The Bone Clocks

I get my box of Rothmans out of my shirt pocket—eight gone, twelve left—but before I can light up Gary appears in his REALITY IS AN ILLUSION CAUSED BY A LACK OF ALCOHOL T-shirt and offers me one of his Silk Cut, saying, “This one’s on me, Holly.” I thank him and he says, “You won it fair and square,” and his eyes flicker up and down my chest, like Vinny’s do. Did. Gary’s ’bout to say something else but one of his mates calls him over, and Gary says, “I’ll see you later,” and goes. Not if I see you first, I think. I’ve had it with boys.

Three-quarters of the pickers are students at college or uni or waiting to go this September, and I’m the youngest by a couple of years, even counting my age as sixteen, not fifteen. I’m trying not to act all shy, ’cause that might give my age away, but they aren’t going to be plumbers or hairdressers or bin collectors: They’ll be computer programmers or teachers or solicitors, and it shows. It’s in how they speak. They use precise words, like they own them, like Jacko does, in fact, but not like any kid in my year at school’d dare to. Ed Brubeck’ll be one of them in two years. I look over at Gary and just at that moment he sort of senses me and gives me a fancy-meeting-you-here look, and I glance away before he gets the wrong idea.

The pickers who aren’t students sort of stand out. Gwyn’s one. She’s playing draughts with Marion and Linda and, apart from a “Hi” and a fake smile when I came in, she’s ignored me. Cheers very much, Gwyn. Marion’s a bit simple and her sister Linda fusses all mummishly and finishes her sentences for her. Picking fruit at Black Elm Farm’s their annual holiday, sort of. There’s a couple, Stuart and Gina, who have their own tent, tucked away in a dip. They’re late twenties, look like folk singers, with earrings, and hair in pony-tails, and actually they areamateur folk singers, and busk in market towns. Gina’s taking me and Debby food shopping to the Spar at Eastchurch after I’ve been paid. They act as go-betweens to the other pickers and Mr. Harty, Debby told me. Last, there’s a kid called Alan Wall, who sleeps in a tiny caravan parked round the side of the farmhouse. I saw him hanging out washing to dry when I was having a look around. He can’t be more than a year or two older than me, but his scrawny body’s tough as cables and he’s tanned like tea. Debby told me he’s a gypsy, or a traveler, as you’re s’posed to say these days, and that Mr. Harty hires someone from his family every year, but Debby didn’t know if it’s a tradition or debt or superstition, or what.

COMING BACK FROM the toilet, I see a narrow canyon between the farmhouse and a shed. Someone’s waiting. A match strikes. “Fancy meeting you here,” says Gary. “Care for another smoke?”

Yes, Gary’s good-looking, but he’s at least a bit drunk, and I’ve known him all of two hours. “I’ll get back to the common room, thanks.”

“Nah, you’ll share a smoke with me. Go on, Hol, everyone’s got to die of something.” He’s already stuck his box of Silk Cuts in my face with one stuck out for me to take with my lips. I can’t refuse without making it into a big issue so I use my fingers and say, “Thanks.”

“Here’s a light … So tell me. Your boyfriend in Southend must be missing you something rotten.”

I think of Vinny and heave out a “Christ, no,” think, You idiot, Sykes, and add, “Kind of, yeah, he is, actually.”

“Glad that’s sorted.” In the glow of his fag, Gary grins dead slinkily. “Let’s go for a stroll and see the stars. Tell me about Mr. Christ-no-sort-of-yeah.”

I really don’t want Gary’s fingers inside my bra or anywhere else, but how do I tell him to piss off without bruising his pride?

“Shyness is cute,” says Gary, “but it stops you living. C’mon, I’ve got alcohol, nicotine … anything else you might need.”

Christ, if guys could be girls being hit on by guys, just for one night, lines as cheesy as that’d go extinct. “Look, Gary, now’s not a good time.” I try to walk around him to get back to the farmyard.

“You’ve been eyeing me up.” His arm comes down like a carpark barrier, pressing against my stomach. I smell his aftershave, his beer, and his horniness, sort of. “All night. Now’s your chance.”

If I tell him to feck right off, he’ll probably turn all the pickers against me. If I go nuclear and call for help it’ll be his version against the Hysterical New Girl’s, and how old is she again, and do her parents really know she’s here anyway?

“Polish your mating rituals, Octopus Boy,” says a Welsh voice. Me and Gary both jump a mile. It’s Gwyn. “Your seductions look very like muggings to me.”

“We were—we were—we were just talking.” Gary’s already scuttling away to the common room. “That’s all.”

“Annoying but harmless.” Gwyn watches him go. “Like mouth ulcers. He’s propositioned every female on the farm except Sheba.”

Being rescued’s humiliating and what comes out is a grumpy “I can look after myself.”

Gwyn says, a bit too sincerely, “Oh, I don’t doubt that.”