The Collected Stories

‘I sent her the note, Miss Whitehead. It’s a private matter –’

‘Not private in my class, Elizabeth. Pass me the note, Eleanor.’

Liz Jones was sniggering: Eleanor knew that she’d wanted this to happen. Miss Whitehead would read the note out, which was her rule when a note was found.

‘The new boy in Grimes is called Denny Price,’ Miss Whitehead said. ‘He wants to do you.’

The class laughed, a muffled sound because the girls’ heads were bent over their desks.

‘He wants to have sexual relations with Eleanor,’ Liz Jones explained, giggling more openly. ‘Eleanor’s a –’

‘Thank you, Elizabeth. The future tense, Elizabeth: s’asseoir.’

Her voice grated in the classroom. Her voice had become unattractive also, Eleanor thought, because she’d never let herself be loved. In her clean bed-sitting-room she might weep tonight, recalling the insolence of Liz Jones. She’d punish Liz Jones when the bell went, the way she always inflicted punishment. She’d call her name out and while the others left the room she’d keep the girl longer than was necessary, setting her a piece of poetry to write out ten times and explaining, as if talking to an infant, that notes and conversation about sexual matters were not permitted in her classroom. She’d imply that she didn’t believe that the boy in Grimes’ had said what Liz Jones had reported he’d said. She’d pretend it was all a fantasy, that no girl from Springfield Comprehensive had ever been done in the playground of the estate or anywhere else. It was easy for Miss Whitehead, Eleanor thought, escaping to her bed-sitting-room in Esher.

‘It’s your bloody fault,’ Liz Jones said afterwards in the washroom. ‘If you weren’t such a curate’s bitch –’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, shut up about it!’ Eleanor cried.

‘Denny Price wants to give you his nine inches –’

‘I don’t want his bloody nine inches. I don’t want anything to do with him.’

‘You’re under-sexed, Eleanor. What’s wrong with Denny Price?’

‘He’s peculiar-looking. There’s something the matter with his head.’

‘Will you listen to this!’ Liz Jones cried, and the girls who’d gathered round tittered. ‘What’s his head got to do with it for God’s sake? It’s not his head that’s going to –’ She broke off, laughing, and all the girls laughed also, even though several of them didn’t at all care for Liz Jones.

‘You’ll end like Whitehead,’ Liz Jones said. ‘Doing yourself in Esher.’ The likes of Whitehead, she added, gave you a sickness in your kidneys. Eleanor had the same way of walking as Whitehead had, which was a way that dried-up virgins acquired because they were afraid to walk any other way in case a man touched their dried-up bottoms.

Eleanor went away, moving through the girls of other classes, across the washroom.

‘Liz Jones is a nasty little tit,’ a girl called Eileen Reid whispered, and Joan Moate, a fair-haired girl with a hint of acne, agreed. But Liz Jones couldn’t hear them. Liz Jones was still laughing, leaning against a wash-basin with a cigarette in her mouth.

For lunch that day at Springfield Comprehensive there was stew and processed potatoes and carrots, with blancmange afterwards, chocolate and strawberry.

‘Don’t take no notice,’ Susie Crumm said to Eleanor. The way Liz Jones went on, she added, it wouldn’t suprise her to hear that she’d contracted syphilis.

‘What’s it like, Susie?’ Eleanor asked.

‘Syphilis? You get lesions. If you’re a girl you can’t tell sometimes. Fellas get them all over their equipment –’

‘No, I mean what’s it like being done?’

‘’Sail right. Nice really. But not like Jones goes for it. Not all the bloody time.’

They ate spoonfuls of blancmange, sucking it through their teeth.

‘’Sail right,’ Susie Crumm repeated when she’d finished. ‘’Sail right for an occasion.’

Eleanor nodded. She wanted to say that she’d prefer to keep it for her wedding night, but she knew that if she said that she’d lose Susie Crumm’s sympathy. She wanted it to be special, not just a woman lying down waiting for a man to finish taking his clothes off; not just a fumbling in the dark of the estate playground, or something behind the Northumberland Arms, where Eileen Reid had been done.

‘My dad said he’d gut any fella that laid a finger on me,’ Susie Crumm said.

‘Jones’s said the same.’

‘He done Mrs Rourke. Jones’s dad.’

‘They’ve all done Mrs Rourke.’ For a moment she wanted to tell the truth: to add that Susie Crumm’s dad had done Mrs Rourke also, that Dolly Rourke was Susie’s half-sister.

‘You’ve got a moustache growing on you,’ Liz Jones said, coming up behind her and whispering into her hair.

The afternoon of that day passed without incident at Springfield Comprehensive, while on the estate Eleanor’s father slept. He dreamed that he was wrestling again. Between his knees he could feel the ribs of Eddie Rodriguez; the crowd was calling out, urging him to give Eddie Rodriguez the final works. Two yards away, in the kitchen, Eleanor’s mother prepared a meal. She cut cod into pieces, and sliced potatoes for chips. He liked a crisply fried meal at half past six before watching a bit of television. She liked cod and chips herself, with tinned peas, and bread and butter and apricot jam, and Danish pastries and tea, and maybe a tin of pears. She’d bought a tin of pears in the Express Dairy: they might as well have them with a tin of Carnation cream. She’d get everything ready and then she’d run an iron over his uniform, sponging off any spots there were. She thought about Crossroads on the television, wondering what would happen in the episode today.

‘I’d remind you that the school photographs will be taken on Tuesday,’ Miss Whitehead said. ‘Clean white blouses, please.’