by Jean Ure
But there was something else which troubled me, apart from the question of God. When so many people were suffering, how could I still be excited at the thought of Matt coming to Dad’s get-together? How could I still be dithering about what to wear?
I knew if I asked Dad he’d tell me not to bother my pretty little head, cos Dad really doesn’t like to think about bad things. Quite often, when the news is on, he’ll go and make a cup of tea or pick up a magazine. Mum says he’s a bit of an ostrich like that. On the other hand, if I were to ask Mum I’d be scared she might start … not lecturing me, exactly, but going on. That is what me and Dad used to call it when Mum got on her high horse: going on. In this case, going on about my obsession with clothes and the way I looked. I could do without that! So, as usual, I turned to Hattie. Hattie can always be relied upon to speak her mind, but she doesn’t lecture, and she doesn’t go on. I asked her if she thought that I was vain and shallow-minded, and Hattie gave one of her guffaws and said, “Of course you’re vain! You’re one of the vainest people I know.” She then added that she’d probably be vain herself if she looked like me. “It’s all part of the package.”
Well! That solaced me slightly. “But what about shallow-minded?” I said.
Hattie thought about it, then went, “Mm … I s’ppose you are a bit. But no more than most people.” She said that with so many truly ghastly things happening in the world, what with AIDS, and people starving, and wars and floods and hideous disasters, you couldn’t afford to let it take over your life or you would most likely end up going into a deep depression or even killing yourself.
I was relieved when Hattie said this. I said, “So you reckon it’s OK for me to forget about the tsunami for just a few hours?”
Hattie said, “Yes, absolutely! But I think probably we should think about it afterwards … I mean, like, maybe we should actually do something?”
I agreed, eagerly. “Yes! Let’s do something. We could have a fundraiser!”
I was just so grateful to have been given permission to be shallow and self-centred for just the one evening.
Brilliant best party of all time. Simon and the Sun God came. The Sun God – Matt! – is even more gorgeous close-up than from a distance. Sun God is the right name for him! We sat by ourselves for a while and talked, and got on really well. So well, in fact, that I plucked up my courage and asked him the question … if I am selected for Founder’s Day, would he like to come with me as my partner? Looking back, I don’t know how I dared! It just, like, shot out of me before I realised what I was doing. But it’s all right, cos he has said yes. HE HAS SAID YES! I can hardly believe it. Just wait till I tell Hattie!
It was a good party, but only because Matt was there. If he hadn’t come, it would have been the same as every year: a load of grown-ups and just me and Hattie, with a couple of younger kids plus Weedy Gonzalez and my cousin Tina. Tina’s OK, but she’s what I would call a bit of a dimbo, meaning that she giggles a lot about nothing, and squeaks and clasps her hands together, and even presses them to her bosom (what little there is of it). Weed is a boy in my class at school. His dad and my dad play golf together and are what is known as buddies. Poor old Weed! He is terrifically geeky and boring. I know he can’t help it, he is really quite nice and totally harmless, but just not anyone that I could fancy in a billion trillion years.
The best part of the evening was when we went in the pool. Me and Matt, that is. Tina and the Weed insisted on coming, too, but fortunately they can’t swim so they just pottered about at the shallow end and left us pretty well in peace. Simon said no thanks and Hattie told me, in a whisper, that she had her period, which wasn’t strictly true as I knew for a fact that it had finished. Me and Hattie always know these things about each other. But I didn’t say anything as I didn’t want to embarrass her. She’d become very strange and oversensitive about herself just lately, and I guessed she didn’t want to be seen by Matt in her bathing costume, so I told her to keep Simon amused and that we would be back in a few minutes.
In fact we stayed in the pool – or at any rate, sitting on the side of it, dangling our legs – for almost an hour. Matt said he’d never been in an indoor pool before, not in someone’s actual house, so I explained how Dad was a builder and had got the place cheap and done it up.
“It was all falling to pieces … dry rot and everything.”
Matt said he guessed that was one of the advantages of having a dad who did something useful. I asked him what his dad did, and he said he was a lawyer; and he pulled a face, like he didn’t rate lawyers too highly in the overall scheme of things. I didn’t quite know what to say to that, so for a few minutes I didn’t say anything, and neither did he, and we had one of those awkward silences which always embarrass me most horribly. Then I had a moment of inspiration and asked him why Simon didn’t swim.
“Is it because of his leg?”
Matt said that it was. He said, “It’s not that he can’t swim. He’s just oversensitive. Thinks people will stare at him, or something.”
I said, “Like Hattie!”
“Like anyone cares,” said Matt.
I asked him what was wrong with Simon’s leg, and he told me that he had been in the car with his dad when his dad had lost control and driven into a tree at 90 mph.
“He was in hospital for months. He’s still got to have more operations.”
I said, “God, if my dad did that to me he’d never forgive himself!”
Matt said he didn’t know about Simon’s dad forgiving himself, but Simon’s mum had certainly never forgiven him.
“They’ve practically come apart at the seams over it.”
“That is so terrible,” I said. I didn’t think I could bear it if my mum and dad were to come apart at the seams.
Matt said that Simon’s mum was a right battle-axe. “She’s another lawyer, wouldn’t you know it?”
This time, it was me that pulled a face. I really don’t know why I pulled one, just that it seemed to be what was expected. Lawyers, ugh! Women lawyers, yuck!
“I can’t stand professional women,” said Matt.
I said, “What, even though your mum is one?”
Matt said, “Yeah, even though my mum is one.”
I wondered if that meant he didn’t get on too well with his mum, but I didn’t like to ask in case it seemed like prying. And I didn’t like to ask what it was, exactly, that he had against professional women in case he thought that I approved of them, or worse still was aiming to be one. Me a lawyer! No thank you.
He told me, anyway. “There’s just something about them … so damn bossy all the time. Too busy trying to beat men at their own game. Know what I mean?”
I nodded eagerly. “My dad would agree with you! That’s what he thinks, too.” I told him how Mum had recently got this bee in her bonnet about not having had enough education.
“And she’s taking it out on me! Like I’ve got to work really hard and pass all these exams to make up for her not passing a single one.”
“Gross,” said Matt.
“Actually” – this was where I started to get bold – “I am sort of working a bit harder than usual, but it’s nothing to do with Mum. It’s because I’m trying to get selected for Founder’s Day.”
Matt said, “Yeah, I’ve heard of that. It’s quite a big do, isn’t it?”
So that was when I got really bold and asked him if he’d like to come with me as my partner, and he said that he would, and I was, like, over-the-moon!
It had been good having Simon to talk about, because while I have always been into boys in a really big way I do sometimes find them quite difficult to actually converse with.
Like with Hattie, for example, I can chat about absolutely anything for hours on end, no problem at all, but with boys I am not always sure what will interest them. It seems to me that you can’t gossip with a boy like you can with a girl. They are quite odd in their own way, but I do like them!
Mum slightly annoyed me next
morning by saying, “My goodness, what a flash young man! He thinks the world of himself, doesn’t he?”
I asked her how she could possibly know, since as far as I was aware she hadn’t even spoken to him, apart from just saying hello. Mum said, “I didn’t need to speak to him, I could tell just by looking.”
I said, “Well! Talk about judging people by their appearances. You are just so prejudiced. I suppose if he’d been black, you’d have said he was a mugger. Or if he’d had a ring in his ear, you’d have said he was on drugs. Or— ”
Mum said, “Scarlett, don’t be silly. You know better than that.”
I thought, well, but really! Just because Matt was good looking, was that any reason to take against him? Mum really could be quite impossible, at times. I complained to Dad about it. I said, “What does she want? Would she rather I went out with some geeky little nerd?” I knew Dad wouldn’t agree, cos last term when I’d gone out for a short while with Jason Francis he’d said we made a handsome couple. (Just a pity Jason was such a gunk.) “I mean, what is her problem?” I said.
Dad told me not to pay too much attention. “Your mum’s going through a funny phase at the moment. Taking life a bit too seriously. Don’t worry! She’ll come through it.”
I said that I hoped she would cos I was beginning to find all this constant criticism quite tiresome. Dad said, “Tell me about it!”
“I mean, what is wrong with her?” I said.
“Nothing,” said Dad. “It’ll pass.”
For just a moment, when he said that, I thought I could hear a note of doubt in his voice, like maybe he wasn’t so sure, after all, about it being a phase.
“God,” I said, “please don’t let it be permanent!”
“I’ll second that,” muttered Dad.
Oh, but it couldn’t be! I couldn’t bear it if Mum was going to turn into some sour-faced harridan without any sense of humour. I didn’t think Dad could bear it, either. And then where would we be?
I decided to put it to the back of my mind. It was between Mum and Dad; there was nothing I could do about it.
In the meantime, me and Hattie didn’t forget our vow to have a fundraiser for the tsunami victims. We spoke to one or two of our special friends at school and they all agreed that it was a good idea. Most of our mums and dads had made donations, but we wanted to do something by ourselves, to show that we cared. It was just a question of what. Hattie said we should call the whole of our class together after school to talk about it, so we got permission to use the small hall and almost everyone came along. Even the boys! I say that as usually they would turn their nose up at anything organised by girls, plus they do have this tendency to mess around all the time and make stupid jokes. Fortunately Hattie was there to keep them in order. They are quite in awe of Hattie!
I don’t know whose suggestion it was that we should have a beauty contest. It certainly wasn’t mine! And I don’t think it was Tanya’s, either. But we had a show of hands and practically every hand in the room went up. Someone then said that we should have a “beefcake” contest for the boys, so they could strip off and show their muscles, but the only boy to put his hand up and support that one was Weedy Gonzalez – who doesn’t even have any muscles! I thought that was quite brave of him, actually. He’s not so bad, old Weed. The rest are such spoilsports!
One of them, Anthony Meyers, said that instead of a beefcake contest we should have a Tom Bowler. Well, that is what I thought he said. I only discovered later that in fact it is a tombola. Just a sort of lucky dip, really. You have all these tickets with numbers on them and people pay to pick them out. If they get a number with, like, 0 on the end, that means they’ve won a prize. Some of us were a bit alarmed at the thought of prizes, cos where were we going to get them from? But Ant said as it was for charity any old thing would do, just so long as it wasn’t too tatty, or had bits missing, so we all agreed to go home and find stuff that we didn’t want any more. I said, “And we can ask our mums and dads, as well.”
Patty Stevens said that she would get her mum to bake a cake, so that we could have a “Guess the Weight of the Cake” competition, and Anita Serrano, whose dad runs a restaurant, said that she would ask her dad if we could use his downstairs banqueting hall for free, one Saturday afternoon. It was all quite exciting!
I told Mum and Dad about it when I got back from school. Mum said she thought it was an excellent idea. “Except for the beauty contest. Whose suggestion was that?”
“Not mine,” I said.
“Are you sure?” said Mum.
I was indignant. “Someone else suggested it. Then we voted on it. What’s wrong with a beauty contest, anyway?”
“Nothing,” said Dad. “Just a bit of harmless fun.”
He chuckled. “And of course we all know who’ll win!”
“It won’t be me,” I said, quickly. “It’ll be Tanya.”
‘Tanya? That one that came to your party last year? Nah!” Dad shook his head. “She’s a milksop beside you.”
“Frank, do you have to?” said Mum. “Your daughter is quite vain enough as it is.”
I felt my cheeks fire up. Hattie had said I was vain! I said, “You don’t have to get all bent out of shape over it. I already told you, it wasn’t my idea.”
“No, but I bet you went along with it!”
“So what? So did everyone else! And if you can win prizes for – I don’t know! Writing essays, or something, I don’t see why you can’t win prizes for the way you look.”
“Exactly,” said Dad. “Where’s the difference?”
“The difference,” said Mum, “is that one is an achievement, the other is just an accident of birth. Beauty is only skin deep, you know! It’s what’s inside that counts. Who’s going to judge this beauty contest, anyway?”
I said, “All the people that come. They’ll all get to vote.”
“And how is it supposed to make money?”
I hadn’t quite thought that one out. I said, “I dunno … I guess people will pay to come in.”
“You’d better believe it,” said Dad. “I’ll pay to come in, don’t you worry!”
Mum clicked her tongue, impatiently. She said, “I’m fighting a losing battle, aren’t I?” And she swept out of the room, leaving me and Dad to exchange rueful glances.
“She’s doing it again,” I said.
“I know, I know.” Dad waved a hand, as if to say, tell me about it. “Women get to a certain age— ”
“She’s not that old!” I said.
She was only forty-two: not exactly ancient. “If she’d had me when you were first married,” I said, “she’d only be thirty-two. Why did you wait so long?”
“Ah. Well.” A slightly shifty look came over Dad’s face. “That was, like – I guess – my fault. In a way.” He gave me this guilty grin. “I didn’t want her to lose her figure!”
I said, “Dad.”
“Well, and also I wanted to keep her all to myself … just at the beginning, you know?”
“Is that the reason you never had any more?” I said.
“Why? Would you have liked us to have more?”
I’d sometimes thought about it. Hattie had two sisters and a brother, and I had occasionally wondered if I would like to be part of a large family. But on the whole I couldn’t honestly say that it bothered me. I quite enjoyed being an only child. I said this to Dad, and he said, “Well, there you go, then! I shouldn’t talk to your mum about this, by the way. She – ah – she needs a bit of time to get herself sorted.”
I wouldn’t have dreamt of talking to Mum! Talking to Mum was the very last thing I wanted to do. I wrote about it in my diary:
Mum is behaving so oddly these days. I just can’t make her out any more. These last few months it’s like she’s almost become a different person. Like always NIGGLING. Always on at me not to be obsessed with the way I look, or the way other people look. Like for her looks just aren’t important. But Mum has been a beauty in her time! Dad’s always said
that I take after her. I’ve seen photos of when she was young, when she and Dad were first married. The way she dressed, the way she smiled at the camera, like giving it the old come-on.
So what’s changed? Whatever it is, it’s not fair on Dad! He’s so proud of her, he just loves to be seen out with her. What he loves best is to be seen out with B0TH of us, me on one arm, Mum on the other. “My two girls!” I guess some people might say that was a bit yucky, but I don’t see what’s wrong with it. Not if it makes Dad happy. God, you’d think Mum would be flattered, after all these years, having a man that still wanted to show her off. I would be!
Mum was a puzzle, but I really didn’t have time to cudgel my brains over her because all of a sudden life had become just hugely full of promise. Not just the fundraiser, not just the beauty contest, but …
Hooray hurrah and five thousand cheers! All my hard work has paid off. I HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR FOUNDER’S DAY!!!
Hattie had been selected, too, but that came as no surprise; I’d known all along that she would be. But me!!! I could hardly believe it, even when the list was read out to us by Mr Frazer and I heard the names, Hattie Anstruther, Tanya Hoskins, Scarlett Maguire … I did this like huge sort of double take and then screamed, really loud, and clapped a hand to my mouth. I noticed one or two people giving me these rather sour looks, like they couldn’t believe it, either, and didn’t think I deserved it. But I had worked so hard, and I hadn’t been late for school once, not for the whole of last term, and I knew that my attitude was better cos lots of the teachers had remarked on it. And I wouldn’t cheat and slacken off just because I’d been selected! I might relax just the tiniest little bit, but not enough to affect my grades. Whatever some people might think of me, I do have my principles and it wasn’t fair of Inga Martin to go round telling everyone that it was nothing but favouritism. Just because she hadn’t been selected! How could it be favouritism? I wasn’t anybody’s favourite! Up until the start of Year 8, I bet most of the staff thought I was a total pain. (Which I can see now that I probably was.)