Love Lessons (18 page)

‘I can't stay long though,' I said.

I'd got it into my head that Rax
might
just come by the shop, maybe while his wife was trailing round Sainsbury's. I'd die if I missed him.

I rather hoped all this tuition nonsense was a ploy and that Toby would try to drag me somewhere quiet to kiss me. Then I could simply shove him off me and run back to the shop. But to my irritation he seemed determined to behave perfectly, keeping a little distance between us as we walked into town, talking earnestly about his dyslexia and how he'd felt so humiliated as a little kid and he'd hated books so much he'd scribbled all over his sister's paperbacks.

I made all the right responses but it was such an effort I started to get a headache. However, there was a little bit of me that was pleased a boy like Toby seemed to like me. As we got nearer the town centre little gangs of girls going shopping looked round and stared enviously. They raised their eyebrows at my Saturday outfit. I was wearing last year's dreadful blue cord dress, which was way too short for me, and a shapeless hand-knitted purple sweater that had stretched in the wash. I'd threaded blue and purple glass beads into a strand of my hair and painted a blue cornflower on one of my old black shoes and a purple daisy on the other. I was worried that these homespun embellishments made me look weirder than ever.

Toby had made a serious effort. His shirt was always hanging out at school, his tie undone, his shoes unlaced, but now he was wearing a hooded jacket with a coveted logo, black sweater and black jeans so obviously new he could barely bend his legs. He'd just washed his famously floppy blond hair. It fell silkily over his forehead into his eyes, so he had to keep shaking his head every so often. I knew all the girls at Wentworth thought this a fabulously sexy gesture, but I was starting to find it intensely irritating.

We went to the McDonald's in the shopping centre. Toby insisted on buying us two Cokes, plus two portions of french fries. I thought of Grace and how she'd die for a chance to sample McDonald's chips.

Toby manoeuvred us to a table right at the back and then opened his rucksack. He really did have half a dozen textbooks and two pads of paper tucked inside.

‘OK, I thought I could maybe talk you through some basic maths. Not that I'm any great shakes, mind, but I'll help if I can.'

‘Please don't,' I said. ‘I mean, it's very nice of you, but I
hate
maths. I don't want to do it.'

‘But you'll have to master it sometime.'

‘No I won't. I can do enough. How many people are sitting at this table? Two. How many Cokes have they got? Two. How many chips have they got left?' I helped myself to a handful. ‘Not many at this rate.'

‘You're so different from all the other girls, Prue. I really reckon you, you know that.'

‘Don't start all that. Look, I'll help you with your reading if that's what you really want. Get your book out.'

He brought out this grim little reader in big print with cartoon pictures of teenagers and a lot of stilted phrases and dated slang.

‘Oh God,' I said.

‘It's not
my
fault. It's better than some of the others – Peter and Jane and Pat the flipping dog.'

‘OK then, get cracking.
The Big Match
. Start!'

‘I feel a fool. OK, OK.
The – Big – Match
. Why does match have a “t” in it anyway? It's stupid. Right.
The – Big – Match
.'

‘You've
said
that. And I've said it too. Now start on the rest.'

He started. I realized how bad he really was at reading. I thought he'd just trip up on a few of the longer words, maybe mix up the odd
were
or
where
, the way Grace used to when she was five or six. But Toby was still way back at the beginning stage, stumbling through each and every word. It was as if the letters grew into tall trees and he was blundering through a dense forest, unable to find his way out.

I sat and listened. I helped him out, prompting him, sometimes taking over and reading out a whole phrase. I kept my voice gentle, neutral, encouraging, the voice I used for coaching Dad. Toby was much sweeter natured. He kept apologizing, thanking me over and over, telling me I was a born teacher. He thought I was being so kind because I really cared, when inside my head I was hot, angry, bored. I listened to him stuttering away and I had to press my lips together to stop myself screaming at him.

When he eventually made it all the way through the story and Bil-ly had fi-nal-ly got tick-ets for the Big Match we both cheered as if Toby had scored a goal.

‘Wow! That's the first book I've ever read all the way through!' he said.

He was flushed with pride at his achievement, even though
The Big Match
wasn't really a
book
and I'd told him three-quarters of the words.

‘It's all down to you,' he said, and he squeezed my hand.

I snatched it away quickly. I didn't want anyone else holding my hand now. I stuck it into the empty french fries packet, pretending to be looking for a last chip.

‘We'll get some more! And a burger? Or are you more an ice-cream kind of girl?'

‘No, no, I don't want anything, really,' I said. ‘I've got to get going. Mum will need me to help in the shop.'

‘She said it was fine. I'm sure you can stay out longer. We really ought to give you a bit of maths tuition now.'

‘I
said
. No!'

‘Well then, we could go round the shopping centre if you want. Anywhere you like, I don't mind. Even clothes shops.'

‘There's not much point my going round any clothes shops. I haven't got any money for any decent clothes.'

‘I thought girls just liked to look. Rita always wants to spend
hours
in New Look and TopShop.'

I fingered my awful sweater defensively. ‘I know I look a freak,' I mumbled.

‘You don't. I love the way you look. You're not boring like all the other girls, you've got your
own
style.'

‘Yeah, part jumble sale, part botched home-made,' I said.

I was pleased all the same. I hoped Rax felt like that about me too. I wondered if he ever took his wife and kids to McDonald's on their Saturday morning shopping trips. I wanted to see him so much. If he spotted me with Toby he'd realize I wasn't completely a sad little Prudence-No-Friends.

I supposed I counted Toby as a friend now, just so long as he didn't try to be anything more.

I wandered round the shopping centre with him for half an hour, but I couldn't really say I enjoyed myself. Toby was very eager to please, shuffling along one pace behind me so I had to keep choosing where we were going. I didn't know which shops to amble in and out of, how long to take admiring different outfits, which racks to spin with interest. It all seemed so false and uncomfortable and awkward. I tried hard to keep up a steady stream of chatter. His answers were mostly monosyllabic. Maybe he was used to small simple words, like the ones in his reading book.

I seemed to be fated to help people with their reading. It had been tedious with Toby but it was far worse with Dad. He was clearly furious with me for not turning up on Friday. He wanted to interrogate me but couldn't find the words. He came out with a long semi-comprehensible splutter: ‘Baby? – No! –
Not
!' I knew he was expressly forbidding me to do such a thing again but I chose to misunderstand.

‘Yes, Dad, I simply wanted to start earning some money of my own. I'm so glad you think it's a good idea,' I said.

Dad reached boiling point, straining to say what he meant. He thumped the bed with his left arm. He even did a feeble mini thump with his right.

‘Oh Arthur, you're really getting lots of movement back now!' Mum said, clutching his bad hand and stroking it.

Dad snatched it away from her, not wanting to be distracted. ‘Baby – no-no-no!' he repeated.

‘Yes, Dad. Lily's the baby, and Harry's the little boy. They can be a bit of a handful, but I can get them sorted out. Just call me Mary Poppins, eh?'

Dad looked as if he wanted to call me all sorts of names, though Mary Poppins wasn't one of them. But then I took out the compilation I'd made of extracts from his Magnum Opus. The moment I read out the first line Dad lay still. He listened, his head cocked to one side, his mouth snapped back into a straight line. He looked almost his old self.

‘Now you try to read a little, Dad,' I said.

He reached for the book. He cleared his throat. He pronounced the first four words clearly, with proper expression. I thought a miracle had happened. Dad had recovered all his faculties and I could stop feeling chewed up with guilt. But then he stumbled, he repeated himself, he couldn't get any further though he strained to the utmost. His entire Magnum Opus was reduced to four words:
I, Bernard King, think
 . . .

Dad's eyes filled with tears.

‘Oh Prue, don't upset him! Maybe you should put it away,' Mum whispered.

‘Don't worry, Dad. I'm sure you'll be able to read it all soon. Meanwhile, I'll read it, shall I?'

Dad nodded, and so I read to him. He twitched and sniffled for a minute or two and then he became absorbed. Grace yawned and twiddled her thumbs and did mini Iggy-Figgy waves to herself. Mum frowned at her as if she was fidgeting in church. She had an expression of pious concentration on her face but her eyes were darting all round the room. I knew she was thinking about Dad's washing and cooking our tea and all the final demands and bailiff's threats at home.

I read on, my voice starting to mimic Dad's old intonations and accent as I worked my way through his convoluted sentences. I started to ham it up just a little, inserting a Dad-cough here and a Dad-sniff there. Mum glared. Grace snorted. Dad snorted too, regularly, again and again. He was fast asleep and snoring. His Magnum Opus had worked like a bedtime story for a tired toddler.

I left my cut-price annotated version on his bedside locker. I hoped Dad might enjoy glancing at it, but when we visited on Sunday it was missing. I asked him about it but Dad looked blank and shook his head. So much for my labour of love. One of the cleaners had obviously chucked it in the rubbish bin. Dad had forgotten all about it.

I'd been going to copy out more of it, maybe even do a couple of watercolour illustrations, but now I decided not to bother.

I hid myself away on Sunday evening, constructing a surreal sculpture based on our old doll's house. I made a papier-mâché man, deliberately too big for the house. His arms reached out of the windows, his feet stuck out of the door, his head was halfway out of the chimney, but he couldn't escape, try as he might. I fashioned a fat fur mouse out of an old pair of mittens, and made two tiny mice from each thumb. The man had a collar round his neck. The fat mouse had the lead tightly clasped in her paws. The two tiny mice scrabbled on his shoulders, shrieking in his ears.

Grace crept up on me and peered over my shoulder. ‘That's good – but
weird
,' she said. ‘It's like that Alice book.
Is
it Alice?'

Dad had once discovered what he thought was a first edition of
Alice in Wonderland
at a jumble sale and thought it would make our fortune, but of course it wasn't a
real
first edition, just an illustrated edition from much later that was hardly worth a bean. Dad couldn't bear to see it on the shelf in the shop and gave it to me as a colouring book.

‘Yes, it's Alice,' I said to Grace.

How could she be idiotic enough to think I'd give Alice a
beard
?

‘Is it for homework?'

‘Sort of.'

‘Have you done all your other homework?'

‘Nope.'

‘Hadn't you better get cracking?'

‘I'm not doing it.'

‘You'll get into trouble.'

‘See if I care.'

I
did
get into trouble on Monday, but it wasn't over homework. I got to school early, wandered across the playground, walked over to the playing field and hovered near the art block. I hoped that Rax might be at school early too, but his art room was in darkness and there was no sign of him. I sighed and started trailing back towards the main building. We didn't have art on Monday. I had a dreaded maths session in the Success Maker.

I looked longingly at the school gate, wondering whether to make a run for it. Rita was flouncing through the gate into school, tossing her head, obviously sounding off about something to her friends, Aimee, Megan and Jess. Then she looked up and saw someone. She started running forwards, her pretty face contorted. I looked round. There was no one behind me. She was angry with
me
.