by Emlyn Rees
‘But … what are you going to do to him?’ I cried desperately.
Mr Pearce drew me away from the door and made me sit in the red leather chair. He leant on its back next to me. ‘Look, er …?’ he said calmly, leaning forward.
‘Mickey,’ I mumbled, swiping angrily at my tears.
‘Mickey. OK … well, Mickey, we have a thing here called in loco parentis. Do you know what that means?’
I shook my head.
‘It means’, he continued infuriatingly calmly, ‘that I am responsible for all the boys here. In this house they fall under my care. By law I have to act as their parents would if they were here.’
‘Fred doesn’t need you. He’s old enough to do what he wants,’ I spat back.
‘He’s not. Not according to the law and not according to the rules of this school.’
‘Well, I think your rules are stupid,’ I blurted out. ‘You lock people up here like animals –’
‘This is an educational establishment, Mickey, not a zoo. The rules are here for a purpose. They are here for the boys’ own protection.’
‘Fred doesn’t need protecting.’
‘I’ll have to disagree with you there. How old are you?’
‘Seventeen,’ I lied.
Mr Pearce looked unimpressed and raised his eyebrows at me. ‘I’m going to need your parents’ number. I take it they don’t know you’re here?’
I sat silently, feeling trapped, my hands curled into tight fists. I hated this man and everything he stood for.
‘Can you tell me your home number?’ asked Mr Pearce, walking behind his desk and picking up the telephone receiver.
‘Go to hell,’ I snarled.
Mr Pearce put the phone down slowly. ‘Look, Mickey,’ he said reasonably, ignoring my last remark. ‘I appreciate that you’re angry and this situation is rather delicate, but let’s not make it any worse than it already is. I think it’s best if you stay the night here and your parents can come and collect you in the morning.’ He looked at me, but I still refused to relent. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I won’t tell them about … well, you know.’ He cleared his throat.
I bit my lips together and looked up at the ceiling. I could see a cobweb hanging from the light. I was determined not to speak, but Mr Pearce wasn’t letting me off the hook.
‘I’ve got all night,’ he said, picking up the receiver again. ‘I can find out your home number from Fred’s mother, if you would prefer?’
The last thing I wanted was for Louisa to get involved. I had no choice but to tell him and I watched as he dialled. I could tell it was Dad who answered and I felt myself cringing, as Mr Pearce talked to him.
‘Hello, it’s Andrew Pearce here from Greenaway College,’ he introduced himself, scratching a tuft of his beard. ‘You’ve no doubt been wondering where your daughter, Mickey, is?’
He glanced at me. ‘Yes, that’s right … her friend Frederick Roper …’
I tuned out, staring towards the wall, my eyes blurring with tears.
Eventually Mr Pearce put down the phone. ‘Come on,’ he said, standing up and ushering me out of the door. ‘My wife will look after you. ‘Sue?’ he called, stepping out into the corridor, his voice jovial, as if nothing had happened. I stared at him, astounded that he could have detonated my world and yet sound so cheerful. A short woman with frizzy hair appeared from a door near the stairs. She was wearing a pink and white tracksuit and she smiled at me as she walked towards us, gently shooing the dog out of the way. ‘If you can fix Mickey here up in the box room …’
The room was up two flights of stairs at the back of the house. It was decorated with frilly blue curtains and had speckled blue and purple wallpaper. I sat on the soft bed feeling more alone than ever. I’d already tried the window, but it was locked and I knew that Mr and Mrs Pearce would be listening out for my every move. Fred was somewhere on the other side of that wall, he could only be feet away, but he might as well have been in Australia.
The blue carpet was a blur, as tears fell on to my lap. Only half an hour ago I’d been lying naked with Fred, but it seemed like a lifetime away and, even though I was fully clothed now, I felt more exposed than ever. I was swamped by the humiliation of having been caught in the act. I supposed it would be the kind of thing that was funny, if it had happened to someone else. I could imagine Annabel and Pippa gasping with delighted horror, if they were ever to find out. But to me it felt desperate. I simply couldn’t get my head past the shame of Mr Pearce, and that vile Clarkson, seeing Fred and me. It had made it all so sordid. However hard I tried to remember how beautiful and amazing it had been making love, it had been soiled and ruined by other people, and I wanted to kill them all.
Everything had been perfect. Or at least as perfect as possible, given the circumstances. But now, having been ripped away from Fred, I felt worse than I did when I hadn’t been able to see him at all. I couldn’t bear to think about what was happening to him, or how bad he must be feeling. At least I was on my own. Poor Fred would be back in his dormitory and everyone would know about us.
I don’t know how long I sat on the bed, but eventually I heard the door open. Mrs Pearce walked into the room and put a steaming mug on the bedside table. ‘I made you some hot chocolate,’ she said and I glanced at the mug out of the corner of my eye, but didn’t say anything.
‘Mickey?’ Mrs Pearce, put her hand on my shoulder and sat down next to me on the bed. The springs underneath creaked with her weight. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked gently.
‘It’s not fair,’ I whispered. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘Come on, now. It’ll all seem better in the morning,’ she said.
I looked up at her, my eyes narrowed with loathing. ‘It won’t. It won’t. You don’t understand. It’s not Fred’s fault –’
‘Look, if it makes you feel any better, Fred isn’t going to be expelled. He’s leaving anyway after his exams in two weeks. The poor boy, he’s been through quite enough.’
Her words didn’t make me feel better. They were the last thing I wanted to hear, but something in her tone made me feel less bitter. I turned to her, hoping to appeal to her. ‘Can’t I see him? Just for a minute,’ I begged.
‘I don’t think that’s going to be possible,’ she said, reaching behind me and pulling back the cover. ‘Certainly not tonight. Look, the best thing you can do is get some rest. We’ll see what we can do in the morning.’
Reluctantly, I shifted backwards and pulled my feet up, hugging my knees.
‘There. That’s right,’ said Mrs Pearce, handing me a tissue.
I blew my nose. ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled.
‘Just get some sleep now. I expect you’re very tired.’ She smiled at me, her eyes kind. ‘It’ll all be better in the morning.’
I nodded dumbly as she stood up and left the room, throwing me a worried look before closing the door. Then I buried my head in my knees and sobbed myself to sleep.
It wasn’t better in the morning. I was jarred out of fitful dreams by a piercing electric bell. I could hear shouting and I leapt out of bed, pulling aside the curtain. Fifteen minutes or so later there were more bells. I looked through the window. The doors in the main part of the building burst open and a whole gang of boys in school uniform spilt out on to the drive, running against the rain. I leant up towards the glass window-pane, wiping my condensed breath off with my sleeve, hoping to find Fred’s face in the crowd, but he wasn’t there.
Predictably, my dad turned up early. It was odd seeing him at Fred’s school. Dressed in his best, most sombre suit, he still seemed out of his depth and stuttered uncomfortably. I said nothing as he thanked Mr and Mrs Pearce, assuring them that I would be punished in the way he saw fit. I felt an icy detachment descend on me as I walked to Dad’s car. I didn’t look back as I left the school grounds.
Dad and I didn’t speak all the way back to Rushton. I sat, fixating on the windscreen wipers, watching the blades lash back and forth, feeling as if I were bein
g whipped. I didn’t care what my parents did to me. The worst punishment in the world had already happened.
When we got home, Mum was waiting in the dining room, angrily smoking a cigarette. I noticed the ashtray on the table was already full. ‘I can’t believe you,’ she started, her head wobbling with fury. ‘The humiliation of it all. You have no idea –’
‘What made you do it?’ asked Dad, finding his voice at last. ‘What made you run away?’
I looked at him, astounded that he could ask such a question. How could I begin to make him understand that Fred and I were in love and that seeing Fred was the only thing that mattered to me?
Mum stood with her hands on her hips, her face set in an angry scowl. ‘Answer your father,’ she commanded.
I ignored her, squeezing my lips together as I looked at the light hanging over the table. From the corner of my eye I could see Dad glancing at Mum and I sensed a change of tack.
Dad cleared his throat. ‘Did Fred? Did he … you know … touch you?’ he asked.
I felt something inside me snap. I looked between my parents, feeling hatred surge through me. ‘We were having sex,’ I sneered. ‘Of course he touched me.’
My mother let out a whimper and turned away. ‘Oh, Geoffrey!’ she said, clutching her hand to her mouth.
‘Don’t treat me like a child,’ I shouted.
‘But you are a child,’ said Dad icily.
‘You can’t stop me doing what I want,’ I yelled, rearing towards him. For a moment I thought he was going to slap my face, but he didn’t.
‘We can and we will. You’re not going to see Fred again. Not ever. Do you hear me?’
‘I’m going to see him. I don’t care what you say. We love each other and we’re going to be together.’
‘No, you’re not,’ said Dad. ‘You’re going to do your exams and start showing some respect around here.’
‘I hate you!’ I screamed at him. ‘I hate you both. You don’t care about me.’
‘That’s it!’ shouted my mother, incensed. ‘Can’t you understand? There’ll be no more of this nonsense.’ She started towards me, but Dad held her back.
I glared at her, willing every ounce of spite I could muster at her, before turning on my heel and running up the stairs to my bedroom, where I slammed the door as hard as I possibly could.
The flat feels unusually quiet when Lisa and Joe have gone out. I zap through the TV channels, feeling at a loose end. There’s nothing on that’s worth watching, so I turn it off and run a bath. I dig through Lisa’s wooden box of aromatherapy oils and pull out the rose oil. Unscrewing the lid, I breathe in the heady scent and wonder if it really can solve all my stress.
It takes thirty roses to make just one drop of essential oil. Being in love back then was like dousing myself in a whole bottle of the stuff. It was overpowering, heady and dangerous, and every emotion since has seemed vastly diluted. It strikes me now, as I carefully tip a few drops under the gushing water, that ever since Fred, I’ve lived half my life in a pretty much constant state of anticlimax.
I kept a diary after we were split up that fateful night. Writing down how I felt seemed to be the only way of ordering my thoughts. For a year, I wrote daily, like a prisoner bursting with impotent outrage, as I hurled myself against the infuriating wall of parental authority. At first my lengthy outpourings were tear-stained and grief-ridden, long passages of which I duplicated in my letters to Fred. But when I heard nothing back from him my diary entries became an embittered tirade, giving way to confusion and, lastly, depression.
Then I wrote to keep my feelings alive, recording mundane events of my lonely existence with added pathos, hoping that one day those pages would be my evidence. That if, by some miracle, I ever did see Fred again, I could show him the tomes to make him experience the misery I’d felt. Or, if the worst came to the worst and I died, my parents would be able to read and weep at the unhappiness they’d inflicted on me.
For most of my childhood I’d been chasing adulthood, willing it to be official, seeing the age of independence burning like a beacon on my horizon, but without Fred I felt robbed of any glory and I barely had the energy to blow out the candles on the cake Grandma Richie made for my sixteenth birthday. Of course, I failed my O levels, more out of protest than anything else. Since the world wanted to treat me like an imbecilic child, I decided I’d behave like one. I had nothing to live for and where there had been a future vibrant with dreams, without Fred there was just a blank.
Thinking back, it seems ironic that it wasn’t the moment I lost my virginity to Fred that marked the end of my childhood, but when I slammed my bedroom door on my parents. I was more petulant and childish than ever, but as I wept into the dressing gown hanging on the inside of my door, beating my fists with muffled frustration, I became aware that I’d lost and for the first time I was defeated.
I can’t blame my parents for the way they acted. They were frightened that I was growing up too quickly. And I can’t blame Mr Pearce, Fred’s housemaster, for splitting us up because he also acted out of fear. His hands were tied by responsibility and the possible consequences of allowing his dependants to live outside the rules. And so it was that between them, their fear seeped under my barricaded bedroom door and I became an adult.
From that moment on I never had the same view of the world. Where once my parents had had to stop me, I now stopped myself. I changed from being self-centred to being self-censored. The world ceased to be a place of wonder, a place to go and grab. I never opened an atlas after that and shouted ‘stop’. I never built elaborate fantasies again. Even when I met Dan and moved to London, there was a part of my heart that was always cautious.
If Fred and I had been able to stay in touch, perhaps things would have been different. Inevitably, though, fury turned to apathy and the pain hardened into numbness. The diary writing waned and then stopped. I’d relived our passion in the temple over and over in my mind, until I’d regurgitated the memory so many times that it stopped being tangible. Eventually my whole relationship with Fred no longer felt real. We were old news. Everyone and everything moved on. Even the newspaper articles about Miles, which had seemed so important at the time, were consigned to kitty litter.
I tip my head back and let the water seep into my hair. I feel it float like seaweed around my head and wonder what life would be like if I weren’t cautious. Last weekend flashes into my head. I feel the sunshine up on Jimmy Dughead’s field and see myself standing with Joe and Fred looking out over the rooftops of Rushton. Could life really be like that all the time?
I sit up abruptly and smooth the water from my hair, angry with myself. I can’t do this. Last weekend wasn’t a promise of things to come, it was a pleasant aftertaste of things that have gone and I’m a fool to think there’s any reality in it. It was no more real than a television advert showing a happily family. Life isn’t like that: the parents are actors and the children have make-up on to make them look rosy.
I hug my knees up in the bath and face facts. The truth is that Fred isn’t mine, he’s Rebecca’s. Tomorrow, he’ll walk up an aisle towards her, looking impossibly handsome and the snapshot image of a happy couple full of hope will have her face in it, not mine.
It’s wrong to feel jealous, but I feel sick with it. I don’t think the rose oil has helped. I feel as if I’ve got pure green loathing pumping through my veins.
For a second I fantasise about calling Rebecca. ‘Hi, Rebecca, it’s Mickey here,’ I say aloud. ‘Fred doesn’t love you. He loves me.’
As soon as I’ve said it, I let out a deep sigh. How can I think such a thing? What kind of a person would it make me if I did that? Why ruin her life? She hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s not Rebecca’s fault, it’s Fred’s.
Of course, I could take matters into my own hands. I could, if I had the nerve, split Fred and Rebecca up. I could be the one to stand up in the church and spell out the just cause and impediment exactly why it is that they shouldn’t be joined
in holy matrimony, but what would it prove? I wouldn’t be the girl Fred ran off with, I’d be the person who’d ruined everyone’s day.
I know I’m being unfair because, by anyone else’s standards, Fred’s done nothing wrong, but I still despise him for taking the easy path. He’s spent his adult life treading so carefully that he’s become highly skilled at it, but I suppose he’s an exemplary model of the way we’re all supposed to behave. I should applaud his maturity, not denounce it.
Of course he’s not going to run out on Rebecca. Why would he? He’s adapted to being a Wilson and built a highly successful life around the person he is now. Why should I set such great store by the past that we once shared, or the person I loved all those years ago? Is that honestly enough to expect him to change his whole life?
After all, it’s not as if I’ve offered him anything but a whole load of doubts. Even when we were on the brink of being reckless, even when he was right there in front of me, I still backed away and wouldn’t risk my security for him. If I didn’t act then, why should Fred act now?
But being adult about our situation doesn’t solve it. The reason I’m feeling so churned up is because seeing Fred again has reminded me of something. Of a girl who wasn’t afraid to take action and sitting here, shivering, even though the bath is hot, I feel ashamed when I compare myself with the person I used to be.
I get out of the bath, fling on some old jeans and start a hunt for my hairdryer. I find it in Joe’s room and sit on his bed. Under the bottom of the duvet is a lump and I reach under and pull out Joe’s toy turtle. He’s had it for a few years and I tweak the ears of the familiar friend. I press down on its head, trying to find the hard lump inside that, when pressed, activates an electronic voice.
‘Make a wish,’ says the turtle’s voice and I smile.
‘Well, turtle,’ I say aloud, ‘I wish I was young again.’ I look up and catch my reflection in Joe’s small mirror, and feel tears welling up, as I dare myself to say what I’m thinking. ‘And I wish,’ I say hoarsely, looking at my bedraggled, tangled hair and tired face, ‘I wish …’
