What They Do in the Dark (30 page)

‘Can we have a lend of that?’ says Pauline, loud enough for me and Cynthia both to jump. Cynthia is already cowering as Pauline gets off her chair and snatches the sewing from her. It’s shaped like a small book, with white felt inside and a purple felt cover, stitched with an incomplete bouquet.

‘What’s it for?’ asks Pauline.

Cynthia mutters, glasses downcast.

‘You what?’ Whatever she says, I can see Pauline will be inclined to disbelieve her.

‘It’s a needle case,’ I explain. ‘You keep needles in it, so you don’t lose them.’

‘Can we lend it?’ Pauline says, taking it. Cynthia’s slack fingers acknowledge that this isn’t a request. I wonder what Pauline is
going to do. As she pulls the needle free of its thread she briefly admires the embroidery, which is much better than the lumpy cross-stitch we occasionally produce at school.

‘You can sew your dress,’ she points out to me, and then to Cynthia, ‘Got any more cotton?’

Cynthia shakes her head. Unbothered, Pauline hands me the needle and begins to tug at the woven yellow thread attached to the buttercup petal Cynthia is stitching. The surrounding fabric buckles and bunches, but the embroidery silk doesn’t give, even when Pauline uses her teeth. It’ll be hard to smooth out what she’s done. I stand there, holding the needle, as Pauline glares at Cynthia, ready to blame her for thwarting her brainwave.

‘Nig-nog,’ she says.

I know it’s hopeless, really. I know Mum will find the hole beneath the sleeve, if not tonight, when I’ll be in enough trouble for being out so late, then another day, dealing me a double portion for my attempts at deception. But the force of Pauline’s determination blunts this knowledge. She chucks the soft booklet at Cynthia’s face, making her flinch.

‘It’s no good!’

Taking the sewing on to her lap, Cynthia’s fingers attempt to smooth the clotted stitches. ‘Sorry,’ she says, keeping her remote eyes in their bottle lenses turned away from us. She’s saying it to make us leave her alone.

‘We just need to get some cotton,’ I reassure Pauline. And then for Cynthia, in the same spirit in which I give her big portions at school dinners, ‘Embroidery stuff’s probably too thick anyway.’

But Pauline isn’t about to let go. ‘Was that yer mam?’ she demands. Cynthia nods. Suddenly, Pauline shunts forward hard on both legs so that she rams Cynthia’s shins with her own, making her slam back in her chair. Pauline’s face denies what she’s just done. ‘When’s she coming back?’

Cynthia attempts to shrug, but it isn’t good enough, and
Pauline rams her again so that she gestures at the machines and says, ‘When it’s dry,’ in her almost voiceless voice.

‘Fucking nig-nog!’ Pauline grabs the sewing from her and chucks it across the row of chairs. I go to rescue it. It’s probably a present for someone, like a grandma. I wonder if I’ll ever make a present again for my grandma, since she belongs to Dad. I feel sick and tired and excited. No one comes from the back room where the radio chunters on, playing ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ by Charlie Rich. No one comes in to do their washing. Cynthia is crying, which she sometimes does at school, the type of hopeless crying you usually cry only at the end, when you’ve been crying a long time, the way Pauline was crying in her sleep.

When I pick up the needle case, I start unpicking the petal Cynthia was working on, reversing the smooth official stitches to decode the back of the felt square where the connecting lines are chaotic and random, in search of a starting knot.

‘We can just undo this bit,’ I reassure them both. Pauline is interested. She wants to do it, but I won’t let her. Her filthy hands have already greyed the white pages meant for the future needles. Once I’ve started, it’s enjoyable to undo Cynthia’s embroidery. I’m being nice to her really. It could be much worse. After all, I only need one bit of cotton to repair the hole in my dress.

As I thread the needle with the wrinkled, freed cotton, Pauline gets my dress out from the drier. It’s puckered around its seams and I realize it might have shrunk from the heat. I try to smooth it, panicked again. Everything gets worse, whatever you do. Looking up from the mess I’ve made, I see Cynthia staring out of the window, probably wondering where her mum is, and I realize that’s another mess. She might be a blackie but Cynthia’s mum is still a grown-up, and if she gets back before we’ve gone, Cynthia will dob us in. Her mum’s anger will be another route to my own mum and the final reckoning of my crimes, which now includes conclusively ruining my clothes.

‘We’ll get done if her mum comes back,’ I tell Pauline, and hoist the dress back over my head. Sure enough, it feels newly snug and comes further up my legs than before. Pauline doesn’t notice, though, so maybe it’s not as bad as I think. And at least it’s clean.

‘What about the sewing?’

‘We’ll take it with us.’

I pincer the needle and then, since I need to carry my library books, give it to Pauline. Cynthia is holding herself tense, waiting for us to go. Pauline pricks the top of her arm with the needle as we pass. Two more effortless tears crawl from beneath Cynthia’s glasses. They make me feel bad.

‘Listen,’ I say, about the needle and thread, ‘we’ll give it back.’

She doesn’t make any response at all. I may as well not have bothered to speak.

‘Promise,’ I say. ‘Swear to God.’ Which is a promise I have never in my life broken. But she doesn’t know that, does she?

‘You’re really good at sewing,’ I proffer. Pauline’s nodding me out of the door, but it feels essential to get Cynthia to know that I’m not horrible, like Pauline.

‘Tell you what, why don’t you come with us and you can sew my dress? It’s got a hole.’

I lift my arm to show her, but her glasses don’t angle up to take it in. She’s beginning to nark me.

‘I’m rubbish at sewing,’ I tell her, which isn’t even true. I make a last attempt. ‘If you sew it for us I’ll get you something. A lolly, sweets.’ Even though we don’t have any money left. She won’t know that though, will she, until after she’s finished? And it’s true that she might do a better job than me, better than Pauline certainly, and if I sew it myself, wherever we go to I’ll have to take the dress off again outside and parade my underwear. In any case it feels very important now not to leave her alone, unconsoled, before her mum gets back. It feels important that she can’t resist us.

‘Go on,’ says Pauline, wheedling. I’m surprised she’s so instantly
keen for Cynthia to come with us, but I’m grateful for the help. I pick up the needle case from where it’s slipped to the floor, square its soft pages.

‘It’s really nice.’

Patiently, I hold it in front of her and in the end she stands to take it. Then she shuffles with me to the door, as though she has no choice. I feel like I’ve won. She must believe I’m not horrible.

‘Is it a present?’

She nods.

‘Who for?’

Outside, the low sun is about to be swallowed by buildings. I wonder if my dad is at home yet, having his wash and shave. Pauline and I both seem to know we need to be somewhere where there are no people. We walk for a bit, and although Cynthia casts a look back a couple of times as streets grow between us and the launderette, she doesn’t say anything. She could say something, and if she did, I would listen to her, but she chooses not to. I know she can speak up, now I’ve seen her with her mum, so it’s her own fault. There’s no pushing even, now she’s walking with us.

Once we reach the Town Fields, I lead the way to the back of the pavilion. It’s boarded up and shabby and is the only destin ation, apart from our school, in the whole space. It’s never been used by the school, as far as I know. As far as I know, it’s never been used by anyone, although it must have been built for a reason. It has Tudor beams and pebble-dashed gables at the top and powdered glass and cigarette ends at the bottom. The rubbish accumulates on the side away from the road, screened from both the wind and a human view. Standing there, I raise my arm, ready for Cynthia to sew up the tear. She’s ner vous about it, because of my skin being so close to the material, especially now the dress has shrunk.

‘Don’t prick me,’ I warn her.

If she told me to take the dress off, I would, but if she won’t tell me and she hurts me with the needle then it’s her lookout. Of course when she approaches with the needle and thread it tickles so much that my arm clamps down of its own accord and refuses to lift again. Cynthia blinks, head bobbling, unsure what to do. She holds the needle out again, and I twitch away before it can even touch me. I’ll have to take the dress off, which I don’t want to do, here where anyone could come round the corner and see.

‘You’re not doing it properly.’

She can’t do anything properly, that’s clear enough. She stands there, holding the large needle as though she’s been told to play pin the tail on the donkey and no one’s explained the rules. She lurches towards me again, but I push her away. Not hard, but it’s enough to make her sit down suddenly on the grass. She has no ballast. It’s like batting away a balloon.

Behind us, Pauline laughs.

‘It’s not funny,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to get done!’ The self-pity that our trip to the launderette has delayed arrives in knots at the back of my throat. It’s night-time. I want to be at home. Real home, with Mum and Dad, watching Lallie on the telly, just that. That’s all I want, and it will never happen again, ever.
For Sale
.

There’s a wrenching sound. I turn and see that Pauline is pulling at one of the damaged, ancient boards nailed over the pavilion’s empty windows.

‘You want to be careful, there’s glass,’ I warn her.

‘Stinks,’ she observes, poking her head through the gap she’s exposed. ‘Like you, blackie.’

Cynthia’s getting up. I can’t say I’ve noticed she smells, and anyway Pauline’s not exactly one to talk, as my mum would say. Getting stuck in, Pauline wrenches a larger piece of wood away, rusty nails and all, and waves the studded plank around like a club, grunting caveman sounds. It makes me laugh. She and Cynthia are about the same size, but the fight that’s in Pauline, you
never think about her being small. She makes a mock-lunge at me with her new weapon, and I dodge away, even though there’s far too much space between us for her to hit me.

‘You’ll get splinters!’

Pauline runs down the pavilion steps to get me, and we dodge and chase, giggling, until I see that Cynthia has taken advantage of our distraction to start running away. She’s a rubbish runner, I know from the disaster of school rounders matches, but she’s already managed to cover quite a lot of ground despite her knock-kneed shamble. I exclaim, and Pauline and I chase after her. If we weren’t already chasing each other, we might not bother, but it adds to the momentum of our game. Pauline gets to her first, and since she’s still holding her makeshift club, swings it. The wood makes contact with Cynthia’s side, down at the back near her bum, and she goes down hard. Much harder than Pauline was expecting, I can see. When I catch up, Cynthia’s writhing on the grass, clutching the bit where she was hit.

‘That’s got nails in!’ I admonish. I can’t see any blood but I don’t want to look. Pauline nudges Cynthia with her foot.

‘Gerrup then. You’re a right fucking crybaby, you. I didn’t even touch yer.’

Surprisingly quickly, Cynthia does what she says. Pauline back-swings the piece of wood again, threatening, playing really, and Cynthia jerks back, cradling her head, the sudden movement making her back foot slip and bringing her down again on the grass. It looks really funny, like something in a cartoon, the way her feet lift before she falls and the dismay on her face. The impact dislodges her glasses and for the first time ever I see her eyes, which are large and horrified. Somehow, this is even funnier. I pick the glasses up for her, but before I give them back I can’t resist trying them on.

‘Aw, don’t,’ says Pauline, doubled over now at the sight of me instead. ‘You look a right spaz.’ Everything is a colourful fog, and my eyes strain as though I’m crossing them. Pauline snatches the
glasses off me and tries them on herself. She looks hilarious. Instantly lost and useless, like Cynthia.

‘Speccy four-eyes,’ I laugh. And then to Cynthia, ‘Don’t worry, she’ll give you them back.’

But Pauline takes off the glasses and chucks them in a high arc. They land far away, on the grass.

‘Fetch, doggy!’

Cynthia stands, frozen, until Pauline swings the piece of wood back, threateningly. Then her legs stutter off after the glasses. When she puts them back on they’re skew-whiff – one of the pink plastic armpieces won’t sit flat on her ears any more. Pauline doesn’t let herself stop laughing.

‘Look at you, you’re that bloody ugly.’

Cynthia keeps her body kinked where Pauline hit her. She puts her hand there, and from the way she dabs at her side I know she must have seen some blood, although it’s invisible to me on the Brownie uniform. I’d been promised Brownies myself, but since we moved to Ian’s, Mum has made excuses about not being able to take me because of work. Seeing the few pathetic badges sewn on Cynthia’s sleeve makes me indignant. I know my own sleeve would be crowded with them if I were allowed to go.

‘What badges have you got?’

I approach to have a look. Cynthia flinches, which makes me want to get the bit of wood from Pauline and hit her hard. I don’t, obviously. I just want her to talk normally. The black badges have emblems stitched with green and yellow and the names at the bottom of each: housekeeping, music, sport. The last one sounds extremely unlikely. It has a sewn tennis racquet crossed with something I think is supposed to be a golf club.