Fen (13 page)

She opened her mouth to reply but he wasn't done yet. Something was changing.

Like, the boy was saying, cockcowwhore or –

She looked over the heads of the people opposite, at the sky which was, from the ground up, draining of colour.

Let's play a game, her brother said.

She hadn't heard him talk much. He did something with his head in her direction. It was the first time he had acknowledged her. She was uncertain what it meant: was he asking her to go or asking her opinion on the matter? He finished his drink, tipped the bottle into the centre of the circle and spun it.

It's not hard, someone said when it landed on her. Now you drink.

She thought there must be times you caught yourself learning. Not the places you'd expect or where you were supposed to, but there in the growing chill beneath the trees with the bottle etching its line towards her and her drinking in answer to its tug. She wondered – well, she was drunk – if she'd look back when she was aged through and remember learning how to be drunk by watching her brother.

Later, when James told her she looked good and he wanted to kiss her she let him. Someone whooped a low grunting
sound. When she pulled back, wiped a hand across her mouth, opened her eyes, Arch was watching her. She felt the pit of that look – not bad, only considering.

They played a game she did not know and nobody explained. When the bottle landed on Arch he said things that made her redden and the others laugh at her reddening. He'd shrug, swig, grin.

Later he was kissing someone too. He did it lazy-like, one arm looped around, his mouth moving slow. He was thinking on other things. She found herself watching him – not bad, only considering.

Someone spun the bottle again, though the game had flagged, failed. The dark of the tree lids above her coughed to motion. Then James – who'd kissed like a shark, small, fast-moving teeth – was looking at her.

Arch, he said. Dare you to kiss Mattie, and she turned to watch her brother pulling his face back, slipping his arm free.

He came over without much ado. He didn't make a fuss. That wasn't the way he was made. He would never lose face: you could dare him to swing down onto the train tracks and he'd do it, leg over leg and onto the metal runners.

He would never do anything by halves.

His tongue in her mouth quickish and tasting of the hot dog and onions she'd watched him eat. She wasn't pulling back but he had a hand in her hair all the same, holding her firm. It went on. She had her eyes open
because she'd forgotten she was supposed to close them. His face was too close to be anything recognisable. She worked out the flat of his nose, stretching away from her cheek. The others were whooping and howling and someone said: a game all the family can play. They were clunking their beer cans on the ground so she could smell the spillage and the wet dirt and he was going on, rhythmic now, as if he were hearing a beat in it all.

She broke and hulked in a mouthful of air and let it cool her insides and he sat back on his haunches like a piss-proud dog and looked at her.

That week she went to drink with them most days.

She finished her exams and did well.

We'll see, her mother said, setting Arch's place at the celebration dinner. But he was only a little late, toeing his shoes off at the door and sliding into his seat and raising his thumbs at her in something both mockery and collusion.

On Christmas Day she stood in the hallway and listened to her mother on the phone to Marco. Her mother did not say much (don't swear, Marco, please) but still – from the little Matilda heard – anybody with half a knowing of what Marco was comprised of could guess what had happened. Matilda wondered what a baby made a little of someone like her and a little of someone else would look like.

*  *  *

She was never certain why Marco's mistake made Arch so angry. She saw him scrapping or heard about him scrapping all that next week, picking fights with anybody who came close enough he could call them out. One of the girls at school, prim with it, said he was out of his league, that play-fighting at school was fine but this was different and everybody in town was tired of his bullshit.

She went back to the fire pit beneath the copses once or twice a week. She dressed carefully, looking down at herself. Marco and Arch looked so like one another, like a mistake doubled across a space. She looked like leftovers, what had come after. She drew, haphazardly, a black line across the rim of her eyelids the way she'd seen his friends do.

Those long nights he was fidgety, could not keep still. She saw the way his friends treated him, with a wariness that normally comes around animals that don't have the language to be reasoned with.

Often he came to the field late, lifted up his T-shirt silently so they could see the fresh marks, the dirty scrapes of blood. He was going further and further afield to pick fights, was taking the train or hitch-hiking to the city to find bars where they wanted it as bad as he did. There were still people who wanted it that bad. She could see his friends growing bored with this show, with his hand reaching for the rim of the shirt, with his thinness coming into view. He would point out the new ones with a pride that made her wonder if he even fought back any more.

Have a drink for fuck's sake, someone would say and the moment would pass. Except she would remember the scratches and bruises. She would remember each new one.

At the end of the year there was a car outside school and C.E was sat in it with one arm hanging out the window though it was near freezing and the other hand banging on the horn to call her over.

Mattie, right? she said, although they'd spent almost a year passing one another in the hallways of the house.

Yeah.

She sat and tried not to look too hard but looked all the same. She remembered seeing C.E in the sports changing rooms, nearly naked, the long telescope of those legs, talking and talking. She wasn't going to stay there. She was there because, second time around, her father had married a British woman. She knew the rest of them would get stuck stocking shelves and getting fat. She wasn't like that.

Except. There she was. She was still carrying a little of the pregnancy weight around her belly and, braless, her breasts were heavy. She was languid the way she had always been, long-bodied in the loose dress, legs a little apart, woollen socks and wellington boots. There were cigarette butts in the ashtray.

They drove out of the car park. Matilda could not think of anything to say.

Is this your car?

It's a friend of mine's. She let us borrow it.

They drove the rest of the way without saying anything.

Walking to the house she listened for the sound of the baby or of Marco and Arch going at it the way they had when they were younger. The house was quiet.

C.E kicked her wellingtons off against the wall and went in. The baby was on the carpet in the sitting room. It wasn't moving much only lying on its back, looking at the ceiling. Her mother was on the floor, not close enough to touch the baby but near enough to see with good detail, knees bent beneath her, one hand holding up her head.

Matilda followed C.E into the kitchen. Marco was there and so was Arch. They were drinking tea. Arch was leant against the counter and Marco was sat at the kitchen table. They weren't talking any.

Hello, Mat, Marco said, one hand around the tight bone of C.E's hip.

Hi.

In the next room they could hear their mother talking to the baby.

What's its name? Matilda said, too loud because nobody was saying anything. Everybody looked at her.

Skyla, C.E said. It's my grandmother's name.

She looked at Arch. He was pale across the face and neck; his mug was full.

Her mother made pasta with tomato sauce. She kept waiting for Arch to make his excuses or just go. She
steeled herself to say that she was going with him, that she wanted to go to the field and drink with his friends too. Occasionally the baby would make a huffing sound as if it were bored; otherwise it didn't do much. Sometimes she caught a smell from it, a warm, half-asleep smell.

After dinner, Arch's bony legs were over the side of the armchair and he'd found a beer from somewhere and was drinking it slower than she'd known he could drink beer. She wanted one but didn't know how to ask. He didn't comment on the baby, seemed barely to notice it was there. Occasionally C.E would stand and go and rearrange its clothes or look down at it.

Arch was speaking to her now. You remember Harry, he would say to her. Or: you heard what Sarah said the other night? She was pleased, as if they were plotting a thing. She had a book out because she didn't know what else to do with her hands. Sometimes she looked up and he was watching her that way he did of a time. Not bad, only considering.

Later, Marco and C.E had an argument about something someone had said. It went on a good ten minutes and got louder and louder until they seemed to run out of steam.

Crazy fucking cow, Marco said after a moment.

Quiet, idiot.

Marco talked a bit about the boats. He wasn't used to them, he said, had thrown up the first five or six times
and they'd said he wasn't made for it and should work at the pub. He was, he said, better now, could manage a fair swell without losing his breakfast. He scoffed about a burnt-out lighthouse and the superstitions the sailors had which he had to pretend he held with. C.E didn't say much more.

You going to stay there? Arch said.

Marco shrugged. Don't know. Maybe.

Sounds a shit-tip.

Not as shit as here.

Give it a rest, C.E said, and Matilda thought that, though she might have birthed something up that looked like one or other of the boys, she didn't know the first thing about the danger of them.

It's all right, Marco said, sounding amiable enough, don't get your pants in a fucking twist.

It was dark outside. The baby had fallen asleep on the carpet with its limbs splayed, not moving. I'll do it, her mother said when C.E moved to take her upstairs. She did not come down and it was different without her there. Arch came back with four beers and handed them out without it seeming much of a thing to do.

I haven't pumped, C.E said, and gave hers to Marco, who drank both of them at the same time as if it were a joke everybody had known was coming.

You remember that time we sucked all the petrol out of Mrs Williams's car? Marco said, holding his beer up.

Yup.

Did she know it was you? C.E said.

Everybody knew it was us, Marco said.

Arch drank down a gulp of beer and looked at Matilda. She wondered what he wanted; whether he wanted her to stop whatever was going to happen, whether he'd always, really, wanted her to stop it. She waited for him to give her a sign. She was not certain what she would say, only that she would muster something. Remind him he'd told everybody he'd go to the pub.

Eventually Arch looked away, said: you remember when we used to track foxes?

I thought you said he loved animals. C.E's voice was loud.

Marco shook his head. It wasn't like that. We never killed one. It wasn't about killing them. We'd just follow the tracks until we caught up with it, chase it for a while and then let it go.

What's the good in that? C.E was talking loud still, as if to cover something. Matilda could feel Arch wincing at the sound of her voice.

You wouldn't understand. You never do anything unless there's an exact point set out for it.

She waved a hand at Marco. No, I just don't see the point in chasing an animal like that.

He didn't see the point in hurting an animal – Marco rolled his chin at Arch. We could have got close enough to skin it with our hands but he would have skinned me first.

C.E laughed and stretched so you could see the slight handhold of flesh between her T-shirt and jeans. Matilda watched them watching her.

You couldn't have got that close, she said, stretching still, not really looking at either of them.

Foxes are cleverer than that, at least the ones we have back home. You couldn't even get within spitting range, otherwise you would have come home with a fox brush. Boys like you always lie. It's all you're good for.

Marco watched her carefully. He looked like he'd never seen anything who wore her skin the way she did. You're wrong, C. Right, Arch?

Arch didn't say anything.

They're easy to track. Foxes. You just have to know how and fucking go about it really quietly until you're close enough and then you get loud and they lose all their cleverness and you can chase them down.

Bullshit, she said and Marco downed the last dregs of the beer from both cans and laughed at her with his head resting back against the chair.

Well, we can show you.

Show me what?

She turned her face between them.

Show you how it's done.

You idiot. It's dark.

Marco shrugged.

You're bluffing, she said and jabbed a finger in his direction.

We can show you, can't we, Arch?

She knew then there was nothing she could do about it and got up to put on warm socks before they could leave without her. When she came back down the front door was open and Arch and Marco were stood in the square of light, smoking and not talking. Marco looked her up and down and dropped his cigarette into the dimness, moving a foot to cover it.

You're not coming. I don't know what you think you're doing.

She looked at Arch. She wanted to nudge him, tell him she wanted to be there. She had to be there. Didn't she?

He didn't say anything, only let out all his breath, and Marco laughed and said: go upstairs and you can watch out for us coming back.

She didn't go or say anything, only stood waiting until C.E came out of the bathroom with a big jumper on and her hair tied up and said: all right then, and the three of them went out leaving the door swinging, and she watched them until they hit the road and it was too dark to tell their bodies from the rest.