The Steep Approach to Garbadale (22 page)

They didn’t know. They could not be sure, not even of themselves, and playing it out by talking about it was the only way they had to deal with the uncertainties.

‘He brought the soil from Garbadale, too, same way,’ Alban told her. She was sitting up now, peering through the green gloom at the convincing-looking cliff. They both wore jeans; his T-shirt was the best they could do for a blanket. She still wore her blouse, though he’d undone the buttons and it was hanging open at the front. He knelt behind her, putting his hands to her breasts and cupping them, then nuzzling his nose through the dark, fragrant mass of her hair and kissing the nape of her neck. She pressed back against him.

‘Why bring the soil?’ she asked. He bit her neck very gently and she shuddered.

‘That made a bit more sense; lots of peat in it - very acidic. Let them grow different types of plants.’ He ran his open mouth down to her shoulder, tips of his teeth leaving faint red marks on her skin. He pulled back to get some of her hair out of his mouth. ‘Plenty of peat on Exmoor, too, though. Must have—’

‘Do that again,’ she said.

He did that again.

After a while she rose back up against him and then turned so that they were kneeling face-to-face, and kissed him very deeply for a long time, before pulling away and saying, ‘Listen; at Jill’s party the other night?’

‘Uh-huh?’ he said.

‘I bought some condoms from her.’

His heart leapt. He stared at her. ‘You did?’ he said, uncertain. Mouth dry.

She nodded. Her eyes looked very wide and she was still breathing hard. She quickly wiped some hair from her mouth then held his face in both her hands.

‘So,’ he said, then had to stop to swallow. ‘Does that mean you want to?’

She nodded again. ‘Suppose it must.’ Her gaze searched his eyes. ‘You?’

‘Oh, fuck,’ he said, letting himself go partly limp, as though he was about to faint or something. ‘Sorry. Yes. Oh, yes. Come on, you know.’

‘I was saving them for our last day,’ she explained, talking quickly, urgently, ‘when your parents are here, but that’s mad; there’ll be more people around and anyway it’s probably when my period starts.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Right.’

‘Only one problem.’

‘What?’

‘I left them in the house.’ She twisted one corner of her mouth, raised both eyebrows. ‘Eek.’

He reached for his T-shirt. ‘Where are they?’

She put her hand on his. ‘Too long to explain. I’ll go.’

He helped her do up the buttons on her blouse.

‘You sure about this?’ he asked her.

‘Positive.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘Yup.’

She kissed him quickly, stood. She looked up and around in the half-light, hair swinging to and fro. ‘Raining,’ she said.

He listened, too. He could hear a pattering noise. ‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Back soon.’ She pushed out of the bush. He heard her running on the brick path.

He lay back, chest heaving. He looked up at the pattern of light and shade produced by the glimpses of grey sky and the dark underside of the broad leaves. It was finally going to happen. He sat up. Was it? What if she changed her mind? What if somebody at the house told her to do something she couldn’t get out of or made her go somewhere, or if someone had found the condoms wherever she’d stashed them, or what if it was all just a joke, and she was off to lie in a bath, or sit on a couch in the sunroom, eating chocolates, reading magazines and giggling at how she’d left him?

He got to his feet and paced, ducking his head beneath the great bare looped branches of the bush, stepping over an exposed root. No, she wasn’t like that. Some of her friends played practical jokes on each other and teased each other all the time, but one of the things he thought was great about her was she didn’t take part in any of that. She might laugh with the others, but she didn’t like being cruel. So, she’d be back. She’d be true to her word. Maybe he should have a wank first; when they did it properly he’d probably come really quickly and that would be frustrating for her, wouldn’t it? Maybe he’d come as he - or she - put the condom on. That would be embarrassing. And a waste.

He paced back, almost hitting his head on a branch. A few drops of rain got through the canopy of leaves and hit him on the face. It was quite dark outside now.

He glanced at his watch. Maybe she wasn’t coming back. How long had she been gone? He ought to have looked at his watch when she’d left, but he hadn’t thought. Oh, but it might be going to happen, they might be going to do it!

The rain came on harder.

She wasn’t coming. She had never meant to come back. He was fooling himself. She was fooling him. He was a fool.

He sighed and looked up, shaking his head. He listened to the rain, sounding quite loud now, all around. The temperature had dropped a little.

Out of the sound of the rain there came the slap-slapping sound of trainers on a wet brick path. He held his breath. He heard leaves rustle nearby, but she didn’t appear.

He was about to stick his head out of the bush, but then saw a shadow appear at the place he’d been going to push the branches aside, and she was there, wet through, hair plastered to her forehead, grinning. ‘Wrong bloody rhodie bush!’ she said. She was breathing hard. The rain-wet blouse stuck to her breasts.

He stepped forward and took her in his arms.

 
He did come too quickly. She caught her breath when he first pushed into her, though she still said it hadn’t hurt. They weren’t even sure the condom was on right because it had been reluctant to unroll, but it seemed to work. No blood, which they both thought was good. He got to see her vagina for the first time, even though everything had become very dark under the canopy of leaves. He kind of wished for a torch. She thought it was ugly but he thought it was the single most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire life.

They waited, her stroking his back with her hands, listening to the rain, feeling the odd droplet hit their naked bodies. Twigs and old leaves and bits of soil, all dampened by the raindrops starting to patter through the canopy, began to stick to them. They were both beginning to feel cold. Then they did it again, using a fresh condom.

He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but it was such a corny thing to say, and this was somehow such a corny time to say it, he didn’t. It took a bit longer this time. She came a few seconds after he did and this made him want to cry.

They lay pressed together, holding each other in the gloom, listening to the rain.

 
Two days later his mum and dad appeared for the weekend, to take him back to Richmond. They brought Grandma Win with them, though mercifully they’d left the deeply annoying Cory behind with friends.

‘Alban’s a prefect at school, aren’t you, darling?’ Leah said, leaning to take a mouthful of profiteroles.

‘Leah, please,’ Alban said. He could feel his ears going red. He took a drink of lemonade. His father laughed silently, sipped his coffee.

‘At her school,’ Aunt Clara said, ‘Sophie’s a monitor.’

‘Really?’ Grandma Win asked. ‘Isn’t that a kind of lizard?’

Sophie’s eyes widened as she added some sugar to her coffee, but she didn’t say anything.

Uncle James looked confused.

Grandma Win was a tall, thin, sharp-looking lady who had what Alban’s dad called Thatcherite hair. She was fifty-nine, which was pretty ancient, obviously. She’d be sixty in a couple of months. She carried herself in a very upright, angular sort of way and always looked a little stiff. She wore large glasses with a graded shade element, even indoors, and often wore mauve dresses and tweed twin sets. Her voice was usually soft but a little throaty, which she excused on the grounds that she still liked the occasional cigarette. It was a very English voice, which always surprised Alban because she’d lived mostly at Garbadale for twenty years now with Grandad Bert, who was much older even than Grandma Win and who’d broken his hip last year and tended to stay there at Garbadale all the time.

‘So, Alban,’ Grandma Win said, ‘do you play
Empire!
on the computer? What do you think of it?’

Alban looked up. He glanced at his dad, then at Grandma Win. ‘Ah, no, Gran. Not really.’

‘Oh dear,’ she said, frowning. She looked at Andy. ‘Andrew, don’t you let the boy play?’

‘We’ve decided Alban can use my home word processor for writing essays and so on. In the coming academic year.’ He glanced at Leah. ‘We’d really rather he didn’t play computer games.’

Leah nodded.

‘Oh, I see,’ Gran said. ‘Well, I think we have to hope that not all parents feel the same way about their precious little darlings, or we’ll be bankrupt.’ She emitted a brittle smile and leaned forward towards Alban. ‘I bet you
want
to play games like
Empire!
, though, don’t you, Alban?’

Alban glanced at his dad, who was watching him with a look of wry amusement.

‘They look interesting,’ Alban said, hoping this would keep everybody happy. He went to take more lemonade but he’d drained the glass. He pretended to drink anyway, hoping nobody would notice. A last dribble. God, he’d thought that - now that he’d Done It - this sort of embarrassment would stop. He’d felt like he’d become a man two days ago, with Sophie, but nobody else seemed to have noticed any difference; they still treated him like a child. Mind you, he supposed it was for the best nobody had noticed.

In fact, he’d already played the arcade version of
Empire!
, and one of his friends whose dad published a computer magazine had a Nintendo Entertainment System and a Sega Master System, and there was another version on the NES which he’d also tried. The arcade version didn’t really work because you couldn’t make a territory-capturing game fast enough to keep people coming back with more coins, though the games designers had done their best. The NES version was better and more suited to the character of the game but looked clunky, and the board game was still more satisfying. He hadn’t wanted to mention any of this in case Andy and Leah disapproved. Looking at Grandma Win, though, he had the oddest impression that she could tell all this. He’d never sat at the same table as her before, never really talked to her properly. He was starting to think she was quite a scary old woman.

‘I don’t see what’s wrong with rounders,’ Uncle James said suddenly. ‘Or rugby. Children watch too much telly as it is.’

‘Oh, James, please,’ Sophie said, over her coffee cup. She shared a brief look with Alban as her father did his intensely funny turning round in his seat thing, pretending to look for this person called ‘James’ who must just have entered the room.

Sophie and Alban had met up twice more and yesterday they had used up their last two condoms in the tumbledown remains of an old cottage at the southern boundary of the estate. He’d found an old tarpaulin and cleaned it up and brought it to spread over the grass and nettles in the centre of the ruined building, and they’d lain together there. They’d laughed and giggled afterwards, tickling each other and trying to keep quiet, just in case. These dinners, afterwards, have almost become fun. They exchange sly looks, catch each other’s eye and have to suppress smiles, and - once, last night, the way they were seated - he felt her stroke his leg with her foot. Meanwhile their parents chatter and natter and clatter their cutlery and talk about all sorts of rubbish, perfectly oblivious.

This was the third little shared moment they’ve had, this meal.

Alban let the sweet, conspiratorial smile linger just a moment. Then Sophie looked away. He asked for a coffee and, as he accepted it, glanced at Grandma Win, to see a hard, narrow-eyed look disappear, like something swallowed in by her whole face, to be replaced instantly by a thin, glasses-glittering smile.

 
The next morning, the day before they’re to leave, he goes to Barnstaple with Andy and Leah and he just walks into a chemist’s and - using money that usually he’d have spent on sweets or a single - buys a packet of condoms. His face is scarlet and he can’t look at the assistant, who is young and pretty, but it doesn’t matter; it’s done. He’s done it. He feels intensely proud. When he gets out of the chemist’s he wants to jump in the air and shake his arms and
scream
! Instead he just makes sure the packet is firmly lodged in a secure jeans pocket and walks with a grin and a swagger back to where they’ve all arranged to meet.

 
‘Really? Alban, you’re marvellous!’ she yells, taking hold of his shoulders then throwing herself against him, hugging him and kissing him.

They’re down in the long grass on the far side of the old orchard wall, in the early part of dusk. He’s supposed to be doing some final tidying-up before the so-called ‘proper’ gardeners start again next week. She’s meant to be taking a walk down to the river in the last of the light.

She’d thought it would be a sorrowful, frustrating goodbye, but now they have condoms, and, thankfully, her period still hasn’t started. (He’d completely forgotten about this, he realises as they start undressing each other - if he’d remembered he probably wouldn’t have thought it worth the embarrassment of buying the condoms in the first place.)

‘This is getting better every time,’ he whispers into her ear, a little after entering her. They’re bucking and jerking away at each other, not always in sync, but the actual feeling of being joined like this is becoming something he’s learning to enjoy properly. The first time or two it was all so quick and complicated. There seemed to be so much going on there was no time to appreciate it.

‘I love you inside me,’ she whispers back.

Then he feels her stiffen. ‘Ssh!’

‘What?’ he says. Maybe too loudly.

She slaps a hand over his mouth, forces him to lie still on top of her. He wonders if this is some new sex thing she’d read about - he’s read about a lot of stuff in Plink’s older brother’s porn mags, and even in Leah’s
Cosmopolitan
- but then he realises she’s heard something. He starts to bring his head further up to look her in the eye, but she pulls it down again.