One particular afternoon from that time stood out in Billy’s memory. He would have been about fourteen. It had been a hot, sticky couple of days in an otherwise dismal summer, and when Raymond turned up at Billy’s house, he didn’t have a shirt on, only a pair of mulberry-coloured loon pants, the backs frayed where they dragged along the ground. Raymond’s dogs swirled about on Billy’s small front lawn, growling and snapping at each other. One of them was called Cabal, which had been the name of King Arthur’s dog. The other one was John. John the dog. Raymond thought that was funny. When Billy answered the door, Raymond held up a plastic bag and swung it from side to side. The contents clinked. Billy knew then that they would be getting drunk together. Raymond would have conned somebody into buying alcohol for him, or maybe he’d been shoplifting again. If you stole something and got away with it, you were innocent. That was Raymond’s philosophy. You were only guilty if you got caught, and Raymond never got caught: people would look into his face and see nothing but honesty in it.
“I’m going out for a bit,” Billy called back into the darkness of the house. He heard his mother’s voice, but Raymond was already turning away, so he shouted, “See you later,” and then slammed the front door shut. Once on the pavement, he glanced up and saw a bent head in the upstairs window. His brother Charlie, reading. Charlie’s A level results were due any day now, and they were all expecting great things.
That afternoon Raymond and Billy did what they usually did. To get to the park, most people would have walked along the road, a distance of less than a mile, but Raymond and Billy would cut across the open fields, which took them past the brine reservoir. Billy was fascinated by the warning signs — drowning hazard, corrosive liquid — and he was drawn, too, by the mysterious square brick huts. As for Raymond, he had his own personal agenda. The reservoir belonged to the company he held responsible for his father’s death, and he would be muttering threats and curses as they approached the padlocked gates. He seemed to like this route to the park. It kept his hatred fresh.
There was a place where the path narrowed, and they had to walk in single file. Raymond went first, the dogs running on ahead. A high hedge shielded them from the sun; the air cooled suddenly. As he followed Raymond, he noticed the paleness of Raymond’s back, more like the inside of something than the outside, as if the skin had already been peeled away and this was the fruit, the goodness, the part that you could eat. He felt himself blushing, and he lagged behind, feigning interest in a discarded cigarette packet.
Later, they lay side by side on the warm grass. They started with barley wine. There was a kind of thickness to the liquid in those small brown bottles; you could taste how strong it was. Drink three and you’d see double. They drank two each, then switched to vodka.
“You want to do something?” Raymond said.
Billy was staring up into a sky that was so smoothly blue, so absolutely free of clouds, that it made him feel dizzy, and when he heard the words “do something,” his heart turned over.
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
And then, when Raymond didn’t speak, he said, “Like what?”
“Come on.” Raymond got to his feet. Two fingers in his mouth, he whistled to the dogs, then he began to walk.
“Where are we going?” Billy asked.
Raymond didn’t answer.
They circled back past the brine reservoir and ducked through a wire fence, coming out on to the footpath that led to Raymond’s house. When they arrived, his sister, Amanda, was lying on her stomach in the front garden, reading a comic. She was wearing a lime-green bikini and sunglasses with pink plastic frames. She was only eleven, but she already had breasts.
“You’re burning,” Raymond said as he passed her.
Amanda gave him a V-sign without even lifting her eyes off the page.
Billy grinned, but she didn’t notice. They were all the same, he thought, these Percivals…
Once they had locked the dogs in the back yard, they got two bikes out of the shed and cycled down the hill to Weston Point. They had to wait at the level crossing while a train laboured past. Billy counted eighteen wagons, each one filled with chemicals. The gates lifted, and the two boys cycled on. The village streets were deserted. All the shops looked shut, even though they weren’t. You could feel the heat rising off the tarmac in ghostly waves.
They hid their bikes in the gap between a fence of concrete slats and an old free-standing garage, then they scaled a wall and dropped down into a jungle of bindweed, lavender and nettles. Billy had climbed into other people’s gardens before, with Trevor Lydgate, when he was younger, but this felt different. There was something driven about Raymond, something merciless. Billy looked towards the house, with its black windows and its untended garden, and wondered what Raymond had in mind.
Crouching low, they crossed the lawn, and when they reached the house they flattened themselves against the wall, their palms and shoulder blades pressed against sun-toasted brick. They must look as if they’d been caught in an invisible force field, Billy thought. Like people in a science-fiction programme. Turning his head sideways, he met Raymond’s gaze, and they both began to laugh. And once they’d started, they couldn’t stop. They bent double, gasping, trying not to make a sound. What if someone comes? Billy kept thinking, but that only made it worse. In the end, Raymond brought out the vodka. He took a long swig, then offered it to Billy. Billy swallowed some. It was warm and slightly oily, and he shivered as it went down.
Just along from the back door, they found an open transom window. The frosted glass told them that it was a lavatory. Raymond heaved himself up on to the window ledge and slithered in head first, his legs wriggling comically for a few moments before they disappeared. I hope no one’s having a crap in there, Billy thought, and he had to pinch his arm hard to prevent himself from having the hysterics again. He glanced round quickly to see if anyone was watching, then followed Raymond through the narrow gap. He was stockier than Raymond, which made it more difficult; one of his trouser pockets snagged on the window-catch and ripped. Using both hands, he managed to manoeuvre himself down from the closed lid of the toilet seat on to the floor, landing in a heap at Raymond’s feet. He stood up. The room was only just big enough for the two of them, and he could smell the alcohol on Raymond’s breath.
“What are we doing here?” he said.
Raymond shook his head, then opened the door. They stepped out into a long, thin corridor with brown walls and a floor of cracked linoleum. There was a rack of musty raincoats, and a metal Hoover with a torn dust-bag. From somewhere near by came the squeaky chipmunk voice of a cartoon character.