by T. S. Easton
As Blossom and I headed towards the main entrance I sensed someone charging up behind me. I turned and my heart sank to see it was Bonita Clark. Bonita doesn’t suit her name in any way. She should be petite and balletic and smiley, but Bonita is none of those things. She is strong and stomping and sweary. And here she was, almost sprinting as she tried to get ahead of me and through the door first. The thing about Bonita is that she is the most extraordinarily competitive person on the planet. She’s captain of the netball team, and the hockey team. She runs cross-country and plays football with the boys, and she’s good. There is much to be admired in Bonita.
I’m afraid to say that Bonita doesn’t feel the same way about me. Our difficulties started a couple of years ago when I was forced into the hockey team against my will eagerly seized my opportunity for sporting glory. Bonita was captain, and tried to explain the rules and tactics to me before our first game. She put me at full-back. It didn’t end well. I let my attention wander and the other team scored a goal while I was texting.
Bonita was furious. ‘It’s not that I expected you to be the best of the best,’ she said. ‘But I thought you’d at least watch the game.’ It wasn’t much better when I was paying attention, to be honest. I got over-excited at one point and took out one of my own team-mates with a wild swing of the stick that a Saxon Yeoman would have been proud of. Anyway, after that I somehow found myself off Bonita’s team and onto Hannah Frobisher’s, though what poor Hannah had done to deserve that I really don’t know. Now I often have to play against Bonita and she’s always knocking me over, or running rings around me, trying to humiliate me, which isn’t difficult, I have to admit. After all I have as much sporting endeavour as Kanye West has humility. Bonita thinks sport is important, competing is important, winning is important. I don’t. We’re just different. What I don’t understand is why it bothers her so much.
Most sixth form colleges don’t require students to take any kind of sporting activity. But Bosford is an exception. Our glorious motto is Mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body. The theory goes that only by exercising the body and the mind together can true excellence be reached. ‘Try telling that to Stephen Hawking,’ I said to Miss Collins, my form tutor, when she told me I had to sign up for hockey again this semester.
‘When you’re as brilliant as Stephen Hawking, you can stop playing competitive sports,’ she said, handing me a hockey stick and a pair of shin pads. ‘Until then you’re at full-back.’
So that’s Bonita, she just has to be best at everything. At netball, at hockey, at football, at running. And now she wanted to be first through the school door. It was a double door, but only one door was ever open. The other was bolted shut. Now what I should have done, of course, was just stop and let her go by. Who cared who went through the door first? I didn’t care if she scored a dozen goals against me in hockey, so why should it matter if she got through the doorway into the school before me? But I was feeling mischievous today.
I think sometimes I just get bored with doing the sensible thing and so I end up doing something idiotic just to see what happens. Like the time I took up the sousaphone. The teachers had told us all we needed to choose an instrument. Most people were sensible and went with flute and clarinet. The boys all chose guitar or drums. But because I thought it would be funny, I went with the most bloody inconvenient instrument I could think of, which is a brass monster so huge you have to wear it. I could hardly lift the thing, let alone get a noise out of it, and of course I gave up after a few weeks. Anyway, today was one of those days and I pretended I was going to let Bonita pass through the doors first, but at the last second I lunged forward and got there at exactly the same time as her. We got stuck like two corks in the same bottle. She glared at me.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘So sorry. My bad.’
But as she pushed forward, I pushed forward too, ensuring she couldn’t go through.
‘Sorry,’ I said again as other students stopped to watch the fun.
Then Blossom, who had already gone through, reached up and released the bolt holding the other door closed. It flew open with a ping. Bonita and I sprang forward, sprawling on the hallway floor, school bags flying. A huge cheer rose from the students who’d had their Monday morning brightened enormously. Bonita got to her feet first and glared at me.
‘Seriously?’ Bonita snapped. ‘This is the thing you choose to get competitive about? Going through a door? Why don’t you push this hard on the hockey pitch?’
‘I don’t care about hockey,’ I replied. ‘But doors are important to me.’
‘You’d better watch yourself, Waters,’ she snarled, and I realised I’d crossed the line. My heart pounded and I kept my mouth shut. Luckily, Blossom stepped in between me and Bonita. She’s completely fearless.
‘What are you doing, guys?’ she asked, pleading. ‘We’re never going to bring down the patriarchal edifice if we’re fighting each other.’
Bonita stepped forward, fuming. But my edifice was saved by the patriarchy in the form of Mr Singh who came along and told us all to get to class. ‘This isn’t over, Petal,’ Bonita called as a parting shot. She thinks it’s funny to get my name wrong. She does it to Blossom too and calls her Flower. It’s an irritating coincidence that Blossom and I do have botanical-sounding names. Throw Pip into the mix and we sound like the panel of Gardener’s Question Time.
I felt shaken after the incident. Honestly, why do I do these things to myself? In Year 3 Mrs Fowler told me I was an attention-seeker. All the jokes and mucking around were just ways of seeking acceptance. A defence mechanism. I’m not sure if that’s true. When Verity lived at home, and she and Mum would fight all the time, I think I tried to play the clown to ease the tension. I don’t like it when people fight. Unfortunately, cracking a dumb joke at times of high drama often just makes things worse.
I was relieved when Pip joined us just before we went into the LRC for English. Pip, for all his oddness, is a quietly reassuring figure. If people like him can exist and function in society, then there’s hope for all of us. If that sounds horrible then I don’t mean it that way. He’s an intensely warm and caring person and I don’t know what I’d do without him. Blossom told him what had happened with Bonita and he wrapped his spindly arms around me, like a ginger Groot. ‘Remember the old saying,’ he muttered. ‘Tricky days make us stronger.’
‘Thanks, Pip,’ I said.
‘Or they kill us,’ Pip added. ‘Tricky days can also kill us.’
Blossom Pankhurst
At lunch I went looking for Blossom. It didn’t take me long to find her. She was standing in the main foyer holding a piece of paper and remonstrating with Mrs Turvey, the PE teacher.
‘Who do they think we are?’ she was saying. ‘Second-class citizens? What did the suffragettes fight and die for?’
Miss Turvey frowned. ‘I think they fought and died for votes for women. I don’t know if they had strong feelings about the membership policies of community sports clubs.’ I snatched the paper out of Blossom’s hand and inspected what turned out to be a cheaply produced flyer.
‘I know, right?’ Blossom said to me. I noticed Miss Turvey sneak off while Blossom’s attention was diverted.
‘What,’ I said. ‘You don’t like boxing?’
‘You can’t see what’s wrong with that flyer?’ she asked. I read it again.
‘Is it the missing apostrophe in “Ladies”?’ I asked. I’ve inherited my parents’ obsession with punctuation.
‘It’s not the missing apostrophe,’ Blossom replied. ‘It’s the missing chromosome. Why should women be forced to attend on a different night to men?’
‘That’s what this is about? You want to hit men?’
‘Maybe, but that’s not the point!’ Blossom snatched the flyer back off me and held it up. ‘Fleur, this kind of segregation is illegal under the 2010 Equality Act. Clubs can’t stop people from joining on sex grounds.’
‘So what are you going to do a
bout it?’
‘I’m going to go down there on Saturday and tell them they have to change their policy. Then a letter to the council, copying in my MP, then if they still refuse, direct action. Like the suffragettes.’ She smiled grimly, her eyes lighting up at the prospect of a fight to the death.
‘Do we have to go on a hunger strike?’ I asked. ‘It’s just that Mum’s doing roast beef on Sunday. With Yorkshire pud.’
‘Fleur!’ Blossom snapped. ‘This is serious. Are you going to support me in this?’
I sighed. ‘Yes, of course I am.’
Blossom smiled with satisfaction. She knew I’d give in. I always do.
Prince George
On Wednesday after school my boyfriend George came to pick me up. George is the exact opposite of Magnet in every respect except one, which is that he’s usually absent. Wednesdays and Sundays are the only days I see George. He’s a few years older than me, is at Hove Naval Academy doing officer training and has a very busy schedule. Wednesday is Date Night. He also comes up for Sunday lunch with my family and sometimes Blossom. I’m not really sure how that started, but start it did and George isn’t the sort to change tradition. It’s a tidy arrangement, George keeps telling me. He gets on very well with my parents and they talk about things like the economy and the situation in the Middle East. Mum is happy for me to go out with George, even though he’s nineteen, because he’s a military man and Mum thinks I’m safe.
As it happens, I am safe with George, though not necessarily in the way Mum thinks. Sometimes I wonder if he couldn’t be slightly more daring in that regard, if you get my drift. I suppose that’s another point of difference between George and Magnet, George doesn’t seem to be into piercing things. He’s old-fashioned. Not particularly religious, just very, very proper.
‘I have firm ideas about things,’ he says.
There’s lots about George I love. He’s hot, for a start, and he has a car and money, which is nice. He has quite a plummy accent, at least in comparison to the rest of us yokels. I secretly find posh boys a bit sexy, which is not something I would ever admit to Blossom, but hey, we all have our weaknesses.
Most importantly, though, George makes me laugh. Which sounds like such a cliché, but it’s a true cliché. I met him at school when he was in the sixth form. He was confident and charming and handsome. He was known around the school as Prince George, which isn’t very original but suited him. Even then he was in the Naval Cadets. I used to watch him across the playground until one day he just came over and started talking to me.
‘You’re Fleur Waters, aren’t you?’
I nodded. ‘How do you know my name?’
‘I asked around,’ he said.
‘You asked around?’ I replied. ‘Like a cop, knocking on doors?’
‘Um … well, I actually had to ask a few people because at first no one seemed to know who you were. Someone thought your name was Fiona.’
‘I clearly make a big impression on people,’ I said.
‘You made an impression on me,’ he said. Then he laughed and looked embarrassed.
I wonder if that’s what made me fall for him. His admission that I’d made an impression. The first boy to notice me. Maybe that’s all it took, for someone to notice me and to take the time to find out my name wasn’t Fiona. He asked me if I wanted to have lunch with him in the canteen the next day and I said yes straight away and that was sort of that.
Blossom was unsure about him though. ‘Are you sure he’s right for you?’ she asked one day when he wasn’t around. ‘I bet he votes Conservative.’
‘He’s just different,’ I replied, shrugging. ‘I thought you were all about the diversity.’
‘Hmm … he’s not the MOST diverse person on the planet,’ she pointed out diplomatically.
‘Did you ever stop to think that maybe he’s the person everyone else is diverse from,’ I suggested. ‘Without George NO ONE would be diverse, and who wants to live in that world?’
‘I like him,’ Pip said. ‘I didn’t have any money yesterday and he bought me a cheese roll.’
Being bought a cheese roll was enough for Pip and we could all learn a lot from him. So George was made a permanent fixture. Before he went off to the Academy that September he came around to my house for ‘a talk’. I wondered if he was going to break it off. I remember that night very clearly. It was still just about warm enough to sit out and we walked down through the large rear garden that overlooks Mr Palmer’s wheat field. Early windfall apples dotted the lawn. We sat at the old picnic table at the foot of the garden and watched the swallows swooping, plucking evening bugs from mid-air. ‘I think we can make this work,’ he said after quite a lot of preamble. ‘I’ll see you twice a week at least. And maybe you can come down to Hove for weekends sometimes.’
‘Weekends in Hove,’ I said. ‘Living the dream.’ I felt I should say more but rather like my dad, I was in two minds. George was safe, and lovely, and I quite liked the idea of seeing him just twice a week, knowing when, and for how long. So that all that side of things, the romance-y, emotion-y side of life was taken care of and kept in the proper box. I wouldn’t have to worry about it. Why not give it a try? I thought. I know what’s behind Door Number One. From where I was sitting I couldn’t even see Door Number Two.
So that’s how I ended up at Chickos on this Date Night. Chickos wasn’t our normal sort of place, we usually went to a little Italian restaurant he knew or a great Thai pop-up a friend had recommended, or an intriguing new Lebanese café that had opened up in someone’s front room near the Lewes roundabout. We take it in turns to choose, and he always pays. But sometimes you don’t want fancy food and World Music. Sometimes you just want greasy chips and cheesy tunes. So tonight I’d chosen Bosford Chickos, which I quickly realised he wasn’t happy about.
‘So explain the ordering system again?’ he said, for the third time.
‘It’s not as complicated as you’re making out,’ I said. ‘You just go up to the bar and order your meal, and they give you a little rubber chicken with a numbered wooden spoon shoved up its bum so the waiter knows where to bring your food.’
He turned in his seat and looked over at the bar. ‘But there’s a queue.’
‘Do you want me to go?’
‘No, it’s just that we already queued to get the table. Now we have to queue again to order the food? This is really inefficient.’
‘Yeah but the chicken’s delicious.’
‘What about drinks?’
‘Same system, you queue up,’ I said.
‘Another queue?!’
‘To maximise efficiency,’ I suggested, ‘you could order the drinks at the same time as the food?’
‘I like to have a drink while I inspect the menu,’ he complained. I kicked him under the table and he yelped.
‘Remember you asked me to tell you when you were being whiny?’ I said.
‘I never said that.’
‘Didn’t you? Well anyway, you’re being whiny now.’ George laughed like I knew he would and went off to stand in the queue. I shook my head and smiled at the same time. He was nineteen going on thirty-nine but he didn’t lack for self-awareness and he always took it the right way when I teased him. That was a side of him that Blossom just didn’t see.
He came back after a while carrying a rubber chicken with a wooden spoon up its bottom.
‘See?’ I said.
‘And you come here often?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I lied. Pip, Blossom and I ate here quite a lot on Saturdays after we got back from Battle. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea of course, but they let Pip store his halberd in the umbrella stand. Mum doesn’t like Chickos because a) it’s in rough West Bosford and b) she suspects there should be an apostrophe in the name but isn’t quite sure and that unsettles her.
‘Just thought it was something a bit different,’ I said.
‘It certainly is,’ he said, looking around. He wasn’t really dressed for Chickos, in his jacket an
d pointy shoes.
‘Maybe we could go to a club afterwards,’ I said. ‘Do some dancing?’
‘You’re only sixteen,’ he pointed out. ‘And also you hate dancing.’
‘I don’t hate it. I’m just really bad at it,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t matter at Lick’d because it’s so dark no one will see me. And they never check your ID either.’
He frowned. ‘I don’t know. I have an early start tomorrow. We have Navigation with Major Horton.’
‘So what about Saturday night?’ I asked. ‘Come up on Saturday. Take me dancing.’
‘But I’m coming up on Sunday,’ he pointed out. ‘For lunch, like always.’
‘So come up on Saturday and stay over?’ I suggested, rolling my eyes. He stared at me, wide-eyed, as if I’d suggested he throw me onto the table and ravish me then and there. ‘I’m sure Mum wouldn’t mind.’ Actually I’m sure she would mind very much. She’d definitely put George in the spare room but that was fine with me. If nothing else it would be nice if George and I could sleep under the same roof for once. Even sleeping in the same county would be an improvement.
The food arrived. We’d both asked for a quarter of a chicken. I’d ordered chips and coleslaw. George had gone for a jacket potato and sweetcorn. He tries to keep the fats to a minimum because there are constant fitness tests at his college and he has to go for ten-mile runs every couple of days. It doesn’t sound like very good training for a war to me. If the Russians attack, our Junior Naval Officers will be starved of calories and exhausted from ten-mile runs.
‘Here are your meals for yourselves,’ the waiter said quickly before turning to go.
‘Excuse me,’ George said. ‘I ordered some drinks? Two Diet Cokes?’
