Writing On the Wall

by Lynne Reid Banks

  I told him we were going to see Julia. My dad never goes to films – never – but he knows all about what’s on because he reads the crits and watches Barry Norman on the box. I knew I was on to a good thing with this Julia because Dad’s got this hang-up about the war and the Nazis. He’s always trying to tell us about how horrible the Germans were and what they did and all that, till I’m sick of it. So when I said “Julia” he was pleased.

  “I’d like you should see that,” he said. “It’s a truth story.” Dad never has managed to get “true” and “truth” right. For instance, the whole family says “to say the true” instead of “to tell the truth”. It started as a tease, like “Can I help you somesing?” which is another of his phrases.

  So it was all systems go, though Dad did get a bit of a funny look in his eye when I came down in all my gear that evening.

  He never liked me in my punk gear. Not that he ever really made a fuss because he says teen-age is dressing-up time and there’s no harm in it. But still, I could tell that just as he’d hated my short, pink-and-white hair, he hated my red cheeks and eye-shadow and my green lips and the silver and black stars I’d stuck on. And my tight pants, half pink and half black, and high heels, and satin jockey-jacket that I’d picked up in a jumble sale.

  “Like that, you go out with your girlfriend?” Dad asked.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “And would it spoil your fun if I said, you look better when you don’t chew gum?”

  “Who cares how I look?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “All I care is that I look right,” I said.

  “Does ‘right’ mean ‘horrible’ nowadays?”

  “When you’re a punk, it does.”

  “Do you look horrible to another punk?”

  I hope not, I thought, thinking of Kev. But aloud I just said, “You wouldn’t understand, Dad. I’m off now.”

  “Be home early. I wait up.”

  No use telling him not to – he always did. So I went out, and round the corner I met Kev. He was in his full gear as well, and he didn’t look horrible to me, which answered Dad’s question. He said, “You look great,” and I said, “You too,” and he rubbed my hair and told me we were going into the West End.

  Kev didn’t often have much money. His dad’s out of work most of the time, and the family lives on Security, even though I heard his mum goes out cleaning and gets paid cash. I suppose that’s what his dad uses to back horses, because sometimes he wins and then Kev’s in funds for a bit.

  We had a Macdonald’s Kingsize and chips, and one of, their stand-your-straw-straight-up milkshakes, and then we went to one of those pleasure arcades near Piccadilly and played the games. Kev was always at the one in our local chippy, but with that one you don’t get money if you win, you just get a free go. These you could win at. Kev gave me five 10p’s and I played till I lost them, which wasn’t long, and then watched him play. He was lucky. He won his second go, and after that he kept on, win, lose, win, for about an hour. He lost it all in the end, but we’d had a good cheap evening and before we left he stood me a go at the one like we used to play with at fairgrounds, the crane that comes down and grabs something and drops it down the hole. Only it usually doesn’t pick up anything. But it was our lucky night. It picked up a glittery hair-slide, like a butterfly. Except that when I reached up to put it in my hair, of course I found I hadn’t got anything to pin it to. So we laughed and I put it in my pocket.

  Then it was still early so we walked about the streets and looked at the porn-show pictures. I didn’t like them much. I suppose it’s my upbringing. Mum’d never let us see anything like that when we were little. I mean she’d never let the Sun in the house for instance, and anything that looked rude, on telly, say, she’d have it switched off before you could blink. Karen says her mum let her see her in the bath, but my mum, when she’s in there she doesn’t even splash much in case it should make us imagine things. So when I see mags and that, and these displays in Soho, well, I get embarrassed.

  But I wasn’t going to let Kev see how I felt. He seemed to think it was all perfectly natural. But then he often comes up West so I suppose he’s used to it. I wanted to ask if he’d ever been to one of the shows but I was afraid he’d say yes and tell me what was in them. I wanted to know, in a way, but not from him.

  Then I reckoned it was time to get home, but Kev had other ideas.

  “I got a mate’s we could go to,” he says. “For a drink.”

  Well, I’m not daft. I mean, he was nice and all that, and I fancied him, but they all try it on, don’t they. Mary’s told me. And Karen. With Karen they didn’t even have to try too hard. And she’s not the only one in our class. Couple of girls I know had it away at fourteen. One of them had to leave school. . . . That was what kept me off it. Partly. Partly it was Dad and Mum, and my family and all that. And. . . . Well. Confession. I never could see myself telling Father Gilligan a thing like that. Anyway I didn’t fancy anyone enough. Till Kev.

  Still, when he said about going to his mate’s I said, “No. Let’s go to a disco.” But he’d got no more money. We were hanging about outside Leicester Square tube by now and it was getting cold. The wind was blowing the litter along the pavement. There were a couple of drunks coming out of a pub, and some other funny types I didn’t like the looks of.

  “Come on, Kev,” I said, tugging his arm. “Let’s go home.”

  “Oh all right,” he said and walked away from me down the tube, leaving me to follow as best I could through the crowd.

  We had a fair walk from Acton station. He walked a bit ahead of me most of the way and didn’t talk. I could see he was pissed off but I didn’t know why, if it was something I’d done or just a mood. I felt miserable, trailing along after him. Then I remembered Karen saying they always act sullen if you don’t give in to them. Like blackmail.

  Still, I wanted him to cheer up. So when he stopped, on the big railway bridge, I pulled myself up beside him and we hung over, waiting for a train to go under us. One did. Kev said, “D’you ever drop anything?”

  “What?”

  “Over the bridge.”

  “On to the train, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Course not! Whatever for?”

  “See it bounce off.”

  “That’s just thick. Could hurt someone.”

  “It only hits the roof.”

  “What does? What do you throw?”

  “Coke tins. Stones. Any old rubbish.”

  I didn’t say anything. I thought it was stupid. But Mary says you have to realise, boys do daft things sometimes, to let off steam.

  “Well?” he said in this sort of taunting way he had, as if he was giving me a dare. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “What’ll we throw, though? Nothing here.”

  He looked all round, and we both spotted it at once – a spray can, lying in the gutter. Kev pounced on it. He gave it a shake.

  “It’s half-full,” he said.

  “What is it, Windolene?”

  “No. It’s paint-spray.”

  “What colour?”

  “White.”

  I knew what he was going to do just before he thought of it. He pointed it at me and started towards me, grinning.

  “Don’t you dare!” I screamed, half-laughing but a bit scared. That stuff won’t come off.

  “I liked your hair with a bit of white in it,” he said. I backed away, my hands over my hair.

  “Kev, don’t! I mean it!” But he was still coming at me. I had to think, quick, of something more exciting for him to spray than me. “Listen, I tell you what! Let’s spray something on the bridge.”

  That stopped him. “Like what?”

  “I dunno, anything you like! Then Monday when we go past to school we can look at it and know we wrote it. It’ll stay there for ever.”

  He looked at the wall of the bridge. It was dark brick, nothing on it, just asking for some mark o
r other. Like fresh snow asks to be walked on.

  He grinned at me. Then he suddenly handed me the tin.

  “Here. You do it. Then we’ll throw it over when the next train comes.”

  Sometimes you do something because you don’t know what else to do. You get caught up. I’m telling about this because it was the beginning. The first time I did something I didn’t want to do because Kev kind of pushed me into it. I didn’t want to spray words on that wall and I didn’t want to throw the tin on the train. It was daft. So why did I do it then? I don’t know. I wish I did.

  I couldn’t think of a thing to write at first. I just stood there.

  Kev said, “Write your initials and mine in a love-heart.”

  I looked at him. His face was in shadow, just outside the lamp circle. Did he mean it? Or was he laughing at me, for being a girl and having silly, romantic thoughts? “Then everyone’ll see,” I said.

  He threw his head back and roared, a great guffaw.

  “You didn’t really think I’d let you? You silly cow, I’d half kill you if you did that!”

  That hurt me. It made me mad, too. First sulking because I wouldn’t go to a strange flat with him, and now calling me names. So I put my finger on the spray button and wrote

  KEV B IS A BASTERD

  “D’you like that better?” I asked him.

  He looked at the words, and looked at me. The second I finished doing it, I was sorry. I was scared, but I was sorry too. It looked awful, white on black in the lamp light, there for the world to see. I’d have given anything not to have done it. I would now. Why did I? Temper, that’s all. I’ve got a terrible, mad temper sometimes.

  “You need doing up, you do,” he said. His voice was all quiet and threatening. I thought he might really hurt me, and I felt quite weak with fear for a minute.

  “You shouldn’t have called me a cow,” I said. My voice came out all breathy.

  “That’s there for good,” he said, pointing to the words. “I shan’t forget that in a hurry.”

  Just then we heard a train coming. “Come on!” I said, quick, to distract him. “Get ready!”

  He hesitated, but then he did go to the wall and pull himself up. I got up beside him, and we leaned over.

  “I should throw you over, you know that,” he said, over the roar of the train. “But I’ll think of some other way to get back at you. Go on – throw the can down.”

  The train roared under us and I held the empty tin over the edge. But I couldn’t drop it. I just couldn’t. In the end Kev gave me a thump on the wrist, and the tin hit the train roof, bounced off, and then fell alongside the track.

  The bridge trembled under our stomachs. I felt excited. Almost sick with it somehow. We dropped back down onto the pavement, and then Kev grabbed me. I got a fright – I thought he was still mad. The train was still roaring, or maybe it was just a noise in my ears. And I was still shaking after the bridge had stopped. Then Kev kissed me on the mouth. I didn’t know if I liked it or not. It was scary, especially coming right after he’d been so angry. As if that hard, passionate kiss was a punishment. But I wanted him to do it again. I wanted, in a way, to do it all again, just to get that shaky, dizzy feeling, to hear that roaring in my head.

  3 · Dutch Treat

  After that night I went out with Kev every weekend. It got very tricky, making up things to tell Dad. I soon used up all the war films, for a start. I let it go on for three or four weeks and then I knew I’d have to tell him it was Kev, not Karen. Don’t ask me why I had to tell him. Half the time I don’t know why I do things. If it’s not Kev or Vlady or someone outside myself pushing me, it’s something inside. I just couldn’t go on making things up. Imagination or no imagination.

  One night after school I left the telly and went into the kitchen. Our kitchen’s our eating room too. Mum calls it the dining-room even though the stove and sink and that’s staring her in the face. I think if Mum had one wish, about the house anyway, she’d ask for a separate room to eat in. We’ve got a room that could be it, but it’s Vlady’s room. Dad insisted, when he saw Vlady’s got brains and needed a quiet place to study.

  Dad was sitting at the table reading a Polish paper. He looked up as I came in and gave me a smile. He still looks foreign. I don’t notice it, but Karen said once. Something about his lips. A bit balloony, like mine. Not that I care.

  I was trying to be casual. Karen says, when she’s got to do something – like tell the teacher she hasn’t done her project or face her mum about something – she always practises it first. Of course that’s because she’s stuck on acting and that. She calls it “rehearsing”. I can’t rehearse. I don’t like thinking of things ahead. If I’ve got to do them, I go and do them. What’s the use thinking what could happen? It’s like going through it twice.

  All right, so I sat down opposite Dad and said straight out: “I’ve been going out with Kevin, not Karen.”

  “I thought so,” he said, quiet. And went back to his Polish paper.

  “You’re not cross?”

  “Not now you’ve told me,” he said. He looked as if he was reading, but after a minute he put out his hand, under the edge of the paper, and left it lying on the table. I put my hand into it and he gave me a squeeze. He put down the paper and smiled at me.

  “Tell me the rest,” he said.

  Well. All the rest, the necking and that, I wasn’t about to tell him, I mean I couldn’t. But I told him we’d been up West and I told him about the one film we really did see, which was Love at First Bite, about this vampire.

  I always know when Dad’s disappointed in me. His eyes kind of go sad. Sometimes when he gets this sad, droop-eyed look, I feel like screaming. How can I be different than I am, how can I be more what he wants, clever and that? I can’t help not liking the books and films and stuff he wants me to like, I can’t help liking pop music and girls’ magazines. And Kev.

  “Does he take good care of you?” he asked.

  “Course he does.”

  “You don’t do any bad?”

  “Oh Dad. . . .”

  “Oh Dad,” he copied me. He sighed. He’s got this deep sigh, like he had all the world’s worries. Mum says it’s because of all the things he saw in the war when he was young. It made him sort of always a little bit sad underneath. “Expecting the worst from people,” Vlady says.

  Vlady’s very sharp about people. Once when I had one of my moods and sulked round the house for a day, and shouted at Dad, Vlady got hold of me. He pulled me into his room, the one that ought to be the dining-room, and locked the door. “You listen to me,” he said, fierce. “Just stop it or I’ll give you something to sulk about! Dad’s had enough in his life. He deserves some happiness from his family. We got to make it up to him.” I was much younger then and nobody’d told me anything, so I sulked back at him, “Make what up?” So then he told me. All Dad’s family was killed by the Nazis in a camp in north Poland called Stutthoff. Vlady told me the whole thing, about the ovens and the gas chamber and that.

  Course I’d heard something. There’s kids at school even make jokes about it, but I thought it was just the Jews. Vlady said lots of the clever people in Poland were killed too. Dad’s father was a teacher, so they killed him because they thought he might make trouble, teach against them and that.

  I was upset – course I was. But I didn’t want to think about it. Still, I was nicer to Dad after that, for a while anyway. I do try with my moods but sometimes I can’t help it.

  Anyway, so we were sitting at the table and I suddenly wanted to tell Dad everything, only I couldn’t because it would make him more disappointed. He’d be sure to think it was wrong to paint on the wall, and I know what he thinks of pinball machines or any kind of gambling. It makes him sick. He says it’s for idiots with nothing in their heads, or for idlers with nothing better to do. My dad’s a Catholic, of course, but Vlady says his real religion is work. He thinks the worst sin is not to work. Maybe that’s why he didn’t like Kev, becaus
e his dad’s always out of work. Not that that’s Kev’s fault, now is it?

  The only thing he said, after that big sigh, was: “You’re too young to go out with a boy. That’s my view. But if I try to stop you, you will do something foolish. I will have to trust you, my little girl. Because him I don’t trust, not so far as I could throw the House of Parliament.” I tried to take my hand away but he held on and smiled his sad Polish smile into my eyes, and then he added, “Don’t go to the West End. It is a bad place at night. Tell me where you want to go and I take you in the car. I gladly take you, and I fetch you back if you phone me.”

  Of course that would have killed all the fun so from then on I told Kev I wanted just to go into Ealing or Hammersmith to the films or for a Wimpy or sometimes to a pub. We were too young to drink in pubs, but in some areas they’re not too fussy. We sometimes spent a whole evening in a pub when Kev was skint. It was boring in a way but I wanted to be with him so I had to do what he did.

  We did a lot of necking now. I always felt funny about it, and I always confessed it (when I didn’t forget to go – Mum usually didn’t let me forget). Father Gilligan didn’t make too much of it, but he always said I should be careful not to let it go any further. Kev acted like he wanted it to go further, but I used to hold his hands away.

  Once I said, “Do you tell your mates about this?”

  “Course not,” he said, but I wasn’t so sure. Karen says they all talk about it. And I thought Darryl and Cliff and that lot had started looking at me kind of smirky at school. Made me feel like hitting them in the face.

  And then there was Karen.

  If you ask me, Karen was a bit jealous. She and I had been together a lot till Kev came into my life. And then she had this idea that boys only want one thing and that unless you give it to them they’ll push off to some girl who will. So when I told her I didn’t let Kev do more than neck a bit, she didn’t believe me. It upset all her ideas.

  “He must be getting it from someone else,” she said.

  “No he’s not, he doesn’t go with other girls.”