A Year in Fife Park (18 page)

Frank looked at me, expectantly.

‘Hold my dressing gown,’ I said, resignedly calling over my shoulder. ‘Make sure it’s ready for me when I get back.’

I walked down to the water, striding like the Emperor in his fancy new clothes. I waded in, just waist high at first. The water was like a liquid icepack, but I could feel the sensation being distanced by the alcohol. The worst part was when the water first tickled the hairs on my sack, and I forced myself onto tiptoes, to avoid the inevitable wave of ball-crushing coldness.

Eventually I took the plunge, all at once, in to my shoulders. I was under for a second or two at most, and I drew breath and a little water with the shock. Then I turned around, and ran for the beach, covering myself with both hands, which probably wasn’t necessary. As I neared the shore, a small ripple in the sand caught me off balance, and I fell face first into the froth of the breaking waves. I exposed myself to the entire beach, instinctively rubbing the sand out of my eyes, and then pelted over to Frank, who respectfully fitted me with the gown.

‘Thanks,’ I said, feeling much better.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said. ‘I’m fucking freezing.’

On the way off the beach, we met Dylan and Joanne, as well as James, one of Dylan’s perma-stoned associates. We went back to his room in Sallies and turned on the heating. It was soon pretty warm, and Frank went and took a shower, while I lounged around in my dressing gown. I couldn’t get the taste of saltwater out of my mouth, but Dylan rolled a solution, and we smoked it out of the window. It was very laid back and cosy, until Frank returned and starting hurling abuse out of the window at the last stragglers shivering their way along from the beach.

‘I’m taking it easy, from now on,’ I told Dylan. ‘No more gear, no more crazy, no more freezing seawater. No more fucking nudity. No more stupid crushes, no more destruction. No more jumping through hoops. I’m tired, man.’

‘No way,’ Dylan said. ‘No way.’

Maybe he was surprised, or maybe he’d just heard it before. I always do pretend that things are over.

Post

What’s to say about the year I spent in Fife Park? I felt like I couldn’t be hurt, but I was. I thought I had a plan, but everything was a mess. I thought there was a glow, but it doesn’t stand out like a glowing thing should.

It’s late in the spring, and I’m thinking of Fife Park. I thought I could pick up the past, and see it as I did then. But I only see it as it seems now; it was just the kind of stupid shit you’d expect a dumb kid to do, and afterwards I grew up.

I had a plan for change that year. And it was ridiculous, I knew it at the time, but I lived like it was true. I didn’t change, in the ways I thought I would. I didn’t become the person I hoped; I didn’t understand what he would be anyway.

But I did random things because they were random. I did serious things because they were serious. And I was too serious about them, and it was funny, and I laughed with myself. I was so in touch with the time, as it went by.

What an idiot idea it was to try and boil that down. The answer is there in the wholeness of it. It can’t be condensed for convenience or narrative. What I had then, that I lost, was all of it. It was a whole life, complete and constantly renewing. It was everything I was; that glow burned out of the core of me, and lit up everything I saw.

And so I have retraced my steps to the end. The truth was never anything like I remember it, and what I remember was never a feeling at all: it was a person, and I am what is left.

But I have a picture in my head of Quinn Wilde, that lost idiot youth, that fool nonpareil with the dyed red hair. I didn’t think I knew him still, but now I’ve come to know him better than before. He’s a glowing exemplar of all the ways I’d like to be. He is an aspiration. He’s pure fiction.

And now he’s shed his youth as well. The crows feet suit him well, and his eye-scar crinkles when he smiles. Like a kind of conscience, he made me restless when I threw my joy away. He brought me back, and made me look again. Now I want what he would want, much more than what I have. Now I want to live like him, much more than like myself.

And when I wonder what Quinn Wilde would do, the answer is quick and clear: he’d write a book about Fife Park, and muse about his past, and wonder what he lost, and how he changed, and if he grew.

And he would very definitely want the world to know, and he’d make his book a real thing, and he’d hold it up as if to say, ‘I am still here, we are still fine, you always were a worrier.’

And he’d maybe post a copy to you too; if you’re lucky enough to live in Fife Park.

Thanks, Acknowledgements and Greetz go to:

Ella Wilde,

John Dylan,

Michael Holmes,

all the good (and entirely fictional) people I have caricatured and maligned in writing this; all the residents of Fife Park past and present; all the
Internet Jerks Extraordinaire
at the Sinner; everybody I blew off (socially) whilst pulling sixty hour weeks so that this would be finished before Fife Park got knocked down; all the lost souls who, having passed the event horizon, never managed to leave St. Andrews; and everyone who recognises a place or feeling in this book. Last, but not least, my brothers:

Mart, Craig, Frank, Gowan, Lance, Zorg and Mush.

Yes, you can copy this book.

These terms apply:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

You can also download this book from www.fifepark.com