Moderate Violence

by Veronica Bennett

  “Aren’t you two dancing?” asked Holly over her shoulder as she and Tom passed on their way to the dance floor.

  Stuart and Jo looked at each other. “Oh, OK,” said Jo.

  It was hard to dance in such a crowd. Jo’s tiara loosened itself and her hair started to escape its pins. She feared for her bare toes among the boots and spiky heels. Then someone fell against her and almost knocked her over. She felt Stuart grab her round the waist, but when she righted herself it was Ed who appeared in front of her, smiling through his sweat-smeared make up. “We said we’d have a dance, didn’t we?”

  “You did,” corrected Jo. She had to shout to make him hear her. Her voice squeaked against the booming music. “Watch out for Pascale!”

  “Oh, Pascale…” he said, rolling his eyes. “Look at her, she’s all over Grant Cox.”

  Jo looked. Between the heads bobbing around her she recognized Pascale’s silver-sprayed hair and Grant’s cornrows. “She’s such a groupie,” said Ed, “and he’s only the DJ’s brother!”

  Jo giggled. “Didn’t she want you two to stick together because of your costumes?”

  “That only applies if I want to go off somewhere.” He was smiling, and looking at Jo approvingly. “You’re taller than I thought, you know.”

  “Got heels on,” she gasped as someone’s elbow landed between her shoulder blades.

  “Come here,” said Ed. He took both her hands and pulled her towards him. “Can’t have you getting knocked over.”

  They couldn’t really dance much. Jo was very aware of Ed’s arms around her, and the texture of the silver lamé jacket he wore. She locked her hands behind his neck, feeling the little ring of bone sticking out at the top of his spine. She tried to remember what that ring of bone was called. They’d learnt it in Biology. Axel? Axis? Atlas?

  Ed’s belt buckle – God, don’t think about it – was digging into her stomach. She adjusted her position, but he moved too. He must have thought Jo’s little wriggle was encouragement. She took her arms away from his neck and pushed her hands against his chest, trying to make a space between them. “I feel a bit crowded,” she said.

  He relaxed his hold on her. “Sorry.”

  “Oh, no, don’t be!”

  They swayed about in silence for a minute. Jo closed her eyes, trying to imagine she was dancing with someone who wasn’t Pascale’s boyfriend. It didn’t work, because she couldn’t conquer the guilt.

  The music never ended. That was the problem with DJs – they just segued one track into another to keep the dancing going. But how did you ever get an opportunity to stand still, especially in such a crowd? Jo wondered inanely if she and Ed would have to dance together for the rest of their lives.

  “Better?” shouted Ed in her ear.

  She nodded, and they went on dancing. She could feel Ed’s hipbones, and his spine through his jacket and shirt. Even though he’d loosened his embrace, the side of his face was sweating silver greasepaint into her hair. She turned so that her forehead touched his sticky cheek. She realized that he was taller than Toby, because when she embraced Toby their foreheads touched. And she was wearing high heels, too. He must be a lot taller than Toby.

  Pascale’s voice entered Jo’s meandering thoughts, as piercing as a police siren. “Ed Samuels!” She emerged from the crowd of dancers, her silver make-up shining surreally under the lights. “Are you going to dance with me or not?”

  “What about laughing-boy over there?” asked Ed in his geezer voice.

  “Who? Grant Cox?” Pascale seemed unwilling to notice that Ed still had his arms around Jo. Standing on tiptoe, she grabbed his shoulder and kissed him on the mouth. “Oh, Ed! You are funny!”

  Jo had no choice but to squirm out of Ed’s arms. “See you later,” she said to no one in particular. By the time she sat down, Ed and Pascale were snogging energetically. Stuart, Holly and Tom had vanished.

  Jo tried to shake off the memory of the dance. So far in their relationship Toby had always touched her tentatively, as if he were hardly doing it at all, but Ed’s touch was really there. Being close to him didn’t seem the same as being close to Toby at all. But why was she comparing them? She’d even compared their heights, as if she were shopping for a date on the Internet.

  She took a gulp of diluted apple juice, wondering vaguely what Toby was doing tonight. Not something he’d tell her about, that was for sure. She took another gulp, thinking about what was hidden by the plaster on her arm. The truth was, she was as devious, secretive and – what was that word she and Holly had been so struck by when they’d studied Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ? They’d slipped it into every conversation for about a week. Mendacious. It meant that you lied. It was a great word, definitely. And Jo was as mendacious as Toby.

  * * * * * *

  Fridays were always busy at Rose and Reed. This particular Friday, Gordon had also called a staff meeting after closing time. And it was a hot day. When the shop closed Jo was exhausted, and longed to go home. But Gordon sent Sophie, a part-timer even newer than Jo, out for sandwiches, Eloise brewed a pot of coffee and they all crowded into Gordon’s office.

  “Why are we in here?” muttered Jo to Eloise. “Can’t we have a staff meeting in a café or something?”

  Eloise stopped licking mayonnaise off her fingers and gave Jo a surprised look. “But we need a TV, don’t we? Gordon’s got the recording.”

  “What recording?”

  “Oh sweetie, did no one tell you?” Eliose took a bite of her sandwich. “We’ve had a visit from the mystery shopper.”

  “What mystery shopper?” Jo was beginning to feel very stupid.

  “It’s how Head Office checks up on the branches,” explained Eloise, “to see if the employees are up to scratch. Gordon wouldn’t have been told about it – they just send this ordinary-looking person with a concealed camera to film what the assistant who serves them does. Or doesn’t do, more like.”

  Jo began to understand. “So is Gordon going to show the film this person took of one of us?”

  Eloise nodded, her mouth full of sandwich.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” Jo’s heart jumped about in her chest. “Come on, Eloise, tell me.”

  Eloise raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. Then Gordon came in with his sandwiches in one hand and a DVD in the other, followed by Toby with a box of strawberries, a pile of plastic sundae dishes and a packet of plastic spoons. He filled two dishes and brought them to where Jo sat.

  “Thanks.” She took the strawberries, but she didn’t start to eat them. Her stomach felt clenched up. “Did you know we’ve got to watch a mystery shopper film?”

  He shrugged, propping himself against the windowsill as there was nowhere left to sit. “Something like that.”

  “I bet it’s me,” said Jo.

  “Why? It might be me, or Sandy, or anyone. Maybe even Gordon himself. Relax.”

  Jo couldn’t relax. She hardly listened to Gordon’s preamble. Her eyes were fixed on the DVD lying on his desk. When he put it into the player a rustle of expectation went round the room. Everyone thinks it’s them, thought Jo.

  The TV screen leapt into life. There was the ground floor of the shop. There was Tasha at the cash register. And there was Jo, standing by the door, looking bored. The person with the hidden camera approached her and asked if she could show her dresses suitable for wearing to the office, in a 12 or a 14, long sleeves please.

  Jo, who had gone very hot, remembered the woman. About thirty, with an educated voice and bobbed hair, she’d come in only about a week after Jo had started to work at Rose and Reed.

  The mystery shopper trailed around after Jo, filming her haphazard selection of four dresses. The woman picked out the only one they didn’t have in a 12 or a 14.

  “Will you be getting any more of these in?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Jo’s recorded voice sounded like a little girl’s. Everyone laughed. Toby put his strawberries down on the windowsill and nudged Jo’s back with his
knee. Jo had stopped looking at the recording, but she couldn’t escape hearing it.

  “Well, could you get one from another branch?” asked the mystery shopper.

  “I don’t know,” said the little girl’s voice quietly.

  “Or could I get it mail order? You have a catalogue service, don’t you? What would I have to pay for delivery?”

  “I don’t know,” said the even quieter little girl. “But if you’d like to wait a moment, I could ask.”

  “No, I think I’d better leave it.” The mystery shopper thrust the dress into Jo’s arms, which were already full of the rejected dresses. “But I also need a jacket. Could you show me some?”

  Again the camera followed Jo’s back view as she led the woman to the Formalwear section. Jo took a brief look at the screen. Her hair looked its usual limp self, and it had separated at the back like it always did by the afternoon. She looked away.

  She didn’t do much better with the jackets. The woman wanted the sleeves altered, and Jo didn’t know what whether, or how, this was possible. After the woman told Jo she didn’t want to buy anything there was no more dialogue. Wondering if the film had finished, Jo took another peep at the screen. It hadn’t. Because she had forgotten to put back her armful of dresses before she attended to the search for a jacket, she had left them draped over a rack of suits. The last thing the camera recorded was Jo scooping them off, catching one of the hangers in the collar of a suit jacket, and dropping all four dresses on the floor in her scramble to extricate it.

  The film ended. Gordon stood by the TV, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, surveying his employees. “I think you’ll all agree that wasn’t good.”

  He waited while people murmured and looked at the carpet. Suddenly ravenous, Jo filled her mouth with strawberries.

  “What do we learn from this unedifying sight?” asked Gordon.

  He wasn’t looking particularly at Jo, but she knew the question was for her. She was about to apologize for getting him into trouble with Head Office, but before she could speak, Toby pushed himself off the windowsill. “What’s the point of this, Gordon?” he asked aggressively. He took the disc out of the player and held it up. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to throw this piece of garbage away.”

  He threw it into the waste bin under Gordon’s desk, where it clanged satisfyingly. Taking no notice of Gordon or anyone else, Toby gently removed Jo’s strawberry bowl from her lap and set it on the window sill beside his own. Then he put his arm under her shoulder blades and pulled her up. “I’m taking Jo home now.”

  Eloise looked stricken. “It’s my fault, Toby. I obviously didn’t tell Jo everything she needed to know.”

  “But that’s exactly why this exercise is useful,” Gordon told her. “We all learn from it.”

  “But it’s not fair!” protested Toby. “If they filmed Jo today she’d be miles better. Why humiliate her?”

  “It’s not humiliation, it’s staff improvement,” insisted Gordon grimly.

  “It’s bollocks,” said Toby. He still had his arm around Jo. “And if you try and do it to me, I’ll tell you to stuff your job.”

  “Toby,” began Jo, “you really don’t need to – ”

  “And you can shut up, too.”

  Jo didn’t mind him being rude to her in front of everybody. In fact she was proud of it. It showed they were a proper couple. He’d stood up for her by putting his own job on the line and saying what everyone was secretly thinking. She wished there was a ‘Strong heroism’ label she could slap on his forehead, right there in front of everyone.

  “You’re crazy,” she told him as he bundled her out of the office and up the stairs. “They’ll sack you. They’ll sack me.”

  He didn’t let go of her until they were outside on the pavement. “No they won’t,” he said, pulling the shop door behind them. “But they might think again about their moronic mystery shopper idea.”

  Jo’s heart was doing a tap dance. Toby looked the same as he always did, but he wasn’t the same. Jo reached for his hand. “This is where I thank you for rescuing me.”

  He smiled. “Go on, then.”

  She put her hands behind his head and pulled his face down to hers. He didn’t resist. She kissed him for a long time, and felt his lips and tongue respond, and his arms snake round and clasp her against him. Neither he nor she was wearing much. She knew he could feel her bones and her skin and her flesh as plainly as she could feel his.

  When she pulled away and saw his familiar face with its tufty hair and the shadow that showed he hadn’t shaved since last night, the self-consciousness she usually felt with him flew away.

  “I love you, Toby,” she said. “Not because of what you did in there. I just do.”

  He pulled her towards him again. She couldn’t see his face, but his heart under his T-shirt felt like a pneumatic drill. He kissed her on the top of her head, pressing her skull hard.

  Then he drew away, lifted his chin and looked up and down the street. “Those sandwiches Sophie got were rubbish. Do you want a pizza?”

  Chapter Eight

  This weekend, Jo decided, they’d do it. Even if Toby didn’t want to, she’d make him want to. It’s the only power girls have got, Pascale said. And it’s the most powerful power in the world. Sexual desire has brought down great men and elevated great women. It’s at the source of everything that’s ever happened in history, Pascale said. Jo doubted this, but she was beginning to think that maybe she did have the power, after all.

  She thought of nothing else all day Saturday. Her standing with Gordon actually seemed to have gone up since the events of yesterday. Eloise had obviously been instructed to allow Jo to work on the till instead of leaving her to sweat in the stockroom like she usually did.

  “Maybe we’d better go over some things again,” said Eloise when Tasha had had to come to Jo’s rescue at the till for the twentieth time. Humiliating though this was, since Tasha was no more experienced in shop work than Jo, she didn’t care. She couldn’t concentrate enough even to think about caring.

  She decided to wear the new underwear Trevor had bought her to go under her Miss Universe dress. Little lacy knickers, and a skimpy bra to match. She’d shave her legs when she got home, though she’d only done it a couple of days ago. She’d wear that musky perfume of Tess’s that Toby liked, and experiment with curling her hair and sweeping it off the nape of her neck like Pascale’s. Jo had heard somewhere that boys found the napes of girls’ necks sexy.

  Since last night, everything seemed clear. Her confession to Pascale about not knowing if Toby fancied her was irrelevant now. They were a couple, she and Toby. He must really, really like her, or he wouldn’t have risked confronting Gordon like that. And the way he’d kissed her outside the shop last night was different from any kiss he’d given her before. He had kissed her as if she was important to him.

  She knew what she had felt when the compulsion to tell him she loved him rushed over her. It wasn’t passion, or sexual desire. It was just that at that moment, she knew she loved him. All of a sudden, her course of action had sprung into clarity, as brightly as a computer screen. Her virginity was a weight she’d been carrying around too long. It was dragging her back into childhood instead of allowing her to go forward into adulthood. Now that she’d realized she loved someone, she really did have to get rid of it.

  Toby was working upstairs that Saturday, and Jo didn’t see him much. Their lunch breaks were at different times. But at closing time he came and leant on the cash desk where Jo and Tasha were tidying up.

  “Where shall we go tonight?” he asked Jo, smiling with no teeth showing. “Up to town?”

  “You sound like Tess,” said Jo, hanging up plastic bags. “You’ll be saying ‘my club’ next.”

  “Town’s just another way of saying London,” said Tasha, who didn’t know Tess.

  Toby was watching Jo patiently. “We could go for a meal in the West End if you want. There’s a place on Frith S
treet I sometimes go to.”

  Jo and Tasha exchanged a look. “He sounds keen,” said Tasha.

  “I just want to have a nice night out!” protested Toby.

  “What train shall we get?” Jo looked at her watch. It was ten past six. “By the time we both go home and get ready…”

  “Listen, Jo,” interrupted Toby, looking at his own watch, “I’ve got to go up there early, to do some shopping. Why don’t you meet me at Waterloo? About eight thirty?”

  Jo was disappointed, but couldn’t say so in front of Tasha. Once again, Toby had plans he hadn’t told her about. She was tempted to say, “What sort of shopping?” but then she realized he might be going to buy her a present.

  “Oh, all right. I won’t bother to get dressed up, then, if you’re going in your work things.”

  “Tell you what,” he said unexpectedly. “Why don’t you wear a skirt? You never do.” He nodded towards a rail of short cotton skirts. “And you’ve got better legs than most of the women who are trying those on.”

  Tasha giggled. “He’s really out to please tonight, Jo!”

  “I might,” said Jo. She had to concentrate very hard on not going red. Toby’s suggestion had made it very clear that his plan for the evening was exactly the same as hers. She came round the cash desk and kissed him on the cheek. “You’d better go and get your train, then. See you at eight thirty.”

  * * * * * *

  Trevor, wearing an apron, opened the front door before Jo could get her key out. “I’ve heated up a shepherd’s pie, made by the loving hands of Mr Marks and his good friend Mr Spencer,” he announced.

  “Sorry,” said Jo, rushing past him and taking the stairs two at a time. “Must have a shower. Toby and I are going out for a meal in the West End.”

  “Celebrating something?” asked Trevor peevishly.

  “No.” Nothing I’m going to tell you about, anyway, she thought. When she’d showered, she wound her hair round rollers and dried it. Then she put on the only skirt she owned. It was made of washed-out denim, and came about half way down her thighs. With no tights underneath it was cool enough for August. But she wished she had a flouncy, semi-transparent skirt like the one Pascale often wore, which looked sexy and properly summery.