Fiction: Tim Rees

Sibley Blame
by Tim Rees

Sibley Blame stared through the thick pane of glass and watched the ballerina dance. He knew he had just fallen in love because his heart seemed to meet his mind for the first time.

The ballerina glided on the perfect pointed balance of her toes, so graceful, titillating Sibley's imagination to take her in his arms and fly with her, to feel her swan-arched back, to push her tightly against him.

A hand clamped hard fingers painfully into Sibley's shoulder.

"Got me a peeping-tom have I? You a pervert, boy?" the gruff familiar voice bellowed in Sibley's ear.

He turned, sharply shocked from his daydream, to face the whiskered, walnut features of old Liam Jenkins, the caretaker. Sibley had been caught red-hot-handed.

"Shit! Mister! You's scared me!!" Sibley yelped, his voice thick with embarrassed shame. "I was on'y watching like. Doin' no 'arm is I?"

"What's that one-eyed-spitting-python doing in you's hand, boy?" Liam laughed raucously, compounding Sibley's humiliation, as he hurriedly forced the appendage back into his stained, torn-worn jeans and stood up straight, hoping, he had thought, to deceive Liam's eyes with a firm denial. But his trousers tented like the tepee of the infamous Indian brave, Little Big Horn.

"Please, mister Jenkins, I was wondering like, if I's couldn' join the ballet classes . . . You's know's me don' you's? I'm the au'tistic type I am."

Liam Jenkins looked at the fifteen-year-old boy with a twinkle in his twilight eye. He knew he had Sibley by the short and curlies.

"Well now, Sibley Blame, me ole lad." He scratched his spikey chin with a gnarled hand that seemed to inspire the most heinous of thoughts. "There is a small job you's can do for me... It's with the ballet class right 'nough."

Ten minutes later Sibley found himself sweeping the floors of the community hall. He had surrendered his services easily - mostly from fear that if he refused, Liam might tell the social workers at Splott children's home about the ignominious activity, and partly because it offered the opportunity to be a little closer to the ballet class, and his one dream dancer in particular.

Up close, she was truly a corker and, Sibley figured, probably the same age as him. She had long braided, blonde hair and she had beads in the braids that glinted a profusion of colour every time they caught the light.

"What's you's doin' 'ere?" came a voice from behind that Sibley instantly recognised as belonging to nosy Megan Llewellyn who lived in the home with him. He hadn't realised she took ballet lessons.

"Helping Liam Jenkins get this place sorted," he quickly excused, with as straight a face as he could pull.

Megan curled her lip in disbelief. "Get outta it! What 'ave you's been doin' wrong now, Sibley Blame? What 'ave you's bin doin' t' earn yus name?"

Sibley hated it when she did that same little rhyme every time.

"Nuffing, I in't don' nuffing wrong, like! Just doin' Liam's a favour is all!" he mumbled, panicked, horrified that she should ever discover the truth. In an attempt to change the subject he asked her if she knew the name of his dream girl.

"That's Millie Hind, that is," sneered Megan. "She don' wanna know the likes a us . . . 'Er parents drive a Rolls! I know 'cos I seen it righ'! Bit posh for you's, Sibley squirt-features."

Megan hop scotched away, looking wickedly over her shoulder as she went straight across to Millie Hind and told her that Sibley fancied her.

The group of girls giggled loudly, causing Sibley's cheeks to blush the colour of an obscene beetroot. Mortified, he brushed furiously.

Within two hours he had swept every room in the building and old Liam Jenkins surprised him by being genuinely grateful, even paying Sibley three quid for his hard work, and telling him with a wry smile that the little incident he had witnessed earlier would remain between themselves.

With his mind at ease, the familiar jaunty-strut in Sibley's step returned. He hurriedly made to leave the building before Liam found anymore work. On his way out, Sibley passed the main hall and couldn't resist one last secretive glance. Possibly, he thought, the girls were changing.

The room was empty except for Millie Hind who sat, the picture of sadness, alone in a corner.

She was sat folded up with her forehead resting on her knees and her arms hugging her legs so tightly they obscured her face. Sibley knew instinctively that tears were being shed. Her lithesome body cried out to be held, and he found his eyes yearning over each fine line of her leotard-exposed, pearl-white legs.

Crouching quietly down beside her, Sibley placed his rag-clad arm around the sobbing curve of her shoulders. Upon his touch, Millie lifted her head and looked at him with blue eyes that shone through her tears like liquid sapphires, but her perfect up-turned nose squidged into the misshapen suggestion that he was nothing more than a bad smell.

"Get away from me!!" she huffed haughtily, shrugging his arm off with a shiver of disgust.

"Me name's Sibley, Sibley Blame," he pleaded. "You's is Millie Hind in't you's? Megan told me so."

"What on earth could that ever have to do with you?" Millie grimaced, rising hurriedly to her feet and brushing herself off as if Sibley had contaminated her with poor peoples' germs.

"I's watched you's dance earlier. I's think's you's b'utiful, an' you's dance's real good," Sibley stated, in an eruption of bold honesty that was rare for him.

"Do you dance?" Millie asked, with a quizzical look from her quiescent wet eyes, which compounded the merest smile as she bit her lower lip.

"On'y reggae, bit like . . . Bu' the way you's dance's . . . Boy, it in't half sexy, like!"

Millie looked shocked so Sibley hurriedly dug deeply into his baggy jeans and produced the three-pound coins and held them out to Millie in the palm of his grubby hand.

"I never nicked this, honest! Old Liam Jenkins give 'em me like, for sweeping the floors an' that! I's'll buy you's a coke if you's want's?"

Millie laughed and it was sweet music to Sibley's ears. "I've never met anyone as up-front as you . . . I'll have a coke with you, but I'll pay. My grandparents gave me ten-pounds."

"Ten quid! Blimmy! Meg's said you's was loaded!" Sibley blurted, truly impressed. Then he asked the question that had been puzzling him. "What's a girl like you's doin' round 'ere in Splott, like?"

The question wiped the smile brutally off Millie's face and Sibley wished he had never voiced it.

Millie turned on him angrily. "My parents are divorcing! So I've come to live with my grandparents for a while! My Mother wants custody of me so she can take my Father to the cleaners, and my Father wants custody of me so she can't . . . So much for what I want?"

A landslide of emotions began their cascading fall to the pit of Sibley's stomach. Talk of inconsiderate parents always choked; but he remembered his social workers advice: 'Put it behind you Sibley, the rest of your life is up to you,' she had said. So, swallowing back the rising tears, he expressed what he saw as an irony of their reversed fortunes; neither pleasant, or with obvious solution, each as powerless as the other; rich and poor, each were denied choice.

"So that's what you's was crying for? Seems like we 'ave som'at in common. Me Mam couldn't keep me at home 'cos she 'ad no money! You's parents can't 'ford not to keep you's at home! It's a funny world i'nt it, Millie Hind?"