Stuart Harrison - Lost Summer

‘I got these bloody blisters yesterday,’ he said, picking at the skin.

It was as if invisible shutters had closed. The subject wasn’t open for discussion but Adam felt excluded by his lack of understanding. He swallowed his frustration.

During that first year he’d lived in Castleton, Adam had never seen where Nick lived. He knew vaguely where it was; somewhere down past the council houses at the bottom end, close to the eastern edge of the wood, but he’d never been there. A faint air of mystery surrounded Nick’s family. Adam knew there was a younger sister who caught the school bus in the mornings and was as scruffy as Nick and just as sullen, and he’d seen their mother around town wearing a shapeless worn coat, her pale blotchy legs bare even in winter. But Adam had never seen Nick’s father, James Allen. Nick never mentioned him, and neither did David or Graham.

What little Adam had known he’d overheard in snatches of conversation between Kyle and his mother. Whenever there was poaching on the estate, or there had been an outbreak of theft, Kyle blamed Nick’s dad. He heard stories about Allen getting drunk in the local pubs and starting fights with men from the estate. Once he’d seen Nick’s mother in town with a black eye. Over time Adam had formed a mental image of the whole family living in Dickensian squalor, terrorized by an evil-tempered thug.

Eventually Nick had turned up that morning but he hadn’t offered any explanation for being late.

They rode their bikes out of town across the bridge and took the road that climbed steeply towards the fells. By eight the sun was already warm on their backs and the effort of the climb had made them sweat. At one point he and David had paused to rest. The others were still out of sight around a bend in the road behind them. On one side the road was bounded by a wall, and on the other by a thick hedge. A blackbird flashed by, chattering in alarm.

When the others finally appeared they were pedalling slowly. Nick’s bike was a big heavy machine that seemed to be made of cannibalized parts. He was wearing boots that looked too big for him, though the laces were undone. The leather was cracked, and the sole of one had come loose at the toe. It was flapping up and down, making a slapping sound as Nick struggled up the hill. The chain creaked with every turn of the pedals. Creak slap, creak slap.

When they finally caught up Nick dropped his bike on the ground and went to sit on the wall. He dumped the sack that was tied over his shoulder on the grass and it moved as the ferret inside poked and snuffled looking for a way out. Nick lit a cigarette butt he found in his pocket, though he was still panting. He coughed and spat then muttered something under his breath as he lifted his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, revealing for an instant his pale skinny body. There was a vivid purple black bruise the size of a melon across his ribs.

‘Bloody hell. What happened to you?’ Adam said without thinking.

He knew straight away he should have kept his mouth shut. The others were looking away as if they hadn’t seen or heard anything. Nick looked up in surprise, and some ill-defined expression briefly flashed in his face before it was quickly replaced with an angry glare. Abruptly he dropped to the other side of the wall and walked fifty yards up the hill where he sat down.

‘A few minutes later David and I started off again,’ Adam recounted. ‘Nothing was said but I knew I’d crossed a line. David gave me the cold shoulder all the way up the hill. I kept thinking about the look I’d seen on Nick’s face. It was shame. I’d embarrassed him.’

‘And you felt bad about it?’ Morris asked.

‘A bit I suppose. But I’d be lying if I said I was that worried. Nick made it clear he didn’t like me and the feeling was mutual. Somehow he always managed to turn things around. Like I said, it was mostly because of him that I never really fitted in.’

That day Adam and David had waited for the others at a place known as the Giant’s Chair. It was a rock formation that roughly resembled a huge seat. Local legend had it that a race of giants had once roamed the fells and this was all that was left of their existence. It was easy to climb to the top by the gently sloping grassy rise on one side, but once in the seat itself the drop was a sheer one. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. From there the road was visible, winding back down to the valley. The town was out of sight but parts of Castle ton Wood could still be seen. A pine forest lay to the north, and fringed inside its southern edge was Cold Tarn, a natural deep lake that even on a day like this, when the sun was beating down from a cloudless sky, appeared black. Sometimes they fished for pike and perch there, and in season wildfowlers stood in the reeds that fringed the shore to shoot ducks. Behind them, Cold Fell rose 600 metres above sea level at the northern extent of the Pennines.

Back the way they’d come two tiny figures were visible more than a mile away, moving slowly up the steepest part of the hill.

Adam had pulled a book from his pack and started reading while David sat with his feet dangling over the edge of the rocks, chewing on a stem of grass.

‘What’s that you’re reading?’ David asked after a while.

Adam silently held it up so that he could see the cover but he didn’t say anything.

‘The Crystal Cave ? What’s it about?’

‘I’ll let you read it when I’ve finished.’ He was being sarcastic because David didn’t read anything unless it was about sport.

For a while David tossed small pieces of rock out into the open, seeing how far he could throw them. Eventually he stopped and said, ‘What’s up with you?’

Adam put his book down. ‘So, now you’re talking to me again, is that it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on. You haven’t said a bloody word since we left the others.’

David found another stone, and threw it hard out into the air where it dropped from sight.

‘I just said it without thinking,’ Adam said. ‘For Christ’s sake I didn’t mean to embarrass him or anything.’

But if David had heard him, he didn’t give any sign of it. He picked up another stone and threw it out into the air.

‘How do you think he got that bruise anyway?’ Adam said, though David kept his back turned and didn’t reply. He sensed that David’s refusal to talk about it stemmed from loyalty to Nick, but the reasons behind it were something Adam was excluded from. At first he’d tried to make friends with Nick, but every gesture he’d made was openly rejected. Once Kyle had offered to give all four of them a lift to Carlisle so they could go to a film they all wanted to see but Nick had refused to go at the last minute even though Kyle had said he’d pay for all of them. It had developed into an argument and in the end Adam had had enough.

‘You’d go if David’s dad was paying though wouldn’t you?’

Nick had glared at him and clenched his fists. ‘Fuck you, grammar boy!’

For a second Adam had thought Nick was going to throw a punch. David and Graham were looking on silently and in that moment Adam had realized that if he and Nick had a fight they would be forced to take sides. That afterwards no matter who won or lost nothing would be the same again. He knew they wanted to see the film and it was obvious that Nick was being unreasonable, but he sensed that they would side with Nick. Even as the realization hit him David had stepped in.

‘I changed my mind about the film anyway. Let’s go fishing instead.’

It was meant to defuse the situation and Adam knew it. But he also knew Nick had won a subtle battle. They had gone fishing, but Adam had never forgotten how he’d felt.