Junk - Melvin Burgess [74]
NO MORE HAND JOBS
NO MORE FOR ME-EE
NO MORE HAND JOBS
‘CAUSE NOW I’M FREE-EE…
We were all talking about how great it was to give up smack. I was watching, thinking, Who’s going to make it? Who’s going to make it?
NO MORE JUNKIES
NO MORE FOR ME-EE
NO MORE JUNKIES
NOW I’M FREE
*
It was dark when we got there. Griffin Cottage. When we got out of the car we stood for a bit on the grass.
The dark and the quiet were so intense. It was like standing on a hill in outer space. You couldn’t see anything but you could feel how it went on forever and ever all around you…
‘It must be as dark as this all the way to the next star,’ said Tar. Yeah. It was so dark the dark was like, filling it all up, as if it had been poured in. And there was nothing going on. No noise. If you held your breath there was nothing. That was so amazing after being in Bristol for all those years, because in Bristol you can always hear the cars buzzing away or the noise of people doing things. There was no one doing anything within twenty miles of here.
I thought, Tomorrow I’m going to be able to do anything. I think we all felt like that.
Inside was smaller than I remembered. This tiny sitting room and two bedrooms and the kitchen sort of tacked on the back. The toilet was an outside one. That part of Wales is like that – timeless. It was cold, it was colder inside than it was outside. There were a few logs left in the basket by the fire and me and Tar went out and got some more. We took it in turns chopping logs while the girls made some tea and got the stuff out of the car and tidied up a bit.
Every time we swung the axe – thup, into the wood – you could hear the echo come back a few seconds later.
I said, ‘It’s the mountains.’ We peered into the darkness. We shone the light out down the hill but we couldn’t see a thing. It was too far off.
I said, ‘They’re out there somewhere.’
He said, ‘Standing around watching us.’
I said, ‘Nah, they don’t take any notice of us.’
He said, ‘Do you think they’re friendly?’
I said, ‘Yeah, definitely friendly.’
Whole mountains without a light on them. There were stars out, it was quite a clear night but there was no moon. We turned off the lamp and stood on the wet grass waiting for our eyes to acclimatise. But it was so dark they never did. We used the gaps in the sky where there were no stars to try and work out where the mountains were, but we couldn’t really do it. Those mountains had really hidden themselves well.
‘What do you think of it?’ I said.
‘I could live here,’ he said.
I laughed. ‘You’d get bored. It used to drive me mad when I was a kid.’
‘No, no. I really love it here.’
I said, ‘Be honest, you didn’t think much of this idea, did you?’
We were standing next to each other. I could just make him out. This ghostly voice.
He said, ‘I didn’t think anyone really wanted to.’
I waited.
‘But I think now… maybe we can do it.’ I could feel him looking at me. It was funny – I couldn’t see a thing but I could feel him. ‘What about you?’ he asked. I laughed. ‘Oh, yeah. Well, we gotta, haven’t we? For Lils.’
Personally I was determined to have a real go at it. I had a little package in my pocket no one knew about, and I almost thought about throwing it away, but I didn’t want to muck things up. I’m lousy at that coming down bit. I’m all right after that but I do need something to let me come down slowly. You have to find the best way of going about it. That little packet was right for me.
We stood for a while breathing big long breaths of air. It was cold and pure, you could feel it falling down into your chest. You could feel it inside you, doing you good. Then we went in to light the fire.
We all had our little dab and a bit to drink that night – not much, a couple of cans of Special Brew, because the last thing you want when you’re coming down is to wake up with a hangover.