Virginia

I was watching a crap programme about home schooling on BBC 4. I didn’t really want to watch it, but it was safer, because there’s no advert breaks, and it wasn’t a programme about cookery and food and I didn’t get the urge to have a cup of tea and a Jammy Dodger, or two. I remember being on one of those diets that you were allowed to eat the same thing as a small to medium sized slug. My best friend Mandy’s wedding was in two months. I was hoping to wear something that was not flannelette. Another difficulty was my teeth. They made my top lip stick out a bit. Kids can be cruel. I developed one of those conditions where you eat too much to compensate for being slagged off at school and called Mary-no-chin and as I put more weight on, Mary-no-chin-and-no-neck and finally just plain boring, boltless, Frankenstein. But that wasn’t my fault. It was just a bad haircut. My mum wouldn’t let me get my hair styled at Austin’s. She insisted on sensible, value for money, haircuts, done at home. She’d said I’d good normal-sized bones like hers that needing filling

The best part of me is my eyes. I’ve got nice eyes. Everybody says so. Mum had nice eyes too. I knew about boys of course. But when you’re eleven or twelve and impressionable you don’t really have much time for them. Then your only friend starts going steady and it’s as if you’ve died. I could curse and drink and smoke with the best of them, but I never got a chance, not with Mandy going with Neil and leaving me. It was their wedding at St Kessogs I was invited to. Mandy said I could have been a bridesmaid, but I probably wouldn’t want to because of my size. She could talk. At the altar, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see triplets tumbling out of her wedding dress. I didn’t say that. I agreed with her. I always agreed with her. Mandy had impeccable judgment.

At school, she did try and set me up with one of Neil’s pals. He was three years older than us. I didn’t fancy George, and he didn’t fancy me, so we should have got on. He’d terrible teenage acne that wept like the heart of Jesus on a bad day. Conville is a small village. I still see him. It never really cleared up, just dried up in adulthood into a face mapped like a saddle sore. He’s fat and bald now, of course, but he has a pencil moustache that he probably thinks makes him look interesting. It doesn’t. He was never interesting. I’ll probably be sat beside him at the wedding, in the hope we’ll get back together. He’s a library assistant now.

Back then Mandy told me George would go out with me if he could feel my tits. I could have raged and wept, but Mandy told me to ‘lighten up. It was no big deal.’ It was alright for her. She didn’t have any. For his part Neil was also not exactly good looking with that massive Roman conk conquering whatever part of the countryside he looked at, but you could have stitched parts of him together into a passable looking boy. And Neil got on with everybody and was funny. Nobody would have described George as funny.

I’d never kissed a boy before George. I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but I agreed to go on a double-date to the Savoy cinema. I only agreed because it was Ben Hur. We brought our own sweets and sat in the back row. The film started and he flung his arm behind the back of my chair. I was watching the film, but his breathing was like a tractor struggling up the brae, and he wasn’t getting excited by anything that was on the screen. His hand started a slow spider crawl up the outside of my coat. I thought when Charlton Heston met Jesus carrying his cross he would have some decorum, but by that stage his hand had circumnavigated the full stretch of my back, worked its way back round inside the flaps and was hovering at on the outside of my blouse at the bra strap. He was sweaty red faced, bug-eyed and although I couldn’t see his tongue I’m sure he was panting. I wasn’t helped by Mandy and Neil having an orgy and sucking the face off each other, but I noticed his hands were on her face and not inside her good Sunday coat. I didn’t know what to do. I sat back suddenly, squashed his hand and felt it fall away. I tried to be nice about it, smiled and offered him a sour plume, but he wasn’t having any of it. He stormed off all huffy. Never even saw the end of the movie. I didn’t care. At least I got peace. When we came out Mandy was looking at me all funny, but Neil was just Neil and just great, making a joke of things, saying that if Jesus could cure those lepers then surely he could heal George’s spotty-plukey face.

We went to a Dr Who movie the following week and George went through the same rigmarole. By the time we went to see The Lion in Winter, George’s fingers began to wilt and lose their sticky grasp on my clothing. He still got red chap-faced, and his eyes would plead with me now. But I was too busy watching the movie.

I did let him kiss me, if that’s what you could call it, around the back of Nardini’s chippie, where the stove pipe came out and gave off a bit of heat. The only thing was it made you hungry, or ravenous in my case. While his tongue slobbered all over me like a dying fish, and his hips butted against me in frantic spasms, my eyes would squint sideways to see what Neil and Mandy was up to. They seemed to enjoy themselves. I would always break off first, come off up for air, and say I was going, which was a signal for us to leave Mandy and George and get chips and a pickle, which was all I could afford. He said he’d walk me to the bus stop, but I said it was alright we were already there, as it was just across the road. I’d touch my lips tentatively and say they were chapped. I think that secretly pleased him.

The crunch came when Mum found an old green covered Maths jotter I kept my diary in. It told her I had a boyfriend and was ‘cracked’ on Neil.

‘Boys!’ Mum was so outraged she had to get a chairlift back down to normality. If I got pregnant she’d kill me. If I didn’t get pregnant she’d kill me. ‘Boys!’

I picked up one of my set of Barbie dolls from my dresser and thrust it at her like it was a cross and she was a vampire. I also shouted that her ideal couple was Ken and Barbie because he’d nice hair and didn’t have a cock.

She’d slapped me, but I didn’t feel anything. The word ‘cock’ was too big a shock for both of us.

‘You’re grounded.’ She banged the door behind her as she left my bedroom.

I wrenched the door open, shouting at her before she’d got to the first landing, that she shouldn’t have being reading my diary and I loved him, loved him and would never give him up.

‘You’re still grounded,’ she shouted back upstairs.

I slammed my bedroom door shut and as Jesus looked down from his cross above my bed hugged myself and cried.

It was a school holiday and long weekend. The first trial was at breakfast on Saturday morning. Mum made the usual breakfast of kippers, but it reminded me too much of George and I turned my face away. Mum was on me in a flash, grabbing at my wrist, fingers like pincers, making me face her.

‘Did I want to end up like all those other Jezebels and end up living in Mountblow flats and no man would look at me unless he wanted something?’

She tried to slap me again, but I caught her hand. Our eyes locked and I knew she’d never hit me again. I let her hand drop and pushed the plate with the kippers away from me, pulled the napkin from my throat and dropped it on the checked yellow matting that protected the good kitchen table. The kitchen chair scraped the linoleum as I stood up. ‘I love him,’ I said with as much dignity as my reddened cheeks would allow.

‘Marriage is the only protection against sex,’ Mum shouted after me, as I mounted the stairs.

I didn’t come down from my room for lunch. I sprawled on the carpet, childishly choked, only raising my head and lifting my hand to reposition the stylus on the 45 or ‘Stand by Your Man’, thoughts spilling through my eyes in tears. Mum didn’t come up.

I heard mum coming up the stairs at dinner time and heard her grunt and the jingle of her carrying something. I wasn’t for moving, but I dried my eyes in case she came into the room. I heard her strained breathing as she bent down. I could smell gravy and food and my mouth watered. She banged on my door and I heard her slippers shuffled sideways and away towards the stairs. I waited until I thought she’d be at the bottom of the stairs before I cracked open the room door.

My dinner and a glass of milk were sitting on the brown Bakelite tray that was never used. The potatoes were all fluffed out; just the way I liked them. I banged the door shut before I gave in to temptation. Breakfast and lunch and dinner came to my bedroom door, the next day and the next and went away uneaten. I heard Mum sobbing, but I’d never been as thin or as strong. Tammy Wynette and me formed an alliance and it didn’t include Mum. I got dressed as usual for school on Monday morning, but there was less of me and more of my clothing.

I wasn’t the only one that had lost weight. Mum stood thin faced at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Do I get to meet this lad?’

I felt a lump in my throat and choked with tears.

‘It’s only decent,’ she said. Her eyes filled up.

Then we were both crying and laughing, arms wrapped around each other.

‘Course you can meet him,’ I promised.

‘I’ve made your favourite,’ mum said, pulling away from me. ‘Kippers.’

‘No more kippers.’ I followed her through to the kitchen. ‘Maybe just a bit of toast.’

Mum turned and wrinkles frowned around her eyes.

‘And maybe a bit of ham and egg,’ I quickly added to my breakfast list to keep the peace between us.

No more was said about the matter the rest of that week. But it weighed me down and made my shoulders slump. Many a time as I was reaching for another potato or another bit of beef when watching Dixon of Dock Green I felt Mum’s eyes on me and I felt like breaking down and telling her.

‘You and your boyfriend going to the pictures this week?’ Mandy was smoking behind the girl’s toilets in the playground. She was needling me. I sensed the other girl’s listening.

‘Might do.’ I tried playing it cool.

‘It’s Barberella,’ she said, taking one last drag as the bell went and flicking the fag end into the hole in a gutter we’d once seen a rat climbing out of. ‘Suit yourself. You always do.’ And she was away flouncing across the playground without me.

I was running late on Friday. When I got to the Savoy, Mandy and Neil had their usual seats in the back row, but there was a thin space where George should have been. I flopped down beside them. I wasn’t sure I’d come and then ran the whole way when I was sure. Neil had his arm flung casually around Mandy. The main feature hadn’t started, so they hadn’t started eating each other yet.

‘Hi ya,’ said Neil, looking over at me and grinning.

Mandy also looked over, but had on her frosty face and said nothing.

Neil’s arm unhooked from the back of Mandy’s chair and he pushed forward, sitting up straight.

‘George is down there,’ The cinema was set out like an amphitheatre and he pointed vaguely to the bottom row on our left.

‘Ssssh,’ said someone on the right, ‘the films starting.’

Neil had to lean in, over the armrest, to talk. I could smell the mint from his chewing gum. In the darkness he patted me on the knee. ‘He likes you, you know,’ he whispered in my ear.

I heard Mandy pushing back on her seat and tutting.

‘Do you like him?’ Neil kept his hand on my knee. I was wearing thick beige tights to repel any attacks from George, but I wished I was like one of those lipsticked girls from the Mountblow flats and had went for gossamer thin, or even slutty bare legged, but with my knees that was a big no-no.

‘Nah,’ I breathed in his ear. In my head I’d liked to have whispered I like you, but he’d pulled back and was chuckling and explaining what I said to Mandy. He always did that, involved everybody in his conversations.

‘Shut the fuck up. The films started,’ said a different adult voice.

‘I’ll just go and get him,’ whispered Neil. His seat banged up against the rest as he stood, to collective groans from the back row, shuffling past me.

I squinted sideways at Mandy, but she seemed to be engrossed in the film. Neil was away for about five minutes, but it seemed much longer. I could see his teeth grinning in the darkness as he worked his way up the aisle. Neil pushed past me and flung his arm back around the back of Mandy’s chair and they were soon wrapped together in tonsil tennis. George skulked behind him and dropped into the chair next to me. I waited for his hand to begin its nightly progress up my back, but it didn’t, which was reassuring and annoying. Soon I got caught up in the film and was no longer there. I heard Babarella scream on the cinema screen and Mandy scream next to me. I felt eyes turning from the screen and up towards us. I slouched down and tried to slide and blend into the rows of seat. My hand was on the armrest and George patted it, like a blind man, as if to make sure it was mine. He squeezed my fingers and I squeezed his back. His index finger started kneading and massaging the skin on my hand. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t like it and pull away. He took this as a signal to place my hand on the inside of his sweaty polyester thigh. I pulled away then. I didn’t have the gumption to tell him to fuck right off. I knew he had a hard on. I didn’t need to feel it. I could smell it. Sex was all around me, bleeding into the seats, grunting at me from the screen.

I was glad to be out in the open air. George followed me out of the foyer and stood beside me waiting for Neil and Mandy. When they came out they were holding hands and didn’t seem to notice anyone else, including us.

‘We’re not going for chips the night,’ giggled Mandy, pulling at Neil’s hand and laughing. She could hardly bear to look away from him. Nor he her. I could see he made her beautiful and she made him beautiful too.

George ugly shadowed me. He didn’t usually say much, but now said even less. I was almost into Nardini’s when he spoke.

‘You want me to walk you to the bus stop?’

‘I’m fine.’ I done up every button on my coat up, even the one that I had to tug and breathe in for.

He nodded as if he understood. I joined the raucous queue for chips. I looked out of the window and, even though it was raining, he was still standing, water dripping down his neck. ‘I need to get the bus,’ I pointed across the road, my finger waving about as if we were strangers and he didn’t speak the language. A bus came around the corner of Gibson Street and I bolted for it. I tripped and fell half way across and was lying on the road, my packet of chips, bouncing down and away from me, my hands skinned and sore. I jumped up, hoping no one had noticed, but a collective mockery of ‘woooooh,’ rang in my ears, the bus door slammed shut and the bus was away. There wasn’t one for another hour.

‘You ok?’ George was over beside me, patting me down.

I felt like crying. ‘I’m ok.’ I limped across to the bus stop, checking that I still had the right change, threepence, in my coat pocket and hadn’t lost it.

‘I’ll get you some chips,’ said George. ‘And a pickle.’

We ate the chips in silence and it started belting down with rain. I was a little cold and a bit in shock and George had one of those big old-fashioned Crombies. He unbuttoned it and pulled me inside and it smelled of tobacco. I didn’t know he smoked. Later I found out it was his brother’s coat. He tried kissing me, but I wouldn’t. We hugged to keep warm. I started telling him about mum finding my diary. He was a good listener, words dropping like stones into a tin bucket, but I felt him flinch when I told him it was Neil’s name and not his. He didn’t say anything, not at first. He tried kissing me again, his dick drilling into my side. I pulled away, tripping and almost falling against the other side of a bus shelter. An old woman appeared; she had a bit of bumfluff on her top lip and stood peering over at us through bottle lenses.

‘I could say I was Neil.’ George had a glazed look as if he’d been thinking too much.

‘What?’

‘I could say I was Neil. I could meet your mum and tell her I was Neil. Your mum would never know.’

‘You’d do that for me?’

His Adam’s apple went up and down as he swallowed. ‘Yeh.’

A smile touched both sides of my mouth. I went over to hug him, but the old woman’s glare stopped me dead.

He flicked his head in the direction of the shadowland at the back of Nardini’s. The bus came around the corner. He looked at me. I looked at him. His hand came up, grabbed and honked at my breasts.