‘I was
so
not prepared for that Lawrence question. I’ve made a total mess of the ending, I ran out of time. I just hadn’t revised enough,’ she gabbled.
We both knew this wasn’t true. It was something you said, schoolgirl etiquette. ‘Me neither,’ I said.
We made our way down the stone steps and past the gallery of school photographs, all those glossy Head Girls and Prefects, and on the bottom row a decade of guide dogs bought with silver foil.
‘Don’t you wish you could have your essays back for another hour, sort them all out?’ Rebecca glanced back at the office with a convincing expression of longing. Maybe she had cocked up. ‘Which Hardy question did you do?’
Now we were walking through the undercroft, nearly at the canteen. The wind blew Rebecca’s short straight hair up off her high forehead. Her plainness annoys me at odd moments, and I know it’s unreasonable, people in glass houses and all that. At least she wears better clothes than me. And if she’s got no bust to speak of, it seems a small price to pay for not having a vast backside.
‘The one on landscape.’ I grimaced. ‘Aren’t we all just flies crawling across the giant tablecloth of fate?’
‘Plus, we’d gone over it in class. Yeah, I think I did OK on that question.’ She held the door open with a slender arm, then a frown creased her brow. ‘God, I don’t know, though. I might go and see Mrs Clements about it after dinner, get her to talk me through it. Do you want to come?'
‘What’s the point?’ I ducked past her into the canteen; the smell was wonderful. ‘It’s finished now. Try and forget it.’ I nudged her into the back of the dinner queue and we leant against the wall while Year Sevens dithered at the front. ‘Listen, while I remember, I want to ask you something. I’ve been thinking of changing my name.’
‘Your name?’ Rebecca looked at me as though I was mad. ‘To what?’
‘Kat. I want you to call me Kat from now on.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I like it. I think it’s more
me
.’
‘Kat?’
‘Yeah.’ I soldiered on. ‘Haven’t you ever wanted to change your name? Becky, Bekka, Bex, Beckham? You know, for fun?’
Rebecca shook her head. ‘Actually, I hate it when people shorten my name.’ You would, I thought. ‘But if you really want me to call you Kat, I’ll try not to forget.’ There was just that hint of disapproval in her voice. Kat?
Kat?
What next? Tattoos and class-A drugs? The line shuffled forward and she started to get her money out.
Suddenly I slapped my sides with a sensation of panic. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Oh,
hell
, I’ve gone and left my purse in the exam room.’ I knew exactly where it was. I’d got up and walked out with it draped over the back of my chair. It’s another pre-exam ritual I have, the removal of the purse. Besides, it digs in when I lean over.
‘Do you mean your belt thingy?’ Rebecca began to rummage through her bag. ‘I might have enough change, well, if you just wanted a snack. I could lend you—’
‘No, it’s all right. I’ll have to go and get it, I can’t leave it there for somebody to nick.’
This would, in fact, have been unlikely. For a start there was hardly more than a couple of quid in there, and more importantly, the belt itself was gruesome. Maggie’s niece had made it for me back in Year 9, when the official school purse belt – a freaky item worn only by the socially inept – became too small even on its longest setting. We had a row about it. Poll said it was safest to carry your money on your person. I said what about pockets, but she pointed out that I was always poking my fingers through mine till they were all in holes. So Maggie had this mega-belt run up for me in navy, a school colour, and I’ve been wearing it ever since. Glamorous it is not, but it is handy, though I’d rather have pulled my own tongue out than admit this to Poll.
I panted back along the undercroft and up the wide stairs to the hall. I plunged in through the swing doors and stopped dead. The details of the scene flashed up and burned themselves on my brain forever.
At the far end of the hall the gigantic red and gold organ pipes rising in asymmetrical slopes to the hammer-beam ceiling. In front of them, the wooden stage with its lonely lectern, and formal seating at each side for visitors. Then, below and stretching towards me, ranks of wicker-bottomed chairs that squeaked on the parquet when you sat down.
All of it I knew, I’d seen before in a thousand years’ worth of assemblies and speech days: but never with this detail in the window.
Unbelievable, at first. Two girls framed in the tall stone-arched window on my immediate right, where the chairs gave way to the rows of candidates’ desks. Donna French,
Donna French
and Nicky Hunter, in slim profile, touching. They were standing face to face, belly to belly, in what looked like an embrace; laughing in a stifled, secret way.
They jumped in shock at my entrance and again at the bang of the door behind me, but, weirdly, they remained clinging together.
‘Oh!’ cried Donna, her face a mixture of dismay and hilarity.
Nicky let out a shriek and turned her head away towards the windowpane. Donna put her arms behind her back and dropped her eyes to the floor. I saw them arch their backs simultaneously, their willowy bodies curve apart like an Art Nouveau design, but I still didn’t understand. Then there was a small thud and my purse belt, which had been around the two of them, hit the wooden floor.
Released, the two girls moved apart, Nicky giggling with embarrassment. She still had her face turned from me but I could clearly see her reflection in the glass. Her eyes were wide with horror and she was grinning stupidly.
I just stood there like a lump. Donna moved first, bent down and picked up the belt. Nicky took this as her cue to slide out and make a run for it.
‘Sorry,’ mumbled Donna, holding the belt out to me. She was trying not to snigger though at least she’d had the grace to blush. ‘I was going to hand it—’
We both heard Nicky’s far-off snort of laughter, and Donna’s self-control dissolved. She flung the belt on the table nearest and stalked out. As the door bumped shut behind her, the belt slithered off the varnished surface, buckle end first, and fell in a coil. It lay there like a dead snake, with me hating it.
*
He’d first spoken to me half a year before, under the horse-chestnut trees. A day like summer, although it wasn’t. We were the new Upper Sixth; lords of the playing fields, monarchs of the benches. ‘Come and see this,’ he shouted as I walked past, nose in a book. When I looked up he was perched on the back of the Wasserman Memorial Seat, huge shoes planted on the slats. Even as I swooned I thought, someone’ll sit there, in all that mud he’s wiped across it.
I approached warily, in case he hadn’t meant me at all.
‘What are you reading?’ He took the book out of my grip and scanned the cover. ‘
Mansfield Park
? Looks a bit old.’ He shaded his eyes and smiled, though it wasn’t a straight smile, if you know what I mean. I thought he was making fun. ‘You can read too much, you know. Books aren’t life. You have to live. Catch.’
I managed to grab a corner as it flopped down, drew it back up, then hugged the novel against my chest. I wanted to defend it or, failing that, I wanted it to defend me. ‘It’s good,’ I said lamely. I didn’t dare mention the heroine was called Fanny. Behind his back a conker thudded to the ground but he never even flinched.
‘No,’ he said, ‘this is good. Here.’
He held out his hand and showed me a conker-case, green mottled with brown. I could see where the little dark spikes had dug into his palm.
‘Here.’
I took it off him gingerly, held it in my fingertips. Some joke, probably, this was. In half an hour he’d be back in the common room, laughing with his mates about me.
‘Open it. Go on.’
‘Why?’
He sighed and took it back. ‘I’ll do it, then.’ He squeezed the sides and a dark crack appeared in the green. Then the crack opened like a mouth and a segment of the casing fell away and tumbled into the grass. With his long fingers he eased the other two pieces apart and let them rock slightly on the cushion of his left hand. The conker lay in the centre like a precious bead. ‘There.’
I leaned forward to inspect the pattern, beautiful fingerprint whirls, and the shy nude underbelly of pale skin peeping out on one side. It was so glossy it looked almost liquid; a bubble of molten wood. When I poked it, its back was waxy, glossy, like something alive. I drew back. There was another thud inches from my right foot.
‘Do you know what’s special about that?’
He placed the bits of shell down on the bench by his feet and began to roll the conker between his hands.
‘It’ll grow into a mighty tree one day?’ I clung hard on to my book. I was going to fail this test, whatever it turned out to be.
‘No. Can you not see?’
I shook my head, wishing I was back in the library doing an essay.
‘It’s brand new. Never been seen before. You and I were the first people ever to lay eyes on that conker.’ He tossed it high into the air and caught it neatly between two palms. ‘So it’s special, in’t it?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
‘Feel that.’ He passed me one of the spiky casings and I took it more confidently. ‘Not the outside, that bit’s a bastard. The white stuff inside.’
I had to lay
Mansfield Park
on the arm of the bench to follow his instruction. Then I cradled the piece of shell and stroked the lining. ‘It’s really soft. It’s like, like silk; no, suede.’ He had made me marvel.
He nodded. ‘Fantastic, in’t it?’
I stretched out my arm to give it back but he clapped his hand quickly up under mine and the shell went sailing into the lower branches and disappeared. My heart nearly stopped with shock.
He laughed at my expression and I laughed with him.
‘Tell me something,’ I said. ‘How come you’re sitting under this tree with conkers falling all around you all the time, and you’ve never been hit?’
He pretended to inspect his head, rubbing his fingers across his scalp, then grinned. ‘No, no it’s true, no injuries to speak of. It’s me, I’m magic. I’m charmed.’
I thought, It’s me that’s charmed.
The day had begun badly.
Dogman had appeared after breakfast, looking terrible. ‘Wolfie’s dead,’ he’d announced, and collapsed onto the settee. I’d had to go and make him a cup of tea for the shock, although it turned out Wolfie had joined the dog-angels yesterday evening. ‘He rolled over and gazed at me wi’ his big eyes, as if he were saying, I’ve had enough.’ Poll sat on the chair opposite with her hand to her cheek. ‘He’d been on his last legs a while. But I knew this were summat different. And the vet said his kidneys had failed, that was why his breath smelt, and it would be a kindness to put him to sleep.’
Poll was in tears. ‘Nobody loves you the way a dog does,’ she sniffed.
‘Aye, that’s true,’ Dogman sighed.
I left the scene before they drowned in grief; before I lost my temper and told Dogman it was just as well they didn’t put humans down for having bad breath. I should have felt sorry for him, dogless Dogman, but I didn’t.
I was too hungry. The sky above me was filled with clumps of mashed potato and clotted cream. By the time I got to Cissie’s I was feeling faint; I could have dug up and eaten the daffodil bulbs by the front gate. Only the thought of the purse belt got me past the vending machine in the entrance.
‘So they put in a catheter and drew out
two pints
of black . . . Yes?’ They know me at reception, but this was a new woman, pie-crust collar, big pearl earrings.
‘Cissie Southworth.’
‘Sign in the book, if you would.’ She slid the page at me through the glass hatch. I caught the biro-on-a-string as it swung past my stomach and scrawled my name, then checked as usual for any other visitors Cissie might have had since I last came. Just her ex-hairdresser, Edith – she must be in her sixties herself – and the vicar. Well, who else is there left?
Apart from the tragic fiancé lost in the war there’s her sister, my great-grandma Florence, whose ashes live in my wardrobe: died of a stroke over twenty years ago. Poll’s one-armed dad, who would have been Cissie’s brother-in-law, came down with fatal peritonitis about the same time as the Coronation, so he’s out of the picture too. Of her three nieces, Mary died in childhood, Jean’s alive and well but in Australia, and Poll has to be dragged here because they always fall out whenever they meet up. I sometimes look in the visitor’s book for Vince’s name, but I don’t really expect to see it.
I don’t mind visiting Cissie. She’s at least someone I can talk to without bursting into flames of embarrassment. I can sound off to her about Poll and get a sympathetic hearing. Also, she – ha ha, this is really mad – believes I have a life. If I could ask anyone (not dead) about leaving Poll, it would be Cissie.
She was sitting in the TV lounge watching
Watercolour Challenge
with a shrunken, oddly shaped woman. ‘He’s made a right dog’s breakfast of that, now han’t he?’ Cissie was saying. ‘You can’t tell which way up it’s meant to be.’ Then she spotted me and her face lit up.
‘Ooh,’ she said, grasping my hand, ‘our Katherine, what a treat. You’re looking bonny, love. Come next door.’
I hoisted her to her feet and she cast a smug smile at the woman left behind with just Hannah Gordon for company. ‘It’s a shame,’ she whispered to me. ‘She’s nobody.’ I wondered whether Cissie meant she has nobody or she
is
nobody. Maybe they’re one and the same.
We walked slowly along the corridor to her room and picked our way through her soft-toy collection. ‘I’ve a few more since you were here last,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Edith brings them me, oh, and I won that pink ’un in a raffle for Heart Disease.’
‘Don’t the staff bother? I mean, it’s all very nice—’ I scooped a brace of dog-creatures off the armchair and looked round for somewhere to lose them. ‘I’ll just lie them down here,’ I said, shooing them under the bed with my foot. ‘Having so much stuff must make it difficult to clean round. Do they not mind?’
‘I suppose so; they’re very good wi’ me. But we’re not allowed pets, and you get to my age, you need summat to stroke.’ She gave the dog a pat, as if it was alive, and I watched as a hank of white fur detached itself and floated to the floor. ‘This is new. I’m going to call him Dulux.’ It lay splayed across her thigh like road-kill.