The Microcosm

by Maureen Duffy

  Maybe that’s why Jonnie’s so good to me now, gives me everything I could ask for, cos she knows what it’s like. She’s seen hard times too but she’s come out different being more like a man I suppose and not so easy upset though I reckon she understands better’n any bloke could. Only one ever understood. ‘What do they mean by it Larry?’ It’s hard to put it Sadie. I mean I don’t know what to say.’ ‘Go on tell us. I want to know.’ ‘Well they mean you, you’ll never get married. Yeah that’s it, that’s what they mean, you’ll never get married.’ ‘Gawd is that all—what’s so terrible about that. Lots of people don’t get married. My cousin never has. He’s always stayed with his mother. He’s not lonely or miserable. He has his mates come round the house. And our Georgie’s not married either though it’s different for him I suppose being in the army. Still he might when he comes out.’ ‘Oh I don’t reckon. It runs in your family by the sound of it.’ And that was all there was to it then. We went on being friends, going out together but he never touched me except sometimes to put his arm round me and I liked it like that. Then it was his turn to go away and I was so lost without him I thought hell why not. After all I’m going to work now and everyone else does at my age. What you think you know at fifteen. So knowall I thought meself all tarted up for me first real date with a boy. He said would I come to the pictures and now I can’t even remember his name. Wouldn’t have been a bad picture The Old Man and the Sea but he never let me see it in peace, had to be all the time messing about and then when we got outside and we was walking home he said could he kiss me goodnight and I said yes thinking it’d be like me and Larry used to be sort of nice and gentle, friendly and suddenly there he was feeling me in the hatshop doorway and his mouth open on mine with his wet tongue I could feel poking between me teeth til I thought I’d be sick all over him and serve him right the dirty little devil at his age.

  There now I’ve done it, gone and made a mistake, made me hand shake even after all this time and there’s one’ll have to go in the can unless I can rub it down a little on the other edge to even it up. Funny how you can bring it all back and what happened, nothing really, just what’s normal for kids that age but it wasn’t normal for me and I sat on my bed and cried when I got in, rubbing me mouth with me hanky til it was sore, half afraid I’d get a dose or something just from a kiss. Silly little bitch I was then. That’s better. The numbers are coming up right now. Slip it in with the rest and no one’ll know the difference. Now you try to keep your mind on your work my girl stead of rambling on through what’s over and done with and no good crying over unspilt milk. If that was what you wanted you could have had it, still could now come to that so where’s the need to get so worked up. Funny how you can get excited just thinking about sex, any sort of sex, but when it comes to the pushover then something doesn’t click as it should and stead of going all weak at the knees you feel sick, sick as a dog right down through you, a real griping gutsache if it’s a man. A woman’s different though. That Matt now that time in them leather pants with that little purse slung from her belt in front. When we danced and she held me I could feel it hard pressing and the leather like another skin and I could have, right there on the floor I could have if she’d asked me. And she knew it too. Don’t tell me she didn’t know and strong that one, all butch not like some of these halftime change ends and wanting you to kiss their fanny and things no real butch should want a girl to do. And that’s another thing I like about my Jonnie. When she wants you it’s a woman she wants not a little boy; playing winkles together in the boys’ lavatories and all the girls giggling round the door. ‘I’m telling sir of you.’ ‘Go on, only jealous cos you haven’t got one.’

  Get us all working away for dear life. Poor old Edna can hardly get her belly under the bench. I must say she’s hanging it out to the last gasp this time. Wonder if she knows who the father of this one is. I lose count. There’s the little girl her mother looks after for her and then there was a boy and I think another little girl who were both adopted and this one’ll go the same way; bound to. You’d think the welfare could do something for her so she didn’t keep having them like putting a tanner in the slot and an ounce of jelly babies drops out. Still I suppose she’s not bright enough to take care of herself and it’s a terrible thing to think of an operation. However many would she have had if she kept it up til she was fifty and high time to retire then though I have heard of some go on that long. Remember reading about a woman who’s had twenty-six and that was the record. Well at least they can’t say we leave babies lying around all over the place for others to come and pick up. Seems a dreadful thing to give your own kid away even if it is best for it in the long run. I’m glad our mum didn’t do that though she had cause enough. Bad as the old man is he’s still your father and there’s blood there between you thicker than water and anyway I reckon if I’m honest I’m more than a bit like him. And it upsets a child, don’t care what you say, to feel that right at the beginning somebody didn’t want it and look how many down the House are adopted, that shows something. Nature’s way of birth control that’s us though I’d like us to have a baby if you could pick one off the shelf. It’s the pain that puts me off. First he’s got to put it in and they say that can be bloody painful and then there’s the baby coming and that can be sheer hell though Edna reckons it’s no worse than having a tooth out and Sheila said she felt everso sexy when her Tina give her last shove.

  What was it Matt said about me being frightened when I was a kid and I’d never thought of it as a reason but it does make sense when you dig about a bit. As soon as she asked me I remembered. There I was it seemed standing in our front room and mum saying to go round the corner shop for a large white cut. Out I run and as I’m passing the Mackies Brenda calls me in. ‘Stay with her while I go for the doctor. It’s coming,’ and pushes me into their bedroom and slams the door to behind me. There was a hump in the bed and their mother’s face peering at me over the sheet that she’d screwed up under her chin and her hair all sweaty and strewn about the pillow, peering at me but not recognising me I could see and suddenly she lets out a screech like when you tread on a cat’s tail and thrashes about in the bed as if she was having a fit. I want to run away but I can’t and I stare at her and she stares back wildly crying and groaning for what seems hours and I’m so frightened I can’t move or even close me eyes to shut it out. Then she went quiet and I thought she might be dead until suddenly there’s a man’s feet and the doctor’s voice booming over me head and he goes over to the bed and turns back the clothes and I see or think I see something wet and black and she crys out again so that I let out a sound with me hand over me mouth in fright and the doctor swings round and says, ‘What’s that child doing in here? Get her out at once.’ And Brenda pushes me through the door. Funny I went on and got the bread almost as if nothing had happened in a short of daze, sleepwalking until I got in our front door and mum said, ‘And where do you think you’ve been all this time?’ Then I cried, sobbed and sobbed and she couldn’t get no sense out of me for a while. Out it all came at last ‘Will she die mum? Will she die?’ ‘Die, not her. She’s as tough as an ox and had all that tribe already. Don’t you think about it anymore.’ Oh but she was wild though, hopping mad that a child of nine should see such things and so she went round and told Mrs. Mackie as soon as she was better. A right royal row they had over it and we never spoke to the Mackies for years after. Yes I can remember that as if it was yesterday and that’s why Matt says but knowing don’t help, don’t make no difference. I still feel me stomach turn when I think of it; that wet head I suppose it was when he turned the covers back.

  Oh the time drags; think it was running backwards when you weren’t looking. Seems like hours gone and gawd the morning’s hardly under way yet. They’ll be swinging down the rise now to the market. Not too many yet, just enough to make a bustle and give you a feeling of, oh I don’t know, what would you call it? A sort of excitement as if you was all going to a big party. I miss my Saturday
morning. If it wasn’t that we need the extra, that you got to take every chance when it’s offered cos what they pay you come the end of a normal week ent enough to keep little Mitzi in biscuits hardly, let alone pay for Jonnie’s new suit and paper and paint for doing up the sitting room. Then there’s the holidays coming along and nothing in the kitty for that. No holiday at all last year just kept on from day to day cos we wanted to move so bad from that basement with the walls all running water and all the work she put into it, those hours every evening when she come in just so much you might as well have gone out in the gutter and poured down the drain. It wearies her I know it does, not so much the actual work but the coming to nothing and the starting all over again.

  Going shopping now, that’s what I’d be doing with a pocket full of money and Jonnie egging me on. ‘Go on, get it if you want it.’ And then back home with the bags stuffed to bursting and we’d stand emptying it all out on the kitchen table and gloating over what we’ve bought. Oh I’m an extravegant bitch I know but it does you good a treat of a weekend and I love looking in all the windows like when we was kids me and Georgie only we couldn’t buy then. Wonder how he’s getting on and who his latest affair is. They’re not like us though the boys, don’t seem to stick for long most of them though when I get down the House sometimes and you don’t know who’s going with who this week cos you missed a couple of Saturdays I start to wonder about us and how long we can last. Four years this June which is pretty good going. And think I might never have got started if I hadn’t decided to leave home and take that job at that holiday camp in St. Brigid’s Bay. Still, as I said to Matt, if it’s in you it’s got to come out and if it isn’t it won’t. Look how I fought it for months, saying to Larry, ‘I’m not like that, no I’m not,’ but even with him and I was fonder of him than anyone I was trembling before we even got to his bedroom door. And then he just turned and said he couldn’t. Couldn’t force me he meant cos he was fond of me too.

  All because of them two I saw in the pictures, never forget it. Give me their tickets she did and as I was showing them down the centre gangway with me little torch she asked if they could sit in the back row. That was it; asked if they could sit in the back row so I found them a couple of seats. Then I’m swinging me torchlight along a bit later to see if there’s any seats going spare and I catch them in it for a second and I see they’re holding hands. I can see it now; their two hands joined and I flicked the torch off them quick and leant against the wall at the back shaking and ill with shock I suppose. I felt I couldn’t go past them again I was so frightened. I opened the door and went out into the light. Just stood there a minute taking deep breaths when up come the manager and asked me if I was alright. It all come out in a rush, always does with me, just like me dad. He laughed. ‘So what. They won’t hurt you. Just a couple of leses.’ And it hit me he was using the same word the kids had shouted after me at school. Was that what it meant? No not me. I wasn’t like that. Yeah that was it and how I come to ask Larry. I have to laugh when I think of it now.

  Wasn’t funny then though and not even good for a giggle when I found I couldn’t make it with Larry. Even me own test I couldn’t pass. Still I thought I’d be alright cos I didn’t know anyone like that and I couldn’t ever imagine meself starting something with someone. Thought I’d go right away and forget all about it. Get a job by the seaside where I could go dancing and to the pictures and no one knew anything about me. I’d be safe there. That was the biggest laugh of all. Lovely rooms we had in that hostel, overlooking the bay and with everything you could want. Lived like one of the guests, better in fact, and I got on alright sharing with Myra at first. She showed me round and the ropes of the job and we went to the pictures and made up foursomes for the dances with a couple of boys who were friends. Then things started to go wrong. She didn’t seem to want me around anymore, made excuses when I suggested taking a bus into the next little bay along and going swimming there with the boys, didn’t fancy the pictures and when it came to the Friday night said she was going into the next town with Mariette a new girl who’d just been taken on. It was Mariette all the time now. How bloody miserable I was, stumbling around in the dark and not knowing why. I didn’t go out with the boys anymore. It’d been fun the four of us but I wasn’t interested in seeing the one who was supposed to be mine by hisself and they didn’t want me hanging around when they went out together. Most of the time I just went up to our room, had a bath and lay around on the bed, mooning about mum would’ve called it. The end came when she asked me if I’d mind swopping rooms with Mariette. I can remember that oh so clearly, looking across the room at her and saying, ‘Why, don’t you want me any longer?’ And she looking back at me as I lay on the bed with a strange expression that I didn’t understand, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why can’t you just do what I want without any questions? Why do you have to make it so hard?’ ‘I don’t want to go. You can’t make me. It’s my room as much as yours. Why don’t you go if you’re so keen?’ I might have been one of the girls in the adverts, the ones their best friends just don’t want to know. She shrugged, ‘Alright it’s as broad as it’s long. If I go in there her roommate will have to come in here.’ ‘Suppose she doesn’t want to move? Why should she? Why can’t we stay as we are? I wish she’d never come. We were alright together til she came. What’s so special about her that there isn’t about me?’ ‘You asked for it don’t forget, you wanted to know. I didn’t want to tell you. What do you think it’s been like sharing a room with you and having to behave as if we was all girls together, seeing you walking about half naked, sleeping in that bed like a baby?’ ‘What do you mean? What difference does it make if she’s in here?’ ‘She knows darling, she’s like me. If she’s in here we can sleep together, get it? Oh for God’s sake, I’m queer you little fool. Now do you understand?’ ‘You don’t like me.’ ‘Can’t you see, I was getting to like you too much and you being so innocent made it so hard. When Mariette turned up I spotted what she was straight away and so did she. You know, like calling to like and all that jazz but there’s something in it. Rubbish recognises rubbish I reckon.’ ‘You don’t have to go. I mean I don’t want you to.’ ‘Yes I do. How can I put it so you’ll understand. I can’t stick it in here any longer with you. It’s making me ill.’ I turned over to the wall, feeling the tears coming and still not knowing why. ‘Don’t cry baby, for God’s sake don’t cry on me.’ I felt her cross the room to the bed and stand looking down at me and suddenly that was that and all I’d ever wanted.

  Don’t think about it. What’s the use raking all that dead old story over. All good things come to an end and you’re happy enough now. Shouldn’t think about it at all really, sort of disloyal in a way but they say you never forget your first, being a sort of puppy love I suppose and all the pain of a kid in it still. Funny, my luck she should turn out to be bi. Don’t expect it in a butch but it do happen; you hear of it. Sometimes wonder how butch she was. With me of course but what about with Mariette. Said she’d never loved anybody more than me. I was silly enough and young enough in them days to believe it. Still I wouldn’t go back to her now not if she turned up and begged me on bended knees cos Jonnie’s worth a baker’s dozen of her. It was different, not real somehow like one of them holiday romances they’re so fond of in telly plays, all kissing on the beach just out of the sea with the water still running off them and then he lays her down. How they ever find a beach where you can find space for a sunbathe let alone private enough for that I can never fathom. Maybe it’s different in the South of France or wherever it’s supposed to be though what I’ve seen it’s just as crowded there even if they are all starlets and princes.

  That’s what I’d like to see; a play about us. Not one of these prison dramas, all Eton crops and jolly doings in the cells and not a documentary either as if they were talking about some desert tribe and their funny old ways of going on but a bit in one of the serials treating it like it is, just something that happens everyday
with a bit of romance thrown in. Reckon I could cast all the parts too if I thought about it. They want me up there. Directed by Sadie Knowles. Look rather good on the credit titles. Think of the letters they’d get and then I could be interviewed and explain the purpose of the play and how I hoped to entertain as well as instruct. Hallo they’ve wheeled in the barrow. Break for coffee Miss Knowles only it’ll be Amy’s filthy tea out of that urn I swear she scours round with carbolic every day. Where’s me biscuits? There’s Jon just gone up for hers. Wish I could go and talk to her. But there you can’t have everything. In a minute she’ll get out her paper and bury her nose in that for ten minutes, then fold it neatly away and get stuck in again til lunchtime. Wonder what she thinks about while she’s working. Bet her thoughts aren’t running all over the place like mine are or she’d never get through the work she does. I’ve always had a good imagination though, least that’s what the teachers used to tell me. Don’t think I’ll take me tea over to natter with that old lot. Tired of hearing about their kids and their old men what they do and don’t do. Gets a bit boring when you can’t put your oar in too. I could tell them some things we do’d make their eyebrows curl. Never go up West from one year’s end to the next, some of them never been outside this hole in their lives except to Clacton for their holidays every year, and never will neither. You’d think it was all a den of vice and sin to set foot there to hear them talk; all paper talk too what some smart journalist thinks they want to read about for a bit of a thrill and he’s right too. They make me so wild sometimes cos they think they’re so right and that’s all there is to life and anyone who doesn’t think like them’s a bit touched in the head. Coming here every day’s the only life some of them see. Oh I wouldn’t be like that, wouldn’t change places for all the tea in China when I really come to sort it out. Sometimes I think I’d like to be like them just to be able to talk to them without putting a guard on me tongue all the time and then I think it’s not too late and any time you really want to try it you can go out and find somebody cos you’re only young yet and time enough to change if you really wanted to, if you could put up with the bed side of it and they ent found no way round it yet though they keep trying with their test-tubes and babies in little glasshouses so I suppose it’s only a matter of time like landing on the moon and then we shall get some peace maybe when everybody’s having it for fun and anyone can order a baby from the laboratory. Jonnie and me could have one then. I’m not against babies after all, never have been, only the way you got to have them. What was it that little niece of Jon’s said once, ‘You could be a mummy and Jonnie could be a daddy.’ There was knowing for a four year old. Just goes to show kids aren’t born with these ideas. They get them banged into them by their parents and by the other kids like calling me a les at school. They must have got it from someone cos you don’t come into the world with your head full of them things and I didn’t know what they meant by it cos mum didn’t I suppose which just goes to show.