Damascus (5 page)

‘It's a woman, isn't it?' he said, amazed. He rubbed his eyes. ‘It's Jessica, isn't it? I knew this would happen.'

It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere in Britain, just outside Penarth or Holyhead or Dover, close to Redruth or Havant or Tenby, it's the last day of the holidays and Spencer Kelly (12) wants to hold Hazel Burns (12) by the hand. This is the meaning of life. He wants to sit beside her on a sand dune and hold her hand and then kiss her. Just kissing, in a nice way, on her cheek perhaps and then a little bit at the top of her arms.

The thought of it makes his chest and the corners of his mouth hurt, and this is happening right now, with the seaside wind in his hair and the seagulls wheeling above. If he can kiss her this once then he'll always have kissed her, and everything which follows will be different. The sun will stay out and the wind will drop. His father won't mind when he doesn't practise his football, snooker, running, basketball for the end of century Olympics, because a kiss with Hazel Burns will be equally as good. It'll be like the winning goal or try or run in the last and deciding game of the Carling Premiership or the Heineken League or the Sharjah trophy. It's to be the one moment which instantly changes everything.

Spencer and Hazel are out walking on the dunes, alone. Nobody knows where Philip is, but Mr and Mrs Kelly are playing bowls on the front (Mr Kelly 44 Mrs Kelly 9). Mr Burns has hired a small yacht and is sailing. Mrs Burns, not knowing when her husband will next have time for a holiday, is sitting in the bow of the boat scanning the horizon for storms. Rachel is on the beach teaching basic boxing stances to Olive, who only stopped reading when Hazel told her she'd better walk somewhere before she lost the use of her legs.

‘Mummy said you had to look after me.'

‘Mummy says lots of things.'

‘You're in big trouble.'

In return for keeping Olive busy, Spencer promises Rachel a timed game of Ironman triathlon. Later, when he and Hazel get back.

Now, Hazel steps over a tuft of sandy grass. She is wearing her swimming costume and her tennis skirt and no shoes. She's thinking it's no crime to leave Olive behind because I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you. Love you for ever. A long flat cloud rolls across the sun, and the seagulls are suddenly closer, clearer, each movement of a wing like a rearrangement in a shrugging shoulder. Their yellow eyes see everything that moves but remember nothing, not Hazel and Spencer at the top of a dune, the way they stop, stand still, glance nervously at each other's fingertips.

They hear someone coming. They turn and shade their eyes and it's an older boy with walking boots and a rucksack. He wants to know where the coastal path is, but not the one which goes up to the cliffs. He says the cliffs are dangerous at this time of year. He wants the low-level path which follows the shore, and Hazel tells him they don't know.

‘We're on holiday,' she says.

The older boy walks away with the big rucksack bouncing on his back and Spencer and Hazel lie down out of the wind, head to toe, looking up at the sky and the evenly-wheeling seagulls. In a blue gap between two white clouds, a bright interval, a tiny silver aeroplane pipes out a neat pair of vapour-trails.

Hazel moves her wrist so that the ends of her fingers touch the back of Spencer's hand, and this now, both of them think, this now is truly phenomenal, this is really happening right now and in real life, me and a girl, me and a boy, and this will last for ever. I shall never forget you. I shall love you always. This is love, and it's wonderful and frightening because there must be a right and a wrong way to move on from here. But in the meantime there is only me and a girl, me and a boy, and the slow progress of a jet plane to capture as it angles steadily across the pale blue sky.

‘Aer Lingus,' Hazel says.

'Iberia.'

‘British Airways.'

‘SAS.'

‘Lufthansa.'

There is a pause as the plane slips behind cloud, heading for the sun.

‘You know your airlines,' Spencer says.

Hazel pinches his shoulder, but squeezes only softly. When he lifts his arm to protect himself she punches him in the side. He grabs her and they roll each other over, once, twice, until they end up side by side and breathless, absolutely equal no winners.

They break apart and sit up quickly, as if someone was coming. Hazel inspects a fingernail and some sand stuck behind it.

‘I've got a scholarship to a new school,' she says. ‘At lunch you always have to sit in the same seat.'

'I hate school,' Spencer says.

'If you were at my school you could sit next to me.'

And then when Spencer doesn't say anything Hazel says:

‘You can kiss me if you like.'

It is the first of November 1993 and Hazel says:

‘You can kiss me if you like,'and Spencer thinks someone might be watching. He doesn't want to smile but he smiles and with his little finger he draws a stick-man kicking a football in the sand.

‘You can't kiss until you're married,' he says. He doesn't look up, not even when Hazel asks him when was the last time he watched a video?
Everyone
kisses before they're married. She starts rummaging through her bag, saying they should make a pact, and Spencer likes the idea even though he'd never have thought of it himself.

‘Now?'

‘Right now,' Hazel says. ‘Before we kiss. Why not?'

She pushes right to the bottom of the bag and pulls out the woollen red-and-white gloves. She puts one of them on, the right hand one. She tells Spencer to put on the other one and then they hold hands, glove to glove, right hand to left hand.

‘Why are we wearing gloves?' Spencer wants to know.

‘It's a pact. You have to promise to love me for ever.'

‘What do I do with the glove?'

‘Afterwards you keep it. First you have to promise to love me.'

Spencer is thinking they ought to check on Rachel and Olive, and what will Hazel's mother do when she finds out that Hazel's made a pact? Why can't he stop thinking like this and just kiss her?

They hold on tight to each other's gloved hands.

‘Promise,' Hazel says, shaking his hand up and down, looking straight into his eyes. ‘Cross your heart and hope to die.'

11/1/93 M
ONDAY
08:12

At the bottom of the deep end of the empty swimming pool, Hazel mouthed a mouth breathing underwater bubbles. Then she made a face like a fish. She looked up brightly at Spencer and asked him if he knew what time it was.

‘It's twelve minutes past eight,' Spencer said, but Hazel already knew what time it was. She meant, ‘Have you seen how early it is?'

‘I brought you some tea,' Spencer said.

He climbed down the short ladder into the shallow end, walked carefully past the full-size billiard table, and then carefully negotiated the steep slope to join her at the bottom of the deep end. The tiles in the pool were dark blue, and the dusty light falling from the glass roof felt thick like underwater. Hazel had her telephone with her and Spencer's library books, and she was already twenty pages into a crime novel called
Sir John Magill's Last Journey
. Something terrible was always about to happen.

Spencer slid his back down the side of the pool, his vertebrae clicking on the plaster lines between tiles.

‘It's like being in a huge bathroom,' Hazel said, ‘but without a bath in it.'

‘Bow-wow,' Spencer said, showing her the echo.

‘Boing,' Hazel said. ‘Bing-bong.'

‘Boom.'

Hazel's hair, parted in the middle, was darker than usual because it was still damp from the shower. She was wearing her long charcoal-coloured sweater dress, loose-necked with finger-skimming sleeves and obviously an evening outfit. It was all she had with her. She wore a gold chain and a little lipstick and a pair of Spencer's socks she'd borrowed to keep her feet warm. They were very big and woolly and a kind of oatmeal colour. She hoped he didn't mind.

‘Great house,' Hazel said, taking the green-and-white striped mug which Spencer held out to her. ‘Quiet.'

The tea wasn't very hot but she blew some steam off the top anyway, getting a good look at him without making it too obvious. Not bad. Could have been a lot worse.

Alas, he seemed to have brought a funny smell into the pool.

‘Kippers,' Spencer said. ‘William likes a kipper for his breakfast.'

‘This is the man who lives in the shed?'

‘In the vegetable garden. He doesn't go out much. His brother owns the house but they don't get on.'

‘And what happens to William if someone buys the house? What happens to you?'

Hazel's telephone went off like an alarm. They both looked at it, black on top of the library books, its insistent electronic noise finding echoes in the sharpest angles of the swimming pool Spencer said: ‘That'll be the phone.'

‘Does it bother you?'

‘I don't know,' Spencer said. ‘Depends who's ringing.'

The phone went quiet, and the broad silence which followed sank slowly to the bottom of the deep end. ‘Nobody,' Hazel said. ‘Not anymore anyway.'

Spencer stood up again, and Hazel wondered if he was always this restless. She followed him back up the slope to the billiard table and skidded the last metre or so in her socks.

‘The billiard room's going to be re-painted,' Spencer explained. ‘They had to put the table somewhere.'

‘How did they get it down here?'

‘I don't know. Act of God.'

‘Pool table.'

‘Heard it.'

Spencer looked at her as if he had something to say, and then he just looked at her. She touched her hair to check it hadn't gone funny. It was nearly dry. She crossed her arms over her breasts.

‘Are you alright, Spencer? You look…'

‘What?'

‘More worried than I expected.'

He rolled a red billiard ball towards its spot at the end of the table. ‘I'm just a worrier. I worry about what's going to happen.'

Hazel raised her eyebrows. ‘We could always go back to bed.'

‘I mean apart from that.'

He wasn't looking at her when he said it, a bad habit of his which was beginning to annoy her.

‘I have to go out,' Spencer said. 'I won't be long.'

It's not to take your library books back, is it?'

‘Yes,' Spencer said, ‘I have to take my library books back. You can check the date.'

‘There's something else, isn't there?'

'I should get a present for my niece. It's her birthday.'

Hazel took a deep breath, suddenly distrusting her earlier feeling that she'd always known him. How could anybody know anyone else? She took another deep breath. Then she asked Spencer if he wanted her to leave.

‘No,' he said, ‘no, of course I don't,' but he was looking round the pool, licking his finger and drawing a football goal on a tile, and then, as an afterthought, a football inside it.

‘Is it because of last night?' she asked, suddenly worried that sleeping with him had changed everything. ‘I thought it was amazing. It was amazing, wasn't it?'

Spencer blinked and for a moment his eyes stayed closed. He opened them and turned the red ball a fraction with his finger, rolling it minutely one way and then another.

‘What's
wrong?'

‘I don't know. I'm sorry. I think I'm in shock.'

‘Why?'

‘I never thought something like this could happen so quickly.'

‘Well, it's happened. It's here we are.'

‘Hazel, do you believe in Damascus?'

For the first time, across the billiard table, he looked at her directly. Clear brown eyes, most attractive. He should do that more often.

‘I don't know what you mean.'

Spencer meant did she believe in the one moment which changed everything? But he wanted to explain it more clearly than that. Did she believe in lightning and bolts from the blue? Were there certain events which made everything look different, overnight? Could people be converted to different ways of thinking, without any warning, waking up as one type of person and then waking up as another? Was anyone singled out for enlightenment? Did miracles exist? Look. Basically. Were there signs from God, telling people what to do next?