Graham Swift - England and Other Stories

But there it was, and he knew it was hers because it was a plastic imitation leopard-skin. How could anyone forget such a bag?

He never would.

So he’d got off at Thorpe Avenue, his stop, carrying two bags. Then everything had happened. It was all a gift. It was a gift that she’d left her bag. It was a gift that he’d been sitting on his own on the bus and not sitting with handy-Andy here. He hadn’t known, yet, what kind of gift.

He could still see himself walking down Thorpe Avenue, coming to a decision, with two bags, one a somewhat embarrassing pretend leopard-skin. He could still see the October sun coming out from behind the clouds and smiling at him.

The proper thing would have been to phone Karen up and say, ‘I’ve got your bag. I can bring it round if you like.’ It would have earned him points and might have led to something. But it was just a bit too goody-goody and he didn’t have her number. Though that might be in the bag. As might her phone !

Or: he might have taken the bag with him to school the next morning and said coolly, ‘Here’s your bag.’ And then perhaps said, ‘I had a good look inside.’ He decided that this option had less going for it.

Though he did look inside, right there in Thorpe Avenue. Or rather he opened the flap and saw a label underneath saying ‘Karen Shield, Holmgate School’. Then her home address. Well he’d known it was Derwent Road, on the Braithwaite Estate, and now he knew the number. But something about the label made him not delve any further. An odd primness came over him. It was like the label for some little girl much younger than and quite different from Karen Shield, and he didn’t want to know about her.

His feet made the decision for him anyway. He turned and walked in the direction of the Braithwaite Estate. Two stops on the bus, but not so far on foot if you cut through the back streets.

Points from Karen, he calculated, and points from her mother, if she was there. If Karen’s mother was there, then Karen couldn’t be anything but nice and grateful to him, her mother would ensure it. But perhaps he was only thinking of Karen’s mother being there to control his excitement about the possibility he really hoped for, of Karen being there all by herself, worrying about the bag she must have stupidly left on the bus.

He rang the bell at number fifteen and, after a pause, Karen’s mother stood before him, blinking at him. Perhaps his disappointment was written on his face. But he had to go ahead.

‘Mrs Shield? I’ve got Karen’s bag.’ He held it up like a piece of evidence. ‘She left it on the bus.’

He noticed how she blinked and he noticed her red fingernails on the edge of the half-opened door. She stopped blinking and looked at him sternly.

‘Who are you?’ she said slowly, as if she might have just woken up.

‘I’m a friend of Karen’s. At Holmgate. Is Karen here?’

He’d peered in, towards a tiny hallway and the foot of a staircase. There was no sign or sound of anyone else.

But Karen’s mother was undoubtedly Karen’s mother. She was like a bigger version of Karen. She was wearing a smoky-coloured dress of a close-fitting but fluffy material. It went somehow with the red nails. The dress wasn’t very long, and what he mostly noticed, as he tried to look beyond her, was her hip. As she stood holding the door one hip was hidden, but the other was pushed out. It was oddly alert. The idea of a hip, even the word hip, seemed new to him. Strangely, it had never entered his mind when he thought of Karen.

‘She’s not here,’ Mrs Shield said, still looking at him sternly. ‘Karen’s not here.’ She said it so deliberately it almost sounded like a lie, but he felt sure himself now that Mrs Shield was alone.

Karen had got off the bus less than half an hour ago, to go home. It was a mystery. And he was somehow now under suspicion, for his good deed.

‘She goes round to Cheryl Hudson’s most afternoons before she comes home,’ Mrs Shield said. ‘God knows what they do there.’

She looked at him as if this were something he should have known already, as if he should have gone himself to Cheryl Hudson’s. (What went on there?) He felt put on the spot. It was like being called out to the front by a teacher. But Mrs Shield didn’t look like a teacher. And, though she was Karen’s mother, she didn’t really look like a mother.

‘Have you got a name?’

‘Sean.’

‘Sean who?’

‘Sean Wheatley.’

‘And that’s Karen’s bag?’

It seemed a strange question, and even before he could answer she said, ‘I can see it’s Karen’s bag.’

She looked at him searchingly. Her hands were still holding or rather fingering the edge of the door.

‘Tell me something, Sean Wheatley. Did you come round here now to hand over Karen’s bag, or did you come round here because you were really hoping to see Karen?’

It was a big question and he knew there was no ducking it. He knew that Mrs Shield would have spotted a false answer better than any teacher.

‘Both, Mrs Shield. Mainly to see Karen.’

She looked at him again for a long while.

‘Well, you’d better come in and wait for her.’

This was confusing. If Karen was round at Cheryl Hudson’s, then how long was he going to have to wait? Did he want to wait? But he also somehow knew that just to have handed over the bag and left would have been a big mistake.

She shut the door behind him. There was the vague smell of what he thought of as ‘other people’s house’. It was different in every house and you could never work out exactly what it was made of. Part of it must be Mrs Shield. Part of it must be Karen.

But, now the door was shut, Karen seemed suddenly far away, even though he was for the first time inside her home and he was holding her leopard-skin bag.

‘Through here,’ Mrs Shield said.

There was a small cluttered living room, like any living room, with a glass coffee table. He knew that quite often in other people’s houses (sometimes in his own) there’d be a bottle of something, opened, on the coffee table, even in the afternoon. But he couldn’t see any bottle. The telly was on with the sound down. She must have turned it down when she answered the door. The picture on the telly was weak because of the sunshine now streaming through the window. Outside, the clouds had completely dispersed.

He stood by the coffee table, politeness enveloping him, along with dazzling sunshine. He knew that you weren’t supposed to sit in other people’s houses till they asked you to.

‘So, Sean—’ she said, taking a breath. Then she stopped. ‘God, it’s blinding in here, isn’t it?’

She turned. It was the first time she’d moved suddenly and spontaneously, almost girlishly. She drew the curtains. They were a pale yellow and still let through a buttery glow. To close them, she put one knee on the sofa and reached up behind it. He saw an exposed heel and again, dominantly, her hips. Both this time.

As she turned back there was a flustered smile on her face at her own agility. It made her look younger and even less like a mother, certainly not the thirty-five or more she must have been.

She came right up close to where he still stood compliantly. The scent and breath of Mrs Shield were suddenly all over him. There was no trace of drink that he could detect.

‘So, Sean, how long have you been friends with Karen? I mean, friends, not just at school with her?’

But once again she didn’t wait for him to answer. With one hand she pulled down his fly zip, then slipped the other hand inside, like a pickpocket stealing a wallet.

‘Have you got an erection, Sean? Do you have one all the time?’

Then he was, in all senses, in her hands.