“Where?” he asked, stupidly. It was not what he wanted to know.
Fats stretched out on his back in his funeral suit, his feet toward the river. Wordlessly, Andrew stretched out beside him, in the opposite direction. They had slept like this, “top and tail,” when they had stayed overnight at each other’s houses as children. Andrew gazed up at the rocky ceiling, where the blue smoke hung, slowly furling, and waited to hear everything.
“I told Cubby and Tess I was at yours, so you know,” said Fats. He passed the joint into Andrew’s reaching fingers, then linked his long hands on his chest, and listened to himself telling. “Then I got the bus to the Fields. Met her outside Oddbins.”
“By Tesco’s?” asked Andrew. He did not know why he kept asking dumb questions.
“Yeah,” said Fats. “We went to the rec. There’s trees in the corner behind the public bogs. Nice and private. It was getting dark.”
Fats shifted position and Andrew handed back the joint.
“Getting in’s harder than I thought it would be,” said Fats, and Andrew was mesmerized, half inclined to laugh, afraid of missing every unvarnished detail Fats could give him. “She was wetter when I was fingering her.”
A giggle rose like trapped gas in Andrew’s chest, but was stifled there.
“Lot of pushing to get in properly. It’s tighter than I thought.”
Andrew saw a jet of smoke rise from the place where Fats’ head must be.
“I came in about ten seconds. It feels fucking great once you’re in.”
Andrew fought back laughter, in case there was more.
“I wore a johnny. It’d be better without.”
He pushed the joint back into Andrew’s hand. Andrew pulled on it, thinking. Harder to get in than you thought; over in ten seconds. It didn’t sound much; yet what wouldn’t he give? He imagined Gaia Bawden flat on her back for him and, without meaning to, let out a small groan, which Fats did not seem to hear. Lost in a fug of erotic images, pulling on the joint, Andrew lay with his erection on the patch of earth his body was warming and listened to the soft rush of the water a few feet from his head.
“What matters, Arf?” asked Fats, after a long, dreamy pause.
His head swimming pleasantly, Andrew answered, “Sex.”
“Yeah,” said Fats, delighted. “Fucking. That’s what matters. Propogun…propogating the species. Throw away the johnnies. Multiply.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew, laughing.
“And death,” said Fats. He had been taken aback by the reality of that coffin, and how little material lay between all the watching vultures and an actual corpse. He was not sorry that he had left before it disappeared into the ground. “Gotta be, hasn’t it? Death.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew, thinking of war and car crashes, and dying in blazes of speed and glory.
“Yeah,” said Fats. “Fucking and dying. That’s it, innit? Fucking and dying. That’s life.”
“Trying to get a fuck and trying not to die.”
“Or trying to die,” said Fats. “Some people. Risking it.”
“Yeah. Risking it.”
There was more silence, and their hiding place was cool and hazy.
“And music,” said Andrew quietly, watching the blue smoke hanging beneath the dark rock.
“Yeah,” said Fats, in the distance. “And music.”
The river rushed on past the Cubby Hole.
Fair Comment
7.33 Fair comment on a matter of public interest is not actionable.
Charles Arnold-Baker
Local Council Administration,
Seventh Edition
I
It rained on Barry Fairbrother’s grave. The ink blurred on the cards. Siobhan’s chunky sunflower head defied the pelting drops, but Mary’s lilies and freesias crumpled, then fell apart. The chrysanthemum oar darkened as it decayed. Rain swelled the river, made streams in the gutters and turned the steep roads into Pagford glossy and treacherous. The windows of the school bus were opaque with condensation; the hanging baskets in the Square became bedraggled, and Samantha Mollison, windscreen wipers on full tilt, suffered a minor collision in the car on the way home from work in the city.
A copy of the Yarvil and District Gazette stuck out of Mrs. Catherine Weedon’s door in Hope Street for three days, until it became sodden and illegible. Finally, social worker Kay Bawden tugged it out of the letterbox, peered in through the rusty flap and spotted the old lady spread-eagled at the foot of the stairs. A policeman helped break down the front door, and Mrs. Weedon was taken away in an ambulance to South West General.
Still the rain fell, forcing the sign painter who had been hired to rename the old shoe shop to postpone the job. It poured for days and into the nights, and the