The Stopping Place

by Helen Slavin

  ‘It was you. This morning?’ Elspeth’s voice. Musical of course. Jeannie Gaffney nodded.

  ‘You’re all right?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘You’re a public danger.’

  Another nod. But Elspeth was striding, giraffe-like, onwards.

  Jeannie found herself walking home, trying out a graceful, long-legged stride. Stood in front of the mirror trying to make her school sweater sit the way that Elspeth’s did. Elspeth’s looked soft, it didn’t pill or ride up. There was no puckered stitching at Elspeth’s shoulders.

  Jeannie knew she would be an utter failure as Elspeth, but she felt drawn. Each day she looked out for the figure on the bicycle, felt the anticipation. Then, the freedom, the physicality of Elspeth powering the bike. As if in turning the pedals, in the flex and contract of calf muscles, she was somehow powering Jeannie. As if all was right with the world. Elspeth Rideout became her balance, the anti-Jeannie. As long as Elspeth was there the equilibrium couldn’t falter.

  It was unfounded. Faintly ludicrous. But it worked.

  Ted Gaffney worried more when That Bloody Ryan Boy took an interest in his Jeannie. Jeannie was in the Lower Sixth, was seventeen, was, he knew, about to step off into the world. After fifth form exam success Jeannie Gaffney was diligently plotting her course for a matching set of A-Levels. She had even picked up an extra language, she’d been taken on part-time at the local university’s language school to begin Russian. She was part of a small group, gifted in languages, all being specially groomed. Part of a new enlightened local education policy to offer greater opportunities. The language hothouse, one councillor had called it.

  What chiefly worried Ted Gaffney was the notion that there would soon be a parting of their ways. It wouldn’t be too long before he’d be packing her worldly goods into the back of his car and driving her to university. Just a few terms. He felt excitement and doom in equal measure.

  You know, he never told me about Geraldine. That here was love, but first, he had a job to do.

  And then That Bloody Ryan Boy. Ted Gaffney knew That Bloody Ryan Boy’s father and his three or possibly four brothers. They were all lumbering trees of men and it was hard to keep count. Plus there were one or two other lumbering-tree sons dotted about the locality, all of whom seemed to come from Ryan rootstock.

  That Bloody Ryan Boy was Sean, the second eldest. Arrogant, but bright enough not to let it show. Just to know he was God was enough, bragging about it would put people off and Sean knew that with a smile he had ultimate power over most people. Generally those who weren’t impressed weren’t worth bothering with. And then there was Jeannie Gaffney.

  Jeannie Gaffney didn’t fawn or fold up. Jeannie Gaffney, when he deigned, that first time, to speak to her, simply stood her ground and spoke back. He was used to girls who melted or bleated or made a feeble attempt to be smart. He was used to power, like making small dogs do stupid tricks. He liked to make them jump through fiery hoops of desire.

  I know you want me, but I don’t want you. At least I won’t, not after a few minutes. You’ll bore me.

  ‘Could you open the window?’ He’d been sitting in the sixth form common room, in one of the low-slung junkshop armchairs, skimming a book for English. He wanted to impress the English teacher, who was singularly unimpressed with him. Chemistry and physics were at his fingertips, leaching into and out of him by osmosis or electro-magnetism depending on which lab he was in. He spoke fluent maths too, as if he just had to turn to a channel in his head. But English, what a fucking foreign language. He had failed it, and he needed it. It irked him that charm and good looks weren’t enough in Miss Butterworth’s class. She laughed at him.

  Sean Ryan thought that he would shock her by actually reading the set book they were currently dissecting, but he hadn’t got very far. Now he was skimming, hoping to cram in a few sentences that he could drop into the lesson. And it was hottish by the window.

  ‘Could you open the window?’ he said to the girl seated at the nearby table. For a second time. He looked up. The girl was unconsciously twirling her hair round her finger and he was surprised to feel his cock twitch.

  ‘Could you open the window?’ he asked again, squinting at her. She surfaced from the book. Looked at him, vague and blurry.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The window. Could you open it?’ She looked up at the window.

  ‘No. Sorry. I’m not tall enough. Sorry.’

  His cock twitched again. There was something here, and he didn’t know what. He stood up, moved to the window behind him and tried to open it.

  ‘That one’s been painted over.’ She stated the fact. Twitch. His cock was never wrong. It was like a divining rod. Who the hell was she? He couldn’t put a name to her.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked Jeannie Gaffney at last.

  When I pull out that memory from the back of the drawer I still get that crackling frizzle of electricity between my legs. Everyone knew Sean Ryan and that he was only to be trusted to break your heart. He was so much the master of his own fan club and yet everyone wanted him. What I remember about that day is feeling good that I didn’t melt or bleat or fawn. He was taller than me, he could easily reach the window; me, I mean, the Jeannie me, she’d have to stand on the chair first.

  That day, Jeannie Gaffney felt defiant. Powerful. There was a long pause then. You could hear the wide open space of the kids outside on the playing field running round the athletics pitch. A motor mower was buzzing in the distance like a diesel bee.

  He asked if I’d read the book he was reading. Which I had. I didn’t even turn, I just kept on with my work, making notes. He was trying to persuade me to talk about it, give him some crib notes for his English lesson and I wouldn’t. What I felt, I mean, Jeannie, Jeannie Gaffney felt this. It should be written across my head: Jeannie Gaffney felt this.’

  What Jeannie felt was scorn really, that he thought it could be so cheaply won. I’ll ask her and she’ll give me. So she didn’t. Jeannie Gaffney had nothing to lose, wasn’t in Sean Ryan’s League of Blondes or anything. He moved then, to sit on the table beside her, looking down at her as if he didn’t realise she could work out that game plan. It was exhilarating. What she remembered best was the moment she had to leave, standing, gathering her books from the table, looking at his face, the shock and bewilderment on it. How have I not won out here? What is this thing called ‘no’?

  All the time Sean Ryan wasn’t really thinking about the book or the English teacher. He was thinking about putting his hands into ice water and then putting them inside the cups of Jeannie Gaffney’s bra, how the nipples would harden under his iced palms.

  Know what? Jeannie Gaffney was thinking about that too.

  Fast forward to an evening before the end of the term. Balmy, the day sweaty and tired with the heat of itself. Sean Ryan, with his trousers round his thighs, felt the buckle of his belt flash cold against the hot of his skin. It was his brother’s car and the seats folded and sagged against each other, the leatherette used to the familiar drill of girl and nature reserve carpark. That Bloody Ryan Boy wasn’t thinking that her head was banging against the hatchback door and that she was trying to shimmy downwards to avoid concussion. He was thinking about how he wished he had bigger hands so he could grasp more of her gorgeous overspilling arse and he was thinking about the heat of her and then he found himself panting, ‘Fuck…oh fuck Jeannie…fuck.’

  (But Jeannie Gaffney was three miles away sitting on a piano stool playing a Clementi sonatina as her dad fished pondweed out of their pond with an old rockpooling net. ‘Frog. Jeannie…A frog…’ he shouted, and Jeannie stepped out into the honeysuckle-scented air.)

  Elspeth Rideout was not red-eyed and did not want sympathy. Jeannie Gaffney still saw her in the sixth form centre and in the corridors looking as elegant and rangy as a borzoi dog. Jeannie Gaffney had no idea that Elspeth even knew she existed. Jeannie Gaffney had no idea about what had happened in the nature reserve
carpark. So Jeannie Gaffney was puzzled when she caught Elspeth glaring at her, watching her, and once or twice, following her home. On that racing bike, tagging behind the bus. And one afternoon when she was late out of a music class and had missed the bus, Jeannie walked home. And as she strolled through the park Sean Ryan emerged from the trees like the big, bad, wolf.

  See, there are all these things going on behind your back. You just don’t have all the information. How was I…I mean, how was Jeannie Gaffney to know about Elspeth and Sean Ryan? No one told her. They didn’t tell anyone. They kept it quiet and Elspeth kept their break-up even quieter than that. Jeannie couldn’t know their secrets. And that’s always the killer blow isn’t it? The secrets.

  That was the summer that Jeannie spent all her time in the forest with the big bad Bloody Ryan Boy, the summer that she didn’t really talk to her dad and in her not talking she said absolutely everything.

  On the outside she looked like your normal everyday Jeannie Gaffney but Ted Gaffney knew. He’d seen That Bloody Ryan Boy in his car at the end of the road and he had no idea what he should do. He wanted to shout and rant and warn her but what was the use? This is it, this is the process; this is her life.

  He did, one evening, let the tyres down on That Bloody Ryan Boy’s car. And of course, the worst evening of all when he was out at the forest with Geraldine walking Bilberry, her stupid mutt of a dog, and he saw That Bloody Ryan Boy’s car in the carpark. And then there were leaves in Jeannie’s bedroom and one night, when Ted Gaffney just couldn’t bloody sleep he was on the landing, heading downstairs for a cup of coffee that would keep-him-even-more-awake-but-what-the-bloody-hell-he-didn’t-bloody-care, when he caught the dry incense scent of forest floor, of compacted earth holding onto the dampness of the last rain beneath a covering of cast-off needles and the rich brew of leaf mould.

  After the coffee Ted Gaffney had terrible dreams of trying to catch a centaur in the forest. He couldn’t manoeuvre his way through the trees, they blocked his every move, tripping him with their roots, slapping him with their branches and the finale, the bright silver of heavy hooves clomping against his skull.

  I just have to be there. That is what I have to do, he thought the next morning. As he watched the steam rise from his fresh coffee and Jeannie fetched him the painkillers for the ache in his head.

  It had been a lookout point for forest fires at one time, although the forest was no longer vast enough to warrant it. The furthest edge had been felled for a golf course years back and seared across by the new dual carriageway to the city. It cut right through the heart of the forest, leaving a scrap of a few hundred acres trapped on the far side of the tarmac. There was a footbridge that was hardly ever used. Most people walked their dogs to the boundary and walked back to the carpark.

  It couldn’t really be classed as a wilderness if there were toilets and a kiosk. But there was wilderness if you cared to find it. It was just like a fairytale, all you had to do was trip-trap over that bridge.

  They, someone, had built a wooden walkway into the trees that climbed slowly but surely through the tall trunks and ended in a tiny treehouse. You had to climb inside, lifting yourself up the rungs of a makeshift ladder. Once inside there were three windows looking out onto different aspects of the forest.

  Sean and Jeannie had had to cross the footbridge, the traffic scudding below. He did not hold her hand; rather he walked just a step ahead so that all the way across she had a view of his back, the armour plating of his shoulderblades under his white T-shirt. He didn’t turn until he reached the other side where he waited, made certain she was with him and then carried on, down the steps and held the small wooden gate open, the gate that led through the fencing into the forest.

  They walked into the crowd of trunks and the dampening effect of the forest floor, the musty, herbal crust of discarded needles and leaves. The sun striped through to the left and there was the busy sound of chainsaws as the foresters cleared an acre or two. A sappy smell filtered through, almost metallic, like blood. But Sean moved off, halting only to half turn and half smile as Jeannie Gaffney followed.

  They moved uphill. Sean Ryan knew the way. Jeannie Gaffney looked back, unable now to see the primary-coloured blinks of cars in the distance. The trees closed in behind her. Just birdsong and footsteps and the rustling of leaves, the creaking of wood. She had noticed the planks of wood lifting up into the trees. They were a seasoned slope and a gnarled handrail moving from the forest floor up into a sprawling clutch of pine trees. They looked like some strange disjointed wooden snake. Sean paused, as if he hadn’t noticed, was looking over the landscape of trees at a fork in the path. Coniferous or deciduous, which was the way again?

  Jeannie halted, aware of the sweat trickling down her back like a finger tracing her spine. She couldn’t breathe, and it was not the exertion of the forest climb but the wish that it was Sean standing behind her, his finger tracing the sweat’s tributary. She put a hand onto the handrail. The wood was silky and warm to the touch. She looked upwards along the length of the snake and couldn’t quite see where it led. Sean half turned again.

  ‘Want to see where it goes?’ he asked, casually, as if this was an adventure.

  He didn’t touch her until they had climbed up to the wide ladder that led into the hide. He had hardly spoken and hadn’t looked at her. Now they halted, the ladder seeming steep, vertiginous. Sean paused, looked right at her, stepped towards her, kissed her on the mouth, slid his hand into her hair, his mouth open now and his body pressed against hers, pinning her against the wide slats of the ladder.

  Leaves. Breeze. Creak. Creak. Hide.

  But they were not hidden. They were watched.

  The week before the A-level results. The day the thunder was building overhead and Elspeth swooped like a golden eagle and dropped Jeannie from the nest.

  Did she fall? She was pushed. Elspeth waited and waited, such a very patient young woman and such a battle in a confined space. Skin and fists and the fury in Elspeth’s eyes and Sean’s first thought was to pull on his jeans, fending off blows with one hand. As if she was just a gnat really, as if the thing he really had to protect was not Jeannie. As if the thing that was precious to him was not Jeannie at all. It was all just a confusion in Jeannie Gaffney’s concussed head.

  Later, at the farthest end of that afternoon, Jeannie Gaffney was found by birdwatchers. Two gentlemen in khaki shorts, their necks laden with spotting scopes and an Ordnance Survey map in a see-through pouch. They found her like a chick on the forest floor. They covered her in a pac-a-mac and called the police and the ambulance. Then they stood by, watched anxiously as the uniformed policeman picked her up. Had to carry her, so carefully, through the roughshod forest terrain to the waiting ambulance.

  And then there was Dad, summoned from home with a bag of clothes. Such a very very patient man and such a battle in the confined space of his head.

  ‘Ready to come home?’ was all he said and, as they crossed the hospital carpark and he opened the passenger door, just the lightest touch of his hand on her elbow. And in the car, travelling home, she started to cry. In the driveway, shielded by the hedging, he stopped the engine, put his arms around her and she sobbed and sobbed. And then nothing more was said.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ he asked later when, sleepless, they sat in the kitchen. Jeannie shrugged. Ted Gaffney was desperate to think of ways to communicate. How not to say, I wish I’d told you so. I should have warned you. This is how life is. Older and wiser. Say nothing Ted, for this is punishing enough. And then it came to him.

  ‘It has been a rite of passage.’

  Bugger that, he wanted to staple gun That Bloody Ryan Boy’s genitals to a park bench for the starlings to peck at. How dare you. How bloody dare you. And couldn’t say it.

  * * *

  It was front page that week in the local paper. Some unkind person had given the paper a school photograph, Jeannie’s head ringed in newsprint. The local paper, which sat aro
und in the chip shops and Chinese takeaways until at last it lined pet cages and mopped up paint drips while the townspeople decorated. By September there were a few issues lurking in the bottom of recycling bins or saved up for art projects. The newsprint stuffed wet shoes, was made into some papier maché balloons for a Montgolfier and Flight project at a couple of primary schools.

  Elspeth Rideout set out for Oxford that September. Sean Ryan might have joined the army or the foreign legion but more likely, according to local rumour, his father and his brothers knocked him unconscious, stripped him of his clothes, shaved him and shoved him, bound with duct tape, into the boot of his dad’s car and drove him to Inverness.

  Mr Ryan senior did not come to apologise to Jeannie for his son’s cowardice in leaving her for dead in the forest, but on her return from hospital the contents of a nearby florist shop were delivered to her home. Anonymously.

  Ted Gaffney worried that the flowers were from That Bloody Ryan Boy and only when he happened to pull into the petrol station by the leisure centre did he see Ryan senior at a neighbouring pump and find himself on the receiving end of an acknowledging nod. And when he entered the kiosk to pay, the girl wouldn’t take Ted Gaffney’s money.

  ‘He paid,’ she said, and pointed at Ryan senior, pulling out into the traffic.

  The following September Jeannie Gaffney passed all her A-levels but did not take up her place at university in York. Instead she stayed at home, started work in the greenhouses for Parks and Gardens. Ted Gaffney kept talking about a gap year. Ted Gaffney kept York University in their conversation until the following August, when he shut up. Then, a visit to the library enlightened him about the glories of the local Agricultural College. He left out the leaflets on ‘Horticulture: The Growth Industry!’ and ‘Becoming an Arborealist – Our Roots and Branches’. Accepted that she had made her choice.

  Jeannie Gaffney had green fingers.