Nicola Hancock

Legs Eleven

One, a little boy, played my mind.

He wore grey flannel shorts, a white short-sleeved shirt, a red bow tie and black smart lace up shoes.

One, a little girl, played my heart.

It goes without saying that she was blonde. She wore buttercup yellow. A layer upon layered dress of organza then slub silk then starched yellow linen. Then underneath all that, a net petticoat that she deliberately rustled as she moved. The top was fitted, but made only of two layers, linen and organza. The bodice and the fine straps over her shoulders were piped with gold. So too was the bottom edge. At the hollow of her back, where her spine dipped in, sat a beautiful yellow silk bow. You may think this a bit of a palaver to wear, but the sound and colour were one and the same sunshine in her head. She wore it with pride, joy and I'm so special.

Already you can tell a difference between them.

He was very to the point. She, on the other hand, dressed up, dressed down, dressed out and dressed in every one of her senses. But they were born as one and complemented one another other perfectly.

All the more terrible then, the day life tore them apart.

She dressed that day, in her traditional two-piece going away outfit. The top, a trusty cardi, fastened up to the neck with 9, shiny red, two holed, hard to leave alone, flat plastic buttons. She always had been good with her hands, and I watched her make that cardi the moment Granny taught her to knit.

But despite the discipline of her stocking stitches and the symmetry of her raglans, the sadness still leaked from her hand knitted, coarse crimson wool. The sleeves safely-gathered-in to single rib cuffs, which managed to lend the illusion of substance to her wrists, yet dispensed her hankie at the drop of a hat.

With a matching 2¼” single-rib welt, the cardi sat neatly at her waistline, while the ordered grey wall of her concertina-pleat skirt, swung below to the knee. To complete her look, the rattling buckles of the annual red closed in sandals, reckoned up her loss with each distancing step.

And I was left facing a severe parting in a head of blonde hair, yanked into two thick plaits, tamed by twice-wrapped, bow tied, ¾yd, brown nylon ribbons, that never-the-less sprouted forth brush like tufts.

The little boy gained dominion. Full Stop. He appeared the most powerful. He thought the girl was going to behave something like the inside of an under-cooked egg and really would, he thought, mess everything up with her runny yolk and dribbly white. So, as he was in control now, he thought, that by far the best thing to do was to lock her in the airing cupboard and ignore her. Full stop.

He got on with his homework, so that all would be back to normal in no time at all. He applied himself to the most difficult of calculations, notched up A grades galore and shaped himself as an Old Testament child, fit to survive in a world illuminated by fear.