Withering Tights. Louise Rennison

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СКАЧАТЬ if you are a nice person. Why should it matter what your legs are like?”

      I said, “I agree with you, but…look at these!”

      I rolled up my trousers and let my legs be free and wild in the summer air.

      They looked at them.

      Flossie said, “My cousin Jenet has legs like yours, and my auntie took her to a doctor.”

      I said, “Am I going to like this story?”

      Flossie said, “Shhh, I’m talking. Anyway, the doctor said Jenet was like a race horse.”

      I said, “What, she had four really long, thin legs?”

      Flossie came and sat on me. I think she is what is known in showbiz as ‘violent’.

      She said, “No, what he meant was that she will grow into her legs. And you will grow into yours and then that will be good. And you will stop moaning.”

      Vaisey was pulling at her hair, which, and I don’t mean this unkindly, did look like a really badly knitted hat.

      She said, “And you’ve got very attractive hair, not like mine.”

      I know I should have said, ‘No, no, no, no you’ve got lovely hair!’ But really I wanted to hear more about mine first. So I said, “How do you mean ‘attractive hair’?”

      Flossie said, “You know very well what she means. She means you’ve got very attractive hair.”

      I said, in a shy surprised voice, “Have I?”

      Flossie said, “Yes, you have, but you’ve got very bad acting skills. You KNOW that your hair is all glossy and black as a hearth.”

      I couldn’t help doing a secret tee hee.

      And Jo said, “And you’ve got green eyes. If you wanted, you could be like a traffic light or something, they are so green.”

      I felt a bit cheered up.

      I said, in a fit of general loving the world-ness, “I think we are all very, very lovely.”

      Honey came and sat with us. She walks slowly and softly, so that you don’t notice her coming. Not in a creepy ‘I’m going to rob your handbag’ way, just in a softy way. It’s nice.

      Honey seems just like her name. Sort of golden and smoothy. Her skin is golden and her hair is thick and gold. And she has quite big corkers. And she’s sweet, just like honey made by bees. Except that that kind of honey doesn’t have a lisp.

      Honey said, “Theth no thign of any boyth, awound?”

      I said, “No boyth?”

      She said, “Yeth.”

      Vaisey had got interested now. She said, “Honey, do you know about boys? Have you got a boyfriend?”

      Honey said, “Oh yeth, I’ve got two on the go, actually. Thafety in numbeth, my mum thayth. I don’t think I can go a whole thummer without boyth.”

      After lunch, we walked off towards Heckmondwhite. Vaisey, Jo, Flossie and I were slightly ahead of the others. Flossie said, “Oooh, look, a couple of jolly farmers in their fields. One of them is cheerily waving his stick at us. Would it be a stick or a crook? It’s not a gun, is it?”

      I said, “Oh, what larks, it’s the grumpy bloke I accidentally kicked on the train.”

      As we ambled along, Jo said, “Do you think that Honey really has got two boyfriends?”

      Vaisey said, “She seems a bit more ‘mature’ than us, more experienced, don’t you think?”

      I said, “I’ve had my bottom felt.”

      Flossie said, “Who by? Not your mum?”

      I said, “No, it was an actual boy.”

      Vaisey said, “Was it nice?”

      I said, “Well, not really, because he pretended it wasn’t his hand, it was his kitbag.”

      Jo said, “I’ve had my bra undone through my T-shirt.”

      I said, “Great balls of fire, who did that?”

      Jo said, “I don’t know which one, because they all bombed off on their bikes before I could see.”

      Vaisey said, “My cousin put an ice cube down the front of my T-shirt and then offered to get it out for me.”

      I said, “Is that it then? A maybe fondling of a bum, a hit-and-run undone thing, and an ice cube incident?”

      Flossie said, “No, not quite…”

      We turned to look at her.

      She said, “Well, this is how it happened. It was a hot steamy night, you know, those kind of nights when you feel restless. You want something to happen and you don’t quite know what? Like you were in a play set in Mississippi and you can hear the damn crickets. Going on and on.”

      Jo said, “They don’t play cricket in Mississippi.”

      Flossie said, “Someone kill her while I carry on.”

      We stopped walking.

      Flossie took off her glasses. And loosened her hair and tossed it about. Then she stretched her arms above her head and sighed and went on in a sort of Texan drawl. “Now y’all know how damn hoooooottttt it can get in high summer. To get some air, I decided to peg out some washing. My smalls, actually. Although I hadn’t washed them in dirty bathwater. What a fool I feel now.”

      I said, “Will you get on with it?”

      Flossie went on in a quiet voice. “I was peggin’ out some of my pants when I saw a couple of young fellas watchin’ me. One of them was quite handsome. When I turned round, he ducked behind a bush. I thought, ah, he’s kinda shy. So I kinda half-smiled in the direction of the bush and set off, slowly into the house.”

      Flossie mimed picking up a washing basket and sashaying down the road. “Then I heard a rustlin’ behind me. Aah, I thought, now he will say ‘Miss Flossie, you are so goddam beautiful’. But the rustlin’ was followed by pingin’ and one of those boys was wearin’ my pants on his head. And ran off wearin’ them.”

      When we got to Heckmondwhite it took us the usual minute and a half to go round the village. Some of the girls pretended to be interested in the cards in the post office. But it is very hard to be interested in ten copies of a card that has a picture of that fat bloke from Little Britain on the front. And you open it and it says, “I want that one.”

      Vaisey wanted to go home and go to bed and start dreaming on whatever our assignment is. Which I think is slightly cheating because it’s only six o’clock. The other girls had to be back at Dother Hall for tea, so I slumped off home to the Dobbins’ house.

      I am exhausted. СКАЧАТЬ