by Joanna Nadin
‘Totally sad,’ I mumble, pushing down my idle thoughts of sending in a Smiths’ song, and swallowing the God, Tom, I love you that seems to flirt on the tip of my tongue at any given moment.
Harry pulls a face. ‘Can you just, like, shut up?’
‘Me?’ I ask.
I can tell by the pause that she’s rolling her eyes, even behind the Ray-Bans. ‘No, him. Mr Professional Fucking Cynic. Just because you’re off to sodding university doesn’t mean you know everything.’
My stomach slides at the mention of this inevitability, this statement of a silent truth that we’ve been sitting on all summer, pretending the day will never come. Even Harry – who protests at his political zealotry, his new-found vegetarianism, his demands for a household ban on anything made by Nestlé and yes that includes Shreddies – can barely acknowledge that soon she will be living alone under the same roof as her increasingly neurotic mother and absent – at least mentally – father. ‘Can’t I just move in with you, Di?’ she asked one afternoon. ‘Sure,’ I replied, the word slipping off my tongue as easily as thanks or sorry or can I have a biscuit?, but only because I know Angela would never let her.
‘Here.’ Harry holds out the suntan lotion, waggles it at Tom. ‘Do something useful if you’re determined to disturb us.’
He sighs, takes the bottle. ‘Yes, Your Highness.’ Then he smirks at me, marking me out as a co-conspirator, making Harry, for once, the odd one out.
I try to smirk back, but the unbearable situation of being half naked whilst watching the similarly undressed object of my affection rub coconut oil into his sister’s back renders it more of a grimace.
‘Want me to do you?’ he asks when he’s satisfied the few inches there are of her are sufficiently shiny.
‘I . . .’ Say something, I think. Say yes. Say anything. ‘I’m fine. Thanks,’ I manage.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Harry says, pulling herself up. ‘You’ll burn. You always do. Want a Mivvi?’
I nod without thinking. There is never a time I don’t want a Mivvi, not even in the depths of December when everyone else is spooning custard over spotted dick or treacle tart.
‘Tom?’
He shakes his head and Harry, taking this as a personal slight, huffs as she heads to the kitchen.
I look at Tom, then, who shrugs, as if defeated. ‘You heard her.’
I did.
‘Roll over, then, Dido.’
Oh God. I want this but I don’t want this. But it might be my last chance. The results are out in two days and then . . . I don’t even know what then. I close my eyes and turn onto my stomach, what little muscle I possess rigid with anticipation, my breasts spreading out under me like pooled blancmange. And I wish to every god and false idol that I was wearing a one-piece so that all he could access was the small patch of almost-firm flesh on my spine. But instead a wide, unflattering expanse of me is exposed, onto which Tom drips a slick of factor 15 and begins.
It is as if someone has stripped me and stood me under a spotlight. I am aware of every extra inch of me compared to her. What must it feel like to him, I wonder. Like kneading dough, maybe. Probably. And yet I don’t stop him. I feel his hot hands slide across my back, pushing the puddle of oil outwards towards the seams of my bikini top. I hold my breath, willing him to stop at the same time as I’m praying that he’ll slip one hand under a strap, or lower, skirt the top of my buttocks. But God, no, then he would know just how slack they are, how orange-peel dimpled. Panicked, I turn onto my side, out of reach. ‘That’s fine,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m all done.’
He looks at me, amused, bemused, for an appalling number of seconds. Then, with his eyes still focused on mine, he tosses me the bottle, which lands safely on the pillow of my stomach. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘You can do me, then.’
Not a question. An instruction. Or, maybe, in my head, a desperate plea wrapped up in the cloak of cockiness?
Two can play at that, I tell myself, as if telling might make me believe it. ‘Sure,’ I say, echoing my earlier, affected ease.
But saying it is one thing; following through on the promise is another. Because if having him touch my own body was purgatory, this is a strange, exquisite hell.
His flesh is taut under my touch, tanned. I trace a line with my eyes joining the constellation of moles on his back that in my head form a perfect negative replica of Cassiopeia. I know the pattern by heart; know from memory the slope of his shoulders, the dimples on his spine, the dips just above his hip bones, above his . . . I remember the first time I saw him, here on this very patch of lawn. Naked in a plastic padding pool, his penis small, rigid. I find myself imagining it now, fleshing out the shape I have seen straining against the denim of his 501s. He is beautiful. How could I ever imagine I deserve this? But despite my awareness of my own limitations, of the absurdity of this situation, of its proximity to my best friend, his sister, I feel myself contract, shiver with it.
What if he can tell? I think. But his eyes are closed, his face turned away.
My fingers close in on the waistband of his shorts.
He lets out a sound, a half sigh, half groan. And I don’t know if it’s because of him being tired, because of last night – he was round Michael’s until two, Harry says – or because of me, because of what I’m doing right now.
Because I could do it. I could slip my hand down, like Katherine does in Forever. I could touch . . . it. ‘Ralph’, the boy in the book calls it. I wonder if Tom’s has a name. God, I hope not. Harry says Gary called his ‘Little Gary’ and it was more appropriate than he realized. I don’t even know how big Tom’s is. Is big even good? What if it’s too big?
There are too many questions. Too many ‘what if’s. What if he likes it? What if he doesn’t? What if Harry sees me and freaks out and tells her mother and I’m banned from the Lodge for ever and a day?
If I were anyone else, if he were anyone else, maybe I would.
But I’m not. And he’s not.
And besides, we have company.
Harry is here, standing legs apart, armed with Mivvis. Half smiling, she holds one out, letting pink strawberry ice dribble slowly down the stick and drip onto the centre of Tom’s back, just above my hand.
‘What the fuck?’ Tom slaps a hand round to wipe off whatever has hit him, holds it out, then licks it. ‘Idiot.’
‘Dick,’ Harry replies. Then hands one to me. ‘Here.’
I take it, and slide back to my side of the towel. Tom, I notice, does not move. And I wonder if it’s because he won’t. Or he can’t.
‘What are you doing, anyway? I thought you students all liked being pasty.’
‘Like you’d know,’ he replies as if butter wouldn’t melt.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Harry, at least, is oblivious. ‘You haven’t even got in yet,’ she retorts. ‘I don’t even know why you’d want to. I mean, seriously? Hull? Why not LSE, or King’s at least?’
‘London isn’t the centre of the universe,’ Tom says.
‘Funny, because it was last time I looked.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe I’m sick of that southern-centric view of the world.’ He’s pulled himself round now, and, I notice, draped my discarded T-shirt over his groin. ‘All your bloody Waitrose shopping lists and days out to the Grafton Centre and nights in Cinderella Rockefellas.’
‘I have never been to Cinderella’s,’ Harry points out.
‘Whatever. It’s a metaphor.’
‘For what?’
He shakes his head. ‘Give it three weeks and I’ll be out of here. In the real world.’ He lies back on his elbows, closes his eyes to the sun. ‘And I can’t bloody wait.’
Harry contemplates him, considering, I imagine, his optimism, his profundity. ‘Tom,’ she begins.
He opens an eye.
‘Have you got a hard-on?’
‘Jesus, Harry.’ He stands up and, taking my T-shirt with him, stalks back into the house. I hear a door slam, and then the dull, thudding b
ass of Zeppelin being played at a higher-than-allowed volume from his bedroom.
‘Dirty fucker,’ Harry says, then pushes the Mivvi halfway into her mouth, pulls it out again. ‘Are you ill or something?’
‘What?’
‘Not like you to waste good ice cream.’
I look at my hand, see the sludge of vanilla seeping slowly out from its scarlet casing and down my fingers.
‘Shit,’ I say, and try to rescue it. But the sweetness is cloying now, the cream coagulating on my tongue, turning my stomach.
Harry shakes her head and sits back down. ‘You and him are weird, you know that?’
I nod.
‘Good thing he’s going.’
I force a saccharine, strawberry-flavoured smile. ‘Yeah. Totally.’ Then cross my fingers on my still lotion-slick hand and make a wish that he will fail. Or change his mind. Or have some terrible accident that will require my undivided care and attention, and mine only. Then immediately hate myself and hope to die.
Stick a needle in my eye.
But it’s a wasted hate. He gets three As, and accepts his place across the great, grey estuary of the Humber to study English and politics, as far away from small-town Essex, from small-town girls, as he can manage without crossing a border.
So that, one Saturday morning in late September, Harry still in her baby-doll pyjamas, me in a knee-length T-shirt and faded leggings, we stand awkwardly, shoes and slippers scuffing the pea gravel, trying to say our goodbyes. In my right pocket is my breakfast – an already half-eaten Bounty bar. In my left, the mixtape I spent four evenings and three attempts making, two fingers hovering over the play and record buttons on my second-hand tape-to-tape deck.
The Volvo is packed so high the back window is blocked, the boot stacked with two blue suitcases, one just of books; striped raffia laundry bags sitting fatly full of fifteen-tog feather duvet, pillows, brand-new paisley bedding; a guitar, a set of bongos I’ve never even heard him play, a roll of posters – Paris Texas, Betty Blue, The Wall.
‘Oh God, I suppose I should say it’s like the end of an era or something,’ Harry sighs.
‘It is the end of an era,’ Tom replies, dropping his rucksack on the ground. ‘No more borrowing my Floyd CDs when you think I’m not about.’
‘As bloody if.’
‘Harriet, language.’
Mrs Trevelyan isn’t going with them, claiming someone needs to keep an eye on Harry. But Harry is the queen of evading eyes, and besides, we all know it’s only because otherwise she’ll cry at the accommodation office and then all the way home. Or worse, take it out on David. That’s what you say, anyway.
‘Come on,’ says a voice from inside the Volvo. ‘I want to get there before lunch.’
Harry despairs. ‘He’s only saying that because there’s a pub in Beverley he wants to try out.’
‘It’s in The Good Food Guide,’ Mrs Trevelyan says quickly. ‘Three-star rating. They do crab sandwiches and five kinds of ploughman’s. Oh God, you will eat properly, won’t you?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ Tom promises, smiling at me. I smile back. ‘Bye, then.’ He hugs her, making her squeal like a child, forcing her to laugh instead of cry. Then he grabs Harry and they stand, awkward at first, as if their connection is severed by age now, or needs to be. But after a second I see her relax into it, into him, and push her nose into the nape of his neck, where I know it smells of skin and sweat and the Kouros Harry gave him last Christmas. ‘Go change the world,’ she says quietly.
‘I will,’ he replies. ‘You go . . . I don’t know, talk about it on telly.’
She giggles, the laughs segueing into sobs, then pulls away, rubbing her face on her cardigan, last night’s mascara staining the pale wool.
‘I’m going in,’ she says. ‘Too cold out here.’
I nod. But as I turn back to say my own goodbye, he’s edged round to the other side of the car, checking the guitar is secure and that it won’t crack the window. ‘How many times?’ he’s saying. ‘We’re going on a motorway, not bloody mud tracks.’
‘Even so,’ his mother says. ‘You don’t know what it’s like up there. And lock the doors once you’re in.’
I feel in my pocket, feel the hard shell of the cassette case, snap it open and shut to feel the scrape and hear the click. I can’t give it to him. Not in front of them. Then I see my opportunity – the rucksack gaping open on the gravel, admissions papers poking out next to a copy of On the Road. And I know what I have to do. Heart marching, I pull my present out and push it down inside, until it is snug between the green canvas and the Kerouac.
‘Stealing again, Di?’ the voice says.
I swing round, panic and polyester combining to send a surge of sweat seeping from my armpits. ‘I . . . I was just . . .’ Think, Di, think. ‘The wind was blowing the papers.’
Oh God. I am a moron.
There’s no wind, not even a breath of anything but fading summer stillness.
And he knows it. But he says nothing. And I love him even more for it.
‘Bye, then, Di.’
‘Bye,’ I say. ‘Be weird not having you at the bottom of the garden.’ I push my hands hard down in my pockets, scared he’ll see they’re shaking, scared I’ll throw my arms round him.
‘At least you’ve still got Harry, though.’
I nod. ‘I . . . I have to go,’ I say. I can’t do this. I can’t just stand by and watch him drive out of my life. And I can’t hug him in case I never let him go.
I put my head down and start walking but he follows me, pulls my arm.
Then pulls me round.
It is brief. But long enough for him to whisper, ‘I’ll be back soon.’
There is only one answer to that. ‘Like I care,’ I say, sarcasm the better alternative to sobs.
‘Yeah? Me neither.’
I laugh, let my face sink into that place.
‘It isn’t the end of anything,’ he says then. His voice softer now, the edge gone, not playing for laughs any more. ‘Nothing will change.’
I feel tears threaten and pull back, let my head drop, pretending I need to redo my hair.
‘This place never changes,’ I say.
He laughs. ‘Now that is too fucking true.’
‘For heaven’s sake, language, Thomas!’
We both laugh then, and I am grateful for the interruption so I can wipe my eyes.
He picks up the bag and, without even looking, slings it into the back seat and slams the door. Then climbs into the front, rolls the window down.
‘See you,’ he yells to no one in particular.
‘Not if I see you first,’ I say.
He smiles. ‘Right answer.’
Two weeks later, a brown Jiffy bag arrives, postmarked Kingston-upon-Hull. I snatch it from the pile of delivery leaflets and circulars and run clattering back up the stairs to my room, then sit cross-legged, reverent, as I peel open the envelope.
Inside is a tape. On the cover is a collage of magazine-cut images – Bowie as Aladdin Sane; the Queen imagined by Warhol, with an anarchy symbol stamped on her head – and over them two words: Thank You.
And no, the first letter of each song does not spell out I. L.O.V.E. Y.O.U. – a realization that will strike me afresh on every play, disappointing me in his failure, and disgusting me at my own need. And no, there are no hidden tracks or confessions buried in the lyrics. But he has made me a tape, full of songs he loves and ones he knows that I do too.
And I play that tape until not even Sellotape can save it, all the while telling myself that nothing will change.
But it does. In the end, everything changes.
Because eight months later, I meet Jimmy.
Seventeenth Summer
June 1987
By the summer I turn seventeen I have kissed (and been kissed by) no fewer than five boys, a number and sorry line-up I justify as frogs in my bid to find my prince, though my prince, I am sure, is in mortal guise in Hull, and it will be only a matter of t
ime until he rescues me from my redbrick and flint tower.
But until then I need practice, I tell myself, so that I do not disappoint. And besides, five isn’t so many – it’s still four fewer than Harry. Though none of them have made the earth move, violins sing, the way hers seem to.
Until Jimmy McGowan.
The first time I see him – I mean really see him – he is sitting on the back of a sofa in the sixth-form common room talking down Thatcher and bigging up the miners – a coal-faced race as far-fetched and alluring to my middle-class Essex existence as hobbits or hippogriffs. And there is something about the way he holds himself – half defiant, half defensive; the way he talks, walks through life, that resonates, sets my own strings humming in recognition.
I have noticed him before, of course – slinking forward in the canteen queue, smoking behind the mobile classrooms, skulking in the corner at upper-school discos. But he is a year above me and, besides, my orbit has always been around Tom.
But Tom is gone, and at Christmas and Easter his talk is full of other places, other people, another girl – Della, whom he leaves to see long before the holiday is out. And those other boys were nothing: fumbles and stumbles and struggling with zips against the wall of the village hall. But Jimmy is different.
Everything about him is different.
He is half punk, half political geek. Part of the in-crowd but still the cat who walks by himself. Wanted, despite the blond curls, despite the lazy eye that marks him out, that you will later accuse me of fetishizing.
‘You don’t love him,’ you say. ‘You love that bloody eye.’
‘What’s wrong with the eye?’ I demand. ‘Are you saying he’s a freak or something? God, you’re such a . . .’ I scrabble for a smart, startling insult. ‘Eye racist.’
‘That’s not even a thing.’ You sprinkle sick-smelling Parmesan over a plateful of overboiled pasta. ‘All I’m saying is it’s always the same with you. Your idea of love is a sort of warped pity.’ You list the times I have brought home injured beetles in boxes, chosen a doll with a wonky smile over perfect painted plastic, a broken biscuit over an intact one. ‘It’s because you don’t think you deserve better,’ you finish, dropping the plate in front of me with a side-serving of pop psychology. ‘I read about it,’ you add, as if I need to be told. ‘It’s a form of self-harm.’