This is me, Tallie. Aged just past fifteen, two more years – well, a year and a bit - to go before I can leave school and get a job, no brothers, no sisters. Just me. I tell everyone Tallie is short for Natalie, but it isn’t really. My real name is too embarrassing for words – I mean, who calls their child Talisman? Unless you’re some weird new-age hippy or something, and I don’t think my mum was that. I asked my step-father, Harry, once how I got my name, and he just smiled that vague and gentle smile of his, and said that he thought mum had said it was a family name, and my father had insisted on giving it to me.
This is my bedroom. It’s not my taste, really – it’s my stepmother’s. Sapphire, she’s called. Mum died, quite a while ago now, and then Harry met Sapphire when she became the new barmaid at the pub he likes to go to on a Friday night with a few friends for a game of darts. I think she set her sights on him, but she’s okay really. Only she likes pink, and girly things, and is a great one for making the most of herself – and making the most of me.
And her taste isn’t quite mine – she’s so determinedly blonde, and she thinks a woman should “show off her assets” – not that I’ve got much in the way of assets yet. “Never mind,” she says to me. “There’s always surgery. They can do some wonderful things nowadays. When you get your first job, you can save up.”
Harry’s quite sweet – he’s very gentle, and kind, and a bit vague. Not very bright – he always says he tried hard at school, but he never really got anywhere. He thinks Sapphire is wonderful, and can’t imagine what she sees in him – but I think one of the things she sees is safety and security. And I have to say, so do I – if it hadn’t been for mum marrying Harry, I’d have been brought up in a children’s home. And if you watch the news at all, you’ll probably remember the scandal that broke about the homes in our area. At least I was spared that. And Sapphire could have made a fuss about taking me on, but she didn’t, though we don’t have a lot of money.
You can tell we don’t have a lot of money. This is where we live, in one of these houses. I’d like to say it was ours, but actually, it belongs to the landlord – bit by bit, he’s bought up all three streets. All except for one house – but I’ll tell you about that one later.
I always seem to be in a hurry for school – partly because we live quite a way away. in fact, we’re right on the edge of the catchment area, and every so often there’s a debate about whether our street shouldn’t be in another catchment area, but because of some ancient parish boundary rule, it turns out that if they drop our street, then they’ll have to drop another much classier street as well.
I don’t have many friends at school. Who I’d like to be friends with are people like Melody Leigh and her sister, but they’re really clever and hard-working, and we’re not in the same class for anything.
Or the Sorenson girls, Astrid and Freya, are really nice, but I can tell that they look at the way I dress, and just think that I’m not their type. They don’t like the way the boys look at me either – I overheard them saying so in the toilets once. They weren’t being nasty, just commenting.
I don’t like the way the boys look at me either. Especially Bob – he looks at me as though I was a thing he could have, rather than a person.
The school’s quite a decent one, and I’m glad I’m there, I guess, but I always seem to be struggling. The others all seem to know so much more – they talk about plays they’ve watched, or books they’ve read, or concerts they’ve been to. And quite a lot of them play instruments, and they all have their own computers. If it’s computer-based homework, I have to stay at school to do it, or go to the library. And Harry and Sapphire don’t have a bookcase or any books. I do have a mobile though – Sapphire said I had to have that, and she did extra shifts to buy it for me.
We do have an enormous TV. Sapphire saved and saved for it. It’s usually on all the time, and it makes doing my homework a bit difficult.
This is the sort of film Sapphire likes – a romantic happy-ever-after film. Sapphire’s a great believer in True Love. And she really believes that a girl needs a husband, and that you have to dress to attract one. She buys my clothes for me.
But sometimes I go up the road to Granny Thomas’s house. She’s the only person in the street who owns her home. She’s lived here all her life – “and brought up three healthy boys as well” - though where they put them all, I don’t know.
Her garden is lovely, even though it’s tiny. She remembers when all the houses in the street had little gardens like this at the back of them, and who kept hens, and who kept rabbits, and who looked after the pig that the whole street had shares in, and all helped to feed.
You’d think that her garden would get trashed or something, but it doesn’t – partly, I think, because her soldier grandsons visit quite often, and partly because Granny Thomas is not a person to mess with. She’s really kind, but she’s so direct as well.
When I do my homework there, I always get much higher marks for it, and understand it so much better too. Granny explains any bits I don’t understand, but she makes me think about it. She’ll ask why that’s the right answer, or how does that work, or what led up to that event. And she knows so much! I asked her if she’d been to university, and she laughed, and said no, she’d just used the brains God had given her, and when was I going to start using mine properly instead of being content to settle for second-best? And that you could learn anything you wanted from a book, so go and use my library card a bit more.
Even so, despite Granny Thomas’s encouragement, I think I would have just gone along with Harry and Sapphire’s ideas – leave at 16, get a job somewhere, and carry on as before, if I hadn’t been sent home from school that one day. I’d had awful stomach cramps, and had forgotten to take anything to school with me, so they sent me home. Sapphire was out, so I crawled into bed with a couple of painkillers and fell asleep. I didn’t hear Sapphire coming back, but the doorbell woke me up. Sapphire answered it, and I heard her gasp.“Brett!”
“The one and only. Give us a kiss, my dear.”
“No! I’m a respectable married woman now.”
“I remember you when you weren’t quite so respectable, my dear. How would you like your Harry to hear about those days.”I heard Sapphire gasp again.
“What do you want? You know I haven’t got anything.”
“Well. I’ve been watching you for a bit – I’m back in the country now – and I’m not so sure about that. You see, I’ve a mind to settle down now. And a man gets lonely on his own.”
She made a puzzled noise.
“That pretty little redhead who lives here – I like the look of her. I wouldn’t mind having her.”
“She’s only just fifteen years old! No way! I was never into that, and you know it!”
“Calm down, my dear. I can wait a little. I told you, I’ve a mind to turn respectable. Now, you help me to get her, or I’ll tell Harry about your past. Don’t worry – I actually want to marry the girl. After all, it’s like you’ve always said: a girl needs a man to look after her. And I’m making good money now.”There was a long pause, and I could hear Sapphire crying quietly.
“Well? Will you help me, or do I go to Harry?”
“You’ll have to smarten up a bit – as you are, you’ll scare her. And how do I introduce you to Harry?”
“We tell him the truth – I was a close friend of your brother’s, and I’ve called round, just to see how you are doing. I haven’t seen you since the funeral, but Jonny was very fond of you, and so I felt you had a claim on me. You know I can put a story over. Just play along, and you can keep your happy-ever-after ending with your Harry.”
And then he left. I lay as still as a mouse, hoping that Sapphire wouldn’t come into my room, but instead the door banged behind her a few moments later.
That night, as I did my homework, Sapphire was nervous and edgy. But I acted as though I didn’t notice anything. I mean, what could I say to her? At least fore-warned was fore-armed.
No comments:
Post a Comment