I’d spotted him standing in the late afternoon sunshine beside the big sycamore near the South Playing Field, and since my calendar was there in my bag – I’d been showing it off during our music lesson – I’d gone over to him.
He was absorbed in a football match involving some younger boys over in the next field and at this stage his mood seemed just fine, tranquil even. He smiled when I came up to him and we chatted for a minute about nothing in particular. Then I said: ‘Tommy, look what I managed to get.’ I didn’t try to keep the triumph out of my voice, and I may even have gone ‘dah-dah!’ as I brought it out and handed it to him. When he took the calendar, there was still a smile on his features, but as he flicked through I could see something closing off inside him.
‘That Patricia,’ I began to say, but I could hear my own voice changing. ‘She’s so clever …’
But Tommy was already handing it back to me. Then without another word he marched past me off towards the main house.
This last incident should have given me a clue. If I’d thought about it with half a brain, I should have guessed Tommy’s recent moods had something to do with Miss Lucy and his old problems about ‘being creative’. But with everything else going on just at that time, I didn’t, as I say, think in these terms at all. I suppose I must have assumed those old problems had been left behind with our early teen years, and that only the big issues that now loomed so large could possibly preoccupy any of us.
So what had been going on? Well, for a start, Ruth and Tommy had had a serious bust-up. They’d been a couple for about six months by then; at least, that’s how long they’d been ‘public’ about it – walking around with arms around each other, that kind of thing. They were respected as a couple because they weren’t show-offs. Some others, Sylvia B. and Roger D., for example, could get stomach-churning, and you had to give them a chorus of vomiting noises just to keep them in order. But Ruth and Tommy never did anything gross in front of people, and if sometimes they cuddled or whatever, it felt like they were genuinely doing it for each other, not for an audience.
Looking back now, I can see we were pretty confused about this whole area around sex. That’s hardly surprising, I suppose, given we were barely sixteen. But what added to the confusion – I can see it more clearly now – was the fact that the guardians were themselves confused. On the one hand we had, say, Miss Emily’s talks, when she’d tell us how important it was not to be ashamed of our bodies, to ‘respect our physical needs’, how sex was ‘a very beautiful gift’ as long as both people really wanted it. But when it came down to it, the guardians made it more or less impossible for any of us actually to do much without breaking rules. We couldn’t visit the boys’ dorms after nine o’clock, they couldn’t visit ours. The classrooms were all officially ‘out of bounds’ in the evenings, as were the areas behind the sheds and the pavilion. And you didn’t want to do it in the fields even when it was warm enough, because you’d almost certainly discover afterwards you’d had an audience watching from the house passing around binoculars. In other words, for all the talk of sex being beautiful, we had the distinct impression we’d be in trouble if the guardians caught us at it.
I say this, but the only real case I personally knew of like that was when Jenny C. and Rob D. got interrupted in Room 14. They were doing it after lunch, right there over one of the desks, and Mr Jack had come in to get something. According to Jenny, Mr Jack had turned red and gone right out again, but they’d been put off and had stopped. They’d more or less dressed themselves when Mr Jack came back, just as though for the first time, and pretended to be surprised and shocked.
‘It’s very clear to me what you’ve been doing and it’s not appropriate,’ he’d said, and told them both to go and see Miss Emily. But once they’d got to Miss Emily’s office, she’d told them she was on her way to an important meeting and didn’t have time to talk to them.
‘But you know you shouldn’t have been doing whatever you were doing, and I don’t expect you’ll do it again,’ she’d said, before rushing out with her folders.
Gay sex, incidentally, was something we were even more confused about. For some reason, we called it ‘umbrella sex’; if you fancied someone your own sex, you were ‘an umbrella’. I don’t know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham we definitely weren’t at all kind towards any signs of gay stuff. The boys especially could do the cruellest things. According to Ruth this was because quite a few of them had done things with each other when they’d been younger, before they’d realised what they were doing. So now they were ridiculously tense about it. I don’t know if she was right, but for sure, accusing someone of ‘getting all umbrella’ could easily end in a fight.
When we discussed all these things – as we did endlessly back then – we couldn’t decide whether or not the guardians wanted us to have sex or not. Some people thought they did, but that we kept trying to do it at all the wrong times. Hannah had the theory that it was their duty to make us have sex because otherwise we wouldn’t be good donors later on. According to her, things like your kidneys and pancreas didn’t work properly unless you kept having sex. Someone else said what we had to remember was that the guardians were ‘normals’. That’s why they were so odd about it; for them, sex was for when you wanted babies, and even though they knew, intellectually, that we couldn’t have babies, they still felt uneasy about us doing it because deep down they couldn’t quite believe we wouldn’t end up with babies.
Annette B. had another theory: that the guardians were uncomfortable about us having sex with each other because they’d then want to have sex with us. Mr Chris in particular, she said, looked at us girls in that way. Laura said that what Annette really meant was she wanted to have sex with Mr Chris. We all cracked up at this because the idea of having sex with Mr Chris seemed absurd, as well as completely sick-making.
The theory I think came closest was the one put forward by Ruth. ‘They’re telling us about sex for after we leave Hailsham,’ she said. ‘They want us to do it properly, with someone we like and without getting diseases. But they really mean it for after we leave. They don’t want us doing it here, because it’s too much hassle for them.’
My guess, anyway, is that there wasn’t nearly as much sex going on as people made out. A lot of snogging and touching up, maybe; and couples hinting they were having proper sex. But looking back, I wonder how much of it there really was. If everyone who claimed to be doing it really had been, then that’s all you’d have seen when you walked about Hailsham – couples going at it left, right and centre.
What I remember is that there was this discreet agreement among us all not to quiz each other too much about our claims. If, say, Hannah rolled her eyes when you were discussing another girl and murmured: ‘Virgin’ – meaning ‘Of course we’re not, but she is, so what can you expect?’ – then it definitely wasn’t on to ask her: ‘Who did you do it with? When? Where?’ No, you just nodded knowingly. It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.
I must have seen at the time how all these claims being made around me didn’t add up. All the same, as that summer approached, I began to feel more and more the odd one out. In a way, sex had got like ‘being creative’ had been a few years earlier. It felt like if you hadn’t done it yet, you ought to, and quickly. And in my case, the whole thing was made more complicated by the fact that two of the girls I was closest to definitely had done it. Laura with Rob D., even though they’d never been a proper couple. And Ruth with Tommy.
For all that, I’d been holding it off for ages, repeating to myself Miss Emily’s advice – ‘If you can’t find someone with whom you truly wish to share this experience, then don’t!’ But around the spring of the year I’m talking about now, I started to think I wouldn’t mind having sex with a boy. Not just to see what it was like, but also because it occurred to me I needed to get familiar with sex, and it would be just as well to practise first with a boy I didn’t care about
too much. Then later on, if I was with someone special, I’d have more chance of doing everything right. What I mean is, if Miss Emily was correct and sex was this really big deal between people, then I didn’t want to be doing it for the first time when it was really important how well it went.
So I had my eye on Harry C. I chose him for a number of reasons. First, I knew he’d definitely done it before, with Sharon D. Next, I didn’t fancy him that much, but I certainly didn’t find him sick-making. Also, he was quiet and decent, so unlikely to go round gossiping afterwards if it was a complete disaster. And he’d hinted a few times he’d like to have sex with me. Okay, a lot of the boys were making flirty noises in those days, but it was clear by then what was a real proposition and what was the usual boys’ stuff.
So I’d chosen Harry, and I only delayed those couple of months because I wanted to make sure I’d be all right physically. Miss Emily had told us it could be painful and a big failure if you didn’t get wet enough and this was my one real worry. It wasn’t being ripped apart down there, which we often joked about, and was the secret fear of quite a few girls. I kept thinking, as long as I got wet quick enough, there’d be no problem, and I did it a lot on my own just to make sure.
I realise this may sound like I was getting obsessive, but I remember I also spent a lot of time re-reading passages from books where people had sex, going over the lines again and again, trying to tease out clues. The trouble was, the books we had at Hailsham weren’t at all helpful. We had a lot of nineteenth-century stuff by Thomas Hardy and people like that, which was more or less useless. Some modern books, by people like Edna O’Brien and Margaret Drabble, had some sex in them, but it wasn’t ever very clear what was happening because the authors always assumed you’d already had a lot of sex before and there was no need to go into details. So I was having a frustrating time with the books, and the videos weren’t much better. We’d got a video player in the billiards room a couple of years earlier, and by that spring had built up quite a good collection of movies. A lot of them had sex in them, but most scenes would end just as the sex was starting up, or else you’d only see their faces and their backs. And when there was a useful scene, it was difficult to see it more than fleetingly because there were usually twenty others in the room watching with you. We’d evolved this system where we called for particular favourite scenes to be played again – like, for instance, the moment the American jumps over the barbed wire on his bike in The Great Escape. There’d be a chant of: ‘Rewind! Rewind!’ until someone got the remote and we’d see the portion again, sometimes three, four times. But I could hardly, by myself, start shouting for rewinds just to see sex scenes again.
So I kept delaying week by week, while I went on preparing, until the summer came and I decided I was as ready as I’d ever be. By then, I was even feeling reasonably confident about it, and began dropping hints to Harry. Everything was going fine and according to plan, when Ruth and Tommy split up and it all got confused.
CHAPTER NINE
What happened was that a few days after they split, I was in the Art Room with some other girls, working on a still life. I remember it being stifling that day, even though we had the fan rattling behind us. We were using charcoal, and because someone had commandeered all the easels, we were having to work with our boards propped up on our laps. I was sitting beside Cynthia E., and we’d just been chatting and complaining about the heat. Then somehow we’d got onto the subject of boys, and she’d said, not looking up from her work:
‘And Tommy. I knew it wouldn’t last with Ruth. Well, I suppose you’re the natural successor.’
She’d said it in a throwaway manner. But Cynthia was a perceptive person, and the fact that she wasn’t part of our group just gave her remark more weight. What I mean is, I couldn’t help thinking she represented what anyone with any distance on the subject would think. After all, I’d been Tommy’s friend for years until all this couples stuff had come up. It was perfectly possible that to someone on the outside, I’d look like Ruth’s ‘natural successor’. I just let it go, though, and Cynthia, who wasn’t trying to make any big point, said nothing else about it.
Then maybe a day or two later, I was coming out of the pavilion with Hannah when she suddenly nudged me and nodded towards a group of boys over on the North Playing Field.
‘Look,’ she said quietly. ‘Tommy. Sitting by himself.’
I shrugged, as though to say: ‘So what?’ And that’s all there was to it. But afterwards I found myself thinking a lot about it. Maybe all Hannah had meant to do was point out how Tommy, since splitting with Ruth, looked a bit of a spare part. But I couldn’t quite buy this; I knew Hannah too well. The way she’d nudged me and lowered her voice had made it all too obvious she too was expressing some assumption, probably doing the rounds, about me being the ‘natural successor’.
All this did, as I say, put me in a bit of a confusion, because until then I’d been all set on my Harry plan. In fact, looking back now, I’m sure I would have had sex with Harry if it hadn’t been for this ‘natural successor’ business. I’d had it all sorted, and my preparations had gone well. And I still think Harry was a good choice for that stage in my life. I think he would have been considerate and gentle, and have understood what I was wanting from him.
I saw Harry fleetingly a couple of years ago at the recovery centre in Wiltshire. He was being brought in after a donation. I wasn’t in the best of moods because my own donor had just completed the night before. No one was blaming me for that – it had been a particularly untidy operation – but I wasn’t feeling great all the same. I’d been up most of the night, sorting all the arrangements, and I was in the front reception getting ready to leave when I saw Harry coming in. He was in a wheelchair – because he was so weak, I found out later, not because he couldn’t actually walk – and I’m not sure he recognised me when I went up and said hello. I suppose there’s no reason I should have any special place in his memory. We’d never had much to do with each other apart from that one time. To him, if he remembered me at all, I’d just be this daft girl who came up to him once, asked if he wanted sex, then backed off. He must have been pretty mature for his age, because he didn’t get annoyed or go round telling people I was a tease, or any of that. So when I saw him being brought in that day, I felt grateful to him and wished I was his carer. I looked about, but whoever was his carer wasn’t even around. The orderlies were impatient to get him to his room, so I didn’t talk with him long. I just said hello, that I hoped he’d feel better soon, and he smiled tiredly. When I mentioned Hailsham he did a thumbs-up, but I could tell he didn’t recognise me. Maybe later, when he wasn’t so tired, or when the medication wasn’t so strong, he’d have tried to place me and remembered.
Anyway, I was talking about back then: about how after Ruth and Tommy split, all my plans got confused. Looking at it now, I feel a bit sorry for Harry. After all the hints I’d been dropping the previous week, there I was, suddenly whispering stuff to put him off. I suppose I must have assumed he was raring to go, that I had my work cut out just to hold him off. Because whenever I saw him, I’d always get something in quick, then rush off before he could say anything back. It was only much later, when I thought about it, it occurred to me he might not have had sex on his mind at all. For all I know, he might have been happy to forget the whole thing, except that every time he saw me, along a corridor or in the grounds, I’d come up and whisper some excuse why I didn’t want sex with him just then. It must have looked pretty daft from his side, and if he hadn’t been such a decent type, I’d have been a laughing stock in no time. Well, anyway, this era of putting Harry off lasted maybe a couple of weeks, and then came Ruth’s request.
That summer, right up until the warm weather faded, we developed this odd way of listening to music together in the fields. Walkmans had started appearing at Hailsham since the previous year’s Sales and by that summer there were at least six of them in circulation. The craze was for several people to sit on th
e grass around a single Walkman, passing the headset around. Okay, it sounds a stupid way to listen to music, but it created a really good feeling. You listened for maybe twenty seconds, took off the headset, passed it on. After a while, provided you kept the same tape going over and over, it was surprising how close it was to having heard all of it by yourself. As I say, the craze really took off that summer, and during the lunch breaks you’d see all these clusters of students lying about the grass around the Walkmans. The guardians weren’t too keen, saying we’d spread ear infections, but they let us carry on. I can’t remember that last summer without thinking about those afternoons around the Walkmans. Someone would wander up and ask: ‘What’s the sound?’ and if they liked the answer, they’d sit down on the grass and wait their turn. There was almost always a good atmosphere around these sessions and I don’t remember anyone being refused a share of the headset.
Anyway, that’s what I was up to with a few other girls when Ruth came up to ask if we could have a talk. I could tell it was something important, so I left my other friends and the two of us walked off, all the way to our dorm hut. When we got to our room, I sat down on Ruth’s bed, close to the window – the sun had warmed the blanket – and she sat on mine over by the back wall. There was a bluebottle buzzing around, and for a minute we had a laugh playing ‘bluebottle tennis’, throwing our hands about to make the demented creature go from one to the other of us. Then it found its way out of the window, and Ruth said:
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