23

That whole month of July was one of the happiest times of my life, I think, maybe the happiest. But I can’t remember it that way. It’s certainly not one of the little golden ages, like the summer before, or the youth club, or the time in the band when we hadn’t played a gig and we were still rehearsing and Jenny hadn’t started turning it all sour. It can’t be, because every time I think about it, I can’t help but remember what was being planned. At the time I was blissfully happy, and now I’m sick with guilt, because on some level I knew that something was up. If it was a golden age, it was a dishonest one. A fool’s golden age.

It wasn’t even perfect at the time. Nothing ever is, of course. I remember being quite annoyed that my parents made me look for a part-time job. I found one in a newsagents in Quireley High Street, which I pretty much hated from the start. Still, it brought in a bit of money, though not that much. It was just on Saturdays and a bit on Sundays, because shops weren’t open long on Sundays back then. And though I was pissed off at having to do it so soon after finishing school, I really needed it, seeing as there was no way I was going to carry on doing my paper round now I’d left. Thomas actually carried on doing his, which would have been hilarious if we weren’t all too … well, whatever it was we felt about him to make a joke about it. Jase immediately walked into a bit of work through his dad’s car-repair firm, just odd jobs and stuff, but it was obvious they’d train him up. Ben and Neil didn’t get jobs. Neil because he was too weird, and Ben because he was too lazy. Looking back on it, there was really no hurry, and they probably had the right idea, just enjoy our freedom and the summer for a bit, but I had a girlfriend, and girlfriends swallow money, or at least they seem to when you’re sixteen. Besides, I wanted to be drinking something other than Napalm, because I couldn’t help being sick every time I did.

The whole Fields thing just got bigger and bigger. There were so many kids round that bonfire, and it wasn’t just on Fridays any more, it was most nights of the week. I remember it being beautiful every night, clear skies and sunsets, then stars in the night sky on the way home. I think I remember one rainstorm, and us all sheltering under the trees, except for the crazy kid who jumped through the fire, and he just ran about in it getting soaked. It was a whole month of blue and green and pollen in the air, long before I started suffering from hay fever. And girls, and friends, and laughing, and music on a portable tape player, that last summer of hard rock and metal. Funny how it didn’t sound as good as it had just a month or so ago.

So, it wasn’t all so perfect. There were a few things we could really have done with but didn’t have. The promised weed, for example, never showed up. Either the person who said they blew someone couldn’t get any after all, or they got it and smoked it all with their college mates in the afternoon, then turned up that evening at the bonnie totally mashed, but with none to share. They say that anybody who wants to do drugs knows where to get them, but we fucking didn’t.

Another thing we weren’t getting was sex. Jenny was still holding out on Thomas, and that insane thing he had over us meant that none of us could or would cross that line, even though some of the girls were obviously up for it. Instead, we just stuck our tongues in their mouths and occasionally felt their tits. Tit feeling was OK, because Thomas had let it be known that Jenny had shown him her little lumps, and allowed him to run his hands over them and tweak her nipples in her bedroom one time, but anything below the waist or above the neck was out of bounds. Thanks to Thomas, we were all getting up to a lot less trouble than our parents feared, at least in that respect. Not that we were angels. Some of the college boys vandalised a plastic frog on a spring or something in the kiddies’ play area, which I didn’t think was cool, although Ben did. But I wasn’t going to stop them; how could I? And we were pissed out of our minds on cider and Napalm, of course.

Obviously, one of us had been getting laid and that was Jase. But July didn’t turn out to be such a good month for him because Kate dumped him all of a sudden, giving one of those weird reasons that girls come up with, something about needing time, or needing space, or needing some particular combination of time and space that Jase couldn’t give her. In reality she just wanted to go out with a crusty from college with disgusting dreadlocks and camouflage trousers who never washed and always smelt like a wet dog. They ended up together for ages. In fact, I don’t remember them breaking up. Maybe they’re still together. Perhaps Kate’s cock hunger could only be satisfied by someone as dirty as she was. Anyway, Jase was pretty depressed about that for a week or two and didn’t come down to the bonnie for a bit, but then he did and he was back to normal.

And then there was Neil and Louise. It wasn’t as if they were going out, they weren’t, but they always talked together the nights they were both at the bonfire, although neither of them came as often as the rest of us. She lived quite a way out, and Neil, well, Neil was Neil. God knows what he was up to some of the time. I know he stayed in on Mondays because there was a radio programme that played all this weird music that he used to like to tape and then walk around listening to all week on his Walkman.

I think that’s where he found ‘Flying Saucer Rock ’n’ Roll’. He tried to get the rest of us into it, but we never quite remembered to listen. Besides, I heard one of his tapes and it wasn’t my sort of thing. Other than that, he might not have come out much because he didn’t have any money, but then he didn’t drink so he didn’t really need any. Neil was into abstinence from mind-altering substances, which is odd because all his heroes from the sixties were off their tits on drugs. But in the world of Neil I suppose it all made sense. Anyway, Jenny didn’t like the idea of him and Louise getting on so well one bit. She was always having a go at Louise about what an embarrassment Neil was, and Hannah did too, seeing as she just did what Jenny did and everything, but Louise was having none of it – she liked Neil and always talked to him. Maybe they met up during the day somewhere, I don’t really know. So that was July. Everything felt … ready. Ripe. We enjoyed that ripeness so much, we forgot that unless fruit is plucked and eaten, then it falls off the tree. And rots.

It was intoxicating, that blend of sunset, grass pollen, fire and friendship. The gig almost sneaked up on us. Not that we weren’t rehearsed, we’d been meeting as normal every Saturday. But it was only in the last week that we really began to talk about it and persuade people to come. And sure, loads of people said they would. Jenny did her usual sniping about Neil’s abilities, but that didn’t stop people from wanting to go. We were happy, that last week in July, in that summer, by the bonnie, on the Fields. And then one day it was the first of August. And our dads were shifting all our gear over to that dingy little social club on the other side of town. And we were there setting up at seven o’clock, doors at eight, ready to go on at half eight. This was it, our big moment, the one we’d been dreaming about for so long we’d forgotten we were even dreaming it. If only it had stayed a dream.