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| From an image by James Taylor at eltpics |
Three and a
half years ago, I wrote that I was putting off writing the next instalment of
my Green Days (that last instalment is here). I am now officially an expert procrastinator! But here it is.
And as I sit on the edge of the page, right here, up at the top, I have no idea
how it’s going to weave itself on the way down. Look out below. Literally, look
out. And I’ll write the following instalment shortly after.
*******************
The girl
walking along, nonchalantly proud of her new-found long, long legs and arms,
which were brown (or at least a sort of orange) for the first time in their
twelve-and-a-half years, was wearing a mint green dress. A rebel unaware of the
existence of causes, her bottle green jersey was tied around her waist, her
sandals happily scuffed, her battered old, half empty brown briefcase – how come
it always reminded her of a floppy-jowled dog? - bumping the side of her leg as
she walked. She’d have a bruise. She didn’t care. It had been a long, fun
summer but that morning, she’d traded her annoying little sister in for her
band of buddies, and gone back to school.
Summers
were glorious back then. They were made of rope ladders and swings and bright polyester
halter-necks and swimming-pools and orchards and wormy greengages and comparing
bikini tops to see if anyone’s wasn’t flat, and mums that made iced tea because
Robert Carrier told them how to. It was buffet lunches in British Home Stores
and coffee in the Wimpy grill with friends and no parents and lying on your
friend’s living-room floor listening to their older siblings’ records. It was
Arthur Rackham posters and Liberty’s and tank tops and high waisters. It was
Angel Delight and sliced banana with some friends, and avocado pear and vinaigrette
with others. Queen sang to their best friend, Elton to Kiki, and Tavares was a
band, not a beach. Young Hearts (ran) free and You should (have been) dancing. It
was hiding under weeping willows and playing spies because boys were boring,
and it was Jackie comics and green eyeshadow and wearing clothes chosen by your
mum. The world was as big as it ever had been, bigger for sure, as the child
world and the teen world merged and overlapped. It was yellow and orange and
unsubtly sunlit, and it was as fragile as an egg shell on a speedway track.
The girl
had grown rather spectacularly during the holiday, height providing a
ridicule-shield, she hoped, and she had tales of Spain and of strawberries-and-cream
sundaes, stamps with that Franco chap, and a tan to show off. There was no
homework that day because teachers were glowing in the aftermath whilst
battling back-to-work blues. Life was as bright as a Snowball with a cherry,
and she might even have been humming as she walked home that day.
Thirty
minutes separated the train station from home, on foot. First along some post-war
streets of houses, then under the railway arch and past the first water meadows
with their scruffy ponies. Into the filthy-rich Fisheries, where huge houses
were ungated in the pre-paranoia seventies, and then along behind the cricket
pitch to the village. Along the road without a pavement, and turn into the estate.
Second house to the right, her arms were thin so she could push her hand
through the letter box and open the door from the inside. Mum would be there,
maybe at the sewing machine, maybe with juice and biscuits, sister would be…
let’s not think about that for now. Don’t spoil the moment. Yes, she was
definitely humming.
Partway
along the last but one street of post-war pebbledash, a car pulled up alongside.
A silver Capri with a black roof and an unusual number-plate. ‘Channel Islands
or import’, she thought absent-mindedly. She liked cars, loved their shape,
their sound, and a year of train travel with spotters from Presentation College
had sharpened her nerd skills to ‘expert’. The driver had fair hair, that over-dry
straw-fair that comes with bleached eyelashes. He had an unfamiliar accent too,
South Africa? New Zealand? Somewhere that they played rugby and cricket, that
much she knew, from Grandstand and Parkinson and being curious about these
things. But there was no-one else on the street to give him directions.
Annoying. Depending on mum’s mood, juice and biscuits didn’t always wait.
No, she
didn’t know the way to Newlands School. Of course she knew it, all her friends
from primary went there, but she’d never been. No, she couldn’t give him
directions to her school; it was way too far away, thirty or forty minutes by
car. The name? She told him the name. Yes, it was a nice uniform, if you liked
that sort of thing. Nice tan indeed, she’d been on holiday with her parents. (The
murmur of ‘don’t talk to strangers’ was growing louder.) Yes, her skirt was
very short – she’d grown a lot that summer. Her mum had turned the hem down as
far as it could go. Could he see the underside of the hem to see her mum’s
work? Huh? Well, I suppose…. Could she
squat down for him? So he could see….? Could she…… what? His voice like oil.
His smile like melting brie, unfaltering, unpleasant. Squat? Eternity passed.
No, she did not want a lift. No. No. No. Quaking. Throat drying. Holding back
the tears but always be polite to strangers clashing now with the need to go.
Fast. Get away. Someone coming. ‘Help this man, please, he’s lost’. And she
ran. She ran faster than ever before or since. She disappeared down the lane at
the back of the houses, the lanes that ran below the railway embankment, to the
railway arch, the lane that was dangerous but was the safest place on earth
just then. She ran. She was gone. Was he? Didn’t know and would never know.
The rest of
the story disappeared in time, the details bleached and smudged. Police, yes,
smiling policeman, policewoman too, long interview at the dining-room table, talk
of other girls and her mother on the phone. Sitting under the stairs for hours
and hours, perhaps days, sleeping on the gold coloured carpet. Father bringing
a snack and sitting with her for a while. In his suit. Those details still
hover. The rest, all lost. But you see, nothing happened. Not to her. Not that
day. It happened to the man. And it happened to other girls who, unlike her,
had got in the car. The car with the number-plate she’d noticed.
I’d
noticed. And that event, and the association in my mind with my uniform, the
sudden turning of my legs from a source of pride to a source of shame changed
everything.
But dramas only
become dramas if you let them. And this is just a story like so many others’
stories. Something the passing of time has pruned, blurred. And that I grew out
of. It took until about ten years ago, but I outgrew it. And nothing happened
that day. I remember the feeling, the emotions, fear, confusion but most of all
the fight or flight survival energy surge. I remember all that acutely but the
rest…. It wasn’t melodramatic, it was largely about my imagining what could be
happening and what could go on to happen, and it was wise fear not crippling
fear. If it had happened any other day, month, year, perhaps things would have
been different. But it happened that day. And it was key on my route to
becoming a teacher. Perhaps even more so a teacher trainer. That September
afternoon I didn’t realise it, but my personal little train reached a set of
points and the sandy-haired shadowman pulled the lever.
Twat.
