Summer of '76 (2 page)

Luke laughs, almost spitting out his sandwich. ‘Urgh, it’s putting me off my food.’

‘Well I hope Mary Whitehouse is watching
this
. Talk about indecent. Look at those outfits. You can clearly see their meat and two veg.’ Dad gets up to lean on the mantelpiece for a better view, moving in so close that he’s obscuring it entirely. ‘You know what? That one used to be a model – the brunette. You know how I know?’

‘Go on then,’ Luke replies with a sigh. ‘I can see you’re dying to tell us.’

Martin has zoned out altogether as he chews his way through his chicken paste sandwich.

‘Because I went out with her. Back in my London days.’

‘Really?’ asks Martin, refocusing as he gulps down his last mouthful.

‘
Really
.’ Dad raises one eyebrow and drops his voice. ‘A lovely girl, if you know what I mean.’

‘
Dirty
old man,’ Luke says.

‘But, you know how it is. I had to break it off with her. She was getting too clingy, wanted more from the relationship than I did, blah blah blah…’ Dad flops back into his seat, waving his hand in the air, gazing into the middle distance as if imagining the long-ago affair.

‘So, what was her name, then?’ Luke raises his eyebrows suspiciously.

‘Name? God knows!’ Dad laughs uproariously, taking a swig of his beer. ‘Bunty? Sindy? Heaven only knows!’

‘How can you not remember something like that?’ Luke stands and takes Martin’s empty plate, stacking it on top of his own.

‘Ah, so many women. So long ago…’

Luke rests his arm on the mantelpiece, flipping a box of matches with the tip of his free hand. ‘You see, Martin, the thing you need to remember about my dad is that he’s full of –’

‘Luke!’ Mum shouts from the hallway. ‘Is this your motorbike mess on the drive? Someone’ll end up breaking their neck if you leave it there!
Clear it up
!’

Dad pulls a smug face at Luke and turns back towards the television. ‘Nice to see you, boys.’

It’s past ten o’clock when Luke rises on Sunday morning. He clears the draining board and eats boiled eggs with Kitty before leaving the house, pausing to knock once at his parents’ door on his way out.

‘Mum? I’m off. Kitty’s on her own now.’

They were out late last night, at one of their parties, and judging by the silence from the other side of the door they won’t be up for a while. Luke’s bedside clock told him it was gone two in the morning when he heard them return, and he could tell they’d had a good time; they were giggling and whispering, Mum joking with Dad to keep the noise down as he dropped his key fob on the front doorstep with a clatter. At least they’re not arguing, Luke thought vaguely, before rolling over and going back to sleep.

He wheels his scooter down the front drive, turning to wave at Kitty as she bangs on the front window with her Tiny Tears doll, wobbling her head from side to side to make him laugh.

When he arrives at Sandown seafront Martin is already waiting for him by the pier, and they set off up the island together, to travel the eight or nine miles towards Nanna’s house in Wootton Creek. By the time they arrive, the heat of the day is already taking hold, and they’re glad of the shade of the wooded back roads that fork off beyond Kite Hill.

Nanna’s home is a simple, low-ceilinged bungalow set on a large plot of lawn that slopes down to the creek beyond a screen of trees and bracken at the bottom. The front garden is almost always in shadow, facing dense trees and wooded pathways which snake off in several directions towards the various stretches of coastline at the top of the island. Beyond the low wall to her front garden there’s a cluster of old pine trees where Nan has set up a wooden bird table, on to which she scrapes bacon rinds and crusts
each morning after breakfast. Several peanut feeders and home-made fat-balls dangle from the branches of the trees, and they now swing wildly as a burst of garden birds takes flight, alarmed by the sound of the bike engines turning on to the gravel path.

‘Squirrel,’ says Martin, smiling lazily and pointing at the small chestnut rodent as it scoots up the trunk and into the foliage above.

They leave their scooters in a sunny patch of light at the side of the outhouse, hooking their helmets over the handlebars. Luke runs his hands up through his sweaty hair and opens the front door without knocking. ‘Hi, Nanna! It’s me – Luke!’

There’s a pause, before Nan’s voice trails back faintly. ‘I’m in the back, love. Just adjusting my ankle strap.’

‘Where?’

‘In the back!’

The lads walk through the narrow hallway, until they reach the living room and the bright, warm conservatory at the back of the house.

‘Bleedin’ hell, it’s hot!’ Nanna’s sitting in one of the
sun-bleached
wicker chairs, with her foot up on the tiled coffee table. There’s a support bandage hanging limply from the end of her toes. ‘Here, give us a hand with this, love. Bloody thing. Pain in the arse, it is.’

‘
Language
, Nanna.’ Luke laughs, sitting on the seat beside her. ‘Look, I’ve brought Martin with me.’ He gives her a nudge and she looks up at Martin wickedly.

‘Oh, don’t mind me, Marty, love. Put it down to my age if you like.’

Luke eases the tube bandage along her foot, noticing the silvery slip of her skin as it resists the tight elastic. After a bit of tugging and adjusting, he fits it neatly over her heel. ‘So, how’s the ankle doing at the moment, Nanna?’

‘Oh, it’s alright, love,’ she replies, using his shoulder for support as she gets to her feet, wriggling them into her pink
velour slippers. ‘Just a bit crumbly. Like me.’ She picks up her wooden walking stick and beckons for them to follow her into the kitchen, where a freshly baked lemon cake is sitting on the side. ‘Fancy a slice?’

Luke kisses her cheek and fills the kettle at the sink. ‘Grab a seat, Mart. And you, Nan. I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.’

Nan sighs heavily as she sits at the small square table, rearranging her thin little legs to get comfortable. ‘What are you boys up to today? Off down the beach or something nice like that?’

‘We’re on our way over to Sunshine Bay,’ Luke replies, placing a fresh bottle of milk on the table. The silver foil lid has a wide hole torn in it, where the blue tits have pecked their way through to get at the cream. As he reaches back to fetch the teapot he notices the row of rinsed bottles lined up along the windowsill, and makes a mental note to put them down on the doorstep for Nan on his way out. ‘I start my new job at the holiday camp soon, so they want me to come and collect my uniform.’

‘Entertaining the grockles?’ Nanna asks.

‘Nothing so glamorous,’ he replies with a snort. ‘I’ll be cleaning out chalets and minding the pool. Just part-time until after my exams, then I’ll do more shifts. The money’s not too bad – and if you work there you get a free pass for the pool. And cheap food.’

‘
And
you’ll get lots of nice girls down there if you’re lucky.’ Nan gives Martin a wink. ‘What about you, Martin, love? You looking for a job too?’

He rubs his nose self-consciously, and looks down at his hands. ‘Oh, no. I’m working for my dad, you know, making picture frames. It’s the family business.’

‘That’s nice,’ she says, pinching at her blouse collar and blowing up over her face to cool off. ‘Though I don’t s’pose you meet many girls in that line of work, do you?’

Martin shakes his head and gives an embarrassed little smile.

‘Of course, she’s right, mate,’ Luke says, sitting at the table and pouring the tea. ‘Once I start work down at Sunshine Bay, I’m gonna be fighting ’em off. I won’t know which way to turn for girls throwing themselves at my feet.’ He raises his eyebrows at Nan, who chuckles.

Martin covers his cake-filled mouth.

‘Just think of all those girls in bikinis, Mart,’ Luke grins. ‘Like Honey Ryder in
Doctor No
.’

‘Or Raquel Welch in
One Million Years
BC
,’ Martin replies, chewing slowly on his cake.

Nan points at the sugar bowl on the side, and Luke passes it over. ‘If it’s naked girls you’re after, you’d have liked it round here back in the day.’

‘How’s that?’ asks Luke.

‘Well, we had our own nudist colony up at Woodside, when it was still just the big house. Run by Reverend something-or-other. Bare bottoms everywhere. And not all of ’em that nice to look at, I’ll bet.’

‘A vicar? Are you pulling our legs, Nan?’

She looks affronted. ‘No, I’m bloody not! It only closed down ten or so years ago, before they turned all that land into the holiday camp, as if we needed another one. You ask anyone. They were supposed to stay in the paddock if they were in the altogether, but no end of ’em used to get down on the beach, frolicking about under the tamarisks!’ She giggles to herself. ‘I remember it clearly, because it all started up the year your dad was born, not long after we’d moved on to the island. Lots of the locals were up in arms about it – couldn’t believe a vicar would encourage such shenanigans! Some of the youngsters used to cycle up to the bay and stand on their saddles trying to peek over the hedges. I even heard that the lads from Ryde rowing club used to take a regular trip across the creek just to get a sneaky look on their way down to the Sloop. Well, we didn’t have all the dirty magazines in them days. Probably the first time some of ’em had seen a naked body!’

She gives Martin a little shove across the table and the boys fall about laughing. ‘Bloody hell, Nan,’ says Luke. ‘I’ve never heard of that before. What about you and Grandad? Didn’t you ever fancy getting yourself a nice all-over tan?’

‘You cheeky bugger!’ she hoots, slicing them all a second piece of cake. ‘No, we did not! Mind you, I once had to give him a right bollocking, when I heard him and his daft mate Eric Stubbs had cycled down there for a look one Saturday night. Eric’s wife, well, she heard him bragging at the front gate and dragged him round here to get it out of them.’

‘No! What did Grandad say to you?’

‘Not much. He said he was so drunk at the time that all he remembered was falling into the hedge and tearing his shirt collar. He said Eric was a bleedin’ idiot for thinking they’d all still be out in the gardens at that time of night. It must’ve been midnight by the time they got up there – all the nudies were tucked up nice and cosy in their beds by then!’

‘I bet you were mad at him, weren’t you?’ Luke licks his finger and cleans up the crumbs from his plate.

‘Me? Nah. He’s just a man, after all. Anyway, talking of daft men, how’s that dad of yours? Hasn’t been over to see me in weeks – since he bought me that bloody thing over there.’ She flicks her hand towards the small fridge in the corner of the kitchen. ‘Waste of space. What do I need a fridge for?’

Luke stacks the plates and puts them on the side. ‘You’ll be glad of it if this weather keeps up, Nan. But yeah, Dad’s fine. Looking forward to the end of term, I think. He’s always threatening to jack his job in, but you know he never will. He never stops moaning about teaching, but I think he’s glad of it when the long school holidays come round.’

‘He always was a lazy git.’

‘
Nan
.’

‘Well, he was.’

Martin hides his face behind his teacup, draining every drop with his last mouthful. The sun shines through the window into his eyes and he blinks like a mole.

‘Actually it was him who came up with the idea of me getting a job at the holiday camp. He said he was a Bluecoat at Pontins for a while when he was my age.’

Nan splutters. ‘A Bluecoat?’ She wipes her lashes with a crumpled lavender hanky. ‘The closest he ever got to it was a singing competition he went in for when he was nine!’

Luke’s jaw drops. ‘He wasn’t a Bluecoat?’

She raises her eyes theatrically. ‘
And
he came last, poor little bugger. Tone deaf.’ She eases herself out of her seat and hobbles over to the sink, where she pauses to watch the rise and fall of the birds beyond the windowpane. ‘Poor old Richard,’ she says with a gentle sigh. ‘He always was full of shit.’

The middle of May is beautiful, with a steady warmth taking hold across the island. Any rainfall is rare and short-lived, and a strange kind of hush descends as the breeze drops from the air. After their first exams, Luke and Martin take their scooters around the island for the weekend, planning the route with precision, a two-man tent strapped to the back of Martin’s bike. They avoid the resorts, skirting along the coastal roads where they can, stopping off at viewing points for lunch and a stretch. At St Boniface Down they leave the bikes and climb up the steep south side, where the fabled wishing well is said to be found if the climber ascends towards the apex without looking back down. Halfway up, a pair of tawny-coloured goats is grazing on the path above them; the gull-eyed creatures stop chewing and stand rigid, staring down the path at the lads, each goat a mirror image of the other.

Martin clears his throat nervously.

‘They’re alright,’ Luke says striding on towards them. The goats turn and canter away, up over the summit and out of view.

At the top the boys take off their rucksacks and lie back on the dry grass, feeling the sun bleaching down on their
arms and legs. Luke closes his eyes as his heart rate decreases steadily and his limbs sink into the hillside. There’s no sound from Martin, who is stretched out just inches away; Luke stays perfectly still as he listens to the light chatter of skylarks dancing in and out of their meadow nests in the surrounding grasses. He exhales, forcing all the air from his lungs, opening his eyelids narrowly against the glare of the wide sky. Swallows glide and dip overhead, briefly cutting out the sun as they dive into the meadows.

‘So, we didn’t find it, then,’ he says, ‘the wishing well.’

‘Knew we wouldn’t,’ Martin replies. ‘My dad told me it was a load of rubbish when I said we were going to look for it.’

Luke props himself up on his elbows and gazes out across the water. ‘I don’t know why you bother telling him stuff, mate. I mean, all he ever does is put you down.’

‘He wasn’t putting me down, was he?’ Martin says, screwing his face up against the light. ‘He was saying the wishing well was rubbish, not that I’m rubbish.’

There’s a long bramble scratch running down the length of Martin’s shin, and a small trickle of dried blood merges with the ingrained dirt and dust that clings to his pale skin. Luke stares at him. ‘Yeah, but essentially, mate, it’s the same thing. If he says the wishing well is rubbish, what he’s really saying is that you’re rubbish for thinking you might find it.’

‘Can you hear the birds?’ Martin asks, sitting up and tipping his head to one side. ‘Wish I had a camera. You could get some brilliant photos of those swallows if you hung around long enough.’

‘How can you tell they’re swallows and not swifts?’

He looks deep in thought. ‘Just can. Longer tail streamers, I think.’

Luke reaches for his bag and starts to unpack their picnic. ‘Sorry, Mart. About your old man – I shouldn’t have said that. He’s your dad. You don’t want to hear me running him down.’

‘He also said I was a useless, overgrown waste of space,’ Martin says, pulling himself up into a gangly cross-legged position. ‘So I s’pose you might have a point.’ Reaching for a sandwich, he takes a large bite, his expression losing focus as he starts to chew. ‘He’s been getting worse lately. I never know what kind of mood he’s going to wake up in. Yesterday I knocked a cup off the side when I was washing up, and he went mad. He grabbed the rest of the cups off the draining board and chucked them at the wall. Said we might as well make a mess worth sweeping up. We’ve only got two left now, and a few glasses.’

Luke shakes his head, breaking his sandwich into two pieces. ‘Man, you’ve gotta get out of there. Hey, maybe we could get a place together? You could come with me to the mainland?’ He prods Martin with his toe. ‘Mart? It would be a laugh! You and me, living together? You could do that photography course you keep going on about.’

Martin continues chewing until his sandwich is finished, and reaches for another. ‘I couldn’t do that, mate. I haven’t saved enough for the camera yet – and I don’t want one of those cheap ones. It’s got to be a good one if I’m going to do a proper course. Anyway, you’ll be busy getting to know all your new mates at poly.’

‘Don’t be an idiot. Once an islander, always an islander. Seriously, you could get a job over there, no problem.’

Martin turns the sandwich over in his hands. ‘But I’ve got my job with Dad. He’s getting more orders than ever these days, and I know he wants me to carry on the business.’

‘But what about what
you
want to do? You always said you wanted to work with animals, like David Attenborough.’

‘Or Johnny Morris.’

‘Don’t you want to do that any more?’

Martin doesn’t answer for a moment. ‘Dad says there’s no money in it, and you can’t live on fresh air. He’s just had an order in from this big new gallery in London – forty frames – and they want them done really quick. He couldn’t
do it all with just the one pair of hands. He couldn’t manage without me.’

‘But you must have ambitions, Mart. I look at my folks and think, I don’t want to end up like them, stuck in the same old place, doing the same old things. I’d rather top myself.’ He turns his face skyward as a cluster of noisy gulls passes over. ‘I mean, you must have some things you want to achieve before you die?’

‘I’d like to go on Concorde,’ Martin replies, after a minute’s thought. ‘Or hang-gliding. Like those fellas we saw over at Compton Down.’

Luke brushes the crumbs from his lap. ‘Sorry, Mart. It’s just – it won’t be the same when I’m over there.’

Martin drinks deeply from his water flask, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘That’s OK. You’ll be back some weekends anyway, won’t you? You said it yourself – Brighton’s not that far away.’

Luke shields his eyes as he looks out over the endless horizon. ‘You’re right,’ he says, watching the sunlight as it ripples and shimmers across the water.

‘I know I am,’ says Martin, stretching out his long hairy legs and brushing the crumbs into the grass. ‘You’ll be back. Just like nothing’s ever changed.’

Later that day, they set up their tent on the south side of the island, at a large cliffside campsite along the Military Road with views across the channel. It’s not overly crowded, but the owner has asked campers to stick to the near end of the site while they’re busy getting the place ready for the tourist season. The whirr of lawnmowers buzzes in the breeze as gardeners clear the overgrown borders, cutting down the meadow grasses at the edges, lopping off the fresh daisy heads before they’ve had a chance to unfurl. Before long, Luke knows, the campsites across the island will fill up with holidaymakers, crowding in from the mainland with their caravans and tents and hordes of noisy children. But for now
it’s relatively peaceful, with just twenty or so pitches taken across the gently sloping hillside.

Martin and Luke find a spot towards the top of the field where the grass is bathed in sunshine, away from the boisterous young families who congregate closest to the washing-up stations and showers. The sun is bright, but up here the wind whips and howls around the tents and guy ropes, tugging and swirling at Luke’s hair as if it’s caught in a vortex. He swipes his fringe aside, while Martin lunges clumsily, grasping for a corner of the tent which has slipped its peg as they struggle to get it anchored.

There’s a small group a few tents away, perhaps in their late teens. They’ve got that polished city look; they’re definitely not from round here and they don’t look like seasoned campers. One of the girls is wearing a beige trouser suit, with flared bottoms and a short-sleeved jacket. She wears the jacket open, and beneath it Luke can glimpse a bright white bikini top. Nothing else. She catches Luke’s eye every time he glances in her direction, and after this has happened a few times he smiles uncertainly and gives her a little nod. She’s got long straight hair, dark blonde at the roots, graduating in colour all the way down her back to where the ends are pale and sun-bleached. The girl returns his smile and looks away, pulling a floppy sunhat down over her head.

He drops to his knees to peer inside their own small tent. ‘How are we doing with the groundsheet, Mart?’

Martin is scrambling around inside, trying to hook the plastic cover under the canvas walls and on to the pegs on the outside. He sprawls across the sheet with one side of his face pressed against the plastic surface in concentration, a tiny pink tip of tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth.

‘Near-ly… there!’ He pushes himself into a sitting position and brushes the dust from his hands. ‘That should do the trick.’

Luke crawls inside and sits beside him, cross-legged, looking up and around their sleeping space. ‘Bloody hell,
Mart, it’s not that big in here is it? You’ll have to sleep with your feet sticking out of the tent.’

Martin lies down and stretches himself out to try it for size. He’s too long to lie flat. ‘I’ll have to sleep on my side, then,’ he says, rubbing a grubby finger along the bridge of his nose. ‘Don’t know how they can call it a two-man tent. It’s not even long enough for one man.’

Luke hops on to his feet and looms over him with a menacing snarl. ‘Not for a super-freak like you, maybe!’ He jabs Martin in the ribs, making him shriek. It’s a high-pitched ‘Yeeearghhh!’ sound and Martin lashes out in reflex, knocking Luke over so that he tumbles out of the tent flap, in full view of their neighbours. When he gets to his feet, the blonde girl’s looking over again. She’s whispering with the others in her group, who are now all craning to get a good look.

‘What’s the matter?’ one of them calls over, a
snooty-looking
girl with a big flicky fringe. ‘Did oo see a ickle bumble bee?’

The group howls with laughter, including two lads in ironed shorts and shirts who are returning from the standpipe with plastic tanks of water. Everything in their party looks brand new, even the guy ropes.

‘Daft girls,’ Luke mutters, offering up a small embarrassed shrug and wandering round to the other side of the tent. He self-consciously brushes dust patches from the seat of his
cut-off
jeans, suddenly aware of his scruffy appearance. He’s only brought one spare T-shirt with him, and he’s already started to whiff a bit.

Martin crawls out and gets to his feet, stretching his arms high above his head, so that his long, thin shadow cuts across the faded orange canvas.

‘Who’s daft?’ he asks, lazily scratching at his armpit and yawning.

Luke cocks a discreet thumb in their direction, allowing himself another quick peek at the girl with the long hair. She’s very pretty.

Martin puts his hands on his hips and looks over, squinting into the afternoon light for a better look. His tiny shorts look ridiculous. ‘What, them?’ he says, too loudly, and he points right at them.

‘Oh, my God, Mart! Do you have to be so uncool?’ Luke drops to the ground so that he’s obscured by the tent. He rubs his hands across his face and groans. ‘Fucking hell!’

Martin shrugs and sits down beside him. ‘Sorry, mate. So what are we gonna do for food tonight?’

Luke gets up and starts to unstrap the rucksack from the back of his scooter, unrolling his sleeping bag and laying his belongings out on his side of the tent, before crawling out backwards and flicking the earth and grass from his knees. ‘Fish and chips? We could stop off for a pint somewhere at the same time. I’ll need something to knock me out if I’ve got to spend the night cramped up in a tiny tent with you and your stinky feet.’

Martin snorts a little laugh and unpacks his few items, throwing them into the tent in a small heap. Making a pillow of his jacket, Luke lies back against the grass. The wind has dropped a little now, and the sun feels warm against his skin. Martin stands beside him, looking out across the campsite, casting a shadow across Luke’s face, shielding him from the sun. Luke frowns up at him. ‘Cheers, mate. I was hoping to get a nice Martin-shaped tan mark across my forehead.’ He props himself up on his elbows and nods towards the ground. ‘Chill out, man. We’re meant to be taking a proper break from revising, clear our minds.’

Martin pulls his T-shirt over his head and lies on the grass alongside Luke, stretching his arms above his head like a man about to do military sit-ups. ‘God, I’m white,’ he says, taking a good look at his broad, bony chest.

Luke snorts, and reaches for his sunglasses. ‘I’m definitely gonna need these now.’

For a while they lie there, side by side, just watching the other campers come and go, soaking up the warmth of
the afternoon in companionable silence. The blonde girl passes by and takes a good look at them before returning to her group. ‘See that one?’ Luke says, when she’s gone. ‘She reminds me of Samantha Dyas.’

‘From the year below us?’ Martin says. ‘She’s a bit like her. You know she’s going out with Len now?’

‘Who, Samantha?’

Martin nods.

‘Bloody hell, what’s wrong with the world?
Len Dickens
? She must be mad. He’s a thug.’

‘He wasn’t always,’ Martin says, pressing his fingertips against the skin of his chest to test the heat.

‘I don’t know why you’d defend him, Mart. He’s never given you anything but grief.’

‘I’m just saying, he wasn’t always that way. He was a good mate back in primary school.’

‘Yeah, well, that was a long time ago. Before he turned into a mental case.’ Luke gets to his feet and yawns. ‘Right! I need a piss.’ He chances a glance at the nearby group, who are now distracted as they try to decipher the instructions on a new tin of camping gas. ‘I’ll fill up the water bottle while I’m down there.’

He takes the path to the toilet block, going the long way round, to avoid the blonde girl and her mainland friends. He wonders if they’re staring at him, taking the mickey out of his scruffy clothes and unkempt hair, laughing at his pale giant of a friend.

As he nears the block, his attention is diverted by a huge black dog, a Rottweiler, galloping down the slope from the other side of the campsite, and in a split second Luke realises that it has him in his sights. In one fluid movement the dog jumps at him, knocking him to the ground with ease. He lands on his side, balled up beneath the huge beast as it barks great bellowing woofs across the campsite for everyone to hear. The rear end of the dog looms over Luke’s face, its grotesque testicles swinging between thick, muscular hind legs.