The Vale of Health. part 1

“Joel are you sure you ought to be drinking?”

“Drinking, yes – always a good idea”

“I mean with glandular fever”

“”Oh – well I think it just makes you pissed faster – that can’t be a bad thing can it”

I looked at Joel as we stumbled across the muddy heath, clutching the carrier bag, which contained two of the bottles of wine that we’d liberated from his brother’s flat. The other one was in his hand, open, and we were sharing it as we walked across to Penny’s.

He’d been ill for a couple of months at least. It had taken ages for them to find out what was wrong. People had started saying nasty things to him about buckling down and getting on with his life, and I think it must have got to him a bit. The doctors had kept on saying there was nothing really wrong for a while, and then I remembered the afternoon I’d gone over to his flat, and he’d leapt at me as I came through the door, folding me in a fierce hug, then dragging me around the room in a clumsy dance. It’d taken a while to make him stop for a second to let me in on the secret of what we were celebrating.

“Good news or bad news first?”

“Just tell me”

“Ok – the good news – I’m not mad; I was beginning to worry. Bad news; I’ve got glandular fever”

He’d had to give up his job, which was really sad because he’d enjoyed it so much, but he was never down for long. When he felt well enough, he’d take driving lessons, and I often bunked off college to come and spend time with him so he wouldn’t be lonely. My attempts to be a serious hard working student had already begun to fade away and it was so much nicer to be with Joel.

We never did much, just sat around laughing and teasing each other and thinking up schemes for the future. Once his sore throat was better, he simply got tired quite often, but that wasn’t such a big deal – he just had to rest. It wouldn’t be long before the spring and he was bound to be well by then. We made all sorts of plans for it, Joe had an idea for a film he wanted to make, and he was thinking of applying to a film school in Poland after that, and then of course, we would probably get our flat soon too. We’d been on the waiting list for a while so it couldn’t be much longer.

It was funny how he seemed to have grown even taller since he’d got ill. In his black leather coat he looked like a spider – it was a woman’s coat from the sixties, and his arms stuck out about a foot after the sleeves ended. You could see his hands were all red with cold. I shivered and wrapped my thin jacket around me, but it didn’t do much good. The wind was fierce and the jacket was never very warm to start with. It looked good though, and obviously, that was the important part.

Joel rubbed his face.

“The wind makes my spots hurt”

I sympathised; of all the days to have spots, the one where your friends were playing Dingwalls and you were going to see them was definitely not the best. I was so excited about it – Zach and T. – at a proper venue. We were all going – loads of us, and we were meeting up at Penny’s first.

Suddenly my heel twisted in the mud and I clutched onto Joel’s arm to steady myself

“Fuck fuck fucking bastard heath!”

I looked down to see if the heel had broken, but it was ok, and I gritted my teeth and carried on – it couldn’t be much further now.

It wasn’t long before we were within sight of Penny’s flat. It was in the Vale of Health, which was pretty ironic since Penny probably hadn’t cleaned it since her dad had converted the basement of his house into somewhere for her and Will to be independent. It was still nice though; if you ignored the shit everywhere, and never ate anything you were offered.

We went there quite a lot after an evening drinking our way around Hampstead village – it was a warm and comfortable place to sit up all night on sulphate, solving the problems of the universe and dislocating our jaws with chewing gum in the process. You just had to make sure you kept your shoes on the whole time, because the floor was always sticky underfoot.

As we started down the slope to the little row of houses, it began to rain almost horizontally, because of the wind, and I tried vainly to cover myself up a bit more.

“What time are they on tonight?” I had to shout to make myself heard

“Eight I think” Joel shouted back

I fished my broken watch out of my bag to see what the time was – good! It was early enough for me to be able be to dry off and put more makeup on before getting there. It had been a close call, getting back to London in time. We’d been at the cottage in the country and most of them had been staying on so it had been hard getting a lift back.

In the end we’d had to tag along with some woman who’d been going back early for a meeting and actually, she hadn’t been very nice to us. She’d got all upset at one point when a tyre had gone flat just outside Bury St Edmunds and we’d stayed sitting in the back while she got out and tried to fix it.

She’d made a few cutting remarks to us about not helping; Joel had gone red then, and got out, although he knew nothing about punctures; but even that hadn’t seemed to make her happy, especially not after he’d made the joke about the savage wolfhounds who belonged to the mad Duke, and roamed the estate we were driving through. It had been a long silent drive back after that.

There’d been quite a big crowd at the cottage – almost the whole production team from some film David was about to start in Australia, and she’d been about the most unpleasant of them all – just our luck.

His jolly secretary had been there – she was really nice, and her boyfriend who was a cameraman, and someone else I hadn’t met before – he did other stuff as well as being in the film business – he’d managed some band. I couldn’t remember their name for the moment – I was a little bit drunk already – but they were pretty cool – I could remember that much, and he’d even organised a disastrous punk tour to the States, which had ended in some great drama. Also, he was French and quite good-looking despite his age.

I dried the watch on my jeans before putting it back, and I felt my ring slip almost off my finger. Bugger! It was always doing that. Good thing it hadn’t come completely off or I’d never have found it in the dark.

We’d come to the slipperiest bit now, so I put my arm through Joel’s – we were both slightly unsteady, and finally, after a few stumbles, we waited, wet and shivering, on Penny’s doorstep while Joe rang the bell.