by Andrew Greig
‘Paterson! Are you in the furniture moving business, man? Get up!’
Fando winked at me.
‘Nice catch,’ he said.
I went red and put the jotter on the desk.
(I still feel the soft roughness of that blue card cover. Patrick Geddes’s jotter, a classroom in July years back, with the smell of sweat and chalk. And cut grass and hawthorn wafting in the open windows and the faint clatter of the mower out on the football field. I see Shonagh among the girls looking worried and excited, and Fando. Of course I see Fando now as his blue-green eyes approve my catch, I feel my pleasure and anger at him and the tickle of sweat under my eleven-year-old armpits – but I can’t see Patrick Geddes. Not a trace. Fallen through a crack in my memory, as I probably have in his. Gone for ever.)
‘Get up, Paterson!’
Porky pushed up off his fat white knees and his head crunched into the corner of the desk. Fando had his hands in the pockets of his dark green shorts as he waited as the class waited.
‘He tripped me, sir!’ Porky wailed.
Dewar shook his head and blew softly and his breath quivered his dark moustache.
‘Did you trip Paterson, Mr Fillamon?’
Fando looked straight back at him.
‘No.’
‘No, sir,’ Mr Dewar corrected him..
‘No, sorr,’ Fando said, broadening the Irish. ‘Our feet got tangled as we came in the dorr. Sorr.’
He had a way about him, the exotic bird of passage, blown into the school for that summer when the gypsies camped by the river. Part-Irish, part-Tinker – a double outsider, doubly strange. I was just a single outsider, just English, though that was bad enough.
Dewar’s moustache quivered. He looked down but I noticed the side of his mouth tug, knew what that meant. As an incomer I’d learned to watch the signs. Porky sniffed, Fando stood still and relaxed but I saw his right knee turn out and knew he was ready to run.
‘So what’s your version, Miss Gardam?’
The class, those hyenas, shifted. Porky looked at me with watery blue eyes. Fando’s eyes were green today, he was the tallest boy in the class, exactly my height.
‘Well? A tangle or a trip, Miss Gardam?’
I was sweating in my clumpy shoes and mum’s cut-down print dress. With all the eyes on me, I heard my mother telling me one thing and my dad the opposite. Honest Injun versus Cheerful Charlie.
I chose neither.
‘It looked like a … tango, sir.’
‘A tango?’
‘Yes sir, like they were trying to dance but Peter fell. Sir.’
Spluttering from the girls in the front row, laughter from the thickies at the back. Dewar’s hand brushed over his mouth then thumped onto the desk.
‘I’ll tango you. Ach, away and sit down all of you.’
I went and sat down beside Shonagh. Fando winked as he went past. Shonagh passed me a sweetie under the desk, the first I’d been offered since I’d arrived at the school. Porky sniffed in the corner.
They got out their books and I sat for a while feeling confused. You could tell the truth or you could tell a lie but there was a third way. You could make them laugh. A joke was neither truth nor lie.
I stared at my writing and sucked the sweetie quietly. Make them laugh sometimes. Be anybody. It was like finding a new way home.
*
He was sitting cross-legged in the shadow under the big hawthorn at the end of High Field, fiddling with something in his lap.
‘Nicely done, colleen,’ he said without looking up.
I hesitated. I stopped and looked down at him, fingers looped round the cord of my duffel bag.
‘My name’s Stella,’ I said. ‘And it was mean to pick on Porky when everyone does.’
He looked up.
‘We call all pretty girls colleen.’
Nobody spoke to me like that. Well, except for my family and now Shonagh, almost no one spoke to me at all. And I knew I wasn’t pretty. I was skinny and scraggy and had reddish frizzy hair.
He uncrossed his legs and leaned back against the trunk and stared at me.
‘I know why you didn’t tell,’ he said.
Maybe he did. He seemed so sure he knew something about me I didn’t. I reached up and held a branch and swung slowly from side to side and stared back.
‘I still think it was mean,’ I said.
He opened his hands. He had a knife, an odd white knife with a long thin blade. I stared back at him, still swaying slightly from the branch. Under the tree things smelled at once strong and sweet and sick.
‘Imagine being fat and slow and everyone getting on at you all the time,’ I insisted.
He held the knife between his finger and thumb by the tip of the blade. He held his arm up and squinted like he was going to draw me.
‘Sure it was a devilment, colleen,’ he said.
That wasn’t his real speaking. I wasn’t stupid. Fando grinned very white teeth and drew his arm back. I stopped swaying and stood dead still with my arms clasping the branch above my head.
‘My name’s still Stella,’ I said. His arm brushed quickly across his face then a flash and a thunk and the knife was quivering in the trunk. I blinked but didn’t move. Even in dreams I’d never been afraid of Fando Fillamon, not that at all.
‘But if they weren’t picking on him, it would be on you or me, wouldn’t it now?’
He rolled over and plucked out the knife and rolled back quick as a wolf, neat as me catching the falling jotter.
‘And you know that’s true, colleen.’
‘They wouldn’t dare pick on you,’ I said.
‘Paddy? Pape? Tinkybum?’ He spat. ‘If there was enough of them they would.’
‘I haven’t seen a knife like that,’ I said. ‘Is it a gypsy one?’
He grinned, flexed his hand and the thin blade disappeared.
‘Na. You’d best be looking, then.’
I dropped the duffel bag and sat down beside him. He shifted away, just a little, and then I felt dizzy and full of myself. I lifted the white shaft from his brown palm and examined it. The handle was long, white and cool, with two silver hoops and a black button at one end.
‘It’s a flick-knife. Himself got it in Paris from a gangster.’
I turned it over. Paris. Gangsters. Flick-knife.
‘The handle’s ivory,’ he said.
‘From elephants’ tusks? Real ivory?’
I saw his eyes glitter as he nodded and I knew we were kin.
‘How do you use it?’
His fingers brushed my palm. He wrapped the handle in his long fingers then bent his wrist away from me, pressed and whipped his wrist and then the blade was pointing at my heart.
‘That’s great!’ I said. ‘Let me try.’
He shifted away, rolled on his back and looked up at the sky through the leaves, still clutching the knife pointing up.
‘Ah well,’ he said.
I leaned over him. He kept looking at the sky. It was hot in the hollow under the tree and inside my dress I felt myself full and buzzing and looking for a new home like a summer swarm. I took the tip of the blade by my thumb and finger and drew it gently from his hand and rolled away with my prize.
I soon got the hang of it. Press the button, fold the blade. Bend the wrist, pause, press, turn and – click! Every time I did it I felt stranger and more confident and swarming inside. It was like stroking yourself over and over till that part of you felt different, not even part of you.
‘Strike upward if you really want to hurt,’ he told me. ‘Aim for the heart. If you want to cut, strike down. I’ve sharpened both sides.’
I pictured Porky falling, crying, his head hitting the desk.
‘I don’t want to hurt anybody,’ I said.
‘And why would you indeed?’
That wolfish grin and brown hair flopped over his eyes. He reached out one hand towards me and I knew what would happen and there would be kissing and rolling round and for the
first time I could almost see why people did that. But he took the knife back gently, slipped it in his pocket and stood up. He held out my duffel bag, I tugged down my dress.
‘Can I come with you to the camp?’ I blurted.
‘Na. Himself will be there.’
‘My dad drinks with your dad,’ I said.
‘He’s the only one here who does,’ he replied.
‘My dad drinks with anyone who’ll listen to him.’
He glanced at me, then giggled.
‘Mine too. But he wouldna stand for it. We don’t mix.’ He looked down and shrugged. ‘Sorry, colleen.’
Then he ran down the path towards the river where the caravans were and I took the short cut home through the cornfield, which grew much higher then. On the way I tried different ways of walking in my mum’s dress then forgot about it and broke off a stalk and ran home with it in my right hand, striking upwards at the heart with every second stride.
*
I got up and went through to the little alcove curtained off from my bedroom, feeling the tingling in the back of my knees as I lit the single ring and put the kettle on. Hard to connect that free, solitary girl with myself now. A different person, almost a stranger, but one I shared my life with. Now I was meant to be ladylike, now I was more … restrained. It seemed there were fewer options when you grew up, not more. I’d never expected that.
I poured boiling water into the pot then put it by the bed. I sat and clasped my feet in my hands, the way I’d done as a child. What had happened to that physical freedom, that boldness? Perhaps it was still there, to be poured over some lucky man in a way I’d never quite done.
I thought of Len’s long hand firm on my waist, and wondered if it would be him. I stared into the steam rising from the spout, remembering how it felt then.
*
I slipped the window up and went out headfirst. The moon was a pale round disk like one of my mum’s ornamental seed pods, the drainpipe was already dew-damp on my hands.
I got my knees onto the ledge, glanced down at the flowerbed where the square of light from the kitchen window below fell on the groundsel and stock. I tightened the cord of my dressing-gown round my old pink pyjamas, then without pausing to think about it – that was the trick like with catching a jotter in mid-air – I stood up on the ledge, facing in. One hand squeezed between the pipe and the wall and the other gripped into the ivy and I stepped out and down onto the little sloping ledge that ran right round the house one floor up.
The ledge was rough on my bare soles. Three steps sideways clinging to the ivy, then my foot was on the lead skews. I groped for the roof-ridge then pulled myself onto it, turned round and sat astride and looked out.
I could hear the murmur of my parents’ voices below and a jazz record playing. I looked along the street to the left, the neat new gardens. Then off to my right over the wall and down the dip where the trees and river and gypsies were. The voices rose. ‘You just please yourself!’ I heard, then Dad’s giggling laughter that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. My mother said something else I didn’t quite catch, then the clink of a glass and another giggle. Then the window was pulled down and the voices were cut off.
I pulled a cigarette, pinched earlier from my dad, from the top pocket of my dressing-gown. I ran it under my nose, all smooth and cool and white like the ivory knife, and smelled the smoky gypsy smell. It was quite true: I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I just didn’t want much to do with them. In my daydreams, the struggles, the chases, the plots and secret understandings were all about escape. That was the excitement, getting away. Of course Dad pleased himself and was totally unreliable and people thought he was a great laugh. Of course he wanted to help me and show me things, but what he taught was only what pleased himself, not me.
I jabbed and parried at the moon with my cigarette, then stuck it in my mouth. I thought about Porky, the white of him falling.
I leaned down and cautiously struck a match on the slates. The moon made a haze in the damp air, like a pale waterfall pouring silently past. I sucked in and blew out. I would live in a cave behind a waterfall, sitting on a rock and watching the screen pour past, and be wild and free and please myself.
I smoked quietly, trying not to cough, thinking how I’d be leaving the little school tomorrow. And how I’d heard the gypsies were leaving for Blairgowrie and the raspberry picking, and I’d never see Fando again. I kept getting bigger and learning things, and there was nothing I could do about it. At best I could only stay alert, and catch the jotter as it fell.
*
I stirred on the bed, wanting a cigarette though it was bad on my breath. Anyway Mrs Mackenzie’s house rules included no smoking in bedrooms. I’d have one on the way to training school.
I drank my tea then glanced at my watch. Forty minutes. Sometimes life seemed one long sequence of schools. You think you’re done with it, then university. Leave that and suddenly you’re studying and being examined all over again. There was something to be said for life behind the waterfall.
I twitched, embarrassed at that childhood fantasy. It had been so real, so important at the time. Perhaps it lingered yet, in little traces and blips. I’d thought I’d been in love since, with Roger at least, but perhaps no one had ever found me. Perhaps I’d never let them.
I gathered up my notepads and jotter, put on my cap and straightened it in front of the mirror, then went down the stairs and out of the door.
‘Lovely morning, Mrs Mackenzie!’
Today was the final test on the console. As I walked to the bus stop I thought of Fando. I’d read something of what had happened to gypsies in Germany and the countries it controlled. I hoped he wasn’t there, that his family had gone back to Ireland. Maybe it was just propaganda.
The girl I’d been still whispered in my ear once in a while. Like when after Czechoslovakia was invaded and I saw a notice in the newspaper saying trainees were wanted in Signals. A little inner voice, a hatred of bullying perhaps, or the memory of Fando, made me write down the number and join the WAAF instead of continuing with teacher training.
Maybe I had lost something when I grew up, some kind of freedom and boldness. Yet when the bus came along, I seized the rail and jumped on, pleased to feel it pull away and take me towards the future and all that waited there.
*
Sunlight splitting white beams through trees like at the pictures, angled down from projector to forest-floor screen. Late afternoon, stood down, I walk right into it. A clatter, flash and I flinch. Black and white crosses, sun in my eyes: two magpies.
In the fringe of the wood among hawthorn, hogweed and nettles. A sharp reek in sunlight. Each leaf outline traced sharp and clear. My youthful twenty-twenty vision.
That’s what it is: like I’m finally on-screen, not onlooking. I’m in it, alive like never before, moving among heroes and pals, not to mention lovely gals and bang bangs. Loads of action. Everything sharp to the last leaf, the last chewed fingernail. Living in focus for the first time since childhood. Some feeling.
I look up where the birds had gone, feeling the fizz rising though me. It comes clear: you stop acting, and act. Be regardless, as they say, the true fighter pilot. Be light. Everything else is bollocks.
Much simpler this way. If I could but follow it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Late July
Jean Finlay took off her headset and slid out of her seat, rubbing her eyes.
‘All yours,’ she said. ‘Good luck.’
I took her swivel seat, felt the warmth she’d left behind, the slick of sweat on the calibration dial. A deep breath, on with the headset. Sergeant Farringdon pulled up a seat next to me and sat with her hands crossed in her lap. Her back was perfectly straight and her head was high. I pictured hours of deportment lessons.
‘The morning wave’s gone through,’ she said. ‘You can expect a bit of a lull.’
It was quiet and dim in the receiver hut, which doubled as an operations room. There was a
steady flow of chat and phone calls and chain-smoking on the other side of the hut. On mine there was only the towering bulk of the receiver with all the switches, fuses, buttons and dials that had become familiar to me. But this time it was different. This time I was in charge. My first big day.
For a long time we sat together and watched the green line. Some excitement when blips started and I was about to post it up when I recognized that the signals came from IFF transmitters our planes carried, so they were friendlies. I dropped my hand from the calibration dial, rubbed it on my skirt, waited. And waited.
I rubbed my eyes and saw the green line blip and bounce. I put down my fist and it was still bouncing. I could feel the pulse in my throat as I turned the dial for the bearing. I screwed up my eyes to read the range and prepared to enter it into the calculator. We were away.
I gabbled the figures. Hostiles’ code number, range, bearing, height, number. Farringdon steepled her fingers.
‘I think you’ve overestimated again,’ she said quietly. ‘But not by much. Very good. Just keep doing that and don’t get in a flap and you’ll be all right, Corporal.’
She patted my shoulder and got up to go. Even as she did so, another blip started and I went into action, sure the approaching aircraft could tell I was a fraud. My back was beginning to hurt. To my right, a WAAF I didn’t know calmly pulled up a seat and began to record my hostiles. She worked out the Tizzy angle and passed on the likely point of interception for the squadrons on their way. Her voice was calm and easy, almost bored, as she spoke into the mouthpiece hung by her lips.
She caught my eye and grinned. She was middle-aged, reminded me of my mother only more relaxed.
‘Jessie Walker,’ she said. ‘It’s a piece of cake, dear.’
Reading is a queer affair. I’ll be sitting in the deck chair sweating in my Mae West looking at a page of The Three Hostages but really the letters might as well be sundial spikes.
Because all that’s happening is I’m watching the sun move across the page, while trying to follow the languid slang passing between Bunny and Coco, Dusty, Boy and Bo – the university types all having such nicknames. (Sergeants don’t have nicknames.) Then I’m thinking about Stella last time I saw her, and how I wasted so much kissing time just walking and talking under the trees.