The Generation Game (3 page)

Oh dear. What if I let her down?

I’ll probably let you down. I won’t mean to. I’ll try my hardest not to. But Life gets out of control and bulldozes best intentions.

Then there’s Adrian, the man you’re supposed to call ‘Daddy’. He and I dressed up in uncomfortable clothes and said vows in front of our raggedy collection of friends and
family (those that would come) and I do believe he sincerely meant those vows on that day, in that register office. Maybe. But his good intentions flew out the window, fell by the wayside (etc,
etc), when he decided I wasn’t quite enough for him. He omitted to tell me this for a while, seeing as I was cultivating varicose veins and stretch marks on your behalf. But eventually, one
evening, a few weeks ago, as I was slumped at the kitchen sink, glugging down the Gaviscon, after much huffing and puffing and beating around the bush, he pointed out to me that Someone Else was
more than happy to fill in the gaps, step into my boots, take over the helm (etc, etc).

Do we blame that on Life? Or on him? I’m not actually sure. All I know is I never want him back. I don’t want you to get used to him being around only to disappear one day. I know
too much about disappearing acts.

Here I am. Left again. Left holding the baby, as they say.

And a lovely baby you are, you are. And a lovely baby you are.

Fast forward to a windy Monday morning in September two years later when my rickety sash window rattles me awake. Or maybe it is Mother crashing about downstairs. We have a
Downstairs now as well as an Upstairs. I have my own sash window and my own bedroom. We have moved from Above Bernie’s Motors to a little two-up-two-down in a Better Area. Bernie can’t
‘pop up’ anymore after work. In fact he doesn’t visit at all. Not since Mother has become friends with Sheila.

I am wondering if it is safe to get up when I notice something on the back of my closed door: some funny clothes hanging stiffly on metal hangers. A navy blue pinafore and matching cardy. When Mother breezes into the room the hangers make a jangle that cuts right
through me, ominously. This is not a normal day. No playing with a washing-up bowl of water and a wooden spoon. No trips to the beach. No buckets and spade. No ice cream.

‘Come on, Philippa. Wakey wakey, rise and shine.’

Oh dear. Why the fake cheeriness? Usually Mother is silent until her third cup of coffee of the morning. And she is already dressed rather than doing her shuffling-around-in-her-dressing-gown-clutching-her-head routine. In fact she is dressed up to the nines. Her best red frock and matching red lips. She looks pretty.
‘Dynamite,’ Bernie would say. But there is only me and all I can do is stare at her as she reaches up for the funny clothes on the back of my door and I realise that the time has come
to wear them.

It is my Uniform. I am going to School.

Unfortunately Mother has underestimated my waistline and there is a struggle squeezing me into the pinafore.

‘I should have splashed out on a new one,’ Mother says. ‘Toni’s a petit little thing. I should’ve known it would be too small.’

Yes, Toni. Our Toni. Bernie and Sheila’s Toni. Mother is now such good friends with Sheila that she is happy to receive hand-me-downs from her. Toni, who is now in her first year at
Torquay Girls’ Grammar. Sheila has kept her school clothes all these years wrapped up in tissue paper in the attic waiting for a suitable little girl to have them. Though only four years of
age, I am not little by any stretch of the imagination. What was Sheila thinking when she offered them to Mother?

Mother attends Sheila’s Coffee Mornings every week without fail. At last she has friends in Torquay. A circle of friends. Sheila’s friends. Much to Bernie’s horror.

‘What do you want to be friends with them old bags for?’

‘What’s wrong with them? They’re a nice crowd. They’ve welcomed me with open arms.’

‘What about my arms? They used to be big enough for you, Hell.’

‘It’s friends I need Bernie. Not you.’

And that was the last time Bernie was allowed upstairs. Soon after this frank exchange Mother moved us to our new house. She borrowed enough money for the deposit and a month’s rent and a
small refrigerator – from somewhere or other – on the promise of her new Job which she is going to start on this historic day. She is a Free Woman now I am starting School.

School.

I don’t know if it is the tight pinafore or the boiled egg (‘you need a proper breakfast, Philippa,’) or if it is the way Mother tugs my unruly hair back into pigtails
liberally applying Harmony hairspray in an effort to keep the frizz at bay or if it is the walk itself, the windy walk to School that makes me feel so sick. Nothing usually makes me feel sick. Too
much cake. Too much ice cream. Too many greens. A ride in One of Bernie’s cars round Devon country lanes. Nothing.

Something is most definitely Up.

The short walk to School is over in a flash. All too soon we are heading through the gates into the playground. It is pandemonium. Screaming children everywhere you look. Barking dogs running
round in circles and in an out of legs. Weeping mothers with hankies held to their noses. Mothers looking as scared as their children. Not a father to be seen. Perhaps all families are like mine
after all. Perhaps the families in the books I am allowed to borrow from the library when Mother remembers my Education are the exception. The ones with the mummy and the daddy, a boy called Peter
and a girl called Susan. (I have yet to see the books in my new classroom which will soon wither this blossoming hope.)

I look up at Mother. She is the only mother without a soggy hanky. Quite dry-eyed. And the prettiest, by far. It isn’t just her dress and her lipstick and her heels. It is something about
the way she holds herself. The way she walks as if she was on stage. A tilt of the hips, the shoulders. The curvy but perfectly trim figure. Her youth.

All the other mothers take time away from their grief to notice her. To turn their heads away from their precious children and stare. And does Helena enjoy it? Does she even notice it at
all?

Either way, Mother will come to hate the Playground. She will despise these other mothers. The idle chitchat at the gates. The gossip. The fierce maternal protectiveness and pride that they wear
like essential accessories. She will prefer the company of Sheila’s cronies. Established women whose children are now at secondary, who’ve moved on from child-talk and speak instead of
money and houses and husbands. (Of which Mother is still in short supply.)

Today she starts off as she means to go on. She takes me as far as the classroom door, handing me over trustingly to my new teacher, a woman neither of us has ever met before. Helena can’t
wait to get out of there, leaving me as soon as possible. (Too soon Mummy! I hate it here! It smells of cabbages and dirty bottoms!) I do my best to detain her, to make her behave like the other
mothers who fuss around their darlings, helping them find their seats, running a last comb through their hair. Begging makes no inroads on her so I start to howl instead. But it is no use. My
misery is nothing to her.

‘You’ll soon get used to it, Philippa. Your grandparents dumped me in the back end of Wales for a decade. This is nothing. I’ll be back for you at three o’clock.
It’s only six hours.’

Six hours! Mother has no idea what those slow crawling six hours will entail. She knows nothing of Christopher Bennett who licks his bogies and smells of bonfires. Nothing of Mandy Denning who
cries her eyes out when I fall off my chair so that she wrestles all the attention from the teacher. She knows nothing of the humiliation of PE when we are forced to strip to our pants and vest and
pretend to be as small as mice. She knows nothing of the endless dinner-time when we are chucked into the throng of the playground to be bumped and barged by really big boys and girls all of whom
like calling me Fatty.

Instead.

She plants a rare kiss on the top of my head, grimacing at the taste of hairspray.

‘Must dash, Philippa. Mustn’t be late for work.’

And she is gone.

I am hot and squashed on the Carpet, one of a multitude trying to ‘sit on our bottoms with legs crossed nicely’, extremely tricky with plump legs like mine. I
manage to dodge Christopher Bennett who is fidgeting in a Special Place at Miss Hitchcock’s feet, craftily untying the laces of her man-shoes (I caught Mother scowling at them this morning
during the brief moment she was in Miss Hitchcock’s orbit). Instead, I am wedged between Mandy Denning with the blonde hair and doll-sized hands (do her eyelids click shut when she lies
down?) and a quiet boy with messy hair and skin the colour and smoothness of duck eggs, who quite possibly might crack open if he falls in the playground he looks so fragile. Maybe that is why he
spent Break playing on his own in a (miraculously) quiet corner, gently moving his arms up and down, side to side and round and round in some kind of balletic rain dance.

Miss Hitchcock sits on her chair reading from a book with funny pictures. It is about two children with absentee parents and I warm to it straightaway, especially when a cat sporting a rather
nice hat turns up, causing mayhem. (Why isn’t this book in the library?) Just as we think things can’t possibly get any messier, the cat introduces his two friends, Thing One and Thing
Two. Chaos! But not to worry: the cat tidies up before Mother gets home. All we catch of her as she opens the front door is a glimpse of red coat and high heels (and even if they do have laces like
Miss Hitchcock’s shoes, I just know she is wearing lipstick like Helena).

By the time the bell rings at Hometime, I am feeling better. I’ve done it. I’ve been to school. I am a Big Girl now. We surge for the cloakroom, a riot of shuffling feet and flailing
arms, freedom beckoning. So it comes as something of a shock when Miss Hitchcock’s booming voice cuts through the hullabaloo: ‘Don’t forget to bring your dinner money tomorrow,
Christopher Bennett.’ We all look at each other, horrified.

Tomorrow?

‘Yes, tomorrow, Philippa.’ Helena hands me a tissue at the school gate. ‘I thought I’d explained. School is every day.’

‘Everyday?’

‘Except Saturdays and Sundays. And the school holidays.’ She buttons me into my coat. ‘But you’ve got weeks before those start,’ she adds, finding it hard to
disguise the relief in her voice. Then she manoeuvres me deftly through the swarm of reunited mothers and children, and strides off along the pavement as fast as she can in her heels, pulling me
along in her wake.

How long is a week? I look up at Helena – focused straight ahead – but no further information is forthcoming. All I know for sure is the length of six hours: an eternity filled with
bogies and bonfires.

Eventually we Halt at the Kerb around the corner (I am a fully-fledged Tufty Club member). ‘Look right, look left, Philippa,’ Mother commands. ‘And look right again.’ I
am still not sure which is which so I watch Helena out of the corner of my eye. ‘If all clear, quick march.’ And we are off.

Helena is fervent about road safety, preparing me for later life when I will have to cross roads on my own, knowing there is little hope that cars will stop for me in the same way they stop for
her (with a screech of brakes and a funny whistle). So I take it seriously too and know my Kerb Drill by heart.

Things lighten up, however, when Helena stops at a newsagents, one we have never visited before, presumably because this school route has taken us out of our usual environment. She peers with
some interest at the window display of tobacco and pipes before scanning the little hand-written notices by the door. Then she smiles down at me and I notice for the first time that her face is
funny: blotchy and mottled. Has she been crying?

‘Are you all right, Mummy?’ I enquire politely. But this just sets her off again.

‘Oh, Philippa,’ she says, sniffing. ‘I wish you were a boy.’

A boy? This is awful. Has she no idea?

‘But boys pick their noses, Mummy,’ I inform her, a prickle to my pride.

She laughs then, blowing her own pretty red nose before pushing me through that door into the shop, whispering the magic words: ‘Sweetie Time.’

It is an Aladdin’s cave inside. Glass jar upon glass jar filled with rubies and emeralds and diamonds and amethysts and gold and silver and pearls. Sherbet Lemons, Acid Drops, Aniseed
Twist, Toffee Bon Bons. And all the rest of the names I can’t yet read but know by heart from the shapes and colours and smells.

‘You can have a quarter of whatever you like,’ she says to me. Then she too is lost in her own world of comfort, the lines of neatly stacked cigarette packets beckoning her from
behind the counter, where a man has looked up from his newspaper at the sound of Mother’s voice.

‘Afternoon, madam,’ he says. ‘And what can I do for you?’

I am far too absorbed in making my decision and distracted by the rows of comics at my feet to hear what she says in reply. It is sometime later that we find ourselves back outside on the
pavement (a paper bag of wine gums clutched in one of my hands, a copy of
Twinkle
cherished in the other) and Mother is telling me that the Nice Man has offered her a Job.

‘But you already have a Job, Mother. Do you need two Jobs? Are we very poor?’

‘That other Job was a Bad Job.’ She tears open a fresh packet of Consulate with some venom at the memory of this Bad Job. This one will be a Lovely Job, Philippa. A Proper Job as
they say Down Here. (Down Here being the only place I’ve ever known but still a foreign land to Helena.)

‘Just think, Philippa,’ she says. ‘Think of all those sweets!’ And she plants a (second of the day) kiss on the top of my head that I wouldn’t swap for all the
sweets in the shop.

It is Saturday at last. Hurray! No uniform today. No Christopher Bennett. No Miss Hitchcock with her man-shoes and voice of doom. But Mother has her Job to do and so I have to
go to Auntie Sheila’s for the morning with my duffle bag of ‘things to keep me quiet’.

I like going to Auntie Sheila’s – as long as Bernie is at the Lot. Terry ignores me as he has recently become a teenager. He spends his time in the garage attempting his Guitar Riffs
and playing darts. Toni treats me like the pony she’s never been allowed to have because Sheila thinks riding will give her bandy legs, which are of no use for ballet. Toni battles with my
frizzy hair, trying to train it into French plaits, pulling my scalp and making my eyes water. But it is worth it for the pretty ribbons she weaves through them. Toni makes obstacle courses in the
garden and I have to gallop-and-trot and leap over bamboo canes pilfered from Bernie’s neglected greenhouse.