What You Wish For, page 9
Beers in hand, the three surveyed the room, trying to figure out where to stand. At the front of the clubrooms was a temporary stage, and most of the floor had been cleared, only a few tables up against the back wall. Devon had a quick look for Moana, but wasn’t surprised not to see her; it wasn’t really her scene. Immy worked Saturday nights at a Hampton bar, and Jase would be at home with his Xbox controller. He found Emma easily enough. She and her mates were in the far corner, overlooked by a stuffed wapati. Table was crowded but she’d nicked a chair from somewhere — no doubt without asking — and shoved her way between two girls Devon vaguely recognised from high school. He hadn’t bothered to keep in touch with anyone from those days. They’d all found him tricky to hang out with, didn’t like the negative attention he never failed to attract. No one except Emma had ever stood up for him. Devon had been glad to put school behind him and focus on his work with horses, and his university study. His Lighting Tree colleagues were well used to him, plus the clients generally cared more about horses than humans. Distance learning meant limited interaction, and apart from the odd Skype tutorial, none face-to-face.
It suddenly occurred to him that the Boat Shed job was the only part of his life now that exposed him regularly to strangers. And even those wankers who came because they wanted to see the freaky man-girl wouldn’t dare give him grief because of Jacko. Since school, Devon saw, he’d made sure his life was pretty damn sheltered.
Well, shit. Guess if he couldn’t find a date, he now knew who to blame.
‘She is exceedingly popular, isn’t she?’
Dr G was staring longingly over to where Emma now held court.
‘Doc, if I may,’ said Brownie. ‘I’d respectfully suggest you set your sights elsewhere. Not because you and she wouldn’t make a fine, handsome pair, but because all the signs point to our Emma being otherwise spoken for.’
Now that was a surprise. Devon had judged Brownie to be interested in only one person: himself. He wasn’t yet ready to completely revise his opinion, but to be fair he should be open to making minor adjustments.
‘Yep, gotta second that, Dr G,’ said Devon. ‘If Emma was available, you’d know. I mean, we’d know. It’d be obvious.’
‘I have no chance is what you are saying.’
Poor bastard. Sounded like he’d just been told that Father Christmas was actually creepy old Uncle Keith in a red onesie.
‘If it’s any consolation,’ said Brownie, ‘I am also currently sans love interest.’
‘Ditto,’ said Devon.
‘And friends,’ Brownie added.
‘I’ve got one of those,’ Devon said. ‘But it’s Emma.’
‘So we three are the outsiders,’ said Dr G. ‘The loners.’
‘That’s small towns for you,’ said Devon. ‘Only so many aberrations allowed.’
‘But don’t worry, Doc,’ said Brownie. ‘You fit the acceptable bill to a tee. After a decade or so, people here will completely forget you’re foreign.’
‘That is a worry, you know,’ said Dr G. ‘I realise your comment was a jest, but I am acutely aware that I represent my culture here, and I’m not sure that another, more confident man wouldn’t show it in a better light.’
‘Dude, seriously, you need to stop running yourself down,’ said Devon.
‘Correct,’ said Brownie. ‘And if Gene were here, he’d say: that’s our job.’
‘There’s no point wanting to be someone else.’ Devon was getting tired of this conversation. ‘You’re you. Suck it up. Like the rest of us have to.’
The band was still off stage. Over the club’s crappy sound system, son of Glasgow, Bobby Gillespie, was insisting they should get their rocks off. Yeah, thanks, Bob. Thanks for rubbing it in.
‘Ever used Tinder?’ Devon asked Brownie.
A firm shake of his head. ‘Nope. No point.’
‘Because it’s a cesspit of douchery?’
‘Because there are others more relevant to my circumstances.’
Devon frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
But whatever clarification Brownie might have given was lost as Dr G suddenly found his beer pouring down his shirt, courtesy of a large dickhead who, while monstering a space at the bar, had accidentally on purpose knocked Dr G’s elbow.
Of course, the usual response to such a provocation was ‘Watch it, fuckwit!’ To which the provocateur would reply, ‘Whadidja call me?’ And then it would be all on.
But being unaware of the correct protocol, Dr G said, ‘I am so sorry,’ and, grabbing a towel off the bar, bent to mop up the floor.
Leaving the dickhead at eye-level with Devon. Who saw the boringly familiar sequence of reactions in the dude’s pig-ugly face: ‘Hey, baby’ becoming ‘What the fuck?’ becoming ‘Fuck this’. Like Devon was some kind of trick — some prankster’s test of gullibility, and masculinity.
Pig Face deliberately looked past him, addressed Brownie. ‘Who’s your bitch?’
Wow, original. Sparkling.
Devon slipped his beer quietly onto the bar. Best be ready. And best be careful what you wish for — this was a big dude, front rower by the look of him. Devon wasn’t sure four Muay Thai lessons would be enough.
Brownie said, ‘This is my friend, Devon.’
Voice calm, body relaxed, beer still in hand. As if nothing at all was going down.
Pig Face snorted. ‘You a couple of bum boys then?’
‘Why?’ Brownie said. ‘Want to make up a threesome?’
Now the warning was neon-clear. As was the message that Brownie didn’t give a monkey’s whether or not Pig Face heeded it. Devon made a few more upward adjustments to his opinion of Barrett Tahana.
Then, Lord love him, Dr G stood up, and head-butted Pig Face right under the chin.
‘Fu-ugh!’ Pig Face clamped his hand to his jaw, eyes rolling, like an invisible flock of tweety-birds was circling his head.
‘I am so, so sorry,’ Dr G said again. ‘May I take a look?’
And he reached up to touch Pig Face’s hand, which was tentatively waggling his jaw.
That was it. Two bum boys the guy could handle. But three? With a resentful backward glance, Pig Face skedaddled.
‘You OK, Doc?’ said Brownie. ‘You hit a big lump of concrete.’
‘I am fine, thank you.’ Dr G rubbed the top of his head. ‘Yes, no major damage. Unless you count my dignity.’
‘Don’t knock it,’ said Devon. ‘You saved us from the ogre. Dr G the giant-slayer.’
Brownie was staring at him. ‘Guess that happens all the time, does it?’
‘All the time,’ said Devon. ‘When I was thirteen, I thought acne was the fucking worst thing that could happen. Two birthdays later — ta, da.’
Then he said, ‘Thanks for taking the heat. Are you any good in a fight?’
‘Better than I was six months ago,’ said Brownie.
‘Oh, right, yeah. Shit …’
A whine of feedback made them cringe. Band was on stage, and, judging by the fact they looked like Status Quo, ready to soft rock.
Devon sought Emma. She and her girlfriends had hopped up and were sashaying their way to the front, where no doubt they’d dance all night. If you didn’t know her well, based on tonight, you might decide she was a terrible friend.
But he did know her, and when she had stuff on her mind, this is how she acted. Looked for a distraction, a way to get lost in the moment. Drinking, dancing — who knows, maybe one of these guys would get temporarily lucky? Emma wasn’t necessarily a one-man woman. She priced her independence higher than rubies.
A click of drumsticks. Guitarist launched into the opening riff of ‘Hard to Handle’. Black Crowes’ version. Crowd pleaser. This crowd, at least.
‘Twenty bucks they encore with ‘Gloria’,’ said Brownie.
‘No bet,’ said Devon.
Dr G was watching Emma dance. His shoulders heaved in a sigh, and he turned back to his fellow wallflowers.
‘You know they are having a midnight showing of Blade Runner, the director’s cut, at the Hampton Odeon tonight?’ he said. ‘In my opinion, it is superior to the original.’
Devon glanced at Brownie, who smiled wryly, and slid his half-empty glass next to Devon’s on the bar.
‘Best offer we’ve had all evening, Doc,’ said Devon. ‘Lead the way.’
CHAPTER 11
Sidney
It cost thirty dollars a year to run a stall at the Sunday morning Hampton Farmers’ Market. Not much compared to, say, the American national debt, but if Mr Phipps didn’t pay half that fee, Sidney would make no profit (once she deducted costs for ingredients she hadn’t grown herself, petrol, jars and labels) for close to a month. Sidney sold ‘sticky stuff in jars’ — her homemade jam and chutney, along with honey from Mr Phipps’ bees. On top of sharing the stall fee, Mr Phipps also let her take a small commission on his honey earnings because talking to the public wasn’t his thing. Talking, full stop.
Sidney was happy to man — or woman — the stall on her own. It got her out of the house and gave her a break from the boys (before Kerry, Mac had child-minded; bless them both). And when she chatted to customers, spruiked her products, and totted up the morning’s sales, she had an inkling of what it might be like to be a proper business owner. She felt she could be quite good at running an online business — if she had a suitable product to sell, seed funding for manufacture and marketing, and fourteen hours a day to devote to getting it off the ground.
As it was, the only entrepreneurial expansion she’d indulged in lately was selling her home grown seedlings — herbs and vegetables mainly — through the plant collective. They had a regular stall in the old Gabriel’s Bay Legion of Frontiersmen headquarters, long since abandoned by the patriots and adventurers for the simple reason that they were all dead. Somebody in the plant collective was descended from the last Gabriel’s Bay member, former sapper, Gordon C. Micklethwaite, and had thus gained rights to the hall from the Legion’s national body. The collective allowed the hall to be used by other community groups, including the world cinema club and Starchild Music Therapy for the Under Fives. As long as your application fit with their ethos of diversity, inclusion and peaceful collaboration, and you could use ‘non-binary’ correctly in a sentence, your group’s activity would probably be approved.
There were rumours that more subversive activity took place behind the yellow-painted weatherboards, but Sidney wouldn’t know about that. Despite taking her expected weekly turn at the Legion stall for some weeks now, she wasn’t ‘in’ with the plant collective. She knew any sense of exclusion was entirely of her own making. In fact, she had much in common with the majority of the members: she survived on a low income, and she’d had a middle-class upbringing. The collective were in the lowest tax bracket now but most hadn’t come from poverty. Most were here because, like Sidney’s ex, Fergal, they had dreams of a simpler life — self-sufficient, back to nature, part of a supportive community. Unlike Fergal, they had no illusions about the work it took to live that simpler life. Soon as he found out, Fergal had bailed. Sidney had been determined to learn how to stay afloat, and so had these people. Given all that commonality, she and they should form a real bond.
But she couldn’t. Not fully. They were lovely people, well meaning, hard working, but some of their ideas were, to be frank, deranged. Sidney knew multiple factors were to blame for her being unable to embrace their theories. She’d grown up in a house where everything matched, elbows were not allowed on tables, and there existed such a creature as a ‘nice girl’. That kind of thing left a lasting impression on one’s psyche, along with a preference for good personal hygiene and children who remembered to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Sidney had been a bookworm as a child, and while a part of her would still like to believe magic existed, her adult self held the strong opinion that critical thinking trumped blind adherence to faith or fad. She struggled with the concept that atomic interconnection allowed people to turn their wishes into reality, and that milk and white bread were as bad for you as cigarettes. She was also of the opinion that science and medicine had been quite useful to humanity, and that it was rude to tell a cancer patient that their body contained everything it needed to heal if only they focused on the positive and made themselves ‘ripe for cure’. If the conversation turned to vaccination, she knew that the most fruitful response was to go outside and beat her head against a wall, rather than to argue against the likelihood of ninety-five per cent of the world’s medical community being complicit in a massive conspiracy. She was so glad her children were at an age where she didn’t have to defend the fact she no longer breastfed. And no one need know that she’d used controlled crying on Rory, and listened to him scream himself to sleep for a week.
She did like crystals. They were pretty. She was also anti using chemicals in her garden and pro saving the bees. So there was that.
Not to mention that if she were living another life, back in her middle-class hood with money, she’d be battling different pressures: why wasn’t Aidan reading above his age, was she seriously going to continue with state school, didn’t she know everyone was skiing in Japan this Christmas instead of Banff?
So much worse. Apart from the having money aspect. That would be heaven.
‘Penny for them?’
Doctor Love was smiling at her in his mildly puzzled way, which everyone who first met him mistook for absent-mindedness. He soon disabused them of this notion. Man might be seventy-three but he was sharp as a scalpel.
‘Or should I deposit one in here?’
He picked up the Littleville donation box that Sidney displayed on her stall, rattled it.
‘No you shouldn’t,’ said Sidney. ‘Because those few you can hear are all yours as well. You’ve given enough.’
Doctor Love — or should she call him Charles now he’d retired? — slid a dollar coin in the slot anyway. Which took the total up to seven dollars, thirty cents and a badge that said ‘Kiss me, it’s a New Year’.
‘Fortunately, we aren’t relying solely on this to raise funds for Littleville,’ he said. ‘I don’t wish to raise hopes too far, but I may be close to a breakthrough.’
‘Better than my usual state of close to a breakdown,’ said Sidney. ‘Have you found an investor? Or a rich person to blackmail?’
‘A sponsor,’ he replied. ‘Who may be willing to pay for the privilege of naming rights.’
‘No kidding? Local business? Someone with a God complex?’
‘As it happens, a national chain of stores,’ said Doctor Love.
‘Get you!’ said Sidney, admiringly. ‘Are you allowed to name the namers?’
‘Not yet. We’re still in negotiations.’
‘Get you again with your negotiations! Littleville’s own Richard Branson!’
Doctor Love smiled. ‘If only I had his hair.’
‘His private island would be quite nice, too. If there was no one else on the beach, you’d never have to worry about your body being bikini ready.’
‘A worry I’m happy to say I’m rarely troubled by.’
Then he said, ‘I’ve recommended you to Bernard Weston. He is looking to employ an assistant.’
Sidney drew back slightly. ‘To assist him with what?’
‘Attending to correspondence, liaising with his tenants. Nothing onerous, and the hours are flexible. How would nine-thirty on Monday suit to talk to him about it?’
‘Tomorrow? Oh. Well — I guess that would be fine.’
‘Splendid,’ said Doctor Love. (He could never be Charles. What was she thinking?) ‘I’ll tell Bernard you will pop round.’
And he left. Having apparently organised for her to be employed, and without giving her a chance to say no.
Whoever was representing that national chain, Sidney wondered if they realised that they’d effectively already written out a cheque.
‘Heya, Sidney!’
Emma. Looking, as usual, glowing, and with (not uncommon this, either) a strapping young man in tow. The word that sprung immediately to Sidney’s mind was the delectably old-fashioned ‘swarthy’. The next was ‘villain’, as in the damnèd type that smiles.
But she might be judging him unfairly. He looked a little like her ex, Fergal. That was guaranteed to put her off anyone.
‘Sidney,’ said Emma, ‘this is Loko.’
‘As in “motion”?’
‘As in one of the Haitian loa,’ he said. ‘The spirits of voodoo. Loko is a healer of plants.’
English, well spoken with a hint of West Country. Emma met him there, perhaps?
‘And is that what you are?’ said Sidney. ‘A healer?’
Her question seemed to amuse him. ‘You could say that.’
‘Loko’s joined up with the Wood Sprites,’ said Emma, with obvious pride.
‘Oh, the lovely Rua,’ said Sidney. ‘He helps out at the collective. Does the most beautiful wood carving.’
Emma scowled, much like a teenager whose grandmother has just pronounced death metal ‘a bit of fun’.
‘Their camp’s under threat,’ she said. ‘We’re going to do something about it.’
‘I assume you don’t mean writing a sternly worded letter to the Hampton Gazette.’
Emma snorted in derision, but Loko said, ‘All means of protest are equally valid.’
Sidney tilted her head in enquiry. ‘But some are more valid than others?’
He met her eye, and Sidney’s protective instinct surged. Sidney had known Emma since she was a gangly twelve-year-old. She was not a child now, but she was — and would always be — Mac and Jacko’s daughter. Her best friends’ precious girl. And this man, Sidney was convinced, thought life was a game designed for his own entertainment, and all the men and women in it merely playthings.
