Moderate Violence (9 page)

“Look, come back in the house to wait for your dad,”
suggested Toby. He sounded uncertain, and much more concerned.

“No!” It came out more aggressively than she intended. “I
mean, I’m all right here, thanks. Just ignore me.”

He didn’t ignore her. He put his arms around her and
held her stiff, trembly body, murmuring comforting words until Trevor’s car
drew up with all the windows down and the sun roof open, and ‘Hotel California’
on the stereo.

“You must be Toby,” said Trevor, silencing The Eagles. “I’m
Trevor Probert.”

Jo registered vaguely that Trevor had got Toby’s name
right. “Hello,” said Toby He opened the passenger door and helped her in. “Jo’s
not well.” He did up her seat belt for her. “I’ll call you later and see how
you are,” he told her, and shut the door.

“Thanks for looking after her,” said Trevor.

As the car pulled away from the kerb, Jo turned. Toby
was standing on the pavement with a gap between his thighs and his hands in the
pockets of his jeans. Panic swirled around her, but she summoned her voice. “Toby!”
she called. He was too far away to hear her.

But what would she have said anyway? It’s nothing to do
with you? I really like you and want you to be my boyfriend? Please don’t think
this is
anything
to do with
you
?

“What’s the matter anyway?” asked Trevor as she turned
back, defeated.

She leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes,
ambushed by nausea. “Don’t know, I just feel crap.”

“Better phone the golf club, then.” Jo could feel that
he was driving slightly too confidently. He broadened his Welsh accent. “Listen,
you toffee-nosed bastards, you’ve poisoned my daughter. Fancy a court case, do
you?”

“Very funny.” Jo opened her eyes. The world was going
by very fast. “Try not to kill me, will you?”

Trevor slowed the car enough to make a more or less
successful turn off the main road. “I’ve only had a couple of pints, or three. And
we’re almost home now.”

Jo stared at the sunlit London roads, the rows of
houses with bicycles and dustbins on their front paths, the worn grass verges
and littered pavements, the new-paint green of the trees. The unnerving
brightness that had obliterated reality in Toby’s garden had gone; now everything
she looked at seemed extra-clear, as if, like Dorothy and Toto, she’d emerged
from ordinary life into a Technicolor world.

“I’ll be OK,” she assured her father. “I haven’t got
food poisoning. I just felt…”

But she couldn’t explain the panic in the garden, or
the desperation now.

When Trevor had parked haphazardly in a too-small
space, swearing under his breath, Jo opened the car door. “I’m going upstairs,”
she told him. “I’d better have a rest.”

He leaned his arms on the steering wheel and looked at
her with a troubled expression, blunted by alcohol. “Cup of tea might help,
love.”

“If I drink anything I’ll be sick.”

In the cool of the hallway, Blod slipped out of the
shadows and curled herself round Jo’s leg, but Jo ignored her, and Trevor
picked her up. Jo watched them go into the kitchen. Her legs felt very tired,
but she took hold of the banister and slowly climbed the stairs.

The light in her room was muted; the sun was round the
other side of the house. Jo lay down on the huge bed with her face to the wall,
burying her nose in the pink belly of an ancient rabbit who stood guard at the
end of the line of cuddly toys. She tried not to think about Toby, or what he
thought of her and her family. She tried to think about nothing.

Trapped under her body, her left arm throbbed. The
blood supply to it was being restricted by her weight. She lay still for a few
moments, thinking about her left arm. It was made of bones, and ligaments, and
flesh, and arteries and veins and skin, like everyone else’s left arm. No one
but Jo would think there was anything special about it, or that it had any
power beyond the usual things left arms do. It did, though; she knew that now.

She closed her eyes tightly, waiting for the red circles
surrounded by the pulsing light. When she saw them, she opened her eyes again. The
light was still there at the edge of her vision, white and insistent. She
rolled over, liberating her arm, and closed her eyes again.

The fingers of her right hand locked themselves around
the fleshy part just below her left elbow. She thought about the whiteness of
the skin on the inside of her arm, the part where no one ever seemed to get
sunburned. She began to press and release. Press. Release. Press. Release. Then
she stopped releasing and just pressed, digging her nails in, clamping her
teeth, willing herself not to gasp with the pain.

She opened her eyes. Where she’d pressed hardest, with
her middle fingernail, a bluish-purple mark had appeared. She scratched it,
hard. It produced a bud of blood. And it didn’t take much more pressing and
releasing for the bud to burst.

Jo scratched more and more with sticky, scarlet nails,
smearing blood over her arm. It was agony. But when she stopped, in the place
of agony came peace.

She lay there with her eyes closed, breathing steadily,
unaware of any sensation except the absence of pain. But when she roused
herself and looked at her arm, her heart gave a thud. The wound was bloody, as
she’d expected, but there were also glistening patches of watery goo, like the
pretend lacerations on the pretend corpses in
CSI
.
Her nails, which must be sharper than she’d thought, had penetrated the
liquid-producing layer of flesh which burns and blisters exposed. And which
left a scar. Especially if you picked it.

She mustn’t get blood on the duvet cover. She needed to
clean the gouged-out place on her arm, and hide its ugliness. Slowly, she got
up and opened her bedroom door. The murmur of ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ with the bass
turned up came from the sitting-room. In the bathroom, Jo locked the door,
leaned on the washbasin and ran warm water over her right hand. Pink water
swirled down the plughole. She wetted some toilet paper and dabbed the patch on
her arm where she’d scratched away her flesh. She said the words softly to
herself as she worked.
Patch
.
Scratch. My own little scratch-patch
.

She flushed away the bloody toilet paper and opened the
medicine cabinet. The only plasters remaining in the box were the small ones
designed for finger cuts, and Jo had to use two to cover the wound. Then she
spread soap over the nailbrush. She felt nauseated, and her legs were wobbly,
but she had to get the blood out from under her nails, and out of her sight. The
soap went pink and frothy; her nausea grew, but she finished the job and felt
her way unsteadily back to her room.

She sat on the edge of the bed and gazed at her
‘Wonders of China’ calendar on the opposite wall. Jo had no particular interest
in the wonders of China, but the calendar was Sylvia the Chinese Cleaner’s idea
of a Christmas present. Sylvia came into her bedroom to clean every Thursday,
so Jo had to have the calendar up.

The picture for June was of a little girl dressed in an
elaborate costume with a huge headdress. Just like on every picture, for every
month, there was a line of Chinese writing down the side, translated into
English at the bottom. Under the picture of the little girl it said ‘Be Free’.

“That’s a joke”, Trevor had said, “Considering how the
Chinese might possibly be the most un-free people in the world.” She read it
again, and again. Just those two words. Maybe the English translation was done
by a rubbish translator. Or maybe, she realized suddenly, the idea of being
free is open to interpretation. Hadn’t they learned in History that above the
gate at Auschwitz 1, it even said, ‘Work Will Set You Free’?

She looked at the pile of DVDs on the dressing-table
desk, their plastic prongs and sharp corners concealed by a veneer of just
being DVD covers. The sight calmed her. As she sat there on the bed, cradling
her wounded arm, the panic, the desperation and the guilt – about Toby, about
the press-release method and the scratch-patch – began to trickle away.

Her gaze landed again on the calendar. Being free
wasn’t about physically escaping, whether from China, or a concentration camp,
or the rudeness of Mr Treasure’s horrible secretary. It was about that line by
some poet from ages ago, that Mr Gerrard had made them discuss. ‘Stone walls do
not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage’. By the end of the lesson they had
worked round the idea that it was your mind that imprisoned you, and therefore
it was your mind that freed you.

She wished that poet, whoever he was, could appear,
right there in her bedroom. She wanted to tell him that although she’d left the
English room that day feeling bemused, and wondering why poetry had to be so
complicated, now she understood with luminous clarity what he’d meant. He’d
meant that you make your own prison, and you find your own method of escape. Jo
had found her way to escape.

Chapter Six

At the end of each year Kingsgrove School
held a Summer Ball. This year the organizing committee, of which Holly was
chair, had decreed that the fancy dress theme was The Universe, and that
everyone’s clothes, make-up and hair had to reflect stars, suns, moons,
planets, space rockets or whatever they could think of.

“Why have we got to have a theme at all?” Pascale
moaned. It was the day before the second Maths paper, and Pascale had come
round to help Jo revise. They hadn’t done any revision yet; they were in Jo’s
room, sifting unenthusiastically through Jo’s party dresses. “I mean, if it was
just a party, without all this universe bollocks, you could wear this blue
thing.” She sat on the computer chair and smoothed Jo’s blue dress across her
knee. “The colour suits you, with your baby blue eyes.”

“The universe
is
sort of blue,” said Jo, trying to be helpful. “Or at least the earth is, in
shots of it taken from space. You know, with clouds swirling around all over
it.”

Pascale pondered. “You mean you could fix swirly things
to this dress, and be the earth?” She scrutinized Jo with narrowed eyes. “Might
make you look a bit fat, though.”

“Well, it’s an idea.” Jo took the blue dress from
Pascale and held in front of herself. She’d had it last year for Trevor’s
fortieth birthday party. It did suit her, and she liked the twisted ribbon
straps. But it wasn’t exactly a
ball
dress
– it wasn’t even floor-length – and she didn’t think Pascale’s ‘swirly things’
would improve it. Also, it was sleeveless. A couple of weeks had gone by since
Jo had stood in the bathroom swirling pink water round the washbasin. But the
wound on her arm still festered. The desire to pick the scab every time it
formed was impossible to resist, especially when she was in bed. Lying in quiet
darkness was supposed to induce sleep, but lately, all it had induced in Jo was
an awareness, both repugnant and delicious, of the plaster on the inside of her
elbow, and the compulsion to rip it off. And then, the guilt, the necessity of
keeping the blood off the bedclothes, the furtive trips to the bathroom.

She would have a scar there for ever. But in those
moments of weakness, she didn’t care.

She tossed the blue dress onto the pile of clothes on
the bed. “I can’t wear this. I’ll have to get Trev to buy me something new.”

Pascale studied her reflection in Jo’s mirror. “Ed and
I are wearing matching stuff,” she announced. “His dad’s got this silver jacket
from his Rock ’n’ Roll Nostalgia Nights, and silver boots. We thought if Ed
wears those, and I wear a silver dress, and we both have glitter in our hair
and do a zig-zag on our faces, we could be sort of Ziggy Stardust people. You
know, seventies glitter rock. Sexier than dressing as aliens or astronauts.”

“That’s a really good idea!” Jo honestly thought it
was. “But you can only do that sort of thing if you’ve got a boy to go with. You’re
lucky.”

The question of who was going to be Jo’s escort was a
vexed one. Strictly, you could go to Summer Ball without one – lots of girls
had to. But Jo couldn’t stand the thought of being one of those girls. And Toby
wouldn’t be able to come because it was only for Kingsgrove students. Tom
Clarke, the second most presentable boy in Jo’s class, was also a committee
member, and it was understood that he would be taking Holly.

“Hm,” said Pascale. Jo knew she was only pretending to
ponder. “Pity Toby can’t come.” She flicked Jo the look Jo had been expecting
for a while. Curious, but full of superior knowledge. “So how are things going
with the fit and delicious Toby?”

“Things are good,” Jo said nonchalantly.

“Three weeks now?”

“About that.”

“And how’s it going?”

“I just told you, things are good.”

“
Everything
?”

Jo wanted to tell her. It was next to impossible that
Pascale would understand, but she longed to tell someone, and here was Pascale,
asking.

“We haven’t…you know, done it,” she said in a rush. “If
that’s what you mean.”

“Did I say anything?” said Pascale, her eyes wide and
her hand at her throat. Then she dropped both her hand and the pretence of
outrage. “Why haven’t you, then?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably because he’d rather do it
with
you
.”

Pascale could never tell the difference between real
and sarcastic adoration. “
Really
?”
she asked, flushing with pleasure. “Did he say that?”

Jo sighed. “No, of course he didn’t say that! I know
you think he’s an arsehole for going out with me, but he’s not
that
much of an arsehole.”

“Oh.” Pascale thought about this for a second. Then she
added, bristling, “You know, Jo, you can sound really bitter sometimes. And
it’s not attractive.”

Though Jo was used to such comments, generally from
Tess rather than Pascale, this particular one enraged her. “Well, whoever said
anything about me was
attractive
?”

Somewhere, deep inside Pascale’s theatrical expression
of shock, was genuine surprise. She put her hand on Jo’s arm. “Oh, Jo, are you
upset?”

Jo’s anger dispersed as suddenly as it had appeared. Always,
what Pascale did and said was authentic. She was incapable of calculated
malice. Her brain-processes, except in Maths, were entirely engaged in plotting
the best way through the maze between girls and their discarded, existing or
prospective boyfriends.

“I just don’t know what to do, Cal,” Jo confessed.

Pascale had her bereavement-counsellor face on. She
nodded sympathetically. “Is it that you don’t fancy him?”

Jo had to think about this before she answered. Whenever
she saw Toby she noticed all over again what she’d noticed the first time – that
by any girl’s standards he was good-looking. So she
must
fancy him. That’s what fancying someone was. And yet,
whenever he started to put his hands on her body, something seemed to stop him
succumbing to the power which Pascale wielded so easily. Maybe the truth was that
Jo simply didn’t have that power. “Maybe he doesn’t fancy
me
.”

Pascale’s eyes brightened at the prospect of guiding a
lost soul through the relationship maze. “So why don’t you just say, ‘look,
Toby, do you want me as a girlfriend, or a friend? And if you don’t want me as
a girlfriend, what are we doing?’” she suggested, making it sound very simple.

Jo was half horrified, half amused. “I couldn’t do
that
!”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Because she was afraid he might reject her.
And because she was even more afraid of where that rejection might lead her.
“Because”, she continued “however fanciable he is, I don’t think I want to
sleep with him.” Then, seeing Pascale’s confused expression, she added, “Yet,
at any rate. Three weeks isn’t that long.”

“Three weeks will become three months, though,”
insisted Pascale, “and you still won’t have done it, and both of you’ll be
wondering why not, and it’ll just get ridiculous.”

“All right,” said Jo, glad to close the subject. She
looked steadily at Pascale. “You won’t mention this to Holly, will you?”

Pascale made a mock-offended face. “As if!”

“And thanks for the advice, Cal.”

“Just ask Doctor Pascale!” said Pascale happily. “Now,
talking of Holly and her insane ideas, we still haven’t solved the problem of
your escort. How about David Mathison?”

David, who was in the Lower Sixth, was one of Pascale’s
many rejects. “He and I had fun together before…we stopped having fun,” she
said. “He’s nice, and he knows you a bit, and I bet he hasn’t got anyone to go
with. All those Lower Sixth girls are such dogs.”

Jo laughed. “Is that why he went out with
you
, then?”

“He would have gone out with me even if every girl in
his year was Miss Universe,” smiled Pascale. She whipped round and stared at
Jo. “There you are, you can dress as Miss Universe! Long dress, high heels,
tiara, sash…my God, Jo, you’ll look like a million dollars! And I’ll be
standing there with a zigzag on my face!”

Jo’s heartbeat felt uneven. She sat down on the bed
amongst the discarded clothes. “That’s brilliant. Do you think anyone else will
have the same idea?”

“Not if we don’t tell them.”

“Not even Holly?”

“
Especially
not Holly.” Pascale giggled. “She’s the one that’s got us into this fancy dress
crap anyway. I want to be there when you walk in and her jaw hits the floor.”

“Can you ask David Mathison for me?” asked Jo. “You
could hint that I’m doing something glamorous, without telling him exactly what
it is. He’ll need a tux.”

Pascale raised her eyebrows. “God, he’d look amazing in
a tux.”

“But will you call him? I can’t, out of the blue.
Please
.”

“Well…” Pascale was pretending uncertainty again. “I
suppose I could. And if he’s already taken, there’s Stuart Holt, and Max
Can’t-remember-his-other-name, and – ”

“Oh, shut up! Just make sure you get me someone who’ll
be tall enough when I’m wearing high heels and a tiara. This is going to be
brilliant
!”

           
* * * * * *

Jo stared at the names on the list. There
were still only five, though now there were six significant people in her life.
She’d been putting off labelling Toby because it felt so underhand, having a
secret from him. But if he didn’t have a label, it wasn’t fair on the others
who
did
.

She turned over a few DVDs, trying to focus on one
thing about Toby that set him aside from other people. But there were so many
things. He was the only boy who had ever noticed her, pursued her, taken her
out, kissed her, touched her body, comforted her when she was upset and
tolerated her friends.

Well, she’d helped him along a little, with that phone
call from the train. And she’d asked him if he had a girlfriend, which wasn’t
exactly subtle. But all girls did that sort of thing. It was part of the game. And
hadn’t Toby played the game too? Buying her that sandwich, helping her with the
T-shirts, writing his number on her hand? Yet…her heartbeat wouldn’t settle.

She had the biggest double bed in the world.
Her mother lived miles away. And nothing would rouse Trevor from the alcoholic
coma he fell into every night. Toby must be thinking he’d struck fantastically
lucky. But somehow, he hadn’t.

She flicked through DVD covers impatiently. This was
stupid, stupid,
stupid
. But now
she’d started it, she couldn’t abandon it. She had to keep her place in the
middle of them all. She had to be in charge like the ringmaster cracking his
whip. She couldn’t risk allowing herself to wobble.

U for Universal. ‘Suitable for all’, it said on the
back of Disney’s
Aladdin
. God,
what was that doing here? She hadn’t watched it in years. But maybe that was
what Toby was. A ‘U’ person, who’d had lots of jobs and picked up lots of
friends on the way. People in London he knew from when he was a waiter, he
said. People who worked funny hours, so he met them late and stayed over. Mitch,
one of them was called. Maybe Jo would meet them someday, but it was more
likely that she wouldn’t. Toby was one of those people who liked to keep his
groups of friends separate. He didn’t have a Facebook account. He wanted to
segregate his social life, while plate-spinning his friends. All things to all
people.

With a sigh, she typed ‘Suitable for all’ next to
Toby’s name.

She thought about what Pascale had said:
Ask him if he wants you as a girlfriend, or a friend.
What would happen if Jo did that? She imagined a scene in a film where the
actress asked the actor that question. How would the script read? What would
the director want? Long pauses, evident distress, or would he prefer the scene
to be understated, leaving the audience to interpret the feelings?

Toby’s smooth cheeks would sink slightly, and a
nearly-hurt look would come into his eyes. His eyebrows would sharpen at the
corners; he would be alert for a trap, wondering what she
really
meant. Was she saying she didn’t
want him as a boyfriend? Well, why didn’t she just go ahead and dump him? Suspicion
and uncertainty would hover between them, taking up the space on the screen
between the actor and the actress, arousing the audience’s sympathy…or apathy. Such
was a director’s gamble.