Imperfect Strangers (7 page)

CHAPTER
10

How old had we been? Eight? Nine? Ten?

“Come on Keith,” said Heather Unwin, taking me by the hand, as she led me down the garden path. Her garden path. The garden next to mine, which being so shambolic, often fell victim to Mother’s scorn.

“Just look at these weeds,” she would snarl, as she carefully cut dandelions from her own lawn.
“A kind of cleansing, this act, which would always be done with a sharp slender knife.” On such occasions she wore two pairs of gardening gloves: a small tight fitting pair, which were waterproof, underneath a pair made of tough, impenetrable-leather, the cuffs of which covered half the length of her forearm.

“Any wonder m’lawns such a mess w’that shambles next door?”

She’d scowl at the fence separating the Unwins’ garden from ours. At times such as this, when mother was tending the garden, complaining about the weeds, I said nothing. There was less chance of catching some of the blame if I kept a low profile. I’d just take the extracted weed from her, run and put it in the bin, fetch back a handful of compost to fill the hole, and wait patiently for the next weed.

“There,” she’d say, “Grass’ll soon grow back, ‘n’ nobody’ll be able t’tell.”

Nobody will be able to tell. Just like nobody can see a bruise if it’s covered with hair.

That day, though, the day Heather Unwin led me down the garden path,
Mother was not in the garden. She was indoors, no doubt cursing all the neighbours for generating the dust that collected in the home she so diligently cleaned. “Fires burning and soot billowing, all day long when it’s not even cold.”

Up until
the moment when Heather appeared, I’d been content, bouncing my football in the covered passage between our houses. Not being allowed in the house during daylight hours, the passageway is where I often found myself. And, even though it had stopped raining at least twenty minutes ago, I remained there, bouncing the ball, over and over. B-doyng, B-doyng, B-doyng, over and over – the timing of the bounce and resulting echo as consistent as the tick of a slowly unwinding clock.

“M
y mum says: will you stop bouncing that bloody ball
!”

Heather yelled the words much louder than she needed to. She did it on a purpose,
did it to make me jump. She laughed viciously when I flinched. The ball drummed to a halt at my feet. She yelled that command at me as if she were an adult. Yelled it with much more authority in her voice than a girl only four months older than me was entitled.

“S- S- Sorry,” I finally managed. It was the worst my stutter had ever been. It wasn’t nerves, though
; it was excitement. Little did I realise at the time, but my stutter was to get much worse. Heather laughed. I blushed. My face felt hot, and it prickled. Maybe she felt sorry for me then, because she walked into the passage, took hold of my hand, and told me to not look so sad.

“Why don’t you go in
doors when it’s raining?”

I’m not allowed, I thought, but shrugged my shoulders rather than tell her that
Mother cleans in the day, and I’d be in the way, and I’d likely get some what-for.

“Why don’t you go and put some dry clothes on?”

Again I shrugged. “Can’t be bothered.”

“My mum says it’s a shame.” She did not say what was a shame, just that it was.

“W- Would you like this?” I asked, fumbling in my trouser pocket. I found it on the floor when collecting the clear plastic halves for my model making, but Heather didn’t need to know that. “I got it from the machine, that’s...” I drew the ring from my pocket and presented it to her in my outstretched palm. My hand shook and the cut-plastic ring seemed to exaggerate the tremor. “I w- w– I w-wanted a toy soldier, b- but I got this.” It was lie, and lies are bad, but I didn’t want her to think it had been on the floor. I didn’t want her to know it was a prize that had been chucked by another boy in disgust at receiving something intended for a girl.

Heather smiled and looked as if she had been about to take it from my hand, but she stopped herself. She then stepped back a pace and placed her hands on her hips. “That’s not the way to give a girl a ring. You have to kneel on the floor, just one knee, and then offer it to me.”

I looked along the length of the passage, towards the pavement. Feeling safe that we were alone, I turned back to Heather and knelt on the floor. My hand shaking, I held the ring aloft in my outstretched palm.

“You have to ask me.”

“W– Would you like this r-r-ring?”

“You have to say with this ring I thee wed.”

“But I d– d–….  I d– d–”

“I do too. Thank you.”

Heather snatched the ring. I never had a chance to finish saying: I don't want to. But it was too late, she had the ring on her finger and she was looking at it with pride, her fingers outstretched. What will Mother say when she finds out I’m married?

Heather
then held out her hand to me, beckoning with wavering fingers that I should take hold.

I reached forward and gently gripped her fingers while rising to my feet. They felt soft and warm.
Her fingers were delicate and had perfect nails that were all pink and shiny.

“Come on,” she said. “Now we’re married, I need you to do something for me.”

The grass on Heather’s back garden was tall. Up to our knees. Mother’s grass was perfectly manicured, cut every other day throughout the summer. It would have been amazing to roll on. But I was not allowed to play on it, on account of the fact that my heavy, clumsy feet would ruin it. Mother’s feet were larger than mine, though, so I never fully understood why it was that mine should be heavier. Still, I did as I was told and stayed off the grass. I would have what-for if I played on it. I already had more than enough what-for as it was.

“
Algiyer wot fer
,
” she would say if, after receiving a scutch, I even dared to ask, what it was for? And then, scutch again. Harder, with more force, knuckles this time, just above my ear. I stopped asking why, and just took the punishments when they came.

Heather's socks, which in the passage had reached to her knees, smoothly covering her calves with brilliant white, had now fallen to her ankles, weighed down with wetness. My trousers were also heavy, so heavy I had to put my left hand in the pocket to prevent them from coming down. There was no pocket in the left though, just a fringe of frayed material where the pocket should have been. While others held me down, Paul Frazer had ripped it
away and run around the schoolyard shouting that it smelled of pee.

It did not
smell of pee.

One thing I could positively say is that my clothes
and me were clean. Too clean! Painfully clean. Scrubbing brush and Vim clean.

Heather held my right hand, but we were apart, our arms at full stretch. She stood there a moment like that, her socks, no longer a gleaming white, but a murky-pale-grey, and bunched above her pristine black shoes, water droplets on the surface
glinting like beads of glass.

Her head was tipped forward, looking down on a cardboard box
that had been opened out, laid flat, like a sheet. It had been put there recently. I figured that, because it was dry and the shed door was open. I glanced over my shoulder, at the passage, at my ball, but as she pulled me closer and looked into my face I looked at the cardboard. There was no way of telling what kind of large object had been delivered in it, because, apart from an arrow and the words: this way up, it was plain. The edges had gone a little blotchy, swollen with moisture from the grass.

My neck felt hot
: hot and sticky. Icky. Uncomfortable.

Heather sat down and dragged me down with her. Then she pulled the cardboard over us, obeying the instruction, drawing it over our legs
in the direction of the arrow.

This way up, I told myself. Looking over the tops of the gra
ss in the direction of my ball.

This way up.

Heather sat looking at her hand, admiring the ring. I sat looking along the path of trampled grass, to the spot at the end of the passage, the spot from where my ball beckoned. Heather reached under the sheet, hitched up her skirt and slipped off her pants. I glanced down, wondering what she was doing, but quickly looked away and fixed my eyes on the spot where the ball was. I did not want to be married.

I did not want this.

“This is what you have to do,” she said, handing me the broad leaf. She snapped herself another leaf from the ground and, rolling her thumb over the surface, proceeded to rub from it a web of cotton like substance. “Go on then.” She nudged me with her elbow.

I copied her, my eye switching from the leaf to the ball to the ring on her finger, the purple facets of which captured the light and seemed to keep
it prisoner. If only I could take it back, be unmarried, and go back to bouncing my ball. When the surface was almost clear of its cotton-like coating, I began to dread what would come next. I wanted to get away, but I did not. I stayed and began rubbing more slowly, intent on making the task last as long as possible.

“Hurry up,” she demanded. “I can’t use it until it’s clean.”

And then it was.

Clean.

Its cotton-webbed surface completely removed.

Whatever was to come after the removal of the cotton stuff was now imminent. Heather took the leaf from me and tore it into inch wide strips. Its green smell invaded my nostrils. It smelled of that dark cabbage when
Mother shreds it. Heather kept hold of one strip and placed the rest in my hand.

“I’ll show you what to do,” she said, “and then you have to do it.”

When she lifted the card-sheet slightly and her hands disappeared beneath it, I looked at the spot where my ball was. I felt her knee press against my leg as she squirmed. I pictured them, her knees, smooth and firm under a thin covering of skin. Thinking of her lovely smooth knees, I tried to block out any thoughts of what she was doing with the leaf.

“There, now it’s your turn.”

When she looked at me, my face must have been scarlet, because it felt hot, and she told me I should not be embarrassed, and that married women have to do this every month if they haven’t had a baby. She took the leaf strips from my hand, leaving me with only one, and placed them on top of the cardboard. “Honestly,” she said, in the type of voice her mum might have used. “Men are so useless!”

I wanted to tell her that I was only a boy, but I didn’t.

This way up, I told myself, just as a reminder, as my head began to spin. She took hold of my wrist. Later in life I will react to such an action with pain, but for now my wrist held no memory of burning. My hand trembled as she drew it under the cardboard. This way up I told myself, my eye fixed on the arrow.

“You have to do it,” she said, grunting slightly from the exertion of forcing my hand to move. “If you don’t I might have to have your baby.”

I didn’t want her to have my baby, but I didn’t want to do the thing with the leaf either. I felt the soft-heat of her thigh on the back of my trembling hand, as with both hands she tried to force my clenched fist between her legs.

“Keith!” she snapped. “You have to put it in.”

I would have gladly stroked her knee, her lovely smooth knee, or her calf with the sleek covering of pristine white sock, but not this.

“
Do it
!”

“NO!” I shouted. “I don’t want to.” But maybe the shout had been in my head, because she didn’t seem to hear me.

And then she pierced my ear with the shrillest of screams. Over and over she screamed. Sharp, short blasts, over and over, ripping into my ear, like the screech of the gym-teacher’s whistle.

This way up, I told myself, my eye passing the arrow on its way to the ball. The view of the spot where my ball stood was blocked. Why? The shock of realisation caused a
frantic fizziness to bubble around my ribs. A huge lump formed in my throat, and I couldn’t breathe past it. I tried to swallow it away, but it refused to budge. Time slowed, or did it speed up? Mrs Unwin’s face boiled with fury. She was yelling as she stormed towards us, but I could not hear a word of it over the shrill stab of Heather’s scream.

Heather then stopped screaming and began a wailing howl as she rolled away from me and slumped onto her side. I heard the yell of Heather’s mother then. Heather had let go of my hand
, and I started to push myself to my feet. Mrs Unwin grabbed my wrist and forced my hand open to reveal a crumpled strip of leaf.

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “Get away from her you disgusting boy.”

I tried to swallow, but my throat resisted. Words spun around my head. Mrs Unwin stared at the ground, gripping my wrist, her expression frozen. I looked down, to see Heather pulling up her pants. Suddenly Mrs Unwin raised her arm and punched my head, catching the top of my ear and the place where my skull was already bruised and sore. Had she not had hold of my wrist I might have fallen to the ground, because my legs went a little wobbly. My ear throbbed with fury. The lump in my throat grew, and I found I could not swallow at all; couldn’t draw breath even. With her free hand she grabbed my upper arm, pinching tightly, her talons piercing the tender flesh of my armpit.