We drop Will on the floor of the Whispering Cave. I guess he won’t be delighted about his precious suit touching the wet sand or the fact that the smell in here hits you like a punch in the face: rotting seaweed and sulphur. It’s starting to get darker and you have to squint a bit to see properly. The sea’s rougher than it was earlier, too: you can hear it crashing against the rocks on either side. The whole way here, as we carried him, Will was laughing and joking with us. ‘You boys better not be taking me anywhere messy. If I get anything on this suit Jules will kill me—’ and ‘Can’t I bribe any of you with an extra crate of Bolly to take me back?’
The guys are all laughing. For them, this is all great fun, a bit of a blast from the past. They’ve been sitting in the marquee for a couple of hours getting drunker and more restless, especially those like Peter Ramsay who have powdered their noses. Before I did my speech I too had a bump in the toilets, with some of the blokes, which was maybe a bad idea. It’s only made me more jittery. It’s also made everything weirdly clear.
The others are all just excited to be outside. It’s a bit like the stag. All the boys together, like it was back in the day. The wind, blowing a gale now, makes it all the more dramatic. We had to bend our heads low against it. It made carrying Will all that much harder.
It’s a good spot, here, the Whispering Cave. Pretty out of the way. You can imagine, if there had been a cave like this at Trevellyan’s, it would have been used in Survival.
Will is lying on the shingle: not too close to the water. Don’t know what the tides are like around here. We’ve bound his wrists and ankles with our ties, as per old school tradition.
‘All right, boys,’ I say. ‘Let’s leave him here for a bit. See if he can make his own way back.’
‘We’re not going to actually leave him there, are we?’ Duncan whispers to me, as we climb out of the cave. ‘Until he works out how to untie himself?’
‘Nah,’ I tell him. ‘Well, if he hasn’t returned in half an hour we’ll come get him.’
‘You better!’ Will calls. He’s still acting like this is all a big joke. ‘I’ve got a wedding to get to!’
I head towards the marquee with the rest of the ushers. ‘Know what,’ I say, as we pass the Folly. ‘I’m gonna peel off here. Gotta take a leak.’
I watch them all return to the marquee, laughing and jostling each other. I wish I could be like one of them. I wish for me it was only harmless school memories, a bit of fun. That it could still be a game.
When they’re all out of sight, I turn around and start walking back to the cave.
‘Who’s that?’ Will calls, as I approach him. His words echo in the space, so it sounds as though there are five of him saying it.
‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘Mate.’
‘Johnno?’ Will hisses. He’s managed to sit up, is leaning against the cave wall. Now the boys have gone he’s dropped the act. Even with his eyes covered I can see he’s fairly pissed off, his jaw tight. ‘Untie me, get this blindfold off! I should be at the wedding – Jules will be livid.
You’ve had your joke now. But this isn’t funny.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I know it’s not. See, I’m not laughing either. It’s not that much fun when you’re on the other end of it, is it? But you wouldn’t know, not up until now. You never did a Survival, did you, at Trevs?
Somehow got out of that one too.’
I see him frown behind the blindfold. ‘You know, Johnno,’ he says, his tone light, friendly. ‘That speech … and now this – I think you might have had a bit too much of the good stuff. Seriously, mate—’
‘I’m not your mate,’ I say. ‘I think you might be able to guess why.’
I played drunker than I am, during the speech. I’m not actually all that drunk. Plus the coke has sharpened me. My mind feels very clear now, like someone’s turned on a big bright spotlight in my brain. Lots of stuff is suddenly lit up, making sense.
This is the last time anyone plays me for the fool.
‘Up until about two this afternoon I was your mate,’ I tell him. ‘But not now, not any longer.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Will asks. He’s starting to sound a bit unsure of himself. Yeah, I think. You’re right to be scared.
I could see him looking at me the whole way through that speech, wondering what the fuck I was doing. Wondering what I was going to say next, tell all his guests about him. I hope he was shitting himself. I wish I’d gone the whole hog in my speech, told them everything. But I chickened out. Like I chickened out all those years ago – when I should have gone to the teachers, too, backed up whichever kid it was that sneaked on us. Told them exactly what we had done. They wouldn’t have been able to ignore two of us, would they?
But I couldn’t do it then, and I couldn’t do it in the speech. Because I’m a fucking coward.
This is the next best thing.
‘I had an interesting chat with Piers earlier,’ I say. ‘Very educational.’
I see Will swallow. ‘Look,’ he says, carefully, his tone very reasonable, man to man. It only makes me more angry. ‘I don’t know what Piers said to you, but—’
‘You fucked me over,’ I say. ‘Piers didn’t actually need to say all that much. I worked it out for myself. Yeah, me. Stupid Johnno, must try harder. You couldn’t have me there, could you? Too much of a liability. Reminding you of what you once were. What you did.’
Will grimaces. ‘Johnno, mate, I—’
‘You and me,’ I say. ‘See, it was meant to be you and me, sticking up for each other, always. Us against the world, that’s what you said.
Especially after what we’d done, what we knew about each other. I had your back, you had mine. That’s how I thought it was.’
‘It is, Johnno. You’re my best man—’
‘Can I tell you something?’ I say. ‘The whole whisky business?’
‘Oh yeah,’ Will says quickly, eagerly. ‘Hellraiser!’ He’s remembered it this time. ‘See, there you go! You’re doing so well for yourself. No need for all this bitterness—’
‘Nah.’ I cut him off again. ‘See, it doesn’t exist.’
‘What are you talking about? Those bottles you’ve given us …’ ‘Are fakes.’ I shrug, even though he can’t see me. ‘It’s some single
malt from the supermarket, decanted into plain bottles. Got my mate Alan to make up labels for me.’
‘Johnno, what—’
‘I mean, I did actually think I could do it at the beginning. That’s what makes it so tragic. It’s why I got Alan to mock the design up at first, to see how it might look. But do you know how hard it is to launch a whisky brand these days? Unless you’re David Beckham. Or you have rich parents to bankroll you, or connections with important people? I
have none of that. I never did. All the other boys at Trevs knew it. I know some of them called me a pikey behind my back. But what we had, I thought that was solid.’
Will’s shifting on the ground, trying to sit up. I’m not going to help him. ‘Johnno, mate, Jesus—’
‘Yeah, oh, and I didn’t leave the wilderness retreat to set up the whisky brand. How pathetic is this? Wait for it … I got fired for being stoned on the job. Like a teenager. This fat bloke on a team-bonding course – I let him go down too fast on the abseil and he broke an ankle. And do you know why I was stoned?’
‘Why?’ he asks, wary.
‘Because I have to smoke it, to get by. Because it’s the only thing that helps me forget. See, it feels like my whole life stopped at that point, all those years ago. It’s like – it’s like … nothing good has happened since. The one good thing that’s happened to me in the years after Trevs was that shot at the TV show – and you took it away from me.’ I pause, take a deep breath, prepare to say what I’ve finally come to realise, after nearly twenty years. ‘But it’s not like that for you, is it? It’s like the past doesn’t affect you. It didn’t matter to you at all. You carry on taking what you need. And you always get away with it.’
