Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,101
was bouncing up and down beside me. “Greg likes me! He likes me! He’s going to give me a lift home on his motorbike!” She looked about as thrilled as someone who’d won a ten-thousand-pound bingo prize. “And he told me, Jesse, he told me that you said he should ask me to dance. God, I’m sorry I wasn’t very nice to you earlier on because, really, you are absolutely the best bloody friend in the world.”
“Thanks, Trace,” I said, beaming at her, only noticing, out of the corner of my eye, Malcolm turn around and stalk off.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WE EXITED THE CHURCH HALL TO FIND THAT A LIGHT POWDERING of snow had fallen and the world had been dusted a luminescent white. The air tasted different, a cold, sharp burn. I stood on the steps as everyone spilled past me into the street. All the voices were filled with the thrill of snow, the girls’ squeals and the boys’ shouts seeming to travel forever across the silvery open fields. I watched as the haphazard pattern of footprints multiplied and boys hurled snowballs and the girls screamed and ran. I watched Tracey climb onto Greg’s motorbike and wrap her arms around his waist before they eased away. And I watched as Stan revved his bike so that it bucked up and down like a rodeo horse while he waited for Amanda to make her way unsteadily toward him. “Come on, slowcoach!” he yelled. “Let’s get going.” As she climbed on behind him, she noticed me watching her and gave a little wave. “Merry Christmas, Jesse,” she called as she pulled on the bike helmet and fastened it under her chin.
“Merry Christmas,” I called back, my voice a forlorn thread in the wide-open night. Stan revved the engine again, released the brake, and, after the bike skidded back and forth on the slushy road for a second, they sped off. I watched the bike rush into the darkness, its shape and the shapes of the figures on it rapidly fading until it became nothing but its red rear light gliding through the darkness, like a single disconnected eye.
All the others were gone, either picked up by parents or walking home fast through the bitter cold. In the distance, I could hear their voices, loud and strident against the subtle insulation of the snow. My father still hadn’t arrived.
After only a few minutes my whole body tingled with cold. I stamped my feet, wrapped my arms to my chest, and looked up at the stars. They shone scattered and gleaming, like salt grains on a frozen road, and I imagined myself stretching out to run my fingertips over them, rough crystals against a tarmac black. A car came, its lights sweeping over the thick, intertwined branches of hedgerows, the stripes of other tires made through the snow. It slowed as it approached the tight curve in the road in front of the church hall. I began to move toward it, cursing under my breath at my father for taking so long. But, once around the curve, the car sped up again and I was left to watch its lights swing around another bend and disappear from sight. I looked at my watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. My father had forgotten to pick me up.
Behind me, the lights in the church hall flickered off, and I heard Reverend Mullins humming “Silent Night” as he pulled the doors closed and pushed a key into the lock. For a moment, I considered asking him if I could use the telephone in the church hall to call my father, but I didn’t want to have to wait with him, trapped in some interminable conversation about joining the choir, visiting Lincoln Cathedral, or the benefit of prayer upon the tumultuous teenage soul. Besides, I had become very conscious of the bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label that I had stowed away in my coat pocket. I decided to walk the two miles home.
As I walked, the whiskey bottle banged so insistently against my thigh that it started to hurt, and when I’d got far enough from the church hall to no longer fear being bothered by the vicar, I pulled it out. There were about three inches of liquid left. For a moment, I considered drinking it down, wondering what it would feel like inside me, wondering if it might take away my misery and set me free in the steely cold night. Then I thought about