The Deepest Cut

The long grass whipped her sun-browned calves as she fled out of the orchard, through the meadow, across the brook, over the railway embankment and into the dark green grounds of home. The yews looked down on her as she belted through, crushing daisies underfoot, hurdling tombs and dodging mini-mausoleums.

Dried spittle collected at the corners of her mouth and urine trickled down her legs and into the soles of her white plimsolls. The steady beat of her weight hitting mossy ground echoed in her head making her brain hurt, she thought it might explode. Breathless and bruised she stopped and turned. The graveyard was empty, save the watchful eyes of the departed. The chase was over; the boys were nowhere to be seen.

Ruth’s hair touched the ground as she bent over, hands gripping knees, arms straight. Her head span and she grabbed for breath. Her tongue too big for her mouth. The back door of the rectory slammed. Ruth jumped. Her father strode across the garden. The gate creaked as she opened it and swung back uneasily when she staggered towards her father, burying herself in the warm folds of his cassock, arms locked around his thick torso, head resting against the familiar mound of his stomach. The cloth smelt of wood and damp stone, and cloaked the scent of his cheap aftershave. She rarely got this close to him when he was dressed for service. Then panther-like, the tips of his fingers resting on the ground, he crouched down to look into her face.

‘What is it poppet? What’s happened to my baby? Your legs are scratched.’

Resting on his haunches he ran his palms down the outside of Ruth’s spindly legs and up again, stopping short of the hem of her cotton dress, lingering. He gripped hard as his thumbs crept towards the pliant flesh of her inner thighs. Like most of her clothes the dress was threadbare and faded, a jumble sale steal, too small, too child-like for a twelve year old. He grasped her shoulders and stared. She shuddered under such scrutiny, and blushed.

He leant in and whispered in her ear, ’We share everything.’

Shaking and crying she told him.

******

George loved the orchard. It was one of those places where he could lose himself, a place where new worlds were created in the long grass, on the boughs of the gnarled fruit trees, a place where he could forget his miserable little life. He loved the smell of ripe plums and damsons, the sharp crispness of green apples. It was such a contrast to his father’s rotten practice. George swore he could see the flaky remnants of corns and athletes foot on the furniture, detect the whiff of strong cheese round his father. The sour-sweet smell of decay permeated the house. Feet like hooves, nails like claws; he’d seen them all through the keyhole. How he wished his father didn’t work where they lived. How he wished he didn’t have to live with Henry. With fear.

His older brother Henry came down to the orchard with friends, when the adults, fed up of the teenagers’ loitering, told them to clear off and play. There were few places to go.

George hated it when they came to his orchard. The older boys proclaimed themselves too old for games, but play they did. More often than not George was captive to a gang of superheroes, gangsters or outlaws. He was sick of being tied to trees, beaten with sticks, sick of being afraid.

Earlier in the summer, in a bid to escape yet another beating, he climbed so far up a tree he couldn’t get down. Climbing up was easy, getting down was not. To his dismay and humiliation he had to call out to his brother and beg for help. In truth, George didn’t mind being in the tree. He felt safe. The view was amazing and from his vantage point he could see into the meadow on the far side of the orchard. It was just that he couldn’t stay there forever, and his stomach was rumbling.

That was the first time he saw her. Watched her. The girl with the long brown hair. She was lying on her front in the grass, elbows on the ground, chin cradled in her hands, legs bent up, feet resting on her bottom, reading. Periodically, she kicked a leg out, and George thought he saw her knickers. He knew her from school, but only by sight. Languid and pretty, she looked like a rag doll, and wore old-fashioned clothes. George bumped into her in the corridor once and the way she looked at him when he mumbled ‘sorry’ made him feel sick. In a nice way.

He didn’t tell anyone he’d seen her there, and whenever he was alone he would climb into a tree, gaze out over the meadow and look for her. She visited the meadow as much as George did the orchard, maybe more. She was always there when he was. He liked the fact she was unaware she was being observed. It made him feel omnipotent, and strong, if only for a few moments. She did things he knew she wouldn’t do if she knew she wasn’t alone. And though he couldn’t hear her cries he felt sad when her shoulders shook and she covered her face with her hands.

The breeze was cool the day she came into the orchard. George, and Henry and his mates, were lying, silent and spent, in the long grass at the wild end, beyond the trees where nature had annexed man’s territory and reigned once more. George had seagull feathers in his hair and blackberry juice smeared on his cheeks. The others wore bandanas on their heads and a feral look in their eyes. Their faces were smudged with dirt.

******

‘I was hungry, I went into the orchard,’ Ruth rasped, wiping colourless snot from her nose. ‘The blackberries were ripe.’

‘Why didn’t you come home?’ her father said. He waited as she stared at the floor. She was afraid. He was a Samson of a man. But it was too late now.

******

It wasn’t easy picking fruit from the blackberry bushes. It was why she enjoyed it so much. The berries weren’t easily had, the stakes were higher than with the gooseberries or raspberries, and the prize was greater. Hairs tickled her tongue before her mouth plunged down and released the sharp, sweet juice from its flimsy container. Minute seeds gathered between her teeth and her tongue enjoyed chasing them out.

She was releasing stubborn seeds with her fingernail when she felt the movement. It came from behind and as she spun round, alarmed and on guard, the grass rippled and seemed to laugh at her. There was no one there. She returned to her gathering, placing the fruit in the raised skirt of her dress.

The next time, the movement came from her left and she heard a twig snap. A shrill sound that sat above the tenor hum of the grasshoppers. As she was about to turn another came from her right and this time she knew she wasn’t imagining it. Turning slowly and deliberately she shouted, ‘Who’s there?’

Her voice didn’t sound like her own, it came from somewhere outside of her. Her eyes scoured the scene and saw another’s peeking between the dough-coloured ears of grass. Pale blue eyes met dark ones and she felt a flicker of recognition. The rest of the face was covered in a purple foundation. Low pitched smaning punched the air and from her peripheral vision she made out the heads of four masked intruders slithering along the ground.

Rooted to the spot, she couldn’t take her eyes from the blue ones. The others rose, encircling and trapping her. One of them growled quietly at blue eyes, and he stood up like the rest. She recognised two of the boys. Blue eyes and the tall one: the chiropodist’s sons.

She’d caught verrucas at the swimming baths a few years ago and her mother had taken her to the chiropodist’s practice on the outskirts of town.

‘While I’ve got the strength, darling,’ her mother had said.

Ruth took a step backwards into the blackberry bushes. They were her enemy too. Brambles brushed her legs, carving their warnings into her skin until a thorn, thick and curled liked the horny, bitter nails of an old woman, dug hard into her thigh. Blood, deep red and viscous, trickled down her leg. The tall boy stared. He was enjoying himself: the power. It was a look she knew well. He gestured with his stick, pointing at her skirt and flicking upwards. She felt blackberry juice oozing between her clenched fist, the plump shiny fruit reduced to a pulp in her palm. Those from her dress fell to the floor.

She raised the skirt of her dress to her waist and wished she could cover her face. The boys laughed and crept forward. This time the stick touched her knickers, then tapped the dry earth. And her heart whispered her father’s words, ‘If you expose yourself, and they see, they will know what you are. Jezebel. You dirty little whore.’ Her father’s bass tones echoed round her skull.

She heard the angels singing, their celestial voices rising higher and higher with the quickening pulse of her heart. Their melodious sounds distorting, she flew outside of her flesh over the meadow and across the golden fields of her mind. She felt nothing. She heard her mother’s voice ringing in her ears, ‘Be a good girl for Daddy. Be there for him. He’ll need you so much after I’m gone.’

And Ruth opened her mouth and howled at the sun. The sticks fell and she opened her eyes, still baying, and looked at the boys. Blue eyes was screaming at her,‘Run. Run.’

She stumbled forward and bolted. Like Moses at the Red Sea he parted the waves, and she ran.

******

She wasn’t sure how much she told her father. Between great shuddering sobs words tumbled out, ‘Boys, sticks, blackberries, trapped, frightened, running.’

‘Did they touch you?’ he said.

She thought she might explode.

‘Did they touch you? Do you know them? Who were they?’ he roared.

And despite herself she said, ‘The chiropodist’s sons.’

******

George was consumed with rage. It overpowered everything else. The shock, the shame, the horror. He became a tornado, threatening all in his path, and the others feared him. And George sensed their fear and grew stronger. He wanted to protect her, shelter her from harm, keep her at the eye of the storm that was him. He longed to destroy Henry. For wanting to frighten her, to hurt her. To damage her. She was so fragile. Like a cracked vase of his mother’s.

George had only gone along with Henry’s idea because they weren’t turning on him. Here was another distraction from their ennui, their malevolence. He, George, might be weak and terrified, but the girl was weaker.

And though it embarrassed him he was excited at the prospect of viewing her, close up. He had no idea the others would go so far. He saw what they might do and fear threatened to engulf him. To debilitate him, render him utterly useless, as it usually did. Then something deep within lashed out. A sense of outrage, an unstoppable force.

He leapt at Henry, punching, pushing him to the ground, yelling at her to run. To run as fast as she could. He flew at another boy who turned to make chase, flaying fists in his startled face. The others watched on, motionless. As the girl disappeared George turned again and shouted, ’You’re nothing but a bunch of lousy, stinking bullies. Lousy, stinking, rotten bullies, and I hate you.’

Then he closed his eyes and waited for the blows. They never came, and when George opened his eyes, he saw the boys walking silently, heads down, out of the orchard.

He yelled after them, ‘I’m going to tell. You fuckers, you lousy stinking fuckers.’
George saw Henry wince, and knew they would never beat him again.

******

Cursing all the way, Ruth’s father dragged her to the chiropodist’s house. ‘No one touches my girl and gets away with it.’

There was no answer when he hammered on the door and she thought the boys must be hiding. She was glad and pleaded with her father to leave. The more Ruth begged the more enraged he became. He was still shouting at the brickwork when the police arrived.

The police didn’t charge the vicar with disturbing the peace because he was a man of God. All the children refused to tell the adults exactly what happened. George was grounded for two weeks, Henry a month. George welcomed punishment, he needed it. For his cowardice, his excitement, his shame. An eye for an eye.

‘I’m gonna beat your brains out,’ said Henry, but George knew he wouldn’t. The price was exposure. Freedom from fear was his reward for staying quiet, not telling what really happened that day in the orchard.

******
Weeks later George saw Ruth on the school playing field. It was lunchtime and she sat on the damp grass reading and eating an apple, alone. He walked over. She looked up, smiled, blushed a little. Though it was the start of term her skirt was old, and short. He noticed bruises above her knees, and a cut on her thigh. He kicked the grass.

‘What you reading?’ he said.

‘The Secret Garden.’

‘Any good?’

‘Yeah. You can borrow it when I’m done if you like.’ She stared at the ground.

‘Okay,’ he shrugged, smiling as he walked away.