Authors: Calvin Wade
SIMON – October 1992
This was a first. For the first time in my life, I had been invited on to Nicky Moyes bed. Nicky had invited me into her bedroom many times over the years and several times since our friendship had re-kindled in recent weeks since we met up in Penny Pinchers, but I had always sat, rather uncomfortably, on an old, wooden dining room chair. Not now though, now our friendship had developed on to another level and Nicky felt comfortable enough in my presence to invite me on to her bed.
“Simon, you look so awkward sitting there on your hands, come and lie on the bed with me, there’s loads of room.”
I wasn’t going to decline the invitation, it was a dream request, but once I was there, lying back horizontally with my head propped up by two feather pillows, I immediately tried to deduce what this invitation meant to our relationship. Were we still just good friends or had things now evolved beyond that? Was I being ridiculous to expect anything more than friendship from a girl seven months pregnant with someone else’s child?
“Bloody hell!” Nicky giggled, “You don’t look any more comfortable on the bed than you did on that chair! You don’t have to lie like you are in a coffin! Tuck your legs in and face towards me!”
This was, with hindsight, a simple request to make me relax, but I remember my heart pounding vigorously and my brain telling it,
‘She wants to kiss me! She wants to kiss me!’
I shifted my body over on the bed so I was lying on my side, facing Nicky,
“Is that better?” Nicky asked with toothpaste breath into my face.
“Much.”
“Good!”
Over the previous two months, I had seen Nicky every single day. We had always had a special bond, back from our very first meeting in Joey Neill’s tent, but the last few months had moved our friendship closer. I felt I understood her inside and out and understood that Nicky was bringing about a change in me. I was more at ease with Nicky than I had ever been with anyone. I opened up to her about Colin and about my own lack of self-worth. Nicky countered my self-deprecation and made me feel wonderful. I developed a love for her as a friend, which overwhelmed me. I wanted to share every waking second with her and longed to become the father to her child that I knew Jason McLaren had not been and would never be.
Nicky brought her head closer to mine so we were almost touching foreheads. The baby growing inside her was now evident to everyone that knew her, but her face hadn’t fattened and older ladies would be constantly commenting on her ‘neat bump’. I had never previously understood before how anyone could find a pregnant woman radiant. I did now.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Nicky observed randomly.
“What is?”
“Here I am, bringing a new life into the world, but I still think about death a lot. Does that make me weird?”
“It makes you a nutter!”
Nicky gave me a playful push.
“Seriously, Simon? Do you not think that’s a bit weird?”
“No, I think it is perfectly natural.”
“How come?”
“Pregnancy makes you think about death. In the early stages, you worry about miscarrying or in your circumstances, you wonder whether you should have your
baby or not. Then, when you’ve progressed past the miscarriage and abortion stage, you want constant re-assurance that everything is OK in there. Has the baby been kicking or moving? Are things developing how they should be? Is the baby the right size? Then, as you get nearer to the birth, you wonder whether the baby will get out OK and whether you both will survive the expanded vagina experience. I think the fear of death surrounds you when you are pregnant.”
“Wow! When did you become so deep?”
“Probably when Colin died,” I answered honestly.
“You still miss him, don’t you?”
“Nicky, I’ll always miss him.”
“Do you know what I think is sad?”
“What?”
“How quickly you’re forgotten.”
I was a little unsure where Nicky was going with this. I had just confessed that I would always miss Colin, so Nicky’s statement seemed illogical.
“What do you mean?” I asked puzzled.
“I mean, when you die, you’re only missed by those closest to you and as time passes, those people die too. In a thousand years time, we’ll be gone and no-one alive will know anything about us. They won’t know what we loved or hated, who we loved or how we felt. We’ll just be forgotten, forever, as if we didn’t exist at all.”
“It won’t take a thousand years for that to happen. Do you know anything about your family from a hundred years ago?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. I guess because there are camcorders and more photographs and stuff now, there’s more chance that people will be aware of us in a hundred years time, but
if they didn’t know us, will they be bothered about keeping our videos and photographs?”
“Do you not think that’s really sad? That we only matter for a fleeting moment in the world’s history?”
“I guess it just makes me want to enjoy every moment I’m here.”
“That’s a good way to look at it, Simon. You’ve always been like a wise old man, even when we were young.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that.
“Is that a compliment or a criticism?”
“It’s a compliment. You’re a lovely person, Simon. I don’t know what I would have done without you through my childhood and especially during the last couple of months.”
“Thanks, Nicky.”
I could feel myself blushing. We looked at each other for longer than friends normally look at each other. Nicky had, still has, the most beguiling eyes. You see pictures of her as a baby and they almost cover her face, but even now, they are full, wide, brown eyes. The whole physical beauty of her face is incredible. Her nose turns up a little at the base, but that’s cute, she has defined cheekbones, tiny ears and full lips. Being around this earthly goddess, especially feeling the way I did about her, made me feel angered by my ugliness. During that exchange of looks though, I felt impulsively, for a moment, that Nicky wanted to kiss me, but then convinced myself that that would be impossible. I vowed mentally, for possibly the thousandth time, that I needed to start eating properly and working out.
Perfect moments always have an ending. My perfect moment had lasted two months, but I wasn’t anticipating it finishing as abruptly as it did. There was a knock
at the bedroom door. Instantly, I sat up on the bed. Nicky’s father, Arthur, was always walking into her room after a brief knock. I knew he didn’t like me, he had always deliberately made me feel uncomfortable, so I knew I would be even lower in the popularity stakes if I was caught lying back on Nicky’s bed. For once, Arthur Moyes would have been a welcome arrival. Jason McLaren walked through the door looking like a young James Dean, which is hard to compete with when you look like a fat George Formby. Despite his superior looks, he didn’t look too pleased to find Nicky and me on her bed.
“What’s going on, Nicky?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’s going on’?”
“What are you, my unborn child and him doing on the bed?”
“Talking, Jason, that’s what we are doing, talking.”
“I hope that’s all you were doing.”
“Jason!” Nicky exclaimed, “Simon is just a friend, an old friend. He is welcome to lie on my bed any time he wants. I just wish you and I had only been talking on the bed, we wouldn’t be in this situation now, would we?”
Jason’s face was stern and serious. He looked a lot older than sixteen.
“I need to talk to you, Nicky,” he stated.
Nicky looked irritated by his presence which I would have taken as a positive if I didn’t have my doubts that it was all an act. Not an act to fool me, more an act to try to fool herself that she did not want Jason back in her life. I shuffled my bottom off the bed, I wasn’t happy to continue sitting there with Jason in the room.
“Nicky,” I said as I stood up, “I think I’ll get going. The porcupine needs plucking.”
“What?”
“Sorry, I couldn’t think of a good excuse to go now Jason is here, so I just said the first thing that came into my head.”
“You don’t need to go, Simon. Jason does. How the hell did you get into my house, anyway, Jason?”
“Your Dad let me in.”
“Well, there’s a surprise!” Nicky said with a genuine sigh.
“We really need to get this sorted out,” Jason pleaded, “In ten weeks time, you are having our baby.”
“You cheated on us.”
“I know. I was drunk and confused and scared. I love you, Nicky and I need to be a father to our child.”
“I’m not sure we need you, Jason. How can I ever trust you after what you did?”
“I promise it was a one-off, it’ll never happen again. I swear on my mother’s life.”
Nicky said on the phone the next day, the one benefit she would reap from him cheating on her again would be the death of his mother.
As much as I would have loved to stay and help Nicky bad mouth Jason McLaren, I knew I should not be watching this scene play out. She was a pregnant, frightened, teenage girl, despite her protests to the contrary, I could not see any way that she would not give Jason another chance. She owed it to her baby to do so.
“Nicky,” I said softly, “I’m going. I hope everything gets sorted out in the way that you want it to, but I need to leave the two of you alone to sort it through.”
“Simon, there isn’t anything to sort through.”
I gave her a kiss on the forehead.
“Nicky, we all know there is. I’ll phone you tomorrow to check that you’re OK.”
“Thanks, Simon.”
I left Nicky’s bedroom that day knowing my daily visits to her house were over. If Jason came back on the scene, which I knew he inevitably would, then he wouldn’t be encouraging Nicky’s friendship with me to continue. Despite being far superior to me in the looks stakes, Jason was still only sixteen years old and I knew he would feel threatened by Nicky having a nineteen year old male friend, even one as unattractive as me. It was probably pretty obvious that I fancied her too.
As I put my shoes on in the Hall, Arthur Moyes came out of the lounge with a smoking pipe in his hand.
“Getting off, are you?” he enquired.
“Yes, Mr.Moyes. I think Jason and Nicky are probably best left alone”
Arthur Moyes took a puff on his pipe.
“Do you know what, Simon? I think that’s the most sensible thing I have ever heard you say. It probably is best that you leave them alone and I don’t just mean tonight.”
Nicky phoned me the following morning before I had chance to phone her. As expected, she told me, for the sake of her baby, she was going to give Jason McLaren one last chance. After that, we spoke on the phone from time to time, but, I’m sure to Arthur Moyes great delight, I let Jason and Nicky try to patch their relationship up without my interference. Something told me if Nicky needed me, she would find me. Perhaps Nicky was right. Perhaps I’d always been a wise old man, certainly much wiser than I gave myself credit for.
Part
Six
Destiny Calling
JASON McLAREN –
July 1993
William Arthur McLaren (the middle name was a trade off for the baby having my surname) was born on 17
th
December 1992, weighing a healthy nine pounds nine ounces. The birth was the proudest and scariest ordeal I have ever had. I loved that little lad, he looked like a mini version of me and he had all the girls going weak kneed over him just like his Dad does!
My Mum, Dad and Arthur Moyes had been keen for me to stay on at school for my “A” levels. Nicky sat her GCSEs but the distraction of the pregnancy probably didn’t help and although she passed six, enough to go on to College if she’d have wanted to, she decided to be a ‘stay at home Mum’. I passed ten, seven ‘As’, three ‘B’s so went to Runshaw College, Leyland, to do my ‘A’ levels. I was still thinking about going to Loughborough Uni but tended not to mention that to Nicky as she tended to go into a major sulk if the word ‘University’ was thrown into a conversation.
I like Nicky, I like her a lot but if truth be known, if she had had an abortion or not become pregnant in the first place, I’d have finished with her long before my ‘A’ levels. Will was the reason we were bound together. I wanted to be a good Dad and everything, but I’m a good looking lad and girls do tend to throw themselves at good looking lads. I’m not saying it’s their fault, I’m just saying that if I’ve had a drink and girls start throwing themselves at me, then it becomes hard to say ‘No’. My motto was definitely, ‘what you don’t know, can’t hurt you.’ It doesn’t make me a bad person. I wanted to do right by Nicky and baby Will, but I had to do right by myself too.
Once she found out she was pregnant, Nicky never wanted to have sex ever again. That was understandable under the circumstances but young men have needs, if you know what I mean. Nicky and I didn’t live together. I stopped at Mum and Dad’s, so the opportunity was there. Mum and Dad knew what was going on, they were
aware I was stopping out a lot and once in a while, if I had to, I’d bring the girls back to ours. Mum gave me a ticking off for bringing girls back, but it was more a warning not to get caught out again than it was to be faithful to Nicky. They couldn’t care less whether I was faithful to Nicky. They thought she’d tried to trap me, so the messing around with other girls served her right, in their opinion. They were wrong, Nicky didn’t deserve to be messed around but I was a good looking seventeen year old lad with desire coursing through my veins. Put another seventeen year old lad in my shoes and I promise you, he would have done exactly the same. They were all one nighters though. I just wanted a bit of physical intimacy. Well, they were all one nighters until Miss Fulbright came along.
It must have been July 1993. Will would have been about eight months old, just starting to crawl and I was coming to the end of my first year at Runshaw College. I think it was the weekend of the Wimbledon finals. Steffi Graf and Pete Sampras ended up winning, if I remember rightly. Anyway, on the Friday, I was in a Statistics lesson and the lecturer, Miss Fulbright was fit. She had blonde bobbed hair, blue eyes and reminded me more of a teacher you would find in pornographic films than a real one. She looked like ‘Plain Jane Superbrain’ from Neighbours after she took her glasses off and let her hair down. She seemed the type who would punish naughty boys. Perhaps it was just my dirty mind, but Miss Fulbright did nothing to curb those lustful thoughts. On that fateful day, she was wearing black boots with massive, three inch heels, a skirt that barely reached her thighs and a white blouse, partially unbuttoned, which gave you the slightest glimpse of a white patterned bra. Her breasts were big enough to feed a maternity ward but were attractively pert not tired and drooping like a well nuzzled pair. Thinking back, I probably went through her lessons with my tongue dangling out my mouth.
Miss Fulbright was discussing linear regression and had written f (x) = mx + c on the white board, along with a scatter graph, but to be honest, all I was thinking about was that her Geordie accent was sexy and whether her breasts would look just as good in the flesh as they did in that bra.
Once the lesson finished, I deliberately took my time leaving the room. It was a tried and trusted plan that had worked several times before and had provided some ideal opportunities to chat with Miss Fulbright. Statistics was my last lesson on a Friday anyway, so I was in no rush.
“Busy weekend planned, Miss?”
“Out with the girls tonight in Preston, probably same again tomorrow night or we may head into Blackburn for a change. Marking can wait until Sunday. What about you, Jason, what will you be doing?”
“Something similar. A few pints with the boys tonight then cricket tomorrow for Eccleston and then another few pints once we’ve finished.”
This was a half-truth. I was playing cricket for Eccleston but sandwiched either side of that were supposed to be two nights around at Nicky’s with her and baby Will.
Miss Fulbright gave me a really intense look.
“Why does a good looking young bloke like you not have a girlfriend?”
“We split up.”
This was a half truth too. Nicky and I did split up, but we were back together again before Will was born.
“Oh, that’s a shame, I split up with my bloke too, about three months ago now. I thought I’d miss him, but as luck would have it, I’m having too much fun to notice!”
“Me too, Miss. Who would want to settle down at our age?”
“Exactly! Jason, call me Natalie, or even, Nat. When you’re in class, call me Miss Fulbright, but when it’s just you and I, Natalie is fine.”
“OK.”
“I’m only twenty two. Miss makes me sound ancient,” Natalie explained.
“Ok, Miss. Sorry, Natalie. Think it’ll take a bit of getting used to that!”
Natalie Fulbright gave me a bright, sexy smile as she finished putting her lecture notes back in her bag. One thousand dirty thoughts leapt spontaneously into my brain.
“So you never know, I might see you in town, Jason.”
“Not tonight, Natalie, I’m only going around Chorley, just having a quiet one before the cricket, but I might well see you tomorrow night.”
“I hope so, Jason. You are one of a select bunch of students here that I would be happy to run into.”
This was definitely a come on, without a shadow of a doubt. Miss Fulbright was just about to leave the room but I couldn’t leave things there. I had to strike fast.
“Natalie, if you were guessing where you would be at say midnight tomorrow night, where would you guess you’d be?”
“Well, although the girls are talking about Blackburn, to be honest, we all live in and around Preston, so it’s much easier and cheaper to go out there. I would say at midnight tomorrow, we’ll be in Tokyo Joe’s.”
“Right.”
I began planning the sickness Nicky would be told I had.
“Why are you asking, Jason?”
This was asked in a teasing, jokey and in my mind, seductive way.
“I know it’s unlikely, as me and the lads could be off anywhere tomorrow night, but I just thought that if I happened to be in the vicinity, we could catch up for a quick drink and a drunken dance.”
“What do you mean, Jason, me and my friends and you and yours?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.”
I smiled at Natalie Fulbright and she smiled right back at me. We both knew that was not what I meant, I was talking one-on-one.
“OK, I tell you what, Jason, quickly scribble down your home phone number and I’ll find out from the girls tonight where we will be tomorrow night. I’ll ring you tomorrow and let you know.”
Natalie Fulbright was after me as much as I was after her. I quickly wrote down my number and handed it to her.
“It’ll have to be in the morning, Natalie, I’ll be out at cricket all afternoon.”
“That’s fine. It’s not likely to be too early though. After a night out, I need to catch up on my beauty sleep.”
“You don’t need to
do that, Natalie, you’re already beautiful!”
“You haven’t seen me first thing in the morning!”
‘Not yet’, I thought, ‘not yet’.
“I’m sure you look great twenty four, seven.”
“You charmer, you! I bet you have the girls eating out of the palm of your hand, don’t you, Jason?”
“Only the ones I want to be eating out the palm of my hand. It is very much invitation only.”
God, I thought I was good.
“Do you know what I think, Jason?”
“What, Miss?”
Old habits die hard.
“I think you need a strong woman to bring you down a peg or two, Jason. An older woman, maybe. Someone with a bit of experience. Anyway, I’m off, I’ll speak to you in the morning.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
Natalie Fulbright walked out the room and I turned to watch her backside wiggling along in that tight skirt. There was no way I was having two nights in with Nicky and the baby after the way that had just played out. Friday was going to be family night and Saturday I was going to be off clubbing, with the delectable, Natalie Fulbright.
I had my plan mapped out. I would drop a few hints to Nicky that I wasn’t feeling well, then ring her the following day and tell her that I had taken a turn for the worse, was running a temperature and had best keep away from her and the baby until Sunday. How could she argue with that? No-one wants their little one around germs, do they?