* * *
Al cycled to the off-license while I was in the shower, then I met up with him at the cricket pavilion near to Tabitha’s house. He’d already started drinking when I got there, handing me a can as I sat down next to him on the wooden steps. We smoked a cigarette and drank a beer in silence, as we gazed at the shrinking orange semi-circle made by the sun as it sank behind a row of tall conifers before us. The shadows of the straw bales in the field beside us slowly stretched out, before disappearing completely as everything came under shadow.
It wasn’t until I opened my second beer that we started to talk.
“Happy Birthday mate,” Al said. I turned my head towards him to reply, but couldn’t see his face for the orange blur the sun had burned into my eyes. “How’s it feel to be sixteen?”
“Thanks Al,” I said, “the same to be honest, how did you feel last month when it was yours?”
“Same. Sixteen’s a shit birthday, only good thing is they have to sell you fags!” Al quipped. “So you gonna finally do your CBT test and get that bike on the road? Be easy with the money we’ll get from Tabitha’s.”
I laughed, “Not if I keep spending it all on beer!”
“I wonder what we’ll be doing tomorrow Lu?”
“Dunno mate, have to see when we get there I suppose.”
“Did you see the frogs today in the swimming pool, how long do you think they’ve been in there?”
“Fuck knows mate, I don’t know how long they live for,” I replied.
“Nah that’s not what I mean. Do you think they’ve fallen in recently or do you think they’re like frog descendants from other frogs that fell in years ago? She did say it’s been a lot of years since anyone has been in there.”
I thought about the frogs eyes, angled by evolution to be spent constantly looking up at a world they would never know. Telling stories to their tadpoles about the days when their ancestors used to be gods, walking around on the world up above.
“Do you think we should set them free Al?”
“Nah mate they’re probably better off in there, what they don’t know and all that.” He was probably right, if ignorance is as they say, truly bliss. “Tell you what we should set free though, the fucking spastic cat. That ain’t right having a cat locked up in a chicken cage.”
“Yeah you’re right,” I said, “but what if we let it out and it goes on a killing spree, she did say there was something wrong with it.”
“That’s what cats do mate, they either sleep or they try and kill things. If it comes out and starts chasing birds that just proves there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not like it’s gonna start eating people is it?” Al was right, I was probably being melodramatic.
It was getting properly dark now, and cold. You always felt it cool down more in the summer, when temperatures changed the most. The stars came out to join us.
“We’re gonna have to let it out,” Al said. “I don’t like the idea of a cat being locked in a cage on its own at the end of her garden, it would be better off dead than being locked up. And anyway, if we let it out and it wants to live with her then it will just go back, people have cats and they come and go but they always go back.”
“Alright mate, it’s a deal. When we finish working for her we’ll free the spastic cat. I’m not doing it before then though cos I don’t want to have to pretend to her face that I don’t know anything about it.”
“Deal,” Al replied.
It was technically the next day by the time we’d finished drinking, and despite being pretty hammered by the time I got home, I still knew how hard it was going to be to get up for work.
Church Group Page 21
