Precocious Page 16

  It was the kind of hotel that made me want to whisper: a beautiful marble staircase, huge vases of lilies whose scent filled my throat. Muted music.

  ‘What do you mean?’ you laughed, signing a form.

  ‘You’re just very … casual,’ I shrugged. I took the key card from you: it said ‘family room’.

  You were still allowed to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, back then. We watched a young couple, dressed similarly in jeans and belted, black pea coats, sunglasses pushed back on their heads. He’d opened up a bag of crumbs and was surrounded by swooping and cooing birds; some resting on his arms, his shoulders, some appearing to peck at his hair. Behind the flapping of grey wings, I could see that he was grinning, and although his girlfriend was squealing and holding her arms up to her face, she was laughing.

  ‘Bloody flying rats,’ you tutted. ‘Ugh. Filthy.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I murmured, mesmerised by the boy and his girlfriend, ‘I think they’re … sort of cute.’

  ‘Do you disagree with me on everything just for fun?’

  ‘I don’t think I do. Do I?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘There you go again.’

  ‘Ha. Maybe.’

  You smiled and linked my fingers with yours and I suddenly realised how far from home we were. I gazed across the square at the face of Big Ben in the distance, car horns and the chatter of unfamiliar accents and languages resounding in my ears.

  I suddenly had a sense of being at the heart of the world. When I grow up, I thought, I’m going to live here.

  We strolled, still hand in hand, looking askance at the people on open-top buses – ‘Tourists!’ we scoffed – not us; we belonged here.

  It was as though I’d only in that moment realised that places existed all the time without me in them; that all over the world there were places where I could be, where we should be. Places we, you and I, should go to.

  ‘Istanbul,’ I shouted, ‘we should go to Istanbul.’

  What a waste it seemed: life happening elsewhere. But just for today, I thought, I am in it. Today it’s my life, and it’s full of possibilities.

  You didn’t question my outburst, didn’t even look surprised, just squeezed my hand and said, ‘One day we’ll go to Istanbul, sunshine.’

  Us in the mirror.

  ‘Look how good we look together.’

  I nodded approvingly.

  ‘Yep,’ I said, ‘in London, we look good.’

  Still bright in my mind, fifteen years on, what seems like a slow-running cinema reel of you laughing in the bedroom as I sang in the bathroom, my head dizzy with you, putting on lip-gloss that would soon be kissed away.

  It was one of those months between winter and spring, when the air feels clean and everything is just below ground, waiting to push through. We lay on our backs in Hyde Park.

  ‘You remind me of someone I used to know. Have I ever told you that?’ I shook my head. ‘She was a writer, too. She wrote poems.’

  My heart caught in my throat. You called me a writer. I rolled onto my side, rested my head in my palm.

  ‘What was she like?’

  You smiled, right into the corner of your eyes, and for a moment I hated her for being the cause of that smile, but I wanted to hear.

  ‘She was like you. She was … different.’

  ‘In what ways?’

  You laughed.

  ‘Well, she liked Fleetwood Mac when everybody else was into Rick Astley and so on. She cared about everything, except what people thought of her. I love that.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  You shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. She … she moved away. She had her whole life ahead of her. Like you, she could achieve anything. I doubt she even remembers me!’

  How could anyone forget you? I wondered, and rolled back into the grass.

  Back then not only could you feed pigeons in London; you could smoke pretty much anywhere, even inside, without being frowned on. Imagine that! I can’t actually believe now that I ever wasted time smoking outside, in parks and in the street. If I’d known what was coming I would’ve gone immediately into a café, a pub, onto a train, to light up, just because I could.

  But you were frowning at me.

  ‘Why do you smoke?’

  I thought about this for two long drags, looking at the white tails left by aeroplanes in the sky. Finally I replied, ‘Because nobody tells me not to.’

  ‘What if I told you not to?’

  I looked at you.

  ‘But you smoke,’ I pointed out. ‘You smoke loads.’

  ‘That’s different. I’m …’

  ‘What? Old? A hypocrite?’

  You ignored this.

  ‘And drugs?’

  I groaned.

  ‘Jesus. Don’t give me the Just Say No talk, please.’

  ‘I know you aren’t going to like what I’m about to say, Little Miss Independent. I’m not sure I like it, to be honest. It’s just … sometimes I want to put you in my pocket and take care of you. There!’ You exhaled dramatically. ‘I’ve said it.’

  I made a yakking sound into the grass, chanting, ‘Gross, gross, gross.’

  But you were wrong; I did like it. I liked it a lot.

  We went out, because nobody knew us in London. I looked older, dressed up, you looked younger, somehow.

  We held hands, my nerves high in my throat.

  I let you lead me, trusting you, all the time looking down. The pavements looked cleaner, in the dark, in the rain. Taxis edged past slower than we could walk, horns occasionally and for no apparent reason blaring. Coloured lights from the buildings above reflected and bounced in the puddles. I jumped on them, trying to capture them, splashing my shoes, making you laugh.

  Nobody gave us a second glance, everyone pressing forward on their own personal missions, with fast feet, hard eyes.

  I pressed my face against the window of a Chinese restaurant, eyeing row upon row of featherless ducks, hanged and burnt-looking, waiting to be eaten. I shuddered.

  ‘Do you want to go in?’ you said into my ear, brushing a raindrop from the end of my nose, and then you were ushering me into the steam and the warmth. We draped napkins big as bed sheets across our laps and I played with the chopsticks, making them dance like skinny bodiless legs across the table. I flicked through the menu with disinterest, let you order for me; eating was a necessary but temporary diversion from my real business, of talking to you, being close to you. Restaurants were just a place where we could sit still, sit opposite each other.

  You wanted to know what was going on at home; what was the source of my most recent exasperation.

  ‘It’s like with our kid,’ I blushed, corrected myself, ‘I mean, my brother, our Alex. Alex,’ suddenly afraid I might sound common, but you hadn’t seemed to notice. ‘He comes and goes at all hours, there’s always some girl or other on the landing, queuing for the bathroom, wearing one of his skanky old T-shirts and no knickers. Ugh.’

  I was exaggerating a bit – they usually were wearing knickers – but I liked the fact that you were amused.

  ‘My point is,’ I went on, ‘do they even notice? Well, she does, and you know what she says? “Better he does it under my roof than in an alley somewhere, or in the back of a car.”’

  ‘Well, she might have a point there. And he is a bit older than you, so …’

  ‘He’s seventeen,’ I grimaced, ‘and why does he have to do it anywhere? Ugh, ugh, ugh.’

  ‘Sounds to me as though you have very cool, liberal, dare I say it maybe even a little bit hippy-ish parents, and most of the kids in school would kill for a swap. But you, naturally, would rather they were hard-line puritans who sent you to bed at 7 p.m. with a gruel supper and no TV.’

  ‘First of all: they’re not hippies, they just don’t give a shit.’ I had never sworn in front of you before, I was pretty sure – I checked your face – no reaction. ‘Second of all: please don’t
talk to me as though I’m some typical teenager with textbook, predictable reactions to everything.’

  ‘Would I dare?’ you smiled.

  ‘I’m telling you. I know everyone thinks their family is weird and says “oh, they don’t understand me”, but mine really is, and they really don’t.’

  ‘I know. I get it.’

  I also wanted to say, of course, and you. You. You’re the proof that I’m not the same as the others. The fact that you’re my ‘crush’, if we must call it that (everyone seemed to). Not Mr Hill, the anaemic Biology teacher who looked barely out of school himself and had all the other girls in giggles every time he walked down the corridor. Laura was chief of his fan club; she raved about him. He left me cold.

  You had something about you – it’s an overused phrase, one that we all nodded knowingly around and pretended to understand. But no one else really did; you had something about you and I wasn’t surprised that not everybody could see it.

  Of course they couldn’t – it was for me. It was the Something that connected you to me; the light in your eyes, like a secret, waiting for me, whispering that you were mine.

  In the hotel room, the bed loomed between us, too big, too well made. I tugged at the covers so tightly tucked under the mattress, and I pulled the very top one onto the floor. Sitting on it cross-legged, I reached up and dragged a pillow down too.

  You raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What’s this?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I just don’t like the bed.’

  You bounced on it, patted it as though encouraging a puppy.

  ‘It’s comfy,’ you said.

  ‘It’s too … big.’ It looked like the kind of bed that would expect something from me: a performance maybe, one I hadn’t had time to rehearse. It was a movie bed, a grown-up bed. I was happy on the floor. Slowly I peeled off my socks.

  ‘Then I’ll come to you,’ you smiled, but there was a touch of annoyance in your voice.

  ‘Whatever.’ I suddenly wanted water; the Chinese had been too salty, the wine too strong, the air-conditioning too dry.

  Then you were kissing me, and there was no time for water, and anyway I liked it, I liked that part, always. I made the sound that I could never help making, ‘mmm,’ as though I was eating something good, and you smiled into the kiss because you thought you knew what that meant, and you fumbled with the button on my jeans.

  I helped you. I got undressed quickly because in truth I just wanted it over with, I didn’t want the next part, not tonight. I just wanted a quick kiss and a cuddle and to go to sleep here on the floor. But I didn’t know how to tell you that, and anyway you mistook my speed at undressing for excitement, which made you smile even more. You didn’t even wait to get your own clothes off, you just unzipped your trousers and climbed onto me.

  I made some more noises because I knew that would make you finish faster, but I stared at the skirting board the whole time, and once you were breathless and still I said, ‘You can go and sleep in the bed, I don’t mind.’ You did, leaving me on the floor.

  I got up early and packed my bag while you slept so that we would be ready to leave, then made you a cup of tea and brought it to you. I stroked your hair and you woke up and murmured, ‘You’re an angel.’

  That was my favourite part of the whole weekend.

  When I came home from London, Mum was home too. She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea, like a visitor, so I went upstairs and looked in their bedroom. Sure enough, her clothes were hanging back in the wardrobe, her eyelash curlers and hair tongs were sitting on the dressing table.

  ‘So you’re back,’ I said later.

  ‘I never went away,’ she said simply. I looked at Dad; he nodded and looked down. So this is how it’s going to be, I thought. We’re just going to pretend it never happened.

  The best way I could think of to close the weekend off was to lock myself in my loft room and get stoned, but I couldn’t get hold of Mari. In a way I didn’t want to see her; she knew me too closely. I wanted to be with someone I could pretend with.

  Todd. He was clearly pleased to hear from me and appeared at the bottom of the stairs so quickly I thought he must have run round from his house.

  He’d brought his little biscuit box.

  ‘Come to Mama,’ I smiled, feeling terribly grown up and cool. Todd’s eyes were shining.

  I lay on the bed looking up at the sky while Todd rolled the first joint.

  ‘Are you sure your folks won’t mind?’ he asked nervously, looking at the door.

  ‘Advantage of living in the loft,’ I said, standing on the bed and reaching up to open the skylight. Cold air whooshed into the room, ‘and of course of having completely disinterested parents.’ Secretly, of course, I didn’t want either of them to come up the stairs. I didn’t know what their reaction would be; apart from anything else, unlike my brother I never had ‘friends’ of the opposite sex over.

  We were listening to Nirvana, but Todd was flicking through my albums. He seemed impressed at all the ‘really cool old stuff’ I had: Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan. Funny; I had always thought that stuff made me not cool. I smiled, the marijuana working its magic and sending happy little swirls into my brain. I felt as though I was watching them. It was also making me chatty, giddy.

  ‘D’ya know where I’ve been this weekend? London.’ I said it reverentially; if you only knew what I was doing while I was there, I thought. ‘Have you ever been to London, Todd?’

  ‘Me?’ he inhaled. ‘Nah, never been anywhere, me. I mean,’ hurriedly, ‘I go to Manchester, like, all the time. Hacienda and that …’

  He trailed off and stared at me. His eyes were chocolate-coloured, and like a dog’s; round and baleful. His hair dropped in curtains around his face, decades away from turning grey. He looked untouched.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I brought my hands up as though to brush something from my face. Todd was grinning.

  ‘You’re not like the other girls. You know that?’

  ‘Hmm, so I’m told,’ and perhaps he thought my smile was for him, instead of belonging somewhere else, across town, or in London, or in an English classroom, because he leaned in a little too close and I had to feign a coughing fit, which turned into laughing.

  ‘You know what it is,’ he was saying, ‘that attracts you to people?’

  ‘Err, usually a fit bum,’ I giggled. I was the funniest person alive right now.

  ‘No, no, I mean you know like when you fancy someone and, erm, you’re not really sure why you do? I mean … do you know what it is that causes that?’

  I tried to be solemn.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, Todd, I don’t. Tell me!’

  ‘It’s the smell. Not, like, perfume or whatever. It’s pheromones, or something. You don’t even know it, you’re not conscious of it, I mean, but that’s why you like people.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ But then I was off again, until I thought I would die laughing, and eventually I started to fall asleep, my eyes too heavy and my head too thick, even though my shoulders were still shaking. And I was thinking of you, and your smell, of Aramis and cigarettes and coffee, and I thought, sometimes it’s perfume, sometimes something else. And Todd said sweetly that he should leave, and said something serious about friendship that made me suddenly want to cry.

  So when he kissed my forehead a chaste goodbye, I smiled with my eyes closed and whispered, ‘Nice smell.’

  There are two, or maybe more, sides to every story. Sometimes people will try to muffle every version of the story but their own. ‘Where they burn books,’ Mrs Syms, our History teacher, once said, ‘sooner or later they end up burning people.’ She told me she’d seen it inscribed at a concentration camp. I didn’t know why anyone would want to visit such a place, but Mrs Syms was the kind of woman who seemed to want to surround herself with other people’s suffering. She was kind, and interesting, and was the person who made me understand the importance of the past.

&
nbsp; This was about the time that Mari found the letters. It turned out her dad, the missing dad who had served as the template for all her expectations of men, had been writing to her for years, and her mum had been hiding the letters from her.

  ‘All men are the same,’ used to be Mari’s line; ‘selfish bastards, all of ’em.’ The funny thing was, this never seemed to bother her, it was just a fact that she’d accepted. She even seemed to like men; she had several close male friends. She just had no expectations of them. So she’d never seemed particularly hurt by her view of the world. But after she got hold of the letters; this was what did it. Having to rewrite years and years’ worth of your version of events; this is how your heart gets broken.

  She never shouted and screamed at her mum. They were too close, she said, had been through too much together. In spite of their strange co-existence, meeting only ever in the crossover place of day and night, one eating breakfast, the other tea, with brief words and even briefer hugs, they were close. In spite of their seeming independence, a relationship more like sisters than mother and daughter, or more like friends than sisters, no, not even that – more like co-lodgers – in spite all of this, in the way of family they were all the other had. They were very ordinary letters, Mari said, telling her what he’d done at work that week. Hoping she was being good at school. They never suggested meeting up, never explained why he’d left or said sorry. But they were regular, and carefully written. She said she only read them once, but she kept them, in a shoebox on the top of her wardrobe. And when she moved into her flat, the shoebox came too, and was placed on top of another wardrobe, and is still there.

  What I never understood was why, if her mum hadn’t wanted Mari to see the letters, she had kept them at all.

  ‘That’s easy,’ Mari said, and I suddenly realised why there had been no recriminations over the whole thing, ‘because they’re part of him. She still loves him, of course. The letters were meant for me, but she took them and kept them because they were all she could have of him.’ She shrugged. ‘How could I be mad at her for that?’

  Diary: Monday, 12 April 1993

  Laura is sleeping over tonight. We’ve had cheese on toast and we’re in our PJs now, writing our diaries. She’s been talking about Mr Hill – she’s got it bad for him, bless her. She swears he stares at her in assembly, giving her the PPs (piercing, passionate looks, in case you were wondering!). She’s probably right – why wouldn’t he? She’s gorgeous.