The rest of the week continued the same as it had started. We had our little chats at lunchtime but mainly just Gus telling us stories of things he’d done when he was our age. It was all the same as we did; parties, drinking, motorbikes, only at a time when people wore different clothes. The rest of our time was spent working hard. The pain never went away. I don’t think I’d done enough to get strong to the point where it didn’t hurt, I maybe got used to it though because as the days passed I didn’t seem to notice so much.
On the Friday we began to run out of posts to erect.
“Not many holes left to dig now then Gus?” Al said. “Do you know what’s next for us after this?”
“Sorry lads I think this is it. Did Tabitha not say anything to you?”
“No, she hasn’t spoken to us since Monday morning when she introduced us all,” Al said.
“See this is what I was saying to you the other day. You’re only here now because you’re helping me, there’s nothing left to be done after this. I bet she didn’t tell you because she thought if you knew, you’d take your time to try and get more work out of her.” He looked a bit sympathetic towards us. “Now do you get what I was saying when I said she looks down on people, she doesn’t even trust you enough to keep you in the picture. I won’t lie to you though, us blokes have got to stick together.”
I was sad to find out we were on our last day there, and more sad to think we could just as easily not have known. I could tell Gus wasn’t best pleased with the fact that we’d been kept in the dark, so when lunchtime came and we were nearly finished he suggested that we make the job last until five. A quick check to make sure Tabitha’s car wasn’t there and we spent the rest of the day sitting in the sun behind Gus’s pickup, chatting rubbish.
I felt a little emotional as I collected my final week’s wages and we all said our goodbyes. Having dropped hints to Gus about coming to work with him and the offer being politely declined due to us “Needing to concentrate on our education,” I knew we probably wouldn’t see Tabitha or him again. Even if we didn’t, we’d be back. We still had to free the spastic cat. As an added bonus, because we’d only worked a fortnight of the holiday we’d still have four weeks to hunt the cat down, if it did, as there was a possibility it might, go on some murderous rampage through the village.
In the time we’d worked there, we’d cleared every one of her forgotten gardens and made them habitable. Nonetheless, I doubt she ever set foot in them again.
We Were Grown-ups Now
September 1999.
My exam results finally came through. I got a C in maths, four D’s, an E and four F’s. One of those F’s being in English, my spontaneous attempt at storytelling in the exam having fallen on deaf eyes. Having done practically no coursework or revision, I was chuffed to bits with those results, even when I showed them to my maths teacher (not the foggiest of what his name was) and he tried to shoot me down in flames.
“You got a C? That means you got an A* in your test paper! If you’d actually done all the coursework like you were supposed to you’d probably have straight A-C’s!” he said, before walking away to find a pupil worth taking up his time. And I suppose he was probably right. Looking at it the other way though, I’d managed to doss about all spring, sitting down the beach on the yellow sand while the rest of the school had been shut away either in their bedrooms or the suicidal library, and yet I’d still managed to get the grades required for college. I tried explaining it to my parents that way but they took the side of my maths teacher, as if it had anything to do with them. Al’s grades weren’t much better, but luckily entry requirements for his bricklaying course were short fingernails and a pair of steel toe-capped boots.
We had a good drink that night at the pillbox, relishing the fact that we’d never again have to go to school. This was it though; time to grow up, no more common enemy to rally against. What we did from now on would have to be what we wanted to do. There was no more having your life planned for you and just turning up each day, we’d need to pursue the things we wanted in life, as the men we would become. It was a good night that one, it will stay with me forever; the memory of Al and I side by side on our hands and knees, vomiting fizzy sick from the top of the pillbox into the water below. We were grown-ups now.