‘Who was it?’ the girl next to Caz asks. ‘Sergeant Collis?’ ‘No. No one they knew, that was the problem. Took them to Colyton. Kept them there half the fucking night.’
‘Potter’s a walking disaster,’ says John, draining his glass and knocking me in the ribs again. Drunk as I am, I bring my shoulder up quickly and make contact with John’s arm, cracking the glass against his teeth. His head spins around as he checks his teeth with his tongue.
‘Fucking little—’
‘Want another one, John?’ Nick dives in, convincing John that I’m not worth bothering about while sending Jessie all the right signals.
‘I’m going to have one more, then let’s go. Let’s do something.’ Nick gets up and I try to do the same, sensing an urgent need somewhere between my stomach and my mouth.
‘Here, Jessica,’ a weasel face – or is it a weasel voice? – says somewhere behind me, beneath me, whatever. ‘Your brother reckons he used to drink in London. Is that right?’
Caz smiles across at me. ‘He doesn’t look too brilliant.’ I manage to inch my way around the alcove toward her. ‘You look like you’ve swallowed a bucket of worms.’
‘I think I have.’ I steady myself on the shoulder of Colin, I think it is – a fat-faced wanker who’s the hanger-on of the group. ‘I’ll be back,’ I manage through a clogged mouth.
The next few moments are a dreamlike journey, weaving through the tiny pub garden, banging into everything there is to bang into and doing about three unnecessary circuits as I try to keep out of range of Mum and Dad. I get a vivid, whirling picture of the whole village falling down three hills toward this focal point, where an uneven mass of increasingly noisy drunks straddles the road, lit sporadically by the sick white or slow red of cars’ reverse and brake lights scarring the growing darkness as they move in and out of the car park around the back.
It’s here that I’m headed, too, stepping right in front of an oncoming Hummer in my struggle to reach the toilets in time. I almost don’t make it, feeling my mouth fill with something vile and fluid as I stagger up the step, into the welcoming stench and silence of the gents. My gut pushes upward, like a drum hit from the wrong side, my mouth falls open and I throw myself over the urinal as a torrent of vomit comes out, nearly choking me as I gasp for air.
There is a quiet that follows throwing up, a sense of peace and achievement matched by an incredible lightness of the stomach. Only your mouth tastes like shit. The rest of you is elated, alive to the freshness of a world unsullied by waves of nausea. Every detail is pure, from the echoing drip of the cistern overhead to the graffiti by the condom machine, like a torch shone on someone else’s mind: ‘Helen – we want to screw you. MM. NH. TF. Clelia can swallow it whole.’
I’m feeling great by the time I get back outside, ready for anything – even Jessie’s friends. The trouble is, I’m with them, they’re not really with me, and as I walk back around from the car park, I have a momentary doubt as to whether I should call it quits now and leave them to it. They’re still there, jammed into the stone alcove by the entrance to the pub, glasses on the table, stoned expressions all around.
Jessie and Nick are at one end of the group, a little apart from the rest, deep in some intensely private conversation, their eyes locked in some middle zone where nothing else exists. For a moment, she looks like any other older sister. For a moment, I wish I could be where they are. Then, as I skirt around the serious drinkers, crunching over the crisps and shit their dogs are eating off the ground, I glimpse Dad, hard to spot at first in the dark but half lit by the curtained glow of a cottage across the street.
He is talking to a woman who has The Mouth some of the locals have: like a chicken’s arse, drawn tight with string. I am close enough now to see him as he looks away, glancing at Mum – who is laughing at something someone else has just said – then looking quickly in Jessie’s direction, his head making minute adjustments as he fixes on her and Nick. I want to read something into it, but the thought of them together, her washing his dong and doing whatever else, seems far away, not possible at this moment, yet I know it’s there. What is it to me? Why should I care if it’s Dad’s prick or Nick’s prick she’s interested in?
He looks away, drinking his pint and nodding at the woman with The Mouth as if to say, ‘Just disappear back into the stonework, why don’t you?’ I feel for him. I feel for both my parents. There are very few interesting people around, most of them just give up or never had it, never had the edge, the urge. When I think about it, maybe Mum and Dad are seriously fucked up – but at least they’re still conscious. ‘Has anyone got any chewing gum?’
No one hears me. Caz and the other girl are talking. Toe-rag is wiping the beer scum off his glass with a finger. John is nodding his head to the blows of some inner battle. My mouth is a toilet, a graveyard. I want to spit, but I swallow instead.
‘What are we going to do then?’ asks Colin, bulbous cheeks wobbling in the dim light from the pub. He’s more of an outsider than me, I think. He’s stuck there, practically doubled-over in the most cramped part of the alcove, the resident butt of jokes, the jester figure, any group has one. He’s the one who’d be a future captain of industry in the stories, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to happen to Colin.
‘I want some danger,’ Caz says. The other girl laughs.
‘Sit next to Colin then,’ John tells her. ‘He’s been farting all night.’
‘Piss off!’ Colin can risk this. Nobody takes him seriously.
‘Let’s just go,’ Jessie says. She is standing with one hand on Nick’s shoulder, totally in control, not threatening Nick’s position as leader but rather enhancing it, reinforcing it.
‘Let’s take a ride.’ Nick’s voice is softer than the others, a slightly different accent. He seems to know something they don’t – nothing tangible, maybe just something about himself. ‘Let’s go,’ he says. ‘Tonight’s too beautiful to miss.’
And they all get up. Caz turns and looks at me, standing behind her. She frowns. I think she half likes me, though I’m hardly a serious proposition for her. It’s only when all of them start working their way out of the alcove and through the tight-knit boozers in the garden that I fully realize just how much a part of the picture they are. Everyone knows their names! If they were a threat – some really ugly fuckers from out of town, say, some dyed-in-the-wool Hell’s Angels – the local constabulary would be down on them like a ton of bricks. And no polite questioning, either – they’d be stuffed in the back of a police van, driven around for a few hours over some remarkably bumpy country roads, then dumped across the county line where their bikes would be found in a tangled heap. But Jessie’s friends are just playing, and she’s just playing with them. She wants the real fire.
‘Is there a good beach we could go to now?’ she asks Nick as we head around the back to the bikes. ‘I’d love to swim in the dark.’