‘I’ll come by for a massage but I’ll never let you tinker with my brain. Words, words. How can talking be the answer to everything? There’s nothing wrong with me. If I’m sick, God help everyone else.’ After a while he added, ‘Rocco’s dangerous because he uses other people and gives them nothing in return.’
‘Some people like being used.’
‘I’m giving you notice, Feather, I’m going to kill that bastard.’
‘As long as there’s good reason for it,’ she said, walking away.
4
Too weak to move, ravers from the previous night sat on the beach in shorts. Some slept, others swigged wine, one had set up a stall selling melons. A woman, a regular who came every morning with her cat in a box, walked it on a lead while the kids barked at her.
Lisa snoozed on the sand until she thought she’d boil, and then raced into the sea.
She loved her black dress. It was almost the only thing that fitted her. She put on her large straw hat with its broad brim pressed down so tightly over her ears that her face seemed to be looking out of a box. As she passed them the boys called after her. She was tall, with a long neck and a straight back. She walked elegantly, with her head up. In another age a man would be holding a parasol for her.
Nearby sat a middle-aged woman, a TV executive, who kept a cottage nearby, commuted to Los Angeles, and read scripts on the beach. She had most of what anyone could want, but was always alone. She dressed expensively but she was plump and her looks had faded. The boys, barking at the cat, also barked at her. Lisa shuddered. Men wanted young women — what a liberated age it was!
Maybe Lisa would ask her for a job. But working like that would bore her after a few weeks. How would she have time to learn the drums? At least … at least she had Rocco.
What conversations they had had, hour after hour, as they walked, loved, ate, sat. If she imagined the perfect partner, who would see her life as it was meant to be seen, absorbing the most secret confessions and most trivial incidents in a wise captivated mind, then he had been the one. What serenity and unstrained ease, without shame or fear, there had been, for a time.
Lately he had been hateful. She would have threatened to leave him, except his mood was her fault; she had to cure him. It was she who’d insisted they leave London, imagining a place near the sea, with the countryside nearby. They would grow their own food and read and write; there would be languorous stoned evenings.
There had been. Now they were going down. She’d spent too much on jewellery, bags, and clothes in Vance’s. The manager, Moon, had ‘loaned’ her Ecstasy too, which she and Rocco had taken or given away. She owed Moon too much. Beside, she was wasting her life here, where very little happened. But what were lives for? Who could say? She didn’t want to start thinking about that.
She and Rocco rarely fucked now. If they did, he would smack her face before he came. She was always left in a rage. But he was curious about her body. He watched her as she did up her shoes; he would lift her skirt as she stood at the sink; he would look her over as she lay naked on the bed, and would touch her underwear when she was out. But she ached for sex. Her nipples wanted attention; she would pinch them between her fingers as she drank her tea. She felt desire but didn’t know how to deliver herself of it.
She walked through the town. Vance’s shop was beside two shops selling religious paraphernalia; there was nothing of use to buy in the high street. The pubs were priest-ridden; the most common cause of argument was Cardinal Newman.
Several of the local boys who worshipped Rocco, including the most fervent, a lad called Teapot, liked to hang around the shop. They copied Rocco’s mannerisms and peculiar dress sense, wearing, for instance, a jean jacket over a long raincoat or fingerless gloves; they carried poetry, and told girls that the meaning of life had coalesced over their breasts.
Fortunately Teapot’s group were still on the beach and only Moon was sitting in Vance’s tenebrous shop, fiddling with his decks. He spent more time deciding which music to play than organising the stock. Sometimes Vance let him DJ at the Advance.
The blinds were down. A fan stirred and rippled the light fabrics. Moon had a mod haircut and wore little blue round shades. Lisa wanted to wave, so uncertain was she that he could see her, or anything.
She moved around the shop, keeping away from him as she asked if he had any E. She was going somewhere that she couldn’t face straight and needed the stuff today.
‘How will you pay me?’ he asked outright, as she dreaded he would.
‘Moon —’
‘Leave aside the money you owe me, what about the money you owe the shop? The leather jacket.’
‘It was lifted from the pub.’
‘That’s not my fault. Vance is going to find out.’
‘Rocco’s sold an article to the New Statesman. He’ll come by to pay you.’
Moon snorted. ‘Look.’ He scattered some capsules on the counter, along with a bag of his own brand of grass, with a bright ‘Moon’ logo printed on it. ‘Is it right to play games with someone’s head?’
If she found a man attractive she liked to kiss him. This ‘entertained’ her. She would explain that there was no more to it than that, but the men didn’t realise she meant it. She had had to stop it.
‘You made me like you. You opened your legs.’
He came towards her and put his hand inside the front of her dress. She let him do it. He started kissing her breasts.
He was keen to hang his ‘back in five minutes’ sign on the door for an hour. But, unusually, some kids came in. She snatched up the caps from the counter and got out.
From the door he yelled, ‘See you later!’
‘Maybe.’
‘At the Rim.’
She stopped. ‘You coming, then?’
‘Why not? By the way, don’t mess with me. You don’t want me spreading stuff about you, do you?’
5
They would drive five miles out of town along the southbound road, stop at a pub at the main junction, and then head up to the Rim.
Rocco, Bodger and Moon led the way in Bodger’s Panda, followed by Karen, Vance, Feather — holding her cat — and Lisa in Vance’s air-conditioned Saab. The boot was full of food and drink.
‘Two years from now,’ Vance was telling Feather, ‘when I’ve raised the money, I’ll — I mean we —’ he added, nodding at his wife Karen. ‘We’ll be off to Birmingham. Open a place there.’
‘If we can ever afford it,’ said Karen. ‘I can’t see the bank allowing it.’
‘Shut your face,’ said Vance. ‘I’ve explained. I’m not making the mistake of going straight to London. I need experience. Coming with us?’
Feather stroked her cat. ‘Whatever for?’
‘Because however comfortable you are now, rubbing your pussy and listening to people moaning about mum and dad, in five years you’ll be bored. And older. There’s a lot of people there need serious head help.’
Karen cried out, ‘Look!’
They were speeding along a road carved out of a sheer cliff. Everyone felt they were racing along a shelf attached to a high wall and that at any moment they would go hurtling over into the abyss. On the right stretched the sea, while on the left was a rugged brown wall covered in creeping roots.
They had several drinks in the pub garden, before moving on.
‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ said Rocco. ‘I should be on the train to London.’