‘Bit young, maybe,’ Neil said. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘If there’s grass on the pitch…’ Adam joked, a second-hand vulgarity that he had heard but never himself uttered before.
‘In any case,’ Neil said, ‘what about her old man?’
‘Aw, he’s a sweetie,’ Adam said. ‘Look at them — not now, you idiot, he’s watching us — they’re a right-on family. Stop making excuses.’
‘Okay, Ads, okay,’ Neil said, capitulating as he had over the singing and the dip in the Pacific. ‘Let’s play.’
Eric held up the towel to shield Rose, averting his eyes as she slipped back into her clothes.
He let her have a beer that evening. At least, Rose appeared to be drinking a beer — Neil saw her gulp from the bottle and wipe her mouth with the back of her hand — though it was possible, he later realised, that she had taken one swig and passed it back to Eric. Father and daughter were sitting next to each other by the campfire that Trey had built after he served dinner. It was a warm dry night and they didn’t need the heat, but a fire was expected, and they used the flames to toast marshmallows. They could see each other sporadically in the flickering light.
Next to Rose sat one of the Germans, a woman in her late thirties with short blond hair and ropy English. Next to her were the couple from Yorkshire, and beside them were Adam and Neil. Those two were drinking — they and some of the others had bought beer in San Francisco — but they weren’t drunk that night, not really. The other Germans and the gay couple were on the far side of the fire; the elderly hippies and the solitary athlete had already retired. No one had done anything difficult or brave, no perilous climbs or punishing hikes, but there was nevertheless an air of outdoor camaraderie, a communal will to make this be or seem the frontier trip of their imaginings.
They talked about what they had seen in the meadows that day and what they were hoping to see on the next, flora and fauna and soaring rock, peering meditatively into the flames when there seemed to be nothing left to say. Rose pulled her baggy sweater down over her legs and hugged them to her body. Eric and the Yorkshireman began to discuss computers. Eric put his faith in them; the Yorkshireman used an old-fashioned word processor.
‘You wait,’ Eric said. ‘In ten years, I’m telling you, there’ll be a computer in every village in Africa. One hundred per cent easier — everything. School, business — you wait. And be sure and remember me when it happens!’
‘They can’t eat computers,’ a German man said from the other side of the fire.
‘Guess not,’ said Eric, laughing and taking no offence.
He stirred the cinders. Neil used Adam’s penknife to open two more beers.
‘Hey,’ Eric said, rallying. ‘You guys ski?’ He was looking at them.
‘Of course,’ said Adam.
‘’Fraid not,’ said Neil.
‘Too uncoordinated,’ Adam said. ‘He’d be laughed off the slopes.’
‘You two should come see us in Boulder,’ Eric went on. ‘We’ll teach you. Shouldn’t they, Rose?’
‘I guess so,’ Rose said, sweeping away a hair with a hand mittened in sleeve.
‘Any time. Love to have you. Wouldn’t we, sweetie? November to April, best skiing in America. Twenty minutes and you’re on the slopes. And, no kidding, a hot tub in the yard!’ He giggled.
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Adam said.
‘I mean it,’ Eric said. ‘It’s great to meet you guys. From England. I don’t think Rose has met someone from England before, have you, honey?’
‘Sure I have,’ Rose said, poking the ground with a marshmallow stick.
‘How did you two meet?’
‘Playing rugby,’ said Neil.
‘Yes,’ said Adam. ‘We were playing against each other. I was playing for Cambridge and Neil was playing for Birmingham. We had a drink in the bar afterwards. That was three or four years ago.’
‘Who won?’ Rose asked.
‘We did,’ Adam said.
The English couple whispered to each other. The Germans and the gay couple retreated to their tents. Trey went to wash up the dinner plates in a plastic tub. Eric stood, clutched his back, and wandered into the trees to pee.
‘So, Rose,’ Adam said. ‘What’s your story?’
The woman from Yorkshire turned sharply towards him, as if she were about to say something, but instead she looked away. Neil laughed at his friend’s insouciance, tried to disguise the laugh as a cough and only just kept in his beer. Rose blushed. She blushed in two stages, each discernible by the orange light of the campfire. Her face coloured, and a few seconds later darkened again, the blotch spreading down her neck as her self-consciousness kicked in, the embarrassment self-perpetuating, like a quarrel that lives on its own momentum after the original insult has been forgotten.
There was something new and grating about Adam that night, Neil thought. He had interrupted him twice; he needn’t have made that crack about Neil being too clumsy for skiing; he had hijacked their lying game, which they were supposed to play against outsiders, not versus each other. Or, there was something different about the two of them together. Up till then their rivalry had been playful and polite, like a tennis knock-up with no score, kept in check by joint enterprises, curiosity and affection. This evening it was overt and raw. Rose was the contest more than she was the prize. Somewhere else, on another night, the discipline would have been arm-wrestling or Trivial Pursuit.
‘Well,’ Rose said, recovering herself, ‘it’s pretty short.’
Neil stood, padded past Adam and the English couple and sat next to Rose in the spot that had been Eric’s. He leaned back on his elbows, and straight away began talking to her in a voice too quiet for anyone else to hear, and almost too quiet for Rose, so that, to follow him, she had to lean back too, extending her legs in front of her and crossing them at the ankles.
Eric returned from the trees, humming. He glanced at Neil and Rose and sat next to Adam, the weight of his torso rocking him back on his haunches before he righted himself.
‘When you heading home?’ he asked.
‘We’ve got these flexible tickets,’ Adam said, peering around the circle, beyond the English couple, to where Neil was reclining with Rose. He was impressed, even faintly pleased, with his friend’s ruthlessness, as well as aggrieved. ‘A week or two, probably. You?’
‘Right after Yosemite,’ Eric said. ‘Rose has to get ready for school.’
School, Adam thought. They called everything school, didn’t they? That Colorado State T-shirt. ‘Yes,’ he said absently, ‘I suppose so.’
‘Sophomore year already,’ Eric continued, shaking his head in the standard parental amazement. ‘My girl. You believe it?’
‘What’s her major?’ Adam asked, speaking American.
‘Major?’ Eric said, giggling. ‘High school sophomore’s what I mean.’ He stopped laughing and turned towards his daughter.
‘Of course,’ Adam reassured him. ‘My mistake.’
The Yorkshire couple cut in to quiz him about Cambridge — they had a nephew who had studied there, maybe Adam knew him, etcetera — and he was obliged to keep up the pretence, even though it was no fun on his own and he sensed that his act wasn’t convincing. He was telling them how he had read philosophy and been on University Challenge, how he had given up rugby after breaking his leg on tour in South Africa, all the while monitoring Neil and Rose. Neil was making her laugh, he could see that; she was making patterns in the dust with her outstretched feet. Tough luck, pal, Adam thought. Technical disqualification.