Sophie

by Guy Burt

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  Sophie said, “One thing. Don’t fuck with Mattie, OK? Talk to Andy afterwards and he’ll give you some reasons why not.” She shot a glittering smile at Andy. “I’m older now,” she said.

  “Yeah, all right, I understand,” Steve said, shaking his head. “Christ. You talk like a teacher, for God’s sake.”

  “Something like that,” Sophie said. “Anyway, you’re more than welcome round here. We don’t mind sharing.”

  “Yeah, sure. What if I decide I don’t want you around?”

  Sophie looked at him, and then smiled. “You’re pretty bright,” she said. “I think we’ll get along OK.”

  “Shit,” Steve said disgustedly. “I really don’t believe this.” He ground out the cigarette on the sole of his shoe; I noticed that he did so very carefully. Sophie’s smile widened a little.

  “We’ll see you at the weekend, OK?” she said. “Saturday.”

  We watched them out of the door in silence. When the metal sheet had dropped back into its place, Sophie leant back in the straw and grinned at me.

  “This is going to be really good,” she said.

  Friday school was chaotic, and by four o’clock teachers and pupils alike were glad to be finally heading for the gates. Sophie met me at the side of the playground and we walked home together as usual. She seemed elated about something, although she didn’t mention anything particularly exciting when we were chatting about our day. I supposed that she was looking forward to meeting up with Andy and Steven again.

  It is perhaps curious that I felt no jealousy, however slight, that Sophie was taking so much interest in other people; I was quietly certain that, had it been I who had suddenly decided to spend time with new friends, Sophie would have reacted differently. But a part of me even felt something like relief that Sophie’s attention was being diverted a little.

  That evening, I made myself a glass of squash and wandered out into the garden with it. It was cold; there was a damp smell in the air; overlaid with the smell of a bonfire. I wandered down towards the stream and the orchard, and was pleased to see that the bonfire was in our garden: a tall, neat pile of leaves and branches, smouldering damply like a sulking volcano. The evening light had started to darken, and the trees cast long shadows across the lawn. When I got back, the kitchen was empty. Upstairs, I found Sophie lying on her bed kicking one foot in the air.

  “Hi,” she said. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Walking round the garden,” I said. “It’s starting to get dark really early.”

  “Yeah, that’ll keep happening for a long time yet,” she agreed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Thinking.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  She sat up, stretched, and looked at me with a hint of a smile on her face. “Shut the door. Can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure!” I said, and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Well, I don’t know, really,” she said. “It was just an idea.” She straightened herself, and seemed to be deliberating as to what to tell me. Finally, she said, “How old do you think I look?”

  “Huh?”

  She scaped her hair back with one hand, and held the other at her neck, framing her face between her arms. “How old do you think I look?”

  “I don’t know . . . ,” I said slowly. “Quite old.”

  “Older than eleven?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. Yeah.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. I think I look about thirteen, except for this crappy hairstyle and the fact that everyone knows how old I am. You know what I mean. People get so used to you that they don’t really look at you anymore. Maybe if I looked different, people would treat me differently.”

  “Like who?” I asked doubtfully. “The people at school?”

  “No way. I don’t want that lot changing their preconceptions right now.”

  “Mummy?”

  “She doesn’t matter. No, I was thinking more of Steven and company. Maybe if I looked a bit older, they wouldn’t keep treating me so much like a child.” She sighed. “He knows I’m bright, but it’s going to be no use at all if he knows I’m a bright eleven-year-old.”

  “He thinks you’re twelve,” I said.

  “Even so. Anyway. People don’t talk to kids, so I’d better not be a kid. At least for a while.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, interested.

  “Not much. Hang on a bit.” She was still wearing the skirt that was a compulsory part of the girls’ school uniform, and a plain white blouse. As I sat and watched, she opened her wardrobe and found a pair of jeans. “These’ll do. Wait here a while.” I blinked as she left the room, and I could hear her go to the bathroom, to the airing cupboard that the hot water tank was in. A few moments later she was back, carrying a white shirt that looked as if it must be my father's. “This is way too big,” I heard her mutter.

  She shrugged off her skirt and pulled on the jeans instead, and then took off the blouse and substituted the shirt. Its cuffs hung down a good eight inches or so from her wrists, and I started to laugh.

  “You look pretty silly,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure. Wait a bit while I try and sort this out.” I waited as she patiently rolled up the sleeves of the shirt until they were bunched casually three-quarters of the way down her forearms. She tucked the loose billows of cloth into the waistband of the jeans. “I could do with a belt,” she said.

  “I’ve got one.”

  “OK, go and get it.” I hurried out and returned with the belt.

  “Right,” Sophie said, as she threaded it through the waistband loops of her jeans. “Close your eyes.”

  I giggled. “What are you going to do?”

  “Never mind. Just shut your eyes, and don’t peep or this’ll be totally pointless.”

  “OK,” I said, and did so. There was some shuffling, and then the rustle of a plastic bag. I giggled again.

  “Shut up,” Sophie said, but I could hear the smile in her voice. There was a pause, and then the sound of things being rearranged on her dressing table. Then there was a very long silence, broken suddenly by the hiss of an aerosol spray.

  “What are you doing?” I said, almost squirming with impatience. “Hurry up. You’re taking forever.”

  “Hang on. I’m nearly done,” she said, but there was still an interminable wait before I heard her walk across to stand in front of me.

  “Wait,” she said. “Don’t open your eyes yet. When you do, I want you to try and look at me as if you’ve never seen me before. Try imagining that it’s someone else here, someone you know, and picture them instead of me. When you’ve got their picture really sharp in your mind, open your eyes quickly. OK?”

  “OK,” I said.

  “Make sure you’ve got a really good picture of them first,” she said.

  “OK, OK.” I concentrated on imagining one of the girls from my class. At first it was a nebulous attempt, but fairly quickly I managed to get an image of Jacqueline Tynes, who sat in the front row, steady behind my closed eyelids. The room was totally silent; I could hear only my own breathing. When I was almost convinced that it was Jacqueline, and not Sophie, who was standing in front of me, I opened my eyes.

  It was a strange shock, but it hit me squarely. I had been concentrating so hard that I had pushed the image of Sophie herself right out of my mind, and when I saw the girl in front of me, two things struck me. The first was that she was not my sister, the second was that she was beautiful.

  “How old am I?” Sophie said.

  My voice was rough with confusion as I heard myself say, “Fourteen. I think. About that age.”

  “Good,” she said brightly, and the moment she moved away from where she had been standing, that temporary illusion was gone. When I saw her walk, she was suddenly my eleven-year-old sister again.

  “You looked really different,” I said, struggling to find a way to express what I’d seen. “Have you
done something to your hair?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and pointed to a can of hairspray on the dressing table. “No ponytail, see?”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said, my voice still sounding odd. She had been astonishingly beautiful, for that single second before she spoke or moved. Now that I was able to notice the details of the change, I found myself more confused than ever. Her hair had been swept forward, so that it fell to the sides of her face rather than at the back in a ponytail; it was held like that with hairspray. And she’d changed her clothes; I’d seen that part.

  “Are you wearing makeup?” I said.

  “No. Why? Do I look like I am?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What else? Other than the clothes and the hair?”

  “That’s all, really,” she said.

  “That’s it? Just those things?”

  “Well,” she said, and grinned. “Nearly.”

  “What is it?” I said. “What else? Come on, tell me!”

  “I’ve been reading books,” she said.

  “You’re always reading books,” I said.

  “Shut up. And I found out something really interesting—that the way you stand, or sit, or whatever, can change the way people think of you. The way they perceive you. You get it? Before you’ve even said anything at all, they get an impression of you. And it’s a really strong impression, because we all do it without thinking. People interpret it without thinking. But it can be faked.”

  “Is that what you were doing?” I asked, impressed.

  “Yeah. I don’t know enough yet, but we’ll see. And the hair and stuff is just decoration. It’s not so huge a change, after all.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s really clever, Sophie.” It had occurred to me that this explanation made sense of the transformation in her when she moved. Perhaps she hadn’t studied that part of it yet.

  “Thanks.” She looked at herself in the mirror. “I’d better brush this out before supper.”

  He stands up, starts to pace the room again. There is tense panic inside me, brought on by the conversation about the barn; there is so much emotion caught up in this—in him—that I am constantly aware that it may break loose. If that happens, I think I am lost. I feel strange; curiously unconcerned one minute, verging on hysteria the next. I can tell that I am exhausted. I think this must be the reason I am unable to keep so tight a hold on myself. I don’t know how long we have been here now, but it is several hours. And of course there was the journey here, and everything that happened before that. I need all the reserves of energy I can find.

  I am becoming so afraid of this man.

  All this is about control. If he has not said that, already, then it has been so strong in what he has talked about that I could never have missed it. I can see him, as a child, just beginning to test the relationship for the first time, to dare to push against it, look outside it. But Matthew the child has no control, because Sophie has it all. Which is why I am sitting here now, in this dark room, with candle shadows on the blank walls and the sounds of a dying storm around me.

  At the moment, though, it is too simplistic. There will be far more to it, and eventually I will know all the reasons and all the details. I hope.

  Thinking of the storm brings it to my attention for the first time in an age. When I concentrate, I find I am right; the sounds are quieter, the rain steady but less heavy, the wind has dropped somewhat. Matthew, still pacing up and down the empty kitchen, gives no indication of being aware of me. These pauses, when he appears to be gathering himself for the next part of his story, must be important to him. It is almost as if, each time, he is working up the courage to continue.

  I review everything mentally. I still feel, uncomfortably, that there is something obvious that I am missing. I glance round the room as if I might catch a glimpse of it, whatever it is, in the shadows, but there is nothing.

  He turns to me. “How long had you been thinking about it?”

  My mind goes blank. “About what?” I ask.

  He shakes his head impatiently. “About changing yourself. Re-creating yourself.”

  I feel a splinter of terror. Carefully, I say, “What are we talking about, Matthew?”

  “The hairspray, the clothes. That stuff. You know.”

  Relief. “Oh. That. I don’t know.”

  “It was very clever. You must have practised at least a little on your own, before showing me. It was—impressive.”

  I don’t know what to say to this.

  He goes on, “That was a turning point, I think. Your first glimpse of a different world.”

  “You mean the adult world?”

  “Nearly. That was what you were after, weren’t you? I thought about this, afterwards. Thought about it a lot, because it felt important. And do you know something? I really think you were scared. Scared because you couldn’t see what was coming next.” He exhales, and lets himself sink back to a sitting position across from me. “You’d always lived in a world that was completely known to you. You determined what would happen in it, what would happen to it. You even killed off its monsters.” He smiles, humourlessly. “And then, on the horizon, you saw changes coming. Small things for everyone else in the world—a new school, being a teenager, things like that. You didn’t see them the same way. You saw them as steps away from what you were.”

  “You’re saying I couldn’t accept that.”

  “That’s right. You couldn’t. I don’t know whether you realized right then, but that was it.” His face is contorted, almost painful.

  I try to move cautiously, hesitantly. “I was afraid?”

  “Yes.” The word comes out like a sob.

  “Did you know?”

  He shakes his head again. “Not then. Later. It took me a while to realize what was happening. Sometimes you were—too close to me for me to see you clearly.” He takes an uneven breath.

  I say, “And what did you feel? When you knew I was afraid?”

  His expression twists suddenly to anger. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, shut up,” he says. “Just stop talking and shut up.”

  I watch him as he sits. After a time, his breathing settles a little and he raises his head slightly. I wait for him to become calmer, at the same time trying to fight down my own heartbeat, which has sprung up at his unexpected outburst.

  We climbed over the wall and cut down into the shadow of the barn, where the morning air still retained its nighttime chill. I went into the barn first, and, sure enough, Andy and Steven were sitting on a bale of straw waiting for us.

  “Hi,” I said. Sophie stood up just behind me.

  “Sorry we’re a little late,” she said. Her voice was different as well, I noticed. I had kept my eyes on the two boys, though, and it didn’t surprise me at all to see them both straighten a little where they were sitting, as if to get a better look at Sophie. She went on, “It’s our half-term now, so there’s lots we can do. Come on up.” She started up the little steps to the open room of the fort.

  “Lots to do like what?” Steven said, following her.

  “That’s what I want to talk about.”

  “You still sound like a fucking teacher,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She sounded bored. I found a corner to sit in and got out my planes, arranging them in my lap. The other three had moved slightly together, as if in conference. I let my eyes drop, and pretended not to be listening to them.

  “So?” Steven was saying. “What sort of things?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you could suggest some,” Sophie replied. “You know. Something a little interesting. After all, you’ve got this place now, out of sight and out of mind, as they say. If you want to play houses in it, then that’s fine, but I imagined you could think up some better ideas.”

  “Playing houses is about all you’ve done,” he said, looking around.

  “Looks that way, doesn’t it? So if anyone does come across this lot, they’ll assume it’s just some kids playing. That’s pretty normal. That’s
what you thought when you first found it, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” he agreed reluctantly. “OK, then. Sophie here wants to do something different.” He looked at Andy and grinned. I moved the fighter planes in my lap mechanically, and kept listening. “Grown-up things, you mean?” The sarcasm in his voice was very obvious.

  “If you know any,” Sophie said.

  Steven laughed. “Yeah, just none that you’re capable of. I mean, what do you want to do? Get pissed and tell rude jokes? Read dirty books? Smoke dope? Christ.”

  Sophie looked up with interest. “Can you get hold of drugs?” she said. Steven’s jaw dropped, and for a moment he just sat there looking comically surprised.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You said did I want to smoke dope. That’s drugs, isn’t it? I want to know if you can get hold of any.”

  Steven shook his head, half admiringly. “You are so funny,” he said, absently. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here listening to this. You can’t do dope at your age, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Why not?” Sophie asked.

  “Jesus! You’re only twelve, don’t you understand? Besides, you couldn’t afford it on your pocket-money.”

  “Money,” Sophie said, slowly. “OK, I see. But there’s not any biological reason why not, is there?”

  “Probably. Maybe it blows your head off if you don’t have pubes yet. It’s just something you’re going to have to wait a few years for, that’s all.” He grinned and sat back.

  “Have you done it?” Sophie asked.

  “Sure, of course I have. There’s a guy I know who gets hold of gear at school, if anyone wants any.”

  “So you could get some, then?” she continued.

  Steven shook his head again. “You just don’t give up, do you?” he said.

  “If you’re sure you can get some,” Sophie said, “we could talk about money now.”

  Across from me, Sophie and Steven eyed each other thoughtfully. Nothing much more was said for a while, and after a time Sophie seemed content to let the conversation stray back to more ordinary topics, as if her comment about money had been a joke. I thought that Steven had probably realized that she meant it, though, and was just messing around, trying to make up his own mind. For my own part, I was surprised at what Sophie had been saying, but not shocked; I had almost imagined that she would be interested in something like this. It was the next stage, and I recognized that; she was looking to extend herself, to stretch out a small way towards the world of adulthood, to become involved in the possibilities of adolescence. I could see easily enough that she thought it was about time; she was obviously impatient with childhood.