Plender (5 page)

Liar, I thought. That’s why he’s said they’re in the house. That way he can’t prove it: kids didn’t often go in each other’s houses round here. Parents didn’t like it.

“Bet you haven’t got thousands,” Robert said.

“Bet I have,” said the new boy, and turned away from the fence and walked towards his house. He stopped in the open doorway and turned back to look at Robert.

“Are you coming in, then?” he said.

I drained my glass again. I smiled to myself as I saw in my mind’s eye the exact movement of Knott’s head as he’d beckoned Robert into number forty. That had been the beginning of it all, that little inclination. The beginning of his takeover. By the end of the summer the gang that had been mine was his. So I’d had no choice but to become his best friend but it wasn’t until the grammar school that I’d really begun to hate him.

KNOTT

Click.

“Right, if you can just move your arm a little, yes, lower, that’s it, more to the left,
that’s
better . . .”

Click.

She’s loving it. You can tell. Brought the roses to her cheeks. She’s being a somebody. This is a real event.

Click.

“Now, if you lean forward a bit, put your arm back up again as if you’re looking out for someone, someone in the distance, that’s it . . .”

Click.

I expect she’s wondering when the pass is coming. Any minute, I expect. The next time I get in close. I can see her tremble a bit when she thinks I might be moving in.

But she’s got the wrong idea.

“Fine,” I said, putting the Yashica down. “Okay. Have a break. I want to set up the Rollei and change the background.”

Eileen relaxed and leant against the plaster sundial while I slid the photo-mural of the thatched cottage out and replaced it with a kitchen interior.

“Drink?” I said, dusting off my hands.

“Well . . .” said Eileen.

“Drink,” I said and poured two more.

As I poured I watched Eileen. She was still taking in the place, her eyes flicking from object to object. The initial impression hadn’t left her. She hadn’t had enough time to get over her surprise at finding a layout like this on the top of a smelly old warehouse.

“Have . . . have you had this place long?” she said as I passed her the drink. She was trying to sound as if she was in this kind of place every other day.

“No, not long,” I said. “A year or so.”

Since Kate and I had moved back up North. Since Kate’s old man had given me his catalogue contract. Since I’d understood what the word affluence really meant. And I always took a perverse pleasure in showing the place off; it always made me feel more guilty when I saw how it impressed the girls I brought up here. Reminded me that I was cheating on the person who’d made it possible: God knows I’d never have got what I’d got without her. Or rather without her old man. But as my mother said, I couldn’t have wished for a nicer father-in-law. As far as she was concerned he was the ultimate in family planning. Still, thanks to him, my mother could look on me as the success she’d always insisted I should become. Which suited me fine because it meant I appeared to be successful without actually having had to do anything about it, while at the same time I could indulge my guilt complex on the different aspects of the situation: not realising the potential my mother had encouraged myself and everyone else to see in me, marrying for reasons of class and money as a means to a successful end, and cheating on the reasons for my false success. But so long as appearances were kept up it didn’t matter how deceptive they were, as far as my mother was concerned. But then it had always been that way. Like that time when I’d been eight or nine . . .

Early evening, after tea. The high blue sky was still and quiet. The only sound was of Mr. Morris putting his motorbike and sidecar away in his creosoted shed, scraping his heavy studded boots on the rough cast concrete. I stood in the front garden and looked across the road towards the sound. Beyond the privet I could see the big black-coated figure of Mr Morris move stolidly across the threshold of his shed. I waited until he’d closed the door behind him. Then I opened the gate, trying not to let the latch click so that my mother might not come out and ask me where I was going. If that happened I’d have to lie, say I was over to Brian’s or Robert’s or Stewart’s, and if I said that that was what I was going to do, then I’d have to do it, while she waited and watched to make sure I did. Because she’d suspect me the minute I answered. She always knew when I was lying. And if I acted out the lie then I wouldn’t be able to meet Linda and, as she was already at the place we’d arranged, then not to go was unthinkable. I knew she wouldn’t agree to meet again if I didn’t turn up. She was that kind of girl. She behaved to suit herself and no one else.

I’d seen her cycle past our house five minutes before, slowly, lazily, not sitting on the saddle. That had been part of the arrangement, too. I was to look out of my bedroom window at six o’clock and if she cycled past I was to follow her on foot to Johnson’s Field.

I’d gone up to my room on time, full of dread, because to go upstairs except at bedtime was in itself worth suspicion, even more frightened in case Linda looked towards the house and my parents might see in her face what we were planning to get up to. But she’d sidled by without the flicker of a glance and so I’d gone downstairs again and let myself out of the front door which was also risky because to go out via the front door implied secrecy.

Once out of the garden and walking along the warm dusty pavement my fear was even worse. I had to push myself forward because I knew, I just knew, that if I met Linda my mother would find out. It was a terrible certainty but it was as if I were dreaming: I couldn’t turn back.

I rounded the corner of the crescent and turned into the lane that ran behind the high board fencing at the back of the gardens in my row. Johnson’s Field was on the other side of the lane.

I jumped through the gap in the hedge and cut diagonally across the field to the adjacent hedge where the three tall oak trees were, where the hedge was densest and lent itself to the transforming of bowers into dens. It was in one of these dens that Linda waited for me.

I crackled my way through the thick twiggy entrance and then suddenly found myself face to face with Linda in the still cool space of the den.

Linda was two years older than me, the only girl in the gang. She was as good at fighting as any of us boys, but in the games we played she usually had to be content to pretend to bandage the wounded, whether she was being a cowgirl or a knight’s lady. And as I loved her I always allowed myself to be wounded early on so that I could lay my head in her lap the way she insisted it was done, just like they did on the Saturday pictures.

But of course as leader of the gang I had no choice but to keep my feelings to myself. So when, one day on the way home from school, she’d ridden her bike along the curb next to me and suggested what she’d suggested then I’d been flooded with a mixture of dread and happiness. Linda loved me, that was obvious, otherwise she wouldn’t want to meet me alone. We could be hero and heroine together, unobserved; I would be able to be loving her without anyone laughing.

But the minute I stepped into the den fear fluttered at the bottom of my stomach. The expression on Linda’s face explained the real reason for our meeting.

“Hello, darling,” she said.

Darling. The way she said the word was smug, self-conscious, triumphant. The sound of the word made me feel sick. It was a horrible word, a word that brought laughter and derision whenever it was spoken on the Saturday morning screen. A word that shouldn’t be spoken to a boy. My parents never said it, never even acted what it meant, to me or to each other. It was a sissy word. I’d seen my parents exchange disgusted satisfied smiles whenever it was used on the radio. Their glances told me the word was nearly as dirty as swearing.

I didn’t answer Linda.

“First,” she said, “we’ll have a kiss.”

She reached for me and pulled me to her and we kissed, flat mouthed and awkward. The warmth of her face made me shudder. She stepped back.

“There,” she said, “now it’s as if we were married.”

I found my voice.

“Good,” I said. “I’ll pretend to be Jungle Jim and you can be my wife and prepare me a meal while I . . .”

It was no use.

“Oh, no,” she said. “That’s just a game. We can play at that any time.”

Very quickly she pulled her dress over her head. I stared at the stark whiteness of her vest and knickers.

She draped her dress over a thin low branch and then took the rest of her clothes off.

“Look,” she said.

I looked, amazed at the lack of anything to really look at. This was it. This was what boys and girls weren’t supposed to do together. It seemed so stupid. Now I’d seen what Linda was like, all the fuss didn’t seem to matter. The fear I’d been feeling disappeared. But only for a second because Linda said:

“You can touch me if you like.”

I stared at her, horrified. How could I? I couldn’t, not there. Besides, how? What did you do?

“Come on,” she said. “Look, like this.”

I looked away, but at the same time the overwhelming feeling grew in me that I wanted her to touch me.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “You’re not frightened, are you?”

I shook my head.

“Well then?”

I said, “Don’t you want to see me?”

“Not now,” she said. “We’ll deal with you tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? How could she imagine I dare come back tomorrow.

“But look,” I said, “It’ll only take a minute. Then I’ll touch you.”

She rolled her eyes and tut-tutted.

“Oh, all right,” she said. “But hurry up.”

Trembling, I unclasped the snake belt and let my trousers down. I put my thumbs in the waistband of my underpants . . . and then I heard my mother’s voice from the top of the field.

“Peter! Come here this minute. This minute, do you hear?”

My stomach turned to jelly. She’d found out. She knew. It was the end of the world. Tears sprang to my eyes. Linda grabbed her dress and furiously struggled it on.

“It’s your fault,” she said, glaring at me. “You let her know where you were coming.”

She finished fastening her buttons while I trembled the clasp of my belt together.

“Peter! Do you hear me? Come here this minute!” and then another voice joined in.

“Peter, Peter, your mum wants you. Quick.”

Then I heard: “Now you go home, Brian. It must be nearly your bedtime.”

“It isn’t,” said Brian Plender. “Honest. It’s ages yet, Mrs. Knott.”

“Well, you go on home, anyway.”

Brian. He’d told her. He’d told my mother where I’d gone.

“Go on, then,” said Linda. “Get going.”

I stared at her.

“You don’t think I’m coming with you, do you? I’m staying here till she’s gone.”

“But you have to come with me,” I said. “If you don’t, me mam’ll know what we’ve been doing. She’ll think you’re frightened and that’s why you won’t go.”

Linda just looked at me, saying nothing.

“Peter!” came my mother’s voice.

I couldn’t stay there any longer; if I did I knew she’d come for me. So I stumbled through the hedge into the evening brightness of the field and saw my mother in the gateway black against the dying sun.

I meandered up the field, occasionally thrashing the hedge with a twig I’d picked up, trying to look as casual as possible so that my casualness would convince her of my innocence. But when I got closer I knew nothing I could do or say would be of any use.

Before I reached her she turned and began to march away from me, back towards the house. That was the thing that made me go to pieces.

“Mam,” I cried, tears coming as I scrambled after her. “Mam!”

She didn’t turn and she didn’t answer. We rounded the corner into the crescent. Brian was backing away down the pavement on his side of the road, hands in pockets, whistling and dragging his feet.

My mother went through our gate and into the house by the front door. This was to prevent my father, who was eating his tea in the kitchen, becoming involved and therefore embarrassed. My mother opened the door of the front room and stood back to let me pass. I walked through into the cold unaccustomed tidyness of the front room. The only time there was a fire lit in that room was on Christmas Day. Even though the evening sun was streaming in through the bay window the room felt chilly and still and depressing.

My mother closed the door behind her.

“Now then,” she said. “I want to know what you’ve been up to.”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You’ve been with that Linda, haven’t you?”

I just nodded.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. We were just playing.”

“Don’t tell lies. You were doing something you’re ashamed of, weren’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

“It doesn’t matter whether you tell me or not,” said my mother. “I shall find out anyway.”

And I knew she would, she always did, so I confessed. When I’d finished, my mother knelt down and dried away my tears and then she took me by the shoulders and looked me in the face, her own face softening a little bit and she said:

“Listen to me, Peter, because this is for your own good: you want to stay away from girls like her. They’ll only do you harm. They’re nothing but trouble. They could do you a lot of damage. You stick to your pals like Brian and Robert. Do you hear?”