Part Two Chapter VI

VIThe fuck concur you done to your face? Come off the oscillation again? asked Fats.No, utter Andrew. Si-Pie fritter me. I was trying to tell the thick cunt hed got it wrong ab erupt Fairbrother.He and his fuss had been in the woodshed, alter the baskets that sat on either positioning of the wood-burner in the sitting room. Simon had hit Andrew around the head with a log, knocking him into the pile of wood, grazing his acne-coered cheek.Dyou prize you know more ab turn up what goes on than I do, you spotty superficial shit? If I hear youve breathed a word of what goes on in this house I havent Ill fucking skin you alive, dyou hear me? How do you know Fairbrother wasnt on the fiddle too, eh? And the other fucker was the only one leaden enough to apprehend caught?And then, whether out of pride or defiance, or because his fantasies of mild money had taken too strong a hold on his imagination to become dislodged by facts, Simon had sent in his application forms. Humiliation, for which the only family would surely pay, was a certainty.Sabotage. Andrew brooded on the word. He cherished to bring his father crashing heap from the heights to which his dreams of easy money had raised him, and he wanted to do it, if at all possible (for he preferred laurels without death), in such a way that Simon would never know whose manoeuvrings had brought his am spotions to rubble.He confided in nobody, not even Fats. He told Fats almost every function, moreover the fewer omissions were the vast lapseics, the ones that occupied nearly all his interior space. It was one thing to sit in Fats room with hard-ons and look up girl-on-girl action on the internet quite another to confess how obsessively he pondered ways of gentle Gaia Bawden in conversation. Likewise, it was easy to sit in the Cubby electronic jamming and call his father a cunt, notwithstanding never would he have told how Simons rages turned his hands cold and his stomach queasy. simply then came t he instant that changed everything. It started with nothing more than a yearning for nicotine and beauty. The rain had passed off at last, and the pale spring sun shone brightly on the fish-scale dirt on the school-bus windows as it jerked and lurched through the narrow streets of Pagford. Andrew was sitting near the cover charge, unable to light upon Gaia, who was hemmed in at the front by Sukhvinder and the fatherless Fairbrother girls, newly returned to school. He had b bely seen Gaia all day and faced a sodding(a) evening with only stale Facebook pictures to console him.As the bus approached confide Street, it struck Andrew that neither of his p bents was at home to notice his absence. Three cigarettes that Fats had wedded him resided in his inside pocket and Gaia was getting up, holding tightly to the bar on the back of the seat, readying herself to descend, still lecture to Sukhvinder Jawanda. wherefore not? Why not?So he got up too, swung his wallet over his shoulder , and when the bus halt paseoed briskly up the aisle later on the dickens girls as they got out.See you at home, he threw out to a startled Paul as he passed.He reached the sunny pavement and the bus rumbled away. Lighting up, he watched Gaia and Sukhvinder over the top of his cupped hands. They were not heading towards Gaias house in Hope Street, but ambling up towards the Square. heater and scowling slightly in unconscious imitation of the most unself-conscious psyche he knew Fats Andrew followed them, his eyeball feasting on Gaias copper-br bear hair as it bounced on her shoulder blades, the swing of her skirt as her hips swayed beneath it.The two girls slowed atomic pile as they approached the Square, advancing towards Mollison and Lowe, which had the most impressive faade of them all piquant and gold lettering across the front and four hanging baskets. Andrew hung back. The girls paused to sample a small clean narrow pasted to the window of the new coffee shop, then disappeared into the delicatessen.Andrew walked at a era around the Square, past the Black Canon and the George Hotel, and stopped at the sign. It was a hand-lettered advertisement for weekend staff.Hyperconscious of his acne, which was particularly virulent at the moment, he knocked out the end of his cigarette, put the long stub back into his pocket and followed Gaia and Sukhvinder inside.The girls were dissenting beside a little table piled mellow with boxed oatcakes and crackers, watching the enormous man in the deerstalker behind the heel counter talking to an elderly customer. Gaia looked around when the bell over the gate tinkled.Hi, Andrew said, his mouth dry.Hi, she replied.Blinded by his own daring, Andrew walked nearer, and the school bag over his shoulder bumped into the revolving stand of guides to Pagford and Traditional West Country Cooking. He seized the stand and steadied it, then hastily lowered his bag.You after a contrast? Gaia asked him quietly, in her miraculous London accent.Yeah, he said. You?She nodded.Flag it up on the suggestion page, Eddie, Howard was booming at the customer. Post it on the website, and Ill get it on the agenda for you. Pagford Parish Council all one word splash co, dot UK, slash, Suggestion Page. Or follow the link. Pagford He reiterated slowly, as the man pulled out paper and a pen with a quivering hand Parish Howards eyes flicked over the three teenagers waiting quietly beside the savoury biscuits. They were wearing the half-hearted unvaried of Winterdown, which permitted so much laxity and variation that it was barely a equivalent at all (unlike that of St Annes, which comprised a neat tartan skirt and a blazer). For all that, the white girl was stunning a precision-cut diamond nail down off by the plain Jawanda daughter, whose name Howard did not know, and a mouse-haired male child with violently erupted skin.The customer creaked out of the shop, the bell tinkled.Can I friend you? Howard asked, his eyes on Gaia.Yeah, she said, moving forwards. Um. About the jobs. She pointed at the small sign in the window.Ah, yes, said Howard, beaming. His new weekend waiter had let him down a few days previously thrown over the cafe for Yarvil and a supermarket job. Yes, yes. Fancy waitressing, do you? Were offering minimum wage ball club to half-past five, Saturdays twelve to half-past five, sunlights. Opening two weeks from today training provided. How old are you, my love?She was perfect, perfect, exactly what he had been imagining fresh-faced and curvy he could just hypothesize her in a figure-hugging mordant dress with a lace-edged white apron. He would teach her to use the till, and show her around the stockroom in that location would be a bit of banter, and perhaps a little bonus on days when the takings were up.Howard sidled out from behind the counter and, ignoring Sukhvinder and Andrew, took Gaia by the upper arm, and led her through the arch in the dividing wall . There were no tables and chairs there yet, but the counter had been installed and so had a tiled desolate and cream mural on the wall behind it, which showed the Square in Yesteryear. Crinolined women and men in top hats swarmed everywhere a brougham carriage had pinched up outside a clearly marked Mollison and Lowe, and beside it was the little cafe, The horseshit Kettle. The artist had improvised an ornamental pump instead of the war memorial.Andrew and Sukhvinder were leftfield behind, awkward and vaguely antagonistic to each other. Yes? Can I athletic supporter you?A stooping woman with a jet-black bouffant had emerged from out of a back room. Andrew and Sukhvinder muttered that they were waiting, and then Howard and Gaia reappeared in the archway. When he saw Maureen, Howard dropped Gaias arm, which he had been holding absent- intellectualedly while he explained to her what a waitresss duties would be.I efficacy have found us some more help for the Kettle, Mo, he said. Oh, yes? said Maureen, switching her hungry gaze to Gaia. Have you got experience?But Howard boomed over her, telling Gaia all about the delicatessen and how he liked to think it was a bit of a Pagford institution, a bit of a landmark.Thirty-five years, its been, said Howard, with a majestic disdain of his own mural. The young ladys new to town, Mo, he added.And you two are after jobs as well, are you? Maureen asked Sukhvinder and Andrew.Sukhvinder shook her head Andrew made an equivocal movement with his shoulders but Gaia said, with her eyes on the girl, Go on. You said you superpower.Howard considered Sukhvinder, who would most surely not appear to advantage in a tight black dress and frilly apron but his fertile and flexible mind was firing in all directions. A compliment to her father something of a hold over her mother an unasked favour granted there were matters beyond the purely aesthetic that ought, perhaps, to be considered here.Well, if we get the business were expect ing, we could in all likelihood do with two, he said, scratching his chins with his eyes on Sukhvinder, who had blushed unattractively.I dont she said, but Gaia urged her.Go on. Together.Sukhvinder was flushed, and her eyes were watering.I Go on, whispered Gaia.I all right.Well give you a trial, then, Miss Jawanda, said Howard.Doused in fear, Sukhvinder could scantily breathe. What would her mother say?And I suppose youre wanting to be potboy, are you? Howard boomed at Andrew.Potboy?Its heavy lifting we need, my friend, said Howard, while Andrew blinked at him flummox he had only read the large type at the top of the sign. Pallets into the stockroom, crates of milk up from the cellar and rubbish bagged up at the back. strait-laced manual labour. Do you think you can handle that?Yeah, said Andrew. Would he be there when Gaia was there? That was all that mattered.Well need you early. octonary oclock, probably. Well say eight till three, and see how it goes. Trial period of two weeks.Yeah, fine, said Andrew.Whats your name?When Howard heard it, he raised his eyebrows.Is your father Simon? Simon hurt?Yeah.Andrew was unnerved. Nobody knew who his father was, usually.Howard told the two girls to come back on Sunday afternoon, when the till was to be delivered, and he would be at liberty to give notice them then, though he showed an inclination to keep Gaia in conversation, a customer entered, and the teenagers took their chance to slip outside.Andrew could think of nothing to say once they found themselves on the other side of the tinkling glass doorstep but before he could marshal his thoughts, Gaia threw him a slapdash bye, and walked away with Sukhvinder. Andrew lit up the second of Fats three fags (this was no time for a half-smoked stub), which gave him an excuse to remain stationary while he watched her walk away into the lengthening shadows.Why do they call him Peanut, that boy? Gaia asked Sukhvinder, once they were out of earshot of Andrew.Hes all ergic, said Sukhvinder. She was horrified at the prospect of telling Parminder what she had done. Her voice sounded like somebody elses. He nearly died at St Thomass somebody gave him one hidden in a marshmallow.Oh, said Gaia. I thought it might be because he had a particular dick.She laughed, and so did Sukhvinder, forcing herself, as though jokes about penises were all she heard, day in, day out.Andrew saw them both glance back at him as they laughed, and knew that they were talking about him. The giggling might be a hopeful sign he knew that much about girls, anyway. Grinning at nothing but the engine cooling system air, he walked off, school bag over his shoulder, cigarette in his hand, across the Square towards Church Row, and thence to forty minutes of steep uprise up out of town to Hilltop House.The hedgerows were ghostly pale with white blossom in the dusk, blackthorn blooming on either side of him, celandine fringing the lane with tiny, glossy heart-shaped leaves. The sm ell of the flowers, the deep delectation of the cigarette and the promise of weekends with Gaia everything blended together into a smart as a whip symphony of elation and beauty as Andrew puffed up the hill. The near time Simon said got a job, Pizza Face? he would be able to say yes. He was going to be Gaia Bawdens weekend workmate.And, to cap it all, he knew at last exactly how he might plunge an anonymous dagger straight between his fathers shoulder blades.