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short story

Football boots

Meg Lindsay

It wasn't difficult for Carla to get out of the window once she had made up her mind to do it. Her small slippers crunched into the snow, and she gasped a mouthful of chilled night air. The moon had carved immense shadows on the lawn behind the house, and she scurried to one, her heartbeat loud in her ears.

Now what? What would John say? She pictured him, deep asleep under a mound of quilt, sweat glueing red hair to his broad forehead, square jaw set. He usually slept with one arm dangling down to caress his precious football boots. She squeezed the lumpy polythene bag to her hammering chest. Not tonight!

But as the cold penetrated her dressing gown, her confidence began to abandon her It was her resentment that had driven her this far. She hadn't considered what to do next. And now suddenly, in the dark shadows, she felt surrounded by a jostling host of Johns, laughing and pointing at her. She felt skinny, ugly, and above all, silly. Her lip trembled. John always made her feel so silly. He could hang upside down from the climbing frame; he could clamber up the steepest heap of rubble, and stand swaying on its peak, chanting the rhythm of his contempt. He was never afraid of anything. If he fell, he would not cry, not even when blood flooded from muddy knee or elbow. He was only eight, and so was she, but he seemed to be constructed tough and strong, whereas she was thin and silly.

She shivered. She had to get on with it. And she had to be clever, or they'd know. They'd search, find and accuse. They'd be shocked, surprised, angry and disappointed. And John would push that broad face close to hers, wrinkle his nose, stick out his tongue, waggle his head and cavort in victory. Again. Her anger pulsed through her once more. Clutching her burden ever tighter, she set off through the shadows, down the path. The rhododendrons on either side had sheltered it from the snow, creating a black tunnel all the way to the road. She plunged into it, before her terror could hold her back.

She hesitated beside the gate for a moment “maybe here? But she must be resolute. No half measures would do. She ran on. She turned left and scampered down the quiet road. The street lights' orange radiance was doubly dazzling, reflected from the snow, and she felt everyone must see her, obvious in dressing gown and slippers. If a car were to pass, there was nowhere she could hide. Again her confidence froze. But suddenly she remembered. She ran forward and jumped into the snow beside the road. Kneeling, she pushed the bag deep beneath the kerb. Her arm slid in up to the elbow, the cold of the water making her gasp in a lung full of damp air, heavy with the smell of rotting grass.

It was done! Her speed on the return journey amazed her. She bounded over her bedroom window ledge, exhilarated at what she had done. A sinuous wriggle into bed, and she could relish the warm sheets against her shivering limbs. She had done it “she had actually done it! As her thundering heart faded to a gentle throb, she slept.

* * *

John was a skimpy four year old back then, a grey skinned kid who smelled of urine and sour milk. He could dimly recall the odour of wet coats in the cramped hall cupboard, and a huge rough haired dog whose hot breath slimed his cheeks. He had run into the kitchen and banged the door against its dribbling gape. Mummy was sitting there, still as stone. She held a letter in tight, white fingers, and on the table lay a bulky package, bundled in crushed brown paper. A red and mauve scarf wrenched her hair into a bunch at the nape of her neck; her bare legs were tangled through the bars of the chair. He still remembered that scarf. The electric fire was as black as the bars at a prison window, and John shivered.

"Ma, ah want..."

She swirled round. Her fist crushed the scribbled words. The package thudded against his ankles. Then she was at the door. She wrested it open. And paused. Her taut finger slashed towards him.

"Tough luck, son. Your precious father! Letters and parcels, but money? No way!"

John stood so still. The thread of sound which was her footsteps stretched out along the pavement and finally snapped. Still John stood.

Red cardboard peeped from the wreckage of brown paper at his feet. He squatted, and with awkward little fingers, struggled with the twisted sellotape which imprisoned the box. Concentration possessed him, pushing his fear and helplessness aside. He had to get inside this box. It was for him, he knew that for a certainty, and it was from daddy, that was for sure. No-one else made mummy's face look crumpled and wet like that. At last he managed to free a corner of the box lid, and hauled at it till the cardboard gave way. A thin strip of yellow flopped out, and John started back. The yellow snake in the story book bit and bit.... But no. It was a lace, like the grubby ones on his trainers, but bigger, brighter. Excitement beat in his ears. He tore the lid from the box in a final triumphant frenzy, and fell back on his skinny buttocks as the contents tumbled out.

Immaculate black and white, zigg-zagged by the yellow laces, they were so huge that he could slip his feet, trainers and all, right into their capacious depths. Daddy had sent him boots! Real football boots like they had seen in the shop window that wet day, forever ago, when daddy had taken him to The Match. John's ecstasy was total. He was no longer alone and small in a damp, empty flat. He was a boy who had football boots, who had a daddy who had given him football boots.

That was the day that mummy didn't come back. A neighbour found him two days later, peering from behind a torn curtain, eyes so huge they seemed to obscure his face. He was clutching a red box which his tiny fingers would not release even when he was being bathed and fed in the foster home that night.

* * *

Carla opened her eyes. The room was so bright “of course, the snow. She pushed her fringe back from her eyes, and studied the clock. Goodness, nine o'clock on Saturday, and she'd promised to play with Beth next door. She grabbed track suit, pants, vest from floor and wardrobe, and began to wriggle into them. Suddenly she froze. Memories of last night bubbled into her mind “orange street lights, snow cold under her knees, ghostly white of polythene deep below the black water. Her stomach knotted in anticipation. She found herself listening for uproar from John's room, but there was nothing, apart from the radio's gentle conversation in the kitchen downstairs. Her assurance of the previous night had melted with the morning sun. Her one objective was to get out of the house in the hope that the worst would be over by the time she got back.

The kitchen door was ajar, and Dad was at the cooker, stirring something in a bowl and humming along with the radio.

"Want one?" The warm smell of pancakes.

"OK. Any of mum's jam left?" She was pleased and surprised at how casual she sounded.

"In the cupboard. You going out?"

"Just to Beth's".

"Be back for lunch then. I'm going to the shops with mum this afternoon. Might as well get those school shoes for you while we're at it. John needs some too".

Carla tensed. “He would. He always needs everything I've got as well as all his own stuff". She thumped the pancake on the plate and her vehemence spilt the milk.

"Carla, for heavens sake". His impatience was quickly reined in. “You know perfectly well that John hadn't got anything when he came. Of course we had to kit him out."

Her throat tightened, and the pancake blurred before her eyes. How she hated John. And now he'd forced her to do something really bad “if Dad knew, he'd hate her. It was John she wanted him to hate, not her. She banged her knife on the floury worktop and ran for the door.

* * *

There was only the roughness of the carpet beneath his fingers as he woke. They were gone. Every organ within him clenched in sudden grief. Only those boots had ensured that daddy would return. The vital link. Only they could protect him from being overwhelmed by the grey, choking mist of nothingness that was always at his heels. Ever since that day in the first foster home, the mist had followed him. Sometimes it receded, when the hot days there lengthened into the endlessness of a childish summer, patterned with green grass, ice cream melting over tight knuckles, tadpoles in jam jars on his bedroom window ledge. Dishonest wishfulness persuaded him that now could last forever.

With his move to the next family, the grey mist crept nearer. They stood in the path, the woman and the boy. A big boy, with a thin nose and eyes too close together. John felt small, tiny even, as if the boy could crush him like a beetle. And John knew that he would crush him as soon as he could, grinding his heel round and round. Enfolding his parcel close to his small chest, he knew it was up to him “there was no-one else.

He spent six months there, until Mrs. Grace and Tim could stand it no longer. Who could be expected to tolerate a child who took every opportunity to spit and swear, who meticulously destroyed Tim's precious model aircraft, and finally kicked him so viciously that the bruises took weeks to fade? He had to go; the placement was untenable, the disruption inevitable.

And so he walked up this path here for the first time. Carla was hiding behind her mother's skirt “a thin wispy girl, dark hair flopping around a pale, tense face. But she was still a risk, for the grey mist was close at his heels, and only he could defend himself, and keep it at bay. And a man held Carla's other hand. A father. John's terror formed a choking knot in his throat. But he had the boots.

Yet he had always known that one day they would be gone, and he would again be alone and invisible. And today was the day.

* * *

When Carla came back, mum was at the table, spooning mounds of beans onto four plates.

"Hi there. Had a good time? Ow!" She flapped one hand, dropped the tray of sausage rolls onto the table and reached towards the tap. “Just what I tell you off for “not looking what I'm doing". The sausage rolls hissed steamily on the tray. Carla waited. It must come now. John must be up by now, must have noticed, must have shouted, sworn, kicked dad's ankles, hurled toys, shards of plastic punched into the walls. His face would have been bloated, red, sweat dripping from his chin. And dad and mum would have listened, stroked his stiff red hair, cleared up the broken toys. She felt trapped between her hatred and her fear of what would happen next.

"Carla, have you seen John's football boots?" The beans on her plate began to ooze over the edge “orange, slimy.

"Carla!"

"I haven't seen them this morning. They're always under his bed". She chose her words with meticulous care. But she knew she was a liar. John had made her a liar.

"Oh well, they must be somewhere. Oh there you are. No luck finding them then?"

John was standing by the kitchen door, looking at Carla. He shook his head. One hand was rubbing the door handle. Carla braced herself. Nothing happened. John flopped into the chair opposite, and covered his forehead with one hand. With his fork, he began to pursue the beans round the rim of the plate. She looked at him, confused. Suddenly she saw a tear drop into the beans, a transparent pool in their glutinous surface. Then another. He glanced up, saw her looking, crushed his palms across his cheeks, and stared at the table. He looked small, tired, lonely. For the first time since he arrived, she was not afraid of him. She felt pity. And she felt guilt.

Her voice shook. “Mummy. If John can't find his boots, will you buy him new ones?"

John leapt up. The beans rained over her, the plate chattered against the fridge.

"You can't. Nobody can. They were the only pair in the whole world like that!"

For an endless instant, they stood frozen in breathless juxtaposition. Then suddenly he hurled himself into dad's arms, and gasped and choked out his misery. And dad held him tight against his shirt, spattered as it was with sauce, like blood.

Carla's fist clenched tight over the edge of the table as she stared. Mum took it, uncurled it softly, and kissed her sweating palm.

* * *

They found the boots three weeks later. Next door's black and white mongrel Harry, the one with the uneven ears, was found by the verge chewing something. Mr. Smith said he wondered if these might be the missing boots? They were soaked, their sharp black and white merged to a progression of grey, the yellow laces frayed. Mum packed newspaper into them; dad tried to polish them up. Carla found herself untroubled by this; her plump bulb of jealousy did not bloom but withered.
But never again did John keep them by his bed. They lay in a box in the bottom of the wardrobe. When at last they fitted his burgeoning feet, he wore them for school matches, while dad cheered and jumped, and talked endlessly about every move of full backs, goalies, and referees who were not as even handed as they should have been.

And then John needed new boots, and Carla went with mum to buy them. They threw away the old ones. They were, after all, of no further use.