Swan River (21 page)

The windows were opaque with condensation. She put her arm through mine and gripped my hand. I sat back, wondering and apprehensive. What was in her mind? She lived in Highgate, a part of London I had never been to and knew nothing about except that it was miles north. She knew I lived in Chelsea. How would I get back from Highgate later? This was our first date, so she couldn't be inviting me to stay; if she was, she must like me and have an idea that it would be fun to have breakfast together and maybe go for a walk in the morning.

I had never been in a taxi with anyone other than my mother and grandmother. As it swung round a corner, Bonnie fell against me and somehow we started kissing. Her tongue was smooth and sugary and the kissing went on and on until eventually I looked up. The taxi was moving fast through traffic lights, windscreen wipers slapping from side to side. I could see the driver's eyes in the mirror and felt embarrassed; what would he think – these people who weren't able to stop kissing each other? I turned back to Bonnie.

Minutes later, she sat up and called directions to the driver. I wiped the window and glimpsed a privet hedge and a red door. The taxi stopped. We were on a hill.

The driver gave me a big smile as he drove off. Bonnie put a finger to her lips, unlocked the red door and led me across a hall. There were rugs and pictures; it seemed like a normal house but she opened another door with a key. She put her finger to her lips again and signalled that I should follow her; we tiptoed across a dark room and through another door; she closed it behind her and clicked the light on. We were in a small kitchen.

‘Kate's asleep in there.' She whispered and pointed to the room we had just crossed. ‘There's only one room and this, and a loo outside. Kate and I share a bed.' I must have looked startled. She took hold of my chin and shook it. ‘We sleep head to toe – I'll make you a bed on the floor. Kate's going out early. Then you can come in with me and get comfortable.' She shook my chin again, but more gently. ‘Don't look so worried.'

* * * * *

With my eyes closed, I lay on a thin piece of foam listening to the steady breathing of two women. The floor was hard, and I was cold even though Bonnie had tucked blankets around me and spread an eiderdown over them. I had been awake for twenty-four hours but couldn't sleep. My brain shifted randomly, out of my control, from memory to memory, image to image: Bonnie's beautiful hair, the Indica bookshop, Louise's hand on an eggshell, Bonnie's serious face as she talked about her father, Bonnie smiling as she danced. I opened my eyes and, in time, found I could see the dim shapes of a table, an armchair and, on the other side of the room, a bed; it was large with the long side against the wall.

I was wearing my shirt and pants. My other clothes were on the armchair. I got up quietly, put my socks back on and spread my donkey jacket over the eiderdown. I lay down and still felt cold. I wondered how long it would be before Kate went out. I could get warm then and sleep for a bit, perhaps cuddled up to Bonnie, before we got up and had breakfast – or lunch, depending what time it was.

I was lying on my side facing the wall; someone was moving about. I opened my eyes; I must have been asleep. It would be Kate. I shut my eyes again to avoid the embarrassment of having to say hello to her. She went into the kitchen and I could hear her washing and brushing her teeth, a kettle boiling and a door opening and closing. She came quietly in and out of the room two or three times, dressing and drinking coffee. There was a long silence when I thought perhaps she had gone without my hearing the door, but there were more sounds – a zip and hair being brushed very thoroughly. Finally, the door to the hall opened and closed.

I waited a minute or two before opening my eyes and turning over. I heard Bonnie moving. ‘Come in and get warm… Get Kate's pillow… and tuck in the blankets.' She sounded sleepy. I took my socks off and walked towards the bed. She was lying on her side looking at me with only her face above the sheets. I thought momentarily about my pants; I still had my y-fronts from school. My shirt was hanging over them, but I wished I had bought some of the striped briefs I had seen in shops in the King's Road. The sheets and pillowcases were sky blue and there was a printed Indian bedspread. I moved the pillow and tucked the blankets firmly in around the corner where Kate had slept. Bonnie pulled back the sheet and I got in.

The bed was warm and she put her arm around me and kissed me. I felt pleasantly overwhelmed as I had in the back of the taxi, but now there was heat and sleepiness, and I could feel the smoothness of her back and that all she was wearing was a T-shirt. She stroked me lazily, and we dozed in each other's arms.

Still lazily, she undid the few buttons on my shirt and suggested I take it off; I'd be more comfortable. I dropped it on the floor. We stroked and felt most of each other's bodies, until, lifting up my head, I saw my watch on my wrist beside her hair on the pillow.

It was a quarter to eleven and I remembered my mother. I hadn't told her I would be out all night. She would be worried, panicking and would have rung the police. I kissed Bonnie quickly and sat up. ‘I ought to phone my mother.'

She brushed her hair aside and gazed at me curiously. ‘Your mother?'

‘Yes. It's just that I didn't tell – '

‘All right.'

I got out of bed, suddenly feeling foolish, and walked towards the telephone. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘You have to go across the road to the phone box.' She was sitting up, staring at me and frowning. ‘That phone only takes incoming calls.' She lay down again and said tiredly, perhaps irritably, ‘And you'll need a sixpence… There are some on the kitchen table.' I quickly pulled on trousers, shirt, shoes and donkey jacket and picked up a sixpence. ‘I'll have to let you in. Ring the top bell.'

‘I could take the key.'

‘No.' She sighed. ‘You might meet the old bag.' She turned her back to me.

A cold wind blew through the broken panes of the telephone box and the phone itself took the warmth from my hand. It rang for a long time before my mother picked it up.

‘Hi, Mum. Just ringing to say that I stayed at a friend's – '

‘I thought you must have, dear. How nice of you to call. Are you having a good time?'

‘Yes. Thanks. I'll see you later.'

‘All right, dear. Bye now.'

I put the phone down and stamped my feet, stalling my longing to rush down the hill, get back into bed and get warm. I thought about what had just been happening and about Bonnie. She was two years older than me. I stopped stamping, and stared at the glass without focusing. My ideas about first dates might be wrong; and my impression that women never made the first move – the first move with any serious implications anyway.

I pulled my jacket around me, ran down the road and rang the bell. Bonnie opened the door and sprinted back across the hall to her flat; her T-shirt just covered her bottom. Another door opened. An old lady was standing inside it, looking at me.

‘Who are you?'

Bonnie had disappeared. ‘I'm a friend of Bonnie's.'

‘Did you stay the night?' She frowned. ‘I don't allow that.' She had straggly hair and thick damp lips.

‘No. I just arrived.'

There was a pause while she seemed to examine my clothes. ‘All right.' She shut the door with an emphatic click.

Bonnie was sitting on the side of the bed giggling.

I shut the door. ‘Who's that old woman?'

‘Landlady. Bloody old cow.' She giggled more loudly and made a snorting noise. ‘Shall we go back to bed?' She smiled.

‘Er, sure…If that's OK?'

She came towards me and spoke slowly, emphasising each syllable. ‘It is O…K.' She kissed me and pressed herself against me. Again, she spoke slowly. ‘You are
so
stupid.' She stepped backwards, crossed her arms and pulled her T-shirt over her head. She turned away quickly and got into bed. I glimpsed her small breasts and saw that her pubic hair was golden.

* * * * *

That evening my mother wrote Christmas cards while I watched
Perry Mason
. She had to finish the cards that night because Christmas was in eight days' time. She had numerous cousins whom I knew vaguely and she kept passing cards to me and asking me to write my name; I complied perfunctorily, thinking that each one would be the last.

Della Street was stalking an ugly man in a pork-pie hat, but I was finding it hard to think about anything but Bonnie. We had parted saying that we would meet again before Christmas and I had said that I would telephone. On the tube back from Highgate I had decided I was in love with her. We now had an important bond between us and I wanted to be with her all the time. Several times that evening I had almost telephoned, but had held back; she would probably think me silly. I was intensely aware now of the age gap between us – though she thought it was only one year, a lie I would have to own up to.

‘What would you say if I was to say I wanted to get married?'

My mother stopped writing and looked up at me. Her mouth was a little open, but she looked thoughtful rather than surprised. She looked down at her Christmas card and finished signing it. In one part of my mind I knew it was a daft question, but in another I knew I would never love any woman other than Bonnie; she was perfect.

‘I'd say that it might be better to wait a little. You are just eighteen and there – '

‘Lots of people get married when they're eighteen… or younger.'

‘I know, but I think on the whole it's better, if possible, to wait. Marriage ties you to one person… for ever… for the rest of your life is the – '

‘I know that.'

‘Well, you asked me what I thought, darling.'

‘Sure.'

She started to write another Christmas card. Della Street had been locked in a room with bars across the windows.

‘Of course, I'd give you my blessing whatever you – '

‘I don't need your blessing. I'm eighteen.'

She went back to her cards. I knew I was being obnoxious, but I didn't know why; somehow, she made me feel irritable. I went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and came back and asked her if she wanted one.

‘No thanks, dear.' She smiled. She was licking envelopes. It suddenly annoyed me that she called me ‘dear' and ‘darling'.

I sipped coffee and thought about Bonnie: how beautiful she was; how free; how uninhibited; how willing, it seemed to me, to do anything.

‘Did you have anyone in mind? To get married to?'

I didn't answer. She was sitting back in her chair with a pile of envelopes on her lap, licking stamps.

‘Well. You don't have to tell me.'

‘No, I don't.' I was shocked by the harshness of my voice. I knew she didn't deserve it. I lit a cigarette. I was happier than I had ever been, but I was being rude to my mother, the kindest and most equable person I knew.
Perry Mason
ended and the news came on; Harold Wilson had done something dull and children were being napalmed in Vietnam. ‘God! I'd like to make the world a better place.' I stretched, and stubbed my cigarette.

‘You can.'

‘Yeah?' I shrugged.

‘Probably in small ways… at first.'

‘Yeah, maybe.' I smiled tiredly.

She started to write yet more cards. ‘You know, if you got married, you would have a responsibility to your wife and that might prevent you doing other things… like travelling or… you still might go to university.'

I grunted. I knew she was right.

‘Can you sign this? It's to Auntie Evelyn.'

I wrote ‘David' in the space after ‘Mary and', and imagined piles of cards that said ‘Bonnie and'.

20

Half a Turkey

Diane came over to my desk. She was grinning and showing her tiny upper teeth, and was shaking her hands down by her sides; she had been applying puce nail varnish. ‘So what's she like?'

‘Who?'

‘Your girlfriend.' She laughed and shook her head as well as her hands. ‘It's so obvious.'

‘Is it?… How come?'

‘Everything about you. You keep smiling to yourself. You're walking differently. You keep patting your hair.' She strutted across the room with her chest thrust out, tapping the back of her head. ‘Come on! Tell!'

I was amazed that she knew. She said she had just been guessing, but she had been working in offices for a few years and always watched the other people, wondering whether they were happy or not. I told her about Bonnie and laughingly confessed that I was in love.

She sat down on the corner of my desk and looked serious. ‘Have you told her you love her?'

I shook my head. ‘No.'

‘Well, don't…yet. Honestly, it's not a good idea. Even if she thinks she loves you, she'll be put off by you talking about love. It puts pressure on her, makes the whole thing kind of heavy. She probably just likes you, you know? And wants to have fun.' She looked very concerned and I felt grateful. ‘Don't say you love her for at least three months.' She leaned forward and stared into my face. ‘I'm so happy for you… but I'm right, honest. Forget about being in love – for now anyway, and enjoy yourself.'

I thought about this as I walked down to Finch's to meet Pat and Dave. It was hard. Bonnie mattered more than anything. That had to be what people meant by love, people like Shelley and Keats and Graham Greene, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Pat was dismissive of the whole idea and told me not to be silly and romantic. Dave was more interested and sympathetic, and I was pleased when Pat left the pub early after fixing an evening when we would go to
Un Homme et Une Femme
.

Dave hadn't felt like I felt, but he said he could imagine it. We crossed the road to the Goat in Boots where we had a few friends, principally Peter the Pianist and Peter the Painter. Peter the Pianist was plinking the piano; he looked up and waved. Peter the Painter was a graduate art student who funded himself by selling meticulous paintings of pretty landscapes on the railings at Green Park. He had a big nose and long wavy hair and looked like Charles I. He joined us at a small circular table and Dave told him that I was in love.

‘Oh, no. Stop it.' He smacked my hand. ‘It's just misery, mate, I promise you. How long's this been going on?'

‘Since Saturday.'

He laughed affectedly and looked at me with a sagging grin, as though I was something amusing but slightly offensive. ‘I suppose you can't think about anything else, and you don't know what to do next.' He slapped my thigh. ‘I know. I know, Dave. It's happened to me.' He took several gulps from his pint. ‘More than once.' He started to shake his head. ‘Calm down. Treat her like a friend… well… bit more than a friend…
if you can
.' He chuckled. ‘Honestly mate, I feel for you. Fucking agony.' He put his hands on his hips, sat up straight and stared around the pub, as if that was all he had to say.

It was, for the moment, and he soon went to talk to someone else. Dave fetched fresh pints and we drank in silence for a while before the routine began.

‘Dave?'

‘Yes Dave.'

‘I was thinking, Dave.'

‘What Dave?'

‘I was thinking, Dave, that I'm fed up with living in that dark little bed-sit, and that I should look for a flat, Dave. What do you think, Dave?'

‘Sounds good, Dave.'

‘Would you be interested in sharing, Dave?' The routine had begun at school – probably because we were both amused by our friends calling us Dave – and had become a habit; it was supposed to be mildly satirical, but now he was frowning at me and stroking his chin.

I had liked Dave since my first day at school when he had shown me where to go and had cycled to the river and back with me – and I liked him even more now; he was a romantic without being a drip. I quickly got excited about the idea of a flat; I had been worrying about having no room of my own where Bonnie and I could be together, and I would soon finish the shorthand and typing course and would be able to work full time, so I thought I would be able to afford it. As Dave and I discussed the merits of different parts of London, I wondered how my mother would feel. We agreed on the edge of Chelsea where it merged into the World's End and Fulham, an area with the Goat in Boots, Finch's and the Fulham Forum cinema at its centre – and my mother's flat not too distant.

* * * * *

Two nights later Dave, Bonnie and I went to the Architectural Association's Christmas Ball in their building in Bedford Square – Dave's brother Martin had given us tickets. The attraction was a group called the Pink Floyd whom Pat and I had seen a few weeks earlier at a strange all-night event at the Chalk Farm Round House; they had made no records, but Bonnie knew who they were and wanted to see them. She was wearing blue jeans and a check shirt, and no ribbon – her hair fell freely around her face.

Dave left us and we strolled around the elegant old building arm in arm for hours waiting for the Pink Floyd to appear in the open space in the basement. We ate, drank, chatted to people we didn't know and spent time kissing at the bottom of a flight of stairs.

Very late, with about fifty others, we stood watching shapes and colours moving and merging on the walls, and a frenetic, wiry man with a guitar making strange noises that echoed for long seconds – while the rest of the group played as if they were the Animals or Manfred Mann. I looked at Bonnie and wanted to tell her she was perfect, but I had thought about what Diane had said – that I mustn't be ‘heavy'; I would tell her that I loved her on 18 March, three months from last Sunday.

* * * * *

On Friday evening, the day before Christmas Eve, I went to her flat carrying a bottle of Nuits St Georges, a wine that my mother had told me was always good, and a pair of silver earrings in a box wrapped in red paper. I had thought of buying a ring of some kind but Diane had advised earrings – a ring was too ‘heavy' – and had suggested Kensington Market as a good place to get them.

I arrived at eight, as Bonnie had asked; the food was almost ready to serve and Kate would be out until late. The room was lit by two candles – one on the table where we ate and one on a shelf above the bed. Dave Brubeck's ‘Take Five' was playing. She had cooked fish pie and bought cheesecake from somewhere in Soho.

After supper we opened our presents. She liked the earrings and put them on. She had bought me a Penguin paperback of
Tender Is the Night
by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

We were lying on the bed listening to a slow, breathy saxophone – a sensuous, thought-stopping sound, unlike anything I had heard before – when the phone rang. The candles had burned down and there was a whiff of burning wax; Bonnie was resting her head on my chest and pulling gently at the hairs behind my ear. She raised her head and listened; the phone went silent after the third pair of rings. She smiled and looked down at me, pushing my hair back from my forehead. ‘Kate'll be here in fifteen minutes… Have to get up… soon.'

We drank coffee with Kate, who came in cold, red-faced and chattering. Before I left I looked at the LP cover –
West Coast Jazz with Stan Getz
.

* * * * *

The humanists were shutting their office until the new year; Bonnie and my other friends were spending time with their families. I decided to go to my father's after Christmas and stay there until I had to go back to work. Rather than shout on the telephone, I had written to him telling him my plans and he had replied on a postcard: ‘Delighted. Come for ever, if you want.' I looked forward to spending time with him – and perhaps some time alone, walking, or sitting in a pub.

I wasn't expecting him to do anything special, but there was a Christmas tree with a gold star at the top and some red baubles hanging off it. It was on the table next to the television where Joey's cage usually was – Joey was on the floor – and there were presents in Christmas paper underneath. With a lot of grunting, my father bent down behind the television and found a switch. Coloured lights flashed all over the tree – some of them carefully buried among the needles. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Nice, don't you think? Got it cheap on Christmas Eve. Lights came from Woolworth's, three and six… They don't have to flash though.' He unscrewed one of the bulbs and the lights went out while he put in another one that made them shine without flashing.

He held up the bulb he had removed. ‘There's a resistor in there. Metal strips expand and contract – very clever… Now, I've bought half a turkey, and we're going to have a party on New Year's Eve.'

‘
Half
a turkey?'

‘We can't eat a whole turkey, just you and me.' He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘I got it from the pub. They've got thousands there. I stood the chap a lager and he split it down the middle with an axe. Paid him eight shillings. He said not to tell anyone or everyone would want half a turkey.' He grinned and led me into the kitchen. The half-turkey was in the fridge – lying on its flat side in a rectangular metal tray. It looked plump and fresh and a little purple. ‘I'm not sure whether to roast it like that, or somehow prop it the right way up. I've got stuffing and sausage meat.'

‘How're you going to stuff it?'

He raised his arms in the air and made a kissing noise with his lips. ‘There'll be a way.'

‘Is this for the party?'

‘No. This is just for you and me. I thought we'd have Christmas lunch tomorrow…Then we can eat it cold for the rest of the week. And I can casserole the leftovers, make soup from the bones – all that, like your mother used to do. I've got potatoes and parsnips – for roasting – and peas and carrots. But no sprouts. I hate sprouts.'

‘No. I don't like them either.'

‘Horrible – taste like farts.' He grinned and looked away.

‘Right.' I tried not to laugh but, for no good reason, our giggles soon reached the soundless level where neither of us could speak. I went into the living room and held on to the back of a chair. It took me a minute or two to recover.

Back in the kitchen, he was smiling at the glass in the back door. He turned. ‘You mustn't make me laugh like that.'

‘You started it.' There was a box on the floor with some bottles in it. I peered in. ‘Is this for the party?'

‘That's the drink for it… except this.' He pulled out a bottle of cherry brandy. ‘This
isn't
for the party. It's for us. I've got an Arctic Roll.' He grinned and put his hand on my shoulder.

‘Great!' We hadn't had Arctic Roll for two years.

I examined the contents of the box; there were three bottles of sherry, four half-pint bottles of Carlsberg and a bottle of Quosh. ‘Who's coming then?'

He told me while he put the kettle on and warmed the teapot. The chemist and the newsagent were both coming with their wives, and Wing Commander Hayes would be driving over from Marlow. He had invited Old Bowen, but Mrs Bowen had said it would be too much for him; however, she might come herself if the old man was in the mood to be left on his own.

‘And Mrs Harris.' He smiled, as if there were something naughty about Mrs Harris.

‘Who's she?'

‘Runs the florist down the road.' He waved his hand vaguely towards the east. ‘Edwina, to me. Very nice – '

‘I didn't know you knew her.'

He was still smiling cheekily. ‘Oh, I've got lots of friends.'

‘Ooh. You and Edwina, eh?' I nudged him.

‘She's got a daughter actually – Arabella – very pretty. She's coming too. Almost exactly your age.'

‘Oh God! Da-ad!'

‘She's a peach – an absolute peach. You'll like her.'

‘Dad! It'll be incredibly embarrassing.'

‘No, it won't. She's a nice girl. Intelligent, makes jokes… Just left convent school, Our Lady of… Misery and Dolours… or whatever it's called… You know? Up towards Amersham.' He looked as if he might giggle again; we both knew that it was called Our Lady of the Assumption.

‘Dolours…? What are they?'

‘Sorrow… lamentation, tears… suffering, privation, pain, agony and absolute bloody misery… all that sort of – ' He was silent for a moment, then made a spluttering noise, followed by a series of full-throated guffaws, during which he held on to the kitchen cabinet and bobbed his head up and down.

I was catching his hysteria again, but managed to say, ‘So you thought coming to our party might cheer her up?'

‘She doesn't – ' His laugh became a cough. He gulped and the coughing got worse, deep and bronchial. His face turned red and he hurried to the lavatory, hoicked and spat, and came back wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘Oh dear. That's terrible. Mustn't laugh so much… I was going to say that Arabella is very cheerful. Takes the Pope with a pinch of salt. I asked her.'

I could imagine her; I knew the kind of girl he liked – she was not far from the kind of girl I liked. Despite his coughing fit, I wanted him to laugh again. I looked at him with raised eyebrows.

He was smiling and shaking his head and filling a glass from the tap. He drank it quickly. ‘Don't get me going again, Sunny Jim.'

He filled another glass with water and I gave up trying to be funny. ‘So we have to stay up most of the night with these people?'

‘No. No. They're coming at six. Otherwise we'd have to do proper food. They'll go at about eight… I hope.' He'd bought some crisps and planned to spread Gentleman's Relish on triangular pieces of toast – Old Bowen had given him a large jar of it for Christmas.