Innocents

by Coote, Cathy

  I seemed to know everything, or nothing, depending on the time of day and the pattern of the conversation and what we were doing.

  I could know whatever it suited me to know.

  Kisses were the first point of contact, for me. There was no dialogue except the physical. All my speech was just to bring you close. All my listening attitudes were just poses calculated to turn you on. You could have been talking about anything, anything at all. I had nothing to say to you, except with my body.

  But now, any lightest token of your affection would seem like the highest blessing to me. To think I've had all of you, safe in the crook of my finger, and I thought nothing of it. To think you've come nuzzling to me, craven, for any morsel of love, and I fed you shreds of plastic. It turns my stomach.

  As the spring grew warmer, we embarked on endless picnics.

  Behind our new house, there was a little bit of a back garden, enclosed by high walls on all sides. All the walls trapped the drops of rain and shreds of shadow. Towards the edges of the lawn, moss mingled with the grass. In the corners, slime and lichens spread across the bald surface of the earth. Buzzing things hovered there. Strongly perfumed flowers wrestled with each other, day to day.

  The very centre of the garden was the only place you could rely on. It was the only place that was safe. The meagre sun-light sucked the water out once a day and made it dry enough to sit on.

  We had our picnics there, under the big spreading tree. We sat on a tartan rug that you'd bought specially. You made me fairy bread and fed me chocolate, square by square.

  In Mr Harrison's English class one week, we studied the significance of landscape.

  He held up a picture of trees and grass and rocks, all yellow-brown under the relentless sun.

  ‘What does this make you think of?’

  ‘Swaggies.’

  ‘Sheep.’

  ‘Bodies,’ I said, and instantly regretted it.

  He paused in my direction, and waited till everyone else was looking at me. ‘Why's that?’

  I fought to keep from going red. I spoke casually, to hide my creeping horror. I didn't want to seem macabre. ‘Y'know,’ I said. ‘Newspaper stories. Girls who go missing along the highway.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ he said, his words a little quick. ‘The media association. Good.’ And laughing through his nose, dismissively, he put the picture face down on the desk. He reached into his pocket for a plastic figurine. ‘Have a Kermit the Frog.’

  Mr Harrison was a very easy case indeed. At first, as you know, I worried that he might understand the real situation between you and me. He had a way of fixing me in his gaze and asking pointed questions which made me sweat.

  But then certain weaknesses of his became glaringly apparent.

  He once asked me to fetch some whiteboard markers from his office.

  ‘Top drawer,’ he said.

  His office was small and cramped and busy. There were letters scattered all over the desk. Photographs of school plays and picnics crowded the walls. Brash trinkets sat jumbled together on a shelf—the source of his endless supply of classroom rewards.

  I found the pens immediately, behind some bottles of Voltaren pills.

  At home, I asked you, ‘What's Voltaren for?’

  You answered, ‘Pain.’

  After that, his loud laugh seemed less instinctive, more forced. His enthusiasm seemed more like obligation, duty. I saw his powerful strides tinged with a kind of stiffness in the joints. Once or twice, I saw him adjust his ridiculous cloth cap to a jauntier angle.

  Sometimes, I flirted with the truth. I don't know why.

  You told me, ‘I was so nervous of you, when I first met you…’

  ‘I know!’ I said. Your forehead creased into lines of inquiry. With an eyebrow, you questioned me.

  ‘I found your diary,’ I explained.

  ‘You read my papers?’ You were hurt; faintly outraged. ‘You read my personal writing?’

  That diary was only the half of it. I found everything, in the end.

  I nodded. ‘Well, how else am I supposed to know what you think?’

  An exhalation of dumbfounded amazement broke from between your lips. You shook your head slowly, looking past me at the wall.

  ‘You could just ask me.’

  Ask you? The idea was ludicrous. What if you were playing the same sort of convoluted game I was? Or—a more potent fear still—what if all this was some obscure adult game, some grown-ups' affair about which I was too naive to know anything? My mind pulsed with the half-shadowed range of possibilities. Clues like your diary were of vital importance.

  With an effort, you conquered your instinctive little-boy, you-looked-at-my-stuff anger. Taking my hand in yours, leaning across the table, appealing, for the sake of communication, of mutual understanding, of your holy, all-encompassing love, you wanted to know: ‘Don't you trust me?’

  I realised then that no, I didn't.

  I didn't trust anyone. A hot fear came coursing through me, tingling my nerves and speeding up my heart. What if you found out that I didn't trust you? Would you call me a bitch? Would you understand, suddenly, that I lived in your house, occupied a paramount place in your mind, on false pretences? The idea of you withdrawing yourself, leaving me in a solitude where I could not help but be constantly aware of my own defiled state of mind, was too terrible to bear.

  But I was an expert in thinking on my feet. I calculated rapidly, and decided on my next move without the faintest hesitation.

  Composing my features into the most apologetic, rueful smile possible, and squeezing your hand with an appropriate urgency, I said, ‘Of course I trust you.’ Looking sheepish, looking shy, pouting a little, as though forced to admit something I found slightly embarrassing, I added, ‘I love you.’

  Fatherly forgiveness won an easy victory over your sense of outrage.

  ‘I know,’ you said. Your face creased into a sad, loving smile. ‘I love you too, little angel.’

  You stood up and came around behind me, keeping my hand in yours, twirling my arm like a dancer. You leant over, enveloping me in your arms, seatbelting me to your body. You buried your face in my hair and inhaled deeply. You covered my neck with kisses. I gripped your hands tightly, as though I were terrified you would ever release your grasp.

  I thought, Phew! But I didn't stop reading your diary.

  My occasional nightmares couldn't give me away. Rather, they were tools I wielded deftly.

  I came slowly, dreadfully, to awareness.

  ‘Oh, baby, baby, baby. Don't cry.’

  I blinked, rubbed my eyes, blearily remembered myself—the existence of my body, my life, my lover. ‘What's…?’

  We were sitting up in bed, in our moonlight-silvered upstairs room. You leant against the bedhead. I leant against you. A recollection of some keen caustic sorrow was dimly evoked in me, as if by a wafting smell.

  ‘It's all right.’ Your arms were smooth around my body, your chest slippery under my cheek.

  ‘What happened? I don't remember.’

  Like a Disney father, with scripted, chisel-featured tenderness, you informed me. ‘You had a bad dream. You were crying.’

  With my fingers I found my tears, a layer of slime between my cheek and your chest. ‘Oh! Darling, I'm sorry, I've got you all wet!’

  With your fingers you shushed my lips. ‘Don't be silly; don't be sorry. What were you dreaming about?’

  ‘I can't remember.’

  You whispered, ‘You can tell me.’ I understood in a second that you loved this, all your compassionate instincts swollen to fill you. I clasped you tightly to me, my lips pursed, rigid, in a kiss frozen against your collarbone.

  ‘It's all right,’ you said.

  Sometimes, I cried. I didn't know why.

  Oh, how hard I used to desire to be like the crowds of people I saw in shopping malls! I wanted so much to be like those who can restrict their tears to appropriate places—funerals and sad movies. My tears used to burs
t from me at the oddest times.

  It disconcerted you.

  After breakfast one morning, I followed you into the bedroom. I knelt by your knees as you stood knotting your tie. I leant my head against your calf, tracing the crease of your trouser-leg idly with my forefinger.

  Tie tied, you stood back, smiled at me in passing, and sat on the bed, pulling on your shoes.

  Abruptly, I found myself choked by violent sobs. They shot from my lips like hacking coughs.

  A second saw you knelt by me. ‘My darling, my darling, my darling …!’ You tried to cradle me to you, but I was lost in my gushing eyes and tear-dampened hair. A kind of cramp seized my insides. Doubling over, I clutched at my stomach with one hand.

  ‘Angel, what's wrong? What's the matter?’

  I could not speak. I heard your panic but had no time for it. I made motions like one vomiting, but I was spewing sobs. It hurt terribly.

  It only happened a few times, but it left me exhausted. I'd sit palely on the bed, catching my breath.

  It left you intensely puzzled and worried.

  I could always work with it, after the event. I could use those puffy cheeks and lips swollen with blood and darkly shining eyes to my advantage. In fact, those mysterious tears were good for hours of repatriations, inquiries, and soul-searching. For you, I mean.

  Anxiety seemed to make you desire me more intensely. You always made the most careful love to me when I'd been crying.

  I mixed utterly contrived emotions in with the real ones, just in case.

  I made myself seem sad, when it suited me. I remember lying under you, doing my best to look sad and distant. And you above me almost burst with the effort of moderating your passion. It seemed that it was all you could do to keep from slamming into me with the force of your worry.

  I kept my face very still, careful not to blink the moisture away from my eyes. The sudden squall which had showered those tears was long gone and I felt nothing except vaguely hungry.

  There was always my status as the adolescent girl, who wasn't quite responsible for her actions—not yet—to fall back on. It was an easy act to put on. I did it effortlessly.

  I'd gaze out the window, distant, silent.

  ‘What's wrong?’

  Tracing the outline of one hand with the index finger of the other. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘Oh. I dunno. Sometimes I just get … confused.’

  Against the reflective sky in the window, I saw familiar concern falling over your face, deepening wrinkles embedded by long years of sympathy. You said, ‘Look … if there's anything…?’

  I exercised a trick I'd learned, and stayed silent. If I said nothing, you kept talking, growing more and more emotional as you did so.

  ‘I understand that you're very young.’ You shoved your hair impatiently away from your face. Pulling wry expressions, I looked at my hands.

  ‘The last thing I want to do is make you unhappy.’

  I nodded.

  You said, ‘I don't want you staying involved if you'd rather not be.’

  Deftly, I made my whole momentary, assumed unhappiness your fault: ‘But you'd miss me. You need me, now!’

  ‘Oh, darling.’ You were an instinctively, compulsively truthful man. ‘Yes, I need you, I can't deny…’

  ‘It's okay.’

  I'd made you wretched. ‘But if you're unhappy, if this is all too much! I'd rather die than think I was responsible for—’

  You'd suffered enough. I let you out from under my paw. ‘Oh, shut up! Stop being stupid!’

  You smiled ruefully, wiping at the corners of your eyes.

  Impulsively, girlishly, I threw my arms around your neck and declared into your ear, ‘I'm just premenstrual. Ignore it.’

  Then I dusted the length of your arms with kisses, and you cried.

  *

  Things weren't completely perfect, of course. I lived constantly on edge, keyed up with need; supersensitive; stressed. I slept badly.

  You didn't mind. You said, ‘I love having you next to me. Twitching. Stealing the blanket. Smacking me in the face in your sleep.’

  You suffered, like any man your age, from more physical pain than I did. You still had that wry shock of men just past their youth, who can't quite believe that their body really would decide that there are some things it will not tolerate.

  Your knees cracked when you shifted position. You got indigestion and muscle cramps and your eyes hurt if you read under too bright a light.

  I hated those ailments. To me, they always felt like the worst kind of aggravation—the only obstacle which I couldn't find a way around. Even the best general can't fight Acts of God.

  I remember once you stopped right in the middle of things. ‘My back hurts.’

  It seemed like the thinnest of excuses to me, despite your half-grin of pain. ‘Probably from all that painting,’ I suggested.

  ‘No.’ You moved clumsily off me, falling heavily, face down, onto your pillow. ‘Just arthritis.’

  I didn't want you to have arthritis. That didn't suit me at all.

  ‘It's okay, isn't it?’ I said. Frowning, you felt behind your back.

  There was no course available, it seemed, but compassion. I kissed your cheek. ‘You shouldn't be doing so much handyman-stuff,’ I told you, softly, sternly—the way you told me to eat properly and dress warmly.

  ‘I enjoy it.’

  ‘It's fine already.’ I stroked your backbone with the tips of my fingers. I was dying of impatience, choking with a lust for victory. It was terrible, after so much hard work, to have my prize snatched away. ‘There's no need.’

  You said nothing. Your eyes were closed.

  I waited by your side, infuriated. I was afraid to move, lest my action disturb your spine so badly that it fell completely to pieces.

  Another time: ‘I can't breathe.’ You rolled over, wheezing slightly. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from clucking in annoyance.

  ‘What's wrong, darling?’ I asked, laying one hand on your forehead.

  ‘I get asthma.’ You put one fist across your chest, breathing carefully. ‘Just sometimes.’

  I tried to coquette it all away. ‘Come on!’ I said. I made huge kissing motions in the air.

  ‘I can't,’ you told me plainly. ‘Sorry, angel.’

  I stuck my tongue out at you, making wicked eyes.

  You coughed steadily. Phlegm absorbed you. You weren't even looking at me.

  ‘Come on!’ I said again. But my voice was lost in the harsh sound of your coughing.

  So once again, I was left with no route to follow but the sympathetic one. I drew my hand down over your cheeks.

  My sympathy took the form of yours. I suppose that's because your sympathy was the most potent and bewitching that I'd ever known. ‘Poor little boy,’ I said.

  ‘I'm an old man!’ you laughed, slapping my hand away.

  *

  The world reminded me, once in a while, how little I had in common with the rest of creation. After shopping one morning, I realised exactly what an isolated and unnatural creature I was.

  ‘Raggle-taggle gypsies,’ you said, rounding the corner. ‘Poor freaks without mortgages.’

  We slowed to a standstill behind a red-light queue. I saw from the car window the man playing the ukulele for silver coins, with his trailing dreadlocks knotted Oriental-style on top of his head, an oversize chopstick skewing the arrangement. I saw his moth-eathen poncho decorated with stylised llamas, through which his hands emerged like butterfly wings, afire with obscurely significant rings flashing silver Nordic symbols and purple healing crystals. I saw his filthy bare feet and his bedraggled mongrel dog in its iron-studded collar.

  I felt jealous.

  You see, his girlfriend, sitting by the patchwork hat laid out to receive coins, tickling the dog under his chin, was dressed in exactly the same style. They were really together.

  You went on, as the lights changed and the queue began t
o move, ‘The girls at school called them crusties.’

  I knew the people that he meant.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘They're sort of aesthetic Luddites.’

  With your indulgent, what-a-clever-girl smile, you asked: ‘Are they, my darling?’

  I slapped your knee, saying (because I knew you'd love it), ‘Don't patronise me! I can use a word like Luddite if I want.’

  ‘Course you can, angel.’

  I tasted an acidic bitterness as we swished away from the kerbside crusty bivouac. Nosestuds and dreadlocks. Pierced lips. Ankle tattoos of the Chinese character for courage. Eyebrow rings. These seemed such empty gestures of freakishness. They served, I thought, only as identification marks, so that great tribes of the alienated could recognise each other and gather together. At the weekend, second-hand markets in the old primary-school grounds, the vendors of ancient silk dresses and ratty seventies cup-and-saucer sets would instantly all recognise the busker and his girlfriend as fellows. They would share joints and discuss incense and herbal remedies for chronic fatigue syndrome.

  I was acutely jealous of their camaraderie. I was born a freak. I lived without hope of fraternity. I carried my perversion with me like a cancer.

  ‘And what are those?’ You nodded out my window as we passed the CD shop.

  Pressed against the glossy glass, a couple squirmed, kissing.

  Strait-jacketed by traffic fore and aft, we slowed to a halt.

  ‘Goths, I guess.’ I looked more carefully. Under that knee-length cloak of scruffy velvet and the tatty home-dyed lace, familiar features flashed. ‘It's Anita,’ I said. ‘From school.’

  Glancing across, you said, ‘Oh, so it is. And she seems to have hooked up with Lord Byron.’

  The Gothic stick of a boy Anita was kissing wore a flounced pirate shirt and a tight black waistcoat. A slick foppish fringe hung down over his face, obscuring his eyes.

  ‘Although,’ you added, ‘I don't know that Lord Byron would've had quite that many earrings.’

  ‘She was the school freak,’ I told you.

  ‘Poor girl. She always seemed a bit misunderstood.’