Girl With Leaves In Her Mouth

“You’re gorgeous, do you know that?”
He was surprised to hear himself say it. There had been a time when he could not bear to look at her, when her picture was in all the papers. Georgia slipped out of her coat and sat down. Richard was glad she was here but he wished he wasn’t half way through his lunch.
She pulled a supple, amber oak leaf from her mouth, unfurled it and placed it on the table. Richard took a look at it then looked at her. He touched the stem with his finger and aligned it with the cruet. He did not know what to say next. He had never expected to see her again. She looked calm. There was even a smile in her eyes.
The waiter was quite taken with her. He brushed the crumbs from the table, working sensitively around the leaf and laid a place setting for her. He offered to take her coat. Richard felt unable to speak whilst the waiter hovered. He felt unable to speak after the waiter had gone for more bread. Eventually he tried. “How are you?”
“Late it seems, judging by your plate.”
He frowned. He knew immediately he was being teased. She carried on, “It’s O.K. I won’t mention the fact that you stood me up the last time we were supposed to meet. I just want to talk. Well… I want to hear you talk.”
Richard had engineered this trip for himself. He was homesick. There were a lot of old conversations he would be happy to have. And a few he would like to avoid. He could tell she was taking a good look at him while he re-filled his glass. He wondered if she found him older. He felt himself blush. He drained his glass of sparkling English mineral water and spoke quickly. “I don’t really drink any more. Or come back here. My folks… are both dead. I go where I’m sent. I’m quite good at the rootless stuff. Loner. Self-sufficiency. You know?”
“No. Tell me.”
He remembered he was not talking to a bored colleague. She brushed imaginary dandruff from her shoulder and found a small twig in her hand. She placed it beside the leaf.
“Green salad please.”
The waiter was attentive. She placed her napkin on her lap, tipped the salad leaves onto the table in front of her and gave the plate back to him. He smiled, nodded and took it away. Richard looked down at his lamb with overworked mash. He had never taken much pleasure in his food. He cut the meat efficiently and moved it around in the puddle of mint sauce.
Georgia took a sprig of privet from her mouth, four or five small leaves on a long stem. She ran her tongue over her teeth and gave a little cough to make sure she had left none behind. She offered it to him but he would not join in with the joke. It fell to the floor a couple of feet from the table. They both watched it fall. On the carpet there were several other leaves, gathered near her chair, near her side of the table. She took another leaf, this time a dried, broken sycamore and blew it, like a kiss, from her outstretched palm. It floated gently onto his plate. His knife and fork clattered down.
“Don’t be a bitch.” He wondered if this trip had been such a good idea. He had not imagined getting angry with her.
He wanted it to be nice.

They went shopping. Town was an unimaginative mix of old and new. Flag stones clunked underfoot, concrete car parks slapped the sky ahead. They ignored the first few shops as they walked then Georgia took the lead. He followed her into an accessory shop. “Let’s buy sunglasses.”
They tried on glasses for fun. She chose a retro pair. He was unimpressed.
“There is no British safety mark on them. They’ll hurt your eyes.” This statement alone persuaded her to buy them. He put his Rayban Aviator copies back in the exact place he had found them then tried to spin the rack. It stuck. She browsed through other things. There was not much for him to look at. Shopping together had always wound him up. He was always late for shopping trips.
She would end each Saturday by wagging her finger and explaining that it was unforgivable to be late.
He applied some lip salve from his own pocket and then felt like a shoplifter. He wondered where she was. At the desk the assistant was putting the sunglasses into a plastic box and putting the plastic box into a bag. She slid the assembly across the counter with a smile. Georgia took a crisp oak leaf from her mouth, smoothed it out, apologised for having nothing smaller and gave it to the shop girl. She snapped back the clip on the notes drawer, put the leaf in the till, and counted out the change to Georgia. She pushed the till drawer shut with her hip and switched her attention to the next person in the small queue.
On the street Georgia left the glasses in her pocket. They both took silent note of the cloudless sky. He knew she would not wear them, she probably didn’t even like them. Irritation flickered through him. Now he recognised her. There she was, stranded in some small way by spite, waiting for him to rescue her. He didn’t want to. She spoke anyway. “It was cold waiting on that bench. Should I have known you weren’t going to come?”

To get to the park they would take a bus. Richard paid the fares and let Georgia choose the seats. He followed her unsteadily up the stairs to the back of the empty top deck. He heard himself “tut”. They would barely have taken their seats when it would be time to get off. Georgia sat in the corner of the back seat. Richard sat next to her, but not too near. He found himself staring down the aisle towards the front of the bus, uncomfortably aware of anyone who might emerge from the stairwell.
The road swept down the hill and straight through the heart of the town. The park lay undisturbed and waiting a mile or so away. Richard groaned as the bus turned off the main road. This was a 24, it would go meandering through the estates to the school.
“We’re going to the hell-hole. Hold tight.” She touched his arm. He felt a little sick.
The bus swung into the slip road by the school. The weight of bodies pouring onto the rocking bus added to his nausea. “Lazy gits” he thought, most of them are only going half a mile. This had been his bus, hers too. Maybe that’s why she chose the back seat.
The bus started moving again. A group of gangly, animated boys each sporting their own experiment with facial hair, made their way casually towards Richard and Georgia to claim the back seat. The five boys stood twitching, chewing and waiting to sit down. They slouched at angles watching the couple. The gawkiest boy dragged his sweaty palms along the metal ceiling of the bus. It made a loud squeaking noise. Richard thought he should speak. For the first time he noticed there was a leaf on each of the surrounding tartan cushions. The boy with curly hair looked at Georgia who motioned with her hand to one of the empty seats. He picked up the leaf very gently and sat with it on his lap. The other four boys sat where they were invited to and did the same. They sat looking from her to him and back again but saying nothing. Richard wondered if they recognised her.
Without warning Georgia put her hand behind Richard’s neck and pulled him towards her. She began to kiss him. The boys watched. Richard closed his eyes. Self-conscious panic took hold of him. The kiss seemed endless. He broke away, staring ahead, straight down the aisle through the window to the horizon. He felt stupid. Georgia gave a little giggle. Richard looked immediately at the boy with curly hair who was fixed by Georgia’s gaze. On his lap there was now a pile of leaves. Richard looked at the other four boys; each of them sat silently, perfectly still, with a small pile of leaves on their laps, their hands sorting through them gently. The bus went over a pothole. Some leaves fell to the floor. The curly headed boy looked anxious, apologetic. Georgia smiled and shook her head. She ran her hand through her hair and produced a beautiful, pale green chestnut leaf and presented it to his bashfully outstretched hand. He blushed.
Richard’s nausea returned. He was aware of cold saliva around his lips. He wanted to get off the bus. They all sat there, in silence, for the rest of the journey, swaying in unison around corners and nodding together at junctions. The boys were waist deep in leaves by the time Georgia took Richard’s hand and insisted, “This is our stop.” They were three stops short of the park. She glided downstairs. He stumbled after her, leaves stuck to the soles of his shoes. The bus pulled up at the market square with an animal-hiss of its brakes.
Richard was panicked by the bus journey. He didn’t know what he wanted out of this day anymore. It wasn’t what he had expected. He sat on the low wall by the florists. When he looked up he could see the sixth formers pressing themselves against the window as the bus pulled off. They weren’t looking at him. He looked around for Georgia.
“Let’s not go down there.”
But she was way ahead of him. He followed her down the side road past the back of the police station to the dog pound. This was a route to the park he would never have taken. He knew a thousand routes around town and none of them took him anywhere near here. He scanned the car park full of stolen cars.
“Please, Georgia, c’mon.”
She stopped right where he knew she would. The dogs were in day pens. In the last cage were two dogs together, an older shaggy one and a young aggressive thing. She turned to Richard to make sure she had his attention.
She had once been afraid of dogs.
She offered her sleeve through the bars. The oldest dog came forward and sniffed her hand. The other dog licked her fingers. She opened her palm. Richard watched her closely. He loved watching her but he was shocked to see her hands so dirty. She turned her hand over. There was soil in the lines around her knuckles and mud under her nails. Before he could say anything the older dog pushed its long snout through the bars and began truffling under her skirt. She carried on stroking the dog’s head. It knew her. It found its way under the fabric of her skirt then suddenly pulled back. Richard had never seen a dog walk backwards before. All barking stopped. Both dogs retreated and sat against the far wall of the pen. Richard took Georgia’s hands and looked at them. She pulled away from him.
He wanted desperately to hold her.

When he caught up with her she had reached the park and stood holding the railings staring across to the ponds. Children in bright colours were playing noiseless games with Frisbees and kites on the lush green hillside. The breeze took their voices away. A small white dog ran in a straight line between two people, one at the top of the hill, one at the bottom. It all looked innocent. Nearest to the gate two seven year old footballers with no other team-mates to evade were shouting “man on! man on!”
She turned to him. “Let’s go back.”
“But you used to love it…” He cut off. He had said something stupid. He was feeling awkward in her company again. He glanced at her then looked at the ground. She was waiting for him, somehow unable to cross the gravel at the gate, unable to enter the park. She was waiting for him to comfort her. Like she always did.
He watched himself kick over some stones trying to stay calm. He was not sure what he was feeling now. He was having a rush. He realised he felt high, bright with some sort of expectation. Could it be joy? She was looking across the park to the ponds. He looked at her shoulder, at her bruised neck. He asked himself if her still loved her. He thought maybe he should hold her. Maybe then he would know.
He kissed the top of her head, breathing in the scent from her hair. He wrapped his body around her. She felt cold. It scared him. He could feel his heart beat. A dampness invaded his nostrils. He wanted to pull out of the embrace but he was too scared to look at her face, his old fear returning. There had been a time when he couldn’t stand to look at her. He held his breath. He didn’t want to breathe her in any more. She didn’t smell like she used to. She smelt of leaves and grass, of leaf mould and earth.
He closed his eyes then eased back, his hands holding her shoulders. He looked at her. That wasn’t calm in her eyes, it was something duller. He needed her to speak.
She did. She said what he needed to hear.
“We did have a good time in there didn’t we?” He nodded but he could not follow it up with a smile. He felt too full of emotion. He let his hands drop. He was glad to let go of her. He looked across the park. They did have some fantastic times in there, meeting, after dark, on their bench.
But then love gave way to irritation. And the last time he hadn’t shown up.
She had spent a whole night in there once, lying perfectly still, twisted a little into the ground, leaves in her open mouth, waiting for some dog walker to find her in the morning.

He suggested a swim. Swimming had always been a hit with Georgia. It was a swimming and shopping town, no cinema. Georgia excelled at both.
She wore a red two-piece and swam teasingly around him in circles as he crawled back and forth. The pool was quiet and all the attendants looked bored. They stood in small groups chatting. One of them used a net to scoop a single cigarette butt out of the water. Richard reached the shallow end and stopped for breath. Behind him, floating in lazy arcs on the surface of the water were perhaps forty or fifty leaves. Closest to him two blackened acorns spun manically on the tiny whirlpools which caught up with him as he stopped. He watched them sink.
He hooked his arms around the rail near the metal steps, lay back and let his legs float up. He looked at her body. Her skin was refracted white under the surface. She looked young, hardly more than fifteen. He tried not to look at the dirt streams running down from her nose. She would hit him later for not telling her. He wanted to touch her. She doggy-paddled for a while then rested her feet on the bottom. A film of dust rested on the surface of the water around her shoulders. She studied her water puckered hands and complained that chlorine made her teeth feel rough. She reached into her mouth with wet fingers and pulled out another oak leaf to float on the surface of the pool. He’d had enough.
He dived away from her. This time though it was difficult to get any real speed going. His limbs felt heavy. Maybe it was the lunch sitting in his stomach. One or two leaves touched his lips. He spluttered. He dipped his face in the water. When he resurfaced one small leaf clung to the side of his face like a birthmark. He swam on. The deep end of the pool seemed a long way off. He would do four more lengths then call it a day. As he turned and kicked at the wall he looked up for her. She was under the water. He knew she was going to jump up at him. The attendants were on their break. There were leaves everywhere. He was not going to indulge her any longer. He swam back towards the shallow end.
He grew impatient. He stood up, leaves clinging to his thighs and trunks. He looked around for her. She was taking full advantage of the attendants’ absence. He dipped below the water and began looking for her.
He could not see her. It was darker now, the leaves filtered the light. He pushed his limbs through the water going beyond the shelf at the shallow end, down the slope towards the centre of the pool. Up above his head the entire surface was now covered in leaves. Even the gap where he had stood was now slowly closing up. The covering of the pool was complete. Except, he thought he saw light flickering through, over there. He thought he saw Georgia swim through a column of dim light. The water grew darker still. It seemed dirty. His feet left the bottom. He reached out to the side towards the rail. He was further from the edge than he thought. He panicked. Where were the vents and the rails? He couldn’t make out the pattern of the tiles anymore. He couldn’t gauge how far the surface was. He tried to swim. His clothes were soaked and heavy. He swam then stopped. He was caught on something. He wrestled with his coat. His lungs were hurting. He had to make a decision. He couldn’t see. He had to stop panicking.
He would trust the water. If he kept still it would take him up. He would be safe. Georgia would save him. He let his body go. He let the water take him. He called out for her. Bubbles broke through the pondweed on the surface. She would have to forgive him now. He too would have his picture in the paper.

Jeanie O’Hare 2000

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