The Generation Game (12 page)

‘Not glamorous, I know, Philippa,’ Linda says, ‘but essential. Without the cleaning team this party would be a disaster. Can you imagine the tug of war taking place on a road
full of seagull splats and last night’s grockle vomit?’

Linda can be disparaging of the tourists that the locals call ‘grockles’. She conveniently forgets that the town relies on them. But, no, I don’t want to imagine this scenario
and so, in an effort to please her Majesty (and Linda), I put in some elbow grease. Linda eventually passes our efforts before moving us on to the next task: blowing up red, white and blue
balloons. This takes some time. Just as I am about to pass out, we use up all of Bob’s extensive stock and, finally, I am excused from further duties so that I can add the finishing touches
to my jubilee bonnet. This is one competition where I am determined to shine.

I’ve been working on my bonnet for weeks. The basis of my bonnet is an old boater of Auntie Nina’s that she left behind in her hurry to leave Torquay. I’ve kept it all these
years in the bottom of my wardrobe, for dressing up. I don’t dress up anymore as I am far too old for such childish malarkey. But I can’t bring myself to chuck it out because of the
memories of Lucas that ripple through me whenever I look at it (and because I never tidy the bottom of my wardrobe).

The colour scheme has been easy to choose: red, white and blue, obviously. But finding a novel way of displaying these colours has taken some thinking. I’ve thought about it a lot. And
then it comes to me, one night staring at the pattern in the curtains (that I’ve decided looks like a Cavalier, quite possibly Charles I – which reminds me of a painting I’ve seen
in an art book in the library called
And when did you last see your father?
A question I often ask myself.). It comes to me: Winning the bonnet competition rests on the judges. And who are
the judges? Mainly old ladies from the street. And what do old ladies like? Flowers, of course.

A few weeks earlier, I asked Wink to help me out. Being an old lady, (but unfortunately not a bonnet-judge as she’s already accepted the honour of tug of war adjudicator) she has a whole
stash of fake flowers and has given me free reign to select the best. ‘I never go out now, duck,’ she says, with a faraway look in her eye. ‘The only airing they get is
funerals.’ That puts a dampener on things as we both remember the black and white church and the little coffin and Wink with her gammy leg out in the aisle.

‘If I could win first prize,’ I muse, ‘that would be something.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It blinking well would.’

After the marathon cleaning operation and balloon blowing effort, I nip down to the florists with a pound note that Linda has given me for doing such a proper job and buy a bunch of cornflowers,
several sprigs of gypsophila and a single red rose. I carefully walk home with them, the scent making my nose twitch, the cellophane crackling with excitement. Forget the Queen, this is going to be
my day. I will be holding the coveted fiver in my hand in a few hours if I pull this off.

In my room, I sit back and admire my efforts so far: the silk and paper flowers arranged delicately around the rim of the boater and across the top. The neatly tied (red, white and blue)
ribbons. The selection of sequins to add that bit of sparkle (it is a celebration after all). Now all I have to do is attach the fresh flowers as best I can and then, in the middle of the boater,
sticking out the top, place a Union Jack from a set of Bob’s paper sandcastle flags.

There. This is it. Not only will it appeal to old ladies but it also smells nice. A multi-sensory bonnet that is sure to win me that fiver and do her Majesty (and Bob and Wink) proud.

I should’ve known by now that things never turn out the way you plan them.

All day long I look forward to the bonnet parade. It is hot and sweaty in the tank top that Wink has knitted me from a pattern in
Woman’s Realm
. (Red, white and blue again, but with
the added motif of a row of crowns around the bottom.) I have to sit through the knobbly knees of the street. Lugsy’s are surprisingly knobbly but not as knobbly as Mr Taylor from number
thirty-two whose wife is extremely proud of his accomplishment, brandishing the winning voucher for ‘a Take-away for Two’ donated by the Chinese as if it were a Golden Ticket for Willy
Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Then there is the beautiful baby competition. Let it be noted that babies are not especially beautiful when they scream which is what every last one of them does as the judge – the
Catholic priest of all people – tickles them under the chin. What a noise! There are only four entries (and to my knowledge only one of them lives on our street) but there could be a whole
midget-choir of them for the racket they’re producing.

Once the mothers have ssshh-ed the babies and the runners-up sulk over the winner (a Benny Hill look-a-like), it is time for the Bonnet Parade. A makeshift stage has been fashioned out of planks
and milk crates ‘on loan’from Lugsy’s dairy. The contestants are told by Linda, who’s been chained to a megaphone for most of the day, to line up on the catwalk.
Straightaway I am at a disadvantage as I am squeezed, in a way that I haven’t been for a long time, next to Christopher Bennett who completely overshadows my creation with his own.
Christopher Bennett has put even more effort and planning into his hat than I have into mine; his eyes have been on that five pound note for far longer. He will shine brighter and bigger
and… shinier than I could ever hope to in a million years. Whatever was I thinking? He’s got to the heart of the matter:

Q: What do old ladies like more than flowers?

A: The Queen. Her Majesty. HRH. Elizabeth II. That’s who.

Christopher Bennett has engineered a bonnet Isambard Kingdom Brunel could only dream about. Christopher Bennett’s construction is something else. It is at least two feet tall, like a
chimney. But it isn’t just the size that matters. It is the painstaking effort he’s put into decorating it. Every last quarter of an inch is covered in photos or drawings of the Queen
in her various ages. There is Baby Princess Elizabeth in her golden curls sitting on her mother’s lap. Girl Princess Elizabeth with her little sister Princess Margaret toddling by her side.
Bride Elizabeth with her groom, Prince Philip and the Coronation Elizabeth weighed down with her massive crown and orb and sceptre. There is Mother Elizabeth with her four children and there is
Colourful Elizabeth in all her various hats and coats and handbags that she’s coordinated over the years in a way that must have impressed even Helena over the Ocean who still shares the very
same monarch as me. (Who even now, if she is awake, could be celebrating at her very own Canadian street party amongst the Mounties and raccoons, Orville Tupper on her arm, pouting at the little
people around them.)

This Queen montage, manipulatively manufactured by Christopher Bennett, earns respect from the three old lady judges who bestow the crisp five pound note on the Bogey Boy, who I know will put it
to ill use on sneaky cigarettes and slot machines when he should really spend it on a jolly good barber.

It is a disaster. All my best laid plans squashed and flicked away like one of his greenies. But things are about to get even worse. Christopher Bennett talks to me.

‘Hard luck, Smithy. Better luck next time… like, in twenty-five years, if the old bat lasts that long.’

Trust my luck for these traitorous mutterings to go undetected by any other witnesses. If Bob heard his Republican views, Christopher would be out of this street before you could whistle God
Save the Queen (the traditional version, not the new one by that Punk Rocker band). He would be blackballed by the shop, never to return for a packet of fags ‘for his mother’ ever
again.

And why can I never think of a witty put-down when I need one?

‘Oh, get lost, Bogey Boy,’ is what I eventually come up with.

He laughs and shoots one out of his left nostril across the pavement in a way that I can’t help but admire. The boy is a pro, it has to be said, if a little uncouth.

‘Fancy a bag of chips, then, Smithy, or what?’

And before I can stop myself, and because Cheryl has gone back to Solihull for the week and there is no-one else of my age to moan to about the grown-ups, I say, ‘all right then, go
on.’

And on things go, queuing up at the Jolly Roger Fish Bar, a roaring trade, despite the jubilations and the abundance of sausage rolls and scotch eggs to be had on every other street in Torquay.
Too much salt and vinegar giving me a thirst so I don’t mind having a swig out of Christopher’s hip flask, his mum’s Pomagne with all the fizz gone so it tastes like one of
Bob’s pear drops (oh-Bob-if-you-could-see-me-now).

Another swig and another swig and suddenly we are in the Bone Yard, near the big angel, two rows down from Albert Morris. And Christopher Bennett decides now is the time and place to try it on
with me. One rancid kiss later and Philippa Smith wallops him across his curly bonce and then legs it as fast as possible down and up the once-so-familiar rows until she can no longer hear his
curses. Until she finds herself face to face with her old friend, her best friend, her Lucas.

Lucas.

It has been a long time. Long enough to make me feel guilty when I remember his letter to me:

Please keep on telling me.

I haven’t kept on telling him. I used to come every day at first. Then maybe twice a week. Then it dwindled to once in a while. I stopped keeping on telling him because
it felt like he wasn’t there anymore. Like he was off somewhere else, Heaven most probably. And now it has been too long. It isn’t like I haven’t thought about him. I think about
him all the time. I think about him more than I think about Helena. Because he never wanted to leave me. He never chose to leave me. He just went. ‘Life’s unfair,’ Wink likes to
tell me. That’s why Lucas went. But her philosophy doesn’t explain Helena’s departure. It didn’t just happen. Helena
meant
to go. She caught a plane and she flew
across the ocean to a country of ice and snow and mountains and giant crashing waterfalls. And I am still waiting for her to find that big condominium (flat) with the extra bedroom for me,
Philippa, her daughter.

And, yet again, for the second time in a day, I can’t think of suitable words to say so I simply whisper: ‘I’m sorry, Lucas.’

But I do have something for him. Something that every school child has been given. Something that has been burning a hole in my pocket ever since I received it, knowing that Lucas would’ve
appreciated it far more than I ever would: a jubilee commemorative coin.

I search for a stick and start digging a hole. Only a small one as I don’t want to be accused of grave-robbing (though in actual fact this is more like grave-giving). Only a little hole at
the base of his headstone, big enough to bury the coin.

‘There you go, Lucas. I haven’t forgotten you.’

Night isn’t far off now though it is still just about light in the Bone Yard despite the bell recently tolling nine times. The party sounds like it is in full throw and
is set to go on indefinitely – which it can thanks to Linda’s organisation of coloured outdoor bulbs that hang back and forth across the street, like the ones along the seafront.

Lucas and I have had a heart-to-heart. He quite obviously doesn’t approve of my snog with Christopher Bennett or my first over-indulgence of alcohol. If Lucas were here he would also be a
Grammar Boy, but he would shine above the likes of Christopher Bennett. He would be the proud owner of that crisp five pound note. He would be a responsible citizen. A studious student. A rock for
me to lean on. But he isn’t here. He is a headstone. A memory. A speck of stardust.

The music has stopped. The Bone Yard is in darkness. I’m not scared. It is a safe place. All the people here are dead. I’m not scared of the dead. It is the living that does all the
hurting. (This is some years before Michael Jackson’s
Thriller
and the possibility of zombies.)

I make a bed for myself, a nest, curled up like Andy, next to Lucas in the uncut grass. The smell of soil and dry leaves. An owl tooting in a tree nearby. I could stay here all night. I am so
tired, I can’t move. When I do move, my head hurts, the cells fizzing from alco-pear-drops.

‘Goodnight, Lucas.’

Much later. A bright light in my face. Is it Heaven? Will I see Lucas dressed up to the nines in his white robe, his feather wings folded neatly behind him, his halo polished
and gleaming?

‘‘Ello, ‘ello, what’ve we got here, then?’

Oh dear. It is like an episode of
Dixon of Dock Green
, a kindly officer of the law, trying to ascertain if I have a home to go to.

‘Yes,’ I tell him, politely. ‘I live at Bob’s News.’

‘Ah,’ he says, bending in a plié Toni would be proud of, his whiskered face inches from my own. ‘You’d be Bob’s daughter, then.’

‘Yes, sir, that’s me,’ I say. ‘Bob’s daughter.’

Well, you shouldn’t argue with a man in uniform.

Later, in my own bed, my warm, dry, comfy bed, I know I’ll never get to sleep. The tiredness – and the after-effects of the Pomagne – evaporated the moment
that torch beamed in my face. And now the Cavalier is laughing at me in the way that Cavaliers do – haughty, flouncy and not really laughing at all. I am an idiot. I had my first kiss with
Christopher Bennett and then fell asleep at the grave of the boy who should’ve had that honour.

Still, the Queen must be proud of her subjects. She’s had a whole lot of riotous, jubilant behaviour going on up and down her land, all over the kingdom, and far across the oceans, from
Botswana to Jamaica, from Australia to Canada, all in the name of her twenty-five years as our Queen. I’m not so sure what she’d make of my own conduct.

Bob isn’t too impressed. He’s had the whole street out looking for me once they’d packed up and swept up and realised I was nowhere to be seen. But he doesn’t show it. He
just says a quiet thank you to the policeman and gives me a hug. As he holds me in his arms I pray he can’t smell anything illicit clinging to my woolly tank top or my hedge-backwards
hair.