JASON AND ADELINE
Jason and Adeline met in an oak tree. Jason was known as Jason, Adeline as Adeline (except by her mother who couldn’t remember it and despite the best attempts of relatives, friends, the midwife and the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, usually settled for anodyne). They were both nine, in the same class at school and lived in the same street.
I digress. Jason and Adeline met in an oak tree. Adeline had clambered into its cavity with her copy of “Practical Householder”; Jason was already up above, stuck and sobbing. She assessed the situation, drove away Dwayne, the school bully, and sorted Jason out: ‘left foot down a bit, right hand towards your knee, right foot to the left, don’t look down! That’s it. Well done!’ A small crowd of kids migrated from the nearby park to watch the rescue, so Adeline pocketed his noticeable shoes, wrapped her gabardine raincoat round Jason’s shivering shoulders and led the victim safely back to number seventeen.
He was about to sneak indoors, without so much as a ‘thank you kindly’, when Mrs. Chalmers appeared, untying her apron, patting her perm. She nodded them both inside, flicking nervous glances up and down the street. As he winced under dabs of TCP, Jason was obliged to explain how Adeline had rescued him.
“Saved his life, Adeline!’ breathed Mrs. Chalmers, handing her a second chocolate brownie and stroking her son’s blond head. “Darling, no more trees. Please. And…” She gestured towards the shoes.
Adeline returned home, where she helped her mother with the instructions for the new recycling regulations. Darkness had fallen by the time she succeeded in this task, and as she closed the dustbin lid after the final demonstration of its use, she looked up and caught sight of a girl in Jason’s lighted window. The girl looked very like her Barbie doll: her hair hung in shoulder-length locks and she wore something feathery and pink around her neck. How gorgeous, thought Adeline, who wore her uniform both in and out of school, I wonder who she is?
The curtains snapped shut. Adeline felt a pang of something strange in her middle. The next day as they waited for the bus, she asked Jason: was the shock of being stuck in the tree or the fear of being late home, perhaps the reason he had not mentioned her?
“My cousin Jasmine,” he said, “she visits me sometimes.” At which Adeline felt a comfortably warm feeling in her middle. From then on Adeline trotted behind Jason from home to bus to school, and back again, ever alert for the rowdier older pupils. At playtime she hovered, watchful, on the edge of the boys’ games. After pulling a bully’s ear hard enough for him to need a bandage next day, the message went out loud and clear: don’t mess with Adeline, and consequently, don’t mess with her friend Jason.
Over the next two years-- give or take the annual street barbecue, sightings in the supermarket, arguments over whose ball had been found in the hedge during pruning, and the infrequent but severe misfortune of finding themselves obliged to share a seat on the school bus-- apart from these embarrassments, Jason and Adeline publicly kept the sort of puzzled distance to be expected from two kids of opposite genders. In fine weather they might be seen hurling abuse, conkers or snowballs at each other over the front privet; they avoided the park but sat at the foot of the oak tree, arguing and giggling. They were sufficiently active and quarrelsome that both parents sighed with relief at having such perfectly normal children.
In inclement weather, and in the evenings, Adeline took Barbie and Care Bears to Jason’s house, and Jason took Ken and his Game Boy to hers. Adeline liked the smell of wax polish and fresh laundry that hung around in Jason’s room. Mr Chalmers let her help in his potting-shed. Jason liked the dressmaker’s dummy, sewing box and throb of the sewing machine in Adeline’s. Mrs. Judd encouraged him to help in the kitchen. They played sufficiently quietly indoors that both sets of parents sighed with relief at having such amenable children.
Two years went by, as years are wont to do. Jasmine never appeared at Jason’s window again, Mrs. Chalmers’ kitchen went on filling with the aroma of chocolate brownies, and Adeline’s mother continued to receive warnings from the council about putting the wrong items in her recycling bin. Adeline became star of the art department and Jason came top in domestic science. Jason starred in the school play, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, and his parents rewarded him with a sparkling wristwatch. Adeline won the high jump and the hundred metres on sports day and was rewarded by an evening explaining the metric system to her mother. Time rolled on.
When they had turned thirteen Mrs. Chalmers wondered whether she should interrupt their play and suggest that Jason was perhaps getting a little old for evenings with Barbie and Ken and their now extensive accoutrements and wardrobes. But Mr. Chalmers said, “When you read in the paper what some young people are getting up to in their spare time it seems a shame to disturb them.”
When Jason’s fourteenth birthday loomed Mrs Chalmers spoke up, however, and the two concurred straight away. They were too grown-up for Ken and Barbie. They changed to swapping study notes, cruising the shopping malls, and could be heard upstairs jigging to the Gipsy Kings and Bee Gees played at high volume. They subscribed to ‘Teen People’ magazine, screamed hysterically over ‘fess-up’ accounts and penned mordacious letters to the problems page.
Two years on saw them both enrolled as students at the local college. Adeline studied dress design, Jason learned catering. He was now six foot three, gangly, gruff, and spotty. Adeline was four foot eight, sassy, dark and trim. They nodded to one another from time to time in the cafeteria, but preferred not to recall their earlier years together. Adeline was seen in the company of a fleeting succession of new best friends. Jason’s new best friends were as short-lived: Tarquin, then Marcus, Theo then Damien, climbed the staircase of number seventeen but descended again in quick order.
One day Adeline, on her way home, saw the local neaderthals, and Dwayne, tattooed and shaven, staring upwards into the oak tree. From far away she heard their braying taunts and saw their straddled legs, half-exposed buttocks and neck-less posturings. Approaching at a trot she heard a whimper from the oak tree. Jason was higher up this time; above him was a mewling, spitting kitten, underneath him the certainty of mutilation.
Adeline sorted out the thugs with a combination of muscle, mockery, and her mobile phone. She picked up the bag Jason had dropped in his panicked attempt at heroics, and gathered up his belongings, chef’s hat, cookery book and shoes, but hid from the sight of the fast growing circle of spectators his mascara and eye-shadow. She talked him down, rescued the kitten and they left a murmur of approval behind them as they limped home, Jason constrained by his bag and a badly strained ankle, and Adeline by his weight across her shoulders and a deafening heartbeat. The kitten purred contentedly inside her anorak. Seeing it cuddled so close to Adeline’s body gave Jason a strange feeling just below his tummy. She propped him against the doorpost of number seventeen and rang his bell. Now distanced from danger they smiled lengthily at one another and Adeline felt her tummy lurch too. Jason’s mother had been standing at the window with widened eyes as they approached. She did not offer Adeline a second, or even a first brownie this time, nor did she make mention of her saving Jason’s life, but glowered at her and hurried Jason indoors.
Mrs Chalmers, her son opportunely incapacitated, took action, engaged a brusque and omnipresent nurse to become Jason’s custodian. On Adeline’s visits, Jason was always ‘resting’ and on his first outing once his ankle healed, he was obliged to lean on Nurse Golightly’s arm and shoulder and ample bosom, her arm round his waist. There her arm seemed to remain for many months. Now ‘Brides Today’ began to arrive along with the Sunday papers. Mrs. Chalmers thought a lot about hats; Mr. Chalmers sampled champagnes.
One evening Adeline was putting out the cat when once more she saw Jasmine at Jason’s window. This time she cupped her mouth and called out,
“Hello, Jasmine. How is Jason?” The curtains snapped shut. Not many minutes after, Nurse Golightly was seen to scurry down the front steps of number seventeen, wide-eyed and hand to mouth, followed by an airborne suitcase. Adeline gathered up the nurse’s windblown wincyettes, and bundled them through the window of the departing taxi. After this incident, Mrs. Chalmers took to her bed, not to emerge until the sales began, Mr Chalmers went on smoking his pipe behind The Telegraph, and Adeline’s mother opened her new Ladybird book. Jason started to visit Adeline’s house again.
Over the next few years the two young people, and the cat, climbed Adeline’s staircase quite often. Ever obedient, they no longer played with Ken and Barbie, Care Bears or Game Boy. Instead they explored products from Superdrug, giggled in GapMan and tried on trousers in Top Shop. They bought a Wii and began interactive tango lessons. They fed on Jason’s experimental confections. The scissors snipped, the sewing machine hummed.
The years passed, as they are wont to do. Jason and Adeline worked hard and saved hard. When Jason broke the news to his mother of their engagement, Adeline dealt with Mrs. Chalmers’ fainting fit then helped her own mother write on the calendar the momentous words, ‘Wedding Day’. Adeline worked on the dress after her hours at FashionFit, and on her day off trawled hosiery and haberdashery counters; silk, satin and sequins, she thought. Jason planned the catering for the reception during his limited free time from Bigscam Bistros: crevettes, crepes suzettes, and coffee cream, he thought. The aroma of slow-baking wedding cake replaced that of Mrs. Chalmers’ chocolate brownies.
The great day dawned, as great days do. The groom waited at the altar rail, straightening hired lapels and bow tie, fiddling anxiously with the pointy bits of a waistcoat, and realigning recalcitrant cufflinks. The Mendelssohn voluntary burst forth and a hushed congregation swivelled expectant eyes and excessive hats to watch the bride’s progress down the aisle.
The wedding dress that had taken Jason and Adeline fifteen years from inspiration to completion, was greeted with a gasp. It swished and rustled down the aisle, an exquisite confection of white satin and silk, with trimmed with tulle and organza, ruffles, lace, bows and beads. The train, so long it stretched halfway to the door, was studded with glinting pearls and crystals as though diamonds had been spattered across it. The veil was embroidered with silvery oak leaves. Under it, the bride’s hair hung in shoulder-length golden locks; a feathery pink boa adorned the neck.
“How gorgeous,” thought Adeline and smiled her broadest smile at Jasmine.
After the service the couple turned to face the congregation. Adeline stretched up to take her new husband’s arm, smiling proudly. Jason smiled down at Adeline, blinked his long black lashes, and led her down the aisle in the three-inch satin heels he had always loved to wear.
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