She shook her head at him. There was hardly anything she’d have disliked more than a ride into the country with Chinny Martin, her arms half round his waist, a borrowed crash helmet making her feel silly. He’d stop the motor-cycle in a suitable place and he’d suggest something like a walk to the river or to some old ruin or into a wood. He’d suggest sitting down and then he’d begin to fumble at her, and his chin would be sticking into her face, cold and unpleasant. His fingernails would be ingrained, as the fingernails of boys who owned motor-cycles always were.
‘Thanks all the same,’ she said.
‘Come on, Jenny.’
‘No, I’m busy. Honestly. I’m working at home.’
It couldn’t have been pleasant, being called Chinny just because you had a jutting chin. Nicknames were horrible: there was a boy called Nut Adams and another called Wet Small and a girl called Kisses. Chinny Martin’s name was Clive, but she’d never heard anyone calling him that. She felt sorry for him, standing there in his crash helmet and his special clothes. He’d probably planned it all, working it out that she’d be impressed by his gear and his motor-cycle. But of course she wasn’t. Yamaha it said on the petrol tank of the motor-cycle, and there was a girl in a swimsuit which he had presumably stuck on to the tank himself. The girl’s swimsuit was yellow and so was her hair, which was streaming out behind her, as if caught in a wind. The petrol tank was black.
‘Jenny,’ he said, lowering his voice so that it became almost croaky. ‘Listen, Jenny –’
‘Sorry.’
She began to walk away, up the village street, but he walked beside her, pushing the Yamaha.
‘I love you, Jenny,’ he said.
She laughed because she felt embarrassed.
‘I can’t bear not seeing you, Jenny.’
‘Oh, well-’
‘Jenny.’
They were passing the petrol-pumps, the Orchard Garage. Mr Batten was on the pavement, wiping oil from his hands with a rag. ‘How’s he running?’ he called out to Chinny Martin, referring to the Yamaha, but Chinny Martin ignored the question.
‘I think of you all the time, Jenny.’
‘Oh, Clive, don’t be silly.’ She felt silly herself, calling him by his proper name.
‘D’you like me, Jenny?’
‘Of course I like you.’ She smiled at him, trying to cover up the lie: she didn’t particularly like him, she didn’t particularly not. She just felt sorry for him, with his noticeable chin and the nickname it had given him. His father worked in the powdered-milk factory. He’d do the same: you could guess that all too easily.
‘Come for a ride with me, Jenny.’
‘No, honestly.’
‘Why not then?’
‘It’s better not to start anything, Clive. Look, don’t write me notes.’
‘Don’t you like my notes?’
‘I don’t want to start anything.’
‘There’s someone else is there, Jenny? Adam Swann? Rick Hayes?’
He sounded like a character in a television serial; he sounded sloppy and stupid.
‘If you knew how I feel about you,’ he said, lowering his voice even more. ‘I love you like anything. It’s the real thing.’
‘I like you too, Clive. Only not in that way,’ she hastily added.
‘Wouldn’t you ever? Wouldn’t you even try?’
‘I’ve told you.’
‘Rick Hayes’s only after sex.’
‘I don’t like Rick Hayes.’
‘Any girl with legs on her is all he wants.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I can’t concentrate on things, Jenny. I think of you the entire time.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh God, Jenny.’
She turned into the Mace shop just to escape. She picked up a wire basket and pretended to be looking at tins of cat food. She heard the roar of the Yamaha as her admirer rode away, and it seemed all wrong that he should have gone like that, so noisily when he was so upset.
At home she thought about the incident. It didn’t in the least displease her that a boy had passionately proclaimed love for her. It even made her feel quite elated. She felt pleasantly warm when she thought about it, and the feeling bewildered her. That she, so much in love with someone else, should be moved in the very least by the immature protestations of a youth from 1B was a mystery. She even considered telling her mother about the incident, but in the end decided not to. ‘Quite sprightly, she seems,’ she heard her father murmuring.
‘In every line of that sonnet,’ Mr Tennyson said the following Monday afternoon, ‘there is evidence of the richness that makes Shakespeare not just our own greatest writer but the world’s as well.’
She listened, enthralled, physically pleasured by the utterance of each syllable. There was a tiredness about his boyish eyes, as if he hadn’t slept. His wife had probably been bothering him, wanting him to do jobs around the house when he should have been writing sonnets of his own. She imagined him unable to sleep, lying there worrying about things, about his life. She imagined his wife like a grampus beside him, her mouth open, her upper lip as coarse as a man’s.
‘When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,’ he said, ‘And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field.’
Dear Jenny, a note that morning from Chinny Martin had protested. I just want to be with you. I just want to talk to you. Please come out with me.
‘Jenny, stay a minute,’ Mr Tennyson said when the bell went. ‘Your essay.’
Immediately there was tension among the girls of 1A, as if the English master had caused threads all over the classroom to become taut. Unaware, the boys proceeded as they always did, throwing books into their briefcases and sauntering into the corridor. The girls lingered over anything they could think of. Jenny approached Mr Tennyson’s desk.
‘It’s very good,’ he said, opening her essay book. ‘But you’re getting too fond of using three little dots at the end of a sentence. The sentence should imply the dots. It’s like underlining to suggest emphasis, a bad habit also.’
One by one the girls dribbled from the classroom, leaving behind them the shreds of their reluctance. Out of all of them he had chosen her: was she to be another Sarah Spence, or just some kind of stop-gap, like other girls since Sarah Spence were rumoured to have been? But as he continued to talk about her essay – called ‘Belief in Ghosts’ – she wondered if she’d even be a stop-gap. His fingers didn’t once brush the back of her hand. His French boy’s eyes didn’t linger once on hers.
‘I’ve kept you late,’ he said in the end.
‘That’s all right, sir.’
‘You will try to keep your sentences short? Your descriptions have a way of becoming too complicated.’
‘I’ll try, sir.’
‘I really enjoyed that essay.’
He handed her the exercise book and then, without any doubt whatsoever, he smiled meaningfully into her eyes. She felt herself going hot. Her hands became clammy. She just stood there while his glance passed over her eye-shadow, over her nose and cheeks, over her mouth.
‘You’re very pretty,’ he said.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Her voice reminded her of the croak in Chinny Martin’s when he’d been telling her he loved her. She tried to smile, but could not. She wanted his hand to reach out and push her gently away from him so that he could see her properly. But it didn’t. He stared into her eyes again, as if endeavouring to ascertain their precise shade of blue.
‘You look like a girl we had here once,’ he said. ‘Called Sarah Spence.’
‘I remember Sarah Spence.’
‘She was good at English too.’
She wanted something to happen, thunder to begin, or a torrent of rain, anything that would keep them in the classroom. She couldn’t even bear the thought of walking to her desk and putting her essay book in her briefcase.