Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

‘I’m starving,’ said Daphne.

‘Nothing like the sea for giving you an appetite,’ agreed Ralph, with an expression Jane supposed was meant to be suggestive. He’s so babyish, she thought. And he’s only six years younger than my mum. It wasn’t nearly lunchtime, but they bought cod and chips and sat on a bench overlooking the beach to eat them, blowing on the chips and handing them to the baby when they’d cooled down.

After they’d eaten, they bought tickets for the pier. It was horribly crowded and they were drawn along its length by the throng, the wooden boards vibrating below their feet.

‘Hoi polloi,’ said Ralph, gesturing at the hordes. ‘The multitudes. Just like the Roman crowds in the Colosseum – in search of cheap thrills.’ He likes raising himself above the crowds, and acting like someone special, she thought. And sure enough, he edged himself to the front of the queue to buy tickets for the merry-go-round, leaving everyone else to wait in line like the hoi polloi they were. Still, it was fun on the old-fashioned carousel with its painted horses, which rose and fell like decorous dolphins. Jane sat on a pink and gold pony next to Daphne, and Ralph was behind them holding Jason and clinging to the barley-sugar pole. Afterwards, they had to hang around while he got out his tape recorder for the tenth time. He’d already done it next to someone busking with a banjo, and he kept stopping for another little session – it was evidently the excuse for the trip.

They all took turns in pushing the baby – he wasn’t bad, Jane agreed, when Daphne said he was sweet, though she found him at best irrelevant. The pier became overheated and even more congested and she felt trapped and angry. To add to the misery, the stabbing period pains were becoming worse. If she didn’t change her sanitary towel soon there would probably be a leak. She’d been through this particular mortification and walked around for ages with a great red stain on her jeans before a woman at a bus stop told her. Her body seemed designed for treachery – a vehicle bringing public and private shame. Three spots on her chin throbbed in the heat and her T-shirt was damp with sweat despite much rolling with Mum deodorant. It was a great injustice that Daphne never appeared to be brought down by these biological weaknesses; she’d only ever had one spot and didn’t appear to sweat, or at least not in any quantity. Jane’s mother said, ‘Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies glow.’ Daphne only ever glowed. So I am a horse, thought Jane.

They stopped to lean over the cast-iron railings, squinting at the sunlight that turned the sea silver. A father and son were fishing and had boxes of live maggots wriggling by their feet.

‘Listen, if any of us get lost, shall we say we’ll meet right here at this bench?’ Ralph said like the leader on a mountaineering trip. ‘Opposite the candyfloss stall, if you forget. OK? There are so many people, you never know. Best to be safe.’

Yes, Ralph. Whatever you say, Ralph, she thought and nodded obediently.

It did not take long before she found herself alone. She’d seen Ralph whispering in Daphne’s ear earlier – that was nothing new – but she didn’t imagine her friend would conspire against her. For about ten minutes, her anger at this abandonment brought on a renewed energy and she strode past the bench where they’d agreed to meet, where naturally there was no sign of Daphne or Ralph with his stupid baby. Giving up on them, she went to find the toilets, changed her ST, placed the old one in a paper bag provided and took it to the special bin by the basins. Deciding to teach them a lesson, she left the pier and walked down to the beach. This brought temporary relief. She shuffled along in the shallows, holding her shoes and letting the sea splash on to her turned-up trousers. I hate him, she thought, kicking the water with irritation rather than joy.

She persuaded the ticket seller to let her back on to the pier and returned to the assigned meeting place, hoping the others would be waiting. Nobody. Now she hated Daphne too. The cool reprieve of the sea was soon forgotten as she sat on the appointed bench and began overheating again. Her arms were red from the sun and her glasses were slipping down her painfully hot and presumably burnt nose. An elderly couple sat next to her eating ice-cream cones, licking slowly, gazing out past the screaming gulls that dive-bombed down to pick up pieces of discarded food. When the pair got up in silence and trudged glumly in the direction of the pier’s end, Jane wondered whether they were going to jump off and drown themselves. And what about me? What am I going to do? What if the others don’t come back? How long would I wait here? What if they’ve run away, eloped?

Half a dozen teenage boys walked past, holding bags of sweets and ridiculously large sticks of pink Brighton rock that they thrust and jabbed at each other like swords. They stopped to buy some candyfloss and one of them, lanky and narrow-eyed, called out to Jane. ‘Oi, feeling hot?’ He fell against his friend crowing with laughter. ‘Fancy a snog?’ he shouted, looking at his small gang for approval as they yowled like hyenas.

‘Fuck off!’ she said too meekly, realising immediately that this was the wrong approach. The boys gathered round. ‘Oooooh,’ squealed the lanky boy, in mock horror, closing in. ‘Don’t mind if we do… if you fuck off with me.’

He swung himself over the bench so he was sitting on the back, his feet on the seat next to her, and leaned down. ‘Fancy a bit of my candyfloss?’ She could smell him – an animal pungency and cigarette breath joining the warm chemical sweetness of pink, spun sugar. He was leering, emboldened by his mates who circled round them. Jane turned away from him, striving for haughtiness, but the boy jumped off the bench and leaped into a crouch at her feet. ‘Here, try a bit. It’s really nice. Sweet. Like you.’ He turned to his mates with a grin.

She edged along the bench and looked in the other direction.

‘What’s your name then?’

She didn’t answer and stood up, looking for a way out, but the boys all moved so they surrounded her in front and the bench blocked her escape from behind. ‘Come on, no hurry. Sit down again?’ The boy patted the bench and sat down himself.

‘Jane!’ Ralph’s superior tones sounded clear and incongruous as a bugle. He and Daphne were hurrying along the pier towards her, the pushchair bumping along before them.

‘So, Jane, give us a quick kiss then before we go,’ said the boy, weighing up the options and preparing his exit. ‘That your dad, then?’ he asked, gesturing at Ralph.

‘Yes, and he’ll kill you,’ replied Jane.

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Ralph, providing a good approximation of an angry dad.

‘Nothing. Just talking.’ The boy paused for effect. ‘She’s gorgeous, your daughter.’ His mates snorted with mirth and their eyes flitted between the risk of an irate father and the fun of teasing a bespectacled girl with spots and big tits.

‘OK, off you go now,’ Ralph countered sternly, having evidently considered and then decided against denying his paternity. ‘Go on, scat.’

‘Ooh, keep your hair on,’ retorted Jane’s lanky tormentor. ‘Come on, boys, we’re not wanted around here.’ And he turned and sauntered off, his hyenas following with a look of satisfaction as they tore pieces of candyfloss from their sticks and stuffed them into their mouths.

‘Where were you?’ Jane whimpered. She addressed Daphne. ‘Why did you leave me?’

Daphne didn’t meet her eyes. ‘We couldn’t find you… and then we went for a walk to find some shade.’ Daphne’s lips were red, her hair mussed. You could see her pointy breasts through her shirt. She looked as though she’d been getting off with Ralph. What kind of friend abandons you to go off with an old man? An old man with a baby! Jane pictured them in the damp shadows beneath the pier, hiding behind the wooden supports. There was a strand of green seaweed tangled in Daphne’s hair.