The Quarry (16 page)

Hol hugs herself in her big white cocoon of jacket. From this angle, I can’t see the muddy mark on the sleeve or the burn hole on the back.

‘Usual quota of ongoing emotional crises happening at the time,’ Hol says. ‘All part of the Willoughtree House merry-go-round. Your dad and I had been an item for a half a term in first year but then went our separate ways, amicably enough. Pris had succumbed to his charms too, a few times, but they were never really a couple. Ali had had a thing with Rob most of that term – this was second year – but then that had fallen apart a bit messily and she’d moved out for a week or two, slept on some girlfriend’s floor. She’d been back that night to try and sort things out – with Guy, about whether she should stay the next term, not with Rob, who was enjoying being single again. She and I ended up sitting cross-legged like a pair of little pixies on the bench there.’ She nods back at the two concrete uprights against the wall of the tower. ‘We’d never really got on that well – she was closer to Pris, though I think Pris was sleeping in the back of the hearse at the time while the guys were off looking for interesting places to pee or something – but for some reason she decided I was her best friend that night. Said she was thinking about leaving the course, the uni, not just the house, because she was so upset at what had happened with Rob.’

‘Oh dear,’ I say, in a gap, while Hol is gazing out to the sunset.

‘Thing is,’ Hol says, sighing, ‘I sort of had a quiet thing for Rob myself; had had almost from the start, but by the time Guy and I were apart he was with Ali, and after that he was enjoying screwing around too much … But he’d said just that evening that he was already getting tired of these meaningless first-year fucks – we had all the world-weary wisdom and ennui that comes from not being a first-year oneself, so—’

‘Hey!’ somebody shouts from the top of the tower. We both look up. Haze is waving at us. ‘Where …?’ he shouts, then looks behind him, disappears briefly, comes back. ‘All right!’ he shouts down, voice almost inaudible in the stiffening wind. ‘… breath back! Or … thing!’

‘Now what?’ Hol says. We both go to the doorway. ‘You guys okay up there?’ she shouts up the stairs.

‘Taking a rest!’ Paul’s voice comes floating faintly down. ‘Heavier than he looks!’

‘Fucking …!’ Guy shouts too, but his voice is fainter still and we lose whatever follows.

‘They must be on a landing,’ I say. There are three small landings on the way up, where the doors to the rooms are. I guess the guys are resting on one of those. Hol shrugs. We go back outside, stand looking at the view again.

Hol just gazes into the distance.

‘I didn’t know all that,’ I tell her after a moment or two when she hasn’t said anything. I try to sound interested. I
am
interested, but I know that me being interested and actually sounding interested are not always the same thing and I have to work at letting people know that sort of stuff. Anyway, this prompt works.

‘Yeah, well, like I say; all a bit of a merry-go-round back then,’ Hol says. ‘Full of hope, hash and hormones.’ She gives a small laugh. ‘And wholefood. That was Haze’s thing, mostly.’ Hol shakes her head. ‘That man discovered more types of lentil than we ever knew existed, or wanted to. Different ways of cooking them too, not all completely horrible. There was a while when Guy and Rob seemed to be competing over who could bed the highest number of women in a week; they were hardly out of their bedrooms and Haze was hardly out of the kitchen. I told Haze, he, Guy and Rob were all just the same, really; anything with a pulse.’

She looks up at me and smiles.

‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘this night, I thought I’d spotted my chance to see what would happen with Rob and me. At the time he seemed like the happy medium between Guy and Paul. Guy was already starting to become his own tribute band; too full of himself and determined to be eccentric to be a decent … mate; all right for an interesting, exciting interlude but not proper boyfriend material.’ Hol pauses, looks at me as if to see whether I’m going to take this adverse comment on my dad badly.

I just nod.

‘Paul was always too sensible, too careful, too focused on shaping his life as a sort of support structure for his career,’ Hol says. ‘There was space in his life for a woman, but you always felt there was a pretty tight spec sheet involved and you’d have to answer an advert first, make the shortlist, have your CV polished to a high burnish and then hope to shine in the interview. Rob was smart, funny – in a quieter, drier way than Guy, but still with proper wit – and there was a sort of decency to his ambition at the time; talked about getting into activism, running a charity … Both of which he did, before he was headhunted and turned by the kleptocratic elite … But, that was later. That night, going on what he’d said to me earlier in the evening – which might just have been a sort of tentative approach in itself – I thought I might make my move when we got back to the house, or at least make it nice and obvious and natural that he could make a move for me. See?’ She glances at me. ‘I was starting to mature, beginning to understand that some men like at least the illusion of control.’ Hol looks up at me again and grins. She leans against me, puts her arm through mine.

This is a nice thing to do and gives me a good feeling. Of Dad’s old housemates, Pris is the prettiest, but Hol is still an attractive woman and even though she’s more like an aunt – and, just possibly, a lot closer than that – she’s the kind of woman you can sort of have fantasies about and not feel she’d be horrified if she ever found out. Knowing Hol, she’d just sigh and shake her head. Of course I know nothing will ever happen, but I remember Hol herself telling me it was okay to fantasise, even quite wrong things, as long as the rudeness or other inappropriate behaviour remained virtual and stayed inside your own head. Better to fantasise about your lust or obsession honestly and explore it that way than refuse to acknowledge it at all and risk it bursting out into reality without warning.

‘However,’ Hol says, and sighs. ‘Instead, I found myself telling Ali that Rob had told me he was getting fed up with bedding a succession of pliant first years.’

‘Really?’

‘I know. But there you are. I told her she was the second person to bare all to me that evening and Rob had said this, and that that probably meant he was starting to regret them splitting up and it was probably only your standard-issue male pride that was stopping him from telling her this and asking her to take him back, and she should just be honest and open with him without making herself vulnerable. Frankly I was sort of concocting my own little idealised narrative as I went along from relatively scant evidence, and enjoying spinning this tale for myself as well as for Ali, but it seemed to work; convinced at least one of us. So then the guys came back out of the darkness, and Ali got up and walked over to Rob and started talking to him, and next thing they were walking off round the back of the tower, arm in arm.’ Hol lets go of my arm, hugs herself. ‘Though there was one last lingering look back from Rob as they went.’ Hol sighs. ‘Or so I seem to recall. Light wasn’t good enough to make it out exactly, but I’ve thought about that look a lot, over the years.’

‘Wow,’ I say. ‘What? So … were they going to … Did they, like, you know …?’

‘What?’ Hol says, frowning at me. ‘You mean did they
fuck
? Round the back of the tower? Are you kidding? It was cold and windy and raining; we were already soaked through; last thing you’d have wanted to do was bare any more flesh to the elements. And any of us could have wandered round the back of the tower at any time, caught them. It’s not even as though it would have been their first time and they were desperate. Would have had to have been a knee-trembler, too. Jesus, Kit; even we had
some
standards.’

‘Ah. Sorry.’

‘Nah, they were just talking, then hugging, kissing. But the point is: that was that. My chance, if there had ever even been one, had gone. I was being nice, and the girl’s need seemed greater than mine.’

‘Regretted it ever since?’ I offer.

Hol shrugs. ‘Well, I don’t lose any sleep over it, but it might have been nice to have known.’ She’s silent for a few moments, then glances back at the tower.

I think I can, distantly, hear people going, ‘
Heave-ho!
’

‘Ali and Rob were together from then on,’ Hol says. ‘If it had been me and him instead … Who knows what might have been different?’ She shrugs.

My phone goes. It’s Guy. ‘Dad?’ I say.

‘Fucking terrible idea. Can you get up here, Kit? These lightweights are crapping out.’

‘We are not crapping ou—’ Somebody is protesting as Guy kills the link.

‘I’m wanted,’ I tell Hol.

‘That must be nice.’

I walk up the narrow stone steps. They got as far as the second of the tower’s three landings and had to admit they were never going to get Guy all the way to the top and back down safely. Paul is less fit than he thought, especially in the upper body, he tells us; he’s more of a runner, a marathon man. Plus he had the harder lift, of course, from the bottom. He could probably make it, get Guy to the top, but it’s better not to risk it with an already sick man. Also, it’s a really heavy, old-fashioned wheelchair.

‘Enough fucking excuses!’ Guy yells, his voice echoing in the confined space. ‘Get me back down for fuck’s sake. Stupid fucking idea in the first fucking place!’

I take the front of the chair, holding the small front wheels up near my shoulders while Rob takes the top again. We make it down to the bottom of the tower without dropping Guy or cracking his head on the stonework. He grumbles and curses the whole way. The others are immediately behind us, complaining about the cold, though Rob and even Paul are both still sweating and I’m a little warm myself now.

Hol is standing at the bottom of the steps, just outside. ‘That fun?’ she asks Guy, grinning.

‘And you can fuck off as well!’ Guy shouts at her.

4

G
uy falls asleep in the car. He’s effectively still asleep when I help him upstairs. I leave him on top of the bed in his pants and vest with a cover pulled over him. He’s missed some meds but sleep is probably better for him now. It’s getting dark outside anyway, though I doubt he’ll sleep through.

‘Yeah,’ Haze says, in the kitchen, where a large pot of tea is being prepared and biscuits sought. ‘Reckon I’ll hit the hay too, just for a disco nap.’

‘That might not be such a bad idea,’ Paul agrees. ‘I brought some fig rolls,’ he tells Pris, who is opening cupboards.

‘Fig rolls,’ Alison says, screwing her face up. ‘I never got your thing about fig rolls.’

‘Hey, Kit,’ Pris says when she sees me. ‘Any biscuits left?’

‘Um, possibly not,’ I tell them. There were none on special offer in any of the shops Hol and I visited this morning, or at least none I like.

‘Yeah,’ Paul says, ‘I never really liked fig rolls that much either, to be honest. But I liked them more than anybody else – everybody else kind of hated them – and so they got nicked and eaten only as a last resort, usually when people had the munchies. They lasted longer. Buying them just kind of became a habit after that.’ Paul shrugs, frowns. ‘I still don’t really
like
them.’

‘Jesus,’ Hol says, walking in, wiping her hands. I can hear the cistern in the downstairs loo flushing. ‘You saying you bought something you didn’t like because we liked it even less so you didn’t have to
share
?’

Paul frowns at her. ‘That is pretty much what I just said.’

Hol shrugs. ‘I missed the beginning.’

‘You should have kept your biscuit of choice in your room,’ Alison says. ‘I did.’

Paul nods. ‘I know. But that always felt like having an eating disorder.’

‘Okay,’ Alison says, nodding. ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘These digestives look viable,’ Pris says, staring into a battered-looking biscuit barrel. She sticks her nose in, sniffs.

‘They may be past their use-by,’ I tell her. They are definitely past their use-by and I was saving them for the base of a cheesecake I was going to make, but never mind.

Pris sniffs them. ‘They’ll do.’

‘Yeah,’ Haze says, ‘well, I’m taking myself off to bed. See you later.’

‘Yeah, I’m going to pass on tea and biscuits, too,’ Paul says.

‘Nah, I’ll take a couple of biscuits …’ Haze says, grabbing two and only then making for the door.

‘What?’ Pris says. ‘I’m making a fucking gallon of tea here, guys.’

‘I might go on looking for the tape,’ I tell people loudly, as Haze is in the doorway to the hall. ‘That okay? I’ll try to keep quiet, but …’

‘Yeah,’ Haze says. ‘Yeah, no problem. Laters.’

‘No probs,’ Paul says. He takes out his phone as he follows Haze to the door. ‘Chelsea score,’ he says, clearly, to it, and leaves, peering at the screen. We can hear him tut and say ‘Shit’ as he heads to the foot of the stairs.

‘Would be fucking Chelsea, wouldn’t it?’ Hol says.

‘Not Man-U?’ Rob says, yawning. ‘Surprising.’

‘Tea, Kit?’ Pris asks.

‘Yes, please. I’ll take the big blue mug there; on the draining rack.’

I have several special mugs; the blue one is the biggest. I have my own special cereal plate and spoon, and dinner plate too. I know this is a bit childish but I don’t see any harm in it and it’s just comforting. I kind of keep Guy’s cutlery and crockery separate too, nowadays, since the diagnosis. Before then I’d happily have shared stuff. I think it’s some deep instinctive thing about being around somebody very ill; you want to set up and maintain certain boundaries. This is the reason I didn’t finish Guy’s eggy mug concoction this morning, even though I like it too (another memory of childhood).

I know Guy’s cancer isn’t contagious; you can’t catch it off him, no matter how close you are physically or genetically, not even if you’re his son. That’s the thing about cancer; it’s all yours – it’s entirely, perfectly personalised. The cause might have come from outside – carcinogens in tobacco smoke or whatever – but that just triggered the runaway reaction in your own cells, and in that sense a fatal cancer is a kind of unwilled suicide, where, initially at least, one small part of the body has taken a decision that will lead to the death of the rest. Cancer feels like betrayal.