Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

It was really getting to Jane now, tormenting her nights, raiding her head as soon as she awoke in the mornings. The way things did when there was nobody like, nobody you could tell.

Im sixteen years old, and Im

Feeling deeply isolated, she walked numbly out of the school, with its acrid anxiety-smell, and into the sun-splashed quadrangle, where Scott Eagles and Sigourney Jones were already into a full-blown, feely snog almost directly under the staffroom window.

The big statement. This was Jones and Eagles telling the sad old gits in the staffroom that the English Language GCSE that they and Jane and a bunch of other kids had just completed, was, like all the other GCSEs the focus of their school-life for the past four or five years of truly minuscule significance in comparison with their incredible obsession with one another.

Yes, having done their sleeping around, they were into something long-term and meaningful. Life-partners, possibly. An awesome thing.

Jane, however, felt like part of some other species. Sixteen years old and

She closed her eyes on the superior, super-glued lovers. Walked away from the whole naff sixties edifice of concrete and washed-out brick sinking slowly into the pitted asphalt exercise yard, which the Head liked to call a quadrangle. She needed out of here, like now. And yet she kept wishing the term still had weeks to run.

So, how was it for you, Jane?

Huh?

She spun round. The sun was a slap in the face. Candida Butler was shimmering alongside her, tall and cool, the words head girl material shining out of her sweatless forehead as they probably had since she was ten.

The exam, Jane. Candida wrinkled a sensible nose at the Jones-and-Eagles show. Her own boyfriend was at Cambridge, reading astrophysics. An older guy, natch. Candida who was never going to be called Candy by anyone was serene and focused, and knew it.

Pity the essay titles were all so crap, Jane said.

Did you think so? Candida looked mildly surprised. Shed have opted for the utterly safe and anodyne My Grandmothers Attic. Anyway, its another one over, thats the main thing. She looked down at Jane with that soft, mature smile. So what are you going to be doing with yourself this summer?

The suns reflection lasered out of the plate-glass doors of the new science block. Danny Gittoes and Dean Wall, who probably still couldnt get the letters GCSE in the right order, came out of the toilets grinning and ripping off their school ties in preparation for another bid to get served in the Royal Oak, where the teachers drank. Went without saying that they wouldnt be coming back in the autumn.

Jane wished it was already winter. She wished she could spend the next seven weeks holed up in her own attic apartment, under the Mondrian walls, with a pile of comfort reading.

I am sixteen, and Im an old maid.

Im going on holiday for a couple of weeks, she said miserably. With my boyfriend. At his familys holiday home.

From the edge of the quad, where it met the secondary playing fields, you could see across miles of open countryside to the Black Mountains on the horizon.

On the other side of the mountains was Wales, another country.

Eirions country.

On the edge of Wales, probably nearly a hundred miles away, was the Pembrokeshire coast, where Eirions family had their five-bedroom holiday cottage. Where you could go surfing and walk the famous coastal path and lose your virginity. That kind of thing.

Some people have all the luck, said Candida. Were kind of constrained this year, because Roberts got a holiday job at his cousins software plant near Cheltenham.

Beats strangling poor bloody chickens at Sun Valley.

I suppose. Candidas wealthy farming family probably had major shares in Sun Valley. Welsh, isnt he, your guy?

Not sos youd notice. Jane blushed. Then, furious with herself, she went over the top again. I mean, he doesnt shag any old sheep.

Candidas eyes narrowed. Are you all right, Jane?

Yeah. Jane sighed. Fine.

Candida patted Janes shoulder. See you next term, then. On the A level treadmill.

Sure.

Jane watched Candida stride confidently across the quad towards the car park, where her mother would be waiting for her in the second-best Range Rover. Janes own mum ancient, clanking Volvo would be a while yet. Shed had an early funeral to conduct: Alfred Rokes, whod gone out at a hundred and two, having still been blacksmithing at ninety, so nothing too sorrowful there. And then a little grief here, maybe the Bishop was expected to call in.

With a good hour to kill, Jane could have strolled round the back for a cigarette. If shed been into tobacco. But when your mum smoked like a chimney, what was the point?

Janes nails dug into her palms.

An old maid who didnt even smoke. What kind of life was this?

OK, the problem. The problem was that Eirion was giving every impression of wanting to move them up to the Scott Eagles-Sigourney Jones relationship level.

Jane watched Jones and Eagles heading hand in hand for the students car park. Scott had passed his test on his seventeenth birthday; hed been driving Land Rovers since his feet could reach the pedals, which had probably been around the age of nine, because he was a tall guy, maybe fully grown now. Adult. Experienced.

Also, Eirion, himself sexy enough, in his stocky, amiable way had obviously been putting it about for years. Well, you know, I was in this band, he would say. Oh, Eirion had been around, no question.

And he could have had Jane, too, by now. She would have had sex with him, no arguments. In the back of the car or somewhere, anywhere; she just wanted the bloody thing cleared away, like dirty dishes everybody said the first time was crap anyway, this messy chore to be undergone before you could start enjoying it.

But Eirion would gently detach her clammy little hand from his belt. I want this to be proper, hed mumble. Do you know what Im saying?

Proper? Like, what did proper have to do with it?

I dont want this to be ordinary, you know? Run-of-the-mill. Me and you, were And then hed go all embarrassed, looking out of the car window at the moon. Jesus.

Ordinary? Listen, ordinary would have been just fine by Jane, who had no illusions, didnt expect rockets and Catherine wheels. Ordinary wouldve been an enormous relief.

She found herself stomping across the playing field between the tennis courts, panting with anguish under the merciless sun. A torrid sun, guaranteed to turn the Pembrokeshire coast into Palm Beach. Did Eirions fat-cat family have their own beach? Did they all sprawl around naked and uninhibited? Like, just because they were Welsh didnt mean they were all buttoned-up and chapel-whipped, necessarily. Probably the reverse: she and the Young Master would be assigned a double room and presented with a gross of condoms.

Shit. She shouldnt be feeling like this, because back in the exam room shed probably done OK. You always sensed it. Shed get her ten GCSEs and then come back in September and do some A levels.

Come back as an adult, with a lover.

She swallowed.

So Eirion, at seventeen, was experienced and mature, had done the rounds, and had met Jane who was sexually backward to what, in this day and age, was a frightening extent and she had become like special to him, maybe because when theyd first met shed been physically hurt by someone shed thought was a friend, and hed felt protective and stuff and that was OK, that was acceptable.

And special? yeah, OK, that was flattering.