Sweets From Morocco

by Jo Verity

  One of the major props in Tessa’s subterfuge was the revision schedule pinned to the notice board in front of her table. Before she went downstairs, she filled in the space allocated to this afternoon’s session. ‘2hrs-English. 1hr-History’. Not bad.

  *

  ‘D’you want me to test you?’ Lewis asked. It was Saturday morning. Tessa was sprawled on her bed and he was lying on the floor next to it. ‘Vocabulary? Quotations?’

  He was bemused. Tessa had been unbearable in the run up to her ‘O’ Levels, panicking and crying, continually chanting equations and chunks from Shakespeare and irregular French verbs. And she had sailed through all nine exams. But this time, with more at stake and only three days to go, she was uncannily composed.

  ‘No thanks.’ Tessa dropped a sherbet lemon on to his chest.

  He popped the sweet in his mouth and closed his eyes. He rolled it over and over with his tongue, enjoying the delicious bitterness and the way the rough sugar casing grazed the roof of his mouth. It would take at least ten minutes before it became smooth and thinned, eventually splitting and allowing the fizzing sherbet to erupt. Immobilising it between his cheek and his teeth, he asked, ‘Aren’t you nervous?’

  ‘About the exams? No. Not really. Why? D’you think I should be?’

  ‘It’s just that I was reading somewhere that being scared improves performance. Sharpens our wits. It’s a kind of chemical thing. And you seem a bit … I dunno … a bit too calm.’ She didn’t reply but, sensing that she was staring down at him from her elevated position, he opened his eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘Lewis? D’you remember when we were living in the other house and Gran was staying and you slept on the camp bed in my room?’

  ‘Sort of. Why?’

  She smiled. ‘I loved it.’

  ‘How can you say that? It was horrible. Mum crying. Dad being blamed for … you know, and Gran watching us like a hawk. And there were the neighbours, all steering clear. As if we had some infectious vanishing disease and if they came anywhere near us, their children would vanish, too.’

  ‘But didn’t you love it when the light was off and it was just us two, lying in the dark?’ She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, resting her bare feet on his chest. ‘I won’t believe you even if you say you didn’t.’

  Without warning, she spat her sweet at him. It landed on his cheek and he grinned, tossing the sticky yellow remains in to the waste-paper basket. ‘Now that’s more like the Tessa Swinburne we know and love. I was starting to think there was something wrong with you.’

  ‘Lewis…’

  ‘What?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘What?’

  But she shook her head. ‘Nothing. I’d better get on with some history.’

  After the lively chaos of his sister’s room, his own, with its pale green walls and neat bookshelves, was comfortingly dull. Tessa was constantly pestering him to ‘liven it up a bit’ and a few months ago, mainly to shut her up, he had put a few posters up but Elvis Presley and Brigitte Bardot gazing at him as he undressed for bed made him uncomfortable and he’d replaced them with the Periodic Table, a map of the world and an exploded drawing of a jet engine.

  The buckles on his satchel jingled as he took out his textbooks and piled them on the desk. The stacked books, with their brown paper covers, gave him a kind of self-belief – a sense of knowing what was going on and what was expected of him. Now that he was in the sixth form, he had finished with all those waffly subjects – history, English, religious education – and he could get on with the stuff that mattered.

  He was in the middle of calculus homework when Tessa summoned him. ‘Can you come here for a sec?’

  Without protest, he went.

  ‘Lewis, you know a lot about this sort of thing.’

  He was accustomed to the way his sister dived into a topic, expecting everyone to jump in after her. ‘Do I?’

  She stood in front of the mirror, backcombing her hair, shifting her gaze from her own reflection to his, and he was aware of the asymmetry of her familiar face, only noticeable when he saw her in the glass. He grinned.

  She stopped pushing the comb through her hair, tangling it into a dark mop, and spun around. ‘What are you laughing at?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m sure it’ll look fab. Once the birds have nested.’

  ‘Pig. At least I’ve got a hair style, not just a hair cut. Anyway,’ her frown vanished and her tone softened, ‘I need you to back me up on something. It’s a bit like the nerves thing you were telling me. Well, it isn’t really but—’

  ‘Tess, just tell me what you’re on about.’

  She clapped her hands together as if needing to make sure he was paying attention. ‘If a person worked all morning and all afternoon, wouldn’t they benefit from taking some time away from their books? To kind of revive their brains and…’ She gave a beseeching smile. ‘There’s a dance at St Marks Hall tonight and I really, really need to go. Please help me persuade Mum and Dad.’

  ‘I don’t see what I can do—’

  ‘Can’t you come up with a sort of scientific-y reason why it’d be good for me to take the evening off? Because I honestly know it would. There must be something.’

  Throughout their childhood, Tessa had been the one who came up with terrific ideas for schemes and adventures. She was clever and fearless, single-minded and resourceful, which made the instances when she deferred to him, particularly significant. Seeing her expectant face, he was determined to fulfil her confidence. ‘There is something, actually…’ he paused, ‘but I don’t suppose you’d be interested in what anyone with a mere hair cut has to say.’

  ‘Lewis!’ she screeched, hurling a hairbrush at his head.

  ‘Okay, okay. I read in one of the science journals – Scientific American, I think – that there’s been some research done on how physical activity can be beneficial to brain function. They proved that regular sessions of exercise improved the students’ exam performance—’

  ‘Brilliant.’ She hugged him.

  ‘Hang on a minute. The subjects were taking a five minute break every half an hour. Sprinting round a track – that sort of thing. They weren’t working all day, then going out dancing all night.’

  But Tessa wasn’t listening. She turned back to the mirror and sprayed her tangled hair with something sickly-smelling then moulded the tangle into a helmet, the ends flicked up to form a kind of gutter. He glanced down at the exercise book lying on the bed. Written across the front in curlicued script, was ‘The Woman Who Loved Too Much by Tessa Swinburne’.

  By midday the temperature was in the eighties. It was airless inside the house and they took a snack lunch into the garden, spreading a tartan rug in the shade of the laurel hedge. Lewis could see that his mother was having one of her ‘good days’. She had been working in the garden, reclaiming an overgrown rockery near the back door, and the sun had raised a crop of freckles on her thin arms. Were he to run a finger along the underside of her upper arm, where the skin was still creamy-white, it would feel even softer than the petals of the white rose that scrambled along the garden fence. The trouble was that he had no idea how she would react if he did. There were days when she was fine – laughing, full of energy, ready for anything – and others when she seemed unable to deal with the simplest things. Last week a butterfly had been scrabbling against the window, trying to escape, and Lewis had found her watching it and sobbing but doing nothing to help it.

  They talked about Tessa’s exams and their parents both expressed admiration for the hours of work she was putting in. For the umpteenth time they told her that it would pay off and how lucky she was to have the opportunities that had been denied them. His sister kept glancing at him, raising her eyebrows, eventually prompting, ‘Sometimes my head feels clogged up like a blocked drain.’

  Then he did as she had asked, even exaggerating a little to make it appear that the perfect treatment for her sluggish brain was to go to the Saturday night dance.

  Chapt
er 8

  Tessa phoned her friends, suggesting that they use Lewis’s revelation about exercise as ammunition if their parents weren’t keen on them going out so close to exam time. She didn’t bother with Diane Stoddy. Tony Rundle would definitely be put off if she turned up with his friend’s little sister in tow. When it came to it, Pamela Blackmore was the only one who sounded keen and the two girls arranged to meet at the bus stop.

  Tessa planned what she would wear. She was disappointed that she’d been unable to afford the black pumps. They would have looked terrific with her green sheath dress, but they cost twenty-nine and eleven and she had less than a pound in the toffee tin she used as a money box. She’d begged Lewis to lend her the balance and he’d looked apologetic. ‘I’ve got to buy a decent tennis racquet before the house tournament. A couple more weeks’ paper round money and I’ll have enough. Sorry, Tess.’

  On Saturday afternoon, safe behind her bedroom door, she Veet-ed her legs and under her arms and re-varnished her nails, throwing open the window to get rid of the telltale smells. This done, she logged ‘1 hour – French verbs’ on her chart.

  ‘Who else is going?’ her mother asked when she went downstairs to get a drink of squash. ‘Diane? She’s a nice girl.’

  ‘No. Diane can’t come. There’ll be a crowd of us I expect but I’m going with Pamela. You remember Pam, don’t you?’

  ‘Is that the tall girl, with the blonde hair?’

  ‘No, Mum.’

  When they moved from Medway Avenue, Tessa and Lewis had continued to attend the same primary school but, perhaps because of the tragedy that made them for ever ‘that odd family’, few friends came to play at the house. Then when Tessa passed her eleven-plus exam, she’d started at the grammar school and acquired a host of new friends – Pamela and Caroline, Anne and Rosemary, Sarah and Gail. She introduced them to her parents at school concerts and speech days but, perhaps because they all wore navy gymslips and white blouses, her mother constantly muddled them up. Was it Caroline or Gail who wore glasses? Sarah or Anne who played the violin? She did, however, always remember Diane Stoddy – the little girl who had lived round the corner in that previous life.

  Tessa envied her friends. She imagined them nattering with their mothers about boys and clothes and periods; having rows and loving reconciliations. She would have given anything to be able to tease her mother and share secrets. But she had seen the panic in her mother’s eyes when a wrong word or a stray thought threw her off kilter, driving her into that distant, silent place. Her father maintained that it wasn’t a matter of telling her to ‘snap out of it’ but Tessa couldn’t help feeling that it was worth a try. The spells in hospital, the medication and the kid gloved approach weren’t doing much good, so why not? Every now and then, when things started to go adrift, she wished that whoever had taken Gordon would come back for her mother and allow the rest of them to get on with their lives.

  Tessa’s inability to confide in her mother left her without an ally in matters like hairdos and make-up. Her father was a stickler when it came to his daughter’s appearance. ‘A touch of lipstick’s fine,’ he would say, ‘but you don’t need all that other rubbish. You’re pretty enough as you are.’

  Tessa was a striking girl. Her dark-lashed eyes, tanned skin and full lips needed no enhancement. Nevertheless, conforming to the fashion, she applied the palest pink lipstick then dabbed her lips with a powder puff to make them paler still. She smeared green eyeshadow – the magazines said that green brought out subtle tones in brown eyes – across her lids. She ringed her eyes with harsh black eyeliner, extending the lines away from the outer corners, curving and tapering them. Finally, she spat on the block of black mascara, scrubbing at it with the miniature brush, sweeping it through her lashes, again and again, until they were stiff and spiky.

  Lewis loved to watch his sister performing her ‘going out’ ritual. It was always fascinating to watch an expert at work, be it a motor mechanic, an artist or a girl putting on make-up. He made excuses to come to her room Did I leave my slide rule in here? or Can I borrow your coloured pencils? then hung around, whilst she magicked her everyday self into one of those untouchable creatures whom he saw behind the counter in Boots. Many of his friends had sisters but they didn’t talk about them much. When they did, it was obvious that they thought sisters were a waste of time and, whenever he came across these girls, he could see why. They were wishy-washy, always giggling and whispering. ‘Your sister’s a bit … I dunno … scary,’ one of them remarked after Tessa told him that nail biting was a disgusting habit. Lewis had grinned his satisfaction. ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘How do I look, Lewis?’

  Tessa had transformed herself into a dark-haired Dusty Springfield in a tight-fitting green dress which was obviously the effect she was after. But as far as he was concerned, she was an intimidating stranger.

  ‘You look fine.’

  ‘Are my seams straight?’ She swivelled round to show him the backs of her legs. ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Five-to-seven.’

  ‘Do me a favour?’ she wheedled. ‘Pop and check where Dad is. He blows his top when he sees me wearing make-up.’

  Their parents were in the kitchen, his mother arranging roses from the garden in a tall vase and his father at the sink, washing up. Lewis went to the bottom of the stairs and whistled softly, signalling the all-clear.

  Tessa crept down, pausing briefly in the hall to shout ‘I’m off now. Won’t be late.’ She smiled at her brother, whispering, ‘Thanks. I’ll do the same for you.’

  He should tell her to take care, to stay with Pamela, not to break the ten-thirty curfew. ‘Tess—’ The door slammed and she was gone.

  Lewis felt awkward when Tessa wasn’t there to balance things up. Two parents – two children. That was how it should be. But in a few months, when Tessa left, the family equilibrium was going to change and attention would focus on him. He wasn’t sure how he would deal with that, feeling, as he did, that he had been born to play a supporting role. He’d never felt resentful. On the contrary, he knew he was extraordinarily lucky to have a sister who made anything and everything interesting. Tessa was the Lone Ranger and he the faithful Tonto.

  When he was aimless, as he was that evening, he would lie on his bed, staring up at the model aeroplanes suspended from the ceiling on cotton threads. Caught by the draught, they slowly revolved, opening the dreamy portal that allowed him to enter his alternative existence.

  Tessa is on her way to the dance and, in the spare bedroom (which, of course, isn’t spare at all), Gordon is shouting for him to come and help with an Airfix kit or a jigsaw. His brother is almost eight – in Mrs Benson’s class at school – and he’s reading Famous Five and, because he’s such a good reader for his age, Biggles. He’s got brown hair and gangly legs. His bony knees are dirty with grass stains and two crinkly-edged incisors are pushing into the gap where his baby teeth used to be.

  Throat aching, Lewis could go no further.

  Tessa wasn’t surprised that Pamela Blackmore was the only one to come out that evening. She was going to teacher training college and only needed to scrape two A Levels. Tessa liked her dizzy good humour, added to which she made Tessa feel exceptionally brainy.

  Pam was waiting at the top of the road. ‘I like your dress. Très chic.’

  Tessa had chosen the fabric herself – glazed cotton, the colour of Granny Smith apples – and Vogue pattern and her mother had made the dress as a present for her eighteenth birthday, a couple of months earlier. She had complied with Tessa’s request to add a large, flat bow beneath the bustline, but refused to make the dress as tight-fitting as her daughter would have liked.

  But seeing her friend in a pink short-sleeved sweater and straight grey skirt, Tessa knew that the dress had been a mistake. ‘This? I’ve had it for ages,’ she lied, as if age could make it look less formal, less like something she would wear to a wedding.

  Her confidence waned further when they reached Sain
t Mark’s Church Hall and she saw that the girls, collecting in gaggles of two or three on the pavement outside the squat building, were dressed like Pam, in straight skirts and demure blouses. Some of them were in the year below her at school, fancy-free on that particular Saturday night because the Lower Sixth’s exams didn’t start for a couple of weeks.

  ‘C’mon. There’s no point in standing out here,’ Tessa said, leading the way up the steps and into the dingy building.

  Despite the heat wave of the past weeks, a smell of damp carpets and disinfectant lingered in the foyer. They handed over their money to the young man sitting at a baize-covered table, in return for which he stamped the back of their right hands with a purple splodge.

  They went through the double doors into the dimly-lit hall where a few people were starting to assemble. ‘Is Geoffrey coming?’ Pam asked.

  Tessa had had a stream of boyfriends. From the third form onwards, a boyfriend was an essential commodity, a step in a pre-ordained progression. Menstruation, brassieres, high heels, leg and underarm depilation – but not necessarily in that order. Amongst her girlfriends, she would have been thought a failure if she didn’t have, or be about to get, or have just split up with, a boyfriend. The pairing involved nothing more than an exchange of cards on Valentine’s Day, intertwined names doodled on pencil cases, a great deal of French kissing at the cinema and ‘heavy petting’ at parties. Tessa was intrigued by sex and in no doubt that she would adore, and be very good at, it. She wasn’t interested in ‘saving herself for her husband’ but she wanted the ‘first time’ to be with someone who knew what they were doing; someone who would make it unforgettable. One day, when she became a famous author and was writing her memoirs, she wanted the anecdote of her first sexual encounter to be one of the high spots in a thrilling story. She couldn’t allow it to be with a ham-fisted schoolboy.