“We’d like to meet her,” Mum said gently, and so I couldn’t refuse.
I’d been going out with Margaret for four weeks now, and Mum and Dad were dying to see her, but for some reason I was reluctant for them to meet. It was silly really. Margaret was pretty, polite and quiet-spoken, the kind of girl parents would be happy to see their son dating; but in some way I was ashamed of her. Perhaps because I knew whenever I was with her, that there was someone else I’d rather be talking to. It had always embarrassed and disquieted me having to lie, and I was ashamed of trying to pass off this living falsehood to my parents, and scared that Mum would see the truth.
Mum and Dad couldn’t help staring when I brought Margaret in. We were only going to the cinema, but she was dressed up in a close-fitting black jumpsuit with a trim white belt. Her face was immaculately made up and her freshly washed hair shimmering red and gold. Without a doubt Margaret was the most glamorous thing our sitting-room had seen. Perhaps Mum and Dad had imagined me holding hands with a cardboard cut-out or a rubber doll, since both of them seemed shocked when she showed she was alive by saying how pleased she was to meet them.
Mum recovered first.
“Margaret, I’m Sheila. It’s good to see you too.” The two women looked at each other, unsure whether to kiss or shake hands and settling for an uncertain smile.
“And this is Dad,” I said.
“Ron’s my name, and Ron you can call me,” Dad said, and though I thought he sounded awful, he grinned in a pleasant way and I could see Margaret relax. From what I’d told her about Dad, I think she’d been expecting a combination of Jack the Ripper and Attila the Hun.
“Would you like a sherry?” Mum said, and Margaret glanced at me with wide questioning green eyes. I nodded, realising it would be childish now to drag her away, but still feeling the uncertainty waver inside me.
“Right, then,” said Dad, helpful for once. “I’ll get the glasses.”
“Take a seat, Margaret,” Mum said thoughtfully. “The brown one in the corner’s the most comfortable.”
Margaret took the weight off her feet and Mum said something about the exams coming in less than two weeks time. Then Dad breezed in with the sherry poured out into four neat glasses and we all sipped it politely.
I looked around the room and could see the three of them all charmed and pleased with each other. It should have made me happy, seeing my parents so content and so proud, admiring their son’s girlfriend, and yet I couldn’t help thinking how very different it would have been if it had been Richard there. My parents would have been horrified, but I would have been holding the hand of someone I cared for and desired. I wondered how people could argue about the beauty in truth when it seemed so much easier living a lie.
“They’re so nice,” Margaret assured me in the car. “Your Mum’s sweet, and your Dad’s a proper charmer.”
I turned away from her excited gaze and said nothing. I was beginning to realise how effective a barrier silence was, though I still felt a stab of pain when I used it to shut Margaret out.
I liked her; she was a cheerful, generous girl and I felt at ease in her company. But something was missing. At first I’d kissed her with dread, afraid she’d feel as if she was made of stone and cold to the touch. But as her arms moved up my back, rested around my neck, I felt a kind of excitement and my hands were curious to explore her. But curiosity and interest didn’t seem enough. My desire for her was painted in drab colours without the brightness of a stronger feeling, a warmer passion.
I think she sometimes noticed the chillness about me, and then she’d go very quiet. I would reach for her hand, wanting to explain everything, only when I met her puzzled eyes I knew I was afraid to confide, and took refuge in silence.
“Martin … you’re not listening.”
“I was dreaming,” I apologised.
Margaret smiled and took my hand and I tried not to draw it away.
“We’ll miss the film,” I told her, “if we don’t hurry.”
Letting go of my hand, she reached for the door-latch and then stepped out of the car.
In the cramped space of the cinema I began to sweat slightly. I kept thinking I should be holding Margaret’s hand, but for some reason I was nervous of touching her. Perhaps I remembered the night in the cinema when I’d left Richard sitting on his own, waiting for me in the pub.
I sensed Margaret move lower down in her seat and I wondered if this was the time when I should stretch out and touch her tentatively. I wondered if every young man felt like this, whether the whole pattern of romance was merely a numbers game; first her hand, then her thigh, her breast, her neck and finally, in an urgent move towards possession, the place between her legs.
The whole business felt unnatural to me and yet I was curious to know what it would be like to lie inside her. My anxiety turned itself into a nervous excitement and I delighted in the sudden hardness at my groin, thrilled like any other young man at the prospect of conquest, dismissing any respect for her feelings in a desperate, glorifying masculine drive.
I wondered how many men, lost in their vanity and the pride of conquest, were unaware of the woman beneath them, intent only on the pleasure she gave, forgetting to appreciate what they held, concentrating only on making their score. And as they were insensitive to the person in the body beneath them, so perhaps they were ignorant of the spirit that roamed within themselves, blind to who lay inside.
I took Margaret’s hand gently and squeezed it, waited for the answering pressure, then turned my face to hers and smiled, wanting only to be her friend.
The film had been boring despite all the million-dollar special effects and the odd shot of gruesome horror. All the characters had been cardboard cut-outs with leaden dialogue. No one seems to make films about people any more, not like the old films. Even if pretty girls went to windows and burst into song and lonely young men tap-danced along dim-lit pathways, it was more human somehow, flickering with life, involving your emotions. I was always riveted to the old films on Sunday afternoons. Judy Garland and Humphrey Bogart are my favourite stars.
Margaret took my hand as I walked quickly back to the car.
“There’s no need to hurry, Martin,” she said.
I slowed my pace just a little.
“The pubs will be shutting,” I explained, not looking at her, thinking uncomfortably about the contraceptives in my back pocket, purchased nervously from the slot machine in a gents toilets three weeks before.
“We could go for a walk,” she said, quietly.
“All right.”
Reluctantly, I took her hand and we wandered down the road, heading for the darker, narrow streets where we could find the shadows.
That evening Margaret put her tongue nimbly into my mouth when I kissed her. No one had ever kissed me like that before. I started in surprise and she withdrew her tongue quick as that. I was shocked at my excitement and kissed her again, harder this time, and found my senses responding to the more passionate physical contact. I took her hand gently in my own and slid it down nervously to where my erection pressed hard against my fly. This time she started, and I smiled because it was all so ridiculous, playing off each other’s nerves. Yet I was anxious to enter her and, in my naivety, my anxiety seemed like passion. I wonder how many others make the same mistake.
“Is there somewhere we can go?” I said, and she looked away from me, knowing what I meant.
I think I was sorry, just for a moment, but then I told myself bitterly that I was soft. Any other man would press for this conquest, priding themselves on notching up another score. I thought of the number of times I’d heard men boasting about how many girls they’d laid. I’d never heard any man bragging about being in love.
Whilst my sexual success with Margaret, despite her hurt, would be admired, my love for Richard would be derided. It made me wonder bitterly just who was perverted, those that used others for sexual gain, or those that genuinely loved.
“Martin …
” Margaret reached for me, but I pulled away and she, in her innocence, misunderstood my anger.
“On Saturday,” she said. “My parents are going up to London to stay with friends. They won’t be back until Sunday lunch-time.”
I turned and kissed her, as if I was grateful, wondering why I hated myself when a whole host of men would be smiling knowingly, giving me the wink, and even my parents in their own way would be pleased.
“Margaret’s a lovely girl,” Mum told me as I lay in bed, my face a hard mask of disinterest.
“Isn’t she lovely?” Mum persisted, nonplussed by my stony face.
“Yes,” I said.
“Very attractive. Lovely red hair. Nice figure and so well-spoken … ” Mum’s voice trailed off, as if she’d given up trying to convince me.
“What’s she doing when she leaves school?”
“Warwick University. Business studies,” I said.
“That’s not too far away from Hull, is it?” Mum hesitated, trying to visualise a map of Great Britain.
“Don’t ask me,” I said. “I failed my Geography ‘O’ level, remember?”
Mum gave me a concerned glance, and I was sorry for being sarcastic.
“There’s nothing the matter, is there?”
I shook my head.
“I expect it’s your exams.”
I said nothing, closing my eyes, waiting for her to go away. There was silence for a moment and then I heard her footsteps receding along the landing. I was sorry for shutting her out, but angry at her at the same time for making me feel there was only one way to behave. Mum, like everyone else, seemed to believe that all young men should be turned out uniform and regular like tin soldiers. Young men went to bed with girls and if you didn’t you were queer, bent, perverted. Didn’t anyone realise how the names hurt? Couldn’t anyone see that in wanting to love and be loved I was just like any other human being?
It was my last full day at school before we went home to revise for a week before our exams started. It shook me that the familiar corridors and classrooms I’d grown up in over these past seven years were going to be taken from me, and I could never return. Suddenly I didn’t want to leave, I wanted to stay and shelter there and never have to go and face the world outside.
I could still feel the child in me, curled up like some baby that I, as everyone, would carry for the rest of my life. Only it would grow more distant in time, fading like the memory of my first teacher’s face, or the autumn collage I glued brown and gold leaves to when I was eight years old.
I remembered the games I’d played at school, the songs we’d chanted in the playground, the bully Watson who’d chased me round with the penknife he’d stolen from Woolworths. I remembered hating French last thing on Friday afternoons, breaking Stuart Hill’s nose and the time Gordon had burnt his hands playing with chemicals in the back row of the labs. Millicent Winger at thirteen had loved me; her pencilled love letters were in a drawer at home. Kevin Clark had exposed himself in History, and Sydney Weaser had been sick when we’d seen a colour film of a baby being born. In the third and fourth year I’d been captain of the rugby team and had collected a trophy from the Headmaster in Assembly, walking up in front of what seemed like the whole world. I thought of Algebra with Mr Little who’d enjoyed twisting our hair out, Miss Brewer who’d nearly died telling us the Facts of Life and Scottish Mr Bruce who’d taught us Geography, staring at the class imperiously with his one glass eye.
And now it was over.
I was sitting in the back of the class, paying no attention to anything but my own thoughts when the bell rang. Time to go home. A thousand thousand times I’d waited for the bell, whiling my way through Maths, Economics, Physics… until it was ten to four. Now it was the last bell.
Everyone was quiet then, for a brief moment, the excitement coiled inside them.
Mr ‘Minty’ Murray gravely wished us all luck in our English ‘A’ level exam and hoped we would be happy in our future lives. He told us we could come back and see him any time we wanted, but experience must have assured him that none of us would. A whole year of us moving out. Books were closed, desks were tidied and faces would be forgotten. And next year a whole new class, as if we had never been.
I was sad then, and I thought of Tom alone in his house with the whisky and the blaring television. I wanted something to hold onto, something to take with me when I left the school for the last time. After the way I’d ignored Richard, I couldn’t expect him to care.
I stayed sitting at my desk, lost to it all, believing everyone had gone, when I looked up and saw Richard standing there by the door waiting for me.
“The last day,” he said, and I could barely hear him, his voice seemed to come from a million miles away.
Drifting still with my own thoughts I stared at him and was afraid as he looked right into my own eyes and, it seemed to me, saw everything within.
“I’ll be on my way … ” he began, but then he must have seen the beseeching look in my eyes because he stayed there, waiting for me to speak.
“Good luck in the exams,” I managed, ashamed of my reticence.
He shrugged and just for a moment I saw the hurt on his face.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
I couldn’t say anything because it was true. Since the night I’d seen him dance I’d known I wanted him. And yet afraid of my feelings I’d run away, run to Margaret and conformity. But as Richard stood there watching me quietly, I was again aware of my desire. I wanted to hold him. But still the words wouldn’t come.
“I’m sorry … It’s just that … it’s just …
The words trailed into silence, and for the first time we held each other’s gaze.
We hadn’t spoken for weeks, we hadn’t even acknowledged or come close to one another, yet now, though we were yards apart and without even a single word or gesture, we touched.
It was as if we both could see who lay inside each other, the spirit that folded its soft wings around itself and remained unseen to outsiders, and yet was stirred into life and perceived by those who could see, even if they could not articulate or understand.
A wife could submit to her husband’s demands, a lover could give way to another’s desire, and yet, despite the heat of the embrace, the skin joined to skin by sweat, the two could remain far apart, ignorant of one another.
Aware of each other, Richard and I were startled, lost for words to say, and I was frightened by his closeness, horrified that the weeks I’d been with Margaret hadn’t driven him away. I bowed my head and waited, but it must have been five long minutes before I heard him walk away. Only then when it was too late did I raise my head to call him back, but the words died in my throat.
I thought of tomorrow night and Margaret waiting for me in the emptiness of her house where no one would disturb us as we began our play. Something stirred uneasily within me and I turned my eyes to the window and the view of the open sky.
There was a small, narrow room in the changing-rooms that we called the Den. It was filled with gym mats, spare team kit and footballs. Tom used to sit in there sometimes, not minding the musty smell, and drink the tea he boiled in a kettle he had stored down there. It used to puzzle me that someone so kindly as Tom would choose to shelter there rather than mixing in the staff room. But now I think I understood. I’d seen the loneliness behind his easy smile, and curiously I realised it was easier in some ways to tolerate your loneliness on your own, without the superficial conversation of others grating on your senses.
I found Tom down there, but he wasn’t alone. A lad of fourteen called Wilson was with him, sitting cross-legged on the floor at Tom’s feet.
I had the awful sense I’d interrupted something. Everything was very quiet and they both looked startled when they saw me standing there. Tom turned his nervous surprise into a quick smile, but the boy was unable to mask an embarrassment and an anger at my intrusion. I wondered whether to make myself scarce, but Tom called out to me as I took a s
tep back.
“Jumbo, come in. Have a tea.” Tom busied himself with the kettle, and turned to Wilson. He said something I couldn’t hear and then Wilson, not looking at me, pushed his way by and out of the Den slamming the door behind him.
“Promising young chap that,” Tom said, as he stirred a tea-bag round and round in the hot water. “Captain of the football team. Bit small for rugby. Shame that, still … ” Tom turned, and smiled at me, but I could see an anxiety huddled in the shadows of his eyes. Perhaps he was remembering the last time we met.
I took my mug of tea and sipped it, feeling awkwardly large for the small room.
“Thanks for clearing up,” Tom said, suddenly. “The house was a terrible mess …”
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him, not wanting him to worry or feel ashamed.
“I was in a dark mood,” Tom said quickly. “I don’t normally drink like that. Hardly touch a drop of the stuff.”
I wished he hadn’t lied, or felt the need to lie. I wished he could have trusted me.
“Wilson often comes here for a chat,” he carried on, not looking at me. “Nothing wrong in that, is there? No harm in it at all.”
I shook my head agreeing. There’d been stories of Tom staring at the young lads as they showered, but none of the rugby team had ever taken any notice of them. I looked at Tom, watching him blow on his hot tea. I remembered him telling me how deep down women frightened him. I wondered if he too was running away from some part of himself he did not want to think about. Perhaps he too was scared of wanting to love another man. Then I thought how everyone seemed afraid of love, and Tom was just another sad and lonely man, that’s all.
“It’s our last day,” I said, trying to sound bright. “Don’t have to come in again, except for the exams. Week after next.”
“I know … ” Tom sipped his tea. “Terrible things, exams,” he said, then turned to look at me. “You’ll be all right though, Jumbo. You’ve got it up here.” He tapped his temples.
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