friends.
Another thing I noticed—and I could see it tied in—was the big hush that would descend around certain veterans when they went off on “courses”—which even we knew had to do with becoming carers. They could be gone for four or five days, but were hardly mentioned in that time; and when they came back, no one really asked them anything. I suppose they might have talked to their closest friends in private. But there was definitely an understanding that you didn’t mention these trips out in the open. I can remember one morning watching, through the misted-up windows of our kitchen, two veterans leaving for a course, and wondering if by the next spring or summer, they’d have gone altogether, and we’d be taking care not to mention them.
But it’s perhaps stretching it to claim students who’d left were an actual taboo. If they had to be mentioned, they got mentioned. Most commonly, you’d hear them referred to indirectly, in connection with an object or a chore. For example, if repairs were needed to a downpipe, there’d be a lot of discussion about “the way Mike used to do it.” And there was a tree stump outside the Black Barn everyone called “Dave’s stump” because for over three years, until a few weeks before our arrival, he’d sat on it to read and write, sometimes even when it was raining or cold. Then, maybe most memorably, there was Steve. None of us ever discovered anything much about the sort of person Steve had been—except that he’d liked porn magazines.
Every now and again, you’d come across a porn mag at the Cottages, thrown behind a sofa or amidst a pile of old news-papers. They were what you’d call “soft” porn, though we didn’t know about such distinctions then. We’d never come across anything like that before and didn’t know what to think. The veterans usually laughed when one showed up and flicked through it quickly in a blase way before throwing it aside, so we did the same. When Ruth and I were remembering all this a few years ago, she claimed there were dozens of these magazines circulating around the Cottages. “No one admitted to liking them,” she said. “But you remember how it was. If one turned up in a room, everyone pretended to find it dead boring. Then you came back half an hour later and it would always be gone.”
Anyway, my point is that whenever one of these magazines turned up, people would claim it was a left- over from “Steve’s collection.” Steve, in other words, was responsible for every porn mag that ever showed up. As I say, we never found out much else about Steve. We did, though, see the funny side of it even then, so that when someone pointed and said: “Oh look, one of Steve’s magazines,” they did it with a bit of irony.
These magazines, incidentally, used to drive old Keffers mad. There was a rumour that he was religious and dead against not just porn, but sex in general. Sometimes he’d work himself into a complete state—you could see his face under his grey whiskers blotchy with fury—and he’d go thudding around the place, barging into people’s rooms without knocking, determined to round up every one of “Steve’s magazines.” We did our best to find him amusing on these occasions, but there was something truly scary about him in these moods. For one thing, the grumbling he usually kept up suddenly stopped and this silence alone gave him an alarming aura.
I remember one particular time when Keffers had collected up six or seven of “Steve’s mags” and stormed out with them to his van. Laura and I were watching him from up in my room, and I’d been laughing at something Laura had just said. Then I saw Keffers opening his van door, and maybe because he needed both hands to move some stuff about, he put the mags down on top of some bricks stacked outside the boiler hut—some veterans had tried to build a barbecue there a few months earlier. Keffers’s figure, bent forwards, his head and shoulders hidden in the van, went on rummaging about for ages, and something told me that, for all his fury of a moment ago, he’d now forgotten about the magazines. Sure enough, a few minutes later, I saw him straighten, climb in behind the wheel, slam the door and drive off.
When I pointed out to Laura that Keffers had left the magazines behind, she said: “Well, they won’t stay put for long. He’ll just have to collect them all up again, next time he decides on a purge.”
But when I found myself strolling past the boiler hut about half an hour later, I saw the magazines hadn’t been touched. I thought for a moment about taking them up to my room, but then I could see if they were ever found there, I’d get no end of teasing; and how there was no way people would understand my reasons for doing such a thing. That was why I picked up the magazines and went inside the boiler hut with them.
The boiler hut was really just another barn, built onto the end of the farmhouse, filled with old mowers and pitch-forks—stuff Keffers reckoned wouldn’t catch alight too easily if one day the boiler decided to blow up. Keffers also kept a workbench in there, and so I put the magazines down on it, pushed aside some old rags and heaved myself up to sit on the tabletop. The light wasn’t too good, but there was a grimy window somewhere behind me, and when I opened the first magazine I found I could see well enough.
There were lots of pictures of girls holding their legs open or sticking their bottoms out. I’ll admit, there have been times when I’ve looked at pictures like that and felt excited, though I’ve never fancied doing it with a girl. But that’s not what I was after that afternoon. I moved through the pages quickly, not wanting to be distracted by any buzz of sex coming off those pages. In fact, I hardly saw the contorted bodies, because I was focusing on the faces. Even in the little adverts for videos or whatever tucked away to the side, I checked each model’s face before moving on.
It wasn’t until I was nearing the end of the pile that I became certain there was somebody standing outside the barn, just beside the doorway. I’d left the door open because that’s how it was normally, and because I wanted the light; and twice already I’d found myself glancing up, thinking I’d heard some small noise. But there’d been no one there, and I’d just gone on with what I was doing. Now I was certain, though, and lowering my magazine I made a heavy sighing sound that would be clearly audible.
I waited for giggling, or maybe for two or three students to come bursting into the barn, eager to make the best of having caught me with a pile of porn mags. But nothing happened. So I called out, in what I tried to make a weary tone:
“Delighted you could join me. Why be so shy?”
There was a little chuckle, then Tommy appeared at the threshold. “Hi, Kath,” he said sheepishly.
“Come on in, Tommy. Join in the fun.”
He came towards me cautiously, then stopped a few steps away. Then he looked over to the boiler, and said: “I didn’t know you liked that sort of stuff.”
“Girls are allowed too, aren’t we?”
I kept going through the pages, and for the next few seconds he stayed silent. Then I heard him say:
“I wasn’t trying to spy on you. But I saw you from my room. I saw you come out here and pick up that pile Keffers left.”
“You’re very welcome to them when I’ve finished.”
He laughed awkwardly. “It’s just sex stuff. I expect I’ve seen them all already.” He did another laugh, but then when I glanced up, I saw he was watching me with a serious expression. Then he asked:
“Are you looking for something, Kath?”
“What do you mean? I’m just looking at dirty pictures.”
“Just for kicks?”
“I suppose you could say that.” I put down one mag and started on the next one.
Then I heard Tommy’s steps coming nearer until he was right up to me. When I looked up again, his hands were hovering fretfully in the air, like I was doing a complicated manual task and he was itching to help.
“Kath, you don’t… Well, if it’s for kicks, you don’t do it like that. You’ve got to look at the pictures much more carefully. It doesn’t really work if you go that fast.”
“How do you know what works for girls? Or maybe you’ve looked these over with Ruth. Sorry, not thinking.”
“Kath, what are you looking for?”
I ignored him. I was nearly at the end of the pile and I was now keen to finish. Then he said:
“I saw you doing this once before.”
This time I did stop and look at him. “What’s going on here, Tommy? Has Keffers recruited you for his porn patrol?”
“I wasn’t trying to spy on you. But I did see you, that time last week, after we’d all been up in Charley’s room. There was one of these mags there, and you thought we’d all left and gone. But I came back to get my jumper, and Claire’s doors were open so I could see straight through to Charley’s room. That’s how I saw you in there, going through the magazine.”
“Well, so what? We all have to get our kicks some way.”
“You weren’t doing it for kicks. I could tell, just like I can now. It’s your face, Kath. That time in Charley’s
