by Joanna Nadin
‘What, as opposed to the beauty pageant that you parade in front of me?’ I poke the penne around in the slop of oily sauce.
‘That’s not fair,’ you protest. ‘Jermaine was positively . . . normal.’
‘He didn’t believe in vegetables,’ I remind you. ‘And he had tattoos.’
‘Tattoos are art,’ you insist, pushing your plate away untouched. ‘And anyway, he’s long gone.’
I shrug, conceding the point. Because Jermaine is now no more than a forwarding address, a relationship that ended – disappointingly for the neighbours, who had at first complained vehemently but had later grown stoically accustomed to his late-night revving of engines and the smell of burning brake fluid – with a whimper rather than a bang. One morning you got up, packed his tools into a cardboard crisp box and his few clean clothes into the gym bag he’d swapped for a toaster down the Lizzie, gave him fifty pounds and a kiss and said it’d been an experience, but it was time, now. Since then, your bedroom has been empty; the only males to cross our threshold the reluctantly summoned fridge-repair man, and David, who fixes everything else. Though as far as I know, or want to consider, neither of them have been further than mild flirtation and the foot of the stairs.
But about Jimmy, you are wrong. It’s not the eye, although I love it for its difference, for the story I weave about its occurrence – a beating from a policeman on a picket line, a blinding punch that leaves him disfigured but a hero – it’s everything else. The wide smile that turns his face from glowering threat to easy Cheshire Cat; his absurd yet impeccable sense of dress that sees him defying the sixth-form uniform of Brideshead hair and Bono boots to come to school in a James Dean jacket and rockabilly quiff, a paisley waistcoat and pocket kerchief, a dead man’s demob suit.
‘He is so totally gay,’ Harry informs me with authority as he walks into the common room with his eyes ringed in Rimmel kohl.
‘He is so not,’ I retort, watching him slide down into a stained armchair, my eyes taking in every inch of studied rebellion, my head playing out an elaborate fantasy in which he turns to me and winks, then later pulls me into a doorway behind the science block, pushes me against the cream-glossed wall and kisses me until I come – a reaction I have yet to discover is as improbable as the story itself.
‘God, you are so bloody obvious. Anyway – ’ Harry prepares to deliver the final damnation – ‘Tom says he’s a total twat.’
I bristle, feeling my first flush of ardour dampen, the cine-show of us in an orgasmic yet fully clothed clinch freeze-framed in my head. And then I glimpse something else – the chance to prove Harry wrong, to prove Tom wrong – and I vow to take it. But within weeks what begins as a fuck-off to my best friend and the boy I love grows into an obsession all of its own.
I dig around for details, carefully, casually, as if scuffing my shoes through stones. I find out from a girl called Amanda, otherwise known as Drip, that he once drank twenty-three glasses of water at his primary school dinner table for a bet, before he threw them back up into the copper jug they came from.
I find out from Julia Shelton, who is widely rumoured to have a third nipple, that he has snogged at least seven sixth-formers, and gone further with two, at the same scout-hut party, but that he is still, thrillingly, a virgin.
And I find out from his slack-jawed, pock-skinned sidekick Gary Reeves that he lives up the estate on Hunters Way, the youngest of five McGowans – three girls with shamrock-shaped names – Sinéad and Siobhán and Orla – and another boy – Brendan – with a dodgy Ford and an arrest record. In my head I imagine an Irish version of the von Trapps, all ‘Danny Boy’ and jigs and reels. Later I will find out that his mother died in childbirth to be replaced three months later by the grim-faced Deirdre, mother to the three girls, and bogey figure to everyone else: a fact – a tragic past – that only makes me want him more. But by June, the record of him not acknowledging my existence stands at an appalling two hundred and fifty-three days, and something, I decide, has to be done.
He drinks in the Duke, a free house favoured by sixth-formers, Peter Pans, and a mildly retarded man called Billy Bob who lets kids buy him half pints of brown ale in return for inept Fats Domino renditions and unconvincing card tricks. And you, of course, until I started going out, and you started staying in. It sits lumpenly at the top of the high street, all tarnished horse brasses, sticky carpet and as much mildew as graffiti in the toilets. And yet it still weaves a kind of magic, conjured from cheap spirits, cigarette smoke and desperation. Inside the Duke, anything might happen, and frequently does. The Duke is where Tina Fraser dumped a cheating Dean Auger, where Harry first kissed Lee Sweet while the jukebox played Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, where Tom told us both about Della, and I had to close my mouth in case the vodka he’d bought me had loosened my tongue.
And so I set the Duke for the scene of my revenge and triumph. All I need to do is persuade Harry, for whom I have been perpetual wing-woman, to do a favour in return for me.
‘Oh God, really?’ She pulls a face. ‘But Ricky wants to go to Stortford.’
Stortford is a gleaming Mecca of a town compared to Walden, a land of provincial promise with purpose-built pubs and a nightclub called Cats’. And though Ricky is, to my mind, a prick of a boy, he drives a Toyota, which is the Essex escape car equivalent of a limo or a Mustang, at least to Harry.
‘Just for a bit,’ I beg. ‘If Tina’s in there you don’t even have to stay.’
‘It’s a waste of time,’ she says. ‘He fancies some girl from Friends’ School. Daisy something.’
‘Fairs,’ I finish. ‘And everyone fancies her.’
Harry’s face tautens, a mirror of her mother. ‘Ricky doesn’t.’
He hasn’t met her, I want to say. But I want this. I need this. And besides, she’s probably right. ‘Please?’ I try.
She groans. ‘Fine. But only for an hour. And you’re paying.’
‘Fine,’ I say.
But it is so much more than fine. For with this deal I have struck a match, and I can hear the crackle and spit, smell the sulphur as I hold it out to the touchpaper of a small-town Saturday night.
It takes me two hours and eleven costume changes to get ready, and by the time I finish I have sweated off two attempts at Sixties eyeliner and driven Harry to new levels of boredom and derision.
‘God, Di, he’s not going to give a shit which bra you wear,’ she moans. ‘It’s not like he’s going to go near it anyway.’
‘He might.’
‘Well, if he does, he’s hardly going to change his mind just because you picked black over navy. It’s got tits in, end of.’ She takes a drag on her Marlboro Light and blows the evidence out of the window, not that you’d care. ‘Double Ds, too,’ she adds. ‘He’ll think it’s fucking Christmas.’
‘What if he doesn’t like big ones?’
‘All men like big ones. As soon as I’m rich I’m getting mine done. So think of the fortune you’ve saved. And hurry up. I’m gasping for a gin.’
I stare at the me in the mirror. This is my Pygmalion moment, my ugly-duckling-turned-swan metamorphosis that I have longed for ever since I first opened that battered Ladybird Cinderella and saw her go from rags to riches in the wave of a wand and the turn of a single page. But transformation is not so slick in real life, not so easy to pull off. I am uneasy in this skin, it itches, and I find myself yanking at the skirt hem to cover up more thigh, hauling up my straps to hide my cleavage. I’m convincing no one, I think. Not even myself.
But I am wrong; have, not for the first time, done myself down. Because you, it seems, are mesmerized.
‘About bloody time,’ you crow as I descend the stairs and drift into your eyeline on the chaise longue. You wave a finger in a vague circle. ‘Go on, then, give us a twirl.’
I shufflingly oblige, turning leadenly as you inspect the hair half up (bed hair, Harry said, so he thinks about sex), the top pulled down, the skirt short – too short, I think.
‘Har
ry did it,’ I say quickly, as if this will lessen the incongruity.
‘Then Harry deserves a bloody medal,’ you say. ‘Or a double vodka, at least.’ You fumble on the floor for your handbag, tipping over an almost empty glass of red and losing your place in a book on Man Ray. ‘I thought you were welded into those shapeless fucking T-shirts,’ you continue.
My armour, I think. To cover up the big girl that used to be under there. Because the puppy fat has finally slipped away – not down to time, as you claimed it would, but thanks to the pressure of A levels, and an F-plan guide pushed into my hands by Angela. ‘I’m not saying you’re big,’ she said. ‘But I know what it’s like. That’s all.’
So surprised was I at this admission of less-than-perfection, at this connection to me, that I felt I had to follow it to the letter, even when you complained about the smell of the lentils, the smell of me. And it worked, or almost. Because a ghost body still clings to me like a caul, hangs like an obese aura. So that when I picture myself in my head, even being generous, I am an ungainly hourglass, and am then surprised when the mirror tells me a different story. When you tell me a different story.
‘You’ve got a lovely body,’ you say. ‘You should show it off more.’
‘That’s what I keep telling her,’ Harry agrees. ‘But she never listens.’
‘You said I was Rubenesque,’ I protest.
‘That was Tom, not me, and anyway it was a fucking compliment.’ Harry is still experimenting with swearing in front of you and I can feel her need for approval as keenly as my own.
‘It is,’ you say simply. ‘Though you’re more Rossetti now. All hair and tits and tragedy. Now go on. Bugger off.’ You hand me a tenner and dismiss us with a wave.
‘You could come,’ Harry suggests then. ‘Couldn’t she?’
‘I . . .’ But I can’t think of an excuse that won’t insult you and so instead have to wait agonizingly while you weigh this offer up. For a terrible moment I think you’re going to say yes. That you will march into the Duke, hold court, capture Jimmy’s attention, and probably heart, while I shrink into the fading flock wallpaper.
But for once you read my mind, can see inside my head to the fear and self-loathing, and sheer need for this to work. ‘No,’ you say. ‘You go. Go find whoever it is you’re doing this for. Show him what he’s been missing.’
I should tell you that I’m not doing it for a boy. I’m doing it for me.
But we all know that would be a lie. So instead I take the money and run.
The pub is heaving. Around the jukebox a cluster of upper-sixth boys try to outdo each other with their obscure musical taste, cueing up ‘Crystal Chandeliers’, ‘Blueberry Hill’, and Bananarama in a nod to irony that reveals a lack of understanding of the appeal of girl bands as well as of comedic convention. Behind the bar Bobby Norris pulls pints, passes over packets of peanuts, undercharges underage drinkers by a matter of pounds that will eventually see him sacked and working in the Waitrose warehouse for the next twenty years.
And there, sitting at the coveted window table, the still, shining centre of this whirligig ride, is Jimmy McGowan, brow furrowed, finger pointed accusingly at Gary Reeves as he extols the virtues of communism.
‘What do you want?’ Harry asks, shouting over Charley Pride and the high-spirited hubbub of who saw who do what and where.
‘Huh?’ I am still watching Jimmy.
‘For fuck’s sake, Di. Drink?’
‘Uh. Coke?’ I try.
‘God,’ she says. ‘At least put a rum in it.’
‘But . . .’ I look over at Bobby behind the bar. ‘Will you get served?’
‘Jesus. He’s been trying to get into my knickers for two years,’ she sneers. ‘He’s hardly going to card me. Besides, I look at least twenty-one.’
I take her in. She’s not exaggerating.
‘OK,’ I concede. ‘But not rum. Vodka. And grapefruit,’ I add. As if this added sophistication and contrariness will add years to me, gild me with magic that will trap Jimmy in its glow.
‘Freak,’ Harry mutters, but holds out her hand anyway. I hand over your tenner and watch as she heads to the bar, leaving me to squeeze into the old church pew that does for a seat at the top table.
‘Do you mind?’ I ask.
Gary glances over and shrugs a dismissive whatever, not even bothering to make eye contact. But Jimmy, Jimmy looks at me. I mean really looks: his gaze holding mine then lowering to assess all this work that was done for him, for this very moment.
He looks up again. ‘Free country,’ he says. ‘Or so they claim.’
I see my opening. ‘Fucking Thatcher,’ I say as I drop into the seat, as I pray he takes the bait.
He nods. And bites. ‘Too right,’ he says.
By the time Harry gets back from the bar we have sacked the cabinet, staged a coup, and called a snap general election, a repeat of last week’s that will see Kinnock sail to an easy victory this time.
‘God, not politics,’ she exclaims as she clatters the drinks down, budges me up. ‘Aren’t you bored of it by now?’
Her arrival brings with it a seed of doubt, the always-there fear that she will upstage me, outshine me, steal my thunder and thus this boy. But for Jimmy, Harry’s political ambivalence far outweighs her skinny legs and social graces, and he turns straight back to me and the problem of South Africa, so that after just two gin and slimlines, she says she has to go.
‘Come on, drink up,’ she instructs.
I feel disappointment wash through me, diluting the vodka and, with it, my conviction that this – me and Jimmy – will happen. ‘I—’
‘Is she your keeper?’ Jimmy interrupts.
I start. ‘No. But—’
‘So stay.’
Harry is fuming. ‘Di?’ she snaps, stopping just short of stamping her feet.
I look at her, but all I can see, feel, is Jimmy’s eyes on me. ‘Go,’ I say.
She stares back, daring me to repeat that. I dare. ‘Go,’ I say again.
‘Fine,’ she says finally. ‘I’ll call for you in the morning then, shall I?’
‘If she makes it home,’ Jimmy swaggers.
Harry shoots him a look.
He holds up his hands. ‘Joke. We can walk her home.’ He nudges Gary. ‘Can’t we?’
Gary shrugs again, indifferent. But I don’t care what he thinks, anyway. And nor, it seems, does Jimmy.
Because three hours later he does walk me home. Alone.
He doesn’t ask to come in and I don’t offer.
He doesn’t cup his hand around my face and lower his lips to mine.
He doesn’t tell me he misses me already, the minute he has to go.
But three weeks later he pulls me into the bathroom at Fiona Lambert’s eighteenth and pushes his tongue into my mouth and his hand into the wide cup of my bra. And as he groans at the feel of my nipple under his fingers, as I taste cigarettes and Doublemint and victory, I fall swiftly and stupidly in love.
And so engrossed am I, so joyous, that I fail to see that you have too.
The Big House
September 1987
Of course I can see them now – the telltale tropes and traits, the little giveaways. Maybe if I’d been less self-absorbed, or less absorbed in Jimmy, I would have wondered why you’d grown your hair into a neat Brooks bob, why you’d taken out the nose ring, why you’d taken to painting insipid watercolours standing at the attic window, hours idled away scanning the hawthorn-hedged landscape that I so adored, and you, for so long, railed against. Instead I put this down to timid settlement, cautious satisfaction. You’d grown up, I thought, grown out of childish things, those endless adolescent costume changes as you tried to find a life that might stick. More fool me for not seeing that this was just another turn on the carousel.
Maybe, though, I didn’t want to see.
Because I am happy, in this humdrum town. Cannot imagine myself anywhere but these hugger-mugger streets of coloured cottages and clapboardi
ng, clinging to the hills as stubborn and enduring as the amber-stamened crocuses that appear each spring: on the common, in the playing fields, in our own back garden, pale and etiolated underneath a canopy of dark browns and greens. After eleven years, the Narnia I had imagined over the wall has solidified into bricks and mortar that feel as much my home as our gingerbread house, even with Hansel a hundred and more miles away. Harry and I leave the gate unlocked and largely ajar, slipping backwards and forwards seamlessly between two worlds, our lives tangled, melded. We take food from each other’s fridges, sleep in each other’s beds, swap clothes as easily as secrets. As easily as parents: Harry slipping into your bedroom to borrow ballgowns and cadge cigarettes; me making mental notes for my meticulously planned future as Angela shows me how to bake butterfly cakes and bottle fruit, how to sew on buttons, how best to prevent wrinkles by never smoking and smiling only when necessary – the only sliver of advice I fail to heed. And David? David we share, don’t we? He traverses the portal as easily as us girls, playing father to all of us – taxi driver, rescuer from late-night parties, mender of broken things.
Life was sweet, or so we thought.
But we were fooling ourselves, weren’t we, Edie? Nothing about our existence was fixed, dependable. It was a game: a domino run or a house of cards; everything balanced so precariously, so delicately. One flap of a butterfly’s wings, one change in circumstance, one careless mistake and it would begin to topple. And who was it stacked it all?
You, of course, Edie.
I find out about the house by accident, sitting at the kitchen table at the Lodge, making a shopping list for Harry’s eighteenth – an official one, anyway, my looped handwriting listing crisps, Coke (the real kind, not own brand), cheese and biscuits – half child’s tea party, half the cocktail sophistication we imagine we exude. The alcohol will come later, bought last-minute from Costcutter on the Cromwell estate, an entire square mile which has Here be dragons stamped over it on Angela’s mental map, guaranteeing that none of her acquaintances will be lurking behind a stack of cat food eager to report back.