The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan Read Free Book Online

freckled. The meanest sort, I thought. I crossed the playground at great speed and seized him by his lapel with my right hand and, with the other gripped round his throat, banged him hard against the shed and pinned him there. His face shook and seemed to bulge. I wanted to laugh out loud, so wild was my elation.
    ‘You lay a finger on my brother,’ I hissed, ‘and I’ll rip your legs off.’ Then I let him go.
    It was Sue who brought Tom home from school that afternoon. His shirt was hanging in shreds off his back and one of his shoes was gone. One side of his face was swollen and red, and a corner of his mouth was torn. Both his knees were grazed and dried blood ran in streaks down his shin. His left hand was swollen and tender, as though it had been trodden on. As soon as he got in the house Tom began a strange animal howl and made for the stairs. ‘Don’t let Mum see him like that,’ Julie shouted. We were on him like a pack of hounds on to a wounded rabbit. We carried him into the downstairs bathroom and shut the door. With all four of us in there we did not have much space and in the hollow acoustics of this room Tom’s cries were deafening. Julie, Sue and I pressed around him kissing and caressing him as we undressed him. Sue was almost crying too.
    ‘Oh Tom,’ she kept saying over and over again, ‘our poor little Tom.’ With all this going on, I still managed to feel envy for my naked brother. Julie sat on the edge of the bath and Tom stood between her knees leaning back against her while she dabbed at his face with cotton wool. Her free hand steadied him, the palm flat against his belly, just above the groin. Sue held a cold flannel against his bruised hand.
    ‘Was it that ginger kid?’ I said.
    ‘No,’ Tom wailed. ‘His friend.’ Once he was cleaned up he did not look so badly hurt, and the sense of drama ebbed away. Julie wrapped him in a bath towel and carried him upstairs. Sue and I went ahead to prepare Mother. She must have heard something because she was out of bed and in her dressing gown, ready to come down.
    ‘Just a little scrap at school,’ we told her. ‘But he’s all right now.’ She got back into bed and Julie put Tom in beside her. Later, as we sat around the bed talking about what had happened and drinking tea, Tom, still wrapped in the bath towel, fell asleep.
    We were downstairs one evening after supper. Both Tom and Mother were already asleep. Mother had sent Julie to Tom’s school that day to talk to the class teacher about the bullying, and we had been talking about that. Sue told Julie and me that she had had the ‘weirdest’ conversation with Tom. Sue waited for one of us to prompt her.
    ‘What did he say then?’ I said wearily after half a minute had gone by. Sue giggled.
    ‘He told me not to tell anyone.’
    ‘You’d better not then,’ Julie said, but Sue went on, ‘He came into my room and said, “What’s it like being a girl?” and I said, “It’s nice, why?” And he said he was tired of being a boy and he wanted to be a girl now. And I said, “But you can’t be a girl if you’re a boy,” and he said, “Yes I can. If I want to, I can.” So then I said, “Why do you want to be a girl?” And he said, “Because you don’t get hit when you’re a girl.” And I told him you do sometimes, but he said, “No you don’t, no you don’t.” So then I said, “How can you be a girl when everyone knows you’re a boy?” and he said, “I’ll wear a dress and make my hair like yours and go in the girls’ entrance.” So I said he couldn’t do that, and he said yes he could, and then he said he wanted to anyway, he wants …’
    Sue and Julie were laughing so much now that it was not possible for Sue to continue her story. I did not even smile. I was horrified and fascinated.
    ‘Poor little thing,’ Julie was saying. ‘We should let him be a girl if he wants to.’ Sue was delighted. She clapped her hands together. ‘He’d look so beautiful in