Glasshopper

by Isabel Ashdown

  I wait for her to look over her shoulder at me but she doesn’t.

  The corridor is deserted as I leave her classroom. There’s only Maths left today, but my brain is full of arrows and ships and Miss Terry. I slip out of the back exit, across the playground and through the gap in the hedge. I dump my school bag, and lie down on the cold grass, where I’m close enough to the school to hear all the comings and goings at the end of the day. I hear the rumble of the caretaker’s wheelbarrow. The screams and shouts of the first years on the netball court. The car engines of teachers who’ve finished for the day. No one will notice me gone.

  I’ve been doing my paper round for two weeks now, six days a week with Sundays off. Every week, I stash my savings in my Secret Literature Hideaway Book. It’s a money box in the shape of a normal book, and you put it on the bookshelf with all your ordinary books, so thieves wouldn’t have a clue. Matthew gave it to me for my last birthday, said he got it off the market. I’m saving for a new dynamo set for my bike, and I want one of those bike horns that make an electronic sound. If I don’t get them for Christmas, that is. At the end of my round every Saturday I return my paper bag to Mr Horrocks’ shop and he hands me a small brown envelope and a chocolate bar of his choice. He half smiles and winks, passing it to me secretively like it’s a message from the FBI or something. One week it was a Texan bar, the next a KitKat. It doesn’t really matter, I like them all. Andy is desperate to get a job here too, but he’s only ten and Mr Horrocks wouldn’t have him yet.

  A few days before we break up for Christmas, I turn up at the shop and hang my paper bag on the hook at the back of the till where Mr Horrocks keeps them. It’s 8.30, and I guess I must be the fastest paper boy because my bag is always first back on the rack.

  “Good lad,” Mr Horrocks says as I’m doing it, and as usual he heads towards the counter to get my money envelope. But before he opens the till we hear Mrs Horrocks from out the back, upstairs, and she sounds really old and weak.

  “Ted? Are you there, Ted?”

  Mr Horrocks pauses, his hand wavering over the till.

  “Ted?” she calls again, this time sounding worried, sounding like a little child. Mr Horrocks’ forehead wrinkles up.

  “Can you hang on a minute, Jake? Keep an eye on the shop – I’ll just be a couple of minutes.” And he’s gone through the beaded curtains, to the upstairs I’ve never seen, to the wife I’ve never met.

  The shop is small and dark, with every shelf packed with things to buy. It’s a newsagent, but it sells loads of other bits and pieces – custard powder, toilet rolls, Basildon Bond envelopes, Bic biros, sheets of wrapping paper on a stand, shaving brushes. It’s a bit of everything. The shelves are dusty in places, I guess in the spots where stuff doesn’t sell much. The cigarettes and lighters are on a shelf behind the till, and penny sweets in plastic tubs run all around the front of the counter. I’d love to know what’s out the back. I bet there’s a loo, and a phone, and maybe towering boxes of biscuits and things that he brings out to fill up the shop.

  A few minutes go by, and Mr Horrocks still hasn’t come back down. Luckily no one’s been in the shop; I wouldn’t know what to do if they did. I wander over to the beaded doorway that leads through to the back, and stand there casually, straining to hear what’s going on upstairs. It sounds like someone’s crying, and I can make out the odd word from Mr Horrocks. “It’s fine, love. Don’t get upset, Marcie.” I can’t think what’s going on up there, and I start to wonder why I’ve never seen his wife before. All these years, and it’s always been him behind the counter or stacking the shelves in his navy blue apron. I stay where I am, scanning the shop, thinking about Christmas coming, wondering how Mum will be this year without Dad. There’s a stumbling, bumping noise from the room above, and it goes quiet for a moment. Then I hear Mr Horrocks’ voice again. “There you go, love. You sit there and watch a bit of telly. I’ll be back to make you a cuppa.” And I hear his footsteps moving across the floor towards the stairs I can’t see. I grab a pack of twenty Benson & Hedges and stick them up my sleeve, before moving round to the front of the till, to stand with my hands politely behind my back. I can hear him shuffling through the back room, towards the beaded curtain and the front of shop where I’m waiting. I can feel a bead of sweat in the dimple above my lips. I drop my arms down by my sides and stand awkwardly waiting for him to appear.

  “Sorry about that, son,” he says, and he pops open the till, pulls out my wage packet and hands it to me directly. No FBI secret stuff today.

  “Thanks, Mr Horrocks,” I say, feeling a bit embarrassed. He looks at me in his particular way, when he seems to be thinking about something else altogether. Then he leans over the counter to reach for a box of Dairy Milk, and passes it to me before I start to leave the shop. Brilliant, I think, that’ll save me a bit of cash.

  “You’re doing a good job, Jake lad,” Mr Horrocks says, not smiling. “You’ve not been late yet. Keep it that way, lad. Work hard, show us all what you’re made of.”

  He puts his hand on my shoulder as he’s saying this, his glassy blue eyes glittering in his crinkly face. I wish I had a grandfather, like all my mates have. He’d have a dog, and a fishing rod, and he would’ve fought in the war and have tales to tell. He might even have a scar to show for it.

  “Can I give them to my mum?” I ask him, holding up the Dairy Milk.

  “That’s why you’re a good lad, Jake,” he says, and he turns his back on me as he starts to empty a new box of crisps into the racking.

  I push the chocolates up my jumper and cycle towards home, swallowing a lump of anger, my face burning against the cold morning air. I pass some of the other paper boys on their way back to Horrocks’ with their empty sacks. I wonder if they’ll all get a box of Dairy Milk like me. Probably. When I get halfway back, I stop at the footbridge that runs over the stream behind the school. There’s no one about and I dump my bike in the nettles and scoot down under the walkway, to the spot where the big lads used to keep a stash of porno mags. The mags went long ago, but the ground is littered with freshly dumped cans, cigarette butts and sweet papers. I plonk myself down on the hump of the bank that rolls down to the stream. It’s a filthy stream; doesn’t belong here. It should be somewhere else, out in the countryside where it can run clean, without being bunged up with beer cans and johnnies. I rip open the Dairy Milk and stare at the pictures on the menu. Toffee Delight. Hazelnut Whirl. They’re the best. Andy and me always fight over them. Not that we get that many boxes of Dairy Milk, but at Christmas we’ll always scrap over those ones. Orange Cup. Urggh. The morning is cold and damp, and the light under the bridge is grey. As I run my fingers across the chocolates I notice my knobbly knuckles look red with the cold and my nails are bitten down to the quick. What a state. After I’ve gorged all of the nuts and toffees I turn the box over, sprinkling the remaining chocolates across the muddy ground, before jumping up and grinding them in with my heels. I stamp and stamp and grind and grind until the chocolates are nearly invisible in the mush of mud, and then I drop to my bum again, and sob into my knees until I can’t sob any more.

  Mary, August 1963

  When I walk to Rachel’s college, it’s just to look, just to see what he’s like.

  I creep about the grounds, like a trespasser. The buildings are shut up, the students and teachers all gone home for the holidays. I left my hair down today, and brushed it a hundred times to make it shine. Mummy asked me why I was wearing my best dress when I left, and I told her I just felt like making more of an effort today because the sun was shining. She smiled, pleased.

  As I turn the corner of the main building, the light reflects off the long greenhouse and I pause, pressed against the brick wall, my breath zipped up tight. That’s where he’d be, if he were here. I feel the sting of the sun as it singes the tops of my bare shoulders.

  When Rachel came home last night, she was in a black mood. I asked her if she’d finished with him, and she told me of course she had, and t
o bugger off and stop asking questions. She called me a pathetic child and slammed the door in my face. Through the dusty little panes of the greenhouse I can make out pots and leaves; tomato plants; bags of earth; steam. His wheelbarrow is parked neatly by the door. But he’s not there; no sign of him at all. Perhaps when the students go home for the summer, so does he. Rachel says he has skin like hard silk.

  “Can I help you?”

  I spin and gasp, and I’m staring at him, and he’s staring at me.

  “Do I know you?” he asks, a quizzical frown dancing around his eyebrows. His eyes are sharp and sad. His shorts are too big for his slim frame, sitting low on his hips, exposing the deep grooves that run down below his tanned waistline. He has his shirt in his hand, and there’s a film of sweat covering his sinewed torso.

  I can’t speak.

  “Are you looking for someone?” he asks, looking concerned and annoyed at the same time.

  “Are you Darren?”

  He puts his hand in his pocket, pushing the waistline down lower. My heart is thumping and I think I should probably leave.

  “Who’s asking?” He leans in to the brick wall, smirking.

  “I’m Mary,” I say, flicking my long hair off my face.

  He looks blank and shrugs.

  “I’m Rachel’s sister.”

  His hand comes out of his pocket and the cocky expression disappears. He turns to walk away, towards his greenhouse. “You should go home,” he says.

  I run after him and touch his arm lightly, and he spins around as if he’s stung.

  “What do you want?” he bristles.

  He thinks I’m a child too. I put my hand on my hip, and flick my hair again. “I think she’s mad, that’s all.”

  Darren shakes his head and strides into the greenhouse. I follow him, and stand in the doorway as he starts potting up some seedlings, scooping up fistfuls of earth and pressing down with his wide thumbs. His shoulder muscles flex as he works, and his face is set in an angry glare. Rachel’s right, he is like Paul Newman.

  I pull up a stool and sit on it, crossing my legs. My shift dress rises up, and from where he works, I know if he turns and looks at me he’ll see my knickers. The moist heat in the greenhouse smells green and clear.

  “So, is that it, is it completely over then?” I ask.

  Darren turns, runs his eyes over me, lingering on my legs. “Apparently so,” he says.

  “Well, I for one can’t understand it. Can I help with the potting?”

  He shrugs, and I stand beside him so the hairs on our arms are touching.

  “What can I do?” I look up at his face and he looks at mine. Tiny beads of sweat cling to his brow.

  “Go get a few pots from under the bench down the back.”

  I walk to the back of the greenhouse, aware of his eyes on me. I bend to my knees and reach under the bench for the pots. “These ones?” I call out, holding some little black ones up over my shoulder. I know he’s still watching me, trying to see up my skirt.

  I drop the pots on the surface in front of him and wait for him to look at me. He doesn’t. “You know, Rachel can be a bit of a cow sometimes. And she’ll only marry someone who can look after her properly, so she says.”

  Darren’s hands are suddenly on my hips, strong and hard, pushing me into the workbench as he presses his mouth down on mine, parting my lips with his forceful tongue. His teeth catch my lips and I taste blood. I kiss back, smelling the earth and perspiration rising from his naked chest. In one movement, his hand is up my skirt, stripping my knickers and forcing his finger inside me. I yelp at the brief stab of pain, and see his hands in my mind, tanned and dirty. His mouth silences me. One hand holds my hip bone, as the other pushes at my leg, making a space. He shoves, angrily grunting and pushing, and he’s inside me and the pain is searing. I press my eyes shut and see the winter tide on Hove seafront. The wave pulls up high, like a monstrous thing, so high that you think it will never come down, and then it does, viciously thudding against the shoreline, tossing the pebbles asunder, grabbing at the debris on the beach, before it roars back and upwards again. A little girl in a blue shift dress runs along the water’s edge, trailing a red ribbon from her hand. I squint hard at a gull as it sweeps high above the wave, bombing beneath the water as the foam hits the shore.

  Darren shudders, pauses, then yanks out of me, backing away to the workbench opposite, horror smudged across his face. I drop my head and see a thin stream of pale blood running down the inside of my legs, snaking away to nothing beyond my bare ankles. Darren sees it too. I hear a sob, and look up as he turns away and leans into the bench. My body throbs mechanically, but my heartbeat has slowed to a dull tremor. When I take a breath, it surprises me, aloud, like a cry. Darren starts and turns back to me.

  “There’s a toilet in the building opposite.” He hands me my sandals, his eyes averted. “Sorry,” he whispers towards the bench.

  As I leave the toilet block, I look back and see Darren through the door of the greenhouse. He’s sitting on the stool, bent over his knees with his hands to his forehead.

  Jake, Christmas 1984

  When we get home from school on the last day of term, Mum announces that we’re going to spend Christmas on the Isle of Wight, with her sister Rachel. The bags are packed already, and within half an hour we’re in the back of a tatty cab, on the way to the ferries at Portsmouth Harbour. None of us talk. Mum sits in the middle, smiling as if in a daydream, staring at the road ahead; Andy sits on the other side of her, turning his thumb, first one way, then the other, frowning and quiet. The taxi driver in front smokes all the way there, with his window wound down an inch, so that the second-hand smoke streams past his headrest and into my face. I try coughing from time to time, but he doesn’t get the hint. Every now and then his eyes check us out in the back. But even he doesn’t break the silence. The grey sky is turning black as we approach the terminal, which is lit up with fairy lights that twinkle in the December drizzle. When the taxi pulls up by the ticket desk, Andy and me start to unload the boot as Mum pays the driver with a few crumpled pound notes. Andy shoots me a worried look as we dump the bags on the grimy pavement a few feet from a mangy-looking Alsatian dog and his trampy owner.

  “What about Dad?” Andy whispers, his eyes flicking to Mum as she climbs out of the car, clutching her patchwork shoulder bag.

  I scowl; shake my head at him before Mum can see. Andy doesn’t say another word until we’re in the café on board the ferry, drinking hot chocolate and watching the lights of Portsmouth drop away, as we sail towards the smaller lights of Fishbourne Harbour on the Isle of Wight. I wonder if it will snow this year. I wonder what we’ll get. Mum hasn’t packed a lot, so maybe she’ll be doing her shopping there. She still has that quiet, calm look on her face and it’s making me uneasy. She’s getting my nerves on edge, just by looking like that. And Andy’s right. What about Dad? I bet she hasn’t thought about him in all this. It’s like kidnap, I think, but worse because she’s our mum, and she kind of tricked us into coming before we could even talk to Dad or give him presents or work out when we would see him over Christmas. I want to scream at her, shake her until she snaps out of this zombie act. And who’s bloody Aunt Rachel anyway? If she was all that great, we’d have met her before, wouldn’t we? That’s the trouble with Mum; she’s always changing her tune.

  “How come she lives on the Isle of Wight?” I ask her.

  “Who?” Mum asks, looking up from her coffee, surprised.

  I tut, and look out the window. All I can see is my reflection in the glass, unless I press my face up close and shield the sides of my eyes with my hands. The wind is blowing a polystyrene cup about on the deck, whooping it up like a bird, plopping it down like a stone.

  “Oh! Yes – of course. Aunt Rachel,” Mum blurts out. “I’m not sure, darling. We’ll ask her. You’ll like her, and the kids are lovely.”

  “So you’ve met them, then?”

  “No. No, not yet.”

 
“Then how do you know they’re lovely? They could be right little gits for all you know.”

  Mum’s hand goes to her necklace, twisting it nervously, her thumb squeezing the silver cross, making her nail turn white and angry. She’s trying not to look at me, because I’m ruining it.

  “Well Rachel says they’re lovely – in her letter.” She looks up at me now, with pleading eyes.

  “What did you tell her about us, then?”

  “Well, I told her that you’re thirteen, that you’re a great little artist, and a brilliant runner. I told her that Andy is a bit of a maths wizard, might end up being the brains of the family! And that he’s nearly eleven, and about to go up to the High School next year, with you. I told her that you’re neat and tidy, and Andy’s messy. You’ve got green eyes and Andy’s got brown.”

  She looks up at me, and I can see she wants me to be pleased with all this rubbish she’s told Aunt Rachel.

  “Yeah, Mum. But what about the other stuff? Who’s my best friend, for example? What’s my favourite TV programme? What do I want for Christmas? Even, what do I have for breakfast in the morning?”

  She stares at me. And Andy stares at Mum, looking worried, as her eyes well up again. It’s always me. I just can’t keep my mouth shut for five minutes. I rip open a tiny packet of sugar cubes and stuff them in my mouth as I storm away. I can’t stand to be near them.

  I take a walk around the open deck to cool off, feeling good about the icy spray on my hot face. The glass windows run all around the inside decks, letting me spy on the other passengers as I stroll around hidden in darkness. There are laughing groups of men at the bar, drinking pints and smoking; and a bored-looking barmaid wiping down the slops and sloshes their clumsy drinking makes. Every time she runs the bar towel along to dry up the puddles, another splash sloops up and over and on to the dry surface. After a couple of times, she realises the men are winding her up, and she laughs and leaves them to it. It’s all friendly enough.