THIS GIRL, JAN DODDS –

put upon then shat upon all Thursday from morning bell. Even by Alice. Gormless Alice. Who Jan had maimed for robbed for took the rap for. But by ten to ten that night Jan had acquired a throbbing blackeye and a bellyful of lads and arrived finally at Mr Somerville’s bedsit, exultant, having cadged her way to Gatley from Civic, after spurning his offer to pick her up after school, by the new Kwik Save, once she’d gone home and changed. She’d told him, for Alice’s sake: Not tonight, while corkscrewing his ear behind the science mobiles. On patrol with his borrowed PE whistle lassoed over his blue serge suit, freshly drycleaned because of Jan. There to flush out the smokers who flushed save Jan –

exhaling smoke well after his whistle blow. She had a taste of him, but then knocked him back. See, Alice was lovesick and bad with it. Worse than she’d thought.

When first bell pealed Alice threw up with longing. Jan bent in the bogstall, stroking the pills of her Poundswick jumper since Alice had no hair to hold back. The walls gloried Jan in Magic Marker with exploits and diagrams, taunts and vows over nabbed conquests. Even the ones claiming she’d been up the duff couldn’t puncture her pride. That Sharon, in their year, was her only competition.

‘. . .but Jan. . . I love him. . .’ – Alice, spewing colourful breakfast, suicidal over that no-mark lad from next door who she’d just seen in the corridor before registration. Jan never noticed. Too busy noticing Mr Somerville. Twenty-five he was and subbing English for Mrs Baxdale while that fat hen fucked off on maternity. Miss could’ve been carrying triplets year-round, though appeared to Jan physically unshaggable: her double-decker arse required a special chair too wide to tuck under her desk. Jan had once placed a single rusty tack before Miss came clucking into the classroom after a gravy dinner, apparent on a blossom-pink crochet cardi which wouldn’t button. Sitting convent-straight and prim behind her back-row desk, Jan said: ‘Enjoy your dinner for two today, Miss?’ The bitch ignored her to note the tense frequency of the room’s hush. Instead of sitting she stared down the classroom, past Jan, to the wall, slack-gobbed, and saw the top left corner of the bleached atlas curl, a tack missing. Jan watched it curl with her until Miss, lurching to Jan’s desk, struck Jan straight across her face which only made Jan laugh with the shock of it, royally impressed. The longer Miss stood there the wilder grew the class’s amazement. Oohs and ahhs. Lads drumming their desks. Miss fled the classroom defeated; her arse unpricked but knocking pens and exercise books to the floor on its way out. No letter home came. Not even another EWO about Jan’s truanting. For a night or two she almost worried. But Mr Somerville arrived at Poundswick the following week to replace Mrs Baxdale and improve Jan’s attendance.

 

All that day Alice adrift. Agonising over her own daft shyness – losing her breakfast, tears, shop money to the same toilet bowl, like it was some foul wishing well. Alice was behind the science mobiles at break – not answering Jan’s smutty stage-whispers about a new member of their nicotine club who’d joined uninvited and offered Alice his red lighter. He was a marcid beanpole of a lad from the year below; and Alice seemed to see him, but Jan couldn’t be sure even when those kohled eyes fell on the Zippo he pushed under her nose. He was more of a looker than that no-mark she was after, but it made no difference. Jan saw he feared gentle Alice: all chest and piercings; crimped knots gone to a laddish grade four. He scarpered like the others when Somerville showed up again with his whistle. Alice too. Jan kept a scoop of Somerville’s honeyed earwax under her tongue and was still chewing it when she found Alice shaking in the corridor alone, and then chased her into the bogs. After seeing what Alice saw: by the pigeonholes, courting looks –

the no-mark lad Alice was mad for, stitched at the gob with that Sharon.

‘Fuck you gawping at, slag?’ That Sharon, lips agleam.

Jan had nutted front teeth grey, had scalped ponytails for their scrunchies and slit earlobes by plucking out hoops. But Jan stayed stone-quiet in the corridor and let herself be out-stared. In the bogs she coaxed her way into Alice’s stinking cubicle and coaxed her back out. At dinnerhour they skipped dinner but stayed on school grounds because Alice was scared of seeing them at the shops. And so Jan taxed a Marathon bar off a first-year Billy No-Mates roaming the playground borders. Ta. His voice broke swearing at her. By the time she’d teethed open the wrapper and bit into the bar he sounded two-foot taller. His manhood he owed Jan, like the rest. But Jan’s day was thankless. She wanted to go halves with Alice on the Marathon even though it was her first meal of the day – and so saved the rest, tucking it in Alice’s satchel, from which it would fall out, later, under the changing-room bench, alongside green coppers and loose tampons and broken hairbrushes. They had netball last thing. In the emptying changing room Jan waited for Alice to find her kit. Poor Alice, moving like a pissed snail. Days-old Ringo crumbs freckled her outgrown bra. Stooping and pouting in odd socks and hockey pleats she looked ridiculous, like a pinup in mourning. The underwire had given her a weird rash. Spokes of kohl ran to her nose. Miss jogged back into the changing room to hurry them out:

‘You won’t lose weight gabbing, girls. Get out there or you’ll make the time after the bloody bell and I mean it. And Willows, take out those teardrop earrings. Leave them all on me desk in the office for your mam to come collect next week.’

Alice benched herself half-changed and wept. Jan held her fiercely, too mithered to gloat up at Miss. Just tending to Alice as she had done all day.

‘Dodds. Jan.’

She looked up at last.

‘What’s the matter with Willows?’

‘She best go home, Miss.’

Miss looked at Jan like she’d just pulled a knife.

 

When school let out, Jan walked to Civic to blow a pinched quid in the Oxfam – swapping price stickers till she left with an oxblood scarf and a 7-inch of ‘Playground Twist’.

Susie-Ann was skipping between the odd slanted poles holding up the big Co-op entrance, her cheeks domed with sweets. Some game. There were smaller kids in unforms waiting their turn. Knowing Susie would freeze at the sight of her, Jan charged, slapped her first and the girl went flying, spitting sweets. She picked herself up, vibrating. Trying so hard not to cry.

‘Bet you had me dinner today,’ Jan said.

The girl stood her ground. ‘Ay, Missus Dodds says your mam’s got a boyfriend.’

‘A boyfriend? Me mam?’

‘Your uncle Mac.’

‘Who the fuck’s that?’

‘He come today seeing your Kelly and now he’s gunna marry your mam.’

Jan dressed the scarf round Susie-Ann’s throat. ‘You mean he wants to take her out.’

‘Yeah. For her tea.’

‘When?’

‘Dunno. Your mam said no.’

Jan groaned, and snatched the scarf.

She didn’t go home with Susie-Ann to eat and change but went straight to Alice’s. Bev answered the door holding Alice’s denim jacket bundled and nesting a little tin of needle and thread.

‘Ee-ah, girl. Giz a cuddle.’

‘If you give us a fag.’

Bev laughed her giant laugh and swallowed her into a short slushy frock covered in little daisy print. It was new to Jan but the cotton worn thin, the daisy yellows faint, and it clung to her flab like the old shifts Jan’s mam always wore of a night, though Bev was twice her mam’s size. Bev called her own thighs her skullcrushers. She smelled cidery and lotioned. Sometimes Jan wished Bev were her mam. That it was her denim jacket on which Bev was stitching shite band patches, with its Bully-chewed collar mended.

‘Been shopping, have you?’

‘She upstairs?’

Bev had a quick glance round, checking the landing. A heaped ashtray smoked on the phone table. Then with a chuffed nod she shut the door and brought Jan into the cramped hall.

Mouthing at her: ‘Have a guess who’s up there with my little girl?’

‘. . .’

Alice’s jacket, better than new. ‘I’ve got our Bully in there with them, making sure they don’t get up to owt they shouldn’t. S’alright. Go on up.’

‘. . .’

‘Don’t worry. They’ll be decent. S’only next door’s lad. He’s a keeper.’ Bev laughed big and shuffled to the foot of the stairs. ‘Alice, love! It’s Jan!’

While Jan put the scarf and the single on the phone table and left.

She sprinted down the entry and boosted the Willows’ back fence to lob a milk bottle over it. Aiming for Alice’s bedroom she missed and rattled the guttering. Shattered glass rained on the slabs, playing notes. Decent music for once. Alice opened her window. Jan ducked and ran off.

 

On a wooded mound in a shaded cranny of Wythenshawe Park floored with bluebells and silverweed she had three blond brothers from St Paul’s RC, and their mate, fatter and ununiformed, who answered to Paki Jon and worked, so he said, on the indoor market flogging Betamax with his uncle, though Jan had never seen him before. He’d given her two fags when she’d asked for one; she chained them. His Sergio Tacchini was missing buttons and he stood the same height as her, same age about, but said he was seventeen which made her laugh. In the shade these four lads watched each other and timed each other by Jon’s Casio watch. Jan used both hands. Jan used her gob twice to shorten the odds. While kneeling inside their circle she heard a football being smacked across the park; a Mr Whippy’s jingle start and fade.

Inside this circle she was wanted; they were dead easy to amaze. She felt the oldest, the cleverest. They began talking at once and didn’t mind her talking back. Then afterwards they went shy again and the circle broke and they looked away. But Jan rescued them and soon had them pissing about and wanting her again. The three losers clubbed together and bought her saveloy and chips, biking her to Wendover Road for it, on the overgrown side of Baguley Brook.

Jan ate with them at the park gate, the blond brothers doing wheelies for her; sunset trees purpled behind them, the air dandelioned and heavy-sweet. She had a right laugh till she mithered them for another ciggie and one of the brothers threw a chip at her instead. When she lobbed one back, Jon spat on her and she spat too and he pushed her and she tore her Poundswick jumper on the top of the gate rail. They rode off leaving her with the thrown chips and News of the World tumbleweeds on the pavement lit.

 

From there Jan trudged back to Civic. Went right up to Tony Kinsella, who stood smoking dope against a ruby car beneath Violet Court, blasting Piccadilly Radio, surrounded by rum lads she’d had. That evening they smelled like animals. Whiffier than the St Paul’s lot. They reshaped around her. Clocking Tony’s older cousin Cid was there, Jan grinned hard at Tony: ‘Can I cadge a lift off you in this then, or what?’ Her palm, to be seen, slipping down his keks. He eyed Cid to smoke, then she brought his smoke into her mouth.

*

Jan cracked her window to let her hair fly. ‘This car robbed?’

‘Nah. It’s our Cid’s.’

‘Ay, he’s doing well. Looks brand new.’

While he drove, she tucked a greasy strand behind a cauliflower ear before he ticked her hand away. Tony’s widow’s peak was so low it joined his brow. He looked like Felix the Cat.

‘It’s next left here,’ she said. ‘Ta. You’re dead good.’

Stub fingers wrenched the gearstick; joint ash bloomed like a sparkler and dusted their thighs. ‘So who you visiting round here, then?’

‘Me nana.’

‘Thought she lived w’you?’

‘I’m kidding. It’s me new feller. He’s coloured, you know.’

‘He the daddy then is he?’

‘Here’ll do.’ She rolled up her window.

He dibbed his joint in the ashtray. ‘Bet it was ugly what came out that fanny.’

‘Oi, at least he could find me fanny.’ Jan knew better but was glad to have said it, as he pulled into the leafy silent street. Tony braked so sharp she tagged her eyebrow on the dashboard. They bounced up the kerb; the engine cut. His seatbelt buckle whacked her funnybone. He waited. Sat and sucked air. Jan held her stinging eye while her curses grew into laughter. Tony stammered summat, shaking, but laughter took her and tightened her body until her own words couldn’t fly: ‘I’m gunna. . . piss meself. . . Honest, Tone. . . I think I’ve—’ Then, on the backseat, he continued what he’d begun that cold February. A cartoon cat’s face above her. Her laughter mad. She listened to herself, spinning, trying to watch him through her good eye. Saw herself thrashing under him in the cramped space, turning until she could smush her running nose and mouth into the seat joins – till his weight left her and he panted: ‘Jan Dodds, you’re a mad bint.’ He kept her spinning. A numb bliss she felt without flesh without sensation: the freedom to leave her body and see it take, and take from, these lads, gifting her the power to age and crown and kin them. Jan Dodds of Woodhouse Park, Wythie: winged above them all, seeing what was what and what was not.

Jan climbed back into her body –

made no noise now except for the floss of his hair stuck between her teeth. Her flooded eye stung shut. The other watched him hunched, panting and zipping.

‘When’s your Kelly getting out?’ Tony said.

‘Yesterday,’ she said.

He coughed.

‘Wait’ll he sees what you done to me face,’ she said. ‘Driving like that. ‘And you’ve got me new feller to worry about.’

Tony helped her out the car, kissed her, then tore off.

Left her to finish dressing on the warm moony street with full trees and ten or so houses old and new cut up into bedsits. She skipped up the steps to the entrance console and poked the buttons until somebody buzzed her in.

 

Jan wandered unsupervised with the milky brew he’d made her in his teacher’s mug. A navy towel for her on the bed. Pale curtains sealed, the big light blown, a reading lamp on his desk spotting a pile of bottle-green exercise books to be marked. She counted the stapled spines: just hers missing. Behind her, gold light leaked from the bathroom with soothing thunder. Blasting taps to cocoon her, keep out the slights, the wrongs, the backstabbers; wash off the whole day. Her head already good as empty. Only her blackeye talked. (Somerville had said nowt yet, just winced.) For her to be welcomed and have him ask of her so little, before brewing up, just for her, and remembering how she took it; then running her a bath. . .

She heard him in the bathroom while she rooted in his cupboards and drawers, flipped through tatty paperbacks for any photos he kept in them; sniffing his laundry pile, checking the brands he wore and contents of his fridge: Findus Lean Cuisine. Takeaway cartons. Lamb steaks going off. Meals for one. But on the bedtable was a painted fruit bowl which since her last week’s visit he’d turned into an ashtray. Elsewhere other things which weren’t his. A useless vase too short and thin for flowers. Last time Jan found two snaps in his wallet, fished out of a puddle of clothes while he slept. He wasn’t married; Jan knew that. She was older than him: thirty-odd, wore red lippy and thick round specs. Bronze cheeks, bronze perm. He wouldn’t say her name or why she had left but her stink was still on his pillowcase, in the pits of his shirts.

Jan finished the brew, picked up the daft vase and used it to putt the stack of exercise books. They fanned neatly across his desk where she left his mug. She carried the vase to his bedtable and dropped it trying to set it down. The carpet saved it and she footed it under the bed. Jan found a blue pair of knickers. She sneezed whipping the dust off them and again giving them a sniff. Tony had finished off the elastic in her own. She shed them and left them under his bed, ready to go home wearing these instead. But re-hid them for now and went in the bathroom, towelled, just as the taps went off.

‘Try that,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t be too hot.’

‘I want it too hot.’

They were both squinting under the bare bulb. ‘Right. In you get.’ He nudged the bath mat neat with his foot. She stepped on it and curtsied. Proud to be alone with him but a bit afraid. Not of him, and not of her saying or doing summat to ruin it, which she no doubt would, but afraid of the quiet. He held her towel waist to pass her as he went out.

Jan stayed on the mat – cinching the navy towel with both hands and glancing from the shut door to her mad reflection in the cabinet mirror and back again. He returned with a bag of frozen veg for her eye. And a torn box of tealights; a lighter between his teeth.

She got into the bath finally, shy almost – soaking while he placed candles along the lip of the tub and lit them. Then he switched off the gold bulb and sat on the toilet seat in the flickering gloom. They watched each other. Candles scrolled water shadows up the tiles to the low ceiling.

‘That better?’

Jan nodded, speechless.

He held the iced bag on her face for a minute, wincing again, till it burned her eye open.

She’d gone to him knowing he wouldn’t ask. He expected her to show up with blackeyes or blue knuckles or scrap-torn clothes. She knew she didn’t need to explain it to him since to him and those like him it explained her. She was far beyond her reputation now and living up to his idea of her, which pre-existed her and his interest.

‘I know I can’t stay,’ she said.

‘I know you know.’

‘Can I kip here an hour? One hour. Promise.’ Jan soaped herself unselfconsciously. ‘Didn’t sleep last night. See, our Kelly’s back – you know, me brother? He come home from Strangeways and he’s took me bed.’

‘What’s wrong with his?’

‘Mam sold it, didn’t she? Pawned everything in his room.’

‘Does she work, your mother?’

‘Not now. Used to be at the Mr Kipling factory.’

‘But she had to give her notice?’

‘Got any shampoo?’

‘And then there’s your nana, who’s a childminder?’ He had a bottle out the cabinet and she approved the label because it was his, not because she knew it. Then he squirted a cold dollop straight onto her crown and rubbed it in and she couldn’t stop grinning. ‘So your Kelly has to be the new breadwinner, does he?’

‘He’s a man now. Only three years younger than you.’

‘Where does he think you are – right now?’

‘He don’t care. None of them bother with me. Nana says I’m just a tabby what comes and goes.’

‘You not close to your mother?’

‘She’s not said two words to us this week. But she can be like that, me mam. She lives in her head.’

‘She pretty?’

‘Who? Me mam? Got a face on her like a smacked arse. I’m telling you. And she’s going fat. She wasn’t bad when she was younger, though.’

He swirled his hands in the bathwater to rinse them, then stood and raised the bog lid to piss. Jan kept his shampoo out of her eye.

She said: ‘Oi, why can’t blokes ever make it go straight?’

‘We’re all deviants.’

‘Deviants! I know what that means. Just don’t ask us to spell it.’

‘Jan, you’re not thick.’

‘Words are worse than sums. Once you know how to read that should be it. They shouldn’t give you books.’

‘Have you ever read a whole book, Jan?’

‘Kelly used to. When he was younger. Used to read them me.’

‘If I give you a book will you read it?’

‘You give us enough homework.’

‘Since when do you do your homework? Do you have anywhere at home to read? Somewhere you can get a bit of peace for half hour?’

‘No. I’d have to come here.’

He kissed her, with slow heat. Sleeve-rolled arms and cleft chin on the lip of the tub with the tealight flames. It seemed like he was rehearsing his next words and when he finally spoke them his voice changed: ‘Jan, who knows about this?’

She tried kissing him the way he’d kissed her but his mouth wouldn’t give.

‘Have you told Alice Willows?’ he said.

‘Don’t say that name. She’s dead to me that girl.’

‘What about Kelly?’

‘Look, are you getting in here with us or what? It’s going cold.’

He put his specs on the cistern.

He climbed over her and got in dressed and hugged her slipperiness. Shot waves up the side of the tub drenching his mat and snuffing the tealights.

Jan shrieked with happiness, rolling with his body in dark water after her day of ungrateful giving: to be carried to his bed for an hour’s kip before he drove her some of the way home.