Sweet Sorrow(34)

Another plan was needed. Turning off the pumps and forecourt lights at nine, I patted the stack of cards in my underpants and, in the darkness of the stock room, loaded a small chandelier’s worth next to the pages of Romeo and Juliet, then climbed gingerly on to my bike and cycled away, avoiding any bumps or vibrations for fear that one exploding glass would start a chain reaction. I pictured my corpse, shards of highball tumblers and champagne flutes embedded down my spine like the plates on a stegosaurus. I imagined the stack of bloodied evidence handed over to my parents, who would be torn between grief and embarrassment. ‘We found these scratch cards in his underpants.’

I cycled on, and after a mile of plantation the road passed through a small, scrappy copse, Murder Wood, and here I turned off, wobbled along a woodchip path, stashed my bike and, crouching low like a commando, followed another path down to the shore of Fallow Pond, a semi-industrial reservoir, fetid and stagnant, its surface silver-black like pewter and more likely to be broken by a lifeless human hand than the leaping of a trout. Last summer, as an end-of-school dare we’d watched as Harper’s older brother tried to swim through the viscous water, staggering out almost immediately, eyes red and weeping, skin as glossy as an otter and coated with a tar-like substance that no amount of soap could remove. Now, in the summer evening light, a single heron stood guard, shoulders hunched like a cartoon gangster, one leg embedded in the muck. I crouched on the bank in a swarm of gnats, listening out for human noise, then stood and opened my bag. As the first glass hit the water the heron sucked its leg from the swamp and flapped away. Another followed, and another. My aim was consistent, and I imagined a pyramid forming of flutes and tumblers and goblets and snifters, slowly blanketed by the black pulp of rotting wood and, below that, the skeletons of mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers. I imagined far-future archaeologists wondering at the find – so many identical glasses, how did they get here? – and failing to hypothesise a worried teenage boy standing alone with a stack of scratch cards tucked into his underwear.

Four lager glasses remained. I’d give them as a gift. Harper was having mates round to the den and we were going to get absolutely slaughtered.





Cinnamon


Round the ring road, through the retail park to the north side, where the Harpers’ house stood in the centre of a plot of churned land, scattered with building materials and vehicles. I laid my bike on the forecourt in amongst the 4x4s, the quad bikes, the timber and bricks and Transit vans and Mrs Harper’s little Mazda run-around.

‘Oi-oi,’ said Martin, opening the door, beer in hand, ‘the master criminal.’ He pulled me into an embrace, then held me at arm’s length. ‘You’re sure you weren’t followed? Here –’ Banknotes, rolled into a tight tube, were tucked into my hand. ‘I gave you fifty because I love you,’ and he held my head between his hands like a squeezebox and, squeezing, kissed the top. ‘Petrol. You need to wash your hair. Come on, the boys are in the den.’

Tubs of white emulsion and sacks of plaster lined the hallway, and in the vast living room on our left a TV, miraculously flat, hung like an Old Master next to the wall-length tropical fish tank. Jaded, chic Mrs Harper lounged in an archipelago of modular white leather like Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface. In our regular polls of sexiest mum, Mrs Harper was the undisputed winner, a source of complicated pride for her son. ‘Evening, Mrs Harper,’ I said in my nice-young-man voice.

‘I’ve told you, Charlie, call me Alison!’

‘Don’t call her Alison,’ said Harper, ‘it’s weird.’

‘Got these for you, Alison!’ I said, producing the four lager glasses that I’d spared from the swamp, and Harper groaned and rolled his eyes.

‘Thank you, Charlie, they’re exquisite.’

‘It’s just shit from the garage,’ said Harper. ‘They explode if you put ice in them.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ said Alison.

‘It is true,’ I said, ‘but it is quite rare. Just don’t hold the glass near your face longer than you have to.’ Alison laughed and I felt sophisticated and worldly-wise.

‘Put them on the side there, charming boy,’ said Alison.

‘Yeah, we’ll chuck ’em out later,’ said Harper, jabbing me in the ribs to propel me down the hallway. ‘Pack it in, you pervert.’

‘But she really likes me.’

‘She gave birth to me, you freak.’

‘I love you, Alison!’ I whispered back down the hall and we clambered over breeze-blocks for the extension to the extension that was currently underway. Mr Harper had built the house with his own hands, or the hands of his workers, altering and expanding the floor plan as casually as if it were made of Lego, and we pushed through hanging plastic sheets, through the new double garage and down into an earthly paradise.

The concept of Harper’s ‘den’ had been lifted from American movies, and kitted out to that blueprint: a large, low space with a pool table, a drum kit, electric guitars, weights and a rowing machine, another huge flat-screen TV, a dizzying entertainment library of video cassettes and DVDs, PlayStation games, vinyl and CDs, a complete run of Maxim and a fridge, the famous self-stocking fridge with its limitless Pot Noodles and Mars Bars. No natural light or air penetrated the den. Instead testosterone was pumped through vents, or so it sometimes seemed, because here was Lloyd, laughing hysterically as he smothered Fox with a beanbag while a can of lager glugged onto the old underlay that carpeted the concrete.