Barking (6 page)

Luke smiled. ‘Thought so,' he said. ‘I told Kevin and Pete and the lads, after I'd seen you yesterday, he doesn't like it there much. Not his style, my guess was. And then we had this sort of collective brainwave, lightning flash of inspiration, all of us simultaneously. Sort of like a multiple pile-up on the road to Damascus. Why don't you chuck in your job with the arseholes and come and join us?'

Mostly, Duncan wanted to scream. It was intolerable; sheer torture. The choice: stay where he was, for ever, and wake up every single morning cringing, or rejoin the Ferris Gang, with the subtle distinction of being the lowest form of life. ‘Come and work for you, you mean?'

‘Not
for
,' Luke said irritably. ‘With. Join us.'

Penny dropping, burning up in the atmosphere, splattering the ground below with droplets of molten copper. ‘What, you mean, as a
partner
?'

‘Mphm.'

‘But—' Well, at least he had a reason to refuse, and so end the torment. ‘No, I couldn't. I can't afford to buy into an outfit with an office in Mortmain Street.'

Luke's tongue clicked like a bullwhip. ‘You don't need to worry about all that rubbish,' he said. ‘All we do is, we get a whole load of new stationery printed with your name in the list of partners - roughly in the middle, because we do it in alphabetical order. Simple as that. After all—'

Duncan knew what was coming. It was like the end of the world; the trumpet had sounded, and the Messiah was swooping down to earth in His winged chariot, and
scrunch
- guess who just happens to be standing underneath its wheels as it touches down.
After all, you're our friend, one of us
.

Trouble was, he wasn't. That had been his choice, and he could still remember why he'd made it. No use worrying about that now; he'd left the band before they became famous, and he couldn't go back to them now, on these terms. Could he?

‘After all,' Luke said, ‘it's not like you're a stranger. We've all known you since you were the little fat kid with the really bad acne, who got crispbread and lettuce for his packed lunch instead of proper sandwiches.'

A shrewd point to raise. The only reason he hadn't starved to death before he reached sixteen was because the others had shared their lunches with him; because (he couldn't help remembering) Luke had
made
them share their lunches with him. But that recollection started a whole new rail network of thought, and he didn't want to go there.

‘It's very kind of you, really—'

‘But.' Luke pulled a sad face. ‘You're about to say
but
, aren't you?'

Nod.

‘Why?'

Duncan remembered a playground: early autumn, dry leaves drifting in on the wind from the plane trees that grew just outside the school gates. Hughes the new boy, just moved into the neighbourhood, uncrinkles the silver foil in which lurks his first packed lunch at Lycus Grove. He's nervous about anybody seeing; understandably, since inside the foil are three slices of Ryvita spread with couscous, two cherry tomatoes and a short stick of celery.

He knows why it has to be that way, of course. His mother and father had explained to him, kindly and patiently, why he was a vegetarian and why we don't eat processed bread and chocolate and biscuits and all that rubbish. It had made sense at the time; it always did, except that shortly afterwards the sense would always evaporate, like the ramparts of Elfland, and that could only be because he was too dim-witted to have understood properly. And, if he couldn't remember the sense himself, he knew for certain that he'd have no chance of explaining it to his contemporaries and so excusing himself of the mortal charge of being different.

One last furtive glance over his shoulder; then he pinches the edges of the first crispbread between forefinger and thumb—

‘What've you got there, then?'

Terror and despair; because he recognises the voice, though he hasn't yet spoken to its owner. That Luke Ferris, the dark lord of the Ferris Gang; the sort of kid his parents have warned him about. Rough, uncouth, no respect for rules, almost certainly a vandal and a bully. The last person on earth who'd be prepared to overlook Ryvita spread with couscous, cherry tomatoes and a stick of celery.

He knows he's done for; but a tiny spurt of courage burns inside him, like a rat at bay turning on the terriers. ‘Mind your own business,' he says.

‘What've you got there?'

‘Piss off.'

That Luke Ferris doesn't say a word; but two of his trolls materialise on either side of Duncan, taking firm but ineluctable hold of his elbows. Ferris advances slowly and takes the foil parcel from his hand like someone picking a ripe apple off a tree.

He looks at it. ‘You like this stuff?'

Duncan looks up, meets his dark, terrible eyes. As he does so, an urge rises inside him to tell the truth; a truth he'd never quite admitted to himself before.

‘'Salright.'

‘Looks like shit to me.'

‘Yeah.'

Ferris's head dips ever so slightly, and the Stilson-like grip on Duncan's elbows relaxes. Ferris is still staring into the foil, as if he's looking at something bizarre and inexplicable. Then, with a move as graceful as it's swift, he lobs the package underarm into the nearest of the four tall plastic trash-cans parked twenty-five yards away, by the alley that leads to the kitchens.

‘You can share ours,' Ferris says.

Duncan is still recovering from the amazing spectacle of Ferris's throw - could've been a fluke, sure, but he really doesn't think so. ‘What?'

‘Our sandwiches. What d'you want, ham or chicken?'

As soon as he says it, the attendant trolls unzip their school bags and produce flat wedges wrapped in plastic.
Sandwiches
: slices of toxic plastic bread with scraps of butchered flesh entombed between them like the dead at Pompeii.
No, thanks, I don't eat meat
, he doesn't say. Instead: ‘Dunno.'

‘Make your mind up. It's not astro-bloody-physics.'

‘I don't know,' Duncan repeats. ‘Never had either of them.'

- Which should, according to his mother and father, have unleashed on him the full fury of their unenlightened wrath (because nasty people who eat animals always make fun of nice people who don't; but you mustn't tell lies and pretend, because you must always stand up for what you truly believe in . . . There were times when Duncan wondered if his parents had ever been to school; and, if they had, how they hell they'd survived.). Instead, that Luke Ferris stares at him. Not mockery or bigotry, but compassion.

‘You what?'

‘I never had either of them.'
I'm a vegetarian.
‘My mum and dad are vegetarians.'

‘Oh.'

Ferris shrugs. Duncan watches him. Even he can see that a great deal depends on what happens next.

‘You poor bastard,' says Ferris. ‘Try the ham.'

He doesn't signal, but a troll steps forward with a plastic packet, which he unwraps.

‘That's ham, is it?'

‘Think so. Pete?'

The troll nods. ‘Ham,' he says.

Duncan hesitates. ‘That's murdered pig, isn't it?'

‘Mphm.'

And now he has no choice. He takes the object in his hand, tries not to look at it, bites until his top and bottom teeth meet through the unfamiliar textures; chews before swallowing.

‘Hey,' he says, with his mouth full. ‘Cool.'

Ferris nods slightly, acknowledging a truth too obvious to need expression. ‘Now try the chicken. That's murdered hen,' he adds.

Yummy
murdered hen. Duncan pauses for a moment, trying to catch words that come somewhere near the turmoil of lights and explosions inside his mind. ‘I like the ham best,' he says, ‘but the chicken rocks too.'

A troll grins; but not unkindly. ‘There's murdered cow and murdered sheep too,' he says. ‘My mum does me murdered cow on Thursdays - you can try some.'

‘And murdered turkey,' adds another troll. ‘And
corned
murdered cow. You want to try some of that, it's amazing.'

The trolls had closed in round him, but not in any threatening way. For some reason, Duncan almost expects them to start sniffing him. ‘My mum's going to be so pissed off,' he mutters.

Ferris grins; a very slight movement, nonetheless showing the teeth. ‘Only if you tell her,' he says.

Which Duncan never gets round to doing; which is why, every lunchtime until the day comes when he dumps his tie in the bin on his way out through the school gates for the last time, he ritually discards an unopened tinfoil packet before seeing what his mates have brought him to eat. Over the years, he wavers in his loyalty. Sometimes his favourite is roast murdered cow, sometimes it's murdered salami. (Nobody would tell him what sort of animal a salami was; at first he assumed it was short for salamander, until he saw a whole one hanging up in a delicatessen shop. For a while he felt guilty about eating cold sliced dachshund, but he came to terms with it in the end.) His greater loyalty, however - to Luke and the gang - never falters even for a split second, in spite of the detentions and suspensions and awkward times down at the police station; not for an instant, until the very end—

‘Why?' Luke repeated.

‘Because—' Duncan hesitated for a split second, then exploded, ‘Bloody hell, Luke, you can't just spring something like that on someone and expect an instant yes-or-no answer. I've got to think about it.'

His explosion had been more like a damp Catherine wheel: two or three unconvincing twirls and a few farted sparks. Luke was grinning, his teeth still as straight and white as ever. ‘Why not? I mean, what's there to think about? You hate this shit-hole you're at now, your whole life's a complete mess. You need looking after.'

This time, the flare of anger was hot enough to light the blue touchpaper of self-expression. ‘Absolutely,' he snarled. ‘My whole life's a complete mess—'

‘Well,' Luke interrupted reasonably, ‘it is.'

‘I
know
.' Not quite loud enough to silence the bar and turn heads, but almost. ‘You don't actually need to remind me, thank you so very fucking much. And it's been a complete mess ever since—'

‘Since she dumped you.'

In the Middle Ages, they hunted the wild boar with a spear. You dug the butt end in the ground, shoved the pointy end at the approaching boar, and let the stupid creature kebab himself on it. ‘Well, yes,' Duncan mumbled; but what he'd been about to say, because until Luke spoke it had been what he'd believed to be the truth, was
ever since I left your stupid gang
. And he'd been about to add that his decision to turn his back on the Ferris gestalt had clearly been proved to be disastrous, and he wasn't fit to run his own life and obviously needed Luke to run it for him; but, regardless and in spite of all that, fuck off and die.

He didn't say any of that. He felt like a physicist who's spend twenty years working on a theory, spending millions in hard-won research grants and devoting his life to the cause, and who finally achieves final and irrefutable proof that his basic hypothesis is a load of old socks.

‘The bitch,' Luke said sympathetically. ‘But what the hell, it's still no reason why you should carry on having a horrid time when you could be having a slightly less horrid one. Well?'

But he couldn't just roll over on his back and admit it. ‘Like I said,' he muttered, ‘I need time to think about—'

‘Chicken.' Very slight pause. ‘That's murdered hen, to you.'

You can't really be offended and want to laugh at the same time, not unless you're Duncan Hughes. He opened his face to say something, but closed it again, as it occurred to him to consider the significance of the fact that his ex-wife had also been a vegetarian.

Then Luke said, ‘So, what was she like?'

There's a drug that supposed to make you tell the truth, whether you want to or not: the CIA buy it by the tankerload, presumably. Luke could've spiked Duncan's beer with it, except Duncan hadn't drunk any.

‘Tallish,' he said. ‘A bit on the chunky side, though she lost a lot of weight. Straight dark hair; she was a lot into the Goth sort of look when I first met her, black clothes and spiky silver jewellery. A bit on the quiet side to begin with. She changed a lot after we left law school and started work.'

‘It happens.' Luke nodded. ‘I gather it's called growing up,' he said. ‘I don't reckon it much, and neither did Peter Pan.'

‘It wasn't just that.' Duncan frowned. For some reason, things long obscure were beginning to clarify in his mind. ‘She was always - well, quiet.'

Luke nodded. ‘Quiet,' he said. ‘Didn't say a lot.'

‘That's right.'

‘You sure she was female?'

Girls had always liked Luke, of course, and Duncan had assumed that his air of arrogant disdain for them was just catnip; it certainly seemed to have that effect. But now there was an edge to his voice. Not bitterness, an echo of Duncan's own attitude. More the unconcerned dismissal of the man who's never been to a particular place and never wanted to. He bookmarked the insight for later.

‘Serious,' he said. ‘I don't mean no sense of humour, just - well, quiet.'

‘Boring.'

‘No, not boring. Just—'

Luke shrugged. ‘Quiet, right. Nice-looking?'

Duncan pulled a face. ‘Yes.'

‘I see. Nice-looking and didn't talk all the time. You wouldn't happen to have her phone number?'