This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

Late in the morning Jackie came down with a couple of plates of fried-egg sandwiches and said if we were going to be having that sort of a day we might as well get a lining in our stomachs. Meaning the drinking, it seemed like. She had this look on her face like she was indulging us. She said but Monday we’d have to get some work done otherwise old man Stewart would want to have words. She said it was still his land at the end of the day. She called him Mr Stewart. We didn’t say anything. We ate the sandwiches. The yolks were soft and the whites were crisp round the edges. We both said they were good sandwiches. Jackie kept looking over towards the church. There were more people standing around outside, and balloons tied to the gateposts at the entrance to the field they were using for a car-park. We’d offered to help with that, earlier in the week, either with the rolling out or even with the like traffic control on the day, but old man Stewart had just looked at us like we weren’t even there until we’d turned round and left. Jackie was wearing this sort of flowery orange dress and a straw hat and Ray asked her if she’d been invited to the wedding. She said she hadn’t, but she might take a wander over there and see how things were going and see what the bride was wearing and see the flowers and everything. A Tornado came over and dropped another bomb on the Sands. Ray finished his sandwich and licked his fingers clean and told Jackie her dress looked nice. She gave him this look like she was waiting for the punchline and then when there wasn’t one she didn’t know what to say. Another Tornado came over and then something like a dozen or two dozen Tornadoes came over at the same time and dropped bombs on the Sands and we just stared up at them and the sound was like the actual ground being ripped open. Fucking, asunder. We all crouched down without realising and it took a minute or two to straighten up again once they’d gone.

Ray said the wedding would most likely be ruined if they kept that up all day. He looked pretty pleased about it. He said it would have been a major operation to get the whole squadron in the air and formed up like that, it would have taken serious logistical oversight and a fair amount of groin on the part of the pilots. He said he didn’t think they’d be doing that for nothing. One of his uncles had worked on the base for a while, in the kitchens, meaning that was another thing Ray liked to sound knowledgeable about to anyone who’d listen, meaning the planes, not the cooking. I tried to say something about it looking pretty serious now, but I couldn’t hear anything I was saying. I was still waiting for the rushing noise in my ears to fade away and basically what felt like my internal organs to fall back into their rightful place. I tried saying it again, that it looked like things were getting serious. Jackie didn’t say anything. She was just looking over towards the Sands. I remembered the thing about her son. She took our plates back to the house. Ray said it was good of her to wash our crockery as well as doing breakfast. He laughed. I told him to leave it out. I went and got another drink. What was his name. Jackie’s son. Mark. Fucksake.

*

I drove to the Stewart place about as slowly as I could. I wasn’t feeling overly confident in my driving abilities by that point, plus not in the state of the car either, and plus there could have been people walking back along the road. There weren’t any taxis around and that was probably going to come as a surprise to the crowd they had over there. We saw two of them just before we got to the turning, walking in bare feet with their shoes sticking out of their handbags, their arms folded across their chests. They looked young.

That’s what I’m talking about, Ray says.

Just the drinks, I say. Nothing else.

Rinse them dishes any day, he says. I thought he was going to make me stop right there, but he didn’t say anything else so I carried on and turned in at the entrance to the Stewart place. We passed some older guests getting into their cars and holding on to each other. We drove down a grassed track which led around the back of the house, past some open barns with more cars parked inside. At the far end of the track, just past the turning into the field with the marquee, we saw a girl being sick into a bed of nettles. Her dress was a bit on the short side for her to be bending over like she was. A lad in a pink shirt with a pinstriped waistcoat was stood next to her, holding her hair away from her face and rubbing her back. They both looked over their shoulders at us, squinting into the headlights. The girl had a string of something hanging from her mouth. We could see her knickers. They were black as sin.

That’s what I’m fucking talking about

, Ray says.

Just the drinks, I say.

*

We knew Mark from school, and for a bit after that. Years back. Spent a bit of time with him. He was all right, he didn’t mind getting up to things. Not that there was all that much to get up to. Mostly it was getting hold of some drinks and finding somewhere to go. One time we walked the five miles out to the Sands with a bottle of cider just so we could drink it while we sat and watched the seals. This was the last year of school. Meaning we were fifteen or sixteen. Ray tried chasing one of the seals and ended up turning round and doing most of the running. It’s surprising how fast a seal can move, if you start messing around with it in breeding season. That was the day we took a car the first time, when none of us wanted to walk all the way home again. I didn’t know Ray knew how to do the thing with the wires, but he said one of his uncles had shown him. We could all drive, just about, but Mark wouldn’t take his turn so we kicked him out and made him walk the rest of the way. He never told anyone about it, which was a good start. That was how come we took him on a job soon after, but it turned out he wasn’t really up for it. He didn’t know what we were doing until we got in through the back door, and then he wouldn’t come in any further than the doormat. He kept saying he could hear someone coming, he could hear a car pulling into the yard, he could maybe hear a siren? He was near enough crying by the time we’d finished so we didn’t take him on a job again. Ray made sure he knew not to tell anyone.

Could see why Mark signed up, thinking about it. The way he liked things to be done right. He probably liked the discipline of it and everything. Sit tight and wait for orders. It was still a surprise though, him being the fattest kid in the year and everything. No one really saw him after he’d signed up. Besides the other boys in our year who signed up with him. He was off on training exercises and getting rid of all that weight and all that, and then when he was home he probably wasn’t meant to associate with us anyway. Must have seemed like a good idea at the time, signing up. He must have thought the worst he’d have to face would be ducking petrol bombs in Belfast or maybe getting rained on for six months in the Falklands. Instead of getting stuck in a broken-down tank in the desert and dying of heatstroke.

Jackie got an earful of all that our-brave-boys stuff after that, all heroic sacrifices and dying-for-all-our-freedom, which if it was me I’d have wanted someone to talk me through how that was supposed to work exactly. Mark sitting tight in that broken-down tank waiting for his orders. Waiting for help to arrive without it ever passing through his big pink head that it was never coming. They gave him a posthumous medal and everything. No wonder Jackie moved out of town. Must have wanted to get away from all that sympathy. Don’t know what happened to Mark’s dad. He’d been in all the pictures in the paper, I could remember that, the two of them sat in their lounge with their arms round each other, holding up Mark’s school photo like some kind of consolation prize. The sofa was hardly big enough for the two of them and all their crying. He must have just gone and done the off.

Fucking heatstroke though. It weren’t exactly Andy McNab.

That was all about the time someone did a job on Hilltop Farm, which old man Stewart didn’t exactly own but it turned out he had some interest in, and word went round that it was us who’d done it. There wasn’t any proof and it got dropped in the end but that didn’t stop word going around anyway. That was when most of the trouble started. It was the interest in that job that meant we got caught out, in the end.

Whoever called it Hilltop Farm must have had some sense of humour, round here.

Jackie came over again before she went to the church and told us that if she did get to go to the reception she’d make sure she brought us back some cake. We told her thanks Jackie, that’s good of you, we’ll look forward to it. Another load of Tornadoes went over, three of them in close formation going extra-low over the Sands without dropping anything. Jackie said that was how they knew last time round that the war was definitely going to start, when they’d started going at the Sands all hours like this. We didn’t know what to say so we told her to enjoy the wedding.

By the time we heard the church bells ringing and the guests were all sweeping out of the church and throwing confetti at the happy couple it had been quiet over by the Sands for a couple of hours. Wouldn’t put it past old man Stewart to have gone and had words at the base. National emergency crisis or whatever, this was his daughter getting married. We stood up at the top of the rise by the hay meadow and watched them all coming out of the church. Getting into the line-ups for the pictures. Moving apart and coming together and moving apart again and the young lady in the white dress always at the centre. The women all in hats and dresses like at the races. Ray started talking about how women like dressing up for a wedding. Can’t argue with that, he was saying. Strappy shoes. High-heeled shoes. Dresses in bold colours and prints. Purple dresses. Red and white floral dresses. Very tight. Above the knee. Figure-hugging, you get me. Dresses they keep tugging at the hemline like they never noticed how short it was when they put it on, you get me. All that hair-dressing. Hats. Summer hats. Summer dresses and summer hats and straps that keep slipping off shoulders. Bare shoulders. Bare legs. You get me. It was hard to stop him when he got going on something like that. Fucking, monologue is what you’d call it. I asked him could he see Jackie anywhere and he showed me where she was standing off to one side, sort of behind a stone wall. There were a couple of other women from the village with her but she was the only one wearing a hat.

The church bells kept ringing until the married couple got into a car and drove off. That was a lot of bell-ringing. The seals down at the Sands must have thought the end of the world was coming. We watched the whole procession of cars follow the trail of balloons from the church to the Stewart place and then I got another drink and sat by the lake and Ray went and broke up another pallet. It seemed a bit early to be lighting a fire. It was a pretty hot day still.

When he was done he came and sat down and asked if he’d ever told me about the porno he’d written once. I told him I didn’t think he had. I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. He told me it had been a while ago and to be fair it had just been the once. He picked up some stones and threw them in the lake. He went and got an empty can and set it up on a flat rock by the edge of the lake and came and sat down and said the story had been for his wife. He looked at me. I threw a stone at the can and missed and didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to know. He told me it wasn’t like he’d been in the habit of writing porn but this had been a long train journey and it was just something that had occurred to him to do. He’d thought she might appreciate it. He’d thought it was something he could do for her, while he was away. To surprise her. I said I didn’t know he’d been married. He said there were a lot of things I didn’t know about him and anyway this was all a while ago now. He told me don’t get him started on marriage.

A stone skidded off the ground and hit the can but the can didn’t fall and I threw another one. Jackie’s car turned into the driveway by her house and stopped. Jackie got out and went into the house and didn’t look at us. She wasn’t wearing the hat. She must have left it in the car. Ray carried on talking about this story he said he’d written for his wife. It had been really something, apparently. Blindfolds, gasps of surprise, third parties involved, that type of thing. I held up my hand and told him Ray I don’t want the details mate. He said fair enough let’s just say it was properly filthy. He said he’d really thought she was going to enjoy it, she’d been known to enjoy that type of thing previously, she’d been quite imaginative. You wouldn’t have thought it to look at her though, was his next point. He wanted to emphasise that, it turned out. He spent quite a while emphasising that. She was gorgeous, in summary, a lovely woman. Looked like butter wouldn’t melt.

There was a whistling noise from the sound system at the Stewart place, and what sounded like microphones being plugged in and out, and then it went quiet again. I went and got another drink. Ray was still telling his story about the porno story. It looked like it was going to take a while. He told me it took him a long time to write it, this story, when he was sitting on this train. He said he kept getting distracted by what he called the old days. I suppose he meant the old days as in when he first met this wife I’d never heard about. He said he hadn’t had a clue where the train was going. It was one of those single-carriage jobs and all he could see out the window was fields like this. He said it had been a hot day and all the windows on the train were open and the pages of his notebook kept flapping about in the wind. I asked him when had he ever had a notebook and he said shut up this was a while ago.

They must have started doing the speeches at the Stewart place. We couldn’t hear most of what they were saying but the place kept going off in applause and what sounded like people banging their cutlery on the tables.

Ray was still going on about the train, and about how there’d been hardly anyone else on board, just this bloke who looked like a fitter, and a couple of old ladies, and then this girl who was either a young-looking university student or an old-looking schoolgirl, it was hard to tell, she kept staring out the window, she must have had something on her mind, and as it happened she was quite pretty but he was trying not to look because he properly couldn’t tell how old she was and you can’t be too careful and anyway he was just trying to concentrate on writing this story for his wife because he thought it was something he could do

for her, it seemed important at the time, he thought she’d like it, he thought it would help.

I said, Jesus, Ray, don’t forget to breathe.

We threw some more stones at the can.

He told me some more about what had been in this story, stuff about firm smacks on the behind and tying hands and stuffing underwear into mouths, that type of thing. I told him I could probably definitely do without the details. They turned the volume up at the Stewart place and we heard someone doing a toast to the happy couple and then the whole crowd of them going to the happy couple again. Ray turned and looked in that direction. We were both thinking about the drink they’d be getting through over there. Ray knocked the can over and went and set it up again and we both moved our chairs a bit further back and threw some more stones. He still hadn’t finished. He started talking about how self-conscious it had made him to be writing all that stuff down on a train and how he’d had to keep stopping to sort of catch his breath but he wanted to persevere with it because he really thought his wife was going to like it. I said it was making me self-conscious just having to listen to him go on about it and he told me to shut up again. He said they’d got into that type of thing before, on the phone, when he’d been working away from home, and then he got into how all the working away from home might have been part of the problem, all those nights away and the unpredictability of it was how a lot of the arguments had started. I asked him like, what, you had an actual job and everything? He said sometimes it was like he couldn’t say the right thing to make it up to her. I asked him if he’d been a travelling salesman or what. He said some days it seemed like she didn’t even want him to try, like she wanted him to just turn round and go out on another job. I said I still didn’t know if we were talking about actual jobs here. He said it got to the point where he didn’t feel welcome in his own house and all he’d ever wanted was a home where he was welcome. I don’t think he was listening to me. It was turning out there was still plenty I didn’t know about Ray. He kept mentioning things as if I knew about them when really I had no idea. Like the wife thing. Or like a while before when he’d mentioned living in Scandinavia. Or even like was he or wasn’t he a Muslim any more or what.

Another thing I didn’t know was whether Ray’s mum still lived round in town or if she was still alive or what. I didn’t know if he knew. Maybe Ray hadn’t said anything about it because he was assuming I’d be as much of a cunt about it as he’d been when I told him about my mum. Who I happened to know had passed on, even though it had been a while before anyone had thought to tell me about it. I missed the funeral when I was inside. That was bad enough but it would have been good to know it was going on. This was what I don’t know why I bothered telling Ray one night, when we’d first got here and Jackie had told us all about what she wanted doing, and given us some binbags for cleaning out the caravan, and come down from the house with a couple of fresh pillows and said I don’t know about the rest of what’s in there but if you’re anything like me you’ll at least want decent pillows.