The Quarry (3 page)

Paul just laughs, then says, ‘Still working for
Sight Unseen
?’

‘
Sight and Sound
, and fuck you again. And don’t pretend you don’t read it, even if it’s just because you have to.’

He laughs again.

‘I’m not any bigger,’ I tell Paul as we head back into the hall.

‘What?’

‘I’m the same size as I was last summer, last time you were here.’

‘Oh. Are you?’

‘Yes. I’m one hundred kilos.’

‘Are you now?’

‘I’m always one hundred kilos. I have been since before I was sixteen.’

‘Really.’

‘I just like being one hundred kilos.’

‘I see,’ Paul says, as we troop up the stairs. ‘Well, that’s, ah, that’s a nice round number.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Exactly.’ I’m leading the way up the stairs at this point so I can’t see his expression.

Guy’s bedroom bell jangles again and a moment later I hear Mrs Gunn bustling out of the kitchen, muttering, ‘Yes, yes, I hear you. Can’t be in three places at once.’ She comes stamping up the stairs behind us.

‘Hello again, Mrs G!’ Paul says cheerily as she passes us.

‘Mm-hmm,’ she says, not looking at any of us as she passes. She has her outside wellies on and is taking off her gardening gloves as she goes, disappearing round the corner at the top of the stairs.

‘How is Guy?’ I hear Paul say quietly.

‘Haven’t seen him yet,’ Hol tells him. ‘No better, from what—’

I turn round, lower my head and my voice and whisper, ‘He’s still dying,’ to Paul.

Paul looks instantly serious. ‘Sorry to hear that,’ he says.

Behind him, Hol seems to be keeping a neutral expression.

We’re in the kitchen ten minutes later, drinking tea that I’ve made and eating shortbread that Mrs Gunn has made – she is still upstairs, probably helping Dad get up – when the doorbell rings.

The doorbell also links to one of the kitchen bells. These are over one hundred and thirty years old, as old as the house itself. The bells exist in a long box up on the wall of the kitchen. They look like little handbells hanging on the ends of metal springs shaped like question marks. A white-or-red disc under each bell used to show which one had rung most recently even after the bell had stopped ringing and the spring had stopped quivering, but the discs haven’t worked for at least the one point eight decades I’ve been around.

When the quarry on the far side of the back garden wall was still being worked, up to four years ago, the twice-weekly blasts used to shake the whole house and make all the bells ring faintly. It was as if the house was trembling and crying out in alarm.

Now they’re going to extend the quarry and the house is going to have to go; Guy is selling the place to Holtarth Moor Quarries and it’ll be demolished. I don’t entirely know where I’ll end up but if there is one thing I’d like to keep from the house itself – I mean, apart from all my own stuff, in my room – it might be this box of bells here in the kitchen. I’m not sure why.

‘Anybody home?’ a distant female voice yells from the front hall.

‘Hey, it’s the fatuous Baker girl,’ Hol says as we all stand, chairs scraping on the flagstones.

‘We just came in,’ says a male voice from the same direction. ‘Hope that’s all right …’

‘Oh,’ Hol says brightly, ‘and Mr Bobby.’

‘What does she call me?’ Paul asks me as we file out of the kitchen to the hall again.

‘Buzz Darkside,’ Hol says, before I can answer.

Paul looks unimpressed. ‘Still with that? Needs reimagining. Hey!’ he says, raising his voice as we see the others. ‘Hey!’ he shouts, even louder. ‘It’s the whole gang!’

I’d expected two more people – Alison and Rob – which I think I could have coped with, but instead there are four and I feel overwhelmed. The other two are Pris and Haze, who used to be a couple but now aren’t and yet they’ve turned up together. Everybody crowds into the hall except Mrs Gunn and Guy, who are still upstairs, and I back into a corner near the cupboard under the stairs, feeling suddenly hot and a bit dizzy, while people, us from the kitchen and the rest from the still-open front door, mill about and talk and shout and put luggage down and embrace one another and slowly start to sort themselves out, though in the meantime they all talk at once and talk over one another, so it’s difficult for me to tell who’s saying what.

‘Yeah, bit mob-handed, as my old da would have said. We did ring, but—’

‘Still not where the sat-nav says it’s supposed to be.’

‘Come in! Come in come in come in come in.’

‘It doesn’t
matter
.’

‘Paul. Ah, thanks. Yeah, thought that must be your great white behemoth blocking the front door.’

‘Yeah, look, I missed out on getting to the supermarket so I haven’t got any booze. But I’ve brought all me special spices and secret ingredients with me. Thought I might make a curry. I mean, I can go out specially later for drink, yeah? Oh, hi, Hol. Hey, Paul, what’s up?’

‘Yes, but it should get it
right
. The place has
been
here long enough.’

‘Passed Pris and her new chap on the motorway so I texted them. Met up for a coffee in Ormers and bumped into Haze.’

‘Well, not for much longer. Evening, all. Oh, look; decent mobile reception. That’s an innovation.’

‘Yeah, that was just a misunderstanding, that disabled space.’

‘Where’s, ah …?’

‘And can I just say now, I’ve brought some lacto-free milk, and I’m not saying nobody else can’t have any at all, but I will need some each day, so …’

‘What did you buy?’

‘Might ask you to move the Audi at some point, Paul; going to need access to a plug to recharge the Prius.’

‘Rick, Paul. He’s called Rick. He’s staying in Ormiscrake. The King’s Head.’

‘Hey, Paul, Hol; good to see you, Kit.’

‘What, is he just shy or something?’

‘Oh, like, no, I wasn’t … I was, um, donating, you know?’

‘You’ve got a plug-in Pious?’

‘He doesn’t want to intrude, Paul. I know that’s a hard concept for you to cope with.’

‘Oh. It’s just that you came out with a bag.’

‘Hol the
doll
! You good? Look at you!’

‘He looking after Mhyra?’

‘Yew, harsh!’

‘Well, you’re kind or blind and I’m a mess, but thanks.’

‘Nah, we left Brattus Norvegicus with my sister in Hemel.’

‘What? Oh, ah. No, yeah, that was, like, stuff they couldn’t … Hey, there’s our Kit! Hey, Kit. Yeah, yeah. How are you, my friend?’

By early evening, when it is already dark but the rain has eased off again and a little watery moonlight is painted over the limbs of the trees crowding the back garden, they are all fed and watered and Guy is up and we are all in the sitting room, sitting.

Mrs Gunn has gone home. She lives in a neat little timber-frame, brick-skin bungalow in a cul-de-sac in the leafy suburb of Quonsley, which is a couple of kilometres away, just over the big bulge of field on the hill that hides most of the city from the house. I have been to her house once, when I missed the bus from school and was told to go to hers to wait for Dad, who was coming with the car. She keeps clear plastic covers on her couch and chairs in the living room. Her house was warm and draught free, and smelled of clean. It could not be much less like this place.

Willoughtree House. That’s the name of this place, the name of the house we are talking about and which I live in with Guy, my dad.

‘I
still
can’t fucking believe it. I certainly couldn’t believe it the first time …
especially
the first fucking time. I remember thinking, Boris fucking Johnson as mayor of London? What next? The Chuckle brothers as secretaries general of the United Nations?’

‘Boris isn’t so bad.’

‘
What?
’

‘Yeah, come on, Hol; at least he’s, like, real.’

‘Fuck off. He’s a fucking right-wing Tory, friend of Rupert fucking Murdoch and defender of the fucking kleptocrat bankers. Another Bullingdon Club bully. How does coming across as being an incompetent bumbler at whatever he does make him
better
?’

‘I’ve met him. He’s not so—’

‘Oh, I bet you have. I bet he’s fucking charming. So was Blair. So what?’

‘Look, I didn’t feckin vote for him, all right?’

‘But Haze is right,’ Rob says. ‘Boris seems more like a normal person.’

‘Yeah!’ Haze says. ‘Not one of these robot guys, never giving a straight answer or anything. Just, just …’ Haze flaps both hands. ‘Yeah, like …’ His voice trails away.

‘You would have fucking voted for him, wouldn’t you?’ Hol says, looking straight at Paul.

‘I just told you I didn’t.’

‘Yeah, you’re contractually bound not to because after giving it a lot of thought you’ve plumped for Labour for your political career. I bet you would have if you could, though. And for all we know—’

‘Like I say—’

‘Look me in the eye, you twat, and tell me you weren’t tempted to vote for him. Especially against Ken; you’re more of a Blairite than that lying, war-mongering scumbag is himself. I bet you had to grit your teeth, if you did vote for Ken. Tell me you didn’t want to vote for Boris.’

‘Never even occurred to me.’

‘You lying bastard.’

Paul spreads both arms, looks round at everybody else, as though appealing to them. He even looks at me. ‘Holly,’ he says, when his gaze returns to her, ‘I don’t know what to say to you when you’re in this sort of mood. I don’t know how to handle you. Politics is politics and there are some decent people on the other side just like there are some twats on our side, and until you accept that you’re always going to sound like some Spartist caricature. Get a fucking grip, why don’t you.’

‘Can we talk about something else?’ Alison asks.

‘I’m not arguing there are no decent people in the Tory Party,’ Hol says to Paul. I think she’s trying to keep calm now. ‘But they’re like bits of sweetcorn in a turd; technically they’ve kept their integrity, but they’re still embedded in shit.’

‘There you go,’ Paul says, laughing lightly.

‘Yeah, come off the fence, Hol,’ Haze says. ‘Tell us what you really think!’

‘Things have changed, Hol,’ Rob tells her. ‘Phase-changed, even. We’re just not where we were.’

‘I’m being serious here,’ Alison says. ‘
Can
we talk about something else? I mean, does any of this really
matter
?’

Hol shakes her head. ‘What a choice: Neo-Labour, the toxic Agent-Orange-Book Lib-Dems or the shithead rich-boy bastardhood that is the Tories. We really are all fucked, aren’t we?’

‘Finally a note of realism,’ Paul says, shaking his head.

‘There’s always UKIP, Hol,’ Haze says.

Hol looks at Haze as though she’s about to say something, but then her face sort of screws up and she just makes a sound like ‘Tschah!’

A bell rings in the hall, not the kitchen. It’s the special one we put in last year. Guy isn’t in the room with the rest of us right now; he left about five minutes ago, pushing on his Zimmer frame and refusing help.

While he’s been absent, I have been asked again about exactly how Guy is. I’ve done my little speech about how he has good days and bad days and good weeks and bad weeks, though month-on-month he’s very obviously heading downwards, and the good days and good weeks now are like the bad days and bad weeks of just a few months ago. Everybody seems satisfied with this.

The thing is, with Mrs Gunn gone, I’ll have to answer the bell if it goes again (we have a code), though I’d rather not. I’d rather stay here with the others, even though I’m just sitting on the edge of the group and only listening, not taking part. This is where I’m comfortable, being with a few other people rather than just with Dad, but not actually having to do much except listen.

The numbers have to be right. Too many people – more than ten or twelve, say – and I clam up anyway, confused by all the different voices and the interrupting and the trying to work out what people mean behind what they say and what their facial expressions and body language are telling me, but, on the other hand, if there are too few people, then they seem to feel they have to try to involve me in the conversation, because they don’t want me to feel left out, or because they don’t see why I should get to listen in without contributing something.

I’m still waiting for the other bell, dreading it. I am Pavlov’s dog, though instead of salivating I have a little jolt of fear in my guts each time it rings.

‘And don’t think I didn’t hear that bit about “For all we know”,’ Paul is saying to Hol, pointing at her. ‘You didn’t actually get to the point where you might have impugned my word, but you sailed pretty close to that … to that particular waterfall.’

‘What the hell are you—’

‘Seriously,’ Alison says, ‘
can
we talk about something else?’

‘And who the fuck uses words like “impugned” amongst their pals, for Christ’s sake?’ Hol asks, sounding angry. ‘Is that, like, lawyer talk or something?’

‘All I’m saying—’

‘Or is it politico lingo?’ Hol is asking Paul. I think she’s still angry but she makes a sort of small laughing sound as well. ‘Have they put you through some sort of Talking Like a Politician induction course? Is that Spad-speak? Now you’re probably going to be an MP, are you going to start talking about straw men, and things getting knocked into cocked hats? Is that how it works?’

‘Politilingo? Polingo?’ Haze is saying.

I have seen Hol and Paul argue and talk and shout like this before. According to Guy they were always the same.

‘Anyway. Think I’ll get another drink,’ Haze says, standing. ‘Anybody else need another drink?’

‘Yeah, that’s what this conversation needs,’ Pris says. ‘More alcohol.’

The sitting room is probably the most civilised space in the house, and the warmest. It has that long rectangular coffee table made of wood in the middle; the one with the flower vase at its centre. A three-seater couch faces each of its long sides and an easy chair faces each of its short sides. One of the couches and a chair are matching blue velvet; the other couch is brown, pretend leather. The other seat is a swivel chair made of stretchy red fabric pulled tight over an expanded polystyrene moulding. Pris has told me this is a piece of authentic seventies batwing kitsch and so old it’s been back in fashion at least twice. Or would have been but for the tears in the fabric and the stains on it. (Last time we talked, she wasn’t sure of the current position of such furniture – she said she’d have to consult a magazine called
Wallpaper
. Which I found confusing, because we’re talking about a chair.) Anyway, the red chair and brown sofa don’t match anything else in the room.