Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (19 page)

‘Janie Ryan?' It was a girl goth. ‘You're fucked! Shouldn't you be upstairs with the blonde brigade dancing to Boombastic?'

I squinted. It was Fat Beth; she was in a few of my classes but we didn't talk. She was the one we thought Mr Price might do.

‘Beth!' I gave her a big hug until her spiked choker was digging into me and I realised she wasn't hugging back. She looked back at her mates, a mass of black material dotted with kohl-lined plastic eyes.

R.E.M.'s ‘Stand' came on, and with a collective sigh the dance floor cleared.

‘I love this song! Come'n dance.' I kicked off my platforms and did my legs-open, hip-grinding dance to R.E.M. while Beth stood smiling in front of me, not moving, except sometimes to look behind her and shake her head at her mates, who might have laughed, if they hadn't been goths.

*

He had mascara, spiked hair and T-shirt that said ‘Vacant?'.

‘Come on, at least a handjob.'

We were in the same cubicle that I'd sat in earlier. He lifted my hand to his jeans but I could hardly move my head to snog never mind that.

He grabbed my arse and started to do it himself with his other hand.

‘Shtop!' I lurched against him.

‘What fucking now?'

He sounded posh; he pulled his face away a bit but his hands still worked away, one on his dick, one on my arse; like patting your head and rubbing your tummy – impressive really.

‘Don't do it on my dressh. It'sh new.'

‘It's a white dress.'

‘Oh.' I looked down at his hand working away and my snakebite-stained dress. ‘Aye.'

I giggled and slid down the cubicle wall and that was where Jenny and Kate found me at kicking-out time. It was a laugh.

*

Or I thought it was a laugh. Until Jenny and Kate pinched and poked at me with it when we got back to school and then blurted it out during Biology, their names for me as precise as the scalpels we cut apart our flowers with. They called me a slapper then shared confused, knowing smiles with each other, and limp lukewarm hugs with me before English when they drew tears, seeing they'd cut to the tender parts.

‘Don't be so stupid, Janie, it's just a laugh. See you at lunch.'

I decided after English that day. I didn't go to the canteen to sit at our usual table, drink peach fizzy water and share a plate of chips with them. Instead, I walked round to the bit of field behind the Portakabin. Not the bit of grass by the sports shed that was covered in fag ends and ripped-up porn magazines where the cool kids hung out but the dark, damp bit that was colder even in the summer.

They were sat in the shadows, hunched over, looking as though their arses had burrowed into the soggy grass. I saw Beth sharing her earphones with a girl called Nibble. My heels sank into the soggy grass and, until I reached them, until they raised their heads, scared at the sight of another kid, I could have just turned back. I could have gone and applied layers of lip gloss and gossiped about what a slag Sarah Tucker was. But then Beth stood up and turned to me with a half-smile on her face, pulling the earphone from Nibble's ear; she didn't know if I was coming to cause grief or not but she kept smiling anyway, and I knew I would keep walking away from the canteen, towards social suicide.

I don't really know what it was that made me. The thing about Beth was that I never thought she was waiting to stab me in the back, pinch my boyfriend, tell me my arse had got fat, or that I should go squeeze my spot ‘cause it's disgusting' like the blonde brigade did.

It was true that if we met outside McDonald's and she got there first she'd shout across the road, ‘Oi, fuckface! Slag. Over here!' But there was always a smile with it, showing the roll of fat under her chin and the deep dimple under her right cheek. You wouldn't believe the filth you can say perfectly nicely if you have a dimple.

Beth spent all her time trying to look hard, with her ink-and-compass tattoos, thin purple lips and spiky jewellery, but I never saw her pass a dog, even the rank, wet ones, without burying her face into their fur. She'd always give up her seat on the bright yellow Banana bus for an oldie, though she would offer it with a sharp jerk of her head and then stare ahead when they thanked her, flicking her lip stud in and out with her tongue so the poor old sod didn't know where to look.

Her body gave her away too. She could paint it and dress it, but it didn't matter how many silvery scratches laced her arms or how much black she scraped on the inside of her eyes, her body was soft and warm. Sometimes it moved like she didn't even notice it happening and I'd find a hand laced in mine or her stiff black hair, the smell of hairspray right up my nose, tickling my neck and her head on my shoulder.

I suppose there was something safe about her. She told me secrets in her flat, deep voice, but didn't ask for any back. She had a guinea pig, Gomez, that she brushed every night in her room while her ma and dad rowed downstairs, because that's what the hospital said she should do when she thought of hurting. Her bedroom walls were covered with cut-out pictures from holiday brochures, mainly Greece but there was one of the Canary Islands too. Beth wanted out of Yarmouth to do something better and so did I and I didn't think she would try to fuck me over while we were getting there together.

I didn't have to push anyone out to get to her either. Nibble didn't care I was Beth's new mate. Nibble had a pencil case of nail varnishes and spent the whole school day painting her nails a rainbow of colours and then scraping it off with her long front teeth. She had wide-set, half-closed eyes and a Cheshire cat grin that was always flecked with pink, blue and yellow. We used to joke her boyfriend ‘Gay Gordon' must shit multicoloured turds from all the varnish he swallowed while swirling his tongue around her mouth in the playground.

Gordon, with his puff of orange hair and slim wrists. Before he went in for the snog, with his mouth open, tongue visible, he'd always make sure there was a a bit of a crowd, then he'd tense his jaw, screw his eyes and go for gold. Nibble loved the attention, practically dry-humping him on the field while we rolled our eyes. She'd whisper loudly about how they tried every ‘Position of the Fortnight' in
More Magazine
, ‘his finger and his cock, like right up inside, my legs wide on top'.

She'd pause, take in our blank, unbelieving faces. Sometimes Beth would snap a bubble of chewing gum to show just how boring hearing about Gordon's cock was, and Nibble would raise her voice.

‘Two fingers and a cock! It's all about the girth. Don't tell no one – I don't want them thinking I'm some sort of slag.'

Nibble never noticed that all Gordon's pictures in his folder were of the lads in bands and that if there was a football match on the field Gordon stared for ten minutes then disappeared, slightly bent forward, and came back flushed and silent with his hands jiggling deep in his pockets. The deal was we all pretended not to notice either.

There were others who came and went. Either floated to smaller groups or decided they would be more invisible in a corner of the library or taking long, lonely walks around the school corridors at break times. Diana from Romania, taller than any of the lads, who wore a boy's uniform and never said a word, just stood on the edges smiling grimly from under her thick black eyebrows. Or Shane, a fatty whose ma must have been a sadist because he never had a jumper or T-shirt that didn't ride up to show an inch of flab. But it was really the four of us, me, Beth, Nibble and Gordon, sitting on the field, not looking at each other too closely, and not fighting each other's battles if other kids did look too close and didn't like or understand what they saw.

It worked OK though. Beth had the Brunswick gang at the weekends, goths from other schools who travelled down from the little villages like Ormesby on Fridays, and slept on her floor surrounded by shiny pictures of Greek beaches and breakfast buffets, leaving mascara smudges on the carpet and a forest of stubbed fags on the windowsill to remember them by.

So, I knew. I knew when Beth looked up and saw me walking over to them on the field that day that she was chuffed. Even though she lost the smile and just let a long casual drip of spit drop to the grass in front of her and looked up at me. ‘You sitting? Fuck's sake, Nibbs! Stop grinding his leg and shove up.' I sat down, Beth showed me that dimple and asked what I was wearing to the Brunswick that week. As easy as that, I made everything so much better and so much harder.

It was unthinkable, unforgivable. Demoting myself was like pulling the wrong toothpick from Kerplunk or making a clumsy grab for the lasso in Buckaroo; it left people scrambling for a sense of order, leaving everyone who was following the rules scrabbling for marbles and plastic bits of cowboy tackle under the furniture.

I left a group of almost-popular blondes and started hanging out with the freaks and geeks who sang ‘Green Day' on the school field at lunch. I gave myself a compass tattoo, took off my gold and replaced it with penny-sweet coloured necklaces and twenty black rubber bracelets up each arm.

We were fifteen, we were always changing: no tits to double-Ds, fatty to fuckable, virgin then pregnant. It wasn't that I'd changed, but that I'd upset the natural order. I had pulled myself backwards and that was deemed punishable.

Jenny and Kate started the ball rolling and the rumours frothed through the school canteen behind it.

‘Janie Ryan shagged a bloke while Jenny and her boyfriend were in the same bed.'

‘Janie Ryan has crabs/Aids/herpes.'

‘Janie Ryan sucked a bloke off in the Brunswick toilets. She swallows.'

I tried to laugh it off in the hope it would die, but they didn't want a laugh or a smart-arse reply, they didn't want it to die down, they were after blood.

‘Aye, so fuckin' what?' is what I said to everything; it was only just over a month till the holidays, I could manage. I kept my head up and my mouth tight while they stabbed me in the back with pencils and compasses in lessons, smeared dog shit on my denim jacket and sprayed me with body spray.

‘What? You should say
thank you
, it's Impulse. You stink of cum.'

I was on my own. Beth, Nibbs, poor fucking Gay Gordon had their own battles to fight and so did the teachers who looked on it all with bored mouths and rolling eyes. ‘Yes, yes, all very funny. Now back to Mussolini.'

*

I didn't tell Ma though she could probably tell. ‘How did yeh fall in dog shit again, Janie?' She seemed worn thin, just getting by enough to do the week's shop and tame Tiny's hair into a ponytail in the mornings. I wouldn't be the something else that broke her completely.

Beth could see for herself what was happening, but like the thin scabs up her arms, she picked around the edges but never gouged deep. ‘Forget them, they're dicks. C'mon, let's make a plan, if we were catching a plane where would we go? Fuck's sake, don't cry.'

I bit the insides of my cheeks till I tasted metal and waited for the bell to go each day, and when it got too bad, when my heart thumped against my chest and my bladder felt so loose I didn't know what I'd do if there was another small, careful cruelty that day, then I'd bunk off and go to the library.

The library in town was attached to the social. There was always a line of pale-looking girls with grimy buggies and thin blokes in torn Kappa jackets outside, holding their numbered tickets in one hand and roll-ups in the other. I could tell who was really hard up from the way their expressions got pinched up like Ma's used to.

The social reminded me of the squat, blocky buildings filled with bullet holes that they showed on
Blue Peter
when they were doing Bring and Buy Sales for Romanian Orphans. They probably didn't even go out there for the footage, just sent a film crew to stand outside the Yarmouth library, waited until one of the snotty-nosed, blank-eyed kids threw themselves down on the pavement having a paddy and zoomed the camera in close.

On the days when it was too much, and I'd bit my lip and picked my cuticles bloody trying not to cry, I'd catch the bus to town, take off my tie and button up my denim jacket and try to breathe past the panic filling my fingers and between the slots of my bones until I got far enough away from school. If the librarians thought I was a skiver they never said a word. Maybe they realised I learned more those afternoons than I ever did sitting in Home Economics or RE listening to people whisper that I was a smelly cunt.

The library was always roasting and completely dead. Sometimes there was a batty old woman in a headscarf, smelling of pee and jumble sales, her arms full of Mary Higgins Clark books, or a knackered-looking ma and her kids, but mostly it was just me and the books and the quiet soupy air.

I walked the aisles, trailing my fingers across the spines. I understood that name ‘spine' because it was the same bumpy feeling as tracing your fingers up and down someone's skinny back.

I'd spend ages choosing my books; the library was a bubble, outside didn't exist. I chose names, looked at the cover, traced my finger across the black letters that made the first lines and tempted myself with the last page before slamming the book shut just as my eyes fell on the words.

There were two librarians, though God only knew what they did except drink tea. One had a hollow beehive of wispy grey hair, as though it might be a home for a small animal, and breasts pushed into twin cone shapes, I imagined they'd fire bullets if you returned your books overdue. The other, an older bloke, had red flaking hands and dandruff that shook free from his scalp with every forceful thud of the stamp and collected in the creases of his bow tie. All the tea made their breath smell like soft turnips but they had a kind way of laying their eyes somewhere else when I brought my stack of books to the counter with swollen, tear-filled eyes. I liked to think they were a couple. Once I saw him inch the tip of his shoe over to meet the toe of her maroon espadrille and they stood side by side at the counter, legs gently splayed, toe to toe, supping tea and banging stamps as usual.

I don't know why I got teary. Sad to leave maybe, or glad I could be there. Glad I had some words to take away, stories from everywhere, not just made in Great Yarmouth. Not just lies about me.

Ma could see what those books meant to me.

‘Yer so smart. It must be from yer da, he loved poetry.'

‘And drinking.'

‘And drinking, aye, but you're smart enough tae take the good bits and leave the rest, Janie.'

But I never knew if I was, and except for Ma, those librarians were the only ones who knew how much hope was snagged in those books.

*

I lasted until the very last day of school. I got one of the Flying Banana hopper buses with my blood fizzing for six weeks of working and drinking and they got on the bus the stop after me. A gang of five: four girls and one of their boyfriends, Danny, who used to joke with me, before I was a freak.

They sat behind me and my muscles turned solid. They had too much energy to spend; you could feel it buckling the windows, melting the plastic seat covers. A twist of marker-pen smell got up my nose and I could hear it squeaking on the window.

‘Did you hear about that girl?' It was Sarah, her chatty, loud voice full of taunt.

‘Who? Janie, that minger? The slag who everyone hated?' Heidi replied.

‘Yeah, the one who stank of fish and always had her legs open. She's dead.'

I tried to keep my shoulders still, made my eyes stay on the same spot of window though I could see their grins reflected.

‘Oh yeah.' It was Danny, the bastard, shouting over the girls and squeaking away with his marker pen. When we were mates he'd once asked me if I could smell onion on his breath after a bag of crisps. He'd breathed his soft cheesy breath all over my face. ‘She was stabbed. Down the seafront.'

Sweat prickled under my shirt, I felt drops popping on my upper lip but couldn't reach up to wipe it. The bus was full. Everyone knew it was me they were talking about.

A pensioner with her tartan trolley stood in the aisle giving them a sour-faced stare; she couldn't have known it would make it worse, that they'd suck up the attention.

‘Yeah,' Sarah again, ‘she was raped.'

They giggled, high-pitched, forced sounds that slapped me about the back of the head.

‘No, no! He was going to rape her but he took one look at her minging face and crabby pubes and stabbed her instead.'

They laughed louder; people turned to stare.

‘She was too ugly to live!'

The laughter wasn't forced any more, they caught it from each other and threw it back and forth, wheezing, gasping for breath. The audience tutted, shook their heads at each other and the laughter got louder.

One of the girls, probably Heidi, kept poking me in the back. ‘Hey, hey.'

My face was hot. My ears were probably beaming. ‘Just fuck off.'

So quiet they couldn't have heard. The poking turned to sharp little slaps to the back of my head. ‘Just fuck off!' I shouted and turned my head just an inch but an inch was enough.

‘Aw, look! She's crying.'

Danny made a baby voice and stuck out his bottom lip. My tears blistered to the surface. I pushed past the woman with her tartan trolley and tumbled off at the next stop.

I was sobbing before the bus left, I couldn't help it. They grinned down at me and pointed to the back window that said ‘Janie Ryan takes it up the arse' in big bubble writing. The e was round the wrong way, stupid fucks. I walked the rest of the way home wiping mascara smudges off my cheeks and thanked God for the six-week holiday.

*

I saw more of Ma in the holidays. I mean, I spent more time with her and there was more of her to see as well. We went around the Oxfam and Spastics Society shops and I bought myself a bottle-green velvet jacket, vomit-patterned polyester seventies shirts that soaked up the sweat, flares that gave static shocks when you ran for the bus. With my glasses I thought I looked like a sexier Jarvis Cocker, though I had to admit we probably had the same sized boobs. I was an indie kid, I was never going to be a goth; I just wasn't miserable enough. I carried around
Melody Maker
and swapped my platforms for Gazelles. Recreating myself was really just in the details.

Ma seemed chuffed with the change, glad I didn't look like the other girls from the estate, I suppose.

‘I was a trendsetter too, yeh know, in Aberdeen. I brought back all the fashion from Portobello Road.'

‘When you were with Da? What did he wear? Were you hippies?'

‘No, he was too old tae be a hippy, forty-odd when I met him. He was stylish though, and I was intae the flares an' long floaty skirts. I had an amazing see-through gold dress, I'd wear it with no bra, no one could take their eyes off me. You wouldn't think it now but . . .'

She trailed off, I wasn't listening, I was flicking through the channels looking for
Friends
, imagining me blonde and tanned if I found my da and he let me stay with him. Ma put her feet up over my lap, and lit a fag.

‘A stunner I was, just like you. Especially now you look less like one of those Yarco slappers.'

‘Ma! I never looked like one of them. I'm half American an' I think it shows an' all.'

Ma gave a short laugh. ‘Yer right, Janie, yer better than the lot of them an' don't you forget it. Now give my feet a rub, will yeh?'

So we sat drinking our tea, having a laugh, watching young Americans drinking coffee, having a laugh. I was in a good mood so I gave her her foot rub, used my thumbs to squeeze the soles of her feet, they smelt a bit yeasty but not bad, and Ma leaned her head right back, closed her eyes and let the canned laughter seep into her lugholes.

She was right about no one ever guessing she'd been a stunner. She'd started wearing tracksuits from the market, baby blue and pink so they picked up stains and were always grubby at the sleeves.

‘They were cheap. An' who cares what I wear anyway?'

That's what she said, a disappointed look on her face, when I rolled my eyes at her new buys. I could have gouged them out when I saw the way all her excitement at her bargain disappeared, sometimes I forgot we were on the same side, but she wore them anyway.

Her face was sagging and heavy now, no sign of the sharp cheekbones and googly black-rimmed eyes I remembered from my childhood. Her body was probably sagging and heavy too but it was hard to tell under the sweatshirt. I'd long since reclaimed the make-up set I bought her though sometimes she let me put a bit of blusher on her, before we went up town.

Ma didn't care what she wore though, she just looked more and more like a Yarmouth ma every day. A few bulging Iceland bags and she'd fit in perfect.

*

‘Ma, why don't yeh have a look in the lonely hearts an' all?'

She was looking in the
Advertiser
for jobs for the summer season, while Tiny coloured and the
Antiques Roadshow
blared in the corner.

‘As if, Janie.' She didn't look up, just worried the biro between her teeth then swapped it for a puff of her roll-up.

‘I mean, Ma, yer still young, well, no old anyway, an' we could do yeh up an' yeh might meet someone nice. Just cause my da bolted, Tony was a psycho an' Doug was a waster –'

‘Janie! Can yeh just shut it?' She gave the paper a flick.

‘Come on, look, I'll read and you just say, “Aye” or, “In yer fucking dreams”.'

She rolled her eyes and passed the paper over. Tiny abandoned her crayons and pivoted herself on her chubby little belly to get a better view.

‘Right. “Man of mature years seeks GSOH.” What does that mean?'

‘Good sense o' humour. Anyway, no “man of mature years”, I'm only thirty-odd.'

‘Fine, what about “Seeking open-minded bubbly lady fer –”

‘Bubbly? Jesus.'

‘Alright, fair enough. Here's one . . .'

Ma and Tiny's eyes were on me now. I traced my finger past the ‘good clean couple' and ‘beautiful buxom' . . .

Tiny wriggled forwards a few inches and put her chin between Ma's knees so she was staring up at us, a big-eyed seal. ‘Are yeh getting a new boyfriend from the paper? Yeh could just go out with my da?'

Ma smoothed her hair a bit. ‘No, Tiny, yer sister's just being daft. Too much imagination is her problem.'