New Welsh Short Stories (14 page)

She looked at me, smiled, pretended to fall, then actually slipped. I caught her, but the lighter dropped into the moat with a plop.

‘Oh my,' she said.

I looked at her face, and then she intoned in a funny deep voice: ‘
Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the lighter.'

On an afternoon when we both should have been in school, she finally took my virginity. In my childhood bed, with the peeling
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faded stickers of Mr Men and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles on the headboard, she guided me, showed me what to do. At one stage I could have sworn that Michelangelo, pizza in hand, gave me a little wink.

Afterwards, as she dressed, and her scarred arms vanished into long black sleeves, she smiled and said thanks.

‘Thanks for what?' I said.

‘Thanks for not being a dick.'

9.

Oh how those women tumbled on the grass in front of the castle!

10.

The Quiff was in the driver's seat, and Larry and I were in the back, silent. Every now and then a woman's voice would come over the police radio, and the Quiff would nod his head knowingly. Gareth was still outside, sitting against the garden wall, as the bald one strolled to and fro on the pavement, asking questions and writing things in a notebook.

‘How long have you all known each other, then?' said the Quiff, staring at the mad neighbour's house.

‘Since nuh
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nuh
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nursery,' I said. ‘And then we all went to the same primary school and now
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now
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now we're all at the same secondary school too.'

His hat lay at Larry's feet.

‘That's nice,' said the Quiff, still looking out the windscreen, as if the street and houses were a TV show. ‘Yeah, it's good to have old friends.'

The detective arrived in an unmarked car, and the Quiff got out to talk to him. The detective was tall and thin and had a big nose. He shone a flashlight beneath the Jeep and the beam fell upon the oar – discarded by Larry when the sirens first sounded. With a tentative scooping of an outstretched leg, the Quiff pulled back the oar.

‘Bingo bango,' said the bald one. ‘We have a weapon.'

‘Great stuff,' said the detective. ‘Case closed.' He got back into his car and left.

I felt a clutch at my ribs, a sagging of my lungs.

Outside my window, the moon was full as an egg.

11.

We saw each other every day and I became part of Jessica's family. On weekends she played the harp at weddings, and I'd sit in the back pews feeling a mixture of pride and distance, as if her talent would always keep us separate. After each performance, she'd buy a bag of weed with the money she'd earned, and apply superglue to her cracked and bleeding fingers. The first time I touched her glued fingertips, they felt unreal.

‘No prints,' she said, moving her fingers in the air. ‘I'd make the perfect thief.'

She grew more comfortable with me, and in turn became more confident. She started wearing short
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sleeve tops, and didn't even care when Larry asked her what had happened to her arms.

But once my virginity was gone I grew hungry with the loss, and I'd try to turn every innocent kiss into the start of foreplay.
And as she became more confident in her body, I (believing myself to be responsible for her transformation) became cocky. And when that happened, the balance between us shifted: as I became the confident one, she became clingy. And I grew attached to being needed and abused the feeling. On evenings when she was really down, I feigned illness, fatigue, anything that would elicit her desperation. I would leave her house early, to have her beg me to stay.

I started speaking with girls in chat rooms, on webcams, anywhere I could. I thought of doing things to these other girls, of exotic positions, of so many different breasts. I had had sex with one person and now I was ready to have sex with the world. And though I was in love, I mourned the fact I wasn't single. So I boasted to Gareth and Larry about oral sex and the frequency with which I received it. I knew it was ungracious but it bubbled up inside me like bile.

12.

It took a while to understand what the police suspected.

‘Attempted burglary,' the bald one finally said. ‘You could go down for eight years for this.'

I pictured the courtroom, the cell, the release at twenty
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five with a wizened face that wasn't my own.

My eyeballs sat heavy in their sockets.

Gareth had left the key in the house, and they wouldn't let us ring anyone, so we couldn't prove the house belonged to his aunt. In the oar they thought they'd found a weapon for smashing the door, and the dinghy, what? A possible means of escape? Were we going to row our way to freedom?

The neighbours across the road were the ones who had heard the shouting and the smashing. They'd looked from behind their velvet curtains and seen a figure kicking the door. They had called the police, but now weren't sure if there'd been one person or more.

Oh, we were being had alright.

13.

Drunk deep to my stomach and wearing vomit on my sleeve, I made the biggest mistake. We were at a silver
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surfaced club, where songs by Usher seemed to be on loop. Jessica had lost her phone, an expensive birthday present from her father, and she was in tears. I meant to say to her that it was okay, that we'd find it, but what came out of my staggering mouth was, ‘I love you.'

‘Oh, you'll be better in the morning,' she said, patting my head. ‘Come on, let's find my phone.'

That evening, at her father's house and with Jessica still phoneless, we had unprotected sex and twice fell off the bed. I tried taking her from behind but didn't know what I was doing. I moved her limbs every which way. But still confused by it all, I grew frustrated and complained about the lack of moisture. In short, I became a dick.

In the morning, awakening to an empty house and emboldened by the intimacy of the night before, I left the bathroom door open while I peed. Passing in the hall, she rested a hand on the newel post, looked at me and sighed.

I don't know if it was the love or the sex, but after that night we saw less of each other. At a house party a week later she got so drunk and so stoned that she passed out on the living
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room floor and threw up all over herself. With Larry's help, I carried her to the bathroom. I sat her up, her head over the toilet bowl, and from her hair I picked out bits of vomited pasta. All the while she was somehow still asleep. In the morning I asked her how she felt.

‘Pretty good,' she said, ‘but who the hell threw up on my clothes?'

I lectured her. I made a martyr out of myself. I wrote a poem about it and sent it to her in an email.

‘I'm not sure I like the tone of this poem,' she replied. ‘But I like the way you rhymed “pasta remnants conditioned hair” with “do you ever care?” – that was nice.'

She grew distant. She started spending time with older people. And the tendon in my ear and the jut of my jaw ached from the heat of the phone continually resting, from the calls I kept making to her home.

And when she broke up with me, the feeling that peeked out – like a hilltop above it all – was guilt for wanting to sleep with other girls during our time together. It was like when I was seven and spent a week at a Welsh
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language heritage centre, where sheep lived in our garden, and I silently wished to have a sheep at home instead of my blind and stupid dog – only to return home to find Rosie had died, had been cremated on bonfire night by my father.

14.

A few days after the Pull The Bull party, Larry ran into the girl with Down's syndrome at the shopping centre. He told us she hugged him, put her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

Her mother apologised and pulled the girl away. But Larry assured her that it was okay, that it happened to him all the time – he said he must have one of those faces. The mother smiled and – I really doubted this part – gave Larry a scone from a clear bag of cakes.

He said he ate half and fed the rest to the ducks in the castle moat.

I don't know why this is relevant. It's just another scene I can never shake.

15.

They wouldn't believe us.

‘It was the guy next door,' Gareth said.

‘We've asked him,' the bald one answered. ‘He says he was out all night.'

‘Bullshit.'

‘Watch your language,' Elvis said. ‘And that's a serious allegation you're making against Mr Spencer there. Think carefully before you repeat it. Now, one more time, what were you doing on the property?'

Gareth told them to look in the house, to see the photos of him on the mantelpiece. They finally permitted him to call his aunt, but she didn't answer. She was still at her meeting with the bereavement group. We could hear everything – or almost everything – from the back of the car.

Larry, meanwhile, had the policeman's hat back on and was admiring himself in the mirror.

‘'Allo, 'allo, 'allo,' he said, stroking the hat.

‘Do you ever take anything seriously?' I said.

He turned to me slowly. ‘No,' he said, ‘never.'

‘Gareth should just call his parents,' I said. ‘They could sort all this out.'

‘Nah, his old man's as crazy as the neighbour,' he said. ‘God, as if they were ever going to arrest a former cop. It's ridiculous.'

‘I just don't get why they're keeping us here,' I said. ‘Unles—'

‘Unless what?'

‘Do you reckon they know about you kissing the Down's syndrome girl?'

He carried on watching himself in the mirror, stroking his tufts of hair.

‘Nope,' he said. ‘Anyway, not even illegal.'

‘What about the fifteen year old in the alley?' I said.

‘Doubt it.' He leaned over the seat and fiddled with the radio. ‘Do you reckon we can get Radio One on this?'

He found a clear frequency – a woman's voice talking about a disturbance at the castle.

‘Eight years in prison?' he said, sitting back and adjusting the hat. ‘I could do that in my sleep.'

Outside, the police were laughing.

16.

After I broke my collarbone, and word of my wrestling had spread, I was called in to see the headmaster.

‘Is everything all right?' he asked. On the wall behind him was a poster with a picture of a wolf, a sheep, a bag of a grain, two islands and a boat, and the words:
There's Always A Solution
. The sling chafed my neck and my armpit smelled.

‘Absolutely perfect,' I said. ‘Couldn't be better.'

‘I'm just concerned,' the headmaster said. ‘We've had reports of you trying to arm
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wrestle the dinner ladies.'

‘Those were private words shared in private.'

‘I see,' he said. ‘Do you know what you'll do when you're finished with school?'

‘I will become a useful contributor to society.'

‘And the wrestling?'

‘That too may still have a role,' I said. ‘It's a bit early to tell.'

‘Anything else you want to tell me?'

‘As a matter of fact, yes,' I said. ‘I'm tired of waking up at 7am. And I'm tired of making breakfast, eating breakfast, getting dressed, brushing my teeth, walking to the bus, getting on the bus, giving money to the driver, sitting on the bus, coming to school, going to lessons and staying there as the day grows darker. My legs are tired and my hips are tired, and my ankles are aching, and my head always feels like I've just done an exam. I find it hard to keep focused on a thought without thinking about thinking about that thought. And I'm finding it hard even talking to you now. And you know what I'm most tired of? Knowing that this is just the start, that I'll only get more tired as I get older, that I'll have a life of being…'

There was no school counsellor so I wasn't referred to one.

I was glad of that.

17.

And though I wouldn't find out about Jessica until the morning after, I remember exactly those seventeen words that came over the police radio:

‘Quit messing those kids and come to the castle,' the voice said. ‘We've found a body in the fucking moat.'

ON THE INSIDE

Trezza Azzopardi

She was looking at a light low down in the sky, a sudden bloom of colour that could have been a firework or a flare. It spread across the horizon, shimmering red and orange over the waves before dissolving into the sea. Immediately it grew darker, and the wind came up and agitated the plastic carrier bag she was holding. Kenny was only just visible at the edge of the water. He had his head on one side, as if he was studying something. After a minute he turned to look at her, making a broad gesture with his arm. He wanted her to go to him. She picked her way between the rock pools, trying not to slip. It was even colder at the shoreline, with the wind buffeting her legs.