The Truants, page 8
‘You mean, sexual?’ said Georgie, her eyes wide. ‘Gripping… I’ll have to ask my parents. Apparently, she did once come for a weekend party at ours. I thought they’d made it up.’
‘Maybe Lorna started it,’ interrupted Alec. ‘The rumour, I mean. Maybe she preferred the whiff of some affair that never happened because the reality was more mundane. Like underperforming with grades, or … I don’t know … plagiarism.’
‘No way,’ I said, quickly. ‘Lorna’s far too brilliant to plagiarise anyone.’
Alec shrugged. ‘Even brilliant people cut corners sometimes. So, listen, I was wondering…’ He half-stood to take something out of the back pocket of his jeans. With a casual glance over his shoulder, he presented his cupped palm just below table-height. Anyone feeling peckish?’
For a moment I blinked, not understanding. There must have been around fifty mushrooms in all: long spindly stems, their pointy cream caps fringed with black gills.
‘’Shrooms – you genius!’ breathed Georgie. She looked up, her eyes wickedly aglow. ‘But where … here?’
Alec snapped his hand closed, eyes laughing. ‘Why not?’
To date, my involvement in the underworld of drugs had consisted of:
• A dozen – maybe two dozen – joints behind The Sandcastle with my brother Freddie.
• A very expensive line of white powder in a pub in West London which, due to the fizzy feeling in my nostrils, the banging headache that ensued and not much else besides, I suspect was mostly washing powder or baby-milk formula.
• A ‘herbal’ ecstasy tablet at a music festival, which smelled of silage and may/may not have improved the high I got from several cans of cider.
The idea of uppers and downers didn’t scare me much. Hallucinogens I was much more wary of, mainly due to a slew of stories revolving around my cousin Tom, who had taken a tab of acid in his year off and then spent six months in a mental institution, eating baby food. But mushrooms were plants. How bad could plants be?
Georgie and Alec walked off towards the riverbank to count them. Nick looked at me. Some strands of black hair had fallen over his eyes. His looks were very classical, I thought. The long straight line of his nose, his full symmetrical lips.
‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Fun? Terrible idea?’
‘Both, probably.’
Over on the riverbank Alec and Georgie’s heads were bent together, her happy laughter floating over to us.
‘She’s great – Georgie,’ Nick said. ‘Much more to her than meets the eye. On campus she seems kind of … brash. But there’s a lot going on, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, there is.’ I fingered a groove on the table. ‘And what do you think of Alec? He seems like he’s really into Georgie, don’t you think?’ I felt an irresistible urge to talk about them, like picking a new scab off a wound.
‘Alec? Compelling as all hell. I was worried when I saw the hearse, but he’s the real deal. That story about what happened at the mine, the risks he takes in his job…’ Nick broke off. He had a wonderful smile too, I thought, his teeth very white. ‘Look, I’m just a geek who likes rocks. When you meet a real-life hero like that… Ah, looks like you’re up next.’
He glanced over my shoulder to where Georgie was walking back towards us, without Alec. ‘Sure you want to?’ said Nick, kicking at a conker on the grass. ‘We can just potter about drinking wine, you know.’
I hesitated. For a moment I thought of Cousin Tom and the baby food. Perhaps I was trying to choke down the disappointment of seeing how well Alec and Georgie worked together – rejection and rebellion make good bedfellows. Perhaps it was the sun and the wine, and the sense that something was blossoming between the four of us, but the spirit of misrule was now in me. I took a breath.
‘If you look out for me, I’ll do the same for you.’
Nick’s eyes crinkled. ‘You’re right. Let’s. We can be idiots together.’
‘You okay?’ asked Alec, as I chased a handful of mushrooms with a long swig of wine.
‘I think so,’ I said, my voice sounding tight.
As soon as I’d sat down with him on the riverbank, my newfound laissez-faire deserted me. It was our first time alone together since the party. My whole body jammed straight into high alert. I was glad I had something to blame my nerves on.
‘Where did you get them?’ I asked, chewing a few more, then taking another sip of wine. Georgie was right. They tasted like someone had made marshmallows out of your spare change. Over at the table, I could see she had slipped Nick a handful, saw him grimace as he knocked them back.
‘A field near my aunt’s,’ said Alec. ‘I went on a run this morning and spotted a few in some long grass. When I started looking, there were hundreds. She makes a mean scrambled egg, my aunt Zanny. I nearly suggested we fry them up with garlic and chilli. We have this ritual of a cold dip in the sea, followed by hot breakfast. She’s incredibly hardy for someone the size of a pepper pot.’ He smiled. ‘But she’s a strange mix, too. Utterly nuts, but also very moralistic. I couldn’t be sure whether she would eat them all at once or call the police.’
‘So you knew they were magic?’
He laughed. ‘You sound like a little girl asking about fairies. Yes, I knew they were magic. Although we don’t have many in South Africa, apart from the ones people grow in nurseries. My brother used to chew a lot of khat, though. Not as trippy, but still gets you hooked.’
He lobbed a stone. It dropped into the water, the ripples spreading outwards.
‘So you and your brother – you’re close?’
‘Close is a funny word. You can be close and still not like someone.’
‘Um, did you just dodge the question?’
Alec sighed. ‘All right, he’s called Basti, and no, we don’t like each other. I have a sister too, she’s a lot nicer.’
I looked ahead at the river, keeping as still as possible. This was a trick I had learned from being in a big family where everyone talks a lot but no one says much. If people start to confide, don’t probe, lose eye contact. Squeeze yourself into as small a space as possible. Eventually, like wild animals creeping out from cover, their souls will inch a little closer to yours.
‘My parents tried for years to have a child,’ Alec said eventually. ‘After a while, they lost heart. Tried to adopt. Eventually, when my mother turned forty, they were given Basti, who was two and a half. He was a crack baby, at least that’s what they called him, from addict parents. Been neglected. Left alone in the house for hours on end. Had to rummage in bins to get his own food.’
‘And you?’ I asked, trying not to sound shocked. ‘From the same place?’ Maybe that’s it, I thought. That charge around him, like a force field. Survival.
He shook his head. ‘Two years after my parents adopted Basti, the impossible happened. My mother became pregnant.’
‘With you?’
‘Yes. Then, a couple of years later, my sister.’
A silence fell. My breathing sounded too fast. I tried to slow it.
‘You feel something?’ he asked suddenly, leaning in and fixing me with his eyes.
‘Feel something?’ My chest wound up tighter. I thought I’d been doing well at masking it, but maybe it was obvious.
‘From the mushrooms.’
‘Oh.’ I wanted to eat my fist. ‘No. I mean, not yet.’
‘Takes a while,’ said Alec, glancing at his watch. He looked back at Nick and Georgie and brushed some grass off his jeans as if preparing to get up. I realised how fiercely I wanted him to stay here on the riverbank in the sunshine, away from the others.
‘Must have been tough on your brother,’ I said.
Alec looked over, his eyes narrowing. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, you were the miracle child. And you’re…’ – I wanted to say ‘gorgeous and clever’ – ‘…well, probably he felt you were the favourite.’
Alec’s face suddenly become very watchful. I had no idea what he was thinking, only that I had his attention again.
‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘But it still doesn’t explain why he is such a cunt.’
I lifted my eyebrows, but said nothing.
‘Hard to explain. He has a way of twisting the truth.’ Alec paused, flicked a little piece of grass into the river. ‘The first time it happened, I was very young. Five, I think. We were in my parents’ bedroom in Jo’burg.’
‘Hey!’ We both turned at Georgie’s voice. She walked over with Nick behind her. ‘What are you two so secret squirrel about?’ She dropped down next to us, lowered her voice. ‘Anything happening?’
I was just about to shake my head when I noticed that the surface of the river, which I had previously thought of as a pale, rather dirty brown, had begun to shimmer as if it was made from beaten bronze. I was busy marvelling at its texture when I realised that the shimmering was actually something much more rhythmical and deliberate. The river – slowly, heavily, like it was deep in slumber – had started to breathe.
‘It’s alive,’ I whispered, half to myself.
‘Sure is.’ Nick nodded and pointed upriver. ‘You see all those winding curves along the bank? We rock geeks call them meandering. When water flows, it moves a little bit faster on the outer edge than the inner, which makes those S-shapes. There’s nothing I love watching more than a river – one of the few places where you actually get to see time carving itself into the landscape. The past flowing into the future.’
We all looked at the water. The edges of the river seemed to pulse.
‘The past flowing into the future,’ said Georgie. She looked at me. ‘The guy’s a genius.’
I nodded, mostly to acknowledge my own body to myself. My limbs had started to sink down into the bank, and I felt the rest of my senses spin out of the husk of me, as if attached by an elastic cord. The ground beneath me seemed to be sliding towards the water, so I scrambled backwards. ‘I think we should all sit further up the bank,’ I said quickly.
‘Don’t worry,’ Alec said, putting a hand on my arm. ‘It’s just kicking in. You need to adjust a bit.’
He moved his hand away but I still saw the print of it against my arm and then tracking outwards, like my brain had taken thousands of sequential photos.
‘The past flowing into the future,’ repeated Georgie, in wonder. ‘We’re all just rivers twisting along, trying to find the sea…’ She was puffing cigarettes madly, using the glowing ends to light one from the next.
‘Would you mind taking that cigarette downwind please?’
We all looked up guiltily. The man with the stripy shirt and military bearing was standing over us with the uneasy bravado of a middle-class person psyching themselves up for confrontation. Without actually using the words ‘heavily pregnant’, he looked pointedly over his shoulder at his wife, who was resting her hands on her swollen belly, like she was in an advert for a mortgage.
Georgie shrugged carelessly. ‘My mother smoked like a crematorium when she was knocked up. Ashes all over my baby head. Your boys are very beautiful,’ she added, taking another drag on her cigarette and making no attempt to stub it out. ‘They look like angels with those halos.’
The two boys looked at us, their mouths open in identical Os, excited by the drama. I started to giggle. Georgie was right. Their blond hair shone like spun white gold and seemed to be radiating outwards.
‘Look,’ said the man uncomfortably, ‘I’m the first to enjoy a party. But this is a family place.’
‘Really?’ drawled Georgie. ‘I thought this was a place that sold alcohol. Steady drinking is the real problem, you know.’ She looked at the empty pint glasses on his table. ‘You should watch out for that. It creeps up on you and, before you know it, you’re losing your temper with the kids, taking a swing at your wife—’
‘Time for a walk,’ interrupted Alec, firmly. He stood up, half-lifting Georgie by the elbow. ‘Why don’t we go and take a look at those chickens?’ He steered her off towards the hen-house.
I looked back at Stripy Shirt, feeling a pang of sorrow for him. Suddenly I understood. His uptight collar was strangling him. ‘Perhaps if you undid that top button…’
‘Jess,’ Nick broke in quickly. ‘Chickens?’
Alec took a seat on a tree stump and rolled himself another cigarette while Georgie and I sat in front of the wire mesh, mesmerised as the cockerel picked his way round the coop, his fleshy red comb jostling over beady eyes. Three hens pecked at the ground.
‘Look at that cockerel,’ said Georgie in awe. ‘The way he controls everything.’ We followed him as he moved around with his slow, jerky tread for what might have been hours.
‘Water. We all need water,’ said Alec eventually, standing up. He glanced down. ‘Think you should get out of the sun, too.’ He put the back of his hand briefly to one of my hot cheeks and I felt my heart drum wildly. ‘You’re burning up with that pale skin,’ he said softly. ‘Why don’t you go and sit under the trees?’
Georgie gave me a shrewd look as he walked off. ‘Burning or blushing?’
I blinked in consternation, my mind blank.
Then she rose to her knees suddenly, her eyes glowing. ‘Let’s go for a swim.’
‘What?’
‘Let’s go for a swim.’ And before I had time to answer she had run behind the copper beech. Still giggling, I ran after her. Nick called my name, but by now Georgie was wriggling out of her skirt and he didn’t follow.
The dark purple canopy of leaves overhead looked so lustrous that I wanted to lie down and just stare at them.
‘You can’t strip off here,’ I whispered, peering round the trunk. Quite a few tables in the garden had emptied, including that of the family with the two boys, but there were still a handful of people finishing their lunch. ‘And you can’t swim, either. You’re tripping.’ I looked round a little wildly for Alec, but there was no sign of him. ‘What are you going to do, leap in the river?’
Georgie snapped open her bra strap and I couldn’t help staring at her large breasts with their upward-pointing brown nipples. She started peeling off her knickers. There was a small strip of pale brown hair down the middle.
‘The river is Time,’ intoned Georgie, giggling hysterically, and stepping out from behind the trunk she ran towards the water, shouting ‘Wakey, wakey!’ as she streaked past the tables. I put my hand over my mouth, feeling the laughter bubbling up inside me, and ran over to the bank in time to see Georgie fling herself in. A large splash broke into a shower of gems as she hit the surface. Nick was standing beside me.
‘Oh, shit,’ he said, but with some admiration. ‘I hope she can swim.’
‘It’s amazing,’ screamed Georgie. ‘Like swimming in silk.’ Then her blonde cap of wet hair was bobbing up and down under the water again, and I heard a posh voice from one of the tables say in some disgust, ‘She’ll drown herself,’ and the next thing I remember Alec was beside us, kicking off his shoes and wading in to get her.
‘Come here, you nutter.’ He reached her in a few steps and put his arms around her, pushing her hair gently off her face, smiling into her eyes. ‘You absolute nutter.’
After that, things got a bit blurry. Perhaps Stripy Shirt had said something to the pub owner because it seemed like the moment Alec pulled Georgie out of the water, there were two police officers in the garden: a man with a jowly face and a woman with a mannish haircut and a disapproving mouth. The woman threw a grey blanket around Georgie as the man pulled the bag of mushrooms out of her bag and said grimly, ‘Right. You can all come with us down to the station,’ which sounded so much like a movie that it was another reason for us to fall about with laughter.
Things were much less funny after that. I dimly remember a humming noise in the police station and having to fill out a form, but the print was crawling all around the page and it took me hours to write my name. And then the policeman who had found the mushrooms was giving us a lecture in a small, brightly lit office, but his jowly cheeks were melting down onto his white collar while he spoke. I started to laugh again, though this time it threatened to turn into tears.
They let us go with slapped wrists and a warning. Mainly, I think, because Alec did the talking. I don’t know how he managed to appear so completely sober but I heard him explaining calmly to one of the officers about ‘a difficult time’ and ‘death in the family’, and the next minute we were back out on the street. It was evening and grey light had wrapped itself round the buildings, softening their edges.
‘Everyone okay?’ said Alec, clicking his lighter and drawing deeply from his cigarette.
Nick and Georgie both looked as shaken and slightly stunned as I felt. We nodded dumbly. Then Georgie got the giggles, and Alec had to frogmarch her quickly round the corner, out of sight of the police station.
‘That was fun,’ she gasped, wiping her eyes, ‘really fun. Where are we going next?’
Alec laughed. ‘You don’t scare easy, do you, beauty?’
He tossed up the lighter and caught it again, once, twice. I watched it spin through the air, leaving tracks, though much fainter this time. He never stops moving, I thought. Part of his body is always in motion, like there’s so much energy in him that it can’t be contained. I want that.
I looked at him and saw the flame of life.
People kill for less, you know.
A few days later, the four of us went drinking – to a tequila bar this time, where a roving barmaid poured salt onto the crook of your hand before you slammed a shot. We ended up back at the university, playing music in an empty common room, heady and elated. At some point Alec and Georgie sloped off together.
I lay on a sofa, resting on Nick’s chest, staring at the ceiling, listening to the lyrics of some song he wanted me to hear.
‘I’ve never had friends like this, have you?’ I said. ‘Back at home, I mean. There were lots of people at school I liked.’
