A Tiny Bit Marvellous (15 page)

Dora

Fifteen hours of Art over two whole days, that was just, like, a punishment or something, not an exam. You weren’t allowed out of the room or anything except for lunch and breaks and toilet breaks and stuff. It was like, so harsh? I have decided that even if it ever turned out that I was quite a good artist, I really don’t want an artist’s actual life. Not a painter anyway. All you do all day is paint, and look at it and paint and look at it. By the end of these last two days I am so fed up of looking at it, I never want to see it ever again. I never want to see the Art room ever again, it feels like I’ve been in there my whole life since the day I was born. And it’s all been leading up to this day, the day I can say that’s the last Art day I will ever ever do. Even though the teacher was saying, ‘Come on, Dora, stop talking and get painting, you can do it. Go Dora!’ and stuff, I still feel like I’ve just spent fifteen hours working on something that’s just going to be rubbish in the end. Nearly everything I do is rubbish. I know it is. I’m not dumb. I can see that other people are doing way better than me.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it’s done now and I’ve only got one more cookery theory exam before I finish school forever. Omigod, no more school! Bring it on baby, yeh. What’s it gonna be like? Oh, is that the alarm ringing at 7AM? Is it for me to get up and put on a rank burgundy and grey disgusting school uniform with absolutely zero taste? No, it isn’t – because Dora Battle doesn’t go to school any more. Bye school! Seeya! Hasta La Vesta, school! Bon voyage!

Why is studying text books so effing hard? I tried to be dyslexic way back in Year 8, because they get extra time and wordsearch and spellcheck and stuff but apparently I’m not, which is really annoying. At least I did find out I need glasses, so that’s something. Not sure that totally 125% explains why I hate reading though. It could be because I actually just hate reading, words and sentences and text books ’n’ shizz. BUT. What’s really interesting, and I think the government should like wake up and realize this about young people today, is that I really do love reading Facebook and MSN ’n’ stuff, and that is, after all, reading isn’t it? It’s still words.

If I was allowed to, and if my prison warden mother would let me, I would stay on Facebook all night instead of sleeping. Well, not completely instead of, but I could so manage on like two hours of sleep instead of the eight hours she forces me to have.

I luuurve Facebook. I love it so much I would marry it. Darling Facebook, please marry me so’s we can always be together and you can entertain me non stop and I will never be bored.

Wish I had more friends on there, though. Lottie’s got three hundred or something but she’s like really pretty and popular ’n’ stuff. Even if I had, like, a hundred it would be like so great. I’ve got some new ones recently but mostly they are my cousin’s friends from their school and they’re so immature ’n’ stuff. Lottie’s brother is one of my friends. He’s cool but he’s crap at answering and he only talks about his girlfriend all the time. Yeah thanks I so get the hint.

Sam used to be quite good at talking on there, which was so cute because he’s so bad at talking in person. God, I remember when we were out on our first date and he was so shy he was almost silent. We sat on a bench holding hands. We were both, like texting people ’n’ stuff, then I received a text from him that just said, ‘Can I kiss you?’ It was sooo sweet. And so was the kiss.

Sometimes I thought he was more like his real self when he could write it down on Facebook than to my actual face. Which is why it’s so weird that it’s even called ‘Face’book because the one thing you are actually NOT talking to is someone’s face. Mum gets it so like wrong when she’s always telling me that people invent a person to be on there that isn’t like their true selves, and it gets everyone confused. Well, yeh maybe, sometimes, but I know, for me, I can be much more who I properly am on there than any other time, just like Sam. It’s all right to pretend a bit Mother, coz you never know, one day we might actually get to be the person we wish we could be. Pretending’s just the practice for that, I think.

Anyway I wish I had more people to pretend with, that’s all. I’m going to update my profile and put on some better photos and I might even make a special offer on the Start Groups thing and send it global – something like:

‘Free cupcakes for first twenty hot guys who sign up to be my friend! Must be fit and funny, no losers or uggos need apply. Guaranteed responses to all post.’

Something like that. Do guys like cupcakes? I’ve never made cupcakes but Peter’s pretty good at them and he would like so like to see the responses I got if I did that. He’s quite good on computer stuff, he completely unfroze ours when it went dead. Plus he doesn’t go blabbing to Mum and Dad about my private stuff even though he can be a right little freak sometimes. That’s one of the good things about having a mother from the Neanderthal ages is that she hasn’t got the first clue how to even switch on a computer so she can’t go snoopin’ about, coz I so know she would if she could.

Omigod!! Lottie just posted a response to my message about our prom dresses ’n’ stuff to say she thinks she might have an actual date for the prom, but she’s too shy to talk about it on Facebook so she’s going to tell me when she comes over. Her mum’s being all moody about the exams at the moment so she’s not allowed to come over for a few days.

Got to be honest, I’m a bit jealous if she’s got a date because we were going as eachother’s date and I was looking forward to getting ready together and saying, ‘Yeh, so what everybody – we don’t need a guy to have a great night. Watch us, suckers, we’re bezzie friends and we’re going to dance ’til we die!’ That’s what we said we were going to do, but we can’t if she’s got someone. I should be happy for her really. And maybe her date will have a brother for me! Or a mate or something? Or anything … ?

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Mo

The biggest difference is that I feel lighter. Physically, actually, lighter. I’m not of course. The effect of it is so convincing that I found myself taking stock in the mirror. I was even slightly surprised to find that, disappointingly, I appear to be exactly the same as the last time I looked. I thought, just for a tiny second, that it would show. How? A luminosity of the skin? A light in the eye? A more upright posture? Less heaviness on the thighs? I saw none of this, and yet I feel distinctly different.

Even the journey in was unlike before. I drove the same old route. Those roads, those houses, those shops, yes, but everything was curiously heightened. As if it had all been dipped in paint, or washed clean with a power jet. It was all a tad cleaner and sharper. Or perhaps I’m wearing new ears and new eyes and they see and hear every single thing afresh. Someone has cranked up the volume and the brightness settings on my life. I am utterly in the tinging crystal-clear nub of it all. Except it’s not clear, there’s no actual clarity. If anything, it’s all blurred. So my senses are sharp but my perception is blunt. Talk about confused.

In the grip of this emotional maelstrom, we started Noel’s second session this morning. I found myself ridiculous when I caught me in the mirror applying more mascara just before he was due. I nearly always wear make-up, that’s not unusual, but every woman knows when she is applying those extra little touches. It’s when the eye socket is a fraction darker and deeper, or the eye-liner has a sassy little feline flick at the outer edge, or when the blusher is blushier, or when the lips are more carefully outlined and the red is audaciously, no-doubt-about-it red. I did all of these things, and I knew I couldn’t possibly deny it to myself when I realized my blusher brush was sweeping over my cleavage, revealed in my new top which was, I knew, too low. Far too low. What was I thinking? Fact is I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t want to think. I wanted to feel.

Rejecting any doubt or conscience, I ushered Noel in and he did that thing again, where he steadfastly holds my gaze – it’s unnerving. I tried to start the session by asking if there was anything on his mind. He was silent for a moment. Then he said one word.

‘No.’

Oh God. I’d been an idiot and imagined the whole ghastly, embarrassing episode. I felt a pall of humiliation creeping over me, and tugged up the front of my top so it wasn’t so compromisingly low. My mouth went dry and I started to fidget with my pad, which then of course fell on the floor and as I reached down to get it my top fell forward, revealing even more bosom, a great quantity, a strumpet’s amount. More frantic tugging, this time so obviously flummoxed. By the time I had regained any shred of composure and managed to look him in the eye again, he was smiling that confident winning smile.

He said, ‘I mean NO, there isn’t anything on my mind, there is something. Someone. And only that someone. Nothing else. Please release me from this torture, cut the crap, and tell me you feel the same, Mo.’

That’s when I knew I hadn’t imagined it all, and that he was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. Exquisite. I was suddenly remarkably aware of where we were, sitting opposite each other in my room, at work, and it all felt supremely inappropriate. We ought to be by a fountain in Florence, surely? I am programmed to be professional at work, especially in my room, where so many secrets are told, where so much is entrusted to me. So, in a vain attempt to be normal, and evidently working on autopilot, I ploughed on with the therapy …

‘I suggest, Noel, that what you are experiencing … is … in fact … transference … first described by Freud … as you know, it means the unconscious redirection of feelings for one person to another … very commonly misdirected towards one’s therapist … which is … er … possibly what’s hap-happening here. I would suggest … maybe … ?’

‘I see. Well, if that were the case – and, for the record, I am convinced otherwise – but if indeed that were the case, am I not, then, witnessing the sister phenomenon – that of “counter-transference”, where, might I suggest, the patient’s situation resonates with the therapist consciously … or not. Empathy can cause the therapist … to fall in love.’

He had said the word. Just like that. ‘Love’.

Just like that.

Dropped it in there, a depth charge, which exploded me. In one stroke the equilibrium between my intellectual faculties and my undeniable animal propensities was shattered, and I was his.

I said, ‘Look, Noel, we can’t continue this here,’ and he said, ‘No. I know. Where then? Just say when and where. Please.’

Then I said, ‘Let me think.’

And now I’m thinking.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Oscar

Hargreaves couldn’t attend our meeting of The Enchantings today. He is away to Reading to have his foreskin removed. He claims to have a condition called phimosis, where he says it is too tight to retract correctly, but I am convinced otherwise. I clearly recall when we displayed our ‘swords and medals’ to each other at the inaugural meeting, that his foreskin was entirely functioning. I suspect he has fallen foul of Bollox Bailey’s crazed pontifications on the merits of the helmet-less warrior. How Bailey ever succeeded in claiming the revered post of Head Boy is a mystery. It will take the school a decade of the fittest and finest minds as Head Boys to recover any kudos for that position.

The moron Bailey has attracted ill-repute to every move he has made thus far. His campaign last term, to banish all ‘floppy’ hair that reaches below one’s collar, was barbaric, rendering many of the follicularly elite shorn to within an inch of their ears. I refused to play Samson to his Delilah and instead employed the services of an ingenious little gadget called a ‘scrunchie’ donated by Dandruff Dora, thus sporting the most impudent of swishy ponytails for the remainder of term, well above my collar, and escaping Bailey’s infernal ire. I threatened him with a snood should he persist next term with this idiocy.

Oh Lord, what about the time Bailey decided we all had to refer to him as ‘sir’ as if he were a teacher? Blaguard. I had to be seen to capitulate, and so dreamed up a canny ruse. Instead of calling him ‘sir’ I called him ‘cur’. If I spoke it fast enough he couldn’t tell the difference, and thus I slandered him regularly, maybe twenty times a day. It was most satisfying. I can only hope that the despots who control the school will come to their senses in time for next year, and that I might be rightfully elected Head Boy. My first command shall be that I am referred to as ‘Most Excellent Head Chap’, and my second shall be that on any journey betwixt the Grand Hall and all classrooms, the only mode of forward motion acceptable is the skip. A double or single hop would be equally acceptable. Running or walking will be deemed abhorrent and be punishable by spanking. By hand. By me.

Whatever Hargreaves’s reasons, and I reiterate that I am positive he is maiming himself purely to appease Bailey, or at the very least to find himself vaguely aesthetically sufficient, he was absent today, thus leaving the meeting to consist only of Wilson and myself. It was Wilson’s turn to choose a password, and he chose ‘Jacqueline Onassis’, which was, I think, a sign of his renewed application to his studies and a quantum leap forward for him. I was touched by his efforts to win my approval.

We pretty much covered the agenda in a few minutes, making all kinds of decisions regarding matters of Enchantment. We added the esteemed Clooney to our ‘Approved-List’ although there was a heated debate concerning his sexuality, which is as yet uncategorized. Secondly we agreed that the unfortunate clog-like sandal, named ‘Croc’, cannot be permitted under any circumstance. Finally we Fêted and Elevated the word ‘Dreamboat’ and attached it to the divine John Barrowman in perpetuity.

Since there was no Any Other Business, Wilson and I sat together in the quiet for a snatched moment or two awaiting the ‘end of lunch’ bell. It was unusual to be in such close quarters with only each other, but it didn’t feel in the least bit awkward. He complimented me on my choice of kerchief, which was peeking out of my blazer top-pocket. I explained that it was, in fact, faux. It was one of a swatch of fabrics Mama had been sent, from which to choose, to cover the ottoman in their boudoir. He correctly described it as an ‘ingenious trick of the eye, a pocket-square trompe l’œil if you will, of the dandiest kind’. Well done, Wilson, dear boy. I rewarded him with a little demonstration of two different styles of folding – the Cagney, and my particular favourite, the Astaire.

He marvelled at my expertise, and seemed not a little moved. I felt tenderly towards him and told him so. His little bright eyes lit up and he asked whether I might reconsider the official rankings of my Beloveds, perhaps promoting him further? I assured him that his place was secure, that I could never be unkind to one who had survived such immense sorrow and that I thought him a corker of a chap, and a tiptop honey.

It was then that I realized I may have been a tad loose-lipped, for his quizzical frown told me so. He asked how I knew anything about his past? That if I did, how much did I know?

‘Oh, Wilson,’ I said, ‘never fear, I will forever keep your counsel, dear dear boy. You have suffered so much …’ and I reached out to him. But he upped and dashed away, and I fear I spied a tear in his beautiful eye. And indeed, another tear in his other one.

OOOPS!

A Tiny Bit Marvellous