The Saturday Girls

by Elizabeth Woodcraft

  The door opened again and a girl from my sister’s year walked in. Suddenly everyone was friendly and smiling.

  ‘Hi, Rosemary.’

  ‘Where’ve you beeeeen?’

  ‘We were waiting for you.’

  Rosemary looked round the room, smiling. She noticed me and stopped. ‘A new face! Hooray. Have you come to join us?’

  ‘I’ve come to do a poem.’

  ‘A poem? That’s good. We’ll take that. Anything’s OK for an audition as long as it shows us what you can do.’

  ‘I’m not doing an audition.’

  ‘The rule is stay and do an audition or exit stage left, I’m afraid,’ Rosemary said.

  I looked at them all afresh. ‘You’re the drama group, aren’t you?’

  Rosemary nodded.

  ‘Well, I can’t. Exit, that is,’ I said. ‘I’m in enough trouble already. I’m waiting for Miss Reeves.’

  ‘Is Reevesy coming back? We’re supposed to be safe in here on Wednesdays and Fridays.’ Rosemary sighed. ‘Come on then, like the wandering minstrels that we are, we shall have to find another room.’ With a big gesture Rosemary beckoned the others to follow her. ‘Sure you don’t want to come? You’re Judith’s sister, aren’t you? We could use you.’

  ‘I’d better stay here,’ I said. I watched them file out of the room. I wondered what it would be like to be in the drama group, to be part of a group where everyone knew you and people were pleased when you walked into the room and you worked together to do something.

  I waited for twenty minutes. Miss Reeves didn’t come. Perhaps that was the punishment.

  The next day I went to Miss Reeves’ form room at break time. She was marking a pile of books.

  ‘I have a poem for you,’ I said indignantly. ‘I had it last night. I learned it.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, vaguely. ‘Oh yes, you’re the girl who wore a lot of jewellery into school, aren’t you?’

  She’d forgotten. ‘I was the girl who made a joke,’ I said. ‘We had a conversation in the dining hall.’

  She frowned at me. Her thick grey fringe almost covered her eyes. Her hair was even worse than my mum’s. It was completely straight, but not in a good way. Plus she had a clip in it. ‘Well, you’d better recite your poem.’

  I straightened my shoulders, looked just across her right shoulder and began.

  Out in the wind, like the hobos say, the saints and outcasts

  of the jungle night, the jungle camps and lean-tos

  along the tracks and the sidings where the billy club guards

  prowl and whack, brutal authority under the moon and that sky

  wide as America, wider than the darkness stretching out and across

  the small towns and the big cities, packed and jammed, loose and straggling

  until the emptiness begins, the sky into and out of night,

  and then all there is is mountains and deserts and the sea

  everyone is heading for, out in the wind and the whistle blowing and blowing.

  And the jazz guys lick their lips and lift their horns and blow

  the breath of eternity out of the silver and gold cornucopias

  free as air, a puff becoming melody, rhythm, dancing, dancing,

  in all the upstairs rooms and downstairs rooms, the cellars

  and attics tucked away, the clubs in all the jammed and packed

  cities and little towns scattered in the emptiness of the night,

  the windows glowing and friendly, smoked and spangled.

  And now, right now, this music moment, there is no tomorrow,

  there is no punching the clock, no tick-tock

  of the working day keeping track, the patter and clatter

  of the kettle drum of enforcing authority, the boss and routine,

  in this moment’s eternity, trumpets and saxophones

  and the eyes of girls shining in the shadowed corners,

  their legs and faces pale and bright as stars,

  and everyone floating, floating, free as a bird.

  As I said the lines Miss Reeves’ mouth puckered into a shape of distaste and her eyebrows lowered. By the end her face was almost folded in two.

  ‘And where did you find this poem? If it is a poem, which is debatable.’

  ‘It’s by Lorenzo Fabbrona, he’s a Beat poet.’ I liked the poem now. I wanted to defend it. It had taken ages to learn and I’d been worried she might say it wasn’t three proper verses, more like three sentences, but that didn’t seem to be the problem. ‘You should read the book,’ I said, dragging it out of my bag.

  She hardly glanced at the cover. ‘It’s not what I had in mind.’

  ‘But they’re really famous. They’re American.’

  ‘I know who they are.’ She looked at me. I wondered if she was weighing up whether she cared enough to make me learn another one. The classroom was filling up with chattering first-years.

  She shook her head. ‘These poems may be considered interesting. But only because they exist. They’re temporary, ephemeral. Their purpose is just for now. They will not stand you in good stead in life. When you are thrown into a prison in some exotic land, for having breached some minor rule of etiquette, this poem will not raise your spirits in the way something such as a Shakespearean sonnet would do.’

  ‘If I was in prison in some exotic land, I don’t think reciting poetry would be top of my list of things to do.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’

  The first-years were staring at us.

  ‘And if I did, I think these poets would be quite handy,’ I said. ‘They’re free thinkers. That’s the whole point. They experience things. They don’t want to live a boring suburban life.’ I looked at her with pity. Her face was wrinkled all over, her eyes, her mouth, her neck. Pale pink powder flaked from her cheeks. She looked like an old dusty ghost.

  ‘I wonder if you are taking advantage of the opportunities this school offers. A girl like you should be grateful to be here.’ She smiled sadly. ‘You can go now.’

  I looked at her. I had done what she asked. And I was a free thinker. I lifted my chin and walked proudly out of the room.

  *

  ‘You have to feel sorry for her. Her fiancé was killed in the war,’ Judith said, as I put out the light in our bedroom.

  I padded back to bed. ‘He should have been a conscientious objector, then he wouldn’t have been killed. Anyway, why does she take it out on me?’

  ‘We’re the working class. They don’t like us being there. We clutter the place up. How many council house girls are there in your class?’

  ‘Just me. Nadine Brown’s in 4P, and there’s a couple of other girls, I think.’

  ‘Out of, what, a hundred and twenty? hundred and thirty? in your year? Not many. They just don’t like us.’

  ‘Perhaps she thinks if more working-class soldiers had died in the war, her fiancé would still be alive.’

  ‘Probably. But before you get into more arguments you should know that conscientious objectors got killed in the war too.’

  ‘Now she tells me. How do you know?’

  ‘I’ve read about it.’

  ‘She said I’d end up in prison.’

  ‘With friends like yours you probably will. I hear you tried to join the drama group.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘That’s what I said to Rosemary. I couldn’t imagine you doing something that productive.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, she said she liked your voice and they’d find a part for you in their summer production, if you want one.’ I heard her turn over and pull the blankets up. Then she was asleep.

  I put my hands behind my head and reflected on the day. The drama group wanted me for my voice. Miss Harmon said I was good at French and Miss Reeves thought I might end up in a foreign country. I liked the idea of it. I liked all of it. What would become of me? When would it start? A foreign country. Which one? Would I be there on holiday, or wou
ld it be part of a job? Did Miss Reeves think I would have a job in a foreign country?

  At least I had two poems to recite if I got stuck in a prison.

  Prison. Why would I be in prison? For some noble cause, I hoped. I wondered if Sandra would come and visit me in prison. Or would Sandra be in prison too?

  CHAPTER 10

  The Shire Hall

  SOME WEEKS BEFORE, WE’D BEEN called into assembly in the middle of the day to be told our headmistress had been awarded the MBE. And today we had the day off school to celebrate. And I had somewhere to go.

  I looked at the clothes on my bed. It was obviously important to wear the right outfit when you were going to court to support your best friend, whose boyfriend was due to appear, especially when that boyfriend, in this case, Danny, might be sent to prison. People would look at Sandra with interest, and if I wasn’t careful they’d wonder who the ragbag beside her was.

  There wasn’t much choice. I really needed more clothes. Today I would wear my cream straight skirt and blue twinset. I looked at my stockings. One small ladder. It would have to do. I wasn’t Danny’s girlfriend.

  ‘Do you want hot milk with your Ready Brek, or are you happy with it going cold?’ Mum called up.

  I ran downstairs as the post fell through the letter box.

  There was an envelope with a French stamp for me, from a new penfriend in Marseilles, and one for Mum. The other letters were for Dad. As I handed them to him I said, ‘Dad, do you know anyone who needs a person who is bright and cheerful and good at almost anything, to work for them?’

  ‘But I’ve got a job,’ Judith said, and laughed. Today she was wearing her hair in bunches and I was glad I wouldn’t have to walk to school with her.

  ‘I could ask Wainwright in the Milk Bar if he needs someone.’

  The Milk Bar! The Milk Bar was in the centre of town, halfway between the Orpheus and the Corn Exchange. Sandra and I had gone into the Milk Bar regularly before we started going to the Orpheus. Interesting arty-type people went in there, as well as Dad and his union members and his mate Jimmy Peecock, from the Essex Weekly News, and Judith’s beardy folk friends.

  The Milk Bar was the kind of place the Beatles would go to if they ever came to Chelmsford. The Beatles weren’t mods – not in those jackets – so they would never go to the Orpheus. I didn’t really like the Beatles, but I wouldn’t mind serving them a coffee and a Chelsea bun. John, who, if I had to choose, was my favourite, probably wouldn’t ever come to Chelmsford, but Paul might.

  ‘Could you really get me a job in the Milk Bar?’ Already I could envisage a new life on Saturdays. I would be working. ‘Yes, I have a job.’ ‘Yes, I work in the centre of town.’ ‘Oh, I can’t see you tomorrow, I’ll be at work.’ I’d be earning cash. I’d be meeting new people, smiling.

  If I went to work in the Milk Bar, Saturdays would never be the same again. Sandra and I would never again catch the quarter to ten bus into town on Saturday mornings. We would never listen to records in the Co-op record department. We would never again gaze at eternity rings in Walker’s on the way back to the bus station to catch the twelve o’clock bus home for dinner.

  *

  Dad was glancing at a letter he had just opened. ‘When I see him, I’ll ask him,’ he said absently.

  ‘So who’s coming to Wethersfield on Saturday?’ Mum said, looking at her letter. Wethersfield was the American air base, where Sylvie apparently went. One year the local CND groups had had an alternative Aldermaston march from there.

  Judith and I groaned.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Mum said.

  ‘I’d have thought you’d want to go,’ Judith said. ‘It’s all about talking to the boys there.’

  ‘Do you really talk to them?’ I said to Mum.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if we see them. They’re not allowed to come out and meet us specifically, and we’re not allowed in. But when people are going in or out, we have a bit of a chat. I think a lot of them are homesick.’

  ‘And they want someone to be nice to them,’ Dad said, tucking a letter back into its envelope. ‘And they don’t come nicer than your mother.’

  Mum sniffed.

  ‘How can you talk to them?’ I said. ‘They’re Americans. They’re just about to go off and kill people in Vietnam.’

  ‘And very likely to be killed themselves,’ Mum said. ‘Though, hopefully, not all of them.’

  ‘But it’s war. Against some small country, thousands of miles away, that’s got nothing to do with them.’

  ‘Unfortunately the American government considers the country rather important,’ Dad said.

  ‘A lot of these young men don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. And a lot of them are very scared,’ Mum said.

  ‘Then they shouldn’t be in the army.’

  ‘It’s the Air Force,’ Judith said.

  ‘And for most of them it’s not a choice. Most of them have been drafted,’ Mum said.

  ‘And there’s such a thing as draft-resisting,’ I said.

  ‘Draft dodgers!’ said Judith, relishing the words.

  ‘I think that’s a very hard row to hoe, love,’ Dad said to me. ‘You have to leave everything you know – your family, your friends, your Milk Bars.’

  ‘Sometimes people have to do what they’re told,’ Judith said. ‘Like we do. Go to school, eat breakfast, go to war.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ I said to Judith. She wore a CND badge too. ‘I don’t know why you bother going,’ I said to Mum. ‘They’re already on the way out there.’

  ‘Well, of course, we want them to know there’s another way of looking at things. But it’s not just about them. It’s about highlighting the issue. Helen Grenville is always trying to get the press interested when we go because if there’s an article, the general public learn about CND, and the bomb, and Vietnam. It gives them another point of view. They might realise that there are other valid ways of thinking about the issue. They may even change their opinion.’

  ‘That’s not going to stop the war.’

  ‘It’s a start.’ Mum sighed. ‘All right, you don’t need to come this time.’

  Dad opened another letter. A page fell onto the table. ‘I tell them I can’t sit, but they never seem to remember,’ he said. ‘In Chelmsford the law certainly is an ass.’ I felt a quiver of anxiety. On the table was a list of cases to be dealt with in the magistrates’ court.

  ‘Are you on the Bench today?’ I asked. A list was always sent to Dad in the week that he was going to sit. Halfway down the page I could see Danny’s name. Dad would be sentencing Danny. What would Sandra think as my dad sent her boyfriend to jail? And what would Dad say? He didn’t mind the friends I had, but he might view it differently if I sat in his actual court saying hello to criminals as they came in. I didn’t want to upset him just when he was trying to get me a job in the Milk Bar.

  Dad picked up the list and glanced at it. ‘Oh, no!’ I said before I could stop myself. Tap’s name, Peter Tappling, was halfway down the second side. He was charged with . . . I peered casually . . . obstructing a police officer. When had that happened? This meant Dad would be passing sentence on Danny and Tap.

  Judith looked at my face and glanced at the list in Dad’s hand. ‘I thought you were going to Cambridge today,’ she said to him, inspecting one of her bunches and wiping off some marmalade. ‘You said I could come.’

  ‘I am and you can,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll have to ring them.’ He folded up the letter, tucked it into his inside pocket and smiled at me. Mum, Judith and Dad finally left the house. I was alone. The house was quiet, as if even I wasn’t there. Silently I cleared the breakfast table, I shook out the tablecloth at the back door and then I ran up to the bedroom. I was going to see Tap, so I changed into my best, unladdered stockings. I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled. Did I look like Jean Shrimpton? As good as.

  *

  People were standing outside the Shire Hall. One or two I recognised from
the Orpheus. And then I saw Tap. He was standing apart, smoking, inhaling hard, staring at the ground. He looked thin and pale. But he was really smart – in a grey mohair suit and a white shirt and dark knitted tie.

  ‘Hello Tap,’ I said.

  ‘Hello Lorna,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s Lorna?’ Sandra murmured. ‘Seen Danny?’ she asked.

  Tap shrugged.

  ‘Good luck,’ I said as we climbed the stairs.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  Danny wasn’t in the large entrance hall. We looked at the lists of cases pinned to the wall, then walked up the stairs to Court Three, where Tap and Danny’s cases would be heard.

  The courtroom was full of men in suits and policemen in uniform. Everything was dark and worrying. Two mod girls stuck out like Dinky toys on the top of a birthday cake.

  A policeman with a clipboard called out Tap’s name and Sandra and I looked at each other. Tap walked into the courtroom with his hands behind his back, the Duke of Edinburgh stroll. He looked smart and confident. As he stepped into the dock I looked at his hands. They were trembling. A man at the front stood up and said, ‘I represent Mr Tappling this morning.’ Tap rolled his shoulders. He stood up straight as the charge was put to him: obstruction of a police officer. After a nod from his lawyer, in a careless voice he said, ‘Guilty.’ A police officer then began speaking. He had seen a man he now knew to be Peter Tappling in Tindal Square, speaking to another man and acting in a way that led him to believe he was in possession of amphetamine pills, known as purple hearts. He followed the said Tappling until he reached the Orpheus coffee bar, a venue frequented by so-called mods, whereupon he spoke to him. He asked Tappling for his name and address and asked to search his pockets, when, without warning, Tappling pulled off his coat (believed to be a light brown suede material) and threw it into the crowd of onlookers, one of whom caught it and drove off with it on a Lambretta scooter, amid much laughter. Peter Tappling had then been arrested and charged.

  Tap’s lawyer said his client was behaving out of character because his mother had been ill and he was anxious about her. The chairman of the magistrates (who should have been my dad) gave Tap a lecture about pills, scooters and bad company. Then he gave him a conditional discharge.