Summer of Love
Christina Jones
It’s the summer of 1969, an exciting time of music and fashion, peace and love.
However, the Swinging Sixties appear to have by-passed the village of Ashcote. Seventeen-year-old Clemmie is thinking only of her A-levels, gaining a place at university and the long hot days stretching ahead. But when she meets the gorgeous Lewis Coleman-Beck, Clemmie’s life changes in a split second and she’s plunged, head-over-heels, into her very own Summer of Love.
Contents
2003
Christina Jones
2003
It’s as hot and drowsy as a July morning: impossible to believe that it’s already September and we’re closer to Christmas than midsummer. The flowers are still blowsy and vibrant; the air is sleepy, sultry, heavy with pollen and sweetness. Everyone says it’s going to be a glorious autumn this year. A perfect Indian summer. Maybe it’ll be like that other perfect summer so long ago when I was young …
Not that I’m ancient, of course. Well, I’m fifty-one now which is ancient by some standards – where on earth did the time go? – but that summer is still as vivid as if it were yesterday. I remember every detail, especially … but no, I really shouldn’t think about that now. Not today of all days. After all, my present life is perfect: there’s no need to look back to the past, is there?
I’m lounging indolently on the hammock swing in the garden with the Sunday papers, and I’m blissfully happy; totally contented with my life, and I know I’m lucky. But even so, being fifty-one has come as something of a shock. Can I really be fifty-one?
I smile to myself. Reaching fifty last year was fine: everyone said fifty was the new forty, and Lulu and Olivia Newton-John and people like that were publicly proud to be fifty. But ‘being in my fifties’ sounds suspiciously like getting old to me, especially when inside my head I’m seventeen. Always seventeen.
Outwardly? Well, I’ve never been vain, but I do take care of myself. I’m a sucker for every anti-ageing cream on the market, and I dance myself silly by way of exercise, and I still wear my faded jeans and an armful of silver bangles and walk barefoot on the grass. My hair is cut in trendy choppy layers – and if the addition of blonde highlights hide the first grey streaks, then it remains a secret between me and Pauline at Marcelle’s Hair Salon.
Oh yes, if I close my eyes on this glorious morning and let the warmth wash over me, I can easily forget that I’m fifty-one years old. Removed from reality by the soporific silence of a Sunday morning, the people and places from the past seem far more real than those who live in my life now. Strange then, how those images from years ago seem to insist on marching through my head today …
I quickly open my eyes again and squint through the spiralling sun across the garden at my parents having coffee beneath the brightly striped umbrella. They’d be so disappointed if they knew where my thoughts are straying. They smile across at me, pleased that I’m here, looking forward to us all going out to lunch later. They’re in their mid-seventies now, still very happy together, but I wonder if they ever really forgave me.
I know they said they did, and after all, it’s a lifetime ago, but at the time …
Why on earth does my mind insist on going down that route? What is it about today, of all days, that makes me want to recall the past? I really mustn’t dwell on it. But I could so easily give into the temptation and remember.
Maybe it’s not only because of the weather, but also because I’m here in my parents’ neat, orderly semi? The house where I grew up, the house in Ashcote, the sprawling Berkshire village that was my childhood home. The house where I broke their hearts.
I still feel real pangs of guilt at their remembered anger and grief, which is confusing as most of my memories of that time are happy ones. I know I shouldn’t be self-indulgent and allow myself to reminisce, but the seductive scents of the warm earth and the flowers and the sleepy rhythmic murmur of the bees could belong so easily to that other summer more than thirty years ago.
The summer that I really shouldn’t keep going back to. My forbidden summer. The summer that changed my life.
1969 had to be the best time in the whole history of the world to be seventeen, I decided. There were so many amazing changes taking place, all adding vibrant colour and a buzz of excitement to the end of my growing-up decade, and I loved being young and alive and happy.
I was captivated by the hippie peace and freedom movement, and avidly watched the eccentrically dressed teenagers on television as they bravely protested about everything from the Vietnam War to racial equality. And then there was the advent of the mind-blowing psychedelic music with rock bands, groups of gorgeous and glamorous boys, stirring up frenzies of adolescent lust in dance halls across the country.
Not, of course, that any of this had made much impact on Ashcote. Ashcote, still rooted somewhere pre-war, had never been quite ready for the Sixties. The nearest we’d ever got to a rock band was the Ezra Samuels Caribbean Trio playing in the village hall on party nights. With a network of high-banked and tree-shrouded lanes feeding away from either side of the High Street, Ashcote was typical of many large Berkshire villages, having its origins in agriculture and accepting the creeping of commerce with a seemingly sulky reluctance. The High Street, which housed the brand new all-girls’ grammar school at one end and a garage at the other, had various shops, the village hall, a pub – which I’d been forbidden to even think about visiting – in between.
It was midday. Early June. 1969. I’d just had lunch with my mum in the garden, and was heading for school with several classmates, all of us knowing that in less than half an hour we’d have to forget all about hippies and rock bands, the sunshine and the flowers and the summer sounds of Tony Blackburn on Radio One, and listen to those dreaded words: ‘You may turn your papers over now …’
Only four more exams to go. One English paper this afternoon, then two Religious Education and the last History of Art. Then the agonising wait for the results of course, and then in the autumn, with my requisite number of graded passes, off to university.
University was a scarily thrilling prospect. I’d never been away from home alone before. In fact, apart from occasional holidays when my parents could afford them, I’d rarely left the village.
An only child, my parents were inordinately proud of my achievements. No one else on either side of the family had ever been to university or even stayed on at school. Mum and Dad had been ecstatic when I’d passed my 11+, and even more so – if that were possible – when I’d passed all nine O-levels with good grades. They expected me to sail through the As – and told simply everyone who would listen about me going to university.
I’d had my interviews at Durham – an excursion of such mammoth proportions that I felt I might as well have been emigrating to Australia – and they’d offered a provisional place to read English as long as I gained a minimum of an A in English and two Bs. All the way home on the train. Mum had been loudly and embarrassingly confident that I’d manage those grades because I enjoyed the subjects, liked learning, worked hard, loved school, didn’t I? I was a model pupil and they were so proud of me.
Mum and Dad had always taken the time to explain things to me, to answer my questions. They’d always talked to me, we’d always discussed everything, and they’d instilled the joy of learning about new things, and the importance of treasuring the old, in me from an early age.
If I succeeded it was simply because of them, I owed them everything and I knew I’d never let them down.
Anyway, once the A-levels were over there were weeks and weeks of lazy enjoyment to look forward to before the learning started all over again, although I’d probably have to take a holiday job. Mum and Dad were going to f
ind it difficult to get all the things I needed for university even with the grant. But I’d plan for after-the-exams later. Today I had to think about Dickens and Chaucer and Shakespeare and Joseph Conrad and Stella Gibbons.
Actually, the English Literature exam held no terrors at all – I was saving my terror for the RE ones looming next week because RE was my weakest subject of the three – I loved reading, was delighted by the English set books, and revising had seemed like pure pleasure rather than hard work.
I drifted along the sun-baked lane between the head-high columbine and dog roses; with the sky stretching cloudless above me and the ground white-hot in the glare of the sun. Dawn and Jenny were on either side of me, and we were singing a silly song we’d made up to the tune of The Hollies’ ‘Sorry Suzanne’. It was supposed to help us remember the plot of Othello, but actually I didn’t need any help at all. I thought that the story was so wonderfully heartbreaking. All that love, all that jealousy …
I wondered if anyone would ever love me enough to want me dead rather than see me in the arms of another man. As I’d never had a proper boyfriend, it was all rather academic, but the passionate tragedy of Desdemona and Iago and Othello filled my dreams.
‘Clemmie!’
I stopped walking. Dawn and Jenny went on, still singing, arms linked.
I grinned at Paula Conway who was sitting on the wall outside the Ashcote Stores. ‘You look very glamorous.’
‘You don’t,’ Paula laughed, pointing at my hated straw boater. We had to wear them – on pain of death – all the time we were in uniform. ‘Mind you, if you yank that dress up any higher the whole of Ashcote will be able to see your knickers.’
I looked down at my even more hated blue-and-white striped shirtwaister, which, like all the Sixth Form, I’d bundled over and over the top of my navy blue elasticated money belt.
‘Only another couple of weeks then this lot’ll be chucked in the bin for ever – look, sorry Paula, but I really can’t stop, I’ve got English this afternoon. Wish me luck.’
‘You won’t need any luck, Clem. You’re clever enough to pass your A-levels with one hand tied behind your back, and with your eyes closed, and having done no revision at all – unlike me.’
I laughed. Paula lived three doors away from me and had escaped from the Secondary Modern as soon as it was legally possible, with no qualifications in anything at all. We’d grown up together, and were still friends; although now she worked in the trendiest record shop in Reading and had a new boyfriend every weekend, she seemed years older than I was rather than simply a few months.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’
‘Half-day closing. I caught the early bus home. I usually stay in town and do some shopping, but I’m – um – seeing someone this afternoon.’
I groaned in sheer envy at the grown-upness of it all. Staying in town to do shopping … The luxury of a half-day off … Seeing a mysterious someone …
‘I wish I was you.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Paula slid from the wall and swung herself round, her glossy bobbed Cilla Black hair and her pink swirly mini dress moving in one fluid motion. ‘You’d be bored to tears with my life. When you’ve passed your exams and been to university you’ll be able to do whatever you like. You’ll get a proper job and earn loads of money and have a fast car and a lovely house and –’
‘I’d settle for having some money right now.’
Paula stopped grinning. ‘Yeah, it must be a drag trying to live on pocket money. Look, if you’re serious, Clemmie, one of our Saturday girls left last week. Shall I ask if they’ve replaced her yet, and if not, I’ll put your name forward, shall I?’
‘Yes, please!’ I still looked enviously at her clothes and her hairdo. I knew I’d have to put some money away, but surely I’d be able to spend a bit on myself? ‘That’d be wonderful. And once the exams are over I can work all week, not just Saturdays, if they need anyone – until I go to university of course.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Paula pulled a teasing face. ‘OK, I’ll ask tomorrow and let you know. Now it looks as if your friends want you, so you’d better run along like a good little schoolgirl.’
‘OK, OK,’ I flapped my hands towards Dawn and Jenny who were motioning me to hurry up. ‘Paula – I’ll see you later – and thanks.’
‘You’re welcome. And good luck with the exam. Not that you’ll need it, of course.’
‘Thanks – and good luck with whoever you’re meeting. Not that you’ll need any luck there, either.’
I could still hear her chuckling as I caught up with Jenny and Dawn.
‘I don’t know why you’re still friends with her,’ Dawn said as we hurried towards the school gates. ‘She’s got a heck of a reputation.’
‘She’s a bit of a – well, you know …’ Jenny giggled. ‘And you’ll get tarred with the same brush, Clem, if you hang around with her.’
‘I don’t hang around with her,’ I said crossly. ‘Though sometimes I wish I did. She has a great life. Working in Sheldon Busby’s and being able to buy records and clothes and make-up and have boyfriends and –’
‘And that’s exactly what she’ll still be doing in twenty years’ time,’ Dawn said. ‘Working in a record shop. And she’ll probably have half a dozen kids and will never have moved away from Ashcote.’
‘Whereas we,’ Jenny said, ‘will have the world at our feet.’
Giggling even more at the thought of the world bowing to three teenagers from Ashcote, we pushed our way out of the blazing sun and into the cool darkness of the school. It was only two years old and still smelled new: three storeys, all trendy grey concrete and chrome, big windows, the spiral staircases visible, the girls teeming up and down inside like so many ants. We’d moved there from the old Grammar School fifteen miles away and it was great to be able to walk to school and go home for lunch; and for the well-stocked modern labs and art rooms and domestic science rooms, to be pristine and gleaming.
Snatching off our hats as we lined up with the rest of the afternoon’s A-levellers, I decided not to tell Jenny and Dawn that Paula might get me a holiday job working with her at Sheldon Busby’s. Somehow I had the feeling they wouldn’t approve.
‘Hurry up, girls!’ Miss Edwards, our English teacher, was standing outside the assembly hall. ‘Stop chattering! You’ve got fifteen minutes before the exam starts. And leave your things here. They should be in your lockers – you know you’ve been told not to bring those talisman toys into school. Fluffy teddies at your age – really! Pencil cases and your brains are the only things you’ll need in the exam room! I trust you’ve all got both?’
‘Yes, Miss Edwards,’ we all chorused diligently, as we trooped into the hall to meet our fate.
Emerging three hours later, exhausted but delighted that the essay questions had been exactly what I would have chosen, I couldn’t wait to get home and tear off my school uniform and sit in the back garden under the cherry trees listening to the radio. No more exams now for a week. I’d start my RE revision tomorrow, but today, I was free!
Dawn and Jenny were equally happy with the exam, so we strolled along Ashcote’s sleepy lanes, singing Donovan’s ‘Colours’, pretty sure that we were one step closer to academic stardom.
Mum made a huge fuss of me when I got home, serving up a high tea of tinned salmon and salad in the garden by way of celebration. I’d scrambled out of my uniform and pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, and let my hair slide out of its regulation ponytail, and now, with my ever-present transistor radio, was sitting on the grass in the still-hot sun, listening to ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’ by the Walker Brothers. It was absolutely my most favourite song ever. The words never failed to make my heart break – and Scott Walker’s deep, sensual voice sent butterflies looping the loop in my stomach.
This was probably why I didn’t hear Paula scrunch along the gravelled path, click through our front gate, or call her usual cheery ‘hiya’ to Mum in the kitchen as she passed.
‘How
did it go then?’ She plonked herself down beside me, carefully pulling her ridiculously short dress decorously down to the tops of her thighs.
The Walker Brothers had been replaced by the Beach Boys on the radio. I turned down the volume. ‘Fine, thanks. What about you and your mystery man?’
‘Fantastic,’ Paula smirked.
‘Is this a new boyfriend then? Do I know him? God, it’s not Nick, is it?’
Nick Rayner was Ashcote’s heartthrob. Dawn and Jenny and I had his name written all over our pencil cases and our folders and books and even engraved on the inside of our desk lids. He was two years older than us and had a motorbike and was what our parents called ‘undesirable’ – although we of course thought he was the most desirable thing in the entire universe.
‘No!’ Paula laughed. ‘I dumped Nick ages ago. He’s just a boy. This one is a real man.’
‘What?’ I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t even know that Paula had been out with Nick Rayner. Dawn and Jenny would be spitting venom. They’d actually cried when Paul McCartney had married Linda a few months before, so this news would really upset them. I concentrated on not looking jealous. ‘So how old is he then, this – er – man? Really, really old?’
‘About twenty-one,’ Paula said proudly. ‘And he’s got a Ford Capri.’
I sat in admiring silence. Twenty-one was seriously grown-up. And the Ford Capri was the newest, sportiest, hottest car on the market this year. No one I knew had ever had a boyfriend with a car – let alone something as swish and expensive as that.
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘At work. He came into the shop to listen to some records and I served him and our eyes met and …’ Paula’s face was far-away-dreamy. ‘He’s dead lovely – you know, all lean and fit, and he’s got fab, long, silky hair, and when he speaks he makes my knees turn to jelly. He’s educated, Clem. Not like the oiks round here. He’s got a dead posh voice and he uses lovely words.’
I wanted to laugh. ‘He sounds like someone straight out of a magazine love story! Are you sure you haven’t made him up?’
Summer of Love Page 1