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Raining!
 “It’s
still raining.”
I glanced out of the rain-slicked window, wondering why girls
had to remark on something that was obvious to someone with half
a brain. I could see it was raining. I could hear
rain clattering on the roof. I’d even got wet when I went to
the outdoor toilet first thing this morning. I knew it
was raining. Why did she have to keep mentioning it?
“I wish it wouldn’t,” she said, carefully following the
line of a silly-looking flower in her coloring book, her slimy
little pink tongue sticking out of the corner of her pouty
mouth.
Couldn’t she concentrate without sticking bits of her out,
I wondered. I didn’t stick bits of me out when I concentrated.
I irritably finished coloring the squashed up fire engine. I
wished that when artists drew things, they made them look like
proper things, and not like the things all mashed out of shape.
“I hate it when it rains during the summer holiday,” she
grumbled, closing her coloring book with what was meant to be a
thump. Only, being a soft covered book, it wouldn’t make
anything like a thump, however hard you closed it.
And that was another thing. Girls always hated or loved
things. They never just accepted things the way they
were, as boys did.
“Are you enjoying coloring that stupid fire engine?”
she asked me, sitting back on her heels.
And that annoyed me. Being a boy, that was something I couldn’t
do. I just didn’t bend like a girl did. And I often wondered
why girls had to be made so . . . flexible. “Not
much,” I replied. “It’s a rotten drawing. It’s all
squashed up and . . . ”
“Then why are you coloring it?” she asked me, “if you
think it is a rotten drawing.”
“It was something to do. And it’s raining, remember,” I
added, in case she’d forgotten.
“You could play with one of my dolls,” she suggested
sweetly. “I don’t mind boys playing with them.”
I snorted. And looked at her in disgust. There she sat with
her tight shorts so high on her legs that she might as well not
be wearing any. And her shirt - which she always insisted on
calling a blouse - was uneven round the bottom because she spent
much of her time tugging it down. It was so out of shape that it
looked more like the rag her aunt wiped the kitchen floor with
than a shirt - or blouse, or whatever she chose to call the
scruffy thing.
“It’s rude not to make a proper reply,” she observed,
tugging her shirt down with both hands.
“It’s rude to ask someone a silly question,” I
countered, sensing a full-scale argument coming on.
“I don’t think so.” And she tossed her hair away from
her face.
“Just because you don’t think so, doesn’t make it not
right.” Or was it right. I’d lost the sense of the
argument by now. And I was beginning to feel cross as she had so
many ways of showing how she felt which I, as a boy, didn’t
have. She was able to sit on her heels for one thing. She was
able to toss her long hair away from her face. She was able to
bend her body into all sorts of contortions which would have
snapped me in half, had I tried them. Just look at the way she
was able to curl up inside that empty water butt beside the
barn, whereas I couldn’t even kneel down inside it. And didn’t
she sneer about that! And then she was able to wear short
shorts, whereas I was forced to wear these horrid old long ones
which came right down to my knees - just because I was a boy.
“I don’t see why not.” She sighed.
And that was another things girls were allowed to do, but
boys weren’t. If I sighed, I got whacked where it hurt. But
you weren’t supposed to even touch girls there. It wasn’t
fair!
“Then what would you like to do?” she asked me.
“Go outside and roll in the mud?”
“I wouldn’t mind rolling you in the mud,” I
snarled, before I’d had a chance to think of what I was
saying.
She gave me a long, intent stare. The sort of thing I would
get whacked for doing. She stood up. She gave me another long,
intent stare, which was even more intimidating this time as she
was now standing up and I was still sitting down. She walked
slowly across the room, opened the door to the kitchen, stuck
her head round it and said loudly to her aunt, who was busy
cooking, as usual, “He wants to go and play in the mud. Can
we?”
I was shocked. I wanted to hide. If I’d said anything like
that to my mother, the skies would have fallen in. Nice people
definitely did not play in the mud. I heard a clatter of
pots and pans and things and I knew that her aunt was stopping
cooking. To my horror, she stepped into the room with her arm
around her niece’s shoulders and looked at me. I really wanted
to hide my head now, but the only place I could think of was
under the carpet, and I knew I would look silly doing that, as
the rest of me would stick up in the air.
“So,” her aunt said, “you two want to play in the mud,
do you?”
I studied the aunt’s face. She wasn’t laughing at the
ridiculous suggestion. Nor was she cross. She seemed to be
taking it seriously. But her aunt usually did. And that made her
so easy to get along with.
“Then what are you going to wear?” her aunt asked, as
though deciding what we were going to wear to go to church on
Sunday. “Certainly not what you’re wearing at the moment,
for you’d get everything all muddy.”
And my mother had strong ideas about people getting dirty. I
shuddered at the thought of how she would deal with this
conversation.
She swiveled her head and looked up into her aunt’s eyes.
“We could wear nothing at all,” she suggested brightly. “Then
we wouldn’t get our clothes muddy.”
I really wanted to hide now. My mother would go elemental at
a suggestion like that. But her aunt took it in her stride, as
she did most things. “It’s a good idea,” she mused, “but
some of the farm hands might be shocked. You’d be better off
wearing your bathing things. They’ll wash out quickly. But the
two of you will have to have a bath afterwards,” she said,
looking at me sternly. “I can’t have you clomping about the
place spreading mud everywhere you go.”
I nodded. And wondered whether I would be able to hold her
silly little head under the water when we ended up in the bath
tub together. I’d have to make her pay for this somehow.
“Then what are you waiting for?” her aunt wanted to know.
“Hurry up and change, before I make you put away your coloring
books and crayons first.”
And that made us hurry. Neither of us was terribly fond of
putting things away after us. I clambered up the stairs after
her.
Half way up, she turned and faced me. “I’m going to roll
you in that patch of mud beside the big barn and sit on you,”
she threatened. “How will you like that?”
“I’ll enjoy doing it to you,” I replied.
She stuck her tongue out at me. And then scampered up the
stairs ahead of me.
I followed her up. War had been declared. And as there were
no rules applied to this combat, it looked like being
interesting!
- Warren Roff-Marsh
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