Love Story 5

Her underactive imagination had me thinking for both of us. How we should behave since we kinda agreed not to get formally engaged until I could afford a gold-banded diamond ring. Fat chance, she’d have to put me first and do as she was told. We’d need to get a council house next door to my mum in four or five years, so she could take care of the baby. We’d take equal turns, of course, after mum fed, winded, washed and changed the baby’s nappies. Our baby would probably be better sleeping in the cot in mum’s room in case it wanted anything during the night. The short time left during pregnancy brought everything into scale.

Mum gave me fifty pence out of her purse to get her cigarettes and a sweet for both of us. Val radiated calm as she waited for me outside the privet hedge. When I got closer I saw she was just concentrating on sucking a Murray mint and not letting on she was chewing in case I asked to share. Val tried to take my hand as a distraction as we walked up the hill, because she knew I didn’t like that touch-feely thing of showing off we were a couple. Two old dears leaned into each other as they stood on the corner nattering.

Ravens squawking like an amp’s feedback loop.  Rainfall puddled the tarred roof. Her eyes light with laughter, but I missed what she said as we pushed through the door. I wandered over to pick up a few breakfast rolls.

Mrs Barclay sniffed the air from behind the counter, her lazy eye settling on the shoplifter without her even knowing it.

Ali panicked. The magazine stuck up her duke and inside her duffle coat flopping to the floor from somewhere between the bulge of her belly and thick elasticated thighs and yellowing knickers. The toe of her platform shoes not built for nudging the bright shiny faces of Jackie poster girls under the stacked white racking holding the magazines and at the lower levels of Women’s Weekly, Women’s Own, The People’s Friend, Evening Times, Daily Records and even some heavy reads such as The Telegraph and Guardian. The Financial Times more for show than real customers. Magazines were more likely to be stolen from the top shelves than bought from the bottom. Ali lucked out picking from the middle.

Mrs Barclay’s eye might have been lazy, but she was quick enough rushing around the long counter and grabbing Ali’s arm.

Ali started bleating and greeting. ‘I didnae mean it. It wisnae my fault.’ She nodded in my direction. ‘He put me up tae it.’

My lips remained frozen. I read the Hotspur, Broons and Oor Wullie part of my Christmas treat, religiously bought and paid for by my parents. Jackie was a girl’s comic.

She glanced in my direction, her lazy eye following sideways, while she decided. I was obviously not a fat wee girl squirming under her grasp. Nor was I, with my rigid corrugated hair, shaking stocky limbs and long eyelashes filling with tears one of those wee nyaffs that were likely to snatch something and shout sweary words before he made a run for it and throwing things.

I found myself adrift like Adam in the Garden of Eden. Eve had eaten the apple, but he got the blame. Even God wouldn’t believe it was her fault and the snake had tempted her. But it was collective responsibility. She was his spare rib, before he knew about nudity and having a spare rib and other body parts. And I’d have probably have read Jackie too. Garnering valuable tips undercover of how to kiss a boy you liked, and how not to dance dangerously close together before he bought a diamond engagement ring and you got married and stopped you buying Jackie. Despite devilish horoscopes telling what the future held for you, it was the good apple of girls’ magazines.

Not that kind of bad apple photo-shoot and shocking page-by-page turner. For doing anything wrong you’d need to angle your head to the top shelf Penthouse and Playboy.  I didn’t even want to think about them. The monopoly of evil the devil had in big boobs and hairy fannies.

‘She’s sorry,’ I apologised on her behalf. ‘Very sorry. She’ll no dae it again.’

Mrs Barclay pulled on Ali’s wrist, tugging her bulk closer. ‘I’ll need tae call the polis.’ But the shop assistant had a lisp. Police multiplied on the sibilant sss of her lips like the skeletons that jumped up like scattered teeth and bony ground with a sword in their hands that Jason and the Argonauts were treading, but minding their own business and looking for an old sheepskin. There was nothing I could do but edge backwards towards the door.

‘Where dae yeh think yer goin?’ Mrs Barclay stalled my retreat.

Mrs Jameson remained tending the till. She continued smiling and serving other customers crisps and fags. Looking on and counting out change to the exact half-penny and commenting on what a terrible cold day it was, even though she was inside under the fluorescent lights with the heating on full.  

‘I’m sorry tae,’ I said, eyes downcast, waiting for the handcuffs to appear. Felt a rumble in my tummy that might have been relief or something nastier slithering out. I clenched my butt cheeks together. There’d no helpful hints what to do in this situation from girls and boy in Jackie, who were always glossy and whose pluke-free skin always shone.   

‘Where’d yeh think yer goin?’ Mrs Barclay’s voice shrill voice rose. Her lazy eye looked at herself. Her fingers fluttered up as her nostrils crinkled and curdled. A dry cough. She took Jackie and put the evidence back in its proper place on the shelf along from the Beanos and Dandies.  

She straightened up. ‘Let that be a lesson tae yeh,’ she told us.

Val danced around me like brown chalk dust. ‘Hurry, she whispered, tugging at the hood of my duffle coat and spinning me around. ‘Yer minging.’ The bell of the shop dinged before I could get through it at her back.

She ghosted along the sloping wall beside the post-office. Trudging up the hill with her head down against the battering rain. Not wanting to be seen with me. I wondered how I’d explain to mum Birell’s had sold out of cigarettes and rolls. How they might not be open again in the foreseeable future. I carefully picked my steps as I’d need to my words.  

I creeped around the back and into coal cellar, where my girlfriend and me hadn’t made love—although she’d convinced her mum and my mum and maybe even herself we had—tugged down my trousers and stepped out of my Y-fronts. Sniffing the cloth as if they were somebody else’s stain. Wiping myself down and leaving them lying like the 666 mark of the beast.