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Finally donning the new uniform polo top and cardigan with a sighing smile in the mirror on Monday, Natalia headed into school knowing she wouldn’t see Stacey and Marcia - trusting that wily Neill had pulled something off, somehow - and that they were just as suspended as she had been above her bed all weekend.
Seeing neither the girls nor Neill anywhere all morning, toward the end of lunch she began to wonder whether she’d need another taxi home. Or rather, she knew she wouldn’t, but that she could hunt Neill down with the excuse of ascertaining that fact.
Climbing the stairs toward his floor, there he suddenly appeared through the double doors with Miss Barnes, wearing a rather extravagant, purple chequered suit, and spotting her immediately. She avoided dropping her eyes, suddenly remembering him complaining about not looking up at him, but with a clear of her throat and a little whirl of guilt in her hips.
He lagged a deliberate step behind Miss Barnes, as he and Natalia drew toward each other like north and south magnet ends, and she began:
‘Neill, what’s hap—’
He leaned in to her ear, so delicately close and quick, and simply uttered in a low husky whisper:
‘Gone.’
With a waft of his warm, biscuity scent and a flash of jacket he was gone down the stairs.
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*
She pulled out her phone on the bus to stare at their last text message exchange. Have a good weekend - she’d had that alright. Add that whispery ‘gone’ onto their messages since; so brief and tantalising the way he delivered it and promptly vanished like a smooth proud purple ghost. She wanted more of that ghost. She wanted to hear, or read, him say something, more, more…
Was it worth texting a thanks, or a question? Maybe it would it look too needy, too nosey? Give him the first sigh of regret of giving the pesky school loner his number? Surely one message wouldn’t hurt. It would give her something to go on all evening.
Back home, she thought long and hard and began:
‘Mr Neill. Just want to say thanks for keeping me safe…’
She backtracked and deleted. Stupidly geeky formal.
She tried: ‘Hey - thanks again,’ but stopped. Too colloquial and self-centred.
Then: ‘What did you do?’ She hesitated, taunted by the blinking cursor.
And then, bam! Suddenly on the screen, his name was flashing. Confused for a second, she almost dropped the phone thinking she’d activated an alarm of the thought police.
He was calling her!
The screen flashed in tandem with her heart rate as she double-swept a shaking finger over the cracks.
‘Heh - hello?’
His loud unmistakeable voice came through. ‘Hello, Natalia? It’s Neill, your Head.’
His voice ringing out in her ear, in her bedroom…
‘Oh, hi, Mr Neill,’ she uttered casually, as though she hadn’t already filed his name into her phonebook the first chance she could.
‘Hello,’ he said again.
‘Hello,’ she said, grinning.
There was a pause, a silent taboo energy as if they could feel each other’s smiles, as her eyes fell to the same spot on top of the wardrobe, where the box spines of Monopoly and Scrabble that she’d bought from a charity shop gathered dust for no-one to play with, and she’d gaze at them whilst playing with herself instead - and now Neill’s voice, her new mental playmate - was encroaching her ear for real, oh dear! Cue bristle of urethra - correction, vagina…
He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, been busy all day, but I just wanted to check, did you get home alright?’
‘Oh yeah, yeah, yeah…’
‘Oh, good. I wanted to tell you that today the two girls have been suspended, but I er, needed to be sure they’d cleared off, and that you’re ok.’
‘Oh! Thanks for checking. I’m fine.’
‘Good, good. Sorry to call you like this.’
‘It’s... really fine honestly.’
‘Have a nice evening.’
‘You too. Bye.’
‘Bye.’
A tear came into her eye as she laid back and thought of how much it meant to her to have somebody step in to curb what was, to most everyone else including Mrs Williams, petty drama, teenage angst, a thin skin; but somehow Neill got it, or judged it important enough to deal with. ‘Gone,’ he’d whispered; ‘suspended,’ he’d confirmed just now. For how long? Obviously not forever? With what reason? She should have asked him on the phone, but she’d been too busy smirking up at Scrabble recalling how she’d imagined last night him spelling out: ‘Rescue! Resurrect! Resuscitate!’ as she orgasms from melancholy to pretty Polly, ‘good heavens girl! You’re so fucking good at this!’
She couldn’t put her finger on the answer of what he would do, but she’d put her right middle finger on what she could, so she took an early bedtime for the paint-mixing palette to come back out, stirring and stroking till the raft of butterflies from their earlier brief phone chat were released, she imagined, up across town to him… up toward sleepy Scarcroft where he lived, in the lovely lucky walls of his house somewhere, where there was evening and bedtime Neill, smoking evening Neill, Neill in casual clothes, Neill in pyjamas, oh my! Neill in the shower, in the bath, in bed. Neill watching TV. Neill brushing his lovely teeth… Neill’s bottom… Neill brushing his bottom… that doesn’t make sense, young lady… good gracious! Bottoms on the brain, his brain on my bottom… she fell asleep with mouth gaping, hand parked between her legs too clammy to withdraw, holding her other arm across herself to again emulate that shield that he carried for her, carried for herself.
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*
Setting off into school with an even heavier hanging guilt that she’d fantasised so much about a man she already had trouble looking in the eye of, the day was to prove a relief somewhat that she didn’t see Neill anywhere, so Natalia relaxed for what felt like the first time in ages to focus on her work.
English first up that morning; her eyes fell deep into the words of Jane Eyre who upon finding a new job as governess, was the happy loner, still ‘solitary and unsustained,’ but just as Natalia last night, her ‘couch had no thorns in it that night, her solitary room no fears.’
Drawn into a happy bit of small talk on the bus with the old lady she’d hidden behind the other day, a prism of dim November sun glinted off the window like Brontë’s ‘gleam of sunshine’ as her mind now turned to the trip to Haworth that was less than a week away! A coach, like this bus - with Neill upon it! Tattling to the woman with a confident alive face, immersed in a daydream of being watched by Neill a few seats away, she marvelled at how she’d never normally enjoy speaking to a stranger on the bus like this before.
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*
The next day at break, Natalia noticed a pair of badge-wearing visitors emerge from the hall toward the stairs, and loitered tying her shoelaces to catch the word ‘committee,’ scuttling up the stairs to try eavesdrop for more, and there - spying from a top view through the window - she saw Marcia herself, arriving with presumably her mother beside her, walking in the drizzle under a black umbrella and disappearing into a side entrance.
A day of curious thoughts led to home time, drifting out of the school driveway in a train of fellow grey and black bodies, when she felt in the corner of her eye, Neill’s black Mercedes sliding past her.
Her heart thumped with not having seen him for two days, and now his wagon was alive, like a large dark horse on a moving belt, purring right through her. Expecting to see it roll off to the gate as usual, he lingered, as the driver’s window hummed down, and she turned to see a blue suited arm hang a familiar fag-smoking hand down the car’s polished door.
His haughty eyebrows were reeling her into his gaze, all open and suggestive, whilst his mouth said loud but low enough, for just her and her alone to hear:
‘There you are. Come for a ride?’
She stopped with surprise, almost jolted toward him, then checked herself with a dubious glance at the other pupils around. She’d heard a ‘bye Neill!’ cried from a scattered voice, but no-one seemed attentive to them, as she stared back.
Into his car? For a ride? Was she still in her bedroom wank reverie? Even if this was a dream, she wasn’t going to mess it up with her trademark hesitation and quickly said:
‘Ye-es? But how…?’
‘Go to the end of the street and turn right,’ he nodded. ‘Meet me behind the shop.’
Throwing his fag back into a pursed mouth he whooshed his gleaming alloys off ahead.
She walked in a daze, impatient but cautious, turning at the end of the street as instructed. Spying his sherry-red taillights glowing through a genie cloud of exhaust fumes, through which she walked like a willing wisher, and after looking casually around her to check no-one was looking, she yanked open the door and fell with a soft plop into the seat of its warm plush interior.
‘Hello Natalia.’
‘Hi,’ came back her croak, as she looked across at Neill. Looking suave, his hair swept back with a little oiliness now after the day, his blue eyes twinkling as though he was bursting to tell her something, speaking now with a tenderly excitable tone in his voice like a father taking his daughter for some birthday surprise:
‘Are you ready? Duck down till we’re past these houses!’
He pelted the car forward as she jerked violently back with no chance of leaning forward to duck.
‘Whoops! Bit fast, but better to be doing the running over than being ran over, hey?’
‘Wait! Neill! Where are we going?’
She was bewildered, delighted and alarmed all at once, trying to pull down her seatbelt at the same time.
‘I need to talk to you, but not here…’
‘This is so totally weird getting into your car like this.’ Struggling to get upright like a beetle on its back for a moment, he reached to turn up the volume of the music she could see playing: Soul Kitchen on the bright LED screen.
‘You like The Doors?’ he said louder over the music.
‘Erm…’
‘I WhatsApped you at lunch asking you up. Did you not get it?’
‘Oh, what…’
She fumbled for her phone to catch sight of a message asking ‘add Neill to contacts?’ Technophobe Neill, WhatsApping her? How could she have missed that! So much for fearing looking like a texting pest!
‘No matter, because this will be much more fun!’ as he swerved round a residential chicane and she fell to one side. ‘I won’t kidnap you for too long. We’re just having a meeting, on the move. I come bearing gifts!’
Kidnap? Oh, gusset be damned.
She sat up again. ‘Gifts?’
One hand on the wheel, he rummaged into his pocket and tossed something.
‘That’s part one, spot what’s wrong with it.’
‘It’s a packet of cigarettes.’
‘And?’
‘And what.’
‘Well, I smoke Marlboros,’ he said as it if was obvious.
‘And these are… Silk Cut,’ read Natalia.
‘So…’
‘So these are what, Marcia’s? You nicked them off Marcia?’
‘No, she gave them to me. …Hmm, we need to go somewhere with a quiet spot to stop…’
He slowed the car as he examined the signs.
‘Follow the signs to Temple Newsam. There’ll be a quiet spot there.’
‘Ah, the place you endorsed. Very well!’
He swung right, racing through the traffic light just as it hit red, motioning at the fags:
‘Have one. Grab my lighter.’
‘What? Are you serious?’
‘Yes I’m serious. Do you still get surprised by me?’
She laughed.
‘Come on,’ as he pushed the packet toward her, turning down the music. ‘Stacey and Marcia are both suspended, for smoking. So let’s celebrate.’
She threw her head back, laughing even more. ‘I really can’t believe what you do!’
‘Look, it’s just a fag. A fag belonging to your bully fiends, that now spells their defeat. We’ll now sit and smoke them. A nice conclusion, n’est ce pas? If we speak French does this count as an extra curricular activity?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘You do now, with me.’
As the daylight dimmed, whilst Jim Morrison crooned of street lights hollowly glowing and cars crawling past stuffed with eyes, they were pulling into the car park by Temple Newsam House.
‘Nice pad,’ he remarked as a floodlit, Tudor-Jacobean manor came into view with a long neat lawn-flanked driveway.
‘Lake and a farm down there too,’ she nodded.
The car park was deserted all for two other cars. He parked a good distance away from them and turned off the lights.
‘Best turn these off. Don’t want those doggers joining our party.’
‘Who?’
‘You don’t know what doggers are?’
‘Er…’
He laughed.
They were both silent for a moment till she sighed.
‘I have to pinch myself that this is real. Is this real?’
He shot his hand on top of hers and squeezed it.
‘It’s real.’
She couldn’t help smiling as his warm touch radiated through her knuckles. But she continued to finger the packet with hesitation. ‘I… don’t know.’
‘Well, if you’re not going to light one up, will you share one with me?’
She watched as he slid one from the packet, held it between his pursed lips whilst clicking his lighter, a fascinated front seat viewer now of what she thought was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. He inhaled sharply, rolled down his window, and then held the glowing stick toward her.
‘Come on. Have a faaag! Life’s too short!’
She didn’t care for smoking, but liked the idea of being involved in the sexy and rebellious act with him, of putting her fingers near his, and having something that touched his lips, touching hers.
She took it, her fingers lingering against his for a microsecond, as she took a tepid suck and breathed out a faint trail.
‘Er yeah, very nice. Done,’ she croaked.
‘Well, it’s a start,’ he chuckled, as he took it back with an expert flick into his sucking lips.
‘So they’re suspended for what, a week?’ Natalia asked.
‘That’s part one, yes,’ exhaling a small cloud over the steering wheel. ‘You want the next bit?’
Holding the fag in the vice of his mouth he rummaged in his pocket for a small clear bag in which were two white-coloured roll-ups.
‘The smoking gun!’
‘What are they?’
‘Grounds for not just suspension. Grounds for expulsion,’ he said with a raised eyebrow. ‘You can indeed learn History here at Temple’s Newton or whatever it’s bloody called, because, today—’ he announced in a drumroll voice, ‘Marcia has been expelled from school for possession of a Class B drug. She’s gone for good.’
She gasped. ‘Oh, wow! Oh, my god!’
She knew he’d do it. She knew it.
He winked as he dragged on the fag.
‘So, this is what, weed?’ she peered closer.
‘Bingo.’
‘I didn’t know weed was that bad.’
‘Oh it’s not,’ he inhaled sharply, ‘which is why we’re about to smoke it. Cigarettes to learn to forget. Rather apt words by Mr Morrison. Let’s have it again,’ as he flicked the song back on.
As the blues notes of the Doors song built up again, Natalia half giddy and half groaning, watched as he extracted the joints from the clear bag, and brought one right toward her mouth.
She pushed it away. ‘Hang on, hang on, hang on!’
‘Whaaa-at?’
‘There’s a few things here. First, aren’t these important evidence that need to be saved?’
‘All done and dusted darling.’
‘Right, assuming that’s true, I’ve just got over my initiation with tobacco literally moments ago, and now you’re having me on the hard stuff?’
‘It’s not such a big deal.’
‘Big enough deal to have Marcia expelled?’
‘Yes, it’s considered a Class B drug. But weed’s a fun and highly insightful substance.’
‘What does it actually do to you?’
‘It makes you feel good. Much more directly than tobacco. Happy, giggly. Something you could do with, frankly.’
She scoffed. ’Haven’t you already arranged Haworth for that?’
He smiled. ‘This takes you out of your thinking brain, and into your body.’
‘Is that what all the stoners say?’
‘You know, cannabis has been highly corrupted. Inside the human body, believe it or not, we have an entire cannabinoid system which cannabis goes into like a key into a lock. This plant is part of nature, designed to pair with us.’
‘So if Marcia was regularly dosed on this natural stuff how come she would go round with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp?’
He chuckled. ‘Well, pardon my language for a young innocent lady as yourself, but frankly it’s because she’s a cunt, and cunts are cunts. When you smoke it, angels appear. When she smokes it, the devil gets a hard-on.’
She giggled.
‘Now let’s smoke them.’
He stubbed out the finished tobacco cigarette.
‘What if it’s laced with something else?’
‘Well, we’ll both find out then, won’t we?’ His hand came right up to her face and placed it resolutely in her mouth.
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