I met a boy at the ice rink once. I liked to go to the rink after school and circle with the best of them. I tasted the ice with my feet, scraping to keep my impetus as I swivelled and shifted direction. I could propel myself just by forcing my blades inwards, outwards, inwards, outwards, angled just right, then perform a quick turn and be off.
There were a few of us who went for the company as much as for our fascination with this cold, unforgiving surface. We could never really speed because of the crowd heaving round, with its jokers and its wobbling beginners clinging to each other. The sounds were magnified by the expanse of white now scored a million times – the shrieks of children, the latest pop on the sound system, The Police. Don’t stand so close to me.
He and I would be forced together each time we left the ice to make way for the real dancers. They revolved in pairs, the ladies sporting thick thighs under short skirts, cold sneers under bright lipstick. We would watch as they rode the waltzes and the foxtrots, showing us how skating ought to be done.
And so we didn’t resist the pull as we gravitated around each other. A girl who chatted to us soon sighed: “Don’t let me get in the way of you two lovebirds.” There, it was said for us and we left the ice rink together.
He was tall and thin and dark haired and could hold me easily on one knee. His upper lip wore a hint of down and his kisses tasted of tea. When he said: “You’re good company to me,” he meant: “I love you.”
He came from a council flat with ten younger brothers and sisters and his housebound Ma. I met her once but she barely seemed to register I was there, or perhaps it was me who didn’t register her. Two of his sisters came with him to the flat I shared with my mother. The lobby must have looked to them like a smart hotel, with its porter and its carpeted hall and lift. On our ninth floor they silently marvelled at the French furniture and the space.
He had left home, though, and shared a flat with an older mate we called Geordie. There we could relax together and shuck the expectations, and be ourselves. Geordie fed our burgeoning love with biscuits with raisins and scalloped edges, washed down with sweet tea.
I knew it couldn’t last, long before he did. My mother had been careful not to carp. I don’t remember how I let him down but I hope it was softly, more softly than he would have hit the ice after a false move. He was capable of love and at that time I wasn’t. I can picture him so clearly. And yet I can’t remember his name.
