Touching Earth Lightly (2 page)

Lying across the bonnet, Chloe said, ‘Oh well, you know. It comes and goes.’

‘Comes and comes, more like it.’ He laughed at his own joke.

Chloe squinted up, and moonlight flared into her eyeballs. She could almost feel the pull of the moon’s gravity, the tug on the top of her head, making her taller.

‘So she does it for you too, eh?’ Gil repeated.

‘Yes. I’m a radical celibate. I gave her my share of libido—I wasn’t using it.’

‘Sure you’re not a radical lezzo?’

Chloe smiled at him. After a moment he returned the smile weakly. He must just feel
duty bound
to insult her; he didn’t have any actual hatred to back it up.

‘She’ll do you, after,’ she said kindly.

He glanced behind him at the wreck, which was rocking itself and the car underneath as Janey finished. ‘Dunno if I wanna,’ he sulked.

Janey called, ‘What do you reckon about his friend, Cole?’

Chloe lay back. ‘Wouldn’t take much convincing, I’d say.’ Gil stood up. He’d do it, just to get away from Chloe and her big words.

Janey said to the other boy, ‘Off you go, then.’

‘Hey, give us a second. Gimme me jacket.’

‘In a minute. I’m using it.’

‘Give us it. You’ll get … stuff on it.’

‘I’ll be careful, don’t worry. Hi. What was your name—Bill?’

‘Gil. Go on, mate. You’ve had your turn.’

‘Bloody hell.’ There was a lot of movement, a twang of metal. The boy came down to Chloe’s roof, buttoning himself. He glanced at Chloe and forced a laugh. ‘She’s done me over. Good and proper.’ He crouched, recovering. His biceps were goosepimpled. ‘You’re the good-looking one. Pity you’re frigid.’

Chloe picked at a sliver of painted rust—thick, old paint from the days when they really
crafted
cars.

‘What happened? You get raped or something?’

‘Pardon?’

‘To make you frigid.’

‘Um, I got bored …’

‘Oh.’

‘… was what it was.’

‘Right.’ He scrabbled his cigarettes and lighter from his tight T-shirt sleeve and went about smoking. ‘Want one?’

‘I don’t.’

‘You don’t do nothin’, do ya.’ Now he hadn’t anything else to do but needle. ‘What
do
ya do?’

‘I look out for her.’

‘Yeah, and what does she do for you? Shit, don’t tell me—I can imagine.’

‘Oh, you can?’ Chloe rolled her eyes at the moon. ‘How
worldly
of you.’

‘She’d root anything, that one; wouldn’t matter what sex you were.’ He looked at Chloe for confirmation.

She sat up, brushed rust flakes off her coat sleeve. This winter she was wearing a coat, enormous and grey like a storeman’s dustcoat, over blouses that hung past her hands, skirts that trailed and ragged and floated like her own pale hair, layers of translucent cloth, anchored by Blundstone boots.

‘Oh, don’t worry your little head about her and me.’

Chloe wished she did smoke sometimes, for the time it filled, the gestures it let you make. It was very good for looking contemptuous. You pursed your lips and tipped back your head and the smoke went thin and straight into the air. It was a way of being taller than another person, like big hair or platform shoes.

‘Chicks like you and her, guys don’t really go for.’

‘No?’

He shook his head decisively. ‘Not properly. You can’t go for a chick who’d turn straight around and root your mate.’

‘What do you mean, go for?
Marry
?’

‘Stick around. Go with. Like, steady.’

‘Ah.’ Chloe’s laughter bounced back off roofs and door panels, disappeared into shadowy nests of engine, boot and bursting seat. The boy watched her, his eyes narrowing. ‘I mean, you’re such
prizes
, guys like
you
, to
go steady
with,’ she said eventually, still laughing.

The springs in Janey and Gil’s wreck began to work towards a crisis. The boy hawked up some tar and spat it off the roof. ‘What a slut.’

‘You’re just angry because she calls the shots,’ Chloe said equably. ‘You’d go for her, no worries. She wouldn’t
want
you to stick around, though—that’s why you don’t like her.’

The boy stood up and ground the cigarette butt into the rust with his running shoe. ‘Don’t have to stay around here
listening to this shit. The both of you are just bent. The
both
of you.’

He stepped down off the car. Chloe watched him clamber and stumble. He sat six or seven cars away, his back to her.

‘Oh, fa … ar out!’ Gil was saying. ‘Man!’

There was irregular movement in the wreck. Janey easing herself out onto the boot was like some kind of mysterious extrusion from the car corpses. The leather jacket was all she wore except for a great gawky pair of black sandals with tree-trunk heels. She came down to Chloe’s level, sliding on her bottom from wreck to wreck.

‘Where’s the other one?’ she panted. ‘Mr Johnny-come-early? Oh, there.’

‘Sulking,’ said Chloe. ‘He’s only here for his jacket.’

‘Gil? Oh, Gi-il? You got a smoke?’

‘Give us the jacket,’ said Chloe. ‘I’ll take it to the Spurned Lover.’

‘Rats, I’d just got it warm.’

Janey’s shoulders and breasts emerged into the moonlight. She handed the jacket to Chloe, and warm breast and shoulder air puffed out of it—Janey air, that smelled like hot metal. Climbing back into the dark stack, she was just a soft white writhing, kinked and cleft here and there.

Chloe leaped fairy-like from roof to roof in her Blundstones and tossed the boy his jacket. ‘Here you go, Johnny.’

‘Thanks for nothin’, bitch.’ He shrugged it on and scrambled towards the street.

Chloe snorted and turned back. Janey and Gil sat naked on the boot of the top car. They smoked and swung their crossed legs, a matching pair. ‘Coming up?’ Janey called out.

‘Nothing for me down here.’ Chloe began to climb. ‘It’s like a huge adventure playground, this place, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, with no other kids on it,’ said Janey, ‘so you never have to wait for your favourite—what’s this one?’ she asked Gil, slapping the car they sat on.

He shrugged. ‘Don’t know nothin’ about cars.’

‘It’s a Wolseley’, said Chloe. ‘It’s written on it.’

‘On your favourite
Wolseley
.’

Chloe hoisted herself onto the boot-end and past them. The moonlight fell through the car window onto Janey’s tight black-widow clothes, on her bag, split open on the floor, spilling foil-wrapped condoms like treasure. There was a breeze here, heavy with jet-fuel and the smell of the sea. ‘So you can think straight now?’ She settled into the dent in the roof.

‘Sort of straight.’ Janey’s white arm was around Gil’s shoulders. They looked like Hansel and Gretel, if Gretel had been the big sister. Their cigarette-coals jerked and settled like red insects in front of them. ‘I could go a George’s mud-cake. What about you?’

‘If it came with a megaccino, maybe.’

‘I could go a drink,’ said Gil. ‘You got anything?’

‘We don’t,’ said Janey. ‘We go crazy. At least, I do; Cole just goes to sleep. We don’t drink and we don’t swear. We’re clean-living girls, aren’t we, Cole?’ Janey flung away her smoke and crawled across the boot to fish her clothes out. She grunted and dragged and snapped them all on. When she stood, she still looked naked, but black now and glossy, with a belt around her like a wrestling champion’s, broad and heavily decorated. She tossed her hair back and yodelled out across the wrecker’s yard, long and expertly on three notes, a multitude of echoes splitting and descanting back from this arena of cars, from the farther stacks, and faintly from the motorway pylons.

‘Signing off,’ said Chloe. But Gil sat on, spooked, until the last echo died and the rats started moving again.

‘Well, g’day,’ said Chloe’s dad when she came in. She caught him glancing at her ragged hair and rust-smudged coat, but he said nothing. He was freshly showered, his silver-streaked dark beard was trimmed and he was eating a virtuous breakfast of muesli and acidophilus yoghurt.

‘Ay.’ She went to the cupboard for a cereal bowl.

‘You okay?’

‘Yup.’

Dane continued to watch as she poured muesli and milk, fetched honey. ‘Not pregnant, or diseased?’

She didn’t answer, wiped her face clear of expression.

‘Show us your arms,’ he went on.

She bared them to the elbows, held them out to his scrutiny, an eyebrow raised. ‘You’ll want to check my hymen next.’ She pulled the sleeves down again, and sat two stools from him at the kitchen counter.

‘Hmm. Not sure what I’d check for, the hymen of a bornagain virgin. And don’t tell me—I’m eating.’

They both ate, Chloe in a daze of exhaustion, Dane with efficiency.

‘Where’ve you been?’ It was almost convincing as an idle question.

‘We went to the movies. Then, just around. You don’t want to know—you’re eating.’

Dane nodded. ‘Fair enough, I get the picture. You going to catch up on some sleep today, then?’

‘Yeah, I’ll … yeah, sleep.’ She laughed, rubbed one eye, spooned up muesli. ‘Can’t even talk. Can’t even
think
.’

Feet descended the stairs and Chloe’s mother Joy came in in her ‘lecturer’s clothes’—clean jeans, an ironed cotton top and a crisp linen jacket. ‘Oh, the fair Rosamund.’ She kissed Chloe on the way to the fridge. ‘You smell a bit. You have a certain
air
about you. What is on that coat?’

‘Rust. It’ll all brush off.’

‘You look like a derro,’ said Joy. She started mixing herself the drink Chloe’s brothers called Weird Green Juice. ‘Where’s the young lord? Still abed?’

‘It’s a school day, isn’t it?’ said Dane.

‘Been out all night?’ said Joy. Chloe nodded, chewing. ‘Ah. How’s Janey?’

‘Tired.’ Chloe chewed. ‘Tireder than me, even.’ Joy bit her lower lip, swirling her glass of Juice. ‘But okay,’ added Chloe.

Beside Chloe, Dane shuddered and stood up. ‘I’d better get going. The architect’s bringing the
client
on site today—huh! As if
he’s
got a say.’

‘Don’t worry about that bowl,’ Joy called after him. ‘It’ll walk to the sink by itself.’ She winked at Chloe.

‘You’ve trained ’em well, darls.’ They heard him sprint upstairs.

‘He’s sick, that dude,’ said Joy.

‘Sick is
good
, Mum. And nobody says
dude
any more.’

Joy slapped her forehead. ‘I will never learn.’

Pete stumbled in, dressed but not quite straight. ‘Wow, you look wasted,’ he said to Chloe enviously, thrusting an arm up to the elbow into the bread bag.

‘Of course she does,’ said Joy, licking away her green moustache and putting an arm around his shoulders. ‘She’s a youth. That’s what you get youth
for
—to waste it.’

‘Yeah? Why do we have to spend all this time at
school
, then?’ He pushed the toaster lever down with gloomy force.

‘Oh, when you’re fourteen, we want to know you’re safe while you’re wasting it,’ said Joy.

‘That’d be right. Not so it’d be
useful
or anything.’

Chloe got up to put her bowl in the sink. ‘Is that a photo of Isaac? When did that get here?’

Pete unpinned it from the corkboard and passed it to her—a photograph, glued to a postcard, of Isaac in front of a strange, tiered, grassed-over landform. Chloe turned it over.

‘So where is it?’ said Chloe.

‘Scotland,’ said Pete. ‘Some wanky landscape architect, Nick says. And FLW is Frank … someone.’

‘Lloyd Wright,’ supplied Joy at the dishwasher.

‘Isaac’ll be in pig heaven,’ said Chloe. ‘Look, he’s lost his spots. All that haggis must be very cleansing.’

‘Yer, now there’s nothing to distract from his nose.’ Pete and Chloe both cackled.

‘Isaac’s got a nice nose. Very distinguished,’ said Joy.

‘Monumental, you might say,’ said Chloe quite affectionately, squinting at it in the photo.

On her way out Joy kissed them both on the tops of their heads. ‘We can’t all look like we stepped straight out of
Marie Claire
.’

‘True, true.’ Chloe preened, milk dripping down her chin.