think about sex, your dad. Maybe it was half-way, on its way up or its way down.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. My hand slid off the book and came to rest on the comforting earth. I wanted to stop this conversation. I felt embarrassed, as if I’d taken a picture of my dad’s penis and shown it to them.
‘You know, men are supposed to think about sex almost every two minutes,’ said Poppy. ‘There was something about it in the Daily Express. Some survey scientists did in America. So I don’t think it has to go up when men just think about sex.’
Trish looked belligerent. ‘My mother said it does. But you might not be able to tell, if they’re wearing trousers.’
‘I think you would be able to tell,’ insisted Poppy. ‘I mean, it gets bigger, doesn’t it? So they’d get a big bump in the front of their trousers.’ That set us off giggling again.
‘In that case Gary Bennett’s jeans might split,’ said Trish. There was a reverent silence, as we all contemplated this shockingly delicious idea.
Gary Bennett was the reason Trish and Poppy were so keen to come round to my house whenever they could. He was only two or three years older than us, but he had already left school and was working as a decorator’s apprentice. He had dishwater-blond hair in tangled curls, blue eyes and a mouth like a Roman statue’s, and we all three dreamed of that curvy mouth clamped on our own. Mrs Owen, from three doors further down the street, who sometimes brought round casseroles because she refused to believe my dad could cook, was best friends with Gary’s mum, a widow who worked at the Co-op. It was only a couple of months since mother and son had moved in across the road, and Trish had noticed him first.
‘You’ve got a boy living opposite you,’ she told me.
I wasn’t much interested. Then the decorator’s firm Gary worked for was hired to repaint Poppy’s house. Every afternoon for the whole two weeks he worked there she and Trish rushed home from school together to get a glimpse of him.
‘Why don’t we go to your house and wait for Gary to get home?’ asked Poppy.
I looked at my hands. They were scrabbling almost manically in the soil now.
‘Come on,’ said Trish. I knew her eyes would have gone sea-dark, fixed on my face, willing me to look up so she could stare me into surrender.
My fingers touched something slimy: a big fat worm. I pulled them away quickly. ‘My dad …’
‘He won’t be home for ages. And Poppy’s got binoculars.’ They’d planned this together, I could tell.
Early that year, when Trish and I were only just getting to know Poppy, I’d caught a mysterious virus, like flu but longer-lasting. My father had asked Mrs Owen to look after me. She didn’t need much persuading, her grey curls bouncing cheerfully as she trotted up and down the stairs with bowls of soup. I got better gradually, but my muscles stayed weak, and the doctor said I needed more time to recover. I would have quite enjoyed being off school if I hadn’t been worrying that Poppy would usurp me in Trish’s affections.
My father fetched me books from the library, but I soon got bored. Mrs Owen tried to keep me in bed, but I would sneak out and sit in our spare bedroom at the front of the house to watch the street.
This had once been my parents’ room, and although it had not been occupied for more than ten years it was fascinating to me because it still contained traces of my mother. Her old cosmetics were in the dressing-table: worn-down lipsticks in unfashionable shades, creamy green and blue eye-shadows, dried-up mascara. I rummaged through the drawers, slipping costume jewellery on to my wrists and fingers, wrapping silky scarves round my head: first Grace Kelly, then a Woodstock hippie. There were clothes in the wardrobe too, duster coats and full-skirted dresses that would have been already old-fashioned by the time she was gone, but they scared me too much to touch.
Mrs Owen had gone out to do her weekly shop, and I was curled on the window-seat, keeping an eye open for her. It was late afternoon. The streetlamps had not yet come on when I noticed a light in the front bedroom of the house across the street: Gary Bennett’s house.
I suppose it never occurred to Gary to draw the curtains when he went upstairs to change out of his work clothes. That afternoon he flicked on the light and came into the room, pulling his sweater and T-shirt over his head, then disappeared into the corner to wash. After a while there was another tantalizing glimpse of bare chest as he came back to the wardrobe and took out a shirt. I watched him button it from top to bottom. Then he turned his back as he tucked it into clean jeans, hunching his shoulders to do up the zip.
I remember those flashes of nakedness, like a set of Polaroid snaps–the skinny white shoulders in the nicotine-yellow light of the overhead bulb, the surprisingly solid arms, the flat slabs of pectoral muscle that were just beginning to develop as his boy’s body toned to do a man’s job. I would have watched longer, but I heard Mrs Owen’s key in the lock and scampered back to bed in my own room before she caught me.
I could hardly wait to tell the others what I’d seen. After my first day back at school, Trish and Poppy came home with me, and we settled to wait in the front bedroom. Shortly after five thirty, the light across the road snapped on and Gary crossed the bay window hauling his jumper over his head. He towelled himself dry staring out of the bedroom window, blissfully unconscious of the three admirers ducking below sill level every time he looked towards our house.
Afterwards hardly a week went by without us making at least one attempt to watch him undress. We weren’t always lucky. Some nights he conducted the entire ritual out of sight in the corner of the room. Or he didn’t get back until too late; I had to make sure Trish and Poppy left before Dad got home. Once his mother came into his room in the middle, and–perhaps telling him off for making such an exhibition of himself–crossed to the window and pulled the curtains shut.
By spring Gary’s chest was harder and broader, and his hair had grown longer. The lighter evenings frustrated us. He no longer needed to turn on the light, and the reflection of the sky on the window made it impossible to see much inside. But that didn’t stop us hoping. Perhaps warmer weather would help. Lately he had begun to fling open the windows, and once even leaned bare-chested over the sill for a full two minutes, staring into the street. Trish had timed it.
If Gary noticed our bobbing heads, he showed no sign. But two or three times lately I had passed him in the street on my way to school, and instead of ignoring me he had given me a wink or a wave. I would go hot and red. I was beginning to wonder how much longer we could get away with spying on him.
But that wasn’t why I was reluctant today. My dad didn’t like my friends coming round; he never said as much, but somehow he made it clear. I knew our time on our own together was important to him. He felt bad about being out at work when I got home, and bad about there not being a mother to get my tea. He didn’t get back till six at the earliest, but it was hard to persuade Trish and Poppy that they should leave.
‘Oh, come on, Katie,’ said Poppy. ‘I told Daddy you were a keen birdwatcher, so he’d lend me the binoculars. We’ve got to try them out.’
‘We’ll be able to see Gary in close-up,’ Trish added persuasively.
But what if he saw us? Still, I couldn’t help being excited. This might be the way to see more. Poppy swore she’d once spotted a flash of white Y-fronts when he reached up to take his shirt from the hanger, and we wanted to believe her, but Trish and I had never seen anything to confirm it.
Trish
