The Fatty wore a crochet jersey, odd socks in Clark’s sandals, and patched short trousers (everyone else, especially my brother, was in longs). Home-cut hair capped a face well used to – seemingly almost bored with – fear: non-existent bush burned off every day at school, head kneed in every night by his over-glanded father.
Having looked round for encouragement or approval, one of the boys leaned over and slapped the piggy in the middle quite hard on the face. The other three took a step forward and joined in. I watched a bit longer, on the off-chance that Valentine would do something exceptionally odious, then signalled my presence with a yell.
I walked towards them. ‘Piss off,’ I told the Fatty, hoping that my intervention would be taken as a breaking-up of unruly horse-play rather than a bulliable rescue. The Fatty collected satchel and cap, and wandered off, breaking into a run as he approached the gate.
Tiss off,’ I said to the other three. They hesitated and backed away. As an afterthought, I shouted out: ‘My brother’s too posh to mix with the likes of you.’ They might beat him up on Monday.
‘Hello, Valentine,’ I said, ‘had a good day? Enjoy your game of football?’ He stood his ground, chewing lemon chewing-gum, hand on tailored hip. ‘Why’d you pick on him? What did he do?’
‘I didn’t hit him a lot,’ said my brother. The others did, mostly.’
‘Did he do anything? Why were they hitting him?’ Hatred was dissipating me.
‘Everyone does.’
I stared at him. I could think of nothing to say, so I caught hold of his shoulder and boxed him on the side of the head. But without much conviction.
Rachel and I lay still on my bed. It was nearly dinner-time. (The pre-twenties aren’t required to socialize; apart from meals they can come and go as they please.) My room, one of the three long, low attic rooms, was okay, allowing for the fact that I hadn’t had a chance to do anything to it. Faddy ephemera covered its walls: posters of Jimi Hendrix, Auden and Isherwood, Rasputin, reproductions of works by Lautrec and Cézanne. The bookcase retold my adolescence: Carry On, Jeeves, Black Mischief, The Heart of the Matter, Afternoon Men, Women in Love, Gormenghast, Cat’s Cradle, L’Etranger. A chess set, a drawing by my little sister, postcards on the mantelpiece. It was straightforward enough – nothing much you could do to it. However, the one vital adjustment had been made before we arrived. That morning, before school, before I had run out to pay my graft to the legless buskers: a panicky telephone call. I got Sebastian, and bribed him with the promise of ten cigarettes to fucking go up and change the light. There had been a pink-tinted bulb in the bedside lamp, so that any village girls I lured up there would know at once how sexy I was. Seb, as instructed, had put in a normal one. A bit outré for an urbanite like Rachel.
Most of the guests were there by the time I got back with Valentine. I joined Rachel and the au pair in the kitchen, gave beefy assistance gathering chairs and shifting the dining-room table. I led Rachel to her room on the first floor, then to mine on the second. Some low-pressure necking took place, soon modulated by me to include drowsy conversation. We talked as it got dark. We talked about our fathers, pretty well agreeing that women had it harder than men :
‘Women have to cope with babies and periods and things, they carry the real responsibility.’ I sighed. ‘If a girl sleeps around she’s a slag, if a boy sleeps around he’s quite a guy. Society and Nature seem to be loaded against —’
‘Do you think so? I don’t think I do,’ mumbled Rachel to my armpit. ‘You’ll probably say this is rather … pissy, but babies are the only things women can have that men can’t. And they should be proud of that. It evens things out, too.’
I considered attacking this view as doctrinaire, brainwashed, sexist, etc., but I said, ‘I don’t think that’s at all pissy. How do you mean, it evens things out?’