How?

 

She heard him tut as she spread her arms and whirled around for a second time, she didn’t have to look at his face to know his eyes were rolled upwards and a grip of irritation had set into his jaw.  She didn’t care, why should she care?  They were going to break up anyway.  She had known that from the first time he had taken her in her father’s barn three months ago.  Oh he had been so sweet right up until the point of penetration, all flowers and secret smiles, long walks through blossom scented meadows.  His kisses gentle and persuasive, too persuasive, she had finally given in to his carefully manipulated demands……no, in all honesty, she couldn’t even say he demanded her body, he was too clever and cunning for that, it felt more like a gentle taking over, a slow and beautiful manoeuvring of her into the right place at the right time.

In the days and weeks that came after there were no more flowers, no more walks, and no more whispered words of love and hinted at promises tickling her ear.  He would just turn up when her father wasn’t around and give a cursory nod toward the barn.  That’s where she would lead him, fully smitten with calf love and believing this was the way it was between couples.  She pushed down the niggling doubts in her mind, telling herself that this was a childish hang-up, she was a woman now, he had made her thus, after all an age was just a number, and at thirteen she had been having periods for two years……how much more of a woman could she be?  During their rut he would tell her that he loved her, filling her heart once more with a hope that her future would lay with him.  After, whilst he pulled up his trousers and she adjusted her skirts, he would make her promise to tell no one, “Three years,” he would say, “Three years, then you’ll be sixteen and we can tell the world.”  And, apart from that tiny part within her brain that objected, she believed him.

She knew what not having a period meant, she wasn’t stupid.  And although her mother had died when she was born, she did have an older married sister who had produced three beautiful, bouncing, baby boys in quick succession.  She was pregnant, and she was going to tell him that very day.  He had agreed to meet her on the cliff tops overlooking the bay.  Out in the open, as everything in her life would now have to be, no more secrets, no more waiting for him to turn up when he felt like it, or more precisely IT!  He was to be a father now, that meant responsibility, that meant he would have to marry her on her sixteenth birthday.   Marry, the word spread a warm glow through her body, it made her shiver with delight, it made her happy.  She had arrived at the cliff top before him, she sat down, and closing her eyes, turned her face toward the warm, late summer sun.  She felt a smile of glorious contentment come unbidden to her lips.  She felt, rather than saw, him arrive,  his words came from somewhere above her head as he stood over her, “What the bloody hell have you dragged me all the way out here for, and what’s that bloody stupid grin on your face all about?”  She opened her eyes and looked up at him allowing her ‘bloody stupid grin’ to get bigger, “I’ve got something to tell you, and it’s brilliant, the best, best news ever.”

She rose to her feet and, as she looked directly into his eyes, her smile froze.   She knew, one hundred per cent knew, there was not going to be any happy outcome to her news.  She saw him, for the first time; really saw him, and what he was.   As a small child she had a story book, in there was an illustration of a wicked wolf, sharp fanged with a drooling red mouth.  Her father had told her that this wolf would come and eat naughty children in the night, those children who forgot to brush their teeth and say their prayers before clambering into bed…………she had always remembered to brush her teeth and say her prayers, but here he was, that wolf, that evil being that preyed on innocent mistakes.  She was unsure if her mistake would be classed as innocent, and for that she would be punished she was sure, but not by him, never by him.  It was over, there would be no more creeping off to the barn, she had made this decision, it was no longer up to him to decide when to finish with her.   A feeling of being set free crept over her, a release from a burden too heavy for her young shoulders to bear, a burden that had her breathless and bowed with insecurity and stress.  The feeling made her spirit soar, like a little bird released from a cage, and she whirled around, not once, but twice, laughing in relief.   She came to a stop in front of him, oh yes, she would tell him about the baby, and then she would tell him to sod off!

She took a step closer to him, she was damp with sweat from her gleeful exertion, placing her hands on his chest, she looked up into his face and blurted, “I’m pregnant.”  Before she could get to the ‘sod off’ part, the look of anger (which she had somehow expected) was replaced by a look of utter disgust, that did surprise her, and made her feel angry in turn.   He shouted at her, his spittle flying into her face, “You stupid, stupid little cow.   How?  For god’s sake how?  You’ve got to get rid of it.”  Half of her wanted to laugh at his ridiculous question.  He must have known how, he was, after all, there at the time!  But the other half of her felt cold and fearful, that ‘it’ he wanted to get rid of was her baby.  By this time he had grabbed her by her elbows and was shaking her, neither of them had noticed how close to the cliff edge they had come, his back towards it.

Her anger, and fear for her unborn, gave her strength, she pushed him hard.  His face registered total surprise at her rebellious reaction to his commands and he took a step back………..and disappeared off the edge of the cliff.

She froze in shock and horror, one hand covering her mouth, the other wrapped around her stomach, as if to both give and receive comfort to and from her baby.  Realising that she too was perilously close to the edge she moved back.  Her mind began to race.   Telling people she was pregnant was one thing, but trying to explain she might have murdered its father was quite another.  She could say that…………she shook her head vigorously,  no, no more lies, she was sick of lies and deception, she would tell the truth, bad wolves never ate truthful girls.  She turned to go, she would go to the nearest cottage, tell them what had happened, tell them there had been a fearful accident, tell them it wasn’t her fault.  IT WASN’T HER FAULT.  


She took one step and heard her name being whimpered from over the cliff.  He was alive; he was alive? It was a hundred foot drop to the rocks below, he couldn’t be.  Once more she turned and dropping to her hands and knees, she crawled to the edge,  there, four feet below her, he was, clinging on to a stunted bush, which in turn was barely clinging on to its cliff face life.  “Help me, please help me, I’ll do right by you, I swear.”  His voice, no longer gruff and harsh, sounded more like one of her sisters boys, high pitched and whiney.  She grunted her reply, and laying full stretch on her tummy, extended her hand toward him.  With one hand still clinging onto his erstwhile saviour, the bush, he reached and grabbed her hand.  “You’ll have to pull, whilst I find toe holds, alright?”  His voice, not so whiney now.  Getting to her knees she pulled, leaning back with the effort.  “Pull, you dozy slut, pull!!”  His voice made her glance down at him, the wolf was back, not that, she supposed, he had ever disappeared.  She didn’t have to go to a nearby cottage, she didn’t have to say anything, keeping silent was not lying………..she opened her hand and let the slippery sweatiness of it do the rest. 


She must have sat crouched at the cliff edge for several hours, her arms covering her head.  Hunger made her move, it must be tea time, father would be waiting.  She stood up, brushed dirt and grass from her skirt and went home.