughing, and another couple of tins are cracked open and passed around.

  For the next few minutes, Jacqueline does most of the talking while I drink from my tin in steady gulps. She shares Curtains’ tin, taking extravagant swigs and acting more and more blocked. I’m sure she’s acting. I’m drinking my hardest and I don’t feel anywhere near that yet.

  When his tin runs out, Curtains opens his jacket and shows Jacqueline a quarter bottle of vodka. ‘Will we go for a dander and have a wee swally?’ he says.

  Jacqueline stops laughing. ‘I mean, the thing is,’ she says, ‘the thing is I’m not sure I should leave my friend.’

  ‘Your friend’s fine,’ Curtains says. ‘Aren’t you? Winona there’s fine. And she’s got these fellas to keep her company, sure.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jacqueline says, ‘hang on a sec,’ and she turns to me and pulls me a few paces away. ‘Are you going to see one of them?’ she says. I shrug. ‘Seriously – are you? ’Cause if you’re not—’

  ‘Are yous fighting over me, wee girls?’ Curtains calls over, and cracks up.

  ‘He’s a ride, isn’t he?’ Jacqueline says. ‘Wouldn’t you say he was a ride?’

  ‘He’s okay,’ I say.

  ‘You’re just jealous,’ she says. ‘You’re jealous ’cause it’s me he’s interested in.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I say. ‘Do you actually think that?’

  ‘Oh my God, you so are,’ she says.

  ‘I’m not jealous of you, Jacqueline,’ I say. ‘He’s not my type.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, he’s not the type of fella I go for.’

  ‘You’re just trying to put me off him.’

  ‘If you want to see him, just go on and see him.’ Then it occurs to me. ‘Have you ever seen a wee lad before?’

  ‘Course I have!’ she says, too loud. ‘And you’re a fine one to talk. You hadn’t seen anyone either before your party, and you let the lot of them do whatever they wanted to you. And in front of everyone. That’s sick in the head. I think you’re some sort of pervert. That’s what everyone says, you know. You and that wee black bitch both.’

  I stare at her. She flinches, as if I might be about to hit her. ‘Are you not even going to say anything?’ she says.

  I say nothing.

  ‘Here, are you coming or what?’ Curtains shouts.

  Jacqueline throws her shoulders back. ‘Aye, sure,’ she says, still looking at me.

  ‘The funny thing is,’ I say, as she takes a step backwards, ‘she was just as white as she was black. No one ever took her mum into consideration.’

  Jacqueline stares at me now. ‘You are seriously weird,’ she says. She turns and walks over to Curtains. He takes her hand, and they set off up the hill.

  I go back to the dregs of my tin. I feel suddenly drunk, and it’s not a nice feeling. The cider is a sloshy mass in my tummy that might surge upwards at any moment, and the vision in my left eye is blurring. My heart is pounding, pounding and pounding, as if I’ve just run circuits around the park. I lean against the wooden frame of the kiddie castle and try to concentrate on breathing.

  The two remaining fellas exchange a few words, and the spotty one slopes off. The other one moves in to stand beside me. His hair is gelled into a crispy comb across his forehead, and one of his ears is pierced with a small gold ring. He’s wearing a Coq Sportif jacket. I can’t think of a single thing to say to him. We stand side by side and pass his tin back and forth. I don’t want any more to drink. I plug the hole with my tongue and pretend to swallow. From time to time he asks a question: ‘So you come here most weekends then’, ‘So are you blocked yet?’ Sometimes he asks the same question a few minutes later. He is drunk, I realise – even drunker than me.

  ‘Here,’ he eventually slurs, ‘so are you going to see us or what?’

  I glance around, but Jacqueline is nowhere to be seen.

  Coq Sportif leans in closer. ‘Are you?’ he says. His breath is sharp wi
th cider and thick with cigarettes. His lips are thin and flaking. They skim my earlobe. ‘Come on.’

  It’s your own fault, I tell myself. You’ve only got yourself to blame. I close my eyes for a second then nod.

  ‘You are, aye?’ he says.

  ‘I am, aye,’ I say.

  ‘Come on then,’ he says, and makes a grab for my hand. His hand is damp, and I can feel what I think is a wart on the pad of his thumb, but I don’t know how to make him let go. We walk up the hill and down the path a bit, passing other couples. None of them is Jacqueline and Curtains.

  ‘In here,’ Coq Sportif says, and we wriggle through some trampled scratchy bushes to a tree stump.

  ‘Right,’ Coq Sportif says, and we sit down. Almost immediately he leans in to kiss me, but he leans too forcefully and our teeth clash. He pulls away. ‘Jeez, take it easy,’ he says, and laughs to himself. Then he dives in again. It seems to go on for ever, and I wonder if I can break it off without being rude. But I’m more worried that if I move too suddenly I’ll throw up.

  Eventually he pulls away, and I shift sideways. The tree stump is cold under my bare thighs, and water is dripping from the branches above onto my shoulders and neck. I can feel my body breaking out into gooseflesh, all over, arms and legs and even places like my stomach.

  ‘All right?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘Dead on.’

  For a moment I think that it’s over. But he comes at me again, this time shoving a hand up my skirt as well. I freeze. I feel him plucking at the elastic of my knickers. All I can think about is the wart on his thumb. I feel the cider swirling at the base of my throat. He breaks off the kissing and says something.

  ‘Sorry?’ I whisper, and he slurs it again. Then, without waiting for an answer, he hoiks my skirt up around my waist and tugs my knickers to one side and pushes a finger inside of me. I can’t seem to move. I try to concentrate on the sound of raindrops falling from the branches around and above us, on the sound of the little stream. I try to imagine myself dissolving, washing away in drops into the earth and the water.

  Coq Sportif is wiggling his finger. Then he stops. He pulls his hand away and shakes it out.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I say.

  ‘What is it?’

  I lurch to my feet, and the cider spews from me in a hot watery gush. Almost as soon as it’s happened I feel better.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Coq Sportif is saying. ‘Did you just boke?’

  I straighten my clothes and take a couple of exploratory steps. My legs are weak and fuzzy, but they hold me up.

  ‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I’d better be going. My friend will be waiting.’

  ‘Ach, wise up,’ he says, ‘for fuck’s sake, like,’ but when I move away he doesn’t stop me.

  *

  I find Jacqueline by the slide getting off with some fella who isn’t Curtains. She’s completely stocious. I walk right up to them and pull her away by the shoulder. ‘Jacqueline,’ I say, ‘we have to go now.’

  ‘What are you at?’ the fella says.

  ‘Look at the state of her,’ I say. ‘We’ve got to go.’

  ‘Fuck away off, then,’ the fella says, and staggers backwards against the slide.

  ‘Come on, Jacqueline,’ I say, and I take her by the elbow and put my other arm around her. I manage to get her over the stile, and then she staggers to the side of the car park to be sick. She’s sick once, and then again, and then a third time. I think, I should hold her hair back. It takes a moment or two before I can make myself, but then I walk up to her and gather it all back into a bundle. She’s crying, huge snotty tears, and moaning in incoherent gulps. With my spare hand I pat her shoulder. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ I tell her. I don’t mean it, but I say it, over and over: ‘It’s going to be okay.’ It occurs to me that she’s made it easier, by saying what she said. I’d already decided that after tonight I wasn’t going to be friends with Jacqueline Dunne any more.

  *

  After she’s finished chucking up, we set off back to hers. She’s so weak it takes us almost an hour to get there, a walk that should be fifteen minutes at most. When we finally make it, I get her keys from her pocket and let us in. There’s no sign of Mrs Dunne, or Mr Dunne.

  I steer Jacqueline up the stairs and into her room as quietly as I can, and onto her bed. Her jacket is covered in vomit, and I manage to get it off her, pushing and tugging one arm at a time. Her vest top and skirt are spattered with vomit too, but I can’t risk it getting round that I took them off her. So I just pull off her boots and tuck her duvet round her.

  Then I tiptoe to the bathroom and pee, wash the stupid make-up off and brush my teeth for several minutes, trying to scrape the feel and taste of Coq Sportif away. Back in Jacqueline’s room I get into my pyjamas and wriggle down into my sleeping bag. Then I close my eyes and try to ignore how hard the floor is under the thin carpet, try to think myself elsewhere, anywhere but here.

  I think myself back into the Clarkes’ house, before they’ve left for London; into their living room. It’s the Saturday before they leave, and their boxes and crates have been shipped to London, and their furniture has been put into storage until they find somewhere permanent to live. The living room is strange and echoey without anything in it. We are lying there, me and Susan and Michael, like we used to do when we were children and the three of us would have midnight feasts. We’ve stayed up talking until it’s getting light again outside and Susan can’t stay awake any longer. Her eyes keep closing then jerking open before slowly closing again, and eventually she is asleep.

  ‘Are you still awake?’ Michael says after a while. He is lying beside the empty fireplace, and Susan and I are over beside where the red sofa used to be, with me in the middle.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, rolling onto my tummy. ‘Are you?’ and I hear him laugh softly.

  ‘No,’ he says.

  ‘Shut up,’ I say and reach over to play-punch his arm. He grabs my wrist and holds it, and holds it a moment longer than he should have. My tummy flips. ‘Are you going to give me my hand back?’ I say, when I can speak again.

  ‘No,’ he says, but he lets go. I flex my wrist. My wrist, my whole arm, seems to be tingling.

  ‘Here, I didn’t hurt you, did I?’ he says, after a minute.

  ‘I think you might have done,’ I say. ‘I think you might actually have broken it.’ It is the way we’ve always talked to each other: a teasing, easy kind of banter, as if I’m another sister.

  But he doesn’t smile or roll his eyes like he usually does. ‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘Tell me if this is—’

  And then he leans forward and kisses me.

  ‘Pastie-lip,’ people used to call him, to call him and Susan both. But his lips are pillowy and soft, softer than I’ve ever imagined a boy’s lips can be, and the kiss is perfect, a long, slow pull of a kiss.

  Afterwards, he inches his sleeping bag even closer to mine, and we lie there holding hands for what seems like hours.

  *

  Jacqueline moans in her sleep, and the spell is broken. My mouth is dry and furry and my head is starting to thump. I need a drink of water. I unzip my sleeping bag and get to my feet as carefully as I can. Even though I’m moving slowly, I have a massive head rush and have to grab onto the bed knob to support myself. Jacqueline twists to one side and then the other, whimpering. I should bring her a glass of water, too, I think.

  I tiptoe to the bathroom, feeling my way along the upper landing. I take the toothbrushes out of their ceramic mug and fill up that. I drink down two mugfuls, three, and nothing has ever tasted so good. I fill up the mug again to bring back to the bedroom.

  I lift up Jacqueline’s head and manage to get a few sips of water into her, though most of it dribbles down her chin. I realise that I’m imagining that Janet Clarke is here, watching what a Good Samaritan I am.

  A memory comes: a time Janet asked us to help her carry the Easter flowers to church. Susan and Michael grumbled, and I pretend
ed to as well, but inside I loved it: we were like a procession, Janet at the front with the tall stems of catkins and pussy willow she’d cut from the trees in their garden, us following behind with the bundles of Queen Anne’s lace and the calla lilies. I was walking beside her, and she sang the whole way, tunes whose words were about other worlds and other places, love and sacrifice and soldiering on. When people in the street turned to look at us, you saw they were assuming that I was her real daughter. I was used to that, though it was something that Susan and I never, ever spoke about.

  But that morning it gave me a hot, secret, glad feeling.

  The Clarkes are gone, I tell myself. I make myself say it out loud: ‘The Clarkes are gone.’ It comes out more forcefully than I’d intended, and Jacqueline opens her eyes. They are glassy and unfocused, and I wonder if I should wake her mum, despite the trouble Jacqueline might be in with her dad. Then I see her recognise me, and she opens her mouth and tries to speak. ‘You’re okay,’ I tell her. ‘You’re back home in your own bed. See if you can drink a wee bit more of this.’ I tilt the mug towards her lips. She gulps, swallows. ‘I’ll leave the rest of it here,’ I say, and set it on her bedside table, where she can reach it.

  Then I wriggle back down into my sleeping bag and turn on my side to wait for morning to come. It will come, I tell myself. It will, it will, it has to, and one day all of this will be long ago, as if it happened in another place, another time, and maybe I won’t ever think about it any more, and even if I do, it’ll already be over.

  Poison

  I SAW HIM LAST NIGHT. He was with a girl half his age, more than half, a third of his age. It was in the bar of the Merchant Hotel, and they were together on the raspberry crushed-velvet banquette. Her arm was flung around his shoulder, and he had an arm around her, too, an easy hand on her waist. She was laughing, her face turned right up to his, enthralled, delighted. They kept clinking glasses: practically every time they took a sip of their cocktails they clinked glasses. I was alone, in a high seat at the bar, waiting for my friends – friends I hadn’t seen in years but who, even years ago, were always late. I’d ordered a glass of white wine while I waited; I picked it up with shaking hands. It was him. There was no doubt about it. His face had got pouchy, and his hair, though still black – dyed, surely – was limp and thinning. When he stood up, he was shorter than I remembered.