‘Goodnight, Holly,’ I say, then push back slightly and look down at her. She’s got that same puckered-brow thing happening, and opens her mouth. So I kiss her.
She sort of lets me, and I try slipping my tongue slowly into her mouth, but then there’s a pressure on my shoulders as her hands push back at me and a vibration as she tries to say something or at least make a noise, then she’s pulling her head away and to one side.
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ she’s saying, and I’m holding her tighter now, pressing myself against her. I have a fairly serious erection and I bring myself forward, pushing into her so she can feel it. She pushes harder with her hands, though, and I have to let her go or it’ll start to feel like we’re wrestling or something. I’m still holding her, and she’s still resting her hands against my shoulders, but we’re otherwise disengaged. ‘Kit, honey,’ she says, very softly, ‘what do you think you’re doing?’
I look at her, frowning. I wasn’t aware that what I was just doing was really open to more than one interpretation. ‘Sorry,’ I say. Mumble, more like.
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she says, reaching up and touching my cheek with one hand. I want to catch that hand, kiss her wrist, have her respond, catching her breath, biting her lip. But I don’t. She shakes her head, smiles, even laughs a little. ‘I shouldn’t even be slightly tempted.’
‘So you are, then?’ I say, pulling her forward a little again.
‘Yeah, well, you’re pretty cute when you get to know you, but, Jeez, Kit …’
‘I haven’t …’ I start to say. I need to clear my throat again, so I do. ‘I’m sorry if I’m being, well, whatever. It’s just I haven’t done this. This is all new for me. I’m still, you know, a virgin, technically.’
‘Oh, honey,’ Hol says, with that same frown/smile combination. She touches my cheek again; tenderly, I think, but probably, I’m guessing, not the right sort of tenderly. ‘Trust me, your time will come, but maybe not with somebody old enough to be your mum, huh?’
‘Yeah; and I’ll definitely believe you’re not my mother if …’ I pull her a little closer still.
‘What?’ She laughs, then slaps me on the front of my shoulder with the back of her hand. She’s still shaking her head, grinning broadly. ‘Yeah, you really are your father’s son, aren’t you?’ She snorts. ‘Try anything, work all the angles.’
‘I just think you’re very, really … sexy.’ Damn! I thought my brain was leading up to something better than that! I’ve sort of rubbed my groin against her a bit as I said that too, and she looks down.
‘Whoa,’ she says again. She even reaches out, touches, briefly holds my erection through my combat pants, giving it a squeeze. ‘Fucking hell, Kit; you didn’t get that from your old man.’
‘Well, it’s all yours if—’
‘Now, just … just stop that,’ she says, pushing away again and folding her arms, looking up at me. I’m still holding her, but it’s starting to feel awkward now.
‘It’s really sweet you think I’m “sexy”, but so did your dad, twenty years ago. That—’
‘That was twenty years ago.’ My, that almost sounds adult.
‘Yeah, but if I – if we …’ She shakes her head. Emphatically, I’m sorry to see. ‘That would be a new … be a new something for me. Low, high, I don’t know, but it’s not somewhere we’re going, Kit. Sorry. Kit, I—’
I look down, between us. My cock feels, if anything, encouraged by this slow, kind, ongoing rejection. The swirling camo design looks like it’s emphasising the size of my erection.
‘Yes,’ Hol says. ‘That’s very, that’s … that’s quite, but … you should … Can you put that away? It’s distracting.’
I reach into my pocket, get a hold and pull my cock up so that it stops sticking straight out and nestles against my belly instead, at least partially restrained by the elastic of my underpants.
‘Thank you,’ Hol says. ‘Kit, I love you like … an auntie, I guess. I think Pris feels the same. Maybe even Ali. Though I guess she hides it well. But … Oh, honey,’ she says, sighing, coming forward and hugging me now, though with her head turned to the side, across my chest, as though she’s trying to listen to my heart. ‘Ah, wouldn’t it be great if sex was just sex? Eh? But it isn’t. Well, sometimes it is, when you just bump into somebody, just for an evening, a night, and you both know that’s all there’ll ever be, or – maybe – the start of something, but …’ She looks up into my face for a moment. ‘But that’s not where we are, hon. That’s not where we’re starting from.’ She puts her head back against my chest. I wonder if she can hear my heart, hammering, urgent. ‘We’ve known each other too long.’
‘Established in our roles,’ I say. It comes out more morosely than I’d meant.
‘I like being your friend, Kit. I want to keep on being your friend. For the next twenty years, the next forty. However long.’
‘It’s because you changed my nappy, isn’t it?’
She laughs, tightens her arms round my back, squeezing. ‘Yeah, that’ll be it.’ She looks up at me. ‘You had the tiniest, cutest, little plump pink bum, then, and a tiny, tiny little willy.’ She holds up a little finger, waggles it. She pushes away, slaps me softly, open-handed, on the side of the shoulder. ‘And haven’t you grown?’ Another pat on the shoulder. ‘Well done. But now,’ she says, with another yawn, which she stifles with a fist, ‘I really need to get to sleep.’ She steps back, bends at the waist, sticking her rear out behind her, one leg coming forward like a ballet dancer as she bows, arms out. ‘Goodnight.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ I say.
She shakes her head as she straightens. ‘Well, just don’t be. I’m sort of flattered, and you behaved like a gent.’ She wobbles her head a little. ‘Pretty much.’ She grins. ‘So don’t be sorry. Sorry is how we’d both have felt in the morning, or even before, if we had.’
‘Can we keep this between the two of us, as well?’ I mutter, looking down.
‘Yeah, of course. What the hey. Enough secrets in this house. One more makes no difference. You sleep well, hon.’ She heads for the door, then out, closing it quietly.
I look back at the dressing table. The screen saver reaches saturation point again, disappears. For an instant, before a little green squiggle starts in one corner, I can see the reflection of my face.
Somewhat to my own surprise, I’m smiling.
6
I go for my walk round the garden. It’s nearly noon but I haven’t seen any signs that anybody is up yet. I’ve looked in on Guy – still fast asleep, breathing normally – opened the dishwasher and unlocked the front door. All the cars are where they were last night.
It’s dry for now, though the garden is damp and the skies to the west, where the weather is coming from, as usual, look dark and heavy with more rain.
Earlier, I took our old combi VHS player up to my room from the lounge to take a look at it. An internal fuse had blown; I fixed it in ten minutes and by far the longest part of that time was taken up with removing and then refitting the case. I put the player under the telly, checked it worked and disconnected Paul’s machine.
I feel a bit hung-over, though not badly. I drank a lot less than everybody else last night, but then I’m not used to drinking very much in the first place. I probably had the same amount of cocaine as the rest, and about half as much of the bong. Dad says it helps to be young, too; you can grossly mistreat your body long into the night and still wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the next morning in a way that just isn’t possible once age has started to take its toll. So he claims; he might just be making excuses.
The familiar route round the garden is soothing, my feet falling easily into the little hollows I’ve worn over the years. I’ve put a gilet on over my T-shirt and farmer’s shirt, because it’s chilly. I had a shower this morning, again. That’s two in two days, which is way more than I’d normally have even in summer, when I might actually get sweaty. Sometimes in winter I don’t bother for up to a week, and
even then it’s my increasingly bedraggled hair that finally forces the issue. But after Hol said I was a bit whiffy when she first arrived and I got that initial hug, I’ve started showering like a girl. Ah well.
I waited a good ten minutes last night, just in case Hol changed her mind and crept back into my room and slid naked into my bed, but she didn’t. Still, just thinking about this meant it was only about another thirty seconds before I was ready to roll over and go to sleep.
One of the outhouse doors is hanging more open than it needs to – it never shuts completely – probably because one of the others has been looking in there for the tape. I lift it and push it to, wedging the door against its frame so it won’t bang in a strong wind.
I think we’re okay, Hol and I. I probably shouldn’t have tried what I did, but – oh, for goodness’ sake – I’ve still to start properly, and even amongst the less than A-list male teens back at school (some of them, frankly – even making allowances and trying to be kind – distinctly unprepossessing) there was a majority who claimed they’d had sex, and a majority of that majority who said they were pretty much sexually active on a regular, ongoing basis.
I don’t think I have any illusions about my own fitness, either physically or as a repository of this slippery quality of ‘coolness’ (I don’t have any), but, again, even allowing – allowing hard – for that, this just seems unfair. If these slack-jawed proto-cretins are getting it, why aren’t I?
I comfort myself with two thoughts: they might be – indeed, they probably were – lying and, even if they weren’t, then I probably wouldn’t really want to have sex with the kind of girl who’d agree to bump uglies with boys so lump-like and dim anyway. Though, at the same time, being honest with myself, I strongly suspect that if one of those girls had thrown herself at me, I would have taken full advantage. But then (I immediately think), that would only have been because it was my first time. Once I’d got over that first, daunting hurdle, I’d be as picky and restrained as I think somebody with my obvious gifts of the mind ought to be.
Anyway, all theoretical for now. Hol rejected me, but it was done with some sympathy and I feel we’re still friends. I take her point about not risking a relationship that might last decades yet, but on the other hand I’m disappointed she wasn’t prepared to be a bit more adventurous and just go, Oh, what the hell … I suspect the devil-may-care promiscuity of her and Guy’s generation might have been much exaggerated.
Various flowers are starting to push up through the earth, both from old, weed-bedraggled flower beds and just from random places where seeds must have fallen. The snowdrops have been and gone.
The trees are producing buds, too; little green packages full of the promise of spring. I feel an odd, even stupid sympathy for the trees and the bushes and flowers that will, in all likelihood, just be starting to come into flower when the house is demolished and the garden drops into the quarry, destroying everything. I suppose I could save some of the flowers, maybe even a few bushes; dig them up and transplant them elsewhere, though of course I don’t know where I’d put them because I don’t know where I’ll be.
It probably won’t all happen at once anyway. The house and the various outbuildings are due to be demolished in any event, as soon as they take over the land, but after that the quarry people will clear strips of foliage and topsoil along the advancing edge of the quarry only as they need to. I’ve seen this process at work on the quarry’s other boundaries: clear and strip a ledge about ten metres wide, exposing the bedrock and giving the plant and machinery a solid new surface to use as a sort of rough roadway, then a few days or weeks later drill the holes, set the charges, detonate the explosives and bring the latest section of rock crashing down. It might take months or even years before the quarry finally eats away the whole back garden and gets to where the house once stood. It’ll all depend on the demand for stone, I guess.
I get to the rear wall, and the place where you can climb up to look over. I feel slightly self-conscious, knowing that there are people in the house who might be able to see me, but I reach up, grasp a stone near the top of the wall, put my foot on the protruding bit of iron and pull myself upwards. I stand on a couple of footholds, relatively high up, so I can sort of balance on my belly on the worn round coping stones, giving me a good view to the base of the wall.
Which is a bit closer to the quarry’s edge than it was the last time I did this, maybe a couple of weeks ago.
It looks like there’s been a minor landslide. The strip of ground between the base of the wall and the lip of the quarry, which was about two and a half to three metres wide the last time I looked, is down to about a metre, for about half the length of the garden wall. This bitten-away-looking chunk is centred more or less on where I am. Just below me, there’s only a path-sized strip of grass; maybe half a metre. The rest of the ground has slipped away, forming a shallow, crumpled slope of dark-brown clods of earth, some of them stringy with the pale roots of plants and some of them lying toppled at all angles, fringed with patches of scrubby, straw-coloured turf.
One arm-thick tree root angles across the slip, its rough brown spiral slowly thinning before it forms a sort of elbow a metre away from the lip and heads back again to disappear into the ground, as though avoiding the edge. There are a few big boulders in the mix too. The soil doesn’t look like it’s been washed away much, or smoothed by the rain, so it probably happened in the last week; maybe just in the last few days. I think back to try to remember any unusual noises from this end of the garden, but I can’t recall any.
It doesn’t look like the rock beneath has fallen; it’s all just the topsoil and earth, maybe two metres deep, which has slumped away towards and – partially – over the lip of the quarry. Probably all the recent rain added just enough extra weight and lubrication to send it over the edge. I doubt we’re in any danger or anything – the rock here is solid, which is why you have to drill and blast it to get it to fall and break up – but I do feel suddenly exposed and vulnerable, perched on the wall like this. It’s not impossible the wall’s been destabilised by this latest ground movement and having an extra hundred kilos draped over the top of it could, conceivably, be just enough to trigger another landslip, taking the wall with it. And, right now, me too, of course. I look to either side. The wall still appears straight and level, not bowed or slumping.
I take a final, measured look round, just to prove to myself I’m not that intimidated and fearful, then get carefully back down and retreat from the wall, standing there and looking for a while at the ground at its foot, in case there’s any sign on this side that it’s been undermined or started to shift.
Then I continue my walk round the garden, though with a frown on my face.
Because there are some changes on this side of the wall that are recent, too. Nothing as obviously dramatic as the landslip on the quarry side, of course, and nothing to indicate that the wall is in immediate danger of collapsing, but changes, all the same, from the last time I walked this way, which was a full three days ago (a long time by my standards of regularity).
The marks made by the rubber foot on the bottom of a standard NHS-issue forearm crutch are generally fairly shallow, unless there’s been a lot of rain previously and the ground is soft. Even then, you could easily miss the signs, and if there was just one, you probably wouldn’t spot it at all.
When there are a few, though, measured out at roughly one-pace intervals on the sodden, winter-thin grass by the side of the little path here, and a little freckle of further indentations, just in front of the centre of the wall, as though somebody stopped there for a short while, shifting their weight from foot to foot and foot to crutch, perhaps, while they did something, presumably with their hands, then – if you’re sort of observant by nature, which I guess I am – it’s all kind of obvious.
I go back into the house and stand in the back porch for a moment, then step into the kitchen itself and stand quietly for a moment longer. I can’t hear anything; it see
ms there’s still nobody else up.
I go out to the garage, where the Volvo sits wrapped in its smell of oil. Hanging on the back wall there’s a big looped clump of climbing rope from about ten years ago when Guy thought he might take up rock climbing (he frightened himself, first time he tried, so never did). The rope’s here in case, for some highly non-foreseeable reason, the car ever needs a tow-rope fifty metres long. I think that way Guy feels its purchase wasn’t a complete waste of money.
I take the rope, sling it over my shoulder, then remove the pair of binoculars from the car’s glovebox and put those round my neck. I leave the garage and go round the back of the little copse of oaks between the garage and the garden’s west-facing wall. There’s a way over the wall here too, provided by an old oil drum standing upright. Guy was going to turn it into a barbecue, but never got round to it.
On the other side, at the edge of a broad, darkly ploughed field, I walk up to the corner where the quarry edge begins, keeping close to the wall so I’m not stepping on the ridged brown earth and so that I can’t be seen from the house.
At the corner of the field where a double wire fence joins up with our wall and the quarry drops away, the landslip further along looks slightly less dramatic.
Once I’m over the two fences I loop some of the rope round one of the strainer posts and walk out to the edge of the quarry, keeping the rope tight. I get to the very edge, just centimetres from the drop; closer than I’ve ever been, made confident by the rope twisted round my arm and gripped threefold in my hand. I look into the quarry, straight down the face and along.
The vertical walls, greyly slick with the recent rain, stretch away, circling back round to the kilometre-distant gap where the buildings and machinery sit.
Relatively little of the landslip seems to have gone over the edge and fallen to the roadway, thirty metres down. Beyond that broad shelf there’s another cliff and then, maybe fifteen metres down, the base of the quarry, largely filled with two giant pools separated by a sort of causeway of rubble, one truck wide and rutted.