It was back in ’95 when his summers were still long and Ben Gordon was out on the ledge, 2,000 feet above the city.
The small iron buttress extended horizontally twelve feet out from the peak of the Stivyakino TV Tower. He had walked the five-inch-wide beam to the very edge. The wind was fierce, and he could barely hear the cheers of the boys and girls a few feet behind him, standing on the platform at the top of the tower. Three before him had done the dare. They had walked out on the beam and surveyed the city below. They had turned around and walked back. It was so high. So high. Ben Gordon had done the easy part. He was out there. Now he had to maintain balance and turn around on that five-inch-wide beam. He looked out at the city. He couldn’t see much detail. He was too high, the city too vast, too sprawling. It looked like the dull grey carpet in his ageing grandmother’s house. That grey carpet with the specks and stains collected over years of neglect. Ben Gordon was 14, his summers were still long and he had no intention of dying. Not now, not with Ava Munro watching. But he couldn’t stay out there forever. Eventually he would have to turn around… but the wind was so strong and the beam was so high. So high.
“You gotta do something, right?” he whispered to himself as he slowly lifted his foot to turn around.
*
The real exams were a year away and nothing much happened to Ben. His weight was a problem, but he hid it well under over-sized shirts. He rarely took his blazer off, despite the sweltering weather and the special dispensation granted to the lads by the headmaster to do so. It wasn’t because he was in any way proud of the uniform or the badge on it. At the other schools in the area they wore plain jumpers. He wore the blazer with disdain even back then. As if he was supposed to be something he was not – some private school boy from the other end of town who never got involved with the organised fights at Sibley Hall at four o’clock. Those poor boys who had to go to school on Saturday morning. Those poor boys who probably had nice gardens in their homes, while he had bricked up car in the front, and rusty scaffolding and yellow grass in the back. They had a second car, he had a kitchen table with an engine block on it. But the summers were long and he kept the blazer buttoned, sucking in the waist line and his thoughts on the here and now.
Ben Gordon sat at the back of the class and listened to the gruff Frenchman’s voice emanating from the ancient cassette tape. He doodled while the teacher, Mrs Cullen, sat in her chair and made whatever notes teachers made when they got some blessed relief from talking or yelling at the class. He knew it was a good school and he knew he was a good kid but deep down he wished it would be over with. To get out of there, to be something else – he didn’t know what. Everything at his troubled age was changing fast. A few months previously he had wanted to be a butler, the week before a pilot – anything but paying attention to the immediate future, which was French listening and comprehension. Ben wanted to visit France, sure, but sometime in the future when he was perhaps at the unfathomable age of 30. The idea of Ben Gordon at 30 was as alien to him as the words coming from the tape, and so he happily imagined a suave gentleman with all the looks and charm of a movie star. An adult who ruled his own world, born from the tubby kid with a wispy moustache. Fantasy was a strong suit for Ben, but before he became the 30-year-old superspy, he would have to get through French class. He doodled on. Where the hell was La Rochelle anyway?
Next to Ben sat Toby Shand, an ugly kid with hair that hung greasily down around his neck. It was common knowledge that Shand didn’t wash his hair, but just ran the shampoo through his mop as a treatment. Lord knew why. This was not a decent guy, Ben knew it and didn’t relish sitting next to him but it had just so happened on the first day of French everybody sat wherever they could, then Mrs Cullen assigned everybody French names and told them they had to sit there forever more. Or at least, for three periods a week. And that was that. Ben was fated to sit next to Shand. Ben drew a doodle on his paper, one of his favourites: a machine pistol used by his favourite regiment of Astro Marines that he followed in a series of graphic novels. He doodled that particular weapon so often that he had committed the entire thing to muscle memory. It was more like printing than drawing these days. He was about to start on another machine pistol when Shand elbowed him.
“Guess what?” he whispered.
Ben shrugged.
“So, I was at Suzanne Coopers the other night with Robbie and Tits and Archer. Her parents were out. Free house. Four bottles of White Lightning. It was well skill.”
“Yeah?” replied Ben. He was interested, not in the anecdote, but in the fact that Shand, Robbie, Archer and Tits managed to do this – go to parties, get into scrapes. Have anecdotes. Hanging out with ‘the fit girls’.
“Yeah,” confirmed Shand with a toothy smile, his eyes glinting. He threw a cursory look to the front of the class to make sure Cullen wasn’t looking over. “We was thinking of leaving Suzanne’s and heading out to the reservoir, then guess who comes over?”
Ben shrugged, leaning in. Despite his aversion to Shand, he couldn’t help but think that this imparting of illicit information might ingratiate him into the cool kid’s circles. Might go to some parties, might move on up. The duplicity of his thoughts troubled him sometimes. His own friends were great and he had known them all his life. But for the chance to break away, go to a party and meet a girl? He would cast the old friends off in a flash.
“Ava Munro came round,” said Shand.
Ben felt the sickness rise. Ava Munro was too beautiful to be classed as a ‘fit girl’. To Ben she belonged in the Sixth Form of another school where he imagined the really, really cool and beautiful girls went. No, not girls – women. The Bond Girls of the area. Eternally out of reach and thankfully so, what the hell would Ben do with a Bond girl?
“Ava?”
Shand nodded. “We played pool for a bit. Then Robbie and Suzanne went off shagging. One thing led to another with Ava… didn’t have any condoms so I ate her out on the pool table.”
Shand sat back and slurped his lips.
Ben felt sick. There it was in all its mockery. The old ‘one thing led to another’ jump cut. What thing led to what to lead to what? How the fuck does it happen? What the fuck happens? Ben had no idea, and thought he never would and there he was – Toby Shand, going down on Bond girls. The French cassette finished and Cullen stood up
Ben felt a twist in his gut thinking of this other world that seemed to exist in parallel to his: the French language in the room, the spotty lothario next to him who had all the charm of diarrhoea, all of it. How was he going to cross over, and, if he did, would he have to act like Shand and behave contrary to the way he truly thought it should be? Would he have to start bragging about his lovers and adopt such disrespectful views? It seemed that he might have to, or else he would forever be the fat Ben Gordon who was a real nowhere kid.
“Christophe!” called out Cullen from the front of the class, craning her neck back so that she could look through the bottom half of her bifocals and see the back row. No answer.
“Christophe!”
Nothing.
“Ben Gordon!” she snapped.
Ben was pulled out of angry thoughts.
“Yes, Miss?” he said, momentarily forgetting that in this class, in this alien world, he didn’t even have his real name but was called ‘Christophe’.
“Where was the man asking to go in the first paragraph?”
Ben felt the panic rise. He had nothing except the thought of Ava’s legs spread, heels jammed in the corner pockets and some mop of shampoo-streaked hair draped over her thighs.
“I dunno, Miss,” he replied, “I couldn’t understand a word… they were all speaking French.”
It was a rubbish joke – he knew it was straight away – but the class erupted into riotous laughter. Easy crowd. Cullen went red just as fast as the class burst into adolescent laughter. The sickness in Ben’s gut turned to fear. Cullen pointed to the classroom door. The fear was realised. Detention. Ben clenched his jaw as he packed up his books into his bag. He shuffled through the back row and down the centre aisle of the class. Ben sheepishly opened the door and just before he stepped through, he caught a glance of Shand who was still laughing and flicking his wrist in appreciation. A minor victory, Ben supposed.
*
It was so stupid, and he knew it. But like most of the events of that Saturday, one thing led to another and now Ben was wearily traipsing up the metal staircase of the Stivyakino TV Tower, lagging behind the other hollering kids. He was short of breath and full of cider. They had climbed over the barbed wire and he had sliced his leg enough to yelp in pain, but not enough to turn back and walk his bike home. The voices in the dark echoed and swirled above him, a couple of torch beams flickering down the thin insides of the helical tower. He was high, perhaps 800 feet up, and he wasn’t anywhere near the top.
“Christ, I’m knackered,” he said, as he leaned over the edge of the stairwell and looked down into the darkness. Into the void below where they had left the empty bottles and their bikes. Robbie and Suzanne were still probably somewhere down there, rutting away. Ben looked up to the beams of light that were growing smaller as the group ran up higher and higher towards the very top. To the red beacon and the aerials. To do what up there exactly, who knew? But Shand had suggested it, and it was something that the kids all did, so who was Ben to refuse to follow? Ben got his breath back and began to ascend farther up the narrow, steel staircase. To the top platform, to do whatever the kids did up there. Through the echoes, he could hear her laughter ring out. He pressed on.
“You gotta do something, right?”
*
Ben sat in the open-plan Lower School. The five English classes there were sectioned off by bookcases and cabinets. He rested upon a bench, and leaned his head against the wall. Beside him, the blue door to Susan Gardner’s office – their head of year. He could hear the English classes wind down and the teacher’s voices raise, trying to be heard over the din as the pupils anticipated the end of the lesson and started packing away their binders. Then, on cue, the five classes ended and the children were vomited out into the open spaces, mingling with each other, each briefly trying to catch sight of a friend from another class as they made their way quickly to wherever their tutor room was, ready for final registration and then home. A few snatched conversations, a few quick arrangements made for the evening and then the converging shoals of fish moved away, leaving only a few stragglers in the area. Those waiting for detention.
Ben had never been in detention before, but he knew the faces to expect: Archer, Bowler and Tits. The usual suspects. They sat on the bench next to Ben and did not look at him once, but it did not stop him feeling notorious, just for a second. Archer, as was his way, continually hacked the contents of his nose to the back of his throat and Tits cracked his knuckles. It was an affectation adopted to create an air of menace about them, but Ben hoped that it was really to disguise their fear. It must be. He could not be so different from them that they had no fear, no guilt. He could not be sitting next to aliens, or psychopaths. Tits and Archer bantered to themselves while Bowler, a skinny blond boy who still looked like he was ten sat a little apart. Darren Bowler was indeed a boy apart from the rest. He was funny to a point and then, when that line was reached, he wouldn’t so much step over it but pole-vault instead. On the first day of school, Darren Bowler stabbed Tim Dolan in the leg with a compass in the first period maths, then by second period science he brazenly pulled the Bunsen burner’s rubber hose from the gas nozzle and set fire to the flow. He was suspended for a week after that. On his first day back, he ran out of the changing rooms and on to the pitch of a house match, naked from the waist down. Just because. Bowler nodded an ‘alright’ to Ben, who replied with a raise of an eyebrow and a tut, feeling utterly notorious among the year’s rogue’s gallery. As if he were one of the Usual Suspects.
Ben stifled a grin and thought only one thing; ‘If this were a movie, she would come around the corner right about now.’ It wasn’t a movie, but sometimes they are based on some semblance of truth and at that moment, the stars aligned, the film was green-lit and it happened: Ava Munro came around the corner and sat down in line for detention. Even more miraculous than that, she sat down next to Ben and stretched out her legs. It was summer and the skirts were rolled up.
“Alright,” leered Archer to her. Ava nodded back.
“Res tomorrow?” he said.
“Sure,” replied Ava.
“Sweet. Five bottles of 20/20 and Coops is bringing an eighth,” added Tits.
“Will Andy Fellman be going?” asked Ava.
Ben folded his arms and pretended not to listen. Andy Fellman was a lad from another school so far past puberty it may as well come and gone in the womb.
“Yeah,” said Archer, “Lee and me are calling on him at five. You gonna shag him?”
“Aw shut up, sick!” said Ava with a coy smile, reaching out her thin leg and playfully pushing Archer’s knee. Archer laughed and held two fingers under Tit’s nose, and Tits took two big sniffs while Archer pinched his own nose.
“You’re so gay,” laughed Ava.
With his arms folded, Ben looked at the ground and furrowed his brow at Ava’s comment, noting to himself that while it made no sense, she was still something else. Something quite special. Gardner’s door opened and without even being asked, the three lads got up and entered.
Ben sat alone with Ava. It was perfect, he would reach into his pocket, pull out a soft pack of white-tips and offer her one. From a folded matchbook, he would light one off his stubble and illuminate her perfect face as she pursed her plump lips and lit her smoke from his flame. Ava was 30, he was 30 and they looked cool because in Ben’s imagination, all future adults were cool. The movie that played out then in his head did not grace reality with its presence. Instead, they sat for 10 minutes, Ben with his arms folded and staring down at his knees, Ava with her legs stretched out in front of her.
“This sucks,” she eventually said, clearly more to the air than to the boy next to her.
“Yeah, what you seeing Gardner for?” asked Ben.
“Told Waller that netball was for lezzers.”
“Fair enough,” said Ben.
“You?”
“Asked Waller if I could join the netball team.”
Ben smiled at Ava and she smiled back before breaking into a laugh. In his mind Ava then said: ‘Baby, you’re so sharp, how about you buy me a drink and we go someplace?’ To which he replied: ‘You read my mind, honey, but first how about a spin in the Aston?’
“So, you going to the res too?” Ben added.
Ava’s smile dropped a little.
“Yeah, you go to the res?”
“Sometimes, yeah.” Ben had never been to the reservoir before. He had cycled passed it once, with his best mate Chris, just to scope it out.
“Cool... just never seen you there.”
“Ships in the night,” replied Ben.
“Eh?”
Ben was about to add a quantifying statement when the door to the office opened and three lads filed out. Ava sighed and stood up, somehow knowing that she was next in. Ben looked over to the three boys as they walked away, none of them saying a thing to Ava.
“Good luck,” said Ben.
“Cheers,” said Ava, suddenly lifting up her white shirt to unroll her skirt. Ben averted his eyes and thought only that he was so inconsequential to her that she could flash her midriff and it wouldn’t mean a thing.
“See you tomorrow night then,” she said, picking up her bag and stepping into the office.
“See you,” he replied, just as the door closed.
*
He had one cigarette left and he had saved it for the perfect moment. The moment had come. There was no doubt about it. The cider was in his belly, his head swirling. At the top of the tower, the blue moonlight reflected off the upright beams and stanchions, throwing Escheresque shadows over everything. The hollering and the cheering from everyone had died down and all Ben could hear were the whispering wind and the occasional groans and slumps coming from the strange silhouettes around him. Over the way, at the edge of the platform by the safety fence, he could see the outline of, he guessed, Rachel and Tits. It didn’t matter who it was. Things were perfect, his life complete.
‘You are so high up and so far from home,’ he thought, ‘you are so cool and nobody at home knows who you are.’
He leaned back against the panelled wall and deemed the moment to be now. He took the white-tip smoke from the soft packet and put it to his lips.
*
The Gordon family ate off trays in front of the TV. His mother had prepared three separate meals as always, though she never complained once. Ben’s older brother, and older sister had grilled chicken and vegetables and while Ben troughed a Chicken Kiev, chips and beans. His dad, of course, a full fry-up. They ate in silence and left whenever they felt like it, leaving plate on tray on the counter-top to go about their private lives. His mother had told him that come October when he turned 15, he would be given proper chores to do, but like everything else in Ben’s future, it all seemed unreachable.
After dinner, he sat in his small room and replayed the same level on his Astro Marines console game over and over. It was near impossible to defeat the end of level boss without the time bomb in the character’s heart detonating. Still, he played it again and again, working out the best route through the level and the most effective use of his power-ups and combination moves to defeat the enemies en route to the showdown with the Big Boss. He had been at the same task for a week. His best mate Chris had sailed through it first time and even offered the cheat codes, but Ben refused them point blank, giving Chris some sanctimonious tirade about honesty and work and value and earning and whatever else his dad had said once that he had taken verbatim and passed off as his own staunch moral compass.
And so, he did that until 11 o’clock without progressing any farther. Finally, Ben called it a night. His bedtime had been at 11 for five years and although he knew he could stay up as late as he wanted, he never did. He brushed his teeth and said his routine prayer (though he didn’t believe one iota in what he was saying) and climbed into bed. He lay, looking up at the glowing plastic solar system stuck on the ceiling and thought over the day, over school and the end of term. He thought of the summer holidays when his parents would be at work all day and he would be at home alone – older sister out and about; older brother, who knows? The previous summer had been spent watching the large library of VHS tapes his siblings had amassed, staying indoors despite the glorious weather. He had sat there, watching films, eating and constructing an adult world amalgamated from all he saw on the screen and taking mental notes on how he was going to act and how he would be, come the time he became an adult. On returning to school everybody was tanned and healthy, while he was pasty and fat.
Ben lay in bed thinking of the coming weeks and of the changes he would make to his immediate future. He would go running, he would eat less, he would do 50 press-ups every morning. He thought about Ava. She was not some ideal to measure all other girls against, she was the only girl – a marker, a milestone in his life so that, when he was 30 and driving in his Aston with her, he would coolly recount the moment in detention and say: “That was the beginning.”
*
Ben had no idea how they got his number but they did. His mother called up the stairs at five o’clock the next day and said that Toby Shand was on the phone. Ben was belting through the level and, at that point, confident that he would finally beat the boss. Chris was sitting on the small bed and reading an Astro Marines comic. Chris, like Ben, was what kinder adults referred to “the indoorsy type”. He was the same age and lived around the corner. They had known each other pretty much all their lives. Chris didn’t say much and had, over the past few months and for no reason Ben could fathom, started to become irritating. His quiet, sweet presence in the room would just grate with Ben.
Ben’s mother called up again and he cursed the interruption. He had reached a certain checkpoint with more health and more ammunition than ever before. The call came a third time and he paused the game, tossing the controller on to the desk. Chris remained on the bed, slowly turning the page of the comic, stopping halfway and looking back on the page he had just read, perhaps to refresh his memory before proceeding. The interruption, coupled with Chris’s idiosyncratic reading technique made Ben slam the door. He stomped down the stairs to the phone by the front door.
“Hello?”
“Ben?”
“Yeah.”
“Shand. Coming to the res?”
“Me?”
“No, your mum, you benny.”
“Yeah sure, what time?”
“Six. We’re going to Food Fayre first.”
“I can do that,” replied Ben, instantly regretting the offer.
“Nice one, just get a fuckload and meet us at the res.”
“Does Ava want anything particular?”
“What?”
“Should I get anything in particular?”
“Nah.”
The phone went dead and, just like that, Ben found himself in deep with the sharks.
*
Ben rested his bike against the bench on the little green opposite Food Fayre. He sat down for a few moments and contemplated his next actions. Chris remained beside the bench, still on his bike. Food Fayre was the only newsagent in the area where someone of Ben’s age could potentially buy booze. Legend had it, if the coast was clear and nobody was inside, you could pick up as much as you could carry. Of course, the people who managed to pull off this feat had two things: confidence and fake ID as back-up. Chris had neither. But he had made a promise, and he could not let Shand and the boys down. How would that look? And of course, how heroic would he appear to Ava if he rocked up with a crate of good booze to get shitfaced on? He would be a legend. But first he had to pass the trial. He looked across the way to the mouth of the Labyrinth, the lair of the Minotaur, the End-of-Level Boss.
Ben took a deep breath and wrung his hands, feeling sick again. The nausea inside him was an infuriating side effect of being good, he thought. ‘It’s the guilt of doing the wrong thing.’ He thought about disappointing his mother and just how sick he felt getting a small detention. If he got caught and the police came? He thought about his older brother and the times he had rolled in drunk, he thought about how his brother looked after him whenever he could. He pictured his brother going into Food Fayre and coming out with armfuls of stuff for his younger brother. Ben’s brother, the hero.
“You coming in?” he asked.
Chris shook his head. “I’ll keep an eye on the bikes.”
“Pussy,” said Ben with a smirk. Chris gave no reaction.
Ben cricked his neck on each side, the signature of a bank robber in a heist movie he had once seen. He stepped across the street, towards the bank.
“Be cool, be cool, be cool,” he said, under his breath. The fear inside betrayed his every thought and magnified every action. He felt his hands shaking, his legs trembling and a sudden, unbearable urge to go to the toilet. So much for superspies and Aston Martins. He pushed open the door and stepped inside.
*
It was a cliché even then, and he knew it, but it was a thrill that could not be ignored. At the top of the Stivyakino TV Tower, on the top platform 2,000 feet above the city they all sat in a circle, an empty bottle between them. Each of them looked in hungry anticipation at a member of the opposite sex. Didn’t matter who. Ben looked only at Ava. Ava looked at all the boys, with a slightly odd shade over her eyes. For a moment, as Shand span the bottle and a moonbeam glinted off the glass and highlighted Ava’s eyes, Ben could have sworn that she looked entirely bored – not just with the game, but the company, the location, the height and life itself. For a second, he thought that Ava simply was not there. He held his gaze a little too long on her, and she noticed. Across the group, as the bottle spun they stared at each other and though the panic in his gut was nearly too much to bear, a mature coolness came over him. He winked at Ava, and she smiled, her eyes pulsing with light.
The bottle spun on.
*
A few weeks before, Ben and Chris had crossed town to go to Food Fayre. Not to buy booze, but to scope out the joint as the had scoped out the reservoir. They bought only chocolate and strawberry milk, but they and taken their time, walking the small aisles and casually glancing over to the alcohol. Ben knew that, when the time came, he needed to be in and out. No wasting time, no messing about trying to find the right stuff. Little did Ben and all the other kids in town know, but the owners were not stupid. Cheap alcopops and the two litres of bum cider were lined up right next to the soft drinks. Nothing desirable was out of immediate reach, nothing behind or under the counter – everything there, in easy grasp. Food Fayre knew what they were doing.
And now here he was, just a few weeks after that initial reconnaissance. He walked the long way around to the booze, turning away from the counter and walking down the aisle of dry goods. As he did so, he cast his gaze up to the huge convex security mirror above, noting the old woman behind the counter watching him. He rounded the corner and began walking towards the counter, ready to veer off to the right when the aisle opened out and get straight at the booze. As he approached, he looked up at the woman who appeared ancient to Ben, perhaps 50, perhaps 80. Hard to tell precisely. She knew exactly what he was in for and he could tell in her eyes that she wanted him to get on with it. The shop was meagre and in slight disrepair. She needed the sale. Ben was waiting for the bell above the door to ring, signifying a new customer, or a cop so that he would have to turn to the magazines, bide his time and collect his thoughts, the pressure valve being released like in those tense scenes in the movies. But nobody came in. Each step toward the counter brought him closer to the point of no return. Nobody was coming. It was time. Ben nodded at the woman, hoping to appear cool as he stepped to the side of the counter. He rubbed his chin and perused the wine. He had no idea what he was doing. He knew what he wanted, and he knew that she knew what he wanted. Yet still he browsed the wine. Slowly, he cast his gaze over to the alcopops and gave a ‘surprised’ hum – the kind someone makes when they discover the price of something desirable is more attractive than first thought.
He picked up a bottle of some radioactive orangey liquid and read the label, raising an eyebrow in approval to the words printed upon it that he was not reading. He grabbed three with each hand and took them to the counter, placing them down confidently. He thought of his brother and the time the family had gone to a country pub for a meal and the older brother had propped up the bar like he belonged there, despite being 17. The woman behind the counter immediately took the bottles and shoved them into a bag.
“Need a few more,” said Ben, turning away from her.
“Take the prices off,” she replied.
Ben turned back to see her scraping off the yellow price sticker which bore the shop’s name. For the briefest of moments, he saw the sad panic in her eyes as she scrapped at the label with her fingernails. He turned to the shelves and got six more bottles and managed to also grab a four-litre bottle of cider. The labels were scrapped off and the items were bagged. The woman took Ben’s money and pushed the bag towards him. She did not look into his eyes, but turned her attention to the till, as if it were a book. Ben took the bags and stuffed them into his backpack. Without saying a word, he left the shop and ran to his bike. Ben cycled like a getaway driver, leaving Chris frantically trying to keep up.
*
‘The Reservoir.’ To Ben, the name had always conjured images of vast concrete bowls and high, sloping walls – a cracked, grey basin with yellow grass pushing through. The reality was quite different. The bowl, if ever there was one, had been filled in. It was more, or less, a park – a vast circle of grass in the middle of a sprawling estate of modern houses that appeared to Ben to be made to order, rather than individually designed. The only difference from the tall concrete tenements two districts over was that these houses were two-up two-downs and spread outwards, not upwards. The park was lined with small trees that did not stretch much higher than the houses behind and there was a small copse in the far corner were dogs raced around. In the centre of the park stood the tallest thing Ben, or any of his friends, had ever seen. There was a small hill on which stood an abandoned concrete building, no bigger than some people’s garages… but on top of the small building stood the mighty Stivyakino TV Tower – a giant, 2,000ft-tall radio tower. It had been decommissioned 20, 30 or 400 years before, and so it stood silently: too big to ignore, to melancholy to tear down. It could be seen from nearly anywhere in the city and Ben would often see its red distress light blinking in the fog, all the way over town from the small window in his bedroom. The red wink in the fog. The distress sign of a dying God. And now he, and the others, stood in its garden. Of course, Shand and the rest had seen the tower up close before. They had desecrated the building, tagging their names upon the walls, they had pissed all over the feet of the sad giant, they had smashed their cider bottles all over and they had fucked against it.
Ben straddled his bike and looked up, the summer haze obscuring the very top of the tower. A sudden sad coldness swept through him, as if a door had been left open in some room inside that he could not locate. The others cycled on and up the small hill, shouting and hollering as they did.
“I’m gonna head off,” said Chris, looking around the park. Ben turned to see a look of concern behind his friend’s eyes. Ben understood it completely. This place wasn’t for Chris, and it wasn’t for himself either. Chris wanted to get back to their district, fire up the console and smash a few Big Bosses. Ben could not deny the power of that desire. They could quite easily turn the bikes around and cycle back. Nobody would care. Nobody would miss them. The cigarettes would get shared out, the booze drunk and the bras unhooked without a second thought to the two fat kids on shitty bikes.
“See ya, then,” said Ben coldly as he swung his leg over the bike and began to push it up the hill.
“Call on you tomorrow,” Chris called out.
“Cool,” replied Ben, without looking back.
Chris turned his bike around and cycled hard over town, making it back home before the sun had fully set.
Ben pushed the bike to the top of the hill and dropped it down on the grass.
“Gear side up,” said Robbie, a thin guy with floppy blond curtains that cut into a severe wedge at the back.
“What?”
“Gear side up, else you’ll trash the derailleur. What are they, Acera X?”
Ben flipped the bike over and laid it back down with the gears facing upwards. He looked down at the derailleur and managed to read the model number under the cake of mud.
“Shitty SIS,” he said, guessing that they were indeed shitty.
Robbie smiled and nodded. “My kid brother’s got SIS gears. Wank.”
“Yeah, my old man’s tighter than Chris’s mum. My brother wanted an Amiga for his birthday. Dad got him an Einstein.”
“What the fuck is an Einstein?” asked Shand as he rooted through Ben’s backpack and retrieved some ciders.
“Exactly,” replied Ben. The group laughed.
“Told you he was funny,” said Shand to the group.
Ben shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah well, I’m fat with a shit bike, so I gotta be something, right?” He unshouldered his bag and took over the duty of handing out drinks, all the while thinking: ‘This is so easy, I am so cool, I am so cool, this is so easy…’
Ben did the rounds and sat down among the group. He looked down at his bottle and realised he did not have an opener.
“Give it here,” said Archer, the small runtish one of the group. Ben, always a little wary of the kid who had reputedly beaten the crap out of Danny Scott on the way home from school a month back for no reason. Until that point, Danny had been Archer’s best friend since primary school. Then one day, like a mad dog in the sun, Archer turned on him. The feral kid took the bottle and stood up. He angled the bottle neck through a grate in the base of the giant’s leg and thumped down upon it, popping the lid off easily and causing the fizzing alcopop to spill out.
“Cheers,” said Ben as he took the drink back. Archer sat back down and cast his gaze on Ben a little longer than he would like.
“When’s Suzanne getting here?” asked Robbie, as he fiddled around with the gears on his own bike. His pride and joy.
Bafflingly, the group broke out into a series of hollers and catcalls at the mention of her name. Ben sat in silence and observed the strange tribe of boys. Robbie batted away the hollers and downed his bottle in one go before smashing it against the wall. “You gonna finger her, Arch?” he asked. Ben looked over to Archer and noted the sudden flash of panic cross his face before that menacing glint returned.
“Yeah, probs,” he said, before reaching into his pocket to retrieve a small knife with which he began to stab the hard soil in front of him.
“Can I have a go?” asked Tits, the affable one whose place in the group was even more bewildering than Ben’s. But then Tits did have a massive house and parents who travelled a lot.
“Yeah, sure,” said Robbie, as he opened up one of the litre bottles of cider. “After me you can have a go.”
Ben took a sip of his disgusting drink and watched them all. The thoughts of being cool passing with each second, a slow realisation dawning. And then came to the centre of his mind a mature, hitherto unheard adult voice. The voice said: “You are not like them.”
At that point, Ben weighed up his options. He could finish the bottle, make an excuse and get the hell out of there. Maybe catch up with Chris and go play games? Or he could stay and see how it all panned out. He probably should have done the first, and he was indeed about to, but as he motioned to stand up, a pack of cigarettes were brought out and Tits tossed one too him. How could he say no? How could he leave? Ben leaned over and lit the cigarette, his first, from the lighter Robbie had swiped from his dad’s glovebox.
*
It was eight o’clock and the boys were well on their way. Half the drink had gone, the bottles smashed, the plastics thrown down the hill. People walking their dogs had been abused, kids from lower years had been accosted and threatened. Ben had joined in for the most part, he could not deny that. He had laughed and jeered when Archer had squared up to some poor nine-year old kid and extorted 50p from him and Ben, along with Robbie and Shand had even thrown coins from the top of the hill at some lady walking her dog. Under the shadow of the great benign giant, they had been rulers of the park and of their own destinies for a few hours. That was until eight o’clock when, from across the way, Shand spotted a group of four girls approaching.
The boys stood up and leaned against the brick wall on top of the hill, resembling some sort of poster from a boyband. Ben hung around the outskirts of the band like a roadie. Maybe it was nerves, but as the girls approached, Ben felt the nausea rise again. The stakes had been raised once more and he was powerless to control his environment. If he just turned and left them at that moment, how would it look? He had gone in for a penny, and now he was in for the pound.
“Ladies,” said Tits in a faux-louche manner as the girls crested the hill and stood in a pre-arranged girl group pose. The nausea in Ben’s gut subsided a little when he saw that Ava was not there. Just the ‘fit girls’ to whom he had never, ever spoken before. Archer handed over a bottle of cider to Suzanne, a rake-thin blonde girl with an entire cosmetics store applied to her face. She wiped the bottle neck vigorously before taking a large swig.
“Who’s that?” asked Rachel, the girl next to Suzanne who wore her ponytail in a fashion that made it resemble a volcano erupting, or a whale’s blowhole expelling air. She looked Ben up and down with an obvious sneer. Suzanne handed the bottle to the other girls. Nobody answered Rachel, and Ben looked to the ground and stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Where’s Ava?” asked Shand.
“Not her secretary,” replied Suzanne, smiling at Robbie as he leaned against the wall.
*
Rachel went first. They had been at the top of the tower for 20 minutes, looking out over the city and also leaning over the railings, and spitting down in the hopes of hitting Robbie and Suzanne as they shagged each other. Of course, they couldn’t see them but the idea was funny enough to attempt. Ben, hung at the back of the group, laughing along with the jokes and drinking cider. He had peered over the edge and the sickness inside of him was most definitely attributed to the height, rather than booze or guilt. 2,000 feet is so high. So high. Rachel tied her hair up and pushed the boys aside.
“Watch this,” she said, swinging her leg over the rail. Ben held the bottle to his lips, mid-sip and eyes wide while the others laughed and clapped. Rachel swung her second leg over the railing and stood facing them all, toes on the tiny ledge. She let go of one hand and turned around quickly, grabbing the railing again. She now faced away from her friends, looking out at the world, her heals on the ledge. After a few seconds, Shand hooked his arm around her waist and heaved her back over the railings to the delight of the group who all applauded.
“Who’s next?” asked Shand, taking some cider from Tits.
Before anyone could volunteer or refuse, Ava walked over to the ledge and climbed out. Ava, however, did not hold on to the rail as Rachel had done. Instead, she knelt down to the protruding beam that jutted out horizontally to the tower.
“She’s fucking crazy!” shouted Tits.
“Ava, don’t please!” shouted Ben rushing up to the railings. Archer pushed him out the way.
“Stand the fuck back,” he snarled.
Ava ignored them all. She gripped the edge of the beam and crawled all the out to the end, before slowly turning around and crawling back. She climbed up over the railing and snatched the cider from Tits. She took a swig and while everybody clapped, she winked at Ben.
“That’s nothing,” shouted Shand who climbed out on to the railing in the same manner that Rachel had done. Everybody turned to watch. Shand faced them, smiled and then stepped off the ledge. Rachel screamed as he fell. But Shand’s grip was sound and he held on to the railing, legs dangling.
“He’s mental,” laughed Tits, giggling like a drunk maniac, the fear of the sudden fall overcoming him.
“Count to 10 when I start,” shouted Shand. He took a deep breath and, dangling 2,000 feet above the world, pulled his chin up to the bar.
“One!” he shouted, lowering himself back down. He repeated
“Two!” everybody shouted.
“Three!”
*
The bottle landed on Ava and she shrugged. It was spun again and it landed on Ben. His eyes widened and he stared at the bottleneck, in the centre of the group pointing at his groin. Ava didn’t say a word, she stood up, stepped over the green-glass decider of sexual fate and took Ben’s hand. The game continued.
“Look, this is… we…” spluttered Ben as Ava pressed him against a wall.
“What? You wanna get off right?” she said, taking a glug of cider.
“I guess… but I mean, here. It’s not very romantic is it?”
Ava furrowed her brow.
“What I mean is, it’s not so classy. You like doing this?”
“What do you care?”
“I care, I mean I think you’re great and cool. You’re a good egg. Maybe we should talk and then next week I’d take you to town or something. Cinema.”
“Why would I go to the cinema with you?” she said, stepping to his side and resting against the wall.
Ben thought for a few moments.
“Well, that’s a good point.”
Ava smiled.
“You’re funny,” she said.
“Thanks, I need to be.”
“Why?”
“To be cool.”
“Is that right?”
Ben shrugged. “Sure.”
“Everybody has to do something to be cool, eh?”
“I guess. Like climbing out on a ledge.”
“That’s cool,” said Ava.
They both looked over to the edge of the covered platform. The game had finished and they were now strange moving silhouettes outlined by the moonlight.
“Didn’t look cool to me,” replied Ben. “Looked fucking stupid.”
“Yeah well,” replied Ava, “you wouldn’t understand.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not one of them.”
“And you?”
Ava shrugged, “I’m not one of anything. You got a smoke?”
“Only one left. Two’s up?”
“In a moment. You really want to go to the cinema with me?”
“Of course, if you would go with me, I mean…”
“Stop sounding like a geek. Anyway, let’s get on with this.”
Ben was about to protest when Ava jammed her lips against his and forced her tongue into his mouth. He did not resist.
*
The gang sat on the grass and rolled a few joints to pass around. Ben was sick of the booze and bored by the company. Nobody was talking to him, but that wasn’t really the point. He couldn’t put his finger on it explicitly. Archer passed a joint to Ben and he took it, the proximity to Archer’s wild eyes unnerving him. The voice in his mind that had not formally introduced itself leaned in and said to him: “You’re not like them. They are cunts.” Ben inhaled and nearly coughed up his lungs. Everybody laughed at him. He passed the joint along and continued to sail away in his mind, already leaving the clique behind and thinking about new ways to present himself in the future. A slowness started to rise inside, a pleasant drift that warmed him. His joints felt loose, his mind limber and suddenly the cunts around him seemed a lot more bearable. He smiled at the group and began to laugh at something or other. Soon, everyone was laughing and a point was revealed to him: they weren’t cunts, they were just kids. He laughed so hard he fell backwards on to the grass and stared up at the night sky, the blinking stars glowing brighter than the plastic stars on the ceiling of his bedroom.
He sat back up and saw that Ava had arrived. She was standing behind the seated group, like an apparition made real. She looked straight at Ben and his glazed expression. He smiled dumbly at her and waved. She laughed and sat down, taking a joint and a drink. Robbie leaned to Suzanne and whispered in her ear. She giggled and the two of them left the group to find a private place in which to go about their business. The place they found was two feet away.
“Going down bruv?” slurred Shand.
“Yeah boy!” shouted Robbie.
“Then let’s go up,” said Tits, groggily getting to his feet.
“Tower time,” said Rachel.
“What is… tower…” slurred Ben, the lethargy almost too much.
“Follow us,” said Ava, reaching over and giving his knee a shove.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” said Ben, getting to his feet and following the group as they climbed up on to the roof of the small building and stepped underneath the stance of the great Stiyvakino TV Tower. Ben stood and looked up into the darkness, the tower’s peak well out of sight.
“Coming?” said Ava as she disappeared inside, running on up the stairs with the others.
“That’s so high,” said Ben as he ventured in.
“You’ve gotta do something, right?” floated Ava’s voice through the darkness.
*
It was near midnight and the adult games were over. The juvenile ones had returned. Ben Gordon, drunk, stoned and spent, was ready to go home, lie on his bed and figure out just who the hell he had become over the course of that day. He was about to leave, finally, when Archer stepped up and said simply: “Nobody comes to the res without walking the plank, you cunt.”
Ben knew exactly what he meant. He looked over to Ava and hoped to see some concern in her eyes. She looked to the floor, make-up smeared and a shameful look of self-loathing plastered all over her face. Ben knew then what he had become and so he walked over to the rail and stepped out on to the beam.
*
Ava broke off the awkward kiss and drunkenly smiled at Ben, who smiled deliriously back.
“Was it what you thought?” she asked.
“Sure,” he replied as coolly as he could, “how about the cigarette?”
“In a minute,” she said in a seductive tone that was a little overcooked, due to her intoxication. Ben suddenly pressed himself back against the wall in shock as he felt Ava’s hands drift over his belly and towards his belt. He went to speak but she pressed her finger over his lips. Ava Munro went down on Ben Gordon at the top of the Stiyvakino TV Tower sometime in the summer of ’95.
Ben Gordon took out his last cigarette and lit it, taking in a deep breath and exhaling. He placed one hand on the back of Ava’s head and controlled her rhythm, ignoring her splutters and gags. He smoked on and thought himself to be mightier than the tower itself.
*
Ben stood on the edge of the world, 2,000 feet in the air, the wind pushing his balance to the limit. He had gone out, and now he had to go back like the heroes in those films he watched back when he was a kid. He lifted his foot and turned around to face the nonplussed gang on the platform. He hoped to see Ava willing him back but she was not there. She had already left, whatever cum of his that wasn’t in her belly, still entangled in her hair.
The sickness rose again at the thought of himself as an adult. Not as 30, in the Aston in a casino in Monaco but as an adult in the here and now. That adult voice in his head introduced itself as Ben Gordon. He said to himself: “You’re like them. You’re the cunt.” Ben Gordon took his first step into adulthood and he slipped.
This short story, by Graham Thomas, is taken from 'Various Sorrows & Joys', a collection of short stories and poetry by Graham and Luke Searle