"Who"s David Byrne?"
"For f.u.c.k"s sake!" Chrissie mouthed, collapsing back on to the bed.
"Are you drunk, Ellis from down the lane?" Katie asked.
Ellis pulled himself together. "No. I"m not drunk at all. Sorry, I was distracted, my sister walked into the room." He picked up the tickets. "The concert is on Friday June the eleventh at the Finsbury Park Rainbow and I would really like you to come with me."
"That"s next Friday. I"ll think about it and call you back, OK?"
"OK."
"It"s really sweet of you to invite me and I really appreciate it. I"m just not sure what I"m up to that evening."
"OK."
"Bye, Ellis." She hung up.
Ellis held the receiver against his chest and smiled. He had crossed the threshold. He had invited a girl out. It hadn"t gone quite to plan and she wouldn"t accept, but the ordeal was over and he could now say he had done it. He felt elated. He flopped back on to the bed, alongside his sister, emotionally exhausted.
"Talking sodding Heads?" Chrissie whispered.
Ellis shrugged. "There"s no way she"d go to a Whitesnake gig."
Ellis sat in the living room, hoping the phone wouldn"t ring. Denny turned the lights off and he and Ellis watched the horizon catch fire. The sky arched its crimson back across the village. Its blackening ribbed patterns reminded Ellis of the markings of the Cheiracanthium species he had been forced to read about during the truces.
What, he asked himself, if the entire world is the belly of a huge spider and we"re all inside it? Beyond our universe is the outer body of a spider bigger than known existence and beyond that spider we call the universe are a trillion other spiders. And those trillion spiders live in just one spider well and there is a world full of wells.
"Spiders are little and we are big, they are big and we are little. It makes no difference either way round."
"None at all," Denny agreed.
And if it makes no difference, Ellis resolved to himself, it makes no sense to be scared of anything.
In the near darkness, he looked at the shape of his father"s body and a faint glow of dusk on his face.
"Dad."
"Yes, dear boy?"
"You know ... I am going to do new things." His voice was gentle and strong. It was a new voice and it was as alien to him as it was to his dad. "I"m going to travel and seek out things. You know that, don"t you?"
He got no response. Denny was motionless. There was more movement in the sky beyond him, as it gave up its last colour and detail to darkness.
Katie Morton rang three days later and said yes. Ellis was devastated.
"You have to tell her immediately that she"s not going to see Talking Heads," Chrissie told him.
Ellis agreed absolutely. Definitely. Obviously. But kept putting it off until, suddenly, it was Friday and Katie was waiting for him at the foot of her parents" driveway on Wickhurst Lane. She opened the door to Mafi"s car before Ellis brought it to a standstill, and was in a hurry to get away. Her parents, she said, were in a "foul mood, as usual".
Ellis had memorised the map of the London Underground during the week. He found it easy thanks to the colour scheme, which his brain could immediately make sense of. He did a last dummy run to calm his nerves as the train approached Victoria station. On the pale blue line, they sat opposite a row of seven long-haired men, all of whom wore Whitesnake T-shirts. Katie Morton looked at them curiously and turned to ask Ellis a question, but he cut her off.
"Where did you live before?"
"Near Brighton," she replied.
"I"d like to go to Brighton," Ellis said.
"It"s great."
"Do you miss it?" Ellis asked.
She shrugged. "I"m not too bothered for now. I"ll tell you something that no one is meant to know," she said, leaning close to his ear. "My parents would kill me if they knew anyone knew."
"What is it?" Ellis said.
"My brother"s in prison. That"s why we left Brighton."
"What did he do?"
"Not much. He"s only in for a year."
Ellis didn"t know what to say. He wanted to know what the crime was but feared that to ask again would be immature. Maybe everyone except for him knew someone in prison. If so, he shouldn"t find it too amazing. But it was amazing, so would she think him dull for not asking more about it?
More David Coverdale lookalikes boarded the train at Highbury and Islington and Ellis decided it was time. He pulled the carefully resealed envelope from his pocket and ripped it open. "Jesus!" he said. "I don"t believe it!"
"What?" Katie Morton asked.
"They"ve sent the wrong tickets!"
As Katie Morton studied the tickets, Ellis doubted the wisdom of messing with a criminal"s sister. She laughed. It was a laugh Ellis couldn"t begin to decipher. He didn"t say anything else about it and neither did she. At the entrance to the Rainbow, he asked her again if she wanted to go for a drink instead or to just go home and she pushed him towards the door with the same knowing smile.
They saw a support band called Redfoot but they never did get to see David Coverdale"s Whitesnake. As they waited for them to come on stage, a very large woman stood alongside them, drinking vodka straight from the bottle. She was huge, more than six feet tall, broader than Ellis and fat; very, very fat. Her hair was long and bushy and dyed black. Her skin was talc.u.m-powder white and she wore dark make-up around her eyes and black lipstick. Ellis saw that she was crying as she swigged from the bottle, as if the vodka was streaming out of the pores of her skin. She smiled at Ellis and Katie through maroon mascara tears and pulled down her leather jacket to reveal a denim jacket beneath, and on the back of it an intricate spray-on picture of a smiling young man holding a guitar. Around it, in metal studs, were the words Ronnie, 19611983, Gone But Still Loved.
"This is my first concert without him," the enormous woman said, hauling the leather jacket back across the vast expanse of her rounded back.
Katie Morton placed her hand sympathetically on the huge woman"s arm. When she did so, Ellis had no idea that Katie was drunk, but moments later he found out just how drunk she was.
"Did you eat him?" Katie asked the woman.
With four thousand people pressing against them, Ellis"s world, miraculously, fell silent. His mind sank into a numbing incredulity at what had just been said. The woman turned, it seemed to no one in particular, and screamed, "Bunny!"
"She"s sorry!" Ellis said urgently.
"BUNNEEEEE!" Her face contorted with anger.
Ten feet away, a tall, Caucasian version of Mr T heard the huge woman"s call of distress. His face sank immediately into a darkness, as if already expressing regret over what he was yet to do to whoever had upset his friend.
"Did I say something?" Katie shouted.
Bunny moved towards them.
"We"re leaving," Ellis yelled, pushing Katie away as the huge woman lunged at them so drunkenly that she seemed to be aiming to simply fall on top of them and squash them to death.
This was the first time Ellis had taken the initiative with a member of the opposite s.e.x. He held Katie"s arm so tight he was almost lifting her, and as Bunny chased them through the syrup-thick crowd Ellis took advantage of being half the width of his pursuer and weaved and ducked himself and Miss Morton out of the arena to the now empty bar, from which they ran without looking back. The Seven Sisters Road would never look so attractive again, nor would the air of Finsbury Park ever taste so fresh. On the tube and train that carried Ellis and his liability of a date back to the garden of England, it occurred to Ellis that a trip up to London to see Whitesnake had been in no way diminished by not actually seeing Whitesnake. His attachment to hard rock and big-hair bands was, he concluded, a little cosmetic. He would check out this David Byrne bloke tomorrow.
The lights of the village nestling in the valley were benevolent and welcomed Ellis home.
"You can"t drive down to the house," Katie said. "My parents are a.r.s.eholes."
Ellis parked by the primary school and walked her home. As they crossed the top of the village green, a truck drove past, catching the couple in its headlights. It sounded its horn in friendly recognition.
"Who was that?" she asked.
"Haven"t a clue."
They picked their way across the rutted surface of Wickhurst Lane in the darkness. She stumbled and took hold of his hand.
"You don"t like London much, do you?" she said.
"Scares me rigid."
"Just remember, all those terrifying-looking people in London would be scared stiff walking down here in the pitch dark. They"d s.h.i.t themselves at every animal sound."
He dared to stroke her hand with his fingertips, in a way that could have been accidental if she objected.
"I liked the way you didn"t try to hide how scared you were up there," she said.
"I did try to hide it," he said, "all evening."
Katie Morton smiled but Ellis couldn"t see it. They parted at a small stone bridge that crossed a stream at the foot of the Mortons" driveway. Ellis told her that at this time of year, if she walked a hundred yards up the stream to the line of pollarded willow, and if she waited in the stream downwind of the line of exposed tree roots as evening fell, she"d see badger cubs playing.
"Have you seen them?" she whispered.
"Yes, every year," he said. "I know this village like the back of my hand."
"Now that I do believe," she said. "I think you and I should just be friends, don"t you?"
"Oh, yeah, definitely. I agree," Ellis said.
As he stepped into Bridget"s shop the next afternoon, Ellis was scolding himself for talking to Katie about badgers when she might have been waiting for him to fondle her. Perhaps it was this that had put the kybosh on things between them. The bell above the shop door was still ringing when Bridget"s voice met him like a physical barrier.
"Here comes lover-boy. Better luck next time."
Mrs Hawking was at the counter, dropping loose change into her purse. She winked at Ellis, saying, "She"s too old for you. You"re a nice boy."
"I"ve forgotten my money," Ellis stuttered, untruthfully, and left.
Emotionally and mentally exhausted by the aftermath of going on a date, Ellis was happy to lie low at home and do work on the cottage for his dad. He went into the town to collect floorboard pins and varnish, and in the window of the Small World Travel Agency a poster told him that for 126 he could buy a train ticket that would take him anywhere in Europe for a month.
"Oh my G.o.d ..." he muttered, as he stood inside the travel agents reading the leaflet. And he began to shake with excitement.
A truck arrived on the Sat.u.r.day morning and hoisted antique floorboards on to the driveway. For a decade, Denny O"Rourke had wanted to replace the flooring in the downstairs of the cottage and his pleasure at the job ahead made him eager and boyish. Mafi sat in the garden and watched Denny and Ellis as they worked side by side, co-ordinating instinctively, rolling up their sleeves in the exact same way and sharing mannerisms as if they had handed them to each other from a shared tool box at the start of the day. Their thoughts, however, were not in harmony, for Ellis could think only of the rail map of Europe he had bought and of the thin black lines that spread across the continent, some solitary and remote, others converging in thick swirls on Madrid and Munich, Paris, Rome and Milan.
On the Monday morning, when his dad had left for work, Ellis shoved the small, folded doc.u.ment with its orange boxes under Mafi"s nose.
"It"s just to do with the summer and work experience and everything ... I forgot to get dad to do it," Ellis said rapidly. "I"m really late, Mafi. Just sign it there."
She signed inside the orange box, unwittingly confirming herself as Ellis"s next of kin.
The next weekend, they ate a Sunday roast outside, by the side lawn. The living room windows were open and a smell of floorboard varnish laced the air.
Denny breathed deep with contentment. "We"ve been here ten years and it"s taking shape ... on a perfect day. It"s never finished, but today ... it feels great."
And Denny O"Rourke did, indeed, feel truly great for a few seconds more, until his son spoke up, with the exquisite mistiming of a teenager.
"Dad ..."
"Yes, my dear boy?"
"I"m going inter-railing in Europe this summer. For a month. On my own."
"No. You"re not."
"I am."
The afternoon changed.
"Maybe next year."
"I want my life to get going," Ellis complained.
"Don"t be dramatic," his father said.
Mafi smiled at Ellis and faintly shook her head, to steer him off the subject.
"If you"re feeling desperate to go abroad for the first time, then we"ll go somewhere together this summer. How about that?" His dad smiled encouragingly.
Ellis slumped. Just when he needed his dad to create a rift between them, from which Ellis could justify escape, he did just the opposite.
"I"ve already got a ticket," Ellis said, without defiance.
"How? You can"t have," Denny said, trying to sound unperturbed. "You"re only seventeen. You"d need my permission."
"You"re wrong and I"ve got one."
There was silence. "How?" his dad finally asked.
Ellis shrugged his shoulders.