A Whisper to the Living (16 page)

‘So what did you do?’ I turned to face her. ‘What did you do, Angela?’

‘I kicked him in the balls!’ She began to roll about the bed, her body convulsed with almost hysterical laughter. I waited for a few moments.

‘And that stopped it?’

‘Stopped it? Stopped it?’ she howled. ‘I reckon it stopped him for a week or two.’ She calmed down gradually. ‘Since then, I’ve stuck to boys my own age, ones that have never done it. Don’t go with anybody older, Anne. They’re the ones that get you into trouble, they’re the ones that force you. Once they’ve done it, they want to do it again and they’re not satisfied with the other stuff. Has your boyfriend ever done it with anyone else?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Who is he?’

‘You wouldn’t know him.’

‘Ah – frightened to tell me his name in case I take him off you?’

‘No.’ There was, of course, no boyfriend. And now I had heard all I needed to know, I was no longer interested in the company of this very boring girl. ‘I think you’d better go now, Angela. After all, I’ve your homework to do as well as my own.’

‘Please yourself.’ She flounced out of the house with an unattractive pout of her small lips and I watched her as she walked down the road, wide hips jerking from side to side, chest thrust out, sturdy legs mincing along, ankles swaying slightly as she balanced her weight on the cubed heels of her black plastic shoes. Yes, Angela had been quite useful.

After she had disappeared, I came out of the house and went to sit for a while on the library wall. This had always been the unofficial meeting place for us – the Cullens, myself and, when he could escape, Simon Pritchard. Here we had all gathered as children to play ‘walk the wall, close your eyes, if you fall, mud in your eyes’ and ‘salt, pepper, mustard’ on the steps. Here we had met to swap comics, to play marbles on the pavement, to exclaim over ladybirds and hairy caterpillars trapped in matchboxes – with air-holes of course.

Simon joined me after a short while, his eyes darting constantly towards the house on the next corner in case his mother should be peeping from a side window. Edna Pritchard was a spy and I had written her down as such. She was a mean, hard-faced woman and I pitied Simon for having to live with such a mother, one who twitched at her lace curtains all the while, one who watched, it seemed, everyone who passed along Long Moor Lane. She didn’t like me. Because she didn’t like me, the same devil that had prompted me to defy the nuns often came to the fore in her presence, made me go out of my way to greet her in the shops, to open doors with a flourish, to offer assistance with her loaded baskets. I suppose Simon’s mother amused me in a way. His father, Dr Pritchard, was a different kettle of fish altogether, lovable, warm, dependable, humorous. So while I pitied Simon for his mother, I could only envy him for having such a fine father, one I might have chosen for myself had I been granted but half a chance.

‘What’s up, Simon?’ I asked, looking into the pale thin face. He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Homework. Bloody homework,’ he muttered.

‘Don’t talk to me about it, Simon. At least you’re not getting persecuted for not being confirmed. Just be grateful you’re at a non-Catholic school. They’re all praying for me up there – rows and rows of little nuns in long black frocks – all praying for Annie Byrne’s immortal soul. You can’t move for praying nuns. I’d rather meet a praying mantis than a praying nun, any day of the week. Come on, cheer up – it can’t be as bad as all that.’

He grinned widely, his whole face changing as he began to chuckle. ‘You’re having me on again, Anne . . .’

‘I’m not – honest. Cross me heart, hope to die, cut me throat an’ spit in me eye. It’s murder. The headmistress is being nice to me. I’m under her wing and I don’t fit because she only comes up to my knees. It’s a very sinister situation, because Mother is never nice to anybody. Some of the girls are jealous of me because I’m getting preferential brainwashing in her office. On top of that, the parish priest keeps coming to our house, trying to get me to go to confirmation class with all the ten-year-olds. I daren’t answer the door. Even my mother’s a bit on their side, though she never sets foot in a church. I feel persecuted. Homework’s nothing compared to that.’

‘Oh heck. What are you going to do about it then?’

I shuffled along the wall and whispered in his ear, ‘My mother’s confirmation name is Winifrede. Don’t tell anyone – it’s a closely guarded family secret.’

‘Winifrede?’ he yelled before guffawing loudly.

‘Shush. Can you imagine it? I suppose I could go through with it and choose a glorious name like Gorgonzola or Heliotrope . . .’

‘Or Rumpelstiltskin . . .’

‘But it has to be a saint’s name. And saints are so good and so boring that it’s difficult to pick one out. I think St Peter’s about the best because he was a terrible sinner. Then there’s always poor old doubting Thomas. I could be Thomasina or Petra . . .’

‘Or Petrol-ina or even Paraffin-ina . . .’ He laughed so much that he fell backwards off the wall and into a rhododendron bush. I dragged him out and back onto the wall, was just beginning to dust him off when his father’s battered Morris stopped at the edge of the pavement and Dr Pritchard stepped out to join in.

‘What’s all this?’ he smiled.

‘Your son fell off the wall, Doctor. A couple of years ago that would have cost him two marbles or this week’s
Beano
 . . .’

‘Oh Dad . . . Dad . . .’ gasped Simon. ‘She’s thinking of calling herself Gorgonzola or Petunia . . .’

‘I never mentioned petunias . . .’

‘Ah. Changing your name, then?’ Dr Pritchard joined us on the wall.

I tried to sober up a little. ‘It’s . . . it’s for confirmation. I’m meant to get confirmed and choose another name . . .’

‘You already have a perfectly good name.’

‘I know, Doctor. But I’m supposed to choose a second one, one I’ll never use . . .’

‘Just as well,’ chuckled Simon.

I gave him what I imagined to be a withering glance, then turned back to his father. ‘Simon and I were just discussing the possibilities. But I shan’t need a name because I’m not getting confirmed. Do you think that’s wrong of me, refusing to be confirmed when everybody seems to want me to go through with it?’

‘Especially the black widows . . .?’

‘Praying mantis, Simon.’ I kicked him gently on the shin. ‘Am I being terrible, Doctor?’

The tall man folded his arms across his chest. ‘Depends on the reason. Are you just being awkward or are you genuinely against confirmation?’

I thought about this for a while. ‘I’m not against it. I just don’t want it for me, that’s all. On the other hand, I might be acting difficult. It’s hard to say.’

‘Yes . . . yes. I expect you find it easy to understand what you know and impossible to understand what you feel . . .’

‘That’s it, Doctor! That’s it exactly.’

‘There, you see? Another perfect diagnosis. What would the neighbourhood do without me? You are suffering from adolescence, my dear. This is a condition from which you will, unfortunately, recover sooner or later. It’s the worst of times and the best of times . . .’

‘You’re stealing from Dickens again, Dad.’

‘I know, Simon.’ He shook his head in mock weariness. ‘It’s so difficult to be original all the time – even for someone as brilliant as I am.’

He was so lovely to be with, amusing, comfortable and comforting.

‘How’s it going with you, Simon?’ he was asking now.

Simon’s head dropped a little. ‘So-so, Dad,’ he mumbled.

Dr Pritchard ruffled his son’s hair and I, as witness to this affectionate gesture, suddenly felt jealous.

‘Another case of acute adolescence, eh?’ said the doctor. ‘Maybe I should work on a cure? Yes, it’s a funny old age, is thirteen. Neither man nor boy, neither fish nor fowl . . . though some of you can be pretty foul at times.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Come along then, son. We mustn’t keep your mother waiting, must we? And I’ve a surgery to run.’ He paused. ‘The good thing about being thirteen is that you can sit on the library wall . . .’

‘And the bad thing,’ grumbled Simon, ‘is that while you’re sitting on the wall, you’re not doing your homework.’ He looked genuinely troubled and I realized, not for the first time, that Simon was having a problem keeping up at school. And I couldn’t offer to help, because that would make Simon and Dr Pritchard think I was some kind of big-head, better than the doctor’s son, a real clever-clogs. As for Simon’s mother – well, she’d made it plain enough that she couldn’t stand the sight of me. Anyway if Dr Pritchard was so gifted, why couldn’t he help his own son? Furthermore, I’d enough troubles of my own at the moment, hanging around here or at the Cullens’ house to keep out of Higson’s way, doing my own homework in fits and starts on the bus, in the dinner hour, in the middle of the night or at tea-time before my mother left for the mill. And when I wasn’t doing homework, I was working on the other thing, writing my story, doing research, planning a solution, trying to overcome the sudden bursts of nervous energy that often hit me without warning.

‘Are you going home now, Anne?’ Dr Pritchard was asking.

‘I’ll sit here for a while.’

He looked at Simon. ‘Go and start Genevieve – no choke.’ He tossed the keys into Simon’s hand. ‘I’ll let you drive her home.’ Home was only fifty yards away. ‘But don’t move till I’m a passenger.’

Simon ran round the car and jumped into the driver’s seat.

Dr Pritchard turned to me. ‘Why do you spend so much time sitting here in the evenings, Anne?’

I shrugged my shoulders lightly. ‘I don’t always sit here. Sometimes I visit the Cullens or other friends.’

‘But you’re here quite often – I’ve seen you.’

‘I’m not doing any harm. It’s a free country isn’t it? No curfew?’ My hackles were rising again. ‘I like to watch the world go by – is there anything wrong with that?’ How dare he? At least I didn’t hide myself behind lace curtains, at least I was an observer rather than a spy . . .

‘No. There’s nothing wrong with that, Anne. It’s just that you seem . . . very tense?’

I jumped down from the wall. ‘I’m alright, Doctor. Are you ordering me to go home?’

He cleared his throat. ‘There are some odd characters about, Anne. You’re growing up now, becoming quite an attractive young lady. Some men are not trustworthy – not beyond dragging a young girl off into the bushes or into a car.’

‘I can stick up for myself, thank you.’

‘That’s what they all say – until it’s too late.’

He was only trying to be kind, only trying to warn and protect me. Yet I was suddenly angry with him for preaching to me about a subject already so dangerously familiar. Briefly, I wondered how he would react were I to tell him right here and now in the street, tell him that my particular nightmare would not leap from a car or from behind a bush, but would and already did pounce on me in my own house.

‘Be careful, Anne,’ he was saying now.

I boiled over, erupted with all the fury of a long-dormant volcano, words spilling like white-hot lava, pouring out in torrents to engulf the innocent, missing the guilty by miles. ‘Stop telling me what to do! All of you keep telling me . . . nuns, priests, now the flaming doctor . . . have none of you anything better to do? Go to church, get confirmed, do your homework, don’t sit on walls. How old will I have to be to make the tiniest decision for myself? I’ll sit where I bloody well want – they can twitch all the curtains in the lane and I’ll sit here! I’ll sit here till midnight if I want to – I’ll sit here till tomorrow . . .’

His hand was on my arm now and, in spite of my fury, I noticed the hurt in his eyes. Oh, to hell with him! Why shouldn’t he feel pain, why did it always have to be me, just me?

‘Calm down, Anne – please . . .’

‘Why don’t you get in that car and look after your own, Doctor? Why don’t you take Simon home and give a hand with his homework? I don’t see why you should worry your head over me – I’m just Annie Byrne from across the road, on a bloody scholarship, not fit company for Mrs Pritchard’s son . . .’

‘Who said so?’

‘She doesn’t need to say it, does she? I can tell from the way she looks at me, as if she wished I’d crawl back under my stone . . .’ Tears pricked my lids and I knew that my anger was about to be drowned.

‘And I don’t like to hear you swearing. It doesn’t suit you, Anne.’

Why wouldn’t he fight back, give me something to sharpen my teeth on, give me a good reason not to cry? I’d had enough, more than enough of patience, understanding, condescension.

‘You swear, Doctor. I’ve heard you on Sundays when you’re fixing the car. But I’m not supposed to because I’m a girl and only thirteen, is that it? What can you expect of somebody so low-born? I’m one of the servant classes, remember that. Twenty years ago, I’d have gone straight from school at fourteen into the mill or into service. Why – I might even have swept your floors for you, Doctor.’ This was my mother speaking. These were her words, drummed into me when I didn’t come up to scratch at school. ‘I can only be what I am. Education will not make a lady of me.’ The tears were a hair’s-breadth away now and my voice was rising in pitch, beginning to crack.

‘You sound very bitter,’ he said quietly.

‘Perhaps I am.’

‘Don’t be bitter. Please, don’t be bitter, love.’

I must apologize, I must! Not only had this man never done me any harm, he had always been someone to respect, to revere almost. Why take it out on him?

‘I’m sorry, Dr Pritchard.’

‘It’s quite alright dear – I do understand and I’m not just being kind and platitudinous – look it up in the dictionary when you get home, eh? What you’re going through is something that can be explained. All girls go through these changes, these moody and difficult times. You’re fortunate in a way, because you can express yourself.’ He turned to look into his car where Simon sat waiting patiently, then, almost to himself he said, ‘And yet the more intelligent ones often suffer more acutely.’ He stared at me for a few seconds then took a step towards the pavement’s edge. ‘Come and have a chat with me sometime soon. Remember Anne – you’re not alone.’ As the car hopped away with Simon at the wheel, I heard my mind’s voice saying, ‘Oh yes I am, Dr Pritchard.’ If only he knew!