Moderate Violence

by Veronica Bennett

  She started to think about Toby’s mum and dad. His mum, a willing servant, didn’t seem to know or care what Toby was doing, and his dad was never there. How had Toby felt, being left as the ‘man of the house’? Jo had never considered the male perspective before. A man was expected to work, earn, support, protect, defend. Active verbs, as Mr Gerrard would say. Action, that’s what men’s lives were about. It was like sex. If the man couldn’t do it, it didn’t get done.

  But supposing you didn’t want to be the man of the house and the head of a family? Supposing you didn’t want to have sex with a woman and produce children, and live with them forever-and-ever-amen? But if your mum and dad, and everyone else, expected you to, you would try to be what they wanted, wouldn’t you? You might even go out with a girl who was too naïve to understand.

  As Jo lay in the hospital bed with the pink tent of Holly’s note on her chest, sleep began to enclose her. Her eyelids heavy, she reached out and retrieved her phone from the bedside cabinet. She wrote the three letters of ‘Yes’, and sent the text to Holly’s number. Her leg throbbed; they’d give her some painkillers if she asked, but she decided not to. Sleep seemed like the better option. Sleep brought oblivion, and oblivion killed pain better than any pills.

  * * * * * *

  Jo was sitting in a garden chair among cushions with Blod on her lap, letting Tess show off in front of Mark by fussing over her and bringing her a drink with a little umbrella in it. Mark had an ironic way of looking at Tess which she hoped meant he wasn’t overestimating her. Maybe he was content just to have his ego massaged, or regular sex, or both.

  He pushed himself out of his chair when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” he said. “And I’m going to stay indoors, Tess, OK? Got some work to do.”

  Tess nodded happily. Mark was some sort of broker. Not an insurance broker, something to do with financial institutions, Tess had told her proudly. It sounded to Jo like he might, indeed, come up with some dosh.

  Holly emerged from the house. Jo watched her cross the lawn and sit down in the chair Mark had vacated. She looked like she usually looked, blonde tendrils in place around her face, smile ready, eyes full of that what-you-see-is-what-you-get expression. Jo knew now, though, that you didn’t always get what you saw. “Hi, Hol,” she said.

  Tess stood up and gathered the empty glasses. “Well, I’ve got things to do,” she said lightly. “And you two need to talk!”

  That’s right, Tess, state the obvious. Neither Jo nor Holly replied.

  “Would you like a drink, Holly?” asked Tess. “It’s so warm today.”

  Holly released the awaiting smile, though not widely enough to reveal her funny tooth to Tess. “No, thanks. But it is hot, isn’t it?”

  Didn’t Holly ever give up trying to charm parents? Maybe, after so many years of practice, it came automatically.

  “Anyway,” said Tess, turning to Jo. “Call if you want anything, darling, I’ll be in the kitchen.” She turned back to Holly. “You won’t tire her, now, will you? She’s had a Very Bad Experience.”

  Holly’s smile didn’t falter. “Promise,” she said.

  Tess started towards the house, and Blod jumped off Jo’s lap to follow her, hoping, as ever, for a snack.

  When Holly looked at Jo her smile had become more tentative. “I’m so – ” she began.

  “Look, you don’t need to apologize,” interrupted Jo. “You’ve done that.”

  “I wasn’t going to. I was going to say, I’m so glad you’re out of hospital. They’re full of bugs and they don’t even have hot doctors like on TV. ”

  “The doctor I had was very nice-looking,” said Jo, “but she was a woman.”

  Holly’s smile tried to broaden, but the small talk wouldn’t hold. Jo sensed what was coming and tried to head it off, “I don’t care what happened, Hol.”

  “Well…” Jo could see that Holly was fighting dismay, but what had she expected? That telling Jo what had happened would make it un-happen? “Look, I just knew. But I couldn’t tell you, could I?”

  “Why not?”

  Holly’s troubled look intensified. “After what you told me that day by the lockers I went into the shop when you weren’t there and asked him about it. He sort of just gave in and told me about Gordon and pleaded with me to keep it secret.” She glanced at Jo. “He stayed at Gordon’s at weekends sometimes. You were suspicious, weren’t you?”

  “No,” said Jo. “I just thought he had this group of friends he didn’t want me to be part of. I thought he was ashamed of me, because I was only sixteen and couldn’t get into clubs. We never even went to Press Gang because he said he didn’t like it.”

  “Well, he had a reason,” said Holly. “That guy behind the bar, the one with the tattoos, had been one of Toby’s…er…lovers, and they fell out.”

  “Oh.” Jo wished they had gone to Press Gang, and encountered the ex-lover. It would have saved a lot of trouble. “Well, go on, then. What did you say when he asked you not to tell me?”

  “I refused. You know what I’m like, I can’t stand lies – but he said he really wanted to make things right with you, and he was going to dump Gordon and stop going to Mitch’s and all that, and be a proper boyfriend. He promised, Jo. And you seemed happy. You said you loved him! But…” Holly looked stricken at the memory. “This dumping Gordon, it didn’t seem to happen. On Monday night, when you turned up at his house, I’d gone round there to moan about it. But he fobbed me off, saying that Tuesday would be the last time ever, promise, promise. And you know how persuasive he can be, and how…I don’t know, how all right things sound when he says them. But then, on Tuesday, I couldn’t stand it any more. I went round to his house to tell him I wasn’t going to cover for him any more, and he’d have to deal with the consequences. I said I wouldn’t leave unless Gordon came with me, but they went upstairs anyway. I sat in the house not knowing what do and then you knocked on the door. You were so worked up, but I was worked up too. I just didn’t know what to do.”

  The two girls, one each side of the table, their faces shaded by the umbrella, looked at each other silently for a long moment. This really is the final scene of a movie, thought Jo. The symmetrical, meticulously-set-up shot of the two characters, the slanting sunlight, the deep shadows, the lush, mid-August foliage. The slow pull back, to reveal the garden, the street, the city. And then the credits.

  Jo pictured Holly, her loyal defender, pleading that day by the river. She’d always known, without ever really thinking about it, that Holly loved her. Holly’s attempt at lying had gone so deeply against her natural morality that she had suffered intolerably. When she’d let Jo in the back door of Toby’s house, it was because she’d collapsed under the unendurable strain.

  “You’ve been as big a fool as I have,” Jo told her.

  Holly had gone pink. She looked insanely pretty. What was it with Tom Clarke, that he hadn’t made his move, properly, on her? Perhaps it was best not to wonder, thought Jo ruefully.

  “Anyway,” went on Holly, “then I found out he’d been expelled from St Bede’s.” Her eyes met the question in Jo’s eyes. “There was a long list of trouble,” she said, still very pink. “But possession of cocaine was the final straw apparently.”

  Jo nodded, sighing inwardly. “Well, that’s not as bad as dealing, I suppose.” Or seducing younger boys. “Go on.”

  “OK, I tried to get Toby to…er…end the relationship, but he didn’t. So I told you about him getting expelled, and tried to make you see what a loser he is, so that you’d dump him.”

  Jo almost smiled. If it wasn’t so brutally embarrassing, it might be hilarious. It would, she thought vaguely, make a neat idea for a movie. Or had the gay-guy-straight-girl craze run its course?

  “And all the time, he kept promising to tell you the truth. But he never did, and when you threatened to smash the door down on Tuesday night, I was so relieved!”

  Jo said nothing. Holly still didn’t know, and with the smallest bit of discre
tion on Ed’s part she never would know, that Jo had thought Toby was cheating on her with Pascale.

  “And all the time it was going on,” went on Holly, “I kept telling myself it was Toby that was in the wrong. But it was me, wasn’t it? I made you cut yourself, and nearly die, didn’t I, little Jo?” Her voice wobbled, and tears rushed to her eyes. She blinked, and they splashed onto the table. “I know you’ll forgive me, because you’re you. But I don’t deserve it.”

  Jo watched her cry for a few moments. She replayed Holly’s words in her head and as she did so, the truth became inescapable. She slowly leaned forward and laid her left arm on the table, underside up. The scars left by the scratch-patch and the compass were displayed in all their glory.

  “It’s not you, Hol” said Jo. “And it’s not Toby, or Trevor, or Tess, or anyone. It’s me.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jo studied the file. She didn’t know what to do with the labels, because things had become clear. And when something was already obvious, you didn’t need to label it, did you?

  She held her breath, ready to delete the names and labels, but she let her breath out and stared at them, wondering. Supposing she re-classified them? A movie X-rated thirty years ago might be a 15 now. Times changed. People changed.

  She hovered the mouse arrow over Pascale’s label. Pascale had proved to be a true friend; Jo didn’t deserve to be forgiven, and yet Pascale had forgiven her. She considered the space beside Pascale’s name carefully. Then, before she could change her mind, she deleted ‘Explicit sexual content’ and her fingers clattered out ‘Strong scenes of violence’. On your part, Jo, that is.

  And Ed. What you see is what you get. He was always, always honest. Jealously, she’d tarred him with the same brush as Pascale. But the ‘Strong sex references’ label had nothing to do with what Ed was really like, on the inside.

  In its place, she wrote ‘Fit for viewing by persons generally’, and was satisfied. When she’d got rid of Toby’s ‘Suitable for all’ label, she typed ‘Suitable for persons of 18 years and over’. There. She’d liberated him, setting him loose in the adult world, where he wouldn’t have to pretend that he was something he wasn’t. He might even one day break into fashion buying.

  Immediately, without having to think about it, she exchanged ‘Fairly adult’ for ‘Mild peril’ beside Holly’s name. Holly was like the fish in Finding Nemo – all at sea, venturing into an unknown world, suffering the real, but not mortal, peril caused by a force stronger than herself.

  After a moment of indecision she added her own name to the list. She stared at the chunky little two-letter word, chewing her lip. Then she typed, ‘Contains adult material’ beside it.

  If Trevor could step up, so could she.

  It was Results Day tomorrow. With a small sigh she opened her Facebook page. There was a message from Holly asking everyone to meet at 10 o’clock at school. ‘I’ll be there’, she typed in the Comment box. Then she added, as an afterthought, ‘xxx’, and pressed ‘Enter’.

  * * * * * *

  “But no-one gets six A-stars!” gasped Holly.

  Jo was standing in the corridor staring at the slip of paper in her hand, with her friends hanging on to each of her arms, staring too.

  “And three ordinary As, and a C for Maths. Oh, Jo!” Pascale, almost in tears, hugged and hugged her. So did Holly. By the time they’d finished looking at each other’s results, all three of them were crying.

  “You’ve got A-star for Maths, Pascale!” exclaimed Jo. “You must be a genius!”

  “I wonder what Ed got for Maths,” pondered Pascale. She blew her nose. “If he didn’t get A-star he’s going to be mad jealous.”

  Pascale had two other A-stars too, and Holly a total of four. “I got A for French!” she said for the third time. “For French! How clever am I?”

  “Clever, clever, clever! But six…” said Pascale, grinning at Jo, “six is ridiculous. Especially when you don’t even know if you’re staying on.”

  “Oh, Jo, you must stay on!” cried Holly, her eyes still shiny with tears.

  Jo put the results slips in her bag. “I might, I think.”

  Holly and Pascale both stared at her. Holly recovered first. “Brilliant.” Her eyes were alight with relief. “When did you decide?”

  “I haven’t decided. But maybe, now that Trevor wants to…” began Jo. Then she stopped. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Wants to what?” demanded Holly.

  Jo wiped her cheeks, keeping the tissue ready in case more tears came. “Oh…to be, you know…”

  “A dad?” supplied Pascale unexpectedly. Her tone was tentative, her dark eyes serious.

  Jo gave her a grateful look. “I suppose so. Instead of a liability.”

  “Well, thank God for that,” said Pascale in her what-a-load-of-bollocks voice.

  Jo put her arms around Pascale and held her tightly. It wasn’t the usual girl-hug that everyone in their class had given each other when they opened their envelopes. It wasn’t even the friend-hug Jo, Pascale and Holly always did when they met or parted. It was a love-hug. There was no doubt in Jo’s mind: she loved Pascale, for her faults, her innocence, and, though it sounded a bit po-faced, for her nobility.

  “Thanks, Pascale,” she said into Pascale’s hair. “I care much more about you than you know.”

  Pascale’s body shuddered. She was making big efforts to keep control. “Oh, bollocks!” she said.

  The tension was broken. They both laughed, embarrassed and relieved. Jo had made her apology, revealing the depths of her shame without needing to re-visit the event, and Pascale had understood.

  “I could murder a cup of coffee,” said Holly, her watchful gaze flipping between Jo and Pascale. “Come on, or those greedy bastards will have drunk it all.”

  They set off in an untidy saunter, with people shrieking and embracing all around them, along the corridor to the dining room, where coffee and cake was being dispensed by last year’s Lower Sixth. Teachers gathered at the door, commiserating with and congratulating people. “Well done, Jo Probert,” said Mr Treasure. “See you on Tuesday.”

  Jo smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

  The three girls went out of the French windows and sat at the picnic tables under the trees by the field. Most of their year seemed to be there. Everyone was excited; it was as noisy as a primary school playground. Jo liked it. It was such a familiar sound, and such a familiar place. The insipid coffee, the feel of the bench on the back of her legs, the marks on the dining-room windows left by the Christmas stickers Year Seven always made. Jo looked round, wondering whether she actually would stay on. Or did she – just a little bit – still want to hold up that placard saying ‘Look at me! Aren’t I special?’

  Their table had filled up suddenly. Almost before Jo had time to notice him, Ed had sat astride the picnic bench beside her and spread his results slips on the table. “What do you think of that, then?”

  He had three A-stars. “One for Maths, thank God,” he said, with a sideways glance at Pascale. Pascale didn’t look at him, but got up and started speaking to someone at another table, her coffee cup in her hand.

  “That’s great!” Jo told him warmly. “I got the results I wanted, too.”

  “So are you staying on, then?” He said this with such artless expectation Jo’s heart began to murmur.

  “I’m thinking about it,” she said.

  His expression seemed to ignite. “Yeah? That’s…um, really good.” He regained control of his face. “Did Pascale tell you?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Nope. What about?”

  “About her and me.”

  Jo smiled. “If you dumped her, she’ll never tell me. If she dumped you, I’ll hear about it eleven hundred times.”

  “Nobody dumped anyone. We came to a mutual agreement.”

  “Really?” Jo was surprised. “How come she tolerated that?”

  Ed began to chuckle. Jo liked the sound of him chuckling. It was mor
e masculine than a giggle, but more musical than the drunken cackle she’d heard so often from Trevor. “Because she’s in lurve. Her new bloke’s called Tarquin!” His voice was almost a squeak. “I mean, who’s called Tarquin?”

  “Um…well, not many people are called Pascale,” Jo pointed out. “Or Poins.” For a moment, she was jealous that Pascale hadn’t told her about Tarquin, but then she remembered that before this morning, she hadn’t seen Pascale since the Very Bad Experience. And Holly hadn’t seemed to know either. “So how did she meet this Tarquin?” she asked.

  “At some party she went to at her dad’s firm,” said Ed, “where they had to dress up as eighties stockbrokers. I tell you, if she’d asked me I’d have refused. I’m never going to go to a fancy dress party again my life.”

  “I think you’d look OK in a striped shirt and red braces,” said Jo, beginning to smile a lot.

  Ed was grinning too. “It gets better. This Tarquin’s got a twin brother called Torquil. What are these people thinking of?”

  Jo giggled. “Poor Tarquin! Because he wears Rose and Reed jeans and has got dark hair, he caused all this trouble and he doesn’t even know it!”

  Ed started drumming his heel on the ground. His knee bounced up and down. He only did that when he was nervous. “Toby OK these days?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  He stopped drumming his heel and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Finding out your boyfriend’s gay must be so weird,” he said quietly. “I’d be furious if that happened to me.” He smiled bashfully. “If my girlfriend went off with another girl, I mean.”

  Jo took a few seconds to work out what she wanted to say. Ed waited patiently, watching her face. She was aware of him watching her, but the anxiety she’d always felt about what he was seeing – was her hair stranding, or her nose shiny? – wasn’t there. “To be honest,” she said at last, “I was more furious about things that happened before that night.” She looked at him earnestly. “I never felt like Toby was…you know, a proper boyfriend, but I didn’t know why. I thought there was something wrong with me.”