by David Rees
‘I don’t know that I like the idea of not being chatted up,’ I said.
Donald laughed. ‘You can’t have it all ways, Helen.’
“Keep an eye on me. And rescue me if the girls come on too strong.’
There’s nothing to get bothered about! If you’re not interested, they’ll leave you alone. When I went last Saturday I was really nervous … I guess I was wondering how do I say no if somebody keeps trying to buy me a drink, or asks me to dance and I don’t want to. Just like you say no to anything you don’t want, I realised. Well… I was with Mark … so it was fine,’
‘I thought you said you weren’t ready for this sort of thing.’
‘That was a couple of weeks ago!’
‘Aren’t you a bit young for such places?’
‘Helen! You go to your discos! Why shouldn’t I go to the ones that suit me? Anyway … this is only the second time I’ve ever been.’
‘Mark, I suppose, is a hardened regular.’
‘No. But he’s been more often than I have.’
It was just like any other disco, I was relieved to find, except that boys for the most part were with boys, girls with girls. I hoped I wasn’t calling attention to myself by being almost the only person there who danced with the opposite sex all evening ― with either Donald or Mark, and occasionally with both of them at the same time. When I wasn’t dancing, I stood at the edge of the floor watching them dance together. Once again I felt I had reason to envy them.
I began to notice differences, things I preferred to some of the scenes I’d witnessed in an ordinary disco. The men were better dressed on the whole and looked gentle; nobody spent the entire evening swallowing pints of beer and getting drunk. If a fight occurred, as it occasionally did in places I’d been to with Brian, it was more likely to be between the women, I thought, some of whom were distinctly unfeminine and aggressive-looking. But all remained peaceful.
I felt lonely on the way home: no arms round me tonight. No kisses. There weren’t many kisses for Donald or Mark either, at least not after we left the disco. I said I could take myself back, but they wouldn’t allow it; so I decided, if Mum and Dad had gone to bed, I’d go straight up to my room and let Donald and Mark have the privacy of downstairs. But they hadn’t gone to bed: another foreign film ― Channel Four was doing a Polish season ― for Mum to think was marvellous and for Dad to grumble about. ‘This one goes on till twenty to two!’ Dad complained. ‘That’s in only half an hour’s time,’ Mum said, looking at the clock. ‘You’re all a bit late coming in, aren’t you?’ Mark was introduced and I went out to the kitchen to make coffee. Mum followed me, as I knew she would. ‘I’ll tell you before you pop the question,’ I said. We’ve split up. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?’
She was surprised. ‘How did you guess, Helen?’
I laughed. ‘I can read you like a book. Mum.
‘Still… you’ve done all right for yourself , haven’t you!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mark … is that his name? … He’s very attractive.’
‘Mark?’ I tried my best not to look amazed, and just stopped myself saying, ‘But he’sDonald’s boyfriend!’ I hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Of course … er … Mark.’
Mum said, ‘Oh, you young people!’ and went back to watch the film. As nobody else was in the kitchen I allowed myself, while I spooned Nescafé into the cups, to have a good laugh about her mistake. Predictable people, my parents. Which meant they expected everybody else to be predictable too.
The five of us saw the final struggles of a group of shipyard workers in Gdansk being shot at by the Polish army, then Mum leaned across to switch the television off, yawned, and said, ‘I’m going to bed.’ She nudged Dad.
He blinked, and muttered in reply, ‘Oh … yes.’
At the door she said, ‘Donald! Long past your bedtime.’ Such was her unsubtle attempt to have Mark and me left on our own; when she had gone out with Dad and shut the door, the three of us found ourselves laughing quite helplessly for a few moments.
‘Well, I won’t play gooseberry either,’ I said. ‘Thank you for a very pleasant evening; I wouldn’t object if we did it again some time. Donald … when Mark goes, do remember to put the lights out. You always forget, so if Mum finds them on in the morning, even she’ll start to think there’s something odd.’
When we got to school on Monday, the crowds parted for us as the sea for Israel. ‘So it’s true, then,’ I heard a boy say: he was looking at Donald then at Mark. Somebody flapped a wrist, and sniggered. Another boy minced, hand grotesquely on hip. Wherever we walked people moved away from us. ‘What on earth has happened?’ Mark said. ‘Have they done an item about us on TV? Profiled us in The Sun?’ We did not have long to wait before we discovered the answer. There was an enormous crowd of kids staring at the far wall of the school building; this wall, which faced away from the road, had few windows, just those at the end of corridors: so there was a great stretch of brick which we soon knew had given the phantom blackboard graffiti specialist considerable scope for his abilities. I shan’t repeat what was painted there, nor describe the obscene drawings that accompanied the comments. Sufficient to say that it told the world in no uncertain terms that Donald and Mark were indulging in a very sexual relationship.
Ted told us later that he had been standing next to the Headmaster when he had first seen this ― this atrocity, he called it. The Headmaster had said, ‘And do they? Is it true?’
‘It’s none of our business,’ Ted had replied. ‘The truth of it ― or not ― is hardly the point.’
‘No indeed.’ Ted was almost the only teacher the Head listened to, it was rumoured. He had been at the school ten years longer.
My feelings when I saw those vile messages and revolting cartoons were anger, hatred and despair: there was some person in the community who was utterly sick. He must be ripped out, I said to myself; expelled, arrested, sent to prison, shut up in some institution for the mentally insane. If I got my hands on him, I wouldn’t vouch for his being in one piece for long. Or her. Could it be a girl? She was so madly in love with Mark or Donald and therefore so thwarted and frustrated she needed psychiatric treatment? Probably not.
Mark just stared; there was almost no visible change in his expression. Donald, however, cried ‘Oh, no! No!’ and beat his hands on his head. He staggered and nearly fell; because of the shock, he said afterwards: his heart was beginning to thump violently, his breath was coming in spasms, and the muscles in his legs were so taut they didn’t seem to be capable of working property. Mark, in full view of two hundred or more kids and several teachers, put his arms round Donald and held him tightly. ‘Keep as calm as you can,’ he said. ‘Don’t let them see it could break you.’
At Assembly, the Headmaster said it was the worst offence that had been committed in his entire six years at the school, and that he would spare no effort in seeking out the culprit; but if the person or persons responsible owned up, their punishment would be the lighter. He knew, of course, that nobody would own up, but I suppose he had to say that. How on earth he thought he could find the culprit I couldn’t imagine, unless the kid had paint on his clothes that matched the colour of the paint on the wall, or a trail of it led from the scene of the crime to the house where he lived.
Donald and Mark were summoned to the Head’s office during first lesson. ‘I’ve only one thing to say to you both,’ the Headmaster said. ‘Have you any idea who could have perpetrated this outrage? Is there anybody in the school ― boy or girl ― who harbours a grudge?’
‘No sir,’ Donald said.
Mark considered the question for a while. ‘No one.’
The Headmaster looked at them, thoughtfully. ‘Very well. Go back to your lessons.’
That was good of him,’ Mark said, when they were outside in the corridor.
‘What?’
‘Only one thing to say. He implied that he didn’t want to know any specific details.
About us. Such as, is it true? I’m not quite sure what to make of that.’ He stared at Donald. ‘God! You’ve been crying.’
‘No.’
‘You have.’
‘All right. I have.’ His face, Mark told me, was utterly forlorn: tear-stained, shocked, white.
‘I … want to hold you. Touch you. Soothe away the hurt.’
Donald shook his head. ‘We’re standing outside the Headmaster’s office!’
‘I know.’
They went to their separate classrooms.
Solitude was the immediate problem. Nobody knew how to speak to them: some kids probably wanted to, but either did not have the words or were scared their friends would think them tarred with the same brush. Donald, who always sat next to Andy, found the desk beside him, no matter what the lesson might be, was vacant. Except in English: Ted ordered Andy to sit in the seat he’d invariably occupied. Jake and Gary, too, kept out of his way; whispered together, giggled. Then, when no teachers were around, there were the taunts, not said to his face, but undoubtedly meant for him to hear.
‘Don’t turn your back on him!’
‘Does he wear a dress when he goes out with Mark Sewell?’
‘Keeps his lipstick in a handbag.’
‘You can usually tell them by the way they walk.’
‘I wouldn’t bend down when he’s in the room!’
‘Does Sewell shove it up his bum?’
This last comment made Donald spring at the boy who said it. ‘I grabbed him by the throat,’ he told me that evening. ‘I’d have throttled him if some other kids hadn’t intervened.’
Fortunately Ernie Pitt came round the corner at that moment and sent everybody packing.
Mark was treated differently. Maybe because he was older, or his actions that morning had shown him to be the less vulnerable, there were no taunts. Or it could have been that, unlike Donald, he had few connections with the games players in the school. Apart from Joanna, who spoke to him with a certain stiff politeness, and Jason, who was no less friendly than usual, he was simply ignored; in the sixth-form common room people suddenly found a great interest in newspapers and textbooks when he appeared. Not me. I tried to spend as much time as I could with him, and with Donald too, but it wasn’t easy: Mark didn’t have exactly the same lessons as me, and Donald’s and mine didn’t coincide at all.
At midday I literally bumped into Brian; he was rushing out of a door carrying half a dozen squash rackets, and banged me on the head with them. ‘Helen … I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s all right. It didn’t hurt.’
‘I want to say this,’ He spoke slowly, seeming to choose his words with care. To do what Mark did … in front of a whole crowd … to put his arms round a boy! That took some guts. I think I’ve changed my mind about him.’
‘In what way?’ I asked.
‘I think I’m beginning to admire him.’
‘Are you the only one?’
‘No. There are one or two others.’
Then why don’t you all do something?’ My voice started to sound shrill.
He gestured, helplessly, with the squash rackets. ‘What can we do? You know how it is. How people are.’
‘Everyone’s scared, Brian! Scared of their own silly shadows! Worried that they’ll lose a little bit of their popularity! They all go around the whole time conforming! If they don’t do precisely what everybody else does their mates won’t want to be seen with them any more! Surely … what am I trying to say?’ I found I was scratching the back of my neck, just as Ted did. Were these mannerisms of his, I wondered, attempts to coax himself into speech? ‘I want to grow up to be me, whatever that “me” is. Not to have blue curtains in my bedroom just because Joanna does. Not to have a boyfriend because other girls have a boyfriend, but because I value him … love him … for the person he is. And if I do things the way my mother does, it shouldn’t be because she does them like that, but because I’ve reasoned out that that’s the best way to do them! Oh … I don’t know … perhaps I’m not making myself clear.’
‘Yes. You are.’ He touched me gently with the rackets, as if they were an extension of his arm, and smiled. ‘You’re pretty good at making speeches! You ought to be in the House of Commons.’
‘If I was, I wouldn’t say things just because the Labour Party or the Conservative Party thinks I should. They’re the biggest conformists of the lot, politicians.’
His smile grew broader. Which made me feel dangerously soft towards him. ‘You’re getting away from the point,’ he said.
‘We ought to respect and look up to Mark and Donald as much as anyone else in this school! Not persecute them and ignore them! They’ve made a stand for individuality ― for their own, and therefore if you think about it ― everyone else’s!’
‘Sssh!’
I wasn’t raving at the top of my voice, but I suppose I was talking more loudly than I needed to. Miss Evans, our R.E. teacher, scuttled by like some small, furry animal trying to avoid a storm. ‘She’s about as individual, that one, as a Lyons’ chocolate cup-cake,’ I said, quietly. We both laughed.
‘Fruit cake?’ Brian suggested. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Mark probably knows a lot better than we do who he is, what he is, where he’s going. I want that knowledge too, Brian. I don’t think I have it yet. A bit … but not enough.’
‘I asked Keith if he’d told anybody. He had, of course … Pat. She’d told her brother. At which point the trail goes dead.’
‘We’ve got to find out who this lunatic is! Before he does any more harm.’
‘Is that a condition of us getting back together?’
‘No.’
‘Well … in that case … will you come out with me this weekend?’
Ted concentrated pretty hard on The Nun’s Priest’s Tale that afternoon. His monologue was virtually without pause; no asides, jokes, reminiscences, just non-stop explanation of the text. At the end of the lesson, he told Mark and me to stay behind. When the others had gone he handed me a piece of paper. ‘The address on that is my address,’ he said, and he blew his nose loudly. ‘I’d be … what’s the word? … honoured … yes’ ― he grinned ― ‘if you’d both come round for a drink. And your brother as well, Helen. Tonight? Is that possible?’
We nodded.
‘Seven thirty?’
‘Drinking with your English teacher!’ Mum exclaimed as we ate our tea. ‘How odd!’
‘Why’s it odd?’ I asked.
‘It’s … just… odd!’
‘Don’t let him make you drunk,’ Dad said.
‘I shouldn’t think there’s much hope of that!’ I answered.
He turned to Donald. ‘What’s the matter with you? Nothing to say for yourself? Face as long as a fiddle, I see. Has she broken your heart?’
‘Nothing’s the matter,’ Donald said.
‘Who?’ Mum wanted to know.
‘Who what?’ was Dad’s reply.
‘Who’s broken his heart.’ Donald got up and left the room, his pork chop, potatoes and cauliflower abandoned on his plate, half-eaten. Mum was astonished: ‘Now what have I said?’
‘Teenagers,’ Dad informed her, in tones of mild disgust, ‘are up one moment, down the next. You never know where you are with them.’
‘Is something wrong? Something at school?’
‘Not that I know of,’ I lied. ‘He didn’t do well in a test this afternoon. That’s all.’
‘Spends too much time on the football pitch,’ Dad said. ‘Still … all work and no play.’ He looked at the clock. ‘I think I can just about fix that wobbly leg on the lounge table before Coronation Street begins.’
Mum went to the door, and shouted, ‘Donald! Come down and finish your tea! It’s getting cold!’
FIVE
Ted’s house ― small, cluttered, Victorian ― was in a pedestrianised street; ‘I’m part of the gentrification process,’ he said. ‘This terrace used to be working men’s cottages. The whole ar
ea has been spruced up now: hanging baskets, window-boxes, tubs out on the cobbles with the flowers all free, provided by the Council. A socialist Council too! This terrace is occupied by teachers and journalists, even hairdressers; not a labourer in sight these days. The wheels of fortune…’ Gentrification or not, Ted’s living-room was very pleasant, so much so that I made a mental note of this detail or that: I’d do likewise when I owned a living-room. Then I remembered what I’d said to Brian that morning ― I wasn’t going to have blue curtains because Joanna did. Extraordinary, I said to myself, the contradictions that existed in one’s character! Would they ever get straightened out? If they did, was that, finally, being an adult?
‘What do you want to drink?’ Ted asked. ‘Beer, scotch, white wine is the choice. Reasonably unlimited in quantity.’
‘I like scotch,’ Mark said. ‘But perhaps it’s a bit strong for now.’
‘Nonsense. After the day you’ve had, I should think you need something strong!’
He was persuaded. Donald opted for beer, and I chose wine.
‘That’s lovely,’ Mark said, pointing to the picture over the mantelpiece.
‘A Braque still life. A print, of course. Sheer coincidence ― my cheese plant there and the jug on the shelf, they’re more or less reproduced in the picture. I only realised that a week ago.’
The room was fully of such happy coincidences ― the pitchpine table and the cane chairs in harmony with the colours of the walls and the pattern of the carpet; books, houseplants, pottery, glassware blending into a neat, lived-in whole. No absent-minded professor’s house, this. ‘Do you live alone?’ I asked.
‘Ah.’ Ted smiled. ‘A question the kids at school never venture. Yes … I live alone, but that wasn’t always the case. Drinks all right?’
‘Yes, yes, thank you,’ we said.
‘A question the kids at school frequently do venture ― of each other, that is: is Ted, orisn’t Ted? Well, strictly for your ears only, Ted is, was, and ever more shall be so. I bought this house with my lover, Alan. We were sitting on the sofa one evening three years back ―this sofa ― watching TV, and he said, “I don’t think I’m feeling too well.” I held him as he lay dying. It took five minutes. A brain haemorrhage. He was thirty-three.’
