Pumping Up Napoleon Read online

  So, yes, we were close – until Carole changed.

  Carole’s breasts, non-existent until our first year of secondary school, seemed to sprout, not overnight, but one September lunchtime in the playground. We were shivering under a lukewarm sun pretending that the summer wasn’t over when her nipples just popped up under her shirt. I checked my own chest. Nothing. Carole saw me looking and glanced down at herself. We didn’t say anything; we both put on our jumpers and looked the other way.

  That Saturday we went on a group outing to the lingerie department. My aunt bought Carole her first bra; my mother bought me something labelled a ‘skin-tone chemise’. It was a beige vest; we all knew. Carole looked at it, looked at what she was getting, looked at me. A new light dawned in her eyes. It was almost intelligence. She stood up taller. It made her tiny tits stick out.

  Everyone thought it mattered to me, but it didn’t. Not then. I wasn’t in a hurry; the thought of acquiring body hair was too frightening. I’d seen my mother’s inexpertly shaven armpits, the winter hairs she let grow on her legs to keep out the cold. They made me shudder.

  But six months later Carole required cups. It was hard for me not to be overawed by her lace trims, her adjustable straps. I begged my mother to buy me something relatively bra-shaped, even if I didn’t have anything to hide. ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ said my mother. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up.’

  She didn’t understand. I wasn’t in a hurry to grow up; it was Carole. I just didn’t want to be left behind. Eventually my mother gave in and bought me something. It was beige, as usual, not much better than a cut-off vest. I was glad to have it, but found it surprisingly chilly to wear. I was cold on my belly and back where the rest of the vest was missing.

  Carole showed me the red marks where her bra straps cut into her shoulders. It was a bit like breaking in new shoes, she said: all that rubbing in unaccustomed places.

  My mother said, ‘See? See how we women suffer?’

  Not long after that I had my first period and found out what she meant. It wasn’t just the pain and the mess and the turning white and the headaches. It was the whole business of sanitary towels. My mother wouldn’t hear of me using tampons: I was too young. So, in the very moment of becoming a woman, I felt like I was being put back into nappies. In those days ‘pads’ were square-edged, thick and about as comfortable as having a brick in your knickers. They had a thin strip of adhesive down the middle. A great innovation, far better than belts and pins, apparently. But they didn’t stick where they were put, did they? A good idea, yes, but underdeveloped. The system worked OK as long as you stayed still. As soon as you started walking the pad was on the move too, climbing upwards over your behind to poke out through the waistband of your skirt. Running to the loo was a race against disaster. Better to walk, carefully, with your hands behind your back pressing on the thing to keep it in place. That’s why some girls had days off school; they didn’t dare go out.

  I consoled myself with the thought that at least now I’d catch up with Carole. I started looking at myself sideways in the mirror, pulling my T-shirt tight. Now, I too had nipples. But change was slow. I wasn’t swelling as fast as I should. You’d think that sharing a gene pool with Carole would have given us some characteristics in common. Well, by the time we reached the third form it was clear that we were, physically as well as intellectually, quite different. Our academic achievements matched our cup sizes: As for me; Cs for Carole.

  Yet Carole was always complaining. ‘My neck aches,’ she’d say, ‘and my back. You don’t know how lucky you are.’ Then we’d go off to our separate lessons. We were in different streams by then: in the same form but not in the same class. I was heading towards the rock of university, Carole was navigating a course between hairdressing college and a degree in marketing.

  When I felt bad about the way I looked I tried to be rational. I’d lie in the bath and look at my body as it lay under the water. I wasn’t fat: but then I had no curves at all. Straight up and down and far too skinny according to my aunt. But what teenage girl, since the history of teenage girls began, has ever felt happy with her body? ‘At least you know boys like you for who you are and not the way you look,’ said Carole.

  Daniel Stanton was one year and about a million miles above me. He had gorgeous hair and his eyes were brown. I had always thought about him, but now I began to think about him regularly and with some dedication. Whereas in the past I had found him easy to talk to, now I didn’t know what to say when he spoke to me, my best effort in a six-week period being a mean-sounding, ‘What do you want, Stanton?’

  I usually tried not to think about him when I was in the bathroom (especially not when I was on the loo). But he was always around on the edge of my mind and it was easy enough to conjure his image in the steam above the bath.

  The windows were dark and dripping on the inside. I wondered what it would be like to see a face outside the window: its nose, mouth and eyes blurred by the dimpled glass. Our bathroom was on the second floor, but there were such things as ladders and ventilation grilles and tiny spy-cameras.

  I took to using bubble bath. One day, not long after, I found my first pubic hairs. I was doomed to be hairy and flat chested.

  Reason told me I was better off than Carole now and in the long run: boys couldn’t see past her tits; teachers treated her as if she couldn’t possibly think and have bosoms that size (surely there was no blood supply left for her brain); other girls our age avoided her. They didn’t want to be compared with Carole and found wanting. It made me sick to see the way boys ogled Carole and then sniggered behind her back. It was pathetic. They all wanted her but they had to make comments, as if they could get over their feelings of inadequacy by making her seem less worth having. The only boy who didn’t act that way was Daniel.

  I was avoiding him in person even though he was hardly ever out of my mind. I couldn’t breathe when he was around. How would I ever be able to speak to him with no air in my lungs? And then something happened: he had his hair cut – ridiculously short. Younger boys started calling him Big Ears. He went all red, his ears reddest of all. I thought: no. And, just like that, he lost all his power over me.

  Turns out I was glad. I really was. I didn’t need to care any more whether I saw him or not. I even began to feel sorry for him because he had become so unattractive and unlovable. He was still a genuinely nice person. Just not someone you could imagine kissing. I would never let him touch me now that I knew what he really looked like.

  One day, feeling sorry for him, I said, ‘All right?’ when our paths crossed. Amazing how easy it was.

  If only his hair had not grown back.

  By the time we did our mock GCSEs Carole had progressed to a 36 double D and tried out three boyfriends. They had all proved disappointing. Their interest was entirely focused on her anatomy. They had nothing to say and neither did she. Each encounter was made up of long, awkward silences followed by a pounce, which found her in no mood to surrender. For a time she embraced the idea of being single and independent. I was pretty good at that myself.

  Daniel and I were on nodding terms. We rarely spoke but saw each other often. Tired of our long-distance nearly-romance (glances meeting across the crowded playground, or sliding together from opposite sides of the classroom) I worked out his timetable of movements and knew exactly when I might bump into him. On Mondays I’d be walking up the science wing corridor to my locker, with Carole in tow, before lunch, and he’d go by in the opposite direction towards the canteen, with a group of his mates. I could see them walking towards us through the glass panels of the swing doors which sectioned off the science wing. One day we all arrived there at the same time and Daniel, like a perfect gentleman, held the door open for us; only his mates barged through and we had to move out of the way. I knew their tricks. ‘Bouncing off Carole’ was a recognised and hilarious team sport among the boys that year. She stuck out her elbows like I had taught her, while I ‘accidentally’ did a bi
t of shoving back. Daniel just stood there, holding the door open until we were ready to go through. He smiled at me. He didn’t look at Carole. He didn’t stare at her tits. I smiled back at him.

  Carole and I walked on a bit.

  ‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’ said Carole.

  ‘That Daniel’s a snob,’ said Carole a week later. We were in my bedroom; my mum and hers were drinking coffee downstairs. My cousin had burst in on me and caught me looking at a website dedicated to cosmetic surgery. I was thinking of asking my mum for a boob job for Christmas, but figured she’d probably make me wait until I was at least sixteen.

  I clicked on the link for ‘breast reduction’ and said, ‘Hey, Carole. Maybe this is what you need.’

  Daniel wasn’t taking any notice of her and she didn’t know what to do about it. I smirked. Carole had been trying to catch his eye all week but each time we passed him it was me he looked at. He even went a bit pink himself. ‘Maybe you’re just not his type,’ I said.

  Carole thought about that for a bit. Then she said, ‘What do you think of this?’ Lifting her T-shirt she showed me her new bra. It was purple, covered in lace and made her boobs look like two large cushions. They were pushed up so high she could have rested her chin on them.

  ‘Not so much upholstery, more a piece of furniture,’ I said.

  She pulled her T-shirt down again and lay back on the bed and sighed. ‘Do you think I can get Daniel to notice me?’

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t interested in boys.’

  ‘This is different. I really like him.’

  ‘Oh. Well, you know, don’t be too disappointed. Like I said, maybe you’re not his type. Physically, I mean. Not everyone likes big boobs.’

  ‘No?’ Carole sounded doubtful.

  ‘Are you two behaving yourselves?’ my aunt shouted up the stairs.

  ‘Yes, we’re talking about sex,’ I shouted back.

  From then on Carole did all she could to get Daniel to notice her, aiming her tits at him like twin torpedoes. I was glad to see that he managed to evade them every time.

  Not long before Christmas something marvellous happened. Daniel started walking me home from school.

  He lived not that far from me but his quickest way was by a different route. So I knew something was up when I saw him ahead of me. I didn’t know whether to catch him up or slow down. I decided to just go on as normal as if he wasn’t there. But how hard that was.

  He was there nearly every day. Sometimes he was ahead of me and sometimes behind. If Carole wanted to come back to mine I had to make some excuse. I didn’t want her to know or she’d insist on walking home with me every night. (I thought she was getting quite selfish, only thinking about what she wanted. She never stopped to think that I might like someone or that someone might like me.)

  It was nearly the last week of term before Daniel got up the courage to speak to me. I’d been disappointed to see that he wasn’t around when I left school that day and I’d been looking out for him all the way. Someone came running up behind me. Another jogger? They could be scary with their sudden panting in your ear. So I turned just to check and it was Daniel. I turned away again. He slowed down. Oh no. Would he think I didn’t want to speak to him? He must have been running to catch me up. I looked back again. He was stopping, out of breath.

  ‘Hi,’ I said and smiled.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, blowing air out when he should have been taking it in. We stood there. ‘You know you shouldn’t be walking home on your own in the dark,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, that’s OK,’ I said. ‘I’m a big girl.’ Wrong. In so many ways. Quick, say something else. ‘But if you’re going this way, we could walk together.’ Too eager?

  ‘OK.’

  Easy. It felt natural, as if we knew each other. And we started regularly walking home from school together after that. We didn’t start off together from school of course; the others would have made fun of us; besides there was usually Carole to get rid of. That wasn’t too hard because she lived just close to the gate but in the opposite direction. And Daniel had to lose his friends too of course. But every evening, somewhere along the way, when we got to the quieter streets we naturally fell into step together. It felt right. Sometimes there were silences and I felt he would have liked to say more, but I knew it didn’t matter. Things could happen slowly between us because they were going to go on happening. We had our whole lives.

  Usually he said goodbye to me at the end of my road, under the streetlight. It was an orange light, unflattering, but never mind. If he could like me in that glare then how much might he love me by candlelight, or by moonlight? How he would gaze at me as we danced under the stars on our balcony in Tuscany, or on the deck of our sailing boat in the Caribbean or…

  ‘Bye then,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Bye.’

  I went down the road to my house.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ I shouted.

  ‘Hi,’ said my mum, coming out of the kitchen. ‘Isn’t your cousin with you?’

  ‘No,’ I said, taking off my coat.

  ‘Only your aunt rang and said she isn’t home yet.’

  ‘Oh.’ In fact, I hadn’t seen her after school that day.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Carole. She was looking at me and her bottom lip was trembling.

  ‘Come on in,’ said my mum. ‘Your mum’s worried about you.’

  Carole said nothing; she went straight upstairs to my room.

  ‘I’ll ring home for you then, shall I?’ my mum shouted up the stairs. She shook her head.

  I took my time before going up. Carole must have seen me talking to Daniel. I didn’t know what I was going to say.

  ‘I hate you,’ she said.

  ‘Carole, love,’ I said, sounding like my mother. ‘It’s not what you think. We’re just walking home together.’ But even as I said it I couldn’t stop a grin spreading over my face.

  The last day of term. In my bag, three things I might give Daniel: a red heart powdered with snow; a football card game, which was also a quiz; and a humorous Christmas card. I didn’t know if I would give him all three or just the card. Or, if he gave me a present, I could give him the card game. Or, if he gave me a definitely romantic present, if he said he wanted to see me over Christmas, I could give him the heart. My own heart thumped in my throat when I thought about that.

  He was waiting for me after school, which pleased me except that Carole was still there. We stood there awkwardly for a minute, the three of us, then Carole said, ‘Shall I come round to yours? Mum’s probably there.’

  ‘Thing is,’ I said, ‘I’ve got stuff to do when I get in. And I think mum’s gone Christmas shopping. See you tomorrow, I expect.’ I gave her a smile and set off. I heard Daniel say goodbye to Carole. I didn’t look back.

  Daniel and I didn’t say much on the way home. It was cold and I could see my breath and his. I changed my breathing so that we exhaled together, twin plumes. I wondered if Daniel was trying to decide, as I was, which present to give. Should I give them all? I wanted to speak but it wasn’t the time to say anything ordinary. Anything ordinary would have been wrong.

  We went on like this with the silence thickening, until we reached the end of my street where we stopped, as usual, under the glare of the street lamp. Lights like these, all over town, covered the stars with orange fuzz. This was it. I turned to Daniel and unclenched my teeth. ‘I got you something,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. He looked startled.

  ‘It’s just a card,’ I added hastily.

  ‘I didn’t get you anything.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said, reaching into my bag.

  ‘I mean, I haven’t written my cards yet.’

  ‘Oh.’ I nodded, looking down at the ground.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘That’s OK.’ I looked up and smiled brightly to show him everything was all right.

  ‘Right.’ He shifted from foot to foot.

  He looked so uncomfortab
le I began to feel sorry for him.

  And then he said, ‘Umm, what do you think your cousin would like?’

  ‘Pardon?’ I said, blinking.

  ‘Umm, your cousin Carole. What do you think I could get her for a present?’

  I would have taken a step back but my heart, my real heart not the one wrapped up in my bag, had turned to stone, broken in two and sunk. I couldn’t move.

  ‘Yeah. Well, you know….’ The words stumbled out of his mouth. ‘If I get you something, I ought to… you know.’

  ‘Know what?’ My voice sounded sharp.

  ‘Don’t want her to feel left out,’ he mumbled.

  I took a breath. Then I smiled. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Poor old Carole; she needs cheering up.’

  ‘Does she?’ He looked anxious.

  ‘Well, you can imagine,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, it’s not easy for her, is it? People don’t take her seriously. Most boys are only after one thing. You know.’

  ‘Umm…’

  ‘Your friends, they’re just as bad.’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Yeah, always sniggering. You know it’s got so bad she’s….’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t say.’

  ‘OK then.’ He looked relieved. He cleared his throat. He opened his mouth.

  ‘Breast reduction,’ I said. ‘She’s that fed up.’

  ‘No!’ He went pale.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, hitching up my school bag, turning my feet towards home. ‘She’s talked about it.’

  He swallowed.

  ‘It’s not a good idea.’ I turned back, leaning towards him. He leaned forward too. In a low voice I said, ‘There’ll be scars.’

  ‘Oh.’ He straightened up. ‘Right,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Well….’ He hesitated. ‘You’ll be all right now, won’t you? Getting home?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said brightly. ‘I live just down there on the left.’

  And then he was gone, leaving me standing there, alone in that ugly light.