Becoming Nancy

by Terry Ronald

  And so, yes, it had been a bloody difficult week, to say the least. But I’m certainly not going to let that spoil today: today in the park, in the sun, with my friends, and with Maxie.

  * * *

  Hamish is now lying face down with his eyes shut. In fact we are all now pretty much just grinning patches of jelly on the cool grass of Brockwell Park, so it’s a fairly rude awakening when Maxie leaps to his feet and screams at the top of his voice, ‘Yeah! I fucking love this song: it’s The Specials! Get up, get up! I have to dance!’

  Somehow everyone manages to haul him or herself upright, and suddenly we’re all moving to the now clearly audible and perfectly superb music. We’re a bit shaky at first, it has to be said, but once we get into our stride we all dance like we’re possessed and we throw our hands into the sky, singing:

  ‘Why must you record my phone calls? Are you planning a bootleg LP?’

  Around the park, everyone is dancing: the white boys and the black girls, the queers and the mums, the punks and the rude boys, the dykes and the Rastas. This is a moment of complete unity – this is what we came here for. My sister Chrissy grabs my hand and we are dancing together, whooping and laughing.

  ‘Said you’ve been threatened by gangsters; now it’s you that’s threatening me.’

  Chrissy spins round and then grabs Abigail around the waist, while Maxie takes my hand, swinging my arm back and forth with his. I close my eyes for just a second to savour the moment, and when I open them, Maxie gives me a wink. I am very happy. We are all roaring with laughter as we watch Frances and Mr McClarnon dancing the moonstomp together, and then hearing our teacher shout out, ‘Don’t call me scarface!’ at the appropriate moment just about finishes us off. As the song ends we collapse like cards back down on to the grass.

  ‘Perfect!’ shouts Hamish McClarnon. ‘Absolutely fucking perfect!’

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  Ten

  The Balcony Scene

  It’s a good six hours since we left the park by the time Maxie and me get to Moira’s flats, and as we step out of the sour-smelling lift and head along the covered walkway, Maxie says, ‘Are you sure she won’t mind?’

  I’m not really sure at all, but I ring the bell anyway. No answer. I ring again, a longer blast this time, and now I can see through the ribbed glass someone shuffling along the passage. When Moira opens her front door, it’s only by about two inches and she warily peeks out as best she can on to the balcony. A brass chain across the door prevents it from opening any further.

  ‘I’ve told ya, I’ve got nothin’ till tomorrow,’ she says curtly.

  I turn to Maxie; he looks as puzzled as I am.

  ‘It’s me, Moira,’ I whisper. ‘David! I’ve got my friend Maxie with me.’

  ‘Oh! Come in, boys, come in!’ she says with some surprise, and she undoes the chain and swings open the door to her council maisonette.

  ‘What the hell are you doing out this late, David? It’s half past one in the morning.’

  Maxie and I bundle into the hall and Moira pokes her head out of the door, scrutinizing the balcony in both directions – for what, I’ve no idea.

  ‘I told me mum I was staying at Frances’ house, Moira,’ I say as she darts back in and puts the catch on. ‘You won’t grass me up, will you?’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she snorts, herding us along the passage and into a lounge chock-full of decorative no-no’s. ‘As if I would! Where have you been till this time, anyway?’

  ‘We’ve been to the Rock Against Racism gig,’ Maxie breezes proudly.

  Moira stands back with her short arms folded and takes in Maxie, giving him the full up-and-down inspection.

  ‘’Ave you now?’ she laughs. ‘And who the fuck are you when you’re at ‘ome, anyway?’

  ‘This is Maxie, Moira. I told you about him last week, remember?’

  Moira sparks up a Superking and plonks herself down on the peach World of Leather recliner she’s always rattling on about.

  ‘I must ‘ave had me head in the oven,’ she smiles, and then she notices: I knew she would, you can’t bloody miss it.

  ‘What’s with the fucking black eye?’ she says.

  Maxie puts his hand up to his face and rolls his eyes.

  ‘We ’ad a bit of trouble at a party,’ he mutters. ‘It’s all right, though, it’s not that bad – no real damage done.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ I say. ‘My beige soul sandals are ruined.’

  Moira’s looking confused.

  ‘I thought you said you were at a concert,’ she says, ‘not a flamin’ party; and even so, it’s a Sunday night – where ’ave you been till this time?’

  ‘Just walking,’ I shrug. ‘Walking. We lost track of time and then Maxie realized that he didn’t have his Chubb key. His dad puts the mortise on at half past ten.’

  ‘They’ve been in Southend so they probably think I’m staying at my sister’s,’ Maxie says. ‘I often do on a Sunday.’

  Moira eyes us askance, flicking her ash into a depleted fruit bowl on the nest of wicker tables beside her.

  ‘So what ’appened at this do, then?’ she asks. ‘How did Joe Frazier ’ere land up with a fuckin’ shiner?’

  Maxie and I park ourselves on the couch beside Moira’s chair, and I relieve her of her cigarette, taking an elongated drag. I don’t always smoke but this has been quite a day, what with one thing and another.

  ‘Well, after we left the RAR gig about eight thirty-ish,’ I say, ‘we all get invited to this random party by Chrissy’s mate Abigail. It’s some bloke she knows on the Aylesbury estate who works in John Colliers on a Saturday and sometimes DJs at the CPH.’

  ‘The what?’ Moira says, pushing back on her recliner and letting the footstool shoot out.

  ‘Crystal Palace Hotel,’ Maxie clarifies.

  ‘Oh!’ she says. ‘That’s the pub where your sister and all the mods go, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Anyway—’

  Moira interrupts again.

  ‘And it’s bloody rough, that Aylesbury estate,’ she says. ‘You kids shouldn’t be knocking around there at night.’

  ‘Well, we know that now,’ I laugh. ‘Anyway … so … we all get on the bus from Brixton and head over there, and at first it was a really cool house party. Me and Maxie went, plus Chrissy, Abi, Frances and even our drama teacher, Mr McClarnon, went for a bit – mind you, he was so pissed by that point I don’t think he knew where he was. Anyway, we were the youngest bunch there. A lot of ’em were eighteen, nineteen, but they were really cool with us because they knew Chrissy and Abi from the pub. And we were dancing … the music was boss, wasn’t it, Maxie? They played loads of ska and new wave, and we all ended up dancing out on the balcony with the sound system blaring out across the estate …’

  It was true, at least half the party had trundled out into the night air to dance with the moon above them.

  ‘I reckon this balcony’s gonna come away from the bleedin’ wall in a minute,’ Frances warned us as the music thumped out through the doors and windows of the flat, which was positively quaking.

  Whoever was playing the music though, as far as I was concerned, had unimpeachable taste, and when I heard my absolute favourite new record – one I’d only just taped off the radio the previous morning and already knew by heart – I was off and running with the rest of them: jumping up and down on the tenth floor of a council estate on the Walworth Road under the stars on a Sunday night – who’d have fucking believed it?

  ‘I bought my baby a red radio.

  He played it all day a-go-go a-go-go.

  He liked to dance to it down in the streets.

  He said he loved me but he loved the beat.’

  Even some of the neighbours didn’t seem to be too fussed about the noise. Some young punky types from the floor below had heard the music and popped up to investigate, and then a lady in a black bra and her teenage daughter came out of the flat two doors down, grabbed a tin o
f Heineken from a passing Rasta and joined in – grooving with the multitude.

  ‘It was about then that the ructions started,’ I say to Moira, who by now looks nigh-on fascinated and has lit up another super-sized ciggie.

  ‘Go on,’ she says.

  ‘Well, me, Maxie and Frances were all standing by the stairwell sharing a smoke I’d bummed off Chrissy, and suddenly out of the lift pour about ten or twelve boys who we’d have rather not bumped into, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Who were they?’ Moira says.

  ‘The little NF contingent,’ I say grimly.

  ‘Led by a kid from our school,’ Maxie interjects.

  ‘Jason Lancaster, his name is,’ I continue. ‘A right nasty little bleeder; hates me with a passion. Anyway, him and his fucking brownshirts – as I call them – come along the balcony where we all are and start mouthing off. Some of them infiltrate the party but a couple of them start throwing beer over two black kids that are stood outside, thinking it’s hilarious. Then another boy has a go at Frances; starts pulling her hair and shoving her about. So Maxie bowls over to this kid and yanks him away by the arm, tells him to get his dirty fucking hands off Frances—’

  ‘Hence the black eye,’ Maxie smiles bravely.

  ‘Hence the black eye,’ I repeat. ‘Well then, all bastard hell breaks loose. Some of the party kids get wind and come over to sort Jason and his mates out and suddenly it’s bedlam. Huge fucking bundle.’

  ‘Ooh my gawd!’ Moira says, clutching her throat. ‘No one was ’urt, was they? There weren’t no stabbin’s or nuffin’?’

  ‘No, the police were called,’ I say, ‘and apart from Maxie’s shiner, none of us lot were really hurt; but Abigail said that one of the NF boys had tried to finger her while she was passing a bowl of Monster Munch through the serving hatch in the kitchen.’

  ‘Shockin’,’ Moira says.

  ‘I know,’ I say, and I take another long drag on her fag and flick the ash in the fruit bowl. ‘The worst part of it was poor Chrissy.’

  Moira’s eyes bulge.

  ‘Why? What the fuck ‘appened to your Chrissy?’

  ‘Well, nothing happened to her,’ I tell Moira. ‘She’d been in the kitchen with Abi and she came out to see what the noise was. Course, who was she faced with when she comes out of the front door?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Squirrel! Her boyfriend!’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ I say, ‘he was one of them. He was the one shoving Frances and pulling her hair. Squirrel was the one that gave Maxie the black eye.’

  Moira stares down at her ski sweater, somewhat guiltily, I feel, and picks at some loose wool. Is she about to come clean, I wonder, about her and Squirrel’s little secret – whatever it may be? Should I inform her that I’d witnessed her passing him an unidentified package in our kitchen the previous Monday, in a manner one might only describe as surreptitious? I decide against confrontation, principally as I’m angling for her to let Maxie and me spend the night, and I don’t want to piss her off.

  ‘I knew he was a bad lad, that Squirrel,’ Moira eventually says softly, but that’s all she does say.

  ‘Chrissy was devastated,’ I tell her. ‘She knew Squirrel was into the mod scene, but not hanging around with the NF kids – she never knew that. She was livid. Anyway, in amongst all the fighting and the loud music, suddenly I heard sirens, and then the police pour into the flats and come dashin’ up the stairs, don’t they? Mr McClarnon managed to shepherd all of our little mob along the balcony and into the lift, and we legged it out of there, thank God. Some mad fucking party, though, eh?’

  ‘Fuck a duck,’ Moira says breathlessly.

  ‘Two ducks,’ I say. ‘Anyway, that was about ten-ish, and since then we’ve just been … just …’

  ‘Wandering around East Dulwich,’ Maxie says.

  ‘Yeah. Just wandering,’ I say. ‘And now we’ve got nowhere to stay.’

  I stare wretchedly at Moira, who just looks back at me, stony-faced, and sucks hard on the remainder of her fag.

  We hadn’t exactly been wandering around East Dulwich for the whole time. Maxie and I had first ushered a more than slightly shaken Frances safely back to the flats where she lives. I felt horrible about what had happened at the party, especially with Squirrel, but I must say, Frances was putting on a valiant front when she kissed us both at her door, waving her finger at us like a mother hen, and advising us to get along home. After that, we left Chrissy and Abigail drinking cider out of plastic bottles outside the dry-cleaners at around ten thirty. Then, deciding that the night was still young – probably foolishly – Maxie and me had set up camp in the Wimpy Bar until it closed and then we’d just walked and talked, though I’ve little to no idea where or what about. I was practically a giddy 1950s schoolgirl by then, if you want the truth – one of the four Marys from Bunty, perhaps – and why not? I’d had one of the most thrilling, if at some points a little scary, days of my life and now I had Maxie Boswell all to myself, to boot.

  ‘I can’t go home now, me dad’ll ’ave locked the door,’ Maxie said. ‘I stay at my sister’s nine times out of ten on a Sunday, so he’ll think I’m over there. I could stay at yours though, couldn’t I?’

  I think I was a little bit sick in my mouth, and then I shouted, ‘NO! … I mean … my old dears think I’m at Frances’. I was supposed to be staying there tonight, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you then?’ Maxie said as we stopped outside the brightly lit window of Marriot’s toyshop.

  I thought for a moment. Yes, that was a good question, as it goes. Why hadn’t I stayed at Frances’? I turned to Maxie, who was staring in the window, utterly transfixed by an almost life-size model of the much-heralded and purportedly terrifying creature from the new movie Alien. It was perched in what looked like a giant Noddy car next to a superstar Barbie fashion face, which I felt slightly detracted from any real terror it might otherwise have instilled.

  ‘I suppose …’ I mutter. ‘I suppose … I didn’t stay at Frances’ place because …’

  Maxie turned around and I felt nervy all of a sudden, but I soldiered on regardless.

  ‘Because … I didn’t want today to end.’

  He leaned against the toyshop window, and then he looked at me and laughed, and I thought: what’s funny? But then he said, ‘Well, it doesn’t ’ave to, does it? Isn’t there somewhere else we can go?’

  It was then that I thought of Moira’s. She’s always up late. She watches telly till all hours now, since my dad got her that knocked-off video recorder.

  ‘I know somewhere,’ I said.

  ‘Well, let’s go,’ Maxie smiled.

  Of course, I don’t tell Moira all that. Just that it’s much too late for us to go banging on either of our own front doors now, so here we are.

  ‘All right,’ she says dubiously. ‘You can stay ’ere tonight but you’re up for school in the morning, seven o’clock, so you’ve got time to pop ’ome and get your school stuff. You’ll ’ave to ‘ave my bed cos me spare room’s got all me wigs in it. I’ll sleep on the recliner – I don’t really mind, I’ve still got three episodes of Quincy to get through. And I’m gonna get you a bag of frozen runners to put on that eye, Maxie, cos it’ll come up nasty in the mornin’ if you don’t – do you ’ear me?’

  Maxie and me are both smiling and nodding; what an adventure we’ve had. Moira drags herself out of her chair and heads towards the kitchenette.

  ‘Do you want a tin of lager to take up, lads?’ she calls out, swinging open the fridge door.

  ‘Go on then,’ I say. ‘Just the one.’

  By the time Maxie finally comes into the cerise-painted bedroom from the loo, I’ve got a partially bald avocado candlewick bedspread hauled up to my neck in an attempt to conceal my lean arms and puny chest – not having ever seriously considered the possibility that we might, in fact, be sleeping in a double bed together. It suddenly dawns on me, though, that I might look vaguely like
a jumpy Victorian virgin on her wedding night, so I bravely let the cover fall, exposing my torso.

  ‘I think I’m a bit tipsy,’ Maxie says, swaying slightly in the doorway. ‘Are you?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m not.’

  And I take a huge gulp from the can of Carling Black Label that’s sitting on the ugly Formica bedside drawers next to me. Maxie undresses with the lamp on, and he is not in the least bashful, throwing his shirt and jeans off and shoving his hands into his pants to adjust himself before hopping into the bed beside me. Oh, God. Maxie is in the bed beside me. I’m picking at the woodchip paper on the wall next to me, and fretfully chewing on my lip as he snuggles down. Oh, Christ on a bike!

  ‘You’re shivering. Should I pop that fan heater on?’ he says.

  ‘I’m all right, as it goes,’ I assure him, and then he leans across me and switches off a small pottery lamp that hasn’t got a proper shade but is draped with a half-finished Holly Hobby cross-stitch picture.

  Then it’s dark. ‘As black as yer hat’, my grandad would have said. And for a while I don’t have even the wherewithal to move, and I can’t hear or see a bloody thing. Then I hear him breathing: it’s a fast, shallow semi-pant and my own respiratory rhythms seem to be in sync with his. I realize, quite suddenly, that I am actually aching for Maxie to touch me – even accidentally – but still I dare not move in case he thinks I’m some kind of voracious teenage molester; so I am lying rigid and damp with sweat. Inert. Confounded. Hard.

  * * *

  After jerking awake several times, and desperate not to fall into a deep sleep and miss any of this implausibly perfect night with my boy right here beside me, I turn on to my side and he is facing me: yes, facing me – we are now only inches apart. Near enough, in fact, to feel breath. I’m longing to make a seductive and sexy move, but I have absolutely no idea how to achieve this in my present predicament, or any other predicament, come to that, and I’m not entirely sure what sexy and seductive actually is, anyway, so I think – what would Debbie Harry do? Oh, it would be so much easier for her, all this. She’d be so much wiser and womanlier; plus she has much longer and blonder hair and I would assume that could only be a bonus, to be honest.