by S. E. Lynes
‘I don’t know.’
Carol tries to think it through clearly – a girl hitting another girl for no reason. She can’t think it through; it’s beyond thinking about.
‘Where did this happen?’ she asks.
‘In the girls’ toilets.’
‘What? When?’
‘They were all smoking in there and I didn’t even say anything. All I did was try to wash my hands and Vonny started saying I was a goody two shoes for using soap and that you wouldn’t think I had a tramp for a dad. And her friends were all laughing and she asked me if I liked boys and I didn’t know what the answer was so I …’ She wails, plunges her face into her hands.
Carol presses her lips tight and waits. A fat tear, round as a globe, plops onto Nicola’s school skirt. Carol jumps up and fetches the box of tissues from the hall table.
‘I didn’t know, Mum,’ Nicky sobs. ‘I didn’t know what the answer was. I just said I didn’t know and they all laughed and then she got hold of my hair and sort of pulled my head down and punched me in the face.’
‘On purpose?’
‘Loads of times.’
‘She … what … she carried on hitting you? In the face? Did you hit her back?’
‘I tried to grab her but I could only get hold of her jumper.’ Nicola’s back is a curve. Her shoulders shake; her face is still in her hands. Poor thing. This poor, poor girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Carol’s chest swells. If she leaves now, she’ll surely catch the headmaster.
‘Right,’ she says, rubbing Nicola’s back. ‘I’m going up that school right now.’
‘Mum, don’t! You’ll make it worse.’
She feels her ribcage deflate, her belly fold in on itself. Her daughter is right. Things haven’t changed that much since her own schooldays.
Nicola blows her nose and groans. ‘Ow.’
‘Does it hurt to blow?’
She nods. Unable to sit, Carol lights a cigarette, stands and begins to pace in front of the fireplace.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘Our Graham saw me.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘He saw me, you know, like this.’
‘Oh Christ.’ That’s all she needs. Graham has taken to meeting his little sister from school. It’s given him something to do with his day. And it’s been a good thing, up until today. She’s even dared to think he’s on the mend. ‘Did you tell him what happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Christ in heaven.’
Nicola bursts into tears again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be silly, love. It’s not your fault.’
Carol tries again to sit still, buttocks barely on the seat. She rubs her daughter’s shoulders while she thinks. Nicola’s nose is surely broken. Graham knows she’s been hit, and who did it. What will he do? Carol knows what he’ll do. Or she has a bloody good idea.
A few minutes later, she’s running along the lane, pushing past the slowcoach schoolkids dawdling home. Her breath is short. A bloody, metallic taste fills her mouth. She has to stop smoking – definitely – it’s doing her no good. Down towards the school field she takes a left and half runs, half walks towards the path that leads to the chip shop. She is panting like a bloody racehorse. That’s it, no more fags after this packet. How could a girl thump another girl like that? There were rough girls at her own secondary modern, of course there were, but they were all dark threats, backcombed hair and waspy belts; nothing of any substance. Why was it every time she thought she was out of the woods there was something else? And Graham, who knew where he was now?
If Jim was here, he could help, she thinks. But he isn’t. He isn’t likely to be either – another thing she’s made a bloody mess of.
She takes the first right off Field Road and sees the school up ahead. There’s every chance that Graham has already been and gone, done what he had to do, but she hurries all the same.
‘Graham,’ she calls out, heart in her mouth, looking through the faces of the thinning crowd. These are the real go-slows, the drifters. The skirts on the girls stick out stupidly from having been rolled up too many times; their eye make-up is thick, slutty. The boys’ ties hang loose, their jumpers knotted around their waists; their bags trail on the ground. Graham isn’t with them.
Up towards the school, she sees three girls clutching at each other, standing over a scene that makes her blood run cold.
A lad dressed in a tracksuit, with a black crew cut, is kneeling on top of a girl whose legs are kicking madly. The lad has pinned her arms down and is leaning into her face. Her friends look on, apparently too frightened to help. It is Graham. She knows him as surely as she knows her own hands.
‘Graham!’ She runs, pain in her chest, blood in her lungs. ‘Graham!’
He’s heard her, she can tell by the twitch of his head. A mother knows when her child has heard. And when her child has chosen to take no notice.
‘Graham!’
He bends forward and … Did he just kiss her? Is that what this is? Carol slows, thinking she’s got the wrong end of the stick. This is some bit of flirting, some teenage horseplay, and she has no business here, making a scene like this.
But Graham stands, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His head jerks forward and the girl on the ground shrieks, the back of her hand flying across her eyes. Did he just spit on her – is that what Carol has seen?
‘Graham!’
This time he does turn and gives her a look to freeze boiling water. He makes his way towards her, shoulders rolling, rubbing at his hair. The girl she presumes is this Vonny gets up off the grass, is helped up by her friends, who close around her, cooing with outrage.
‘Wh-what are you d-doing here?’ His expression is so mean, his face harder to recognise than the back of his head.
‘I might ask you the same question, son.’ Carol stands her ground, hands on hips. She is not, will not be, afraid of him.
‘I’m t-taking care of things, th-that’s what I’m d-d-doing.’
‘That’s what you call it, is it?’
He screws up his face. ‘She twatted our Nicky – what do you want me to do? Just leave it? That’d be m-more your style, w-wouldn’t it?’
Carol closes her eyes. She should have stayed at home. There is no talking to her son anymore. She’s drilled right and wrong into him, table manners, politeness, and at one time it stuck. But his dad’s death has blown a hole in him, and all that good has gone trickling out.
Graham is striding off ahead of her. She tries to keep up, but she’s too puffed out, and with every step he pulls further away. He lights a cigarette; the smoke rises in a wisp over his shoulder. She runs a bit to catch up, but he is too far ahead.
‘Graham,’ she shouts after him.
That twitch again, the set of the ears. He’s heard her, he can easily hear her from here, but she raises her voice anyway, just to be sure. ‘You can’t go hitting girls, son. Do you hear me? You can’t hit girls.’
Without bothering to stop, without taking the time to look at her, not caring if the whole world hears him, he shouts over his shoulder: ‘I n-never h-hit her, all right? So g-g-get your f-f-f-facts straight before you say them.’
The street is empty, but shame burns in her cheeks all the same. He carries on down towards the main road with his stupid, stupid swagger. He looks like a madman, jabbering away, shouting out his own mangled version of events. He looks like a lunatic, a man other people avoid, stare at, fear.
He looks like his father.
Thirty-Seven
Carol
Two in the morning, the front door bangs. Still awake and listening out, Carol throws back the covers and half runs down the stairs. The smell of toast wafts from the dark kitchen, where Graham is swinging on the fridge door, his face white in the light.
‘Graham?’
He turns, and she sees he’s holding an open packet of ham. A huge bite is missing from one corner. It takes
her another second to realise he’s bitten through all four slices at once. He looks her up and down, as if to ask her what she wants, what she’s doing there, in her own house. His face is grey, his eyes still red and bruised-looking. He’s not getting any sleep. How long has it been since he’s looked properly well?
Months.
‘You hungry?’
He nods and sniffs.
Toast pops out of the toaster. She jumps. He turns away to butter it, taking another bite of the ham.
‘I know you’re hungry, love, and I don’t really want to have to say this again, but you can’t come in and eat all the ham. I don’t mind you having toast, but I can’t afford ham, not a whole packet, not as a midnight snack, all right?’
‘Mm-hm.’
‘Do you hear?’
‘I said yes.’ He pushes half a round of toast into his mouth.
‘Your sister’s nose is broken. I took her to the hospital to get it fixed, but it’s just a hairline fracture. She’s in bed now. Obviously.’
He turns around and folds his arms. There’s something in his eyes that she can’t read. I was right and you were wrong, perhaps. That’s what it looks like, anyway. She has to look away.
‘I don’t know what you did to that girl—’
‘I d-didn’t hit her.’
But did he force his mouth onto hers? Did he spit on her? She can’t ask. She is too afraid of the answer. And in the dark, at this hour, she is too afraid of him.
He tears another bite from the toast, the packet of ham empty on the counter beside him. She wants to shake him; she wants to kiss his forehead and hold him to her, to love him back to sense, but she can’t move from the door.
‘Switch the light off when you come up, won’t you?’
‘Mm-hm.’
‘Night, then.’
She climbs the stairs with concrete feet. From nowhere, she pictures Graham’s toothless dunce’s grin as she fastened the endless poppers on his Babygro; his skinny little legs poking out from his school shorts as he told her one day after school, all serious, that he had some sad, sad news: did she know that Jesus had died on the cross? His arm thrown across his belly when he laughed, how he used to point at whoever had made the joke – his dad, usually – unable to speak for giggling.
She pushes open the door to his room. Staggers back onto the landing, overpowered by the smell of stale fags, beer, unwashed clothes and God knows what. On his chest of drawers an ashtray bulges with hollowed-out cigarettes and other makeshift fag ends made out of little rolls of card. In an effort to have him here at home a bit more, to keep a better eye on him, to stop him smoking so much wacky baccy, she’s told him his friends can come over sometimes. There’s a lad called Barry he seems to idolise. He came over a few nights ago to listen to records, but looking at the evidence in here, this has far from kept Graham away from trouble. Barry seems to have turned her son’s bedroom into a drug den. She doesn’t like him, this Barry. Doesn’t trust him. His manners are sickly sweet. Fake. Hello, Mrs Green, how are you today? That’s a lovely cup of tea, Mrs Green, thank you very much. He doesn’t fool her, not for a minute. With his brash American-style jacket. The way he dips his head and laughs under his breath if she says anything. The influence he has on Graham bothers her. But the only idea she has for now is to keep him close. Like the enemy.
She closes her son’s bedroom door, her heart heavy. All she wanted was to have him home safe. Now, she doesn’t know. At home, this is who he is, or has become: this disgusting mess. Out, his absences worry her sick. When he says nothing, she wonders at the thoughts running riot in his head; when he speaks, his broken words fill her only with the deepest sadness. Every day he looks more like his father. She has never thought him capable of the things his father did – there is too much kindness in him. But that kindness has gone into hiding, and sometimes, when he gets that murderous look in his eye, she no longer knows what he’s capable of. And she, she has taken to creeping about in her own home, her belly knotted with a feeling she recognises all too well: dread.
Thirty-Eight
Richard
1993
Graham claps his hands, striding into the chapel like he owns the place. ‘New jeans, Richy-Rich! Talk me through it, talk me through it.’
Richard waits.
Graham sits down, still grinning like a chimp, then flattens his smile and raises his eyebrows as if to say, go on.
‘I went to Marks and Spencer,’ Richard begins, ‘like you suggested. Viv, my friend, came with me actually. My mother left me some money, I think I mentioned.’ He pulls his new navy blazer from the back of the chair. ‘I got this too. It’s wool.’
‘That’s as smart as, that is. Put it on – let’s see it.’
Richard stands up and puts on the jacket.
Graham nods gravely and whistles. ‘I like the way you’ve got it with the tie and everything, very smooth. You could present the footy on the telly in that. Is the tie new an’ all?’
‘Yes.’ Richard is hit by the absurdity of himself modelling clothes for Graham and makes to take off the jacket. Though he knows it to be the right size, it seems too tight; he feels like he has to dislocate his shoulders to remove it. He gets it off and, sweating slightly, shakes it out and puts it back over the chair. Now that he is standing above Graham, he notices that his hair looks longer, thicker.
‘Graham, your hair’s grown.’ He sits down. ‘How can it have grown in a week?’
Graham rubs his head. ‘It was always growing – you just haven’t noticed before now.’
‘I guess this week it looks longer all of a sudden.’
‘Yeah, well. Yours needs a cut, like. You’re starting to look more like Jesus than Jesus does.’
Richard gives a brief laugh. ‘One step at a time. Rome wasn’t built in a day.’
A pause follows.
‘Last time,’ Richard begins after a moment, ‘we talked about you moving back to the family home. I thought we might look at that, see where it takes us.’
‘F-fair play.’ Graham puffs out his cheeks and limbers up his neck like an athlete preparing to compete. ‘I was already a nightmare before I got there, to be honest.’
‘In what way?’
‘At the school I went to when we lived in the refuge, I’d already started to get into … well, let’s be honest, I did start a lot of fights. I was good at it. You had to be hard in that place otherwise you’d be finished, do you know what I mean? And I never said much because of my stammer, like. I pretty much never opened my mouth after we left my dad. I was too … I was too s-scared.’
Scared. This is a big thing for Graham to say. Richard meets it with a slow nod. ‘What were you scared of, do you think?’
The frown is back. ‘Getting my head kicked in, Richard. Literally. Nothing mysterious. Didn’t you have that at school? At ours, there was always someone getting twatted. Every lunchtime someone would shout, “Scrap!” and everyone would start legging it so they could have a look. There’d be these massive crowds of kids all shouting and egging them on, like.’
‘No, I have to say. That never happened at my school.’
Graham doesn’t appear to have heard or seen the shock Richard knows must have shown on his face. To be educated amidst such violence. He can’t imagine it.
‘One lad I punched,’ he continues, ‘his tooth ended up coming through his lip. I’m not proud of that now, but at the time, if I’m putting my cards on the table here, I was made up with myself.’
‘Made up?’
‘Pleased, you know? I suppose I thought if I was the hardest, you know, the baddest, I wouldn’t get beat up by anyone else. I couldn’t talk. So my f-fists did my talking for me sort of thing.’
‘Right.’
‘But the problem is, when you’re cock of the school, like, you end up like—’
‘I’m sorry, cock of the school?’
‘The hardest. The hardest lad, yeah? You end up like Muhammad Ali or something and then every
one wants to have a go, and pretty soon you can’t stop even if you’re, like, Gandhi or someone.’ He scratches his head, folds his arms and leans back in his chair. ‘The school was going to expel me.’
‘And did they?’
‘Nah. I just about made it till the end. But it didn’t change anything. As I said, when we got back to our old house, I started hanging out at the flats, met Barry and ended up getting into fights up there and that. I used to meet our Nicky from school sometimes … This girl beat her up, so I went after her too.’
‘You went after the girl who hit your sister?’
‘Yeah. Well, I mean, she broke her nose, like, you know? But I didn’t hit her or anything. I kind of pushed her to the ground and knelt on her and then I … I put my ciggie up to her face and I told her if she ever came near our kid again, I’d burn her, like.’ He looks up, his eyes doleful.
‘You told her you’d burn her?’
He nods. ‘I said, “If you touch our Nick again, I’ll burn your … f-f-f.”’ He looks up, frowns. ‘You know, I said “your effing face, you effing b-b-b …” Well, you know. You know what I mean.’
Richard appreciates Graham’s effort not to swear but still he has to fight to hide his fresh shock, imagines how terrified the young girl must have been. It is not comfortable to imagine Graham doing such a thing.
‘How did you feel about that?’ he asks.
‘I didn’t feel anything while I was saying it. I was angry, like. For my sister. And then this girl was crying a bit and I … I sort of kissed her on the mouth, just a peck, like. But she was well freaked out. And I feel bad about that.’ He scratches his forehead, bites a strip of skin from his finger.