zoo 2

We were huddled in the bedroom at the cottage, looking through old home movies and trying to keep warm. On the screen two small boys with long blonde hair, suntanned, and wearing nothing but faded jeans, walked through a field of poppies.

“Oh my god you’re wearing flares!”

I put down my glass of wine and began laughing.

Joel pushed the hair out of his eyes - he was concentrating on the projector;

“Piss off. Ben – are you going to pass that round eventually?”

“Sorry”

He'd been staring at the little flickering screen so intently; he’d forgotten he had the joint.

“Why do Americans use them?

I pointed at the crocodile clip.

Ben looked up.

“Because it’s almost pure grass. So they don’t burn their fingers.”

“Ok ….. let’s look at this one – oh shit! let’s not…”

Joel instantly took the film out again, but not before we’d seen his mother walking proudly through the garden with no top on.

We collapsed in giggles as he covered his head in embarrassment. I looked at Ben – he’d changed since he’d arrived – relaxed a little. He didn’t seem so hunched up anymore.

Later that night, after the big dinner round the table, we went and hid from the adults. Ben and his mum had gone home in their battered car and I was curious about him;

“Why’s he like that?”

“Like what? Wild you mean?”

“Yes”

“Oh…his parents…. and it’s round here too. If you’re different they kick the shit out of you at school. Same for me when Mum got ill and we had to come down here for a year – it was fucking horrible.”

“Is that why he kept walking out?”

I knew Ben had been expelled an impressive amount of times.

Joel nodded;

“I think he just got sick of it, and went into town instead – that’s where he started doing smack – he was really young – maybe fourteen”

“I didn’t know people did that in the country”

“It’s fucking everywhere here – off the base, like the grass – they get it flown in – and the ports. It comes here before London.”

A month or so later, I let the door slam behind me as I climbed up the stairs to Joel’s flat. I was feeling very pissed off and I needed advice. He was holding the front door open when I got to the top and I followed him into his bedroom. I pulled off my wet jacket, threw my bag onto the floor with a thud, and sat down opposite him on one of the beds.

“Ben phoned me again”

I tried to rub some of the rain out of my hair.

Joel sighed,

“Well why don’t you say yes?”

“Because I don’t want to go out with him – obviously! I just wish he’d stop phoning me.”

“.. if you say yes he will.”

“Yeah, but if I say yes, I’ll have to go out with him and I don’t fancy him. Have you got a light?”

Joel threw the matches over and I caught them.

“He’s really nice – he’s straight now”

Since he’d got to London a week or so earlier, Ben had been phoning me every other day; Joel had given him my number - he was always trying to fix things up for people.

“He’s had a really shit time. I think you should say yes. Be kind. Go on… don’t you think she should?”

He turned to T. who’d come back from the newsagent’s across the road.

T. shrugged,

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like him”

I was getting impatient with both of them.

Joel tried again:

“But he really likes you”

T. stopped rummaging in the drawer for the stash tin and turned around;

“Tell him to fuck off then”

“Oh but I can’t! I’m shit at stuff like that”

“I think you should try”

“Yeah – say yes – it’s only one day. Then he’ll stop asking”

They both seemed to think it was the best idea. I considered it.

“I could suggest somewhere really crap – put him off…would it work?”

“Oh yes absolutely”

“Let’s think of somewhere really shit she could take him”

“Umm – the zoo?”

We were laughing now; I looked at them,

“Oh god it would be freezing – that would be horrible – would it do the trick? D’you really think so?”

I still wasn’t sure about it at all. T put another compilation tape into the cassette player and began to stick some skins together to make a joint. They pushed their plan; I should phone Ben and suggest the zoo. It was February – it couldn’t fail. T. said he was sure everything would work seamlessly, and Joel agreed. We’d do two hours at the zoo and then he’d stop asking. Easy! Still dubious, I went over and picked up the red phone.

Standing in Camden Town tube a few days later, I was having second thoughts again – it was alright for the others to say it would be ok - they didn’t actually have to do it. I watched the steady drizzle, and the afternoon shoppers hurrying along the wet, dirty pavement, their heads bent to avoid the wind. I looked at the bits of cabbage leaves that had blown into the gutter from the market across the road, pulled my jacket tighter around me, and hoped it would be over soon.

When I saw Ben coming I wondered if he was up to it. He was wearing a woman’s thin black leather coat from the sixties and his long lank hair hung straight down over his face, almost completely covering his eyes. I wasn’t sure if he really had given up smack - he didn’t look as if he had, to be honest. He was very thin and shivering even more than me.

“Alright?”

“Hi. We have to go this way. Cold isn’t it? You ok?”

“Fine, fine”

He turned up his collar as we went out of the station, but it can’t really have helped much.

We began the tedious walk towards Regents Park and the wind got stronger. As we reached the traffic lights and crossed over to the black iron railings that bordered the gardens, the rain began in earnest, and by the time we got to the entrance to the zoo we were both soaked through and exhausted. I looked at Ben and felt guilty. His face was white and he didn’t look very well at all. The wet leather hung loosely on his thin body and he kind of drooped. We didn’t say much – the traffic noise made it pointless.

In the end we didn’t spend more than an hour or so there. We hardly saw any animals – they were mostly hiding from the weather, and the few we did see looked as miserable as I think we both felt – a handful of dejected looking penguins jumping in and out of their pool, and some bedraggled vultures huddled in the far corner of their cage. The rain made everything smell worse than normal.

We sheltered in the snake house for a bit, looking for the most venomous one. Ben watched the innocuous looking little brown snake and I could see the rain dripping off his hair and down the back of his coat; I felt sorry for him.

“Perhaps we could smash the window and you could take it back to Suffolk when you go?”

He gave a laugh,

“Got a brick?”

We went and stood in the tunnel and had another cigarette. Ben’s teeth were chattering with cold, so I pretended to notice the nearby exit for the first time, and suggested we take advantage of it. He agreed, and we began the long walk back. It had stopped raining, but it wasn’t any nicer. The rush hour had begun, and the traffic was even heavier.

By the time I watched him disappear from view back into the tube, my hands had gone numb with cold and I felt dreadfully guilty. It might have done the trick – I thought it probably had – but I wished I had just said no after all. I went slowly off to find a bus stop so I could tell the others how it had gone.