One summer long ago I watched six other girls kill a man. He didn�t die instantly; if he had we might have been caught.
It was my paternal grandmother�s funeral so I went home. I go home for births and deaths, nothing else. On these occasions we pick over the bones and coo over the curdled memories and fresh lives, leaving trails of flowers in our wake. I would prefer the hygiene of being orphaned, a clean slate. However I come fully equipped with the whole pack. Some have died, most are reproducing and all still reside there, not far from each other, even if some of them are in the cemetery. I have left them there, them and the places that are still sticky with my ghost. You don�t have to be dead to leave phantom remnants of yourself, but you know that.
I drive myself here, past the garages where I was first finger fucked when I was fourteen, past the prefab houses that we broke into to steal the lino from the kitchen floor so we could break-dance like the American kids on MTV. Past the Grammar school with its rows of windows that we smashed, and its sports field that we shagged in and tried to roll our first reefer. I turn right into the street where I vomited up the bottle of Thunderbird that had cost three days lunch money. The parade of shops with the Chinese takeaway we�d huddle round after the Youth Club disco had kicked out, our chips in gravy with egg fried rice congealing in its tin container while the boy we had got off with during the last dance walked us home, stopping occasionally to kiss roughly in ugly little stabs of gooey tongues.
I park outside the house I grew up in, the only clue that this is a different time, that then is history, are the cars and their shiny paint work and fashionable body shape. Curves are in; angular is out. Cars delineate time and fashion just as well as the latest skirt length. Our front door is still painted blue, cheap annuals crowd the borders and the white net curtains conceal you like a virgin�s bridal attire. The door yields under the insertion of my key, the same lock the same key. The hallway smells of a certain brand of furniture polish, like a maiden aunt whose only constancy is her Yardley perfume, if only men showed such loyalty. Doors open off this passage, coats hang in the corner, the stairs lead away to the top left corner of the house; I pushed my sister down them when she pissed me off once. I never said I was a decent person. The kitchen-diner still reeks of sodden roast dinners. My shed DNA still lodged in the carpet fibres.
The family are gathered in the living room in mismatched blacks. They are drinking tea, coffee and coca cola in that order. I stand at the edge, have forgotten who has died this time. That's okay, I always answer the same questions, bring the same flowers and wear the same shade of lipstick because I have learnt what suits me. And there she is, sitting on my mother�s sofa holding my cousin David�s hand - my co-murderer Julie. Julie, still blonde but now plump, Julie. Julie, still blonde, now plump and engaged to my cousin David; its a small world. No matter how fast I run I can�t shake loose the past. It clatters along behind me like tin cans tied to a wedding car. I look at her; she looks at me and smiles. She doesn�t recognise me at all.
I remember summers past as hot, bright places to be, each day stretched to its limit, the moon pushed back until the sea spilled off the edge of the earth. They were summers of T-shirts and toned arms, flat stomachs and glossy hair. They are trapped in a gauze that softens harsh angles, a smear of Vaseline on the lens of my memory. They are summers wrapped in jeans and trainers, Levi, Puma, Adidas and Sergio Tachini. I remember the killing summer the same way, hanging out at the park, going for long walks in the woods, smoking monkey vine, couples disappearing then emerging from behind a bush, the boy sniffing his middle finger, the crude semaphore of conquest, the rest of us pissing ourselves with laughter and Clem. Clem had subtle disabilities, his tongue was too thick for his mouth and his words were greased by over active saliva glands - Phlegmy Clemmy. His organs of speech blurred each word, shaved off the edges and knocked down the borders; his sentences were a continent conquered by an oleaginous despot. He was 22, with the mental age of a child and an over active pituitary gland. We hung about in a group of five girls and six boys, two groups distinct but merging, each individual fairly intimate with every other individual of the opposite group. We were together because we lived in the same area and were the same age. We fucked each other because our bodies told us to, not because we fancied each other. Clem stood at the edges of us, watching when we broke off in pairs and rolled around, he would wank while watching, some of the boys encouraged him, showed him our tits or vaginas. Then he would wait for a girl to become detached. All of us had been mauled by him at some point, his long pretty hands snagging our flesh, his breath escaping his mouth in frothy gasps; the girl trying to get away, calling him a pissing freak, eventually managing to escape, the friction of separation leaving him with damp patches on his shirt and jeans.
We let him hang about because he had money and would buy fags and cans of Tenants Super. His mother, grateful he had friends; would let us in the house to watch TV when the weather was bad. The poor old dear looked embarrassed to be caught wearing her slippers.
Julie was one of those girls who made herself extraordinary by sheer force of will and ignorant self-belief. I have never worked out why this was so successful, but her parents told her on a daily basis that she was wonderful in every way, they believed it, she believed it - we all did, even though deep down I could see through it all and knew that it was all a conjurors trick and that one day everyone else would see it too. In any event, she had a short shelf life. But back then we did what she told us to do because she had the best ideas, had the most boyfriends and because to not follow meant to be alone.
Julie is wearing an Elizabeth Duke diamond ring, and is helping one of my mother�s sisters to fill vol-au-vent cases with prawn cocktail and egg mayonnaise. Funeral food, they are having a funeral conversation. � Lovely turnout, she�ll be missed�
�That vicar�s a right prat, why�d they have him do it?�
�Ere did you see Diane, fancy wearing that to a bloody funeral�
�Beautiful flowers�
�Did you see the state of Kelly�s Michael? He�s not right, he�s not ....shame�
There are photos of me, the me she should recognise, stalking the apparatus of daily life, shed skins preserved on paper; Julie doesn�t notice. She impales silver skin pickled onions and cheese cubes together with the relish of a crusader skewering infidels. Her kitchen skills are the sort admired by my mother and her sisters, I have the feeling she makes a delicious pork chop with boiled potatoes and frozen garden peas. The mourners make the inevitable migration into the kitchen. The reek of salmonella from the undercooked coronation Chicken suffuses the room with carnivorous incense. I leave the room to vomit and smoke a cigarette in the garden.
Clement is a stupid name for a boy - he was a stupid boy. We were three weeks into our summer school holiday, long enough for the novelty to have soured and the lack of money to induce a temporary bout of thieving of the odd fiver from your mother�s purse. Our teenage breath was dank with muted, pitiful angst, our launch into adult servitude replete with various methods of hair removal. The boys had begun to disappear from our daily routines, they were looking for something else, somewhere else I guess, they must of found it because we saw less and less of them. They came back now and then, to cadge a fag or a quick wank and finger fuck. So that day it was just Clem, kicking about the shopping parade with us girls. Behind the parade of shops were the garages for the surrounding estate, the architect of this grid had to be so stupendously thick or short sighted because it was sufficiently isolated as to make it the perfect spot for petty crime, drug abuse and sexual misdemeanours of all types. In fact I sucked dick for the first time in that maze and Louise Morris lost her virginity in one of the empty garages, her coat spread out absorbing the discarded engine oil from the floor and the sweat from her arse. She took us round there the next morning to show us the hallowed spot and the used Johnny in the corner. Her coat had to be chucked out.
Julie was on form that day, feeling good. Her hair sparkled with Sun-In, she pouted frosty pink skinny lips and rolled her eyes in their Rimmel Electric Blue lids. One of her top beauty tips was to use a pin to separate her mascara coated lashes. Clem couldn�t take his eyes off her, she shimmered, the rest of us girls watched her, loving her and wishing she would die at the same time. Poor Clem, stupid prick, with his hard dick. That day, from boredom, from feeling so extraordinarily powerful with sexual tricks we murdered him.
Clemmy bought us a bottle of Blue Thunderbird and with our picnic of lighter fuel, chewing gum and crisps we were away. The garages were a concrete suntrap, we sprawled in the nucleus where we were less likely to be disturbed, sunbathing in our bras, sniffing the lighter fuel and drinking. No one disturbed us, our fifteen year-old skin porous and supple. Laughing.
Lisa Collins, I can�t believe I remember her name, had found a headless Barbie doll and was taunting Clem.
�Oh look at her titties Clemmy, ain�t she lovely?�
We laughed at his red face and his cock pressing against his trousers.
�Clem fancies Barbie, Clem fancies Barbie, don�t ya Clemmy?�
We all did it, took the piss, but it was Julie who made him lick the Barbie�s crotch. She promised him that if he impressed us with his skills on Barbie he could have a go with her, so he stuck out his thick tongue and licked Barbie�s insipid little cunt with relish. We all faked panting and moaning, cheering him on, he spread her rubber legs and poked and poked at the moulded plastic, and every time he slowed as the realisation that we were laughing at him hit, Julie would flash her tits at him or squeeze his cock to convince him otherwise. He thought we all really wanted him; he let us pull down his trousers and his pants. Poor kid was trembling, his penis leaking fluid.
It was still hot, still quiet; three o'clock. The garage wouldn�t get busy until people came back from work. He wanted to touch Julie, touch her breasts, to take his time and have permission. I don�t know why she let him, or why we all did. But we were all horny - despite our experience, this was the first time any of us had felt truly aroused. He stroked us, pinched us. Clem�s t-shirt was soaked with saliva; his breath spurted, his mouth a hot geyser. He was a torrent of moisture in the arid garages.
We watched him rub himself, his legs skinny and white. We hadn�t seen a cock in day light before, his looked and smelt like a baby, his flesh delicately talcum powdered. His underwear was clean.
�Do ya wanna fuck Clemmy, do ya? Yeah. Say please.�
�Please.�
� Say pretty please.�
�Pretty please.�
� Say pretty please fuck me.�
�Pretty please fuck me.�
Julie didn�t wet the Barbie�s legs; she just pushed the doll into his rectum, deep, right up to Barbie�s tits. She fucked Clem, pushed the doll in, out once, twice and Clemmy came all over himself.
�Oh you dirty queer boy bastard, you fucking dirty poof, look at you, you cunt.�
We laughed and laughed at him with Barbie snug up his arse, her delicate hands waving. Her long legs massaging his prostrate and he cried; his face palsied by tears.
He bent down to pull up his trousers, tried to escape us, with our treacherous soft breasts and our laughter; Barbie still wedged in, he hobbled off, picking up speed his trousers round his knees. His cock and mouth still spluttering froth.
I don�t know how he got home, if he removed Barbie first or got his mum to do it later. Not much else happened that afternoon. We went to the corner shop and bought more cigarettes and cans of coke; then drifted home to our families sitting on their brown velour sofas watching TV, ate our dinner and went to bed.
Back in the house, Mum is playing Elvis Presley records and her family are singing along, their voices eroded by fags. Julie knows all the lyrics. I do too; I just don�t sing them.
Clement�s mother found him dead in his bed a few weeks later. He had drunk a bottle of bleach and chased it with his mother�s HRT pills. He left no note, but his intention was pretty clear. He died as clean as a whistle, the hormonal equivalent of an adolescent girl. His mum invited us to his funeral, and we went. She didn�t suspect a thing, but then, neither did we. I don�t think any of us once considered that it was us that had caused this. That we had raped and murdered Clem, he wasn�t missed, except by his mother. We forgot that he had ever existed, found someone else to buy fags and cider.
Now here I am, standing in my mother�s living room watching Julie singing Elvis songs, just as my Nan would have wanted. I have stayed long enough now for decency; against the house rules, I still have on my shoes, fuck the carpet, I have to be able to walk the hot coals put down for me. My get out is quick, my mother makes excuses for me, �Pamela has to drive all the way up to London...� I nod, smile, agree to go to the wedding, promise to make it for Aunt June�s Fiftieth and leave; mum waving me away at the door.
All the way home I try to remember Clem and all the lies I told then and since. I am still not sure that I am the woman I wanted to be. I have already bought my hat for the wedding.
DANIEL JOHNSTON
BILLY CHILDISH
JOHN STEINBECK
ANGELA CARTER
ALBERT CAMUS
