Dave and I and Mrs Dave, a most unholy trinity, stood awkwardly on our front doorstep. I longed to run out the front gate and down the path through the wheat fields to the river. Dave shoved his hands deep into his jean pockets. I didn’t dare catch his eye. This was a serious moment and all I wanted to do was laugh. What was wrong with me? My whole body was trembling with suppressed laughter.
My mother was asking Mrs Dave to come in but Dave’s mother was too upset. She stood on our doorstep hardly able to look at me. She spoke to me from one corner of her mouth. ‘I thought better of you, young lady, brought up in a Christian way. You should be ashamed of yourself. Behaving like that. You knew what you were doing was wrong.’ Mrs Dave swung round and fixed her angry eyes on me and then Dave. ‘You too.’
She had to apportion some blame to her darling boy but it was my fault, I knew that, she blamed me for leading her boy on into the dark. Over the line. The terrible uncrossable line. He nodded. I nodded. She was right. How could I behave like that? Why did the wrong thing feel so right? I could feel the badness bursting in my veins, whispering in my head.
Do it. Be bad. It’s better for you. Jane, Jane, we’ll be like Mr Rochester, we’ll keep our secrets in the empty rooms.
She turned to Dave and said, ‘I’ve brought you up better than that, David.’ That was the only time I ever heard Mrs Dave call her son David.
‘Look, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry if I’ve, if we’ve, upset you, but, but . . .’ He trailed off. I was tempted to finish his sentence for him.
‘. . . we didn’t even open the packet before you came home. But this is it—we’re in love love love and, sooner or later, we’re crossing the line.’
Dave said nothing, he’d run out of words. I said nothing and stood there half dead with embarrassment. The idea of a hot-air balloon floated into my mind, with me sitting in one corner of the basket and Dave in the other and the balloon racing into the sky.
The front step of the vicarage looked like it was melting into the ground. I wondered which direction I should run in. My father was out. He hadn’t yet heard. My mother was pale, twisting a tea towel round and round in her hands. She looked like she going to strangle me with it. She sent me to my room. ‘We’ll deal with you later, young lady.’
Mrs Dave turned to her son and pointed at him. ‘You, home,’ said Mrs Dave, staring at Dave.
‘Please, won’t you have a cup of tea with me?’ said Mum to Mrs Dave.
‘I don’t think so but thanks anyway. It’s past teatime now.’ She sighed heavily. Teatimes would never be the same again.
‘Mrs Budde, I’m really sorry, I just wanted to say that this will never happen again.’
‘Thank you, Dave, we’ll talk later when Rebecca’s father is home.’
Dave headed down the front path to the gate. He glanced back at me before he turned the corner. Flames danced and crackled between us. Good luck to anyone who tried to put them out.
The next day my father summoned me and Dave for a meeting in his study. Dave hardly looked at me. My mother had put the tea towel down by now but my father was the living breathing line and I was Daughter of the Line. I was longing for that balloon again. Sorry, Dad! Jesus wants me for a sunbeam. I have to leave now.
When you’re a teenager there are certain words you never want to hear your parents say to you, anatomically correct words. Even though you knew that those were the correct words and there was nothing, I repeat nothing, to be ashamed of, you never wanted to be in the same room with one or both of your parents when those actual words were bandied through the air.
It was like your Aunty Sheila at the ripe old age of sixty-three suddenly lifting her thick woollen jumper and flashing her tits at you. Or hideous Uncle Eric, lingering just a little longer as he kissed you goodbye, his old dry lips staying a fraction longer than necessary on your sweet mouth, his old dry hand pressed against the small of your back. It was disgusting. You just didn’t want to know.
There we stood, on the study carpet, cringing with embarrassment, listening to phrases of gravity and responsibility which I clearly wasn’t ready to hear. Dave took it like the man that he was. He listened to my father. Knowing when to stop. When things had gone far enough. No one wants to see anyone get hurt. You can have all the fun you like, but also clearly you can’t. My father sharpened his harpoon and drew the line at Dave’s feet. Here is where you may go and no further.
‘Rebecca, do I make myself clear? You are fifteen years old. You will do as we say.’
‘I’m sixteen in two and a half weeks.’
‘That makes no difference to anything. Please respect the things we’ve said. They’re for your own good.’
I stopped listening and tried to bite the insides of my cheeks. ‘Should know better . . . after all we have talked about with you . . . you won’t be seeing each other until you cool off . . .’
My father shook Dave’s hand. Dave’s whole body poured itself into that handshake. He absolutely knew where the line was now. Dave and I left my father’s study, both of us shrunk to the size of walnuts when once we had been lusty, living, green-tipped trees.
That night I lay face down on my bed. Maggie lay beside me, casually flicking through the glossy pages of Vogue.
‘What an idiot you are,’ she said.
Dad’s words were still thrumming through my ears.
Maggie picked up Old Ted, my one-eyed teddy bear that still sat on my bed half dressed in an old holey cardigan.
Old Ted dipped his head and spoke to me in a sombre voice. ‘Fancy getting caught, Abraham Budde. What if you’d got pregnant?’
‘We didn’t get that far.’
‘No, but you might have.’
‘Dave had a condom.’
‘Abes, you’ve got to be a lot cleverer than that.’
I grabbed Old Ted from Maggie. ‘You’ll help me, Ted, won’t you?’
‘’Course I will,’ said Old Ted, nodding wisely to me, his one remaining eye threatening to wobble completely out of his head.