The Rotters' Club (27 page)

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘My telephone number.’

He looked at the seven digits inscribed in blotchy, pale green biro. A few hours ago he would have traded anything, anything in the world, for the courage even to speak to Cicely, let alone to be offered this priceless information. Suddenly his life was transformed. It was more than he could comprehend.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome. Thanks for the haircut.’

She turned, and was about to leave. She had to be stopped.

‘About that review –’ Benjamin began.

‘I dare say we’ll be seeing more of each other,’ said Cicely, in a tone so neutral, so parched of feeling that he knew their conversation was at an end. ‘We can talk about it then.’

‘Fine,’ said Benjamin; and then she was gone.

He carried the plastic bag full of hair all the way home and up to his bedroom. Then he dropped it on to the bed and lay down himself with an exhausted sigh.

What on earth was he going to do with it?

10

Five days later Philip asked him the key question and Benjamin had to admit that he didn’t know the answer.

‘So – is Cicely your girlfriend now?’

‘I don’t
think
so,’ Benjamin replied, and then held up his finger to test the direction of the breeze, in a futile attempt to ward off further interrogation.

‘You don’t
think
so?’ said Philip, incredulous. ‘What does that mean? I mean, someone’s either your girlfriend or she isn’t.’

‘Well then, she isn’t.’ He hadn’t a clue which direction the breeze was coming from. He had an idea that you were supposed to lick your finger before holding it up, but had never been able to understand why. Besides, now that he thought about it, there wasn’t much of a breeze anyway. ‘I think this must be east,’ he added, hazarding a wild guess and pointing further up the mud-spattered lane.

‘So what did she mean?’ Philip persisted. ‘What did she mean when she said “We’ll be seeing more of each other”?’

‘I suppose she just meant – well, that we were bound to bump into each other, in the normal course of events.’ The truth was that he didn’t know what Cicely had meant, and it annoyed him that Philip seemed to suspect this. ‘Look, don’t you think it would be more helpful – rather than standing here discussing my love-life, or lack of it – if we tried to work out where the hell we are?’

It was a Wednesday afternoon, the day of the Walking Option’s weekly expedition, and already a typical scenario was unfolding. Not only had they managed to get lost after walking about five hundred yards, but in the course of trying out alternative directions and rounding up the dawdlers who had almost immediately begun to loiter out of sight, the group had managed to disperse. Now Philip and Benjamin were alone in a country lane somewhere in the vicinity of the Upper Bittell reservoir, and had not seen the hapless Mr Tillotson and his frayed, famously inadequate road atlas for about half an hour.

‘This is too much like hard work,’ said Philip, after they had staggered on for another twenty yards or so. ‘Let’s have a break for refreshment.’

A nearby stile presented itself obligingly for this very purpose. They sat down, one on either side, Benjamin facing the lane and Philip overlooking a long stretch of pastureland, green-yellow in the sunshine, dotted here and there with contentedly masticating Friesians. He opened his Army and Navy Stores rucksack, took out a thick stack of cheese sandwiches wrapped in tin foil and passed one of them to Benjamin. They split open a can of Guinness and took it in turns to wince over its heavy, bittersweet oiliness.

‘Nothing like a good bit of exercise, is there?’ said Philip, after they had eaten and drunk in silence for a few minutes. ‘Tones the muscles up. Makes you feel on top of things.’

Benjamin had mellowed under the influence of the sunshine, the food and the alcohol. He was prepared to be philosophical about Cicely’s ambiguous declaration now. The important thing was that she had spoken to him at last. They were in a relationship, of sorts.

‘We can’t be
that
lost,’ Philip was saying, as he scanned the horizon in a half-hearted way. ‘You only live a couple of miles from here, don’t you?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Benjamin. He looked around vaguely. ‘It does look a bit familiar. I think Mum drives this way sometimes.’

Two girls wandered past, and stopped to talk to Philip. ‘Any sign of Mr Tillotson?’ he wanted to know.

They shook their heads, and the shorter of the two, who had frizzy, pale blonde hair, a big bust and a permanent, rather earnest and unsettling smile, said: ‘I think he went down to the canal. We told him some of the boys had sneaked off there for a smoke.’

‘Ah well,’ said Philip, leaning back comfortably against the slats of the stile, ‘I dare say he’ll catch up with us soon enough.’

‘So this is what you call walking, is it?’ the girl asked, her smile ever so slightly broadening.

‘Join us if you want.’

‘No thanks. We think we can get to Barnt Green this way. We can get a bus from there, and be home early.’

‘Suit yourselves.’

As the girls walked on, Benjamin said: ‘Who were they?’

‘I don’t know who the dark one was. Pretty, though, wasn’t she? The other one’s called Emily. Emily Sandys.’

‘I’ve heard of her. She designed the costumes for
Othello.’

‘Quite possibly. Doug was telling me she might be joining the paper, too. Doing lay-out and stuff.’ He gazed after the receding female figures, a familiar look of wistful but unconcealed lust setting his face into momentary slack-jawed immobility. ‘I should have said something to the dark one. I fancy her something rotten.’

Emily and her friend disappeared from view, and the boys fell silent. Their thoughts became, for a while, impenetrable. The scene of rural idyll laid out before them might have given rise to any number of reflections. Although they were only a mile or two from Longbridge and Birmingham’s outer suburbs, the gently undulating countryside, with its indolent, nodding herds and tidy hedgerows, might have inspired a Betjeman to verse or a Butterworth to composition. The pastoral stillness remained undisturbed for several minutes, until Philip asked:

‘How often do you think about girls with no clothes on?’

Benjamin gave this question the serious thought it deserved.

‘Quite often,’ he said. ‘All the time, in fact.’

‘Do you undress girls with your eyes? Try to, I mean.’

‘Sometimes. You know, you try not to stare at them that way, but then again, you can’t help it. It’s only natural.’

Looking into the middle distance, as his mind took an unexpectedly abstract turn, Philip said: ‘The female body is a beautiful thing.’ He glanced at Benjamin then and said, urgently: ‘Have you ever – you know –
seen
one? Got a really good look?’

Benjamin shook his head. ‘Not really. Only on the telly.’

Now they could hear the whirr and the click of an approaching bicycle, and the voice presumably of its rider, who was singing to himself at top volume. The rustic mood of that afternoon might have led them to expect some cheery cowhand, wending his way either to or from a milking session while giving lusty voice to some fine old English folksong. But the words reached them in an excruciatingly tuneless boy soprano, and they were quite distinct:

I am an anti-CHRIST

I am an anar-CHIST

The singer seemed not to know any more than that, because after a second’s pause he began again, even louder and even more wildly off-key:

I am an anti-CHRIST

I am an anar-CHIST

Then he came into view and skidded to a halt beside them. It was Paul.

‘Well
well!’
he said, grinning delightedly at the spectacle of these two shirkers, caught
in flagrante.
‘And what do we have here? Hilary and Tensing, defeated at first base while mounting a new challenge on Everest? Captain Scott and Captain Oates, heading off for the South Pole and calling it a day just outside Watford?’

‘Fuck
off,
Paul,’ said Benjamin, outraged to find that he wasn’t safe from his brother even here. ‘Why aren’t you at home, anyway?’

‘I can ride my bike wherever I want, can’t I? I like to nurture the fantasy that this is a free country, despite the last-gasp efforts of our socialist leaders.’

‘The reason you didn’t go to school today,’ Benjamin reminded him, ‘is that you told Mum you had a terrible cold and were going to have to stay in bed with a hot-water bottle.’

‘A little white lie,’ Paul confided, laying a finger to his lips in a gesture of mock-conspiracy. ‘Of course I realize that
you,
the man who never swerves from the path of duty and righteousness, would never –’

‘Come on, Phil.’ Benjamin jumped to his feet in an impatient movement. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to listen to his gibberish any more than I do.’ He began to march forward with athletic strides, trying to outpace his brother who was pedalling languidly behind him at a couple of yards’ distance. ‘What were we talking about?’ he called over his shoulder.

Phil hurried to catch up, wriggling the rucksack on to his back. ‘We were talking about naked women,’ he said.

‘Ha!’ Paul laughed contemptuously. ‘Now there’s something
you
two won’t be seeing in the near future.’

‘Would you just
go away?’
Benjamin demanded, rounding on him.

But Philip had noticed a peculiar, pregnant undertone in Paul’s latest taunt; the hint of some tacky piece of information he was anxious to share with them, perhaps.

‘Why – have
you?’
he asked.

‘Have I what?’

‘Seen a girl without any clothes on.’

‘Yup,’ said Paul, pedalling faster and easing ahead of them.

‘Oh yes, of course you have,’ said Benjamin, his voice leaden with sarcasm. ‘Loads of times, I suppose.’

‘No,’ said Paul. ‘Just the once.’

Benjamin grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him to a halt, almost pulling him off the bicycle.

‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Who was it?’

Paul took a moment to size up the situation.

‘What’s it worth?’ he asked.

‘What it’s worth,’ said Benjamin, ‘is that if you tell me, I won’t chop your legs off.’

His grip on Paul’s shoulder tightened and he enjoyed watching him screw up his eyes in pain.

‘Let go,’ said Paul, and when Benjamin did, he told him: ‘It was your friend’s sister.’

‘Who? What friend?’

‘You know – those two girls we met down at the café by the bus stop, ages ago.’

Benjamin’s mind raced back to that humiliating encounter: the Sunday morning when Claire had asked him for a date, and Paul had been so rude to Miriam that she’d slapped him in the face.

‘Claire’s sister, you mean?’

‘That’s right. I saw her down by the reservoir. Not this one, the one by Cofton Park. She was starkers. I saw her bush and everything.’

In his surprise, Benjamin made the mistake of loosening his hold, and Paul seized the opportunity to leap back on to the bicycle and begin his escape.

‘Paul,’ his brother called after him, ‘what
are
you talking about?’ There was no reply, and he shouted louder still as the bicycle sped off. ‘That was
pathetic,
you know. Couldn’t you have thought of something a
little
bit more likely?’

But all he heard in return, floating back to him through the mild winter air, was:

I am an anti-CHRIST

I am an anar-CHIST

And the words looped and repeated themselves, over and over, as Paul vanished round a corner, pedalling furiously, his little legs fuelled as always by some limitless, manic, mysterious energy.

11

‘You’ve been a good friend to me,’ said Barbara Chase to Sheila Trotter.

Sheila stared into her coffee, embarrassed. It was a nice thing to be told, but she didn’t know how to respond.

‘You probably think I’m very weak and foolish,’ Barbara added.

‘No, not at all. Anyway, it’s not for me to say, is it?’

Barbara smiled sadly and squeezed her hand.

It was a cheerless, blustery morning, and they were the only customers in the Baker’s Dozen, a café which fronted on to the Bristol Road in the centre of Northfield. Coffee rings were stamped on to the formica tables and crumbs of doughnut and chocolate éclair filled up the cracks between the plastic cushions. As a venue for two women to share their deepest marital confidences, it didn’t have much going for it. But then there wasn’t a lot to choose from, in Northfield, in 1977.

‘You have to stop seeing him, Barbara. You have to.’

‘I know.’ She stirred her coffee thoughtfully, as if trying to find meaning in its swirling depths. ‘But the thing is, when I’m with him, he makes me feel so
special.
He makes me feel so
alive.
He makes me feel so
appreciated.’
She stared out at the traffic, the queue at the bus stop, the dogged housewives walking by with their shopping trolleys, faces clamped against the wind. ‘I need your advice, Sheila. What should I do?’

‘I just told you. You have to stop seeing him.’

Barbara didn’t make any answer to this. She merely said: ‘I told you how it started, didn’t I?’

‘You told me, yes: how he kept chatting you up at parent-teachers meetings. I was there, remember?’

‘And then how he got Philip to give me a note.’

‘You told me.’

‘He wanted me to come on a day trip down to the Tate Gallery. Help him to look after his school group.’