The Generation Game (25 page)

Yes, I know all about that telly programme. Between Wink and Mr and Mrs Raby and Ed in his deerstalker (and of course Lucas who started me off all those years ago) I have a pretty thorough
knowledge of television programmes on both sides of the Atlantic.

But I don’t care if he is Terry or T-J or Justin. He’s got what he’s always wanted. A bird. A beautiful woman. Not plain old frizzy-haired Philippa. Not me.

After Bob has stopped faffing, he goes into the bathroom and because of the appallingly thin walls, even thinner than those of our Canadian motel which from here seems like a dream, a telly
programme I once watched long ago, I hear the rattle of a bottle of pills, a telltale sign that he is still on the Valium.

‘Do you want to stay here the night?’ I ask him when he reappears. ‘You look tired.’

‘The shop,’ he says automatically. ‘I can’t leave the shop.’

‘Don’t be daft. Call Patty. She’ll take care of things.’

‘What about Wink?’

‘Patty and Lugsy can stay over. I’m sure they won’t mind if you explain.’

‘It’s only a three hour drive,’ he protests. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Three hours driving that shouldn’t happen. Not with those pills kicking round his blood system. I need another excuse.

‘Please stay with me. Just till I get settled. Till the morning. I’m lonely without Joe.’

It is true; I will miss Joe. But I’ll find someone else. Someone else always turns up in the nick of time.

Bob smiles. A genuine beam. Because he believes I still need him. More than the shop. More than Wink. More than anyone in the whole wide world.

Bob goes home the next morning and I don’t see him again till the Easter holidays because I am so wrapped up in my new life, my independence, that I can’t bring
myself to get the train back home and see my Bob and Wink needing me as much as I used to need them. I may live in Portsmouth, but I have the whole world of literature at my command. I can go
anywhere, be anyone – all from the (comparative) comfort of my little box room, huddled under my duvet with George Eliot, the orange street lights shut out by the purple velour curtains that
Mrs Raby was so proud of when she first showed me into my new accommodation. No sign of the Cavalier.

No more classic novels. No more Agatha Christie. It is all baby manuals and heart leaflets.

No, please, no.

Three years later I’ve left Portsmouth Poly with a respectable enough 2:2 in English but with no real idea of what I want to do now I am officially an adult. So I manage
to get on the PGCE course at Rolle College in Exmouth. I think I’d quite like to be a teacher. After all, I can’t do as badly as the Mothballs and Pitchforks of the profession. And
Exmouth is the ideal place to study. As much as I enjoyed my time away, I hanker after Devon. And Wink is now so ill – and Bob so dependent on tranquilisers – I don’t want to be
too far away. Just in case.

By having a part-time job in the Union bar, I managed to pay for driving lessons and passed my test on the first attempt, thanks to my well-developed road sense born of the Tufty Club and Linda.
So I can live at home and drive in to college every day in Bob’s still-limping-on Cortina. I can also drive up to Bristol to see Cheryl (now married to her doctor). I can go anywhere I want,
though it tends to be nowhere.

But it is good to be home. I like to walk through the shop and complain at Bob when I notice any changes.

‘Where’s the pipe display gone?’

‘No-one smokes pipes anymore.’

He is right of course. When
was
the last time I saw anyone puffing on a pipe? But I like my shop to be the same. The same as when Helena left. Though maybe I can take this as a positive
sign. A sign that Bob has somehow managed to move on. To look to the future. To go with the times.

‘When did you decide to sell potpourri?’

‘Sheila suggested it.’

‘Sheila?’

‘She popped in a while back. To buy the
Western Morning News
. And to see how Wink was doing. She’d heard she wasn’t too good.’

I suspect ulterior motives but it is sadly true that Wink isn’t too good. But the old girl has done well so far; she was never expected to live this long. She’s kept going mainly
thanks to Bob, not an easy burden what with all the early hours, getting up for the papers.

‘Sheila could see for herself the deterioration,’ Bob goes on. ‘She suggested a home.’

‘A home? What’s it got to do with her?’

‘Well… she’s worried about me.’ He does his cough-thing. ‘I told her I’m not sure how much longer I can go on.’

He reaches for his bottle and washes down another tablet with his afternoon cuppa, then cracks open a Twix, offering me a half but I’ve lost my appetite. Wink can’t possibly go in a
home.

‘I could help out more.’

‘No.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘No. You need to stick at college. Wink would want you to get that qualification.’

‘Wink wants me to get married.’

‘She wants you to be happy.’

‘I am happy.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes, pretty much. I’m just worried about you and Wink. I don’t care about teaching. I’m not sure I even like children.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘I should think so, yes.’

Despite my protestations, Bob wins in the end. He persuades me to carry on with college and agrees to up the home help’s hours.

So the following week, I’m back at school, only this time I am not hot and squashed on the carpet, I am allowed the privilege of a chair as a student teacher and I am referred to as Miss
Smith by Mr Donnelly, the class teacher, a young keen man – though more keen on chatting me up than on teaching. I can feel his eyes every time my back is turned, every time I bend down to
re-tie a rogue shoelace (of which there are several thousand). Mr Donnelly gives me the creeps. He must give the children the creeps too because this is the quietest class I’ve ever been in.
All those six-year-olds doing what they are supposed to be doing. Spooky.

At the end of the day, Mr Donnelly leaves me to read them a story. I choose
Where the Wild Things Are
, hoping to give this subdued bunch of children a bit of imagination.

It is an ill-fated plan. This meek and mild class mutate into a group of hooligans and I hear my voice warbling like Wink’s but sadly it lacks any of her authority. After half an hour of
this torture, I am fighting back the tears as well as the little hands that grip my ankles like octopuses’ tentacles. Mr Donnelly strolls back in with his mug of tea, as I was contemplating
giving screaming a go. I’ve tried everything else.

‘It’s the wind,’ he says, shrugging his shoulders. ‘The wind always whips them up into a frenzy.’

I look out the window onto the empty playground where leaves and crisp packets are bowling across the patched-up tarmac. He grabs the book from me and rereads it. He is a magician, a mesmerist.
A hypnotist. Every pair of eyes focuses on the pages of the book, every pair of ears listens to the story. I will never make a teacher. I do not like children, especially in large numbers. I want
to work in the shop. I want to take care of Wink. I just have to persuade Bob.

After the bell has gone, Mr Donnelly stands outside the door to the playground, pairing each child off with the (hopefully) correct adult. He is proficient and the pandemonium of my school days
only serve to remind me that it needn’t be like that – which it would be with me in charge.

The wind blows into the class scattering worksheets and sugar paper. I’ve just finished piling them up again when he nips back inside, pulling the door closed behind him, face flushed and
hair messed up.

‘It’s really getting up out there. I don’t think we should hang around long tonight. I can give you a lift home if you want.’

I am relieved not to stay one moment longer than I have to now that I’ve reached this decision. But not desperate enough to accept a lift off this randy young man who’d try any
excuse to get me into a confined space with him. I am not having any of it. For the last few years I’ve embraced celibacy and I don’t intend letting go any time soon. That part of life
in which most students over-indulge, makes my stomach turn when I think of all the consequences. The maybe’s and the what-if’s. It is all too complicated. Too difficult.

‘It’s fine. I can get the train.’

‘No, you can’t,’ he says, triumphant. ‘It could be dangerous. Trees on the track.’

You don’t even have to look out the window to see there’s a storm brewing. There is a change in the light, the beginnings of a low howl washing over the sea towards us. But it
isn’t that bad.

‘It’s hardly a hurricane,’ I tell him, gathering my things and preparing to leave.

‘Let me drop you at the station,’ he insists. ‘It’s cold.’

It is cold and I want to get home.

‘Alright, then.’ I give in, my mind changeable as the weather. Five more minutes and I’ll never have to see him again, (so long as I can persuade Bob this job isn’t for
me). I needn’t worry; Mr Donnelly is a teacher after all, a respectable member of the community – if a little creepy. And I have a good right hook if push comes to shove. What harm can
one little lift do?

I follow him to the car park. His car is by far the most battered and un-roadworthy. I probably have more to fear from his Triumph Dolomite than from his roving eye. Though when he judders out
of the car park and into the road, I see it is his driving that should be giving me the most cause for concern.

He switches on his decrepit cassette player and a burst of Irene Cara’s
What a Feeling
fills the Dolomite, which briefly takes my mind off the nasty smell that I know to be Eau de
Dirty Children, having been one of them myself from time to time (and having sat next to Christopher Bennett on many occasions). If it wasn’t so cold outside, I would open a window –
though I’m not sure the handle would be that effective judging by the amount of electrical tape wrapped around it.

The source of the smell emanates from the junk piled up on the back seat.

‘Don’t mind that lot,’ he says, noticing me looking at it. ‘It’s marking and stuff. I haven’t got round to it. There’s so many other things to
do.’

Yeah, like the pub and womanising and listening to dodgy music.

As he pulls into the station I can breathe easy again. He hasn’t attacked me or propositioned me or anything like that. He is just a teacher who has to go home to a load of work and then
go back to class again tomorrow, and the next day and the next. I definitely do not want to do this.

‘Thanks, then,’ I tell him, holding my skirt as I get out the car in case the wind flings it over my head.

‘See you tomorrow,’ he says.

But I’ve already started to shut the door and don’t have to reply to this.

He judders off, nearly knocking over a cyclist. I dart into the station so the cyclist doesn’t come after me. And that is when I see him.

He is sitting on a bench, presumably waiting for the same train back to Torre station as me. He hasn’t noticed my arrival yet because he is busy trying to keep his
Herald
from
blowing away, the very same paper he used to deliver for Bob. Christopher Bennett. He must hear me thinking his name because he looks up and grins.

‘Smithy!’ he shouts. ‘What are you up to?’

I have to force down the urge to shout back
Mind your own!
as I’m not a teenager anymore. I am an adult.

He’s up on his feet now, walking towards me, the wind pushing his hair back so I can see his face which he’s finally grown into. No crusts around the nostrils. No frown lines on the
horizon.

‘You alright?’ he asks, in front of me now, smiling, offering me a cigarette.

I shake my head at the packet and tell him I’m fine, fine. I tell him about Mr Donnelly, the children and then he says his name: Lucas.

‘Do you remember your friend, Lucas?’

‘‘Course I do.’

He tries to light his cigarette but it’s a losing battle with the wind, which is whooshing up the tracks.

‘He was a smart kid,’ he goes on, nostalgic. ‘You’d be alright if they were all like that. Maybe you’d stick it out then.’

‘They’re more like you, Chris.’

‘No-one’s like me,’ he flirts.

‘Cut it out, Christopher.’

‘What’ve I done?’ he asks, pretend-offended.

Then our train pulls in, blasting our words away. But there is no escape; I have to sit with him all the way back to Torquay.

‘You’re looking good, he says once we’ve found our seats. You going out with anyone?’

‘Mind your own.’ There. It’s out before I can stop it.

‘I’m engaged,’ he announces, out the blue, sounding slightly bewildered.

But not as bewildered as me. When I’ve managed to recover myself, I ask a flabbergasted: ‘Who to?’

‘Mandy,’ he says. ‘You know, Mandy Denning.’

‘Really?’

Mandy Denning of the doll hands and china blue eyes.

‘We’re getting married next month so I’m sorry, Smithy… you missed the Bennett boat.’

‘I’m crushed.’

‘You wish,’ he says, pretending to jump on top of me.

‘Cut it out, Christopher.’

I shove him back on his seat, flushing as everyone is staring at us, tutting. I’ve had a lucky escape. Poor Mandy. I hope she’s toughened up.

It is quiet back at the shop. Not one customer. They must all be staying indoors, in the warm. Patty is getting ready to close up.

‘Where’s Bob?’ I ask.

‘Cash and Carry. He should be back soon.’

So I tell Patty about my day as Bob isn’t there to listen. She doesn’t say much but then she is a woman of action not words (a female Joe). Perhaps Wink will be more sympathetic. I
find her in her usual place, sitting by the fire with a woolly blanket over her gammy legs, watching
Blue Peter
. She’s never got over the vandalism of the
Blue Peter
garden and
never misses a programme out of solidarity (and maybe as a nod to Lucas).