The Saturday Girls

by Elizabeth Woodcraft

  I shrugged. ‘Nothing.’ She looked at me with a slight frown. I felt uncomfortable. ‘Going to school.’

  ‘And how’s school?’ Her lower lip was moving strangely.

  I shook my head. ‘We’ve got exams coming up.’

  ‘That’s good.’ She poured boiling water into the pot. ‘And how’s Tap?’ she said. ‘That bad boy, what’s he up to?’

  I smiled. It was nice to hear his name. It was nice to see her. ‘He still works in The Boutique. But because of my exams, I can’t really go out much.’

  ‘Lovely.’ She kept swallowing. ‘How’s school?’

  ‘We’ve got exams,’ I said again.

  Sylvie sat down, putting the teapot and the cups on the table. ‘Ah, you must be working hard.’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Her face stretched into an odd shape.

  ‘Are you all right? I’m sorry I haven’t been round lately.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t been here.’

  ‘Good job I didn’t come,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘Do you know where I’ve been?’

  I shook my head. I had a feeling I didn’t want to know where she’d been. I poured the tea. Sylvie heaped spoonfuls of sugar into her cup, three, four. Finally, in the thick silence, I said, ‘How are you?’

  ‘I stuck my head in the oven.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘Our oven, it’s a gas oven. I turned on the taps and put my head in there.’

  She’d tried to kill herself. No one had said anything about that.

  She lifted her eyes to mine and I looked away sharply. All I’d said was ‘How are you?’ I only asked because I was trying to be polite, and then this came out! She stuck her head in the oven. I couldn’t even begin to wonder why she had done it. I knew why she had done it. She was ill. But why did she have to tell me? What did she want me to say? Is that why I was here, to stop her trying to kill herself again?

  ‘And do you know what my mother’s first words were when she came in and found me? This will make you laugh.’ I doubted it. ‘The first thing she said when she was flinging open the windows, before she dragged me up off the floor, was, “I hope it was your money in the meter”.’ She laughed, her little cracked laugh.

  I wanted to say, ‘Well, at least it wasn’t mine,’ but I also wanted to say, ‘I don’t want this cup of tea, thank you, I want to go home.’ I didn’t want to talk about this. She shouldn’t be telling me about it. There was a funny little smile on her face that wasn’t meant for me. ‘Always practical, my mother,’ she said. ‘I half-expected her to say, “And when you’ve woken up a bit, could you give the oven a clean?” Which I should say, from close examination, it could do with.’

  ‘But you don’t like housework, do you?’ I said.

  ‘Ooh, is that a little criticism, Linda?’

  ‘No, it’s what you said.’ It wasn’t fair. ‘It was in the book.’ I didn’t know how to talk to her. I scrabbled in my bag to find The Second Sex. I’d brought it back.

  ‘The thing is, Linda, it’s quite hard to gas yourself, as well as being very uncomfortable, kneeling on the floor bending your head to get the right angle to fit in the oven. And before that you’ve got to fill in every possible gap and hole in the doors and windows. Which I have to say, was my undoing. It took me so long to make the room airtight that by the time I had done that and then got my head in position, Mum was back from work. Before I’d even drifted off. I hadn’t realised what a very draughty house this is.’ She was swirling the tea in her cup.

  ‘My dad said these houses weren’t as well built as the ones in our road,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘And he would know.’

  There was a lot of saliva in my mouth.

  ‘Of course, it’s not illegal, not now,’ she said. ‘But they do still make a fuss. Because, of course, to the church it is a sin.’

  ‘Not in our church, it isn’t,’ I said. ‘My mum’s church.’

  ‘What do you think?’ she said.

  I didn’t think anything. There were other people I’d heard about on our estate who had killed themselves, the man who was having an affair with the lady over the road. He did it, then she did it. Mum had said we should feel sorry for all of them. Those who had died because they must have been really desperate, and those left behind because they would be so sad. ‘My mum said people don’t try to kill themselves unless there’s something really wrong, or at least they think something is really wrong in their life.’

  ‘That’s a sweet thing to say,’ Sylvie said. ‘Unfortunately a lot of people don’t care about that. After she’d opened all the windows, Mum rang Dr Gardner. He drove me to the hospital in town. They let me sleep it off. But he didn’t say anything about suicide – he told everyone it was an accident in the home.’

  Dr Gardner was our doctor. I liked him for that.

  ‘So I’m not bad, I’m just a bit mad.’

  She didn’t look mad. She looked lovely, lovelier than I’d seen her before, with her eyes really dark blue against her pale skin and her lips just the red side of pink.

  ‘Well, I think you’re just . . . sad,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘Perhaps you’re right. I do worry. About everything. But mostly, I worry about Mansell.’

  ‘Why? Is he ill?’

  ‘No, no. I worry that I’m going to lose him.’

  ‘What do you mean? Why would you?’

  ‘Because I’m a useless mother.’

  ‘Everyone says that.’

  ‘Do they? Oh no, do they?’

  ‘I don’t mean about you,’ I said quickly. ‘I mean about themselves. Every mother says “I’m a terrible mother”.’ I’d read that in Woman’s Own. ‘You’re just – just anxious. Why would anyone take him? You look after him all right.’ It would be terrible. I would never see him again, that little face, that little smile. And if I felt like that, what must Sylvie feel?

  She looked out of the window. ‘I don’t live an entirely conventional life,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a husband. There are my trips to my personal sanatorium. There’s . . . me.’ She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and shook her head. ‘The hospital pumped me full of pills, most of which slow me down and a few that speed me up.’ She waved her hand over to the windowsill, where four small brown bottles were arranged in a row. ‘I have to take three every four hours. They’re rather hard to swallow. But if I jump, I rattle.’

  ‘Better not jump then,’ I said. ‘Not if Mansell’s asleep, anyway.’

  ‘You are funny, Linda. Oh, it’s good to see you.’ She looked into her cup as if she was reading the tea leaves. She lifted her head. ‘Sorry, that was a bit of a conversation-stopper, wasn’t it? What would you like to do? Do you want to listen to some music?’

  ‘You don’t have to entertain me,’ I said. I didn’t want to hear any Frank Sinatra or Louis Armstrong. Or that piercing Miles Davis. I didn’t know what to suggest.

  ‘All right.’ She smiled. ‘We’ll sit here quietly, drinking our tea. And we won’t talk about . . . what I did.’

  ‘You’re not thinking about it at the moment, are you?’

  She laughed that little cracked laugh again. ‘No, not right now. You’re here, and I am full of Largactyl, so I wouldn’t be able to turn on the gas, let alone block up the windows.’

  ‘Perhaps you should get an electric cooker,’ I said, stiffly.

  She looked at my face. ‘Oh, Linda, have I frightened you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What about the people you might have hurt, didn’t you think about them? Your mum, Mansell, Mansell’s dad?’

  ‘Oh, I’m just a worry for my mother. It would be a relief to her if I went. And Mansell? He’s as happy with her as he is with me. He wouldn’t miss me. And as for Mansell’s dad . . .’ She laughed. ‘Well, he probably wouldn’t know. Nope – no one would really care.’

  ‘Well, what about me? I’d miss you.’

  ‘Linda!’
Tears filled her eyes. I’d upset her. What would she do now? ‘Linda, that’s the loveliest thing that anyone has said to me in a long while.’ I hadn’t meant it to be that lovely. ‘Would you be sad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh Linda, this is not what we should be doing at teatime on a Thursday. Sitting on hard chairs in my kitchen talking about this sort of thing. Let’s listen to some Acker Bilk.’

  ‘That might make me want to kill myself,’ I said, then wished I hadn’t.

  But Sylvie laughed. ‘You make a fresh pot of tea, and I’ll put on something that will tickle you.’

  As I walked into the living room with the tea things, Sylvie was fiddling with the record player, humming to herself.

  She must be feeling better, I thought. I felt pleased.

  She waggled an LP cover in my face. ‘Shelley Berman.’

  I poured out the tea and carefully Sylvie put the needle onto the record. There was no music, just a man talking. About a night out, smiling a lot, then getting home and looking in the mirror and seeing spinach on his teeth. And then describing waking up, the morning after, feeling terrible. He had a husky, confident American accent. And it did make me laugh. ‘Who is he?’ I said.

  ‘He’s a comedian.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him. He’s not on telly.’

  ‘He’s American.’

  ‘So’s Perry Como, and he’s on all the time. Is that all he does? Tell stories? Does he sing?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  I liked that. I liked the idea of it. Telling jokes and people roaring with laughter, and not having to say, ‘And now here’s a little song that I sang at my mother’s knee.’

  ‘Can you play it again?’ I said. ‘The one about the Alka Seltzer. I want to remember it – to tell Sandra.’

  ‘Take it home with you,’ she said. ‘Bring it back next time you come.’

  She’d obviously forgotten that we didn’t have a record player. She stretched her arms in the air. ‘Do you mind if we put the telly on?’ she said. ‘I’m a bit tired all of a sudden. Not very good company, I’m afraid.’ She fell back on the settee.

  ‘Shall I go home?’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’ll just be the news.’

  ‘No, stay. I don’t mind – whatever’s on,’ she said. ‘I’ll curl up here and close my eyes for a moment.’ She lifted her feet onto the cushions, put her head on the arm of the settee and within seconds was breathing heavily and regularly.

  Lying there, asleep, in her simple green dress, strands of her hair drifting softly round her face, she looked like something out of a fairy story. I wished she could always look that peaceful, not worrying about her problems; I wished she could be happy. She was so interesting, she knew so much, she’d done so much. She had a lovely baby that she’d fought hard to keep, in spite of what everyone else thought. And yet always she seemed so fragile, as if she might break at any moment, for any reason.

  I stood up and quietly put The Second Sex on the sideboard. Then I put Shelley Berman back on the record player and walked round the room listening to the record and practising the routine so I could repeat it later. ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I want to tell you a story.’

  *

  ‘Have you heard of Shelley Berman?’ I said to Judith as we lay in bed in the dark.

  ‘Is he one of your important blues singers?’

  ‘You obviously haven’t heard of him. He’s a comedian.’ I repeated as much of the Alka Seltzer scene as I could remember. Judith laughed.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be great to do that for a living?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Be a comedian. Standing on a stage, making people laugh.’

  ‘If you want to be on the stage, you should join the drama group at school.’

  ‘They’re all posh,’ I said.

  ‘They’re not all posh, Rosemary’s not posh. Go and see if you like it.’

  ‘I’ve got too much to do,’ I said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Keeping Sandra out of trouble.’

  ‘Then you’ll never have time to join anything,’ Judith said.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Fair

  IT WAS CHELMSFORD CARNIVAL DAY. The excitement seemed to infect the town. Crowds of people came into the Milk Bar, talking loudly to each other and laughing raucously.

  I was coming down the stairs after my mid-morning break, smiling, when Ray came in. I hadn’t seen him since the Aldermaston march, before I started work. I hadn’t actually spoken to him since the row after the football match. As he positioned himself on a stool, I remembered the warmth of his arm round me that day, and then the argument at the back of the bus. My smile faltered.

  Val nudged me with her hip as I slid back behind the counter. ‘Yours or mine?’

  ‘Mine.’ Cheek! Ray was mine. Wasn’t he? I saw him through Val’s eyes, his smiling, open face and thick dark hair. And you couldn’t see any jumpers under his donkey jacket. I squeezed behind her and went to serve him.

  Ray looked at me for a moment, taking in my uniform and my attempt at a pinned-up hairstyle. ‘Hello,’ he said. It was good to hear his voice. ‘So – this is your new workplace.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked round. ‘Very nice. You too.’

  I smiled. ‘Don’t you ever work on Saturdays?’ He worked in a garage on Broomfield Road.

  ‘I’m their star employee, so I can choose my days off.’

  ‘Lucky old you,’ I said. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘That’s a loaded question!’ he said.

  ‘So, one tea, then,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, for now.’ He grinned.

  As I gave him his tea, he said, ‘Are we all right?’

  I could have pretended not to understand, but I wanted him to smile at me again. ‘I think so,’ I said carefully.

  ‘Are you going to the fair?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I might see you there.’

  ‘You might.’

  ‘We could go for a drive on the dodgems.’

  I raised one eyebrow, took his sixpence and went to serve a customer at the far end of the counter. When I’d finished, Ray had gone.

  ‘Nice,’ said Val. ‘Very nice.’

  I looked at Val and I wondered how Ray saw her. She was small and pretty. I felt a pang of something, in my stomach. Surely it couldn’t be jealousy. This was Ray from down the road.

  *

  I always had tea at Sandra’s house on Carnival Day, and then we went to the fair.

  Tea was ham salad with a lot of cucumber. And there was tinned fruit and tinned cream for afters. Not my favourite, but as much cream as you wanted.

  After tea we went upstairs to her bedroom to change.

  Getting ready to go out, doing something normal, felt good after all that worry over Sylvie, not to mention Ray and Tap. Sandra sat down at her dressing table to do her hair. She pulled up handfuls to backcomb, sighing. She was thinking about Danny. She had hoped he would pop back into her life and carry on as if the Trevor conversation had never happened. But there had been no Tuesday letters recently, and no one had any news about him.

  ‘Do you think Danny will come back to Chelmsford?’ I said.

  ‘If he’s coming he’d better get a move-on.’ She pushed down some hair with her comb. ‘He’s not the only fish in the sea.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’ I said.

  She smiled and started to backcomb again. ‘I might change my mind about him.’

  ‘Why don’t you miss out the middle heartache and change your mind about him now?’

  ‘Because that wouldn’t be any fun.’

  Sometimes I wondered if she was really serious about him, or if it was just about seeing how far she could go towards getting a fiancé. ‘What about our coats?’ I said, to change the subject. ‘Are we wearing our coats?’

  ‘Of course. It’s our mod shorthand.’ She had started day release, doing shorthand and typing. ‘The place will be jam-packed wit
h rockers. So when they come flooding towards us, wanting to take us on the dodgems . . .’ My heart did a little quiver when she said the word dodgems. ‘Instead of having to say, sorry, we’re mods, so leave us alone, they’ll just see our coats and get the message.’ We were laughing. ‘It’s quicker,’ she said. ‘Plus it’ll be cold by eleven o’clock.’

  The light was fading as we got to the bus station. We joined the crowds flowing down the street beside the railway arches, towards the entrance to the park. First came the smell, candyfloss, hot dogs and diesel, then we felt the throb of the generators and, as we turned into the park, we heard snatches of our favourite records, Sam the Sham, the Animals, the Four Tops.

  We passed the last of the dads and mums sweating under the dazzling lights of the sideshows as they shot, balanced and threw balls to win goldfish, plastic ducks and coconuts for their kids before they took them home to bed. We stepped gingerly across the grass, over the thick, rubber-cased wires, past the generators pulsing out their greasy engine smell, past the tall test-your-strength machine and the huge wooden mallet leaning against it, and made our way towards the roundabouts in the centre. We stood on the steps of the waltzer. As the ride went round, the wooden floor rose and fell and the seats swirled. Bruce Chanel and his harmonica blared ‘Hey Baby’ from loudspeakers tied roughly to a pole. Boys in dirty jeans with slicked-back rocker hair and the collars of their shirts turned up stood easily on the heaving wooden boards, pushing the chairs round to make the girls scream and their skirts fly up. I wanted to go on, and I knew our straight skirts wouldn’t move, but I also knew it would make me feel sick.

  ‘Do you think Bruce is a rocker name?’ Sandra said.

  ‘I don’t know. It makes me think of Bill Haley,’ I said, ‘so probably, yes.’ We were just making conversation, passing time, looking around.

  ‘There’s no one good here,’ Sandra said. We moved on.

  We walked past the swing roundabout, the seats hanging on long, long chains which splayed out higher and higher the faster they went round. ‘It’s all rockers!’ I said. At every turn were boys with greasy hair and girls with stiletto heels sinking into the grass. Peter and Gordon were singing ‘A World Without Love’ and Sandra said, ‘Well, that’s all they deserve.’