‘Come in here and tell us a proper tale,’ she said.
‘Can you turn the TV down?’
‘I’ll put it on mute,’ said Dogman.
I wish I could put you on mute, I thought.
‘So what do you need a cab for?’ asked Poll, bristling at the thought of any extravagance.
I sat down heavily on the settee. ‘I don’t. I
don’t
. Want a cab. I just had an idea.’
‘We’re not having any more pets, if that’s what you’re after. It wouldn’t be fair on Winston. And I’m not keen on cats, they bring in dead things.’
‘Aye, that’s right, they do.’ Dogman shook his bristly head. ‘Or sometimes things that are still alive. My mother had an infestation of mice once after her Bruno brought in a pregnant one and it got away under t’ cooker. I said to her, I thought cats were supposed to get rid of vermin, not attract it . . . ’ His voice trailed away as, on screen, a busty woman in a T-shirt bent forwards over a workbench.
‘Not cats, not cabs. Just listen, will you? All it was, I wanted to change my name slightly.’
‘What for?’ Poll shifted her weight onto one foot and started fiddling with the leg of her panty girdle. ‘What’s wrong wi’ t’ one you’ve got?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So? What’s there to change?’
‘It’d be easier.’
‘How?’
‘Well, Kat, it’s shorter than Katherine.’
They were both staring at me.
Poll said slowly, as if she was humouring a mad person, ‘You want us to call you “Kat”?’
I nodded.
‘And shall we get you a collar wi’ a bell on it, an’ a little dish for your milk?’ She started chuckling, and Dogman joined in. Laughter all the way. ‘Kat? By, you come out wi’ some stuff, you really do. Kat. I mean. Whale, more like. Elephant. Tell you what, we’ll call you Ellie, if you like.’
I got up to go and pushed past them both, treading on Poll’s slipper as heavily as I could.
‘Ooh, bloody hell, watch where you’re going,’ she gasped.
‘Pussy,’ I distinctly heard Dogman mutter before I could get to the stairs.
*
That midnight found me basqued up and buzzing. On the other side of my bedroom wall, Poll slept the untroubled sleep of one who has no conscience. We’d had another row after tea because it was nearly a month since I’d gone to see Auntie Cissie, and because I wanted to read a book instead of listen to how ill the butcher’s daughter’s neighbour had been after eating squid on holiday. Before she’d gone up I’d mentioned casually about some new outfits, maybe, with the birthday money. She paused at the bottom of the stairs and checked me up and down while I was standing under the hall light.
‘You are a bit scruffy at the minute, it’s true.’ She peered forwards, frowning. ‘Your jumper’s hanging funny; that’s you pulling at the cuffs. Still, you’ve had your wear out of it.’ She nodded. ‘I’ll have word with Dickie. He says there’s some Marks and Spencer’s seconds coming on Munawar Noor’s stall next week. Munawar told him he could have first pick.’
‘What like?’
‘I don’t know. Knitwear, I should think. That’s what he mainly sells, in’t it?’ She turned away and started to pull herself up the steps. Behind her back, I stuck my tongue out as if I was being sick. ‘He’d some nice embroidered cardies last time, do you remember? But they’d none in your size. I’ll ask Dickie to watch out for them coming again.’
‘Could I not have something a bit more, a bit more, young? Like, I don’t know – ’ as if the idea had just that second occurred – ‘a trouser suit?’
‘Trouser suit?’ She paused in her tracks and half-turned, clutching the banister with a freckled hand. ‘What would you want a
trouser suit
for? You look like the side of a house as it is. Backside like yours, you’re best off in skirts. Trouser suit? You’ll be wanting jeans next. And a sight you’d look in those an’ all. There’s more to life than fitting in with the crowd.’
I should bloody well hope so, I thought. ‘Palazzo pants are quite flattering if you’re curvy.’
‘Palazzo pants? Are they them long trousers where you walk on the hems and get them all dirty? You’re not having any of them, they’ll be in holes in no time, I haven’t the money to—’
‘No, listen, they’re sort of loose—’
‘Oh, I know, them ones like they wear in the army with about fifty little pockets in all your nooks and crannies—’
‘No, they’re wide-legged trousers—’
‘Yes, well they’d have to be wide-legged for you to fit in ’em—’
Bitch! Bitch! I wanted to scream at her, but the air had gone out of my lungs like it does in a nightmare and left me with a helium whimper.
‘You
never
treat me— Oh, forget it,’ I squeaked, and flounced off to the kitchen.
‘You’ve got to be realistic, I’m only saying,’ Poll called after me. ‘You can’t get away with such as these slim ’uns. You don’t want to make a fool of yourself. Have you forgotten that time you walked around in a strappy top? And you weren’t as big then as you are now. You cried your eyes out, after. I could have told you.’
Pause.
Die, you old witch. Do it now. Lose your footing and crack your skull against the skirting board. Lie there pleading for help. In agony.
Creak creak up the stairs.
I stood in the moonlight, burning. It helps, times like this, to press my fingers into my scalp, very hard. One day I might push too hard and my fingers’ll go
splot
into my brain.
Far-off flush of the toilet. Hiss of the pipes. I conjured Dad up for an out-loud moan; had him sitting at the kitchen table, looking sympathetic.
‘It wasn’t a proper top, that was why the other kids laughed.’ He nodded at me encouragingly, like he does in these interviews. ‘It was a thermal vest that Poll made me wear under my jumper, even though it was July. She said, “You’ll be outside a lot, seeing the animals. Stop complaining. We never had any school trips when I was your age.” ’
I imagined Dad smiling. He’d have known what she was like.
‘On the coach no one would sit next to me, so I got a book out and pretended to read while the other girls swapped bits of packed lunch. Julie Berry kept kneeling up on her seat to chat to Clare Greenhalgh behind, and Mrs Kirtlan kept turning round and shouting at her to sit down and put her belt on. Everyone was drawing love-hearts on the windows, then shrieking and rubbing the initials out. Part of me really, really wanted to join in but I just lifted my book up higher, like I was too gripped by the story to bother with anyone.’
‘I’ve done it myself,’ Dad said silently.
‘And it struck me then, how do people know what to wear? Because when I looked round, all the girls seemed to be in on some great clothing conspiracy which meant friendship bracelets, and tiny twin plaits framing your face, and turned-up jeans were de rigueur. And yet if I’d dared to appear that morning wearing any one of those items, it would have gone out of fashion
the night before
.’
‘It’s a lot easier being male,’ said Dad.
‘All the girls had these little vest-tops on as well, even Sally Ralphs who was the other fatty in the class and should, by rights, have been a target too. She’s got a boyfriend now, I saw them in the bus shelter before Christmas.’
‘You’ll get a boyfriend.’
‘Don’t want one. They’re too much trouble. Anyway, halfway round the zoo, when I was nearly dead from heat-exhaustion, I thought it might be an idea to strip off the jumper and tie it round my waist. I thought I could get away with it.’
‘You were more developed than the other girls, even at ten. They were probably jealous.’
‘No, I think they just thought I was a blob in bad underwear. They were whooping so loud Mrs Kirtlan had to blow her whistle.’
‘I’d have sorted them out.’ I imagined my dad making a fist on the tabletop and scowling.
Above the kitchen, Poll’s bedroom door clunked shut, vanishing Dad. I opened the cupboard over the sink, drew out a box of Frosties and ate a dozen handfuls while the moonlight streamed in, bright parallelograms on the specked lino. I was thinking about Sally Ralphs’ big arms.
Once the house was quiet and the sugar had kicked in, I tiptoed upstairs and listened at Poll’s door. Then I crept into my room, put a chair under the handle like they do in films, and pulled the rustly binbag from the back of the wardrobe.
It was amazing to get all the clothes out again and look them over in detail, like Christmas to the power of ten. The sweater and skirt were obviously brand new because they still had their tags in and I had to snip them out with my violin nail clippers. The basque I think had been worn before, because it had a tiny black bow at the front that was coming loose. I just clipped it off and the neckline was as good as new.
Then I set to trying all the outfits on, one after another. The clothes themselves looked fantastic. My stupid face stuck on the top spoilt the effect a bit.
I combed my long hair over my face, like Esther in
Bleak House
does the first time she looks in the mirror after her terrible disfigurement. Peeping through the strands, I thought maybe I didn’t look too bad. Yes I was big, but I went in and out, I had a waist, and the flesh was pretty firm. Poll’s arms are thin, but the muscle’s all slack and hangs and swings under her biceps in a truly repulsive way. I gather there are men who find big girls attractive (Dogman, apparently).
I felt drunk on possibility. Perhaps I had an admirer. A secret lover had spotted my potential from afar, and left me these clothes as a token. I wondered what shoes you wore with an outfit like this. Not the brown sandals I had on now, that was for sure. A mum would know such things, but I didn’t have one handy.
I so wanted Dad. Handsome, clever, sitting on the bed; I could nearly see him. Chatting about my plans, my escape; giving crucial advice. I wanted the life that went with these clothes.
Why couldn’t I have a normal, alive father instead of a bloody dead one?
*
I put the stained sheets in a binbag and dumped that in next door’s garden. Mum might have noticed, but I knew Dad wouldn’t. Blood for blood, as it turned out.
‘I was up all night,’ sighed Maggie, clicking sweeteners into her tea.
Poll shook her head and tutted. ‘Me an’ all. Couldn’t get off. Two o’clock, three o’clock. I kept thinking, What are the Gothic elements in Charlotte Brontë’s
Jane Eyre
? And to what extent do they help shape the narrative structure?’
‘It’s the ending that bothers me,’ said Maggie.
‘Oh, me too. Have another biscuit, go on.’ She nodded at the flowered plate.
‘Ta, I will thanks. No, it’s the religious parallel with the story of Saul, and the whole redemption angle I’m uncomfortable with. To me, the plot’s too didactic, too bound up in biblical teaching; the emotional force of the novel becomes, ultimately, diluted. A Romantic writer like Brontë should never have confined her artistic scope within the narrow boundaries of Victorian Protestantism. The two elements are, by definition, diametrically opposed.’
‘Dickie thinks the same.’ Poll screwed up her face. ‘He reckons it’s like serving custard with bacon.’
Actually, this never happens.
*
When Maggie and Poll do get together they talk about illness or the good old days or crime rates. They like to sit with the local paper divided up between them, picking out the shock horror reports about elderly ladies getting beaten senseless for tuppence. If I’m in the room with them, I’m either part of society’s decadence or, if Poll’s in a good mood, a shining exception. Youth as it should be when it’s been properly brought up. ‘She’s a whizz at
Countdown
,’ Poll will often remark. ‘Even the conundrum at th’ end, no problem.’ I keep quiet. It doesn’t do to be too clever round here.
Sometimes we play Scrabble with a giant board, but even that’s problematical. If I win, it’s, ‘Well, no wonder, you’re studying English. I never had a proper education, me.’ If I lose; ‘Eeh, and you with all your brains, fancy.’ Meanwhile, Dogman cheats for England. FUNT, he puts down. YESKER. NONING. When I challenge this shite, he claims they’re dialect words and Poll tells me to stop picking on him.
If only life were an exam.
In real life, for instance, I can never think of anything to say, plus I hate the sound of my own draggy voice. Somebody says, ‘Hiya, cocker, how’s tricks?’ and I panic, even if it’s someone I know; especially if it’s someone I know. I died a thousand deaths last month when Mrs Threlfall asked if I was courting yet.
I spend a lot of time smirking dumbly at the floor. But on paper I’m as articulate as anyone. (
In a sense, Mrs Threlfall, your question, though innocently meant, is redundant, for you should know that I have decided to shun the twenty-first-century mating rituals in which the majority of my peers are engaged. In today’s Britain, women can lead happily independent lives, unencumbered by the erroneous expectations of a patriarchal society. So put that in your Ty-Phoo and sup it.
)
They’re underrated as a pastime, exams. There’s something about the adrenaline rush, the legitimate isolation, the whole regulated nature of the exam experience that makes me feel the school hall is my natural element. I don’t enjoy exams like, say, I enjoy a box of Maltesers, but I am fantastic at them whereas I seem to be crap at everything else. Ten A-stars, me; you’d never guess it if you didn’t know. Some days I wear them round my brow like a crown, but mostly they form a constellation called the Sad Act.
When I walked out of that last English module, I felt elated. I’d been pulling
Sons and Lovers
to bits, brilliantly, because of course I am an expert on Destructive, Stifling Relationships, and Frustration generally.
Halfway through a wasp landed on the paper. It crawled onto the first question I’d answered, sat for a moment waving its feelers, wandered onto the second question, then took off to bother Lissa Hargreaves in front of me. She had a fit, of course, because it wasn’t her wasp. It was my wasp and it had come to tell me that I was going to Oxford. Eventually Mrs Wills came over and shooed it away with a copy of Rules for Candidates.
I finished with five minutes to spare, had a quick read through, tingling; then, as Mrs Wills was cruising the aisles with treasury tags, I took all my hair-grips out and checked all the tops on my highlighters. I was high as a kite. When she said to us all, You may go now, I pulled my cardigan on, grabbed my little plastic bag and half-ran for the door. Rebecca caught me up and we fell into step, comparing notes. Really though I was thinking of the bacon bap I would shortly be ordering in the canteen.