Light Errant (14 page)

Not often, I'd said that to Jamie; not often he'd said yes, when I did. But he said yes that day, and I think perhaps that all things sprang from there.

o0o

My uncle his father was scathing the poor Duke, who stammered and blushed like a child though he was well past thirty now, must have thought himself well hard, well past a public scolding.

“Cousin James, I never... I swear...”

“Oh, it went off by itself, did it?” And without pausing to consider the merits of that, “You fool, you could have killed any one of us, you're not safe with such a weapon.”

Which really was a joke, said to a Macallan; but Uncle James wasn't laughing, and nor was anyone else. Not even I, especially when I saw him stoop to pick up the shotgun himself. If I'd gone for the heat treatment and the Duke had somehow missed noticing pale flames licking around the barrel, Uncle James for sure would not have missed noticing the residual heat. His accountant's mind would have gone click click, and I'd be in serious trouble.

Thanking my lucky stars for my own good sense—and that was a rarity also, usually I did the other thing, cursed my own stupidity—I stood still and signed for Jamie to do the same, to wait. This was a diversion, yes, but I had no plans to run away. In a room with a door, perhaps, anywhere there was a fast exit to be made; but on a wide beach, where they had four-by-fours and we had nothing but feet? Thanks, but no thanks.

We stood still, stood like patient captives in defeat. When Uncle James finally came back towards us, with the shotgun under his arm now and properly broken open, with his men our cousins already scattering to their various vehicles and a
this is it, you boys, no more prevarication
look on his face, I met him with the best I could manage in the way of sullen surrender.

“We left our bikes in the car park, up at the end of the beach. They can't sit there all night, they'll be pinched...”

He'd heard that tone from me all my life, the stubbornness that always tried to find some minor victory in capitulation. That must have seduced him, or else he simply didn't believe either one of us could sustain our defiance for long.

At any rate, he nodded brusquely. “All right.”
Don't want to leave good Macallan property for the cattle to steal.
“We'll take you that far, then you can drive back with us. Get into the Range Rover.”

The Ranger was his own, of course. Everything a status-symbol, because status was everything. Even his sandals would have been Timberland, if he'd only worn sandals to the beach.

He sat in the front, we in the back, and his driver another cousin took us down the beach, with all the cavalcade in attendance behind. When we came to the car park, our two bikes were standing side by side in utter emptiness; the whole place had been deserted, else. We were lucky, I suppose. If they'd linked the bikes to us and us to the swarming Macallans, some brave punter might have ploughed his pick-up over our darlings before he headed off.

Uncle James had his driver stop reasonably if not considerately close to the bikes—a careful or a casual distance: I thought a distance precisely measured in his mind—and waited while we powered up, no doubt waited for us to fall into formation behind.

That we didn't do. I drove boldly to the head of the parade, in front of the Ranger yet; I drove and Jamie followed as he'd promised, and that was
lèse majesté
if ever anything had been. Except that my uncle could always pretend we were outriders, of course, such as any sovereign might command. Could and would, no doubt, but oh, he would be scowling in his car there, he'd be adding this to the burden of grievance charged against us both. Jamie gave me an anxious glance; I winked, and mouthed,
Trust me...

o0o

Not far from the seafront we came to a roundabout, where the road that hugged the coast met the Coast Road, the main dual carriageway from town. Not a massive roundabout, but not mini either: just perfect for my needs just now. We pulled up like good boys at the white line, giving way to the right; and I called across, “Jamie, stick with me! What I do...”

What I do, you do.
Other kids called the game follow-my-leader, but we always had to be different from other kids. They were cattle, we were family; and this game we'd played not only as children on foot or on furniture, but also as teenagers on bikes. He nodded, found a grin from somewhere. Tight and challenging, that was.
Make it good
, it said.

What in fact I did or seemed to do was make it funny, make a joke of it, make Uncle James madder than hell. I drove onto the roundabout when traffic permitted, Jamie beside me and all the parade behind; and all I did was not select an exit, I just kept going round. The Ranger followed us, everyone else followed the Ranger, and as I'd hoped, as I'd figured there were just enough cars in the line to bring us up neatly to the rear of the last. We made a traffic-choking daisy-chain, bringing the whole junction to a halt.

After a lap and a half I looked innocently back over my shoulder, and pulled a
where-do-you-want-us-to-go?
face at Uncle James. He gestured furiously, and the Ranger peeled off onto the Coast Road. I waved obedience; the other cars all followed him, and we tagged on behind, the pack reshuffled to put us at the bottom of the deck. He would never have let us set off this way, he'd have stopped in the car park to put us somewhere in the middle, but it would be beneath his dignity to pull up on the hard shoulder now.

He'd be checking the wing-mirror, though, or having his driver do it; so I drove a mile or so practically in the gutter, where I was sure he could see me. Then I drifted a little wider, tucking in behind the last car in line, where I was sure he couldn't. Jamie joined me, yelling something I couldn't hear; I pulled a face to say so, and held up three fingers.

As we passed the next junction, a slip road leading off to another roundabout, I held up two. He nodded.

The next junction, one finger; another nod, and a thumbs-up in reply.

o0o

We knew this road, as we knew them all. When the junction came, we were ready.
Wait for it, wait for it
—I waited until the car ahead had passed the hatchings on the road, too late for them to follow even if they were watching for this and I very much hoped they weren't. Then a twitch of the handlebars and a squeeze of the throttle and I was away, my tyres scraping the kerb that divided the main carriageway from the slip road; just a second behind me, Jamie had to bump over the grass to make it, but his bike was designed for rougher rides than that and he wasn't about to be jolted off, not my bro.

Up the slip road to the inevitable roundabout, three-quarters of the way around that and over the bridge that spanned the highway; I didn't look down but I could hear blaring horns below me, the rear car trying to warn my uncle up front that we were gone. Well, nothing they could do now even if the message got through. No chance of a U-turn on the dual carriageway, until the next slip road and the next bridge across; if they did double back, we'd be well away before they got here.

o0o

One fast mile through a housing estate, to be certain sure they'd lose us; then Jamie overtook me, made a slow-down gesture, and pulled up in a lay-by.

I drew up beside him, wondering what the problem was. He already had his phone out, and was punching numbers.

“Sweets? Me again... No, listen. Grab a jacket and get out of there, right now. Move, move... Well, turn it off. My dad's on his way, and he won't be happy when he gets there. You shift, I'll explain later. Meet us at the Blue Boar, yes? ... Good girl. I love you.”

He switched off and put the phone away. I was seriously proud of myself when all I said and all I thought was, “Good thinking, Batman.”

o0o

“Did you know, all the Blue Boars in the country used to be white? The White Boar, they used to be. That was Richard of Gloucester's badge, Richard the Third, and he was a popular man. Besides, it was good policy. So they all named their inns sort of in tribute, yeah? Only then he gets killed at Bosworth, there's a new king, Henry the wossname, Seventh? Yeah, Seventh, and suddenly the White Boar is not such a good idea, right? So they all change overnight. But it's easy, because the white paint they used then, it was pretty much blue anyway; so you call yourself the Blue Boar, you don't even need to repaint the sign, see? Easy...”

“Ben.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

Okay. You can race, but you still can't hide. I wasn't even that drunk; actually I wasn't drunk at all, I only wanted to be, no more than that. I shut up.

We were sitting in what had been a favourite pub once, bloodied by the years but stubbornly unbowed: bad décor and lousy turnover but good music, good beer and a pretty good clientèle also. Hell, we went there, didn't we? So by definition, good clientèle. Also the landlady used to supplement her income by selling dope and dancing drugs pretty much across the counter, which endeared her to us no end. Poppers she actually kept literally on the counter, right there on the bar-top in their little bottles. Figured she'd wait a long time for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to sue her for selling medicines without a licence; and right she was, too.

But that was then and this was now, and as usual things were different. The place had been bought up and done out, they'd wrecked a genuinely old pub to create an artificial version: lino was out and polished boards were in, the traditional lounge and public bar had been knocked into one big room and then divided into nooks and alcoves and booths with many wooden partitions.

I hated it like this, we all did. But it did have two advantages, which had made it Jamie's first thought for a rendezvous. It was a sensible bus-ride from Laura's flat and a lengthy drive from anywhere in town, a three-in-one advantage: no one was going to be looking for us out here; we weren't likely to run into any chance-met family member or fellow-traveller so far from the power-base, so dangerously close to the border where the real world overlapped; similarly we weren't likely to run into the opposite kind of trouble, the radical rebels who'd stir up a riot at the sight of a Macallan nose dipping into a pint glass.

The second advantage was provided by that web of partitions. Loathe them we might and did, but no denying they did make for private conversation and easy plotting.

Jamie and I had had to loop right around the town to get here, and we'd probably stretched the journey further than we needed to, being extra careful not to attract any beady and curious eye. As a consequence Laura had been here already when we arrived; and that she'd moved so fast on Jamie's word said a lot, I thought, about her relationship with her, what, her father-in-common-law?

Smart girl, she'd clearly got to know him well.

o0o

She wasn't showing so smart just now, though. She'd had time to stew, obviously, sitting flustered and sweaty watching the door for our arrival. There'd been no kiss for Jamie though he took one anyway, no smile for either one of us. She'd sat and listened a mite frostily, if someone so visibly hot and bothered can be frosty also, and I thought she could; and now that we'd told her the tale, from cousin's death to uncle-and-father's confusion, our triumph on the roads, she was fidgeting with the glass of blackcurrant-and-lemonade that seemed to please her no better than our story, and she was asking foolish questions.

“What, and you had to go and do that, did you? You just had to piss him off that way?”

“I think so, yes.” Jamie glanced at me for support in this, got a nod and a shrug in return,
of course we did, what's her problem?
He went on more gently than I thought he wanted to, more sharply than ever I could have spoken to Laura: “I suppose you'd rather I was back in his pocket and out on the streets tonight with the lads, taking revenge? Is that what you want? It's what he wants.”

“No, that's not what I want. You know that.” That's what she'd taken him away from. Me and her between us, perhaps—but no fooling, it had mostly been her. She'd had most opportunity, after all. “But I'd rather you didn't go out of your way to fight with him, either. Not now.”

My lip twitched, and she was onto me like a shot. “Well, what? What's funny?”

Actually, I'd just experienced a moment of unadulterated happiness. We'd been so close just then, Jamie and I, to catching each other's eye and sharing a single indivisible thought,
ah, it's a baby thang
; and I'd felt the stillness in him that said he wasn't going to do it, and I'd known he was feeling the same in me, and so I'd smiled.

Fortunately a second thought had ridden in on the back of the first,
I was wrong, she doesn't know him so well after all
; and I could justify myself with that, and let her feel only a little patronised. “You don't have to go out of your way,” I said, “to fight with Uncle James. He's very biblical on that score. He that is not with me is against me, yeah? You either knuckle under and do just what he wants when he wants it, or you're in opposition and he'll do anything he can to screw you. You can't be neutral, and you can't come to an understanding with him. He wouldn't understand.” I smirked a little, pleased with that; Jamie applauded, Laura scowled.

“You don't have to wind him up, though,” she said, dragging us back from the general to the specific. “That's just childish, it's stupid. If you didn't want to go with him, why couldn't you just say so?”

“We did, but...” But I'd thought Jamie was weakening, only I couldn't say so, I couldn't betray him that way. Not to her. “He doesn't listen,” I went on, a little lamely. “He's a bully, you know that.”

She snorted. “He just needs standing up to.” Meaning,
If I'd been there, I'd have stood up to him. I'd have said no, and meant it.
Which she would have done, she admitted no more compromise than my uncle; but if she'd been there, he'd have had his men pick her up and carry her to his car, and then Jamie and I would have had no choice but to go along. I wasn't going to say that either, though. Which of course left me with nothing to say.