Innocents (5 page)

‘He hasn't got a collar,’ I said. ‘He could be anyone's.’

‘Oh, dear. Poor old thing,’ soothed the vet with the solicitude of habit, injecting colourless death beneath the quaking animal's chin. ‘Poor old girl.’

Almost immediately, the animal was still. ‘There,’ said the vet, wiping his hand on his white coat. ‘She won't feel any more pain now. There's not much you can do, when they're like that.’

Moving your mouth soundlessly, you seemed to be trying to ask a question.

‘Don't worry,’ said the vet. ‘We'll dispose of her.’

Walking out through the reception room, we must have looked an insane pair, my only darling. The blood across your forehead was dry and flaking, like garish facepaint. One of your hands was smudged all over with it, as though you'd been busy ripping the entrails out of sheep. I wore an apron of the stuff, a dark spreading stain across my lap.

In the car, there were spots the size of twenty-cent pieces on the passenger's seat. An unpleasant metallic smell hung so heavily in the air that I could taste it as I breathed.

You drove in silence, at first, staring straight ahead with the acute concentration of the shock victim.

I sat beside you, being cold.

As we rounded the corner into the school's street, you told me, ‘It's my fault. I just didn't see him.’

Standing inside the school gates, you at last noticed my ruined uniform.

‘Oh, you've got it all over your
dress
!’ You looked visibly upset. ‘I'm so sorry … I didn't even see. Look, come along to the sick bay. We'll fix you up.’

I stood like a discarded meat tray outside the front office, while you charmed the po-faced woman who administered the clothing pool into lending me another uniform for the day, and giving me a new pair of stockings. Passing girls running messages for teachers looked at me with derision, imagining a menstrual disaster.

In the sick-bay toilet, with an ancient flannel and a deeply crevassed rock of soap, I cleaned myself up as best I could. For some reason, I wasn't at all disgusted at the thought that a cat had bled on me.

When I came out—cleaner, dressed in a stiff new uniform—I found you waiting for me.

With a funny combination of formality and sentiment, you said, ‘I really appreciate what you did.’

There was a catch in your voice. Leaning against the starch-white wall, you thrust your hands into your jacket pocket. There was a spot of blood on your lapel.

‘That's all right,’ I said, brightly.

I didn't look at your face. I counted the buttons on your shirt.

Now that the immediacy of action was over, you made me uncomfortable. Oh, not for the reasons you might suspect, darling! I still hadn't the faintest idea how you felt about me. It didn't even occur to me that you had an ulterior reason for crossing your legs the way you did. It was just that your sheer, instinctive
humanity
overwhelmed me with guilt and regret and frustration.

‘I'm sorry about your dress.’

I laughed. ‘I don't care about the dress! Horrible thing. I hate wearing it.’

Relieved, you pressed: ‘You're sure?’

I nodded through you, at the wall.

I didn't yet realise that this humanity of yours was something I could
use
. It loomed like a murder next door—compelling, close, discomfiting. But still, at this stage, someone else's business.

‘Still,’ you said, walking me to the door, your hands clasped together, monk-like, in front of you, ‘at least he didn't suffer.’ You opened the door for me.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘At least, not any more than was necessary.’

At home, I sat cross-legged on my bed, sketchbook open, drawing furiously. I drew Rachel, with angry, lewd strokes. I made her naked before me. Omnipotent, I wreaked vengeance with a pencil.

As the afternoon melted into evening, I drew her kneeling, her forehead touching the ground, her arms pinned together behind her back. Her hair was dishevelled, about to escape the loose bun at the back of her head. Tendrils snaked, Medusa-like, around her ears. Her eyes were closed in pain. Her mouth was parted slightly, as though she were exhausted. I drew the long luxurious curve of her naked back with satisfaction. My eyes narrowed as I sketched in her buttocks and her legs, curled anyhow under her, as though she had been pushed to the ground with force and was too weary and dispirited even to fall comfortably.

I was defending you, darling. I was punishing her for her derision, her harsh voice and mocking smile.

The abuse of your kindness enraged me. My heart raced, thinking of that scornful crowd of vixens, watching you, laughter curling their lips, as you watched the cat, tears stinging your eyes.

My homework lay neglected at the bottom of my school-bag. The light all drained away from my window, but I didn't switch the lamp on. I sat there, still and silent, as my white hands in my lap turned royal blue, then purple. I was watching the tortured image before me melt away into the darkness.

T

‘Heya,’ I said.

‘Oh …’ You looked flustered as you slammed the car door. ‘Oh, hello.’ Fumbling with the boot of the car, you asked, ‘Your—er—parents weren't too upset about the dress, were they?’

Ignoring your faux pas, I said : ‘Nah. I soaked it. It all came out.’

‘Still—’ You were extracting piles of manila folders and hugging them awkwardly to your chest as you shut the boot—‘you should be proud of what you did.’

‘Yeah, I am.’ On tiptoes, I reached up to your stack of folders, and took the top third for myself.

‘Oh.’ You went bright red. ‘Thank you very much, m'dear.’

I liked ‘m'dear’. It had a slightly foppish ring to it which matched your endless supply of baggy-trousered tweed suits and your hair that hung in two lank flops. It was exotic, too; with an aroma of some strange English spice that fascinated me, used to smelling only the overwhelming chemical scent of spray deodorant on my body.

I trotted along at your heels. I liked the way you strode along, like a flamingo on important business.

As we entered the building, Kara came out. You nodded politely at her. ‘Morning,’ you said.

‘Hi,’ she said. I felt her blue eyes burning into my back as I followed you inside.

After we'd entered your classroom and dumped the folders on your desk, you thanked me earnestly. As I turned to go, you said cheerily, ‘Well … I'll see you in class after lunch, won't I?’

‘Yep!’ I said.

I sat and read through Maths. The myopic supply teacher never noticed.

By recess, rumours about my blood-stained uniform of the day before had reached my friends.

Walking through the stark concrete quadrangle, Laura wanted to know: ‘Did you have a little
accident
, yesterday?’

This was the sort of scene I had been dreading for years. Heart-sunk, soul-scuttled, I turned to answer her. But now that the worst had happened, and I was unmasked as a freak, I did find a sort of stony pride to face her down with.

‘What?’ I sounded irritable, busy, as though I had other things on my mind.

‘I heard there was blood all over you.’

‘Cat's blood,’ I answered with terse truthfulness, ducking into the hallway.

I don't know if she believed me.

But from then on, my friends carefully distanced themselves. They said ‘Hi’ to me in the locker room, but then turned pointedly away to focus on more important conversations. They neglected to invite me to parties and withheld juicy bits of gossip.

It was only to be expected. I knew I'd done wrong. I'd been
weird
. I'd sided with a teacher—a weird teacher, at that: one who made a stupid, laughable attempt to make himself likable—against Rachel and the group. But it still stung to be so suddenly declared unclean, unfit to associate with, when I'd worked so hard to fit in.

I spent some weeks as an outcast, hovering lunchtimes away in the library or under distant trees.

My fury at my friends was vague and generalised. They were all guilty, as a crowd. Quietly, methodically, I went about the business of drawing exactly what I thought of them.

I filled half a sketchbook, that week. Agitation kept me awake, long into the silences of the night.

By Friday, discussions of weekend plans that flagrantly didn't include me had taunted me into an agony of restlessness. I ran home, through a sudden drizzle, kicking at stones, ripping the leaves from trees and shredding them with my fingers.

I couldn't eat my dinner. Too many shapes—too much skin—came crowding in on my senses. There was no room for food. I made an excuse and retreated to my room.

I suppose I must have seemed strained and distant enough to worry my aunt and uncle.

I suppose that's why, after I thought he was in bed, my uncle came and tapped at my door.

I suppose that's why, when I didn't answer, he opened the door and entered.

I had crept along the corridor to the toilet. On the way back, I heard nothing except the rain swishing against the ground outside.

I remember seeing my uncle leaning over my sketchbooks, his arms straight, his hands curled under the edge of the desk. I must have touched the door slightly. The hinges creaked, and he spun around in an instant, like a matador.

His face was maroon with fury. Lumps like cellulite sprang up in his forehead. He strode across the floor towards me, pulling himself up to his full height.

I cowered.

‘What is this?’ he demanded, thrusting his big body even closer to mine. I felt the cold smooth plaster of the wall against my back. I couldn't retreat any further. Across the room, I could see my pencil sketches lying bare to the air, open to any eye. I was struck anew by the careful lewdness, the clinical perversion, of the subject matter.

I started to shake. I was a criminal engaged in a complicated felony. I had been found out and I would be punished.

He lunged for me, his face swollen, eyes bulging hideously.

‘What are they?’ He grabbed me with both hands. His fingers dug painfully in below my collarbones. In retrospect, I think there was a kind of panic on his face, a frantic uncertainty, as though, having caught me by the shoulders, he was uncertain what to do with me.

I couldn't say anything. Hot hysteria crept through my veins, flushing my face and neck. I shook my head, more to deny the situation than the crime.

His voice was shrill. His moustache convulsed, caterpillarlike.

‘Did you draw them?
Did you
?’ I could feel his breath gusting over my face.

I gave a spastic nod, closing my eyes so I didn't have to look at his ferocious, hostile face.

Fury condensed in his hands. He shook me violently. ‘They're disgusting!’

I knew that. Of course they were disgusting.

‘What kind of—’ he wanted to know.

I didn't know what kind of teenage girl had files full of detailed sadistic fantasies, either. I trembled in his grasp.

‘You're an animal!’ Again, the hands contracted, vice-like. This time he lifted me completely off the ground, banging me back down like a sack of potatoes.

An ancient reptilian panic awoke in me. I started to struggle, to writhe and bend. He gripped me more tightly than ever, making a fan of fingertip-shaped bruises across each shoulder.

The redness in my face overflowed into snivelling tears. They ran down my cheeks in an uneven stream. I snorted violently, wriggling every second.

‘You're an
animal
!’ he said, right in my ear this time. I turned my head, opened my mouth, and confirmed his accusation by sinking my teeth into his wrist.

‘Shit!’

He let go instantly, clapping one hand over his wound. I didn't wait to see what would happen. I turned and fled, bumping down the dark stairs, sobbing incoherently. I fought with the deadlock on the front door till the cold metal bit into my hands, and flew, finally, out into the night.

I came pelting, I came pounding. All the dogs of hell were on my tail. I couldn't see a thing. I ran with one hand up to shield my eyes, as though I were running into a dazzling light.

Great sluglike droplets of rain collected on the leaves above and then unleashed themselves on me, like waterbombs. My little tears were all flooded away.

It was a low treacherous undergrowth that I ran through, stumbling on roots, catching my foot on traitorously curved low branches, bruising myself on treetrunks. I cried out in frustration when I fell onto my face. The mud sucked at my knees and elbows. It didn't want to let me stand again, but I dragged myself to my feet, lurching onwards, blindly.

I didn't know where I was going. I just crashed on through.

It was just luck that I ended up on the avenue.

I didn't realise where I was, not for a few seconds. I only knew that the leaves and the sticks, the clutching witch's fingers, no longer barred my way. I folded my arms and lowered my head and charged onwards.

There was asphalt under my feet and a fine spray of rain on my face. I yelped when my calf dragged against something sharp.