The Naked Drinking Club (31 page)

When I got back to Scotty, his head was resting forward on his chin, like he’d fallen asleep.

‘Scotty! Scotty. It’s Kerry, wake up. Wake up.’ I shook him gently but he didn’t answer. I searched in his jeans pockets with my left hand, my right hand now throbbing in agony with what I took to be a break, and found his Zippo. I lit it up and lifted his face with my elbow under his chin. I didn’t recognise him.

I couldn’t see his eyes, they were so swollen and cut; his nose was broken, there was no doubt about it, for it lay well over to the left of his face, and his chin was elongated and out
of
shape. His ear was torn at the bottom. The worst thing for me was his T-shirt, which was saturated with blood, not sweat. All the time I had thought sweat was pouring out of him, he was losing blood. I remembered him complaining about being cold. I began shaking and crying, and felt for the first time ever that things had gone way too far in a bad direction, and that I was completely unable to cope. I felt paralysed with fear that Scotty might die. I prayed in panic to anything; I made quick promises of change, if Scotty were saved.

Then I heard what I thought was the Kingswood coming back towards us, and I ran back to the road crying and begging.

‘Oh God, please, please!’ I waved my arms. ‘Jim! JIM!’ I screamed.

Jim pointed to the trees from the driver’s seat, indicating that he was pulling in there, as it wasn’t safe to stop just after the bend. When he stopped, I slumped down onto the bonnet until he got out. His face was white; his eyes darted all over my face as he asked me where Scotty was.

‘Fucking hell,’ he said, about to touch my head with his thumb, then deciding not to. He looked as though he was going to explode, but bit his hand instead and composed himself.

‘It’s not good, Jim. Scotty’s not good,’ I blubbered, as I led the way to the tree he was resting against. As soon as Jim caught sight of Scotty, he ran to him and crouched down.

‘Scotty.’ He shook him but got no response. He started feeling his pulse under his jaw. That’s when I lost it.

‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, no, please, I’m so fuckin’ sorry.’ I paced around, convinced Scotty was dead.

Jim said, ‘I need you to go into the boot of the car and get the first-aid kit, it’s in a green box with a cross on it, OK?’

‘Oh fuck, Jim, what the fuck.’

‘Just do it, please.’

‘The fuckin’ police are looking for us, we can’t stay here, Jim.’

‘I’ll do it.’ Jim stood up and took me by the shoulders. ‘I need you to be calm now, Scotty needs our help. Stay here and breathe, OK.’

I nodded through tears, then fell to my knees in front of Scotty, praying while trying to stifle my sobs.

I heard Jim shout ‘Fuck!’ from the road. He ran back to us.

‘Fucking took the box out to make room for all our stuff in the boot, didn’t I?’

‘Jim, we were in a massive fight in the pub down there. Scotty bottled someone, the police came, please, we have to get him in the car.’ I looked up anxiously to the road.

‘FUCK!’ Jim clutched his head, then grabbed me to steady me and get my full attention. ‘Right now, I need to ask you some things, OK, so I need you to listen.’

‘All right.’

‘Did he hurt his neck?’

‘I don’t know, Jim, he was fuckin’ set about by eight blokes. He’s lucky to be alive, if he is, I don’t know.’

‘What about his legs, back? Do you know anything?’

‘Look.’ I bent down and flicked on the Zippo at Scotty’s face.

‘FFFFUCK!’ Jim lifted him up under the arms. ‘Take his legs, Kerry, we have to get him to hospital, now.’

I stood rooted to the spot by the shocking sight of Jim trying to drag a limp, lifeless Scotty.

‘TAKE HIS FUCKING LEGS!’

We moved him back to the car. I stayed in the back seat with him. Jim told me to keep Scotty’s head up, then he hit the gas like he did on the dirt track on the way to the waterhole. I would have given anything to be back there now, before it all went wrong.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

I LOOKED IN
the mirror above the washbasin in the hospital toilet and surveyed the damage to my face for the first time. My left eye was closing up and my brow swollen and cut, pressing down on it. My top lip was all puffed out like I’d just had plastic surgery, and cut inside from where my tooth went through the gum. I had a tooth mark in my forehead from the headbutt, half a tooth chipped, and my left cheek looked so swollen and felt so big that it didn’t feel as though it belonged to me. Above the bridge of my nose as it met my forehead was an enormous egg, which was bruising already. And my hand was swollen to the point that I couldn’t see my knuckles; my thumb stood out at a right angle, clearly broken or dislocated.

I lifted my top to see if my ribs were bruised; they were OK, but it was hard to breathe in or out without pain down my left side.

I was thirsty and starting to feel nauseous. I should have been repulsed by the sight of my face, I should have felt utter revulsion for myself and the mess I had got us into, but a part of me liked what I saw; it felt and looked like a fitting punishment for all my behaviour, not just that evening, but for ever. I now looked on the outside how I had always felt on the inside. Ugly, and fucked up.

I waited along with an assortment of injured people in a seated area in Coffs Harbour A & E. I waited with Karin, who Jim had organised to sit with me while he registered Scotty himself, in a bid to keep us separate and not attract any police attention, just in case. Jim sat in the next section of seating,
staring
ahead. People looked at my face whenever they thought I couldn’t see them. I felt hard. I was the only facial injury in the waiting room. Someone had a bloody towel on top of their head, but other than that, it seemed to be mostly relatives of the injured, and a few hand and leg casualties.

While we waited for news of Scotty, I imagined the accidents that had brought those other patients here. Despite how pleasing feeling hard was after my beating, now that I was safe again, I would have traded my disgraceful incident for any of the innocent accidents that sat around me.

‘I just want to ask him how he is,’ I said again, for the fourth time.

Karin shook her head.

‘I don’t know what to say. Is he all right?’

‘Leave him for now, it’s best. We’ll talk later. Let’s just get through this, OK?’

That was it. It was all over with the group and me. I’d fucked that all up, and now Karin was this expert wife of Jim’s, and I was taking polite orders from the Danish.

I focused on a checklist poster for hepatitis on the wall next to the water machine opposite, to distract me from my anxiety. I mentally ticked four out of six of the symptoms, and then decided to bury the information. Next, I tried to piece together what had happened from our arrival in Port Macquarie. Of course, there was the bar down by the harbour that we all went to soon after arriving. I remembered Jim ordering food – I thought they all had prawns – but I was sure Scotty and I had nothing. Small patches of detail were coming through, and I didn’t want to ask Karin quite yet, didn’t want to weaken my position even further.

What fucking position is that, Kerry? I asked myself, in one of my most sober moments of the last few days, as I returned to the hepatitis checklist.

‘Mr Crown. Mr James Crown?’ shouted a doctor with a clipboard. Jim jumped up and disappeared behind a curtain with him. Karin and I both let out a big breath through our noses at the same time. We waited for about five minutes, and then Jim came back out and gestured to Karin to meet him at the end of the corridor.

‘Stay there, I’ll be back soon, OK?’ she said.

Jesus, I felt like a convict and she was my parole officer. It annoyed the hell out of me to have that soapy-clean fuck telling me what to do. My remorse and temporary meekness seemed to be turning into anger and resentment as usual. Then I was disappointed at my knowing that I was angry and resentful but not being able to change it. My head was buzzing and all my thoughts were racy and weird; it made me think of my report card at school, which was the same every year: ‘Kerry is her own worst enemy’.

I needed to get away from my head; I needed to know that Scotty was all right, then get away, face my come-down alone, then start again in a few days. I’d give myself a few days to patch everything up, then I’d make my apologies and leave them, before they asked me to leave. I’d then find my mother and get better.

I got up and headed for Scotty’s cubicle before Jim and Karin came back.

He was conscious, which was an enormous relief, but the sight of his mashed-up face made tears well up in me again.

A nurse swept back the curtain. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked officiously.

I had to stop myself from saying, Yeah, I’m fuckin’ lost, and thought this was the toilet. ‘We were staying in the same backpackers’ a few nights ago, I saw him in here and just wanted to, you know, see he was OK?’

‘It’s a wonder you recognised him, poor guy.’

‘Well, I didn’t.’

She searched my face suspiciously, and then I remembered I’d been beaten up and that’s probably why she was searching my face.

‘I know his friend outside from a’ – I desperately tried to think of a respectable, happy-go-lucky travelling-around-Australia activity – ‘from a parachute jump.’

‘Well, you won’t be doing any of that for a while by the looks of things. What happened?’ She opened some swabs and wiped Scotty’s ear. His eyes were sleepy, fighting against closing.

‘I was really stupid and went surfing at night, when I had too much to drink.’

She raised both her eyebrows.

‘And smashed into the rocks.’

‘Yeah, you won’t be the first pom to do that.’

I tried to smile, a sideways smile from the less swollen side of my face, which immediately felt entirely inappropriate.

‘What rocks are they? The surf’s kinda flat tonight, isn’t it?’

I really couldn’t deal with a Miss Marple at this juncture. ‘Not at Scotty’s Head, it’s not.’

Scotty moved a little in response. The nurse wasn’t to know that I could lie and bullshit my way through anything.

‘Anthony has to rest now, he’s in quite a bit of pain I should imagine, and I’ve given him a shot.’

I stroked his hand, which was puffed out and bleeding across the knuckles, then stroked his forearm instead. ‘Yes, sorry, I’ll just be a second.’

She hurried around, tidying stuff away, and wheeled a trolley back in from outside the curtain before leaving. I bent down close to Scotty’s OK ear. I had to clutch my side to hold the bend.

‘Scotty,’ I whispered. He grunted. ‘Fuck, Scotty, I’m so sorry, I’m so fuckin’ sorry.’

He swallowed and nodded slowly. I kissed him on the side of his face. He was trying to say something. I stood up, looking for his mouth to produce something audible.

‘You fuckin’ …’ He was breathless between each word.

‘Don’t say anything, just get better. Please.’ I moved a piece of hair back off his forehead.

‘Came … back.’

‘What?’ I didn’t quite understand him.

‘You came back for me, mate.’

They felt like the saddest words I had ever heard. Scotty tried to smile, which broke my heart. My head dropped down, and I sobbed.

‘I’ll see you soon, Scotty,’ I said, grabbing some plasters and disinfectant wipes on the way out.

Karin had her arm round Jim in the hospital corridor as they drank from paper cups, just like in all movie hospital scenes. She rubbed his back as I approached.

‘Where are you going now?’ Jim was near boiling point. He hadn’t looked at me since we got in the car at the roadside. He scared me like this; I didn’t know how he was going to react. I’ve always been afraid of simmerers, you just don’t know where you are with them.

‘To get some air. I had a quick look in.’

‘For fuck’s sake, nobody saw you, did they?’

‘No, don’t worry, I just looked quickly.’

Karin said, ‘It’s just we’ll have to fill in an accident form and we don’t want the police finding out that you’re together. Otherwise, there will be big problems for you both—’

‘Yeah, I know.’ I cut the Danish off; she was annoying me with her new high rank.

‘He’s got, eh, how do you say it? Semi-conscious problem?’ said Karin, struggling with her wording.

‘Concussion,’ said Jim, looking at the ground, swirling the dregs of his coffee round in the cup.

‘Yeah, thought so,’ I said.

‘Broken jaw, broken nose, broken teeth.’ Jim read out his injuries like a shopping list. ‘He’s going to need stitches in his ear, his head, his
mouth
.’ Karin stroked him again when he boomed out ‘mouth’. ‘And he’s got a small stab wound in his chest, inches from his heart and lungs.’ Then he looked at me for the first time in ages, his suntan completely gone. ‘He was very, very lucky.’

It was only a matter of time before someone mentioned luck. He looked away again, which I was glad of.

‘I’m angry at you both, Kerry.’ He looked up again, and sighed. ‘I can’t very well bollock Scotty, can I? I want to know what happened up there, but I think you should just go and sort yourself out for now.’

‘Sure,’ I said, very much the told-off child.

‘Bloody take a look at yourself, for Christ’s sake.’ Jim looked ashen.

‘You had better go back and see the nurse, otherwise you’ll miss your place,’ said Karin, trying to force a flat-lined smile.

‘I’m not seeing the nurse. I’ll cope – and it’s better anyway, because of the police. What did you say about Scotty?’

‘That he was attacked in Coffs Harbour and mugged.’
Karin
was doing all the answering now. ‘You need to see a doctor, Kerry. What about your ribs?’

‘What are they gonna do, anyway, uh?’ I felt like a total delinquent as I walked out of the hospital. Karin ran after me. We pushed open the double swing doors of the entrance. I winced with pain as I pushed into them.

‘Kerry, please stay here with us, no more trouble, please. Jim is like this because he’s very worried, there’s stuff about him I will tell you later, or maybe he will. He’s like this just now because it’s his way of coping.’