Fen (12 page)

She didn't stand in Marco's doorway to watch him get ready and he didn't climb her drainpipe to get back into the house. She never understood when people asked how she could tell her brothers apart: they were as different as everybody else was.

When they were in their last year C.E came to the town from America. It didn't take long before everybody knew Marco had set his sights on her. He wasn't coy about anything, didn't have the make-up for that. People said she was playing hard to get because she was from the US, but they all thought he was cute enough for her to at
least kiss. C.E was straight up and down and taller than Marco. She wore herself as if she'd had longer than the rest of them to get used to it.

There were stories about C.E and Marco the way there were about everything. Someone said the first time they'd done it was out in that empty horse arena; someone said he'd wanted to wait and she'd not talked him into it; only boiled his blood enough he couldn't bear not to. Someone said he'd wooed her with his cello, carrying it out to her house and setting up shop on the lawn until C.E's father chased him away. Someone else said he'd given ‘the cello' to her that first day she was at school, just handed it over as if it meant less than nothing. Someone said they didn't stop fucking for a week, only came out of it on Sunday morning and wandered out from between the trees. A lot of people liked to say they'd seen them, naked or with half-scraps of clothing on, both of them bruised to hell and nearly blind, stopping cars out on the A-road.

People would say what they were going to say.

Matilda grew used to the sound of her brother building to something on the floor of his room as if he thought it would be quieter down there. She never heard C.E. Only caught her coming out of the bathroom afterwards, hair back in place, yellowing marks on her neck and arms.

She grew used to what C.E left around the house, to the thin underwear their mother hooked out the laundry basket, the half-full perfume bottles, the boxes of tampons. And, once, a pack of pills she turned over, thought about,
understood only later. Wished she was bodily in that way. Not just made of what you needed to work.

A Saturday. Marco home without C.E for the first time in almost a year. It felt the same as a funeral or wedding. There was a slowness to everything he did. He made them cups of tea ineptly, thin brown lines of water across the counter and floor to the bin, too much milk or not enough, the water barely boiled. He had grown, she thought, to look less and less like Arch. He sat on the floor in front of them all, her mother in the armchair, she and Arch on the sofa.

I've got a job, he said. A fucking good job.

Don't swear, their mother said.

It's on the boats. We've a house, it's all settled. He paused, sucked up a lipful of cold tea, made a face at the taste.

A fucking house, all settled. C.E's dad's given us the deposit for it.

She waited to see Arch and Marco acknowledge the breaking. The place Marco was going, the boats and the harbour, was stretches far, a public-transport feat. One had not been out of town before, nor had the other, and what that amounted to was both of them being in the same place for all their seventeen years. She could not imagine them divided in this way. That day their bodies, tight together, had smashed through the glass door of the chemistry lab. It was a sort of love, wasn't it?
The two of them sat on the gravel, Arch pulling a shard of glass out of his thin arm, leaning across to do the same for Marco.

Often, walking home, she saw Arch and his friends on the stile at the bottom of the field. They had all finished school a year ago, like Marco, but they were still here. Arch had a job working at the butcher's on weekends. Some of them went into the city to work in bars or supermarkets. There was something about them having not moved on she knew was not right. She overheard people talking about it. She sometimes overheard her mother on the phone saying that supporting a son who only worked two days a week was an embarrassment to everybody but him. Her mother would reply in the negative: she could not throw him out, she'd let him ride it a little longer.

He's sensitive under the bluster, she would say when she got off the phone and caught Matilda watching. If I told him to find his own place, to get a proper job, he'd never see us again.

Seeing him there, perched on the wood, legs swinging, she wanted to tell Arch that he could stop now, he didn't need to fight the boys who hung around outside school spoiling for something or go out stalking the shy fen foxes the way he'd done with Marco when he was still there.

Where did you go? she'd ask when he came in through her window, vaulting up and over, good at it now, from sill to floor. What did you do?

Come on, Mattie, he'd say already half out the door, you don't want to know.

Except she did. She was not the age she'd been when she last tagged around after him and he'd bend to do her shoelaces or let her wipe her nose on the sleeve of his jumper. She wanted to show him the blood that came, wanted him to smell the way she smelt after games or when she woke. She did not smell the way she had when all she had to listen to were the stories he told her.

She spent a couple of days thinking of which friend to ask. Asked Becky, who would say yes to most things because she didn't know how to say no; who'd let one of the older girls shave off her eyebrows when they were in year seven.

Let's go to the pub.

Why? Becky said, looking suspicious.

Matilda shrugged.

We're boring. It was the truth. In a town where there was nothing to do they did well at doing nothing.

It felt like anything else. They walked back to Becky's house after school and ate the baked potato and beans her mother made them.

What are you going to wear? Becky's mother said with an excitement that set her stomach tight: she'd not been going to wear anything but what she'd worn to school all day. The three of them went and stood in front of the wardrobe and looked in and when they were done she looked in the mirror at the make-up on her face and thought it would be best to give up then.

Becky's mother dropped them off at the pub and told them to ring when they wanted to come back. It was cold outside. The headlights turned over their faces then disappeared.

OK, Becky said, though she sounded uncertain, tugging at her bra straps.

Matilda wanted to say: never mind, let's just go home and watch a film. She was frightened of opening the door and standing there, frozen, and everybody turning to look at them and he looking too.

Isn't that your sister?

That night he would not come through her window, she thought. He would knock on the door until their mother woke up. He would do this because of how she'd embarrassed him.

She pushed inside and went straight to the bar. She ordered two rum and cokes as they'd decided. There was nowhere to sit so they stood. Becky was talking nervously about something; words came to her. Mainly they were unsentenced, free-floating. She listened to the male voices she could hear behind her, to both sides. At some points she thought she heard words said the way he said them, was convinced it was him until a word would follow in a voice entirely unlike his.

She wondered if he would come up if he saw her. He would, most probably, pretend he had not. She wondered if he would even recognise her from the back. Becky's mother had curled her hair.

A little later she shifted her weight and there was a readjusting in her head that left parts of the room – the bar, the face of the woman next to them, some of the bottles – hanging behind a moment longer than they ought. She'd never been drunk before though she'd always imagined it would feel a little the way it did.

I think – she said, and then Becky took off, small heels clicking. Matilda went after her into the bathroom and stood at the cubicle door while she threw up.

Can you hold my hair?

OK.

When she was done Matilda rang Becky's mother and they waited.

Arch was at the bar. James, one of his friends from school – she recognised the too-long hair and eyebrow piercing – stood next to him.

You all right there, Becky? James said, grinning. Arch didn't say anything.

Matilda went outside with Becky. It was colder than it had been before and there was a creature keening somewhere.

I'll drop you home. Becky's mother was in her dressing gown. She had a hot-water bottle on her lap and the car heating running high.

My brother's here, she heard herself saying. I can go home with him.

It seemed an answer good enough, though she knew, because she knew him, that it was not. Again, the headlights
passed over her face and disappeared. She went back into the pub. Got a drink. Went to the big table where he was sat with all his friends. Stood by his shoulder. She would wonder later where she got this bravery from. She'd always thought Arch and Marco had stolen all there was.

He was not speaking, only leaning back to listen. One of his friends was talking, though she could not hear the words.

Matilda, right? a girl with blue in her hair said, leaning her head on one side to look her up and down.

She nodded.

Pull up a stool, Mattie, James said and laughed as if he'd made a joke. She went searching for a stool. It was getting late but the pub was busy enough there wasn't one. She did not want to go back again. To stand there and have one of his friends ask her why she hadn't brought a stool back or suggest she sit on the floor or on someone's lap.

She stood at the bar for a bit. She caught some of the older people looking at her, pretended she didn't see them. She skidded an empty glass along the wood with her thumbnail.

It was a good three miles back to the house. She took off her shoes, did most of it at a run. She thought, as she went, about him doing this same route. He would not run. He had all the time in the world. Don't run, he said when they were younger; they'll see you. She ran and ran until she was damp across her forehead and in
her hair. Took the drainpipe. It was easier than she'd thought.

She did not wake up when he came through her window and in the morning he was gone before she got up.

What's wrong with you? her mother said.

She had made them coffee. They were going shopping in the city.

Nothing.

They went and caught the train. They would go to Gap or one of the other places where there was nothing but long-sleeved T-shirts and dresses that went down to the ankle and up to the neck. She might as well wear a hood backwards over her face. She might as well wear a burkha. She wanted to go to that sex shop. She did not know the name but she wanted to go there and come away with a bag which had the name written on it so everybody would know.

At school the next week Becky was angry at her for staying. It was your idea, she kept saying. I never wanted to go.

She knew she should apologise. There were ways for an easy life and that was one of them. There were rules and orders connecting friendships.

Arch was there on the stile with his friends when she walked down the field towards home. She stopped before she got to them. Stopped and looked at the massed group.

He'd been fighting again since the weekend; a cut above his eye, bruised knuckles. Well, they were pikeys, he always used to say. He was like a dog let loose in a pit without knowing nobody was watching.

She walked up. They were smoking.

We're going up to the field. Want to come?

It was not him. One of the other boys – all of them held heavy bags of bottles and cans. He had rings and a lopsided tattoo.

OK.

OK? the boy parodied, rocking his eyebrows.

She shrugged. Yeah.

They'd made a sort of place in the midst of one of the copses of thin trees that were spaced across the flats. There was a fire pit dug into the ground and scattered with beer cans and cigarette stubs. Someone had piled up dirt in meticulous, strange slopes she was confused by until the boy with the tattoo lugged a skateboard from his rucksack, rode a smooth curve, flipping high at the top, smoothing back round. Most of the trees had suffered their damages. As if they'd been coming there for years and years. There were names and symbols and the scoring patterns of unidentified games marked into the bark, reaching up higher than her head.

She stood and watched the slow, almost domestic bustle of them. The girl with blue hair went at the fire, bobbing a little on the backs of her heels, making odd triangular structures out of small sticks and twisted paper, lighting
the base of them so they went up strut by strut. Someone else was letting the beer cans float, to cool, in the small, dirty turn of spring just at the edge of the trees. They gave her one and she cracked it down with her thumb and put her mouth to the explosion of warmish foam which bubbled onto her face and down to the ground.

It was light yet. They seemed in no hurry, though she felt she was waiting for something, for a truth or an understanding. They sat around the fire and spoke in pairs or as a whole and now and then one or the other of them would add more wood to the fire so it burnt higher. With her, they engaged in the sort of conversation she felt adults must work through at dinner parties. They asked what she was studying at school and what her plans were for later and what sort of music did she like and had she seen the new January Hargrave film? She tried to answer them in ways she would not normally answer these questions.

So, the boy who'd invited her said: how old are you anyway?

Fifteen.

He whistled and laughed and some of the others laughed too, as if they were knocking thirty rather than eighteen at the most. As if they'd done everything there was to do. She did not understand that: they had never gone further than the nearest city; they had never done anything worth doing.

What you going to study then?

Don't know. Linguistics? she said.

Like, he rolled his eyes, making up words?