‘Yeah,’ Vince said. ‘I’ve been in the wars.’ Under all his bruises he could feel himself colouring further.
There was a kerfuffle at the door as the careers master came in and caught sight of him. ‘There’s someone wants you,’ he said. ‘Penny Robinson has locked herself in the sixth-form ladies’ toilets and she wants to talk to you and no one else.’ Vince turned to go, frowning.
‘Well,’ said the PE teacher. ‘Isn’t that the girl you were out having lunch with?’
‘What?’
The careers master had turned to listen, too.
The PE teacher said, ‘You heard. Someone saw you out on the town and then catching the bus with one of the sixth-form girls.’
‘So?’
‘One thing you have to learn,’ the PE teacher said, ‘in this job. No matter who they are, no matter how much they’re begging for it, no matter how much you want to give it to them, you have to stop yourself. Isn’t that right?’
The careers master nodded. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘Right,’ Vince said.
He went straight to the sixth-form block and, with an air of unabashed curiosity, pushed his way into the ladies’. ‘Pen?’
No urinals, he thought. They’d be hellish things to sit on, he supposed. He tried to imagine life without urinals.
‘Pen?’
‘I don’t like being called Pen.’ She was in the furthest cubicle.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Did Mr Polaroid send you?’
‘Yes, but I’m concerned as well.’
The door opened, allowing him to slip into the little room to find Penny sitting on a cracked lid.
‘Hi-ya, sweetheart.’
She looked at him. ‘Do you know what we remind me of?’ she asked.
‘Go on.’
‘Some awful cheap version of one of them brat-pack films from the eighties.’
Vince grimaced. ‘You can be Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club.'
‘I feel more like Molly Sugden.’
‘Why don’t you like being called Pen?’
‘It’s what Liz calls me sometimes.’
‘Oh.’
Now she was staring at his bruises. ‘Jesus, what happened to your face?’
‘Does it show up that badly? Can I borrow some foundation off you?’ He knew she must have some. Her skin was still quite bad, lumpy and inflamed under a coat of foundation. She rummaged in her bag. He asked, ‘What’s all this about?’
She stopped what she was doing for a moment. ‘Do you ever feel like you’re bottom on the list of everyone’s priorities?’
‘All the time.’
‘I think that now and then and it scares me.’
‘It’s best to assume it,’ he said. ‘And then, when suddenly you’re not, when someone is thinking about you, really thinking about you, then that’s a bonus.’
‘I suppose you’re right. Can I stay here until that happens?’
‘’Fraid not, pet.’
‘What happened to you, anyway?’
‘Queer-bashers.’
She started to apply make-up to his bruises. He gasped at the coolness.
‘They got me and Andy after the thing last night. It wasn’t too bad.’
‘Is Andy all right?’
‘He’s fine now. A bit sore.’
It was funny having his head in her hands like this as he talked. She felt his voice vibrate through the soft white skin of his throat. ‘How are things with you two?’
‘Oh… well,’ he said. He wasn’t at all sure what to say in school. ‘I’m not sure if we’re sticking together. I don’t know.’
‘I liked him. I thought he was nice.’
‘Really?’
‘The little bit of him I saw, yeah.’
‘He was my first lover,’ Vince said. ‘Isn’t there something sad in me going back to him? Isn’t it just like coming home and working in my old school?’
The toilet in the next cubicle flushed. They heard someone step out, hastily wash their hands, and clip-clop out of the ladies’.
‘Fuck!’ Vince hissed. ‘It’ll be round school in seconds: Mr Northspoon’s a big fag.’
‘It was my fault.’
‘Never mind. Maybe it’s best if I’m out at work.’
‘Yeah?’
He shrugged.
‘Vince, my mam didn’t come in last night.’
‘Is this what this is about? I saw her last night. She was in safe hands, I think.’
Penny screwed the cap back on the tube of foundation. ‘Safe hands? You saw her with the bus driver, then?’
‘Someone’s told you? Yeah. She was having a whale of a time.’
‘Good.’
‘Ha’way, pet. Let’s get out of the toilets.’
‘Honestly, when you go on about queer-bashers and all that —’ She shuddered. ‘It makes you wonder if it’s worth going out anywhere. Sometimes I think I’m scared of everything. The whole world. Even my mother’s out on the prowl at night.’
‘You want to get on out there! Show them what you’re made of!’
‘Yeah?’ She stood up from the loo and kissed him on the cheek, an unbruised, un-made-up part.
Peter has the sweetest nature. The sweetest boy. Rose thought the words over and over before Jane arrived late to collect him. He would grow to be a fine young man. A credit to his mother. Rose could see that now. She wasn’t surprised that her daughter couldn’t. Jane just didn’t understand the things Rose understood about men. Jane hadn’t held on to her own man, Brian, and Rose could see exactly why. Brian wanted a drinking buddy and, although Jane had never known it, that’s what Rose became for him after he left her daughter. She took him in and saw him right. She despaired of her daughter’s inadequate love. All these men wanted to feel they were Sweet little kids, whatever they did. That was all Jane had had to do for Brian. He was a pig all right, Rose could see that. But a beguilingly rough pig, with a nasty temper and a passion she had taunted and brought to a head. She seduced him, bringing him running upstairs to her room,
