Since the pennying incident I’ve become very wary of the ushers. The more they drink the more it emerges: something dark and cruel hiding behind the public schoolboy manners. And I hate that right now my husband’s behaving like a teenager who wants to be accepted into their gang.
‘Right,’ Johnno says. ‘Everyone ready?’ He looks around the table. I’ve worked out what’s weird about his eyes. They’re so dark you can’t tell where the irises end and the pupils begin. It gives him a strange, blank look, so that even while he’s laughing, it’s like his eyes aren’t quite playing along. And the rest of his face is a bit too expressive by comparison, changing every couple of seconds, his mouth very large and mobile. There’s this kind of manic energy about him. I hope it’s harmless. Like a dog that jumps up at you, big and scary, but all it really wants is to be thrown a ball – not to maul your face.
‘Charlie,’ Johnno says. ‘You are joining us?’
‘Charlie,’ I whisper, trying to catch my husband’s eye. He’s barely looked my way all evening, too wrapped up in Jules or trying to be one of the lads. But I want to get through to him.
Charlie’s such a mild man: hardly ever raises his voice, hardly ever gets cross with the kids. If they get a telling off, it’s normally from me. So it isn’t like he becomes a more intense version of himself when he drinks, or that alcohol amplifies his bad qualities. In ordinary life he doesn’t really have many bad qualities. Yeah, maybe all that anger is there, hidden, somewhere beneath the surface. But I could swear, on the couple of times I have seen him drunk, that it is like my husband has been taken over by someone else. That’s what makes it all the more frightening. Over the years I’ve learned to spot the smallest signs. The slight slackening of his mouth, the drooping of his eyelids. I’ve had to learn because I know that the next stage isn’t pretty. It’s like a small firework has suddenly detonated in his brain.
Finally Charlie glances in my direction. I shake my head, slowly, deliberately, so he can make no mistake of my meaning. Don’t do it.
‘What’s the fuck’s going on here?’ Duncan crows. Oh God, he’s caught me doing it. He swivels to Charlie. ‘She keep you on a leash, Charlie boy?’
Charlie’s ears have gone bright red. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Obviously not.
Yeah, fine. I’m in.’
Shit. I’m torn between wanting to stay so I can try to stop him doing anything stupid and thinking I should leave him to it and let him take himself out, no matter the consequences. Especially after all that unsubtle flirting with Jules.
‘I’m going to deal,’ Johnno says.
‘Wait,’ Duncan says, getting to his feet, clapping his hands. ‘We should do the school motto first.’
‘Yeah,’ Femi agrees, joining him. Angus stands too. ‘Come on, Will, Johnno. Old times’ sake and all that.’
Johnno and Will rise.
I look at them – all, except Johnno, so elegantly dressed in their white shirts and dark trousers, expensive watches at their wrists. I wonder why on earth these men, who have apparently done so well for themselves since, are still obsessing about their school days. I can’t imagine banging on about crappy old Dunraven High. I never had any resentment towards it but it’s also not somewhere I think about all that much. Like everyone else, I left in a scribbled-on leaver’s shirt and never really looked back.
No leaving school at 3.30 p.m. and heading home to watch Hollyoaks for these guys – they must have spent a chunk of their childhoods locked in that place.
Duncan begins to drum slowly with a fist on the table. He looks around, encouraging the others to join him. They do. Gradually it gets louder and louder, the drumming faster, more frenzied.
‘Fac fortia et patere,’ Duncan chants, in what I guess must be Latin.
‘Fac fortia et patere,’ the others follow. And then, in a kind of low, intent murmur:
‘Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo!’
I watch the men, how their eyes seem to gleam in the flickering candlelight. Their faces are flushed – they’re excited, drunk. There’s a
prickle up my spine. With the candles and the dark pressing in at the windows and the strange rhythm of the chanting, the drumming, I feel suddenly like I’m watching some satanic ritual being performed. There’s a menacing element to it, tribal. I put a hand to my chest and I can feel my heart beating too fast, like a frightened animal’s.
The drumming intensifies to a climax, until it’s so frenzied that the crockery and cutlery is leaping about all over the place. A glass hops its way off the corner of the table and smashes on the floor. No one apart from me pays it any attention.
‘Fac fortia et patere! Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo!’
And then, finally, right when I feel I can’t bear it any longer, they all give a roar and stop. They stare at each other. Their foreheads glisten with sweat. Their pupils seem bigger, like they’ve taken a hit of something. Big hyena laughs now, teeth bared, slapping each other on the back, punching each other hard enough to hurt. I notice Johnno’s not laughing as hard as all the others. His grin doesn’t convince, somehow.
‘But what does it mean?’ Georgina asks. ‘Angus,’ Femi slurs, ‘you’re the Latin geek.’
‘The first part,’ Angus says, ‘is: “Do brave deeds and endure”, which was the school motto. The second part was added in by us boys: “If I can’t move heaven, then I shall raise hell.” It used to get chanted before rugby matches.’
‘And the rest,’ says Duncan, with a nasty smile.
‘It’s so menacing,’ Georgina says. But she’s staring up at her red, sweaty, wild-eyed husband as though she’s never found him so attractive.
‘That was kind of the point.’
‘Right, ladies,’ Johnno shouts. ‘Time to stop fannying around and get some drinking done!’
Another roar of approval from the others. Femi and Duncan mix the whisky with wine, with sauce left over from the meal, with salt and pepper, so it forms a disgusting brown soup. And then the game begins – all of them slamming down their hands on the table and yelling at the top of their voices.
Angus is the first to lose. As he drinks the mixture slops on to the immaculate white of his shirt, staining it brown. The others jeer him.
‘You idiot!’ Duncan shouts. ‘Most of it’s going down your neck.’
Angus swallows the last gulp, gags. His eyes bulge.
Will’s next. He puts it away expertly. I watch the muscles of his throat working. He turns the glass upside down above his head and grins.
Next to end up with all the cards is Charlie. He looks at his glass, takes a deep breath.
‘Come on, you pussy!’ Duncan shouts.
I can’t watch this. I don’t have to watch this. Sod Charlie, I think. This was meant to be our weekend away together. If he wants to take himself down it’s his bloody lookout. I’m his wife, not his mother. I stand up.
‘I’m going to bed,’ I say. ‘Night all.’
But no one answers, or even glances in my direction.
I push into the drawing room next door and as I walk through I stop short in shock. A figure’s sitting there on the sofa, in the gloom. After a moment I recognise it to be Olivia. ‘Oh, hey there,’ I say.
She looks up. Her long legs stick out in front of her, her feet bare. ‘Hey.’
‘Had enough in there?’ ‘Yeah.’
‘Me too,’ I say. ‘You staying up for a bit?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘No point in going to bed. My room’s right next to that.’ As if on cue from the dining room comes a burst of mocking laughter.
Someone roars: ‘Drink it – drink it all down!’
And now a chant: Down it, down it, down it – switching suddenly into raise hell, raise hell, RAISE HELL! Sounds of the table being smashed with fists. Then of something else shattering – another glass? A slurred voice: ‘Johnno, you fucking idiot!’
Poor Olivia, unable to escape from all that. I hover in the doorway. ‘It’s fine,’ Olivia says. ‘I don’t need anyone to keep me company.’
But I feel I should stay. I feel bad for her. And actually, I realise I want to stay. I liked sitting with her in the cave earlier, smoking. There was something exciting about it, a strange thrill. Talking to her, with the taste of the tobacco on my tongue, I could almost imagine I was nineteen again, talking about the boys I’d slept with – not a mum of two and mortgaged up to the eyeballs. And there’s also the fact that Olivia reminds me of someone. But I can’t think who. It bothers me, like when you’re trying to think of a word and you know it’s there on the tip of your tongue, just out of reach.
‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I’m not all that tired. And I don’t have to get up early tomorrow morning to deal with two crazy kids. There’s some wine
in our room – I could go and grab it.’
She gives a small smile at this, the first I’ve seen. And then she reaches behind the sofa cushion and pulls out an expensive-looking bottle of vodka. ‘I nicked it from the kitchen earlier,’ she says.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Well, even better.’ This really is like being nineteen again.
She passes me the bottle. I unscrew the cap, take a swig. It burns a freezing streak down my throat and I gasp. ‘Wow. Can’t think of the last time I did that.’ I pass the bottle to her and wipe my mouth. ‘We got cut off, earlier, didn’t we? You were telling me about that guy – Callum?
The break-up.’
Olivia shuts her eyes, takes a deep breath. ‘I guess the break-up was only the beginning,’ she says.
Another big roar of laughter from the next room. More hands thumping the table. More drunken male voices shouting over each other. A crash against the door, then Angus falls through it, trousers about his ankles, his dick flopping out obscenely.
‘Sorry, ladies,’ he says, with a drunken leer. ‘Don’t mind me.’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ I explode, ‘just … just fuck off and leave us alone!’
Olivia looks at me, impressed, like she didn’t think I had it in me. I didn’t, either. I’m not quite sure where it came from. Maybe it’s the vodka.
‘You know what?’ I say. ‘This probably isn’t the best place to chat, is it?’
She shakes her head. ‘We could go to the cave?’
‘Er—’ I hadn’t planned on a night-time foray about the island. And I’m sure it’s dangerous to wander around at night, with the bog and things.
‘Forget it,’ Olivia says, quickly. ‘I get it. I just – it’s weird – I just felt it was easier talking in there.’
And suddenly I have the same feeling I did earlier. An odd thrill, the feeling of breaking the rules. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Let’s do it. And bring that bottle.’
We sneak out of the Folly via the rear entrance. It’s really creepy at night, this place. It’s so quiet, apart from the sound of the waves on the rocks in the near distance. Occasionally there comes a strange, guttural cackling that raises all the hairs on my arms. I finally realise that the noise must be made by some sort of bird. A pretty big one from the sound of it.
As we continue, the ruined houses loom up next to us in the beam of my torch. The dark, gaping windows are like empty eye sockets and it feels unnervingly as though someone might be in there, looking out, watching us pass. I can hear noises coming from inside, too: rustles and creaks and scratchings. It’s probably rats – but then, that’s not a particularly reassuring thought either.
I’m aware of things moving around us as we walk – too fast to see properly, caught momentarily by the weak light of the moon. Something flies so near to my face that I feel it brush the sensitive skin of my cheek. I jump back, put a hand up to fend it off. A bat? It was definitely too big to be an insect.
As we climb down into the cave a dark figure appears on the rock wall in front of us, human shaped. I almost drop the bottle in shock until, after a beat, I realise it is my own shadow.
This place is enough to make you believe in ghosts.
