Thomas’s eyes burned like the sunset behind his jam jars. ‘Right, let’s get him,’ he said.
We walked towards them. ‘Oi! Wank-wrangler!’ shouted Thomas. ‘You doing this or what?’
‘Yeah, sorry,’ said Neil, walking towards us. ‘Just lost track of time.’
‘I bet you did, you dirty little fucker. Stick your finger in her hole, did you?’ Although a few paces behind, Louise could probably hear.
‘Ah, no, no I didn’t,’ said Neil.
‘Good,’ said Thomas, a little too quickly, and a little too much like he cared. ‘Right, let’s get this fucking thing over with.’
‘I think we should play “Flying Saucer Rock ’n’ Roll”,’ said Neil.
‘No. It’s shit.’
Louise caught up with Neil and squeezed his hand. ‘Good luck,’ said.
We walked back into the social club. I’d leave a couple of hours later, tamed, damaged, changed.
25
I never normally have lie-ins, but the next morning I stayed in bed for hours. It made my dad think I had been drinking, but really I hadn’t, not that time. Truth was, I didn’t want the day to begin, and if I stayed in bed I thought I might be able to stop it. Didn’t work that way, of course. Ben phoned and asked if I wanted to meet up at the Fields at lunchtime. Apparently, quite a few people were going to be there. Thomas was going to be there, anyway. I didn’t want to, but if I stayed in it would probably look worse, so I said yes.
Every minute of that morning, I tried not to think about the night before, and of course spent every minute of that morning thinking about it. The gig itself was terrible. Neil’s singing was even worse than usual, his keyboard playing all over the place. I don’t know what he was thinking. And because we were all so embarrassed, we didn’t play well either. I’d miss a chord change, or Ben would play a wrong note in a solo, or Jase wouldn’t know the song had ended and would just carry on playing. Thomas played all right, pretty much, but he just stood and stared out into nothingness, as if he wasn’t really anything to do with what was going on. After the first song, people clapped, and there were a few cheers from our girlfriends, and the Louises and Kate, but by the third song in, I could definitely hear people laughing, and soon they weren’t even doing that, they weren’t listening, they were bored. Neil’s hiccuppy, stuttering vocals just didn’t hold their interest. They probably didn’t even count it as music. Not their sort of music, anyway, which was metal and grunge. We managed to get a bit of applause for every song, but by the end it was just Louise, Neil’s Louise, I mean, all on her own. Everyone else was talking, or wandering outside, or simply not paying attention. Kate, who had cheered the loudest at the beginning, was busy snogging her crusty and didn’t even notice we’d finished.
Once it was finally over, the four sane members of the band started packing up our instruments as if we were racing against time. Truth was, there was no hurry at all. There weren’t even any cars to load them into. Ben used the payphone to ask his dad if he could come and pick him up early. Naturally, Ben’s own personal taxi service was soon on its way.
When we finally ventured out to our friends, no one acted as if we’d done anything. None of them wanted to mention what had just happened. Well, that’s not quite true. Unlike the rest of us, Neil wasn’t in a hurry to get packed up. As soon as he’d finished singing he made a beeline for Louise, with a big goofy grin that suggested he was unaware of the fact that he’d just made a total tit of himself in public. She started talking animatedly, far too animated to fit in with the rest of the girls we knew. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she seemed to be telling him how great he was. I could see Jenny about two feet away, glowering at them like there was no tomorrow. Thomas also had them in his sights as he wound his jack lead. It was as if they were psyching themselves up for a pincer movement, and looking back on it, I’m not sure they weren’t.
Jenny rested her hand on Louise’s shoulder and said something in her ear. It looked like she was persuading her it was time to go, It wasn’t at all, but Jenny suddenly had something she had to be back for and if Louise wanted to get home with her and all the other Louises then she’d have to go now. Hannah, her trusted lieutenant, began to rally the twitty troops into formation, and within two minutes they had their coats on and handbags clutched. It was definitely time to go.
When Hannah snuggled up to me and whispered a sweet goodbye I wasn’t remotely listening to, I saw Neil and Louise do the same, as all the while Jenny hovered at Louise’s shoulder, haranguing her that they had to leave now. They didn’t kiss, I don’t know if they ever did, but they held hands as their faces nuzzled, and only broke apart when Jenny manoeuvred Louise away, her arm round her as if she was really her friend.
Neil just stood there, looking a bit lost, but happy. I wonder if he had any idea. He couldn’t have. Meanwhile, I went to phone my dad to see if he could pick me up earlier, but he wasn’t in, so I had no choice but to stay and wait. Fortunately Jase didn’t seem that bothered about getting home in a hurry because some college kid had bought him a drink, so at least I had him for company, not that I really wanted any. Thomas had got hold of his dad, though, and so he needed Neil to pack up his keyboard and sharpish. ‘Right, get a move on,’ he snapped, as he knocked Neil in the ribs with a loose fist. Neil did as he was told, and pretty soon Thomas was grimly helping him lift the keyboard back into the car. It had started raining again, not as heavy as before, but a miserable, spitting drizzle. If the keyboard hadn’t been his family’s property, I wonder if Thomas would have given him a lift at all. Neil got in the back seat. The boot door slammed. Thomas waved goodbye with an efficient dart of an arm, and they were away, out of the car park and into the black and neon yellow night. To this day I cannot imagine what it must have felt like to have been inside that car.
I joined Jase at the bar with his college kid mates. He offered me some of his beer casually. I said no and he shrugged.
‘So how do you think it went?’ I asked, finally. I just had to talk to someone about it.
‘Fine,’ he said.
‘Do you think anybody liked it?’
‘Dunno, maybe.’
That was as much as I could get out of him, and he went back to talking to his college mates. I sat there, pretty much in silence for the next hour, waiting for my dad.
Now, after Ben’s phone call, I wanted to crawl back into bed where it was safe, but I needed to get washed and dressed if I was going to get to the Fields in time. I wasn’t hungry.
After the rain the night before, the air was flesh and a strong wind buffeted me from side to side as I rode my bike up Cresston Avenue. The suburban houses did not seem beautiful like they did on the night of the fair. Now their beauty seemed an awful one. They seemed to be screaming. Clouds as big as spaceships zoomed across the sky, blocking out the sun and quickly releasing it again. The light flickered through the trees as I sped under them, and made my head hurt.
From a distance, I could see Jenny, and Thomas, and Ben, and Hannah, and an army of twitty Jenny-friends, and Louise, some way from the entrance on a grassy area half hidden by bushes. I had the awful feeling I was about to witness a lynching. What happened was almost as bad, in its own way. As I rode up, a circle was forming. Jenny was hovering around Louise, moving from side to side, sometimes at one shoulder, sometimes at another, sometimes in front, mostly behind, The twits stood behind Louise in a crescent, Hannah directing them in a smirking chorus line. Thomas was in front of her, rolling backwards and forwards on his bike. Ben was to his side. The only place for me was the other side of Thomas. I guess I must have looked as if I was part of it all too.
‘Neil wasn’t very good last night, was he, Thomas?’ said Jenny as she paced.
‘No, he was fucking shit,’ said Thomas.
‘Made himself look stupid, didn’t he?’
‘Yeah, fucking useless twerp.’
I wondered where Jase was.
‘Do you fancy him then?’
said Thomas, rocking ever closer on his bicycle.
Louise looked down and bit her lip.
‘Do you? Do you?’ giggled Thomas.
‘Well, he’s sweet,’ mumbled Louise to her shoes.
‘Sad! Sad! Sad! Sad! Sad!’
Thomas emphasised this with a peculiar pointing dance aimed at Louise’s head. It was weirder than anything I’d seen Neil do, but Neil wasn’t Thomas.
‘Neil is a mongoloid! Neil is a spastic! You can’t fancy him!’
Hannah giggled and all the twits giggled too. Normally they didn’t laugh at those words, they didn’t approve of them, but they laughed at them now. Ben also laughed, which didn’t happen often. It was a low, moronic sound, like a distant road drill. Jenny just looked sadly at Louise, then smiled.
‘There, there,’ she said, hugging her, ‘we’ll find you a new boyfriend, one who’s not such a weirdo.’
Louise began to cry. Jenny clutched her face and looked into her watery eyes.
‘What’s the matter, babe, what’s the matter?’
Louise just kept on crying.
‘Tell me what the matter is, Lu-Lu honey. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s the mattcr.’
I looked at Ben. He glanced back, his face hard, then looked away. Thomas just stared into the distance. Those stupid little girls would not stop smirking.
‘Look, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the matter is. Now, stop being silly and tell me what’s wrong. Come on, stop messing me about.’
Finally, Louise tried to speak. ‘I want Neil,’ she sobbed. ‘I like Neil. I don’t care …’
‘What did you say? What did you just say?’
‘Does – doesn’t matter.’
‘No, what did you just say?’
‘I like Neil and I want to go out with him and I don’t care what you think, you stupid townie!’ cried Louise in a sudden burst of red-faced fury.
Jenny slapped her. Louise cried out. Jenny put her hands to her mouth.
‘Oh, honey, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’
She wrapped her arms tightly round Louise, in an embrace that ensured she could not get away. Louise sobbed quietly into Jenny’s pink T-shirt.
‘There, there. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. Do you forgive me? Yes, I’m sure you do.’
This was horrific. I felt sick. I wanted to tell her to leave her alone, I wanted to tell them all to go fuck themselves. But my mouth wouldn’t open. I couldn’t make a sound. I realised then that this was all much bigger than I was. This was evil, pure and simple, manifesting itself through the medium of teenage girls. I knew that if I went up against it, I would be crushed. ‘Now, why don’t we take you back to my place and we’ll have a good chat, a nice cup of tea, and you’ll feel a lot better. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Louise said nothing, her face a red and black mess, her body trembling. ‘Look, guys, we’re going to go back to mine for a bit,’ said Jenny. ‘Think it’s going to be girls only, I’m afraid.’
‘S’pose,’ said Thomas.
Jenny wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the lips. Hannah did the same to me, but I didn’t even feel it.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘There’s something the matter, I know there is.’
I said nothing.
‘Oh well, be like that then,’ she said, and went to take her place by Jenny’s side as they led their prisoner away. It was known by twelve o’clock the next day that Louise no longer wished to see Neil. I never laughed. I didn’t stop it, I couldn’t have done anyway, but I never laughed. Surely that must count for something? Doesn’t it?
26
The summer was on the ground, a fruit you wouldn’t want to be eating. We still went to the bonnie as always, but it was turning shit. There were more and more kids there, but most of them weren’t our type of people. The Horned Gods came along a few times, and stood by themselves sneering. Fortunately they hated it so much they stopped coming. Some of the others were virtually townies. Every so often you’d see a tracksuit top or something and you’d just know it wasn’t what it used to be. We should have told them to fuck off, but the college kids wouldn’t have put up with it. Some of them were old enough to have been to raves and had this thing about everyone being together and chilled. Mind you, a lot of the college kids gave up on the whole thing, and just went to the pub instead. The weather wasn’t so good anyway, it was pretty muggy a lot of the time. Many of the old faces disappeared, like James, the other James, John, Jon without the H. Some of them were simply bored, I think, a few probably went on holiday or something. But there was another reason some kids dropped out, and that was to do with the whole sex thing, the doing it, or the not doing it.
I mean it was just ridiculous, a bunch of sixteen-year-old boys, most of them with girlfriends, and none of us were up to anything because we were all waiting for Thomas to get some. And one by one, a lot of guys got tired of waiting. So they’d finally give in and let their girlfriends wank them off or even give them a blowjob or something, and of course the plan was not to let anybody know, but being sixteen-year-old kids it naturally stayed a secret for about five minutes. Within a day, the information would have got back to Thomas. Just one cold stare from Thomas from behind those jam jars the next evening would be enough to inform these old comrades of his, some of whom had known him since primary school, that their presence was no longer welcome, and something very bad would happen to them should they turn up again. You see, they remembered. They knew what he could do. Some of the new kids didn’t get it, because it had been a while since anyone had seen Thomas in action, but if you’d been around a few years, you knew, all right.
One of the guys tried his luck. Will, it was. He’d known Thomas for quite a few years, and he’d been on the grass verge for as long as I could remember, but maybe he’d never seen Thomas in full swing at first hand. That’s the only way I can explain why he was still hanging around, even after he got his dick sucked at a party on the other side of Quireley that the rest of us weren’t told about. He’d have been OK if he’d just kept his trap shut, but of course he blabbed. And there he was at the bonnie the night after. Thomas gave him the look. Maybe he thought Thomas had gone soft. Maybe that’s why he came back again two nights later. He really shouldn’t have done.
He was standing on the ridge above the bonnie talking to his friends from school when Thomas came up.
‘Oi! Did you call Jenny a bitch?’ said Thomas.
He got the fear right then. He tried to save himself but he knew it was no use.
‘No. Who’s been saying I did? I swear I didn’t.’
‘You fucking liar!’
With that Thomas pushed him over, and he rolled down the slope, landing by the bonfire. He got a few scratches from the branches piled against the slope, waiting to be burnt. When he stood up, it looked like there was something wrong with his ankle, although he was trying to hide it.
‘Hey, are you OK?’ asked a sixth-former. ‘What was that about? Do you want me to talk to him?’
‘No,’ said Will, ‘it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’
Will kept his distance from Thomas for the rest of the evening, went home early on his own and didn’t come again.
The girls didn’t really want to come out that much either. You’d see them now and again, Jenny and Hannah and all the Louises and the one who used to be Neil’s Louise who just turned up with them like she was hypnotised or on drugs or something, but mostly they just started going round Jenny’s and did whatever girls do together, fiddle with their hair, put on make-up, slag us off, watch Pretty Woman on video. That’s what we imagined, anyway. If we wanted to see them, we’d have to go round theirs in the afternoon, or take them to town and spend money.
So that was what was happening at the bonnie. But the really weird stuff was what was happening with the band. Yes, the band. The band kept going. It’s hard to believe, I know, but it did. And not
only that, Neil still turned up at the bonnie. God knows what he was thinking. For a start, the first anybody heard from Neil was the evening after that incident on the Fields, with Jenny and Louise. After Jenny had Louise holed up at hers all afternoon doing God knows what to her head, she and her twitty friends took her home. Apparently when they got in the front door, Louise’s mum said that Neil had been phoning nearly every hour all afternoon. Sure enough they’d been in about ten minutes when Neil phoned again. Louise’s mum handed the cordless phone to Louise. With Jenny and Hannah perched on either shoulder, they had a conversation that went something like this:
‘Hi, Louise, it’s Neil.’
‘Oh, hi, Neil.’
‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
‘Great. Um, are you free tonight?’
‘Not really, no, sorry.’
‘Oh, OK. What about tomorrow?’
‘Uh … no. I’m busy tomorrow, sorry.’
‘Oh right, OK. How about some other time next week?’
A pause.
Then, ‘No, I don’t think so, sorry.’
Another pause. A very long awkward one.
‘Ever?’ said Neil.
‘Ah, I gotta go. Listen, you take care, OK? Bye.’
And that was that.
That was Sunday. We didn’t often go down the bonnie on Sunday, so it wasn’t until the next day that we got to hear about it. Jenny gave Thomas the story in luxurious detail on the phone that morning, and when we met up to go down the bonnie as usual, Thomas told us all about it and we had a good laugh. Well, Jase didn’t see the funny side, but Ben thought it was hilarious, and I pretended to, even though it actually made me feel a bit sick. Still, appearing to find it funny was probably necessary for my social survival, so I laughed nearly as much as Ben.
Flying Saucer Rock & Roll Page 17
