The Four of Us

by Margaret Pemberton

  There was only one picture on display in the first window and it stopped her dead in her tracks. In a heavy ornate gold frame, set on an emerald-green silk-covered stand, was a large oil painting of four young women in a garden. The style was Impressionistic, full of light and pastel colour, the period – if the girls’ankle-length, broderie-anglaise-trimmed white dresses were anything to go by – was Edwardian. Three of the girls were seated on a wide garden swing. Two had their arms round each other’s waists, the third, holding on to the rope of the swing, was resting her head against her hand.

  The fourth girl was standing looking towards the three of them, a pale blue sash around her narrow waist, a wide-brimmed straw sun hat held low in one hand.

  With her throat dry and tight, she saw that the painting was titled Summer Memory.

  Foolishly, she felt tears prick the back of her eyelids. She, Kiki, Artemis and Geraldine could never have looked so sublimely languorous when enjoying the summer sunshine in the garden at Petts Wood, but it was the four of them nevertheless. The two embracing girls, heads close, one golden-haired, one titian-haired, were, for her, Artemis and Kiki. The girl resting against the rope of the swing, looking coolly and clearly out of the frame with steady dark eyes was, surely, Geraldine. And she, Primmie, was the girl a little apart from them – the girl who looked somehow younger than the other three – the girl with the blue sash and the sun hat.

  The tears continued to prick and she blinked them away, suddenly conscious of the people passing to and fro behind her on the narrow pavement. It was a stunning picture and she wanted it more than she could remember wanting anything. It wasn’t priced, and she could well imagine why.

  Not going into the gallery to ask the price, knowing it would be way beyond her means, she turned away from the window and went, instead, into the general clothing store opposite and bought herself a pair of very sensible and inexpensive green Wellingtons.

  All the way home, the picture haunted her. Had the young women, so at peace together in the sunlit garden, been real people, and, if so, what had happened to them? Had they been sundered apart as she, Kiki, Artemis and Geraldine had been sundered apart?

  As she stowed away clothes and books – and as she discovered to her delight that the electricity had been reconnected – her thoughts refused to leave the past and when, just after three o’clock, the phone rang and she answered it to a male voice saying, ‘Just confirming your reconnection, Mrs Dove’she knew exactly what it was she was going to do next.

  She was going to put one of her leaving presents to good use. It was a laptop computer given to her by Josh, who had bought it cheaply from a friend. With excitement coiling deep in her tummy she hoisted it from the bubble-wrapping it had travelled to Cornwall in and, with a mug of freshly made tea beside her, set about registering on the Friends Reunited website.

  Everything was straightforward until she came to the point where she was required to enter some details about herself. What on earth could she put that would encourage Geraldine or Kiki or Artemis to get in touch with her? Widowed after being married for twenty years, four children and living in Cornwall? It didn’t exactly add up to anything exciting.

  She picked up her mug of tea, nursing it in her hands as she thought over the little she knew about her friends’lives since they had last all been together. Kiki, of course, was easy, because she had been able to keep up with Kiki’s life through the occasional articles she had read about her in Lucy’s pop magazines. Geraldine’s photograph, too, in the early years after they had parted, had quite often appeared in the gossip columns, not because she was also in show business, but because she was so regularly on the arm of high-profile businessmen or media-conscious aristocrats. Whether she had married one of her highly eligible men friends, Primmie didn’t know. What she did know, though, was that Geraldine’s lifestyle had been worlds removed from her own humdrum but happy one in Rotherhithe. And then there was Artemis.

  Her throat constricted. It was impossible to think of Artemis without also thinking of Destiny – and she couldn’t do that again, not so soon after the moment in the church at Dean Prior, when thinking about Destiny had so nearly unhinged her.

  Artemis had married well. When last she had heard of her, as well as a home in the Cotswolds, she’d had homes in London and Spain, two sons at Eton and a husband who was in the same league as Geraldine’s high-flying businessmen boyfriends. Even as a girl at Bickley High, Artemis had been mindful of people’s backgrounds and social credentials. Why, then, would Artemis be tempted to get in touch with her after all these years? Considering all that had happened between them, why would any of them be tempted to get in touch with her, or, come to that, with each other?

  The tea was cold and she put the mug down, a headache building up behind her eyes. Knowing that the only cure for it was fresh air, she picked up her coat and stepped outside the house, seeing with startled surprise that the light was already smoking to dusk. Undeterred, she wrapped her coat a little closer and set off on foot down the track towards the church and the sea.

  The locked church was even smaller than St George’s had been. It was also, according to the notice pinned in its porch, nominally in use, with a church service scheduled for the last week in May.

  Beyond it, the headland shelved steeply to a small sickle of sand and shingle. There was a narrow pathway leading down to it and she took it, uncaring that it was now dusk and would soon be dark. She was too deep in thoughts of the past to be concerned about the safety of what she was doing. With every step towards the sea, the years were rolling backwards. The ’90s. The ’80s. The ’70s.

  At last, on damp shingle, she came to a halt, her hands deep in her coat pockets, the evening breeze tugging at her hair.

  The ’ 60s.

  That was when it had all begun. That was when the four of them had formed a friendship and unity so close it had seemed indissoluble.

  She looked out over the silky, heaving darkness of the sea, remembering with absolute clarity the fourteenth of September, 1962.

  Remembering the beginning.

  Chapter Four

  September 1962

  ‘Come on, Primmie! You can’t be late! Not on yer first day.’

  Primmie stood in front of her wardrobe mirror, moving the knot of her school tie up a little bit, and then down a little bit. Where should it be? She moved it upwards again. It looked better like that, even though it was half-throttling her.

  ‘Primmie!’

  ‘Coming, Mum!’ She slid her arms into her new maroon blazer and picked up her shiny new satchel from the bed.

  ‘Oh, Primmie,’ her mum said to her as she ran down the stairs. ‘Primmie darlin’, you do look smart. I can’t tell you’ow proud I am. No one from round’ere’as ever gone to Bickley. No one.’

  ‘Well, I’m only going because Mr Moss suggested I sit for a scholarship place.’ She tried to keep the nervousness from her voice, wishing her mum wouldn’t go on so. She was nervous enough as it was – and one of the reasons was precisely that she didn’t know anyone at Bickley High. All her other friends had gone off to local secondary modern or grammar schools last week – and they’d gone off to them in large friendly groups.

  Bickley High wasn’t a secondary modern or a grammar school. It wasn’t a state school at all. It was a fee-paying public school – which was why its start of term date was different to that of her friends’schools – and it was a train journey and a long walk from where she lived.

  ‘Goin’to start talkin’posh now, are yer?’ her friends had said tauntingly when news of her having won a scholarship place to a public school had spread round the playground. ‘You always did think a lot of yerself, Primmie Surtees. Always top of the class. Always teacher’s pet.’

  She had hotly denied the jibes, stung by their unfairness. It had made no difference. The nasty, sarcastic remarks had continued, making one thing quite clear she wasn’t going to be able to both go to Bickley High and continue to be accepted
as one of the crowd in Rothehithe. Bickley High’s cream and maroon uniform set her apart far too obviously. Through no fault of her own, she was already being regarded as one of ‘them’and not one of ‘us’.

  Her overriding fear, as she saw with a sinking heart that her mother had her hat and coat on, was that her fellow pupils at Bickley High would regard her in exactly the same way. It was why she was now being so careful about the way she talked. Not because she wanted to sound posh – which was what her former friends seemed to think – but simply because she wanted to fit in and not be different.

  ‘You don’t have to come with me, Mum,’ she said, not wanting to start her first day being laughed at for having her mum with her, as if she were a five-year-old. ‘I can remember the way. I ain’t…’ She stopped herself and took a deep breath. ‘I’m not going to get lost. The school might be a long walk from the station, but it’s a straight walk.’

  ‘Maybe it is, Primmie,’ her mother said, removing an imaginary speck of dust from her school blazer, ‘but just for the first day, it’s best to be on the safe side. Now let’s get cracking or we’re goin’ to miss that bloomin’train.’

  The first thing Primmie noticed as she walked with her mother the mile and a quarter from Bickley Station to the school was the amazing number of cars zooming down the tree-lined road, all with passengers wearing Bickley High uniform. There were some other maroon-blazer-ed pupils on foot, but all of them were walking in small friendly groups – and none of them was wearing a blazer as shriekingly stiff and new as hers.

  ‘It’s quite a trek, gel, ain’t it?’ her mother said, puffing for breath as they reached the school gates. ‘Still, you’ve got young legs. As long as you don’t miss the train in the morning, you’ll be tickety-boo.’

  The school was long and low, with lots of large windows. The gravelled area in front of it, too, was large. It had to be, as car after car swept through the gates, crunching to a halt and disgorging two or three or even four girls at a time.

  ‘I think you should go now, Mum,’ Primmie said as a white Zodiac pulled on to the gravel within feet of them. ‘None of the other mothers are hanging around.’

  ‘W-e-ll, that’s p’raps because none of the other girls are new,’ her mother said uncertainly, overawed by the sheer number of girls now thronging the area in front of the school.

  ‘Geraldine is new,’ a well-spoken voice said suddenly from just behind them. ‘And I’m not going to stay with her. I’m driving back into Bickley High Street. Would you like a lift?’

  The speaker was the driver of the Zodiac. She was a dark, vital, casually dressed woman who looked years too young to have a daughter of eleven.

  ‘Oh, that’s very kind of you, I’m sure, but I couldn’t possibly …’

  Well aware of how deep her mother’s discomfiture was and also aware that if her mother didn’t accept the offer she would probably still be hovering around her when morning assembly began, Primmie said forcefully, ‘Of course you can, Mum. That’s very kind of you, Mrs …?’

  ‘Mrs Grant. Jacqueline Grant. And my daughter is Geraldine. She isn’t very happy at being here this morning …?’

  ‘Primmie,’ Primmie said as Mrs Grant waited enquiringly for her name. ‘Primmie Surtees.’

  ‘And so if you would keep an eye on her for me, Primmie, I’d be very grateful.’

  Geraldine Grant didn’t look as if she would suffer anyone keeping an eye on her. Tall and skinny, her hair was cut in a short bob and was night-black and so shiny it looked like silk. Her eyes were dark, too, wide spaced and thick lashed. As she caught Primmie looking at her, she flashed her a dazzling smile and then, behind her mother’s back, rolled her eyes to heaven so expressively that it took all Primmie’s self-control to fight down a fit of the giggles.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Grant, I’ll do my best,’ she said, struggling to keep a straight face.

  The minute Primmie’s mother began awkwardly to get in the car and her own mother slid again behind the driving wheel, Geraldine said as if they’d been friends for years, ‘Well, thank goodness we’re on our own. What’s Primmie short for?’

  ‘Primrose.’ Primmie suddenly felt shy. ‘It’s a bit old-fashioned and so I prefer to be called Primmie.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Geraldine said with wry frankness, ‘though the name suits you. You’ve got fair hair and green eyes and so with a bit of imagination I suppose you could be said to look primrosey.’

  Geraldine flashed her another radiant smile and slid her arm companionably through hers. ‘Come on, Primmie Surtees, let’s find out where we’re supposed to be. I didn’t want to come here, did you? I wanted to go to Benenden.’

  Primmie’s eyebrows shot high. ‘Benenden, where Princess Anne went?’

  ‘Yes, but not because she went there, but because it’s in Sussex and that’s where my cousin Francis lives.’

  As they were talking, they were making their way through the throng towards the school’s main entrance. Suddenly there was the sound of a commotion behind them and they turned round just in time to see a powerfully built man slam the driver’s door of a powder-blue Rolls Royce behind him and stride across to a dark-green Volkswagen.

  ‘Are you bloody blind!’ he was thundering to the Volkswagen’s driver. ‘You’ve smashed my wing mirror and come damn near to scraping the side of my car!’

  That he was the owner of the Rolls and not a chauffeur was obvious from his Crombie overcoat and the half-smoked cigar he tossed to the ground as the driver’s door of the Volkswagen opened and an attractive blond-haired man in his mid-thirties stepped out on to the gravel.

  ‘Mea culpa,’ he said a little sheepishly. ‘Here’s my card. Send me the bill for a new mirror. Best not to lose our tempers in front of so many young people, eh?’

  His spare build and the way he was dressed, a much-worn tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, grey flannels and brown suede shoes, was in marked contrast to the other man’s flashy ostentation. When the cigar had been tossed aside there had been the glint of gold on his little finger as well as round his wrist. It had looked more like a bracelet that a wristwatch and Primmie felt her interest deepening. In the part of south-east London she came from, Crombie overcoats and gold jewellery were the signature of villains and the man in question was certainly built like a villain – and had a villain’s threatening attitude, as well.

  ‘Don’t tell me how I should be behaving, pal,’ he was saying now, stabbing the driver of the Volkswagen in the chest with a stubby finger. ‘Because I don’t take kindly to it.’

  All round them shocked mothers were hurrying their daughters away from the fracas and towards the shallow steps leading to the school’s main entrance. Standing on the top step, and with no parent to chivvy them inside, Primmie and Geraldine continued to watch the scene with fascinated interest.

  ‘And I don’t take kindly to being poked in the chest,’ they could hear the Volkswagen’s driver say steelily. Despite his narrow shoulders, he was beginning to look far less diffident and it occurred to Primmie that her first day at Bickley High might very well be about to kick off with fisticuffs in the school car park. As the thought flashed through her mind, rear doors of the Volkswagen and the Rolls opened simultaneously.

  From the Volkswagen a diminutive red-haired girl tumbled into view, yelling, ‘Don’t you dare talk to my father like that, you horrid person!’ From the Rolls, a plump, fair-haired girl emerged. With obvious reluctance and deep embarrassment she walked across to her father, taking hold of his arm, saying pleadingly, ‘Please, Daddy. Don’t go on about it any more. People are looking.’

  Amazingly, the intervention seemed to do the trick. Mr Nasty ceased his finger-jabbing and with a last threatening glare at Mr Nice turned away from him, giving his attention, instead, to his mortified daughter.

  ‘Shame,’ Geraldine said as she and Primmie also turned round and began walking into the school’s spacious entrance hall. ‘I thought there was going to be a fight. It would have
been the most enormous fun, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘You’re only saying that because you’ve never seen one,’ Primmie said chidingly. ‘Real fights aren’t like fights in films, you know. They’re ugly and frightening.’

  Geraldine’s sloe-dark eyes blazed with interest. ‘You’ve seen fights, Primmie Surtees? Where on earth do you come from?’

  ‘Rotherhithe.’

  There was no time to say anymore because an official-looking woman was holding up a large placard on which was written ALL NEW GIRLS LINE UP HERE, PLEASE and, underneath in smaller letters, NO TALKING.

  The queue was already fairly long and as she and Geraldine attached themselves to the end of it, as did the diminutive girl with the mop of spicy red hair.

  ‘I thought your father was great,’ Geraldine said to her, ignoring the instruction not to talk and breaking the ice immediately, just as she had done with Primmie. ‘A lot of people wouldn’t have kept their temper as he did. Primmie,’ she gave a nod of her head in Primmie’s direction, ‘thinks the driver of the Rolls is a nouveau riche from the East End.’

  ‘I never said any such thing!’ Primmie protested, scandalized.

  ‘Silence, please!’ the woman holding the placard thundered.

  ‘And what’s a noovo reesh?’ Primmie persisted, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘A criminal?’

  ‘No, idiot.’ Geraldine gave a gurgle of laughter, uncaring of the glare she received from the woman at the head of the column they had formed. ‘It’s someone who’s come into money and has no taste – or, in this case, no manners.’

  ‘We are now going to file silently into the Grand Hall for assembly,’ the woman said, shooting Geraldine a look to kill. ‘After assembly you will then re-form in a line to be taken to your form rooms and given an introductory talk.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of form rooms, plural,’ Geraldine said as their column began to move off. ‘It means we may be split up if we don’t keep together. Let’s stick close, shall we? I’m Geraldine Grant and this is Primmie Surtees.’