by Bruno Noble
‘And black,’ I felt compelled to say, and immediately wished I hadn’t as Takahiro looked at me, looked at me properly, searchingly, as though seeing me for the first time; which perhaps he was. ‘The witches are all in black, the soldiers and other men are dressed mainly in black and the minimalist stage is black.’
‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ Takahiro assented. ‘There’s a lot of darkness but that, to me at least, serves to reinforce the impression of a monochrome world; one I didn’t have on reading the play. Besides, having actors dressed in black as well as the kurogos’ – the clearly visible stagehands – ‘is confusing; but I can see that that may be considered to concentrate the psychological action on Macbeth himself.’ Takahiro stopped there and we all looked into our cups.
From that day on, when Takahiro and I bumped into each other, we would wave and exchange quick konnichiwas and brief, nervous bows. In the sixth-form room, we chatted with increasing familiarity once the ice had been broken by his first, ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ Takahiro had the ability to make what one said seem interesting and profound and to make one feel clever, as though one had something of value to say. In contrast to most of our countrymen, he maintained eye contact when speaking and never interrupted with chirrups of encouragement. Believing that he was more interested in what I thought – in the concepts that I expressed – than in me, I was flattered by the intellectual attention and by his frequent lapses into English. He evidently relished speaking it in complicity with the only pupil who could hold her own with him, and I delighted in the pressure I felt to weigh my words carefully with him.
The stress all school-leavers were under at the end of that final term, to exchange addresses and telephone numbers with fellow pupils they hoped to stay in touch with, was absent in my and Takahiro’s case: he was going to study English at the same university as me.
Sharon
I immediately liked attending the secretarial college.
For a start, I was commuting into central London, with the tide rather than against it, and I felt quite a grown-up, as though it were a rite of passage from child- to adulthood. I delighted in being allowed to wear Wanda’s business suits, blouses and skirts. I learnt to do my blouse up when I had a seat, so that commuting men who stood in the aisles couldn’t peer down my cleavage, and to stand by the doors rather than in the aisles when I wore skirts and didn’t get a seat. There was a quality to being ogled by adult men that was different from being lusted after by teenagers.
The thing I missed the most about school was the acting, but this, the commuting into central London, was the real thing, the opportunity for me to act the young adult, the commuter. With every journey I took I played the role differently, depending on my dress, on my mood and on who was in the carriage around me.
I needed formation, a persona, opinions, so I bought different newspapers on the way to college in the mornings that not only gave me something to hide behind but also political and social views and perspectives. But I found them confusing and, to tell the truth, boring. I couldn’t keep up with the disparity of views between the left and the right wings on the battles between the unions and the government and on AIDS, famine, market crashes and US foreign policy. I couldn’t help but agree with every leader I read and every opinion voiced and eventually had to admit that my newspaper experiment was not delivering the new, adult personality I sought. Defeated, I read fashion magazines.
And then there were the girls, my college colleagues, teenagers and twenty-somethings looking for a fillip in life. We were ripe for reinvention; we could leave our short lives’ baggage, reputations and old school uniforms at the door and either disguise or reveal ourselves in make-up, in new clothes, accents and hairstyles. Hanging over us, I detected a thin, grey cloud of academic or social failure – after all, we were the girls who hadn’t gone on to finish a formal formation, alike in that we were caught between a higher education that we had been deemed incapable of and full-time employment in the service of others. After a while, though, I came to realise that this cloud hung over me only, that most of the others who tugged skirts as they sat and removed pens and pencils from their cases at 9.30 every morning were pleased with their achievements in having reached this point in preparation for the workplace. Emboldened, I decided to be like them – to no longer, when asked what I was doing, mumble defensively that I was attending secretarial college; to take pride in the course and in myself for taking it, and my cloud drifted away to leave clear blue skies.
To my surprise, perhaps because of the absence of boys, there wasn’t the bitchiness among us that there had sometimes been among the girls at school; we were supportive of each other, tender and warm on the whole, even though one or two of the girls preferred their privacy and kept their distance. We fell into loose cliques, broadly defined by our commute – who, once college finished for the day, walked to which station or bus stop – and by our other commitments in terms of family, boyfriends and even, in the case of a couple of girls, babies.
And then there was the course itself that, I realised, I had signed up for with no expectations and that, maybe for that very reason, I found myself enjoying. We were taught on the second floor of our liftless school building, amid the clang of an old heating system, the hum of traffic on the West Cromwell Road and the squeaking and groaning of a post-war conversion of two now-conjoined residential apartments yet to settle. We were taught to type, to write in shorthand, to take dictation, to manage diaries, to make and receive telephone calls, to format and write letters and envelopes, to assist in preparing presentations, to organise meetings, take minutes, book restaurants and travel, to manage expenses and – most exciting as far as I was concerned – to maintain a ledger. I signed up for extra classes on the rudiments of accountancy, of book-keeping, and I stood out for my head for numbers: I didn’t so much love numbers as was loved by them. Everything fell into place for me as far as they were concerned; even though I didn’t really understand the meaning of assets and of liabilities, of the advanced principles of VAT and of book-cost accounting, even though I found the principles behind them tedious, my numbers somehow always ended up in the correct column and added up as they should. I would talk to Wanda most evenings after work and amuse her with stories of my new friends, sharing my day with her in a way I never had with Mum or Dad. An accountant herself, she was interested to follow what I referred to as my numbers work and exclaimed, after dinner one night, ‘Sharon! You have such a gift! You should work in a bank.’
I settled into a routine that was only punctuated by Mum’s visits. At times, Dad and Seamus would take us out for pizza and, at others, Wanda cooked dinner for us. I went out with my new secretarial friends on a Thursday or Friday night for a drink or dinner and a nightclub if we were feeling flush. There were nights in with Wanda watching wildlife documentaries and every week an evening or two on my own, when Wanda worked nights.
It occurred to me that Mum and Wanda had reversed roles; Mum now felt like my visiting aunt. She made a better aunt than a mum. She – and Dad – felt guilty, I knew, but they were adept at putting their guilt to one side and developing a relationship with me that was more adult. For so long the black outline of a girl in Seamus’s old colouring-in books, I looked in at myself with a vested curiosity as my parents finally, albeit unknowingly, picked up colouring pencils and began to colour me in, from the feet up and ever so slowly. Mum asked me questions about college, about the course, my new friends and living with Wanda. The last was difficult to answer, as I didn’t want her to feel that Aunt Wanda had replaced her.
‘So how often does Wanda work late then?’ We were sitting in front of the TV with the sound down low.
‘Once or twice a week.’
‘What do you do then?’
‘Nothing. Cook or bake. Sometimes I’m out with friends.’
‘Do you ever come home together?’
‘I’m normally back before her.’
‘So where does she work exactly?’
‘Here and there. I think she does the books for small businesses.’
‘Yes, but since when does an accountant work nights?’
I shrugged. It had never occurred to me to ask that question.
Mum extended her arm to give my elbow a nudge. ‘Has she got a boyfriend?’
‘No! Not that I know of.’
‘Come on, you can tell me if Wanda has a boyfriend.’
‘Mum! Actually, we were wondering if you had.’
‘Me?’ She shook her head. ‘Find out where she works when she’s out late at night. I’d be interested to know.’
‘Well, you could ask her yourself,’ I said to Mum boldly.
‘Yes, I suppose I could,’ she said quietly, her eyes on the television and one hand on my arm. Animals gathered around a watering hole. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ she added, still quietly.
‘Me? No.’ I couldn’t help but blush. Another, unspoken question hung between us. ‘I haven’t been out with any boys, Mum. My friends and I, we go to clubs and such but, you know, it’s just dancing and that. Just fun.’
‘Sure,’ said Mum.
*
Fun. That’s what Gavina Belchamber, Sarah Henn, Monica Massit and I decided we wanted out of life. We carried no histories. We had no edge: we were warm, loving and fun-loving. After college, we four would make our way to Earls Court tube where Gavina and I would head south to Wimbledon and Sarah and Monica west to Ealing. That is, when we weren’t heading east to Gloucester Road tube and on to London’s West End. On those evenings, we swaggered arm in arm in knee-length boots and above-the-knee skirts, unbuttoned or low-cut blouses, glass bead necklaces and second-hand sheepskin or brocaded jackets or coats. And hair, lots of hair, piled high or left undone, and mascara and lipstick and sweet-tasting anticipation. At such moments, my friends and I poured out of and into each other, indiscriminately, I became them and they me, we were an intermingling of personae, me never feeling so much myself as when feeling I was someone else. Happily and loudly we strode, taking up the width of the pavements, breaking step and unlocking arms only at the last second in order to dodge trees, lamp- and signposts and parking meters, to overtake slow-moving pedestrians and make way for oncoming ones. Raising my head I could see the poised, watching gargoyles that lined the tops of classical red-brick mansions, echoes of the gremlins and goblins in the park of my child’s mind. Incandescent in the setting sun, they were furious that I was escaping their clutches for the welcoming arms of my dear friends. Malignant though immediately harmless, I never quite forgot their presence.
‘Watch where you’re going, Sharon!’ That was Gavina. ‘Sorry!’ she called on my behalf to the pedestrian I had nearly walked into. ‘She’s a bit ditsy this one!’
Sarah and Monica cackled in syncopation with the slap of our heels on the pavement.
‘What a noisy bunch we are!’ exclaimed Gavina. ‘We’re like those noisy birds, you know –’
‘Jackdaws.’
‘We’re noisy and we’re birds.’
‘Parakeets.’
‘A flock of birds.’
‘A flock of secretaries.’
‘No! What’s that called, you know, that word for a large number of something?’ asked Gavina.
‘A collective pronoun,’ I said.
‘Yes, there must be one for secretaries.’
‘Let’s make one up!’
‘A gaggle of secretaries,’ offered Monica.
‘A shoal of secretaries,’ suggested Sarah.
‘A school of secretaries.’ Monica again.
‘A goosestep of secretaries,’ said Gavina, raising her legs high with each step.
‘A skirt of secretaries,’ I proposed.
‘Yes! That’s the one!’ chorused my friends and, pleased with itself and with the world, this skirt picked up its step.
We ate in a cheap unlicensed Italian restaurant off Cambridge Circus that welcomed diners who had brought their own wine, bought, we could tell from the brown paper bags, from the old wine shop on Old Compton Street. Next, to a pub in Covent Garden and then down to the Embankment, to a club into which girls were allowed free and boys could only gain entry if escorted by a girl.
‘Stop saying girls,’ instructed Monica with a shake of her hair, when we wondered without complaining over this inequity. ‘We’re women now.’
True, I thought to myself, though still unused to the idea and to the terrifying responsibilities that accompanied the exile from childhood. It had taken me so long to come to some idea of who I was, only for it to have to change.
The deal was unwritten: if a boy asked you into the club and you accepted, he’d owe you a drink; if you declined the second drink or a dance, he’d have to accept the message and not approach you again. We queued and eyed the boys who eyed us on the other side of the street.
‘What’s the collective thingummy for boys?’ asked Gavina.
‘Oh, you and your collectives,’ said Monica, fed up, tense – either, I assumed, hoping that a particular boy would ask her or that a particular one wouldn’t.
‘A bogey,’ I offered.
‘Anyway, I told you, they’re men, not boys. Look at them,’ continued Monica as four of them stepped out of the shadows and into the street.
‘A bogey of boys,’ I repeated, but no one was listening.
‘Hello,’ said one, as he and his friends approached us.
‘Hello,’ we replied, running our hands through our hair and shouldering our handbags.
They were clean-looking, friendly, polite and only a year or two older than us, so we accepted second and third drinks and dances, fast and slow. I never quite understood how couples formed on those occasions; in quick time, we each – Gavina, Monica, Sarah and I – had our boy and he had us, an arm around a waist and endearments in an ear. I never made a choice; I was always chosen or maybe simply allocated by default. We laughed and shouted and screamed and talked and mooched head to head, coloured blue, red, purple, yellow and green by rotating lights and glitter balls and all the time I forgot myself, who I was and who I wasn’t, and then it was all over and we were outside the club, music ringing in our ears and the steam from our breath and hot bodies mingling with cigarette smoke under street lamps so that the street felt like an extension of the club, eyeing the entrance to the tube a hundred yards away and all too conscious of the need to make the last tube home.
I could hear Gavina saying to hers, ‘No way, my father will kill me if I don’t make it home!’ and, ‘No way! Take you home with me? My father would kill you!’
And me saying to mine, ‘Sorry, no, I live with my aunt,’ and letting him kiss me because he hadn’t been drinking and tasted of chewing gum and smelled intoxicatingly of aftershave and fresh sweat, all the time worrying that if I left it at this I wouldn’t be keeping my end of the bargain and that maybe I should have done or be doing more for him and, why not admit it, for me too but then thinking that it was just a little bit creepy that none of them had been drinking alcohol at all while keen that we should and thinking, too, that maybe it’s best I left my old reputation at school and didn’t allow it to follow me here and colour my relationship with my new friends, or maybe not, and then hearing Monica shouting at me to come on and Sarah tugging me by the elbow.
We four girls and Monica’s Kevin and Sarah’s Liam stood squeezed in the aisle of a crowded carriage of the last underground train of the night and Monica commented on the happy coincidence that Kevin and Liam lived in Ealing too. ‘Oh yeah!’ mouthed Gavina when the train’s swaying brought her close to my face, but I didn’t care. Who was I to judge? The last train home. The last refuge of party-goers, drunkards and pukers who carried on their partying from whichever club or pub they had left. We clung to the leather straps that hung from the handrail and swung, bumping into each other, trying to avoid the knees and toes of the seated passengers around us. My two friends with their beaus tried unsuccessfully to suppress their smiles when each clackety shake brought th
em together.
‘There must be a hundred people in this carriage,’ said Kevin in attempt at diversionary conversation.
‘Actually, it’s closer to two hundred,’ I said. ‘Give or take five.’
Kevin and Liam were good-looking, I admitted, even in the artificial overhead light that flattered no one.
A seated elderly woman in a coat like a quilt and whose grey hair escaped in wisps from a hand-knitted bobble hat clutched a stained Gladstone bag on her lap and talked to herself loudly, making little sense.
‘Talking to yourself, are you?’ asked Liam.
‘First sign of madness,’ said Kevin.
They hung onto the straps above her, grinning down at her.
‘What I have in my bag is none of your business,’ snapped the old woman, looking up. The overhead light shone directly onto her face, exposing dirt-filled wrinkles. The shoulder of her coat where her Gladstone bag’s strap rested was quite worn through.
‘Oh! Cheeky!’ replied Liam. ‘And which home are you returning to this evening? I’m surprised they let you out in the first place!’
‘What I have in my bag is a secret, you know,’ she said, wide-eyed and slowly, but loudly enough to be overheard by other passengers who had ceased their own conversations to listen to this one. Suddenly conscious of an audience, she added coyly, ‘She’s dead, you know!’
‘Really!’ exclaimed Liam incredulously, hanging from two straps as the train slowed. ‘I was going to say, if it’s the Regent’s Park zoo you want, change at the next stop but maybe it’s a prison you need!’
‘No, definitely the loony bin,’ said Kevin.
A young woman who had been leaning her head against her book-reading partner’s shoulder raised it and barked righteously, ‘Stop it! Stop talking to her like that. Show some respect.’ And all in our end of the carriage craned their necks to look at her while, I guessed, feeling guilty for having enjoyed the exchange.