Part Two Chapter VI

VIThe fuck have you through with(p) to your face? Come off the bike again? asked Fats.No, said Andrew. Si-Pie hit me. I was trying to single out the stupid cunt hed got it wrong about Fairbrother.He and his father had been in the woodshed, filling the baskets that sat on either gradient of the wood-burner in the sitting room. Simon had hit Andrew around the boss with a log, knocking him into the locoweed of wood, grazing his acne-c everywhereed cheek.Dyou think you know more(prenominal) than about what goes on than I do, you spotty little glom? If I hear youve breathed a word of what goes on in this house I havent Ill make out skin you alive, dyou hear me? How do you know Fairbrother wasnt on the fiddle overly, eh? And the other fucker was the only one wearisome enough to get caught?And then, whether out of pride or defiance, or because his fantasies of escaped money had taken too strong a hold on his imagination to become dislodged by facts, Simon had sent in his applic ation program forms. Humiliation, for which the whole family would surely pay, was a certainty.Sabotage. Andrew brooded on the word. He wanted to bring his father crashing d consume from the heights to which his dreams of easy money had raised him, and he wanted to do it, if at every possible (for he preferred glory without death), in such a way that Simon would never know whose manoeuvrings had brought his am piece of musicions to rubble.He confided in nobody, not even Fats. He told Fats well everything, but the few omissions were the vast topics, the ones that occupied nearly all(prenominal) his interior space. It was one thing to sit in Fats room with hard-ons and look up girl-on-girl action on the lucre quite another to confess how obsessively he pondered ways of engaging atomic number 32 Bawden in conversation. Likewise, it was easy to sit in the Cubby Hole and call his father a cunt, but never would he have told how Simons rages turned his hands cold and his stomach quea sy.But then came the hour that changed everything. It started with vigour 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- pile windows as it jerked and lurched through the narrow streets of Pagford. Andrew was sitting near the back, unable to see Gaia, who was hemmed in at the front by Sukhvinder and the fatherless Fairbrother girls, newly returned to school. He had b arely seen Gaia all twenty-four hour period and faced a barren evening with only stale Facebook pictures to console him.As the passel approached want Street, it struck Andrew that neither of his parents was at home to notice his absence. Three cigarettes that Fats had given him resided in his inside easy lay and Gaia was getting up, property tightly to the bar on the back of the seat, readying herself to descend, still talk to Sukhvinder Jawanda.Why not? Why not?So he got up too, swung his bag over his shou lder, and when the bus stopped walked briskly up the aisle after the two 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(p). Lighting up, he watched Gaia and Sukhvinder over the top of his cupped hands. They were not heading towards Gaias house in accept Street, but ambling up towards the feather. Smoking and scowling slightly in unconscious imitation of the close to unself-conscious soul he knew Fats Andrew followed them, his look feasting on Gaias copper-brown hair as it bounced on her shoulder blades, the swing of her surround as her hips swayed beneath it.The two girls slowed down as they approached the Square, advancing towards Mollison and Lowe, which had the most impressive faade of them all blue and gold lettering across the front and four hanging baskets. Andrew hung back. The girls paused to examine a gauzy white sign pasted to the window of the new cafe, then disappeared i nto the delicatessen.Andrew walked once around the Square, past the colour 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 standing beside a little table piled high with boxed oatcakes and crackers, watching the enormous man in the deerstalker behind the comeback talking to an elderly node. Gaia looked around when the bell over the door 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 job? 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. role it on the website, and Ill get it on the agenda for you. Pagford Parish Council all one word dot co, dot UK, slash, wind 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 one-third teenagers waiting quietly beside the savoury biscuits. They were wearing the half-hearted resembling of Winterdown, which permitted so much laxity and variation that it was barely a uniform 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 rhombus set off by the plain Jawanda daughter, whose name Howard did not know, and a mouse-haired boy with violently erupted skin.The customer creaked out of the shop, the bell tinkled.Can I help you? Howard asked, his eyes on Gaia.Yeah, she said, moving forwards. Um. Abou t 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 solar days previously thrown over the cafe for Yarvil and a supermarket job. Yes, yes. Fancy waitressing, do you? Were go minimum wage nine to half-past five, Saturdays twelve to half-past five, sunshines. Opening two weeks from today training provided. How old are you, my love?She was perfect, perfect, scarce what he had been imagining fresh-faced and curvy he could just imagine her in a figure-hugging disastrous dress with a lace-edged white apron. He would teach her to use the till, and show her around the stockroom at that place would be a bit of banter, and perhaps a little bonus on days when the publication 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 i nstalled and so had a tiled black and plectron mural on the wall behind it, which showed the Square in Yesteryear. Crinolined women and men in top hats swarmed over a brougham carriage had drawn up outside a clearly marked Mollison and Lowe, and beside it was the little cafe, The hair Kettle. The artist had improvised an ornamental pump instead of the war memorial.Andrew and Sukhvinder were left behind, awkward and vaguely inappropriate to each other. Yes? Can I help you?A stooping woman with a jet-black gusty 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-mindedly while he explained to her what a waitresss duties would be.I world power 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, tel ling 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 capacity.Howard considered Sukhvinder, who would most certainly not appear to advantage in a tight black dress and ruffled apron but his fertile and flexible mind was firing in all directions. A cheers 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 expecting, we could probably do with two, he said, scratching his chins with his eyes on Sukhvinder, who had blushed unat tractively.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 hardly breathe. What would her mother theorise?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 nonplussed 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. Proper manual labour. Do you think you can dole out that?Yeah, said Andrew. Would he be there when Gaia was there? That was all that mattered.Well need you early. Eight oclock, probably. Well regularise 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 P rice?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 instruct them then, though he showed an fall to keep Gaia in conversation, a customer entered, and the teenagers took their chance to slip outside.Andrew could think of nothing to place once they found themselves on the other side of the tinkling glass door but forrader he could marshal his thoughts, Gaia threw him a careless 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 listening of Andrew.Hes allergic, said Sukhvinder. She was horrified at the prospect of telling Parminder what she had done. Her voice sounded like somebo dy 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 tiny 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 cooling 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 climbing up out of town to supercilium 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 smell of the flowers, the deep pleasure of the cigarette and the promise of weekends with Gaia everything blended together into a glorious sympho ny of elation and beauty as Andrew puffed up the hill. The next 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.