Disconnected

by Sherry Ashworth

  You were waiting outside the Head’s office, shook Mum and Dad’s hands, knocked timidly on the Head’s thick wooden door, backed off as if alarmed by your own temerity.

  “Come in!” boomed his voice.

  All that polite business with chairs and the Head and my dad waiting until all the ladies had sat down. The Head had come out from behind his massive desk and was sitting in a little circle with us. There he was, with Dad on his left, Mum, me, and you on his right. You crossed your legs and clasped your hands like a good girl. I just wanted to laugh. It was like we were going to play musical chairs or something. There was this basic incongruity of us all trying to be matey in the Head’s study of all places, with those heavy bay windows, his certificates framed on the wall, stacks and stacks of books and reports on education, stifling, headache-making, utterly respectable. And us in a cosy little circle.

  Not that I had anything against the Head. He was all right in assemblies and when he was interviewed in the papers. He had a sense of humour, which we all appreciated. People said he did his job well and we found him approachable but a bit scary. You know his daughter was in the year above mine, but she was quiet as a mouse. I suppose you had to be, if you were the Head’s daughter. Keep your head down, I was thinking. A joke. Because to tell you the truth, I was beginning to feel slightly hysterical.

  “Now, Catherine,” he said, affable, relaxed but with a detectable edge, “perhaps we ought to start with you telling us why we’re here.”

  Mum twitching by my side. Everyone looking at me. Sense of not being able to breathe. You shot me a look of solidarity because you would have hated to have been put on the spot like that. Thanks, Mrs Dawes – it made a difference.

  “Because I haven’t been working,” I said. I was quite neutral as if I was talking about somebody else. Which, in a way, I was.

  The Head nodded sagely, acknowledging I’d given the correct answer.

  “And also to find out why,” he added. “And what we can do about it.” He liked verbal footnotes.

  I felt as if I was being pushed against a wall. I knew you were all trying to help and if it wasn’t for the drink I’d had before I came in I’m not sure I could have handled your suffocating concern.

  The Head continued.

  “Perhaps if you were to describe the problem in your own words…”

  “I seem to have lost motivation,” I said.

  It was easier to talk your language.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” said the Head. “You of all people! With eight A-stars at GCSE! Catherine. I’ll put it to you straight. You’re one of our brightest sixth formers. A credit to the school. Your teachers have absolute faith in you. I have absolute faith in you. The world is your oyster. Do you know, you could study anything you wanted at university? You could be anything you want.”

  He was only succeeding in terrifying me more. I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I hate it when people say that to you, what do you want to be? Expecting you to have your life all mapped out. I was silent.

  “Mrs Dawes!” declared the Head, inviting you to continue the pep talk. You were more hesitant.

  “It’s true, Catherine, as I’ve often told you. You are a gifted pupil. Maybe if we spent some time in the Careers Office and you found a profession that interested you, that might give you some motivation?”

  The Head nodded approvingly as this was just the sort of solution he liked best: practical, putting the school in a good light, achievement-orientated. You looked pleased he approved of you.

  “Catherine once wanted to be a barrister,” my father supplied, recalling a brief phase I went through two years ago.

  “She also mentioned the civil service,” Mum said.

  “Well, Catherine?” asked the Head.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Perhaps Catherine is going through a reassessment of what she wants to do with her life,” you said, trying to help me again. “That might be the problem.”

  At this point the Head intervened. You were doing too well. He had to take some of the credit.

  “Yes, I think we’re agreed on that, Mrs Dawes. The question is, and I put it to you, what are we going to do about it?”

  Dad nodded enthusiastically. He and the Head were carved from the same block.

  “Do you think, Catherine,” the Head pursued, “you’ll be able to take up the pen again in time for the examinations?”

  They were three weeks away. Two papers in each of my four AS-levels. I had learned nothing. Three pieces of coursework were incomplete. It was like one of those nightmares you have when you feel paralysed, pinned down, emitting only a tiny squeak when you want to scream for help.

  “Because if you can’t,” the Head continued, glancing at my parents, “there’s no shame involved. You can leave school. You’re seventeen.”

  Leave school? Oh, no! That wasn’t what I wanted. Not yet, anyhow. I could see what he was doing, putting the frighteners on me. Showing me the alternatives. Bastard. I wondered whether he’d cooked this up with my parents. Panic pricked my arms and forehead.

  “I don’t want to leave,” I said.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  “Perhaps, Headmaster,” you piped up at that moment, “we might give Catherine some extra support. I was thinking of counselling – maybe a professional?”

  That was sweet of you though I would never have seen a counsellor in a million years. Your suggestion wasn’t too well received.

  “I don’t think Catherine has psychological problems,” my mother said frostily. To her, there was a stigma attached to therapy. “If she needs to talk, she always has me.” Touché. Mum’s a doctor. She knows everything medical.

  “No time for a counsellor,” the Head said. “Exams in three weeks. It’s a challenge, Catherine. Are you up for it?”

  “Don’t you think,” you persisted, “that it’s also a case of too much pressure? With the move from three to four subjects at A-level, and the fact that the students know their university applications depend on the AS results. If there was more time…”

  You stopped talking, Mrs Dawes, because no one was listening to you. Mum and Dad were waiting to hear my response to the Head. The Head was waiting to hear my response to the Head. I thought, this is all a silly game. None of it is real. It’s meaningless. None of you can control me. I don’t have to play by your rules, but I do have to survive given that the rules exist. So I decided to make life easy for myself. It was the cleverest thing to do.

  “I do want to sit the exams,” I said.

  In a way, it was true. I reckoned I probably knew enough to get by, even if I didn’t do my best. And the easiest thing to do would be to stay at school and take them.

  “And will you work, Catherine?” asked the Head.

  I could hardly say no. “Yes,” I said. “I can see what you’re saying. I’ll do my best.”

  “Good, good!” the Head said. “I’m sure Mrs Dawes will help you sort out what needs to be done. I can see you might have to write off some of the outstanding essays. But with two or three hours work a night I should imagine you’d be able to make up a lot of lost ground. Just a blip, eh, Catherine? Just a blip.”

  The word ‘blip’ sent me into hysterics. The Head sounded so funny saying it. Blip. What kind of word is that? The last few weeks, my life with Taz, my new friends, my mood swings, a blip. A blip on his radar screen. I could only partly suppress my laughter but luckily it came out as a smile. Everyone thought I was cheering up.

  “And I’m sure you’ll play your part, Dr and Mr Holmes. Lots of hot chocolate brought up to her room!”

  My mother smiled ironically. I knew she resented being told how to do her job. That amused me even more.

  “I’d like that, Mum,” I said.

  You all laughed, thinking the tension had been broken up.

  “You see, in the end, Catherine, it’s quite easy,” said the Head. “Don’t think about it, just do it!”

  Yes, I thought, that what H
itler’s officers did in the Second World War. But I smiled at him and repeated his words. It was fun playing along with everybody.

  “Just do it,” I said. “I will, I’ll do my best. I feel better now. A lot better.”

  God, it was so easy, acting the good girl. I was surprised I hadn’t done it before.

  Mum took my hand and squeezed it.

  “I think,” I continued, “I just let it get on top of me. And all my outstanding work grew to a big thing in my mind. But I think I have a perspective on it now.”

  “That’s my girl,” the Head said, smirking.

  “I mean, I’ve never failed an exam in my life and I’m not going to be defeated by these ASs.”

  “That’s the old Catherine speaking!” my dad said.

  “I’ll draw up a timetable tonight,” I said.

  “Excellent, excellent.”

  I was feeling exultant at the success of my deception and slightly sick all at once. Now it was a matter of pretending to work. I hoped I could pull it off. I just needed time. If I sat the exams I could carry on at school till July, and then there would be the holidays anyway. Then I would have a clearer idea about everything, I would know what to do. Maybe I would do well in my exams without any work. Maybe the world would end. Like, who’s to say? It was just a matter of surviving one day at a time. Anything I did to survive was OK. Including lying about my intentions.

  “Thank you,” I said to the Head. “I feel better now. I’m sorry to have been such a trouble.”

  “Not at all, Cathy,” you said.

  My mother flinched. She hated anyone calling me Cathy She said it was common. Catherine was my name.

  “It’s been very worthwhile,” my dad said, getting up, shaking the Head’s hand. “Very worthwhile.”

  I began to wonder whether I could get out on the weekend and go to the Gardens again.

  To Taz (6)

  For various reasons, I remember George’s party very vividly.

  It must have been a couple of weeks or so after the night in Satin, and we’d seen each other several times since. In the end, I found it interesting, the stuff about your sexuality. I know I must have been a nuisance, quizzing you about it, asking you when you first thought you might be gay, how could you fancy both sexes, which sex did you prefer, but you didn’t seem to mind. You still made me feel I was your best friend.

  I didn’t exactly stop fancying you, but I was OK with the fact I could never properly have you. I’m not one of those obsessive freaks who moon about over one person and make stuff up in their own mind. The funny thing is, in my experience it’s usually blokes who are like that. They’re the romantic ones and it’s the girls who are more practical, more down to earth. Like, Lucy and Brad. He’d already told her he loved her; she was like, what do you mean by love, and frankly, she was getting a bit scared by it. Someone should have told him to lay off her a bit. Or do you think boys just confuse lust with love?

  The answers weren’t important. I didn’t mind not having a bloke and in some ways it was easier, just being able to act how I wanted, get smashed, not care what people thought, what one particular person thought, and I could see that having you as my special but not boy friend was probably just what I needed. I was still able to tell you the truth, how I went to school every day, sat in lessons, listened sometimes, dreamed other times. Joined in the chat in the common room, made coffee, acted normal. Borrowed essays off people, took them home, rushed through rewrites of them, handed them in. The teachers were encouraging because at least they were getting work in now, even if it wasn’t my best. It meant my parents were off my back too. I stayed in my room, read a bit, chilled, and made out I was learning. So I was free to go out.

  On the night of George’s party we were in the Gardens, at a loose end. Mac had had some weed earlier, but it was finished. We had hardly any cash. We were indecisive, in danger of arguing about what to do next. Then Bex got a text off a mate of hers, saying there was a party at George’s. Mac and Steve were laughing, but getting ready to go, no question. I asked you who George was. Some sad old bloke, you said. Buys his friends. You go round to his place and he lays on the booze. Does he fancy you? I asked. You laughed. You said I still wasn’t getting the hang of this bisexual thing. You said, come to George’s, and you’ll see.

  Then as we left the Gardens I saw Jan, or rather, she saw me. She looked pleased.

  “Hiya,” she said. “Are you leaving?”

  “We’re off to George’s place,” I said. It was possible she might know George.

  “Can I come?”

  “Sure,” you said. Jan grinned at you and fell into step with us. I felt it was my job to introduce you and I did, saying that I’d met Jan in the Gardens, and she was into rap. I didn’t need to say much else. Jan was a high-octane talker.

  “Yeah. I bought some albums today. I got some dosh, see. Do you want me to get some booze for the party? I can. I got the dosh. I’m not looking for a free ride. Where are we going? Where does this bloke George live? Have you got any slap, Cat, if it’s a party?”

  But Jan looked OK. Do you remember her long, dark hair, like in a commercial? And because her skin was pale it made her eyes look big. And with her being so thin, she stood out. I could see you were intrigued by her too.

  We must have walked for about half an hour to get to George’s. He lived just out of town, along an old Victorian terrace with three-storey houses divided into flats. A bit grotty. Rubbish on the steps, weeds, smell of rotting vegetables from somewhere. He had one of those entryphone things. A bloke loaded with piercings answered the door to us and we all piled in, climbing up two flights of cracked lino-covered stairs. Next to a dirty old toilet with the door open was George’s flat.

  It was buzzing. Lots of people there, some I recognised from the Gardens. You pointed out George to me. He was a fat bloke who looked in his mid twenties. A fat face, one of those faces that looked like someone had blown it up with a bicycle pump. Little slitty eyes creased into a smile. He wore trousers that were way too small for him, so his gut hung out over the waistband. Did he think that looked cool? He was glistening with sweat, but was pleased to see us, even though he didn’t seem to know who we were. He welcomed us in, pointed out the tiny kitchen where the booze was. He didn’t need to do that twice.

  There were cans and cans of lager and beer. We helped ourselves and drank straight from the cans. I was curious.

  “Who is George?” I asked you again.

  “Don’t know exactly. He’s spoken to us a few times. He goes into Bex’s café. He’s got no mates. He works in the warehouse at the brewery. He has these parties, for the company.”

  I looked around. I supposed that was OK, throwing parties to make friends – didn’t everyone do it? Only the weird thing about this party was that everyone looked about ten years younger than George. It was the kids he’d invited. I wondered if he was a paedophile, but somehow I didn’t think so. The people he’d invited, they were just the street crowd and they were exploiting him. They weren’t vulnerable, innocent kids. Hell, they were Mac and Steve and Taz and Bex and me. George stood by, just grinning, watching everybody. He was just getting off on being part of a crowd. He was willing to rent the crowd. Like extras in a film.

  His flat was cheap, nothing special. There was a fireplace with a gas fire, an old telly, two tatty two-seater settees with scratchy covers. But you couldn’t really see the flat for the people standing around drinking. He’d turned the radio on loud and there was dance music banging out. The nearer we stood to the kitchen, the less the music interfered with the conversation.

  “Look,” said Jan. She pushed up the sleeve of the jacket she was wearing and showed me a watch. It had a thick pink strap and a bubble-shaped face.

  “Cool,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Got it today.”

  “Is it your birthday or something?”

  “Yeah!” she said. “No, not really. I wanna dance.”

  And she did. She t
ook off her jacket, threw it in a corner, moved into the centre of the room and began to shuffle around to the music, attracting some attention. She didn’t care about the attention. She was just getting into the music. She was swinging her hair around, more and more, until it seemed to have a life of its own. You asked me again, Taz, who she was. I told you I didn’t really know. We watched her together. She was wearing a T-shirt that was too small for her and showed up the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra. Not that she needed to. She was quite small. Her skirt was short but she could take it. She had good legs.

  After a while she came back to us. You gave her the can you were drinking and went into the kitchen to get another. You started talking to someone there, leaving Jan and me alone. She slithered to the floor, her back against the wall. I got down and joined her.

  “You really freaked out,” I said.

  “Yeah. I like a good bop. I’m all hot now, sweating like a pig.” She drank greedily from her can.

  “Shit!” she said, and crawled along the floor for her jacket, found it, and began rooting through the pockets. Her face relaxed. “Still there,” she said. She put the jacket over her lap.

  “What did you think you’d lost?” I asked her.

  “My money,” she said. “I owe some of it to Sally. She’s my mate. I live with her. Her and her daughter. She’s got this baby daughter, Kayla. So I have to help with the food and rent. Or I baby-sit. She screams like hell but she stops after a while. She has these tantrums, see. And she gets ratty when Sally has to go out. So it’s good for her, having me there. It’s dead good, this watch, isn’t it?”

  Jan admired it again. It was all right but it looked quite cheap.

  “Shall I tell you how I got it?”

  She wanted to, so I encouraged her.

  “From the covered market. When they weren’t looking. They’d left them out on the stall while some customer was giving them grief about a handbag that was wrong or something. I took the lot. I flogged some. I kept this one.”

  OK, Taz, I’ll be honest. That kind of shocked me. Only at first. Because I’d never been tempted to steal, but then I thought, hey, what kind of prig was I? I nicked booze off my parents and if they didn’t give me money, who knows what I’d do? And my dad spends ages with his accountant finding ways of minimising his tax bill. And my mum accepts all these freebies from the drug company reps that visit her. People are always taking things off other people. And looking at Jan, I reckoned she needed the money. So I decided it was OK. Every time I do that, break through a taboo, decide something is all right that I thought wasn’t, I get a thrill. A dark, electric thrill.