by Kim Newman
You wonder if you’ve drunk too much. Are you going to be sick?
Your head whirls as Mary dances, arms out, fingers beckoning you. With an effort of will, you hold back sickness, swallowing fluid.
You are in control.
You reach and take one of Mary’s hands. She pulls you out from between cars and you dance. Her shadow twines around yours.
It is time to drive out to Achelzoy, to Michael’s party. Mary lets go of you long enough to get into the driver’s seat of the Honda. She opens the passenger door and you get in, bumping your head on the frame.
‘Poor thing,’ she coos.
She has already reversed out of her parking space, nearly side-swiping a still-foamed Mickey, as you reach for that impossible, unfamiliar seatbelt. Your fingers might as well be sausages as they grope for the catch.
Mary has driven on to the road, face set in concentration. Outside the college is a traffic light. Amber switches to red. As Mary stops, the car interior is filled with a red glow. You are still trying to work the seatbelt.
Her face a glowing red, Mary leans close to you. The engine is in an idling thrum. You smell perfume. Mary’s lips are slightly open, her eyes almost closed.
You cannot get the belt to connect.
Party-goers stream across the road in front of the car, ignoring you both. They are whooping drunk.
The moment won’t last. The green light will come.
What do you do?
If you insist Mary help you do up the seatbelt, read 35 and go to 37. If you kiss Mary, read 35 and go to 40.
27
You don’t tell Mum and Dad you’ve been offered the chance to take two O Levels. The school gives you a letter for them, which you read and dump. You mumble something about wanting to pass CSEs with good grades rather than fail O Levels, and Mr Bird accepts it. You sense his disappointment but he’s busy with too many other crises — Tony Bennett has scandalised the school by assaulting a woodwork teacher with a chisel — to follow up.
You spend more time with Vince and Marie-Laure, getting stoned and worrying. Vince accepts nothingness as his future, and has found out how to sign on for supplementary benefit as soon as school is over. You talk about ‘fill-in’ jobs, not careers but things you might do to get money.
You make plans to go to festivals, hitching around the country together. You see Easy Rider at the Palace Cinema and wonder about saving up to buy motorbikes.
School doesn’t take up much time or thought. You’re as clever and as qualified as you’re ever going to be. A lot of kids in the CSE stream bunk off more or less all the time. You don’t go as far as that and turn up to most of your classes. Through habit, as much as anything else. You can do the work without much fuss and bother, so you do.
Tony Bennett goes to approved school. Paul and Dickie idolise him, glorying in their tearaway reputations. They terrorise the more misfit O Level kids, preferably a year younger and a lot smaller than them. They have a collection of stolen ties, and extort dinner tickets from whoever seems easy meat. Once or twice, you go along with them, but the bullying seems childish, a throwback to infants’ school. A gang of girls (Vanda is one) harass poor, demented Timmy Gossett, which makes you sick.
Two terms slip by. At Easter 1976, you realise you have only until the summer before school runs out.
You’ve been in eduction — from Denbeigh Kindergarten through Ash Grove Primary through Hemphill Secondary Modern to Ash Grove Comprehensive — for all the life you can remember. Soon, that’ll be over. If you think about it too much, it stops you sleeping.
Dad takes you aside and a heavy pall of dread falls on you. He asks you about the future, about your plans, your thoughts. You have nothing to say to him. He doesn’t notice, and instead goes on about how he left school at sixteen to work in a bank and made something of himself.
You have a heart-clutching certainty he’ll make you work in the bank. Laraine’s ex-boyfriend Sean started as a tea-maker and minion before ascending to the position of clerk. You’ll become a teenage suicide statistic before you wear a prat suit like Sean Rye.
You don’t want to work in a fucking bank. You don’t want to work in a fucking factory. Let’s face it, you don’t fucking want to work. You want to be left alone.
You collect a stack of worthless CSEs. Shane gets his wish and goes to work for Hackwill & Son Builders’ Supplies, assisting a delivery driver. Paul, Barry and Dickie go down the Synth. It takes them a week to learn to hate the factory the way they hated school. Dickie is fired after a month, for vandalising equipment. Vince talks about the army but doesn’t do anything about enlisting. Marie-Laure works for three days as a waitress in Brink’s Café but gets sacked for swearing.
You go home and wait for the darkness to close in.
Go to 29.
28
Rowena caves in easily when you promise to look after her and bring along a flask of something to keep her warm inside.
‘In that case …’
Was the fuss about flu some sort of test to winnow out anyone who wasn’t that keen? Or did she need a few minutes to get used to the idea of you?
Now, she sounds quite keen.
‘I’m not wearing any sort of fancy dress,’ she says. ‘I think it’s childish.’
‘Me too,’ you say, squelching your possible Invisible Man idea.
You think of what you’ll look like together. She’s a head shorter than you. She’ll fit under your arm.
Will she let you kiss her? Or anything more?
Suddenly, you’re not sure about this Keith-and-Rowena thing.
She’s running through her schedule for the day, suggesting a place to meet first thing in the morning, allowing a few hours to get home in the late afternoon and dress up for the evening.
It’s too late now. You’re committed.
You feel a tickle in the back of your throat and wonder if you’re coming down with something.
If Rowena really has got flu, do you want to snog her? Or breathe in around her?
Do you worry about Rowena’s Germs?
Throughout Rag Day, the town centre is clogged with students in costume, accosting passers-by for money. Neil Martin demonstrates the untruth of an old saying by trying to sell hot cakes from the Corn Exchange steps. Desmond Fewsham has found an accordion he can’t play and is anti-busking, providing a minute of merciful silence for every 10p given him. A few seconds of tuneless wheezing is enough to solicit a donation. No one is sure which charity Rag Day is supposed to be raising money for, but Michael Dixon, president of the Student Union, assures everyone it’s all in a good cause. Mickey Yeo, creeping around in a Dracula cloak with his hair in Johnny Rotten spikes, has voted the Union use the money to send Satanist missionaries to backward Christian countries. Mostly, students take Rag Day as an excuse to loon about.
You meet Rowena at ten o’clock at the Corn Exchange steps. She is bundled up in an orange coat, lower face mummified with a scarf. Her nose is red. She looks like one of Santa’s elves.
‘Hi,’ you say.
Do you kiss? You do not.
Rowena mumbles something.
If she really has got flu, it’s good news. She wasn’t trying to brush you off, and is interested enough in you to come out in the cold against medical advice.
Roger turns up, dressed as Zorro, cutting Zs in the air with a plastic sword. Rowena hugs you. Surprised, you hug her back. She might as well be wearing an astronaut’s suit. You can’t feel a girl under all the wrapped-up-warm layers.
You realise she’s out with you at least partially to get back at Roger.
Victoria arrives, illegally parking her old Mini van by the Corn Exchange steps. She emerges from her van, decked out in gauzy black rags like Morticia Addams gone punk. For her, this is an everyday look.
Roger ostentatiously tries to kiss her before she can lock the van door. She shudders, driving him away with her spider-web-gloved fingers.
‘Give it a rest, Rog,’ she snarls.
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Rowena presses close to you. Those breasts are between you, albeit an impenetrable thickness of woollies away. Roger looks as though he wants to challenge you to a duel. You feel like a prop in the Roger-and-Rowena double act. Or a trophy.
By the early afternoon, after a considerable amount of under-age drinking in the Lime Kiln, everyone you know is desperately drunk. You brought a flask, filled with whisky from Dad’s cocktail cabinet. You and Rowena started nipping at it well before eleven. It’s kept you warm and got her drunk.
In the pub, she unwinds the scarf from her face and goes on to brandy. Apart from anything else, you’re not sure if you can afford to keep paying for her spirits. This is the 1970s; she ought to buy some of her own. Victoria has steadily refused offers of drinks and got her own in, probably to fend off unattached leches who imagine she’s a lot easier than she is. But Rowena is an old-fashioned girl.
She might also not be capable of formulating a sentence as simple as ‘Another brandy, please.’ As afternoon closing time nears, she might not even be able to stand up. She is singing something that could be ‘Wide-Eyed and Legless’ or the theme from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?. Her voice, in its current state — abetted by Beecham’s Powders, Bell’s and brandy — is no match for Victoria’s.
Everyone in the pub is appalled and fascinated.
Roger, slunk off in a corner with Jacqui Edwardes, can’t stop laughing. His mask keeps going awry. Anyone who gets within reach of Rowena has to avoid her flailing arms. Her drunkenness is so extreme it makes everyone else seem sober and reasonable. And she’s your responsibility. Roger is laughing at you.
Victoria, who is at the bar, elegantly drawing on a cigarette in a holder, looks like a goddess through the smoky haze of the pub.
Mary, who is around somewhere, observing, seems like a much better bet. But it’s too late.
Rowena interrupts her singing with something between a cough and a burp.
‘I’m not sure I feel well,’ she says.
People move away from her as if she’d announced she was prone to spontaneous combustion. You’re stuck between her and the wall.
She holds her tummy and screws up her face.
‘The dam’s a-gonna break,’ Mickey Yeo announces. ‘Head for the hills.’
Mary holds a side-door open and keeps a way clear. Cold air rushes in.
Rowena focuses on the open door and gets up.
Her mind has shut down to the point when it can only deal with the absolute present. She has no memory of where she is and who she’s supposed to be with.
You can sit back and let her charge away. You’re not really responsible. You gave her Bell’s and bought her brandy but didn’t hold her nose and pour it down her open throat. She got drunk herself. Even old-fashioned girls have to take the blame.
Rowena, unsteady on her feet, shakes her head. Fluid dribbles from her mouth.
She makes a dash for the door. The whole pub cheers.
If you sit back and wash your hands of Rowena, go to 33. If you go outside to help Rowena, go to 46.
29
In the summer of 1976, you start signing on every week. Queuing is half an hour of misery but it’s all you have to do to get a supplementary benefit girocheque for £28. In theory, you’re receiving benefit while you look for work. The Job Centre sends you for interviews. The trouble is that you’re too clever for real shit jobs and not qualified for anything else. You nearly become a car-park inspector but it turns out you need a driving licence for that. You are even rejected by the Synth, after scoring outside the parameters on an aptitude test.
Your parents are not delighted.
You hang around with Marie-Laure and Vince and, as soon as he’s fired from the Synth, Dickie. You spend mornings in Brinks’ Café, hoarding cups of coffee until they go cold; you sometimes drink in the Lime Kiln, watching the pennies on halves; and you hitch out to Achelzoy a lot to smoke dope in Marie-Laure’s bedroom. A drought in the West Country yellows the fields and bleaches the streets.
You give up shaving but can’t grow a proper beard. Marie-Laure takes you and Vince round the charity shops and you dress in oddments. Marie-Laure can make Sally Army leftovers look good, but you and Vince come out like prats in demob suits and trilby hats.
The long, hot summer of 1976 turns to autumn.
Nothing changes. You sign on, cash your giro at the post office, go to Brink’s, go to the Lime Kiln, get stoned at Marie-Laure’s. The Job Centre catches on sooner than your parents, and stops wasting its time sending you to interviews.
Marie-Laure makes friends with Victoria Conyer, who is at college, and Graham Foulk, another of Laraine’s ex-boyfriends, who has been in the sort of life you’re living now for several years. In his mid-twenties, he has only ever had casual employment, though he makes some money selling dope.
You spend a lot of time in Graham’s bedsit in town. There are always college kids — they have free periods — hanging about. Only Victoria actually seems to notice you and something about her strikes you as scary. When high, she talks, free-associating fantastically. Vince is really impressed, but you suspect she’s mad.
Mum and Dad corner you in your room one Sunday and hold a family meeting. They’ve obviously talked about it beforehand and are serious. They want to hear your ideas and opinions but have made up their minds. They say you’ve had a nice holiday after school but it’s time you did something constructive. You’re afraid this means working in the bank, but what it boils down to is that they want to charge you rent, take a third of your giro. You feel stabbed to the heart. Ten pounds a week gone. Your life is over. Then, they say you can earn the rent money back by working for £1 an hour, doing odd jobs around the house and in the garden. Ten hours a week gone. That’s worse.
You buckle down and do the weeding, trimming, raking, burning, painting, whatever. But you know you have to leave home. If you get a place like Graham’s, you’ll be entitled to housing benefit on top of supplementary benefit. You’ll be independent of your parents, if not the Department of Health and Social Security.
You plot and scheme but don’t do anything.
One time, Laraine, at home for reading week, catches you alone and has a talk with you. Mum and Dad have probably ordered her to.
‘Keith, I can understand you not wanting to be like Sean, but do you have to turn out like Graham? If you’re choosing career patterns, my ex-boyfriends do not represent the entire spectrum of possibilities.’
Christmas comes and goes. It’s 1977.
You do your ten hours a week in the salt mines. It goes up to fifteen hours when Mum decides you should pay a further £5 a week for food and washing. A full half of your giro now has to be earned. If you aren’t out of your parents’ house by summer, you’ll be a full-time slave.
Coffee, halves, dope. Television. Films, in the afternoon when it’s cheap. With Vince, comic books. At Marie-Laure’s, long-playing records. You haven’t read a non-Doctor Who book since you left school. You concentrate on distractions, because if you didn’t, you’d feel shadow wrapping tightly around you like a living toga, feelers covering your face, the swamp-suck at your limbs pulling you down. It’s worse than it was at school.
What will happen to you?
You’re seventeen and your life seems set on rails. Nothing will change. Ever.
Coffee, halves, dope.
Television. Actually, television becomes a problem. The programmes are all right but adverts frighten you. The people in them (smiling, prat-suited, shiny people) are obsessed with bank accounts and fridge freezers and holidays and DIY. Adverts are a window into an unreal world beyond the giro and odd jobs, a world for ever closed to you.
Victoria tells you adverts are propaganda for evil, for bad faith and wrong values. You can tell, she says, because every advert has a black spider in it, hidden like the creatures in those ‘How many animals are there in this picture?’ puzzles, lurking among the clean machines and clean homes and clean people. If you watch closel
y enough — usually when you’re stoned, perceiving a higher plane of reality — you can see the black spiders, she says. You try, thinking she’s mental, but see a scuttling horde at the rear of the frame in a carpet-sale commercial, hairy legs brushing the shagpile.
You don’t watch telly for weeks. That means the black spiders come out of the screen and are everywhere, always out of sight. You know it’s a metaphor. But that doesn’t make them less real.
Vince and Marie-Laure start sleeping together. This makes you a bit more of an outsider. You think they’ve got together out of boredom. As far as you can remember, Marie-Laure never really liked Vince. You wonder what it is that has bound you and your few friends together for so long. You’re mostly fed up with them.
The kids who got jobs seem no better off. Shane comes round Graham’s quite a lot to smoke dope, and bunks off his delivery route. His engagement is off and Vanda is seeing Barry Mitcham, who has put on about three stone and seems middle-aged. She is a DHSS clerk but seems no more cheerful than the claimants queuing on the other side of her desk. Dickie and Tony Bennett have been arrested for burglary and are going to grown-up prison.
Victoria talks about the end of the world.
In the autumn, with your eighteenth birthday a few weeks off, you’re raking up soggy heaps of fallen leaves when it strikes you that it’s all silly.
The movements of your arms and hands and legs as you work the rake are individually silly. You can’t figure out how they go together to work the rake. You stop for a moment to think it through.
Are your hands in the best position? Do you need to bend over so much? Your back has a crick from that.
You try to start raking again but get tangled.
You’ve raked the leaves into a circular pile round your boots as if preparing a bonfire with yourself as the guy. The leaves seem to be climbing your shins.
No, not the leaves.
In the pile are spiders. Millions of them, all concealed under leaves. They crawl up your wellingtons, aspiring to tip over the tops and get to your calves, to wriggle down to your toes.
