Special, p.13
Special, page 13
‘Oy, babe.’ Caz gave her what looked like an affectionate nudge and was in fact a jab in the ribs. ‘Your round.’
‘Only got seven quid.’
‘I bought the last ones.’
Adey raised himself off the bench. ‘I’ll get them.’
‘I’ll help.’ Hen leapt up.
‘Made for each other, those two,’ said Caz, watching them. ‘The world’s first completely mute couple.’
Hen and Adey stood by the bar. Hen had one ankle wrapped round the other and was staring upwards at the bottles of electric-green liquid above the till. She leaned over. ‘She’s not doing GCSEs for another two years. None of us are.’
Adey looked at her, noticing the little beige scab on her chin where she’d put too much concealer over a spot, the raw unwoken complexion, the clotted mascara. He shrugged. ‘Course. Obvious. How old are you?’
‘Um.’ Hen swung her cross. ‘Fifteen.’
‘So how come you’re not doing exams this year, then?’
‘Alright, fourteen, then. Thirteen. Sort of. Don’t tell the others. Please.’
‘Won’t. Promise.’ He gathered a cluster of glasses and walked back to the table.
+
It got later. Jules looked at her watch and was surprised to see that they’d been there for over an hour. The noises from the bar rose and flowed. People came and went, banging the door. Jules felt herself beginning to drift with the motion of the drink, slipping deeper into the evening. The details of how they were to get back and what might happen if they were caught seemed very far away. She thought of Ali, Mel and Izzy still lying there in the darkened bedroom, Izzy scratching, Mel whining. She was puzzled by how little it all seemed to matter. The vodka settled agreeably in her head, tugging at her senses.
Higgs and Adey were whispering together. It seemed to Jules that there was some secret understanding which was bestowed on all men at birth. They knew things that she never would, they could negotiate the world and its complexities in a way that she could not. She looked down at the hairs on Higgs’s wrist. His arm was tanned, and his fingers were unexpectedly graceful. She felt a sudden impulse to fold his wrist inside her own hand, to feel that human solidity against her own skin. Under his shirt, with his clothes off, what did he look like? Where his arm disappeared into the sleeve, where his neck was hidden by the collar, what did he feel like? The skin on his shoulder, what did it smell like? What would he be like when he was naked? How would he feel if he was next to her?
Yves was watching her. He saw the introspection cloud her face and the look—part wistfulness, part avarice—she was giving Higgs. He saw the faint blush shading her ears and followed the wander of her thoughts.
Jules stood up abruptly and stumbled towards the ladies’ toilets. She got tangled up in a stool at a nearby table and took a second to stand upright again. As she walked, her legs stammered against the floor. Yves heard the peel of her shoes on the sticky carpet and saw her look round, just once, at Caz. He waited for a minute, half listening to Adey’s laughter and the placid grumble of the bar. Then he got up and followed Jules towards the corridor. He stood outside the ladies’ loo, plucking at the flaky paint by the phone.
When Jules re-emerged, there was a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead and her face had lost its glow. She leaned against the doorpost, trying to look casual, feeling for her balance.
Yves loomed. ‘Fancy a snog?’
Jules opened her mouth to say something. There was a clatter of teeth. She felt the snail’s trail of his saliva down her chin and the sweet reek of beer on his breath. When she shut her eyes, the world shifted sideways, so she opened them again. She caught a glimpse of raspberry-pip acne scars and the scab of an old spot at the side of his nose, closed her eyes again and moved her tongue around in what she hoped was the right way. She had never been sure about kissing, never been sure that this weird damp writhing was what she was supposed to want. Yves shoved his pelvis hard up against her so Jules’s hip cracked painfully against the doorpost. She reached for his arm to steady herself and felt a jolt of suprise at his touch. Men were like snakes; though everything told her that their skin should be as dry and human as her own, some part of her still expected them to be slithery, almost alien, to the touch.
‘Here,’ he said. His voice had clotted. He shoved her further down the corridor towards a fire exit, pushed down the bar and suddenly they were out at the back of the pub, and the wind whacked hard against Jules’s legs.
‘Over here.’ Yves half led, half dragged her through the darkness towards the shadows of the beer garden. Jules tripped against something and squeaked in fright. At the same moment, there was a faint click and a light came on far above them.
‘Fuck,’ muttered Yves, clutching at a handful of her dress. ‘Come on.’ He pulled her along, past the summer picnic tables and the murmuring trees.
At the back of the garden there was a children’s play area: a see-saw, a climbing frame and a sandpit. Jules started giggling She was beginning to feel sick. Yves clamped one hand on her hip and the other one around the back of her neck so she was pressed up close to his face. Some of her hair was tugging painfully between his fingers as he shoved his tongue between her lips again. She could hear his breath speeding up, smell the fag smoke on his mouth. It sounded as if there was something blocking the back of his throat. Yves shoved himself hard up against her again so Jules felt his erection for a second before she overbalanced and fell backwards into the sandpit, catching her ankles against the wooden sides.
The sand rasped against Jules’s back as she pushed herself away from the edge. Yves was grappling at his jeans. She could hear him breathing faster and faster, and saw his face congeal in the sodium glow of the street lights. His gaze was not focussed on her, but on some distant place.
He knelt down, squashing Jules’s shin. ‘Move. Up.’
He felt for her thigh, pushed her dress upwards so it bagged around her breasts, and snapped at the waistband of her knickers. He knelt upright again for a second and pulled down his boxer shorts.
She stopped watching his face and stared at his dick instead. It looked unnatural, as if someone had pinned a big stupid coat-hook on him for a joke. Jules, accustomed only to the surreptitious geography of other girl’s bodies, the sneaky changing-room glimpses of thigh or cleavage or waist, could not understand this squared-off gout of flesh glowering above her: no curves, no shape, just this doggish tangle of hair and muscle. She began to giggle. Yves grappled in the darkness and pulled something out of the pocket of his jeans.
Jules lay in the sand and just for a second remembered how she had imagined it would be, all her life swelling towards one moment of inevitable desire. This seemed to be nothing like that. All this disjointed groping and prodding, all this noise. She heard snapping, like the sound of someone flicking rubber bands, and the tight whine of Yves’s breathing. What’s he doing? What’s he need a condom for? She couldn’t stop giggling now. It sounded foreign, as if it wasn’t actually her who was laughing.
Yves plunged abruptly down on top of her, pushing his face into hers. She wanted to put her hand up to rub away the pain, but she was squeezed underneath him, his flesh wrenching against hers. His hand floundered around down by her hips, catching at her clothes, plucking at the gap between her legs. When he shoved his finger up inside her, it was covered in grains of sand. It felt to Jules like someone was trying to strip away her insides, like someone was scraping her to death. She tensed with the pain, banging her ankle against the side of the pit and making a small noise way down low in the back of her throat. Each grain of sand, each scrape of his nail, became a separate agony. Yves, far away on some private journey, did not hear her, even when she started to cry quietly. He pulled his finger out, hauled himself further up her body and groped around for his dick. Then he pushed inside her, rasping through sand and hair and flesh, until Jules could feel nothing but a kind of white-hot ache. She was saying something, although she had no memory of starting to speak. As he rubbed himself up and down her, crushing her into the sand, the ache got worse, until every other thought—the fear, the self-consciousness, the loss—dwindled away, and all she could feel was the hope that the pain would stop soon.
When he came, she felt no different. The scraping stopped, and she could smell a hot metallic scent, like wild garlic. He did not move, just lay on top of her, so Jules’s thinly upholstered bones screeched with the pressure of his weight. She lay there, staring up at the clouds and the sad lustre of the street lights.
Finally Yves rolled off her. ‘You a virgin?’ His voice was muffled.
‘No.’
He turned his face away from her. ‘You’re not now.’
Jules stayed where she was, staring upwards. She felt the bile rise up through her throat, leaned over away from him and was sick in the sand. Then she lay back and passed out.
Yves got out of the pit, pulled up his trousers and stuffed something into his pocket. He looked down at Jules, curled absurdly, smeared in muck and prickling leaves, her dress still rolled up around her chest, hips and arms pale against the darkness of the pit and the grass beyond. Then he dusted himself down, shook the leaves out of his hair and walked back to the bar.
+
In the back room, Hen had gone for more drinks. Adey was having a half-heated argument with Higgs, and Caz was silently examining her ankles. She seemed aware that the argument was partly theatre, a sideshow dialogue performed for her benefit.
When Yves came back into the room, she did not look up.
Adey gave him a watery glare. ‘J’ou get to?’
‘Piss.’
Higgs raised one enquiring eyebrow. Yves winked. Neither of them noticed Caz intercept the look. Neither of them saw her get up and walk across the room.
She went into the ladies’ and said softly, ‘Jules?’ No answer. Behind her, she could feel the draught from the fire exit on the back of her legs. Outside, the wind was shoving paper bags at the dustbins, and an incomplete moon was rising. Caz walked out on to the grass, moving slowly until her eyes adjusted to the dark. The dew cooled the toes of her shoes.
The security light came on, blinding her, so she turned back towards the pub and skittered out of the spotlight’s range. When the spotlight went off again, she walked up to the corner, past the shadowy swings and the see-saw.
She looked down at Jules, still lying curled asleep in the sandpit. There was sand dabbled all the way down her calves, her tits and bum were naked to the world, and one shoe was lost in the dark. Beside Jules, just to the right of her head, was a splatter of vomit.
She stepped back a pace, pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it. She could hear the faint shushing of the traffic on the road beyond and the scream of a rabbit in a nearby field. The sound the trees made seemed like the sound of the sea. Caz stood there, listening to the trees and the road and staring down at her friend. She smoked the cigarette to the end, and then stamped it out by the edge of the sandpit. Then she turned and walked back to the pub.
+
Hen was tipping her chair back and forth and glaring at Higgs. ‘Drink any you under table. No problem. Nooo prob-lem-o.’
Someone had placed three small glasses of clear liquid on the table next to the half-full pint glasses.
‘Slammers, then,’ said Higgs. ‘Go on.’
Hen giggled. ‘Race.’
Caz bent down and whispered something in her ear. Hen flapped a hand. ‘Naaaw. No’ now. Later.’
Caz whispered again. Adey looked up. ‘What is it?’ His voice had blurred and his eyelids had a sleepy angle to them.
‘Got to go. They’ll check up on us.’
Hen leaned over unevenly and tried to pull out the spare stool. ‘Siddown. In a minute.’
Caz plucked at her arm. ‘Now. Come on.’
‘Piss off.’
Higgs stretched his arms out, mock-pleading. ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave us. Not nearly drunk enough yet.’
Caz smiled and began dragging Hen towards the door. ‘Gotta go.’
‘Wait!’ said Hen, lunging for the table. ‘Moment.’
Caz stood by the doorway, waiting.
‘Bag.’ Hen groped around on the floor, giggling. Higgs caught her eye and nodded slightly. ‘Go on.’
Hen picked up the glass of tequila, tipped her head back and swallowed it down in one. Liquid dribbled down the corners of her mouth. When she slammed the glass back down on the table top, her eyes were wild. She was drunk, triumphant, gorgeous. The men were watching her. She was perfect.
‘Hen!’ shouted Caz, ‘Come on! We’re going.’
Hen shrugged her jacket on, walked to the door and gave the watching men a little wave. ‘Byeeee. Byeeeeeee.’ Then she stopped again, raised one finger at the staring boys, and shouted, ‘Kiss my slit.’ Spun round and tripped out after Caz.
The boys heard her laughter—high, jerky, almost mad—all the way through the next room.
+
In the minicab on the way back, Hen’s head flopped down on Caz’s shoulder. Caz stared out of the window. Two or three groups of people wavered down the road, shouting companionably at each other.
Hen sat upright suddenly. ‘Where’s Jules?’
‘Dunno. Probably gone back already.’
Hen slumped back again. ‘Oh,’ she said, and went to sleep.
Early Saturday
Jules woke up.
Whatever she was lying on was uncomfortable. Things kept poking into her skin, and she had a memory of being cold in the night. Her sleep had been unusually dark, and when she woke it seemed as if some extreme noise had been abruptly switched off. The light was tentative; it was not quite dawn. The trees moved above her, and she could feel the damp sand scratching at her back. The dress was still wrinkled around her ribs and her skin was mottled with cold. Somewhere, she could hear the sound of a tractor in a nearby field.
She pulled herself up far enough to wriggle the dress down over her hips, and then lay back again, staring up at the cold sky. She remembered the drink, the sandpit, the weight of Yves on her bones. When she stood up, her body didn’t seem anchored properly to the ground, and the sand seemed to stare back at her from a long way away. She could see a splatter of something liquid, and realized she must have been sick. Her mouth felt full of some unpleasant furry stuff like the sticky carpet in the pub last night. She could also detect an unspecified ache somewhere up in what might have been her womb. It felt hot and indignant and when she moved or bent over it got worse. This was not like any pain she’d known before; this wasn’t like period pain or stomach ache, it was a deeper hurt. The consideration of her innards and the thought of how the ache had got there made her feel sick again.
One shoe was upside down at the end of the sandpit and the other one was way off to the right, by the trunk of a tree. The ground was soggy with dew, and the shoes felt damp when she picked them up. Jules shook the muck out and began searching for her knickers. She had expected a glimpse of white poking shamefully out of the long grass or under one of the benches, but there was nothing more than the skirl of yesterday’s litter in the wind and the fading glow of roses. She scuffed through the grass and examined the small patches of shrubbery bordering the beer garden. They weren’t there. As she searched, she felt a new panic rising. What if someone from the pub saw her searching through the grass, looking for a pair of incriminating knickers? The thought of anyone having seen her, stripped and raw and all smeary with sick, made her feel ashamed. She ripped up a hank of grass and pushed the sand off her legs, anxious to get away as fast as she possibly could. She could feel the panic in her throat now, and the push of tears against the back of her tongue.
The beer garden rustled around her. The pub had long ago been locked up, and Jules looked round for some kind of exit. The only way out that she could see was the tall iron gate leading on to the car park, which had been closed and padlocked sometime yesterday evening. The gate had a vicious set of iron spikes along the top designed to deter intruders. The bars were too close together to wriggle through, and the base too close to the ground to slide under. She was going to have to climb it. She kicked off her shoes again, dropped them over to the other side, and began searching for a foothold. The fear that someone might see her, knickerless and filthy, halfway over a pub gate, made her scrabble and yank. Three times she lost her footing and slid back down to the ground, banging her shins against the metal. She heard footsteps on the pavement beyond the car park and sank back into the shadows. The walker passed by and she tried climbing again, desperate now. The fourth time she pulled herself up she kept her foothold and began gingerly levering her right leg over the spikes. She could feel the clammy dawn cold on her hips and the spikes digging into her thighs. She was sobbing now, panicky with shame, acutely aware of how stupid she must look. She balanced for a second on the top cross bar, yanked her left leg over, found the foothold and dropped down onto the ground. Then she started walking.
Please God, she thought, please God, let nobody I know see me. Please. Please. She was crying now, but she had nothing to wipe the tears away. Two or three cars passed by, so she swung her hair over her face and stared down at the pavement. Once out in the country again the pavement disappeared abruptly. Every few steps, she sank back into the verge, halfhobbled by the little heels of her shoes.
As she walked, she remembered the night. Nothing seemed a complete memory any more, only a series of images and impressions—the rasp of the sand, the expression in Yves’s eyes, the trees watching her from above. The experience seemed wrong somehow. She felt angry, not with Yves, but with herself. She had obviously done something wrong: moved in the wrong way, held him the wrong way, had the wrong sort of anatomy. She’d spent so long—so unbelievably long—waiting to cast off her virginity, and when it finally happened she had flunked it. Half her life had been spent waiting for last night, and when last night actually happened she’d been so drunk she could barely remember it. When Caz had done it, she’d lain on the grass when they got back to school and talked about it all with such perfect assurance that Jules had been unable to sleep that night for fear. According to Caz, it had all been gorgeous—a man who’d fancied her for ages, a reluctant (but not too reluctant) wooing, a room lit with candles, a silent space without intrusions. Jules had imagined it to herself again and again, the honeyed light, the liquid glances, the heroic union. In her mind, it was all so smooth, so quiet, so right. It was nothing like the dankings and grabbings of last night.
