Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon (13 page)

‘Is it sad? What’s happening?’ Anna prompted.

‘Listen – this is really horrible. There are these boys on an island, right? In two gangs. They’re all up on a cliff. Listen. One of the boys levers a big rock off the top, and then this …’ She started to read, in a hushed voice, so that Anna had to creep closer to hear. ‘
The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch …
’ She glanced up. ‘That’s a special shell he’s holding …
the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, travelled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy’s arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig’s after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone
.’ Rose lowered the book and looked at Anna, her eyes wide, then she shut them tightly. ‘Isn’t that awful?’

‘Is he dead?’ Anna had moved closer, and was poking at the long grass at the edges of the concrete the swing was set in. Something had come into the garden, something dark and furtive that chilled the bright day.

‘Of course he’s dead, stupid. Weren’t you listening? Oh … oh, that’s so awful. I can’t stop thinking about it.’ Rose dropped the book, folded her arms tightly and hugged herself.

His head opened and stuff came out and turned red
. Anna imagined it, the boy Piggy falling like Humpty Dumpty, smack on the rock. Falling and falling to the violent
crack
, the shock of not falling any more, the slam of bones and skull against rock. The stuff that came out would be like creamed rice. And then he’d be sucked away by the sea and the other boys wouldn’t have to look at him any more. He’d be eaten by fishes, all gathering round for the rice pudding, red, like when you mix it up with raspberry jam. Piggy, what had been Piggy, would be there in the water with nothing inside his head, nothing behind his eyes. Anna put down her stick and started to cry, quietly sobbing at first, then letting her voice rise. Mum would hear from indoors if she wailed loudly enough.

At once Rose was off the swing, crouching beside her. Her arms went round Anna, cuddling. ‘Anna! Annie! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, honest. It didn’t really happen. It’s just a story.’ She sounded frightened, and Anna knew why: if Mum came up the garden to see what the crying was for, and Anna told her, Rose would be in trouble. ‘Don’t cry, please,’ she begged.

Even at nine, Anna knew how to make the best of a winning hand. She sniffed pitifully. ‘All right. If you come and read me a story at bedtime. A nice one. Not like that.’

‘Of course I will. I’m sorry, sorry.’ Rose’s mouth was against Anna’s hair as they rocked together. Her hair fell around them like a tent.

At tea time, when Dad came home, Rose couldn’t eat her pudding. They were having jam sponge with custard, usually her favourite, but she was only pushing it round her plate and trying to hide it under her spoon.

‘What’s the matter?’ Mum asked. ‘Have you been eating sweets?’

‘No,’ Rose said pathetically. ‘I’m just not hungry.’

Anna knew why she couldn’t eat it. It had red jam sauce and Rose was thinking of that stuff that came out of Piggy’s head. Anna was eating hers up without any trouble, because she knew the stuff that came out was like rice pudding, not like this yellow sponge. She scraped her bowl, keeping a careful watch on Rose’s. If Rose didn’t want it, it oughtn’t to be wasted.

At bedtime Rose read Anna a story about a girl who turned into a seal, and left her mother and father to swim out to sea with the other seals, her real family. Rose read stories much better than Mum or Dad did. She read them in a quiet voice that made you listen, and she believed in them; you could tell by the way her eyes went swimmy.

Much later, Anna heard her screaming from the depths of a nightmare, and Mum’s feet hurrying along to her room.

Chapter Eight

Sandy, 1966

Roland was their father’s favoured one; Sandy couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t thought that. He had come first. He was a boy. In the album there was a photograph of his christening: the new family posed in the garden, her mother seated, the white-swathed baby in her arms, her father standing behind. What struck Sandy about this picture was her parents’ almost identical smiles, inviting the world to share their good fortune.
Look – look what we’ve done. This is what we’ve dreamed about, and now here he is, made flesh
.

The war had ended five years before Sandy was born, but there was so much reminiscing about air-raids, gas masks and rationing that she felt it had only just slipped from sight. She knew her parents’ war stories: how they’d met in 1943, on a bomber base in Lincolnshire; it was quite romantic, as recounted by her mother. Dad had been in Bomber Command, flying Lancasters; Mum was a WAAF typist. They met at a dance, fell in love; there was a photo of them, Douglas and Patsy, both smart and correct in their best blue, her arm curled round his. They dreamed that Douglas would come through the terrible dangers of flak and fighters that faced him several times each week, and that one day, when the war was over, a shared future would be their reward: a wedding, a home of their own, a baby. A son. Sandy knew without anyone telling her that her father had specially wanted a son.

Turning the album pages brought her to her own photograph, with
Cassandra’s Christening
printed underneath in white, on the thick grey page. There she lay, alone on satiny cushions, in the same white dress Roland had worn, her eyes gazing soulfully away from the camera. There were pictures of Roland and herself together as they grew up: on beach holidays, or in school uniform. But it was to Roland’s christening and babyhood that her eyes were always drawn.
They didn’t have me, then. They were happy without me, before I existed
.

She didn’t hold it against Roland, though, that he’d come first. He was her hero, her pride, her friend and her enemy, her supporter, critic and confidant. At eighteen he was tall and lean, thin-faced, with thick dark hair that fell to his collar – like a girl’s, their father said disparagingly. Several of the girls in Sandy’s form were silly about Roland, eyeing him at the bus stop as he waited with other sixth-form boys. Her mother had always said that there was something about men in uniform, joking that it was Dad’s RAF blue that had attracted her. Yes, Sandy could see the uniform thing when she looked at Roland, and more particularly at his best friend, Phil Goss. They wore their school blazers, ties and white shirts under sufferance, yet there was a sort of disciplined grace about them; in their Cuban heels and narrow trousers they were as tall and leggy as racing colts. Out of school hours, with two other friends, Roland and Phil were the Merlins, enclosed in the special bond that held them and the music they made. Then, they had another kind of beauty: raw, thrilling and suggestive. Especially Phil.

Coming second, and being a girl, had its compensations. Roland was the one who carried the expectations of their parents, especially their father. Roland was one of the brightest students in his year, expected to sail through A-Levels and get a place at Oxford to read mathematics. This had been planned for so long that everyone took for granted that it was Roland’s ambition, rather than their father’s.

Roland, Cassandra: romantic names, suggesting myth and high drama. They had been chosen by Mum, who once told the children that their father had favoured David and Susan. At infant and junior schools Sandy had liked her unusual, important-sounding name and was glad she wasn’t Susan, of which there were three in her class. But when she reached secondary school, Cassandra sounded hopelessly old-fashioned, even prissy, and she made herself known as Sandy.

Like Roland, she passed the 11-plus and went to grammar school – in her case the rather unambitious St Clare’s, whose girls were aimed at secretarial jobs or positions in the armed forces, only a minority going on to university. Careers advice was limited, with the assumption that the girls would be trained as assistants to male bosses. Sandy accepted this, imagining herself poised and sophisticated, hair in a cool chignon, typing letters and managing her boss’s appointments diary. She would go to college and learn shorthand-typing and filing and how to answer the telephone. None of this excited her, but it would be a passport to London, to the fashionable streets and trendy shops; it would provide money to spend on clothes and outings. ‘It’s a good grounding for a girl, shorthand and typing,’ her mother told her. ‘You can work anywhere, with those skills. And you can always go back to work part-time when you’ve had children.’

By the fifth form, when the era of Swinging London asserted itself with intoxicating energy, all this felt dull and unenterprising. Sandy began going around, in school and out, with Elaine, who had recently joined the form. Elaine was chestnut-haired and striking, with an air of worldliness and independence. Not only had she been out with boys, but she was more fashion-conscious than anyone Sandy knew; she usually had a magazine in her bag, scorning
Jackie
, Sandy’s choice until then, in favour of the more sophisticated
Honey
. At breaks and lunch times they pored over the problem pages, Elaine taking a lofty attitude towards the naivety of the letter-writers; they studied hints on hair, make-up and skin care, and absorbed fashion details. Merely to know names like Biba and Mary Quant, to use them casually in conversation, brought the colourful, carefree magazine lives within reach.

Their school skirts became progressively shorter, and they wore slingbacks with stacked heels instead of the regulation lace-ups or bar shoes. Soon only the frumpiest and most biddable girls wore knee-length skirts and sensible shoes. Their form teacher threatened lines and detentions, but had little power. According to Elaine, Miss Thompson was a frustrated spinster. Rumour said that she’d been engaged during the war but that her fiancé was killed in the D-Day landings. This impressed Sandy, but Elaine was dismissive: ‘It happened all the time. She’ll never find anyone now, not at her age.’ Miss Thompson, Sandy estimated, must be around Mum’s age, over forty, invariably dressed in dowdy two-pieces and porridge-coloured stockings. ‘No wonder she’s jealous,’ Elaine said, with a toss of her abundant hair.

Hair was another point of contention.
Long hair must be plaited or worn in a ponytail
, the rules said. Rather proud of the length of hers, Sandy had at first worn it in two plaits, but only the first-formers did that, looking like sweet little Swiss girls. The current mode was for long straight hair falling like curtains from a central parting. Even St Clare’s had to move with the times, and some of the younger teachers now wore their hair long and loose, with skirts well above their knees.

Sandy examined herself in the long mirror inside her parents’ wardrobe door. If she narrowed her eyes and pretended to be looking at someone else, then yes, she was passable, though not as striking as Elaine. Her features were unremarkable; her hair, long and brown with fair glints in it, was her second best attribute. She had recently overtaken her mother in height, and her slim body had a grace she never felt when in company and overcome by self-consciousness.

Her number one asset was Roland. Having a brother in a rock group saved her from dullness.

Every afternoon, on the bus home, it felt as if the world was theirs. Elaine and Sandy bounded upstairs, making for the back seats. Time was their own here; freed from lessons and bells, they’d earned this interlude of giggles and gossip. With shoes kicked off and ties stuffed into their pockets, they shared chocolate bars or crisps as they reviewed their day: who had dropped an easy catch in rounders or had been an unbearable know-all; who’d displayed a greying vest or pudgy flesh in the PE changing room; which teacher had got flustered, outsmarted by Elaine or another of the mouthier girls. Here no one could dent the confidence Sandy borrowed from Elaine. Their cackling laughter drove nervous shoppers to the front seats, and kept mothers with toddlers on the lower deck.

Their bus took them past Grove Park, the boys’ school: beyond Victorian stone buildings, the cricket field stretched green and smooth alongside the road. Sometimes there was an after-school match, only of interest if the players were sixth-formers, tall and rangy in their whites, with open-necked shirts and rolled sleeves. They made Sandy think of the First World War poem she’d read in English, all about
Play up! Play up, and play the game
, as if warfare was an extension of school cricket. The association made these boys appear sacrificial, bareheaded in the sunshine, submitting themselves to the discipline of the game. Sandy was hoping for a glimpse of Phil, but couldn’t see him; there was Roland, though, standing in the outfield, hands on hips, looking intent. Possibly he was composing: that was what he did, all the time.