Do you want me waiting alone in the dark for two hours?
You can’t be vegetarian if you pour gravy all over your potatoes.
What about my hips though?
They’re dandelions from the lawn.
I could be abducted.
Don’t be silly, we mustn’t waste paper.
What’s vaginal?
The French eat them in salad.
I’d eat meat if I killed it myself.
Mum! What’s green and has got six legs and if it falls out of a tree kills you?
Should we tell her it doesn’t suit her? I mean, it would just be being kind.
They call it Piss-en-lit which means -
Did you kill this ratatouille yourself then?
I’ve missed the bus now anyway.
‘Wet the bed’. It’s actually a diuretic.
I don’t know, darling. Hasn’t it got something to do with a banana?
21
Broken voices
‘Where is Bernard?’ said Neville. ‘He has my knife. We were in the tool-shed making boats, and Susan came past the door. And Bernard dropped his boat and went after her taking my knife, the sharp one that cuts the keel. He is like a dangling wire, a broken bell-pull, always twangling.
VIRGINIA WOOLF, The Waves
There were 180 pupils in my year at school, girls and boys, thirteen or fourteen, all undergoing monstrous change. Some burst out of their seams while others erupted through their skin. Some slowed down into men and women overnight, and took on gravity. Others found that their circuitry came loose and while they were slowly being rewired, their hands and mouths did things that shouldn’t be seen or said as they blurted, stumbled and twitched. There were those for whom it was all ooze, blush, sweat and stink, and those who experienced such silence that even though they could see torment and confusion all around them, they prayed to be afflicted. One or two simply flowered.
Some boys’ voices squeaked, some croaked and veered, others descended gently and it could take weeks or months but then it was done, and they turned to us and spoke.
So will you
Do you want to
Y’know
If you
Will
Want
Go
Out
Go out
Go out with
So?
22
The other side of the air
when the innermost point in us stands outside, as the most practised distance, as the other side of the air …
RAINER MARIA RILKE, ‘To Music’
We were dancing on a Scottish hillside, a ring of teenagers who had known one another for maybe ten days. This was a dangerous dance, in which someone ended up in the middle and had to choose their next partner. Suddenly I was in the middle and everyone was nudging, giggling and whispering because there was the boy who had been kissing me and there was the girl he had been involved with a week before and there was the boy she had gone off with and there was the boy who had put his arm round me by the campfire on the first night and there was my friend the sister of the boy whom the girl had gone off with.
For six years, my parents sent us each summer to Forest School Camps where we learnt how to build a fire, use a knife, cook porridge, put up a tent in the rain, pack a rucksack, dubbin boots, walk all day in rain, live in mud, shit in a hole in the ground and play games in the forest at night. We smoked and drank within the limits of our meagre allowances and rural isolation. We barely washed and never brushed our hair. We also learnt folk songs and country dancing. An alternative outdoors-based school in the 1930s, FSC has persisted with its ethos intact and insisted on such responsibility and freedom that even the most cynical teenager unbent, used the lingo, played the games, sang and danced.
Hormones hit and, all of a sudden I wanted to belong, only not with the serious girls with their knee-socks and violins. I wanted to be desirable and bad, which in Essex at that time meant being a disco girl. I was on the edge of being accepted by this group and turned up on camp the summer I turned fourteen in a state of metamorphosis. My clothes were half hippy, half tart and my accent wavered depending on whom I was talking to. I was also on an intense course of medication for period pain which turned my brain and body to sponge, and I behaved like a sponge – absorbing the spillage of someone else’s drama. The boy who put his arm round me was good-looking and nice. The one who kissed me was not, but he was a disco boy. In this world of cheesecloth, denim and centre partings, here was a boy with spiky hair, a bomber jacket, bright tight shirts and loud-checked baggy trousers. He strutted, swore, smoked and spat continuously, and I was besotted. One night, we passed in the dark and he said he’d split up with his girl, swore, spat and kissed me. The next night we met again and kissed some more and when I asked for a cigarette he grabbed me as if about to throw me and ‘joked’ that he would give me all his cigarettes if I ‘dropped ’em’. I said no and he spat, laughed and walked off. The next night I let him kiss me again and the day after that he was back with his girl who sat on a log with her cohorts, queenly and mocking, and taunted me as I queued for my porridge. The boy she’d taken up with meantime, now rejected, came and sat next to me and for a morning we went through the motions of preferring each other to either of them.
My head ached, my body bloated and as I became more anxious, more sure that I was being scorned, I grew louder. After two years of being frightened, I had become angry and found that the best way to get people to leave me alone was to scare. At school, I could be tough and remote; I knew where I was. Where was I now? In despair, I stepped away from myself and watched this confused uncontrollable girl break down and sob and shout, unable to say why because she didn’t know. In disgust, I abandoned her. People were kind but exasperated. She was pathetic and annoying, and so childish that even those her own age felt they had permission to offer criticism and advice. ‘You could be alright you know, if you …’ ‘I’d like you if you didn’t …’ ‘Why do you wear that?’ I wanted to be with them, not her, so stayed away for the duration.
On camp, dancing was the chance for everything whispered to be enacted. It could be as fraught with political implication as an Elizabethan pavane. In two weeks, a court had been established and hostilities declared. There had been hostages, casualties, spies and traitors, and now there was détente. The camp stood in a ring, hand in hand, and everyone understood and was glad not to be the girl in the middle.
I watched her in that ring. She was aware of the whispering and what it meant, and she knew that the disco boy pouting and winking and miming ‘Me, choose me,’ was doing so in order to amuse his gang. She knew she had been cast in their drama, not even cast – she was less character than prop. In the end, she did what she was being told to do, and chose him and he laughed and spat and twirled her round, all the time grinning and winking at his girl.
23
The electrified self
The dancing itself begs description. Every figure lasts about an hour, and the ladies bounce up and down the middle with a degree of spirit which is quite indescribable. As to the gentlemen … They whirl their partners round, nothing loath, scrambling up and falling and embracing and knocking up against the other couples until they are fairly tired out and can move no longer. The same scene is repeated again and again, slightly varied, by an occasional row, until a late hour at night. And a great many clerks and apprentices find themselves next morning with aching heads, empty pockets, damaged hats, and a very imperfect recollection of how it was they did not get home.
CHARLES DICKENS, ‘Country Fair Dance’
I was becoming a girl as instructed by girls but I knew I wasn’t a real girl, at least not of this kind. I wanted to be a disco girl like Tina, whose every aspect conformed to some golden section of girldom: her height relative to her shape, her prettiness relative to her smartness, her niceness relative to her toughness. Tina offered certainties. She issued instructions on how to dance, who to like and what to wear. Clothes had to be
pressed, shoes polished, bodies scrubbed, shaved, creamed and deodorised. Just as her mother kept the house fanatically clean, so Tina attended to herself. Each morning, her face would be retuned – the brightness turned down, the colour turned up – and she would stride into school, her hips and breasts armoured, her hair a winged blonde helmet. I wanted this shell, which she used to attract or deflect at will. To me, she was wise and ruthless, a goddess of war.
What did my family make of the painted, squawking girl I suddenly became? Nothing. They behaved as if all I’d done was change the side of my parting or swapped the laces in my shoes, certainly nothing worth remarking. I could have come to table wearing a diving suit and doubt anyone would have said more than ‘Pass the potatoes’. I believed I had found what I wanted to be. They knew it would pass.
I teetered on platform-wedge shoes, and a pencil skirt curtailed my stride. How these clothes made us walk was how they made us dance. We minced, jerked and shuffled; shoulders hunched, elbows tucked in. We danced in a circle or in line, and performed routines with the zeal of synchronised swimmers. The only release we had was in the music, which was just what Tina would not permit us to be – deadly serious and light-hearted.
The disco evening began with a whole other evening’s worth of getting ready. Three or four girls would congregate in someone’s bedroom and become hysterical. They milled about in a vortex of skirts, tops, shoes, tights, mascara, foundation, eyeliner, nail polish … The air was weighed down by our perfumes, which claimed to smell of melon or apple or peach. They were as unripe as we were. We would share out face packs, which set in a yellow or green gelatinous mask. I peeled mine off too roughly and it left my skin bright pink, my spots inflamed. Legs and armpits were inspected for any hair that had missed the razor, eyebrows scrutinised. Make-up was all about the eyes, three shades plus liner, three coats of mascara. Hair was blown dry and tonged into flicks then lacquered to toughness with extra-hold hairspray that smelt like a bag of cheap sweets. We were drawn together in the whirl of preparation and remained so. We strode down the street three abreast, squeezed on to the bus seat, walked into the hall arms linked. We danced, raised our glasses and lit our cigarettes together; we shrieked, pointed, whispered and giggled as one.
These discos took place in village halls – raised, wooden, low-roofed constructions designed for council meetings and jumble sales. They were strip-lit rooms whose windows were jammed shut, and they smelt of cedar floor polish, wet wool, disinfectant and gravy. There would be a stage, where the DJ set up, and a kitchen from where soft drinks would be sold in paper cups. We bought the orange squash and topped it up with vodka from our handbags, or emptied the cup and filled it with cider. Drinking wasn’t as imperative at a disco as it was at a party. There was too much to do.
Safely in place in our circles and lines, under cover of maximum volume, within the bounds of our pencil skirts, we could be fierce. Imagine ten girls in four-inch wedge heels stomping in time to War’s ‘Me and Baby Brother’ – hop, skip, jump, CRASH … For me, disco was a new chemistry, geometry, architecture and physics. The village and its landscape were locked in place, and I within them, until the bass beat opened up the earth, the brass section blew off the roof and you had to move, everything had to start moving and, to quote Brass Construction, ‘Keep on Movin’’.
The DJs were not personalities. They were doing a job and gave us what we expected and asked for. They set up their decks, lined up their boxes of records, said little, and produced the same sequence every time.
The familiar, friendly introduction – Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’.
The full-on funk once the girls had overcome their nerves – K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes, Earth Wind & Fire.
Ska to persuade some of the boys to join them – ‘Johnny Reggae’, ‘Al Capone’.
A break for novelty records so the boys who couldn’t dance could take over the floor and lurch about – ‘Laughing Gnome’, ‘The Wurzel Song’.
Advanced – David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ or ‘Golden Years’, so that the serious dancers didn’t get bored.
Light new dance with a restricted beat which the boys could jig about to, bringing them into contact – Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony’s ‘Hustle’.
Preparation for the slow dance – ‘Float On’ by The Floaters.
Something that could be a slow dance, or not – The Commodores’ ‘Sunday Morning’.
The actual slow dance – Chicago’s ‘If You Leave Me Now’.
Could be a slow dance or something for the loners in the corner – The Moody Blues’ ‘Nights in White Satin’.
Recovery – Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give It Up’.
Sing along and go home smiling – Jeff Beck’s ‘Hi-Ho Silver Lining’.
If I had not kissed anyone, or danced with anyone, or had a reason to cry, the music made me feel as if I had gone through all that anyway. Because the music was charged and we were no more singular than iron filings, no less easily moved as the music attracted and repelled, organised and disturbed and then let us into the night, clusters of emotion ready to dissolve into sleep.
24
The slow dance
Only on horseback and in the mazurka was Denisov’s short stature not noticeable and he looked the dashing fellow he felt himself to be.
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace
As a student, whenever I came home I would read the births, marriages and deaths columns of the local paper. There was always a whole page of weddings, with photographs. The brides were often taller and bigger than the grooms, but maybe that was because they were in frothy white with their hair up, festooned with flowers and lace whereas the men wore morning suits of newsprint grey, and still favoured lank shoulder-length cuts. They always struck the same pose and had the same expression, as if copying the figures on top of their cake. ‘Turn towards each other,’ the photographer would have commanded, ‘but look at the camera. And smile! It’s your wedding day remember? Hold hands, no, not like that …’ They might be seventeen or eighteen and were learning how a husband and wife should stand.
I always found people I knew, not just in those columns but among the small ads as well. Names caught my eye because they were those of the slow dancers. Barry Wise now advertised reproduction antiques, Martin Love announced that he was taking over his father’s scrap-metal yard and little Danny English had passed his catering qualifications and was rejigging the menu at the Lion and Lamb. Andy Bellman had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly, Kevin Birleigh was caught shoplifting women’s underwear and Terry Elm had been killed while playing an old game – driving at night with no lights across a junction. I would find the names of the slow dancers in the cemeteries too – illness and accident and those who had done what they could to break out of a quiet life.
At fourteen I had even less in common with these boys than with the disco gang I was working so hard to be part of. We didn’t have anything to say and when we passed in the street or at school, they smirked and I blushed. But I fell in love at the village-hall discos because they could dance. Unlike the clever excruciated boys who were my friends, they knew how to be boys.
Although girls talked about boys, we danced for ourselves and each other. Boys loomed out of the shadows during the opening bars of the first slow dance, which might be the Chi-Lites’ ‘Have You Seen Her?’ with its repeated ponderous intro acting as subtitles to what passed between us and the boys who were crossing the floor: ‘Aaaaaah! … Hhhhmmmm …’ We simpered and wilted – there would be no stamping or clapping now.
The girls tried to look both occupied and available – whispering but opening out from their knots and circles. As a boy crossed the floor, he grew either taller or smaller. He was either desirable or not. It had nothing to do with personality and not much to do with the detail of his looks.
If the wrong boy’s hands were parked on the wrong girl’s lower back, he would stand rigidly apart and commence to manoeuvre her round
in a circle regardless of tempo. Or he would push his luck, grab her bottom and pull her in, and she would jerk away and dance with her hands on his shoulders, keeping him back. They gazed at the floor between their feet or over one another’s shoulders at their friends but did not give up – at least they were dancing.
The right boy with the right girl would not have to think about how to approach the dance. It just happened, you just were, and all the thoughts you’d had about this moment, how you intended to be or intended him to be, were gone. You didn’t think at all because this wasn’t dancing but being moved, and you felt the heat and pressure of his body against you and the heat and pressure inside you, another kind of electrification that was not about music at all.
25
As if in space
Ourselves in the tune as if in space …
WALLACE STEVENS, ‘The Man With the Blue Guitar’
The boys we really wanted to dance with were not those who sat next to us at school but the older ones, who had jobs and behaved like men. Most left school at fifteen to follow their fathers onto farms and into factories, or to take their place in the family firm of roofers, scrap-metal dealers or greengrocers. They were almost the last apprentices, training as printers, butchers and joiners. Like Wheelwright, Burgess and Cooper, these trades were also local surnames; thirty years on, they seem almost as quaint.
The Importance of Music to Girls Page 7