Jenni Mills - Crow Stone

‘I think it’s pretty,’ I said nervously. There was a weeping Jesus on our living-room wall, and I couldn’t quite see how he fitted into a garden. Our Jesus had big, sad eyes and in the picture he was knocking on someone’s door. He reminded me of a Kleeneze brush salesman at the end of a long hard day. When I was younger I thought he was weeping because he knew he wouldn’t find my mother at home.

Trish’s wave took in the dribbling nymph, the constipated gnome and the oversexed snapdragons. ‘It’s naff ,’ she said. I still didn’t get the connection with Jesus.

Our house was silent and smelt of wet washing. It always did, regardless of the weather. Every time I let my friends in through the green front door, with its lozenge of cloudy glass, I was conscious of how cramped it was. Trish’s home in Midcombe was especially lovely, an old Georgian rectory looking out on to roses and open countryside. Poppy’s big modern house on the other side of Green Down was architect-designed, and sat in nearly an acre of immaculate lawns and terraces, kept private by tall pines.

My dad had concreted most of our tiny garden and drawn wavy lines on it before it set, to make it look like crazy paving.

My mother’s room was airless, warm and musty. I thought I could catch a whiff of perfume, as if she had spilt some on her way out ten years ago.

‘Put the binoculars here,’ said Trish, marching over to the window and taking charge as usual.

‘He’ll see them,’ protested Poppy.

‘Not if you draw the curtain a bit and poke them underneath.’ Trish was about to station herself behind the binoculars but Poppy shoved her out of the way.

‘They’re Daddy’s. I get first go.’ She knelt on the floor. ‘He’s not back yet. But I can see a Led Zeppelin poster on the wall.’ A strand of red hair had found its way into her mouth again, and she was chewing it rhythmically. ‘And there’s a guitar in the corner.’

‘Hold on,’ said Trish. ‘He’s coming down the street now.’

I could see his boss’s van pulling away at the top of the road. He walked easily, nonchalantly. I wondered if he was planning the evening ahead–a pub, with his mates, perhaps meeting a girl. We had never seen Gary with a girlfriend, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

He swung in through the front gate. Five long minutes crawled by. Perhaps his mum was making him a cup of tea, asking about his day.

‘Get on with it,’ muttered Poppy, through clenched teeth. Then, a moment later, she breathed, ‘Yes …’ Trish and I, huddled on the floor below the level of the window waiting our turn, wriggled in anticipation.

‘He’s in the room,’ reported Poppy. ‘I can see … he’s taking his T-shirt off.’ Silence. ‘Aaahh …’

‘ What can you see?’ asked Trish.

‘His glorious chest,’ said Poppy. ‘His lovely, lovely chest. Oh!’

‘Yes?’ we said in unison.

‘He’s got a little hairy triangle just at the top,’ said Poppy, sounding disappointed. ‘I’ve never noticed that before.’ We didn’t rate chest hair. ‘He’s gone now to get washed.’

‘Give someone else a chance,’ said Trish. ‘You’ve had your turn.’

‘Katie next,’ said Poppy. ‘My binoculars, her house.’

I slithered into place. Being shorter, I had to get up on the window-seat instead of kneeling, and then the angle of the binoculars seemed wrong. I was just moving them to get a better view when Gary returned to the window, towelling under his arms. Something seemed to catch his eye, and he opened the window wider. I focused the binoculars on his chest as best I could–it wasn’t very hairy–and then realized as I lifted them that he seemed to be staring straight at me. I gave a little squeak, and fell off the window-seat.

‘What? What did you see?’ hissed Trish.

‘His Y-fronts?’ speculated Poppy, dreamily.

But I didn’t have time to reply, because suddenly I could hear feet on the stairs. The bedroom door swung open, and there was my father.

I saw him take in the scene–three teenage girls, giggling and sprawled on the floor, in the bedroom he had once shared with his wife. There was a terrible silence that seemed to go on and on.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he said eventually, in a mild, calm voice. ‘Katie, you know I don’t like you coming in here.’

Trish and Poppy heard nothing in my father’s voice except quiet disappointment, but I heard something far more dangerous. They didn’t know my father as I did.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Carter,’ said Trish. ‘We … we were just messing about.’

My father appeared to take this in peacefully, as if resigned to the whims of teenage girls.

‘Well, you’d better let me run you home,’ he said. ‘And, Katie, you’d better go to your room and start your homework.’ So softly, so reasonably, that no one but I would have understood.

‘He whistled while he was driving us home,’ Trish told me, the following day. ‘He seemed … well, a bit remote, he didn’t speak to us or anything. But he didn’t seem angry.’ She didn’t know that whistling, through clenched teeth, was how my father signalled extreme fury. ‘I can’t believe … well, he didn’t act cross at all.’

When my father returned, he came straight upstairs to my room. I was sitting on the bed, trying to take in a chapter of my history textbook on the Corn Laws, though all the time I could think only of what my father’s feet would sound like on the stairs.

He was even faster than usual; I had no chance. He crossed to the bed, and dealt me one hard heavy blow to the side of my head. I was knocked backwards, shooting an arm out to save myself and making the briefest of contacts with his merciless right hand. I crashed against the framed photo of my mother on the bedside table. It fell to the floor, and the frame and glass shattered.

All my father said was ‘Pick that up.’ He was trembling. Then he left the room.

My head sang with pain. I lay back on the bed, breathing hard, feeling no surprise, only the usual hollowness. I waited till I felt less dizzy, then picked up the photo of my mother, shaking the smashed glass into the waste-paper bin and reminding myself not to walk barefoot until I had had a chance to Hoover properly. I placed the broken frame and the photo back on the bedside table, propping it against the lamp.

Some of the hollowness was hunger, but I didn’t dare go downstairs. My heart was still thudding, but I made myself finish the chapter of history and trace a map of the Somerset coalfield for geography homework before I got into bed. It was still light outside, and for a while I lay awake, listening to the sound of the hi-fi downstairs playing Bobby Darin and Roy Orbison. It was my fault, of course. I shouldn’t have let Trish and Poppy come back.

But I also kept remembering Gary Bennett’s face. I thought his eyes had met mine, through the binoculars. I was sure he had winked.

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