‘Sam! How are you? Didn’t recognize you in your Wild West gear!’ It was Phillips, appearing from the other side of the church. Sam realized he was referring to the fringed leather jacket.
‘Hello, Mr Phillips.’
‘Were you looking for someone?’
‘Yes. No. I mean . . .’
Phillips waited patiently. ‘I don’t expect you were looking for me, were you?’
‘No. I . . .’
Phillips smiled, then wrinkled his brow, puzzled. He tried to help Sam, saying, ‘How are those rascally friends of yours? Terry and Clive? How are they doing?’
‘I’m sorry about that day.’
‘Pardon? What day was that?’
‘That’s what I came to say. That day. We were being stupid. Completely stupid. Childish.’
Phillips blinked but plainly at nothing in particular. ‘What day?’
‘We were just messing around, that’s all. Nothing personal.’
‘I’m not quite with you, Sam.’
‘Mr Phillips, is it true you’re like a doctor, and anything anyone says to you can’t go any further, like to the police or parents or anybody? Is that true? I heard that you’re not allowed to tell anyone things other people tell you.’
‘You mean at confession? Yes, the thing is, Sam, I’m a lay preacher – do you know what that means?’
‘Oh?’
‘But I mean . . . yes, if there was something you wanted to
tell me, or to talk about in confidence, then of course that would just be between me and you. Have you scratched yourself ?’
Sam took his glasses off and turned away He didn’t want Phillips to see the tears that had formed in his eyes.
‘Anyway,’ Phillips laughed, resting a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder, ‘what can be that bad? I’d only have to tell someone if you were to confess to a murder! So cheer up. Come on, Sam.’
‘No. I just came to say sorry about that day. I have to go now. I’ve got an appointment.’
‘An appointment! Sounds important!’
‘Not really ’Bye.’
Sam felt Phillips watching him all the way to the gate. After he’d gone a dozen yards or so he looked round. Phillips was still regarding him carefully.
The pond seemed to be the only place where he could get away from the complications of friends’ cousins, parents, Sunday-school teachers, so he went there, hopelessly early for his appointment with Alice. He sat on the battered car seat, smoking (or, rather, occasionally holding a lighted cigarette to his lips rather than genuinely smoking, since he still didn’t really enjoy the things) and trying to decipher the tiny fragments of the torn letter he’d found in the pocket of Alice’s jacket.
On one piece he discerned the words
you never said
and on another
memories I have
and then
loving you will not
and then
not married
and then
fucking
– yes, yes, it clearly said
fucking
– and
crying all night
. There were other words and half words out of which it was impossible to construct phrases or any sense. He tried piecing them all together, placing the scraps side by side like a jigsaw, but most of the letter was missing. Whoever had torn up the letter had made a thorough job of it.
Sam threw the letter fragments into the pond, where they
fell like tiny leaves, floating on the cold surface without breaking the skin of the water. He searched through the pockets again, looking for more information about Alice. All he found was a comb in the inside pocket. A few hairs were attached to the comb. He took the hairs from the comb, twining the long, fine strands around a matchstick. It was while he was putting the matchstick in a pocket of his jeans that he caught a flash of something moving on the water at the periphery of his vision. There was a ‘gloop’ and a brief flash of green and gold as a large fish came up and took the fragments of paper from the surface of the water.
Then it was gone.
Sam scrambled to the edge of the pond, peering into the wintry blackness, seeing only the shadows of fronds and the deeper darkness. Two cool, soft hands reached from behind him, covering his eyes, and he knew from the scent that came with them that it was Alice. Too soon the hands were removed.
‘The pike. I just saw it.’
‘I don’t believe you!’
Oh, yes, he wanted to say, it just ate the last pieces of your love letter. Her head was tilted at a shy angle, but her eyes mocked. Alice’s eyes subtly changed colour depending on the time of day, or the condition of the sky, or the brightness of the light on the water. She wore his denim jacket and yards of multi-coloured scarf. She collapsed on to the old car seat. ‘I nearly didn’t come. My horse has gone lame, and I couldn’t ride this morning. Hey, did you scratch yourself ? Then I thought you wouldn’t speak to me again on the school bus if I didn’t come.’
‘Makes no difference to me,’ said Sam. ‘I was coming here anyway.’ He flipped open his box of ciggies, offering them.
They sat together, smoking and playing ‘Do You Know Him?’, as Alice named all the people she knew at school and Sam named the few he pretended to know. Sam had no sense
of time passing. Though Alice’s presence made him jumpy, and he felt his nerves straining and popping every time she spoke or he had to answer, he was happy in her company in a way he could never have predicted.
There was a scuffling in the trees, and Terry and Clive broke through the bushes. They stopped dead when they saw Alice sitting with Sam. Terry blinked stupidly, a half-smile twitching across his face. He looked at Sam’s cigarette. Clive had, the day before, been inflicted with a severe haircut, making his ears and neck seem excessively pink. His eyes widened at Alice, who merely crossed her legs and took a cool drag on her cigarette. Clive looked as though he felt he’d been tricked but in a way he couldn’t quite figure out. He picked up a stone and flung it into the pond with unnecessary force.
‘Where’s your pony?’ said Terry.
‘It’s not a pony. It’s a horse.’
‘You look a twat in that jacket,’ said Clive.
‘Fuck off,’ said Sam.
‘You fuck off, scarface.’
‘No, you fuck off.’
‘Is this what passes for wit in your little gang?’ said Alice.
All three boys looked at her, as if they all wanted to say the same thing and she’d just taken it away from all of them. ‘We’re not a little gang,’ said Clive.
‘A little Boy Scout gang.’
‘No more than you with your Pony Club. Deborahs and Abigails.’
‘And Jemimas,’ Terry put in supportively.
‘She knows,’ said Sam, ‘who smashed up the gymkhana hut.’
‘Who was it?’ said Terry.
Alice narrowed her eyes at Sam. ‘I
know.
But I’m not
saying
. Crash the ash, Sam.’ Sam took out his cigarettes and
offered them round with desperate nonchalance. Clive and Terry took one each. ‘So. What do you call your little gang?’
‘We’re the Heads-Looked-At Boys,’ said Terry.
‘No,’ Sam cut in quickly. ‘That’s in the past.’
‘Or the Moodies,’ said Terry. ‘That’s what my Uncle Charlie calls us. The Moodies.’
‘That fits,’ said Alice. ‘The Redstone Moodies.’
Sam was about to protest when Clive barked a mirthless laugh. ‘Yeah. That’s us. The Redstone Moodies.’ Then he tossed another stone in the pond, but more gently this time.
‘What do you have to do to join? Wear shorts? Tie a reef knot?’
‘Strip naked and jump in that pond,’ said Terry. ‘For full membership.’
Alice stood up and offered to take off her jacket. ‘Come on, then. We’ll do it together.’
Terry looked less than keen.
‘You have to suck my dick,’ said Clive.
‘Right. I’ll suck your dick while you suck Sam’s.’
‘Ha!’ laughed Terry, jabbing a finger at Clive. ‘Ha!’
‘All talk,’ said Alice. ‘You’re all talk. I’ll match anything you do. But that’s just it. You won’t do anything.’
‘You don’t have to
do
anything,’ Sam said acidly. ‘You just have to be fucked-up in the head.’
‘Good.’ She took off the denim jacket and lobbed it at Sam. ‘Now give me my leather back. I’ve got to go.’
Reluctantly Sam handed Alice’s jacket back to her. She put it on, pushed her way through the bushes and was gone, leaving behind her a unique silence, a rippling silence like the one that follows a stone tossed in a pond.
‘Who is she, then?’ Terry said after a while.
‘Alice,’ said Sam.
The following morning, on the first day of the school’s Christmas holidays, Sam lay abed consulting a dictionary.
Gossamer
n. & adj. light, filmy substance; the webs of small spiders, floating in calm air or over grass; a thread of this; something flimsy; delicate gauze
He heard from downstairs a knocking at the back door. After a moment his mother came into his bedroom. ‘Terry’s here for you.’
Sam dressed, went to the bathroom, squashed a wet flannel against his face and went downstairs, still blinking. Terry stood in the hallway, wearing gloves and scarf, his left foot turned inwards. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he whispered. He fidgeted nervously while Sam ate a dish of breakfast cereal.
‘What is it?’ said Sam when they’d got outside.
‘See for yourself.’
Terry led him towards Clive’s house. After two hundred yards they passed a tall, white-painted picket fence. Sam stopped in his tracks. Daubed in red paint, in broad letters three feet high, were the words REDSTONE MOODIES.
‘Who . . . ?’ said Sam.
‘There’s more. Follow me.’ On the bus shelter further along the street, the same words: REDSTONE MOODIES. Then again a little further, on the white-painted side of the local pub, the Gate Hangs Well. And on the brick wall
running beneath the window of the newsagent’s. And on another garden fence. What’s more, the large sign outside the library was overpainted with the words YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE REDSTONE.
‘Jesus!’
‘It doesn’t stop here,’ said Terry.
The graffiti ran on for half a mile. The artist, or the author, had obviously got bored at some point and started to introduce variations in the language. Royle’s sweetshop was particularly targeted, splashed with the words DEEP MOOD and FINE MOOD. The same slogans cropped up intermittently, so the perpetrator, running out of walls and windows had painted the pavement. Even the church was daubed DEEP MOOD.
‘Why,’ Sam wailed, ‘do I think this is going to come back on us?’
‘Uncle Charlie saw it this morning. He questioned me about it, but then he said he didn’t think that even we were stupid enough to do it right on our own doorstep.’
‘I don’t feel we should even be out on the streets.’
‘Why? You didn’t do it. Did you?’
‘ ’Course I didn’t do it.’
‘You certain?’
Sam stopped Terry with a look. ‘You think I did it?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘You think Clive did it?’
‘No.’
They were unable to call on Clive because he wasn’t home. They knew he was spending that day, even though he was still not quite thirteen years old, sitting a degree-level examination.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Terry. ‘We shouldn’t be on the streets. They’ll all think it was us.’
‘I’m not going home.’
‘All right, we’ll go to my place.’
But when they got back to Terry’s house, there were recriminations of another order, and for once the boys were not the target of parental outrage. In the lounge, Linda was in tears. Charlie and Dot stood over her, looking wronged, angry and bewildered all at the same time. The Chief Guide had called to say how disappointed she’d been that Linda hadn’t turned up to lead the Commonwealth parade, and how everyone had missed her, and was everything all right? Dot and Charlie, who only the day before had seen her leave the house in her Guiding gear, and had indeed welcomed her return that evening in the same smart uniform, were dumbfounded.
Then it had all come out.
Linda’s head was buried under cushions. She was weeping bitterly. Charlie was shouting irrationally. ‘You can’t have boyfriends,’ he stammered, ‘if you’re going to study! You can’t!’ Linda was, that year, preparing to sit her O-level exams. It had been widely assumed that she would stay on at school for A-levels.
‘We don’t know anything about this boyfriend!’ Terry’s Aunt Dot’s voice was raised to a queer pitch. ‘Nothing at all!’
‘I’m sick of the Guides!’ Linda shrieked through her cushions and her hot tears. ‘Sick of the Guides!’
‘You can’t be a scholar
and
have boyfriends!’ Charlie bawled again. There was something odd about the way he brandished the antiquated word ‘scholar’, as if the sitting of A-levels implied the taking of certain vows. ‘You just can’t do it!’
‘Nothing’s been said about this boyfriend! We know nothing about him!’ Dot turned to Terry and Sam, who were observing all this from the hallway. Her eyes bulged like those of a frightened horse. ‘Do you two know anything about this boyfriend?’