Moderate Violence

by Veronica Bennett

  “Home alone, then?” he said. He was smirking, but Jo forgave him. He had every reason to laugh at her.

  “Um…yes, I suppose so. My dad won’t be long, but if we’re quick we’ll miss him.”

  For the first time since she’d met him, he smiled with his teeth showing. It was a good smile, not too cheesy, even though his teeth looked as if they’d been chemically whitened. “Lead the way, then.”

  When Jo opened the front door, evening sunshine slanted through the hall, showing the dust on the picture frames that Sylvia the Chinese Cleaner wasn’t tall enough to notice. Blod came out of the kitchen, mewing, and nudged Jo’s legs as she showed Toby into the sitting-room.

  “Shall I put the telly on?” she asked him. “Here’s the remote. I won’t be long.” She looked down at Blod. “Oh, come on, you stupid creature, what do you want?”

  “Maybe he wants some company,” said Toby. “I like cats. I bet he’ll climb on me if I just sit here.”

  “She,” said Jo. “She’s called Blodwyn. We call her Blod, usually.”

  “Blodwyn?”

  “My dad’s Welsh.”

  “Ah.” He looked at her for a moment. “You’re a Celt, then.”

  “Well, half.”

  “My mum and dad are Scottish,” said Toby. He sat down in the corner of the sofa and sure enough, Blod jumped up onto the seat next to him and began to sniff him warily.

  “Oh, of course!” Jo suddenly remembered that when Gordon had introduced them, he’d said that Toby’s other name was Ferguson.

  “Aye,” he said in an exaggerated Scottish accent. Then, in his normal voice, “But I’ve always lived in London. And my parents don’t talk like Gordon. They come from a different part of Scotland.”

  Blod had her forelegs on his thigh. “She likes you,” said Jo.

  “Irresistible to all females, you see.”

  “I’d better go and get ready.”

  He began to flick through TV stations. “OK, I’ll just stay here with my new pal.”

  Jo washed quickly, changed her underwear and put on her own Rose and Reed clothes. She sprayed herself with a lot of the contents of a half used-bottle of perfume Tess had left in the bathroom. It was so strong it made Jo cough, and when she got back to the bedroom she had to dab her eyes with tissues. Looking as if she’d been crying when she hadn’t was stupid. And eating curry always made her eyes water too. She stuffed some tissues in her bag. Without looking at her hair, which she knew would disappoint her, and wishing she had time to paint her toenails, she dug her feet into her sandals and went downstairs.

  Toby looked comfortable, with his head on a cushion and Blod on his lap. He looked as if he belonged in Jo’s house. Her stomach tightened when she saw him. He had no right – no boy had any right at all, in fact – to be so nice, and to affect her insides like this. Usually it was unavailable boys who did that – rock stars on videos, who were deliberately filmed to look sexy, and were probably horrible people. But Toby was sexy and nice. And, apparently, available.

  He turned his head without taking it off the cushion. Then he raised it and looked at her properly. “You look really good.”

  “It’s only what I wore to work on Saturday.”

  “It’s still nice. And you smell terrific. That’s expensive.”

  “It’s my mum’s,” said Jo, watching Toby lift Blod carefully off his lap and stand up. Most guys wouldn’t have bothered, she told herself. They would just have stood up and let the cat cope. But Toby bothered. Maybe he wouldn’t have if his mates had been there, though. Boys’ mates always had an adverse effect on their behaviour.

  “I thought your mum didn’t live here,” said Toby, brushing cat hairs off his trousers.

  “She doesn’t. She just…oh, never mind. I’ll tell you another time. Look, I’ve just got to text Trevor, or he’ll wonder why I’m not here.” If he’s sober enough, she thought.

  “You call your dad Trevor?” asked Toby admiringly as they left the house.

  “Always have. And I call my mum Tess.”

  “Must be nice to have such liberal parents!”

  Jo pulled the door behind her. One day, when she knew Toby much better, she’d explain to him why her parents were about as far from liberal as it was possible to be, outside of the Middle Ages.

  “Mm,” she said, pressing the Send button on her phone. “They thought of it as a bit of a joke. Their initials were both TP – she’s called Tess Pratt – so they just wanted to be good ol’ Trev an’ Tess, even to me.”

  It was still warm, but while they’d been in the house there must have been a shower of rain. The pavements looked patchy as some bits dried quicker than others. The air smelled of earth. “Nearly summer,” said Jo, sniffing.

  “Your exams soon?”

  Jo nodded. “Study leave started last Friday.”

  “Are you working in the shop full time, then?”

  “No, I’m studying.” Then, realizing how geeky that sounded, she added, “I mean, I have to go into school so often to take an exam, it wouldn’t be worth it. I’ll be at the shop every day after the exams have finished, though.”

  Walking beside her, Toby had taken her hand so automatically she’d hardly noticed. She was conscious of how his hand felt. Soft in places, bony in others, like anyone’s hand. No rings. “Gordon’s offered me a permanent, full time position,” he said. “Do you think I should I take it?”

  Jo didn’t know why he was asking her, but she was flattered. “Um…why not, if you like the work?”

  “It’s OK, but the thing is, I really want to work in fashion buying, not selling. I mean, I want to go to the shows in Paris and Milan, you know, and negotiate with designers and manufacturers and all that.”

  “How do you do that?” asked Jo, interested. It was normally girls who went on about working in fashion.

  He swung her hand a little. “You get a job in a company as a trainee, and work hard and do well, and get noticed. Then maybe you can branch out on your own and make proper money. But all that takes, like, forever. I just want to do it now.”

  “Wouldn’t it help to go to art college?” suggested Jo warily. “To study fashion, I mean?”

  “Tried that last year. Didn’t get in.”

  “Are you going to try again this year?”

  “Jo, you sound like my mum!” He sounded impatient. His hand gripped hers harder.

  “For art college you have to do a foundation year, then three more years. It’s too long. I want to be earning, so I can get a car. I’m eighteen and I haven’t got a car, which is ridiculous.”

  Toby was right. Earning money did sound like a good idea, and education did go on far too long. Jo didn’t care about having a car, but she longed for some independence. She didn’t like living with Trevor, and if he was serious about going back to Wales she certainly didn’t want to be Tess’s flatmate. If Gordon were to offer Jo a permanent job, she’d say yes before he’d finished the sentence.

  “Maybe working at Rose and Reed will lead somewhere,” she observed. “It’s a big company, with lots of branches, so it must employ several buyers. If you work hard and do well, like you said, and keep a look-out for openings, maybe Gay Gordon would give you a recommendation.”

  He smiled, more to himself than at her. “I doubt it. Since I left school I’ve been a trainee hair stylist, which was bloody terrible, then a waiter, which was nearly as terrible, and now I’m a shop assistant. It’s not a great track record.”

  Jo didn’t know what to say. Surely he had contradicted himself? He seemed to know exactly what was required to fulfil his ambition, but had dismissed her suggestion that he had already taken the first step towards it. Confused, she fell back on a first-date question. “What school did you go to?”

  “St Bede’s.”

  St Bede’s was an independent boys’ school with an academic reputation and a gaudy purple blazer. “And you just left?” she said with admiration.

  He nodded. “I was totally freake
d by the whole exam thing.”

  Jo pondered. She was freaked by the whole exam thing too. “Your parents must be normal,” she told him. “Mine never shut up about A Levels.”

  “They want you to go to university?”

  “Oh, yes. My dad because he didn’t go, and my mum because she did. It’s all crap.”

  “Sounds it!” said Toby cheerfully. “Me, now, I’ve got my folks house trained. My mum nags me, I ignore her. She’s used to talking to the back of my head. And my dad, he’s never there. He works abroad mostly, in the Gulf. He does the electrics on new buildings. He goes there to get away from my mum.”

  Jo wondered whether there weren’t easier ways to escape from your wife. “And you haven’t got any brothers or sisters?” she asked, still in first-date-land.

  “No. I’m an only, just like you.” Toby sat down on a low garden wall and took hold of her other hand too. “You’re lovely, you know.”

  Jo found herself giggling. She must be nervous. She moved forward so that she was standing between Toby’s legs. He let go of her hands and put his palms on her bottom. His head was level with her stomach. He pulled her further towards him, dipped his head and kissed the little strip of flesh where her top met her jeans. She held his head for a few seconds, wondering what to do next. But then he stood up, and the most intimate moment she’d ever had with a boy was over.

  “So…what subjects did you like at school?” she asked as they walked on.

  “None of them,” he said crisply.

  Jo didn’t want to sound geeky, but she had to say something now she’d asked the question. “I don’t like most things, but Computer Studies is OK. And French would be, too, if we had a decent teacher.”

  He pondered for a moment, not looking at her. “Sounds like you should take your mum and dad’s advice. You like studying.”

  “I don’t want to go to university, though.”

  He grinned. “Don’t go, then!”

  It sounded simple. Suddenly Jo was filled with more enthusiasm than ever for not doing what her parents wanted. “Actually, Toby, I’d really like to make films.”

  He stopped walking, and looked at her with puzzled eyebrows. “Like, movies, you mean?”

  She nodded. “Making films is no more ambitious than going to the Paris fashion shows, is it?”

  He ignored this. “How do you start?”

  “Um…I’m not sure. Maybe by failing to get into art college?”

  They both smiled. It was silly, really. Dreams. But did sitting in a boiling Assembly Hall, scribbling until your hand ached, over and over again, paper by paper, necessarily make dreams come true? She let go of his hand and fingered the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Toby…I mean…”

  They hadn’t started walking again. He was giving her The Look.

  “You haven’t got a girlfriend, have you?” she asked, feeling foolish.

  He smiled without showing his teeth. “I have now.”

  Drawing her towards him, he put his hand on the side of her face and kissed her lips lightly. His mouth tasted minty and felt squashy. Then he started to put his hands on her body. He stroked her midriff and her bare arms. His knee slid between her thighs.

  Jo put her arms up and caressed his neck, and put her fingers in his hair like people did on TV when they were kissing a boy. He kissed her a bit harder, putting his palms on her bottom again, holding her firmly against him.

  Jo’s muscles were tense. She tried to slump against his body more, to feel herself cradled, or whatever he was trying to make her feel. She even slid her fingers under the back of his shirt, to show she knew she was supposed to touch him too. They stood there on the pavement in the darkening evening for a few more minutes.

  As they broke apart, a jolt of dismay shook Jo. She didn’t quite feel what she’d hoped to feel. Was there something wrong with her? Somehow looking at Toby had affected her more than touching him, and being touched by him.

  “Are you OK?” he asked. “You’ve gone all tense.”

  “Oh…sorry.” She rubbed her upper arms. “I’m a bit cold,” she told him, though she wasn’t. At least, not in a way that had anything to do with the air temperature. “And hungry. How much further to this restaurant?”

  Chapter Four

  Tess’s name was Therèse. Her mother, Granny Pratt, was Belgian, and the family had lived in Belgium until Tess was about fifteen. She was perfectly bilingual except for French ‘r’s in some English words. When Jo had begun learning French herself, she had realized where that throaty ‘r’ sound came from. But it had taken her ages, much to Mr Peacock’s frustration, to allow herself to imitate it. Trevor was fond of telling people how Tess’s ‘r’s had struck him as extremely sexy when he’d first met her. Tess would supply the punchline, “French ‘r’s or French arse?”, and their friends would roar with laughter and sip their wine, and Jo would wonder how long it would be before she would have to hear the story again.

  Jo was good at French. But she hated the lessons, because the teacher they’d had this year, Miss Balcombe, was what Grandad Pratt would call a ninny. She was one of those teachers who should never have been a teacher, at least not of comprehensive school kids. Little girls in straw hats, maybe, like the ones whose mothers double-parked their Range Rovers in Jo’s road every morning and made Trevor curse. Or boys at Eton, or something. Miss Balcombe’s rosy-cheeked, large-bosomed, cardigan-clad body, which Jo always thought should be wearing an apron and have flour on its hands, enclosed a mind of astounding naivety. How could someone of that age – twenty five or six at least – not know anything? She didn’t even seem to know much about French, and was always saying, apologetically, “Er…you’ll have to look that one up, I think!”

  The boys were merciless. And when the girls weren’t encouraging their cruelty, they were feeling sorry for poor Miss Balcombe. Jo wished she could do something to help her. But how could she say, “Miss, you’re in the wrong job. Go and work in a library, or a charity shop,” without pulverising poor Miss Balcombe’s already crumbling self-esteem?

  Now that Jo was on study leave, Tess was going on and on at her about schoolwork. And Miss Balcombe, to Jo’s surprise, suddenly took on an important role in the War On A Levels.

  “I can’t possibly do French, Tess,” Jo explained. “The teacher’s hopeless. And A Level’s hard, so you’ve got to have a good teacher.”

  “Would this teacher be taking the A Level class, though?”

  “Oh, yes! She’s the senior person.” This was a lie. Mr Peacock was Head of Modern Languages. But what did Tess know?

  “I thought Mr What’s-his-name, begins with a P, was the senior person.”

  Jo thought fast. “Well, maybe, but his subject’s German, not French. That’s why Miss Balcombe was taken on, to do Sixth Form French.”

  “I see.” Tess was still suspicious.

  “It would be awful, Tess,” said Jo earnestly. “And you wouldn’t want me to be unhappy, would you?”

  It was five past eleven the next morning. Her mother had called in on her way to her club, which was how she always referred to the gym, with a gift of twenty-five pounds, “for doing your exams, darling,” and a box of cakes from the French baker’s near the station. Jo knew they were peace offerings after yesterday’s row.

  The weather was even hotter today, and the kitchen got the full sun in the morning. The chocolatey cakes were wilting on a plate in the middle of the table. “Can’t we go outside?” pleaded Jo.

  “I told you, I’m not sitting out there until the pollen count comes down,” said Tess. “You might not mind being seen with a person whose nose is as red as Rudolph the Reindeer’s, but I mind being that person. The grass in this garden is terrible because Trevor will not cut it often enough. Has he decided what he’s doing yet?”

  This question was so unexpected Jo was bewildered for a moment. Then she remembered. “I don’t know,” seemed the safest thing to say.

  “Oh, come on. Where is he this morning?”


  A sudden jolt of pain seared through her body, drowning out Tess’ words. Jo looked down into her lap and saw she had been digging her nails in to her arm just below her elbow, where the sleeve of her blouse finished. “In the pub, probably” Tess continued, obliviously.

  Press. Release. Press. Release… There would be crescent-shaped marks on her arm.

  “Or he’s gone off to put the house on the market, hasn’t he?”

  Red at first, fading to skin-coloured again. Press. Release. Press. Press… She moved her hand away from her arm and sighed.

  “No, of course not.” Jo said. She didn’t remind her mother that the house was, in fact, Trevor’s as well as hers. Grandad Pratt had given them the deposit as a wedding present, but Trevor had made the mortgage payments. “Give it a rest, Tess. My head hurts.”

  “Hangover? Have a cake.”

  “No, it’s not a hangover. I didn’t drink anything last night.”

  Tess had her poor-diddums face on. “Oh, were you all on your ownsome? Serves you right for going off in a huff like that.” She took one of the cakes and cut it in half. “Share?”

  Jo shook her head. “Actually, I went out for a curry with a boy I know from work.” The words came out in such a rush she wondered if they’d made sense, but a glance at Tess told her they had. Her mother was staring at her, the cake half way to her mouth.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. His name’s Toby and he’s eighteen.”

  Tess bit into the cake. “So he’s off to university next term, then,” she said contentedly.

  “No, he’s got a job on the permanent staff at the shop. He really wants to get into fashion buying,” she went on before Tess could finish her mouthful, “so it’s a sort of step on the ladder.”

  “I see.” Tess put the cake down. “Has your father met him?”

  “No.”

  “Have you met his people?”

  Jo tried to remain patient, though she winced inwardly at the way Tess always referred to anyone’s family as their ‘people’, as if no Ferguson could ever be good enough for a Probert. “Tess, I’ve only been out with him once. I hardly know him.”