Porky (11 page)

Sometimes I'd wander into the forecourt, all
insouciante
, and look at the bags of sweets on the swivel stands. There was a shop, with plush Snoopies in it and car deodorants on golden chains. The walls were covered with that plastic panelling I told you about, which Dad had nicked for Kanga's house. The attendant I remember best was the Indian one. He didn't seem to mind me wandering around; he was just right – not too aloof and not too familiar. In fact, he once gave me a packet of Polos. I felt relaxed at the garage. Nothing was demanded of me. I was reassured by that big public road.

I wasn't exactly escaping. You must remember that in those days, when I was only twelve, I still loved my Dad and felt I shouldn't be avoiding him. That's why I did it on the sly. If he knew, then he might turn cold on me and I couldn't bear that. I still adored him being pleased with me and taking me on his knee. I kept my wariness well hidden and I soon learned to distinguish the times when this was safe – in company, or when he was being vague and ordinary, sort of breezy and
known
– and the times when it wasn't.

I want to get on to when I was thirteen, a teenager. I don't want to talk about the first time it happened. By it, I mean the sexual intercourse. I want to tell you when I began to change in myself, which was later. Still, if you want to know the facts, it happened first – only partially – when I was twelve, and four more times that year. I don't want to remember when, or where. If you were a psychiatrist you'd be stopping me here, I bet. You'd be asking me questions and pulling me back. That's why I refused to see one. With you, it's easier. If you're still there, listening, you'll only hear what I can tell you, and if it's too painful for me, then I'll stop.

It wasn't hard to pretend nothing happened, because half an hour later everything was back to normal, just like that. Another thing I must say: I was never forced to do anything. I didn't have to be, because he was my Dad.

I do remember the exact moment when I lay soaking in the bath, aged thirteen, and realized how wrong it was. Not just wrong of me – I was used to that feeling – but wrong of him. I'd suspected it, of course, for ages, but I'd never dared admit it. Can you understand why? If you can, you'll know why I lay there without moving. And why I didn't move as the bathroom grew dusky, and the bath water grew cooler and cooler until it was quite cold.

Teddy used to break things. He snapped all his crayons in two, and he smashed the shed windows. He'd go into the field and pull up the cabbages. I wasn't like that. Nothing showed, with me. When I was young I was an open little girl, I trusted everyone, but I'd long since lost that. Even if they were the noticing kind, which they weren't, nobody in our house could tell that I was changed that evening and afterwards.

I didn't behave differently; I just felt different, through and through, because I'd realized:
it's his fault too.
I didn't dare repeat it to myself in those words. But as I climbed out of the bath, those words were spreading and settling inside me.

The next day, Saturday, I had a dentist's appointment. The surgery was in Staines. I went there early, on the bus, because I wanted to do some window-shopping. But there wasn't a bus back so my Dad said he'd pick me up.

I was terrified of the dentist. Nobody likes going, of course, but I didn't know if my fear was normal. As I said, I couldn't tell if I felt like everybody else. I was nervous of the pain, oh yes, but the terror came from the dentist finding something out. I felt this with anyone official who examined me. The doctor, for instance, and even our games teacher, who'd discovered a verruca on my foot.

My mouth, surely, could give no clues – logically it couldn't. But the pitiless, antiseptic smell, and the white coats, and that probing light inside my throat, and the way he paused, with his pointed instrument in my teeth, and frowned, and looked closer . . . Then the way he turned to his assistant, who was standing right near me, and said something in code which she wrote down in a file. Perhaps you can understand that when it came to rinsing out, the assistant had to hold the glass against my lips because my hand was too trembly to do it myself. Pink water splashed out of my mouth.

‘All shipshape.' Mr Downes smiled. I'd had an injection, and a filling. He laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘All over now, Heather. Okey-dokey?'

I nodded.

‘Never as bad as we'd expected, is it? You're a brave girl – just one hole, but a biggy.'

I was given my coat.

‘Anyone picking you up?' he asked.

‘My Dad.'

‘Ah . . . the elusive Mr Mercer. Janice, you've sent him a reminder, haven't you?'

‘Two.'

Dad always threw them away; he was like a child about the dentist.

Then my heart stopped. What if they gave him gas and he started talking? People said things, under gas; he'd told me so.
All your little secrets
, he'd said,
all pouring out.

‘Janice can pop down with you. Is he downstairs?'

‘No!' I lied. ‘He's waiting miles away!'

‘Miles?'

But I was clattering down the stairs.

Dad was sitting beside the reception booth. ‘What's the hurry?' he said. ‘After you with his drill?'

I was outside now. I ran to the truck. Wrenching open the door, I caught my breath at last.

We drove away. For the first time, out in the open, I thought: it's not just
my
fault that I can't look Mr Downes in the eye. It's not just my fault that I've behaved so oddly. It's yours too. Why did you let me get like this, when you're my Dad?

On the way back he had to stop to see a mate of his about a dog – Rinty had been run over the week before. Perhaps that's another reason for my behaviour; I'd loved Rinty.

I stayed sitting in the van. The sun was setting and the sky was streaked yellow. I should feel peaceful, now the dentist was over. The road was a cul-de-sac; there were bungalows down one side. The other side was a field, clumpy with gorse, and beyond it the raised bank of the reservoir. There was no real countryside around us, I realized: just forgotten fields like ours, scruffy and neglected.

The sunset was so beautiful; it seemed a waste that I was feeling this way. Farther down the field someone was trotting round and round on a pony. Behind them stood the electricity sub-station; a brick block with wires criss-crossed above it. It was all spoiled, our countryside, with its ugly buildings. I wound down the window to clear the fug. Near my face the hedge was cobwebby with old man's beard, draped around the branches; on the black twigs the berries looked like beads of blood.

‘Up, down, up, down . . .'

A woman was shouting at the girl, I could hear them now. I recognized the girl on the pony: it was Sandra, from my class.

‘Toes up! Heels down!' The voice carried on the autumn air.

Girls at school had pets, I realized – Gwen with her guinea pigs and tortoise – and I just had animals. I was different. Another thought struck me. Perhaps the dentist thought Dad couldn't read – that's why he wanted to remind him about an appointment. You see, my thoughts were clear and unwelcome that evening.

Dad climbed into the cab.

‘A bitch.' He shut the door. ‘Never told me it was a bitch.'

‘What's wrong with a bitch?'

‘Too temperamental. Moody, like, when they're in heat.' He inserted the key. ‘Have half the neighbourhood sniffing round our door.' Then he turned. ‘How's Heth, then? He filled your teeth?'

‘Just one. He said I'd been looking after them very well.'

‘That's my girl,' he said vaguely, patting my knee.

The drill had hurt. I so wanted to be comforted. Sandra and Gwen would have been.

‘I had an injection, but it still hurt.' That was the wrong thing to say, because his voice softened.

‘Poor old Heth . . . Hurt a lot?'

‘Not really,' I lied, willing him to start the engine.

‘Poor old Heatherbell . . .' His hand was rubbing my knee. ‘Poor old mouth.' He pushed back the hair from my face.

‘Up, down, up, down!' yelled the lady.

‘Poor old mouthy,' he said again. His face came close, his breath warm. ‘Daddy kiss it better.'

I drew back. ‘They'll see.' I raised my eyebrows, jerking my head towards the bungalow. ‘Your mate will.' Then I said, ‘And my friend Sandra's in that field.'

A silence. His hand remained heavily on my knee. I'd said it aloud: I'd spoken about what we were doing.

Stunned by my words, I couldn't move either. I remember counting the wires against the streaked sky. I didn't dare look at anything closer. At that moment I was apart from my Dad, because I had spoken about us. And that made us terribly together. I felt so old.

He reversed the van, abruptly, and turned it round. We drove up towards the main road. I've been trying to pin-point the stages, telling you how I was losing my innocence. This was one moment. And – see, he wasn't even touching me. But as I said, it happens when you least expect it . . . lying in the bath, and then sitting in the cab. My body had been violated before then, oh yes, but not my spirit. And, please take it from me, it's the spirit that matters.

I watched Sandra as we drove past. She held herself so straight and proud; her hair floating up and down.

On the way home he pulled into a lay-by. The sun had set; the passing lorries had already switched on their headlights. He turned off the engine. There is nowhere on earth as lonely as a lay-by. In my heart I'd wanted him to stop; I knew, now, that this was all the consolation that I deserved. It was the only comfort we could give each other.

A field stretched to the far motorway, with its raised arc lights. We were under the flight-path; in the field stood beacons, too tall for their surroundings, dwarfing the bushes. They were as tall as telegraph poles, with lights on top. As he drew my head on to his shoulder, as I knew he would, I was thinking that they must be put there in some pattern, a lit grid that made sense to planes in the sky, but that down here they were just big stupid poles.

‘I've been a bad boy,' he mumbled into my hair. ‘That's what you said . . . I've been a bad, bad boy.'

He meant it, but he was also working himself up. I knew both those things, now. ‘Will my Heatherbell forgive me?'

I didn't nod, but I didn't move away either.

His voice thickened. ‘Does she know how much I need her?'

I nodded then. I did know.

‘How lonely I am . . . how blooming lonely?' He rubbed his nose up and down in my hair. He paused. It took him some time to speak. ‘Both of us is that, aren't we?'

He rested his head against mine. ‘Ever so lonely.' We sat quite still. ‘Whatever's going to become of us, Piglet?'

I couldn't answer this.

‘I'd do anything in the world', he said, ‘to stop you being harmed . . . never want you hurt, in all your life . . . You know that, don't you . . .' He pushed back my hair, strand by strand, and then he kissed my ear. ‘You're so precious, that's why. My precious . . .' His voice grew thicker. ‘Even if I'm a bit of a naughty boy . . .'

His hand moved inside my blouse. His hand was big, and dry, and so warm. ‘They know it too, don't they . . . so soft . . .' His voice was almost inaudible now. ‘They're wanting me to give them a kiss . . . so they're knowing for sure . . .'

His mouth closed over my skin; his moustache tickled. His mouth was very soft; he was never, ever rough. You must believe me. He paused, and murmured,

‘Your little heart's beating . . . beating like a bird, a wild, wee bird, trapped in there . . .'

He straightened my blouse again, carefully. Outside, in the dusk, a heifer rubbed itself against one of the poles. The traffic rumbled past; nobody was stopping. He rested his head against my chest. As always I felt awkward about my plump stomach, beneath his chin, but I also knew that he shouldn't be the one to rest his head there; my plumpness shouldn't belong to him . . . But my lumpy growing had been under his touch.

‘There's someone else wants to tell you too . . .' His breathing was quickening now. ‘Someone else needs you . . . you know he does . . .'

His hand closed over mine. It stayed there a moment. The van shook as a lorry thundered past. Then he lifted my hand and carried it down to his trousers. ‘So lonely, he is . . . there's only one person can take his loneliness away . . .'

He was undoing his buttons. I didn't help, but I didn't stop him. The fabric sprang back.

‘. . . just one darling girl can do that . . .'

I kept my head turned away from him; I kept my eyes on the field with its tall lights. The heifer was ambling away. My fingers, guided by his, felt skin. It was tucked away, bulging, but he was tugging at the last button. I never knew what to do with my fingers; they were useless. The trousers were open; it sprang up. It still shocked me, when it did that. It was too big and sudden.

‘See . . .' he murmured, ‘he's all ready . . .'

He couldn't put it into me, not here in the cab, beside the road. I was glad about that. He was holding my hand, guiding it up and down, as if I were doing it all by myself. I was squeezing my eyes shut now, and clenching my brain. His breath was making fluttery sounds so I knew it would soon be over . . . the seat was creaking with his movements. I bit my lip and it hurt; the dentist's numbness was wearing off.

My eyes were wet, but when he finished I kept my head turned away, as I always did, so he wouldn't see. If he saw, he would be certain to start sobbing in that horrible way. I couldn't bear us both to be crying.

Besides, I needed to keep something to myself . . . something of my own, that belonged to me, even if it was just my tears.