We’re in the sitting room. More drink has been taken. We’re on the fourth or fifth bottle of champagne, and most people have some sort of chaser too.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Guy!’ Rob yells suddenly. We all look at him. Even Ali. ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’
‘Get fucking what?’ Guy says.
‘That the world’s fucking changed, Guy. Again? You know? Like it always does?’
‘Babe,’ Ali says, reaching to touch Rob’s arm, but he pulls it away, keeps his gaze fixed on Guy, who is glaring back at him.
‘And like it always will? And just because you don’t like it, that doesn’t matter a fuck. Jesus Christ, Guy, none of us are glad you haven’t got long to go, but it’s like that’s just an acknowledgement of how cut off from everything you and people like you are – have been – for years, decades.’
‘Babe,’ Ali says again.
‘Yeah, the world isn’t fucking perfect, Guy,’ Rob says, ‘but it never fucking was and it never fucking will be, not with us in charge. The fact you don’t like the way things have been going since before … before even you were able to vote, is just too bad. Dying … being on the brink of death doesn’t give you any right to just sit there—’
‘Babe,’ Ali says a third time, reaching out to Rob again. He shrugs her off, spilling some of his champagne onto the carpet. At least it’s not going to leave much of a stain.
‘Leave me alone, will you?’ Rob says to Ali. ‘We’ve been creeping around, pussy-footing around this all weekend – in fact, no; all of the last two fucking decades. Guy, Guy, Guy, seriously,’ Rob says, wiping his mouth and sitting forward, putting his glass down and holding his hands out like claws towards Guy, who is looking, I think, vaguely amused. ‘We don’t want you to die, but you’re going to go … still bitter, still fuming against stuff there’s no, no reason to fume against.’
‘What?’ Guy breaks in. ‘I cannot rail against the injustices of humanity in my own fucking house because I might curdle my karma or something? What fresh bollockry is this?’
‘The world has changed!’ Rob shouts. Ali looks like she’s going to reach out to him again, but then makes her mouth go tight, folding her lips inwards so that they sort of disappear inside her mouth. She sits back, arms folded, gaze fixed on the table. ‘It’ll change again and the people who grew up while it’s … while it’s like the way it is now will be upset at that and wish it would return to the way things were when they were young, but it won’t ever go back, not to their time, now, or to yours, twenty years back or more, not to anybody’s time.’
‘So I should stop whining about it?’ Guy says, with an expression somewhere between a grin and a sneer.
‘Yeah,’ Paul says, with a sort of half-hearted laugh. ‘Stop bellyaching about it.’
‘But I like whining,’ Guy tells him. ‘I enjoy bellyaching about shit happening and it’s one of the very few pleasures I have left, harping on about how stupid people are and how fucked-up the world is.’ Guy looks from Rob round at the rest of us, then back to Rob. ‘Fucking entirely take your point, Robert. But do not attempt to deprive me of one of my last … last … retained enjoyments. Shit!’ He looks at me. ‘What was I …?’
‘Last remaining?’ I say.
Guy snaps his fingers. ‘Fucking “remaining”; trust me to go for the marginally more obscure term.’ He shakes his head.
‘So we should just roll over and let ourselves be double-fucked by the bankers and the governments that govern in their interests but our name?’ Hol asks Rob.
‘Oh, fuck,’ Rob says, laughing. ‘Here we go. It’s the last Marxist in the shop. What, Hol?’
‘Don’t have the discipline to be a proper Marxist,’ Hol tells him. ‘But it’s not really about politics, just fairness; justice. Being decent to your fellow human beings.’
‘Well, there are lots of ways of trying to be fair,’ Rob tells her. ‘And the one we’ve settled on is obviously capitalism and the market; we’ve sort of tried everything else and they didn’t work, and even if those other possibilities were strangled at birth by big bad capitalism, it’s no good trying to resurrect them. We have to work with what we’ve got.’
‘What, to each according to his greed?’ Hol says.
‘We’re all greedy,’ Rob says loudly. ‘Some of us are greedy for different things, not always money, but we’re all greedy. You’re greedy. I’m greedy, we all are. The system we have to work with just acknowledges that, that’s all.’ He sways slightly, even though he’s still sitting down, as he picks up his glass and drinks. ‘You should try working with it sometime, Hol. Try going with the flow. You’ll get further.’
‘Not in any direction I fucking want to go,’ Hol says.
‘Well, tough,’ Rob tells her. ‘Cos you’re being borne along in that direction all the time anyway whether you like it or not.’
‘Yeah, we should all swim faster towards the next precipice, the next great fall,’ Hol says. She drinks too. ‘Woo-hoo.’
‘Have we all quite finished?’ Pris says. ‘You guys …’ She shakes her head, ventures a smile.
‘Yeah, come on, guys,’ Haze says, rolling another modest joint (supplies are low).
But Rob is looking at Pris with his lip curled and saying, ‘Oh, stop being the fucking school matron, won’t you? You think you’re holding us together or something? Balm for our jaggedness or what the fuck? Who appointed you—’
‘Right,’ Ali says, sitting forward. ‘Babe, Rob, come on—’
Rob ignores her, still glaring at Pris, who wears a frown. ‘You’re so fucking jolly-hockey-sticks for a council-house girl made good,’ Rob tells her. ‘With your latest dumb-ass bloke in tow and this pathetic desperation that we all think he’s “okay” and not too much not like “one of us”.’
‘Christ, Rob,’ Ali says, like she’s going to cry now, and sits wringing her hands.
‘Like that fucking matters,’ Rob says. ‘Like we represent anything worthwhile, like we’re anything else apart from a bunch of people who came together for a few years because we were in the same uni and the same department and then went our separate ways to our own pathetic individual disappointments, and became the sort of people we’d have run a mile from when we were the age we were when we first lived here. Well, your guy isn’t okay, Pris; none of us think so. But none of us is going to risk hurting your fragile fucking feelings by saying so, not even Mr I-Speak-the-Truth Guy here.’ Rob wipes his mouth again. Pris seems to shrink in on herself. ‘Pris,’ Rob says, leaning towards her, ‘your new guy is …’ Rob looks at Hol. ‘What’s the—’ He snaps his fingers, looks back to Pris. ‘Lumpen; yeah, that’s what he is, he’s lumpen.’
‘Okay, you need to stop now,’ Ali says quickly, clutching at Rob’s elbow.
He shrugs her off. ‘Oh, don’t give me the fucking wounded puppy eyes,’ Rob tells Pris, his face contorting. ‘This is the fucking point: if you love him or just like him or he’s a good fuck or something or good with your kid, fine; why the fuck not? Sincerely hope you’re happy. Sincerely. But don’t look to us for some sort of fucking endorsement. You don’t need it. We’re a bunch of fuck-ups; not one of us is doing what we really ever wanted to do. Not one.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Hol says.
‘Why the hell should we have to stick with what we wanted to do when we were basically just kids anyway?’ Paul says.
‘What?’ Rob is saying to Hol. ‘You wanted to be a penniless film critic? So shit at managing her own finances you have to ask your friends for loans? Really? Seriously?’
‘Fuck you,’ Hol says, staring at him, voice flat.
‘What?’ Ali says. Haze looks startled.
Rob grins at Hol, waves one hand at her regally. ‘Ah, repay me any time, but get off my fucking case about what a corporate sell-out I am, or whatever this week’s line is. Helping to keep you afloat, honey.’
‘Repay you?’ Ali is saying. Her face looks pale. ‘It’s all in joint … do you have a
fucking separate bank account? Where—’ But Rob is still looking at Hol. He is smiling. She is not. ‘God fucking dammit,’ Ali says. ‘Look at me when I’m—’
She wraps her fingers round his elbow again and Rob tries to shrug her off once more but she keeps her grip, and then Rob sort of half turns to her and jabs his elbow – his whole arm – back so hard he hits her in the bottom of her ribs and you can hear the thud and the wheeze of breath being knocked out of her and her involuntary gasp and yelp of pain.
‘Christ!’ Paul says, getting up, going towards Rob or maybe Ali. Haze is just sitting looking stunned, Pris’s mouth is hanging open. Even Guy looks surprised.
‘You fucking—!’ Hol is bouncing out of the couch and coming at Rob, planting one foot on the table between them and looking like she’s going to leap across it.
Ali is sliding off the couch to her knees, wrapped around herself, doubling up on the floor, kneeling, head down, blonde hair hanging.
Rob leaps to his feet, in front of Hol. ‘Yeah, Hol?’
Hol is half on and half off the table. She swings her balled right fist at him but he just pulls his head back and she misses, unbalancing herself. She staggers back and to the side, one foot scattering glasses on the table. She starts to fall; the wrong way for me to save her. I’m getting up from the pouffe as fast as I can. Haze is holding the book he’s rolling the joint on up and out of the way.
Hol flies to one side, falling between the table and the end of the couch, but sort of catching her left knee on the corner of the table and the back of her head on the arm of the couch; Guy has stuck a foot out under her, to try to help cushion her head before it hits the floor.
‘Fucking enough, Rob!’ Paul yells, getting to Rob from one side and trying to put his arms round him. Rob is watching Hol as she falls in a ragged, disorganised heap; the sound of her hitting the floor is loud, and I feel the floor bounce. Rob wriggles in Paul’s embrace, not wanting to be held.
Ali is still on her knees, also between the table and the couch, on the other side. Pris has got to her, kneeling with one hand on Ali’s back.
Rob relaxes and lets himself be held by Paul. He turns to him and says, ‘This is nice; finally coming out, are we?’
‘Oh just leave it, Rob, for the love of fuck,’ Paul says, sounding weary.
‘Give us a kiss.’
‘Fuck off.’
I’ve gone round the back of the couch to help Hol. Guy is leaning forward, grunting with the effort, one hand on Hol’s shoulder. Hol is stirring, one hand gripping the edge of the table, trying to get up. I get to her and start trying to help.
‘So, how are we now?’ Rob says jovially, looking round at us all as best he can while still trapped in Paul’s arms. ‘Better, worse, or just the same?’
We’re in the kitchen again. Hol is sitting at the table, an improvised ice pack held at the back of her head, a pack of sacrificial frozen peas on her injured knee. I am washing up and drying, and Guy, walking with just his stick, is putting away, one-handed. He hobbles across the kitchen every so often, carrying one plate or glass at a time. Paul is sitting beside Hol, his head on the table again, like he was this morning.
Rob seemed happy enough to go to his and Ali’s room, though there was some crashing and banging up there afterwards and it did sound like he was wrecking the place. ‘We should set him loose on the rest of the house,’ Guy said. ‘Save the quarry people some money tearing it down.’
Ali thinks she might have a cracked rib. She rang a taxi to take her to A&E. Pris went with her.
Haze went to sleep slumped on a seat in the sitting room. He had to be woken to be sent to his bed.
Guy is whistling. He stops long enough to say, ‘Well, we should do this more often, don’t you think?’
‘Yeah,’ Hol says. ‘Every weekend.’
‘I’m free next one,’ Paul says, then; ‘Oh, no; no I’m not.’ He doesn’t take his head off the table as he’s saying any of this. ‘But yeah. Actually … I may just move back in. Commute.’
‘You really that hard-up, pet?’ Guy says to Hol, as he passes, carrying a saucer.
‘Hard-up enough to have to ask Rob for a loan,’ Hol says dully. ‘Draw your own.’
‘You should have asked me,’ Paul says.
‘That’s very … gallant of you,’ Hol tells him. ‘Trying to protect what little is left of my reputation in front of these two. But let’s stick with the truth, eh?’
‘Ah,’ Paul says from the table. ‘Okay.’
Hol catches me looking at her. ‘Paul already loaned me money.’
‘I see,’ I say. I go back to drying.
And so this last evening seems set to dribble away into nothing, while we go to our respective beds.
Ali rang from A&E to say she and Pris wouldn’t be back; Pris had gone to Rick’s hotel in Ormiston and Ali had booked herself into the George, in Bewford city centre. She was still waiting to be seen by a doctor. Hol is limping almost as bad as Dad. Paul has a sore head and has taken some ibuprofen and some co-codamol. I settle down a surprisingly cheery Guy, make sure he takes all his meds, and then collapse into bed, too tired to play any HeroSpace or even have a wank.
I wake up to hear Guy coming hobbling along the corridor, approaching my door. I look at my phone. Half an hour since I went to sleep. The door opens, sending a widening bar of light across the floor and the far wall. Dad comes in but it’s not him after all; the figure is slighter and straighter. I realise it’s Hol as she closes the door, shutting off the outside light. A few standby lights and charging LEDs on things like the computer and socket transformers and so on provide just enough illumination.
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ she tells me. She comes up to the bed, limping a little. She’s wearing a thin, dark dressing gown. She stands so close I can smell her; coconut – from her hair, I remember – plus some other perfume, just faint, but deep and musky.
It too is something I’ve smelled on her before, but there is a last, elusive, hinted tang coming off her as well, something sharp and fresh and somehow animal at the same time, something I sort of know but don’t know, something bewilderingly, undeniably, unavoidably exciting, as though the higher regions of my brain and self have nothing to do with the experience or the effect it’s having on me.
If I reach out now, I think, I could touch her.
‘Um,’ I hear myself say. My mouth has suddenly gone very dry. ‘Why, ah … Why are you … here?’ I ask her.
I think I see her shake her head. ‘I don’t know myself,’ she tells me. I hear her blow out a breath. ‘I feel like I … Like I can’t do the right thing, like there’s no right thing to be done, just a choice of which wrong one to do, trying to work out which is the least … damaging, least … humiliating or mean or selfish or … I don’t know—’
‘Sh,’ I tell her.
‘Yeah,’ she says, putting a hand into her dishevelled hair and rubbing the back of her head, ‘I’m sort of wittering, I suppose. I should—’
‘No, I mean, sh,’ I tell her, pushing myself up to a sitting position and turning my head towards the window. ‘I can hear something.’
She turns too. ‘What?’
‘Something …’ I say.
‘Yes, but—’
There’s a noise. I recognise it. ‘That’s the car,’ I tell her.
‘Whose car?’ she says. ‘Ali coming back after all? Rob going for a long midnight drive of the soul?’
Actually it’s nearly four in the morning, but I don’t say this. ‘No,’ I tell her, pushing the duvet back. ‘That’s our car. That’s the Volvo.’
I swing out of bed and pull on my underpants – facing away from Hol so she can’t see my erection.
‘Guy?’ she says into the darkness. ‘He can still drive?’
‘If he takes enough painkillers,’ I tell her. (So many you wouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy machinery, or drive, though I don’t say this.)
I can hear the engine sound getting louder as the Volvo leav
es the garage. ‘Let me listen a moment,’ I whisper. We both hold our breaths. The car moves off down the drive without pausing. ‘He’s not gone back to close the garage doors.’ I shrug down my T-shirt, pull up my camo trousers, reach for my gilet. ‘I’d better check his room,’ I tell her.
Hol swivels, gasping with pain as she puts weight on her injured knee. ‘Give me one minute,’ she says, hobbling for the door. ‘I dress fast.’ She leaves the door open; I follow her ten seconds later, still buckling my belt.
Guy isn’t in his room. The bed is still warm. Snores come from Rob’s room. Hol comes back out of her room, a fleece held between her teeth, hopping on her good, bare foot as she pulls a boot on over the other, nearly falling, and grimacing with pain and muttering muffled curses.
‘Check—’ I start to say, as she stops at Paul’s door and opens it. There’s a grunt from inside.
‘Present,’ Hol says. She looks at me, then has to sit on the top step of the stairs to put on the other boot. ‘Take it we’re hot pursuiting?’
‘Think we should,’ I say.
‘My car,’ she says. ‘You’ll have to drive.’ She nods. ‘This is my clutch leg; doubt it’ll work right.’
I can see tail lights in the distance as we head down the drive, then lose sight of them as we come down to the public road.