18. Memory Is a Fickle Clown #2
Briar reads the note five more times and falls asleep wondering what exactly had changed his mind.
‘Jones, we’re walking to the pub for dinner to celebrate a job well done, and we’re going to buy you a burger the size of your mother and all the imitation champagne you can drink.
I’m not insulting your mother, I’m saying - it literally doesn’t matter what size your mother is, this burger will be her equal. In mass, if not in height.’
Westby, Tate and Hadley are all gathered in Briar’s doorway in their civvies, Hadley pink-faced and freshly showered after some kind of Saturday sporting endeavour, presumably one where she gets to hit people with big sticks.
Briar awoke with a ringing in their head like the world’s worst hangover and has spent their day drinking endless cups of coffee until it felt like their heart was going to vibrate apart like man’s early attempts at spacecraft.
Tate had called in on them briefly, presumably checking that Briar wasn’t actually dead, and having received only grunts in response, had made himself scarce.
Every ounce of Briar’s mental energy is being expended on avoidance; thinking about the details of what transpired the night before would be catastrophic.
There are reminders everywhere. Fresh bruises blooming on their forehead and their cheekbone. The absence of their phone, now confined to a locked drawer in Eugenia’s office. She was very clear about the fact that she’s the only one with the key.
Briar blinks slowly, and Westby sighs. ‘Well? Do you want the motherburger or not?’
‘Fine.’
‘It will be fine,’ Tate says, as Briar grabs an overshirt. ‘The one thing you can guarantee in life is that the burger at the Horse and Bugle will be fine.’
They have to exit via the front office so that the scholarly among them can formally check out with a precise time of departure and an estimated return, and then they’re free.
The weather has truly been abysmal these past few months, but there’s watery sunshine this evening as they all walk in single file down the lane, and the one benefit of a wet summer is that everything is so brilliantly green: the burgeoning hedges, the tall grass on the verge, the trees grasping hands to form a tunnel above them.
When they emerge from under the canopy, fluffy gold fields of wheat ripple on either side of the road, a couple of plucky pheasants picking around the perimeter on Briar’s right, visible through a low gate.
‘Do you live around here?’ Westby asks, dropping back to speak to Briar. His wound seems to be improving, and he’s quite fast on his stick now, enjoying it as a prop as well as an aid.
‘Sort of. Not far.’
‘So you could drive home in Genie’s sexmobile, if you wanted?’
Briar had thought of that the moment Eugenia handed them the keys, but had realised immediately that they had no desire to drink a cup of tea in the kitchen like a visitor and endure a well-intentioned grilling from their mum.
Strange, to miss her so much - because Briar does miss her, her humming in the morning and their games of cards in the evenings, her conversations with the cat, even her fussing - and still shy away from the thought of home.
It’s too complicated, two worlds that can never collide.
Besides, Briar could never explain their injuries in any way that would satisfy their mum. She worries about Briar enough already.
‘Could do,’ says Briar. ‘Don’t.’
‘Say no more.’ Westby’s probably conjuring up images of a broken home, a terrible, looming father, gruel for dinner, etc.
Briar’s birth dad was never in the picture, true, but Sean’s been around for so long that it’s more of an abstract hurt than a real one.
Briar wonders about him sometimes, and then decides he’s probably a bastard and a homophobe, and that they’re damned lucky they ended up with a gentle-hearted stepfather instead, who’d slapped a non-binary sticker on his tractor last Pride month.
‘Temple is oft times hell, but I’d stay all year round to avoid my old man.
He keeps doing outrageous things to try to get my attention. ’
‘Like what?’
‘Heart attacks,’ Westby says, without a shred of humour. ‘Blocked arteries, weak chambers, the lot. He absolutely cannot get enough of them.’
Over his shoulder, Tate says, ‘I don’t think he’s doing it on purpose.’
‘Aha, see, that’s what he wants you to think! Oh, to be an orphan. All the best people are.’
Hadley has picked up a large stick and started bashing hedgerows with it as she walks, shaking loose both bug and leaf. ‘West, I think you might be criminally insane.’
‘Actually, so far I am insane within the parameters of the law, unless you care overmuch about underage drinking and smoking a very little bit of weed, which no self-respecting judge would.’
‘Reckless driving, insurance fraud, breaking and entering,’ Tate supplies.
‘Triple jeopardy - I did all of that almost simultaneously, and my aunt only minded the broken window.’
‘Have you been involved in an accident that wasn’t your fault?’ Tate quotes. ‘Except, West, they were all your fault.’
Hadley thwacks an overhead tree branch so hard it splinters, half-collapsing into the road, pale innards peeking out like a glimpse of bone. They all have to duck or weave around it. ‘You’re going to make somebody a wonderful lawyer someday.’
Briar is loath to ask people about their plans for university, mostly because the question always immediately gets Uno-reversed right back to them, but now they’re curious. ‘Are you taking Law?’
Westby shakes his head. ‘Not any more. I have bigger fish to fry.’
‘I’m reading Law,’ Tate says, sounding pretty miserable about it. ‘At Cambridge. If I get in, which I will. Nightmare.’
Westby points with his stick. ‘Ask Watson what she’s doing, it’s so funny.’
‘Fuck off, West.’
They plod along, Hadley harassing the vegetation at regular intervals, until Briar says, ‘So Hadley, what are you—?’
‘RADA.’
This sounds familiar, but Briar can’t place it. ‘What’s RADA?’
‘The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,’ Westby says, practically gleeful. ‘Drama school! I never get tired of hearing that, it cheers me immensely. She’s had to do four auditions. Four. To go to clown college!’
‘It’s not fucking clown college.’
Westby laughs, properly, from his gut. ‘D’you know how I know you’re telling the truth, Watson?’
Hadley throws her stick with force into the golden field beyond the hedge and it sails in an arc, achieving impressive height and distance.
‘Because . . .’ Westby dissolves into plummy laughter. Briar can tell he’s been reduced to hysterics over this before. ‘Because I know which clown college you did apply to! And it was in France!’
Hadley whirls around. ‘école Philippe Gaulier is very fucking respected, and I didn’t apply there for undergrad, I applied for the fucking summer course, and then I couldn’t do the fucking summer course because of the fucking bullshit timetable here, as you well know, you self-important prick.’
Tate glances back at Westby and presses his lips together, clearly aiming to be diplomatic but unable to reconcile this with the existence of école Philippe Gaulier.
‘Ignore her,’ Westby says to Briar. ‘She’s having a cunt summer.’
‘Wrong,’ shouts Hadley, resuming her stomping. ‘I’m having a cunt life.’
Tate clears his throat and asks Briar, ‘What about you?’
‘Gap year,’ says Briar.
‘Will you travel?’
Oh, only to the most exciting places of all - the farm supply shop! The top field! The same three pubs, where the locals exchange muttered slurs and act like Briar’s a deplorable soy-chugging London day-tripper, even though they’ve lived in Worth Herring basically forever! ‘Yeah. Probably.’
Tate starts talking about a summer trip to Greece which seems like it was mostly spent eating honey-drizzled feta baked in pastry on various boats, and eventually they reach the Horse and Bugle.
There are a few families finishing up lunch, a couple of old-timers at the bar nursing their pints, part of the structural integrity of the place.
As they approach the bar Briar digs out their ID, but Tate stops them with a shake of his head.
‘Not necessary,’ he says.