Innocents (8 page)

The
form
of your body was what I desired. It was the solidity of it, the realness. Calves and forearms. Curves and bulges. Planes and angles.

Occasionally, some detail of you would come flickeringly alive in my mind—a thumbnail in sideways movement as you stroked my hand, perhaps, or the vastness of your back, flecked with constellations of delicate moles. Lying there, I flicked slowly, luxuriously, through this catalogue of memories.

The sketchbooks were gone, I remember. Presumably my uncle had torched them or ripped them up. At the time, I paid this fact no attention at all. I existed in a strange, dreamy limbo. I floated above myself, flexing my imagination like a baby kicking foetal limbs while suspended in the womb.

A

I made myself into a different creature, for you.

I'd never prepared myself as carefully for anything. I washed my hair, and conditioned it. I lathered my legs and shaved the little hairs away. I soaked my face with my aunt's cut-price beauty treatments. I cleansed. I toned. I moisturised. I rehydrated. I exfoliated.

I made endless eyes at myself in the mirror. I pouted, to see how that looked. I grinned, to see how that looked. I found the least commonplace of my bras—one made of black silky stuff, flounced with lace—and dabbed it with perfume before I put it on. I ironed my uniform. I washed my stockings and tumbledried them.

I put make-up on, and wiped it off again. I looked younger without cosmetics.

Coquetry didn't come naturally to me. I learnt the art painstakingly, like a geisha. It's true that I learnt it fast. I had to.

When floating smells and shreds of noise indicated that my aunt and uncle were at last about their breakfast businesses, I slipped out the back door, to school.

The day dragged.

Sitting in Maths class, inflated with impatience, I thought I'd have a heart attack. All my innards simmered in my stomach. My skin was perfectly still, but just beneath it, my nerves all wormed with a terrified excitement.

I stared at the backs of heads, my eyes trying to rip aside all those different textures of hair like a curtain, and reveal you on the other side.

I drew our two ages, yours above mine, in thickly inked figures. Hiding in the margin of my maths book, among a thousand innocent numerals, they did not shout their incompatibility to the world. Still, the rounded 6 of 16, below the acute angles of the 4 in 34, gave me an illicit, sensuous thrill.

Like a general, I waited for battle. I wanted to storm you like a city, surround you, besiege you, until you opened the gates to admit your conqueror.

At recess, you were on playground duty.

I saw you standing in a corner of the quadrangle, sipping coffee.

I came prancing up to you.

‘Heya!’ I said.

You froze like prey, the mug to your lips. I circled you, smiling. You swivelled to watch me, your eyes quick and worried. I don't think you'd slept much. The skin around your eyes was black with insomnia and worry.

I stood before you, holding myself still, hands clasped demurely behind my back, as though I was singing to an examiner.

‘Aren't you talking to me?’ I asked.

‘Yes, of course I am!’

I danced and jittered before you, filled to bursting with some undeniable life-fluid. The energy running through my limbs was irrepressible. It screamed,
Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!

‘Cool!’ I said, dancing a hornpipe, toes pointed.

Your blushes contradicted me. ‘It's not cool.’ You darted glances at the windows nearest us, seeking spying eyes.

‘Is so!’

‘Look—’ You beckoned uncertainly, retreating rapidly to a corner of the oval. Your jacket flapped out behind you with the force of your strides.

I trotted along at your side. You slowed down. You must have been aware that I had to trot. I rather liked it. It drew attention to my short legs; my littleness.

You'd resolved yourself. You held yourself stiffly. Arms folded, I looked up at you. You were a picture of tweed misery. I was overcome with a sharp desire. I wanted to touch you, to make you want me again.

Firmly, you deposited me on the moral high ground. ‘I'm sorry,’ you said, shaking the hair out of your eyes distractedly. ‘I'm so sorry about what I've done.’

I moved to take your hand, which dangled by your side, in mine. You flinched elaborately away, pretending to wipe something from your palm onto your trousers. I only brushed your knuckles with my fingertips.

An instant expert in this warrior's art, I twisted fear, stoicism and a big-eyed ingenuousness together and tossed them at you. ‘So now—? Don't you want anything to do with me?’

I clasped my hands together before me. I saw your eyes flicker down, registering the way my right hand gripped my left, as though I were, pathetically, trying to hold my own hand.

An outraged sense of decency reddened you. ‘It's
wrong
!’ you explained wretchedly. ‘I've behaved despicably! There's no excuse.’

‘Don't you like me?’

That made your limp hands curl inwards. You grasped your thumbs with your fists. Your words came out gravelly, flecked with guilt. ‘Yes, I do! That's just the problem, don't you see?’ Teacher-mode took over. You raised a hand, hesitated, then placed it resolutely on my shoulder. ‘Don't you understand?’ you appealed. ‘It's just an impossible relationship. I mean … it
isn't
a relationship. It can't be. It's
impossible
!’

I made a Molotov cocktail out of my perceptiveness and lit it under your nose, my head quizzically on one side: ‘Are you scared you'd be exploiting me?’ I held you in my gaze. ‘Because I'm not
that
stupid, that I'd sleep with someone I didn't really want to,
actually
.’

Smiling ruefully, shrugging, you granted me that victory. ‘I didn't say that. I didn't mean to underestimate you—’

‘Yeah, you did! Look—’ and before you could defend yourself, I leant forward, charmingly tippytoed, and planted a kiss on your cheek. ‘If you don't want to do anything because you've gone off me, or you're sick of me, or whatever, okay. Fair enough. But don't go all boring and “Oh no! Social taboos!” on me.’

Your admiration of my cleverness, my piercing, unexpected sophistication, was hardly camouflaged at all. ‘But what about …?’ you wanted to know, your open hands indicating the green school grounds around us, the brick classrooms on the other side of the oval, the milling dots of distant girls, the sky above.

‘Oh, bugger it!’ I explained. ‘Can I meet you after school?’

You nodded. ‘I suppose. Just to talk.’

Without a word, I turned away.

Walking back across the oval, I was already planning the next stage of my campaign.

We had arranged to meed out the back of the supermarket, in the shaded part where they threw the scraps and old boxes.

I arrived before you, even though I'd had to walk. I waited in the darkest corner, next to the blue rubbish skips. Thinking wistfully of my canister of teenage-strawberry-scented spray deoderant at home, I hoped the smell from the garbage wouldn't cling to me and put you off.

For a few silent minutes, I thought you weren't coming. The phrase ‘all dressed up and nowhere to go’ kept flickering through my mind.

I had my bag slung over one shoulder and my jumper tied around my waist. I'd never tied my jumper around my waist before. Usually I kept the baggy thing on, no matter what the weather. It was extra armour. Today, despite the goosebump breeze, I took it off and sashed myself. Today, my slim arms and the tautness of the tartan dress over my bosom were needed as lures.

I tugged at the jumper to adjust it, wishing there was a mirror around. I thought maybe my hair had got all messy on the walk from school, and tried anxiously to smooth it with my fingers.

Cars came and went at the distant, sunny end of the carpark. I wanted to lean against the wall but that would have made me filthy. I stood up straight, feeling like a china doll on a stand.

Finally I saw your car, driving cautiously (if a car can be cautious) down the rows, as if it was nosing along looking for a park.

The car seemed slightly drunk. It turned a bit too sharply—a genteel lurch—around the corner. The tyres screeched faintly as you stopped. Reaching over, you flicked the passenger door unlocked.

‘Hi!’ I said, opening the door and flinging my schoolbag casually onto the floor.

‘Hello.’ You sounded grimly determined.

I kissed you on the cheek as you started the car. ‘Where're we going?’

Your hands on the wheel, you answered tersely, ‘I'm not sure.’

We sped off.

As you drove, I rubbed the back of your neck, hooking my fingers under drum-tight wads of muscle. My hands looked very slender and elegant, next to the sun-thickened skin that crowded in folds below your hairline.

‘Oh …’ you said, rotating your stiff neck—‘Marry me.’

‘Okay.’

You giggled, high and nervous as a girl.

There are parts of my body which are nearly transparent. My palms, my cheeks, the insides of my arms. If you look closely you can see all the blood moving, the veins pumping, the tiny yellow fatty globules gathered together. My fingernails are thin as ricepaper. It distresses me. I feel I'm not decently covered.

But your cheeks felt rough when I touched them. Even when you'd scraped the stubble off, the skin was harder and thicker than mine. I liked that. You were a more solid creature than I was. You were realler.

You kept one hand on my thigh as you drove, only moving it when you needed to change gears. It sounds funny, now, to say that I was jealous of the car. Whenever we had to slow down for traffic lights or pedestrians or a thickening in the traffic, the gearstick took priority over me. My leg, left open to the air by the shift in your attention, thrilled with cold and I awaited your attention impatiently.

Raising one hand, I traced the outline of your jaw. You trembled satisfyingly under my fingertips, your eyes bulging desperately at the road ahead. Both your hands gripped the steering wheel.

‘Can we stop?’

You didn't ask me why. Without a word, you turned off the main road and down a suburban side street, halting in front of an anonymous house. With the engine switched off, all motion dead, you still trembled.

‘Can I kiss you?’ I wanted to know.

‘Of course.’ You didn't take your eyes off the windscreen.

Stretching my neck, I brushed your cheek daintily with my lips. ‘What's wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I'm making you uncomfortable, aren't I?’

Biting your lip, you shook your head swiftly. I played the false-apology card which, even then, I kept up my sleeve for emergencies. My head on one side, an expression of concern on my face, I said, ‘I'm sorry.’

That made you look at me. ‘Why are
you
sorry?’

‘I don't know …’ I played with a strand of my hair, twisting it uneasily round my finger. ‘I've upset you. I didn't mean to.’

You were incredulous. ‘You haven't upset me!’ Your face was tinged with red. There were tears at the corners of your eyes.

‘You're
crying
! I've made you cry.’ Silence. ‘I'm sorry.’

Looking me in the face at last, you explained, your words crisp and fierce: ‘
I love you so much it's making me cry
.’

I giggled.

‘What?’

‘It's funny.’ I explained. ‘Seeing a grown-up cry.’

That word—
grown-up
—was chosen specially to emphasise the foreignness of your age. ‘Over nothing!’

My eyes were wide. I couldn't stop staring. I looked harder and harder, straining my eyes. I tried to tattoo you onto my retinas so that your image would be there every time I closed my eyes.

Squeezing my leg gently, shaking your head, you told me, ‘It's not nothing.’

Sincerity widened my eyes. ‘I know.’

There was a pause. You picked stray cotton threads from the knee of your trousers.

‘How are things … at home?’ you asked, with a social worker's businesslike tact.

I laughed, a short dry burst through my nose. ‘Oh,
great
!’ I said with rasping sarcasm, thinking of the bottomless silences, the unbridgeable distances, of the weekend past.

Your voice had gravel-flecks of anguish in it. ‘Is it?’ Your poor wobbling lips couldn't shape the words. Hideous, phantasmal abuses welled up before your eyes. Dark spreading oilstains overwhelmed my bright little life.

‘'S not much fun,’ I admitted, with the POW's shit-happens smile.

Then you kissed me.

You kissed me hard, your tongue stiff between my lips, your hands engulfing my face on either side, fingers spread.

‘I won't let anything happen to you!’ you declared fiercely, your face an inch from mine. I could see all the ghosts of freckles and the little networks of lines that represented your age. The blood pumped furiously just beneath. Your eyes blazed. You looked at me defiantly, with your chin held high and your eyes wide open, but there was a kind of shakiness to you. You swallowed but did not shift your gaze.