The Teenagers (1/2)

There is little to do for the children of the village. There are no shops except for the Post Office and Londis. The nearest town is seven miles away, and the buses come once every three hours, if they come at all. There is the Village Hall and there is recreation ground. There are lots of trees. As the years go by, you can see the children passing through it. At first they come out of St. Peter’s, and they are babies, really, carrying their work satchels and holding their mothers’ hands, but the next time you see them they are playing bike-tig on Castle Hill Road or Shirley Drive, and the mothers have gone. Already they are forming into groups: the skaters, the footballers, the tough kids, and you see them attempting kickflips in baggy jeans, long-passing across the empty rec, or kicking lampposts until the lights flicker and die. Then, only a few years later, they go out into the world – Alton is not a place for the young – and you never see them again. Some years ago, two of them were walking down Knight Lane. The sun was low over the houses and they were deep in conversation.

‘I just want to get away from here,’ one of them was saying, and this was Wolff. He was sixteen, dark and well-proportioned, and looked like Tom Cruise gone only slightly wrong. He wore a baggy beanie hat and high-tops, and a sleeveless vest advertising a Chinese beer. ‘Nothing happens, mate. I mean, I’m sure it’s fucking great if you’re sixty – I want to live here when I’m fucking sixty – but if you’re sixteen, mate…’

'I know,’ said the other one, and this was Finney. He was younger but taller, and dressed all in sports gear, from a Reebok running top to Umbro astroturfs. He had the sad, starved look of the fifteen-year-old boy, and his hair was cropped and blond. ‘Half the battle of village life,’ he said, ‘is getting out of the village.’ It was something one of Finney’s neighbours had said to them, and it struck them both as bitterly true.

They came to the top of Horse Road, and without looking at each other or signalling, started running down it.

*

They were best friends, and had been for years. That summer they had done everything together. They had watched horror movies in the daytime at Wolff’s house. They had laid each other off for shots at the rec, before sitting on the swings to talk. They had half-made a short film in which Wolff played a gangster, and gave a monologue from the witness protection programme about his old life of crime (‘If only I hadn’t whacked Carbone’). They had seen the terrifying remake of The Omen on the day it came out, 06.06.06, at the Odeon in Hanley. They had watched the World Cup with bottles of beer, which Wolff’s dad now allowed them to have. They had biked down to the rope swing with towels around shoulders, and jumped into the refreshing water of Dimmingsdale lake. But more than any of these things, they had run, for hundreds of miles.

Wolff was unquestionably the leader, and this was only partly to do with age. He also had better ‘people skills,’ it had long been agreed. It would have been unusual for them to hang out at Finney’s house, or for Finney to even call for Wolff, and Wolff did most of the talking when they were together. Finney was better at football and school work, and around other people his loyalty sometimes wavered and he bullied Wolff for being thick, but neither ever held a grudge. Wolff’s greatest strength, Finney sometimes thought, was that he was 100% himself, whereas Finney was afraid of being whatever was the taboo was. At various times growing up, Finney thought, ‘I hope I don’t become a serial killer,’ and, ‘I hope I’m not a paedophile,’ and, ‘I hope I don’t fancy Wolff.’ Wolff would never have thought these things: he was just Wolff, and why question it?

*

They ran loosely, shaking out their legs and enjoying the breeze on their bodies. They reached the bottom of Horse Road, and some kids were standing around outside the youth hostel over the wall. These were city kids, brought to the countryside on some initiative, and Finney and Wolff didn’t know them. To show they weren’t pussies, they returned the stares of the boys. They were mostly younger, but two girls of around their own age stood apart, leaning on the building and watching as they passed.

‘Worth a squirt,’ said Wolff.

'Worth a squirt,’ agreed Finney, and they turned left onto Red Road, settling into panting silence and exchanging only the occasional breathed grunt of ‘Car.’

The two girls leaned back against the building and sighed. They had envisaged alcohol and boys; what they had got was climbing-walls and orienteering. They had been here for one day, and already they were regretting it. Views – what was the big deal about them? At the end of the day, if you were sad enough to like this boring shit, you could come back when you were about to die. But fuck wasting your time here when you were young and alive.

The one on the left took a cigarette from her pocket, and this was Lauren. ‘Don’t even give me that look,’ she said to the minder who had tut-tutted in her direction. She was dark, compact, and pretty, and wore a black vest-top with cream-coloured jeans. The girl on the right was taller and less symmetrical, and this was Natalie. She wore a baggy red hoodie (Class of ‘06), and had the slight ungainliness of some fifteen-year-old girls.

'I’m not taking this shit any longer,’ said Lauren in a lower voice. ‘What the fuck are we still doing here?’

‘No idea,’ said Natalie.

‘Seriously, mate: fuck it. Let’s just run away.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah. We’ll get someone to buy us booze from the shop. Mate, we can just go and get wasted in those woods.’ And as they talked on their idea gained momentum, until any attempts to curb it might have failed anyway, had they been made.

*

They, too, were best friends, and that summer they had done everything together. They had sunbathed in Natalie’s garden, putting cucumber slices over their eyes. They had searched Natalie’s mum’s computer for the sickest porns they could find (bestiality, necrophilia). They had taken up knitting, and abandoned it because they couldn’t stop laughing, and because they could see how much work it would take to get good. They had watched the boring remake of The Omen on the day it came out, 06.06.06, at the Odeon in Hanley. They had watched random bits of the World Cup, discussing which players they would shag. They had sat on the swings and smoked cigarettes, talking about life and when it might come for them. A recurring topic had been how bored they were.

Lauren was unchallengeably the leader. It was long agreed that she was ‘a character,’ and that she wouldn’t have to worry about making her way in the world because girls like her always landed on their feet. She had an effortless knack for English: read none of the books, wrote her essays on the bus to school, and got some of the highest marks in the year. She had a comic vision that was unmistakeably hers. It involved the snazzifying of people’s names, and she was gifted at converting her life into anecdotes. Natalie simply didn’t feel things with the same heat – never saw why things were as brilliant or as awful as her friend made out. She constantly worried that she had a big forehead, that she was ugly in profile, that her voice made people shiver. Lauren would never have worried like that. In any given case, Lauren was right, and it was the world that was wrong.

*

They made their way up Horse Road, and no one had noticed them leave. Lauren walked a little ahead of Natalie – it was always the way: a strange competition in her – and did an impression of the camp leader, a fat man who rolled Coke cans over his face when he was hot. It was strikingly well-observed and cruel, and the girls both laughed, giddy on freedom.

'I love you, Natalie!’ said Lauren. ‘You’re my absolute bezzie, you know!’

‘I love you, too,’ said Natalie.

‘Let’s get fucking wasted!’ said Lauren. ‘Let’s get absolutely fucking smashed, you beauty!’

Outside Londis they found a man in a suit to go in for them, and they stood outside by the road. Some BMX kids were hanging about, and after a while the leader of them spoke. He wore a baggy hoodie and bulky Vans trainers. His earlobes were two gaping cylinders. He gripped his handlebars and said, ‘So where’s the party, then, eh?’

'We're getting wrecked in the woods,’ said Lauren.

‘Rad,’ he said. ‘Might see you down there.'

‘Maybe baby,’ said Lauren, and then the man in the suit came out with the cigarettes and Lambrini, and the girls were away, laughing into the night.

***

Now the sun was low over the village, and the last of the Alton Towers staff had their headlights on. Living-room windows glowed in the dusk, the only movement from the TV screens within, and soon the curtains would be drawn. The BMX kids sat outside Londis, and they were Sam Barcham and James Beattie, Olivia Boulton and Elsa Forrester. They were just now emerging from years of oppression by the chavs who leave school at sixteen, and their group was newly-formed and uncertain.

‘Let’s fucking do this,’ said Barch. There were noises of enthusiasm, and soon a text had been written and sent-to-multiple. The village was silent as they waited for the next customer. They had been waiting for months, and they finally knew what it had been for.

Three-hundred yards away, in the Village Hall car park, a phone vibrated in an accelerating car. The girl in the passenger seat held it up, and the driver yanked on the handbrake and steered rapidly right, and this was Harvey. He wore a polo-shirt with the collar up, and inside it was a gold chain. There were tramlines on the sides of his head. When the car was stationary he turned Radio 1 down, read the text, and said, ‘Fuck me – there’s a party in the woods tonight.’

'Whereabouts?’ said the girl, Gemma Nash. Her hair was tightly tied behind her head, and like Thomas she wore blue Adidas trackies.

‘Fuck knows,’ said Harvey, turning out of the empty car park. ‘Let’s have a ponder, eh?’

*

Scraps of daylight were merging with shadows as Finney and Wolff ran along Red Road. They reached The Rambler’s Retreat in Dimmingsdale and Wolff staggered to a halt, his hands on his knees, panting. 'Fuck it, mate,’ he said. ‘Let's just go for a walk.'

'Sound,' said Finney.

As they walked on towards Oakamoor, Wolff said, ‘It’s like, when you’re a kid, you just kind of assume that everything means something. But then you grow up and it’s like, “Sixth-form. A-levels. Uni. Get a job. Get married. Have kids. Retire. And die.” Well no. I want more than that, mate. I want to be a radio presenter. I want to be a wrestler. I want –’ he searched for the phrase and came up with a quote from Al Pacino in Scarface – ‘the world, Chico, and everything in it.’

‘There’s not much in life,’ said Finney.

‘Yeah, cheers for that, Sigmund.’

‘It’s all right.’

*

The Nissan Micra flew down Limekiln Lane, and it was rattling again with the bass of dance music. Harvey and Gemma were not going out: it was more that they were stuck with each other. Their families lived next door and holidayed together, and as babies the two of them had bathed in the same tub. Other friends came and went, but they remained each other's constants.

They drove around for fifteen minutes, speeding between junctions, and finally they saw some boys they knew, riding down Malthouse Road and carrying boxes of beer. Harvey slowed, smooth but rapid, and wound down the window as the boys approached.

‘What’s this about a party?’ he called to the one in front, and it was Jase Mould. He was big and bear-like, and wore skinny jeans and a 2-for-£10 Topman t-shirt, like the others. Also like the others, he had a long, slanting fringe that was straighter than the rest of his hair. He shook it away from his eyes now and said, ‘Big party down Dimmingsdale woods, Harv. You coming?’

'Might be, kid. You?’

'What’s it look like?’ laughed Jase, holding up the beer.      

Harvey ignored this. ‘Long time no speak, Jase lad.’

‘I know, yeah. J’still do kickboxing?’

‘Do I fuck, kid. You?’

‘Nah, gave it up, mate.’ There was a silence, and then Jase said, ‘Right – best be off. Gimme your number and I’ll text you if we find it first.’ And Harvey gave Jase his number, before speeding off into the night.

‘I used to be best friends with him,’ said Jase, as they rolled down the slope. ‘Honestly.’

*