‘It’s fucking freezing,’ a caramel blonde from the other car said, wedging her hands under her armpits.
‘Where are we, anyway?’ Tarquin asked, looking around disgustedly at the accoutrements of Nature.
‘Killiney Hill,’ Bill O’Malley told her.
‘Come on.’ Guido had already half-disappeared into the shadowy band of trees. Cursing, the party followed after him.
In the distance, on the crest of the hill, the silhouette of the obelisk protruded like the nib of a fountain pen, inscribing a clouded signature on the tenebrous contract of the night sky, a secret pact between world and darkness. When he was younger, Howard used to hear stories about Satanists coming up here to perform black masses. Tonight he couldn’t hear much more than the wind, and the damp crunch of twigs under his feet.
They reached a fork and pursued the coast northwards, out of the park and into the compact wilderness around it. To the right the sea foamed blackly beneath a static, ominous overhang of cloud. The track climbed steeply upwards until the trees fell away to grass and rocks and heather.
‘Dalkey Quarry,’ Guido announced, raising his voice over the wind. ‘A sheer vertical drop of about three hundred and fifty feet. It’s not the Grand Canyon, but believe me, you’ll find it plenty high enough.’
En masse, they peered over the edge. The rockface dropped swiftly into shadows, long before it reached the ground.
‘You cannot be serious,’ the platinum blonde said.
‘I told you, it’s one hundred per cent safe!’ Guido interjected irritably, huffing as he hauled a metal harness from under a brake of gorse. ‘I’ve jumped in it myself like twenty times.’
‘You told us in the pub you’d tested it fifty times,’ Tarquin said icily.
Guido rolled his eyes. ‘I wasn’t there counting it, Jesus Christ. It was a lot of times, okay? Just trust me.’
She stared at him, arms folded, for a long moment, while Guido pretended to be engrossed in untangling the rope; then she tottered away to Tom, who’d been listening to this exchange with a mirthful expression as he smoked a cigarette and looked back over the lights of the Southside, the exclusive postcodes sparkling back from the seafront – his world, Howard thought.
‘I’m just worried you’re going to do something crazy,’ she wheedled, stroking his chin beseechingly.
‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ Tom said. ‘Chill out.’
‘Heads up, Tommo!’ Something glinted through the air: a hip flask, tossed over by Paul Morgan. Tom took a swig, gasped, threw it on to Steve Reece.
‘Well, I’m not hanging around to watch you kill yourselves,’ Tarquin, displeased, decided. ‘I’m going back down to wait in the car.’
‘Me too,’ the platinum blonde said.
‘Fine!’ Guido shouted, kneeling by a tree trunk with the rope. ‘Go!’
‘Wait!’ The caramel blonde tripping after them as they marched off down the path.
Farley stood at the edge of the quarry, contemplating the abyss with an indecipherable expression. Peeping over the brink again, it seemed to Howard the drop had grown even steeper. ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?’
‘Hey, Farley, heads up!’ called Steve Reece. Farley looked round just in time to clasp the flask to his stomach. He gazed at it blankly a moment, weighing it in his hand. Then, opening it up, he pulled from it until he was overcome by coughing. ‘Give some to those guys too,’ Steve Reece instructed.
Gasping, Farley handed the flask to Howard. ‘I just think it would be fun,’ he said, in a whiskey falsetto.
‘We’ll do it too,’ Bill said heavily. Howard’s throat had seized up from the alcohoclass="underline" all he could do was nod his head.
They trooped over to where the others were waiting for Guido to complete his preparations. Metallic objects clinked in his hands. ‘Nearly ready…’
‘What are you doing?’ Tom called amusedly over his shoulder. Howard turned to see the outline of the girls bunched at the end of the path.
‘We don’t want to walk through the woods on our own,’ the squeak came back. ‘We’re just going to wait here.’
Tom let out a belly-laugh. ‘Birds,’ he said, flashing his teeth at Howard.
‘Yeah,’ he returned shakily.
‘All set.’ Guido, holding in his hands what looked like a strait- jacket attached to an orange rope, rose to his feet, to dutiful whoops of excitement from the huddle of boys, which the wind seemed to swallow before they had even left their mouths. ‘Before we continue, I will be needing your contributions, please, gentlemen.’ The famously serpentine eyes darting from one face to the next. ‘Twenty pounds each.’
Checking their wallets, Bill and Howard realized that they didn’t have enough money. For an instant, Howard saw a lifeline. Then Tom stepped in, offering to cover him. Steve Reece did likewise for Bill. ‘Thanks,’ Howard mumbled. ‘We can settle up later in the week.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Tom said.
The notes disappeared into Guido’s back pocket. ‘Okay.’ In his voice Howard thought he heard the trace of a quaver. ‘Who’s going first?’
No one said anything. Howard occupied himself with gazing down into the drop, much in the same way he’d examine his fingernails when the teacher put a question to the class, until it started making him nauseous and he had to step back. Guido shifted from foot to foot.
‘What’s the matter? I’m telling you, this is a hundred per cent safe. They’ve been doing it in Australia for years. But no problem, if you’re too afraid, you can go and wait with the girls.’
Still no one responded. The sea crashed; nightbirds cried; the wind hollered mockingly.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Guido exclaimed. ‘What’s the problem? Are you all faggots?’
‘Fuck it –’ Tom stepped forward and grabbed the harness. At exactly the same moment, however, Steve Reece had the same idea, and now a new and vociferous argument broke out over who would go first.
Finally it was decided that the fairest solution would be to draw lots for the privilege.
Taking an expensive-looking pen from his jacket, Tom wrote out their six names on a flyer for an Indian restaurant. Even in his careless handwriting the list had the look of something fraught with destiny; no one spoke as he passed it to Guido, who tore it into strips, curled the strips into balls and dropped them into his helmet. Closing his eyes, he reached in and plucked a single ball back out. Each of the boys arranged his face into an attitude of yawning indifference. Guido untangled the strip of paper and extended his palm so that everyone could see it.
HOWARD
‘Great,’ Howard said tightly.
Guido picked up the jingling harness.
‘Good luck,’ Bill O’Malley said. Farley nodded dumbly, staring at Howard with an almost parodic expression of guilt.
The others punched his shoulder and said in terse voices, ‘Good man, Fallon, fair fucks.’
In a daze, Howard raised his arms and the harness was strapped around him. Beside him Guido issued last-minute instructions: ‘… elasticated… last second… adrenalin…’ But he was aware only of his numb fingers and the frenetic clamour of his heart, the wind charging about below like a wounded beast, and the bleak, stony faces of the other boys, uncomfortably resembling the front row of mourners at his funeral…
‘Don’t worry.’ Guido intervened in his field of vision again. ‘Nothing can possibly go wrong.’
Howard nodded and, in the manner of a man who has just stepped out of the deep freeze, lumbered up to the brink.
The chasm at his toes yawned and seethed, a single undifferentiated blackness that bore no relation to anything earthly, but rather resembled some terrifyingly literalized condition poised just beyond the edge of human apprehension –