The Naked Drinking Club (34 page)

‘It’s OK,’ she said.

That made me even worse, and I began crying for everything: for my grandfather at the end of his life, for the death of my grandmother, for my parents and how miserable they had become. I cried over happier times with us all together, before we were scarred and changed for ever with unhappiness, times when my grandparents would take me on the bus down to the seaside every summer, and how we would always sit upstairs at the front and look out at everyone, laughing at all the funny things we saw. I thought about me desperately walking around the streets of Newcastle alone a few years ago, trying to find clues that would lead me to my mother. I cried about my fear of being close to others, and how I saw what was normal to most as a weakness with me. Eventually, the crying fizzled out, and we lay quiet for the longest time, until I drifted off.

‘I gotta pee, OK?’ she said. Running her thumb lightly over my forehead. Sometime later I felt her move off the bed and I felt immediately afraid that she was leaving.

I listened to her pee trickle down into the toilet, the only sound anywhere now that the rain had stopped.

We slept for five hours, which took us into the late afternoon. A firm knock on the caravan door woke us, and I checked the time on Anaya’s watch. I got up and moved along the furniture, clutching at things to make it to the door. I felt in much worse shape now; every part of my body ached, my stomach felt as though it was eating itself, and I had a headache like I had never known before.

I opened the door. The rain had begun again and was pelting down. Jim stood outside with a waterproof hooded jacket on and a pizza takeaway box in his hand. ‘Come on then, let me in.’

‘Is it the next day?’ I asked, letting him into the caravan.

‘No, it’s bloody not the next day.’ He shook off his coat and threw the pizza box on to the table. ‘Still got company have you?’ He rolled his eyes.

I pointed to the bedroom. ‘Yeah, Anaya is, eh, sleeping. I think.’

Jim mumbled that he didn’t want to know.

‘I thought you wanted to be on your own today,’ I said, wanting him to go.

‘Get some of that in you.’ He pushed the box towards me; I opened it up and ate a slice of Hawaiian. I was ravenous.

I said, ‘I keep seeing these spiders, imagining them crawling around.’

‘I’m not bloody surprised. Look at the state of you.’

I chewed and talked. ‘Jim, I’m sorry about the pissed-up behaviour, I really fucked up.’

‘Pissed-up behaviour! That’s what you call it, is it?’ he said, half laughing.

I felt embarrassed at my appearance, and could see Jim looking at my nails and hands, which were filthy despite the shower I’d had earlier, no doubt from scrabbling on the ground, hiding from the police. I was disgusted at the sight of my swollen hand holding the pizza slice, and the appearance of it next to the ham was making me feel sick. I had never been sick before with drink, and vowed to myself that this would not be the start of it.

‘How’s Scotty?’

‘He’s much worse than you, but he’ll be OK, he’s a young lad, which is probably what saved him.’ Jim spoke about Scotty as though he had survived a plane crash, living for days on top of a dangerous mountain. ‘He’s coming back to the site tomorrow, all going well.’

‘Thought he was going home?’

‘Nope. He’s refused. Doesn’t want to worry his mum.’ Jim shrugged his shoulders. The bedroom door opened and Anaya walked out wrapped in a blanket.

‘Hey, Jim, how are things?’

Jim changed his mannerisms when Anaya came in, and began punctuating his Scotty update with two-handed thigh slapping, then he drummed on the table, while Anaya sat next to me, helping herself to the pizza.

‘Right, you,’ said Jim, pointing at me. ‘I’ve been thinking, and you and I need to have a talk.’ I saw the teacher in him again. ‘Get your bathers or whatever and meet down the beach in ten.’

‘Why?’ I looked out at the rain, which now appeared torrential.

‘We’re going to sort out this bloody state of yours. You’re no good to anyone like this.’

‘There, that’s you told,’ said Anaya, eating her second slice, apparently without a care in the world, and back to her old self again.

I did feel better on the beach. The battering rain took away my mental claustrophobia, waking me up a little. There was no wind and no surf, it was humid to the point of the rain feeling warm, but it was hard and pounded off my head, hurting my facial injuries when I looked up.

‘Breathe in that beautiful, fresh sea air.’ Jim took huge breaths, striding ahead of me towards the edge of the ocean. I copied him. ‘This’ll sort your bloody head out.’

Now that my breaths were exaggerated, I could taste the levels of stale drink in my system, which made me want to throw up. I staggered along, waving one arm around, unable to match Jim in his enthusiasm. We reached the edge of the water. I turned to look along the shore, almost expecting to
see
Anaya heading down to us. But there was no one in sight. The beach was deserted from where we stood for a mile in each direction.

Jim started to strip, just as some lightning appeared. ‘Right then, get your kit off, come on.’

‘Isn’t the lightning dangerous?’ I said, a little apprehensive.

‘Fuck’s sake, after what you’ve got up to, you’re worried about the lightning?’ He had a fair point. ‘It’s not lightning that’s going to bloody kill you.’ He threw his jacket and shoes away from the tide and ran in.

I winced as I peeled off my top and shorts, and waded in behind him. The tide was full in, making me waist deep in a few strides. Jim swam front crawl fast and furiously out to sea. Thunder grumbled over us, as I lay on my back and looked up to the darkest sky I had seen in any daytime: a thick charcoal sky that looked as if it was about to swallow us. The waves started to build slightly and bobbed me around. I kept looking up, trying to faze out the spiders; I’d only seen a couple since entering the water. I tried to clear my mind of Anaya, of the night before and what had happened today, of the panic I felt about her, and of my increasing remorse over the bar fiasco. I ducked under the water, and swam down to the bottom. Hundreds of little fish darted around, moving out of my way. The shape of Jim swam towards me. I surfaced. The spiders were gone.

‘Much better, eh?’

‘Yeah, thanks. Jim?’ We both stood facing each other.

‘No, listen to me, you!’ He firmly grabbed my arms with both hands. ‘I’m going to tell you this once, and never again, OK?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, of course.’

‘Chris, my brother, was always trouble, ever since he was a lad. Always in trouble, always pushing things with everyone. He had a massive chip on his shoulder, always thought he was the worst off. I didn’t tell you when I spoke about it before, that my brother ended up dead.’

‘Fucking hell, I’m so sorry. Fuuuck.’

‘Yep, and I spent four months in hospital with this.’

‘Now I see why Scotty was pissing you off so much that night we played truth or dare, when he kept going on about it.’

‘Scotty’s all right, but he’s a fucking idiot as well, and the annoying thing is he reminds me of our Chris.’ Jim cupped seawater.

‘Is that when you decided to come here?’

‘A lot more stuff happened after Chris died. Some things have a knock-on effect, you see, and then everything else seems to slide away.’ He trod around a little. ‘I hated teaching, it was so bloody disheartening, but that’s another story. The way I looked at it was that I had another chance after that fight, another crack at it, so why spend my life doing something I hated?’

‘No point,’ I said solemnly. ‘What happened to the people who stabbed him?’

‘Seven years, reduced to five in the end.’

I shook my head.

‘Destroyed almost everything, wrecked my mother. My father worked twenty years in the pits and survived them, but the shock of Chris killed him a year later.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Look, I’m from a good family, you know. I mean, there were five of us, so it was hard at times, but we were well brought up. Chris was the youngest. There was a time when my mum and dad nearly separated, and my mum had an affair with someone and got pregnant with Chris, so he was my half-brother, yeah? It was tough for him because he only discovered it when they had a massive row, and my dad shouted at my mum about the last child not being his.’

I listened, willing the story to bring me closer to my own destiny.

‘We all loved Chris and never thought about him as anything but our brother, and their son. But Chris was on self-destruct from that moment. We loved him, but he didn’t like himself, couldn’t accept his life the way it was.’

A bird swooped down in the background; my gaze followed it.

‘Are you listening, Kerry? Because this is important, and it’s the one and only time I’ll talk about it. My life’s about moving on, do you understand?’

‘My life is too.’ My eyes filled with tears, and suddenly I felt
ugly
and small, and such a misguided idiot for thinking I looked good in the bar, all beaten up, and fucked in the head.

‘I don’t know you well, Kerry. I think I do, but I don’t know what’s eating you. ’Cause I see Chris in you as well, and it’s very hard to let it happen again.’

I nodded, too choked up to be able to speak.

‘Listen to me.’ He grabbed me again, his jaw tensing, his eyes watery. ‘I made a mistake, Kerry. I was angry and I made a mistake.’

I looked at him quizzically.

‘I should never have left you both on the beach that night. I’d just had enough. I could see what you were doing and I just couldn’t let it go on, but it was really wrong of me to leave you both there. I wasn’t thinking. You see, it reminded me of stuff. I’m sorry.’

‘Please, I don’t blame you. We were being very annoying, really, I know that.’

‘Well, I’m deeply sorry for what I did.’

‘Forget it. Not your fault, you know?’

‘I know you’re still young, but if you don’t sort some stuff out now, you’ll go the wrong way, and there’ll be a point when it’s all irreversible, do you understand?’

I understood more than he could imagine. Thunder clapped again, this time nearer, and a fork of lightning appeared on the horizon.

‘There was nothing I could have done for Chris, he made sure of it. It was the worst thing, to see someone I loved destroying their life.’

‘Yeah – but poor Chris, not being told the truth by your parents. No wonder he went fucking mental, that’s enough to destroy everyone.’

‘NO! Life deals you stuff, Kerry. I’ve said this to you already. It deals you stuff, fuck knows why, but it does, and either you chose to let it ruin you, or you make the most of it, and move on.’

‘That’s not true, not everyone has difficult stuff to deal with. Look at Andrea and Karin, they’re OK, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, I agree they seem reasonably happy girls, but that doesn’t mean to say that they have got through life without
any
mess or pain. Besides, they’re young. Who knows what kind of hand they’ll have been dealt by the time they’re my age or older? By the way, Karin is the first person I think I’ve met in a long time who’s not fucked up. That’s why I like her.’

‘Yeah, well, I was dealt a shit hand to start with.’ I wasn’t buying any of that there’s-loads-of-people-out-there-worse-than-you crap; it didn’t make me feel any better, or any better equipped to deal with what was happening in my life at this moment.

‘Listen. You make the most of the hand you’ve got, and that’s that.’ Jim ducked under the water and came up again, sweeping back his hair.

This felt like the right time to tell him my story, to open up to him, and so I started. I began with the morning of my eighteenth birthday, when I took the bus into Edinburgh to Register House, and waited in a library-style silent queue for an hour, and was then taken into a small room with tall ceilings. How I showed my driver’s licence as ID and paid a clerk five pounds. A while later, the clerk and a second person brought an enormous ledger into the room and laid it on the table in front of me, with a piece of paper acting as a marker sticking out from one of the pages.

‘There you go,’ said the clerk, opening the book at the marked page and turning round to face me. My heart was thumping through my chest.

In faded black fountain-pen writing was the date of my birthday in 1965. Next to it was written ‘Mother’ with a line under it. The name read ‘Madeline Thomson’. It gave her occupation as a nurse, and her age as eighteen. It said the father was ‘unknown’. There was another name underneath: Joanna Thomson. That was me, that was the name I had been given for the purposes of my birth. It only stayed with me and was used by my mother for the three months before she handed me over to my new parents, who would know nothing of my old name or the people who made me. There was an address for my mother at the time of my birth. It was in Newcastle. Then there was a signature belonging to my mother. I ran my fingers over it. It was the first thing I had ever known about where I was from and perhaps the only
thing
I would ever see that came from my mother, except for myself.

I asked the clerk for a copy, but she said that was not allowed. I got out my notebook and wrote down the information before my allocated time was up. As I left, I looked at the queue of people still waiting – most of them were around my age – who were about to go through the same thing I had just experienced. They looked at me; we all knew how it felt to be each other.

I tore out all the other pages in my notebook that had already been written on and decided that the book was only to contain notes and findings regarding the search for my mother that began that day.

I began drinking heavily. Then one night, three or four years later, quite unplanned, I boarded a bus for Newcastle. I spent a day and night there wandering around asking questions, going from house to house in the streets around my mother’s original address. I spoke to an old woman who had been a neighbour for many years of a woman whom I thought might be my grandmother. She was the one to tell me that there was a middle daughter called Madeline, who’d lived in the house with her seven sisters after her parents died. In the mid-sixties she met an Irish soldier by the name of Duffy, whom she married and emigrated to Australia with within a matter of months. The woman thought the daughter had mentioned Sydney as their destination but she could not be sure. I slept in the bus station before returning to Edinburgh, and from that day on planned that I would eventually take up my final search in Australia itself.