Flood (9 page)

'It's freezing in there,' he said. 'Dare you.' He looked around, but the rest of them were busy opening cans and catching the foam in their mouths. He wiped himself with his T-shirt. 'Fair shares/ he said, walking towards them.

They lay in the long grass and stared at the sky as if it were a picture-show. They had blades of grass in their mouths. It was a time for lazing. They had spent their energy fighting in the pool.

'The dole in eight weeks,' said Clark. 'I can't believe it.'

'It would be better if we all had jobs, though,' said Colin.

'Ach, we'll get jobs eventually,' said Mark. We've deserved our rest.

Complete rest and relaxation. No early rises except when you've to sign on. It's just what the doctor ordered.'

'Oh aye?' said Sandy. 'Seeing the doctor, are you, Mark? I wonder what for?'

The clap if I know him.'

'Now, now, lads. Let's not be too hasty in condemning the poor sod. Let's condemn him slowly.'

'Ha fucking ha,' said Mark.

'Any advance on that?' said Sandy.

'But seriously, guys. No more school! It's like being let out of jail after doing thirty years' hard labour.'

'Now, now, Mark. Remember one of us has to go back.'

'Oh yes. Sorry, Witchy. I forgot.'

'I don't like being called Witchy, Marcus.'

'I don't like being called Marcus, Witchy.'

Sandy stuck a hand up into the air and Mark clasped it.

They shook. Then there was silence for a time. Sandy lay with his shirt crumpled over his genitalia. They had to be protected, he had told his friends, as you never knew when they would come in handy. Sandy worked hard at every utterance he made in this group. His jokes were his defence in a way, and were also what had first gained him entrance to the gang. He did not want to lose his privilege.

'Freedom,' said Clark. 'It's okay, Sandy. You don't have any exams when you go back. No work to do. Just sit it out, like you were in jail in Monopoly.' Everyone chuckled, grass still wedged between teeth. The sun was too bright. It made Sandy's eyes dizzy to look at it. He watched the blood red of a foetus form whenever he closed his eyelids.

That little shit Belly Martin. It's about time somebody got him. And good, too. Give him something as a souvenir.'

"You're right, Colin. But how?' They thought for a few moments.

'Bring him down here,' said Sandy, savouring the words as they formed inside his aching head, 'and throw him in the pond. Then leave him, naked, wet, lost in the dark, and just go home.' Somebody sat up. Their shadow blocked the sun.

Sandy peered up but could not see who it was.

'That's brilliant, Sandy. But how do we capture him?' said Colin.

'Kidnap him some evening when he leaves the chip shop,'

said Sandy, closing his eyes again.

'It's a fine plan,' Clark said lazily.

'A great plan,' said Colin. Everybody agreed. 'So great that I think we should have a trial run!' Colin was on Sandy immediately. Sandy gasped, nearly choking on his blade of grass. He clung with one hand to his shirt while the other clawed at the earth. Colin was dragging him by the feet towards the pond. Too late, Sandy released his grip on the shirt and grabbed for Colin. With a splash, he had been thrown in a semi-circle right into the pond. He was going down. It seemed incredibly deep, and certainly much deeper than it had been twenty minutes before. It was like being tossed into the sea from a helicopter. Sandy turned and turned. He sucked in some liquid and began spluttering. The water was sour for a second and then was bland, filling his mouth, trickling down his resisting throat. It was dark down there, but he fought against the darkness. His feet touched bottom. He pushed hard, and his head rose above the surface. Someone was shouting.

'By Christ! Here comes the Loch Ness Monster!'

He stood coughing and retching for a minute. They were at the edge of the pool and began to help him out. They could see that something quite frightening had just happened.

'Sorry, Sandy,' said Colin, patting his back. 'It was just a joke. Are you all right?' Sandy nodded.

'Fine,' he said. Then, tipping his body slightly forward over the pool, he brought up a foamy concoction of lager and lemonade and algae and water. The others stood back a little.

Well,' said Mark, 'we'll not be swimming in there for a while.'

They lay down again and were reflective for some time.

Sandy stared at the grass and let himself dry in the hot sun.

He felt fine, but shaky.

'Are you still seeing Shona McKechnie?' Mark asked Colin. This brought an interested glint to every eye: sex.

'Well, lads,' said Colin, 'that's confidential. Hush-hush. I wouldn't like to say, really.'

'That means she's chucked him in,' said Clark, hoping it were true.

'Just you keep thinking that, young Clark, if you want to.'

Well, tell us then, Colin.'

'Okay, boys. Are you sitting comfortably?' They shifted closer to Colin. 'Once upon a time,' he began, 'there was a sexy young lad called Colin McLintock. Now, Colin happened to stumble across a ravishing princess one day. . .'

'Stumbled is the right word! You were pissed as a fart.'

'Okay, Mark,' said Colin angrily, 'you tell the story.' But they poked Mark in the ribs and pleaded with Colin to continue. 'No more interruptions then,' he said. 'Now, as I was saying, this handsome lad one day met a lady at a party, and the lady's name was Shona McKechnie. They enjoyed one another's company, and started necking on the couch.

He walked her home. There was a passionate goodnight kiss on her doorstep, and that, thought Colin, was that. But no! It was not to be, my children.

For, as it turned out, this Shona person had a fiery reputation with the older boys in town. After school, it turned out, she would go up into the

Wilderness and cavort with the whole of the Cars gang.

Word had got around that Shona had the hots for noble young Colin, and so the Cars, in their infinite stupidity, decided to scare him away from the princess, a bit like the Ugly Sisters in "Cinderella" . . .'

'Christ, Colin, you better watch that they're not hiding in the grass this very minute. If they could hear you .. .'

'So,' Colin's voice became even louder, 'the aforementioned Cars gang, being a cowardly bunch of shits, chased poor Colin for weeks and would be waiting for him outside school, forcing him to sneak home by devious routes, and they made his life hell to the extent that he gave up seeing Shona, though she still chased him in school. So you see, lads, he was in a tight spot. Chased by two fearsome elements.' Colin was on his feet now, acting with gusto. What could he do?

He did what a man must do.'

'Quite right,' said Sandy.

'He started seeing Shona again, but making certain that it was kept as secret as was humanly possible. He told only his most trusted friends. And, my most trusted friends, he is still seeing her. He is seeing her tonight, he thinks. And he is regularly getting his nuts from her.'

"You jammy bastard,' said Mark.

'What's she like then, Colin?' asked Clark.

'Princesses are not to be discussed in such terms,' said Colin, sitting down again. There were groans of dissent.

Sandy knew these games. They were old, and their utility value, as the Economics exam would have had it, seemed to decrease with each rendition. They all knew what sex was.

They had learned about it from boys with older brothers, from glossy magazines flicked through in public conveniences, from tentative dates at parties and school discos. But probably, despite all their bravado, Colin was the only one of them who had properly lost his virginity. The rest of them were left straining on the leash like bug-eyed dogs. Sex for them was the toilet at home or under the sheets with a handkerchief and the mild queasiness and guilt afterwards.

The horror that your mother would find or had already found some telltale stain. Not all the boys at school were as innocent. The Cars, the town's gang, were not innocent, but then they were mostly older boys who had already left school. Sandy picked a new blade of grass and chewed it, crushing the sap with his teeth. He thought of his own princess. Dark golden kisses, treasured like jewels. He had written some poetry for her, but would never let her see it. What if she couldn't read? All the better: the poem was terrible.

From the falling time you call to me,

From the youngest time you call to me,

And now we are here,

Shed not a tear,

From the falling time.

Your hair is so long

I feel I could climb it,

Into a castle where treasure is hidden.

Your shape is as secret as the key to that treasure.

Will you give me the key,

For this is a tempting time?

He was embarrassed by it, but he would keep it in his secret drawer beside the others and the stories he had written and hope his mother did not find it. His friends would laugh at him if they found out. All they knew was that he was good at writing stories and poems when asked to in English by a teacher who was going out with his mother.

He had visited the mansion one day in every week for a while now. He was waiting for Rian to suggest some meeting in a secret place. She had not yet done so. He had to content himself with a stolen kiss when Robbie was not around, and then only if Rian were in the mood. If not, she would sit with her face as dark as a coal-box and her arms folded firmly across her chest. On those days he would talk more with Robbie, and be more friendly towards him, just to spite his cruel princess.

They were talking about videos now - about the ones they had seen lately and the ones they would see when their parents were out. Sandy thought that he would leave and go to the Soda Fountain. Mr Patterson had promised him a whole lot of chocolates when he had finished his exams. But Sandy did not eat many sweets these days. Their taste was debilitating. It slowed him down, making his insides all sugary and numb. He preferred fruit. He would visit the fruit shop. But then he was being asked a question.

'What about you, Sandy? You never had a dad, did you? I mean, you never knew who your dad was?' They were talking about someone whose father had died suddenly. Now they had directed the conversation towards him. He looked at the serious faces and the acne and the thin, pallid bodies.

'No,' he said, 'I never knew.'

'Did you ever try to find out? Didn't you ever ask your mum?'

'No.'

How could he have done that? It had taken time to discover that children ought to have a father. By the time he found out, he had become sad for his mother. How could he have asked her such a personal and unnecessary question?

Often, though, he had thought of asking her. He knew some of the rumours which had been currency when he was a child. It was his Uncle Tom, who had then quickly scarpered.

It was the Devil himself, and his mother was a witch after all. It was one of his Uncle Tom's friends. It was a fairy king. Would she tell him if he asked? Perhaps she would, now that he had grown up, but what did it matter? It was a moment's curiosity every few months. It was nothing.

'What's it like then, not having a dad?'

'It's not like anything really. It's not very different.'

'How can you know if you've never had one in the first place?' Colin was good at arguing. Sandy was forced to shrug his shoulders.

'Well, it doesn't seem any different,' he said. 'Am I different from you?'

'Well, you're witchy for a start,' said Clark, laughing.

'I'd put a spell on you if I was,' said Sandy. 'I'd change you from a frog.' They all laughed at that. Sandy felt safe again. He was tempted to visit the mansion, but he knew that it would probably be empty at this time of the day. It was

tempting, too, to visit the gypsy encampment at Craigie Hill.

It would only take ten minutes from the Soda Fountain. The wind was beginning to blow a bit anyway. They could not lie here for much longer. Sandy pressed a finger down on to some of his goosebumps. They flattened for a second, then swelled.

The dark strands of hair on his arms stood on end when he shivered, like the sea rolling up to the esplanade in Kirkcaldy.

'Why don't we go to Kirkcaldy?' he suggested.

'No money,' said Clark. Colin and Mark nodded.

'Well, let's arrange a trip for when we have money. To celebrate the end of the exams. We can go to the Harbour Tavern. Dicky Preston says they serve you in there even if you're underage. He says it's easy.'

'Okay,' said Colin. The others were nodding. 'That sounds fine. We'll need a good bit of cash, though, so start hunting through your mum's purse and looking in your dad's pockets. Okay?'

'Magic'

The cemetery sat at the top of The Brae. It was quite large, sprawling with the headstones of mining accidents and many other less newsworthy deaths. Matty Duncan was buried here in an untended but often visited corner. Mary passed this corner, and glanced at the gravestone. If he hadn't died, it would have been my father . . .

The cemetery contained most of Mary's family. A lot of plots had gone untended for too long, and yellow-flowering weeds were beginning to make serious inroads, giving the place a rank, lush look and a constant pungency resembling that of urine.

Mary stooped over one or two graves on her way to her parents' plot, and pulled up some of the silent, stubborn weeds. Seldom did they come up at the roots. Mary knew that hers was merely temporary surgery.

Her parents' tombstone gleamed still. In a few years it would lose its shine, but not yet. The letters were dull gold and indented clearly. Mary squatted by the graveside and placed her posy of flowers on the grass. She lifted the two glass jars from either side of the tombstone. There were partly withered stalks in one. The other was empty, someone having taken the flowers she had placed in it so delicately last week. She said nothing and thought nothing, just walked with both jars over to a small hut beside which stood a bin and a cold-water standpipe. She emptied the stalks into the bin where they landed on top of other matted and decaying vegetation, and rinsed out both jars under the tap before filling them. The icy water lingered on her hands, freezing them, sending all feeling to some foreign region.