Winter had passed the way a headcold does. The winters here were really nothing. Not like back in Philly, stomping your feet to keep warm. That local band The Atlantics had released a hit record, a surf track, ‘Bombora’, good as anything he had heard from the States. Maybe he was wrong, maybe the guitar sound wasn’t dead yet, although The Beatles were getting bigger by the minute. It was November now and he couldn’t believe it but he was lying on the beach beside Doreen, his right arm around her body listening to her heart, just like he’d imagined. The days were warm again and the nights scented, the moon a big pearl on black velvet. Nobody else was around. It could have been a desert island.
‘I used to sit on the sandhill opposite your house and watch you,’ she confessed, her thumb moving across his palm.
‘I know.’ He had seen movement one time, pretended to move off, found some binoculars, crouched down behind the sofa and checked out who was watching him, his heart in his mouth because he’d half-expected it could be Peste or somebody like him, somebody sent from home.
‘No! You knew all that time? Why didn’t you say something?’
‘I didn’t want to break the spell. I liked knowing you were there.’
‘This is better.’
‘Yes.’
‘I had an abortion,’ she said. ‘Earlier this year.’
He remembered when she’d seemed wan, not herself.
‘I don’t want to keep secrets from you.’
It was the perfect time to tell her about Jimmy. He started. ‘I …’ It was too hard.
‘Don’t feel you have to tell me stuff.’
He let go. ‘I killed my brother, Jimmy.’
He felt her stiffen, even though she tried not to.
‘I mean, I didn’t actually pull the trigger but I ratted him out.’
He held his breath. This was where he always imagined she left him with nothing but the smell of her perfume on his skin. She turned around, stroked his face. He wanted to spell it out. ‘I understand if you want nothing to do with me. I do. I was a miserable coward.’
‘I love you,’ she said, and kissed him again. ‘And you’re not a coward. There’s nothing cowardly about the truth.’
‘An Englishman, an Irishman and a Jew walk into a bar …’
They all leaned in, even though they could hear perfectly well, because when George Gardiner told a joke you didn’t want to miss anything. Nalder allowed himself to drift temporarily, to view the tableau as if he was an angel on the wall looking down at this fraternity. Sunday morning, the sun heating the greens, producing the most wonderful smell, exceeded only by that from the skin of a newborn baby. He saw Gardiner, his knees in their check pants pointing forward, whisky tumbler at the ready as his animated hands enlivened the joke. Parker, who had taken to wearing all black like his hero Gary Player, a smile of anticipation already in his dimples, Johnson with his straight back, just out of the circle because he was smoking Kool and was polite enough not to want to puff directly into somebody’s face, and himself, more a Kel Nagle type with his rotund torso and set off to the side the jaunty hat with the little feather. It was a wonderful thing indeed to be part of all this, better than he had imagined. When Edith and the boys wanted to give him a Father’s Day or birthday gift, they didn’t just have to go to socks, no, they could give him a set of golf balls or gloves. Marvellous. It was not lost on him that the sublime had come from horror and blood. Wasn’t that the way it always had been, whether it was the British in India or the Incas? The two are the flip sides of the same coin, the trick in life was to make the right call.
Kitty had been surprised at how quickly Brenda’s notoriety had faded. She had finally died two weeks ago, never having regained consciousness. The local paper had run a big story and a reporter had tried to interview Todd’s mum but had got nowhere. Her own parents never openly reflected on their eagerness to match her up with Todd. That episode had been forgotten or swept under the carpet — apart from her mum making some comment about Kitty having ‘good instincts’. Yeah right. She was less certain now about being an actress, didn’t think she was pretty enough and, sure, you could play those support roles like Ethel in I Love Lucy but that wasn’t where the fun was. She was going to leave town though, as soon as she could. Maybe there would be something else she could do, like television. At university she could at least join a drama society. Her mum and dad seemed to get on better now, or maybe they were just more careful around her. She had glimpsed Doreen a few times in town. At first she had made sure she crossed the road or went into an arcade, anything to get away from her, but those hours they had trained in the Surf Shack, the afternoons they’d had tea at the Victoria Tearooms and laughed and talked, they were still with her like germs from a flu you couldn’t shake. Somewhere while listening to Please Please Me, out from the vinyl grooves crawled the embarrassing memory of the aftermath of the Todd fiasco when it had been Doreen who had driven her home. She hadn’t wanted to admit it but she missed her.
The other day she had seen Doreen near Gannons and for the first time she hadn’t walked away. She’d stood there and looked at Doreen who, emerging with her shopping, had looked up and seen her, and you could tell it surprised her, and she just stopped stone dead and their eyes had met. Then Doreen had waved at her, just a small little wave with four fingers while her thumb held the shopping bag, like she was cleaning a tiny window. Kitty hadn’t waved back, but she hadn’t left either. She watched Doreen walk away and was still watching when Doreen turned back, and she was pretty sure she smiled, and to be honest, inside, she was smiling too.
It was a funny thing but each day now seemed further and further away from the day before. All that mattered was ahead of her. She rolled over on her bed and put down her book. Lately she’d really started pushing herself: French authors, Steinbeck. She looked up and saw the transistor radio she had won in the dance contest and she was filled with joy. Wow, she had actually won. It was funny how you could forget triumphs. She’d been darn good as Nellie Forbush too. She was ready to finish school, to get out, but she knew she was going to miss it, was going to one day long for these hours of utter boredom — spinning the wheel of your bicycle while mothers played slowed rallies on the warm grass tennis courts, dreaming of a future that you’d be lucky if it turned out half as good as your past, of gossip on school playgrounds and decorating your schoolbag with woven plastic strips and badges of Mousketeers, of the joy of opening a new bottle of Fanta, and the scratch of chalk on a blackboard while you wrote the names of the Beatles in your exercise book using three different coloured pens at once.
She turned on the radio. ‘Ask Me Why’ was playing. The Beatles made you feel great, no matter what. The past was like the poor old fido you had to bury in the backyard. You’d never love another dog as much as the one you had from when you were ten years old but you had to embrace your future: the possibilities were infinite.