Free Damascus by Richard Beard Page B

Spencer’s Damascus. After the certainty of a revelation, little things like these probably didn’t matter so much. She said:
    â€˜Is pregnancy really the worst thing you can imagine?’
    â€˜Of course not.’
    â€˜Then it’s not so bad, is it?’
    â€˜There’s also disease.’
    â€˜We know everything about each other. I thought this was what you wanted?’
    'It all seems very sudden. Very quick.’
    â€˜Everything changes, snap bang, instantly. That’s what you were always waiting for. And anyway, what’s so wrong with children if we love each other?’
    Spencer: the dreadful unstoppable momentum of it all, a wedding probably, a honeymoon if they could afford it, the child, temper-tantrums, and no more watching television in the afternoon, consoled by the thought that he was hurting nobody by doing nothing because there was nothing to be done and life could always begin tomorrow.
    Hazel: on any particular day, not a special day in time of war or social unrest, but just any normal any old newsday, children could be abducted, fall from cliffs, collide with fireworks, contract meningitis. They could be shot in the face from point-blank range or stabbed or stoned or poisoned by a pellet from a customised umbrella. And even if they survived all this, they’d probably still run away from home to star darkly in dubious films with titles like 
Hellfire Corner
or 
So You Want to Be a Surgeon?
 or 
Clarissa Explains It All
.
    There was, however, nothing to be gained from being frightened.
    â€˜There is also joy,’ Hazel said. ‘Let’s try and live life as if the world was going to stop at tea-time.’
    â€˜Why should it?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Stop at tea-time.’
    â€˜A thousand reasons. Anything could happen. I’m just saying don’t be so frightened.’
    â€˜It’s not fear, it’s thinking.’
    Then you think too much. Fear is easy,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s like being sad. Anyone can be sad and afraid. Now come and sit over here.’
    Spencer went and sat on the sofa. Hazel put her hand on his knee. She asked him if he ever wondered what Charles Kingsley was like in bed.

    It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere in Britain, in Baling or Gala or Aberavon or Newmarket, in Thornton Steward or Durham or Matlock or King’s Lynn, Hazel Burns is fourteen years old and a prisoner in her own home. In the front room she and her mother stand opposite each other, locked in full combat.
    â€˜It’s only a mini-skirt. All the girls are wearing them.’
    â€˜Stop being so adolescent.’
    â€˜I 
am
 adolescent.’
    â€˜Do I have to spell it out?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜What would Sam Carter think?’
    â€˜Spell it out, Mum.’
    â€˜Imagine you’re walking home. It’s dark. You hear footsteps behind you. You’re terrified and all you’re wearing is that handkerchief, which, if I may say so, makes you look like a prostitute. The footsteps speed up, following you all the way home. Eventually you reach the front door, you turn round.’
    â€˜And then what?’
    â€˜Use your imagination.’
    And there he is, River Phoenix in sunglasses, having faked his death to start a new life as Hazel’s secret long-term lover. Destiny would be a fine thing. Or at least, Hazel corrects herself, a fine destiny would be a fine thing.
    â€˜What’s wrong with Sam Carter?’ her mother asks.
    â€˜He’s fat.’
    â€˜What about one of those nice boys you always meet on holiday?’
    â€˜They all live miles away. And anyway, we keep on moving house.’
    â€˜How about your black trousers? You could put on some trousers.’
    â€˜I’m not changing.’
    Her mother loses her temper and says well then in that case young lady you’re not leaving the house and Hazel thinks fine, if I’m not allowed to leave the