Innocence (3 page)

We charge into the cold water, exhilarated by the breath-squeezing moments when the air empties from our lungs and refuses to return. The weariness of the day leeches out of my bones and into the river as I kick my legs lazily and swim.

After, we lay naked on a secluded patch of grass on the opposite bank—the warehouse has no windows, and behind us there are only endless fields of yellow rapeseed. Over the warehouse rooftops, the setting sun is like a fire on the horizon. I finish the can of cider, offering a little to Jay. The alcohol warms my blood, and all the events of the day seem oddly disconnected. My mind turns to thinking about other things, things more immediate and real. I think about being immersed in the cold darkness of the river. The ache in my muscles from working so hard today.

“I don’t like it here,” Jay says. His voice is quiet, barely louder than the soft movement of the water.

“Why not?” I murmur when I have the energy to open my mouth.

Jay doesn’t answer, though I see him shrug out the corner of my eye.

We don’t talk the whole long walk back. It’d be difficult anyway, considering Jay hangs back a good ten paces, whacking the undergrowth to oblivion with a stick he picked up somewhere. I stop every so often, waiting for him to catch up.

Dad is in the lounge when we get back. He’s a little drunk.

I’m exhausted. I don’t want to talk to him, so I make some excuse and go to bed. It’s early, and I’m not sure I will sleep once I lie down, but I do, and my body switches my consciousness off as soon as I’m horizontal. Not even cold feet wake me.

A
CHING
EVERYWHERE
,
I leave before either of them stir. I say hi to Lorne as she sits reading on the wall and realize I never asked Jay about his school. And I meant to—I just forgot.

Guilt swirls in my guts as I sit on the pavement, waiting for Finn.

“So you going to tell me who died?”

Finn obviously hasn’t got the message from my sullen demeanor that I don’t like talking this early in the morning. I’m still contemplating the world.

The traffic is pretty snaked up, so I switch on the radio, only then realizing we’re in a different yet very similar car to yesterday. I pick at the ragged Coke sticker on the dashboard.

“How are you with heights?” he asks as we pull up in front of the house. His dark hair is tied back in a ponytail, making his features seem sharper, making him seem older than I estimated yesterday. Today he looks about twenty-five.

I shrug. “Okay… I guess.”

“I’m taking the tiles off the roof today. Rowan volunteered to be my rope man. I’m hoping he’s forgotten about it.”

I frown at him sidelong, wondering why he’s telling me. Surely he can’t want me to do the ropes for him—he hardly knows me. Then again, Rowan did nearly kill me yesterday without even trying, so I wouldn’t trust him either.

“If you don’t want to, it’s fine. Just… come visit me in hospital sometime?” His voice is all sad and serious, but when I look he cracks a smile, all uneven teeth and shining eyes.

It’s infectious. “Better than shifting fireplaces,” I murmur, warmth squirming in my gut like a wriggling kitten. I push myself deeper into the seat, trying to stop it.

The day is easier. Up on the roof with Finn, it hardly seems like work at all.

The sun is bright and hot, reddening the back of my neck and my arms to a sting. With the rope secured round the chimney, all I have to do is hold the slack around my waist, letting it out a bit or pulling it in a bit as necessary. Taking Finn’s weight makes my arms burn with exertion as they did yesterday, but I’m coming to like the pain. I wonder if one day I’ll have muscles like Shane.

Every time we take a break, I look around, noting how different everything looks from this high up, trying to work out the path through town and where the boat is. Over the rooftops I spot the dark ribbon of the river winding through the industrial estate. Without meaning to, my eyes light on the spot where Jay and I went swimming yesterday, the bank we lay on.

Distractedly I wonder if Jay is down there on the boat or if he’s in school somewhere. I’ve always known where he was since we were very small, and now I don’t, some weirdly parental anxiety is starting to kick in.

Around three o’clock we carry the heavy stacks of unbroken tiles carefully down the ladder and pile them up across the attic like slate monuments to our deconstruction of this house.

It’s just us up here. On the floors below, I can hear the slam of sledgehammers and crowbars deconstructing the house in far dustier and less perfect ways, and I’m thankful I’m not down there.

“Hey, Chris.” Finn looks at me conspiratorially, holding his finger up to his lips. “Stay up here a minute.”

Bemused, I watch him tiptoe gingerly down the creaky attic steps to the next floor. Seconds later he reappears with two cans of beer. Smiling, he chucks me one.

I watch as he cracks his open and takes a long swallow, the muscles of his throat working quickly and fluidly.

“S’warm, but it’s still good,” he says and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

Tentatively I open it and take a sip. Beer is what Dad sometimes smells of. I step up to the grimy attic window, and look at all the ordered piles of trash laid out below. Beer and cigarettes. Finn doesn’t smell of cigarettes. Maybe woodsmoke, though, and cold wind. He moves into my personal space behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end a bare second before his hand clasps me there, the coolness of his skin strangely soothing against my sunburn.

“You’re a hard-working kid,” he says. “Thanks for saving my neck today.”

The hand squeezes, releases, and he steps away, leaving me vibrating in his wake.

“Drink up now,” he calls from the other side of the room. “I’ll drive you home in a bit.”

J
AY
IS
in the galley, cooking, when I return. He looks up as I descend the steps, wordlessly acknowledging me before I walk into our bedroom and change out of my grimy clothes.

Crumpled on the floor next to Jay’s bunk is a pair of black polyester trousers, a stark white shirt, and a black nylon blazer—school uniform.

I think about lying down on my hammock and watching the birds through the skylight in the ceiling. But I don’t.

I think about going swimming again, but I know I won’t. I put on some deodorant.

“You started school today, then?” I emerge from the bedroom, fully aware I should have spoken to him about this yesterday. His words about not liking it here make more sense now.

Jay nods, glancing up from the pan he’s stirring. Scallions and bacon and cubes of potato are frying. It smells like heaven.

We take it in turns to cook, and tonight is my night, not his. But I’m not complaining. “Where’s Dad?” I ask.

“Driving for Bosco. Said he’d be back late.”

We eat in silence. I’m so hungry, I hardly taste the food before I swallow, only realizing at this late stage that I skipped lunch.

After I put my plate in the sink, I grab the brown envelope from under the cabinet in our room and nip over to the Tavern. The envelope contains the meager savings I’ve managed to accumulate over the past couple of years. I buy a bottle of Coke at some overly extortionate price and take it back to the boat. I hold it out to Jay, feeling the heat of my sunburn glow.

“Will you tell me about school?” I ask quietly.

But instead of saying anything, he throws his arms around my shoulders, almost clinging to me.

We curl up on the sofa together, Jay’s back against my chest, and he tells me how rubbish his day was. The school is huge, much bigger than any either of us has been to before.

“I hate it,” he breathes.

But I think what he really hates is being with people. He’s shy, and he’s never really had to face it. I understand that.

“We used to talk about finding Mum,” he says tentatively. “You said we’d save up and one day we’d have enough, and you’re earning money now.”

He shifts to look at me, pinning me with his eyes, the color of them changing with the light.

Finding Mum is something we’ve talked about a lot. “You think Dad is letting me keep the money I earn?”

I hate that Dad has so far given me nothing. And I hate that I’ve
done
nothing about it. I can’t hold Jay’s gaze. Instead I pull him in tighter and rest my head against his shoulder. “We will. I’ll get enough and we will go.”

“Soon,” he pleads.

“Soon.”

T
HE
FOLLOWING
day, Jay comes and sits outside with me as I wait for Finn. The morning is cool and hazy, the scent of fresh-cut grass in the air. It’s going to be hot later on.

Jay runs his hand over the sunburnt skin of my neck. “Looks sore.”

“It is.” I smile wryly, and he lifts his hand away.

“Hey!” I call out to Lorne as she appears out the door to the Tavern with her book.

She smiles uncertainly.

“She wearing the same uniform as you?” I mouth to Jay.

Looking down at his oversized blazer, he nods.

“Want me to introduce you?”

The death glare he gives me makes me smile.

As Finn pulls up to the curb, I give Jay a quick one-armed hug.

“See you later.”

He nods tightly, and I know he’s watching the car until we disappear.

Finn has the radio on loud today, and we’re nearly at the house before I muster the courage to talk above it. I clear my throat. “Is there any way I can earn a bit of money without my dad knowing?”

The traffic has slowed right up, and though the car is still coasting along slowly, Finn turns and looks at me appraisingly. I feel my face heat up and fiddle with the frayed hem of my work shirt so that I don’t seem rude by not meeting his eyes.

“Maybe,” he says after a while, still sounding like he’s thinking about it. “Might be something.”

He doesn’t say anything more about it until the end of the day when we get into the car again, and then he doesn’t say much, only “Couple of guys might want to meet you over at the camp.”

And instead of driving me home, that’s where he takes me.

The camp is a good twenty minutes across town and then out into the green gold of the countryside. The sky is the sort of deep azure you usually associate with an Indian summer, but it’s only July. Everything has peaked too early this year, the flower heads blown apart already, fruit fallen and full of wasps. If this heat wave carries on, the green will be gone and a dead brown wasteland will rule August. I open the window of the gray saloon car we have this afternoon and stick my hand out into the warm, heavy air that rushes past. The heat doesn’t bother me, not when it all seems so full, everything brimming over, exploding with life.

As we swing wide up a dirt track between two fields full of cows and bound sickly over the potholes and ruts, I realize why the suspension on all the cars is shot. My body untenses only when Finn turns the ignition off.

It’s a small camp, maybe ten small caravans set out in a rough semicircle, overlong grass brushing the windows, making it seem as if the camp grew there out of the ground a long, long time ago. The remainder of a fire is blackly evident in the not quite center of the grass, the scent of wood smoke still in the air. Somewhere a dog barks ceaselessly. I crane my head till I see it chained up outside one of the caravans. A smallish brown mongrel, some sort of terrier cross.

A couple of cars are parked along the hedge next to us, the ground all churned up around them. I recognize the Renault from the first day, bonnet popped up in the heat, tarpaulin spread across the ground in front like a dog lolling its tongue.

“This is Bosco’s field,” Finn tells me by way of introduction before we get out of the car. “He owns it and we work mostly for him, but some things we do for ourselves, and we don’t always want him to know what they are. Like you don’t want your dad to know. Do you understand?”

His gaze is sharp. I nod.

Warmly, he clasps my hand where it lies on the seat next to my thigh, his thumb making small circles on my wrist, his fingers doing the same on my jeans. It’s just the outside of my thigh, but the sensation makes me light-headed, and my cock starts to stiffen. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react.

“Welcome to my home,” he says in a whisper, squeezing my hand once more, then unclasping it.

Unsteadily I exit the car, still high from his touch, and follow him across the grass towards the vans.

As Finn approaches the caravan with the barking dog, the dog becomes a floppy mess of excitement, no longer barking a warning but yelping in delight. She sniffs at me, just as wildly excited to lick my hand as she was to lick Finn’s.

“You’re a rubbish guard dog,” I whisper, smiling as I crouch down in front of her.

“Maisie.” He introduces her to me. “She belongs to Malachi, but he’s too pissed to care.” He speaks loudly, his tone sneering.

Scratching the dog behind the ears, I look at the tatty, off-white van she is chained to and wonder if anyone is inside to hear him.

The whole field is virtually silent apart from Maisie’s yaps.

We move on, leaving Maisie straining against her chain.

“Mine.” Finn grinningly points to a rounded little van set up on bricks near the edge of the semicircle. “Care to take a look?”

My heart hammering like a wild gypsy song, I nod, trying to look casual but feeling a war beginning within me. I want him to be making small circles on my thigh again with his fingertips and at the same time want to run and run home to Jay and everything warm and known.

Apprehensively I follow him inside the van, suddenly unsure whether the whole pretense of a job and meeting people was just that—a pretense to get me here—and if it was, I don’t think I want to be here at all.

I want
something
, but I don’t know whether it’s Finn. Mostly I think I want Finn to want
me
. I like the idea of him wanting me. I like the idea of being desirable. But I’m not sure if I desire him completely. My body clearly does but… I don’t know… it’s as if something’s missing.