After Brock (22 page)

‘Yes,' said Mum, ‘UFOs. Such a useful topic in today's fraught world! Typical!'

Before he could retort, Dad was saying, ‘Well, obviously we can't now stop you appearing on the programme, and we'll see you go up to London and back all right. But you cannot expect us, after how you have treated us, to take any interest in it at all. Whether you do well or disappointingly is no concern of ours. We shan't even listen. Instead we shall do something we'd in point of fact been intending to do one day that week, take Julian and Robin into Bristol to see the production of
A Midsummer
Night's Dream
that's had such good write-ups.'

Now Pete felt tears in his eyes, and no mistake: ‘That sums up the relationship between me and my family perfectly,' he said, ‘you infantilise me'. He had not been travelling into Hereford with an admirer of Jung for nothing. ‘What you have just proposed is the sort of punishment you'd mete out to a small child. I know you don't think much of my intelligence, I know you think those two conceited little jackasses grinning away in front of me now are cleverer. Well, I don't care any more, do you hear; I simply don't care. I shall do my own thing in the world, in my own way, and it will be beautiful.'

  

Ping! That was the fifth or sixth pebble to hit Pete's bedroom window in the last couple of minutes. Was a freak wind blowing up those little stones Dad and he had laid last week on the pathway connecting front and back gardens? Very freak it'd have to be, for, though cold and cloudy, this evening of Wednesday, January 23 1974, it was also very still. As this was an electricity day by government permission, Pete's bedroom was warm and well-lit enough for him to persevere with
Reform
and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal
by G.R. Elton. ‘If you show familiarity with it,' Mr Taylor at school had said, ‘you'll impress any A Level examiner.' Pete had immediately envisaged this man, sweating out the July evening (when marking would be done) in some stuffy study, a pale-faced, prematurely ageing wreck, with a half-drunk mug of Maxwell House at his elbow, and an almost-empty packet of fags. Just as despair at his thankless task was becoming unbearable, his eye fell on a phrase: ‘As the great contemporary British historian, G.R. Elton has written…' Whereupon the poor bloke would leap up and exclaim:
‘Elton
, my sainted aunt!
Reform and
Renewal.
Nothing but a straight A for
this
candidate!'

These were the last hours of Pete's Fifth Day of Disgrace, his parents persisting like the weather in general coldness, speaking to him only about household tasks and what work he'd been set for his A Level studies.

Ping! Another pebble. The sixth or seventh. Casting
Reform and
Renewal
aside, he walked over to the window, the curtains of which he'd not drawn, and pressed his nose flat against the cold pane. Its moist chill on his skin sent him back to when he was a kid, and would envisage on the other side of the glass some visitor from Narnia or Middle Earth – Reepicheep the Militant Mouse, Puddleglum the Marsh Wiggle, or Gandalf and Frodo Baggins themselves – calling up to him to join them in adventure. And indeed tonight there
was
someone below, someone gazing up at him with bright imploring eyes: Sam Price, in tasselled woollen hat, red scarf, bomber-jacket, and jeans. He had in his right hand a fresh pebble, which he stopped himself from chucking upwards as soon as he caught sight of Pete's head and torso framed by the window. The relief he showed was like a parody of that emotion; shoulders sagged, knees splayed an inch or so further apart. Then he put the first finger of his right hand to his lips, and shook his head eloquently from side to side. He's telling me not to open my window and shout out to him, appreciated Pete, who mimed to him to come on in. Sam shook his head again, but now mouthed the words, ‘No!
You
come down!
At once
! Important!'

Whatever was the time? The evening had dragged so in G.R. Elton's company he had little idea, but supper seemed long, long ago. Pete glanced up at the clock on the wall, a present from his parents on his seventh birthday, with an animal picture beside each number on its face. Only 9.15, squirrel minutes past camel. The evening had more of itself left than he'd supposed. Dad was out at a Civic Society committee meeting; Mum was in the sitting room watching a documentary about Kew Gardens, the Brats were up in their room. Nevertheless best to tiptoe his way down the thankfully well-carpeted stairs; only one of those nat-uralists who went in for recording bats could have heard Pete move. Whatever urgency could have brought cool Sam down in such stealth to Woodgarth? Was he in trouble? Had Trevor and Susan Price found the stash of dope in his snug and kicked him out? Or threatened him with the police? Or had some incident at the crammer's come to a head, comparable with whatever-it-was which had finished his Darnton career, and its Principal had phoned his parents? Or maybe – the worst possibility perhaps – his parents had had one of their violent set-tos.

Pete opened the back door with anxious caution, yet it squeaked and sighed. The hinges needed oiling, and Dad had asked Pete to oil them yesterday, but hadn't he performed too many penance tasks lately? So now he had to let himself outside into the zero temperature mighty carefully – to be immediately assaulted by Sam hurling his heavily clad body onto his. He pressed his brass-studded, leather-jacketed trunk and tight-jeaned thighs hard against him, and clapped a strong, gloved, determined hand over his pal's mouth. And into Pete's ear, in that sexy, creamy-thick voice at his unique command, Sam whispered: ‘I've got the car parked a few yards up Etnam Street. If you don't come with me this minute, you'll regret it to the end of your days. No! Fucking! Kidding!'

On each of these last three words he gave Pete's right shoulder a vigorous shake with his free hand. And each shake felt to Pete like a sloughing off of stupid custom-bound restraint. He had, even in these nanoseconds, time enough to think: ‘It's the school corridor and the car park all over again, but multiplied by ten, because of what's developed between us since. He led me that evening, and he's gonna lead me again tonight.'
High Flyers
apart, nothing mattered more to him than Sam's good opinion. His attitude to himself stood in strict measure to this, it grew in strength whenever he gained Sam's (usually unvoiced but nevertheless detectable) approval. For Pete was finding it harder and harder to dislodge nig-gling notions that he himself was essentially a nerdy, dull, unfocused, even conventional kind of guy, who would one day vanish ‘without trace' into the vast crowd of his kind, the most unimportant of unimportant specks in the horrendous enormity of existence. Whatever his faults, Sam Price could not be so dismissed.

The two of them walked to the waiting VW Beetle, about a hundred yards off, in total silence. Cloudy sky, and wisps of mist rose from the ground in every direction. Sam, unlocking the car, said, without forgoing his tone of an initiate into mysteries which only he could disclose, ‘Get in, Pete and I'll tell you everything!' Paradoxically Pete felt the stronger for doing as he was told. Only by compliance with Sam could he live up to the manhood his eighteenth birthday should have conferred.

Though – ‘
Everything
, mind, Sam!' he felt he owed it to himself to say.

Sam slammed the car door shut on the two of them and placed his hands on the steering wheel, but clearly had no intention of starting up the engine yet. With something of his usual truculence he demanded, quietly, ‘Where do you think we're off to tonight? For this opportunity in a million?'

‘But isn't that what you're about to tell me.'

‘Guess, man, first. Use your imagination.'

‘London?' (The Grateful Dead performing in some late-night gig that they might just about make with a bit of luck?)

‘Wrong, man, utterly wrong. Though I wouldn't be surprised if London isn't on its list,' he added cryptically. (‘Its'?
‘Its'
?) ‘You and me – we're headed for the Berwyns. Before schedule, you might say.'

‘'Streuth!' said Pete. ‘Can I ask why?'

Sam just said: ‘Dude, guess again!'

Pete tried again. ‘That older friend of yours,' he recalled. ‘The guy who lives in the Berwyns. Whatshisname!' And then out the required disc in his head slid. ‘Don Parry!'

Over Sam's face, unprecedentedly tense though it was, there passed, unmistakably, a look of admiration. A look which, because involuntary and immediate, so touched Pete that he would treasure it, against darker memories, and sometimes against his wishes too, through the years to come. ‘You've hit the fucking nail on the head! Yes, Don Parry. It's because of him we're going on our – what shall I call it? Mission?'

‘We're going to rescue him?' Perhaps Narnia and Middle Earth came too readily to his mind.

‘I don't think so, no! But that's a possibility, I have to admit…I've just had, you see, the most amazing phone call from old Don, and I've come here to act on it as fast as I could. Never in a million years could you guess why the old bastard rang me, why we've fucking well got to get over to Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant,' once again the impressively smooth flow of Welsh syllables, ‘pronto. Absolutely pronto.' And he thumped his right fist lightly against the rim of the steering wheel.

‘Okay,' Pete still strove for nonchalance. ‘First you ask me to guess, then you say I couldn't in a million years. For Christ's sake stop beating about the bush!'

But Sam wasn't exactly doing this, he was just so revved up himself he was unable to speak coherently, let alone compose himself sufficiently for a night-time drive. He might even benefit from smoking a joint, though the prospect of being in the power of a high Sam for the next hour and a half was unnerving. Was this erratic friend of his a touch crazy after all?

Perhaps not. Sam revealed himself as perfectly aware of his own state. ‘Just give me a few moments,' he asked. And resting his tasselled, woollen-capped head against the back of the driving seat, he went through a sequence of deep breaths, drawing himself up so high he all but touched the lining of the car roof, then sinking himself so low he slumped down beside the brakes. It was an exercise which, if carried out by somebody less self-confident than Sam Price, might have made Pete giggle. But it worked, and presently Sam had steadied himself sufficiently to give the gist of Don Parry's vital communication in a voice very different from his favourite cynical drawl. ‘Because, Pete, in the Berwyn Mountains, just over an hour ago, a UFO landed. And I'm speaking in earnest, man, in fucking earnest. Just as old Don himself was. Weird, isn't it? That you and me should have been both planning to go to the Berwyns, and chatting away about extra-terrestrial matters. Like we had second sight. And now we're off to what's maybe the turning point of our lives. Of human history too.'

Wow! Sam's ecstatic agitation (though the pupils of his eyes had contracted to those tiny pinpoints generally associated with alarm) had, rather to his surprise, produced in Pete himself a complementary calmness (for all the disagreeable resonance of the word UFO). Possibly this was a concomitant of shock: shock at seeing his worldly friend in such an explosive condition; shock that it was UFOs, that subject which both united and divided them, which had brought about Sam's abrupt, astonishing, clan-destine descent on Woodgarth, shock too – as at certain other instants of his life, like seeing his dear tabby-cat fatally knocked down by a car; or facing his quiz show audience – at having to confront an ineluctable slice of reality. For this was clearly how Sam saw the event he had at last been able to name.

Though they'd ridden together in this car only that morning, Pete now experienced his most intense closeness to Sam yet.

   

‘Where to start? The whole thing's so fucking shaken me, I don't really know where'd be best. How about reminding you that my mate Don – I guess I can call him a mate even though he's thirty in February – really plays the field where women are concerned.' The phrase didn't come out quite naturally; it was somebody else's, probably its subject's. ‘Well, the main woman in his life at the moment – she's married actually, which is not without its problems – lives in Llandrillo, on the far side of the Berwyns from Llanrhaeadr.' He was speaking as an intimate with a region he'd never once set foot in. ‘Well, this evening Don went over to Llandrillo to see her, like every Wednesday, staying till about a quarter to nine, fifteen minutes before her man comes back from shift work in a hotel in Bala. So there the two of them were, sitting in the kitchen – we won't ask what they'd just been up to – when, taking them absolutely by surprise, the house gives a great shake, and then another and then another. The floor was rocking under their feet, like, Don said, two people were pulling at the boards from opposite ends. Scary, huh? And that was just the start of the fun and games. The goddam table had a trembling fit. And the chairs too, one toppled over completely. And the fucking carpet curled up, and the kettle bounced about on the hob so it splashed scalding water everywhere, and the hearthrug flew into the fender – and Don, who was trembling himself, only just rescued it before there was one almighty conflagration. And most of the plates and cups and canisters on the dresser – which his girl-friend, Susie, like every good Welshwoman is very proud of – fell off, many of 'em smashed beyond repair…'

Pete was increasingly sure he heard Don Parry's voice within Sam's, particularly when it came to that antiquated phrase about Welshwomen and the dresser so uncharacteristic of his companion did it sound. He couldn't prevent himself from interjecting: ‘But all that sounds like an earthquake, Sam. Really does! We have quakes in this region, you know, only often not so you'd notice. In fact the most serious fault-line in all Britain runs the length of the Marches. Shrewsbury more or less stands on it, and it has a kind of tributary known as the Bala Fault.' His brain truly did come in useful at times, it wasn't only good for thrilling a radio audience! ‘Didn't you learn about all that in…?' But then Sam, thanks to his parents' misplaced snobbery, had never been to a local school, where they taught you about such things with an enthusiastic pride. So he had no idea of any Marches fault.