‘If that’s the way you want to pay,’ he said in a mocking and disappointed tone. ‘But no lies, you know. This is a game of truth. The pot on the bloody fire, love.’
‘I never lie,’ she said. ‘I don’t see any point in it, especially in front of strangers.’
‘I thought we were friends?’ said Bill.
‘You can take your choice,’ she laughed.
‘All right, as long as the miles roll by under this fusillade of shots. I’ll have to interrupt you now and again to tank up that thirsty radiator. You’re a real sport,’ he went on, licking his chops, inside as it were, ‘to join in our fun and games.’
‘You think so?’ she said, in such a tone that I knew she wasn’t joining in anything at all, though only time would prove whether Bill or I was right. There was a strong whiff of petrol in the car, but the others didn’t say anything, so I decided to go until they did. Not that I doubted my nose, but I just didn’t see how it could be dangerous. In any case, I had always found the smell of petrol rather agreeable to the senses whenever I was beginning to be just a little bit tired.
‘I had a perfect childhood,’ June began. ‘You see, when my parents got married they wanted a girl, and I was a girl. Even they couldn’t mistake that. They were as happy as they could be that things had begun so well. At the time I didn’t realize this, and though they told me as, soon as they thought I was able to understand, it wasn’t till I was sixteen and began to have a mind of my own that I realized what a responsibility had been put on to my shoulders, especially since, after having me, my mother wasn’t able to produce any more. What had kicked off for them as a blessing ended up for me as a curse.
‘I was a girl, and therefore they indulged me in everything that had to do with girlishness — though you’ve got to remember I’m talking from hindsight and not so much from what I felt at the time. I was up to my neck — unwillingly — in dolls’ houses, dolls, ballet clothes, sewing machines, and embroidery sets. Whatever I wanted, I had, providing it was just just the thing for a little girl, the girl of their dreams. They weren’t very well-off, mind you. My father was a booking clerk at the railway station, but in providing so well for me they acted as if they were thanking God for having sent me in the first place. It was an act of worship. God’s altar was little me.
‘I suppose somebody should have told my mother that children were born from my father’s penis that in a moment of dark confusion got mixed up in her womb — and not in heaven. But they didn’t, and my ideal life went on for a few years more. My hair grew in dark ringlets down my back, and in looks I seemed to satisfy them as well, though they found me a bit quiet, which they put down to intelligence, and the much hoped-for fact that still waters run deep. But I only remember feeling sly and miserable, because though children can’t tell you what they feel they certainly know enough about what they feel to be able to remember it when they’re grown up. Being the apple of their eye they didn’t let me play with other girls on the street, thinking they were too rough for me and that they might initiate me into games of doctors and nurses, so I was reduced to dismembering my dolls with a kitchen knife when my mother’s back was turned, or cutting their hair with scissors as if they’d been found in some sort of unmentionable collaboration with a dirty hooligan down the street, or I’d make a hole between their legs and stick spent matches there. In actual fact, my mother was bored with looking after me, after she had lost her enthusiasm for petting and spoiling, so she was only too glad to see that I was pensively playing on my own for an hour. When my father came home he would slobber all over me for half a minute, then rush out to his railwayman’s club to play darts.
‘A few years went by before my mother realized that it would be impossible for her to have another child, and then a year or two more passed before they began to regret that they hadn’t had the sense to wish for a son first, since now it was too late to have one. They seemed to think, then, that their wish for a girl — me — had been the prime cause of the first child being a girl, and because of this their attitude began to change. I was at school, so at least I had another form of life to cushion the shock of it. But still, it was hard. I’m not blaming my patents, because I think those who blame parents for things they think were done against them as children are being a bit unrealistic. All you can do is state the case. Maybe I’m only saying this because I’ve got a seven-year-old daughter now.
‘Anyway, whereas before they loaded me with all the feminine things at a time when I wanted to know something about what boys had to do with the world, they now took everything like that away and brought me guns, Meccano outfits, chemistry sets. This might not ordinarily have been much of a shock to me, but the fact was that I’d actually been so weighed down with little-girl things from birth that I’d long since given in and grown to like it. I was a little girl, and that was that. My father would now teach me how to shoot a pop-gun. Once, he came proudly home from the club with a great parcel in his arms, which turned out to be an electric train set he’d won in a raffle. He set it up for me, and played with it for more than an hour while his supper got cold, and I sat boggle-eyed and not understanding a thing.
‘My parents were so selfish and gentle that they were totally ignorant. But when my father tried to dress me up in a cowboy suit, my mother drew the line, and at last got a glimmer of what confusion was being spread in me. So she went out next day and came home with the largest doll I had ever seen. I was eight, and didn’t like dolls all that much, anyway, as I’d often said, and when I pushed it aside in disgust so that it fell off the table and cracked its skull, she was so chagrined that she smacked my face for the first time in my life. All I could do was go back into my corner, and indulge in the age-old consolation of playing with myself, which I did, for at least by doing that I could see I was definitely and for ever a girl.
‘Though my parents may not have realized it, I already knew about the facts of life, because at school we talked on this topic continually. In fact I remember feeling that because my knowledge was so much more recent than any similar knowledge my parents could have had, mine was so much more accurate, while theirs must be right out of date. The fact that my nose was always up in the air because of this made them lose hope of their little girl ever growing up into a beautiful-dutiful daughter. From time to time they tried by an act of kindness to do something about it, but one or other of them usually ended up by cuffing me or pushing me aside in a despair that I knew wasn’t genuine.
‘In spite of this, and maybe because of it, I did well at school. From first to last I was top of the class, and though they made a show of being glad, this also puzzled them. Up to the age of ten my father had helped with my homework, but after that it became too complicated and I was left to deal with such mysteries on my own, which I was capable of solving. But my mother thought I was only doing it to spite my father, so as to make trouble between them. This wouldn’t have been difficult at the best of times, but they stood together by saying how ungrateful I was at them sweating blood half their lives to give me the ideal conditions in which to enjoy and take advantage of my education. It was awful, really. I hardly understood what they were saying. Going to sleep at night I’d made up stories to myself saying I hadn’t been born to them at all, but that gipsies had sold me to them as a baby, and that my real carefree wild parents were at that moment bending over a smoking fire in the mountainous part of some Balkan country waiting for the supper pot to boil so that they could feed themselves and the numerous children scattered around in the darkness who were all my real brothers and sisters. I even spread this story at school, not from spite, but because I wanted to appear different to the rest of the them. I didn’t hate my mother and father, I swear I didn’t, but to me they were more like other children than parents, whom I would try to fight on equal terms. I went so suddenly between love and hate when I got to the age of thirteen that in calm moments I’d picture myself running away from home. Neither of them thought twice about knocking me about, and a time of violent rows began that lasted till I was seventeen.