Moderate Violence

by Veronica Bennett

  “Hello, Mrs Probert,” he muttered.

  “Mrs Probert? Who’s she?” Tess’s voice rose to a near shriek. She leaned closer to Toby. “My name is Therèse Pratt, Tess to my loved ones, and that includes you.”

  “Um…” said Toby.

  Jo retrieved a bottle of beer from the back of the fridge. While she searched the drawer for the opener she tried again to make Tess talk sense. “Why aren’t you out?”

  “Little me on my little ownsome tonight,” said Tess. She gulped down the glass of wine without taking breath and poured another. “We decided not to go.”

  “Who’s we?” asked Jo, raising her eyebrows at Toby as she handed him the beer.

  “Me and my friend.”

  “Who, Erica?” asked Jo. To Toby she said, “The one with the lilac sports car,” and he smiled. He still looked self-conscious, though.

  “Not Erica,” said Tess decisively. “Definitely not Erica.”

  “Oh Tess, have you fallen out with her?” asked Jo in mock-dismay.

  “None of your business, Miss Nosy Parker.” Tess had put the bottle and the lipstick-smudged glass down, and was pushing herself up from the table. “I’d better make myself scarce, hadn’t I?” She picked up her handbag and slung the strap over her shoulder, but left her high-heeled shoes where she’d discarded them. As she passed Toby in her bare feet, she didn’t even come up to his shoulder. “Nighty night, you two,” she said. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

  When she’d gone Jo picked up Blod, who miaowed discontentedly. “She didn’t feed you, did she?” she murmured into the cat’s fur. As it was Saturday, Jo had been at work all day. “Why didn’t you scratch her with those lovely claws of yours?”

  Toby watched while Jo put down food and water for the cat. Then they went into the sitting room and put the TV on, and Jo went round drawing curtains and putting on lamps. No-one had used the room this evening. Tess obviously had been out, and come in earlier, and more in need of alcohol, than she’d intended.

  “Your mum’s scary,” said Toby from the sofa.

  “You think?” Jo thought about the ‘Strong, violent horror’ label. On Results Day, she might have to change it to ‘Extremely strong, violent horror’.

  Toby seemed to have read her mind. “I was wondering about something. After your results, shall we go away?”

  Jo’s insides leapt. She stopped tugging at the stubborn curtain over the French windows. “On holiday, you mean?”

  “Ye-es,” he said with a little frown.

  “Tess would never let me go.”

  “Because of the money?”

  “No, not because of the money!” Abandoning the curtain, she flopped down beside Toby on the sofa and put her chin on his shoulder. She could feel his collar bone, and the pad of muscle where his neck began. She could smell his shampoo, the curry he’d eaten and the beer in the bottle he held. She could see his chest moving up and down as he breathed. In her head, she strove for the truth. When she had it, she smoothed it, so that Toby wouldn’t be hurt by it. “She’d say I don’t know you well enough to go on holiday with you, and I’m too young anyway.”

  “Oh,” was all he said.

  Between his body and Jo’s an unspoken message was being transmitted. What do people do on holiday? They spend the day on the beach then they go back to the hotel room and make love. Then they go out for dinner and come back and make love again. They even make love in the morning before breakfast. They’re miles away from parents, work, husbands, wives, whatever they want to get away from. What they do in that hotel room is a secret between them, to be remembered for years – perhaps forever. But she and Toby weren’t going to do any of that.

  “I’m always forgetting you’re only sixteen,” he said, and took a mouthful of beer. When he’d swallowed it he squeezed Jo more tightly against him. “You act older than me most of the time.”

  Jo sighed. “I get a lot of practice,” she told him, “with parents like mine.”

  “But they’ll still refuse to let you go on holiday with me?”

  “Of course.”

  He finished the beer and set the bottle on the floor beside him. Jo thought he’d start to kiss her, but he disentangled himself and stood up. “Think I’d better get going. Work in the morning.”

  Jo stood up too, somehow feeling relieved. She wondered if it was relief that he hadn’t started to put his hands on her – she was wearing her new skirt again, and she didn’t want his fingers to encounter the plaster at the top of her leg – or that she wouldn’t be going on holiday with him. “You’re not working Sunday again, are you?” she asked. “That’s about four weeks running.”

  “Gordon needs the help.” At the front door, he bent to kiss her. His lips felt wet and tasted of beer. “And I’ll get Tuesday and Wednesday off.”

  Monday was Jo’s day off. “So I won’t see you in the shop till Thursday, then?”

  He blinked. “Guess not. Take care.” And before she could reply he turned and strode to the gate.

  Jo shut the door behind him and leaned against it.

  Guess not?

  Her breathing felt shallow, and she noticed that she was trembling a little, like she sometimes did in the winter when she was waiting for the bus in her blazer and skirt. It wasn’t cold in the hall, though. In fact, it was hot. It was shock that was making her tremble – shock that Toby could ignore her hint even more blatantly than she’d dropped it.

  Thursday was five days away. Why didn’t she have the courage to ask what he did on his days off, or insist he took her out more often than Saturday nights? If Pascale, who at this moment was doubtless being drooled over by some flashy-looking Spanish boy, had witnessed that throwaway Guess not, what would she have done?

  She pushed herself off the door and went back to the sitting room. It was gloomy, full of shadows, the people on the silent TV screen mouthing pathetically. Jo lunged for the remote, and suddenly, overwhelmingly, an intolerable weight began to press on her from every direction. She collapsed on the sofa, clutching her stomach. What the hell was this?

  The feeling increased. It wasn’t panic, or confusion, or despair. It was something wilder than any of those; something violent. She thought about the sticky flesh under the plaster on her arm. Then she stopped thinking about it. Mastering this new, crushing opponent needed more than an assault on the scratch-patch. But there was no time for, and no possibility of, going upstairs and getting out the nail scissors. Jo sat there, her eyes roving the room, searching for a weapon.

  On the table lay her school pencil-case, a legacy of those far-off days when she used to sit here and revise while Trevor was in the pub. Jo hauled herself up and seized it, rummaging with purposeful fingers until she found her compass. She couldn’t wait the few seconds it would take to pull her skirt up and her tights down to expose her upper leg where she’d driven the scissors in on Saturday night. She had to do this now, or the enemy, whatever it was, would overcome her.

  She was still wearing her jacket. There was no time to take it off. She pushed up the left sleeve with her right hand. It wouldn’t go any further than halfway up her forearm, but that would have to do. Holding her breath, she drove the point of the compass into the fleshy part just above her wrist. She drove it in hard, much harder than with the scissors.

  There was quite a lot of blood. Swallowing, striving for control, she stumbled into the downstairs toilet and grabbed a handful of paper. She had to flush several gory wads away before she could return to the sitting-room, her jacket sleeve hiding the toilet-paper bandage, her heartbeat slowing. In her right hand she still held the compass.

  She looked at it carefully, turning it over and over in her hand as if it were a cherished object. It was a cherished object. It was a trophy, evidence of a conquest. She suddenly felt light-hearted, as if nothing could ever matter, in the whole world, for the whole future. She knew that all these people – the ones she had secretly labelled, as if they were movies – couldn’t just tramp
le over her without causing actual, running-down-the-arm bloodshed.

  A noise, a kind of buzzing, started in her head. She sat down shakily at the table, wondering if this was, at last, the onset of insanity. Then she realized that it was the sound of her phone, ringing in her handbag. Grabbing it untidily, she managed to answer it before the caller rang off. There was no caller ID, just a number. “Hello?” she said warily.

  “Jo? It’s Ed.”

  “Ed?” she repeated inanely. “Ed Samuels?”

  “Yeah, same old Ed.”

  What was Ed doing, phoning her? He didn’t even have her number. She was too nonplussed to speak.

  “Look, can I meet you somewhere?” He sounded nervous. “Tomorrow? I just need to talk to you about something.”

  Jo’s brain began, slowly and wearily, to work. “What about that coffee shop on the corner? With the awning?”

  “Gino’s?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Eleven?” suggested Ed. There was relief in his voice. “I’ve got to be at work for twelve.”

  “See you then,” said Jo.

  “Thanks, Jo.”

  He hung up. Jo stared stupidly at the phone for a moment. Gino’s, with its plastic plants and grubby striped awning, was a place no one from school ever, ever went. That’s why she’d suggested it, and why Ed had been relieved at her suggestion. Obviously, as Pascale was in Spain, he didn’t want anyone to see him with someone else. But why did he want to see her at all?

  * * * * * *

  He was sitting at the corner table farthest from the door. When Jo saw his expectant, embarrassed face, the feeling she’d had when they were dancing at the Summer Ball revisited her. He was just so straightforward; he wore his insides on the outside.

  She sat down opposite him. “What is it?”

  “I expect you can guess.” He really was embarrassed. His face, and what she could see of his neck above the collar of his Burgerblitz shirt, had gone perfectly pink. He pushed back his hair, which since he’d stopped gelling it fell over his forehead in a clump. “It starts with a P.”

  “Ah.” Any boy who risked going out with Pascale, even if he lasted as long as Ed, had to accept that he’d eventually suffer for it. It was a natural hazard of life. “Look, I’m not sure I can help much,” said Jo, beginning to be embarrassed too.

  He pulled his unzipped jacket closer around his body, twisting sideways on his chair so he wouldn’t have to look at Jo. He planted his feet and stared between them at the floor. “I think she’s seeing someone else.”

  The milk-frothing machine suddenly began to roar. At the same moment, a girl with a notepad appeared at their table and looked at Jo expectantly.

  “Oh…a latte, please.”

  Ed’s coffee was only half drunk, but he ordered another. He probably had to stay awake, flipping burgers until midnight. Jo waited for the noise to end, then she said, “Ed…why are you telling me this?”

  Unexpectedly, Ed looked straight at her. It wasn’t The Look – he’d never consider bestowing that on Jo – but it was meaningful. Suddenly, its meaning came to her, and a miniscule shift in his gaze showed that he knew she’d understood. They looked at one another for a long moment, then Jo got up, pulled her chair nearer to his, and sat down again. You couldn’t be too careful, even in Gino’s. “You think she’s seeing Toby?”

  He nodded miserably.

  Jo’s blood-vessels had contracted, every one of them. Her body shuddered with a cold, mean spasm. Under her cardigan she could feel the hairs on her arms sticking up. “What makes you think that?” she whispered.

  “She’s kind of gone cold on me.”

  “Toby’s gone cold on me too,” said Jo before she could stop herself.

  Ed was immediately alert. He looked at her with bright eyes. “It’s bloody obvious who they’re hot for, then, isn’t it?”

  Jo strongly wished her words unsaid. “No, I didn’t mean that, exactly.” She tried to say what she did mean. “Um…it was ages ago that…well…” Nothing she could think of was suitable for Ed’s ears. Girls didn’t go around telling boys about the stuff that had gone on, or rather hadn’t, between Toby and herself. She tried again. “I just get the feeling he’s not really concentrating on me.”

  Ed didn’t say anything. He was leaning his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. He looked very dejected.

  “Have you actually seen her with Toby?” asked Jo gently.

  “I haven’t, no.”

  “Who has, then?”

  “Poins.”

  For Pascale’s brother Poins to be a witness, Toby must have been in the little igloo house. Jo felt dismayed. “Poins?”

  Ed leaned back and put his hands in his trouser pockets. “I was round at Pascale’s on the Friday night before they went to Spain, waiting for her while she was getting changed. I was playing cards with Poins. You know what he’s like, always wanting to play some game. Then he asked me if he could do some card tricks on me, but I refused because I hate all that crap, and he said that the other bloke that called for Pascale the other day let him do card tricks so why wouldn’t I? And when I asked what bloke, he realized, and went all shy, and said he didn’t know his name. So I asked him what he looked like and believe me, Jo, it was Toby.”

  The waitress brought their coffee. Jo spooned some of the froth off the top of her latte, her brain busy. “What did he say about him?”

  “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “Just say it, Ed.”

  “He said the bloke had jeans on with ‘RR’ on the pocket. Like Rolls Royce.”

  Jo tried to think rationally. Poins, who liked cars and planes, would notice that. “Lots of people buy Rose and Reed jeans,” she said.

  “And this bloke had dark hair, and he looked done up, Poins said. I guess he meant sort of well-groomed. Like Toby.” Ed’s brown eyes were watching her nervously. “What do you think?”

  Jo’s brain was still busy. That Friday was the day of the staff meeting at work. The day she’d said that stupid thing to Toby. The next day, he’d tried to have sex with her in a taxi. And the day after that, Sunday, was the day Jo had gone round to consult Doctor Pascale on what to do about Toby. She put down her spoon. She felt sick.

  “Oh my God,” she said in a small voice.

  “Are you all right?” asked Ed, his expression sharpening.

  “Oh my God,” she said again. “I talked to Pascale about Toby…personal things…”

  “When?”

  “The day before she went on holiday. The Sunday. And I had a pizza after work with Toby that Friday, the day he…”

  She swallowed. She was sure she was going to be sick.

  “The day Poins saw him at Pascale’s later on?” supplied Ed.

  Jo’s heart began to thud. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” she asked, trying not to sound as if she was accusing him. “I mean, this is more than a week ago.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” he confessed. “You know, wondering.” He gave her one of his candid looks. “But she’s coming back from Spain tomorrow, and I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

  Jo picked up her coffee and sipped it. Her nausea diminishing, she tried to sound businesslike. “What are we going to do?” She took another sip. “If we confront them, they’ll just deny it.”

  He went on looking straight at her, his mouth in a line. Then he laughed. The way he looked when he laughed reminded Jo of the moment when he’d pulled her towards him when they’d danced. The thing with Ed, she decided, was that he didn’t mess around. If he wanted to dance with you, he did it. If he wanted to know what his girlfriend was doing with your boyfriend, he asked. And if he wanted to laugh, he laughed. “Christ, Jo, we’re a right pair!”

  “I think it’ll just have to come out of its own accord,” she said, realizing this as she said it. “They’ll tell us eventually. They’ll have to.”

  Ed nodded. He seemed receptive to this idea.

  “And don’t
forget,” went on Jo, “it may be a load of nonsense. Poins might have been making the whole thing up just to get back at you because you wouldn’t let him do his stupid card tricks. Pascale doesn’t call him Poisonous for nothing.”

  Ed shook his head. “I know she’s cheating on me.”

  “Well, if you get proof, dump her,” she told him decisively. Someone had to be the first to fail the never-been-dumped challenge, and if there was any justice in the world, it should be Pascale.

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  Jo knew he would. No messing around. “What time tomorrow does she get back?”

  “About three in the afternoon.”

  They were both silent, thinking about this. “We need to arrange some way of getting them together, with us there,” said Jo. “Then they won’t be able to hide it.”

  Ed’s eyes brightened, though there was still anxiety in them. “We could go on a double date, to Press Gang, maybe, tomorrow night?”

  “Toby won’t go to Press Gang.”

  “Why not?”

  Jo couldn’t admit that Toby refused to tell her. “He just doesn’t like the place. In fact, I can’t say I’m very keen on it myself.”

  “Somewhere else then,” said Ed, frustration creeping into his voice. “Toby can choose where, if he’s so picky.”

  Jo was dubious. She sipped her coffee mechanically. “I’ll try to fix it, but the next day we’re both at work is Thursday.”

  Ed looked at her, not understanding. “Get hold of him on Facebook, then. Or on the phone, or email him or something. I mean, he’s your boyfriend, Jo.”

  “OK, but last night I said will I see you before Thursday and he said guess not.”

  Ed drank a lot of his coffee and clattered the cup back onto the saucer. “God, he has gone cold on you, hasn’t he?

  Jo felt the beginning of a flush on her cheeks. She couldn’t tell him that it wasn’t so much that Toby had gone cold on her, it was more like he’d never warmed up. “I’m glad you told me,” she said, and put down her cup. “It makes a lot of things clearer.” She rested her chin on her hands and stared into the cup, trying to keep her face and voice normal, so that Ed wouldn’t realize how profoundly depressed this conversation was making her. “Trouble is, Ed, I feel such an arse.”