Jam (16 page)

Something moved nearby. He looked down at the van. Both of the doors were closed; he could see the outline of Chris's shoulders, hunched over his mobile; he could see the white glow of his screen. He peered into the darkness. There – a shape that didn't fit. A human figure, crouching in the shrubbery. He sidestepped into the shadow of a tree and crouched down himself for a better view. Now there was a noise that didn't fit; a whispering, of water perhaps, or someone's fingers in the
leaves. Then it stopped. The silhouette moved, fumbled, got to its feet. It took a step, then another, and emerged. A woman, facing away from him, stumbling down towards the motorway. By some sixth sense she turned, looked back. An Oriental woman, slim, bespectacled. She hurried down the embankment and disappeared.

Monty squared his shoulders and closed his eyes. He knew that in a moment he would have to go back down to the van and face Rhys. He balled his fists and opened them, balled them and opened them, then flung some punches into the air. He had no choice, he knew that. He would have to try to make peace.

Hubster

Shauna Williams raised her head from the steering wheel at the sound of sirens, watched the lights streak out of the world and pass away into it like something out of
Star Trek
or something. Knowing that it would be no use at all, she tried her phone once again, and once again it was dead as before. Rain was battering the outside of her car; the air was cold, but she didn't want to start her engine. So she drew the soft folds of her jumper tighter around her body, up around her cheeks, and for some time visualised Hubster with his arms around her, warming her.

She was still horribly thirsty, and still her head was pounding. It was as if the end of the world had arrived. A numbness crept over her brain and much time passed. Nothing moved but the rain.

Inevitably, her thoughts turned back to the wedding. In the weeks preceding the ceremony, her anxiety had shown itself in disturbed sleeping and eating patterns, which were the dual indicators of mental unease, according to her therapist at least – the therapist she hadn't seen for over a year. (Who had turned out to be far too balanced and successful to make her clients feel anything other than inadequate; her with her big fucking house in Primrose Hill, her thriller-writer husband, her picture-book children and Labradoodles. Her boutique boho style. Her perfect garden.)

At work Shauna had been stressed, and in the evenings she had gone out, night after night, and got drunk, a clichéd drunk drinking to forget. She had refused to give herself time to trawl through her memories of Seedie and what he had meant to her,
what he still, if she was honest, meant. For this reason it wasn't until the day of the wedding itself, when midway through the ceremony the sky behind the boiled-sweet-stained glass darkened and the buttery church light suddenly turned chill and grey, that she was reminded of the curse that she had invoked so many years ago. It had been contained, she remembered, in a letter she had sent to Seedie; it had been couched in playful terms, if unmistakably bitter in tone. Dear Seedie (she recalled with a start as she sat there nauseated in the darkening church in her turquoise and her fuchsia, avoiding the eye of his mother, looking up at him in his grandiose morning tails and Chloe in her exquisite off-the-shoulder ivory wedding gown, with that simple rollover neckline and Mikado mermaid silhouette), I do understand that sometimes people, like cruise ships, have to move on to new horizons. Well done you. I do also understand that Chloe is as decent a new horizon as any, given that you've made your mind up to leave Port Shauna. For your own reasons. Whatever they may be. So I wouldn't dream of telling you that if you ever get married, you and Chloe, I hope it rains on your fucking wedding day. I wouldn't dream of saying that I hope the inevitable poncey garden party in Hampshire is a washout, and everybody's hats get ruined. Because that would be incredibly rude. Wouldn't it. With very best wishes, S.

So the curse had been cast. And it was before the end of the ceremony that the rain, utterly unforecast, began to fall. As Seedie's lips drew to Chloe's at the crowning moment of the thing, Shauna fancied she heard a thunderclap, as if the day had been choreographed by the
Wizard of Oz
.

The morning having been spotlessly clear and bright, little provision had been made for the downpour. An umbrella was somehow found for the bride and groom, and they left the church amid a half-hearted shower of soggy confetti, which fell from the air in woebegone clumps. Everybody put a brave face on it, tried to frame it as romantic, as a sign of grace, as a novelty that would give people something to remember (in
which lay the tacit acknowledgment that until that point the wedding had been unremarkable in every way).

Shauna, trying to stifle her superstition, and attempting – unsuccessfully – to brush it off, left the church even more anxiously than she had entered it. She got through the inevitable handshake with the mother, the father, the kiss on the cheek of Seedie himself, and of Chloe, without incident. She had sailed through numbly, thinking of nothing, ‘Raspberry Beret' still playing relentlessly in her ear, allowing herself to channel polite convention as a witch doctor channels the spirits.

Then came the champagne. With strawberries bobbing in it, bejewelled with golden bubbles. With waiters subtly offering refills when the glass was only half-empty – a ploy, Shauna was convinced, to get the guests trolleyed. In her case certainly it worked. The reception was held in the house itself instead of the garden, while the staff scurried around outside collecting umbrellas, moving buckets of champagne to shelter, sealing the marquee like a submarine. It stretched on and on, that reception in the house, while the sky framed in the old windows glowered more angrily than ever, and began hurling down great twisting sheets of water that exploded relentlessly across the county. Elemental. The rain was complicating things for the staff; there was so much more to be done. Still the champagne flowed. Shauna found herself in a corner of the drawing room, sitting side-saddle in the window seat, talking to a man with very high cheekbones and big pink hands, who went by the name of Hodgy and was busy learning Arabic for the Foreign Office. They had started their conversation as parts of a group, but somehow this and that had come up and people went this way and that, and then it was just him and her fixed by the window, and she shunted up to make room beside her on the seat while the rain sprayed like gravel handfuls on the glass behind them. Their legs touching from thigh to knee, their arms elbow to shoulder as well. Hubster? In her excitement and growing drunkenness she mistakenly called him
Podgy, and he flushed a shepherd's delight, and in the ensuing laughter she nuzzled her head into his chest like a foal. Thereafter a lone waiter entered with more bubble-beaded champagne; they accepted almost without noticing, but both refused the strawberries. Hodgy was a big man, strapping, with a laugh that resounded in her gut. He was also, she reluctantly detected, rather boring, and possibly a bit of a wanker. But the quantity of bubbly was such that these imperfections were smudged out in the roseate haze of alcohol. And then they were called for dinner.

The humiliation of it. The humiliation of it. She was drunk, he was drunk, they were both as drunk as bishops. She had dashed to her car to grab a pashmina and he had accompanied her with a folding brolly (where had he got that from?). On the way back they found themselves shortcutting through a flowerbed, lost, effectively, in the grounds, and one of the heels of her Manolos became hopelessly embedded in the mud, and, as the wedding music mewed somewhere in the background, they found themselves alone and laughing crazily in the bushes, and before she knew it they were lip-to-lip, and tongue-to-tongue – such was their desperation and intoxication – and he was muttering something about a quickie, his words slurred as his mouth was pushed to the side against her cheek, and her hands were inside his shirt against his body in the rain, and with some surprise she saw that her breasts were out and scooped in his large pink palms, and then, beneath a waterfalling tree, she dropped to her knees in the mud, and in a drunken swirl in which the world rolled around her like Plasticine, she took his weight in her mouth and sucked him off.

Afterwards, sobered by the act, they cleaned themselves off as best they could. Shauna felt foolish and ashamed. Still ‘Raspberry Beret' played on. Hodgy begged her not to tell anyone, and that made it all the worse; he had a girlfriend, he told her now, and if she were to breathe a word of this to anybody she could single-handedly ruin the lives of so many
people. Muddied and sullied, they made their way to the marquee separately and sneaked in on opposite sides of the tent. But somebody somehow had spied them, and the gossip had already – already! – circulated. Everybody knew. And did that stop her? Did it make her bow out, cut her losses, slink off home? Did it fuck.

This can't go on, thought Shauna. This abominable thirst, this headache. This hangover, this life. She could be at home by now, drinking sparkling water and lime, popping paracetamol, running a bath. She could be drinking a peppermint tea. Damn it, so she should be. She shouldn't be here. More sirens, more lights, whipping past on the hard shoulder, premonitions embodied. She tilted her seat backwards a little, as if that would ease the pain. If this went on much longer she'd have to get out, hope for the best, find somewhere she could buy some pills, some water. Take a piss. She raised herself onto her elbows and could see no sign of civilisation. It was chucking it down, anyway. She would wait it out, or try to. This jam simply couldn't go on for too much longer. Somebody somewhere must be doing something to sort it, to clear – whatever it was. She shuddered to think. Was that a helicopter? It was so difficult to tell with the noise of the rain. She passed her dry tongue across her dry lips, swallowed with some effort, pinched her eyes tight. She knew then, huddled by herself in the darkness and shadows in the middle lane of a frozen Orbital, cradled in the impersonal embrace of an indifferent universe, that she hadn't put that curse on Seedie and Chloe all those years ago. She had put it on herself.

She slept, and when she came to her senses the rain had stopped. Her bladder was fit to burst, and she was cold. She stepped out into the fresh air and slammed the door behind her. The squall had moved on. She slipped between bumpers, through the lanes of traffic, and across the hard shoulder to the barrier; there she crossed paths with Hsiao May, and for reasons largely physiological – on Shauna's part at least – they shared just a comradely nod. Then, concentrating on keeping
her bladder clenched, she made her way up the hill towards the copse.

She was so focused on reaching her goal that she didn't notice the figure standing in the shadows of the trees until she had almost bumped into it. A movement of the hand alerted her to its presence; she jumped, almost overbalanced, let out a yelp.

‘Don't be scared,' came a voice. ‘Sorry. Sorry. It's just me.'

She cast her eyes into the shadows, and at the same time Monty stepped out. He looked tired, dishevelled, and had a slightly otherworldly expression, like somebody awoken freshly from a dream.

‘Monty?' she said.

‘Yes.'

‘What . . . what are you doing here?'

‘How shall I put it? How shall I put it?'

‘Call of nature?'

‘Yes.'

‘Me too.'

‘Not exactly glamorous,' said Monty. ‘Anyway, I don't think I even know your name.'

‘Shauna. Do you want to know my last name?'

‘Why would I want to know that?'

‘I don't know. You might want to send me a letter or something.'

‘A letter? Who sends letters any more?'

‘I don't know. Look me up on Facebook, then.'

‘I'm not on Facebook.'

‘Nor am I. Lawyer, you know.'

‘You're a lawyer?'

‘For my sins.'

‘At least you're not a banker.'

‘No. More's the pity.'

‘Oh?'

‘They earn a darn sight more than people like me.'

‘True.'

‘Sorry,' said Shauna, ‘this is great but I'm desperate for the loo. That is, loo in the most general sense.'

Monty flushed. ‘Don't let me stop you.'

‘You're lucky being a bloke. Women need more coverage. And tissues and things.'

‘Well, avoid that spot just over there. Three trees back.'

‘Why . . . oh.'

He laughed, awkwardly. Shauna made her way into the copse, and found an appropriate spot. Here and there she could see movement in the trees, figures moving furtively in the shadows, but she was not afraid. This was the loo of the motorway, she thought. And anyway, Monty was there.

But when she emerged from the copse, he was nowhere to be seen.

The beautiful game

It was an hour after midnight. People were snuggling up as best they could. A light, cloudlike drizzle passed without becoming rain, and the motorway was shimmering again. Ursula, having woken briefly, had returned to her sleep, her coat bunched against her cheek; beside her, Max sat in silence. Jim, in the cab of his van, now lay sprawled across the seats, his forearm over his eyes. Popper lay in the reclined front seat of his Golf, looking up at the constellations of stars that could vaguely be seen beyond the orange lights, beyond the clouds. Chris was sound asleep and snoring like a child; Rhys was looking idly out of the window, wondering where Monty had got to, beginning to feel a little tired now. Shauna's car sat empty. Hsiao May and Harold, in their separate vehicles, were reading by the overhead lights. In the battered Ford estate, Dave, Stevie and Natalie slouched in various states of consciousness, too stoned to make the effort to contrive a pillow or a blanket.

All were contending with the cold, which seemed to grow around them like a living thing. Some huddled into jumpers and coats, some turned on the engine to get a blast of heat, and some mused on the urban myth that it would be best to have a candle, because candles give disproportionate amounts of heat in an enclosed space.