All She Wants

by Jonathan Harvey

  ‘Azure sunset. Isn’t it fab?’

  ‘It’s gorge. I heart it.’

  ‘I heart it an all,’ agreed Hayls.

  ‘So what else do we know about this new lad?’ I asked as I dusted the finest trace of body glitter onto my cheekbones.

  ‘He’s a bit of a bad boy,’ said Hayls, excited. ‘He’s been excluded from St Eddie’s for setting fire to something.’

  ‘Ooh, what?’ asked Debs.

  ‘Dunno. I think it was, like, a classroom. Or a teacher.’

  ‘Ergh,’ I said. ‘He’ll probably be some full-on scally in a shell suit and trainees.’ (We didn’t call them trainers, we called them trainees.) The girls nodded in agreement.

  On one level I was right. When we first caught sight of him in the canteen at dinner time, Greg Valentine was wearing something approaching sports casual rather than the standard school uniform, and his trainees were Adidas, multicoloured, which some of the lads in the canteen eyed with something approaching lust. What I wasn’t prepared for was that he had the face of an angel. Charlotte Church may have had the voice, but Gregory Valentine definitely had the face.

  For a start he didn’t look English. I’m not being racist pointing that out, it’s just he had this sun-kissed mop of blond curls, cut into an attempt at a wedge. The mop fell flatteringly into his eyes, which looked dark and brown, and his eyebrows were similarly at odds with his blonde hair. And the dimples. Oh the dimples! They hadn’t just tickled Gregory Valentine with the pretty stick, they’d poked him in either cheek with it, and it had stuck. On paper it sounded so wrong. Blond curly hair. On a bloke. But the reality seemed to be making every girl in the canteen swoon. It was like he walked in and we toppled over in rapid succession, like dominoes.

  ‘He looks like thingy,’ said Hayls. ‘That fella in The Blue Lagoon.’

  ‘I’ve never been to the Blue Lagoon,’ said Debs.

  ‘Not the wine bar on Rose Lane, y’knob, the film. On the desert island. Where they keep shagging.’

  Neither of us had seen it. Though from the look on Debs’ face, you could tell she thought it sounded good.

  ‘She’s in it,’ Hayls continued. ‘South Shields. Our Andy’s got the video.’

  We weren’t really listening, though. We were too busy staring at Greg. He even had tanned skin. I later found out this was natural; he only had to hear there was a bit of sun outside for him to go the same colour as a mug of Mellow Birds. That’s why I thought he didn’t look particularly English. Not that we did either, I suppose. Liverpool is practically the capital of Ireland so, in the Caucasian population at least, there’s a lot of fair skin, freckles and dark brown hair everywhere.

  ‘He looks like he should be in Abba or something,’ Debs said, and she was so right.

  ‘Scandinavian,’ I said.

  ‘But with a tan,’ pointed out Hayls.

  ‘Tandinavian,’ I added, and they both smiled. Suddenly Hayls laughed her head off really loudly, and Greg looked over. So me and Debs laughed our heads off, too, almost crying, clutching onto each other for dear life, such was the force of our hilarity. You see, this was Rule Number One in our flirting book. In order to grab a man’s attention, make out you’re having the BEST (and noisiest) time. And it worked. Greg bought a sausage roll from the counter – cue Hayls stopping howling with laughter in order to say, ‘Sausage rolls. I love sausage rolls!’ before recommencing with the laughter – checked us out again, possibly thinking we were mad women, and scarpered from the canteen. Which is when our laughter ended as abruptly as it had begun, and everyone else in the canteen eyed us suspiciously, as if they totally knew what we were up to. The three of us sighed, knackered from the exertion.

  ‘He looked straight at me,’ said Debs.

  ‘He was like, mentally undressing me,’ echoed Hayls.

  Whereas actually, I couldn’t help but think – I’m not blowing my own trumpet or anything. Why should I? I can’t read music – that that young man was defo looking straight at me.

  It wasn’t the most romantic of first encounters. I wished it had been. Like my mum and dad. They’d met on the steps of the Anglican cathedral when he’d been going in for midnight mass and Mum had been collecting money for Dr Barnardo’s on the steps on the way in. He was a bit pissed – he’d been on a pub crawl with some of the fellas from work – but he took a bit of a shine to her and tried to put a fifty pence piece in the slot of her box, only he was a bit fingers and thumbs because of the extent of his inebriation and they had a laugh about it. When the service was over he saw her again and slipped her what she thought was a five pound note. But when she looked again it was a corner of the order of service he’d ripped off and scribbled his phone number on. She phoned him a few days later and he took her to a dance at the Rialto. They really hit it off, but there was a spanner in the works because Dad had to go away for two weeks on a training course, so Mum made him promise to write every day. He said he would, but she didn’t believe him for one minute. Still, he came up trumps and she still has the fourteen letters to this day. I was always amazed when I read them. He’s a man of such few words usually, and yet on paper he was articulacy itself. One day, I decided, I wanted fourteen letters of my own.

  The first time I spoke to Greg we were in between classes on the Maths corridor and he was walking behind me. He tapped me on the shoulder and I turned round and feigned surprise with a, ‘Oh. You. Hi. Greg, isn’t it? Did you want something?’

  And he sort of smiled, embarrassed, and said, ‘You’ve got something on your back.’

  ‘Duh!’ I joked. ‘It’s my blazer!’

  ‘No. On your blazer.’

  And he ripped off a piece of paper onto which someone had written, ‘I AM A SLAG’. I went the colour of beetroot and quickly said, ‘I’m not a slag! That’s just people messing about.’

  To which he shrugged and went, ‘Well, I never wrote it. I don’t even know you.’

  WHY? Why couldn’t he finish it off with, ‘But I’d like to get to know you better,’ like they did in the movies or on Byker Grove? But no, this wasn’t fantasy land, this was my life. And so he walked off, hands in pockets, head down. An Adonis with a complex about his height perhaps. Because it was at that moment that I realized he was a lot taller than the other lads in our year. I’d not noticed it in the canteen as there’d been so many older kids about, but now we were alone in the corridor he looked ginormous. Just as I was idly wondering whether he might have gigantism disorder I saw him peer into one of the classrooms, falter, then look back to me.

  ‘Sorry. Can you help me? I’m completely lost.’

  Yes! There was a God!

  Turned out he was looking for the metalwork room, so I showed him the way. OK, so I went a very circuitous route so that we’d get to spend more time together, and I remembered the guidelines set out in my Sugar magazine about how to impress a boy if you didn’t have big boobs – it was mostly to do with smiling a lot, cracking jokes and chewing the end of your hair. As my hair was scraped back, I skipped the chewing-hair bit and, on the whole, it seemed to work as he laughed affably, although I wasn’t sure how much was out of politeness as opposed to finding me hilarious. But he laughed all the same. And when, three days later – well, that’s what it felt like – we arrived at the metalwork room he turned to me and said, ‘Cheers, Jodie. You’re a star. I really appreciate it.’

  How could a lad who’d been kicked out of another school be so polite? It didn’t make sense. Maybe he’d been polite when setting fire to the classroom/teacher. ‘Sorry, mate, I hate to have to do this, but it’s for the best, what with me pyromaniacal tendencies and all that, you know?’ Not that he looked like a fire starter, twisted fire starter. But then again, maybe still, fiery waters really did run deep. Then I realized something else. He knew my name and I hadn’t even told him it. That, surely, was a good sign?

  After our chance encounter in the corridor and subsequent ten-mile hike around the school, Greg and I often kept each oth
er company at break and dinner time. Debs and Hayls didn’t mind, they positively encouraged it, thrilled that they could bask in his reflected gorgeousness glory second hand. And truth be told I was flattered, amazed even, that Greg wasn’t embarrassed to be seen with me in public.

  And he knew my name without me telling him it. I must have kept banging on about this because one day Hayls said, ‘Maybe he’s psychic. Now can you shut your fucking cakehole, Jodie?’

  So I did.

  We had our first kiss when we were babysitting for this posh couple who lived in one of the big houses near the golf course. Derek was a social worker, and I loved it when I babysat for him and his wife because I’d go rooting around in his briefcase and read all the case notes about the different families he was working with. It was really interesting, and even though I knew it was wrong I justified it to myself by deciding it was educational. I learned a lot about how other people led their lives, and how horrible people can be to each other and their kids. It made me realize how lucky I was living with my mum and dad. And it made me aware that neglect and abuse didn’t just happen on our estate, it happened in posh houses, too. One of his cases was a little girl of about three who’d been neglected, and part of the neglect was that her dad had left her unsupervised in their swimming pool. I didn’t even know people in Liverpool had their own swimming pools. I thought everyone was like me and had to traipse down to the local municipal pool, where there were turds floating about in the deep end and you had to dive for a brick in a pair of pyjamas – God knows why. What use is that in an emergency?

  ‘Quick! Swim for your life, the boat is sinking! But can you bob down and get us that brick first? WHADDAYA MEAN YOU HAVEN’T GOT YOUR PYJAMAS ON!?’

  Derek and his wife Eileen were a pair of old hippies; their house was crammed with joss sticks and pot pourri, and she was never out of a gypsy skirt. Their kids, Molly, five, and Rufus, three, were a pair of spoilt brats, but they always nodded off when I read them their bedtime story. Not that I was boring them or anything, in fact, quite opposite. They’d told Eileen that I was really good at doing all the voices, which was one of the reasons they liked me babysitting, even if I did eat them out of house and home and help myself to their Tia Maria every now and again. They also didn’t mind if I had mates over to help pass the time while I was babysitting. Not that I had that much spare time as there were so many case notes to read and lovely salads to eat – Eileen was always throwing dinner parties and insisted I helped myself to whatever leftovers were lurking under clingfilm in the fridge. So anyway, one night I’d planned on babysitting alone and getting stuck into some notes about a little girl who was being sexually abused by her mum’s boyfriend. I was desperate to know what happened next, but as I opened the briefcase and pulled out the brown folder of notes the doorbell rang. I hastily shoved everything back, closed the briefcase and hot-footed it to the front door.

  It was Greg. He’d come over on his BMX. It was the nicest surprise ever. He explained that he’d called round at ours and Our Joey had told him where I was, so he’d cycled over to see if I ‘wanted some company’. It sounded so grown-up: ‘wanted some company’. It was the sort of thing people said on the telly, not fifteen-year-old lads from round our way. He wheeled his bike into the hall and I went and fixed him a Tia Maria with ice from Derek and Eileen’s special dispenser in the door of the fridge. We went and sat on their huge chunky sofa in the living room and there was an anxious silence.

  ‘So. What were you doing before I got here?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I was just reading the kids a bedtime story,’ I lied. ‘They’re spark out now.’

  ‘What were you reading them?’

  ‘Forever by Judy Blume.’

  He giggled. Everyone at school knew that book was filthy because it had blow jobs in it. It was the most thumbed book in the school library.

  ‘I’m only messing. Just some shite about a teddy bear and his pyjamas.’

  He nodded. ‘Nice one.’

  God, I wished I’d known he was coming, I thought, I would have made more of an effort with my appearance, instead of being sat there in a granny cardigan, leggings and a scrunchy.

  ‘Boss house this, isn’t it?’ he said, looking around the room.

  ‘I know, it’s off its head,’ I agreed. ‘So. How you finding school?’

  ‘S’all right. Most of them are knobs, but a few are OK.’

  ‘What, the teachers or the pupils?’

  ‘Both. I like Your Joey, he’s sound.’

  I liked that about him. He’d seen Our Joey being picked on by a gang of year eleven lads on the way home from school once and he’d scared them off by threatening to set fire to them. Ever since he’d kept Our Joey company on the way home from school, riding his BMX at a snail’s pace while Our Joey ambled along. God knows what they found to talk about, Our Joey’s conversational repertoire was mostly about the Eurovision Song Contest, but Greg claimed Joey made him laugh. I liked to think he was doing it for me, being Our Joey’s protector to show me how much he loved me, or at the very least that he had feelings for me. To be honest, I thought it impossibly romantic, though Hayls and Debs reckoned he was only doing it ‘coz he had no other mates’.

  We sat and chatted for ages; the conversation just flowed. I don’t know whether it was because it was nearly the end of the summer term and we had imminent freedom stretching ahead of us for six weeks, but something certainly made us relax. Maybe it was the Tia Maria. He told me all about his dad’s skip-hire business, which would have been totally boring if someone else had been talking about it, but with him it was interesting. I started wondering if I might one day want to work with skips. I even mooted the idea of a women-run skip-hire business called Ladyskips, which really made him laugh. I also made him laugh with all my impersonations of the different teachers at school. When eventually the conversation seemed to be drying up, as well as our Tia Marias, I hot-footed it to the kitchen and poured us both a refill. He followed me, as if nervous to be left in a strange room in a strange house on his own. It was then that I confronted the white elephant in the room and asked him why he’d been kicked out of his old school. He told me that he knew his reputation went before him, and that everyone assumed he was a fire starter, but actually he’d done no such thing. He’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been caught up in a fire started by some other lads (oooh, dramatic!) and when the headmaster had asked him who’d started the blaze, which was in the music room and damaged loads of wooden instruments like cellos, violins and even a baby grand, Greg refused to say.

  ‘I know I should’ve fessed up,’ he said, ‘but I’d only have got my head kicked in. And these lads knew where I lived and said they’d set fire to our house if I said anything. I bet you think I’m a right coward.’

  ‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I’m glad you never grassed.’

  I’d said it a bit quickly. I was glad he never grassed because it meant he’d ended up at our school. If he’d grassed then he wouldn’t have been stood here now at Derek and Eileen’s, pretending to enjoy Tia Maria on ice. But rather than sound desperate I added, ‘No one likes a grass!’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, my dad’s worked dead hard to build up the skip business. I didn’t wanna see it all go up in a puff of smoke.’

  ‘It still feels a bit tight, kicking you out just coz you were there. The head couldn’t really have thought you started it, could he?’

  ‘He was just trying to make an example out of me. He threatened me with exclusion if I didn’t grass, so me ma removed me from the school anyway. She was fuming.’

  ‘I bet she was.’

  ‘I just . . . haven’t told anyone else at school, in case they think I’m a wimp.’

  ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’

  ‘I knew it would be.’

  And he winked. Now, as far as the magazines I read were concerned, winking could definitely be bracketed in the flirting category of human behaviour. Unsure what to do, I found mys
elf winking back. Greg was just taking a sip of his Tia Maria when I did it, and he spat it out, pissing himself. Oh well, at least I’d made him laugh. He’d got Tia Maria all down his Lacoste sweatshirt, so I went and got a cloth from the sink and dabbed it down for him. It didn’t make much difference so he went, ‘Come on, I’ll do it.’ And he took the cloth from me, with the slightest brush of skin on skin as he did so, then he brusquely rubbed the jumper and the stain started to come out.

  I took the cloth back off him and went to run it under the tap. Suddenly I felt heat behind me. It wrong-footed me, but then before I could wonder what was going on I felt Greg’s arms snaking round my waist and he started nuzzling the back of my neck. And although this is what I’d wanted right from the minute I’d seen him coming into the canteen to get a sausage roll, I just froze. He, of course, sensed this and backed off as soon as he’d advanced. I swung round.

  ‘No! It’s fine. I like it. I was just a bit . . .’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, don’t be.’

  ‘Nah, I thought . . .’

  ‘No, you thought right.’

  The relief on his face was evident.

  ‘So can I . . .?’

  ‘Do what you want!’ That sounded a bit desperate.

  ‘Well, I could start off by . . . kissing you, like.’

  ‘OK. Go on then.’

  And he leaned forward, cupped my face in his hands as if it was a mug of hot chocolate and . . . well . . . it’s not like I hadn’t kissed anyone before. I’d kissed loads of lads. I mean, I wasn’t a slag or anything – despite what that sign on my back said – but I’d snogged enough people to know I wasn’t that keen on the whole thing. But then, I hadn’t been snogged by Greg Valentine. Until now. And, oh my God, it was amazing. He started off just kissing my lips, and while he slipped his hands down, off my hot chocolate face, he wrapped one arm around my back and put the other one on my shoulder. His breath was hot and sweet, and then, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, he pushed his tongue into my mouth. I say it like it was the most natural thing in the world because this was the first time it had felt anything other than completely weird. Usually it felt as alien as someone shoving a pickled gherkin in my mouth and waggling it about a bit. But this just felt wonderful. I even reciprocated and shoved my gherkin – I mean tongue – in his mouth, and he didn’t gag or anything and go, ‘Ergh! Don’t do that, you dirty bitch, how do I know where it’s been?!’ He carried on like it was what he wanted, too. Like we were exploring each other.