by Sophie Duffy
Two days before I am sixteen we leave in convoy. The excitement for Linda is only tempered by the fact Sheila doesn’t have a CB radio in the Volvo estate that she’s banned Bernie from driving. Instead we have to communicate by hand gestures and flashing lights.
The M4 whizzes by, not as fast as Linda would like as Sheila takes road safety seriously (she is a Volvo owner after all). But once we hit London, Linda is in control and makes sure we enjoy a longer stretch of the North Circular than we did the last time. Cheryl and I count how many Union Jacks we can see lining the roads and flapping from tower blocks. We give up after a while as it is clear that the numbers are far too overwhelming to even contemplate. The whole of London is wedding crazy.
And I don’t know why but I have a feeling this will all end in tears. Something holds me back from completely enjoying myself, from completely letting go into the arms of the holiday spirit. Maybe it is just because Wink has been left behind with Patty and Lugsy. They’ll have to make do with the colour television in the living room to witness Saturday’s nuptials.
Maybe that is all it is. Wink.
Toni isn’t as house proud as her mother or as obsessive-compulsively tidy as her brother. While T-J keeps the living room, bathroom and his bedroom army-clean and orderly, Toni can’t even manage her own room which looks like it has been burgled. Sheila is on the verge of phoning the police when Toni has to put her right. So while the rest of us have a cup of tea and some ginger cake, Sheila dons her rubber gloves (metaphorically as Toni doesn’t own a pair of Marigold’s) and gets the bedroom ship-shape, to her daughter’s exasperation.
‘Mother!’
‘Well, you can’t possibly expect Bob and Linda to sleep in here with your discarded smalls all over the mucky carpet,’ Sheila points out.
‘What about T-J’s room?’
‘It’s far too small to offer to guests. Bernie and I will have to go in there.’
‘Really, Mother,’ says Toni. ‘It’s ‘bijou’.’
I’m not sure how Bernie will cope with the box size of his nightly surroundings, but Cheryl and I will get along fine, in the lounge, on put-you-ups. As for T and T, they’ll be staying with friends nearby so everyone has a bed for the night and some notion of privacy, though the flat is a cheap conversion with partition walls that could be blown over by the big bad wolf if he tried hard enough. (I am of course too old now for such imaginings. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that after tomorrow’s fairy tale, that will be it. My childhood over.)
We decide to give the fireworks in Hyde Park a miss so that we can better conserve our energy for the big day. The plan is for Toni to order an Indian takeaway (poor Wink, missing out on this culinary adventure), then an early night. We need as much sleep as we can forage, as we are to leave the flat at the crack of dawn to hunt out the perfect spot on the procession route, where we can stand and cheer and wave our flags.
Toni is packing her overnight bag, waiting for Terry to escort her to their friends’ flat as she has a fear of being mugged since the riots. As the grown-ups tuck into a bottle of brandy, I prick up my ears like a cat as a key goes in the lock. I am horrified to find my stomach contracting in emotion of one kind or another all because I know that in two seconds time I’ll be seeing Terry/T-J/Whatever-he-is-now-called. Oh dear.
‘Wotcha,’ he says, stumbling through the door, slightly coy, everybody witnessing his mother’s passionate embraces.
‘Terry, love,’ she croons. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine, Mum.’ He backs away a little and then manages to throw a half-smile in the direction of his dad who says: ‘Alright, son?’
The three of them have reverted to their Brummie roots, though Toni, who went to the Grammar, speaks almost as well as the bride-to-be, Diana. (Not that the Grammar had that effect on me. My accent defies categorisation, a result of my mixed ‘parenting’, presumably.)
T-J has now found his feet, saying hello to Cheryl, asking how she’s done in her exams. This is astonishing! He’s always thought my friends to be nothing but stupid kids. And now he is talking to Cheryl (who’s also reverted to her Solihull upbringing) like he cares about what she is saying. I think I might possibly be experiencing the grip of the green-eyed monster that so often digs its talons into Sheila. But I soon realise that T-J is just being polite. I soon realise that he looks at me in a completely different way. Straight in the face. I am his equal (in as far as that’s possible for a man of twenty-five and a teenager of sixteen-minus-a-day). I am no longer a school girl in his eyes. I am Philippa. And he fancies me, I just know it!
He leaves me alone with these romantic musings to go and pack his overnight bag. The rest of the occupants of Toni’s lounge hum away at their conversations. I catch the odd word… spicy… carriage… sandwiches… shop… brandy… but what I am thinking is far more important. It is the only thought in the world of any worth. And my extreme happiness is only tainted by the knowledge that Terry is now packing a bag to go and sleep around the corner, instead of under the same roof as me.
But there is some consolation. As he goes out the door, he slips me a piece of paper. I clutch it tightly without anyone seeing and smuggle it into the coffin of a bathroom, feeling like a glamorous Russian spy from a Bond film. On the piece of paper, in T-J’s un-joined-up hand, it says:
Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen. x
Some might say you can’t read an awful lot into this. But I manage to. I am quite possibly going to die with longing.
Lying on the camp bed soon after this, teeth brushed extra carefully, hair combed one hundred times, the way Helena instructed me all those years ago, I stare, not at curtains, but at a Habitat roller blind. Behind the blind, the trees move like shadow puppets, acting out their own drama in the orange of the street lights. I imagine the tree-figures as all of the romantic couplings I know: Romeo and Juliet… Cathy and Heathcliff… Charles and Diana… John and Yoko… Bruce and Anthea… even my mother and father, lost across the Ocean, in the snowscapes of Canada and the tropical rainforests of the Amazon. But best of all, I imagine T-J’s puppet moving mysteriously against mine. If only the Cavalier could see me now. He would feel the green-eyed monster tugging at his long curly hair.
Is Diana as in love as this? Is she as excited about seeing Charles tomorrow as I am about seeing T-J? What future can the princess-to-be see in her curtains? Or does she feel the same niggle of doubt creeping up on her from behind, in the dead of night, trying to put a dampener on things. Or maybe that is Bernie’s phlegmy cough emanating through the flimsy excuse of a wall.
Linda has taken over the organisation of the big day. Her travel alarm pings off sometime in the middle of the night. It is still dark when Cheryl and I are prodded awake with a cup of tea that is completely inappropriate when sleep is all that should be required of our bodies. But as the seconds tick by on Linda’s travel alarm that she’s left considerately by my ear, in the midst of my haze of sleepiness, the excitement muscles its way through: Diana and Charles.
And then the excitement hits me full whack: T-J!
‘Happy birthday, Phil,’ murmurs Cheryl, her eyes glued together with the generous deposits of the Sand Man.
‘Thanks,’ I say but I am hardly bothered by my birthday. My birthday is just the icing on the cake. (Though I do have time to wonder if there will be an actual cake.)
Cheryl delves in her duffle-bag and produces a small box tied up with ribbon. It looks promising.
‘It’s from me, Mum and Dad and our Darryl as well,’ she says as I open the box and find inside, nestling amongst the shocking pink tissue paper, a silver bracelet with a ‘P’ on it. And I remember Miss Pitchfork who was the one to point out my name didn’t begin with an ‘F’ – which was about the extent of her teaching that year.
‘Cheryl, it’s lovely, thanks. Thanks a lot.’ And I hug my best friend so hard she starts complaining.
Now, I am pleased it’s my birthday. Everyone is keen to acknowledge the importance of being sixtee
n. It is a milestone. A bridge I have crossed. A gateway I have entered into (etc, etc). Not quite a grown-up but certainly no longer a child. I can tell this by the way Auntie Sheila and Uncle Bernie refrain from the usual summer dress, and give me instead a card with a ten pound note tucked inside. The way Linda looks at me anew, as if seeing me as Philippa, not just Bob’s daughter. And Bob himself has tears in his eyes as he hands over a present that I wasn’t expecting in a whole century of birthdays. He’s given me a small box, so like Cheryl’s that I wonder if it is a matching bracelet. But no. It is a ring. A gold ring with a fairly decent-sized opal set in it. I’ve seen it before.
I look at Bob.
‘It was Helena’s,’ he says. ‘She left it for you.’
‘Why have you waited so long to give it to me?’
‘She said to wait till the time was right. I always thought she’d be back to give it you herself but… ’
He runs out of words though they are obvious enough. Instead, he slips the ring on my finger. Well, not so much slip as shove, my fingers not being as slender as Helena’s.
‘Does this mean she’s not coming back?’ I say them, the obvious words, because suddenly they need to be said. Suddenly I am a little girl again.
‘I don’t know Philippa,’ he shrugs. ‘I wish I did.’
Then he plants a kiss on top of my head. My Mr Bob-Sugar. And I believe I know why he’s never asked Linda to marry him.
You’d imagine that getting up at three o’clock in the morning would’ve guaranteed front row seats as it were, but when we arrive at the Mall – the destination of Linda’s choosing – we find it already filling up with half the Commonwealth. Linda’s organisation and determination secure us a spot a good long way down the Mall, almost at the Queen Victoria Memorial with its soaring gold Victory, a cake decoration of the gods. And there, in front of us, impressive against the clear blue sky, is the huge, ugly, outrageous Buckingham Palace. We put down our picnic bags and rugs and settle in. We have a long wait.
By breakfast time, the streets of London (yes, those again) are bulging. Despite the lack of space there is a euphoric atmosphere and we find a happy place amongst it: Linda and Bob hold each other’s hands, like teenagers, the impending marriage casting its spell over them, bathing them in a glow of romance that has been missing of late. Cheryl and I recite songs from the Top Twenty, chew Hubba Bubba and plait each other’s hair in an attempt to make ourselves into Bo Derek. Poor Cheryl has her work cut out. My hair still frizzes around my shoulders as it has always done, never to be tamed by mere mortals. I have greater success with Cheryl’s long glossy chestnut hair but she would score more points at a gymkhana than on a film set. Those long ago Saturdays spent masquerading as a pony, with Toni as my groom, haven’t gone to waste.
Toni has gone off with work friends somewhere near St Paul’s. T-J is down his local (one of them). Bernie at the last minute decided he wasn’t up to the crowds and the long day and has stayed behind in bed.
‘Don’t forget my ticker, Sheila,’ he said.
‘How could I?’ she replied.
I think Auntie Sheila is secretly glad not to have Bernie to worry about. She has other things on her mind, not least getting the snap of a lifetime. She is convinced the bride and groom are going to kiss in public and she wants to be ready for that moment. If Bernie were here she’d no doubt miss it as she would be otherwise engaged pandering to his needs, topping up his tea from the Thermos or tying up his shoelaces as he has difficulty bending down.
But she didn’t tell him this. She said, ‘Really, Bernie you might as well have stayed in Torquay and watched it on the box.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see our Toni, didn’t I.’
When she glared at him, he added: ‘And our Terry.’
I realise there is a third reason any relationship with T-J is doomed: Auntie Sheila. Auntie Sheila, like Luke Skywalker (or Darth Vader on her darker days), is a force to be reckoned with. I know she has a soft side that Bob (and even Bernie on occasion) can tap into. She’s always shown this side to me and of course to her Terry and Toni. But I remember the time at the shop, waiting for my first cup of tea. I remember the tinkle of breaking glass. I remember Helena’s blotchy face as she realised her one and only friend was walking away from her. And she was a friend, Sheila. She came round eventually, only to be let down by Helena again. (But then weren’t we all.)
I’ve seen Auntie Sheila protecting her family with a fierceness I can only envy. She wants the best for her Terry. And that won’t be me. To Auntie Sheila, I am the poor girl with no mother. The girl who needs help from time to time: choosing clothes, trips to the hairdressers, a slab of Victoria sandwich on a wet Saturday afternoon.
The thought of a wet afternoon is quite appealing right now. It is getting hot and sticky and it is barely half past ten. The ceremony doesn’t start for half an hour at least and who knows how long it will go on for (apart from the Archbishop of Canterbury and Linda). But we are happy to wait for our fair share of history, our first hand experience that we can pass down the generations. For although Toni will be one of the privileged few to see Diana pick her way up the red carpeted steps of St Paul’s, dragging a train as long as the Penzance to Paddington, we are experiencing the joy of a nation all around us, in this most historical of backdrops.
Time passes quickly, people offering round sandwiches, strangers swapping crisps and KitKats and Silk Cut. Before long, Diana will have married someone called Philip Charles Arthur George (and an unexpected third person to be made known to us in the years to come). Kiri Te Kanawa, a bird of paradise, will have belted out a song that captures Bernie’s (weak) heart as he slouches indoors eating his daughter out of house and home. Even Terry will have found time, at some point during his fourth pint, to comment on the shocking state of Diana’s creases.
Time doesn’t quite pass quickly enough for Cheryl though, who starts to burn under the ferocious midday sun just as the bridal carriage, escorted by the Household Cavalry, is sweeping Charles and Diana along the procession route lined with flowers and every police officer in the country (apart from the ones otherwise engaged trying to stop rioters in any way possible). Nearer and nearer, sweeping down Fleet Street, along the Strand, through Admiralty Arch and finally into the Mall. Linda won’t relinquish her place to get Cheryl into the shade so she shrouds her in a wedding tea towel that she brought in the picnic hamper, like a bridal veil. She looks no less ridiculous than half the crowd who are likewise draped in Union Jacks.
‘Not long now,’ says Bob, slurping his tea. ‘Then we can go home for a lie down.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep again,’ says Linda, as the carriage looms into view, the roar of the crowd swallowing her words and carrying them off somewhere over our glorious capital city. The place that Helena loved. My birthplace.
We catch a glimpse of the bride, Diana in a halo of sunshine, waving in our direction and then all too soon she’s passed by with her new husband, closely followed by the Queen and Earl Spencer and behind them, Prince Philip and Mrs Shand-Kydd, then Prince Andrew and his gran.
‘That’s a convoy and a half,’ Linda gushes as the royal party disappear into the forecourt of the palace and away to the wedding breakfast inside. We hold our collective breath, knowing they’ll reappear before long, for all to see, out on the balcony, in the glittering sunshine, then there is a surge, a rush to fill the Mall, the crowd urging itself forward, those at the front pressing against the railings of the palace, the best view in the land.
And they do. All the royals you could ever hope for, gathered together in one family grouping (an ideal situation, if you were a monarchist or a member of the Paparazzi or an assassin). But unfortunately Auntie Sheila misses the magic moment of the predicted Kiss – a chaste, embarrassed peck on the lips rather than a fully-blown snog – because something else has grabbed her attention. Or rather someone. Auntie Sheila finds herself drawn to Linda. Linda who’s taken this opport
unity to get down on bended knee, in front of the nation and indeed the Queen herself, and ask Bob for his hand in marriage.
Several hours later we are congregated back at Toni’s flat with tales of royal sightings and wedding stories that will go down in folklore. And with a double celebration of the wedding and an engagement to be endured. Oh, and my birthday which has been completely bypassed. Still, the Champagne (well, Asti Spumante) is flowing and who am I to complain? Especially as any minute now a certain someone’s due to come in that front door.
But we are also waiting for another guest. Linda’s son Clive (the sailor) is on leave and, with Bob’s connivance, has arranged to turn up at the flat as a surprise for his mother. Only he is the one in for a surprise when he discovers he is to have a new father. (Bob is still reeling from the shock himself, though he has managed a strangled ‘Yes’ to his now-fiancée.)
While we wait, there is music – a toxic mixture of Toni’s Duran Duran records and Bob’s Elvis tapes. It isn’t the cool party most sixteen-year-olds hope for but then again I am more mature than most sixteen-year-olds (in some ways anyhow) and realise I am not the centre of the universe and never have been. Plus, I know things will pick up once T-J has torn himself away from the pub. My greatest concern is that he’ll end up staying till closing time. That he’ll be too drunk to remember who I am. To remember that I am that sweet sixteen.
Just as I am cutting the cake (yes, Linda remembered and got Auntie Sheila to bake one of her finest), the door goes and my heart rate doubles so I know what it must be like for Uncle Bernie. But it is Clive, looking dapper in his uniform, though more like a sea cadet than a fully-fledged member of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. Linda is in tears of rapture but soon pulls herself together to tell him off for not letting her know he would be on leave. Then she breaks the news to him, a little red-faced because she knows how much Clive thinks of his dad. And so the evening progresses, Duran Duran being completely usurped by the dead king, though we have gone from the Hound Dogs to the Love Me Tenders of Bob’s extensive collection.