Blackberry Wine

28

Nether Edge, Summer 1977

JAY WALKED TO THE EDGE, JOE’S TALISMAN TUCKED SNUGLY INTO his pocket. The sun was veiled, as it was for most of that summer, but the sky was hot and pale, bleeding the air of oxygen and the countryside of colour. Fields, trees, flowers all looked to be varying shades of grainy grey, like the screen on Maggie’s black-and-white portable. Above Nether Edge a small bright blur hung in the sky like a beacon. A warning, perhaps.

Gilly was wearing cut-off jeans and a striped T-shirt. Her hair was tied back with a piece of red ribbon. She was eating a sherbert fountain, and her tongue was black with the licorice.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d make it,’ she said.

Jay thought of the talisman in his pocket and shrugged. They were safe, he told himself. Safe. Protected. Unseen. It had worked dozens of times before.

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

Gilly shrugged.

‘They’ve got some kind of a den over there,’ she said, jerking her head towards the canal. ‘A tree house, I think, where they keep their stuff. I’ve seen them going there a couple of times. I dare you to go in.’

‘I don’t do dares,’ said Jay.

Gilly gave him a satirical look.

‘They won’t be there,’ she urged. ‘This time in the morning they’re still in town, or nicking stuff from the market. It’s only a poxy den, Jay. Dare you.’

Her eyes gleamed slyly, that cat’s-eye marble green reflecting the colourless sky. She finished the sherbert fountain and lobbed the packet into the canal, keeping the licorice stub in her mouth, like a cigar butt.

‘Unlesh you’re yeller,’ she said, doing a passable Lee Marvin.

‘OK.’

They found the den close to the lock. It wasn’t a tree house, but a small shack built from assorted dump-rubbish: corrugated cardboard, sheets of tarpaper and fibreglass. It had windows of plastic sheeting and a door taken from somebody’s old shed. It looked deserted.

‘Go on, then,’ said Gilly. ‘I’ll keep watch.’

Jay hesitated for a moment. Gilly grinned brashly; her face looked stretched into one giant freckle. He felt suddenly dizzy at the sight of her.

‘Ah, get on with it, will you?’ she urged.

Touching the talisman in his pocket, Jay walked resolutely towards the den. It was bigger than it had looked from the path and, despite its eccentric construction, it was solid. The door was padlocked, a heavy industrial lock which might have come from someone’s coal cellar.

‘Try the window,’ said Gilly from behind him. Jay whipped round.

‘I thought you were keeping watch!’

Gilly shrugged.

‘Ah, there’s nobody here,’ she said. ‘Go on, try the window.’

The window was just big enough to crawl through. Gilly pulled back the plastic sheeting and Jay squeezed inside. It was dark, and there was a smell of sour earth and cigarette smoke. A pile of blankets lay on the floor above a couple of crates. A box of clippings. A dog-eared poster cut from a girls’ magazine was stapled to one wall. Gilly put her head through the window.

‘Find anything good?’ she enquired pertly.

Jay shook his head. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable in there, imagining himself trapped in the den as Zeth and his friends rounded the corner.

‘Look in the crates,’ suggested Gilly. ‘That’s where they keep their stuff. Magazines and cigarettes, stuff they’ve lifted.’

Jay pushed over one of the crates. Assorted rubbish spilled out across the floor. Make-up, empty lemonade bottles, comics. A battered transistor radio, sweets in a glass jar. A paper bag filled with fireworks, bangers and jumping-jacks and Black Cats in their waxy casings. Two dozen Bic lighters. Four unopened packets of Player’s.

‘Take something,’ said Gilly. ‘Take something. It’s all nicked anyway.’ Jay picked up a shoebox of clippings. Rather half-heartedly he scattered them across the earth floor of the den. Then he did the same with the magazines.

‘Take the cigs,’ urged Gilly. ‘And the lighters. We’ll give them to Joe.’ Jay looked at her uneasily, but the thought of her contempt was more than he could take. He pocketed cigarettes and lighters, then, at Gilly’s insistence, the sweets and the fireworks. Fired by her enthusiasm he tore down the poster from the wall, stamped the records, stomped the jars. Remembering how Zeth had smashed his radio, he took the transistor as well, telling himself they owed it to him. He spilled cosmetics, crunched lipsticks underfoot, threw a tin of face powder against the wall. Gilly watched, laughing wildly.

‘I wish we could see their faces,’ she gasped. ‘If only we could!’

‘Well, we can’t,’ Jay reminded her, climbing quickly out of the den. ‘Come on, before they get back.’ He took her hand and began to pull her after him up the path to the ash pit, their stomachs suddenly filled with butterflies at the thought of what they’d done. The sensation was not altogether unpleasant, and suddenly they were both laughing like drunks, clinging to each other as they stumbled up the path.

‘If only I could see Glenda’s face,’ spluttered Gilly. ‘Next time we’ll have to bring a camera or something, so we can have a permanent record.’

‘Next time?’ The thought killed the laughter.

‘Well, of course.’ She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘We’ve won the first skirmish. We can’t just leave it now.’

He supposed he should have told her, This is where it ends, Gilly. It’s too dangerous. But it was the danger which attracted her, and he was too intoxicated by her admiration to plead caution. That look in her eyes.

‘What are you staring at me for?’ she demanded belligerently.

‘I’m not staring at you.’

‘Yes, you are.’

Jay grinned. ‘I’m staring at the great – big – earwig that just landed in your hair from that bush,’ he told her.

‘Bastard!’ screamed Gilly, shaking her head.

‘Wait a minute! It’s just there,’ he said, slyly knuckle-rubbing the top of her head.

Gilly kicked him hard on the ankle. Again normality was restored.

For a while.