Mr Lynch’s Holiday

25

She entered his bedroom without knocking.

‘Come on, Eamonn. Daddy’s waiting to take you, he wants to get back and watch his programme.’

Eamonn was staring at the bed. ‘Why are those there?’

‘They’re your clothes, Eamonn, for goodness’ sake! I’ve laid them out for you.’

Item one: brown wool blazer, generous lapels; item two: white polycotton shirt with stiff, similarly generous collar; item three: brown corduroy trousers, slightly flared; item four: blue tie.

‘They’re the clothes I wore for Gerald’s wedding.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But I’m going to a party tonight. Not a wedding.’

‘Well, you need to look smart.’

He had an indistinct image in his mind of how the other boys might be dressed. He saw ripped 501s. Hooded tops. Baseball jackets.

‘No one will be dressed like this.’

‘Like what? Smartly, you mean? Of course they will. You’re going to a girl’s house. Her parents will expect you to have made an effort, you can’t just go out in your old jeans. Anyway, I’ve seen young boys your age out in ties and smart trousers —’

‘Not like these!’ It came out too loudly. He saw his mother’s face change.

‘Oh, I see. Are these not good enough? Are you embarrassed by the clothes we buy you? Not expensive enough for your friends?’

He sat heavily on the bed and started to take off his shoes.

His father peered at the house from the driver’s seat.

‘How did you say you know this girl?’

‘She’s a friend of someone at the girls’ school.’

His father nodded slowly. ‘I’d say her father has a good job, living on a road like this. What does he do?’

He shrugged. There were many, many things Eamonn wanted to know about girls, what their fathers did was not one of them.

‘Well, you’d better go now. It’s five to seven, you don’t want to be late.’

Eamonn got out of the car, but remained standing by the passenger window. His father mouthed at him: ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’ll wait for you to go.’

His dad leaned over and wound the window down. ‘I thought I’d wait here till you were in, check it’s the right place, the right night. You don’t want to be turning up in your finery on the wrong night. That would be a terrible faux pas.’

He put on his posh English accent. Eamonn used to find it funny.

He sighed. ‘It’s the right house, it’s the right night. Dad, please …’

‘All right, all right. I get the message. You want me gone. Not getting in your way with the young ladies, is that right?’

‘Dad!’

‘OK, son. Just be ready at ten.’

He stood waving, unconvincingly, until his father was gone and then took cover from the house in front of the high hedge. He pulled off his tie, took off the jacket, undid his top shirt button and looked down at himself. Still the flared cords. Still brown. He looked agricultural. A lost young farmer cast adrift from the 1970s. He tucked his trousers in his socks.

He emerged from behind the hedge and walked up the drive. He had taken no notice of the house when his father pulled up, but now it loomed large ahead of him, looking like something out of a horror film. It was old and pointy with bits of plant growing all over it. A couple of balloons hung from an enormous brass handle, smack in the centre of the front door. They didn’t appear to have a doorbell so he snapped the heavy letter box instead. He had to do it a few times before he saw a shadow appear on the other side of the stained glass.

The door opened to reveal a short man with a beard, a glass of wine in his hand and a puzzled look on his face.

‘Oh. Hello. Are you here for Laura’s little soirée?’

‘Yes.’

‘I almost didn’t hear you there. Why on earth didn’t you ring the bell?’ He reached out and pulled a circular brass knob, setting a series of bells jangling somewhere further in the house. ‘Come in, come in.’ He glanced down at Eamonn’s ankles. ‘Did you come on your bike?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Right. Well, I’ll let Laura know you’re here. I think she’s in the beauty parlour at the moment with one of her coterie.’

Eamonn waited in the hallway. It reminded him of church. Tiled floor, heavy wooden furniture, framed pictures everywhere, though none, as far as he could see, of Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Footsteps came hammering down the stairs and then stopped abruptly.

‘Oh. Hello.’

Eamonn looked up to see the girl whose house it was. He had never spoken to her directly before.

‘Hello.’ He pushed a box of Roses at her.

She took them and looked at his trousers. ‘Did you come on your bike?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are the others?’

‘Who?’

‘Jonathan Parker and the rest of your gang?’

‘Aren’t they here?’

‘Not yet.’

‘But they all live round here, don’t they?’

‘I suppose so. Don’t you?’

‘I live in Erdington.’

‘I don’t know where that is.’

Her mother appeared from a door. ‘Laura, what are you doing? Don’t keep your guest standing in the hallway. Take him into the party room.’ She turned to smile at Eamonn. ‘Hello, there. Nice to meet you …?’

‘Eamonn.’

‘Eamonn. Isn’t that a lovely name, Laura?’

Laura was non-committal. ‘He’s come on his bike. From Erdington.’

‘Goodness! You must be absolutely exhausted.’

He followed Laura into a dark room with loud music playing. He smelled the girls before his could see them. A sweet combination of hairspray, teen perfume and something spiced. He made out their shape in the corner, four or five of them, their perms stiff with Shockwaves gel, like a pride of lionesses, swaying slightly to the sounds of Bros. One separated from the group, Harriet, their leader, the one who spoke to Jonathan. She had a plastic cup in her hand.

‘Do you want some punch? It’s got Martini in. Kate’s already completely drunk.’

Trying to find the bathroom later he opened the wrong door and found her parents instead. He was shocked to see them eating their tea so late. They sat at a large pine table, with a bottle of wine open between them. There was music playing, a man with a terrible voice singing over guitar. Eamonn thought the scene looked like something from the telly. A programme on after the nine o’clock news, where men and women shouted at each other and then took their clothes off and got into bed together and his mom would get up and turn the TV off, saying, ‘That’s enough of that.’

Laura’s mother stood up. ‘Hey, Eamonn. Are you OK?’

‘Sorry. I was looking for the toilet.’

‘There’s one by the back door.’

He noticed there were bookshelves even in the kitchen. There was no way they could have read all the books they had. Her father caught him looking at a shelf.

‘Are you interested in psychiatry, Eamonn?’

‘Erm … yes.’

‘We took Laura to the Freud Museum last summer and she seemed most unimpressed.’ He pushed a chair back with his foot. ‘Come in, why don’t you? Join us. Emily’s made this wonderful tagine and we can’t finish it.’ Eamonn was about to say that he’d already had his tea, but then the father added: ‘And I know for a fact Laura won’t touch it. She’d much rather fill her face with the rubbish that McDonald’s churns out.’ Eamonn liked the idea of appearing more sophisticated than that. He made his way over to the table.

‘I don’t really like McDonald’s.’

‘No, we’re not huge fans either. Don’t really see eye to eye with their way of doing things.’

Eamonn shook his head. ‘They put gherkins on everything.’

The mom served him up a bowl of something that looked really bad and he started to worry that he had made a mistake.

‘So, Eamonn,’ Laura’s father said, ‘tell us all about your interest in psychiatry? Are your parents in the field?’

He didn’t see how the questions were connected. Then he remembered the clothes he was wearing — the agricultural look — there was some terrible misunderstanding.

‘They’re not farmers. They live in Erdington. My dad’s a bus driver.’

There was a moment’s silence and then both parents burst out laughing. Eamonn’s face flushed and the food in his mouth felt slimy and alive. He pushed his chair back to stand.

‘Oh, Eamonn,’ said the mom, ‘you are a real character.’

He manoeuvred the foul, mangled slugs to the side of his mouth. ‘Thank you for the food.’ He started walking quickly to the door. ‘I’ll go to the toilet now.’ And he fled.

When he got back to the party the impasse between the boys and girls seemed to have been broken. Everyone now sat in a circle, with an empty bottle of cider in the middle. He was told where to sit and listened while Jonathan and Harriet bickered about the rules.

‘If it points at a girl and it needs to be a boy, then it’s the boy sat to her left.’

‘No! If it does that, we spin again.’

‘Well, we’re going to spend all the time just spinning the bottle.’

‘The main thing is that you have to kiss whoever it points at. You can’t chicken out or say you don’t fancy them.’ At this there was much terrified laughter.

‘Can we just get on with it?’ said Matthew Goldsmith.

‘Come on, girls. Matthew’s bursting. He can’t wait for a big snog.’

On the fourth spin the bottle pointed at Eamonn. After a couple of subsequent misfires, a girl called Emma was picked out. He avoided looking at her face to see any sign of disappointment.

He used to be around girls all the time. Playing British Bulldog, searching for worms, swapping dirty jokes about Batman. In two years at boys’ school they had become distant and exotic. When he saw them they were changed — bigger and burdened with mysterious freight — magazines and bangles and electric-blue eyelashes. He glimpsed them only occasionally. He missed them.

No words passed on their way to the armchair. They banged teeth several times before the angle was right and an airtight lock was formed between their mouths. With his eyes tightly shut Eamonn felt weightless, flying through the darkness, travelling through her mouth and out into the universe. They clung to each other, deaf to everything and everyone, the world forgotten.

It was she who broke away first. Someone was calling his name and finally she had looked to see who it was. Eamonn found himself beached back in the physical world, Wet Wet Wet playing, his lips stinging, his head woozy, an urgent voice saying: ‘Your dad’s here. You have to go.’

He looked down at Emma, her face was closed and unreadable, but he could still taste her in his mouth.

‘See you around,’ she said, like someone delivering a line.

‘See you around,’ he repeated.

He found his jacket where he’d stuffed it in a corner and went out to the hallway. His dad was standing in the spot where he had stood and waited earlier.

‘Where in God’s name have you been? I’ve been knocking the door for fifteen minutes. Are her parents not in?’

Eamonn hurried his father out before he was seen or could say anything to anyone. The sound of the front door slamming brought Laura’s mother to an upstairs window. She opened it and leaned out, calling: ‘Bye, Eamonn. Nice to meet you. Put the bike in the boot, have you?’

‘Bye. Thank you,’ Eamonn said as he pushed his father towards the car.

‘What bike is she talking about? Have they given you a bike?’

‘No.’

‘Seems like a madhouse to me,’ Dermot said as he got in the car. ‘You’d think they could spend some of their money on a doorbell.’