Moderate Violence (12 page)

“You’re crazy,” she told him as he bundled her out of
the office and up the stairs. “They’ll sack you. They’ll sack
me
.”

He didn’t let go of her until they were outside on the
pavement. “No they won’t,” he said, pulling the shop door behind them. “But
they might think again about their moronic mystery shopper idea.”

Jo’s heart was doing a tap dance. Toby looked the same
as he always did, but he
wasn’t
the
same. Jo reached for his hand. “This is where I thank you for rescuing me.”

He smiled. “Go on, then.”

She put her hands behind his head and pulled his face
down to hers. He didn’t resist. She kissed him for a long time, and felt his
lips and tongue respond, and his arms snake round and clasp her against him. Neither
he nor she was wearing much. She knew he could feel her bones and her skin and
her flesh as plainly as she could feel his.

When she pulled away and saw his familiar face with its
tufty hair and the shadow that showed he hadn’t shaved since last night, the
self-consciousness she usually felt with him flew away.

 “I love you, Toby,” she said. “Not because of what you
did in there. I just do.”

 He pulled her towards him again. She couldn’t see his
face, but his heart under his T-shirt felt like a pneumatic drill. He kissed
her on the top of her head, pressing her skull hard.

Then he drew away, lifted his chin and looked up and down
the street. “Those sandwiches Sophie got were rubbish. Do you want a pizza?”

Chapter Eight

This weekend, Jo decided, they’d do it. Even
if Toby didn’t want to, she’d
make
him want to. It’s the only power girls have got, Pascale said. And it’s the most
powerful power in the world. Sexual desire has brought down great men and
elevated great women. It’s at the source of everything that’s ever happened in
history, Pascale said. Jo doubted this, but she was beginning to think that
maybe she
did
have the power,
after all.

She thought of nothing else all day Saturday. Her
standing with Gordon actually seemed to have gone
up
since the events of yesterday. Eloise had obviously been
instructed to allow Jo to work on the till instead of leaving her to sweat in
the stockroom like she usually did.

“Maybe we’d better go over some things again,” said
Eloise when Tasha had had to come to Jo’s rescue at the till for the twentieth
time. Humiliating though this was, since Tasha was no more experienced in shop
work than Jo, she didn’t care. She couldn’t concentrate enough even to
think
about caring.

She decided to wear the new underwear Trevor had bought
her to go under her Miss Universe dress. Little lacy knickers, and a skimpy bra
to match. She’d shave her legs when she got home, though she’d only done it a
couple of days ago. She’d wear that musky perfume of Tess’s that Toby liked,
and experiment with curling her hair and sweeping it off the nape of her neck
like Pascale’s. Jo had heard somewhere that boys found the napes of girls’
necks sexy.

Since last night, everything seemed clear. Her
confession to Pascale about not knowing if Toby fancied her was irrelevant now.
They were a couple, she and Toby. He must really, really like her, or he
wouldn’t have risked confronting Gordon like that. And the way he’d kissed her
outside the shop last night was different from any kiss he’d given her before. He
had kissed her as if she was important to him.

She knew what she had felt when the compulsion to tell
him she loved him rushed over her. It wasn’t passion, or sexual desire. It was
just that at that moment, she knew she loved him. All of a sudden, her course
of action had sprung into clarity, as brightly as a computer screen. Her
virginity was a weight she’d been carrying around too long. It was dragging her
back into childhood instead of allowing her to go forward into adulthood. Now
that she’d realized she loved someone, she really did have to get rid of it.

Toby was working upstairs that Saturday, and Jo didn’t
see him much. Their lunch breaks were at different times. But at closing time
he came and leant on the cash desk where Jo and Tasha were tidying up.

“Where shall we go tonight?” he asked Jo, smiling with
no teeth showing. “Up to town?”

“You sound like Tess,” said Jo, hanging up plastic
bags. “You’ll be saying ‘my club’ next.”

“Town’s just another way of saying London,” said Tasha,
who didn’t know Tess.

Toby was watching Jo patiently. “We could go for a meal
in the West End if you want. There’s a place on Frith Street I sometimes go
to.”

Jo and Tasha exchanged a look. “He sounds keen,” said
Tasha.

“I just want to have a nice night out!” protested Toby.

“What train shall we get?” Jo looked at her watch. It
was ten past six. “By the time we both go home and get ready…”

“Listen, Jo,” interrupted Toby, looking at his own
watch, “I’ve got to go up there early, to do some shopping. Why don’t you meet
me at Waterloo? About eight thirty?”

Jo was disappointed, but couldn’t say so in front of
Tasha. Once again, Toby had plans he hadn’t told her about. She was tempted to
say, “What sort of shopping?” but then she realized he might be going to buy
her a present.

“Oh, all right. I won’t bother to get dressed up, then,
if you’re going in your work things.”

“Tell you what,” he said unexpectedly. “Why don’t you
wear a skirt? You never do.” He nodded towards a rail of short cotton skirts. “And
you’ve got better legs than most of the women who are trying those on.”

Tasha giggled. “He’s really out to please tonight, Jo!”

“I might,” said Jo. She had to concentrate very hard on
not going red. Toby’s suggestion had made it very clear that his plan for the
evening was exactly the same as hers. She came round the cash desk and kissed
him on the cheek. “You’d better go and get your train, then. See you at eight
thirty.”

* * * * * *

Trevor, wearing an apron, opened the front
door before Jo could get her key out. “I’ve heated up a shepherd’s pie, made by
the loving hands of Mr Marks and his good friend Mr Spencer,” he announced.

“Sorry,” said Jo, rushing past him and taking the
stairs two at a time. “Must have a shower. Toby and I are going out for a meal
in the West End.”

“Celebrating something?” asked Trevor peevishly.

“No.” Nothing I’m going to tell you about, anyway, she
thought. When she’d showered, she wound her hair round rollers and dried it. Then
she put on the only skirt she owned. It was made of washed-out denim, and came
about half way down her thighs. With no tights underneath it was cool enough
for August. But she wished she had a flouncy, semi-transparent skirt like the
one Pascale often wore, which looked sexy and properly summery.

The denim skirt didn’t look bad, though. Jo model-posed
in front of the mirror. Toby was right. Her legs, though not in the same league
of brownness, smoothness or length as Pascale’s, were pretty good. She sat down
on the bed and inspected the plaster on her arm. The shower had loosened a
corner, so she ripped it off. The wound had stopped weeping yellowy water, but
it hadn’t started scabbing over either. She prodded it gently, wondering if
this would be the last time she’d touch it. Toby, mendacious or not, couldn’t
be her boyfriend – her
proper
boyfriend – if she never let him see her naked, could he? Somehow, by a serious
effort of will, she had to
make herself
leave
it alone.

 She opened her bedside-table drawer and reached right
to the back, where she kept an empty crisp packet. She folded the used plaster
and placed it in the crisp packet with all the others, and the papers they came
wrapped in. It wasn’t Sylvia’s business if she found used plasters in the waste
paper basket or the bathroom bin, but Jo couldn’t stand the idea of her inspecting
them, wondering. The soiled plasters would stay in the crisp packet until the
day came when Jo would put it in her bag and nonchalantly, on the way to the
bus stop, screw it up and throw it into a public litter bin.

When she’d put on another plaster and dressed in a
long-sleeved top, she took the rollers out of her hair. But when she pinned up
the curls, the result was more 1970s starlet than sophisticated wanton. Pascale’s
hair must be more receptive to curling than Jo’s. Swearing softly, she heated
up the straighteners.

Her phone rang; it was Holly, asking what Jo and Toby
were doing tonight. Jo rushed through the conversation, afraid she’d miss the
train.

“Let me know what happens!” said Holly.

“Will do!” replied Jo.

She left the house without saying goodbye to Trevor and
walked to the station as quickly as the effectiveness of her deodorant would
allow. She didn’t get a seat because a lot of other people were going to
Waterloo Station on a Saturday night. Swaying in the carriage, she thought
about Trevor sitting alone with his shepherd’s pie. For a moment she felt
guilty, but then she remembered that he still hadn’t made an appointment to see
Mr Treasure. Every time Jo reminded him he said, “Can’t Tess go? Teachers
frighten the pants off me. And anyway, I’m going to Wales.”

She sighed. On TV and in movies, and even in her class
at school, people’s parents just got divorced. Kids said, “my parents are
divorced, and I live with my mum and see my dad every other weekend.” But it
seemed to Jo that her own parents’ separation just got muddier and muddier. If
anyone asked her to explain, what would she say? “Well, my mother’s living with
her parents and I’m living with my dad in a house my mum and dad both own, and
he wants to sell it and spend his half on another house, but my mother doesn’t
want to live in a flat, she’d rather come back and live in our house, with him
paying for it even though he’s just been made redundant and wants to go and
live in Wales anyway. Still with me?”

And where was
Jo
in all this uncertainty and vagueness? Did Trevor or Tess ever think about
that?

The train arrived late at Waterloo. Jo saw Toby before
he saw her. As she walked across the concourse she watched him jittering from
foot to foot. He looked nice, in his usual loose-limbed way, neatly groomed
despite not having been home after work. He greeted her with a relieved hug. “Thought
you weren’t coming!”

“Train was late. What have you been doing? Where’s your
shopping?”

“Didn’t buy anything.” He saw her face. “Sorry,
couldn’t find what I wanted. I booked the table, though, so come on.”

The restaurant wasn’t like the golf club, or any of the
pseudo-rustic pubs on Jo’s grandparents’ dining-out circuit. It was a proper
restaurant, with starched tablecloths and discreet waiters who pulled out her
chair and spread her napkin on her lap for her. Jo and Toby even ordered
cocktails.

Jo watched him, trying to gauge his mood. It was
different from how he’d been in the shop. He seemed nervous, as if it was their
first date. Of course, he could be nervous about what was going to happen
later. But if that were the reason, why didn’t Jo’s willingness, which she was
making as obvious as she could, make him feel at ease?

They drank almost two bottles of wine with the meal. Although
Toby had more of it than Jo, she still felt very drunk. It was more wine than
she’d ever had all in one go. She wondered, not for the first time, how Trevor
could get through bottle after bottle and still stay upright. Well, almost.

The wine didn’t seem to relax Toby. In the end, Jo
encouraged him to have another cocktail, and she had one too. Leaning on each
other, they left the restaurant.

“You’re drunk,” said Toby amiably.

“So are you.”

“I’m going to get a taxi,” said Toby, flailing his arm
at the nearest one, which didn’t stop.

“Why can’t we go on the Tube?” asked Jo.

“Because I want to go in a
taxi
.” He scanned the traffic. “There’s one!” They scampered
between the lines of cars. “Waterloo, please!” said Toby, opening the door.

Nestling with his arm around Jo in the corner of the
cab, Toby seemed to make a decision. He put his hand up her skirt, almost as
far as her knickers, and left it on her thigh. Jo was so drunk that she watched
without protest as his eyes got a dreamy, unfocused look, and he breathed
faster. She let him put his tongue in her mouth, and even arched her back so
that his other hand could locate the fastening of her lacy bra. She was aware
that her own breath was shortening, and that she wanted to swallow, but
couldn’t. Holly said that happened all the time, but Pascale said that when you
really
want to do it you get a
feeling inside you like a period pain, though not so bad. In fact, quite nice.

Jo waited, there in the taxi, for the nice pain. But
all that happened was that the constriction in her throat increased as Toby
went on kissing her. He smelled of alcohol. The hand that was up her skirt had
found the top of her knickers and was trying to pull the elastic away from her
body. The other hand had undone her bra and was kneading her left breast
uncomfortably.

Things were going wrong. Jo didn’t feel nice. She felt
ill, partly from the unaccustomed alcohol, and partly from plain, old fashioned
shame. What was the taxi-driver thinking? Although it didn’t matter, because
she would have felt the same even if she and Toby had been doing this at home.

She clamped Toby’s knicker-hand with her own hand. “Tobe,
we can’t do this in a taxi.”

“You want to, though, don’t you?”

“Not here,” Jo said as forcefully as she could. But
registering outrage was hard because Toby’s face was still all over hers.

“Don’t worry,” he insisted. “I’ve got some – ”

“Toby!” She tried again. “I don’t want to do this
here
.”

 He took his hand out from under her skirt. He looked
agitated and sweaty, as if he’d set himself a task he was regretting embarking
on. “What the hell is it with you?” he asked aggressively. “You were all over
me in the restaurant, and then you come on like I’m a criminal or something
because I want to have a bit of fun in a taxi.”