Virtue (18 page)

My Family by Geraldine Pigg aged 12

Once upon a time, I was born. My father was a king and my mother was a queen, and I was called the Princess Incognito. But my mother had a fairy godmother and they forgot to ask her to the chrissaning. Fairies get very cross when they are not asked to things they should be asked to, so my mother’s fairy godmother turned up all in black and stood over my cradle. And she said, ‘You have forgotten to ask me and now I have to have my revenge. The Princess Incognito will die within ten days.’ But my father’s fairy godmother was able to undo some of the curse but not all of it and she said, ‘The Princess Incognito will not die but you will never see her again as she will have to go and live with another family and they will change her name and however long you search you will never find her.’

So then she took me and put me with the family I live with now and they are called Mr and Mrs Pigg. My ‘father’ is called Stanley and my ‘mother’ is called Irene and her name was Mimms before she got married and before they had me they could not have children before so they are very pleased to have me and they called me Geraldine. They own a butcher’s shop on Corporation Road and we live above the shop and they had enough meat to eat even during the war when no one had meat except when they had rashers and then it was mostly offle and mince most of the time. Sometimes we go to the seaside and on Saturday afternoons we go to the park after the shop is closed except when it is raining and we go to the cinema
.

I like films with Cary Grant in mostly and also ones where the princess is saved by the dashing cavalier as it reminds me of what my real life was like before I came here even though I should have been too little to remember. My mother likes knitting and my father smells of pork chops even when he has had his bath. But I do not think that they know that I know that I am not their real daughter or that I remember that I used to live in a palace and have silk sheets and baths every night in rose petals
.

Mother wants me to pass the higher certificate so that I get a good job as a secretary or even a teacher. All the girls in my class have no imagination and want to be shopkeepers and secretaries and some of them nurses. They call me Her Ladyship just because I have higher ambitions, and want to make something of myself and speak properly and that. They play praticle jokes on me and try to get my clothes dirty by tripping me up and throwing things, but I don’t care because it is beneath me to care. And anyway, I know that one day I shall be rich and famous and I can sweep past them in my golden carriage as I pass them on the street. In fact, I will go back to the life I used to live before I came to Warrington, and then they will all be sorry
.

‘So I reckon you’re in for a bit of a spanking on Thursday, then,’ says Nigel, back from Ireland and two days ensconced in the tower. Well, in my bedroom. We made an effort to go upstairs once, but it didn’t last. He’s lying on my bed like a well-warmed cougar, arms behind his head, hair roaring across the red velvet cushion he’s using for a pillow.

‘You never know,’ I reply, ‘I might have got away with it. I’ve not heard a peep.’

Nige snorts with derision. ‘I think a woman as intelligent as your mother will have worked it out by now.’

‘Ah, but you forget. Women like my mother don’t read the tabloids.’

Early evening sun streams through the window and plays lovely little games with the golden hairs on his thighs. I reach out and run my finger over them, brushing them ever so lightly so that they bend like a cornfield in a breeze, and he grabs my wrist and pulls it away.

‘Excuse me,’ he says, ‘but we hardly know each other, do we?’ Then he gives my left breast a caress and plants a friendly kiss firmly on my lips.

Which turns into a longer kiss. And a hand on my arse pulling me hipbone to hipbone.

Oh, bugger. I would so like to stay. I push him off.

‘Honey, it’s half past five. I have to be in the restaurant for six.’

‘Go on,’ says Nigel, like a man deprived, ‘just a bit longer.’

I’ll tell you what: this boy was worth having back. He fucks like he’s rocket-fuelled. Give him the occasional bacon sandwich to keep his strength up, and he’ll keep a smile on your face all day.

‘Oh, honey, I can’t be late tonight. Roy’s pissed off enough as it is. Can’t you stay a bit longer?’

‘Wish I could,’ he mumbles, ‘but my ticket’s not refundable. Just a quickie, huh, Anna? You know you want to.’

Of course I want to, but I can’t. Push him away with a firm but gentle hand on the chest, sit up.

He turns onto his back, pulling another cushion over to cover the bulge under the sheet. ‘Ah, well. Worth a try. Can I come back and try again when I get back from Barcelona?’

Reluctantly, I’ve got my feet on the floor already. ‘I’ll probably have to hunt you down and kill you if you don’t.’

‘Cool.’

I’m pretty sure there are a couple of clean blouses still in my drawer. There should be twenty-odd coming from the laundry tomorrow. This isn’t the sort of job where you can recycle your uniform with a couple of squirts of Febreeze and a bottle of Chanel; it’s the sort of job that would make a washing-powder ad. Anna Waters talks about Raz Automatic, ‘Jam stains, custard stains, gravy stains: I get them all in my work, and they’re the worst stains to get out. I was in despair until I found Raz …’

He watches me rummage, says, ‘So your guts will be garters, then.’

‘Probably. That’s why I live each day as though it were my last.’

In the wardrobe hang four identical gymslips, striped ties pre-knotted round the neck of each hanger.

‘Anna?’

I put a hanger on the bed, take a clothes brush to my straw boater. I’m the best turned-out schoolgirl in London, though I say it myself. I look over at him, say, ‘Yes?’

‘Why don’t you just tell her you’re a grown-up now and she’ll have to lump it?’

I slump on the edge of the bed. ‘No way.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m a coward, I guess.’

He digests this.

‘You’ve got to stop some time, Anna.’

I try a bright smile. ‘Not now, though, eh?’ Stand up and go in search of a push-up bra and some frilly white knickers.

He pushes himself up in bed, pulls up his knees, wraps his arms round them. ‘It’s difficult, you know, for someone like me to understand someone like you. No one ever gave me a hard time when I was a kid. I don’t suppose it’s the same with you, is it?’

I sit down again, with my back to him, shake my head. ‘Look, Nige, don’t get too heavy, huh? I’m having a good time now, and that’s what matters.’

He’s quiet for a bit, then, ‘Still, I bet you did well at school, huh?’

‘Shut up, Nigel.’

‘Tell me. Teacher’s pet, were you?’

‘Shut up!’

‘What’s the problem? Must have been great, passing exams with flying colours, everyone wishing they were you …’

I turn round, glare at him. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. It was shit, if you want to know. It was absolutely shit. There wasn’t a single day when …’

He starts back in mock fear. ‘All right! Keep your hair on! I was only saying!’

‘Well, don’t say! You don’t have the first idea what it was like being me! Being younger than everyone else in your year by two years so that no one wanted to be friends with you. Having everyone call you a suck-up because you always knew the answer to everything, and all the teachers thinking you were a smart-arse and being too scared of your mother to say so. It wasn’t fun at all!’

‘Okay,’ he says.

‘Well, you started it! Do you know what it was like being the unfashionable one, the one who never knew who Simon le Bon was, or Madonna, or what the difference was between a gym shoe and a trainer? I bet
you
were never the one who everybody groaned about when they were made to be your partner in a crocodile. I bet
you
got to go out and play with your mates after school. I wouldn’t have been allowed to even if I’d
had
any mates. All I had was bloody reading lists and maths tutors, and … and … and weekly reports from every one of my teachers, and a nightly hour where my mother and I discussed a nominated topic of conversation. Christ, I’d never even
spoken
to a boy when I went to university. No wonder I’m still living out my adolescence now. Why on
earth
should I tell her anything?’

‘Woah,’ he says. ‘Sorry. Raw topic. Should’ve thought.’

As quickly as I got angry, it’s over. I collect a pair of holdup stockings from the bedside table, begin rolling them down to toe level to put them on.

Nigel puts a hand on my arm. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘are we still mates?’

I look down at him. You can’t be angry with someone as straightforward as the golden boy. At least, I can’t. ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course.’

‘Gissa kiss, then.’

I lean back, give him a kiss, let myself sink into his arms and accept a cuddle. He’s got nice arms, Nigel. I love men’s arms. I love most things about men. I still feel sad that I didn’t get to find out how much until I was nineteen.

He takes a stocking from my hand, looks at it.

‘How do these things stay up, anyway?’

I show him the sticky rubber bands inside the embroidered bit. ‘Perspiration.’ Nigel gets a naughty look.

‘Nice.’

‘Stop it.’

‘Will you let me dress you?’

Now, this one’s new on me. ‘You couldn’t wait to get my clothes
off
a short while ago.’

Silence.

‘All right, then.’

He leaps eagerly out of bed, bears down on me, stocking in hand. Points at the armchair and says, ‘Sit!’

I giggle, sit down, cross my legs at the knee and kick.

‘Stop that. Come on. Be serious.’

‘Serious?’

‘Point your toe.’

I point my toe. He drops to one knee, slips the stocking over my foot, runs his hand over my ankle, smoothing the black nylon on its way, up my calf, over my knee, spreads the top over my thigh and, licking his finger, runs it round the inside of the rubber bands.

‘You’ve done this before.’

Nigel looks up, grins, snaps the stocking down on my thigh.

‘Ow!’

‘No complaining. This is a professional service. If you want to register a complaint, do it to the management in writing. Other foot.’

I point my other foot, and he repeats the process, only this time, he plants a little kiss on the inside of my knee before he covers it. ‘There. You’ll have to carry that around with you all night now.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘We aim to please.’

This is, like, the single sexiest thing a man has ever done for me. He picks up the knickers from the bed, arranges them on the floor so the leg holes are unobstructed, tells me to step into them. Then he crouches down and slides them up my legs, over my buttocks, quickly slips his fingers inside the elastic to settle them into a smooth fit.

‘You
have
done this before!’

Now he’s got the bra in his hand. ‘If madame would care to lean forward,’ he says, ‘we can proceed.’

I obey. His hands gently cup my breasts, and a small, involuntary shiver runs down my spine. Then he’s pulling up my straps and expertly hooking me up at the back, doing a quick check to see that the side panels aren’t rucked up.

‘Now I
know
you’ve done this before.’

But he’s holding out the blouse, unbuttoned. I slip my arms into the sleeves, let him shrug it onto my shoulders and come round to face me while he slowly, carefully, slips each tiny mother-of-pearl button into place. ‘A fine piece of tailoring, if madame will allow me to be so bold,’ he says.

‘Thank you,’ I reply, but somehow I seem to be a bit breathless when I say it. He returns to the bed, hooks the tie over his arm, comes back with his thumbs hooked through the straps of the gymslip. Pulls apart the pleats of the skirt and holds it above my head. ‘And now for the crowning touch,’ he says, waits while I lift my hands over my head and drops it down so it falls in one movement over my body. Slips the tie under the collar of the blouse, wiggles the knot up until it’s tight. By now, I’ve got a silly, unstoppable grin on my face and I’m just staring up at his mouth through my eyelashes.

He leads me across to the full-length mirror, positions me in front of it, standing naked behind me, hands on my shoulders. ‘So,’ he says smugly, ‘does madame approve?’

I turn to face him. ‘Nigel?’

‘What?’

‘Maybe just a quick one, eh?’

Roy is too scared of even the thought of my mother to refuse me the night off, so I brush my hair down, don a new charity-shop shirtwaister in pale blue with a tiny red pinstripe, polish up my glasses and thank God the Aussie boy isn’t around any more to see me. I think, maybe, if he saw me like this he would have kissed me goodbye, perfunctorily and on the cheek, for good. And then I set out across town for my fatal dinner date.

She’s picked the carvery of a bland concrete hotel near Marble Arch. We’re not eating there because she likes the food – I was brought up on the same strictly balanced low-protein diet that Peter raised her on, meat being a substance that fired inconvenient and distracting passions – but because she prefers the combination of anonymity and obsequiousness afforded by these diamond-carpeted monuments to mediocrity; no fashion victim she. And besides, she’s staying upstairs. My mother likes Holiday Inns, Mövenpicks, Copthornes and Thistles. She likes mass-purchase local prints, curtains on sticks and paper-wrapped water glasses. They ground her; they make her feel at home.

As usual, nervousness makes me early. No one would ever have believed me at school, but I always experienced pangs of fellow feeling with the naughty girls I’d pass lined up outside the headmistress’s office. Although Grace limited her travelling during my childhood, I never got used to the pang of unfamiliarity and faint dread with which I anticipated her return from work at six thirty each day. Went-the-day-well enquiries always had a faint flavour of interrogation about them in our house: you vill anzer ze kvestion. Rezisdance is fudile.