Peter May - Runaway

Maurie said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I’m leaving. Going. Quitting. Departing. Fucking off out of here. I don’t know how else to say it.’

Luke passed me a mug of steaming tea, and the others pulled up chairs.

‘Is this because of Rachel?’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘Yes. And no. Well, I mean, she’s part of it.’ I drew a deep breath. ‘Dr Robert tried to... I don’t know how to say this... seduce me this morning.’

There was a dead stillness around the table. I was embarrassed to talk about it, as if somehow it reflected on me. But I’d started. And the rest just came pouring out of me. The whole sordid incident, ending with the punch.

‘Jeeeees,’ Dave said. ‘You actually gubbed him?’

I nodded, and could sense their collective shock. For the longest time nobody spoke. The Kinks were no longer tired of waiting, but the arm had failed to lift at the end of the album and the needle went click, click at every endless revolution of the record.

Then Dave broke the silence, his voice unusually small. ‘Happened to me, too.’

We all looked at him.

I said, ‘What do you mean?’

He flushed deeply. ‘Same thing. Wanting me to try on clothes.’ He had difficulty concealing his shame. ‘Wish I’d gubbed him, ’n all.’

Suddenly no one was looking at anyone else. Eyes were fixed on hands or cups.

Then Luke said, ‘And me.’

He became the focus of our attention, and he blushed, too. It took a moment before we all turned our eyes towards Maurie. He looked grim, but his lips remained firmly pressed together and all he did was nod.

‘Fuck’s sake!’ Dave said. And he turned blazing eyes in my direction. ‘You’re no’ going without me.’

‘Or me,’ Luke said.

And we all looked at Maurie again.

‘Is there a plan?’

But I shook my head. ‘No plan. We fucked up. Whatever it was we thought we were going to find here, we haven’t. My fault.’ I raised my hands. ‘Mea culpa.’

And I caught sight of myself in a cracked mirror on the far wall, with my bruised face, the white Elastoplast still stuck across my nose. The picture of failure.

‘But I really never meant for any of it to happen. I really didn’t.’ I glanced at Maurie. ‘And I never, ever thought I would lose my friends.’ I had to swallow my emotion.

‘You haven’t.’ Luke’s voice was stiffened by a kind of steely resolve, and he looked pointedly towards Maurie.

Maurie spoke much more quietly, and still avoided my eye. ‘You haven’t.’

‘Has to be a plan, then,’ Dave said.

‘I’m going home,’ I told them.

Maurie shrugged. ‘Then that’s the plan.’ He paused. ‘But I’m not going anywhere without Rachel. Or Jeff.’

‘Damn right.’ Dave thumped his fist on the table. ‘We came thegether, we go thegether.’

I smiled ruefully. ‘Runaway home.’

It was Luke’s idea to wait until the evening before going back to the house to get our things. Dr Robert was throwing a party. We only knew about it because there had been some discussion of whether we would play at it or not. But in the end it was decided that the logistics were too complex. And the rift among us was an added complication.

So we whiled away the rest of the day in town, in cafés and pubs, talking about what we would do when we got back home, how we were going to explain everything to our folks, and what kind of reception we were likely to get. None of us was looking forward to that.

We counted up our cash and ended up at the information desk at Euston Station to calculate the cost of six single fares back to Glasgow, to see if we could afford it. We could, but only just. Maurie was dubious about whether Rachel would come with us. But at the very least, he said, he wanted to get her away from Onslow Gardens. And I harboured the secret hope that if we could persuade her to come back to Glasgow, there might just be some chance of patching up the damage between us.

We got back to the house around nine, when we knew the party would just be starting to get into full swing, and no one would notice us arriving. The place was already jumping. You could hear the music halfway down the street, and we could see partygoers dancing beyond the balustrade up on the roof terrace. Silhouettes against the evening sky. The front door was open, the hall and stairs leading up to the next floor jammed with the young and beautiful people of these Swinging Sixties. The rich and the famous from the world of music and movies, drinks in hand, spilling out from the kitchen and into the breakfast room and downstairs lounge. The Stones version of ‘Under the Boardwalk’ from their second album was blasting out of the lounge, and I could hear the single ‘Zoot Suit’ pounding down from the first floor, raw and filled with energy.

We pushed through the bodies in the hall, to the stairs leading down to the basement flat. No one wanted to party down there. It was too gloomy and cold and smelled of damp. Maurie shouted above the noise that he was going to find Rachel, and he headed off into the house.

As I turned to go down the stairs a girl caught my arm. She was beautiful, with long, tangled blonde hair and a skirt so short it barely covered her arse. Her eyes were glazed, pupils dark and dilated, her pale pink lipstick blurred around slightly too-full lips.

She pouted at me. ‘Who bust your nose, baby?’

‘Long story,’ I said, and pulled my arm free.

‘Don’t you want to fuck me?’ she called after me as I hurried down the stairs.

‘No!’ I shouted above the melee, without looking back.

And I heard her scream, ‘Well, fuck you, then!’

The sound of the party was muffled in the basement, but it vibrated through the ceiling. We went off to our separate rooms to gather our things and pack them into the bags we had brought with us. It didn’t take us long, and in five minutes we were gathered in the sitting room waiting for Maurie and wondering if Jeff was even in the house. No one had seen him all day.

It was nearly fifteen minutes of anxious waiting before Maurie appeared with a sullen-looking Rachel clutching a holdall. Black eyeliner was smeared and smudged around her eyes.

‘She’s coming with us,’ he said. ‘All the way.’

But she didn’t look happy, and it was clear she didn’t want to go. Somehow Maurie had persuaded her, and I wondered what it was he’d said.

‘What aboot Jeff?’ Dave asked.

Maurie sighed. ‘Rachel says he’s dancing up on the roof. We’re going to have to go and get him.’

Rachel shrugged. ‘I think you’ll find he doesn’t want to go with you, either. I saw him about half an hour ago. He was high as a kite. He might have dropped a tab.’

‘Not going without him.’ Maurie’s voice was low and determined.

And we all knew that the only chance of saving Jeff from himself was by getting him home.

‘Come on, then,’ I said. ‘Let’s go bring him down.’

We left our stuff in the flat and hurried up the stairs to the hall. Dave was ahead of the group, but even before he reached the top of the stairs he stopped suddenly and turned back, colliding with the rest of us.

‘Jesus,’ he hissed. ‘It’s fucking Andy!’

‘What? Rachel’s Andy?’ Maurie looked at him in disbelief.

Rachel paled to a sickly green-tinged pallor.

I peered up through the bodies beyond the bannister and saw Andy and two others that I recognized from the stairwell at Quarry Hill. Andy wore a black leather jacket with the collar turned up. His face was carved from concrete. Hard and rough-edged, cancerous and unforgiving. He was pushing through Dr Robert’s party guests as if they weren’t there. Ignoring their protests, shoving them aside. His henchmen followed in his wake, kicking or punching anyone who got in their way. Drinks were spilled, glasses broken, but beyond the path they scythed through the crowd, revellers in the kitchen or the lounge were oblivious, ears deafened by the music, senses dulled by drink and drugs.