Meeting the English by Kate Clanchy

Author:Kate Clanchy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466865136
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

15

So now Juliet was thin, and with someone who fancied her, and walking on Hampstead Heath on a warm summer’s night on an anti-Jake mission. She was not enjoying it as much as you might think.

‘Of course Struan is proud,’ said Ron, foraging ahead on the Heath path, his fringe bouncing in the faint moonlight. ‘If your brother had ever been to Cuik, he might have had some understanding of that. It’s not the sort of thing you learn at Oxford.’

‘Jake actually just got expelled from Oxford,’ said Juliet. Her heels were still bouncy, but her head had a bobbing, poorly tethered feeling. She wondered how old Ron was. She wondered if he had been to Oxford, and betted he hadn’t, that was why he was so wound up about it. She thought how boring it was, the way people went on about Oxford, and wondered where Celia went, after the scene at the pub. She wondered, with a little hot wonder, whether she and Jake were having sex right now, and what they would look like from outside, and then she thought how totally unfair it was for anyone to think for a minute that that was normal, or that Juliet shouldn’t be curious about it.

‘Sent down?’ said Ron. ‘That’s unusual, these days.’ He paused at a junction, stroking his chin, like he knew.

‘Well,’ said Juliet, ‘rusticated. He has to stay away for a year. He couldn’t do his play either. He was going to take his play up to Edinburgh, but they wouldn’t let him. Or maybe his money ran out, or something, I’m not very sure. To be honest that’s the first time I’ve seen him for ages, just now in the pub, I know that’s weird because we’re family but it’s a pretty odd relationship. Look, do you think he’s shagging Celia?’ Juliet was conscious that as soon as she opened her mouth, words poured out as if they’d been tightly stacked behind her teeth. That was the pills again, though combined, let’s be honest, with her actual personality: the real, escaping Juliet. Suddenly, Ron grabbed her hand and fixed her with his glossy gerbil eyes.

‘Is Jake taking drugs?’ said Ron.

‘How should I know?’ squeaked Juliet. Ron pushed back his quiff with his free hand.

‘He had,’ said Ron, ‘something strange and glittering about his eyes. I thought – just from my experience with kids, you know – that maybe he was taking something. It’s all right, Juliet, you can tell me.’ Juliet took her hand back, and stuck it her armpit.

‘He’s always looked like that,’ she said. ‘He was on the telly in The Sword in the Stone when he was eight looking like that. He was a child actor, you know, Daddy had all the connections, you know those programmes on the BBC with cardboard sets and all the acting is so crap, it hurts your teeth? I wasn’t a child actor because they said I was too fat for the cameras. We should try and find Struan.

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