by Sandy Taylor
And those evenings, those January evenings when we walked home in the dark, I’ll never forget them. I won’t forget how Ralph held my hand or how he would stop when we reached a dark corner, and how he would press me back against a wall and tilt my face up towards his and kiss me. His face was cold and his hands were cold, but I was warm, I was burning up as he kissed me, and as the days wore on we got better at kissing, we were learning about each other, we were learning about desire.
I thought about him all the time; at work, at home, in bed. I imagined what it would be like to be married, to have a bed of our own, when we would be able to do more than kiss and do it as often as we wanted. I drove myself half mad thinking of how it would be to be in bed with Ralph. I think it was the same for him. I could feel it in the way he looked at me, and knowing how much he wanted me made me feel precious; it made me feel beautiful.
Mary still hadn’t told me about her special night with Elton. It was weeks ago and she still hadn't mentioned it, so I just blurted it out one day.
‘You haven’t told me about the night Elton’s mum went to the bingo.’
‘And I’m not going to,’ said Mary, ‘it was too embarrassing for words.’
Seeing the look on Mary’s face I knew better than to push it.
January turned into February. There was a Valentine’s dance at the local Youth Club and we all had tickets. I bought a card for Ralph, nothing flash, just a red heart on a white background and the words Be Mine on the front. Mary bought a big card for Elton with a cartoon of two cuddling puppies.
‘What do you think?’ she asked and I said I thought it was lovely but I couldn’t see Elton putting it up on his window ledge somehow.
We all went to the dance, everyone did. The Youth Club was just an old green tin hut in the middle of a field, but it had been decorated with hearts made out of crêpe paper and streamers and red balloons, fairy lights were strung across the stage and they twinkled in the darkened room, and as long as you didn’t look too closely it actually looked quite glamorous for once.
Ralph and I danced five dances in a row. We were really into rock and roll and he was a good dancer, but after that we were very hot.
‘Come outside to cool down,’ he said and Elton made a jeering noise and raised his glass to Ralph and said: ‘Good luck, mate!’ and Ralph laughed and scratched his ear and said: ‘Come on, Dottie, ignore him. He’s jealous.’
I couldn’t understand why Elton would be jealous when I knew Mary would have been out of the door with him in a flash if he’d asked her to step outside with him.
Ralph took my hand, and we walked through the room, out into the darkness. The air was icy, but it felt clean and it smelled of the sea. I leaned on the railings at the front of the club, and I took a few deep breaths and the next thing I knew Ralph’s hands were on my shoulder. He turned me round to face him and he kissed me and I kissed him back and his hands were on either side of my head, in my hair, and he was pressed up against me and perhaps I was a bit dizzy with the dancing. Perhaps it was because it was Valentine’s night, I don’t know. But that night I put my hands underneath his shirt and I felt his chest, I felt how strong and broad it was, how warm and different to mine. I put my hands around him and then I moved them to the front, to the button of his trousers. My heart was racing and I was scared but I knew what I wanted. I’d always told Mary that I wanted to save myself for the right time, for when I was married, but suddenly I didn’t care about all that, in fact, any morals I might have had about sex before marriage were about to fly out the window.
Ralph pulled gently away from me but held me close. His breathing was fast and although it was cold I could see beads of sweat on his forehead.
And then I asked him something that had been on my mind for a long time but had been too embarrassed to mention. ‘Have you ever done it before?’ I said.
‘Not properly,’ he said, breathing more easily. ‘Just a few fumbles in the dark. What about you, Dottie?’
‘The same,’ I said, ‘and always with the wrong boy.’
‘So let’s wait,’ he said, ‘let’s make it special, not here, not in the car park outside a grotty club. How will that sound when we tell the grandchildren?’
I laughed. I pretended I hadn’t noticed what he’d said about our future grandchildren. I pushed my hair back from my face.
‘God, Dottie, you’re so… so perfect!’ Ralph said. He took hold of both my hands, held them tight. ‘We can wait a bit longer, can’t we?’ he said. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’
I smiled up at him. He tucked his shirt back into his trousers and smoothed my hair, and when we both looked respectable again, we went back into the club.
Everything looked the same, the lights twinkled and the music was soft and romantic. I looked across at Elton and Mary, they had their arms around each other and Mary was smiling up at him. Everything looked exactly the same, but I suddenly had this terrible feeling of loss, as if it was all too perfect, as if I needed to remember everything before it all faded away.
Chapter Eighteen
That was the year that we all turned eighteen. Mary’s birthday was in February and mine was in June, and Ralph and Elton’s birthdays were so close together in March that they decided to have a joint party. They hired the Co-op hall where Rita had had her reception. The party was booked for the last Saturday in March. A long cold winter was beginning to soften and turn into spring, and there was a sense of anticipation in the air. It wasn’t just the primroses opening their little yellow faces in the park, or the birds singing in the garden, or the warmth in the air when we walked along the seafront. It was more than that. It was a feeling that we were all on the cusp of something: that something was about to happen, that our adult lives were about to start.
Mary and I were both looking forward to the party, but Mary especially.
‘I know, I just know, things are going to change between Elton and me,’ she said one evening when we were up in her bedroom.
I had to admit that things were better between them, but it was still pretty up and down.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah!’
She was standing, looking through the clothes that hung from hangers hooked over the picture rail. She turned and grinned at me.
‘I’m going to make sure I look the best I’ve ever looked at this party. I’m going to make all the boys want me, and when Elton sees that I’m the best girl there by miles, he'll fall completely and madly in love with me’
‘Okay,’ I said, trying not to feel hurt that Mary clearly thought she was going to look miles better than me too.
‘I’m going to need something new to wear,’ she said, ‘something classy. Something… tight-fitting and glamorous. Like a film star would wear.’
‘We could go shopping on Saturday,’ I said. ‘The new season’s fashions are coming into the shops. There are some lovely things around.’ I picked up a magazine and started to flick through the fashion pages.
‘And I need to get Elton a really special present, something that will show him that I understand him, that I know what he really wants. What do you think I should get him?’
‘I haven’t got a clue,’ I said.
‘What are you getting Ralph?’
‘Nothing much,’ I mumbled.
‘Go on. Tell me.’
I stared hard at the pages of the magazine. ‘I’ve bought him a watch.’
‘A watch! Wow!’ Mary made her eyes big and round and bounced down onto the bed. I felt a bit embarrassed now. I’d been so pleased with the present. It had cost me a week’s wages, but I knew Ralph would love it. Now I was worried that Mary would decide to buy Elton a watch too, and if she did, then Ralph would think we’d just teamed up as a pair to go shopping and that I hadn’t put any thought into the present. And I had put thought into it, lots of thought. ‘What sort of things does Elton like?’ I asked quickly to take Mary’s attention away from the watch.
She chewed on her na
il.
‘The only thing he’s really interested in is music.’
‘And women,’ I said, grinning.
Mary pushed me back onto the bed.
‘Not any more,’ she said, batting her eyelashes at me, ‘from now on I’m going to be the only girl in Elton Briggs’s life. I’m going to make sure of it. You just watch me, Dottie!’
I picked up Mary’s old battered teddy bear, it had seen better days and one of its eyes was missing. I turned it over in my hands but Mary snatched it off me and threw it into the corner of the room.
‘So what am I going to buy Elton for his birthday?’ she asked again.
‘What about a record?’
‘Too ordinary.’
‘Let’s go into town then, something might catch your eye.’
We had a lovely day trailing round the fashion shops in Brighton. In the last year a number of small boutiques had sprung up in the town. They were noisy and colourful and were named after their owners, who were called exotic names like Zita and Marlene. The shops stocked the same clothes that were in the London stores. They were expensive, but they were amazing and they were fun, not like the dull department stores where our mothers bought the clothes they didn’t make themselves.
Mary and I tried on miniskirts and maxi dresses. We draped ourselves in feathers and furs, we danced around in thigh-high boots and shimmied in front of the mirrors in spangly, geometric dresses in oranges and purples and greens. We posed and pouted and put on hats and laughed at one another until our stomachs hurt. In the end Mary brought an amazing yellow and black tunic dress. It was very short and sleeveless with a cute little collar and three big, shiny black buttons at the back. I didn’t buy anything. I’d spent all my money on Ralph’s watch, not that I minded.
Mary bought a pendant for Elton. It was a silver-plated plectrum on a black piece of cord. Mary said it was perfect and I thought so too. It was kind of cool. After that we called into Woolworths to get some eye shadow to match Mary’s dress and we saw Sally.
Mary showed her the dress and Sally was suitably impressed.
‘That’ll be perfect for Paris,’ she said.
Mary looked at me and then back to Sally.
‘Paris?’
Sally nodded. ‘Yep. The management team has decided they’re sending us all to Paris in the summer as a “thank you” for all the hard work we’ve put in over the last twelve months.’
‘What, Paris France? French Paris?’ Mary asked. ‘French Paris where Montmartre is?’
Sally laughed. ‘Yes, that’s the one!’
‘Oh my goodness!’ Mary’s eyes were wide and bright.
‘But how come?’ I asked. ‘Normally we just go out for a meal.’ Actually the previous summer we’d gone and played bingo. It had been really good fun and Mary had won half a crown. The Mecca hall seemed a long way from Paris.
‘Our store made more profit than any other in England last year,’ Sally said. ‘This is our reward. We’re going to go on a coach and stay in a proper hotel. We’ll need money for extras, but that’s all. There’s a brochure in the staff room.’
Mary was beyond excited ‘Can we have a look now?’ she said.
‘Of course you can.’
Mary and I ran to the back of the store and through the door that led up the back stairs to the staffroom. We poured ourselves a cup of tea from the urn, sat at a table and pored over the brochure. It was full of beautiful pictures of Paris, which it described as ‘the most romantic city in the world’.
‘Imagine that!’ said Mary. ‘The most romantic city in the world. This is probably going to be the single most exciting thing ever to happen to us in our whole lives! Apart from Elton and Ralph’s party of course.’ She turned over a page in the brochure. There was a picture of Montmartre. It was a big, white church on the very top of a hill and all around it were little cafes and bars and squares where artists painted and singers sang and dancers danced. ‘Look at that! That’s where I’m going to be one day,’ Mary said. ‘I’m going to be one of those artists painting at one of those easels. That’s going to be my life!’
Mary sat back in her chair and closed her eyes.
‘I can hardly believe it,’ she said. ‘I told you we were at the beginning of our lives and this just proves it. We’re going to go abroad, Dottie, abroad, overseas, to a different country! To the one single place I’ve always wanted to go to my whole life! Isn’t it the most exciting thing ever? I can hardly wait for us to get on that coach and drive out of Brighton. I wonder if we’re allowed to take guests. Do you think we will be? I could take Elton and you could take Ralph. Can you imagine that? We can climb the Eiffel Tower! You can borrow your brother’s camera and take pictures of me and I’ll take pictures of you and…’
I loved seeing Mary so happy.
She studied the map on the back page of the brochure.
‘This is where we will be going,’ she said, tracing the journey with her finger. ‘Coach to Newhaven then across the English Channel to Dieppe and then it will be Paris here we come! Ooh la la!’
She closed her eyes and I knew what she was thinking. She was imagining herself in her new dress, dancing through the streets of Paris with Elton at her side. She was thinking of her future, a future that would involve lots of travelling, lots of cities, lots of excitement and adventure.
In the staffroom at Woollies that afternoon, I looked at my friend’s blissfully happy face and felt something I had never felt before. I realised that we wanted different things. I had always been happy to go along with whatever Mary wanted. When we were little, we’d fitted nicely into our separate roles. She had always been the feisty girl who made up the exciting games, I was proud to be her friend and to do whatever it was she wanted me to do. I never had to use my imagination because I was always swept up in Mary’s. I’d never wanted to do anything other than what Mary wanted, because she was everything to me.
And now, now things were changing.
I was excited about Paris too, of course I was, although I’d never particularly wanted to go abroad. I didn’t see the point when I had everything I wanted here, at home. I would go to Paris with Mary and we would have a wonderful time, but Mary’s dreams were no longer my dreams because she was no longer everything to me. Now, I had a dream of my own to follow.
Mary’s Diary
Dear Diary,
It was a bloody disaster, I have never been so embarrassed in my whole life.
I don’t want to even talk about it. Not even to you.
Mary Pickles (wishing she could turn back the clock)
Aged eighteen.
Chapter Nineteen
Two days before Ralph and Elton’s party, I got ill. It started with a cold and then it went on to my chest and I was struggling to breathe. I hadn’t had an asthma attack for months and Mum was so worried she sent for the doctor.
‘Will she need to go into hospital, Doctor?’
I knew she was worried sick because she was twisting her pinny round and round her hand. ‘It’s only a cold, Mum,’ I said.
‘Is it, Doctor? Is it just a cold?’
‘You know that Dorothy always has to be aware that a cold can very often lead to an asthma attack, but if she stays in bed and rests she should be okay. I will call in again after evening surgery. If she gets worse and you are worried, then call an ambulance, but as I said she should be okay if she rests.’
‘Well you won’t be going to this party, Dottie,’ said Mum, plumping up my pillows. I felt like crying. I had been so looking forward to it, but I knew she was right – I was going nowhere.
Mary came round in the afternoon. She sat on the end of my bed. I stared at her blearily through my runny eyes.
‘You poor thing,’ she said.
‘I feel like a poor thing.’
‘Will you really not be well enough to go?’
‘Doctor’s orders,’ I said. ‘So as far as my Mum’s concerned, it’s set in concrete.’
‘Ralph’s going
to be gutted.’
‘I know he is. I feel really bad about it.’
‘It won’t be the same without you.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘You’ll be with Elton anyway.’
‘Yes, but his band’s going to be performing. I expect he’ll be on the stage most of the time.’
‘Well, you and Ralph will just have to look after each other, won’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ she said, making a face.
‘Stop making me feel guilty, Mary Pickles,’ I said croakily, although really I felt too ill to feel guilty.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Here, I’ve bought you something.’
She rummaged in a carrier bag and plonked a Jackie magazine down on the bed.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
Mary stood up and went across to the window; she seemed to be lost in thought. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this party,’ she said, suddenly turning round.
‘Why? I thought you had a good feeling about it.’
‘I did. But I haven’t heard from Elton all week.’
‘I shouldn’t worry about that. He’s probably busy planning it all. Ralph’s been pretty tied up with the arrangements too.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. Why? Do you think it’s something else? Has something actually happened?’
‘Elton never asked me to help. I’d have loved to help him get everything ready.’
‘But you’ve been at work.’
‘I know. But knowing Elton, the silence could be anything. It might be his way of saying he doesn’t want to go out with me anymore.’
‘Wouldn’t he just tell you if he didn’t want to go out with you anymore?’ ‘He’s not that brave. I usually find out by accident, when I see him with another girl.’
It was still beyond me why Mary put up with him. He kept hurting her and she kept going back for more.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said.