This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.

Jon McGregor.

For eireann Lorsung, & Matthew Welton.

That Colour.

Horncastle.

She stood by the window and said, Those trees are turning that beautiful colour again. Is that right, I asked. I was at the back of the house, in the kitchen. I was doing the dishes. The water wasn't hot enough. She said, I don't know what colour you'd call it. These were the trees on the other side of the road she was talking about, across the junction. It's a wonder they do so well where they are, with the traffic. I don't know what they are. Some kind of maple or sycamore, perhaps. This happens every year and she always seems taken by surprise. These years get shorter every year. She said, I could look at them all day, I really could. I rested my hands in the water and I listened to her standing there. Her breathing. She didn't say anything. She kept standing there. I emptied the bowl and refilled it with hot water. The room was cold, and the steam poured out of the water and off the dishes. I could feel it on my face. She said, They're not just red, that's not it, is it now. I rinsed off the frying pan and ran my fingers around it to check for grease. My knuckles were starting to ache again, already. She said, When you close your eyes on a sunny day, it's a bit like that colour. Her voice was very quiet. I stood still and listened. She said, It's hard to describe. A lorry went past and the whole house shook with it and I heard her step away from the window, the way she does. I asked why she was so surprised. I told her it was autumn, it was what happened: the days get shorter, the chlorophyll breaks down, the leaves turn a different colour. I told her she went through this every year. She said, It's just lovely, they're lovely, that's all, you don't have to. I finished the dishes and poured out the water and rinsed the bowl. There was a very red skirt she used to wear, when we were young. She dyed her hair to match it once and some people in the town were moved to comment. Flame-red, she called it then. Perhaps these leaves were like that, the ones she was trying to describe. I dried my hands and went through to the front room and stood beside her. I felt for her hand and held it. I said, But tell me again.

In Winter The Sky.

Upwell.

He had something to tell her. He announced this the next day, after the fog had cleared, while the floods still lay over the fields. It looked like a difficult thing for him to say. His hands were shaking. She asked him if it couldn't wait until after she'd done some work, and he said that there was always something else to do, some other reason to wait and to not talk. All right, she said. Fine. Bring the dogs. They gave his father some lunch, and they walked out together along the path beside the drainage ca.n.a.l.

She knew what he wanted to tell her, but she didn't know what he would say.

What she knew about him when she was seventeen: he lived at the very end of the school-bus route; he was planning to go to agricultural college when he finished his A levels; he didn't talk much; he had nice hair; he didn't have a girlfriend.

What she knew about him now: he didn't talk much; he had a bald patch which he refused to protect from the sun; he didn't read; he was a careful driver; he trimmed his toenails by hand, in bed; he often forgot to remove his boots when coming into the house; he said he still loved her.

He was seventeen the first time he kissed a girl. The girl had long dark hair, and brown eyes, and chapped lips. They sank low in their seats on the school bus, leaning together, and she took his face in her hands and pushed her mouth on to his. She seemed to know what she was doing, he said later. He was wrong. She drew away just as he was beginning to get a sense of what he'd been missing, and said that she'd like to see him again that same evening. If he wasn't busy. They should go somewhere, she said, do something. He didn't ask where, or what. She got off the bus without saying anything else, and went into her house without looking back. She ran upstairs to her bedroom, and watched the bus move slowly towards the horizon, and wrote about the boy in her notebook.

Leaving March, where she lived then, the school bus pa.s.sed through Wimblington before swinging round to follow the B1098, parallel to Sixteen Foot Drain, until it stopped near Upwell. It was a journey he made every day, from the school where he was studying for his A levels to his father's house where he helped on the farm in the evenings. Where the two of them run the farm together now. The road beside the Sixteen Foot is perfectly straight, lifted just above the level of the fields, and looking out of the window that afternoon felt, he said later, in a phrase she noted down, like he was pa.s.sing through the sky.

The girl's name was Joanna. The boy's name was George. He came back for her the same night.

He has told her this part of the story many times, with the well-rehea.r.s.ed air of a story being prepared for the grandchildren: how he waited until his father was asleep before taking the car-keys from the kitchen drawer, that he'd driven before, pulling trailers along farm tracks, but he didn't have a licence and his father would never have given him permission, how he remembered that she'd said she wanted to see him, to go somewhere and do something, that he knew he couldn't just sit there in that silent house, doing his homework and listening to the weather forecast and getting ready for bed.

She wonders, now, what would have been different if he had stayed home that night. She wants to know how he thinks he would feel, if that were the case. An impossible question, really.

The roads were empty and straight, and there was enough moonlight to steer by. She saw him coming from a long way off. Watching his headlights as they swung around the corners and pointed the way towards her. She was waiting outside by the time he got there.

She hadn't wanted to go anywhere in particular. She just wanted to sit beside him in the car and drive through the flatness of the landscape, looking down across the fields from the elevated roads. They drove from her house to Westry, over Twenty Foot Drain, past Whittlesey, and as they pa.s.sed through Pondersbridge she put her hand on his thigh and kissed his ear. They crossed Forty Foot Bridge and drove through Ticks Moor, the windows open to the damp rich smell of a summer night in the fens, and beside West Moor he put his hand into her hair. They crossed the Old Bedford and New Bedford rivers, drove through Ten Mile Bank, Salter's Lode and Outwell, and on the edge of Friday Bridge she asked him to stop the car and they kissed for a long time.

Afterwards, they looked out across the fields and talked. They didn't know each other very well, then. He asked about her family and she asked about his. He told her about his mother, and she said she was sorry. She asked what he was going to do when he left school and he said he didn't know. He asked her the same and she said she wanted to write but that her father wanted her to go to agricultural college. She lifted his thin woollen jumper over his head and drew shapes on his bare skin with the sharp edge of her fingernail. She watched as he undid the b.u.t.tons of her blouse. She took his hands and placed them against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. There was the touch of her whisper in his ear, and the taste of his mouth, and the feel of his warm skin against hers, and the way his scalp moved when she pulled at his hair. Later, there was the smell of him on her hands as she stood outside her house and watched him drive away in his father's car, the two red lights getting smaller and smaller but never quite fading from view in the dark, flat land.

He drove home along the straight road beside the Sixteen Foot, holding his hand to his chest. The moonlight s.h.i.+ning off the narrow water. He was thinking about all the things she'd said, just as she was thinking about all the things he'd said.

He was thinking about his father, he said later, and about how long his father had been alone, and about how he knew now that he wouldn't be able to live on his own in the same way. Not now he knew what it meant to be with someone else. He was still thinking about her when he drove into a man and killed him.

First he was driving along the empty road thinking about her, and then there was a man in the road looking over his shoulder and the car was driving into him. It was hard to know where he'd come from. He'd come from nowhere. He was not there and then he was there and there was no time to do anything. There was no time to flinch, or to shout. He didn't even have time to move his hand from his chest, and as the car hit the man he was flung forwards and his hand was crushed against the steering wheel. The man's arms lifted up to the sky and his back arched over the bonnet and his legs slid under one of the wheels and his whole body was dragged down to the road and out of sight.

Those arms lifted up to the sky, that arching back.

The sound the man's body made when the car struck him. It was too loud, too firm, it sounded like a car driving into a fence rather than a man. And the sound he made. That m.u.f.fled split-second of calling-out.

His arms lifted up to the sky, even his fingers pointing upwards, as if there was something he could reach up there to pull himself clear. His back arching over the bonnet of the car before being dragged down. The jolt as he was lost beneath the wheels. George's hand crushed between his chest and the steering wheel.

Then stillness and quiet.

He lay on his back with his legs underneath him, looking up at the night. His legs were bent back so far that they must have been broken. George stood by the car for a long time. The man didn't make a sound. There was no sound anywhere. The night was quiet and the moon bright and the air still and there was a man lying in the road a few yards away. It didn't feel real, and there were times now when they both wondered whether it had really happened at all. But there was the way the man's neck felt when George touched his fingers against the vein there. Not cold, but not warm either, not warm enough: he feels like a still-born calf. There was no pulse to feel. Only his broken body on the tarmac, his eyes, his open mouth.

He was wearing a white s.h.i.+rt, a red V-necked jumper, a frayed tweed jacket. His arms were up beside his head, and his fists were tightly clenched. A broken half-bottle of whisky was hanging from the pocket of his jacket. There didn't seem to be any blood anywhere; there were dirty black bruises on his face, which might have been old bruises anyway, but there was no blood. His clothes were ripped across the chest, but there was no blood. It was hard to understand how a man could be dragged under the wheels of a car and not bleed. It was hard to understand how he could not bleed and yet die so quickly.

The whites of his eyes looked yellow under the moonlight.

It was hard to understand who he was, and why he had been on the road in the middle of the night. Why he was dead now. It was hard to know what to do. George knelt beside him, looking out across the fields, up at the sky, at his father's car, his shaking hands, the sky.

He had his reasons, he says. He's often regretted it, and he's often thought that his reasons weren't enough, but he thinks he would do the same again.

If he'd been older when he made that journey then perhaps he would have been stronger; perhaps his thoughts would have been clearer. But he was seventeen, and he had never knelt beside a dead man before. So he drove away. He stood up, and turned away from the man, and walked back to his father's car, and drove away. He didn't look in the rear-view mirror, and he didn't turn around when he slowed for the junction.

I suppose it was at that stage that I began to realise what had happened what I had done.

That was how he put it, when he told her, walking out on the path beside the ca.n.a.l after lunch, the dogs running along ahead of them with their claws clicking on the tarmac strip. I suppose.

He had driven his father's car into a man, and then over him, and now that man was dead. He felt a sort of sickness, a watery dread, starting somewhere down in his guts and rising to the back of his throat. His hands were locked on the wheel. He couldn't even blink.

And he knew, even before he got back to his father's house, that he would have to return to the man. He couldn't leave him laid out on the road like that, with his legs neatly folded under his back. He knew, or he thought he knew, that when the man was found then somehow he would be found too, and the girl who'd drawn upon his bare chest wouldn't even look him in the eye.

So it was her fault as well, it seems.

He fetched a shovel from a barn at his father's farm and drove back to where he'd hit the man. It sounds so terrible now. Cowardly? He carried the shovel down the embankment to the field below the road and took off his jumper and began to dig.

He was used to digging. The field had only recently been harvested, and the stubble was still in the ground, so he lay sections of topsoil to one side to be replaced. He was thinking clearly, working quickly but properly, ignoring the purpose of the hole. Once, knee-deep in the ground, he looked up the bank and realised what he was doing. But he couldn't see the man up on the road, so he managed to swallow the rising sickness and dig some more. And all this time, the sound of metal on soil, the sky above.

And then it was deep enough. It was done. So long as it was further beneath the surface than the plough-blades would reach then it was deep enough, most probably. He climbed up the embankment to the road, wanting to hurry and get it done but holding back from what he had to do, from the fact of having to touch him, having to pick him up and carry him down the bank and into the hole he had made. The death he had made in the hole he had made in the earth. He bent down to take the man's arms. He could smell whisky. He stopped, unwilling to touch him, unwilling to go through with what he'd found reason to do. They were good reasons, but they didn't seem enough. But then he remembered her skin on his, and her eyes, and he knew, he said, that he could do anything not to lose that.

She'd made him do it, then. That was how it had happened.

He gripped the man's elbows and lifted them up to his waist. He backed away towards the embankment and the man's legs unfolded from beneath him, his head rolling down into his armpit, his half-bottle of whisky falling from his pocket and breaking on the road. He didn't stop. He kept dragging him away, away from the road, down the bank, into the field.

She'd said, when he finally told her all this, that she wanted to know it all. How it was done. How it had felt. So now she knew.

He laid the man down beside the hole in the earth and rolled him into it. The man fell face down, and he felt bad about that, about the man's face being in the mud. He went back to the place on the road and picked up the pieces of gla.s.s. He threw them down on to the man's back, and then he took the shovel and began to pile the earth back into the hole.

He threw soil over the man until he was gone, until the soil pressed down on him so that he was no longer a man or a body or a victim or anything. Just an absence, hidden under the ground. It was only then that he looked up at the sky, dark and silent over him, the moon hidden by a cloud. He drove past her house in March again, and then back to his father's house. He put the car-keys away in the kitchen drawer, and the shovel in the barn, and he stood in the shower until the hot-water tank had emptied and he was left standing beneath a trickle of water as cold as stone.

So now she knew.

They were married before either of them had the chance to go to university: his father retired early, after a heart attack, and he had to take over the farm. It only made sense for Joanna to move in and help. George had been there when his father collapsed: he'd heard the dogs barking at the tractor in the yard, and gone outside to see his father clutching at his chest and turning pale. He'd dragged him from the cab into the mud and begun hammering on his chest. I didn't want to lose him to the land as well. He'd beaten his father's heart with his fist, and forced air into his lungs, and called out for help. She was there with him. She rang the ambulance, and watched him save his father's life, and decided she would marry him. She can remember very clearly, standing there and deciding that. And he still thinks he was the one who asked her.

When she remembers it now, it's always from a height, as if she can see it the way the sky saw it: George kneeling over his father in the mud of the yard, shouting at him to hold on, the dogs circling and barking.

And now this giant of a man sits in an armchair clutching a hot-water bottle and watching the sky change colour outside. He refuses to watch television, listening instead to the radio while he keeps watch on the land and the sky. He claims to take no interest in the running of the farm: he signed everything over to them almost immediately, and has rarely offered an opinion. But she knows that he watches. She has seen him looking at a newly ploughed field from the upstairs window, or running a hand along a piece of machinery in the yard, or lingering by the kitchen table while she does the accounts. She has seen the faint smiles and nods which indicate that he is well pleased. She hopes that George has noticed; she suspects that he has not. Sometimes, when George takes his father his evening meal, his father will talk about something he's heard on the radio: a concert recording, a weather forecast, a news report. Often they'll just sit, and George will listen to his father's short creaking breaths, thankful to have him there still. She doesn't sit with them at these times. She reads, or deals with paperwork, or goes back to her writing, waiting for him to rea.s.sure himself that his father is well.

They've never had children, and this has They've never talked about it, and yet In this way, their lives together had settled into something like a routine. He was up first, feeding the dogs, bringing her a cup of tea, eating his breakfast and leaving his dishes on the table. She dressed, and ate her breakfast, and cleared the table, and waited until she heard the radio in his father's bedroom before going to help him dress.

Caring for his father had taken up more and more of their time over the years. His health was poor enough to justify moving him into a nursing home. There was one over in March; she had a friend whose mother was there, and had heard good reports. But it was obvious that his father would refuse to go. And she had been unable to find a way of bringing it up with George. There were so many things she was unable to bring up with him. Sometimes it felt as though they only related to each other through talking about work, about the business. As business partners, they have been close, communicative, collaborative. All those good words.

In the mornings and the afternoons, they worked in the fields. That wasn't really true. It might have been true once, in the very early days, when they'd had to work hard all the hours of daylight to try and pull the business out of the hole his father had dug it into. There'd been no money to employ extra labour, and they'd had to do everything themselves. There was less land then, but it was still a struggle and they were always exhausted by the time they found their way to bed.

But things had changed, gradually. They'd bought more land, secured more grants and loans. Diversified. And almost without noticing, they'd stopped being farmers and become managers. Most of the field-work was done by labourers hired by sub-contractors, people they never spoke to. George still liked to do some of the work himself a the ploughing, the ditch-digging, the heavy machine-based jobs a but there was no real need. For the most part they spent their days on the phone, or filling out forms, buying supplies, dealing with inspectors, negotiating with the water authorities. Discussions about drainage and flood defences seemed to take more and more of her time now. The floods seemed to be coming more often, covering more land, taking longer to drain. Maybe we should switch to rice, George had started saying, and she wasn't sure whether or not this was a joke.

All of which meant that when he said he wanted to tell her something, and that they should take the time to walk out along the path beside the ca.n.a.l after lunch, it was no real interruption to the running of the farm. Down in the few fields which weren't yet flooded, the workers carried on, their backs bent low, and she was able to stop him and put her hand to his chest and ask what it was he wanted to say.

In the evenings he often spent time in the barn, fixing things. She would spend that time walking backwards and forwards from the house to the barn, offering to help, and having that help warmly but firmly rejected. He was unable to admit, even now, that she was better than he was at mechanical jobs: repair, maintenance, improvised alteration and the like. Her father had been a mechanic. It was natural that she would have an ability in that area. But still, he found it difficult to accept.

At the same time, he found it difficult to have sufficient patience with, or tolerance of, the writing she did. She had only ever called it writing: he was the one who used the word *poems'. But whenever he said it a *poems' a it was with an affected air, as if the pretension was hers. So, for example, he might come cras.h.i.+ng in from the barn late one afternoon, with his boots on, and say Would you just leave your b.l.o.o.d.y poems alone for one minute and help me get the seed-drill loaded up? There were five other places he could have put the b.l.o.o.d.y in that sentence, but he chose to put it there, next to *poems'. This is an example, she would tell him, if he was interested, of what placement could do.

Once, he says, he saw a man metal-detecting in that field. He was driving past and saw a car parked on the verge, a faint line of footprints leading out across the soil. The light was clear and strong, and the man in the field was no more than a silhouette. He sat in his car, watching. Twice he saw the man stoop to the ground and dig with a small shovel. Twice he saw him stand and kick the earth back into place, and continue his steady sweeping with the metal detector. He wanted to go and tell him to stop, but there was no good reason for doing so. It wasn't his land. The man would surely have asked permission, and anyway he was doing no damage so soon after harvest.

He wondered what the man thought he was going to find, he says. He had a sudden feeling of inevitability; that this would be the moment when the body was found, the moment when everything could be made right. He thought about going to fetch Joanna, so she could be there to see it as well.

He'd been living like this for years, it would seem, lurching between a trembling silence and a barely withheld confessional urge. When he thought about it later, he realised there was no reason why a man with a metal detector should find a body. But that kind of logical thought seemed to crumble in the face of these moments.

He got out of the car, and waited. The man in the field looked up at George, and George looked down at him. Ready. The man packed his tools into a bag and began hurrying back to his car, stumbling slightly across the low stubble.

Did you find anything? George asked.

No, the man said, nothing. And he got in his car and drove away.

This is the way it happens, in the end. This is the way he describes it, when he tells her: He was driving, he said. There were bright lights, and men in white overalls standing in the water. There were police officers along the embankment and a white tent on the verge. There were police vans in the road. A policeman was directing the traffic through from either direction. The men in white overalls were doing something with poles and tape. He could hardly breathe, he said. There was something like a rus.h.i.+ng sound in his ears.

The policeman waved at him to stop, and walked over to the car, and asked George to wind the window down. He reminded George that they were at school together, and George didn't know what to say. A funny do this, isn't it, the policeman said. George thought the policeman was probably waiting for him to ask what had happened but he didn't say anything. The policeman told him anyway: they'd found a body in the water. The farmer had seen it. They were a.s.suming it had been buried for years, and that the flood water must have disturbed the soil and brought it out. There wasn't much left of it now. The policeman said he couldn't imagine they'd find out who it was, and then he asked after the family and said he should let George get on. George said that his wife and his father were both fine and drove slowly into the fog.

Later, he drove into the yard and the dogs came barking out to meet him. He sat in the car for a moment, too weak to open the door. Joanna could see him from the kitchen window. She stood and watched. She wondered what was wrong. The lights of the house were clear and warm, spilling into the foggy night. He got out of the car and walked to the house, pus.h.i.+ng the dogs away, and she came to meet him in the hallway. He looked at her and said that they needed to talk. She said it would have to wait until she'd finished some more work, and he said there was always something else to do, some other reason to wait and to not talk. He said they couldn't go on like this, it had gone on for too long, they were young when it happened, they were older now, time had pa.s.sed, they needed to bring things out into the open and deal with the consequences and stop trying to hide what it was doing to them both. She looked at him. It was the most she had heard him say for a long time. It didn't fit. All right, she said. Fine. Bring the dogs.

He served the meal she had prepared for his father and took it through to him.

They found a body in the field down the road, his father said.

George nodded, and said that he'd heard.

Can't think it was anyone from round here, his father said.

No, George said. I shouldn't think so.

She Was Looking For This Coat.

Lincoln.

She came in and she was looking for this coat. It was her father's, she said. He'd left it on a bus last week. She spent a long time describing it. Herringbone was a word she used. Also she said it was a kind of faded moss-green. Or more like a faded sage-green, but like a faded dark sage-green, with a brown hue. She asked me if I knew the colour she meant. I said I thought I was getting the idea. She had her hands resting on the counter, and she was trying to look round behind me, the way people do, like they think I'm hiding something. She said the b.u.t.tons were tortoisesh.e.l.l and one of them was missing. She said the lining was a very dark navy-blue and it was torn from one of the arms right down to the hem. She asked me if I thought hem was the right word to use about a man's coat. I said I wouldn't know about that. He'd left it on a bus the previous week, she told me again, on the Wednesday. It did have a belt but that might be missing, she said. I turned the pad of Mis/Prop/B forms across the counter towards her and asked her to fill in her name and address and telephone number. I said I could do the rest. I said I didn't think we had anything right here in the office but I could make enquiries. She was looking at the form like she couldn't read it. She said it was definitely Wednesday. She said she thought the coat was from Burton's. I asked her if she knew which bus the item had been mislaid upon. She said she didn't. She said it would have been some time in the morning. She said her father had told her he'd gone to meet his friend for lunch, when she'd spoken to him, when she'd spoken to him on the phone, last Wednesday. The way she was talking, I felt like asking her if she needed to sit down. I asked if her father had a bus pa.s.s and she nodded and I told her in that case he was unlikely to have been on the bus before nine thirty. She looked surprised. I said so we're narrowing it down now aren't we, love? I tried a smile. She didn't smile. I asked if there were any valuables in the pockets. She said she wasn't sure. She picked up the pen. She said there'll be pens in the top pocket, in the breast pocket. She started to fill in her name and address. Kathryn something. With a Y. It was a nice name. It suited her. She had very dark black hair. I told her if she could put all her contact details on the form I'd be able to make enquiries and someone would be in touch. I told her she'd given a very good description and I was sure if the coat had been handed in we'd be able to locate it for her father. There was another customer waiting by then. There's never normally another customer. I said someone would be in contact as soon as possible, if it had been handed in. I told her unfortunately in this day and age etc. She asked me had she mentioned it being a long coat. I told her I thought I'd a.s.sumed that. It came down to here on him, she said, pointing to her knees, but he was a lot taller than me so it would look longer than that on me. I started to say something but I didn't say anything. We had quite a queue by then. We never normally have a queue. I said I hoped we'd be able to locate the item for her. I told her someone would be in touch. She told me the collar was brown. She was trying to remember the name of the material. She said what's it called, it's like inside-out leather, you have to brush it, it's soft to the touch, it smells like leather but it's soft to the touch when you stroke it, it leaves marks if you stroke it the wrong way. I asked her did she mean suede and she said yes, that was it, suede. I wrote on the form that the coat had a brown suede collar. I asked her was there anything else I could help her with today.

Looking Up v.a.g.i.n.a.

Welton.

He was the first boy in his cla.s.s to get pubic hair. He'd vaguely a.s.sumed that this might be something the other boys would be envious of. Perhaps even awestruck by. Something which would make them see him in a new light. But it turned out to be just one more thing they could use in their campaign of vilification against him.

Vilification was a word he'd come across recently. It was a word he'd found easy to understand.

Virile was another word. It was something to do with s.e.x. He knew pubic hairs were the first step on the way to getting s.e.x, so he thought this might mean he was virile and the other boys would be impressed or maybe even intimidated or at the very least would reconsider their apparently venal opinions of him.

He'd had the pubic hairs for over a year now. He was used to them, and had almost forgotten that they might be an issue. The subject had never come up. But this was the last year of primary school, and they were starting weekly swimming lessons, and at the swimming pool there was a communal changing room. One of the boys saw, and pointed it out to the other boys, and soon enough all of them were looking and asking him questions about it.

And for a moment everything seemed to hang in the balance, like when a bus hangs off the edge of a cliff and everything depends on whether the pa.s.sengers rush to the front or the back. It would only have taken one boy to say something like, *cool,' or, *nice one, Smithy,' and everything would have been different. There might even have been some quiet veneration, before everyone put on their trunks and got into the pool. Word would have spread around the school, and he would no longer have been vulnerable to being tripped in the corridors. People would have talked to him on the bus, or between lessons. But instead, someone pushed the balance the other way. Robin was in the vanguard. He shouted something, pointing at the pubic hairs and turning to the other boys for support. They all joined in, and the shouting continued for the rest of the day, and for some days after that. Weeks.

*Bush' was the word that got shouted. Bush, and its many variations, with everyone trying to think of a new version: bush, bushy, bushwhacker, bushmonkey, bushman, bushy bushman, busharama, bushface, bushmuppet, bushalicious, bushb.u.m, bushbunny, busher, bushayre, busherara, busheba, lord bush, president bush, sir bushwhacker of bus.h.i.+ngdon, bushmonster, bushbilly, bushw.i.l.l.y, bushknocker, bus.h.i.+el-san, bushelman, bushalackalonglong, bushy-bushy-bush-bush.

It wasn't even as if his pubic hair was unusually verdant.

Someone told the girls, and so then all the girls knew that he was the first boy in the cla.s.s to get pubic hair. One of them came up at lunch-time and asked him if it was true. She looked like she was on the verge of being impressed, but her friends were laughing so he said it wasn't. He said he vigorously disputed it. Robin and another boy heard this, and pulled his trousers down in order to publicly verify the facts. There was a certain amount of vicarious laughter from just about everyone in the vicinity.

He stayed home from school for a few days after that. Mostly he lay in bed, looking up v.a.g.i.n.a and v.u.l.v.a in the dictionary.

He understood, already, that in a few years' time these same boys would get, or claim to be getting, s.e.x, and that he would be mocked and called a virgin. Virginal. Someone would realise that virginal sounded like v.a.g.i.n.al, and he would be called a v.a.g.i.n.a; a v.a.g.i.n.a-head. He could visualise it precisely. There was no logic to it. It was vindictive. There was no way he could win. There wasn't really any hope of winning. It made him feel vexated.

But he also understood that one day he would leave. Eventually, he would leave. And when he was gone they would still be here. He would move to a big city, and go to university, and be friends with people who didn't feel the need to mock and belittle him, people who were interested in reading and art and philosophy and those varieties of things. And Robin and everyone else would all still be here, with their limited vocabularies, working in the chicken-processing factories and vegetable packing-houses, looking for someone else to victimise.

Victorious would be a word he could use then. Vindicated.