Free Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan Page B

broken. Our favourite used to be owned by a company that made denim garments. I think it was called Blue Bell. Anyway, we went there several times, and I can still see us sat down, smoking on the oily ground, Mark tossing lit matches across the shed, and Lisa dancing or jumping or running the length of the building, sometimes coming back with handfuls of metal buttons, the ones you get on blue jeans, which she found in some corner and gave out as tokens of her love.
    That was how our friendship grew: nights like that. They fought in front of me and they sang stupid songs; they cursed and argued and we drove places in the car or ate chocolate that Mark had stolen from the Blue Star garage. Perhaps they knew me, in their careless way, much better than I did them. Their desolation seemed greatly addictive at the time, and I sat waiting for them to bring me into their world.
    'I could teach you how to do the Internet,' said Chubb.
    'That would be very kind,' I said.
    'I could get you a cheap laptop, as well.'
    'There'll be no need for that.'
    The wedding night, Mark and I walked to the pier. He told me an endless story about the best man being drunk and locked in a room. I lifted my head and saw Ardrossan Castle standing bare and open on the headland, a window up there at the top, the dark wind rushing through. I imagined Mary, Queen of Scots appearing at the window, her eyes scanning the wrong horizon for France, her fierce, feeling eyes dropping to the sands, the stretch of beach now coloured with disco pinks and sapphire clouds from the hotel. We walked back to a car Mark held the keys of and sat inside with the music thumping behind us.
    'It's no' fair,' said Mark. 'Why do you get to drive?'
    'We're not driving anywhere,' I said. 'We're sitting.'
    'I got the keys.'
    'You're too young to drive a car.'
    'That's what everyb'dy says. If you can drive you should just drive. I could get a job driving.'
    'You could get a better job than that,' I said.
    'Doubt it.'
    The car had a terrible scent of vanilla air-freshener and something else, something bad. At one point Mark twisted round and gave an exasperated sigh. 'Jesus Christ,' he said, 'that's completely out of order.' I turned round in my seat and saw a dead, deflated bird lying on a blanket of wet newspapers.
    'What's that?' I said.
    'A dead seagull,' he said.
    'What's it doing there?'
    'One of the boys,' he said, smiling. 'I bet you it was Chubb. He'd be trying to wind Lisa up. This is his idea of a good windup.'
    'But how did he get in here?' I asked.
    Mark rolled his eyes. 'He's not called Chubb for nothing. He can get himself in and out of anywhere you like. Cars are no problem tae him. And he knows this car well enough.'
    The bird was lying with a cold eye lighted in the dark. Its neck was soaked in blood. There was, to me, something terrible about its presence and its dirty feathers. 'That's really wicked,' I said.
    'Yeah,' he said.
    'Not like that. Not your sort of wicked. It's just a terrible thing to do to a living creature.'
    'It's bad news, yeah,' he said. 'Some of the boys. Not my pals. Just people who live round here. It's sick. They fish off the pier and sometimes they—man, this is sick—they put chips on their hooks and cast them out to the birds, and sometimes the seagulls bite and the sick fuckers reel the gulls in and hit them with bottles.'
    'You are joking, Mark.'
    'No. They leave the dead ones at the pier or they throw them into the water. It's bad news, isn't it?'
    'I can't believe it.'
    'Chubb and the boys probably found this one. They put it here for a laugh. That's what they're like.'
    We sat quiet for a moment inside the car's shadows. Mark began speaking again, but there was a new tone. He was recounting an experience, something that had happened, and he sounded altogether new as he said the words, speaking from somewhere I hadn't known and that caused him to tighten his slack manners. He spoke of being a child and going to the Auchenharvie