The Quarry (29 page)

‘Hmm.’ She holds them out in front of her, puts her head to one side. This is an action humans share with dogs. I’ve never worked out why either species employs it.

Technically I’m still waiting for an answer to my question about getting another box; however, I’m starting to think Pris missed it somehow. Eventually I say, ‘Do you think Rick is a thick yellow cord kind of person?’

Pris first purses her lips, then sort of shifts her whole compressed mouth to one side. She frowns. ‘Maybe not,’ she concedes. ‘I’ve never seen him in anything like this. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t try something different, does it?’ She looks at me.

‘Does he have much that would go with them?’ I ask her.

She shakes her head. ‘Not really. Need to be part of a whole new outfit.’

‘Hmm.’

She puts them down on the bed. ‘Do you
like
my new man, Kit?’

‘Rick?’

‘Well, duh.’

‘He seems perfectly nice.’

‘You don’t think he’s …?’

I look at her.

My initial assumption – naturally, I think – is that Pris isn’t sure what she wants to ask me, but then I remember one of those handy-tips-when-having-an-adult-conversation I got from either Hol or Mrs Willoughby (maybe both): sometimes when people leave a question like that hanging it’s not because they’ve suddenly been distracted or have simply forgotten what it was they set out to ask; they’re doing it deliberately (or instinctively) because they want to see what you think. They want to know what
you
believe they were about to ask; either that or they’re giving you permission to raise something that was on your mind anyway.

This applies especially with a question couched as Pris’s question was, as ‘You don’t think …?’ The implication is that the person is worried that you think badly of somebody or something they care about. If she’d said, ‘
But
don’t you think …?’ then the meaning would most likely be reversed. People use this latter form when they think you might be thinking too well of somebody or something they believe needs criticising.

The trouble is, I don’t really have any strong or deep feelings for Rick either way, so I can’t really help here.

‘Don’t think he’s what?’ I ask, resorting to the kind of conversational Route One tactic I’d have used in the old days regardless. It still has its place.

‘I don’t know,’ Pris says, lifting an old black cape with a maroon lining and dusting something off it. ‘I thought maybe, you being, you know …’ She sighs. ‘A sort of independent observer, you might be able to judge whether he … what the others think of him, or what he … how he appears compared to the rest of us, you know?’ She looks up at me briefly, goes back to brushing at the dark cape.

I have a think. ‘He’s younger than you lot.’

‘Do you think they resent that?’

‘No.’

She looks at me. I get the impression this may have been the wrong answer somehow, even though it seemed the obvious right answer to me. ‘Really?’ she says.

‘Well, I don’t think so.’

‘He’s not that much younger,’ she says, almost to herself. She smiles at me. ‘I suppose I worry they could look down on him. Because, I don’t know. Because he didn’t go to uni. I mean, he could have, but his career, you know, just took him along a different path.’

‘I’m not going to uni,’ I tell her.

‘No?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Some people can be a bit, you know, snobbish. Towards people who haven’t.’

I shrug. ‘Their problem.’

She sort of stares at me. Her eyes go wide for a bit. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’

‘He seemed okay,’ I tell Pris. Which is truthful, though of course we all have our own definitions of what ‘okay’ means, and we each might have several different definitions, depending on context. Which allows a lot of room for ambiguity and even misunderstanding. I sort of disapprove of such terminological inexactitude and laxity, frankly, but Hol assures me sometimes this sort of leeway is exactly what people are looking for, especially in a situation where they hope to be reassured.

You get to say something vague that means one thing to you – maybe something not really that complimentary – and the other person is allowed to interpret it as being entirely positive and supportive. As long as they don’t actually misquote you or cite your opinion, as interpreted, as the whole reason for a subsequent, disastrous course of action, this is regarded as a good outcome for both parties.

‘Rick, I mean,’ I add, realising I’ve left a bit of a gap here. ‘He seemed okay.’ I try hard to think of what Hol would want me to ask here. ‘Is he … nice? Is he a decent guy? To you?’

Pris is nodding, still looking at the surface of the cape and picking at it. ‘Yes. Yeah, he’s sweet. Can be really funny, once you get to know him. Lots of mates. And he gets on really well with Mhyra. You know; my little girl.’

‘Yeah, of course. She’s …’

‘Hmm?’

‘She is … your only child, is that right?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Pris says, frowning at me.

‘Well, there you go,’ I say.

‘It’s just,’ Pris says, going back to picking at the cape, ‘we’re such a … bunch of Heathers, you know?’ She smiles at me.

‘Heathers?’ I say, not getting whatever it is I’m supposed to be getting.

‘Film?’ Pris says. ‘
Heathers
. Winona Ryder, Christian Slater?’

‘Not seen it.’

‘Well, long time since I did, I suppose, but I just remember it being about this clique of really bitchy girls, all called Heather. And sometimes I wonder if we’re a bit like that.’

As recently as only a year or so ago, I’d have said something obtuse here like, ‘But you’re not all girls.’ However, now I’m a bit less stubborn about such things and I’ve accepted Hol’s point that you have to partner people in conversations; it’s generally supposed to be a cooperative, not an adversarial, process. You’re helping each other to feel your way to some sort of shared meaning, not jousting from either side of a fence.

Unless it’s Ali, and sometimes Rob, and other people like that, who often do appear to be trying to score points off you. Then the rules are a bit different.

‘Swings and roundabouts,’ I tell Pris. ‘It’s good being part of a gang or a group, but there are negatives too. Bound to be.’

This is close to something Mrs Willoughby’s said, though I also know a little about this kind of thing from first-hand, because I’ve usually – well, always, so far – been on the outside of any given gang, group or clique. Which I don’t mind, because I think you see more as an outsider. (‘Yeah, you see more but you feel less,’ was Hol’s reply when I told her about this.)

‘I’ve got lots of other friends,’ Pris tells me. ‘People from work, from dance classes, pals from my local. Too many, I think, sometimes … But it’s like you always need to come back to the people you sort of half grew up, half matured, with, from uni days, from then, to …’

‘Calibrate,’ I suggest, after a decent interval, as Pris stares unseeing at the cape in her hands.

‘Calibrate?’

‘You calibrate against a known reference point or standard.’ I shrug.

She nods, looks away. ‘Yeah, we’re always measuring ourselves against others, aren’t we?’

It’s not quite what I meant, but if that’s the point she needed to reach, I can’t really contradict her. She’s brushing the cape smoothly now, with the nap, as though trying to soothe it. Her phone goes.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Glo; everything okay?’ There’s a pause, then her face relaxes and she sees me smile. ‘Have you now?’ she says. ‘My. Who could that be?’ Another short pause, then, ‘That wouldn’t be a certain snooky-wook, name of Mhyra, would it? Oh! Is that
you
? Is that my little shnuggy-wuggums, sounding all grown up already?’

‘I’ll get that box,’ I tell her.

‘Can’t seem to pick up the WiFi here,’ Ali says, when I visit her in Outhouse One. It’s cold and damp in this old stone shed of a place and she wears a padded shirt and a thickly quilted gilet of shiny electric blue.

‘WiFi?’ I say, not wanting to give anything away.

‘Yeah,’ Ali says, bringing an ancient, sagging cardboard box down from a shelf. She places it on an old gateleg table she’s opened up. ‘Saw you had broadband and a hub, in your room,’ she tells me, opening up the box.

‘Oh. You were …’ I listen to my voice trail away. I locked my room this morning when I knew we were going to be conducting this search, after assuring people I knew it inside out and that it was one place where the tape most certainly wasn’t. It was Ali I was thinking of, specifically, when I locked it.

‘Oh, I popped in the other night, looking for a spare socket to recharge something, you know,’ Ali says. ‘But I was admiring your games set-up and I saw you had broadband connected and just wondered how come there was no WiFi signal anywhere.’ She smiles at me. The cardboard box in front of her is full of tapes, but they’re the wrong sort; ancient reel-to-reel audiotapes in plastic cases, probably from when Guy was in local radio. Ali starts flicking through them anyway.

‘Yeah, there is no WiFi,’ I tell her.

‘Really?’ Ali says. ‘How does that work? Or not work?’

‘Mostly by me not turning it on.’

‘That’s a little selfish, isn’t it?’ Ali says immediately, as though she already knew this, had gamed our exchange and prepared her reply.

‘Yes, it is a little,’ I tell her. ‘I need it for playing HeroSpace. Paid for it myself.’

‘Well, that’s very enterprising of you, but don’t you think you could afford to share a little? Hol’s indoctrination of socialist values not taken fully after all, hmm?’ she asks.

I just stare at her.

‘Wouldn’t cramp your style as a games wizard too much to turn it on, would it? Bet we’d all be grateful.’

‘You’re all going home tomorrow.’

‘Mm. I suppose. What about Guy? Wouldn’t he like to have WiFi?’

‘Probably not. He’s not that bothered. Have you seen his phone? Hasn’t even got a camera. Its only game is Break Out. It’s a joke. And he’s never really got on with computers.’

‘Does he know?’

I could pretend I don’t know what she means, but I suspect there’s no point. ‘No, he doesn’t.’

‘Oh,’ Ali says, as though I’ve just disappointed her. I’m giving her quite a good hard stare but it’s unappreciated; she’s still flicking through the tape cases, her finger knocking them delicately from one angle of lean to another. ‘I see,’ she adds.

‘But I’m sure he’d love to have something else to dig me up about,’ I tell her. This is a bit bold, but I’m pleased with it; it sounded quite adult. I think Hol would approve.

Ali gets to the end of the audiotapes and closes the box again. She leans her elbows on it, smiles at me. ‘
Do
you know where the tape is, Kit?’ she asks.

‘I wouldn’t have let all this happen if I did,’ I tell her, gesturing around. I am not blushing. I think this is a true statement. It is also an instruction. Just think steely, I tell myself. ‘I don’t need you guys to do all this. I could clear the place myself. I’d rather, in a way.’

‘What was that you were clearing from the room with all the papers, into your room?’

Good grief, the woman sees everything. Yesterday evening I shifted the year’s worth of copies of the
Bew Valley and Ormisdale Chronicle and Post
out of the upstairs room where I’d left them drying and into my bedroom, so they wouldn’t get thrown out. ‘Old newspapers,’ I tell her.

‘Lot of old newspapers.’

‘Fifty-two,’ I say. ‘One year. From the one with the announcement of my birth, back.’

‘Oh,’ Ali says.

‘I thought there might be some sort of clue in the papers that would help me work out who my mum might be.’

‘I thought she was a Jewish princess from NYC,’ Ali says. ‘From this fabulously wealthy family of ultra-strict financiers; some naive exchange student Guy seduced while her bodyguard’s back was turned, bringing shame on the whole family. So they couldn’t possibly keep the baby. Something like that?’ She’s shaking her head, frowning. ‘No?’

‘It depends who you talk to, and that seems to depend on what Guy’s told that particular person.’ I pause, look thoughtful. ‘Though that is a new one. Jewish princess. That would make me Jewish, too.’

‘It would?’

‘It’s a matrilineal … faith … inheritance thing.’

‘Oh. Did you turn up on the doorstep …?’ Ali says, looking pointedly at my groin.

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘Though I don’t think you really need that bit of evidence to be reasonably sure this is another of Dad’s fantasies.’

‘Probably.’

‘I mean, don’t tell him I told you this, but he did once suggest my mum might be one of you. Hol, Pris … you.’ (I’ve decided I don’t care that I promised Guy I wouldn’t say anything about this; the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come round to the conclusion he was just trying to manipulate me.)

Ali grins. ‘Did he now?’ she says.

‘He sort of retracted immediately, but I think that was part of the act, too. He just liked bringing it up, putting it out there, to mess with my head.’

‘Does sound like Guy.’

‘So; not you, then?’

‘No, not me,’ Ali says. ‘Can’t really see it being Hol or Pris either. Hol, if anyone, but even she might have been more, you know, attentive, don’t you think? She’d have been to see you more, if you were hers.’ She purses her lips. ‘Though she does visit quite a bit, doesn’t she? Always has.’ Ali looks – I think – thoughtful. On her, this is a slightly worrying expression. ‘And she did knock back that move to something better and brighter in Manhattan. Hmm.’

‘Yeah. I still don’t think it’s her, though.’

‘No,’ Ali says, nodding, though with her eyes slightly pursed too now, as though her head might think one thing but her eyes take a different view.

‘Anyway,’ I say, holding both arms out, ‘that’s why I was saving the old newspapers; keeping them from getting recycled or thrown on the bonfire.’

‘How’s the fire coming along?’

‘It’s growing. Should be a … good big blaze, when we light it.’

Ali catches something in the way I say this. (I think I might have sort of widened my eyes and moved my ears back a little as I said it.) ‘What,’ she says, ‘do you think we’re getting overenthusiastic?’