Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (best books to read for students txt) 📕

it was then that the door opened and in walked our neighbour Eve from downstairs with a soggy roll-up between her lips, nine months pregnant and naked except for a pair of sagging grey schoolgirl knickers. Eve was four foot ten. Her belly was enormous, one of the biggest I’d ever seen, too big for her, much too big; you felt you ought to offer to hold it for her for a while. She didn’t say anything or take any notice of anyone, just walked in and sat down at the table next to Polly, took a drag on her roll-up and closed her eyes, sighing as if she was snuggling down in bed for a nice sleep.

Lily started sneezing, something she did when she got upset.

‘You’re really nasty, you know that,’ she said, backing away from Johnny with the tears swelling in her eyes, ‘a really, really nasty person.’

‘Yes, Lily,’ he said, ‘I’m absolutely horrible.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘Oh, Lily.’ He looked pained. ‘For once in your life could you not please just go along with what I say? Could you not perhaps credit the idea that I’m older than you and might actually know more?’

‘No,’ she said, and flounced away into the room she shared with Harriet, slamming the door. She really needed her own room but it was impossible.

‘Should I be worried?’ I said to Maurice. ‘Really?’

‘Oh God knows, Lorna.’ He ambled over, sat down at the table and started drinking the yogurt sloppily straight out of the carton. ‘We should all be worried all the time, I suppose.’

Which was no help at all.

One by one they came in from the kitchen and sat down at our enormous table. Keyvan walked round and round the room purposefully as if he was getting somewhere, stopping every now and then to rub his mouth. Some kind of witty banter ping-ponged back and forth across the table between Pedro and Barry. Everyone acted as if Eve wasn’t there apart from Pedro, whose eyes were drawn constantly. I sat down next to Shiv at the table. Shiv was short and square and jaunty and could have passed for the Artful Dodger in a tweed jacket much too big for her. ‘You still got your Tarot cards, Lor?’ she said.

‘Somewhere.’

‘Ooh – get ’em out.’

‘Oh no.’ I brushed it off. ‘I don’t even know where they are.’

He was in a mood anyway now, no point in making it worse. Johnny hated anything like that.

‘You’ve not lost them, have you?’ Shiv said. I used to read the cards for her in the tent. Made it all up. It wasn’t serious.

‘Not lost them. Just don’t know where they are.’

‘I’d love a reading.’

He was hovering across from me staring, the anger in his face diffused, spreading and drawing in such minor irritations as this. I mean, what was the point of wasting anger on me and Shiv mucking about? God help him, if that bothered him so much, what would he have made of my real moments of weirdness? Nothing strange had happened to me for years. I tried to tell him about the cold boy once but he cut me short. Said it bored him. He came round the table and leaned over me. ‘Look,’ he said with his forehead nearly touching mine, ‘don’t make me out to be the heavy father figure here. It’s just not fair. Don’t you care that she’s dressing like that? She’s putting herself in danger.’ He was right of course. Anything to avoid conflict, that was me. Compromise, compromise, calm down, calm down. They were both right. She should be able to wear what she wanted and walk about like a free woman – Christ, if tribes in the jungle can go naked without raping each other all the time, why the hell can’t we? – without having to be afraid. But he was right too, and in practical terms he was more right. There were predators. ‘Back me up a bit more,’ he said.

‘I am backing you up.’

‘Not really.’

‘I am. I’m agreeing with you.’

‘Don’t be an arsehole, Johnny,’ said Polly, sitting smiling at the table.

‘When was it due?’ Shiv asked Eve, rolling a cigarette one-handed.

‘Ooh,’ Eve said, closing her eyes again. You could see her eyeballs swivelling under her lids as if she was in REM. ‘Four days ago.’

‘It’s not unreasonable of me to say she can’t go out tonight, is it? One night. One night. The film’ll be on for ages, weeks, she can go tomorrow.’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ I said.

‘It’s just funny,’ Polly said, still smiling. ‘Here we all are talking about rebellion and everything, and there she is doing that, as far as she sees it, and what do we do?’

‘Don’t be crass, Poll,’ Johnny said. ‘This is completely different.’

Polly shrugged. ‘Just saying.’

‘I know what you mean, Polly,’ I said, ‘but this is just about safety,’ and she can keep her big nose out of it.

‘I was wondering, Lor –’ Eve’s eyes opened and looked straight ahead. Polly and Eve had the same kind of hair. Polly’s lay flat around her head, Eve’s straggled down over her swollen breasts. The blue veins on them looked sore. ‘Have you got anything I can wear? I’m running out of things.’

‘Kids,’ said Maurice, as if he knew anything about it.

‘It’s what I always say,’ said big Els, stubbing out a cigarette in the ashtray, ‘our kids’ll rebel against us by being dead straight. I mean, it’s really not cool to agree with your parents, is it?’

‘I don’t think I’ve got much, Eve,’ I said. Her head was already drooping.

‘Oh babe,’ she said, ‘anything.’

‘I’ll have a look.’

‘That why you’ve not got a stitch on,’ said Pedro, ‘cos you got nothing to wear? That bad, is it?’ He leaned back on an elbow and unfurled smoke from his lower lip.

Eve ignored him and looked across at Maurice. ‘So,’ she said peremptorily, ‘who are you?’

‘You’ve met me.’ He smiled coldly. ‘Once or twice.’

Maurice scorned hippies and druggies, all the dope-dealers and mystics. All