by Kim Newman
It’s an effort to pretend. You used to have the trick. It was part of the system that kept you on the track, like a cow-catcher ploughing obstacles out of the way.
You pretend not to understand.
‘What is it, Keith? You’re so …’
Rowena, thank God, is seventeen years old. She hasn’t been into the shade. She hasn’t got the mental reach or the vocabulary to comprehend what reality is. Mary might, but she is the shade. And Victoria, you sense, would know but not care. Poor blind Rowena, not stupid but not aware, can’t even think of what you are so…
You construct a smile.
At once, you realise you have become the shade. It is your strength. You have run through night and into the dawn. In you, the darkness grows. A comforting, empowering, warm dark.
Nothing you can do will rid you of the dark.
But what will you make of it?
Rowena ladles you some more punch. You didn’t realise you’d finished your first cup.
You work on the smile. You can make it good enough to pass.
Rowena is transparent, shifting from side to side to put her chest on show, looking up at you without trying to seem eager, coaxing out of you sentences upon which she can hang.
You can bring her into the shade. Probably, she will come whether you want her to or not. Tonight, at this party, you can have her. But afterwards, do you stay with her? Or move on, always running? It’s getting dark already.
You finish your punch again. A natural gap comes in Rowena’s chatter. She draws breath. You fill the gap by kissing her. She responds.
If you take Rowena as a steady girlfriend, go to 67. If you get the business of losing your virginity out of the way with her but refuse to repeat the experiment, go to 74.
54
Your parents don’t ask why you’ve come home hours earlier than expected and choose to spend the evening of the big party at home. While walking back from town, you got soaked when it started to drizzle.
You remember Victoria’s verdict.
You can’t help feeling you really are pathetic.
You come down with a severe cold, which means you spend most of the next week — including Christmas Day — in bed, eating your meals on a tray, sniffling into tissues, feeling sorry for yourself.
This gives you time to think.
Looking on the bright side, you’re now an adult, fully initiated into the mysteries of sex. That’s a difficult interpretation, but just about possible.
Rowena is upset not with you but with herself. It’s Roger’s fault. Sometime in the New Year, you should give Roger a right belting.
You are running a fever. You think a lot about Rowena.
Yes, you realise, you’re in love with Rowena Douglass.
That makes you feel better. You can still make things right between you. It will be a project for 1978. If you can win Rowena round, you will be a whole person.
Until now, you’ve just been going through the motions, an exam-passing zombie. All that isn’t worth much if you can’t have Rowena.
And you can have Rowena.
After all, you already have. Right? Right.
You put off telephoning Rowena until after your cold has receded. It’s a good idea to give her time to get over her hysteria, over her anger with Roger, over whatever it was that made her throw you out of Victoria’s van.
Between Christmas and New Year, you decide to call. The 27th seems a good date, one holiday over, the other not started. You can ask Rowena out on New Year’s Eve.
This time, you’ll be alone with her, not surrounded by distracting people. You’re sure now that the problem with Rag Day was Roger and Victoria and Gully and the others.
On the morning of the 27th, you look at the telephone. You have Rowena’s number memorised, though you’ve only dialled it the once, to ask her out last time.
What if she’s still upset?
Your heart pounds as if you’d run a half-mile. This is silly. You’re only going to make a phone call, not invade France. And you’ve already slept with Rowena — if you can call it sleeping — so there’s nothing really to be nervous about. You’re in there. Well in there. You’re Rowena’s only option. If she makes it up with you, she can redeem her embarrassing public behaviour on Rag Day.
Yes, it’s time to phone.
Laraine, home from university, gets in the way. She asks you if you’re going to use the phone. You aren’t able to tell her and she makes a call to her boyfriend, some bloke called Fred she’s been seeing in Norwich.
Your sister and her boyfriend chat and giggle. Hearing only Laraine’s half of the conversation, as you pretend to read the holiday double issue of the Radio Times, you imagine Fred’s suave, coaxing words. Laraine is thoroughly charmed, but also completely relaxed.
That’s what you want to be like.
Your cold has gone, but you still feel as if you’re in a fever. All these years, you’ve listened to songs go on about ‘heartache’ and ‘love-sickness’. You assumed ‘tender’ meant ‘gentle’, not ‘easy to hurt’.
But — it’s incredible — you really do feel sick.
This has got to stop. You have to talk to Rowena, coax and purr and smooth. You have to get things settled. When she’s your official girlfriend, you can relax.
The cow is driving you mad. There’s nothing to stop her calling you. Unless Victoria has poisoned her mind against you. Or Roger has been creeping around, trying to get back in with her.
Roger really needs a belting.
After what seems like hours, Laraine coos farewells and hangs up. Happy, she sits down on the sofa, and runs her hands through her long hair.
Is she in love with Fred? Probably.
You want her to go away now, so you can call Rowena. You don’t want to have this conversation with your sister eavesdropping. It’s too important.
You put the magazine down.
‘I’m still bloated from Christmas dinner,’ Laraine says.
She looks thin to you.
‘I’m starting a diet in January. My New Year resolution. When the leftovers run out.’
You have nothing to say. If this doesn’t turn into a conversation, she’ll go away.
‘Keith, do you want a cup of tea?’
‘No, thank you, Laraine.’
‘I think I’ll have one. Are Mum and Dad around?’
They’re in the garden. If you tell her, she’ll have to go out and ask them if they want tea. Will that give you long enough to make the call?
‘They’re in the garden.’
Laraine gets up — victory! — and looks out of the window. Your parents are seeing to things neglected over the holiday. James helps, raking dead leaves blown from the compost heap.
‘I’ll make a tea run, then. Sure you don’t want one?’
Actually, your throat is completely dry. Desert sands swarm over your tongue. But you have made a statement and don’t want to retract it.
‘No, thank you, Laraine.’
‘There are still mince pies left.’
‘That’s okay.’
Fuck off, Laraine. Go out into the garden. Leave me alone.
‘Looks chilly. Do I need a coat?’
Inside, you scream.
Laraine wraps a shawl round her shoulders and goes out into the garden.
Freedom.
You are on the phone within a second. You have the receiver to your ear.
Your finger stabs the first digit of Rowena’s number.
Don’t think about it. Dial.
You dial the number.
You hear the ringing at the other end. It’s not too late to hang up, write this off as a mistake. Maybe you should have this conversation face to face.
The telephone rings.
One of Rowena’s parents will probably answer — you don’t know if she has brothers or sisters — and you’ll have to ask them to fetch her. Has she told them about you? Almost certainly not. You haven’t told your family about her.
This is the era of the secret life.
The telephone still rings.
It’s been a long while. How big is Rowena’s house? If she were in the attic and the phone by the front door, would it take her this long to answer?
You start counting rings. Twenty more and you’ll assume nobody’s home.
More rings.
‘Calling someone?’ Laraine asks, returning from the garden.
No, I’m scraping the wax out of my ears with the receiver.
‘Uh-huh.’
She goes into the kitchen.
You’ve lost count. Twenty rings must have passed. Just to be sure, you start again.
Twenty rings.
The Douglass house, no matter how huge, must be empty and cold. They’ve gone out for the day, visiting grandparents, or just to get away from leftovers and Christmas telly.
Give it a little more time.
Finally, heart heavy, brow sweaty, you hang up.
In the afternoon, you try again. Still no answer. Everybody ought to buy those machines Jim Rockford has that record a message. Or maybe not. You don’t think you could put what you need to say in words that could be taped and played back in evidence against you.
‘Sure you’re over your cold?’ Mum asks. ‘You still look peaky.’
You shrug that you are fine.
You go to bed early but can’t sleep. You run through Rag Day in your mind, over and over again, playing it out as it happened. Then you imagine variations: what would have happened if you had made an effort to stop Rowena drinking so much, or had left her alone in Victoria’s van despite her clumsy come-on, or had punched Roger for being a bastard, or had gone to the show in the evening and made an effort, or …
Might-have-beens haunt you.
The comics you used to read as a kid often ran might-have-been tales, ‘imaginary stories’ — it only now hits you what a tautology that is — in which Bruce Wayne’s parents aren’t killed or Krypton doesn’t explode or Clark Kent marries Lois Lane. All ‘imaginary stories’ end with the heroes manipulated into the lives they lead in the ‘real stories’ — with Bruce Wayne becoming Batman anyway or Kal-El as the Superman of Krypton or Clark and Lois being super together.
No matter how the plot changed, the character was the same.
No matter what happened, you’d still be you.
‘Keith, you’re pathetic,’ Victoria said.
She’s right. You’ve discovered too late that you can really love, but you’re the kind of person no one could love back. What you did in the van proves it.
You’re a bastard. You’re the one who needs a right belting.
If you’d been a gentleman and left Rowena to sleep it off, you’d have scored about a thousand points. Instead, everyone is going to know what a swine you are. When you go back to college, it’ll be a living hell.
Two more terms, university applications, a bunch of exams, and then it’s over. You can leave Sedgwater, like Laraine, and start all over again.
In the meantime, you’ll have to deal with yourself.
Shamefully, you remember Rowena in the van. In your recall, the scene is longer, almost romantic. You remember the feel of her breasts, the taste of her kisses
bitter, with vomit
That doesn’t work.
Tomorrow, you’ll try telephoning again.
‘Good morning, Mrs Douglass. This is Keith Marion. May I speak to Rowena, please?’
Negotiations in the background.
Last time you phoned, to ask Rowena out on Rag Day, you were handed over instantly.
More fuss. Seconds tick off, marked by punching thumps from your heart.
‘She’s out, I’m afraid, Keith. Do you want to leave a message?’
She’s not out. It’s a brush-off.
Mrs Douglass is being civil to you, so Rowena can’t have told her about the van.
‘Just ask her to phone me,’ you say, giving her your number.
‘I’ll tell her,’ Mrs Douglass says. ‘Happy New Year.’
She hangs up. You listen to the whine of the dead line.
You made a mistake. Many mistakes. You should have said you’d call back. Then, maybe, one time, Rowena would pick up and you could talk to her, persuade her of your sincerity, work on her hurt feelings.
She’ll never take the initiative, never call you.
She was home. She had her mother lie to you. That’s despicable. You’d never ask your parents to lie for you.
They must know something. But Mrs Douglass was cheery, polite. She wished you Happy New Year.
Maybe the negotiation was Mrs Douglass asking someone if Rowena was home and being told she wasn’t. Rowena’s Dad could have been in the room.
You thought you heard a girl’s voice. Rowena could have a sister. She could. Roberta, Rosalind, Rosemary …
Mrs Douglass will pass on the message. Rowena will call you. She will.
Then things will be all right.
Days pass. It’s 1978. Your nerves are stretched tight. Rowena doesn’t phone. Her mum lost the message. You should call again. No, she was there. She’s avoiding you. You’re in the Arctic. You stay at home, even when the rest of the family goes out, just in case. Rowena doesn’t phone. You have to call again and yet you can’t. You can’t bear this much longer. You’re sure you’re losing weight. You certainly haven’t had a good night’s sleep since you were ill and dosed up on Lemsip.
You wonder if you should write to Rowena: a long, detailed, romantic letter. That might work on her. You could explain without interruption. But she might show it to her friends, to Victoria, to anyone. You’d be walking around bleeding and naked for half a year, with everyone knowing about you, laughing.
Actually, if you think about it, all the people you know at college are your age. They’re all going through this to a greater or lesser extent. It’s adolescence. A fucking nightmare.
But it’s worse for you than for anyone else.
It’s never been worse for anyone ever in history.
The holidays crawl by like a glacier. You should be thinking about the future. This is the year you leave college, and — you have assumed until now — go to university. You have UCCA forms and interviews to cope with. And your A levels. You are on the fast track to exams.
But you can think only of Rowena. Ro. Her friends call her Ro. Roger calls her Ro.
You’ve had sex with her. That must mean something. You’ll always have it between you. Even if she never speaks to you again.
You dread going back to college and you can’t wait for it. This limbo will be over, but maybe hell will replace it.
Finally, the day before you go back, you give in and call Rowena again. This time, her father tells you she’s out. You tell him you’ll see her in college.
Not if she sees you first, you imagine him saying.
He just hangs up.
You feel as if you’ve been stabbed. With a serrated blade that’s worked back and forth in the wound, grinding your ribs, bursting your heart.
You can’t go on like this.
The night before you go back to college, your parents and Laraine and James are out, taking Laraine to a restaurant because she’s going away again to East Anglia tomorrow. You have cried off. You say you want to get an early night for tomorrow.
You dial Rowena’s number. After two rings, the phone is picked up.
You stumble over your long-planned sentence.
‘Is Ro-wena there?’ you ask, before anyone has said anything.
You hear breathing at the other end of the line. Then it cuts off.
You call again. Engaged.
Again. Still engaged.
It was her. You’re sure.
The house is empty. All the lights are off.
You realise you are crying. Not just leaking tears, but body-racking sobs.
How can you face college tomorrow?
She’ll be there. In all her loveliness, her unassailable, unreachable beauty. Having glimpsed paradise
, you’ve been cast out into the dark regions, there to dwell for all time, your torments all the worse because you have known sweetness.
It’s insupportable. You can’t take any more.
You cry yourself out. Every muscle in your body aches.
You go upstairs, into the bathroom, and are sick into the toilet. In the dark, you void your stomach. The last of the turkey.
You flush the toilet and wash your face.
You pull the light-cord and look at yourself in the mirrored front of the bathroom cabinet. You are empty. You see yourself as nothing.
Perhaps over your shoulder there is something, a shadow at the window. You turn round.
All that is left in you is fear.
Your own stare fascinates you in the mirror. You know, suddenly, what’s behind the reflective glass.
This doesn’t have to go on. There’s no reason.
The shadows have invaded the room. It’s brightly lit, but that makes the darks more concentrated.
And the worst dark is in you.
Your hand goes out to touch the cool mirror, fingertips resting against the handle of the cabinet.
The dark rises up.
If you let the dark surround you and open the cabinet, go to 84. If you overcome the shadow and go to bed, go to 65.
55
You open the window and Victoria tumbles into your arms. She is lithe, in black and white. She wears knee-high black boots, elbow-length black gloves, a hooded black cloak fastened at the neck, and nothing else. Her hair is permed out in a Bride of Frankenstein frizz, with an electric white streak.
She doesn’t say anything, but hungrily slips her tongue into your mouth, and delicately clamps her hand on your erection.
You don’t wonder how she came to be outside your window.
She pushes you back towards your bed, lays you down and climbs on top of you. Her cloak tents around you both, and she guides your cock into her warm, welcoming slit. She unfastens her cloak and lets it fall behind her. Her slender body shines white like a knife. Moonlight dapples her as she rides you, slowly. You reach up and stroke her small breasts.
Her face is in shadow. She murmurs, throat pulsing.
