Rough Music (38 page)

“Hi there,” Bill said as he came in. “What have you been up to? Junior’s dead to the world too.”

“Nothing,” Julian said. “Playing.”

“Oh.
That
,” Bill said. He was toweling himself, though he did not really need to because the sun had dried his skin off on his way up the beach. “It’s so crowded out there. Your mum walked into Polcamel to get some food. I said I’d get lunch together. Want some lunch?”

Julian did not know where the courage came from. Maybe the cigarette supplied it. Maybe it came from his being so cross with his mother. But he sprang just as Bill sat on the edge of the bed to pull down his trunks. He pretended to pretend to be a tiger so Bill would think it a game. He made a growling noise like a tiger. But actually it was like the unspeakable thoughts. He held Bill tightly from behind, as he had on the motorbike, then when Bill laughed and stood up as if to give him a piggyback, he slid down and held him tight around the legs, his hands holding so hard on his thigh it must have hurt.

“Hey!” Bill said. “Hey!”

And Julian thought that, since he had got this far and would probably be punished anyway, he might as well go further so, not sure exactly why, he reached up and tried to pull Bill’s trunks down. But he had barely got his hand on the waistband than Bill slapped a hand across his and said, “Hey!” more firmly. “Stop that. What are you doing?”

“Pulling down your trunks,” Julian said quite truthfully. He was still trying to pretend it was a game but it didn’t really work anymore and he felt he had to put on a babyish voice, which he knew even as he did it made things worse.

Bill hauled him off, still grasping his hand. He was so strong he lifted Julian right off his leg and off the floor like a little monkey and dumped him on the bed. Julian giggled and made a monkey noise because perhaps they could make it a game after all but Bill was terrifying.

“That’s disgusting,” he said. “You understand? That is
disgusting
. You are never to do that to another boy, OK? You’re lucky it was me because I can tell you, try that with someone else and he’ll break your face open. You understand me?”

Julian nodded. He wanted to cry. He pictured Bill and his mother with no clothes on, bottom to bottom on the sand like a funny crab and it did not seem fair.

“Now get out of here and we’ll say no more about it,” Bill said more quietly.

Julian left the room slowly. He had his dignity. But as soon as he was in the hall, he ran, ran as fast as he could, out of the house, across the veranda, up the stony track to the top of the hill and the car park and the telephone kiosk. Someone had peed in there. There was a puddle and it stank. He made himself stand right in the middle, in his bare feet, because it was a spell and would help make things all right again. The receiver was so hot it burned his skin but he pressed it hard against his ear because it hurt and that was a useful spell too. And so was the number. One hundred. Like abracadabra.

He had been taught several things as soon as he was old enough to understand. Not to talk to strange men or accept sweets from them. His address. His telephone number and a magic phrase you said when you rang a hundred and a nice lady answered.

“I would like to make a reverse charge call please.” He gave Pa’s office number and waited. When Pa came on the line and said, “Hello? Julian?” it was as though someone had pulled out a cork in Julian’s head and all that would come were tears. He cried and cried. Pa was embarrassed, he could hear that, and a bit cross. Julian tried to talk back but it was so hard.

“What’s happened? What’s wrong?” Pa asked and he wanted to tell him everything but he realized it was like bad dreams and you had to tell grown-ups what they expected you to say otherwise they’d be frightened too.

So he said, “I miss you. When are you coming back?”

“Soon,” Pa said, obviously relieved that they were finally having a conversation. “And I miss you too,” he said. “It’s horrid here. Listen, Julian. Is your mother all right?”

“Yes. She’s fine.”

“Oh. Well, you’ve got to tell her we spoke, all right?”

“All right.”

“It’s very important. Ask her if she’s seen the papers. I can’t think why she hasn’t rung yet. Will you tell her to buy today’s
Times
?”

“Yes.”

“Good boy. Now I’d better go. Reverse charge calls are very expensive. They’re really only for emergencies, you know.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“That’s all right. Bye.”

“Bye.”

His mother was home when he got down the hill, and wanted to know where he had been but he just said he had been for a walk and was not hungry. She felt his head and frowned and said he had had too much sun and should stay off the beach that afternoon. Skip winked at him. He just stared back. “All right,” he said and left the three of them eating a big lunch with boiled eggs and pork pies and crisps. He was hungry. He could have eaten two pies and a packet of crisps at least but not eating was a spell too. It would help. He did not tell her about
The Times
because he was still cross with her, more cross than ever now because she could not tell at once what was wrong. He heard her laughing with Skip at something Bill had said and he pulled a face to himself.

He went outside and sat with Lady Percy for a while, stroking her rosettes in a special order and feeding her a dandelion leaf. He told her everything in a low whisper only she would understand, until it seemed she was darker and heavier for the secrets he had poured in at her ear. Then he lifted a corner of the fence that was rotten and posted her through.

She seemed unaware of her good fortune at first.

“Go,” he said to her. “Quick. Before they catch you again. Go!”

But she just sat on the other side of the fence sniffing and munching. Inside he heard plates being stacked and someone filling the kettle. The liquidizer buzzed for a few minutes. His mother must be making one of her nasty leftover soups. Now Lady Percy ran, frightened by the noise, ran as she normally only ran on a carpet or the hall floor. She headed further and further into the field up the valley and, without so much as a nostalgic backward glance, vanished with his dark secrets down a rabbit hole.

He had meant to create a drama, something that would give him a reason to cry and be pitied and held close by his stupid, ugly mother but all he had done was make an empty hutch and a no less empty field. He saw a buzzard wheel overhead hunting mice and rabbits and remembered a comment his father had made on their first night here, something about foxes having plenty to eat. He was possessed by a marvelously dramatic sense of guilt, like hands steeped in blood. It would show in his face. No one would be able to keep quiet now and say it was too much sun and stay off the beach that afternoon.

“Here. Brought you this.” Skip held out a milkshake. “It’s banana. Your mum said that was your favorite. I put ice cream in too so it’s really thick.”

“Thanks.” He took it from her and sucked on the straw. It was good. It tasted of sin. “Lady Percy escaped,” he said.

“No kidding.”

She made no attempt to raise the alarm. She knew better than to make futile rescue suggestions. She just sat with him in silent witness to unswervable change. Julian stole a glance at her as he drank more of the milkshake and realized that it might be possible to be her friend after all. He felt envy too though, not so much of her being a girl as of a kind of flexibility in her which he sensed was part of what it meant to be female. His mother had it too. All women did. He knew that the envy was a low thing, reprehensible, and that he must always be extra nice so as not to let it show.

The heavens should have opened. Thunder and lightning were called for, driving rain and a bone-gnawing wind that would reduce the beach to a littered waste in apocalyptic minutes. The entire ridiculous, ugly scene had been played out in balmy sunshine, however, and the chattering, playful holiday parade closed over his departing family like a brightly-colored soup. Will watched his parents and Sandy drive off, sitting on a rock on the far side of the beach, children playing in a pool at his feet.

The first thing he did when they left was to hurry back across the beach to the house. He half-expected to find a note from one of them but there was nothing. He could not quite believe they had gone. In the pregnant minutes between hearing the well-earned slaps to Sandy’s cheeks and losing his temper with his mother—for the first time in his life, it seemed—he had expected discussion, the kind of merciless picking over of the situation at which families were supposed to excel. His mother’s tears, his father’s gentlemanly acceptance, his sister’s righteous fury and the revelation of Sandy’s complete lack of spine had all passed so swiftly that he had to replay them in every detail in his mind in case there was some clue he had overlooked.

In his impulsive impatience to have them gone he had forgotten their bed linen. He stripped it all now, amassing a great pile as he went, then stuffed too much into the washing machine at once so that the load squeaked against the glass as it turned and probably would not clean properly.

The kitchen was full of food, an elegant unserved lunch that would now go to waste. A four-layered fish terrine was not the sort of thing one could eat on one’s own. He knew it was delicious, he had made it before, but shock had killed his appetite. He poured himself a glass of wine instead, sat in the rear garden, in his mother’s chair, and rang Harriet, prepared to tell her all at last. He rang her direct line as usual but her secretary intervened. Ms. Rowney was in conference until four and could not be disturbed.

He sat on, drinking steadily until his churning emotions arrived at a glassy-eyed stasis. At last the van came bouncing along the valley track to the encampment. Watching Roly climb out and stoop to tether Fay, Will saw not the answer to his problems but only an added complication. Still, he lifted his glass in greeting and Roly raised a hand back. When Will waved him over, Roly merely waved. Will beckoned him again and in response Roly went into a wickedly funny parody of the presenter of a program for deaf children that must have featured in both their childhoods.

“We cannot,” Roly signed, “return all your pictures.”

When Will beckoned again, Roly teasingly responded with an ever more furious set of gestures: a triangle, a wavy line, a handclap. Will laughed despite his mood.

“You’re a cruel tease,” he told him when Roly finally came over.

“Must be something you bring out in me.” He looked around, taking in the deserted house. “What happened to the sculpture?”

“I didn’t heed the warning.”

“And where is everyone?”

“Gone.”

“
Gone
gone?”

Will nodded.

“But I thought you weren’t leaving till Saturday? And how are you leaving without a car?”

Will had not thought of that and felt a spasm of fresh weariness as he thought of an entanglement with local taxi services and oversubscribed end-of-season trains. He sighed.

“Did you have a row?” Roly asked, helping himself to water from the fridge. “All this food! It’s like a canceled wedding.”

“We had a huge row,” Will said. “Terrible things that can never be unsaid.” He sighed. “Eat whatever you can. Actually no, I’m lying. There was no row, just a stupid scene and I lost my temper and told my parents to leave too.”

“So the row wasn’t with the brother or the children?”

“Brother-in-law. No. Do I know you well enough for this?”

“You’re leaving soon and you’ll never see me again. Why not risk it?”

“I was sleeping with my brother-in-law.”

“Shit!”

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Yes you should.” Roly leaned against the fridge, eating terrine with a fork. He was looking particularly fetching in old, sun-faded shorts, an even older shirt and work boots. Will would far rather have dragged him to a convenient rug and peeled them off him than make his confession but that would have solved nothing.

“It was all over. I ended it when I met you.”

“
Because
or when?”

“No. Yes. I dunno. I ended it but somehow my mother found out and she told his wife—my sister—who just arrived like the wrath of God and swept the children to safety. And I let my mother have it in the neck, which was quite unfair because she’s got Alzheimer’s and didn’t know what she was doing.”

“How do you know?”

“They’ve done tests.”

“That she didn’t know what she was doing?”

“Oh. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. And now they won’t speak to me and Sandy’s going around saying he’s gay and in love.”

“Is he?”

“No. Not really. Oh fuck, it’s all the most hideous, unnecessary mess.”

“I think you should use a past tense there. It sounds as though it was a mess and you’ve just managed to cut yourself free of it.”

“But my parents!”

“A mess. You’re free of them.”

“But I feel so guilty. Not about Sandy, funnily enough. But about Poppy and the children. About what I said to Mum. I’ve never shouted at her before. We get on so well.”