‘She drinks a lot too,’ Vince was saying. ‘A fuck of a lot. There’s always a bottle of vodka down the side of her chair. They all drink in that house. Alison’s the only one who doesn’t. She’s probably seen her mother make a fool of herself too many times. No wonder she’s thinking of moving out. If I had a mother like that, I would’ve moved out when I was fucking born.’
He stole one of Moses’s cigarettes. He lit it, sucked the smoke deep down. Half the cigarette was gone before he spoke again.
‘Yeah, she’s always out of her head,’ he sneered. ‘You’ll probably like her.’
*
Closing-time.
Somebody had wedged the door open, and Moses could see a triangle of lit gravel and a strip of dark-blue sky above the darker outline of the cliff. The landlord was shouting something about glasses. His vermilion shirt was shouting too. Moses couldn’t understand either of them. He suddenly felt drunker than he had for ages. Movements kept breaking up into staggered versions of themselves. If he closed his eyes, his whole body began to lift and turn in one long slow backwards somersault. Like being inside a wave. What a terrible, terrible place to get this wrecked in. No rocks, right?
He got up and the world sat down. He couldn’t look at Vince. He knew the upward curve of Vince’s lips would make his stomach churn. He aimed for the rectangle of darkness where the breeze was coming from.
Then he was zig-zagging over stones. A single headlamp blinded him. Tyres spun viciously, kicked up dirt and gravel. He heard a girl’s laughter submerge in the rough snarling of motorbike engines, submerge, surface, then submerge again, like someone drowning, like someone going down for the third time.
He had long since lost Vince.
He stumbled into something (lobster-pots?), cracked his shin, then found himself climbing, falling, scrambling down the steps, slamming into the scaffolding at the end of each flight, winding himself on the metal rails.
Once he looked for the fire. It had shrunk. It threw out orange starfish arms into the darkness.
When he reached the beach he thought he saw Gloria. An impish figure on a white rock. That way of sitting — arms hugging her legs, chin resting on her knees — seemed to belong to her. The next time he looked — lifting his head was so hard, like fighting the pull of a magnet — she had gone.
Halfway between the steps and the fire everything began to whirl about. This was the worst so far. It felt as if someone was stirring the night with a giant spoon, as if he was one grain of sugar in the bottom of a cup. He spun away to the base of the cliffs and collapsed on the pebbles. He retched and retched, but only bile and bitter froth came up.
He couldn’t have guessed how long he spent there, his forehead pressed to a boulder, cooled by the damp chalk. An hour, maybe. Even two. His hair, wet through with sweat, gradually dried into stiff strands. He was shivering, but being cold made him feel better. He scooped up handfuls of shiny wet pebbles and rubbed them into his face.
Once he saw Gloria run past, light steps, light years away. He didn’t call out, and she didn’t see him.
He was glad about that.
*
Afterwards he couldn’t remember exactly how the fight had started.
When he stood up, shaky but clear, he walked down to the sea to rinse his face. By the time he reached the fire it must have been late. Only a few people were still awake, talking in low voices. The evening had divided them into couples. He sat down next to Gloria.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Vince asked from the other side of the fire.
Moses smiled. ‘Throwing up.’
Gloria murmured, ‘Oh, Highness,’ and rested her head against his shoulder.
Highness? he thought.
‘I’m all right now,’ he said.
He stared into the mass of collapsing red embers. Sometimes a flame leapt up, like something growing, only to wither, fall back, die out. Jackson said he was going to gather some more wood so the fire would last the night. Louise went with him. Then Moses felt hands on his shoulders and suddenly he was somersaulting backwards down a steep bank of stones. He lay still, not understanding what had happened. Then he looked up and saw Eddie standing over him. Eddie grinned.
Moses propped himself up on one arm. ‘Hello, Eddie.’
Eddie kicked the arm out from under him. ‘Come on, shithead. This is a fight.’
Moses laughed good-naturedly. A fight. What next. But as he tried to clamber to his feet Eddie pushed him over again and something competitive took hold. He shoved Eddie in the chest. Eddie staggered backwards down the beach.
Moses stood up. He was a head taller than Eddie and he had a seventy-pound weight advantage, but Eddie was muscular and his muscles were hard and supple from sleeping with at least fifteen hundred women and he was using his muscles with a frenzy Moses hadn’t seen before.
Their struggle took them some distance from the fire and now they faced each other, panting, watching each other’s eyes for the next move. Eddie was grinding his teeth together, his face contorted by a kind of predatory glee. He looks as if he wants to kill me, Moses thought. Why? he wondered.
He glanced sideways, brushed some chalk off his sleeve. ‘Isn’t that enough now, Eddie?’
‘Isn’t that enough now? So we’ve had enough, have we? Poor little Highness has had enough.’ And, lowering his head, Eddie charged.
Moses stepped to one side and, using Eddie’s momentum, sent him diving headfirst into the pebbles. It was too easy. Eddie picked himself up, slowly but automatically. He shook himself. He leered over his shoulder at Moses, his features stretched wide across his face. He was breathing through his open mouth like an animal.
He charged again. The same thing happened. Moses the matador. For once, though, Moses didn’t see the funny side. He was tired. Bored too. But Eddie wouldn’t let up. He charged a third time, arms extended like horns, fingers curved and spread. This time he caught Moses, clawed at his collar, clung on. They both crashed to the ground. Moses heard something rip. He rolled over, twisted free of Eddie’s grip. He scrambled to his feet. Eddie lunged for his ankle, but Moses stepped out of reach. He noticed that one of his pockets was torn. All his treasures had fallen out.
‘You bastard. Now I’ve lost all my stones.’
‘Ahhh. Now he’s lost all his stones.’
Moses looked at Eddie and saw fury running in his veins instead of blood. When Eddie rushed him again, he seized Eddie by the wrists.
‘What do you want, Eddie?’
‘Nice Highness.’
‘Look, can we stop this now? I’m bored, OK?’
‘You’re so nice, aren’t you, Highness? Everybody likes Highness. Don’t they, Highness?’
Eddie was spitting the words out from a distance of six inches. Moses could feel the saliva hitting him in the face.
‘What d’you want?’ He shook Eddie by the wrists. ‘D’you want to hit me? Is that what you want? All right. Hit me.’ He flung Eddie’s hands away from him. And waited.
Eddie swayed from the waist, almost lost balance. His laughter sounded like heavy breathing. Then his arm uncoiled through the air and the palm of his hand landed hard and flat on Moses’s face.
‘That’ll teach you,’ he hissed, ‘you bloody martyr.’
Moses had forgotten about his fractured cheekbone, but as he felt the pain exploding inwards through his head, as he watched Eddie laughing at the surprise on his face, it seemed to him that Eddie had chosen that side of his face quite deliberately.
‘You fucking shit,’ he shouted.
Eddie’s eyes lit up. ‘Now, now,’ he said. He began to run backwards, dance backwards on his toes, like a boxer, but when he stumbled on an empty bottle Moses jumped at him and landed a punch on the side of his head. They rolled down a slope towards the sea. Moses forced Eddie on to his stomach. He placed both his hands on the back of Eddie’s head and, mustering all his strength, twisted Eddie’s face into the beach. He heard Eddie laughing through a mouthful of stones.