Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

Stand guard. No one was going to be there: it was Boxing Day. People were at home, watching films. I hadn’t even seen a dog walker. Guard – and I was the one stood on the edge of the woods, on my own, with that flasher roaming about in the bushes. If Barbara knew, she’d have a fit. She’d bought me a rape alarm and I’d stuffed it into the back of the kitchen junk drawer, but now I was thinking it would be a useful thing to have. I imagined creeping towards the car and setting it off, making the pair of them jump out of their skins. I sighed and turned around. I was going to signal to Chloe and get her to get Carl to take us home, or take me home at least.

Chloe was up on her knees. She was turning and climbing between the front seats. She tipped forward and fell into the back face-first. A few seconds later the driver’s side door opened. Carl got out, rubbing his mouth.

I turned my head away quickly in case he thought I was being a perv and spying, but he didn’t look at me. He slammed the door with such force that the car rocked. He got into the back with Chloe.

This is shit , I thought again, and turned my back on both of them. On the car, on Chloe’s new cashmere jumper. On Christmas, on the whole fucking year just gone. Fucking Carl, I thought, and walked slowly away from them around the edge of the car park where the earth turned into grass and undergrowth and hedge. I counted my steps, balanced as long as I could on one foot in the middle of a step and leaned so far forward I was falling and had to stamp my other foot down hard to keep my balance. I knew I looked stupid, like a baby, playing like that.

It didn’t matter. The car park, probably the whole reserve, was deserted anyway, and Carl wouldn’t have been looking at me. He never looked at me.

The man had come out from between the bushes. He’d edged sideways and cringed his face away from the dead brown brambles. The branches had sprung back after him and snagged at the sleeves of his jacket.

‘Oi,’ he said, but friendly. He was carrying a football, a brand new one, and there was a scratch on the back of his hand. It wasn’t deep but blood was beading in the groove and he hadn’t noticed. He came towards me, smiling, and made no move to open his coat or unzip his fly.

‘Oi, nothing.’ I wasn’t in the mood to be nice. ‘Oi, yourself.’

‘What you doing here?’ he said, as if he knew me.

I just looked at him. His voice sounded strange. Like he was deaf, or making fun of someone who was. Like he was a child. He didn’t look like a child though. Too big. Too old to be carrying a football. The kids had been out all morning; I’d seen them on the street. Carrying kites and trying new bikes, testing the ice-rink pavements with new rollerblades. But this boy, this man, must have been older than me. Carl’s age, even – which I’d guessed was twenty-three. He’d told us he was twenty-one.

I looked at his his hands again.

‘What are you doing here? Excuse me?’

He was loud. Irritated, but extremely polite. It was strange.

I was about to tell him to mind his own business, tell him to bugger off, when I realised what he was. One of those – I forgot the word, but I knew there was one.

Barbara called them angels and said they weren’t like real people. More like children, or animals. According to her, they can’t do right or wrong because they don’t have souls of their own, not in the same way normal people do. They aren’t accountable for their actions, like tiny children aren’t.

Mongs. That was it.

That’s what they were called at school. I’d spoken to one before – its parents brought it to church one Christmas. They kept it at home the rest of the time, but it wanted to see the nativity. It was all right. I thought it was all right.

‘I’m just waiting,’ I said, and shrugged. I decided to speak to him like he was a real person, and nodded at his football. ‘Did you get that for Christmas?’

‘Yah, got it for Christmas. Brand new. Best one available in the shops. To buy,’ he said, and smiled.

His teeth were funny. They weren’t disgusting or anything like that, there were just gaps between every single one. Made them look like baby teeth, even though they couldn’t have been, because he was taller than me and I didn’t have any baby teeth at all by then. Can’t even remember losing the last one.

He was wearing a good waterproof jacket – an expensive one – and a purple scarf knotted under his chin and tucked in underneath it. Someone had wrapped him up before letting him out to play with his new ball. There was someone looking after him. I imagined his mum, maybe the same age as Barbara, which is older than usual. Embarrassing.

That’s what happens when you let yourself get old before you have babies. I remembered it then, from Biology. I imagined wrinkled hands tying that scarf around his neck and tucking it in. Someone white-haired kissing him on the head before sending him out to play with his new ball. He probably got teased about how old his mum was, like I used to before I started knocking about with Chloe.

Actually, that would probably be the last thing he’d get teased about. Would be if his school was anything like mine was, anyway. Mongs go to school all together though, don’t they? So maybe he would. Except he couldn’t have been at school anymore, by then. I couldn’t work out how old he was, but I felt protective towards him.

‘Santa bring you anything good?’ he said, and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. His eyes were funny too. I should have known right away. All their eyes are like that. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, about Santa. He might have been smiling, but his face didn’t have the creases in the right place so I couldn’t tell. Even dogs sometimes look like they’re smiling.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Topshop vouchers. A few albums. You like listening to music?’

He didn’t answer me and I shook my head and turned away. I can’t believe, I thought, I can’t fucking believe I am standing out here in the freezing cold talking to a Mong about what Santa brought me. For fuck’s sake.

‘Ginger Spice!’ he said, and I realised he’d been struggling to remember. ‘I like her. I like her. I like her.’ He looked around, checking, I could tell, to see if anyone was listening.

‘Big titties.’

I laughed, but in a friendly way.

‘Yes, she has,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t talk like that.’

‘That girl in the car your friend?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ I said. There was no point asking him if he had any fags with him. He probably only got three quid a week pocket money or something. And spent it all on sherbet fountains and Monster In My Pocket .

‘I saw that girl’s titties.’

‘What girl?’

‘That girl in the car. White jumper. Saw her take it off. That her boyfriend?’

‘Carl’s not her boyfriend. Just a bloke.’

‘He was kissing her.’

‘Knobhead,’ I said, though I wasn’t surprised. I walked away from him, still talking, muttering under my breath.

‘I’ve got to hang about here in the cold until he’s finished with his jailbait. Don’t know what they expect me to do.’

I’d finished talking before I realised he’d come with me, trotting along just beside. I stopped and turned.

‘Look,’ I said, trying to sound adult and reasonable. ‘You shouldn’t be hanging around watching them. Sneaking about in the bushes. It’s pervy. Carl – that man in the car – he wouldn’t like it. He’d shout at you. You should go home. Aren’t you cold?’

He stopped just behind me. He held out his ball for me to take.

‘I’m not playing with you,’ I said loudly, hoping to scare him away, even though it was a bit tight. ‘Get on home, will you?’