Black Rabbit Summer (6 page)

‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Is this some kind of joke or something?’

‘No joke,’ Campbell said coldly. ‘Just a simple question – do you know what a friend is?’

‘Yeah,’ Pauly snorted, pretending to be offended, ‘of course I know what a
friend
is. Why shouldn’t I?’

For a moment or two, Campbell just carried on staring at him, then all at once his eyes lost their coldness, his face broke into that smile again, and he stepped up and gave Pauly a friendly pat on the arm.

‘See?’ he said casually. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

Pauly grinned, not quite so nervous now, but still a little unsure.

Campbell gave him another reassuring pat on the arm. ‘We’ll see you later then, OK?’

‘Yeah… where’re you going to be?’

But Campbell didn’t answer him. He’d already turned round and was heading off down the pathway towards the wasteground, the three Greenwell kids following along behind him. He wasn’t smiling any more. His friendly face had shut down as soon as he’d turned away from Pauly. I’d seen it disappear –
click
– like a light going off. And now, as I watched him go, it was hard to believe he’d ever smiled in his life.

I turned to Raymond.

He was watching Campbell too.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.

He nodded.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah…’ He looked at me, his brow furrowed. ‘He’s weirder than me, isn’t he?’

‘Who – Campbell?’

‘Yeah.’

I laughed. ‘Yeah, I think he probably is.’

∗

The den in Back Lane is hidden away at the top of the bank, about three-quarters of the way along the lane. You can’t see it from ground level, and unless you know exactly how to get there, it’s almost impossible to find. And even when you
do
know how to get there, it’s still pretty tricky.

‘It’s up there,’ Raymond said, pointing up the bank.

‘Where?’

‘There… you cut through those brambles over there –’

‘Where?’

‘There, by that tree stump.’

I couldn’t even
see
any tree stump. It was getting on for nine thirty now and the sun was starting to go down. It wasn’t really dark yet, and the air was still hot and sticky, but the light in the lane was beginning to fade to a dim and shadowy blur.

‘He’s right,’ Pauly said, muscling in between Raymond and me. ‘It’s there, look.’ He pointed up at the bank. ‘You go round the back of that stump, then along that little ridge and up through the brambles –’

‘Shut up, Pauly,’ I said.

He gave me his hurt-little-boy look. ‘I’m only trying to help.’

‘Yeah, right,’ I said. ‘Pauly Gilpin – Mr Fucking Helpful.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means you’re bad,’ Raymond said.

We both looked at him.

‘Bad?’ Pauly grinned. ‘You mean
baad
like Michael Jackson?’

Raymond couldn’t help smiling then, and that was all the encouragement Pauly needed. He put down his carrier bag and started dancing around, singing loudly in a stupid American accent: ‘
Your butt is maaan, gonna take you raaaght…
shit!’

Raymond laughed as Pauly moonwalked into the bank and
fell over, and I found myself smiling too. I didn’t
want
to, but it
was
pretty funny.

That was the thing about Pauly – no matter what you thought of him, no matter how much you
wanted
to hate him, he could always redeem himself by making you laugh. But I knew it was all part of his act. Make them laugh, make them smile, make them forget about everything else…

I looked at him now, rolling around on his back, wiggling his arms and legs in the air, whooping and shrieking like Michael Jackson in pain.

‘Come on, Raymond,’ I said, stepping up on to the bank. ‘Let’s go.’

We used to have dens all over the place – down by the river, along the lane into town, in the little woods at the back of the old factory car park. Most of them were pretty ramshackle things – a few wooden boards jammed into the ground, a couple of old pallets stuck between a gap in some trees. Sometimes we’d fix it all together with bits of old rope or something, maybe throw some plastic sheeting over the top… but they weren’t really made to last. We’d just pick up whatever we could find, stick it all together, and that was that.

But the den in Back Lane was different. I can’t remember
why
we decided to put so much effort into it – I expect we were probably just bored and didn’t have anything else to do – but I know that it took days to build. It was really hard work – finding exactly the right spot, scouring the old factory for building materials (old doors, corrugated metal, rusty nails), lugging it all back to the top of the bank, fixing it all together, plugging the gaps between the walls, covering the outside with branches and brambles… we even gave it a little door and a skylight in the roof. And when it was all finished, it was amazing. Hidden away at the top of the bank, but not too close to the factory fence, it was virtually invisible. Even when you were standing right in front of it, it was hard to tell it was there. And once
you got inside, it was almost like being in a proper little room. It wasn’t huge or anything, but it was just about high enough to walk around in without having to stoop too much, and there was easily enough room for the five of us to slouch around on the floor, which is mostly what we did. The floor wasn’t really a
floor
, but we’d cleared the ground, and we’d stamped it down, and after we’d slouched around on it for a couple of weeks, it was almost as hard as concrete.

We spent most of that summer in the Back Lane den. Hot summer days, rainy days, shadowy evenings and candlelit nights. We just about lived in there. God knows what we did all day – all I can remember is sitting around talking, making stupid plans, messing around…

Messing around.

Yeah, there was that. There was all
kinds
of messing around.

And the den parties, of course. We had lots of den parties that summer. Steamy nights, stolen cigarettes and bottles of booze, getting drunk, getting sick, getting overexcited…

Me and Nicole.

Breathless in the candlelight…

Kids’ stuff.

‘What?’ said Raymond.

We’d reached the top of the bank now, and I’d kind of forgotten Raymond was there. I also hadn’t realized that I’d been thinking out loud.

‘Sorry?’ I said to him, pausing for breath.

‘I thought you said something.’

‘When?’

‘Just now.’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t say anything.’

Raymond looked at me for a moment, smiling secretly to
himself, then he turned his head and gazed across at a suddenly familiar-looking patch of ground over to our left.

‘There it is,’ he said.

In the greying light, I could see the overgrown brambles spreading out over the roof of the den, and beneath the brambles I could just make out the faded blue paint on the boards of the roof. The skylight – a cracked old window pane, fixed with bent nails over a hole in the roof – was still intact.

‘It looks all right, doesn’t it?’ I said to Raymond.

He smiled at me. ‘I told you it’d still be here.’

‘Yeah, you did.’

I glanced over my shoulder and looked down the bank at Pauly. He was scrambling up behind us, breathing hard and cursing at the brambles.

I looked back at Raymond. ‘Do you want to wait for him?’

‘No.’

We walked over to the den and stopped in front of the door.

‘After you,’ I said to Raymond.

‘No, after
you
,’ he smiled, waving me forward.

I paused for a moment, breathing in the hot thundery air, then I stooped down and opened the door.

‘Hey, Pete.’

‘Who’s that?’

Nicole laughed. ‘Who do you think?’

‘Christ,’ I said, edging my way inside, ‘I can hardly
see
in here.’

‘Let me in,’ Raymond said from behind me.

‘Hold on.’

I took a step forward.

‘Shit!’ Eric cried out. ‘That’s my foot!’

‘Sorry.’

As I stepped to one side, I cracked my head on the roof – ‘Shit!’ – and then Raymond stumbled into me, almost knocking me over, and I stepped on Eric’s foot again.

‘Christ, Boland! What are you
doing
?’

‘It was Raymond –’

‘I didn’t
do
anything,’ Raymond said.

Then Pauly bulldozed his way through the door behind us – ‘Watch out! I’m coming in!’ – and
he
tripped over something – ‘Fuck!’ – crashing into Raymond, and Raymond crashed into me, and I toppled over and almost landed in Nicole’s lap.

‘Watch it!’ she cried.

‘Sorry.’

‘What’s going on?’ said Pauly. ‘Why’s it so
dark
in here?’

‘It’s the night,’ Eric said drily. ‘The lack of sunlight.’

Raymond laughed.

Pauly shoved him.

Raymond bumped into me again.

‘Keep still, for Christ’s sake!’ I yelled, nearly losing my balance again.

‘Why don’t you all just shut up and sit down?’ Nicole suggested.

It was a good idea.

Once we’d all settled down and made ourselves comfortable, everything started to calm down a bit. It was pretty cramped in there, and it took us a while to sort ourselves out (so that we weren’t sitting too close to each other, or kicking each other’s feet), but we got there eventually. I’m not sure if I did it on purpose, but I ended up sitting next to Nicole. She was on my
right, sitting against the far wall. Raymond was on my left. And Eric and Pauly were sitting opposite me.

The air inside the den was hot and sticky, and it smelled kind of earthy and raw – a heady mixture of brambles, sweat, warm breaths, and skin.

‘Anyone remember to bring a candle?’ Eric said.

We all looked at each other, shaking our heads, then Raymond reached into his pocket and pulled out two white candles. As Eric clapped his hands – ‘Well done, Ray’ – Raymond lit one of the candles and placed it on the ground.

‘It’s vanilla,’ he said to no one in particular.

As the candle flickered, lighting up the gloom, I gazed around the den. The walls were leaning in a bit, and there were a few stray bramble stems creeping in through gaps in the roof, but apart from that it seemed in pretty good order.

‘It’s a lot smaller than I remembered,’ I said, gazing up at the roof.

‘Maybe it shrank in the rain,’ said Nicole.

I looked at her.

She smiled. ‘Of course, it
could
just be that we’re all a bit bigger now.’

‘A
bit
bigger?’ Pauly said, leering at Nic.

‘Piss off, Pauly,’ she told him.

He grinned.

Pauly was always saying stuff like that – crass, jokey, sexy kind of stuff – and I knew it wasn’t worth bothering about. It was just him being stupid. Mr Funny Guy. But it
did
bother me. Not because I thought it was wrong or insensitive or sexist or anything, but simply because I was thinking pretty much the same thing myself. Nicole
did
seem to have grown quite a lot… and I couldn’t quite understand it. I mean, it
was only just over three weeks since I’d last seen her, and although we didn’t hang around together any more, I still saw her at school pretty much every day. But somehow she just looked so different now – older, fuller, sexier. I knew it was probably just her make-up and everything – darkened eyes, reddened lips – and the way she was dressed – low-rise jeans, a flimsy little cropped white vest – and the way she’d slicked back her short blonde hair, so she looked kind of icy and hot at the same time…

‘Are you all right, Pete?’ she said to me.

‘What?’

‘You’re staring.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sorry.’

She smiled. ‘That’s all right.’

‘Who wants a drink?’ Pauly piped up.

I looked over to see him brandishing a bottle of tequila.

‘It’s the special stuff,’ he said, unscrewing the cap and taking a slug. ‘Whooh-
hoo
!’ he howled, rolling his eyes. ‘Very special in
deedy
!’

‘What’s so special about it?’ Eric asked.

‘Here,’ Pauly said, passing him the bottle. ‘Suck it and see.’

As Eric took a drink, we all started bringing out the bottles we’d brought. It was a pretty varied selection – a bottle of wine, a few cans of Coke, a half-bottle of Bacardi, Pauly’s tequila, Raymond’s bottle of rum.

‘What the hell’s
that
?’ Pauly said, sneering at the grimy little bottle when Raymond brought it out.

‘It’s rum,’ Raymond told him.

‘It’s half empty.’

Raymond shrugged, looking embarrassed.

I glared at Pauly.

‘What?’ he said to me.

Nicole nudged me and passed me the tequila bottle. I carried on staring at Pauly for a moment, telling him silently to lay off Raymond, then I raised the tequila bottle to my lips and took a drink. I’d never drunk tequila before, and at first it tasted pretty good – kind of smoky and sweet and warm. But then, as it seeped down into my throat, I felt the heat of the alcohol burning up inside me, and I started coughing and spluttering.

As the bottles got passed around, and Pauly started rolling a joint, Nicole began telling us all about Paris – the new house, her dad’s new job, the theatre, the schools, how excited she was…

‘What about you?’ I asked Eric as Nic paused for a moment to take the joint off him. ‘Are you looking forward to going?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure if I
am
going yet. I might stay here for a while.’

‘Why?’

‘No reason,’ he said, glancing at Nic. ‘I just haven’t made up my mind if I want to go or not.’

‘What are you going to do if you stay here?’ I asked him.

‘I haven’t really thought about it. I might go to college, I might go to college in Paris –’

‘Coll
age
,’ Pauly said.

‘What?’

‘It’s French for college – coll
age.
’

Eric shook his head. ‘I might do some work in Dad’s theatre.’