Light Errant (10 page)

“Yeah. Uh, is Jamie here...?” I did have to ask, to be ready to meet him if the answer was yes, just those few seconds of warning I wanted; but even as I asked I had a moment of doubt,
what if they're not together, what if he gave her the jeep as a farewell present, what then?

But she only shook her head, dark hair tossing cheerfully across her face as she said, “You've just missed him, he slipped off somewhere on his bike. Why, did you come to see him?” All sorts of undercurrents there: a playful pout,
didn't you come to see me, you dog?
but a serious question beneath it,
do you know what's going on, is that why you're here, looking for your blood-brother?

Yes.
“No,” I said, “both of you,” I said, and that seemed to be good enough. She grunted disbelievingly,
I know what you boys are like
, but she grabbed my hand and tugged me inside, hauled me up the stairs and into Lauraland.

o0o

I used to love this flat, because I used to love her. That past-tense feeling would be a good thing to hang on to, I thought. Just to be clear about things. Maybe there'd be some help upstairs, new furniture, rearrangements. I wanted unfamiliarity, to kill any nostalgic welling in me for the sufferings of yesteryear; I was even looking forward—sort of—to seeing Jamie's things around, blokeish touches to temper the subtle but positive femininity I remembered, that had been totally Laura.

Blokeish touches there were aplenty, from the bass guitar on the landing to the auto mags piled by the sofa in the living-room to the collection of serious beers in racks below the hi-fi, Jamie's version of a wine-cellar; and there had been redecoration also, plain shades of paint over all the various wallpapers of a classic student flat. But the furniture remained the same, as it was in my own—no, in Jon's place now, Jon's and Janice's; the flat smelled the same as it ever had, of flowers and fresh air and nothing nasty lurking in any corner; and there was an indefinable sense of order that I associated still with a female hand, and here with no one but Laura. That guitar wasn't just dumped on the landing for want of anywhere else to put it, or—even more laddishly—want of the enthusiasm to find or carry it anywhere else; that was its place and it seemed to belong there, to have a statement to make as you came up the stairs. The magazines weren't exactly tidy in their pile, but neither were they strewn across the floor or scattered through the flat. Might have been Jamie who had stacked them there, maybe even without Laura's standing over him to insist; but it was still her mind-set that was in charge here, it was still very much her flat.

The furniture surprised me, a little. Cheap and manky as it was, I'd have thought it would be long gone from here. Jamie too had his standards, derived from a lifetime in clover, second and only surviving son of my only surviving uncle. Used to mahogany and oak and fine leather beneath his arse, he seemed unlikely to have stuck this stuff so long. Maybe they didn't spend much time here, but even so I'd have expected him to sweep it all out and refit completely.

But then, really I'd have expected him to sweep Laura out of here and set up home for the two of them in an area very much smarter than this. Rented accommodation just wasn't Jamie's style; rented furniture was almost funny. Perhaps this was Laura's hand again, her stubborn feet digging in,
no, I won't be your kept woman, Jamie, and I won't touch your family's filthy money. You want me, you share my life, woodworm and wet rot and all.

Yes, that made sense. I was pleased with myself, sorting it out so fast; but then I saw her watching me, much amused, and realised I'd been stood in the middle of the living-room gazing around me, logging everything, practically working it out on my fingers while she no doubt followed all the workings on my face.

“Ben, love. Put the helmet down, take the backpack off, take the jacket off, sit down. What can I get you?”

This was still morning; did she need to ask?

“Coffee, of course. Strongest, blackest. See if I can outchew you.”

Stunningly, amazingly, she shook her head. “I don't think we've got any real. I'm off it at the moment, and Jamie doesn't care, he drinks the most disgusting muck. I can do you a mug of disgusting muck, if you want one?”

That meant instant, and if she'd had anything to do with the shopping it'd be good instant, or as good as instant gets; but this was still not a credible position. “Hang on. Run that past me again. You're
off
coffee?
”

The Cappuccino Kid, we used to call her; Elle Espressa, in the evenings. Limitless capacity for caffeine in all its forms, endless enjoyment thereof.

She shrugged, smiled. “Makes me feel sick. Hormones, I suppose. Nasty girly stuff, you don't want to know.”

Damn right I didn't, but it was too late for that. This was suddenly, achingly, unbearably familiar. Good hot Catholic country, Spain, full of bad hot Catholic kids. Lots of sex, little contraception. “Laura, are you pregnant?”

“Clever boy. Do you think it shows?” She flattened her hands, her clothes across her stomach, peering down at it, exaggerating everything. Trying hard, doing no good at all.

No, I didn't think it showed. She'd put on weight all over; there might be a little extra swelling, a little hardening of the belly to talk of the alien within, but I couldn't tell without touching and I wasn't going to touch. Even with an invitation, I wouldn't have wanted to touch.

Thinking
alien
(though it wasn't, not really, it was only part and part of two people I loved), thinking of foreign bodies stirring into life within concealing flesh, I felt something not at all foreign but bitterly unwelcome stirring in my own guts, a sudden sharp twist of a long-buried blade. The echo of an old cry,
it should have been me!
—and the echo returning brought all the old pain with it, cruelly renewed.

I'd thought—or no, maybe not that, but at least I'd vaguely hoped—that I might have been past this by now. Older and wiser, I'd thought myself (don't
laugh
), infinitely more experienced. Marina and Sallah, a dozen girls in a dozen cities, more than. So cosmopolitan, I'd thought myself, so sophisticated. How could I possibly still be carrying a torch for a girl who'd never so much as kissed me with her mouth open?

I guess I had my mouth open just then. Laura was smiling at me, reaching to run her fingers through my hair,
sorry, I shouldn't have tried to be smart, you needed it breaking more gently
, still doing what she could to make this easy: anxious for me perhaps, but not at all for herself or anything that came with her. Totally comfortable with that she seemed, with being pregnant and Jamie's girlfriend and all that that implied; and I think that's what flipped me over in the end. Pregnant—okay, that happened, though she was a medic, for God's sake, she should have known better. Pregnant by Jamie—well, again okay, sort of. Somehow. I could find a way to handle that. He was always a careless bastard. The only real surprise was that it hadn't happened before, that I knew of. But pregnant by Jamie and utterly content, all the weight of clan history hanging over her like the darkest of thunderclouds about to break and her still unfazed, blithely unheeding: I could never have wished her unhappy, but this was too much. This was a wedding-ring and more, this was
I'll take on all his cursed family, all their evil, past and future both; it's worth it to me, so long as I can have him.

Grief enough to me that she had found him sexy, desirable, acceptable two years ago, and me not. The time between had changed me not enough, seemingly, and her too much, if she could make such a commitment. Laura had a solemn soul under her wild skin, she'd never make a baby without making promises to go with. Making and demanding, and just how changed must Jamie be, that they could make this work?

Didn't matter. It was just a stray thought spinning through a mind sick and dizzy, hurting, reeling. What did matter, what could possibly matter? Answer, not a lot. Certainly not my own behaviour, that clearly didn't matter a damn to her, she was only trying to be nice because she was a nice girl and it was the nice thing to do.

If it didn't matter to her, it didn't matter. Not a problem then that I was on my feet in a surge and blundering mutely for the door, jerking free of her staying hand and not listening, only distantly aware that she was talking, following, pleading with me almost as I took the stairs two and three at a time. Couldn't hear a word, against the hiss and suck of a dark tide pulling at me that I had no will to fight.

To get out of there, that was all I wanted; not to see that radiant calm in her, not to look and look for any hint of a bulge in her waistline, not above all to wait for Jamie and see him, see him and her together. Been there, seen that already. I'd been carrying those pictures in my head all this time, wondering, imagining; didn't want the truth of them acted out now before me, where it couldn't be denied or dismissed as not important any more. The real truth was in me, impelling me through the door and slamming it behind me.

Onto the bike, and only realising then that I'd left jacket, helmet, rucksack behind me. Too late to worry, I wasn't going back. Keys were in my jeans pocket, that was all that counted.

I blasted away from her door like all the demons of hell were behind me, and I thought they were. Looking back was a no-no, whether she came or not; she might be standing there in the street screaming my name, but I couldn't hear and I didn't want to know.

Where to go? Again it was a question, and likely the answer eventually would be back to Jon's, but not yet. I wanted speed, I wanted to stare open-eyed into the wind to drive incipient tears back into my skull. Only one route to take, then, the same way I'd always gone when this fierce need was on me; once more it didn't need thinking about, it didn't require decision.

o0o

Adolescence famously has its agonies. Adolescents famously try to run away from them, into drink or drugs or whatever mind-blasting high can numb the pain awhile. Me, I'd tried and used them all, but driving at speed was always the fall-back position, if only because it did the thing twice: it gave you an experience to escape into and at the same time it actually took you away from there, it brought you physical escape. Whatever shit I took with me in my head, I always reckoned geographical distance had a lot to recommend it.

Which I guess is why I'd gone eventually to Europe, looking for escape on the grand scale; I might have picked America or Australia, only that there would have been problems getting the bike across and I never would have left it.

And now I'd come back, thinking myself so grown-up, grown out at last of those teenage clothes, albeit a few years late; and here I was doing it all again, racing shadows of the past down a long straight road, trying to outrun what I carried with me.

o0o

Ten miles the road ran with hardly a kink in it, thanks to the Romans who built it first. Never mind what else they'd ever done for me, Latin classes and toga parties and walks along the wall, this was enough to earn and keep my gratitude. This was plenty.

Jamie and I used to race this road. Sometimes I used to race this road alone, when the need to get away was stronger. Later, after I left the family home in my first weak rebellion, I used to yearn for it; loving and losing Laura, never truly having Laura to lose, could have driven me this way a dozen times a month, except that then I had no bike.

And now here I was and there was Laura and she'd done it to me again, or I'd done it to myself because of her; and I did have the bike, and I did crouch over the handlebars and gun the engine to the max, and pity any poor fool who got in my way because I was truly in no condition to be driving at all, let alone driving like this, but oh, I was going to drive.

o0o

And did; and nobody did get in my way, because actually there was a dual carriageway now from city to coast, had been the best part of my life, and that tracked the river and took most of the traffic. The old Military Road didn't really go anywhere any more, only past a defunct industrial estate and a lot of farms to the site of a Roman camp long since buried under sand-dunes. Good beaches beyond, and a very good hill just before the sea came in sight: boy racers loved this road, but no one else used it much.

So I wasn't really a danger to anyone but myself, once I got past the city limits. That was fine, that was just the way I wanted it. I cooled down fast, in the chill of the drive; didn't take long before it was only myself I was hating here.

Or so I thought, slacking off on the speed at last. But suddenly there was another wheel nosing into sight, catching at the corner of my eye, another bike unexpectedly keeping pace with me. I glanced across, scowling, wanting no competitor—and all but lost control of the BMW as I found myself staring at Jamie from only a metre's distance.

Oh,
fuck
it! My head jerked forward again, I squeezed another kick of power out of my bike, and still couldn't leave him behind. Virtuously helmeted, he was riding a stripped-down Japanese scrambler that shouldn't have been able to match me this way on a clear road. He must have tweaked the engine for racing; racing me on tarmac was going to knack his tyres, but that was small comfort.

Jamie my cousin, my blood-brother, always my rival and always the victor, now more than ever so: right then hating him was no problem, no burden at all.

We screamed along that road, wheel to wheel and head to head, no advantage except that he always did have the advantage over me; and it can't have been more than a minute or so but it seemed like an age before at last we came to the gravelled lay-by that was the turning onto Hob's Hill.

I twitched left and slammed on the brakes, coming to a savage halt on the rough ground. He did the same, and again we glared at each other. No words needed: he gestured up at the track and the scrubby slopes, I nodded, and we were off again.