Natalie Lucas - Sixteen, Sixty-One

Then came the green candle.

On 4th November, I received the lyrics to a Leonard Cohen song via email. The first line was blown up in bigger font and some words made bold:

I lit a thin green candleto make you jealous of me.

Attached was an extract from Matthew’s diary:

November 2000

So, old man, what are you going to do?

About what? And who are you calling old? I thought we were only as young as we feel.

Fool. I suppose you’re telling me she’s the elixir of life?

Natalie? Yes, she might be.

So, what will you do?

I can’t hurry her. Her beauty and charm is in her innocence – she needs to find her own way.

But what about you? What about your needs?

My needs are less important than hers.

Less important, perhaps, but no less pressing. Every man has needs; it’s foolish to deny them.

Yes, yes, we’ve been down this path before. I know I must do something.

So?

Well, Suzie keeps pestering me.

The PhD student who snaps at you if you bring her flowers and doesn’t care if you don’t call? Sounds perfect.

Yes, and she tells me she’s spent the past six months in the gym.

But..

But every time I see her she tells me she wants my child.

Yikes .

Indeed. She says I won’t have to be involved, but I’m not so sure.

You think she’s tricking you?

Not deliberately, but women are irrational, they change their minds, especially when children are involved. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.

So, what’s the alternative?

Becky’s eager.

The one with the nice bum?

Yes, you perv, the one with the nice bum. But she’s not much older than Natalie. Eighteen, and nowhere near as mature.

Could be fun, though.

Yes, perhaps.

But..

But my heart’s not in it, I suppose. Even though I know I need something and Natalie’s talking about experimenting with some boy from school..

Wait! You’re talking about living like a monk while she goes around with spotty teenagers? You’re even more of a fool than I thought.

Perhaps. A fool for love?

Pah. It doesn’t seem fair at all.

No, but she’s a child, I can’t expect her to understand. I can’t make demands on her.

And what’s this email about? Are you lighting a green candle?

No, maybe, no. No, I just want her to know how I feel. Perhaps I won’t even send it.

And if you do?

Nothing. Then she’ll know I’ve chosen what I have with her over anything I could have with the others.

How very noble.

Don’t be so sarcastic. I mean it. I love her. It’s real. For the first time in my measly, ancient life, it’s real.

A bubble began to rise in my stomach as I read. Suzie and Becky. Who were they? Why should I care? Matthew said he was not lighting a green candle, but still sent me the lyrics to the song. What could that mean? The basement room where I was reading was lit only by the light of the screen and I imagined myself engulfed by a turquoise flame. I pounded up the stairs to my bedroom and scrabbled beneath my mattress for my diary.

After an hour sprawled on my bed with a biro in my hand and tears in my lashes, I paced back down to the computer, praying my brother hadn’t gone to play his stupid Age of Empires game and read the email I’d left open on the screen. Happily I passed the living-room door and saw James cross-legged in front of the PlayStation instead.

Back at the keyboard, I hesitated. As much as my fingers tingled to reply ‘No, don’t! I’m here and, yes, I’ll be an Uncle,’ my throat longed to scream that this was unfair, that I was being handled and manipulated and an Uncle wouldn’t do such a thing.

My fingers won.

From: Natalie Lucas

To: Matthew Wright

Sent: 4 November 2000, 22:42:03

Subject: RE: One of Us Cannot Be Wrong

The flame is burning moss. I have an in-service training day a week on Wednesday – can we find a Bunbury?

Later, in my room, I doodled in my notebook:

Am I condemned to be

Number sixty-four?

Will you tell your next girl

This one was a bore?

That innocent little kitten

You deflowered so well;

My young naive mind,

To the devil did I sell?

Will you tell of the chase?

The thrill of the game

That finally won me …

To discover I’m too tame?

Not like Suzie,

She was fun.

Not like Becky,

With the ‘nice bum’.

Is it worth it?

Will I disappoint?

Will you regret the effort?

Will I score a point?

At approximately 3pm on 15th November 2000, in room 107 of The Swan Hotel in Swindon, I lost my virginity. I’d been wearing three-inch heels and an oversized suit-jacket, too much make-up for a teenager and black cotton knickers bought in a pack of five from BHS by my mum. I’d known Matthew had booked a hotel room and I’d lied to my mother about going to the cinema with a friend, but I still padded to the bathroom, self-conscious about my nakedness, and looked in the mirror with surprise. As I peed, I wondered what I had thought usually happened when a sixth-former allowed a sexagenarian to spend £150 on a plush suite that would only be used for an afternoon. Had I thought we would simply continue what we had been doing in his top room? Had I imagined his hands and mouth would always work eagerly to please me without his belt-buckle ever budging? Had I believed we could stay in the no-man’s-land of technically doing nothing wrong? Had I hoped the past few months contained mere digressions that I could take or leave when the mood struck and walk away with my purity intact?

Perhaps I had. It wasn’t as if my bookshelves, teachers or friends could provide a precedent; it wasn’t as if there were any rules. But I’d responded to his green candle, hadn’t I? I wasn’t totally naive: I’d known what he’d wanted. But I hadn’t thought about this while clipping my bra and brushing my teeth this morning. I hadn’t said goodbye to my mum thinking that the next time I saw her I’d be, what, a woman ? I’d thought of my Bunbury: I’d concentrated on not overlabouring my lies but making them seem natural. I’d wondered how easy it was going to be to walk nonchalantly towards the bus stop, then dart off onto North Street and slip unobserved into Matthew’s waiting passenger seat. I’d deliberated over whether to hide my heels in my handbag and change into them while crouched in his car, or to risk my mother’s disapproving comments about unsuitable footwear for the cinema and just leave the house in them anyway. But I hadn’t thought about what it would be like to be in a hotel room with Matthew, about his penis actually sliding inside me, about his body on top of mine, about whether it would hurt or whether I might have forgotten my pill even though I hadn’t once since I’d been put on it for period pains in Year 10, about all that advice in sex education classes to use condoms even if you’re taking contraceptives because you’re not protected from STIs that make your pussy resemble an erupting volcano. With the innocence of a teenager who has spent countless Maths classes giggling with friends and ex-best-friends over code-words for body parts and rumours that the girl at the back puts out for the price of a chocolate bar, I hadn’t thought we’d actually do it .