‘Well, they obviously do,’ I say, ‘when someone makes them.’
‘So, Alex, do I
make
you?’
‘No.’ Alex edges towards him, looking back at me. When she speaks there’s a sort of pleading under the bravado. ‘I help Pete out, it’s nothing much, so that I can live here and not sponge off the others. That’s all. It’s not for ever. All right?’
I shrug, say nothing, and Alex slips out of the room.
‘A bit out of your depth?’ Contempt oozes from Pete’s voice. ‘You could go home. Alex is okay here. You shouldn’t worry about her so much.’
‘Shouldn’t I?’
‘Nothing bad is going to happen.’
‘I’m glad you’re so sure.’
He pushes the door to behind him. ‘Alex has changed,’ he says brusquely. ‘She’s not a little schoolgirl any more. Go home if you don’t like it.’
I dig my nails into the palm of each hand, the hard wooden window frame against my back. ‘I came down here because Alex wanted me to and I’ll go back when I said I would. And if she wants to come with me, then it’s up to her, isn’t it?’
Pete sighs, and rolls his eyes. ‘You should know by now that Alex is better off here than she was at home,’ he says. And then, ‘Ever thought about why she couldn’t tell you anything? Miss Perfect?’
He flicks the door open and is gone. I slump down on the bed and stare miserably at the paisley print of my sleeping bag, tracing its pattern over and over with one finger while Pete’s words spin round my mind like a stuck record. I hear him arguing with Alex, and even when I hear them go out I sit brooding until, over an hour later, Fitz comes looking for me. I hardly hear the door open; I’m in some kind of trance.
‘Beth? Can I come in?’ He stands by the bed. ‘What happened?’
‘Pete happened. I argued with Alex and then I argued with him and then he said that Alex couldn’t ever tell me stuff because—’
‘Hey…don’t let him get to you.’
He sits down next to me and takes one of my hands in his. His is small, fits mine perfectly.
‘Maybe I should go home now.’
‘Do you want to?’
‘I don’t know. I won’t know how to act, knowing all this and pretending I know nothing.’
‘I suppose you’ll have to face that some time.’
There’s a strange comfort in this logic. Today, or next week, Alex won’t come with me, and I’ll have to carry on my ordinary little life that’s changed for ever.
‘I’ve got five more days,’ I say. ‘What’s the point, though? I might just as well go.’
Fitz squeezes my hand. ‘Stay.’
He leans over and kisses my cheek. Turning towards him, I see a self-deprecating smile on his face, his head tilted, bird-like, to one side. I can see that with one word from me he will back off, that he’s preparing to retreat already. I know that things are going to get horribly complicated and that the five days left will take on a completely new significance. I move my face closer and meet his lips in a chaste, still sort of kiss that is unlike any I’ve had before.
1
st
August 1977
I’ve not had many boyfriends before, never got beyond messing about in the park or in some quiet little corner at the disco, although I was tempted, once or twice. I knew other girls at school were having sex, I’d hear them talking about it in loud voices. Sometimes Alex joined in with them and I’d say, Alex, is there something you haven’t told me, and she’d say no but she wasn’t going to let them think they were having all the fun.
Now I know I want to sleep with Fitz. The knowledge that soon I’ll be boarding the bus back home helps to concentrate my mind.
We lie on his bed, kissing, hands exploring, until I begin to ache with wanting him. And then we are pulling at each other’s clothes – zips and buttons, hooks and eyes. It’s like something I have to get out of the way, this first time, and we only pause long enough for Fitz to ask if I’m sure, and for him to find a pack of condoms, and then it’s over quickly, too quickly.
‘Don’t worry,’ Fitz says. ‘It’ll be better next time. I’ll be better next time,’ which is when I realise I wasn’t the only one to be nervous.
I say it doesn’t matter, next time’s fine, which is sort of true, because for the moment I’m revelling in just lying here next to him, loving the feel of his skin on mine. I place my head against his chest, and hear the thud of his heartbeat gradually slowing. As Fitz trails his hand down my belly I look up at him, and a wide smile spreads across my face, like butter on toast. Fitz grins.
‘I think you could get used to this,’ he says.
By the evening he’s moving all his stuff back upstairs and for the whole of the next day we hardly move from the room. The only time I leave the house is to call in sick for him from the phone-box down the road, saying that he has chickenpox. We have no idea how long you need to be off work for chickenpox and the hotel say they will need a doctor’s note, but at the time it doesn’t seem to matter.
Everything changes. I feel invincible — no barbed words from Pete can touch me now — and at the same time totally vulnerable, filled with the piercing knowledge that I’ve begun something I have no way of controlling. I’ve let someone in and right from the start I’m scared by the intensity of my feelings for him, because maybe he won’t feel the same, maybe for him I’m just another girl. There’s no way of knowing. And if he does feel the same, how can we make this last? In a few days’ time I have to go home and back there Fitz doesn’t exist.
Sometimes I’m tempted to say, ‘What’s going to happen when I go?’, as though we can make something happen, but I always stop myself so that he has no chance to say, ‘Just enjoy what we have.’
Alex doesn’t help.
‘Fitz is a great guy to practise on,’ she says one day, when Fitz has gone to the shop for milk. ‘I mean, you just know he won’t mess with your head. He’s the perfect person to lose your virginity to.’ When I don’t answer, staring out of the kitchen window at a fine drizzle, she looks up from making tea for her and Pete. ‘Uh-oh. You like him, don’t you?’
The word ‘like’ contains more meaning than any word should, and at the same time is too feeble to describe the way I’m becoming so totally drawn to Fitz. I wonder then if that’s how Alex had felt, that it wasn’t just the flight from home but the pull towards something. Towards Pete, towards sex, towards a relationship where she felt wanted. Which she clearly does; Pete wants her around him all the time and is always touching her, and suddenly I can understand that. When Fitz’s hands aren’t actually on me it’s as though they’ve left an impression on my body; sometimes my skin crawls with desire and I have to find him, hold him.
Still, watching Alex with Pete, I can’t help thinking there’s something missing. I say this to Fitz one day while he’s searching his pile of records for an old Alex Harvey album. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and I’ve been reflecting on all this while waiting for Fitz to surface from sleep. I watch him, crouched naked over the records, looking at all the little bumps along his skinny spine; it’s the same only different from the first day I met him. How quickly all this has happened, to have got from being nervous with a stranger to feeling like I belong here in his bed.
‘Sometimes I wonder how much Alex actually likes Pete.’
‘Good question,’ he says.
‘I don’t think she’s madly in love with him or anything.’
‘Wise girl.’
‘And yet,’ I say slowly, picturing them together, ‘she lets him tell her what to do, all the time.’
‘Well, she would — he’s twice her age.’
‘That’s just what Celia said. She said someone should take her home.’
‘And she would say that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Celia is Pete’s ex.’
‘What? You’re joking!’
‘Nope.’
He finds the album, slips it from its cover and onto the turntable in one dextrous move, then lies down beside me with his hands behind his head.
‘Celia went out with Pete for two years. It all finished badly a few months ago but she has nowhere else to go and refuses to leave. There’s nothing Pete can do. It’s not like he’s a landlord. When you invite people into a squat you take the rough with the smooth.’
‘And she’s been so ill,’ I say. ‘Poor Celia, no wonder she hardly leaves her room.’
Fitz raises himself on one elbow and squints down at me.
‘Beth, you…why do you think she’s been ill? Why’s she so thin?’
I gaze up at him and see he’s serious.
‘I thought women only died of a broken heart in Victorian novels.’
‘Bugger broken hearts. Celia’s anorexic. At least, that’s what I think.’
‘Anna-what?’
‘Anorexic. You know?’
I shake my head. I have no idea what he’s talking about, have never heard the word. The reason Fitz has is because he knows someone who knows someone who is.
‘It’s to do with eating,’ he explains. ‘When people stop eating. Usually girls, young women.’
He tells me what little he knows, explaining that Celia’s whole life revolves around not eating and pretending that she has.
‘And you think that’s because of Pete? That he did that to her?’
He shrugs. ‘Not exactly — I’m sure there are other things going on. But it didn’t help. It doesn’t help having Alex here either.’
‘Does Alex know? I mean, that Celia’s his ex?’
‘Now that’s a very good question.’ He lies back down, closes his eyes and gently strokes my stomach. ‘Maybe you can find out — ask a few questions about Celia, see what Alex’s reaction is.’
‘I hope she doesn’t know. Or maybe I hope she does. It might put her off him.’
‘If she does, it hasn’t so far.’
Which brings me back to where I’d started.
‘I still say Alex doesn’t like Pete as much as you’d think she would.’
‘And how much is that? Maybe she’s using him in the way that you think he’s using her.’
I open my mouth to speak but Fitz leans over and puts his lips on mine.
‘Forget about Alex,’ he mutters.
*
The summer of nineteen seventy-seven has been cool, rain-soaked, up to now, but that week is an exception. It’s as though the sun is blessing us with rays of warmth; it blazes down each day from a perfectly blue sky. We drag blankets and cushions out into the garden and lie in the long grass, soaking up the sun, me going brown and poor Fitz going pink where he doesn’t watch out for his fair skin. He decides the garden needs some work doing on it so I help him with weeding and chopping things back, with one rusty trowel, one wobbly spade and a pair of shears between us. I follow his directions — he seems to know what he’s doing — and everything does look tidier afterwards. I find I like it: the warm, earthy scent as I turn over the soil; the satisfaction to be got from tugging up long strands of bindweed; the way the baby lettuce seem to sigh and breathe again as they are released from a tangle of leggy green weeds.
‘Where did you learn all this?’ I ask. ‘I thought you lived in a flat all your life.’
‘I used to help my uncle, Dan’s dad. He gave me all these old tools and every now and then he bungs a few seedlings my way.’ Fitz straightens up from where he’s hacking back some ivy, smearing dirt onto his face as he wipes sweat from his eyes. ‘That and my school had a little gardening club, which I liked going to because it got me out of cookery.’
‘So how come you got a job as a chef?’
‘I washed pots for six months and decided anything would be better than that, so I found a job where they’d train me up. From kitchen slave to commis chef.’
I’m learning that Fitz is a curious mixture of chatter and silence with not much in between. He started on the garden with quiet concentration, only speaking to tell me what to do, but now he’s begun to talk all sorts of stories come out about hotel kitchens, and about his big family with lots of cousins. We work on like this for a couple of hours, until my back is aching and there are two shiny blisters on the palm of my right hand, and I refuse to do any more. I peel off my T-shirt, lie down and listen to the sound of his shears snipping away, revelling in the amazing fact that we’ve found each other and thinking idly how nice it would be to have sex out here, on the grass, with the sun pouring down. Only Dan would be sure to arrive right in the middle, I think, and just as I do we both hear the sound of tyres skidding in the gravel of the alleyway.
‘That is really weird,’ I say, giggling.
‘What is?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’ I pull my T-shirt back on and sit up as Dan comes through the gate. He collapses onto the grass, panting, and I go inside to get us all a drink of water.
I’m in complete denial about the fact that I’m going home in two days’ time.
That evening, after Dan’s gone, Fitz and I go round to Victoria Wine and buy some beers. Then we go to the Spar and get burgers and buns and Kraft cheese slices, tomatoes and cucumber. We plan to make a salad with two of the bigger lettuces in the garden. It’s a big moment for Fitz; the first of his crop. He rolls a couple of joints for later, we crack open a can each, and wait for Pete and Alex to come back. I’m excited; suddenly it’s like having my own family. For the first time I think: I could stay here, I could live like this. I see a different kind of future roll out in front of me, and the idea is dizzying, like the bubbles in my head after my first glass of champagne.
By half-past nine, when they’re not back, I’m fidgety. It isn’t like them; daytime is for dealing, night time is for smoking, and Pete always prefers to be home. Fitz is cool. He cooks our burgers, which I eat half-heartedly, and keeps telling me not to fret. They’re probably in a pub somewhere, he says, though we both know that Pete doesn’t like pubs. I’m convinced they’ve been arrested. At eleven we hear the back gate bang and both make for the kitchen, like anxious parents waiting up for their too-late offspring. Alex comes through the door first, her face pinched and drained of colour. Pete slopes in after, with a cut lip and a bruised, puffy cheek.
‘Trouble?’ Fitz asks, a little unnecessarily.
Pete has gone to the sink, splashes cold water onto his face. ‘Some little cunt. Trying to be fucking clever.’
The way Pete swears, in his posh vowels, somehow always makes it sound more vicious.