Twenty-Four Hours

Jackie relaxed. “Thank God,” he said. “You really frightened me then because you’re probably one of those pricks that keep their promises. It would have ruined everything.”

“What I am is the prick with the car,” Ellis reminded him. Jackie laughed and nodded.

“Yeah! Right! Nice one!” he said. “Now – this party! It’s out along the motor way … a country party. I could skate, but it would be easier if you drove me.”

Ellis remembered he had promised himself wild adventures and no apologies. And, after all, he had made his mother no real promises.

“OK, then!” he said.

Immediately, a new ease engulfed Jackie who flopped back in his chair.

“Your turn to tell me,” Ellis went on. “What have you been up to?”

“Oh, about up to here,” said Jackie, leaning sideways in his chair and holding his hand, fingers splayed, about an inch from the ground. “No real job. No self-respect. Mind you, the way I see it, self-respect is the easiest sort of respect to get, isn’t it? Me – I want respect with a bit more challenge to it.” He eased himself upwards in his chair once more as he went on talking. “I make a few dollars here and there, but basically I just fiddle around. I’m a born fiddler.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” said Ellis.

A piece of wastepaper whirled past the window and disappeared into the deepening, summer evening. The city was still embraced by a largely tearless storm.

Jackie slapped his hand down hard on the table.

“Five! Four! Three! Two! ONE!” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet and draining the rest of his beer. The movement upwards married into a movement forwards. “Blast-off!” he cried.

Before Ellis’s eyes he become charged with both energy and mischief. Hastily, Ellis drank half his beer and then, remembering he would be the driver, left the rest of it on the table. He followed Jackie into the street and they wove their way, side by side, back to the parking lot where Ellis had left his mother’s car.

“Straight down the Great North Road,” said Jackie, scrambling into the passenger seat. “It’s a sort of barbecue party. Begins – officially, that is – with five o’clock drinks. So, by the time we get there, they mightn’t care who’s turning up. Unless they’ve been rained out.”

“If it’s an inside party they mightn’t let us in,” said Ellis almost hopefully. He wanted the adventure, but felt dubious about gatecrashing a private party.

“Why not?” said Jackie, sounding affronted. “I mean, look at us: clean, smiling! Both respectable guys! Eh?”

Ellis felt certain that Jackie had chosen him not merely because he had a car, but because his curling hair and tidy clothes might persuade someone, somewhere to welcome them in.

5.50 pm – Friday (#ulink_d75ce3de-3694-5fd2-8785-aac16fedbaae)

As they surged on to the motorway, heading north, the suburbs fell away altogether. Moving deeper into the country, Ellis felt a change coming over Jackie Cattle. He had not understood just how tense his companion had been until Jackie shifted in the seat beside him, sighing as he relaxed.

They crossed a long bridge curving over one of the five rivers that braided and divided the plains between city and mountains, and Ellis glimpsed below him threads of water winding, separating, then weaving together again, negotiating wide, flat beds of grey shingle. Gusts of wind beat the river surfaces into angry grey-green ripples ticked with silver.

“Next turn-off, move into the left lane,” Jackie instructed, smiling in secret satisfaction.

Oh, no! Ellis thought automatically. He had been driven along this motorway, turning left at that very corner, many times throughout his childhood, and never with any pleasure. Come off it! he told himself derisively, as they curved away from the motorway and on to a long, straight road with fences, hedges and occasional gateways on either side. Just because … he began thinking, then forced himself to notice the ordinary roadsides as if he had never seen them before. Some gates had signs beside them listing fruit and vegetables which could be bought during the day, but most signs were lying flat on the grass, flapping and bucking wildly as the wind pushed powerful fingers under them. One particular sign, hanging by short chains from a wooden support that reminded Ellis of a gallows, was stretched out almost parallel with the ground, straining to escape. The words, Fresh Lettuce, Tomatoes, Avocados, angled into sight, then vanished once more.

But they were driving out of the path of the storm. The road ahead was suddenly dry. Hedges and trees which had been writhing on either side of the road were suddenly less convulsive, the sideways thrust on the car much less insistent.

It was hard for Ellis to imagine any connection between the friends of his parents who lived along this road and disreputable Jackie Cattle, and yet he felt himself touched by apprehension. Don’t be crazy, he kept telling himself. There are a dozen places out this way. We’ll probably drive on past, and …

“Big white gates!” announced Jackie, leaning forward.

Oh, no! Ellis sighed to himself in fatalistic despair. The familiar gates were rushing towards him on his right – big, old, gates, white, pointed palings like teeth sweeping down, then up again in a long curve – a sarcastic grin suspended between high stone posts, also painted white.

“White gates,” repeated Jackie. “And chestnut trees! This must be the place!”

Ellis was already turning in at the gates, noting festive balloons tied to the rural delivery mail box. Though the wind was gentler now, the balloons still strained and bobbed furiously like a huddle of demented heads. But the car glided confidently past them and on between the double line of chestnut trees. Even though he was sitting correctly in the driver’s seat, both hands on the wheel in a ten to two position, Ellis felt his mother’s car, which had turned in at that gate many times before, was really finding its own way. Every cell in his body seemed intent on turning and going back to town again. But there, in front of him, set in orchards and wide lawns, sprawled the house, casually impressive among its old trees.

“Oh, wow!” breathed Jackie.

Suddenly the air grew rich with the smell of barbecued steak and fish – salmon, no doubt, wrapped in foil, cooking in its own juices, thought Ellis, remembering other barbecues in this very place.

Beside him, Jackie pulled his knees up, bending and writhing inside his coat as he struggled to remove his roller blades. Ellis parked at the end of a long row of cars, then turned towards him.

“We’d better walk the last bit,” he said, looking dubiously at Jackie’s socks, which were full of holes.

“I’ll go barefoot,” said Jackie, peeling his feet. “I’ll look really laid-back!”

“What about your coat?” asked Ellis, knowing just what sort of party they were going to walk into. “It’s a warm evening.”

“Take off my coat?” cried Jackie. “Are you mad? My life story’s written on this coat. See this stain here? That’s a quarrel with my father, and this smear …”

“OK! OK!” Ellis sighed, waving his hand, palm outward at Jackie. “I just thought you’d be more comfortable if …”

“You think I’d sacrifice truth for comfort?” cried Jackie, settling the coat across his shoulders with a complacent grin. “It will be good for everyone here to see a coat like mine.”

Directly in front of them, between two silver birches whose upper branches had grown together to form an arch, Ellis saw the familiar triple garage set beyond a turning space. He saw a shiny red car parked at such a careless angle that it blocked the main garage door, just as if the owner knew no other car would need to come or go, or did not much care, anyway. Ellis grimaced in spite of himself as he and Jackie strolled towards the bricked flank of the house, Jackie stepping carefully on fallen leaves and grass clippings spread across fine, sharp gravel. Earlier in the day someone had mowed these verges.

Ellis slunk along guiltily, but Jackie, who had absolutely no right to be there (Ellis was sure), stepped out as confidently as if his bare feet were perfectly acceptable. The wind seemed anxious to push them away but, as they came round the edge of the house, the sound of many voices swelled towards them.

“Don’t look so furtive!” muttered Jackie. “Chill out, man!” He improvised a dance step. “Just stroll on in and say, ‘Hey folks! Your lucky day! Here we are! Now the fun begins!’”

“I don’t look furtive,” said Ellis indignantly. “And I know this crowd, which I reckon you don’t. The Kilmers are friends of ours – friends of my parents, that is! They’ve got one of those apartments in the old library, but this is their real home. I’ve visited them twenty million times before.” He looked sideways at Jackie, half-expecting to see capitulation of some kind, or even respect (because, after all, the Kilmers were rich). But in the clear, early twilight, Jackie’s expression was that of a child seeing a vision of wonder. Then he flung an arm across Ellis’s shoulder.

“Hey, Ellis!” he cried softly. “Has anyone told you how beautiful you are? A car! Naturally curly hair! And rich friends! The lot! I love you! I love you! And, hey, isn’t that sunshine? Let’s enjoy ourselves.”

6.30 pm – Friday (#ulink_91be0465-d73e-5474-8fa5-3b743c98f524)

Ellis stepped on to the wide, grassy terrace that led down from the veranda of the Kilmer’s house to the garden below, a familiar enchantment immediately taking hold of him. For there it all was: women in summer dresses, laughing and talking, leaning sexily into the intrusive wind; men in shorts hoisting long glasses of pale-gold lager. Elegant music came towards them in gusts and then retreated. Ellis recognised it as the theme tune of a television commercial in which an expensive car moved with grace and power through a bare, sculptural landscape. Farmers on horses (along with their dogs) watched the car go by with admiration and envy, and a beautiful woman studied it with voluptuous attention, licking her full, red lips.

Jackie seemed to react to the gusts of music, too. He came to a standstill and Ellis saw him grimace.

“Vivaldi!” he exclaimed, half-turning towards Ellis. “Poor bugger! Mind you, those musical jokers wrote a lot of stuff for parties, didn’t they?” Ellis found he had assumed yet again that, in spite of his unexpected accent, Jackie was a man without culture. “I mean, it’s so beautiful,” Jackie added. “But, by now, whenever I hear it going Tah dah dah dah da-da dah, I want to laugh. It’s become its own sort of joke. And it wasn’t meant to be funny, was it?”

“Ellis!” called an astonished voice. “Who is it?” hissed Jackie.

“Meg Kilmer! Hostess. Lives here,” Ellis muttered, grinning studiously at his mother’s friend and feeling suddenly treacherous. Why – why – had Jackie been so desperate to come here? There must have been other parties he could have gatecrashed – parties that were much more his sort of thing. Ellis wondered if he had unwittingly helped an enemy insinuate himself. For he was with Jackie, whose coat had one elbow burned out of it, who was barefoot, who was laughing at the idea of Vivaldi being played as background music, but who was also, at that very moment, turning to greet the hostess with a wide smile.

“Ellis … lovely to see you,” Meg cried, seeming only slightly surprised that he should be there at all.

“Just passing!” Ellis said, smiling too – the sort of frank, boyish smile a friend of one’s mother could trust – an actor’s smile. “Didn’t know you were having a party. Sorry!” He was relieved to find just how easily deception came to him. Though, after all, he hadn’t known: he was speaking the truth.