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Fabulous Flesh

High summer in Pimlico. After days of fierce sunshine, the meagre lawns of the prefabs in Grimsdyke Street are bleached and balding. A breeze churns the baked urban air and releases a faint, blended odour of street dust and dried dog shit.

In the afternoon heat, even the flying ants are walking. Rooksy and I have stopped moving altogether. We’re draped over the chest-high wall of Madge Smith’s garden, savouring the smell of wet soil in her hosed flowerbeds, and admiring her lush, watered grass.

I rest my head on my arms. It would be easy to fall asleep on the hard-sponge bricks, except that Madge is here. We pretend not to look as she bends to set down the large basket of washing on her terrace, which is an extension of the concrete slab on which the prefab stands. Rooksy props his chin on his hands. Sweat beads down his face in glistening lines. He sucks in air around his clenched teeth, and sighs. ‘Do you think Madge would show us her tits if we asked her nicely?’

‘Jesus, not so loud!’

Rooksy says thrilling things but he has sod-all volume control. Madge hasn’t heard what he’s said but her frown makes it clear that she wouldn’t have liked it. I ignore his question, but it’s got me wondering, again: what is it about tits? Hearing the word said aloud excites in a way that bosoms can’t. Mum has bosoms, so does my Aunt Winnie; hers are enormous and stretch her cream blouses and twin sets with more weight than push. Madge has tits.

How, and at what point, they become bosoms is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps they are tits that are no longer exciting? For now, imagining Madge naked from the waist up makes speech difficult and, not for the first time, Rooksy has conjured up images that I’ll be thinking about later.

He straightens up. ‘You know, I think she might. She must be so proud of them.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Rooksy.’

Madge will be doing no such thing. She’s little Jojo’s mum, and she isn’t much younger than mine.

He closes his eyes. ‘Oh the fabulous flesh.’

‘Rooksy, please!’

I turn away but he puts his arm around my shoulders and steers me back to stand alongside him as if we’re in a urinal. Madge glides to her back door where she lifts a cloth peg bag from its hook and returns to drop it on top of the washing.

Rooksy starts moving up and down against the wall, forcing me lower as he rises and shoving me up as he drops. I resist but after a few upward scrapes against the warm bricks, I’m moving under my own steam. A ‘love it, can’t bear it’ feeling grows in my groin and Rooksy’s tight smile makes him look as if he’s trying to whistle through a Polo mint.

Madge looks across at us and our bobbing figures freeze. Rooksy is down low and I’m at the top of my stretch.

‘What are you two doing?’

‘Whoops,’ says Rooksy.

‘You standing on a biscuit tin Billy? Or are you in a hole Peter Rooker?’

‘If only,’ he whispers.

‘What?’ says Madge.

We return to our proper heights and I speak up to stop Rooksy saying any more. ‘Nothing, Mrs Smith.’

‘You have grown though haven’t you Billy, filling out a bit too. What with those blue eyes, you’ll soon be …’ She winks.

My face burns. Thank you Madge. But soon be what? Please say what what is. I’ve started to grow, at last: a little taller, a bit less skinny. Mum and Aunt Winnie have said as much recently, but to hear this from Madge … who has tits.

Rooksy nudges me. ‘Ooh, I’d watch her.’

‘What’s that?’ says Madge.

‘Four nil,’ I say.

‘What?’ says Rooksy.

‘Four nil.’ I shrug as if it’s obvious. Football scores can divert the attention of those who’ve heard something they shouldn’t have. It hasn’t worked; Madge is frowning again. Please Madge, don’t change your mind about me; you’re my only fan with tits. Her eyes narrow but she relents and gives me the smallest of smiles.

She picks up the basket and carries it to the far end of the clothesline, using the top of one thigh to provide extra lift with every other step. At the far end, furthest from prying eyes, she begins pegging out the family’s underwear. First, her husband’s and Jojo’s Y-Fronts, then her whiter, more slender knickers. Knickers: a word as potent as ‘tits’. Could those she’s hanging out be the kind she’s wearing right now? I swallow hard.

Even fully clothed, Madge looks wonderful. A red headscarf squeezes her dark hair into a ponytail. She’s wearing a sleeveless white frock with buttons all down the front. Each time her suntanned arms reach up, her breasts stretch the fabric either side of the brown V of her chest. When she bends down to the basket, they settle back and her cleavage narrows and darkens.

‘Oh, definitely tits.’

‘Without a doubt Billy,’ says Rooksy.

Blimey, have I really said that out loud?

Rooksy jogs me with his elbow and starts whispering a commentary like the mad woman on telly who jollies ladies through health and beauty exercises.

‘That’s it Madge, bend and stretch, bend, sort, pick and stretch.’

One of the pegs fails to close over a shirt and slips down the front of her dress. As she picks it out, Rooksy groans and Madge glares at him.

The clothesline rises as it reaches the pole near us, forcing her to stretch higher. Rooksy can’t help himself. ‘And stretch up … Oh Billy look at them.’

I’m looking, I’m looking!

‘And down …’

Closer now, she stoops to rummage in the remaining washing, allowing us to see further into the ‘happy valley’ – another Rooksy term.

‘And feel …’

Madge’s bum pushes out before she straightens up. Oh god. I should leave now but my legs aren’t up to it. I cling to the wall.

Rooksy is covering every movement. ‘And stretch …’

Now that the basket is lighter, she shoves it along the ground with the outside of her foot. This highlights the curve of her thigh and widens the unbuttoned split of her dress to let us see higher up her suntanned leg. Too much for Rooksy, who puts a forearm over his eyes. ‘Oh, fabulous.’

‘Rooksy, please.’

He grins. ‘What? What have I done?’ A bubble appears and collapses on his shining white teeth.

He knows what he’s done, and he’s doing it from his favourite position: within earshot and out of reach. Rooksy is almost fourteen, only six months older than I am but he knows things that I’m still guessing about.

He’s a ‘dirty bastard’, which is what his cousin called him when she caught him watching her dry herself after a bath. He happily admits that this is exactly what he is.

It’s all very well being a dirty bastard in private but Rooksy makes it public and takes things too far. Some of the parents in our street say he’s been spoiled because he’s an only child. However, if having more money, better clothes and amazing confidence is being spoiled, what’s so wrong with it?

‘Hello Madge.’ His voice is a poor imitation of Humphrey Bogart but his smile is real Errol Flynn – except that saliva has collected at the corners of his mouth and stretches like bubble gum between his lips as he speaks. Above his brown eyes, fair hair sweeps back in glossy waves. Like Kookie in 77 Sunset Strip, he grooms it constantly with a comb, which he tracks with his other hand to smooth down or push up where necessary. And he stares ahead so intently that you’d think he was looking in a mirror.

‘Don’t you Madge me, you cheeky bugger. Mrs Smith to you.’ She puts her hands on her hips. ‘Billy Driscoll, what are you doing hanging around with the likes of him?’

‘Nothing much, Mrs Smith, is Jojo around?’ Like mentioning football scores, asking your own questions can help to change the subject.

‘Over East Lane Market with his dad.’

‘Can I give you a hand Ma— isis Smith?’ says Rooksy.

‘Give me a hand, you dirty bleeder? You’ll get my hand around your ear if you come it with me. Go on, out of it. Why can’t you play football like other kids?’

Football? Rooksy? On the rare occasions he joins in our street matches, his short-lived efforts range between bored wandering about and surprisingly aggressive tackling. We play ‘first-to-ten’ and when one side reaches five, we change ends. This is when Rooksy sods off.

‘Sorry Madge, I mean Mrs …’

Blasted by her fierce look, we turn and squat down behind the wall. Rooksy cowers, ready for her to lean over and aim a clout at him. When she doesn’t, he sits back, closes his eyes and starts rubbing his crotch, whispering, ‘Oh Madge, fa-abulous flesh.’

I want to run away but sit tight rather than let him know I’m a bottler, especially as I’m now looking into the grinning face of the one person who does know this. I’ve forgotten that John is with us. My younger brother is crouched by the kerb and smiling, not so much at Rooksy’s antics as at my ‘scared face’. His eyes widen as he opens and closes his mouth like a goldfish. He claims this is how I look when I’m frightened. I haven’t seen this face myself but I suspect that it’s a fair description. John has his faults but he rarely tells lies. I’d like to show him what his scared face looks like but he hasn’t been frightened often enough to develop one. As far as I know, he has no interest in Madge or the differences between bosoms and tits. This should make me feel more grown up than he is, but it doesn’t.

He turns away and, with his fingers, starts killing the winged ants that are filing suicidally in columns along the gutter. We all kill crawlies but John uses bare hands to squash large spiders and beetles that we would only tread on. As he presses down on the ants, his back broadens into a smaller version of our dad’s, and the sight of John’s flat shoulder blades moving under muscle has me straightening up.

On our sideboard there’s a photo of me, taken a couple of years ago by a beach photographer at Brighton. I hate it but Mum keeps it because, she claims, she likes my smile – not because it’s a big print and the only one that fits her favourite silver frame. I’m standing on Olive Oyl legs and wearing woollen swimming trunks that sag from non-existent hips. My arm is raised in an embarrassed wave that accentuates the white hoops of my ribs.

Skinny arms may have given me a whip-like throw but they’re no good for the important skills, like fighting or looking good in short-sleeved shirts. However, things are getting better at last and there are clear signs that I am going to have biceps after all. Others have noticed too, not least Aunt Winnie, who has stopped putting her arms around me and John to present us as Charles Atlas before and Charles Atlas after.

Rooksy, eyes closed, is chanting softly while pretending that he’s wanking ‘… ninety-nine, a hundred, change hands, don’t care if I do die.’

I shuffle away from him and settle for just thinking about girls and what nestles under bras and knickers. I often ache, really ache, to see breasts close up on women like Madge – or girls like Christine Cassidy, who sticks hers out in case you don’t notice them. Some chance, she’s built like a young Aunt Winnie. I’d still love to know what they feel like. I’ve seen naked women on a pack of Rooksy’s playing cards but the pictures were disappointingly indistinct in areas where I’d have welcomed more detail. When you flicked through them, the women cavorted about, arching back or bending over, while always managing to look as if they were about to give you a kiss. Of course, I made the appreciative noises that Rooksy expected but closer examination revealed that there weren’t fifty-two different women but a hard-working half-dozen. Viewed one at a time, there was nothing happy or sexy about their smiles and, although I didn’t mention it to Rooksy, their flesh was far from fabulous.

The best pictures are in my head. Lying in bed, eyes shut; I can picture girls I actually know, without their clothes. These images are hard to hang on to and my brain could do with a ‘vertical hold’ button to stop them sliding from view. But no matter how fleetingly they appear before me, at least their flesh is fabulous.

‘You still here?’

Madge’s face looms over us like God’s on the church ceiling.

Rooksy rolls to one side, pulling his hand from inside the top of his trousers. Madge notices but she focuses on me. ‘Get out of here, Billy Driscoll, now, and don’t think that what he’s doing is clever, ’cos it’s not!’

‘No, Mrs Smith’.

Rooksy catches my eye. His smile disappears and I wince at having betrayed the shameful truth that I agree with Madge.

As he scrambles to his feet, he makes the mistake of pushing down on John’s shoulders. John spins around, fists clenched. ‘Get off me.’

‘John!’ Madge screams. John freezes. Rooksy’s smile returns as he holds up his hands. Madge points a finger at him. ‘And you, Peter Rooker, next time you’ll be sorry.’

‘Sorry … Cheerio then Madge.’

‘What?’ She scoots after him as far as she can along her side of the wall.

He jogs away laughing.

Before she goes indoors, she flashes me an angry glance. When I look at John, he gives me the gasping-fish face.