Blackberry Wine

40

Pog Hill, Summer 1977

IT WAS AUGUST WHEN EVERYTHING SOURED FOR GOOD. THE TIME of the wasps’ nests, the den at Nether Edge, Elvis. Then the Bread Baron wrote to say that he and Candide were getting married, and for a while the papers were full of them both, snapped getting into a limo on the beachfront at Cannes, at a movie première, at a club in the Bahamas, on his yacht. Jay’s mother gathered these articles with a collector’s zeal and read and reread them, insatiably relishing Candide’s hair, Candide’s dresses. His grandparents took this badly, mothering his mother even more than before, and treating Jay with cool indifference, as if his father’s genes were a time bomb inside him which might at any moment explode.

The grey weather grew hotter, mulchy and dull. There was often rain, but it was warm and unrefreshing. Joe worked cheerlessly in his allotment; the fruit was spoiled that year, rotting on the branches and green from lack of sunlight.

‘Might as well not bother, lad,’ he would mutter, fingering the blackened stem of a pear or apple. ‘Might as well just bloody jack it in this year.’

Gilly’s mother did well enough out of it, though; she’d somehow got hold of a whole truckload of those transparent bell-shaped umbrellas which were so popular then and was selling them at a mighty profit in the market. Gilly reckoned they could live until December on the takings. The thought merely accentuated Jay’s sense of doom. It was only days to the end of August, and the return to school was barely a week away. Gilly would move on in the autumn – Maggie was talking about moving south to a commune she’d heard of near Abingdon, and there was no certainty she would ever come back. Jay felt prickly inside, fey one moment and the next blackly paranoid, saying the opposite of what he meant, reading mockery in everything that was said to him. He quarrelled repeatedly with Gilly about nothing. They made up, cautiously and incompletely, circling each other like wary animals, their intimacy broken. A sense of doom coloured everything.

On the last day of August he went to Joe’s house alone, but the old man seemed distant, preoccupied. Although it was raining, he did not invite Jay in, but stood with him by the door in an oddly formal manner. Jay noticed that he had piled up a number of old crates by the back wall, and his gaze kept moving towards these, as if he were eager to get back to some job he had abandoned. Jay felt a sudden surge of anger. He deserved better than that, he thought. He thought Joe respected him. He ran down to Nether Edge with his cheeks flaring. He left his bike close to Joe’s house – after the incident at the railway bridge that hiding place was no longer secure – and walked down the abandoned railway track from Pog Hill, cutting down into the Edge and towards the river. He wasn’t expecting to see Gilly – they had made no plans to meet – and yet Jay was unsurprised when he caught sight of her by the riverbank, her hair scrawling down towards the water, a long stick in one hand. She was on her knees, poking the stick at something in the water, and he got quite close to her before she looked up.

Her face was pinkish and mottled, as if she’d been crying. Jay rejected the thought almost instantly. Gilly never cried.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said indifferently.

Jay said nothing. He dug his hands into his pockets and tried a smile, which felt stupid on his face. Gilly didn’t smile back.

‘What’s that?’ He nodded at the thing in the water.

‘Nothing.’ She slung the stick into the current and it washed away. The water was scummy, brownish. Gilly’s hair was starred with droplets, which clung to her curls like burrs.

‘Bloody rain.’

Jay would have liked to say something then, something which might have made it all right between them. But the sky felt heavy over them, and the smell of smoke and doom was overwhelming, like an omen. Suddenly Jay was certain he would never see Gilly again.

‘Shall we go and have a look at the dump?’ he suggested. ‘I thought I saw some good new stuff there on the way down. Magazines and stuff. You know.’

Gilly shrugged. ‘Nah.’

‘Good wasping weather.’ It was a last, desperate ploy. He had never known Gilly to refuse an offer of wasping. Wasps are sleepy in wet weather, allowing easier, safer access to the nest. ‘Do you want to come and look for nests? I’ve seen a place down by the bridge that might have a couple.’

Again, the shrug. Gilly shook her damp curls. ‘I’m not that bothered.’

The silence was longer still this time, spinning out endlessly, unravelling.

‘Maggie’s moving on next week,’ said Gilly at last. ‘We’re going to some bloody commune in Oxfordshire. She’s got a job waiting for her there, she says.’

‘Oh.’

He had expected it, of course. This was nothing new. So why then did his heart wrench when she said it? Her face was turned towards the water, studiously watching something on the brown surface. Jay’s fists clenched in his pockets. As they did he felt something brush against his hand. Joe’s talisman. It felt greasy, smooth with much handling. He had become so accustomed to carrying it with him that he had forgotten it was even there. He squatted next to her. He could smell the river, a sour, metallic smell, like pennies soaked in ammonia.

‘Are you coming back?’ he asked.

‘Nah.’

There must have been something interesting on the surface of the water. Her eyes refused to meet his.

‘Don’t think so. Maggie says I need to go to a proper school now. Don’t need all this moving about.’

Again that flare of hateful, irrational rage. Jay looked at the water in loathing. Suddenly he wanted to hurt someone – Gilly, himself – and he stood up abruptly.

‘Shit.’ It was the worst word he knew. His mouth felt numb. His heart, too. He kicked viciously at the river’s edge and a clod of earth and grass tore free and plunked into the water. Gilly didn’t look at him.

He let his temper run freely then, kicking again at the banking so that earth and grass showered into the water. Some of it flew at Gilly, too, spattering her jeans and her embroidered shirt.

‘Stop it, for crying out loud,’ said Gilly flatly. ‘Stop being so sodding childish.’

It was true, he thought, he was being childish, and to hear it from her enraged him. That she should accept their separation with such ease, such indifference. Something yawned blackly inside Jay’s head, yawned and grimaced.

‘Fuck it, then,’ he said. ‘I’m off.’

Feeling slightly dizzy he turned and walked off up the banking towards the canal towpath, sure she’d call him back. Ten paces. Twelve. He reached the towpath, not looking back, knowing she was watching. He passed the trees, where she couldn’t see him, and turned, but Gilly was still sitting where she’d been before, not watching, not following, just looking down into the water, hair over her face and the crazy silver scrawl of the rain fanning down from the hot summer sky.

‘Fuck it then,’ Jay repeated fiercely, wanting her to hear. But she never turned, and at last it was he who turned away and began to walk, feeling angry and somehow deflated, towards the bridge.

He often wondered what might have happened if he had gone back, or if she had looked up just at that moment. What might have been saved or averted. Certainly the events at Pog Hill might have been very different. Perhaps he could even have said goodbye to Joe. As it was, though he did not know it at the time, he would not see either of them again.