Four

Aurélie

 

Autumn came in whispers that year. With golden light and a breeze that weaved around me as I lay on the riverbank. The summer lingered but the air had grown sharper overnight. I greeted the dawn on the wrong side of the wagon wall for the first time in years. We hadn’t moved, our bodies heavier into the ground with sleep. My Aunt would be worried and I wondered if there was anyone to worry about him as I watched the rise and fall of his chest until he started to stir. 

I sat up and took in the dewy morning - the rising mist, the sullen crow of early birds, as I pawed at the mess of hair that fell around my shoulders and onto the dampened material of my dress. I should have felt cold but there was a steady hum of warmth that had stayed with me since my birthday. I caught him in the last moments of sleep - his quiet face, the strands of almost-curly hair that fell clumsily onto his forehead as the early sunlight caught flecks of copper within the brown. Hair, skin and breath, I noticed every part of him. He was everything I had never seen this close before in anyone but my Aunt and myself. His was a new shape, his breathing a new sound. I knew then that I wanted to know more, I wanted to notice him for all the days to come - to look for new sights and sounds, on him - with him. It didn’t matter.

“You know, I think you’re the first person I’ve woken up with to still have all their clothes on. Apart from my friends.” His voice was croaky with smoke and sleep. “I feel like I’ve grown as a person.” He grinned.

“Here I was thinking you were a gentleman.” 

He lifted his body to my level. “Far from it. I’m probably trouble.” He rubbed his face and stared out into the daylight as we sat in silence for a beat. “I’m definitely no good for a gem like you.”

I believed him. He was a boy who had collected too many hearts on his sleeve, had one too many stories to tell and I wanted to hear them all. 

 “I could be trouble as well you know.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He leant closer to me for a moment and nudged me with his shoulder.  “I suppose I should go and be useful. Do some work or something. Adults keep telling me I need to focus on work.” He stood up slowly and stretched, making his t-shirt hem rise. I looked away. “F**k ‘em, I say.” The words fell from his mouth and the sound was sharp and unfamiliar. 

“F**k ‘em.” I repeated. I barely recognised my own voice. It was exhilarating. 

“That’a girl.” He winked at me. 

“I’m not supposed to know any swear words,” I said, shocked at the sound that came from my own mouth.

“Whoever’s tried to tame you should be ashamed of themselves.”

“F**k ‘em,” I said again. 

“From your lips it’s like poetry.” He laughed quietly. “I welcome you to always swear in my company.”

My limited knowledge of viable swear words would be laughable to a boy like him. 

“You haven’t asked me my name.” 

“Well I don’t normally ask,” he said. He paused. Watching me for a moment. “But now you mention it-“

“It’s Aurélie.” 

“Ah look at that, now I’m learning people’s names. You might just be a good influence on me, Auri.” He started to walk away, saluting at me as he left. 

“No one calls me that.” I called after him.

“No-one except me.” There was a smile in his voice.

 

***

I crept alone along the shadows, playing back everything from the last few days as I approached the caravan. 

“You’re home late.” Vivien knew I was there before she even saw me. She was sitting on our step, peering at her embroidery through decades old spectacles, because apparently modern ones looked ridiculous.

“I could be early, depending on how you look at it.” 

“Don’t be smart, young lady.” She spoke plainly, with her French, professorial tone. “Honestly Aurélie, spending the night with a stranger?”

“You didn’t stop me.” She had no answer. “Was it a test or something?” I walked closer to her. “If you were spying on me then you’ll know that we talked and then fell asleep.”

“Do you remember our talk about boundaries?”

It was a painfully fresh memory. Barely a teenager, my chest had begun to appear, my body was changing, getting curvier. I was suddenly aware of myself in a way I hadn’t been before. I was asking questions, doing things I shouldn’t like trying to break into houses to make friends with kids I’d seen on the street, talking to strangers and following them home uninvited. Vivien knew then that we had to have the talk. Not the kind of talk you’re thinking about. The kind of talk you have after you’ve realised that the sweet little girl you raised has found a curiosity within her that you had been trying to hide �" one that made her bold and brave and a little bit reckless. So what could Vivien do but try to teach rules to a creature that had never followed any before? 

The idea of boundaries was as alien to me then as brick walls and a garden fence and not a lot had changed. So no, the concept of spending the night lying in the grass with a stranger didn’t frighten me like it should have. 

“He doesn’t feel like a stranger.” I waited for an answer.

Vivien raised her head at last and considered me with thoughtful eyes. “Let me do your hair?” Her voice softened. “It’s been a while.” I couldn't help but let her, her eyes were so pleading, soft and saddened all at once. “And I’d like to meet this boy that keeps you out all night,” she said as she reached for the comb. 

“He’s just a friend.”

I heard the whisper of a laugh. “We’ll see.”

And then, for the first time in longer than I could remember she told me her favourite, well- rehearsed stories about her past. There were some parts of her history that I knew more about than my own childhood and I had always absorbed every second of those stories, the ones about being a dancer on the stages of London and Paris. I could let them quieten the questions about the stories she would never, ever tell. It had been so long since I had heard about it that I relished them all over again. I listened right up until Lawrence, the bespectacled fruit seller, brought us peaches for breakfast and then the moment had passed. It floated away on the wind as we bit into tender peach flesh, and let the juice drip down our chins.  The rich, peachy scent of the fading summer swirled around us and replaced all the words and the stories and we laughed like children at the mess we made.

 

There was something different about this day. I know that now. If I had listened, then I would have heard it in every whistle of breeze and felt it in the space around me and I still wonder if things would be different now if I had.