Carnage Read online

  I spent a lot of time with Sean that year, just hanging out as friends, there was lots of flirting, or what I considered flirting but nothing else. I was still too young for anything else and Sean seemed to respect that, he wasn’t a saint, I would often catch him looking at my ever growing boobs and I heard Marls tell him on more than one occasion to stop looking at my arse. We never discussed what he’d told Debra Smith in the dining hall that day, he never asked me to be his girlfriend and I was for the most part completely confused as to what I was to him, he kissed my cheek a couple of times, he held my hand when he thought no one was looking and when we looked at each other we knew Sean and I, that there was something going on between us. He was at our house all the time; after school, weekends, and school holidays, he even started coming with us on our overseas holidays. And because of the amount of time the boys spent practicing with the band or doing homework at our house, they very rarely went elsewhere, meaning, there was little chance of him meeting any other girls. Apart from at school, but of course there, everyone already thought he was my boyfriend and I couldn’t be happier about that fact.

  In the summer of 1982 everything changed, Jimmie and Sean came with us to Portugal; my body had changed so much lately, although my boobs had now grown to a generous D cup, I’d recently acquired a pair of hips that balanced them out and stopped me from looking so top heavy and combined with the extra two inches in height I had grown, I was feeling a little more confident in myself. The first day around the pool, all Jimmie and I wanted to do was get our bodies out in the sun, the boys didn’t make an appearance until after lunch. They had stayed up drinking beer with my Dad and Lennon until late and were probably suffering for it a little, my Dad and Len had been up and out very early that morning to play golf, my Mum had gone shopping with a girlfriend who lived over here permanently and was meeting Dad later for dinner.

  Jim and I had drunk a bottle of wine before the boys got up and I was feeling very brave as I lay on the lilo in the pool and watched Sean walking across the patio toward a sun lounger. I had already decided this holiday was going to be it, I was sick of playing games. I was hearing rumours that Sean had kissed girls at parties and him and Marley were always talking about girls that they fancied, even in front of Jimmie and me and it left me hurt, angry and confused; boys could be such arseholes sometimes. All of this had led me to the decision to take matters into my own hands this summer. I was going to be fourteen in September, and about to go in to the third year of secondary school, the boys were going into their fifth. The band was doing well and was being booked to play at the birthday parties of a lot of the kids from school, bringing them a lot of female attention. Some of the parties Jim and I went along to, some, like the eighteenths and twenty-firsts, we weren’t allowed to and it was killing me. I was over it and wanted him to either be my boyfriend or for me to be allowed to tell everyone at school that we were over so that I could have a chance at finding a different boyfriend. I actually didn’t want that at all, I wanted him and nobody else would do. I decided to climb out of the pool and attempt a Bond girl moment. I push myself up from the side and stand and tilt my head to the sky as I shake my hair, then squeeze the excess water out of it; as I look down, Sean is sitting on the end of a sun lounger watching me. Marley has jumped straight in the water and is now terrorising Jimmie, I put my hands on my hips and stand and stare into Sean’s beautiful chocolate eyes.

  “Come here.” He beckons me with his finger, I walk toward him wearing my favourite teeny tiny red bikini, as sexily as you can when you’re not yet fourteen and don’t really know what walking sexily entails. I stop and stand between his legs while he looks up at me with the cheekiest of smiles on his lips.

  “You do know we’re in Europe Gia, everyone here goes topless, and I’m a bit disappointed to see you’re not up with the times.”

  “Well that’s what happens when you lay in bed for half the day. You miss the best parts, we were topless all morning, and I didn’t want my nipples to burn so I just put my top back on.”

  I didn’t.

  I wasn’t topless at any time but he doesn’t know that.

  He smiled up at me.

  “Well I will be sure to set my alarm and be up early tomorrow morning so that I don’t miss anything.”

  “Well then you will be shit out of luck, my Dad will be here tomorrow and there is no way that I’ll be going topless in front of him.”

  He lets out a long breath and looks beyond me, out across the pool, I can hear Jimmie and my brother giggling and splashing.

  “You Gia are a flirt, but one day, one day it will be our turn. Our time.”

  My heart drops like a stone into my stomach. What?

  “Why… why do we have to wait for it to be our time? I’m fourteen in September; everyone thinks you’re my boyfriend anyway?”

  I sound needy and whiney like a child and I don’t want to be a child, I want to be a woman.

  “Gia… you have no idea do you? Your Dad and your brothers would kill me, they’d fucking kill me and I respect them all too much to start something with you before you’re ready but don’t think for a minute that I don’t want you. I know it sounds wrong but right from that very first day when I saw your pink knickers, there’s been something.”

  I want to cry, I’m sick of waiting, all my friends have boyfriends and all I have is a lie, just to keep every other boy away from me. It’s so fucking unfair! Sean reaches out and touches my hand. I want to pull away, but I don’t, his touch does something to me and it pisses me off no end.

  “You told everyone that day in the dining hall that you were my boyfriend and everyone still thinks it’s true. Either tell everyone that we’ve broken up or be my boyfriend Sean. I’m fed up with waiting.”

  I can’t believe I’ve actually said it, I should drink wine more often, the only thing now is, he looks really pissed off. What if he says no, what if he doesn’t want me, I will die, I will simply lie down and die.

  “Do you want someone else to be your boyfriend G?”

  “No.”

  “Then why can’t you just wait for me?”

  “Why, I don’t get what I have to wait for, I’m almost fourteen, my Mum and Dad have been together since she was thirteen, why do I have to wait?”

  He takes a deep breath in through his teeth, and then puffs his cheeks while he lets it out through his lips, his perfect, perfect lips.

  “I was just trying to do the right thing G, by you and your brothers and your Mum and Dad; everyone’s been so good to me. I don’t want to fuck things up.”

  He drags his hand through his brown curls with his free hand. “Let me talk to Marley, see how the land lies, perhaps if I talk to your Dad nicely, he might let me be your boyfriend. If you want?”

  I sit down on the sun lounger next to him; he still has hold of my hand. I nod my head.

  “I do want.”

  “Jesus you two, get on with it. I’ve watched the pair of you dance around for the past few years and it’s getting boring.” Marley calls out from where he has Jimmie wrapped around him in the pool.

  “See, he’s fine.”

  Sean’s shaking his head again. “All this fucking time I’ve waited and he don’t even care.”

  “Just remember Maca, she’s not fourteen yet and she’s my little sister, you do anything more than kiss her and I will kill you, then my brothers and my Dad will kill you again.”

  Sean shoulder bumps me with an even bigger grin on his face. “Just kissing. Dya think you can manage that Gia?”

  I shoulder bump him back. “If you really want me to I will, but I was just about to show you my tits.”

  “Fuck… really?”

  I shrug, I’m embarrassed now. I’ve never even been kissed and I’m threatening to show him my tits?

  “I told ya Gia, you’re a flirt.”

  He looks over my face as he talks to me, “Can I kiss ya G, please?”

  I nod, maintaining eye contact with him all the whi
le. We turn and face each other, my knees go between his open legs so we can get closer, his hand comes up and cups the side of my face, his thumb rubs over my lips, like his testing them, trying them out with his thumb before he goes in with his lips, my heart feels like it’s about to pound out of my chest and go crashing into his; he leans in until his lips meet mine, they are so much softer than I ever could have imagined, soft and minty, he must of just cleaned his teeth, he smells delicious, minty, clean and fresh, I can feel stubble around the edges of his mouth but his lips are so, so soft. He deepens the kiss and without even thinking about it, my hand goes to his dark brown curls and I grab a handful, he lets a little growling noise escape from the back of his throat, which in turn makes me let out my own little sigh.

  “Fuck Gia,” he says into my mouth.

  Sparks go off behind my now closed eyes, it’s like a cartoon, when fireworks go off in an enclosed space and they bounce off every surface. That’s exactly what it feels like is going on inside me.

  “So long… I’ve waited so long to do that G, you have no fucking idea.”

  That year, that holiday, it’s still one of my best ever. My lips and the skin around them felt permanently bruised and sore from all the kissing we did; Sean never did speak to my Dad, he didn’t have to, the fact that we held each other’s hand every second we were together made it perfectly clear what was going on between us. It did though prompt my Mum and Dad to sit the pair of us down and give us the ‘We trust you and hope that you will be respectful of each other and your bodies… and aside from all that, it’s actually illegal for you to be having sex and you could go to jail’ talk. We sat there mortified, Sean squeezing my hand so tight I thought it was going to break. Then he did the most amazingly beautiful thing, he let my Mum finish her speech about me being a good girl, bought up the right way and knowing right from wrong and waiting until I was older before taking things too far. I seriously wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Why did we have to have this conversation now, in front of Sean? Sean took my hand that he was holding and kissed the back of it. He cleared his throat before saying.

  “Frank, Bernie… I know we’re young but I need you to know, that from the first moment I laid eyes on your daughter, I’ve been a little bit in love with her, I’ve wanted to tell her for a while now but I wanted to be respectful of you and the boys. You’ve all been so good to me, you treat me better than my own parents so I wanted to do this right, I wanted to wait until Gia was old enough and until you were comfortable with us having a relationship but I can’t wait anymore, I love her and I want to be able to hold her hand and kiss her.”

  Shit. Don’t say anymore in front of them.

  “We are too young to be thinking about anything more than that, but, I… we, we just want to be together and for you all to be happy about it.”

  Fucking hell, I’ve never died so many times during one afternoon. Where are my brothers and Jimmie when you need rescuing, I bet my parents told them to stay out the way, does that mean everyone is going to know about this little chat? Fucking hell.

  “Well… Sean… as long as you respect my daughter, I don’t think that we’ll have a problem. Would you like a beer son, you must need one after that little speech?”

  My parents treated me differently for the rest of that holiday, almost like a grown up. They allowed Jimmie and I to drink wine at dinner, my Mum asked my opinion on her outfits and told me to try my hair in different styles, she spoke to me like I was her friend, not just her daughter. My Dad took on a more fatherly demeanour around Sean and spoke to him about his plans after he finished his fifth year, legally he could leave school if he wanted but our school went right up to sixth form and Sean and Marley were both staying on. I don’t think either of them really wanted to study anymore but if they left the education system they would be expected to get full time jobs and this would leave them no time for their music. They had been lucky so far, the money they made with the band meant that they hadn’t even had to get a part time job and as their popularity grew they were getting bookings for Friday and Saturday nights and now had a regular Sunday lunch time spot at a pub not too far from where we lived. So as wages for a group of students went, they were doing okay.

  CHAPTER 3

  Returning to school that September, I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life, after we’d gotten back from Portugal, Sean and I were inseparable. Luckily he was always at our house anyway, all that was different was that now when the band practised, I got a kiss every ten minutes between rehearsals, when Sean came and sat next to me after practise, he would hold my hand, he never stopped paying me attention and I never stopped enjoying it. We were very rarely alone together though, my parents must have drummed it into my brother’s heads that under no circumstances were we to be left by ourselves and it was comical at times, the lengths they’d go to. Even if Marley was going to the toilet, he would send Sean to fetch something, just so we weren’t left alone, even if it was only going to be for five minutes. What could we possibly get up to in five minutes? Well lots it turned out, Sean was a typical sixteen year old boy and he had needs and despite only being fourteen, he stirred something in me that I have to admit, at times, terrified me. I wanted sex, I really wanted to have sex with him, I have no idea if it was raging hormones caused by my age or if it was just him, Sean, what he did to me, what he caused me to feel but I was totally convinced that the feelings I had, meant that I must surely be a whore, a slut but I didn’t care, I just wanted him.

  I spoke to Jimmie about all of this but she wasn’t quite getting the passion I felt; she and Marley were turning into more like best friends than boyfriend and girlfriend, there was something going on with her but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what, she never spoke about other boys and she was at our house as much as she always was but things just weren’t happening between her and Marls and it didn’t seem to bother her when he spoke about other girls, or when he kissed other girls like I had seen him do when the band came off stage. My Dad had fixed them up with a transit van so they could get from gig to gig with all their equipment; despite working at one of my Dad’s car showrooms in the day, Lennon was now pretty much managing the boys, he took and arranged all the bookings, managed the money and as the only one amongst us with a full license, he also did all the driving.

  It was Christmas eve of 1982 when I finally worked out what was going on with Jimmie; the band were booked at a local pub, it was a ticket only event and was a complete sell out, we arrived early as the place would be filling up by seven and the boys wanted to have a sound check as they’d never played at this venue before and this was probably going to be their biggest crowd yet, over two hundred tickets had been sold according to Len, and the boys wanted to impress. Not that they wouldn’t, they were great and getting better with every show, growing in confidence so much that almost fifty per cent of their songs were originals, written by Marley and Sean mostly, they still did covers, The Clash, The Jam, The Undertones, The Specials being among their favourites as well as some old classics by The Who, Beatles and Kinks, whatever they played, they sounded great and I loved watching Sean up on the stage, especially when his eyes would lock with mine and everyone else would just melt away, me and him, that’s all there was, that’s all that mattered.

  The boys were having a run through of their set when I realised I was cold, the hall at the back of the pub was big and the heating hadn’t been put on yet so I went to go back outside to get my jacket, as I walked down the hallway toward the emergency exit at the back of the building where the van was parked, I saw them, Lennon and my best friend Jamie. Kissing like their lives depended on it. I stood and watched for a few seconds, my best friend and my brother and neither of them thought to tell me about it. What about Marley, did he know, is that why they had kept it quiet? This could cause so much trouble between the boys and I wished that I didn’t know about it. I watched as they broke apart but still stared into each other’s eyes, I knew that look,
it’s how Sean and I looked at each other, this was more than just a kiss, this was love and I was thoroughly pissed off with the pair of them. As they turned to walk back inside, I walked toward them looking at the ground as if I had seen nothing. Lennon held the door open for me.

  “Porge, where you off to?”

  “Don’t call me that. I want my jacket out of the van. Is it open?”

  He threw me the keys as he and Jimmie walked back inside, she didn’t look me in the eye as she passed and it hurt a little that my best friend had kept this secret from me. She knew everything about me, every look, every thought, every feeling, why wouldn’t she share this with me? He’s my brother. Did she not think I would be interested?

  I grab my coat, head back inside and look around for Len, he appears through the swing doors leading from the front of the pub, carrying a tray full of drinks; he put them down on the table next to me and shouted for the boys to come down from the stage. Jim appeared at my side, then Sean, Lennon passed out beers to the boys and gave me and Jimmie a bottle of cider each.

  “Here’s to Carnage! A great gig, a very merry Christmas and great things for the coming year – 1983 boys, it’s gonna be our year, I can just feel it. Cheers.”

  There were kisses and hugs all round; Jimmie felt stiff and informal when she pulled me into her and I felt awkward. Sean wrapped his arms around me and kissed me like he was never going to let me go.

  “Merry Christmas G. Stay close to Lennon tonight, it’s gonna get busy in here and don’t drink too much.”