Chemistry and Other Stories Read online

  ***

  I felt like I’d come out of retirement. All-night parties, never mind whole weekends, were incompatible with fatherhood. Some things had changed since the days we drove to Wales for free parties deep in forest plantations. Instead of wandering around lost, as we often seemed to do, now people texted each other on their mobile phones as they trudged about. And when they danced everybody seemed to face the stage, as if a person putting on records – or rather operating a computer – was some kind of spectacle. No one else appeared to be troubled by anything sinister in this, nor by the gluttonous excess of a dozen stages.

  The music, to my surprise, sounded pretty much the same. What had erupted in the musical landscape fifteen years earlier, unlike anything in the history of man-made sound, seemed to have then evolved no further.

  ‘Oh, man,’ said Cal. ‘I love these beats.’

  He’d stood up and was dancing, two emphatic treads on one foot, then two on the other, then back to the first, while his torso jerked to the 4/4 beat and his hands played an invisible drum. It was the same movement, whatever track was playing. As he pounded away, rotating gradually in a clockwise direction, Cal gazed into the far distance through his wire-rimmed glasses, so that it was impossible to tell whether he was addressing anyone in particular: ‘I think I’ll go and piss against that tree,’ he said, though he didn’t move. It seemed like he was letting us know of some future manoeuvre he was planning to carry out.

  Guy reappeared with bottles of mineral water, which he passed around. ‘I’ve been talking to people.’ He smiled, like he had a joke to tell us. ‘Severe weather warnings.’ He grinned, as if these words were the punchline.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Bill said, spreading his hands. ‘Can you imagine a more perfect summer night?’

  ‘Flood warnings are being issued by the Met Office. The AA and the RAC are warning drivers to stay off the roads.’

  ‘Good job we’re not planning any road trips,’ said Cal, and everyone laughed.

  We headed down the slope. The others were all from the old crowd, ‘the childless survivors’ as my wife referred to them. Bill had taken more drugs, slept less and danced for longer than the rest of us put together. I had fond memories of him holding dazed audiences in thrall in forest clearings, spouting inspired gibberish about mushroom cults in the Middle Kingdoms or the connection between deep geological activity and crop circles in England’s wheat fields. Bill had charisma, and no ambition. Here he was, in all his regalia: a wizard’s hat and cape, covered in silver stars, and a wand which he held like a baton, conducting his friends and the wider crowd around him.

  Guy, who never took drugs, was bouncing up and down beside him, pausing at regular intervals to replenish his energy with fruit juice and vitamins. We danced, the group of us together, the music hard and sustained, the beats a perfect balance of predictable and unexpected, our bodies taking us on a journey through layers of sound.

  When, at four in the morning, the last of the stages shut down for the night, we headed across a field towards our tents. Stars sparkled in the black sky, aware of the enchantment below.

  In recent years I’d become accustomed to campsites around Britain: our children adored the unfamiliar deprivations of life under canvas, as their mother had before them.

  Bill and the gang had corralled me a place amidst their laager barely large enough for my cheap one-man tent, which I’d bought the day before, and it was odd putting it up, pulling the guy ropes into narrow alleys between other tents in order to peg them. ‘I’m not saying these tents are close together,’ I said. ‘I just hope none of you snore.’

  Apart from Guy, whose shelter was a white gazebo wrapped around with blue plastic fly-sheets, they were all small, globular one- or two-person tents, stuck like anemones to the surface of the sun-scorched earth. Here and there tents glowed from within. We shared hugs goodnight outside the gazebo.

  ‘Glad you came, soldier?’ Bill asked me.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, squeezing his solid frame. ‘I am so glad. So, so glad.’ How had I forsaken this rapture, why denied it myself in return for the more bland, profound pleasure of parenthood? Family life could perfectly well accommodate an occasional foray into ecstasy. Who or what had planted this self-denying seed in my personality? The fading religious ethics of my parents, or a caution within my own character?

  Sara, tall and slender, hugged gently, though for longer than she needed to. Her small, high breasts; her belly; her vacant womb. She’d been dancing for hours, her neck smelled sharp and sweet. I’d been wishing to kiss Sara Simmons for thirteen years. Did she know that? I guessed she knew. But maybe she didn’t.

  No sooner had I laid down my head than the rain began falling, tapping softly at first on the roofs of the tents. My groggy brain reconfigured the sound as purposeful percussion, as if the music in the glade had inspired the heavens, nature responding with a delicate tattoo. Picturing first Jen and then the children each asleep in bed at home, I began myself to fall asleep, to the rhythm of the rain gradually intensifying in volume and complexity.

  It was still dark when I awoke. For a moment I thought we were under bombardment. The rain hammered on the plastic roof so hard you could no longer differentiate separate raindrops in what was a constant roar. I doubted very much whether I’d paid enough money for the tent. The thunder alone, rumbling angrily around the valley before exploding above, would probably blast it loose. That was if the lightning didn’t strike first: it seemed to bite the ground nearby and then light up the world in horrifying flashes of insanity, in which I could see water coursing all around me, along the channels between our tents.

  I needed to pee. I’d brought an empty five-litre plastic water bottle, as Bill advised. He’d also recommended I bring earplugs and a travel shade. I filled my ears and covered my eyes, and went back to sleep.

  We began to stir from our positions around noon, heads emerging warily from tent flaps. The rain had abated somewhat, scaled back to a grudging drizzle.

  ‘Looks like the worst is over,’ said Guy, standing in the same outfit as yesterday, minus his trousers: hat, shirt, tie and boxer shorts.

  ‘Maybe it’s only a respite,’ I said.

  I stood and watched people trooping towards the glade or in other directions, to toilets and showers, or off to their vehicles to stock up on supplies, their feet slipping and sinking in the soft, wet grass.

  ‘I’m off on a coffee and croissant run,’ said Guy. ‘Anyone got any orders?’

  We congregated in Guy’s gazebo. You could almost stand up in it, except that two of the legs had buckled and the whole thing tilted, which probably helped drain off the rain. It was falling hard again, beating down upon the plastic and the soil. People retreated into their own vacant thoughts.

  Bill lay on his back with his eyes closed, and he started spouting some nonsense about the rain cults of certain South American tribes, but he didn’t seem to have the heart for it, and after a while lapsed into silence.

  Cal entered the gazebo, bending his head. Sara followed him in.

  ‘Anyone ever been to Bhutan?’ he asked. No one responded, so Cal sat down, on one of Guy’s fold-up chairs, without sharing whatever thought he’d come in with. Sara sat on the blow-up sofa next to me. Her weight made it sink in the middle, pressing us together.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked her.

  She nodded. ‘Some night.’ She shook her head. ‘Some storm. I mean, scary, but fantastic, no?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  When, in the afternoon, the rain suddenly stopped, we made a sortie. Patches of blue bloomed in the grey sky and the sun shone bright. We joined the throng, plodding through mud. You had to watch where you walked, you didn’t know with each step whether your foot was going to slide from under you or get stuck.

  ‘This raw smell,’ said Sara, treading stealthily. ‘Does it mean there’s shit mixed up in this?’

  No one else answered, so I said, ‘It’s just the smell of churned-up mud.
’

  ‘So says our agricultural expert from Oxford,’ said Cal. People chuckled without looking up.

  By the time we got to the wellies stall, a big sign declared SOLD OUT.

  We ate burritos and fajitas. Guy insisted on standing a round of smoothies. Bill blagged a bunch of plastic bags from a music stall. They came in different colours, and I chose a bright yellow pair: we removed our trainers, stepped into the bags, put back on our shoes and tied the bags as high up our legs as possible.

  Above us the sun was swallowed up again and the clouds spat upon the mob below. Although there were signs here and there of defiant fancy dress – a young man in Edwardian monocle and gaiters; a space girl with purple hair – no one could deny that the mood had changed. Replacing the blissed-out ease of the day before, you could tell from their demeanour that people were preparing to call upon reserves of fortitude and stamina it had not occurred to them they’d need in order to make this festival hum.

  We lumbered after Cal through the thick and sticky mud, to a stage in front of which a hundred people, feet planted in the sludge, twisted and shimmied. Dancing from the knees up.

  Bill lit his chillum and passed it round. Cal danced in his customary manner, stomping two beats on each foot, tamping down the clay. Guy swayed beside him. Up on the stage, either side of the DJ’s console, two women in luminous orange and yellow tight-fitting outfits, with long yellow and orange hair extensions, cavorted with unrestrained energy, attempting to enliven the crowd. The thud of the music was meant to make the ground bounce, and bodies rise off it, but the beat sank in the mud.

  My eyes met Sara’s, and we smiled at each other. It was as if we knew what each other thought, and were smiling at the same things, the very same absurdities.

  When I glanced up through the netting above us and saw how coal-black the sky was, I actually yelped a warning. It was too late. Raindrops fell like pellets machine-gunned from the clouds and splattered on our heads, ricocheted off surfaces, exploded on open ground.

  Our company staggered to the beer tent. Others followed and shouldered their way through, till we found ourselves hemmed in. The rain fell more and more heavily, so thick that all you could see outside was the ground, bubbling and seething. Occasionally a figure emerged, utterly drenched, tottering towards our haven, pushing his or her way in. The crush, the warm rain, the heat of such proximity brought forth the odours of people’s clothes and bodies. Guy alone was somehow able to move, squeezing through to the bar and back again with pint-sized plastic beakers of cold beer he passed around, grinning behind his shades as if already relishing what memories this fiasco would furnish him with, to reminisce the long year through.

  ‘You know what they’re calling this?’ he asked.

  No one asked Guy who ‘they’ might be, nor what ‘this’ was. Instead, reflected in the insectile mirrors of Guy’s sunglasses, we waited in that malodorous crush for him to tell us what they called it.

  ‘An extreme rainfall event.’

  The rain paused after a while and we ventured back outside. The ground was liquid mud now, slippery, easier to dance in though more hazardous. We gave it a go. A big naked man, spray-painted bronze, darted in and out of the crowd, his stub of a penis stuck on to his bollocks like a piece of clay. Out on her own a pretty, wild-eyed girl was flailing, barefoot, in the quagmire.

  When the rain came again we headed back across the open site towards our tents, water flowing down the slope in widening streams. We passed an audience gathered, jeering, around a pair of lads wrestling in slime. They were either friends or incompetent enemies.

  We slithered through the ooze. Cal lurched in front. Bill slid as if his shoes were skis, turning the precarious passage into sport. Sara lost her footing and flung out her arms, but I was there, and caught her.

  People stood about like stragglers, left behind. Celtic men, woad-painted, with shaven heads and runic tattoos. Their Boadicea women. Bedraggled girls in bikini tops and mud-spattered leggings, some with wings on their backs. Nature – vegetal, swampy – had dragged them to the ground, angels in the mud.

  ‘Have you told her yet?’

  ‘Will you keep your voice down?’ I was lying in my sleeping bag. Bill lay beside me. We stared at the low ceiling of my cheap tent. With every second it withstood the barrage, I appreciated what a bargain it had been. Guy had announced that he was retiring to his gazebo for a late siesta, and we’d all elected to do the same.

  ‘If you have feelings for someone, you should tell them,’ he said. ‘However complicated that makes things.’

  ‘I didn’t know they’d be here,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I would have,’ Bill assured me. He raised himself on to all fours. ‘I’m off to get some shut-eye for tonight. There’s so many great acts on I don’t know which tent to go to. The big night.’

  Bill was a positive force in my life. I was so grateful he hadn’t given up on me. ‘I thought tomorrow was the big night,’ I said. ‘The climax of the festival.’

  ‘It is, yeh,’ Bill agreed, as he clambered towards the tent flap. ‘But that’s tomorrow. And tonight, soldier, is tonight.’

  After Bill had left I rolled and smoked a cigarette, and peed into the water bottle, and then I lay down waiting to doze off, the sound of the rain soporific even as it pounded on the roof of the tent and roared away outside.

  When I woke, an hour or two later, the rain seemed even louder. After a while, I realised that there were other noises, too. Human ones. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but something – inflection, perhaps, or emphasis – seemed to suggest that one of them was Cal’s. I can’t be any more specific than that. For a horrible moment it occurred to me that it was the sound of sex, and I reached for the earplugs, but then I heard Sara’s voice: ‘I don’t care.’

  I began, then, as I lay there, to concentrate, focusing my attention in the direction of the tent next to mine. Odd phrases came through to me. ‘Toilets are rank,’ Sara said. ‘Overflowing.’ I suppose the truth is, they spoke louder as they argued.

  ‘How can you even consider it?’ Cal said. ‘No. No way. We’re all in this together.’ And then again, after some mumbled sentence I couldn’t decipher, ‘We’re a group. A team.’

  I realised quite suddenly that I could hear what they were saying not because of unique aural powers I’d turned out to possess, but because they were no longer in their tent but standing outside it, in the gulley between theirs and mine. What Sara was saying, at that moment, was, ‘All I want to do is leave. Is it so much to ask?’

  I opened my tent flap. I couldn’t see them, around the side, so I crawled right out and stood up. Cal and Sara faced each other two or three feet apart, drenched, the fast-running stream that coursed between the tents breaking around their calves like the pillars of bridges, yelling at each other through the roaring rain.

  ‘I didn’t pay all this money for tickets,’ Cal told her, ‘so we could miss out on the best part.’

  ‘I’d pay as much again,’ Sara shouted back at him, ‘to get out of here.’

  ‘You didn’t pay in the first place,’ Cal yelled. ‘I did.’

  I spoke quite softly, but it was clear that they – and probably the others, too, listening in their tents as I’d been – could hear me.

  ‘I’ll take you home.’

  They each turned slowly and stared, incredulous, as much at the sight of me, standing there soaked through, as at what I’d said.

  ‘Who the fuck’s asking you?’ Cal bawled in my direction, but Sara stepped towards me.

  There were plenty of other deserters, slithering and stumbling towards the exit, clutching rucksacks and binbags. Many left their tents behind. In the parking fields it was mayhem. Dishevelled knots of people pushed cars, which took off suddenly and careered crazily across greasy patches of grass before slowing to a stop, and sinking into mud.

  I drove backwards and forward
s a few feet, half-heartedly, aware that we were trapped. The last thing I wanted was to have to go back to the others for help.

  Off in the distance a young farmer – perhaps the owner of these pastures – was buzzing about on a tractor, towing people out. When at last he came our way I hailed him and he turned towards us, the big wheels of his vehicle sprightly in the mire, churning the earth up further, making itself ever more indispensable.

  The farmer swung the tractor round and reversed along the alley in front of our avenue of cars, twisting in his seat. He came to a stop and called out, ‘Twenty quid, buddy.’ I nodded, and he jumped down from his cab and came forward carrying the hook of a tow rope, bending as he approached, peering beneath my car.

  It felt curiously regal being towed out of the car park behind a tractor. I wanted to wave as we cruised past those still marooned. Here and there in vacant spaces between cars you could see pairs of wellington boots upright in the mud, where their owners, I guess, had simply stepped into their cars and driven away.

  The strangest thing was that even as we and others were leaving, so just as many, it seemed, were coming in. Infantry reinforcements plodded in by foot, others were ferried on the bus shuttle to and from the local train station. As we drove slowly through wide, deep puddles along the lane away from the site, other cars full of anxious, excited faces passed us, heading in the opposite direction. We carved our respective ways through the brown water like boats, the lines of our wakes meeting in little shimmies of turbulence in the middle of the road.