This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You (30 page)

I’m not too sure how things worked out with the whole Muslim thing after that. He spent most of his time in the prayer-room or with the other brothers and I didn’t really see him. There was word went round that he’d only converted because someone had been rinsing his gravy-boat and the best protection around was getting in with the brothers, but I don’t know if that was true or what. I’ve never asked him. I got transferred a long while before either of us got out, and we lost touch after that. This was years ago we’re talking. And when I saw him again at the start of the summer it seemed like he’d gone back to calling himself Ray. I wasn’t sure, but he didn’t look like he was feeling too blessed. He certainly weren’t forswearing alcohol. Could be he was still a Muslim but he’d toned it down a bit. Could be that was what he was up to when he kept going back in the caravan and turning the radio on in there.

Someone at the Stewart place tested out the sound system first thing on the Saturday morning. Nine am on the dot, like they’d purposely waited for what they thought was a respectable time. Didn’t seem like a respectable time to me. Ray near enough punched a hole in the caravan wall. They played a few tunes and then they started talking on the microphone. Seemed like they didn’t really know how loud it was or at least how far sound can travel around here. This was some of the younger Stewarts, it seemed like. Old man Stewart was probably already out somewhere, like straightening the cushions on the church pews or something. They said a few things they obviously thought wouldn’t carry as far as the church, and then there was a howl of feedback and a noise like the wrong plug being pulled out and it went quiet again. Ray got up and went outside and I heard him pissing against the wheel of his car. He came back and got two cans of Guinness from the bag by the door and asked if I wanted some breakfast.

We sat by the lake and drank the cans and threw stones into the water. We could see a few cars pulled up outside the church already, three fields to the north. Old man Stewart’s Range Rover was there. I asked Ray what he thought about the line I’d staked out for the ditch. He said it was the finest line of stakes he’d ever seen but I needn’t think he was about to start digging anything at the weekend when we didn’t even have the right tools anyway. I threw some more stones into the water. They made holes in the green algae and then the holes closed up. It happened pretty quickly and then it was like nothing had happened. I wasn’t sure how Jackie thought she was going to get all that cleared up. A car pulled out from the farmyard at the end of the road and stopped. A woman got out and tied a sign and some balloons to a telegraph pole. We watched her. She got back in the car and drove along the road and stopped at the top of the bank and got out and tied some more balloons to the telegraph pole there. She looked about the right age to be the bride’s mother, dressed in presumably her wedding outfit already. We waved but she didn’t see us. Ray shouted hello and waved again and she looked down to where we were sitting. Ray asked if the balloons were to help people find their way to the wedding and she said they were. She was wearing a big wedding hat, and holding on to it like there was a wind blowing a gale. Ray told her that was a good idea, that it was easy to get lost round here even with the bloody satnav. She nodded and smiled and got back in the car and drove off. She drove along and stopped and got out and tied balloons to every telegraph pole between us and the church.

The weather was clear and still and already warm. It was a good day for a wedding, if you liked that sort of thing. I finished my Guinness and threw the can with the others in the ditch at the bottom of the bank and went and had a look around the lake. Ray asked was I going for some kind of leisurely stroll and I gave him the finger. I was wondering how many fishing jetties would fit around the lake and how close you’d put them and how you’d get them to float. I was starting to think we might as well get on and do some of the jobs Jackie had talked about. Since we were here anyway. Might be good to feel like we were getting something done. She’d need some more pallets though.

A couple of vans drove past. They looked like they were from the catering company. Ray waved as they passed but I didn’t see anyone waving back. He got up and went in the caravan and came out with another couple of cans. Another van came past, from the off-licence in town. We didn’t bother waving.

Late in the morning Jackie came down with a couple of plates of fried-egg sandwiches and said if we were going to be having that sort of a day we might as well get a lining in our stomachs. Meaning the drinking, it seemed like. She had this look on her face like she was indulging us. She said but Monday we’d have to get some work done otherwise old man Stewart would want to have words. She said it was still his land at the end of the day. She called him Mr Stewart. We didn’t say anything. We ate the sandwiches. The yolks were soft and the whites were crisp round the edges. We both said they were good sandwiches. Jackie kept looking over towards the church. There were more people standing around outside, and balloons tied to the gateposts at the entrance to the field they were using for a car-park. We’d offered to help with that, earlier in the week, either with the rolling out or even with the like traffic control on the day, but old man Stewart had just looked at us like we weren’t even there until we’d turned round and left. Jackie was wearing this sort of flowery orange dress and a straw hat and Ray asked her if she’d been invited to the wedding. She said she hadn’t, but she might take a wander over there and see how things were going and see what the bride was wearing and see the flowers and everything. A Tornado came over and dropped another bomb on the Sands. Ray finished his sandwich and licked his fingers clean and told Jackie her dress looked nice. She gave him this look like she was waiting for the punchline and then when there wasn’t one she didn’t know what to say. Another Tornado came over and then something like a dozen or two dozen Tornadoes came over at the same time and dropped bombs on the Sands and we just stared up at them and the sound was like the actual ground being ripped open. Fucking, asunder. We all crouched down without realising and it took a minute or two to straighten up again once they’d gone.

Ray said the wedding would most likely be ruined if they kept that up all day. He looked pretty pleased about it. He said it would have been a major operation to get the whole squadron in the air and formed up like that, it would have taken serious logistical oversight and a fair amount of groin on the part of the pilots. He said he didn’t think they’d be doing that for nothing. One of his uncles had worked on the base for a while, in the kitchens, meaning that was another thing Ray liked to sound knowledgeable about to anyone who’d listen, meaning the planes, not the cooking. I tried to say something about it looking pretty serious now, but I couldn’t hear anything I was saying. I was still waiting for the rushing noise in my ears to fade away and basically what felt like my internal organs to fall back into their rightful place. I tried saying it again, that it looked like things were getting serious. Jackie didn’t say anything. She was just looking over towards the Sands. I remembered the thing about her son. She took our plates back to the house. Ray said it was good of her to wash our crockery as well as doing breakfast. He laughed. I told him to leave it out. I went and got another drink. What was his name. Jackie’s son. Mark. Fucksake.

*

I drove to the Stewart place about as slowly as I could. I wasn’t feeling overly confident in my driving abilities by that point, plus not in the state of the car either, and plus there could have been people walking back along the road. There weren’t any taxis around and that was probably going to come as a surprise to the crowd they had over there. We saw two of them just before we got to the turning, walking in bare feet with their shoes sticking out of their handbags, their arms folded across their chests. They looked young.

That’s what I’m talking about, Ray says.

Just the drinks, I say. Nothing else.

Rinse them dishes any day, he says. I thought he was going to make me stop right there, but he didn’t say anything else so I carried on and turned in at the entrance to the Stewart place. We passed some older guests getting into their cars and holding on to each other. We drove down a grassed track which led around the back of the house, past some open barns with more cars parked inside. At the far end of the track, just past the turning into the field with the marquee, we saw a girl being sick into a bed of nettles. Her dress was a bit on the short side for her to be bending over like she was. A lad in a pink shirt with a pinstriped waistcoat was stood next to her, holding her hair away from her face and rubbing her back. They both looked over their shoulders at us, squinting into the headlights. The girl had a string of something hanging from her mouth. We could see her knickers. They were black as sin.

That’s what I’m fucking talking about, Ray says.

Just the drinks, I say.

*

We knew Mark from school, and for a bit after that. Years back. Spent a bit of time with him. He was all right, he didn’t mind getting up to things. Not that there was all that much to get up to. Mostly it was getting hold of some drinks and finding somewhere to go. One time we walked the five miles out to the Sands with a bottle of cider just so we could drink it while we sat and watched the seals. This was the last year of school. Meaning we were fifteen or sixteen. Ray tried chasing one of the seals and ended up turning round and doing most of the running. It’s surprising how fast a seal can move, if you start messing around with it in breeding season. That was the day we took a car the first time, when none of us wanted to walk all the way home again. I didn’t know Ray knew how to do the thing with the wires, but he said one of his uncles had shown him. We could all drive, just about, but Mark wouldn’t take his turn so we kicked him out and made him walk the rest of the way. He never told anyone about it, which was a good start. That was how come we took him on a job soon after, but it turned out he wasn’t really up for it. He didn’t know what we were doing until we got in through the back door, and then he wouldn’t come in any further than the doormat. He kept saying he could hear someone coming, he could hear a car pulling into the yard, he could maybe hear a siren? He was near enough crying by the time we’d finished so we didn’t take him on a job again. Ray made sure he knew not to tell anyone.

Could see why Mark signed up, thinking about it. The way he liked things to be done right. He probably liked the discipline of it and everything. Sit tight and wait for orders. It was still a surprise though, him being the fattest kid in the year and everything. No one really saw him after he’d signed up. Besides the other boys in our year who signed up with him. He was off on training exercises and getting rid of all that weight and all that, and then when he was home he probably wasn’t meant to associate with us anyway. Must have seemed like a good idea at the time, signing up. He must have thought the worst he’d have to face would be ducking petrol bombs in Belfast or maybe getting rained on for six months in the Falklands. Instead of getting stuck in a broken-down tank in the desert and dying of heatstroke.

Jackie got an earful of all that our-brave-boys stuff after that, all heroic sacrifices and dying-for-all-our-freedom, which if it was me I’d have wanted someone to talk me through how that was supposed to work exactly. Mark sitting tight in that broken-down tank waiting for his orders. Waiting for help to arrive without it ever passing through his big pink head that it was never coming. They gave him a posthumous medal and everything. No wonder Jackie moved out of town. Must have wanted to get away from all that sympathy. Don’t know what happened to Mark’s dad. He’d been in all the pictures in the paper, I could remember that, the two of them sat in their lounge with their arms round each other, holding up Mark’s school photo like some kind of consolation prize. The sofa was hardly big enough for the two of them and all their crying. He must have just gone and done the off.

Fucking heatstroke though. It weren’t exactly Andy McNab.

That was all about the time someone did a job on Hilltop Farm, which old man Stewart didn’t exactly own but it turned out he had some interest in, and word went round that it was us who’d done it. There wasn’t any proof and it got dropped in the end but that didn’t stop word going around anyway. That was when most of the trouble started. It was the interest in that job that meant we got caught out, in the end.

Whoever called it Hilltop Farm must have had some sense of humour, round here.

Jackie came over again before she went to the church and told us that if she did get to go to the reception she’d make sure she brought us back some cake. We told her thanks Jackie, that’s good of you, we’ll look forward to it. Another load of Tornadoes went over, three of them in close formation going extra-low over the Sands without dropping anything. Jackie said that was how they knew last time round that the war was definitely going to start, when they’d started going at the Sands all hours like this. We didn’t know what to say so we told her to enjoy the wedding.

By the time we heard the church bells ringing and the guests were all sweeping out of the church and throwing confetti at the happy couple it had been quiet over by the Sands for a couple of hours. Wouldn’t put it past old man Stewart to have gone and had words at the base. National emergency crisis or whatever, this was his daughter getting married. We stood up at the top of the rise by the hay meadow and watched them all coming out of the church. Getting into the line-ups for the pictures. Moving apart and coming together and moving apart again and the young lady in the white dress always at the centre. The women all in hats and dresses like at the races. Ray started talking about how women like dressing up for a wedding. Can’t argue with that, he was saying. Strappy shoes. High-heeled shoes. Dresses in bold colours and prints. Purple dresses. Red and white floral dresses. Very tight. Above the knee. Figure-hugging, you get me. Dresses they keep tugging at the hemline like they never noticed how short it was when they put it on, you get me. All that hair-dressing. Hats. Summer hats. Summer dresses and summer hats and straps that keep slipping off shoulders. Bare shoulders. Bare legs. You get me. It was hard to stop him when he got going on something like that. Fucking, monologue is what you’d call it. I asked him could he see Jackie anywhere and he showed me where she was standing off to one side, sort of behind a stone wall. There were a couple of other women from the village with her but she was the only one wearing a hat.