Demo (13 page)

Laetitia and Julian kinda exchange glances and she shrugs her shoulders. She doesny seem that happy right enough. No as happy as she's tryin to sound. And Julian still isny lookin me in the eye. That suits me. Means I can get a good look at him. Try and take in what he's done to hissel. What
they
done. It's funny how bare naked he seems. His face, I mean. And he's no comfortable, you can see that. Like he needs his dreads to hide behind and suddenly they're no there. So he doesny really know where to put hissel. Where to put his face. It makes him look a lot younger. More kinda scared. Like he's
no really as sure of hissel as he tries to make out. I think it's his eyes. They dae look huge now when there's no hair gettin in the road. I try to remember the exact colour of them when I seen them close up in his bed. Blue. Goldy flecks like wee strands a his tobacco. And I have to turn away, cause I start to get wet and I feel the tears prickin at the same time.

That's when I notice Laetitia watchin me fae under her dark hair. She's standin a few feet away and she comes over to me and puts her arm through mine.

Glad to be going home, Clare?

No really. I keep my face half turned away.

I am, she says. Back to real life.

I say nothin.

It's warm today, isn't it?

If she thinks I'm gonny talk about the weather…

It was fantasy, you know, Clare. You and Julian. He's all wrong for you.

I look at her then. Right in her fuckin ballet dancer face. Right in her big chocolate eyes.

Oh, aye? I says. How would
you
know that?

I bend down and pick up my rucksack. Leave her arm hangin there. I can feel the surprise comin off her even wae my back turned. I walk past Danny to the door of the bus. It's still shut and the driver's sittin wae a newspaper spread over the steerin wheel. Must be an old one. Unless he reads Italian. It's the nice driver, but. The one wae the twinkly eyes. No the wee fat grumpy one wae the greasy hair. I chap the door and he looks up. I smile and he pulls the lever that hisses the door open.

Any chance I could get on and get my seat? I'm cream crackered.

Aye, on you go, pal. It's still twenty minutes afore we leave, mind.

That's OK. I hold my rucksack in front of me and climb on.

That you? The door hisses shut behind me.

Thanks, Charlie. You've saved my life. Sometimes I hear myself soundin just like my ma.

No bother, hen. He goes back to his paper.

I walk up the aisle to the seat next the long back one. If they're comin on this bus, I'm no wantin them behind me. And they wouldny sit in the back seat. They'll want a seat to theirsels. I take my CD player out my bag, alang wae the book that I've no read a word of since we got here. Then I reach down into the bottom and burrow my fingers intay the middle of my T-shirt. I pull out the dread and stuff it quick in the pocket of my hooded top under my coat, take my coat off, roll it up and put it on the rack. Then my rucksack. And I sit down.

Out the window, everybody's still millin about. Laetitia's got her back to the bus and she's talkin to Julian. His face is pale and it looks like it's floatin over her dark head. Like the moon. No the full moon – a quarter moon, maybe. One wae a bit hollowed out it, like the hollows under his cheekbones. He clocks me watchin him and I look away. I put my earphones on, close my eyes and kid on I'm listenin to a CD.

It's dead hard when you really want to see what's goin on, but I keep my eyes shut till everybody's on the bus. I keep them shut till they're sittin down and the engine's started. Naybody sits next to me. When I open them, I see Julian and Laetitia are sittin thegether a few seats down fae me on the opposite side. Laetitia's in the window seat. Her head's on Julian's shoulder. No sign a Danny. He must a went on the other bus.

Now all I have to do is work out what I need to think about. I count off on my fingers.

One: how far is London fae Florence? I was sleepin half the
time on the way here, so I don't remember. Somebody'll know.

Two: what night is Danny's meetin? Assumin Julian will still be goin to it. Thursday night, I think. Aye, Thursday.

Three: how am I gonny get out of goin to school the rest of the week? Farkhanda'll nip my ear till she pulls the whole story out a me.

Four: I need to think what to tell my da about the demo. That'll be OK. There's plenty there. The Greens and the Spanish TUC. The banners –
USA E ISRAELE I VERI TERRORISTI
. And the fairies. He'll have a good laugh at them. Same as Julian. And I'll tell him about the wee French guy and the singin. He'll like that. Mr Abensur and his coffee machine. Da'll tell me what bit of Africa he probably comes fae, plus the reasons why. And the
David,
of course. I'll tell him about
David
and
Il Prigioni
.

Five: Ma's a different ballgame. She'll take one look at me and know right away. I'll have to keep out her road as best I can, till things settle down. Till I know what I'm doin.

I look out the window. We're already on the outskirts of Florence. I don't recognize any a the streets. Must be a different route fae the demo. When the road opens out, we pass a long line a they tall thin trees. They've got no leaves on them except at the very top. The sun's catchin them, turnin them gold. Like artists' brushes wae dods a gold paint on the tips, pointin to the sky.

Julian's head's leanin on the seat in the direction of the aisle. Laetitia's head's still on his shoulder. I can just see her black hair between the seats and a slash of her red jumper. I want to touch his head. See what his new hair's like.

I feel in my pocket for the dreadlock and close my hand around it. It's warm now wae bein next my body. I rub my thumb back and fore in a wee hollow bit. A wee felty hollow.
Now and again I can feel an individual hair, but mostly it's a thick matted bunch. A piece of rope to hold on to.

I look out the window again. I wonder if there'll still be leaves on some a the trees by the time we get back to Glasgow.

I hope so.

November 2002

Laetitia lay in the half-dark and strained to pick out the furniture in the room. If she could make out their outlines, she was real after all. This was real. All of it. The bulk of a chair draped in clothes detached itself from the lighter dark around it, the nature of the garments indecipherable, their colours smudged. But they were there. They were there. And there was the door to the bathroom, the oblongs of the windows, the slats of the blinds just visible, the quiet pool of the mirror on the wall. Her panic subsided and she shifted her head on the pillow to look round at Danny. Asleep, he looked sweet, with long dark lashes brushing his pale skin, all aggression quieted. A pang of – what? compassion, guilt, regret? – made her almost change her mind. But she lifted his arm slowly off her chest. He grunted in his sleep and turned onto his back.

When he was still again, breathing evenly, with just the suggestion of a snore, she pulled back the cover and slid over the side of the bed. Knees on the cold, hard floor, she tucked the duvet close into Danny's side, so that he wouldn't miss her warmth. She moved slowly backwards, hardly breathing. One thing she couldn't cope with now was having to talk to Danny, tell him what she was doing. Explain herself. She stood now, joints creaking, and tiptoed over to the chair. In the semi-dark, she identified her clothes, almost leached of colour, and disengaged them from Danny's. His belt buckle chinked against a metal button and she stood, cold as a statue, her own flesh gleaming like marble, till she was sure she hadn't woken
him. She could feel the wool of her jumper against her chest, irritating her stiffened nipples, the cold denim of her jeans, the lace of her bra and knickers. She bundled them closer and bent down for her boots at the side of the chair. Then she tiptoed past Danny to the bathroom.

The tiles in here were even colder. She pulled the door almost to, couldn't risk the noise of shutting it, daren't put on the light. Her crotch still ached from having been entered. Abraded. Even her orgasm had felt disingenuous. Her body dutifully responded to Danny's surprisingly dexterous touch, but when she came, she felt her mind resist. It wasn't right. And her orgasm fizzled out like a disappointing firework. Why couldn't she just take her pleasure with him? Like men do when it's offered. He was good-looking, had a good body, sturdier, more muscular than Julian's. And he was eager to please.

You'll get none of your wham-bam-thank-you-ma'ams fae Danny Kilkenny, he'd said. I like a lassie to remember a night with me.

In spite of the arrogance of his statement, he was a good lover. Technically at any rate. Knew the right buttons to press. Moved with her. Intuitive. Except he didn't intuit the growing sensation that she didn't want to be there; that started from a thought, then moved down along her body till she felt all her muscles tense. And the thought was? She couldn't really remember. It was more an apprehension. She apprehended something. But what? It felt utterly momentous at the time. Something not to be ignored, or the whole of one's life could be blown off course. It was this that had made her cry as she came. Made the tears come now. She set her bundle of clothes on the lid of the toilet, extricated her bra and knickers and put them on. She had to get out of here. Danny had been concerned when she cried.

Are you OK? Did I hurt you or something?

When she couldn't say what the matter was, he got up, went to the bathroom, came back with a wad of toilet paper, knelt astride her and dabbed her eyes, his balls and cock resting like floats on her stomach.
The peculiar texture of the detumescent cock.
That's what she thought. As if it were the title of a paper she might write. And still she wept. Danny was tender, attentive, his brow creased, stroking her hair off her face, catching the tears as they ran towards her ears.

You'll soak my good pillow, so you will, he said, tutting like a housewife.

She knew she'd have to rally herself or he'd be forced to try and joke her out of it. And she was in no mood for jokes.

I'm fine. Really, she said. Just an overflow of emotion.

Danny took this, as she knew he would, as an expression of her feeling for him and grew even more tender. Eventually she persuaded him that she was alright and he got in next to the wall and curled his body round hers, his wiry pubic hair irritating her buttocks, his arm heavy across her chest. He fell asleep quickly like a child, and his breath, slow and even across the top of her head, finally eased her into a ragged sleep. When, some time later, she jerked awake, panic flooded her.

She pulled her jeans on slowly, so that Danny wouldn't hear the dry rasp of denim on flesh; eased the zip up tooth by tooth. The noise seemed impossibly loud in the dark bathroom. She picked up her black jumper and caught a whiff of the mixture of smells rising from it: smoke, the garlic and oil of Italian cooking and, more enmeshed in the wool, her sweat, overlaid with deodorant and perfume curdling in the fibres. She tossed it on the floor. She'd have to get a clean one from her rucksack. With her boots in her hand, she inched open the door. It didn't squeak; she pushed it enough to slip through.

The room seemed lighter after the windowless bathroom. Danny had turned to face the wall but she could see by the slow rise and fall of his back that he was still asleep. She crept over to the corner, set down her boots, fed her hand into her rucksack and felt about for her other jumper. It eluded her at first till her fingers snagged on its soft wool beneath her journal and tugged it free. Her journal, her lifeline, the thread she clung on to to lead her back to herself; she'd barely written a word in it since she arrived in Florence. It would have to wait. She pushed it to the bottom of the bag. Quickly, eyes still on Danny, she pulled her jumper on over her head and arms simultaneously and smoothed it down her body. Her new jumper. Cashmere and immediately warm and soft against her skin. Like being taken care of. She picked up her boots and stepped carefully across the room, her heartbeat noisy in her ears.

Outside Julian's door, she waited for a minute. Two. Three. What lay on the other side of it seemed as remote as a foreign country. Room 17. The brass numbers concentrated the light from the corridor, as if they had just been polished. Swollen with crying, her face peered back at her, further distorted in each shiny digit. She pulled the cuffs of her jersey over her hands and rubbed her eyes. She was shivering in spite of it, in spite of its colour. Red. Imagine her mother buying her a red jumper. After all the political arguments; after the shock on her mother's face when she admitted that, actually she stood somewhat to the left of Tony Blair. Her mother had blanched. Visibly. Laetitia watched her face drain of colour and her feeble brain tick over to hook into a lexicon of phrases like ‘nanny state', ‘undeserving poor', ‘evil terrorist'. God, she made Laetitia want to put her hands round her throat and shake her till her teeth fell out like a broken string of pearls.

She shook her own head. Julian. What to say to Julian? Even when she pressed her ear to the dark wood of the door, she could hear nothing.

Let him be alone. Let him come to the door with sleep in his eyes, his dreads tangled and take me to his warm bed. Please.

Her hand, still mittened in the red sleeve, reached up to knock, hesitated, dropped to her side. She put her face to the door and whispered.

Julian.

Julian.

The brass numbers clouded.

Julian.

She could feel the tears burning her eyes again, trickling warm down her face. This was hopeless. The closed door. It seemed inconceivable that she could get to the other side of it. Without something cataclysmic happening. Her tendency towards melodrama. Histrionics.
Her
trionics, as Julian called it.

She raised her hand again, pulled back her cuff and rapped twice with one knuckle.