by Diane Janes
‘You know what I think?’ asked Simon. ‘I think you’re just plain scared – you’re accusing Trudie because the idea of calling up the spirits scares the hell out of you.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Danny smoothly. ‘You’re not really bothered, are you, Katy? You’ll join us for a bit of the old voodoo and magic if it makes everyone happy?’
He had edged across, so that he could put his arm around me. He obviously hadn’t a clue how much the whole idea put the wind up me – I knew he would never have pushed it if he had – but unless I was prepared to invite Simon’s ridicule by making any more fuss, I could see I was cornered. ‘I don’t mind,’ I said, as casually as I could. ‘I’m in, if everyone else wants to do it.’
EIGHT
Marjorie’s friend Pam has started swimming again. The knee op went well apparently, so the surgeon has given her the all clear. While this does afford me a bit of breathing space from Marjorie, it also introduces another torment, because all the time I’m swimming, I’m constantly aware of their voices echoing off the roof of the pool, like two birds shrieking in an aviary (either that or a jungle), an impression enhanced by the unexpected appearance of plastic ivy and imitation banana trees which sprouted overnight around the pool on Thursday last. (The Leisure Services committee evidently has a year-end surplus.) The miniature tree ferns (which Pam thinks are pineapples) don’t survive the week, on account of their resemblance to oversized hand grenades, which the local youths are briefly able to lob at one another until an edict from Health and Safety intervenes. However, the plastic creepers have been allowed to stay, so with Pam and Marjorie supplying the sound effects, we only need a monkey or two swinging from the rafters to complete the tropical illusion.
It’s just three days until I am due to keep my appointment with Mrs Ivanisovic. I’m going to book the Travelodge when I get home after swimming – something I’ve put off until now, vaguely hoping that if I don’t make any firm arrangements the trip to Sedgefield won’t happen. I have waited in vain for some word from Mrs I to say that the 25th is inconvenient, but there’s been nothing. Silence. Just an ominous silence.
By poor timing, I find myself in the changing room with Marjorie and Pam.
‘He didn’t!’ Marjorie is saying.
They both affect mock horror at whatever it is ‘he’ did, but this is followed by a lot of inappropriately girlish laughter and shrieking, indicative of delight rather than disapproval. I eventually work out that ‘he’ is a man who has been making advances to Pam. ‘Honestly,’ she says. ‘I said to him – at our age . . .’
It is obvious that for all her protestations Pam is thrilled by this attention – like a fourteen-year-old the morning after her first date, recounting her experiences behind the bike sheds. Don’t some women ever grow out of this terrible susceptibility to male attention? Just before I activate the shower, I overhear Pam proclaiming shrilly, ‘I was all of a flutter.’
All of a flutter. How well that describes it. I can still remember the moment when Danny first asked for my phone number. False modesty aside, I suppose I must have been quite pretty by the time I got to college. By then I’d got the braces off my teeth and lost most of the spots; but shyness and lack of confidence still bedevilled me. My parents kept me on a tight rein, and after an all girls’ school I went to a training college where female students outnumbered the males by six to one, so I hadn’t exactly been overrun with offers of dates.
Cecile was my best friend in that first year at college. Neither of us was a huge success socially: I was shy and tended to shrink into corners, while poor old Cecile was downright plain. Tell people your friend is half French and they expect Brigitte Bardot; but Cecile took after the other side of her ancestry and looked like what she was – an earnest Jewish girl, with dark hair and glasses. She did well at college, then threw up her career to marry a rabbi and raise a family in Hendon, severing her Gallic Catholic connections almost entirely. We don’t exchange Christmas cards, because she doesn’t do Christmas.
In those days Cecile was far more lively than I was. I dreamed of excitement and romance, but was uncertain how to get any. Cecile was convinced that the route lay via hanging out in places almost exclusively patronized by members of the opposite sex and, with this in mind, she dragged me to watch Kung Fu films and listen to dodgy local bands, in virtual certainty that these were the natural habitats of the male. Alas, Cecile had failed to allow for the darkness which is the norm in cinemas and blacked-out upper rooms in city centre pubs – and when we were not completely overlooked in the gloom, we invariably got lumbered with the dull, acne-covered types, who made a half of bitter last all evening and had fingers greasy from the chips they bought on the way home.
I can’t recall which of us initiated a trip to the fair; but my going was an act of defiance, because according to my parents funfairs were full of rough lads and common girls, and consequently not the sort of places they wanted me to hang about in – this naturally imbued visiting fairs with an allure which drew me like a magnet. The fair was being held on Billesley Common. As we approached, the smell of frying onions and greasy doughnuts reached us, mingled with the damp earthy scent of the flattened winter grass, slimy underfoot thanks to the passage of the approaching multitude. My heart quickened to the sound of half a dozen tunes playing at once, punctuated by laughter and screams: a micro-world of pulsating lights enclosed within a circle of trailers and caravans.
Once inside the barrier we drifted among the crowds, assessing the cost of the rides. The bigger ones were expensive and, without boyfriends to pay for us, we couldn’t afford to have many goes. I found myself noticing that my mother had been right about the number of common-looking girls inhabiting the place. They all appeared to be having much more fun than we were, whether screaming as the man spun them on the waltzers, or pigging on candyfloss while their boyfriends threw hoops or darts, or fished for plastic ducks in the hope of winning them a prize. Up close everything looked tatty and I began to wonder why we had been so eager to come. ‘Shall we go on the bumper cars?’ I asked, half-heartedly. I thought I was talking to Cecile, but when I turned it was to find that two men had managed to sidle between us. The one nearest to me had an anaemic-looking moustache and piggy eyes. ‘All right then, darlin’,’ he said. ‘You hop in with me.’ His mate burst out laughing. They both smelled beery. It was barely eight o’clock – quite early for drunks. I decided to ignore them, but when I tried to sidestep past the one who had spoken I accidentally stood on his foot. He glared at me and grabbed my arm, probably thinking it had been deliberate. I am not sure what he had in mind, but the situation was arrested by the intervention of a voice from my left.
‘Let go of her arm and beat it.’
There was something about the voice which made Piggy Eyes automatically loose his hold and take a step back. His companion had already decided discretion was the better part and was moving off into the crowd, beckoning his mate to follow. I turned to get a look at my rescuer and saw two guys of our own age, taller than the drunks, one fair, one dark, both good-looking.
‘He didn’t hurt you, did he?’ It was the dark-haired one who spoke. I exchanged a swift look of disbelief with Cecile. He was the sort of rescuer dreamed up by the serial writers at Jackie – far too gorgeous to be true.
I assured him that I was fine.
‘Maybe you ought to stick with us for a while, just in case those two troglodytes are hanging around anywhere. I’m Danny, by the way – and this is Simon.’
‘I’m Katy,’ I said. ‘And this is Cecile.’
The tawdry funfair was instantly transformed into a place of magic. Danny took my hand and began to steer me through the crowd, leaving Simon to pair up with Cecile and follow us. Two minutes later we were crushed together in a dodgem, Danny handling the car with one hand, while he kept the other arm protectively around my shoulders.
We had been on several other rides and were on our way
to the twister, when I spotted the giant stuffed toys at the back of the rifle range. There was a rabbit dressed in top hat and tails and I let out a little squeal of delight at the sight of it.
Danny halted in his tracks. ‘Would you like one?’ he asked.
‘You have to hit a bull’s-eye,’ I protested. ‘No one ever does.’
Danny grinned at me. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I always get what I want.’ I loved the certainty in his voice, and the way his eyes met mine as he said it, with their unmistakable implication that his desires ran to more than mere stuffed rabbits.
The three of us watched while Danny handed over his money and took aim. We were all laughing, urging him on, and we groaned collectively when his first three shots missed by a mile. Danny gestured to the man behind the counter that he wanted another go.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said quickly. I had scarcely known him half an hour, and he probably didn’t have money to throw away on toy rabbits.
‘Come on,’ said Simon a bit impatiently. ‘Let’s go on the twister.’
But Danny was already pushing a pound note at the stallholder and picking up the rifle again. His whole body exuded focus and concentration. His next three shots also went wide of the mark.
‘They rig the guns, you know,’ said Simon, keeping his voice low, and a wary eye on the stallholder who was only a few feet away from us, taking money from another hopeful punter. ‘Twist the sights or something. You won’t get one,’ he added in a louder voice for Danny’s benefit.
‘I really don’t mind . . .’ I began.
The stallholder had ambled back towards us. He gave Simon a hostile glare. ‘You sayin’ this is a crooked game, son?’
At that moment Danny fired again and scored a bull’s-eye. He tossed the rifle down and threw his arms above his head like a cup-winning goal scorer, extending the gesture of victory my way, until he had enveloped me in a hug.
‘Well done, mate.’ The guy behind the stall pulled down a giant rabbit, which at Danny’s gesture he handed across to me, taking the opportunity to eyeball Simon at the same time. Simon stepped back smartly, but Danny was oblivious of any tension – totally immersed in his moment of triumph. His determination to satisfy my whim, coupled with the fact that he was far and away the best-looking boy who had ever shown the slightest interest in me, ensured that I was beyond being ‘all of a flutter’ – I was soaring on fully fledged wings.
Although Cecile had paired off with Simon, their association went no further than one foursome to the cinema with Danny and me. Cecile and Simon just didn’t hit it off. ‘He was hopeless,’ she said afterwards, ‘like trying to kiss a flatfish.’
After that, Danny and I went out a couple of times on our own. There was no opportunity for more than this before he and Simon went back to university, the very word inducing terror in my heart, with its guaranteed complement of scheming females who probably couldn’t wait to get their claws into him. I was secretly terrified that I would never hear from him again, but he rang me almost every day and about once a month he came down to Birmingham on the train – each brief visit like a colourful explosion against an otherwise grey canvas.
When Danny was around he made things happen. While I only talked about going down to London for the day, he went to buy the tickets. He introduced me to rock concerts, folk clubs and Chinese food. The boundaries of my life expanded from home and college to seemingly encompass the whole world. I was finally taking part in life, instead of being a mere spectator. I think it was when the flowers arrived on my birthday – not just any old flowers, but a bunch of red roses – a gesture both impossibly expensive and incredibly romantic – that the relationship leapt up several notches from merely ‘seeing’ one another, to a grand passion. From then on I was sold.
In those days a boyfriend proved you weren’t a failure or a freak. Having one all but defined your worth as a person. Friends from college who had seen the two of us together sidled up to say, ‘He’s gorgeous. Where did you get him?’ Danny charmed everyone who met him and I basked in the envy he generated. Of course I could rely on my parents to strike a discordant note. Although they made Danny superficially welcome, in private they grumbled that I was ‘infatuated’ and becoming ‘besotted’ with someone I ‘hardly knew’.
‘You’re not in love with him, you know,’ my mother chided. ‘You’re in love with the idea of falling in love.’ I was familiar with her Rodgers and Hart LP and ignored the reference. ‘You’re too young to know your own mind yet, Katy,’ she persisted. ‘You’ve always had your head in the clouds. It’s very easy to imagine you’re in love with the first boy who comes along, you know.’ It was absolutely typical of her to pour cold water on what was shaping up to be the best time of my life. She never understood that when you’re dancing on top of the mountain, the last thing you want to do is look down.
It was about three months after our first meeting that Danny raised the idea of spending the summer at Simon’s uncle’s. ‘Say you’ll come,’ he begged. ‘We’ll have a great time.’
‘Will it be all right with Simon?’ I asked. I had only met Simon a handful of times by then, but Danny had no hesitation in assuring me that it wouldn’t be a problem at all. ‘The more the merrier,’ he said, from which I construed that there would be a whole crowd of us, living as a sort of commune in a big old house, having loads of fun all through the summer.
The prospect of a whole summer living with Danny was the stuff of wildest dreams. In those days, only the most avant-garde of couples lived together openly before marriage. Respectable couples from provincial lower middle class backgrounds ‘went out’ before getting publicly ‘engaged’. At this stage the more liberal of parents might have agreed to the occasional overnight stay, or winked at the obvious connotation of joint holidays, or flats officially shared with same sex friends; but for most of us the expected fiction was a white wedding dress and ‘tonight’s the night’ jokes at the reception.
I knew better than to broach the Uncle’s-House-in-Hereford plan at home – my parents would never have agreed to it, and I knew that if I fabricated any of the arrangements Hereford was close enough for them to come out and check up on me. So with Cecile’s connivance I came up with an alternative which would keep them well at bay. Although I was nineteen years old, there was no question of making my own decision about how to spend the summer – there was a long debate about the France proposal, with my brother Edward offering an opinion and even my little sister chipping in with her fourpennyworth, before my parents conceded that the fruit-picking plan might be suitable, subject to various conditions being satisfied. In fact, by the start of the summer holidays, my parents were feeling rather smug about their decision to allow me to go to France with Cecile. They made no secret of the fact that an incidental benefit of the scheme would be to keep me apart from Danny, about whom they regularly cautioned me not to get ‘too serious’ because it might affect my studies. Too serious. God!
By the time I have finished in the shower, Pam has moved across to the hairdryers, where she is using the mirror to guide her application of face paint. The process requires a degree of concentration which precludes her from conversing with Marjorie, who instead turns her attention to me.
‘I saw you in Menlove Avenue, last night.’ She tosses the words in my direction with barely an upward glance, continuing to fold her damp costume into her towel and pack various other items into her swimming bag, prior to departure.
There is no trace of accusation in her tone, but she has caught me unawares. Startled, I don’t dare to meet her eye – stay focused on the utilitarian white tiling and carry on towelling my thighs. Playing for time, I say, ‘Menlove Avenue?’ as if I’ve never heard of it. ‘Where is that, exactly?’
‘It’s in Kings Heath off Harding Lane.’ Unfortunately my affecting ignorance has merely served to intrigue her. ‘You were there last night,’ she prompts encouragingly. ‘Waiting to pick someone up, it looked like.’ There is no subtlety about Marj
orie’s nosiness. Another person might sense evasion and back off, but she doesn’t retreat an inch.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Can’t have been me – I didn’t go out at all last night.’ I don’t look at her. Dry between each toe as if my life depends on it.
‘Well, I thought it was you. Of course, it was dark.’ She pauses for a millisecond – long enough for me to inhale thankfully, then almost choke as she adds, ‘I said to my friend Gwenda, it’s Kate from swimming – I know that car.’
‘It can’t have been mine.’ God, why won’t the bloody woman just shut up and go home? ‘Not unless someone’s borrowing it without me knowing.’ Try to make a joke – that might do it.
Marjorie has her jacket on and her bag zipped, but she continues to linger. ‘Isn’t it strange? When Gwenda came to let me in, she said, ‘‘Do you know, Marjorie, I’m sure that must be an unmarked police car. There’s been someone sitting in it for almost half an hour. They must be watching one of the houses.”’
‘Well, maybe that was it,’ I suggest. ‘Perhaps it was the police.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so – not in Menlove Avenue. It’s such a nice road.’
Rescuers come in unlikely guises. It is Pam’s turn to give Marjorie a lift, and by now she’s completed her toilette in readiness for the bridge club, or wherever it is they propose to occupy themselves this morning, and is standing rather obviously by the changing-room door. Good manners prevent Marjorie from keeping her waiting any longer. Only when they have gone do
I notice that the background muzak is still playing – hits from the musicals again. Elaine Page is belting out ‘Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina’. I wish she’d shut up too.
NINE
The night of the vase smashing marked the appearance of the first obvious rift in our little group. Until then we had all managed to sidestep any real arguments. Like children charged to be on our best behaviour at a birthday party, none of us wanted to ‘spoil things’ by making a fuss; and until then we had been careful to defuse any disagreements by backing down or making a joke. Unfortunately party manners tend to have a finite lifespan.