Love Story 7

‘I’m not going to school,’ I said.

‘How no?’ she asked.

‘Cause,’ my voice cracked and went up a notch. ‘I’m no well.’

 Her arm shot out and a cupped hand settled below my chin. ‘Gie me yer dinner-money, then. Nae point wasting it.’

Her eyes fixed on the car that swept through the rain on the curve of the hill below us. She only focused on me when I didn’t come up with the cash.

I gazed back at her. ‘No, I’ve had enough of you.’ I began listing all the things I’d had enough of until I was pink faced and shaking. With every word she became smaller in my mind, until she slapped me on the side of the head, leaving an echo in my ears.

‘Shut up, poofy pants,’ she said. ‘Alisdair said I wiz god’s gift tae big tits.’

I’d a strange possessiveness about her tits now that they were no longer mine. I reminded her, ‘That’s cause he said you were fat as fuck and had wee tits.’

Her eyes darted to my face as she pondered a reply. ‘That was before…’

I piped up, ‘Before you got pregnant and even fatter than fuck.’

She blinked hard as if I’d winded her. I knew I shouldn’t have indulged in tit-for-tat telling about tits. If god gave me the chance I’d have taken it back. Her doughy face regained some colour and returned to her default setting. ‘Yer jist jealous,’ she snarled.

I put my hand to my mouth and kissed it. Stepped away from her and as I made my way uphill muttered, ‘We’re no longer engaged.’

I thought she was going to chase me. I was the kind of sportsman that long ago had stopped tumbling my wilkies. Sat contentedly on the low benches as all around me the world of bats and balls exploded with other boys attached. But I was pretty sure I could outrun her. I’d a boy’s body, and was trying to become a proper boy. I knew it shouldn’t have been so difficult.

I dug deep in my duffle-coat pockets. She’d swung her leg up and taken the big step off the wee wall onto the grass. ‘Hang on,’ I shouted in a manly voice.

Sucking on a Murray mint, she watched me as I traipsed down beside her.

I cleared my throat. ‘Here,’ I said holding out fifty pence in coins.

She tongued the Murray mint, clicking against the back of her molars before speaking. ‘Yeh sure?’ She reached uncertainly for the twenty pence and three tens and grabbed them in a swift motion, shoving them into her pocket.

She contemplated me. ‘Yeh want me tae wank yeh off?’

I squinted at the hard-bitten nails of her right hand and the flaking red on her thumb. ‘Maybe another time.’   

‘Yeh’ll be lucky.’ She peered at me again as if contemplating the wrong coloured house. ‘I’m no sucking yeh. I don’t like the taste.’ She corrected herself. ‘I mean, I’m no like that.’

‘It’s OK.’

She looked down at her thumbnail. Putting it in the side of her mouth. Gnawing on slithers of red paint. ‘We still engaged?’

I affected a bow. ‘Don’t think so.’

She laughed without humour. ‘Whit will I tell my Ma?’

We turned our head and waited while a black collie with white markings on its chest pissed against the wall of the house on the corner, marking its territory. A bearded man tugged the lead and the dog fell into step. It gave me time to think. ‘Tell her you chucked me cause I was fucking about with o’er girls.’ I played the big man. ‘Women always like that kinda thing.’   

She sucked in her breath and swallowed her Murray mint, breathing peppermint through her teeth. ‘She’ll never fall for that wan.’

‘She doesnae know me,’ I reminded her.

‘Aye, that’s true,’ she said. ‘She think aw men are bastards. Especially, my bastarding, cheating, Da.’   

The softness left her eyes. I backtracked, ‘I’ll see yeh, then.’ I held a hand up in salute.

She hobbled towards the bus stop favouring her right leg.

Mum was waiting for me in the kitchen, leaning against the cooker, when I came in the back door. ‘Why you no at school?

‘No well,’ I said in a hoarse voice.

Stubbed her fag out in saucer she used as an ashtray near the sink. Her fingers tugging at my chin and turning my face one way and the other as if I was getting my photo taken for an ID parade. ‘You are a bit peely-wally,’ she admitted. ‘But no watching telly.’

‘You think my voice sounds a bit high and girly?’

She reached for her cigarette packet and tapped one out. ‘You sound fine,’ she lit a fag and sucked in the smoke, breathing it out. ‘You’ve just hit an awful growth spurt.’

It was worse than I thought. I waited until Da came home. But I had to time it right. After dinner, but before Tomorrow’s World, when he retreated to his room.

He was sitting in his chair beside the fire when I asked him. ‘You think I talk funny?’

He folded his arms into his lap and made sucking noises with his lips as he considered the question. ‘Ask your mother,’ he said. ‘That’s her department.’

Pastor Colin could not tell a lie, in the same way that Jesus could not fail to walk on any stretch of open water. But I didn’t know how to phrase it. I didn’t know if he knew what a poof was. I waited for him outside the church hall and offered to help him to carry in the box of prayer books he carried away unused when the service was finished. Members brought their own Bibles, heavy with folded and annotated bookmarks.

I expected him to say we’d need to pray about it and we’d find an answer. But he asked a few questions and told me he had it covered. ‘You’re not praying enough,’ he said. ‘Building your relationship with Christ.’

‘I do my best.’

He held a hand up to stop me going further. ‘What do you do when you come home from school?’

I didn’t tell him I’d feigned illness not to go to school. I used the fruity tone of voice when I was buttering up the English teacher. ‘I read a lot.’

Pastor Colin remained unbuttered. He placed some prayer books in the back row should there be a sudden rush for righteousness. ‘That’s good,’ he nodded. ‘What type of books?’

‘I think I’ve got a bit of a cold,’ I said, holding my hand over my mouth. ‘Well, novels, mainly.’

He sighed. ‘Novels are only good for women and communists. That’s your whole problem.’

I wanted to agree with him. Find a godly solution to having the wrong kind of voice. ‘What’s a communist?’

He adjusted the prayer book in the second last seat so it could be better seen from the door. ‘Women who read novels.’ He felt the need to check. ‘I suppose you find time to watch telly too?’

I felt the heat rising in my cheeks. I didn’t want to lie. ‘A bit.’

‘What do you watch?’

I knew I’d be safe with Songs of Praise, but he’d also know I was lying. Top of the Pops just wasn’t on because women wiggled in it and flaunted themselves. Men with beards sometimes did to. ‘Star Trek, I said. Although I hadn’t thought about it, I fancied myself as having boldly gone with Captain Kirk wherever he wanted to go.

Pastor Colin saw it too, but in a different way. ‘The devil’s work.’

I’d enough gumption to answer back. ‘I like it.’

He shook his head. ‘Not if you know Jesus, you don’t.’ He explained to me, ‘One God, One Saviour. One Jesus. If there were other planets with life on them, they’d need their own separate Jesus. Then you’d need twelve disciples for every planet. Fling in a King Herod and a Judas for every sun. It just doesn’t stack up. God’s glory doesn’t work that way. You’d be better spending your time reading the Good Book and communing with Jesus. Then you wouldn’t have any problems speaking properly.’

I ignored most of what he was waffling on about, concentrating on the last bit. He thought I SPOKE LIKE A POOF!