Jago (7 page)

Under a fortress of books, the remote phone buzzed. Paul sorted through the desk until he found the receiver.

‘Station Six Sahara,’ he answered, a giggle at the other end identifying the caller. ‘Hi, Patch.’

‘Yo, Paul.’

‘Haze,’ he shouted, ‘it’s your sister.’

Hazel, having just let another bottle pass inspection, straightened up from the board and said, ‘I’ll just wash my hands.’

Paul told Patch—Patricia—Hazel was on her way, and they chatted. Patch was the only other human being in the large Chapelet family. In the bad moments, he even wondered whether he had picked the right sister. Younger than Hazel by a year, she’d gone straight from school into a junior admin post at the Arts Centre, and gained a power base as their head of publicity and promotions. Since the AC was on campus, she sometimes joined Paul for lunch in term-time. He wondered if Hazel were jealous of her sister. In her position he thought he might be, but the girls seemed to have a good relationship.

‘Work going well?’ Patch asked.

‘Pass.’

‘How’s married life?’

‘Um,’ he thought aloud, ‘here’s Hazel now.’

He heard Patch laugh as he handed over the mobile phone. Patch was sharp.

Hazel wandered off into a corner of the garden, by the kiln shed, and talked quietly into the phone. Patch would not have called in the daytime, interrupting work, unless there was some problem.

The week after the party, he had nearly phoned Hazel several times but couldn’t think of a casual enough excuse for getting in touch. In the end, she had called him, inviting him to a private view at the crafts shop where she worked half the week. There, he had been introduced to her elderly parents. Her father took an instant dislike to him which had since grown. Hazel only had three small pots among the new work on display, but he bought one.

It was on the desk now, pens and pencils in it. She had since told him that her tutor helped with the glaze, but he still thought it one of her best pieces. At the end of the evening, before she went off with her family, they kissed seriously…

‘Come on, Patch,’ Hazel said, louder than her normal level, ‘you know what Dad’s like!’

…and eventually, after meals and movies and weekend afternoons, they were in bed in his flat with nothing else to do but make love. It was rather tentative at first, but became more rewarding as spring faded into summer and the flowers dried up and died. Apart from a brief getting-it-out-of-the-way talk about contraception, they had not discussed their sex life much. Recently, it hadn’t been much to talk about.

Hazel was laughing now, and had come out of her corner.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking at the sickly garden, ‘it’s lovely here.’

When they had finished talking, Hazel gave him back the phone, compressing the aerial with a deft push.

‘Well?’

Hazel bit her lip. ‘It’s Dad again, you know…’

‘The same thing?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I don’t see what the fuss is. Patch left home years ago.’

‘Patch is Patch, I’m not. She says Dad says Mum’s having angina twinges.’

‘And you’re to rush to the bedside?’

Hazel shrugged. ‘Patch didn’t say Dad said that.’

‘Of course not.’

‘You shouldn’t take against Dad, Paul. He’s only concerned.’

Hazel walked back to the studio, and Paul looked up the hill at the trees beyond the property. Sunlight reflected on something, and he half imagined an enemy, spying.

A
s soon as his brother said, ‘I’d shag her if she had a paper bag over her head’, Teddy knew he was going to get bashed. As certain as night follows day and flies swarm on cowshit. There was nothing he could do about it. Whenever Terry said something stupid, a clever answer popped into Teddy’s head and he had to let it out. If he had to be thumped a certain number of times in his life, this was as good a way as any to use them up.

‘I reckon,’ Teddy began, pausing to catch his brother’s attention, ‘I reckon youm’d have more luck with girls if youm wore the paper bag.’

There was a pause as it sank in. Terry always took a few seconds more than a normal person to get the funny. Teddy listened to flies buzz, and waited for the thump. Terry looked at him, nearly cross-eyed, and, quick as a snake once he had worked it out, leaned over to get him. Teddy took the casual but knuckly backhander on the ear. It hurt, but it could have been worse. If they were out with Terry’s mates and Teddy showed him up, his brother used closed fists. After sixteen years of sharing a room, Teddy was an expert on what his brother would do if provoked. It had taken him a long time to realize not everybody acted like a caveman.

‘You’m stupid!’

Whenever Teddy proved he was cleverer than his brother, Terry said he was stupid. Teddy sometimes reckoned he was stupid; for not keeping his mouth shut. But it was a waste not to use a funny when one came along.

Her name was Hazel, and Teddy couldn’t see anything wrong with her face. Especially not from three hundred yards away, using a pair of binoculars that didn’t really work. Terry wanted women to look like the glossy tarts in the magazines under his bed.

They had been watching her from the top of Gosmore Farm orchard for over a week now. Neither she nor her boyfriend had climbed that far up the hill, so they hadn’t been found out. So far. They would be in the end. If Terry was in it, they always got caught. That was another of the laws of nature. When they were seven and ten, Terry had masterminded the theft of three giantsized bottles of Coca-Cola from the garage shop. Jenny Steyning’s dad had caught them, and their own dad had taken their shorts and underpants down in front of everyone at the garage (in front of
Jenny,
Teddy remembered with a flush of embarrassment even after ten years) and taken his belt to their backsides. Since then, Terry had been caught for almost everything: bunking off school, knocking off records from the market in Bridgwater, snogging superhag Sharon Coram, smashing windows at the back of the village hall.

They were supposed to be out after rabbits, but even trigger-happy Terry hadn’t fired a shot in days. Hunting was bad this year, like everything to do with the land. It was the heat. The undergrowth was yellow and rotting. The rabbits must all have had their brains fried, or tunnelled to Iceland. At first, the summer had been great: being outside, getting a tan, earning an extra tenner picking plums. Now, it was a pain. Teddy’s back itched where his sunburn peeled. There was nothing to do. At least, not until the festival.

‘Meeting’s at six, Einstein,’ he reminded. ‘If we’m not there, James’ll cross us off the lists. Youm know he don’t like you.’

‘Six’s not for hours, thicko.’

‘This’s
boring.
’

‘No, ’t ain’t.’

That was it. No more discussion needed. Terry wasn’t bored, so there was no shifting him. Terry fiddled with their dad’s binoculars, trying to get them in focus. The little wheel was missing, so he had to get his finger in and work a cog with a nail.

Teddy didn’t care either way about the Gosmore Farm people, but Terry fancied her and hated him. Terry said he must be a poof. Hazel wore shorts and a halter most days, and had good legs and a flat stomach. For a week, Terry had been thinking aloud, laboriously trying to come up with a scheme to get the boyfriend out of the way so he could have a crack at chatting Hazel up. Some hope. It was difficult not to laugh at Terry when he was plotting. His plans were so stupid, like the time he wanted to steal a barrel of beer from the Valiant Soldier. They wouldn’t have been able to lift it, let alone drink it.

Watching Gosmore Farm really was boring. Hazel was mostly out of sight in the old cow shed making pots. She only ever came out for meals and an hour or so of sunbathing in the late afternoon. The sunbathing was what got Terry worked up. Sometimes, she lay on her front and untied her halter. From the top of the hill, Teddy didn’t find it much of a thrill. When they first started to watch Hazel and her boyfriend, Terry had reckoned they’d take drugs and have it off in the garden. Terry said Hazel was probably a nympho. Terry had a thing about nymphos. According to
Knave
and
Fiesta
and him, nymphomania was as common as hay fever. Considering most of Terry’s ideas about women came from the times when Sharon couldn’t find anything better, Teddy supposed his brother’s delusions were understandable. However, he still considered nymphomania a mythical condition, like the curse of the werewolf.

It occurred to Teddy that his brother might be a werewolf. Terry had a thick pelt on his legs and chest, his eyebrows joined over his nose, and he did a lot of growling.

Any hairs on his hands, however, Teddy put down to something else Terry did a lot of. Terry growled now. Hazel and her boyfriend were out of sight.

‘Bet they’m going to have it off tonight,’ Terry said, pointing his shotgun at the house, taking an elaborate sniper’s aim. ‘Pow!’

‘Le’ss go, Einstein.’

Finally, Terry stirred.

‘I know a short cut,’ he said, and Teddy’s heart took a high dive. For someone who’d spent his whole life in Alder, Terry was incredibly unable to find his way around the woods. But he always tried to come on like Indiana Jones.

Teddy had only come out with his brother because it was even more boring at home. Dad was off working for Old Man Maskell, and Mum just wanted to watch soap serials or quiz programmes on the telly. This summer, Teddy was waiting for his exam results. His teachers said he’d have no trouble getting into college. Terry had left school as soon as he could and never taken exams. Even the army wouldn’t take him, and the farmers all knew enough about him to give him only seasonal work. He got his booze, fag and rubber-johnny money from under-the-counter jobs.

‘We’ll be there in five minutes,’ Terry said, pushing into the undergrowth, Teddy unenthusiastically at his heels. As it turned out, the one thing that thrived on this year’s weather was the common bramble. The footpath was clogged with a tangle of vegetable barbed wire. ‘C’mon, thicko,’ his brother ordered.

Teddy had tried to be as mean and stupid as Terry, but couldn’t carry it off. He got interested in his lessons and was pleased when he did well. Most of the things Terry and his mates did or wanted to do struck Teddy as being boring as well as stupid. Terry sometimes said he could set Teddy up with Sharon, and
that
wouldn’t be boring. Teddy did not doubt it. The problem was talking to her before and afterwards. Secretly, Teddy still fancied Jenny Steyning. No one had seen much of her since she got religion.

Finally, after much scratching, they reached the Agapemone property, only to find a recently reinforced hedge too high to climb and too thick to breach. With some ill feeling, Terry let them give up and double back to the road. By the time they arrived, the meeting had started. On a dead patch of grass just by the Gate House, about twenty teenagers from Alder and the surrounding villages were sitting, cross-legged or sprawled out, paying attention as James Lytton addressed them. They were mostly lads, with two or three girls mixed in.

The man from the Agapemone paced, ticked off points on his fingers, repeated himself to add emphases, and made pointed jokes as if explaining the ins and outs of the D-Day landings to a roomful of army officers. He sounded like someone from a war film as well, his accent not really posh but not normal either.

Everyone else had cans of beer. James had laid on refreshments for the meeting, but they had run out before Teddy and Terry got there. Terry took this badly, and thumped his brother’s arm to establish whose fault it was.

‘Settle down at the back there,’ said James, like a teacher.

Terry unshouldered his gun and squatted in sullen silence near Kevin Conway and Gary Chilcot, and Teddy had to take some ground near Allison, Kev’s creepy, skinny sister. At primary school, Allison had bullied all the boys and, once or twice, had slapped Teddy until he cried. Now, she had long black hair, big black eyes and a worse reputation than any boy in the village. Terry said Allison fancied Teddy, and would torment him with it. Allison crept into his nightmares sometimes.

‘What have we missed?’ asked Teddy.

‘Nothing,’ said Kev. ‘Same speech as last year.’

‘Would the neanderthals who’ve just discovered the power of speech kindly refrain from using it while I get through this, please? Then we can all get in the pub earlier.’

A beery cheer went up, and everybody looked dangerously at Teddy and Terry.

‘Thank you very much,’ James said. ‘Now, back to the agenda. Item nine: the weapons policy. By now, you should know this one. There are a lot of dickheads in this world, and plenty of them turn up here with nothing better to do than make trouble. We try to weed them out, but we can’t eliminate them altogether. What we can do is ensure they aren’t lugging any heavy artillery. Look for knives, baseball bats, suspiciously sturdy walking sticks, catapults et cetera. We’ve never had hassles with firearms or crossbows before, but be on the lookout. There’s always a first time. No one turned up with a stun gun until last year. There will be various people who, for one reason or another, will be in costume. All the legitimate theatrical groups will be blue-badged. They’ve promised us that any swords will be cardboard and rayguns nonoperational. As for anyone else, Vikings will be relieved of their axes, ninjas of their chain sticks. There is no negotiation on this issue. If you see anyone violating our weapons rule, come to me or any of our security people, and we’ll deal with the offender. Don’t try to be a hero and handle the confiscation yourself. As Gary will tell you, it just ain’t worth it.’

Gary Chilcot rolled up his sleeve and traced his scar with an index finger. The year before last, he’d tried to take a sharpened screwdriver off some paranoid kid and wound up with a tetanus infection. There were some humorous expressions of disgust around him.

‘Joking aside, be on the watch,’ James continued. ‘We’ve got a secure area marked in red on your maps, where all the little cowboys can hang up their gun belts. We were lucky last year, electric shocks aside, and had relatively little trouble. Let’s not let things slip. Item ten: entry points. We’ve heavily pre-sold this year to take the pressure off the gates, but we’ll still be taking plenty of admissions in cash. Now, off the record, I’d far rather a few canny punters sneaked in for nothing than have two-mile queues tailing back through the village. The order of the day is to keep things moving. We’ve got five entry points to the estate, if you’ll look at your maps…’