Verrucas

A couple were lying naked in bed. The cover was thrown onto the
floor and the window had been opened slightly, so that the curtains
stirred quietly in the draught. They lay sprawled across each other in
damp post-coital contentment.

She was fair, with straight centre-parted hair, skin that was only very
slightly flushed and calm grey-blue eyes. She had slender arms and
legs, and a narrow build, but not muscular; in her late twenties she
was beginning to lose tone.

The man traced a finger idly and affectionately round her ear, touching
the unpierced lobe. It was part of her general air of intactness that
her ears shouldn't have ever been pierced. Even now, after they had
made love, there was something untouched about her, like a pond without
ripples minutes after a stone had been thrown into it. She lay on her
front, and her back was smooth with hardly a spot or a freckle; on her
shoulders there were suntan lines from last year's vest tops, but the
marks only emphasised the fact that they were no more than skin
deep.

He was built on a different scale from her, tall and solid, so that
from where he lay a little way down the bed his feet stuck off the end.
He had dark straight hair chopped roughly short, and white skin with
more dark hair on his legs, and from his chest down to his stomach. His
arms and shoulders seemed powerfully muscled but he was beginning to
put on weight and there were the beginnings of a spare tyre of flesh
around his waist. She lay across his chest and he stroked her
back.

"I feel like I ought to say thank you or something." she said.

"Why?" he teased. "It was that good was it?" He looked at her fondly
and kissed the edge of her curtain of hair.

"It might have been." she mocked back. "It was all right."

"All right?" He pretended to be affronted.

The repetition of the same words made the contrast between their
accents very clear. Hers was cut glass, tidily enunciated; he talked
South London, a different class, with glottal stops, and consonants
left off the ends of words.

She raised herself on her hands and looked into his face from above.
"I'm not saying you couldn't do better next time but your performance
was satisfactory." she said. He snorted with laughter, hooked his arms
around her and pulled her down towards himself. "There's other things I
want to do with you." he said. "Other positions."

"Mmm." she said luxuriously. They kissed and lay in silence for a
while, until something inside her, something to do with the hormones
changing in her body, afflicted her with a sense of melancholy and she
spoke again. "There's this gap between us." she said "And I can't do
anything about it and I'm really scared I'm romanticising all that
horrible childhood stuff that happened to you. It's this dreadful
middle class thing and.... oh, I don't know." She thought of herself as
articulate and always tried to sort things out by putting them into
words, but sometimes words failed her.

He disengaged himself and looked her straight in the eye, serious but
untroubled. "I wasn't using it as a chat-up line. Honest."

"I know you weren't." She sat up and moved halfway down the bed as if
to dramatise the gap, hugging her knees in one hand and running the
other over his foot.

"Feet." he said. "Sorry. Not very nice."

"That's all right." She smiled. "We've all got them." His feet were
broad and hairy with broken toenails. He drew his knees up and sat
cross legged. She examined one of his soles. "You've got a
verruca."

"Yeah, I know. Sorry."

"That's all right." she said. "I've had them." She studied the
verruca, a little circle of hardened skin with a patch of black dots in
the middle.

"Have you?" He made a sceptical face. Her feet were very pink and
soft. Somehow she looked too clean for verrucas, or warts, or even
spots. He still thought of himself as a pimply adolescent, with skin
that periodically exploded all over like a hot mud spring. Even now he
had one or two spots on his neck. He rubbed them thoughtfully.

"I had one when I was six," she said. "It was awful. I wasn't allowed
to go swimming for a whole summer." She laughed a little. "Major
childhood trauma." He was only half listening, stroking her silky feet
down to the manicured green-painted toenails. "It was terrible. Our
village school had raised all this money and built a swimming pool. It
was outside so you could only go in for a few weeks in the last bit of
the summer term, so it was like this really amazing thing that you were
just incredibly excited about."

"Village school?" he said, trying to imagine. Villages, white ducks on
a village green. The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation
Society.

"Anyway the first week we all had to have our feet inspected by the
teachers. There was Mrs Rhodri-Jones who was our form teacher, and a
swimming teacher, she wore this blue tracksuit with a whistle round her
neck. We all had to line up in our swimsuits and they'd come down the
line and look at your feet one at a time. They did the boys first and
they were all all right except for this one boy called Wayne who lived
in a council house and smelt and I mean obviously he was going to have
one- " She stopped suddenly. "Oh God, I'm so sorry, I mean you lived in
a council house too, didn't you?"

"For a bit." he said. "Until my mum went into hospital. I didn't smell
though."

She had blushed bright red, but it seemed better to go on with the
story. "Well anyway, then they did the girls. It didn't cross my mind I
was going to have one, not for a second. Then they got to me and the
swimming teacher looked at my foot and then she got Mrs Rhodri-Jones to
come and look as well and everyone had stopped talking. There was,
like, this silence and everyone turned round and all the class were all
looking at me. And Mrs Rhodri-Jones said "No swimming for this one I'm
afraid"" and I had to go and get changed back. There were these two
little huts like garden sheds that we changed in, and they smelt of
creosote and talcum powder and the floor was all wet from the last
class that had changed in there. Some of the mums used to come in to
help us get changed, because people were always getting tangled up with
their swimming costume straps and stuff, we were only six. Anyway there
was this one in there who was Nadine's mum and I just hated Nadine so
much, so it was like of all the people in the world it had to be her
mum, and I remember her going "Forgotten something love?" and then the
teacher popped her head in and said "Can you help this one get changed
again Carol, she's not going swimming today, she's got a verruca." And
Nadine's mum went "It's those public baths, isn't it, all sorts go in
there, I never let my two go there, you don't know what they're going
to catch" and she gave me this look."

"Like what?" he asked.

"Oh I don't know, like I was infectious or something, it was horrible.
And I went "I do know how to get dressed on my own thank you very
much." and I put my clothes on and went outside. It was so sunny and
everyone was splashing around in the pool and squealing because they'd
just got in, it looked so brilliant and the swimming teacher blew her
whistle and they all went quiet, this amazing exciting silence like at
the beginning of a concert, you know? Then Mrs Rhodri-Jones remembered
me and she put her hand on my head in this abstracted way and went,
"You go and sit with Wayne by the fence, there's a good girl" and I had
to go and sit with Wayne."

"You didn't like him very much then?" he said.

"Well we all thought he'd got fleas. So you never wanted to sit too
near him because if you did you might catch them, so I was sitting
right on the edge of my chair and kind of moving it further and further
away, and then Wayne said to me "You got a verruca too then?" and I
said "I might have a verruca but at least I haven't got fleas."

"Bit of a cow, weren't you?" He'd stopped stroking her and had moved a
little distance away.

"God, I know, I was horrible, I'm so embarrassed. Wayne got this
chewing gum out of his pocket and went "Want some?" It was really,
really illegal to have chewing gum at school but I was feeling like I
wanted to get in trouble, really rebellious, so I took a bit of his
gum. I still wouldn't talk to him though. I kept trying to move my
chair further and further away and then Mrs Rhodri-Jones saw me and
went "Stop tipping your chair Emily Barrett" and I swallowed my bit of
chewing gum, and she went in a hassled kind of way "I'm going to write
a letter to your mummy, remind me to give it to you before going-home
time." All the other children were going totally mad in the swimming
pool, squealing their heads off. Then Wayne went, "Want some more
gum?""

"Poor Wayne. Bit of a mug, eh?"

She laughed nervously. "I haven't got to the worst bit yet."

"Don't know if I can cope if it gets much worse." he said.

"Oh God, I know, I know this is like, nothing compared with what you
were going through with your dad in prison and everything and the
children's homes, but for me it was, like, well anyway I really got
picked on. To start with they were going on at me about the verruca and
at dinner time they were all going "Don't sit next to her, you might
catch verrucas" and then at playtime in the afternoon they all made
this circle and they were dancing round me and going "Verruca, Verruca"
and "She ca-an't swi-im, she's got verrucas." "

She reached up to his face and pushed away a strand of black hair that
had stuck to his forehead. "I didn't cry though."

He nodded. "Well, good. Glad you weren't a snivelling cry baby as well
as a cow to little Wayne."

She wriggled over onto her front again so she was looking up at him, a
confessional position. "Well actually.... I didn't cry all that day and
then when it got to the end it was just too much. I just ran straight
home and burst into the kitchen and my mum was sitting at the table
picking the heads off strawberries and I just managed to say, "I've got
a verruca" and then I burst into tears." She gave a short pretend
laugh, then sniffed. "My mum went, "Oh darling, you mustn't cry, we'll
get you a verruca sock." That's, like, a rubber sock thing you wear so
no-one else can catch it."
"I know." he said. "She sounds nice though, your mum."

"Oh, she's lovely." Emily said fondly. "I just remember her then, the
way she looked and everything, she was just so pretty when she was
young, she had long red hair, really smooth, and she used to wear lots
and lots of black eye make-up."

"My mum wore lots of black eye-make up too." he said. "I used to
really hate it though, my grandma said it made her look like a tart."
He gave a sort of snort. "So you got the verruca sock and then you
lived happily ever after." He kissed her face, impatient to be getting
on with things now the story was at an end.

"Well no, I didn't. We went into town that Saturday and I remember I
kept pulling my mum's sleeve and going "Mummy, Mummy, we've got to get
the verruca sock" and she kept going "In a minute darling, we've just
got to go to the furniture shop first" and we spent ages and ages going
round this awful furniture shop because they wanted to get a new
kitchen table which I thought was stupid anyway because the old one had
a drawer I used to put crusts in. Anyway we just kept on looking at
those stupid tables which all looked exactly the same to me and then my
Dad went "Good Lord, is that the time? I only put two hours in the
parking meter" and we had to run back to the car and we didn't get the
verruca sock. So in the car I kept going "When are we going to get my
verruca sock?" We were stuck in this traffic jam and Dad got really
cross and shouted "If I hear another word about that bloody verruca
sock you're going to get a sock in the ear.""

The man put his arm round her protectively and smoothed the curtains
of her hair carefully over her ear. "He didn't really knock you about
did he?" he asked anxiously.

"Oh God, no, my parents didn't believe in hitting children. I don't
think I ever got smacked even."

"What, never?"

She shook her head.

"Lucky you." he said. "Good."

"I went on and on about the verruca sock and in the end my mum said
Dad was going to go the shops at lunchtime from his work, and get it in
time for swimming on Wednesday. She wrote the size down on a piece of
paper and made sure he'd got it when he was leaving for work on
Tuesday. He came home with the sock that evening and Mum put it in my
bag with my swimming things for school the next day. And the next day
in school I went around saying to all the other children "I've got a
verruca sock" like it was something really amazing. You know, like
everyone should have wanted one. Like verruca socks were cool. I'd got
them really jealous by the end of morning playtime." There was a
pleased smile on her face. "No wonder I ended up in marketing."

"What about young fleabag Wayne?" he asked. "Had he got one?"

"Well no, of course not, because they lived in a council house and his
parents were really useless, he hadn't even got a proper swimming hat
of his own. So he kept really quiet all the time when I was showing
everyone mine." She blushed. "Oh God - I can't believe I did this, I
was such a cow, I went right up to Wayne and held my verruca sock up in
front of him and said "You haven't got a verruca sock have you Wayne?
You can't come swimming" and he went "Yes I have got one."" The girl
looked up into the man's face. "I mean obviously he hadn't. We did that
"have" "haven't" "have" "haven't" thing. Well when we got to the pool
Mrs Rhodri-Jones suddenly started beaming at him and she went, "Well
Wayne, you're in luck because I happen to have a verruca sock for you
right here." and she got it out of her bag, and I mean, obviously she'd
gone and bought it for him because she knew his mum wouldn't have done
it."

"That's nice." he said. He thought of fleabag Wayne's face when Mrs
Rhodri-Jones produced the sock, Wayne splashing in the sunlit water
with all the other happy children, one foot encased in the white rubber
verruca sock that Emily had made into an object of desire.

"So I was in the changing hut" she went on, "and Nadine's mum was
there again and she said she'd help me put it on. So I sat down on the
bench and she put talcum powder into the sock - they stick together
because they're made of rubber - and she held it out in front of me and
I was trying to put my foot in and she went, "No, other foot, dear" and
I went, "But my verruca's on this foot" and then it slowly dawned on
us.

She paused at the horror of the moment.

"My face crumpled up and I was crying like anything, I just couldn't
stop, I was howling my head off in the changing hut and Mrs
Rhodri-Jones came in to see what all the noise was about and Nadine's
mum said to her over my head, in this horrid, secretly-pleased kind of
whisper, "It's the wrong foot. Mummy"s sent her with a left when it
should have been a right."" I remember crying all over Mrs
Rhodri-Jones, she was really sweet. All the other children were
standing round the door gaping and I just couldn't stop." She
swallowed. "I don't think I've ever cried so much in my life."

He frowned. "Couldn't you have turned it inside out? That would make a
left foot into a right one, right?"

She shook her head. "Well they thought about that and they decided
they couldn't because it had this kind of non-slip surface on the
outside, kind of diamond patterns, and the inside was smooth so it
could be dangerous because I might slip over. They said."

"Typical teachers." he said. "Safety police. Hadn't got a clue, had
they?"

"No, exactly, and you know, in retrospect I really think they could
have turned it inside out. I mean it's not as if feet have non-slip
diamond patterns is it?"

"You've thought about this a lot, haven't you?" he said with a
possible trace of irony.

"It crosses my mind from time to time." She smiled, embarrassed. "You
know that really exhausted feeling you get when you've just cried so
much you can't cry any more. I was sitting outside on my own for the
rest of the lesson watching them swim and my eyes were all swollen from
crying and the sun was shining, it was a really, really hot day and
then Wayne came to the edge and splashed so hard the water came all the
way across, it went right over me and ran down my face, so nice and
cold."

"Good old Wayne."

"He got in trouble though. Anyway I never did get the verruca sock,
can you believe it? I didn't go swimming all the rest of the term,
because the chemist didn't have a right one in my size so I sat out the
next two weeks, and then the next two it rained and no-one got to go
swimming. That was another typically stupid teachers' thing, about how
you couldn't swim if it was raining. In case you got wet, I suppose."
she added with undiminished disgust.

"I swam." he said. "My dad used to take us when he was still around
and after he got banged up we started going on our own, me and my
brothers, till my mum went to hospital. It was good. It was a
laugh."

She said quickly, "I know my stuff isn't anything like as bad. I mean
I don't want you to think I'm comparing my verruca sock thing to all
your childhood stuff-"
"It didn't even cross my mind." he said.

"Sorry to go on." Apologetically, she kissed him. He responded with
prickling desire and wrapped his arm around her smooth back. Presently
she could feel his new erection across her thigh. She reached over to
the bedside table and picked up the condom box. "Oh hell. I thought we
had one more."

"There was the one that didn't unroll right, remember?"

"Damn." She let the empty packet fall to the floor. "I hate wasting
the moment, it's so frustrating when we could be...."

He took her hand and placed it where he wanted it, and started to kiss
her collar bone, working down towards her breasts. "Never mind." he
said. "There's other things we can be doing." and he began, gently and
sensuously, to kiss them.