Bright Stars Read online

  ‘As long as you’re all right, Bex,’ he blethered. ‘And the fox gets to live another day.’

  She smiled weakly and let him lead her to the car, limping and shivering.

  ‘I’ve done something good,’ Tommo said. ‘I didn’t know I could do that.’

  We piled in the car, bloodied and weary. I turned on the engine and revved up, pulled away, held my dignity together. We were off, turning the corner, the worst of it over, but then I stalled.

  ‘Never mind, mate,’ Bob said. He gave me a reassuring smile and I wanted to punch his teeth out.

  Rib

  I was between lectures, didn’t want to trudge back to my room where I’d only brood over recent events: the hunt and the library book. When I confronted Tommo about it (the library book, not the hunt), he said he’d picked it up ‘by mistake’. He said he’d return it to the library. He said he’d pay the fine.

  I forked out for a mug of tea in the Nelson Mandela coffee bar, an extravagance, as money was tight. My grant had to last the term as there’d be no more. Dad was struggling, Edward told me. The roof was leaking and there was no such thing as savings for a rainy day, not since they’d stopped his overtime. And he’d hinted at something else too, some debt, but I didn’t quite work it out and didn’t ask as my head was already full to bursting.

  Tommo didn’t have to think about money, his dad was minted; he could splash it around on clothes and records and massive library fines. He even had a portable television in his room and a video recorder. He was the only person I knew with a video recorder – anywhere, let alone university. And there I was worrying over a cup of tea.

  That was when I saw Christie for the first time. In the coffee bar. She was sitting on her own at a table and she was coughing. I soon realised that she was actually choking, her cheeks flushed and her eyes watering. It was clear no one was going to help, they were all busy or embarrassed or in their own hungover world. I knew all about the Bystander Effect – I had a Higher in Psychology – so I knew it was up to one individual to do something or nothing would be done until it was too late. So I went over and gave her a pat on the back. Only it wasn’t hard enough, I’d held back, not wanting to appear like a violent mad man. Christie grabbed my arm with both hands and looked pleadingly into my eyes. I took this as a sign to try again, only this time with more force. So I walloped her. A sultana flew out of her mouth and hit the far wall, sliding down it like a swatted fly. But then she screamed in pain. Evidently, as I’d walloped her, the force had sent her forward with some momentum so that she whacked into the table where she’d been sitting drinking a Pepsi.

  ‘It’s all right. You’re all right,’ I said. ‘Don’t panic.’ Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army.

  In between gasps of air, she managed to breathe the terrible words: ‘I think my rib’s cracked.’

  I laughed.

  ‘My rib’s cracked… and… you’re laughing?’

  She was joking. Had to be. I wasn’t that strong. I was the weakling of the family. The lightweight girly swot. But then I noticed how there was no colour to her cheeks and she was still struggling for breath and it was clear that she was definitely hurting badly and that this wasn’t funny at all.

  ‘Oh my God, no, really?’

  ‘I’ve done it before… skiing…’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you wanted me to hit you hard.’

  By this point there was a wee crowd gathered, finally the rest of the customers taking an interest in the beautiful blonde woman getting beat up by the Scottish weed.

  ‘Everything all right here?’ asked the manager, a spaced-out relic of a former era, an ex-student who’d never managed to leave.

  ‘What does it look like, asshole?’ Christie was quite abrupt when she wanted to be, for a Canadian – said it came from her American mother. Her dad was a big old softie, or so she said. I didn’t believed that. Though I never met him, not even at the court case.

  I somehow got her to the Infirmary in town, by taxi, where they confirmed a cracked rib. The staff eyed me with some suspicion. Her injury, my black eye. Was I her boyfriend? (No.) Had we had an argument? (No.) Had I been drinking? (At two o’clock in the afternoon? I don’t think so. No.)

  They told me to wait outside the cubicle while they asked Christie how she’d sustained her injury, even though they’d already been through that with me. She said loudly and clearly for the whole casualty department to hear: ‘I am not a victim of domestic violence. Now will you fix me up with some drugs and let me get the hell out of here.’

  So they did. They fixed her up with some drugs and they let her get the hell out of there.

  For now, I had a good excuse to keep on seeing her. While she was incapacitated, I took it on myself to be at her beck and call. I ran errands for her, got her messages. Every day for the next week I’d drop by her campus room, as messy as my brothers’ rooms all put together, bearing presents of pies – steak and tatty being a favourite – and chocolate that was so much better than the crap we call chocolate at home.

  One day she said: ‘You don’t have to keep bringing me gifts, Cameron. Don’t feel bad about my rib. You did stop me from choking, remember.’

  ‘It’s no problem,’ I said. ‘I like coming round here.’

  ‘I’m feeling much better now so I can take care of myself.’

  ‘Of course, I’m sorry,’ I muttered, not sure what either of us was saying.

  ‘Listen, Cameron. Let’s get something straight. Nothing is going to happen between us.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Sorry, I just thought I should get that out in the open, then we can be friends.’

  ‘That’s what I want. I want to be friends. That’s all. You’re way, way out of this wee Scot’s league. As my brothers would say, you’re Liverpool, I’m Stenhousemuir.’

  She looked at me questioningly so I just carried on and I told her.

  ‘Besides which, I like someone else.’

  ‘You do?’

  I nod.

  ‘Then she’s a lucky girl.’

  So we were friends. I was a safe pair of hands. The lads on my floor couldn’t believe my luck, Christie drifting in and out of my room as if it were normal. I was a gay best friend, only without the gay bit.

  ‘You got the golden ticket,’ Jim from Hull said. And his Weeble girlfriend nearly flattened him, nearly fell over in the process.* I didn’t put him right. He could make up his own filthy mind.

  That afternoon changed my life. The coffee bar, the wheezing and gasping, the trip to the Infirmary, spending that time with Christie in unplanned circumstances. I was drawn to her otherness. She was so sure of herself. Although I rescued her from the raisin – hardly a pack of braying hounds, but nevertheless life-threatening – it was more like she’d rescued me from the depths of something I couldn’t even describe. But I didn’t know if she’d be strong enough to keep me from falling back in. That was down to me.

  The hunt, the library book, Bex. Tommo always got what he wanted. Maybe he would get his hands on Christie. Maybe that way Bex would be free to choose me.

  _________________________

  *But she didn’t fall over because, aye, you know what I’m going to say but I’m going to say it anyway: Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.

  Shards

  When Thursday came around, the three of us – Tommo, Bex and I – planned to go into town to the Moghuls, then on to the Sugarhouse. Curry followed by dancing. Bex persuaded me. ‘Go on, it’ll be fun.’ I didn’t feel so sure but gave in pretty quickly.

  Bex called round, waited on my bed while I sorted myself out, changing my sweater twice and searching for my room key that wasn’t in its usual place. I told her about the rib incident. How guilty I felt putting Christie out of action, what with her being an exercise junkie. So Bex suggested Christie come along.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s got a cracked rib.’

 
She leant down, showed me her bald patch with the scab and stitches. ‘I’ve got a cracked head. I win.’

  I couldn’t argue. I should’ve argued. But no. We called round for Tommo and then on to Bowland, to Christie’s room.

  ‘So how do you know this Yank?’

  ‘She’s Canadian and don’t be so flipping racist,’ Bex reprimanded Tommo.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She’s the one whose rib I cracked.’ I told him the story.

  Tommo started laughing, a wild cackling, thrashing his arms around, that way of his that made you both worried and annoyed. He eventually took a deep breath and calmed himself. ‘And now we’re taking her into a provincial northern mill town for a curry.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Bex was getting irritated. ‘We’re extending the hand of friendship. Do you have a problem with that?’

  ‘No. No problem with that.’ And then he sniggered and she whacked him in the stomach, hard enough to make him stop.

  Christie answered the door, holding her hand oddly in front of her, protecting herself from further injury. She looked amazing – and slightly terrifying – in her tight blue jeans and a sports top. Baseball or something.

  ‘We’re taking you out,’ I said, in charge. ‘An Indian restaurant in town followed by the Sugarhouse.’

  ‘What like a gingerbread house?’

  ‘It’s the students’ union club,’ Bex explained. ‘In an old warehouse. It used to hold sugar. You know, way back, in Lancaster’s shameful past.’

  ‘Shameful?’

  ‘Slavery.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right. That’s shameful, for sure.’

  We were waiting in the corridor, this posse, and Christie was in the doorway of her room, standing her ground. She looked Bex and Tommo up and down. ‘Are you gonna introduce me to these guys, Cameron?’

  ‘Your room’s a pit,’ Tommo cut in, off piste as usual, the attention span of a puppy, peering over Christie’s shoulder.

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ She somehow made herself wider, to stop him being nosey, like she had something to hide. ‘You must be the asshole I heard all about.’

  Tommo looked at me.

  I shrugged. ‘I didn’t actually use those words.’

  ‘Anyways, I’ve never had an Indian meal, so let’s do it.’

  ‘Never had a curry?’ Bex was shocked. ‘How come?’

  ‘We don’t really have them where I come from. We’re all burgers and beaver tails.’

  ‘Really?’ we said in unison.

  ‘No, not really. We have moose and bear as well.’

  We headed into town, wincing along with Christie as the bus bounced over potholes and swayed round corners, swapping general details, hometowns, subjects, families. Christie was from Niagara-on-the-Lake. Her parents owned vineyards.

  ‘I’ve never had Canadian wine,’ Tommo said.

  ‘That’s cos we keep it all to ourselves.’

  ‘Nice one.’ Tommo laughed. ‘And hey, Niagara… that must be pretty cool.’

  ‘It’s just water falling off a rock.’

  Tommo laughed some more. Bex looked put out, fiddled with her hair.

  Once seated in the restaurant, already rowdy with students filling their stomachs for the night ahead, we tried to explain the menu to Christie as she couldn’t make much sense of it. ‘All I know is I want a beer. And not one of those warm ones.’

  ‘We call it lager,’ Tommo drawled and I could see it grating on Bex’s nerves, the way Tommo was acting around Christie.

  ‘I know you call it lager but that’s just weird.’

  ‘Have a vindaloo,’ said Tommo, the evil bastard.

  ‘No, Christie,’ I said. ‘Ignore him. Go for a chicken korma. Ease yourself into this and we’ll harden you up as the year goes on.’

  As the year goes on. It was me saying those words – words that resonated with a sense of permanence in a temporary world – that somehow bonded us together. But at that moment, of course, we had no idea how those bonds would be tested.

  Tommo was already a devotee of Thursday nights at the Sugarhouse. Bands, indie music, cool kids. And now me.

  Tommo wanted to be a rock star. He played the guitar. He sang (in his own inimitable way). He was a performer. So far it had only been in my room – the singing, the guitar playing, the performing – but he had ambitions. He was going to get a band together.

  So while Tommo planned to be a star, I was but a moon reflected in his brightness. Tommo was trying to sort me out. Despite marching me to the barber’s and Burton’s, I still managed to look like a sixth-former, but he was warming to my company nevertheless. I had no pretensions, he told me, and where he came from, he wasn’t used to that.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ I’d asked him one day in the Assembly Rooms, checking out vintage jeans. (You paid a premium for the most ripped and faded. I said I’d stick with my Lee Cooper’s.)

  ‘I come from Middle Narnia,’ Tommo said. ‘I mean Middle England. Well, actually Hampstead to be more specific.’

  ‘I’ve heard of Hampstead. That’s posh, isn’t it?’

  ‘Almost as posh as Edinburgh.’

  ‘But I don’t come from the posh bit of Edinburgh.’ He waited for me to go on. ‘I mean everywhere has its posh bits and its crap bits and its somewhere-in-between bits. The somewhere-in-between bit of Edinburgh is where I come from.’

  He’d laughed and said, ‘I always knew you were suburban.’

  I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant but it felt like an insult. So I stuck up for my home. ‘It is a capital city, you know. Like London. Only stronger.’

  ‘Stronger?’

  ‘Well, Edinburgh was never an outpost of the Roman Empire, was it?’

  He didn’t look convinced.

  And now we were in the Sugarhouse, in the quiet room as Christie didn’t want to get shoved around in the crush of the bar and the dance floor. She and Bex were talking about Christie’s passion: cheerleading. Bex was on at her, her Feminist radar alert and glowing, which Christie pushed aside saying cheerleading was about acrobatics and fitness and courage. Bex wasn’t so sure. They were obviously wary of each other.

  ‘Aren’t you going to watch the band?’ Bex asked Tommo.

  ‘Nah, they’re crap. Drummer’s all right though.’ He looked pensive. Or was that drunk. ‘Bassist’s not bad either but they need a decent frontman.’ He coughed. ‘Or front woman.’ He mimed breasts for some reason, as if we didn’t understand what a woman was. Bex glowered and he continued quickly. ‘Fergal Sharkey. Lemmy. Bob Geldof.’ A pause. ‘Debbie Harry. Chrissie Hynde. They might not have the best voices, but they all have energy. This bloke needs to lie down on a chaise longue and have smelling salts administered. He’d be far better off singing chamber music in a cathedral.’

  ‘You’d be better off reading Spare Rib,’ Bex said.

  Tommo changed his mind about the band. Decided they were worth seeing after all. Decided to take Bex with him. He grabbed her by the hand. ‘Come on, let’s do some moshing.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, trying not to sound too keen but not resisting. ‘You coming?’ She looked at us, Christie and me, didn’t wait for an answer, let herself be pulled along by a maniac fuelled with curry and lager and music and lust for her, my friend, Bex.

  ‘You go too, Cameron,’ Christie said. ‘I’m okay, sitting it out here, assimilating all this English culture.’

  ‘I’m Scottish so it’s awful strange for me too.’

  And she laughed. And I was pleased that I had made her laugh. But I said I’d go and watch the band nonetheless. I wasn’t a complete square. I liked bands. I liked Aztec Camera and The Skids and of course I liked Big Country who were hugely under-rated. I’d watch this band for a few minutes, see if they were any good. The Shards they were called. She said, go, just go, and there was a cluster of lads hanging around waiting for my departure, including Jim from Hull with the Black Sabbath T-shirt, though tonight he had pushed out the boat and was wearing a Motorhe
ad one.

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  She raised her eyebrows.

  So I went.

  It was loud and hot in there. I hovered on one side, towards the back, leaning against a pillar, watching Bex dance. She was wearing her usual black mini, a Housemartins T-shirt, monkey boots. Where had she learnt to move like that? Did they have clubs in Devon? Wasn’t it all farms and cows and caravans? I’d asked her that at the ball, joking, and she’d come back with, ‘Yeah and we all marry our cousins and have six fingers on each hand.’ And those big eyes with the spider-leg lashes had flashed at me, catching the lights and sparkling, but she’d given me a smile that made my heart shout.

  And now here I was, a few weeks later, leaning against a pillar, on my own, my head banging in time to the bass, my lungs filled with smoke so I could hardly breathe, like I was too close to a bonfire, Bex out there on the packed dance floor, contained but separate, leaping up and down, shaking her head so her hair was everywhere, Tommo flailing around her.

  I watched Bex. I watched Tommo. I watched Bex and Tommo orbiting each other like stars. I watched.

  Filofax

  Since the hunt, something had changed between Bex and Tommo, some kind of respect and understanding. There was this friction between them but friction makes things move and it moved their relationship to another place, where I couldn’t follow. Maybe it was because they both had a passion. Bex’s commitment to her causes motivated Tommo to commit to his music. He was fired up, writing songs, practising every waking hour. And now he was holding auditions.

  He’d commandeered a room in the music department, put an advert in SCAN, the student paper, and spent a fortune photocopying flyers in the library which I helped him plaster around the college JCRs and on the concrete pillars of the North and South Spines.

  We waited now, Tommo sitting on a table with his guitar, early for once, riffing and tuning, Bex and me playing cards though she was distracted by Tommo. I began to wonder if they had done it. The deed. The nasty, as Christie called it. They were definitely an item, even if they hadn’t named it as such. You don’t have to name something for it to exist.