Sweet

by Julie Burchill

  ‘But you have slain my doubts about adoring you!’ Asif smirked.

  ‘Puh-leese!’ We sniggered and I mock-fainted against the case the skeleton was in. It didn’t so much as shudder – made of strong stuff, like me!

  I look at that skellington, all old and cold, and then at Asif, so young and warm; I heard Kim’s footsteps in another room, searching for us, determined to spoil our fun, and then I heard my own breath in my ears. I leaned back against the big glass case, pulled my skirt up and Asif against me, and away we went – celebrating life against a boxful of death.

  But wouldn’t you just know it? Even as I heard myself going yes, yes, yes! I could hear that other, prissy little voice going, ‘Oh no!’ So Asif got laid – but the ghost didn’t.

  Not this time.

  15

  Dirty deed done, we wandered back into town, drawn like moths to the mall. At a corner shop I stopped to get some fags, and blow me – or rather them – down if Ags and Bags weren’t plastered all over the front page of the local rag! Right long hold-my-hand-mammy faces they had on them, and as far as I could remember it was the first time I’d seen their faces together without at a smirk on at least one of them. So at least I’d wiped the smile off.

  But the smile was wiped straight off mine as I read what it said. ‘Wankers!’ I yelled.

  The shopkeeper gave me evils. ‘Come on, love, we’re not a lending library – you gonna buy that or what?’

  Buy it? Burn it, more friggin’ likely! Too right it was a bloody hate crime! – I hated the way that fat, rich pair of ponces thought they could treat me like trash and get away with it. And now THEY were playing the victims! This was Brighton, anyway – if there was a homophobic gang hellbent on trashing the home of every rich, shirt-lifting local, it wouldn’t take long to catch ’em, heh heh; they’d soon be checking themselves into A & E with overwork and exhaustion!

  ’Cept they wouldn’t – cos it was me – and now I’d committed a hate crime, on top of my previous – and the police were looking for me . . . again . . .

  And there was that bloody reward . . . and the fact that young Master Trulocke always had expensive appetites and a big mouth.

  I threw the paper down and marched up to the counter.

  ‘Twenty Marlboro Red. And two four-packs of them Half-Sugar Bacardi Breezers – Crisp-Apple flavour. And a bottle of Smirnoff,’ I added as an afterthought. This wasn’t the sort of problem that was gonna be solved by a handful of alcopops.

  I slammed out of the shop and straight into Asif, waiting patiently for me outside. ‘Don’t you have a church to go to?’ I snapped.

  He looked hurt. ‘I came here from Crawley just to spend today with you. I thought that was what you wanted – to make me a tour, and to be with me. Do you want me to leave you now?’

  ‘Just carry these, will ya?’ I thrust my bottled bounty at him. ‘And don’t say nothing till we get to the beach.’

  We walked in silence down to the shore, and it wasn’t till we were sat shivering on the shingle, and I had two Smirnoff-supplemented Crisp-Apple Breezers down my neck that either of us spoke.

  ‘Asif . . . you know I’m not what they call a “nice” girl, don’t you?’

  He looked awkward. He wasn’t keen on lying, due to his religion and all that. ‘You are nice to me. You are nice to animals.’

  ‘Yes, but you know what “nice” means, don’t you . . . it doesn’t mean “kind”. It means, “Doesn’t have sex with people she barely knows.”’

  He looked away, picking up a pebble and throwing it. ‘You know me. You know me well.’

  ‘I don’t even know your birthday!’

  He turned to me. ‘You know where I come from. What has happened to my people. That means much more than a silly birthday.’

  I held his gaze. ‘You’re not keen on lying, are you, Asif?’

  He nodded, looking uncomfortable. He knew what sort of thing was coming; maybe he knew me better than I thought.

  ‘So . . . when you’re with me, what do you tell your parents you’re doing?’

  He looked away again. ‘I tell them the truth – that I am with a friend. The best friend I have made since we left Pakistan.’

  ‘A best friend you fuck! – is that what you tell them?’

  He flinched. ‘Of course not! They would not think to ask.’

  ‘So you just miss out the bits you think mummy and daddy would disapprove of, is that it? Very honest!’

  He swung round and caught me by the wrists. ‘What do you want me to say? To swagger into my parents’ home and say, “Mum, Dad, I am going into Brighton now to screw my friend Sugar”? Would that be a good way for me to talk about you, do you think!’

  ‘So . . .’ I knew I was going to be really mean to someone who’d never done anything to deserve it, but I couldn’t help myself, I felt so mad, bad and sad ‘ . . . if you DID tell Mummy and Daddy about me, how would you describe me, do you think?’

  He thought about it – that is, half about what he really thought of me and half about what he thought I wanted to hear. He was so transparent he made clingfilm look like concrete. ‘I would say she is very beautiful, she loves to laugh – but she is often sad underneath. And she seems very tough – but underneath, she is very vulnerable . . .’

  That did it! – I friggin’ hate that word! ‘Vulnerable’ – it’s what wimpy men have to believe all women are inside no matter how tough they seem, or else they’ll wet their Y-fronts in fear! ‘Excuse me, Asif, but I think you’ll find that it’s a totally wanky misconception that girls who seem tough are all squishy underneath. There IS no “underneath”! Unless you’re looking up someone’s skirt,’ I added rudely.

  You’d have thought he’d have got the hint that I was somewhat displeased with his assessment of me from this tirade, but did he have the sheer smarts to back away from the spade? In a word, no. Asif decided to go for broke – as in ‘if it ain’t broke, break it’!

  ‘And though she is often sad, I believe I can make her happy!’ he blurted. ‘Because I believe the answer to her problems is easy to give!’ He took a deep breath – and then came out with the dumbest thing he could ever have said. ‘I think she would make a wonderful mother one day – and I would like to father her children! And marry her, of course,’ he added, bless him – as if I, who’d do it for half a toffee apple if you caught me at a weak moment, was gonna be offended!

  Whatever, I decided – well, me and the Crisp-Apple Half-Sugar Bacardi Breezer chorus came to a joint decision – that this particular case of mistaken identity had gone far enough. I took the deepest breath a shallow girl can take and said – ‘Well, I am a mother – but I don’t know how wonderful at it my husband would say I am. Not that I’ve had much practice, seeing as how he ran off with my baby while I was in prison. That’s right, banged up for stabbing a bloke with a broken bottle. Which, incidentally, is REALLY gonna count against me if the cops find out that I trashed my last employers’ house so hard you couldn’t tell if it was the right way up any more!’ I smiled right into his horrified face and proffered my bottle. ‘Bottoms up!’

  Young Asif took me at my word here, leaping to his feet and rushing off down the beach without so much as a ‘Here’s mud in your eye!’ – though no doubt that’s what he was thinking, albeit in not the usual jolly spirit in which it’s intended. But within a minute he was back at my side, staring down at me where I sat huddled, drinking and chuckling like a nutter on the cold hard shingle.

  ‘So you are still married?’

  ‘Last time I looked – yeah.’

  He knelt in front of me and took me by the shoulders.

  ‘Ooh, sexy!’ I snickered. ‘We gonna do it alfresco?’

  ‘What happened when you tried to get your baby – what was it, a boy or a girl?’

  ‘A girl,’ I hiccuped.

  ‘What happened when you tried to get your daughter back?’ He was that bossy, you’d think he was a judge or something, not some teenage refugee cle
aner!

  I laughed, leering at him. ‘Get her back! – why would I wanna do a mad thing like that! Jeez, you’re as bad as my mum!’

  He stared at me, gob open, like he was trying to work out what he’s just heard, then when the penny finally dropped his face crumpled into an angry frown. ‘At least your mum IS a mum! She did not abandon you like some . . . package in a park!’

  For some reason this made me laugh uncontrollably.

  ‘What is so funny about this!’

  ‘What should I be doing?’ I spluttered through my chuckles. ‘Hunched in a bundle somewhere, weeping, because some bastard ran off with my baby? Who exactly would that help? Except you,’ I added as a sudden insight. ‘Who then might have less trouble coming to terms with the fact that he’s doing the nasty with a heartless bitch who, it turns out, he didn’t know one damn thing about after all!’

  He sank down beside me, shaking his head. ‘You can talk all you like to make like it’s OK. I may not talk as fast as you – but I do know that it is wrong for a mother just to let her child go.’ He laughed incredulously. ‘And we haven’t even talked about you going to prison for attacking someone!’

  That did it. ‘Attacking someone? Fighting back, you mean?’ It was my turn to grab his shoulders now, and I’m glad to say I did it a damn sight rougher than he did to me. ‘What if those little Christian girls taken off that bus and attacked and raped by those Muslim men had fought back, and had a broken bottle to hand, and stuck it in ’em while the dirty pigs were doing it to them? – would you condemn them too? Turn the other cheek, is it? Well, I’ll tell you who always benefits from some people turning the other cheek – bullies and rapists and bastards in general! And I’ll tell you who keeps on suffering because they’ve swallowed that shit about turning the other cheek – women and kids and Christians and sweet people, that’s who! You put the two things together, and congratulations! – you’ve got a recipe for a really shit world!’ I released him and took a swig of Smirnoff, washing it down with a Breezer chaser. Truth be told I’d forgotten what we were talking about and was playing for time. ‘Well, go on then – you keep turning the other cheek, and see where it gets you!’ I finished triumphantly if rather confusedly.

  ‘Better to turn the other cheek than turn your back on your own child!’ he came back. Ah, that was it. ‘Though it may be a blessing if she never knows exactly what sort of woman her mother is!’

  ‘Oh, make up your mind!’ It was Kim and her mum, Stella, all over again, I thought: Kim’s dad condemning Stella for being a drunk, a slut and a useless mother, and then moaning that she’d run off and left her kids! Surely if she, and now me, were such lousy rotten people, why would anyone want us to be bringing up impressionable young kiddies? Weren’t we actually doing the responsible thing by letting these saint-like fathers take over parental duties? ‘You bunch of fucking hypocrites!’ Then out of sheer temper, I burst into tears.

  Of course Mr Christian-Features saw this as his cue to detect the allegedly vulnerable little girl ‘underneath’ the hard-as-nails Sugar-shell. Like I was a frigging human M&M or something! Quick as you can say ‘soft-centre’ he had his arms around me, smoothing my hair and patting my back and stroking my arms like an octopus on a mission.

  ‘Shh, shh . . . let it all out.’ (Well, make up your mind, like, again.) ‘I see how damaged you are beneath your shell . . .’ (Like I was a tortoise somebody had stuck a sharp stick into!) ‘How you are hurting deep inside . . .’ (For some reason this made me think of cystitis, and I pulled myself away from him, making a real effort not to start laughing again.)

  ‘I’m fine, Asif. Really I am.’ I swigged from both bottles, which I’d kept a tight grip on during my enforced embrace. ‘It’s you that’s got a problem with the truth, so far as I can see.’

  He looked shocked, then resigned. I’ll give him this, he had the sense to know when to stop this time. ‘I see nothing will change your view, Sugar.’ To my surprise he took the vodka from my hand and gulped hard on it before passing it back to me. ‘But I will have my say finally, and then I will stop, and leave it to you to make up your mind.’ He took my hands and looked down at them, then up into my eyes. ‘All I will say is that to me, family is the most important thing in the world – more important even than my faith. But I feel so much for you, Maria, that I would be willing to make your family my own. Give me that, please.’ Another swig of Smirnoff; how different it was when he did it – to make himself even more strong to do the right thing, not to make himself weaker so he had an excuse to do the wrong thing, like the rest of us. ‘I am willing, if you want me to, to do anything we can to get your daughter back so we can be a family. And if my family in any way disrespects either you, your daughter or my decision – though they may not do so, I do not know – I am prepared to turn my back on them. Because then I will have a family of my own.’ He smiled, and I knew what was coming, and whereas most other girls in my position would have swooned, I wanted to be sick. ‘What is her name?’

  ‘Renata. Ren.’

  He smiled. ‘I love her already.’

  Right! That was it! I jumped to my feet. ‘Well, isn’t that just fucking peachy! Because now YOU can find Mark, I’LL divorce him, YOU can marry him, and REN CAN HAVE TWO DADDIES! After all, this is BRIGHTON!’ And with that I stormed back up the shingle, cursing and stumbling all the way, a bottle in either hand – Picture Of An Unfit Mother.

  It was a relief for once to get back to Sweet Towers. As I put my key in the door I could hear Susie, JJ and the twins laughing, and for once it didn’t make me shudder with boredom, but cheered me up. Would it really be so bad, having Ren with me? It’s not like I’d be on my own in some scabby bedsit – she’d have a grandma and an uncle and even two minging twin aunties. And a dad too, if that amazing display on the beach was to be believed.

  And let’s face it, my excuse for a career was hardly heading for the splashy smash of the glass ceiling anytime now; a new jiffy mop was just about the biggest thing on that particular horizon at the moment. How far had I got with my daring plan to get the hell out? Brighton held me as firmly in its grasp as some sort of camp Bermuda Triangle. Maybe it would just be easier – and wiser – to give in to what was expected of me.

  My illusion ended the minute I set eyes on my family – not because they were repulsive, or rowing, or any of the usual stuff that makes you want to flee the family home and never go back. No, it’s just that they seemed SO DAMNED HAPPY with what they’d got – so little, from where I stood (the doorway) – and with their roles of mum, elder brother and bratz. And standing there watching them, it was like I got a glimpse of my future, and how I could fit in too if I surrendered – older sister, old before her time single mum, pram-faced princess. And look, there’s a ‘ren’ in ‘surrender’!

  I left the room quietly – no one noticed me. Which was fine with me, because I’d already decided I didn’t want to fit in. Because giving in and doing the done/easy thing doesn’t mean you’re wise or grown up – it just means you’re a coward. And I realized that though I was fond of my family and wished them no harm – even JJ, the little prick – I didn’t actually want them to become the most important thing in my life. I mean, families are fine being the centre of your life when you’re very young or very old because, let’s be honest, you need them then and you ain’t got much choice. But when you’re living your life proper, they should be the scenery not the main event. Otherwise, in my experience, they feel like a straitjacket. And I wasn’t ready for the nuthouse yet.

  What I was ready for was bed. I let myself into my room and stared at the Twister duvet where Kim and me had had many a memorable roll around. For all her faults she’d introduced me to the idea that there was something more out there, given me a little taste of what a different life might be like – and it had tasted sweet.

  I fell asleep on top of the gay duvet, and dreamed of chasing Ren through endless long corridors, crying. Only when I caught her, she was Kim.

&
nbsp; 16

  I woke up in the morning full of beans – or at least full of Bacardi. You know those mornings you occasionally have when you know that you drank loads the night before and you can’t work out why you have no hangover? Well, that’ll be because you’re still drunk, sucka! And the worst is yet to come.

  So on the way to work I was grinning and singing to myself like a happy idiot – that old song ‘The Only Way Is Up’, for some reason – and it wasn’t till fear and dread greeted me at the gates of Stanwick like two particularly ill-tempered bouncers that I really woke up and smelt the cleaning fluid. The only thing going up around here in the foreseeable future was the planes – with me not on them.

  Asif was already there, pushing a brush around like some horrible illustration of Boy Going Nowhere – the perfect match for a pram-faced princess! – and studiously ignoring me. At break time the Argus I picked up just wouldn’t let the alleged ‘hate crime’ die, and used the trashing of the collection as a springboard to a piece about all these horrible gay-bashing incidents that had happened in Brighton over the past year, which even though I knew weren’t the same made me feel totally shady.

  I couldn’t believe it when I got home that night – I walked right in and there on the local news was Marcella Whittingdale interviewing Aggy and Baggy! She makes me spit anyway cos she’s so gorgeous, but to see her nodding sympathetically as they piled on the agony made me want to hurl. I mean, sod all the other stuff going on in the world – clearly a few stained carpets and slashed curtains were far more important than people starving or being massacred.

  To really rub it in, Susie, JJ and the twins were sitting there glued to the screen. ‘Ooh, there she is! – look, Ria, it’s that couple you used to work for!’ squealed Susie.

  ‘Couple of gaylords!’ sniggered JJ.

  ‘Oi!’ tutted Susie. ‘Leave it! – they’ve just been the victims of a hate crime!’

  ‘My arse!’ I spat. Immediately I caught JJ looking at me funny. ‘What?’