After Brock (15 page)

‘This spliff's been great, hasn't it? Made us a friendship,' said Sam. And if it were physically possible for him to inch further towards him without the two of them actually melting into one another, he did just this. Patchouli and the caressing fumes of dope engulfed Pete, banishing the car park's plague-wraiths of night mist – and with them his martyr's humiliations. ‘Something to be pleased about, huh?' That lopsided grin of his widened. ‘Oh, and another point! Don't tell your parents a goddam thing till the actual date.' He articulated the next words in a loud whisper right into Pete's left ear-hole. ‘
Not till January 31 itself!'

Pete said, ‘Christ, you've thought it all out in no time! I reckon you're a bigger High Flyer than I am, Sam.' He couldn't pay anyone a greater compliment.

Their talk went onto more general things, and every sentence seemed to Pete confirmation of Sam's own reading of their situation: yes, the shared joint had made them a friendship. They only stopped when there was an irruption of torches into the gloom of the yard followed by the voices of their carriers. The cast of
The Mikado
and their helpers were finally leaving the school premises from the side door that Sam had revealed to Pete, a ragged aural army of chatter, laughter, hums from the ridiculous show, and best wishes for the festive season. Sam put a finger to his lips, and the two of them remained in their corner so motionless that even Lee T. Webster, Electrician did not see them as he came and drove his van away… Here was Trevor Price himself, self-importantly swinging his arms, as if he truly were Emperor of Japan. And now – Pete's mouth emptied of saliva at the sight – came Mum and Oliver Merchant. Considering the intense and varied proximity the pair had enjoyed all evening, their present movements were remarkably circumspect, not to say chaste. Mum walked independently, holding her bouquet of freesias-and-roses like a torch, as Pete himself had done earlier. Did he feel a little disappointment as well as relief at this? Did he want to get in Dad's good books at last, as his filial defender?

Sam was saying, ‘Coast clear now, thank the Lord! I'd invite you back to mine, but the Old Man will have arrived in Bargates before us, and he'll be wanting to gas on and on about the triumph of the show.' Not half he won't, agreed Pete inwardly. ‘He wouldn't let us just sneak off to my snug by ourselves. I'll walk with you as far as yours instead. Where is it exactly that you live?'

Great that Sam, so early on in their knowing each other, was volunteering to behave like any other mate. Yet Sam's last question, and the tone in which he'd spoken it, was annoying. He'd implied that wherever Pete lived it would be socially inferior to the Prices' Bargates house. And Pete Kempsey felt inferior to absolutely nobody… But, the two new friends made their way through the Priory churchyard and across the Priory Green, in a Leominster never so dark since World War Two.

They made plans to meet in a coffee bar this coming Thursday, December 27 (when, as Sam said, ‘this farce of a festival will be over'). Pete cast, as often when out after dark, many a glance up at the strong sandstone tower of Leominster's Priory Church of St Peter and St Paul, almost willing its protection.

Etnam Street now; Pete could already discern the form of the Christmas tree in the front bay-window of Woodgarth. ‘The Old Man's getting me a car first week of New Year so I can drive myself to my studies,' Sam was proclaiming, ‘so you see… opportunity knocks for us, Peter –
Pete
, I apologise! We can go places together, have another spliff or three, listen to some good music.'

Pete said: ‘Great. Let's do that!' Then, ‘
good
music,' he thought, and ‘Do you like Jerry García by any chance?' he asked as casually as he could, and avoiding the very name ‘Grateful Dead'.

Sam snorted out: ‘Jerry
García
? Why, the man is quite simply a genius.'

‘But when the great “Pig-pen” died earlier this year…' began Pete, to test his new friend further.

‘The whole world seemed to come to a fucking end,' said Sam with a loud, sad, self-conscious sigh, ‘but then the Dead's new album, released in October…'

‘Wake of the Flood,' put in Pete hastily, in case Sam might think he didn't know.

‘Turned out their best yet!' both boys said in unison.

Satisfied with such likemindedness Sam made as if to walk away, towards his house in Bargates, on the west side of Leominster's town centre. Then he clearly had a change of mind and swung round back to Pete. ‘Do you want to hear something that happened to me shortly before I left Darnton? Do you know what Darnton even looks like?' he asked.

And though Sam's tone of voice here unpleasantly resembled that in which he'd asked where Pete lived, the reply had to be: ‘'Fraid I don't.'

‘It's an old foundation and the School House actually dates from the sixteenth century, but most of it's Victorian Imperialist stuff run along medieval lines. Darnton town's pretty dismal, at least I think so, but countryside round it isn't bad. Ordinary fields, grazing pastures, little woods – typical Midlands. And it was out in the country there that I had my big experience.'

Bigger than being on
High Flyers,
I'll warrant, thought Pete.

‘It was the last Wednesday in September. I'd just had my eighteenth birthday, and, by way of celebrating it, a little sermon from my Housemaster about not putting my shoulder to the wheel work-wise. I was really glad, I don't mind admitting, to be out on my own, on a long run. I've always enjoyed long runs, other people can get on my nerves so I like the solitude you can have on them. “How can I put up with another year of Darnton?” I asked myself, and Pete, I'm ninety per cent sure I spoke the words aloud. I'd come almost to the end of one field, and raised my head to look at the shape and size of the next one, and there, Pete, it was…

‘In the sky, about sixty or seventy yards off. Resting on the air just a little higher than the tallest trees nearby! Circular object, two feet across. Joined to one end was a box shaped like one of those old magic lanterns, and this box was pointing right down
at me
. “Whatever are you? Have you come to my call?” I shouted out, “I need your help!” And before you ask, no, NO, I hadn't been smoking a fucking thing. I may have been known at Darnton as the Spliff King, but I promise you I hadn't been near one all day. And do you know what happened next, Pete?'

How could he? Pete was a-tremble with anticipation.

‘This weird object moved so that the box part of it jigged up and down. It was like it was acknowledging what I'd just shouted out, and assuring me of something. Of my own powers, I guess.

It must have stayed there nodding in mid-air at least a minute and a half. And then the entire contraption…'

‘Burst into flame?' from Pete who felt as if he might do so himself, with the thrill of this anecdote.

‘No, it disappeared. Melted into the golden afternoon. This may be hard to believe, Pete, but I wasn't afraid in the very least. You see, I felt
I
was part of
its
experience rather than t'other way about. Wherever it had vanished to, it was taking a little section of my own self with it. Understand? Now, Mr High Flyer Kempsey, what do you make of that? What do you think it was that I saw that last Wednesday in September?'

What could the mesmerised Pete reply but: ‘A UFO?'

‘You've said it, man, you've fucking said it!'

‘I used myself,' said Pete, recollecting hours of boyhood reading, ‘to be pretty interested in them.'

‘Interested nothing!' said Sam, ‘I've fucking
seen
one! And it's a pity more of us don't. We need UFOs in this goddam rotten world of ours. Happy Christmas!'

And with that Sam gave his friend a half-mocking salute, and then began walking up Etnam Street with big strides which – of all things – reminded Pete of Mr Trevor Price of Price's Menswear, as he made his way importantly about the town…

‘Happy Christmas?' Hadn't the Prime Minister himself declared: ‘We shall have a harder Christmas than we have had since the War'?

   

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day – Pete awoke to thoughts about Sam Price. They may well have permeated his sleep also. He went over, with an obsessive, painful thoroughness, every divisible minute of their time together after
The Mikado
. How quickly Pete had felt sure enough of Sam to tell him about the parental opposition to the next
High Flyers
! Pete loved, warm in the security of his bedclothes, to linger on the expression in Sam's tea-brown eyes, the grin on his crooked, down-turned mouth, the saliva that had collected on his lips while he drawled out his advice (which Pete had now acted on).

But – here was the thing – no sooner was he rejoicing in his new friend's boldness, style, and sympathy for Pete himself, then absurd little misgivings would start bothering him. It was like having an itch, which you knew you could not deal with in public, but which furiously, tormentingly increased. The jeering low tone in which he'd quoted from ‘Honky Tonk Women', the boastful look on his face as he spoke of his old public school, Darnton – these and their like got in the way of some of his most admiring images or cherished sound-bites.

What if Sam forgot about the meeting on the twenty-seventh? Should Pete ring and remind him of it? Or (better idea!) give him a call which would go something like this: ‘Having a good Christmas and all that crap, Sam? Just wanted to find out! Still on for Friday? Just checking!' But he didn't do either.

Oliver's presence at Christmas feasts hadn't really improved them. And Julian and Robin, at eleven and ten, were not fit companions for himself, though inseparable from each other. Surely Pete had been more discerning at their age? The watchful, crafty Julian truly excelled (it was sadly a fact of life) at maths and music, yet this second Paganini could sit beside Robs, on the sitting-room carpet, gaping not just at TV but at David fucking Cassidy in the idiotically popular
Partridge Family,
singing his Puppy-song.

‘Give us a break, can't you?' Pete shouted. ‘You're supposed to be
musical
, Julian. Song's words don't make sense either. Why should having a puppy mean Cassidy stays away from crowds? Pity he can't stay away from Etnam Road.'

‘Pity
you
can't stay away from it, Peter,' Julian retorted, ‘you don't like it here. You get nastier and nastier every day. You think only High Flyers have the right to exist.'

The intense hostility on his nearest brother's face, the concentrated resentment in his unbroken voice took Pete quite aback. He was to carry memories of them, in a rebuke palpably more sincere than point-scoring, for three-and-a-half decades.

   

Well, Sam and Pete met, as agreed, at the ‘in' coffee bar for Leominster's youth, at 11 o'clock on December 27, and, grati-fyingly, it had been Sam who rang Pete an hour beforehand to remind him of their appointment. Sam didn't look quite as he had these last days in the slide show in Pete's head. Not so tall or broad-shouldered as himself, he was of neat yet sinuous build, enhanced by that irregularity (more pronounced by light of day) of facial features, by his gentle but unmistakable list to the right. He was wearing a wide-lapelled suede blazer flaring at the hip, and jeans flaring at the legs.

Sam told him, virtually first off, that, rather than be here in Leominster, he'd like to be engaging in his favourite sports: ice hockey, skating and skiing, both cross-country and slalom. Economics and opportunity had made Pete a stranger to these, and he surmised, rightly, that Sam didn't much care for team games. Over Christmas he'd read Dostoyevsky's
Crime and
Punishment
, which Pete, who'd after all answered a question on the great Russian writer on
High Flyers
, had not read. One day perhaps…

‘Which brings me to your own Christmas, Pete. Didn't you tell me Mr Oliver Merchant, he who has a quite unearthly resemblance to our great PM, came to you for Christmas Day lunch. Not jetting forth any more of his precious blood, I hope? Your mother didn't have to play the ministering angel again?'

‘No, not at all,' said Pete curtly, ‘Ol was in the best of health.' And particularly pleasant to himself, he could have added, saying that there was nobody's advice he valued more than Pete's when he showed him a new design for a Sunbeam Press card. ‘After lunch we all had a game of Cluedo.'

‘Cluedo!!' Sam drawled the two syllables out so loudly many another coffee-drinker turned round, some friends of Pete's included. ‘Cluedo? You don't fucking say. That kills me, man, positively kills me.' Somewhat vulgarly he blew across his cup of espresso to cool it. But then if you'd been to somewhere as posh as Darnton, you could get away with such abandonment of ordinary good manners. ‘Have you never heard of the “weasel under the cocktail cabinet”, Pete? Read Harold Pinter, man, read R.D.Laing, read Kafka and Dostoyevsky…'

His derisive attitude to Pete's domestic life notwithstanding, Sam asked if they could meet same time same place the next day. Naturally Pete agreed. He noticed that Sam did not go home straight after their coffee but along to Price's Menswear, in the same street. ‘They're getting ready there for the January sales,' he reminded Pete, ‘and I bet you're slavering at the lips already at the prospect of the bargains the Old Man is offering. I have to keep in with my Estate, because one day Trevor Price, though you may not believe it, will pop his clogs, so it will fall to me to manage it.' It shocked Pete to hear somebody speaking of a parent's death so lightly. On the other hand he himself didn't feel so close to his father that he would look in on his office, which was virtually opposite Price's. ‘But I've got pretty thick these last weeks with some of the reps my father uses (good blokes for the most part), because don't please think that he confines his selling to those who merely walk into the shop off the streets of our town. Oh no, my friend, a thousand times no. He casts his net wide and cunningly does my Old Man.' This painted a picture of a very different man from Pete's father, with his high-principled worries about the state of the country. ‘One guy among 'em you should meet one day. Don Parry, a real character, a card. He lives out at a place called Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, outlandish name but not outlandish to Don.' Nor apparently to Sam off whose tongue the syllables came with impressive speed ‘He's really into the Welsh language, and things written in it: the
Mabinogion
and tales of Arthur generally. And he's probably had more women than any of those Knights of the Round Table, including Lancelot! That's what he'd have you believe anyway. And he can drink his rivals under the table… You must meet him.'