The Quarry Read Free Page A

Paul; films, if you listen to Hol), have multiple interests in theme parks and are increasingly moving into electronic games and other virtual arts and entertainment spaces where they are poised to exploit the synergies offered by multiple-platform cross-conceptualisations. So says their website. (HeroSpace, the game that I play, is not one of theirs.)
    When they all lived here back in the early-to-mid nineties, before I was around but when I was conceived, everybody coming here this weekend was a student in the Film and Media Studies department of the university. Except Dad, who was, nominally, originally with the English faculty before he changed departments. He changed courses a lot. His status was such he was sometimes described as the Student Without Portfolio (a Hol coining, apparently. It sounds like one of hers).
    ‘How are you, anyway?’ Paul asks Hol.
    ‘Just about keeping my head above water. You?’
    ‘Water-skiing.’ Paul grins. ‘Things are good. You heard I might be coming up here to, ah …’
    ‘Get parachuted into the local safe seat over the heads of the loudly protesting local party?’ Hol says, folding her arms in front of her. ‘Yeah, heard. Well done; you finally made it into Private Eye .’
    ‘Yeah, I know; having that issue framed.’
    ‘I thought that was the police’s—’
    Uncle Paul – he’s not a blood relation, he’s just always liked me calling him Uncle Paul – turns from Hol and smiles at me. ‘Hey, Kit, I could end up being your MP!’ He laughs. ‘I should court you!’ He frowns. ‘You are allowed to vote, aren’t you?’
    ‘Jeez, Paul,’ Hol begins.
    ‘Can I count on your vote, Kit, yeah?’ Paul says, smiling broadly at me.
    ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘We’re in Bewford South here. Not Bewford City.’
    ‘Really?’ Paul looks taken aback. He’s frowning. He reaches out and takes me by the right elbow. ‘Well, never mind,’ he says, sounding sympathetic. His attention leaves me. ‘Hey, Mrs Gunn! How you doing?’
    I think I hear a distant ‘Huh’, then the sound of the kitchen door closing.
    Paul frowns briefly, shrugs. ‘Same old Mrs G.’ He looks around the front hall, inspecting. ‘Same old everything, I guess,’ he says, more quietly. ‘Place looks a bit shabbier, that’s about it.’
    I suppose the place does look shabbier. It is deteriorating all the time because although we have a big house we don’t have much money and Guy sees no point in keeping the place in good repair anyway. There are various leaks in the roof and many slates are missing or flap loose in gales and storms. (When the wind blows, it is, I’ve heard Guy say, ‘like living in a castanet factory in an earthquake’.)
    Most of the gutters and downpipes are blocked – a small tree at least as old as I am is growing in the down-pipe on the north-west corner of the house. There’s a crack big enough to fit a finger into running down two storeys of the back wall facing the quarry; two internal doors fit so poorly they have to be shoulder-charged to gain entry to the bedrooms concerned – or hauled open with both hands if you’re inside and want to get out – while another fits in its frame so loosely that just walking past it on the landing outside is enough to make it click and creak open (easily confused people find this ‘spooky’).
    Several windows are cracked across their corners and the one in the boxroom fell out entirely ten years ago and was replaced with hardboard, itself now warped with damp. The electrical system needed refurbishment twenty years ago (I estimate we go through about a metre of fuse wire per annum); the fire in the parlour produces a strong smell of smoke in the bedroom immediately above it, the two above that and the attic above those; the plumbing clangs and bangs; the boiler or something close to it groans and wheezes when called upon for hot water; and the central heating makes a noise like a slow drill and never really heats the two furthest