PLAYGROUND LOVE
"A bloke in sixth form raped a girl in fourth year," Kathy tells me. "And he's being expelled," Helen adds. Wow. "Who and who?" I ask, because although I don't really know anyone in either the year above us or that below, no doubt I've seen them around. "The girl's Mildred Featherstone," Kathy says. "Who's that?" The name's familiar because you can't really forget a name like Mildred Featherstone once you've heard it, but I can't put a face to it. "That ugly-" She stops short, realising that you shouldn't insult a girl who's just been raped. "You know, her with the thick glasses. She's quite . . . tall, and a bit, er, big-boned. Brown hair, usually in a pony tail." "I know who you mean." I'm always noticing her, pacing along the corridors never holding doors open behind her, and stamping up and down the stairs. Ever since I first saw her, I'd been interested to talk to her - I'm always drawn towards freaks and outcasts - but even if I'd been able to think of anything to say, the fierce look on her face would have put me off. "Who's he, then?" "Not really sure. Someone told me his name, but I can't remember it," Kathy says. "He was in 5C last year," Pauline says. The sixth form isn't divided into classes, since only about forty people stay on for it. "He's that bloke that went out with Jane in 5D for a while a couple of years ago." "Really? Him? I remember him. Wonder how Jane feels? Now, what's his name? Mark or something." "Not Mark, but something beginning with M. Mike - no, maybe Martin?" "Marcus!" "Yeah, that's it." Marcus? Could that be . . . what was his surname? "Marcus Brown?" I ask. "That's it," Helen says. Marcus Brown? A rapist? *** Marcus Brown went to my primary school. He was six when he started there and went into top infants. I was in middle infants, but we shared the same classroom for that year and then the three when we were both in juniors. It was a small school, with only about forty pupils spread throughout the entire seven years. Not only did everyone know each other's name, but each other's address, birthday and pets' names. He was tall, the second tallest person in the school by the time he left, at 156cm. At least once a year we made graphs showing everyone's height and weight, and I stared at them, memorising them, while I waited for the teacher to help me with my Maths, which took up most of my time. That seemed unfeasibly tall at the time - I was 135cm and he could look our teacher straight in the eye - although he wasn't that tall really, only 5'2". I couldn't remember how much he weighed: kilograms had been the standard unit of weight all my life, but they meant even less to me than metres did. But he wasn't fat. Not particularly thin either, just straight up and down. He had dark brown hair, short and straight, and brown eyes. I didn't know this because I'd ever looked into them, but because we'd done a poster about eye colour too. I suppose he was quite handsome, but I didn't think about it. Film stars, pop stars and football players were good looking. People my age could only be ugly, thanks to some disfigurement such as glasses, dental problems, an unfortunate haircut or a mother who insisted on dressing you like a Frances Hodgson Burnett character, or non-descript. Marcus was the latter. He had thick fingers. That was his one distinguishing feature. I remembered watching him play the descant recorder. Only because he was sitting opposite me. So he was probably in junior two and me in junior one, because you got promoted to treble or tenor recorder once you reached junior three. I was fascinated by the way his fingers were all squished together, barely able to fit over the holes, squeezing past each other with every new note. Then I realised I'd lost my place and returned my attention to the music. He was probably quite intelligent. Some people were geniuses, some were total spasmos, but you didn't know about anyone else. He was all right at the recorder. He wasn't that good at art: his paintings were always unrealistic with disproportionate objects and unfeasible landscapes. But he was good at football. We were both on a school team for a while, me midfield, him a striker. *** He isn't a rapist in the way that the term immediately suggests. He didn't jump out of the shadows beside a dark path that Mildred was walking along. That doesn't make his actions any more justifiable, just easier to visualise. The precise details of the story are never made official. Mildred isn't at school to confirm anything and doesn't return until weeks later when all the fuss has died down. But gradually, I hear bits of what happened from various sources, and imagine the parts I don't know. It reflects rather well on Mildred, considering she's never had any friends here. *** Marcus was a friend of mine. He came to my birthday parties, those that I had when we both went to the same school, my sixth, my ninth and my tenth. When I turned seven and eight, I thought parties were for wimps and got my parents to take me and my closest friends to the nearest theme park. The first year, I took Alex, David, Ryan and Seth. The second year, Seth was ill, so I took Rachel instead. I can't remember what presents Marcus gave me, except the year I turned ten, when he got me a wallet. A big grown-up black masculine one, with space for ample notes and credit cards that I didn't have. Up until then, I'd only had purses, pink ones, beaded ones, impractical ones with zips that tore at your fingers when you retrieved coins out. Not through my own choosing, since purses weren't the sort of thing you bought yourself. They were the sort of thing you got in Santa's Grotto, the fluffy beard obscuring my tomboy tendencies evident from my jeans and Man City shirt. I loved it. I still use it now, even though it's falling apart. Should I get a new one, in the light of recent events? Marcus and I played football together. Us and the boys in my year, and the other boys in his year, and some from the year below. We played it nearly every morning break and lunchtime, although sometimes it was rounders or catchy, when everyone would join in. We didn't see each other after school, but this went on for five years. Yet I never really knew him. He had a sister, two years younger than me. His Dad was a painter - the sort that painted walls, not pictures - and his Mum worked in the nursery school I'd been to, though I only had one memory of her, trying to make me eat digestive biscuits which I hated. They shopped at Asda. He supported Man U. But I knew nothing about his personality. Is there anything to know about people when they're at Primary School? *** Marcus hadn't had many girlfriends. In fact, there'd only been Jane, a couple of years ago, unless you counted a few one-off things at parties. Now seventeen, like most seventeen-year-old virgins of the male variety, he was eager for sex. Unlike most of the others, though, Marcus decided to take what he considered an easier route than hopefully starting conversations with girls in pubs and too much make-up in order to get it. Mildred. She probably hadn't got a huge amount of self-esteem. She'd be flattered to be asked out by Marcus, two years older than her and much better looking. Hell, she'd be flattered to be asked out by anyone. After a few days, he'd ask if he could sleep with her. He'd tell her that she'd do it if she really loved him. He'd threaten to break up with her if she didn't. Since Marcus would be the best thing to have ever happened to her, she'd go through with it. Then he'd dump her. *** I only started paying any attention to Marcus in his last few weeks at primary school. It was a Friday afternoon in mid-June, a blisteringly hot day. My hair was limp after running around at lunchtime. My t-shirt and jeans clung to my sweaty body. We were doing cross-stitch pictures and it took all my strength to drag the thread through each hole in the cardboard. Afternoon break came as no respite, as it was hotter outside than in. Nevertheless, I was glad to be out of the dim oppressive classroom. Afternoon break was somewhat pointless. It lasted fifteen minutes, I think, but it always seemed shorter. It made the afternoon more bearable, but there was never time to do anything in it. The teachers didn't unlock the shed and wheel out equipment trolley and that day, no one was in a mood to do anything energetic. That included talking. I stood in a corner of the playground for a while, the baking stone wall simultaneously drying my sweat and burning my back. Then I had an idea. We weren't allowed to use the path between the back of the school and the shed where barely-used gym mats were stored, which connected one extremity of the playground to the other, but for no reason other that there you were out of the watchful eyes of the teachers. Thick branches leaned over it, so I thought it might be quite shady. Surreptitiously, I set off towards it. As I approached, I felt a delicious cool breeze whiz through it. Ahh. I stepped into it, and saw Marcus, who'd clearly come there from the other direction. "Oh," I said, embarrassed. In all these years, I'd never had much cause to speak to Marcus on his own, other than to yell "Over here!" or "Nice one!" I spoke to the boys in my year, because we all sat at a table together during lessons, and I spoke to Frank, in the year above, because he was friendly, if completely mad. I suppose Marcus was a bit shy. "Great minds think alike," he said, sounding bored. The next few moments I was unable to recall even a minute later. All I knew was him kissing me on the lips. Then he did it again and again. I lost count. The moments stretched out forever. I could feel every molecule on his lips making and breaking contact with mine. But all too soon, we heard the distant sound of our teacher ringing the bell. Without a word, I set off in the direction I'd come from and him in the other one. *** Unfortunately, Mildred hadn't been as compliant as Marcus would have liked. She'd been ridiculed for so long she'd naturally thought it was a joke when Marcus asked her out. Even when he insisted it wasn't, she remained cautious. Marcus had seen her a few times before he tried to make a move, but his excuses not to be seen in public with her riled her and the lengths he went to in order to win her over seemed rather extreme if his intentions were honourable. When he tried it on, she said, "I knew it!" Frustrated, he'd raped her, not considering the consequences and later hoping she'd be too ashamed and scared to tell anyone. But she told her parents that night, who went straight to the authorities. *** For the rest of that afternoon, my mind sprinted. Did this mean we were going out? The teacher, knowing none of us would manage to spend the rest of the afternoon productively, was reading us part of a story. The earlier parts had been exciting, but now I couldn't pay attention. I wanted to look at Marcus, make eye contact with him, but he was sitting behind me. I could feel beads of sweat dribbling down my spine. The back of my neck prickled and I fought the urge to pick apart the greasy locks of my damp hair. I couldn't wait for school to end so we could set things straight. But that didn't happen. I got a lift home with Jake's Mum, who was perennially late. So much so that often Jake and I were left drifting around the playground on our own and one of the teachers phoned her to find out what had happened. I decided that rather than lingering in the classroom, I'd go outside and wait for Marcus to approach me there. But the moment I stepped out of the door, I saw Jake's Mum's battered Talbot Sunbeam right in front of me, beyond the playground wall. Typical. I pretended I hadn't seen, even though she honked the horn. Then Marcus walked past me swiftly. I watched him march through the gates and away to his mother's car down the road, with nary a backward glance. That weekend was the first time I wished I had some female friends. I'd drifted apart from the only one I'd had, Rachel. It wasn't the sort of thing I could tell David or Ryan or Seth or even Alex, my best friend who went to a different school. I longed for Monday. Perhaps Marcus had felt too embarassed to speak to me again that day, or he'd considered the playground too busy for a private conversation. *** Not everyone believes the widely-known version of the story. When I arrive at French that afternoon, the teacher isn't there yet. This is usual, due to her nicotine dependence. It's hypocritical, considering the number of anti-smoking lectures she gave us when we were in first year, but also a blessing. Not only does it make lessons five minutes shorter than they should be, but her temper's bad enough with the pacifying effects of her cigarettes. So everyone's talking, still about Marcus and Mildred. "Mingin' little slag was probably begging for it, and loved every minute," Kevin says. Had the sentiment not been so cruel, I would be amused by the 'little' epithet, considering Mildred's about twice his size and could wallop him in a second if she felt the urge. "And she only said it was rape because he dumped her afterwards and she was desperate for more," his mate, Mitch, adds. "Or cause she wanted it so fucking much that she wouldn't let him put a rubber johnny on first, and then she didn't want the blame when she got preggers," Craig says. He's the most intelligent of the three, although that isn't saying much. "Yeah!" There's a reason I eventually made friends with girls. *** Marcus didn't speak to me on Monday or ever again. We continued to hang out with the same people, but never made eye contact. I ended up staring at him whenever I could, then mentally smacking myself and looking away. Every time I saw or even thought of him, I felt something I didn't know the word for. It wasn't love or lust, because he didn't even like me enough to speak to me. But it wasn't hate, either, because perhaps he hadn't done anything wrong. It wasn't really annoyance, because I was just as incapable of saying anything to him. Annoyance with myself, I suppose. I didn't want to have a crush on him, since it didn't look like anything else would happen, but I wanted it to. Sort of. I didn't want to go out with him, because I didn't like him all that much and I was too young to have a boyfriend anyway. I just wanted some more magic seconds alone with him and the reason for the first ones. Indeed, the latter alone would have done. But no. After the end of term service, held in the local church, I hung around in the churchyard, praying that he'd whisper to me behind a gravestone. But he said temporary goodbyes to his friends, then got in his parents' car. I watched as it lurched over the cattle grid. Was there anything I could do? Before I could come up with anything, it had turned the corner and he was gone forever. *** On Monday, suddenly everyone's missing a lesson to get an anti-sexual abuse talk. I'm quite impressed. It's not like my school to do something for our benefit that requires effort on their part. It's certainly not like my school to cancel lessons in favour of telling us about anything vaguely useful. Unfortunately, it's too late, for my year anyway. Kevin and Mitch sit behind me, and spend the entire thing muttering about various girls and what they'd like to do to them. That, and kicking the back of my seat. The only blessing is that they're both too ugly and immature to get the chance. But I bet Marcus isn't the only one who'll have and abuse it. *** I did see Marcus again. We went to the same secondary school. It was about twenty times bigger than our primary school, so, being in different years, we certainly ceased to belong to the same group. But I saw him in the corridors and kicking a football around the yard with mates I didn't recognise. Whenever I did, the old feeling of irritation stirred, and I crashed into people and had to chase after the ball when it bounced past my scuffed shoes that drove my mother demented. But it gradually lessened, as I found other people to fancy. He got his hair cut, which didn't suit him, and over the years I stopped noticing him altogether. He was just one of four hundred boys in navy jumpers and grey trousers. *** Kissing a girl behind the school and then not speaking to her afterwards. It's a bit off, really. I try to remember where his hands went. I don't recall him putting his arms around me and I'm sure I'd remember if he'd drawn me that close. Did he touch my non-existent breasts and I'd failed to be afraid, too young to see the significance? Had there been a rapist in him then, prepared to emerge as sexual frustration set in? More to the point, was our encounter indicative of the dysfunctional relationships he'd have in the future? It certainly set a precedent for my forthcoming saliva-exchanges. Three of them were one-off snogs: two in the park when I was thirteen, with boys I would have stayed away from if I'd been older and wiser; one a few months ago at a party, a drunken folly. My only actual involvement with a boy - I hesitate to call it a relationship - lasted a couple of weeks. I was fourteen and it was with an older boy I'd met outside the chip shop. He wasn't bad looking, but as usual, the ratio of physical contact to conversation in the hours we spent together was a hundred to one. I see where my problem lies, though. It isn't that I don't like boys or can't talk to them, or that they don't like me. It's that those I get along with, I befriend immediately, and them the idea of us going out is out of the question. Those that fancy me tend to be retards and my crushes are always on people who are unsuitable or out of reach. However, I believe my fortune has to change one day. Perhaps Marcus had less faith in this prospect? Whatever the cause, my first love has become a rapist. Suddenly, remembering the heartache I endured for months makes me feel like I had a lucky escape.
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