Living In Perhaps (34 page)

I was in the high street one day when Stella drew up beside me in
a car.

'D'you want a lift?' she cried, and it would have been churlish
to refuse, so I accepted to please her, willing to be driven somewhere,
anywhere. The car was a Hillman with a wide bench seat
in the front, luxuriously padded in fat corrugations. Stella patted
the seat and I slid in. 'Now don't get mad at me, Carol. I haven't
passed my test yet, but I needed to pop into town and Warren was
away, so I just took the L-plates off.'

She pulled the door of the glove compartment down and there
they were, two white plastic squares with luminous red Ls and
little pieces of string through the holes top and bottom.

'Warren's present to me. Not brand new, of course, but it's in very
good nick.' She drew smoothly away from the kerb with all the
assurance of a legal driver. She was living with Warren by then, at his
house out in the countryside.
Openly
living with him, as my mother
insisted on putting it, every time she referred to Stella.

'He's been giving me lessons. He's very good, very patient. Not
like they're supposed to be – husbands, boyfriends.' She glanced
in the rear-view mirror, changed gear, took a left into the next
street. 'It can be the end of a marriage, so they say. Teaching your
wife to drive.'

She was all efficiency and composure. She wore a navy-blue
dress with white buttons, and navy and white leather court shoes.
Her earrings were little dots of white in her lobes. Warren was
absolutely the best thing that had ever happened to her.

'Where're we going then? Or are you happy with just a little
drive round? A little sightseeing tour?'

'Shouldn't you just do your errand and get back home as
quickly as possible?' I asked nervously. Would I be an accessory if
we were stopped?

Stella let her head drop back and a rich, loose laugh came out.

We turned against the traffic and came on to the seafront road.
Stella drove regally along the front, looking out at the sea from
time to time, or commenting on the passers-by. I knew it was all
an act to impress me, and I
was
impressed.

'I don't know, some of these people, they can't know what they
look like or they'd never dress like they do. Look at that one!' She
was enjoying herself. Her star was rising, while Bettina's was
eclipsed.

Bettina was having a baby. I wondered if it would have Mandy's
mean-eyed features
and
Roy Tiltyard's lack of chin. Or did
Mandy's looks come from her father, dead at twenty and cross
about it ever since? Bettina was suffering, sick all the time, losing
all her blossomy plumpness even as her abdomen expanded.

'The flesh is just falling off her,' as Gloria said. 'It's awful. It
reminds me of her mother, poor soul.' Bettina's mother, it turned
out, had died of some sort of rapidly progressing cancer. Gloria
could not name it, of course. She made a face and mentioned
some 'internal trouble' and then 'a terrible complaint'. Bettina's
mother had swelled right up like a balloon, and then just wasted
away. Apparently.

I still went to Gloria's at least one lunchtime every week, and
heard about Warren on the one hand, gentlemanly and generous,
and Roy Tiltyard on the other, still living in the flat over the hairdresser's,
staring helplessly while Bettina retched over the basin,
'no help to man nor beast'. I trawled up the gossip for want of
anything more interesting. I was very glad to hear that though
fortunes could go down they could also go
up
.

We came to the end of the promenade, did a U-turn in the car
park and set off again.

'There's your cousin,' Stella said, nodding and raising her
eyebrows at the same time.

I glanced over and saw Mandy, the nearest in a crowd of
teenagers hanging around by one of the shelters. She was still
skinny, still rather small, with a well-used look about her, and a
repertoire of exaggerated gestures and expressions like a female
impersonator. She favoured imitation leather motorbike jackets,
and miniskirts when everyone else had switched to long, and bare
mottled legs in clumpy shoes. As we looked she took a step backwards,
slapping a boy on the arm of his leather jacket, either
laughing or shouting, with her mouth wide open. It looked
aggressive but it could have been a joke. No one else in the crowd
took any notice. The boy's face, we saw as we passed, was transfixed
in a snarl. Mandy swung away from him, twisting out of his
grasp, beginning to walk off rapidly. The last we saw was her little
white face screwed up and her wide mouth enunciating, even for
those not trained in lip-reading, a clear instruction.

'She'll come to the bad, that one,' Stella said, not, I thought,
without a touch of satisfaction.

But who did come to the bad? Not Mandy, or not more than
might be predicted.

It was us. Brian and I, the model citizens, the Scout and Guide,
the church-going children of modest, careful parents. We were
deemed in need of 'care and control'. Maybe it was our genes
coming out, our doubtful inheritance. God knows what kind of
stock we came from – horse thieves, mountebanks, cut-throats.
Really, someone should be responsible for checking up on this
sort of thing. Maybe that's how our parents explain it away, as
they sit quietly over their tea, with the radio tuned to a light music
programme.

There were a number of reports written on us prior to the
court case, to try and work out the state of our minds and
the complications of our background. On paper Brian looked so
much better than me. Of course he would. Perhaps that's what
he'd been up to all those years, with his solemn church-going, his
diligent Scouting, his excellent attendance record at school and
work: making sure he appeared, to all intents and purposes,
squeaky clean. He might have been an indifferent school pupil but
he turned up without fail, and never cheeked his teachers or
noticeably got in with the wrong crowd. In fact the only thing his
teachers noticed about him was that he didn't seem to be a part of
any crowd. And he'd clocked up enough responsible adults elsewhere
to vouch for his character. They said he was a quiet boy,
eager to please, even, one might say, easily led. Oh, and good with
his hands.

I didn't go down so well. It was known – how was it known? –
that my doctor prescribed the contraceptive pill for me; that I had
smoked and consumed illegal substances; that I was identified as
one of a group who stole from local shops. I was a compulsive liar.
Added to which, I had been a poor achiever throughout my school
life, and a sloppy and casual figure behind the counter at the dry
cleaner's. I had dropped out of all improving activities and appeared
to have no aim in life. How all occasions do inform against me. I was
clearly out of my parents' control at an early point in my
adolescence. Witnesses attested to my unreliable temper, my short
fuse. A disturbed start in life was blamed, and defects of character,
which the valiant efforts of my hard-pressed adoptive parents failed
to correct. I was trouble. I had all the potential for bad that Brian
appeared so lacking in. It was a puzzle to them.

No one seemed to think I might have been persuadable,
susceptible. That I might have been easily led by more experienced
and manipulative souls. That at numerous points in my life
I might have done things, not because I wanted to, because I
deliberately and unreservedly made the decision to, but because
there wasn't any choice.

Also I wouldn't cooperate. I wouldn't answer their questions. I
wouldn't talk. That really got to them. Even worse, sometimes
when they were questioning me I wanted to laugh. Perhaps they
saw the ghost of it flitting about my features, a twitch of a smile,
too much glitter in my eye. No one likes to think that a house
burned down with someone inside it can provoke a little flicker of
laughter. No one wants to think that death, accidental or deliberately
caused, would make anybody snigger. I can't wholly blame
them for taking against me, in the circumstances.

But I was thinking of the weight of evidence they already had
racked up against me and here's what made me want to smile: if
only they had seen my portraits as well, my bold and naked flesh,
the way I stared out of the canvas, furious and provoking. Then
they would have formed an opinion, unshakeable and black, of
my defective character. Then there would have been no room in
their hearts for doubt.

Dr Travis spoke to me today. I oscillate between thinking he's
Lorna's boss and Lorna's minion. I don't know. He could have
been putting in a good word, a kind hint, while she was out of the
room. Or he could have been giving me an ultimatum. The final
word, from the top man.

Yes, on second thoughts, I think that's it. I don't think he's
training to be anything, I think he
is
it.

What he said was 'Carol.' My heart warmed to him. It's pathetic
to think I have sunk so low that I feel the use of my name is a
kindness. My real name. My own name, the name that I am used
to. Or one of them, at any rate.

'Carol, I want you to think hard about this.'

I began thinking hard straight away. It was like the Intelligence
Test, like my examinations. I thought hard, and my capacious
mind, my razor-sharp mind, flew to bits.

'This is a place of treatment. You will not stay here indefinitely
if they think the treatment is not helping you.'

I could tell his words were carefully chosen, but, for once,
carefully chosen words didn't offend me. I don't like to think of
people feeling that they have to plan how they are going to speak
to me. I hate feeling that they are treating me like a piece of glass.
A stick of dynamite.

'We would like to think that you are being helped. Making
progress. But you must do some of the hard work, too. You must
try to help yourself.'

I don't know why I thought his words were kind.

'Will you try to do that? Will you? Carol?'

I nodded.

Smoke in the air: the smell of ruin. My head buzzed. I couldn't
think straight.

Mandy had come round, Mandy, who we hadn't seen in
months, had dropped in for a visit, hot on the scent of disaster.
The fire engines had only just gone.

Skinny as a twig in her drainpipe jeans and studded denim
jacket, she sat in our lounge delicately drinking tea. 'Burned to the
ground?' she asked, craning to see out of the window. The hedge
was battered, but still intact.

'Not to the ground,' my mother said. 'But pretty bad. Bad
enough.'

'Who raised the alarm?'

'The lady at number twelve. She saw the smoke when she was
hanging out her wash.'

'Anyone hurt?'

Mum pulled a face.

'
Je
sus,' said Mandy, and I saw my mother flinch. 'They're best
mates of yours, aren't they, Carol? You were always in and out.'

My mother was staring at me, but I was staring at Mandy.

'That boy – that Tom – you know, the one you fancied? Don't
tell me he's got hurt?'

My mother was staring at the carpet now, looking as if she had
swallowed a fly. Mandy sipped her tea, unperturbed. 'Where's
Brian today, then?' she said. 'What's he get up to these days?'

'How's your mother, Mandy?' my mother asked. 'Is she
blooming?'

'Bloomin' obsessed. She's papering the spare room with teddy
bears. All over.'

'What, in her condition? Isn't Roy doing it?'

Mandy reached over to the sugar bowl and popped a lump of
sugar into her mouth.

'Roy doesn't know his arse from his elbow. He'd be no help.'

I sat listening to this conversation, saying nothing. The buzzing
in my head diminished and then rose again, like a swarm of bees
getting closer. And it stayed there until the next morning, when at
breakfast my mother opened the front door to two policemen.
She looked back down the hallway at me: horrified, but not, I saw,
surprised.

Every year in the first week of August the funfair came to town. It
set up in a straggly park behind the high street, and local boys
got into fights and local girls got up the duff and local everyone
got fleeced, and then the fair moved on. My mother disapproved
of it on various grounds: it was
common
and
dangerous
and
a waste of money
. I went once with Barbara and Jillian, and I
agreed; even on a sunny afternoon you could feel the menace.
Dubious-looking men – far worse than the bikers at the café –
hung off the rides, calling out to us and cat-calling across
the alleyways of mangled turf to each other. They took our
money and shut us into rattling seats, peering up our skirts as we
whirled away. They laughed when we clutched at our hems and
clung to the rail and each other and screamed. And when we
stumbled off and staggered away they still shouted after us,
though their eyes and hands were busy with the next customers.
We drank Coca-Cola and ate candyfloss to calm our stomachs,
lurched between the stalls where tides of evil music clashed,
and shook our heads at the hard-looking women who promised
we'd win a giant teddy with a mere handful of hoops. I hugged my
arms around myself, longing for Barbara and Jill to say they'd had
enough. To my mind, all this
fun
was deeply depressing. I never
went again.

Until last summer. Last summer Tom said, 'First week
in August, isn't it? Is the old fair still in town? We've got
to go.'

We were sitting in the garden of the Crown and Anchor, Gloria
and Eddy's local pub. It was only a backyard, but the sun slanted
down into it nicely, and Tom Rose and I were tired after a day
earning money. Tom had been on the beach. The slope of his nose
was pink with sun, and his habitual pallor was beginning to shift
into something healthier. He kicked my outstretched foot and
said, 'Come on, we must. All the fun of the fair?'

'We're tired,' I said. I admit my tone might have been a bit
whiny.

'What's all this
we
?' Tom glanced from me to Tom Rose and
back again, his eyes bright with wickedness.

'I mean we've been hard at work all day. Unlike you.' Tom had
taken up his job as a waiter again, but he only worked the busy
weekend shifts.

'All the more in need of a bit of recreation, then.'

'Anyway, the fair's not fun,' I said.

Tom gave me his scathing look. 'It's a
fun
fair, no?'

'Are we going or not?' Tom Rose asked. He picked up his pint
glass and drained it obligingly.

'One more drink first?' I pleaded, which was not like me.

Tom and I said nothing until Tom Rose had come outside again
with fresh glasses. Then he turned on me and said, 'You're in a rut,
Caro. A big fat stinking rut. Like this whole town.'

I looked at his reddening nose. 'And you've had too much sun.
It's made you cross.' But everything made him cross these days.

He ignored me. 'Can't you see it? You've been in a rut your
whole life.'

'I don't think that's exactly possible. I—'

'I'm trying to help you, can't you see? You could do something
good.'

Now Tom Rose made his contribution: 'You could do
something
spectacular
.'

'Yeah – spectacular.' Tom liked that word.

'Like what?'

Tom's wide bony shoulders made the most eloquent shrug. 'I
dunno. Firebomb the dry cleaner's, for a start.'

'That'd go down well,' Tom Rose agreed.

'That'd give this town a hint.'

The sun had slipped behind the houses by the time we left, and
the air was getting chilly: a stiff breeze straight off the North Sea.
I was still in the respectable blouse and skirt I had to wear for
work and beginning to shiver.

'I
hate
the fair,' I confessed to Tom Rose, as we lagged behind.
Tom loped along in front, covering the ground eagerly and much
faster than I would have liked.

Tom Rose shrugged. 'I don't care either way. But there's bugger
all else to do.'

We could hear it first, and then smell it, before we could see it.

Tom turned round to us and inhaled dramatically. 'Ah, the
unmistakable aroma of hot dogs and vomit.' He threaded his arm
tightly through mine, mainly, I think, to keep me walking. 'I told
you you'd love it! I'll win you a panda.'

'I don't want a panda. I want to go home.'

He relinquished my arm. 'Fine. Fine. Off you go. Tom and me'll
just puke our guts up on the Waltzer, and again on the Teacups,
and you'll have to miss it. No, you go.'

Which, of course, did the trick. As he knew it would.

They went on the Waltzer, they went on the Teacups, they went
on the Shake 'n' Slam. I don't know if that's what the last one was
called, but that's what it did. I stood behind the barrier and
watched the pair of them, hugging myself to keep warm. A group
of girls I vaguely recognized wandered up and stood beside me.
'Look! There's Tom H. and Tom R.,' one of them shouted above
the swirl of the music, and a quiver of interest rattled through
them. They were all pretty girls, with long legs in tight jeans and
hair like a shampoo ad. I thought that they went to the grammar
school; their accents fitted, and they weren't quite as slutty as
some of the other gangs of girls already roaming the fairground,
looking for trouble and fun. I felt like an idiot with my conventional
work clothes and my long face, which seemed as if it
had just got a yard longer.

'Hey, Tom!' another of the girls shouted, as the ride swung
dizzily round our way. All four waved. I hopped from side to side,
my feet cold on the damp ground. The boys' faces swept past, ugly
with the G-force. I couldn't tell if they were delirious with joy or
pain or fear. The grammar school girls giggled and hid their faces
in one another's hair.

Tom H. and Tom R.
That was a new one on me. They'd never
been as equal as that on Hennessy territory. I knew that my Tom
was an object of general desire, but Tom Rose?

I walked up and down, trying to warm my feet. The ride was
slowing to a halt now, people stood up in the cars, ready to
scramble out. The scrawny youth who manned the entrance gate
turned and said, 'You next, is it, girls?' and the grammar school
gang turned away, squealing. Tom and Tom Rose jumped down.

Tom grabbed my hand. 'You missed a treat there. We were
going so fast we actually swallowed our puke back in. Now, what
next? Bloody hell, Caro, you're freezing!'

Tom Rose caught up with me. 'You
are
freezing, Caro.'

He was wearing one of his lumberjack shirts over a black
T-shirt, and he shrugged it off and wrapped it round my
shoulders. It smelled faintly of sweat, and beer, but, underneath,
his mother's washing powder. I pushed my arms into the sleeves.

'Thank you.'

He waved a dismissive hand.

The grammar school girls came up behind us. 'Hi, Tom,' they
chorused. I turned to look at their clear sweet smiling faces, but
they couldn't even see me. I was no competition, in my neat skirt
and somebody else's plaid shirt. I hadn't spent an hour in front of
the mirror in preparation for this evening out. Even if I had, it
wouldn't have done me any good.

'I know, let's go and shoot something.' Tom glanced round at
his new audience. 'How about it, lay-
dees
? How do you like the
sound of that?'

At his insistence we passed up the first shooting gallery, which
had ducks as targets, and carried on round the dingy canvas alleyways
until we found another one with battered tin figures out of
a Wild West saloon.

Tom counted through his coins. 'D'you want a go, Caro?'

'No.'

'Come on. Have some fun.'

'I'd be no good.'

'Damn you, woman, have some
fun
!'

'I told you I didn't like the fair. I'm only here because ...'But it
was obvious why I was there. I didn't have to put it into words.
Anyway, Tom was busy lining up his rifle, concentrating on the
first target.

I watched the targets come clacking round. The first one had a
black hat and turned-down moustache. Both rifles missed. The
next figure was a Mexican towing a mule.

'Get the donkey!' shouted Tom. He squinted and fired. 'Fucking
sights are useless!'

But the mule went down to Tom Rose's shot. A cry of glee went
up from the four girls, and Tom Rose turned round to take a bow,
missing his opportunity as the following target creaked into view,
a John Wayne type in a worn white hat. Nothing. The next was a
bartender with apron and slicked-back hair.

'He looks like Mister Clipper,' Tom jeered, bending to his shotgun.
'Let's get Mister Clipper.'

The target clanged and fell backwards. I didn't see who'd hit it.
Maybe they both had. Tom turned to me. 'Jesus, Caro,
so
sorry
about your dad.' Behind me, the grammar school flock all giggled
again. A fat bent creature trundled across the target area,
waistcoated and staring. 'And there's her creepy brother!' Tom
cried. 'Get the weirdo brother, too!'

I'd had enough. 'I'm going home,' I said, and began to pull Tom
Rose's shirt off.

'Oh, come on, Caro, it was just a joke.' Tom abandoned his rifle
and came over. 'Don't go. You know I can't resist a joke. I didn't
mean it.' He put his arms tight around me and kissed my forehead.
The grammar school girls were just a blur on the periphery.

Tom Rose downed that target, and then the next.

'
Shot
, sir!' Tom cried, in a crusty English voice, and clapped his
hands high in the air as if he were at a cricket match. I wriggled
out from underneath.

'Don't get in a mood, Caro. Anyway, we haven't been on the
dodgems yet.'

I could smell a sweet burnt smell. 'I'm going to get some candyfloss,'
I said. 'Want some?' But nobody did. I glanced at Tom Rose
and saw that he had his arm draped around the shoulders of the
blondest girl. Boys don't touch without intention: that hand on
the elbow, on the small of the back, is never just there by accident.
It's planning to lead to greater things.

The trampled grass was littered with lolly wrappers and chip
forks. I queued behind a fat woman. The sky was quite dark now,
beyond the fairground lights, and the wind had dropped. Maybe
next year I wouldn't be here, I'd be doing something
spectacular
and would never have to come back.

When I got to the dodgem cars the session was under way. They
sparked and banged and tangled, and their passengers' heads flew
back like executionees. Tom Rose and the blonde girl were sharing
one car, Tom Rose in charge of the wheel (of course) and busily
charging a metallic blue car which my Tom drove. In it was
another of the girls, hanging on to his shirt and screaming fit to
burst. The session ended, cars coming to a sudden halt as the
power went off. Their occupants stood up and climbed out. Both
Toms stayed. The ride boy swung from pole to pole, and I saw
them hand him up more money. The poles sparked and sizzled,
the cars started up again. I watched them for a minute more,
and then I walked away. The candyfloss stuck to my lips and
disappeared on my tongue. I had only myself to blame. I didn't
know how to have fun.

*

Stones against my window. I knelt up on the bed and lifted the
curtain. Tom was standing in our driveway. I made a face at him
and held up my fingers: two minutes. I climbed into jeans and a
sweater. I wasn't going to a moonlit assignation with him in my
suburban night attire. I picked up my keys but didn't dare to shut
the front door properly – the latch always clunked and my
parents' bedroom was only a whisper away. I tiptoed up the drive.
Tom had vanished behind the hedge. At the gate he grabbed me
and rolled me into the sharp-smelling leaves. His hands were
cold, and his breath smelled of beer.

'Where'd you get to, Caro? You just disappeared!' He made
magician's gestures with his fingers, and an explosion with his
mouth.

'Shh!' I said, but he took my finger from my lips and fixed me
with one of his vampire kisses. I pushed him away again. 'How did
you know which was my room?'

'I always knew. I'd see you staring out of your window all the
time.'

He knew. He'd always known. He knew everything about me;
or thought he did.

'What do you want at this time of night?'

'I've got a plan!' he said, grinning. 'It's great. I had to tell you. I
was going to tell you earlier, but then you skedaddled.'

'What plan?'

'For when I go to America.'

If he had hit me over the head with a blunt instrument I
couldn't have seen more stars. Tom had a plan, and I was in it and
so was America. Something
spectacular
.

'America?'

'I thought you knew.'

How? Tillie could have told me, or Barbara. Or Tom himself, as
a matter of fact. But none of them thought to.

'No. I don't know anything. When is this?'

'Couple of weeks. I've got an exchange trip arranged with an
American university. For a year.'

So Tom, that slackest of students, had somehow wangled himself
an exchange. A year in America and I could go with him. I put
my arms around his waist. His cheek was warm against mine; his
voice echoed through my head. As if our thoughts were joined.

'And when I go,' he said, 'you can have my job.'

A jolt, a lightning blast. My head throbbed with it.

'Your
job
?'

'Yeah, it's only weekends – they won't want the bother of finding
someone else. I'll tell them you'll cover for my shifts.' He
stepped back and regarded me. 'Get yourself some high heels and
a little tight skirt, you'll do fine.' He gathered up my hair with one
hand and pulled it back behind my head. 'And mascara. A bit of
make-up wouldn't hurt, you know.' Again he leaned towards me
but this time he rubbed noses Eskimo-fashion. His nose was so
sharp.