The Girls from See Saw Lane (9 page)

‘There's nothing wrong with being a housewife, is there, girls?' the presenter asked the rest of the group and they all beamed back at him and nodded. 

I was beginning to agree with Elton that the presenter
was
an idiot.

To be honest, I thought the whole thing was a bit boring, which was odd because every year up until then, it had seemed the most exciting and glamorous event in the whole world ever. I was glad when it finally ended. Sally didn't come first second or third, but she was in the last five, so I thought she had done pretty well. The girl who wanted to go into outer space came last.

Once it was all over, everyone stood up at once and started pushing towards the exit and as I was sitting at the end of the row, I sort of got carried along with them. It wasn't until I was outside that I realised I couldn't see the others anywhere. I hung around waiting, but they didn't come out of the exit I'd come out of. There were so many people everywhere, and I didn't know if they would wait for me at the end of the pier, or if they'd head back towards the seafront. I walked all the way round the pier twice hoping to find them but it was almost impossible. I knew they'd be looking for me too. We were probably following each other round in circles. I hung around for a bit longer then made my way to the bus stop, hoping to find them there. They weren't in the queue. 

There was a wind coming off the sea and I was starting to feel really cold, my eyes started watering, then I saw Ralph running towards me.

‘I can't find Mary and Elton,' he said. ‘I thought you were with them.'

‘I thought you were all together,' I said. I must have looked worried.

‘They'll be fine,' said Ralph

‘Well, I'm glad you found me,' I said, smiling.

‘So am I,' he said.

The bus arrived. We climbed up the stairs and got a seat at the front. Ralph put his arm around me and I snuggled into him. I stared out of the window, feeling happier than I had ever felt in my life. Soon we had left Brighton behind. We passed the Rec where Mary and I used to play and where William and Wallace had given Mary's hamster a swimming lesson. Me and Mary were all grown up now and everything was changing. I wondered what had happened to Mary. I hoped she'd get home all right. I hoped Elton was looking after her.

Ralph walked me to my door and under the glow of the street lamp he held my face in his hands and kissed my forehead.

That night in bed I cuddled my pillow and remembered the feel of Ralph's hand in mine. It had felt like the beginning of something wonderful. I could hardly wait to find out what would happen next.

I
t was Monday again
, one of those boiling hot, Indian summer days when there's not a breath of freshness in the air and all you want to do is lie on the beach and doze. It was only two days earlier, but already Saturday and the beauty contest felt like ages away. Mary and I were back at work. Woollies had this new brand of hair dyes in, with names like ‘Bubbly Blonde', ‘Ravishing Red' and ‘Ardent Auburn.' The boxes had pictures of pretty girls on the front who would have looked good whatever colour their hair was. Mary and I had been unloading the boxes that had arrived that morning on the back of a lorry and were stacking them on the shelves.

‘
We
ought to dye our hair,' said Mary, picking up a box that said ‘Strawberry Blonde' on the front.

‘What colour will it turn out though?' I asked. ‘Because that's two different colours, isn't it?'

‘You're so picky,' said Mary. ‘It will be a blend of the two, won't it!'

‘Do you want pink hair?'

‘It won't be pink, it will be blonde.'

‘Why call it strawberry then?'

‘It sounds more sophisticated. It says here that blondes have more fun.'

‘More fun than who? Us?'

‘Than anyone!' said Mary, rolling her eyes up to heaven. ‘Didn't you notice that most of the girls in that beauty contest had blonde hair? The girl that won had blonde hair, and the girl that came second.'

‘Oh well, we'd better both go blonde then otherwise you'll be having fun and I won't,' I said cheerfully.

Mary glanced at me. 

‘What do you mean?'

‘If you dye your hair blonde and I don't,' I said.

‘Don't you ever take anything seriously?' Mary asked.

I thought for a minute then said: ‘Probably not.'

She turned away from me and started straightening the boxes on the shelf.

‘Is everything okay?' I asked.

‘Why wouldn't it be?'

‘It's just… I was just a bit worried about you… all that gin Elton drank on Saturday… and you had quite a lot and…'

‘What?'

‘I don't know. Sometimes when people have too much to drink they do things they don't mean to do.'

‘I know what you‘re thinking, Dottie Perks.'

‘Do you now?'

‘You're thinking that we did it, aren't you? You're thinking that we did it under the pier and that's why we missed the bus.'

‘Well, it was beginning to cross my mind.'

‘Well we didn't. Happy now, dear?'

‘I worry about you, that's all.'

‘I know you do, but I've got a mother for that.'

‘You will tell me, won't you?'

‘For heaven's sake, Dottie.'

‘But you will, won't you?'

‘Okay, now stop going on.'

I didn't know why it was so important to me to know, because I didn't really want to know at all. It's just that I had a feeling that once she ‘did it' things would change between us. When we were younger, Mary used to say that once you made love to a boy you became a woman and I used to have these visions of us suddenly turning into our mothers, which was a bit disconcerting because for a start I'd have to shrink about five inches. The whole thing was giving me a headache, so I decided not to think about it.

‘Anyway,' said Mary briskly, holding the box up to my head so she could compare the colour of my hair against the model on the cover. ‘I don't think you would suit blonde.'

‘Why not?' I said. ‘I want to have fun too.'

‘I think you'd suit red,' said Mary.

‘Red?'

‘Well not exactly red.' She was rooting around in the boxes.

‘Don't spoil my display,' I said.

‘Like this one,' said Mary, handing me a box that said: ‘Turn heads with Tantalising Tawny.'

I immediately had a vision of me walking around our estate through crowds of people with spinning heads.

‘Will turning heads be as good as having more fun?' 

‘Of course it will. It means people will notice you.'

I wasn't sure that I wanted people to notice me. I had spent my whole life trying to get people
not
to notice me.

‘Well, I'm going to go Strawberry Blonde,' said Mary. ‘If you don't want to turn heads that's up to you.'

There was only one head that I wanted to turn and it was Ralph's. If I went red too, we'd be a matching pair.

‘I think I'll stick to the colour I've got,' I said.

‘Suit yourself,' said Mary. ‘I'll be the one having all the fun.'

Okay, I thought, on your head be it.

W
e didn't have
a chance to talk again until it was time to go home. We were in the cloakroom putting on our proper clothes and brushing our hair when Mary asked: ‘What do you want to do this weekend?' It wasn't at all like her to ask me my opinion with regard to planning our social lives.

‘Don't mind,' I said.

‘Good, ‘cos we're going to the Whisky A Go Go.'

My heart sank. 

‘We're not going there again, are we?' 

‘Of course we are, that's where we hang out now, isn't it?'

‘We've only been there once. I wouldn't call that hanging out."

Mary sighed, ‘Oh Dottie, I thought we had already decided that that is where it's all happening.'

‘I don't know,' I said.

‘Oh come on. I can't go on my own, and I really, really, really want to see Elton.'

‘You
are
still going out with Elton, aren‘t you?'

She shrugged. I thought: So
that's
what the matter is!

‘He said he's not ready to go steady yet,' she said.

‘Oh Mary!'

‘He says he likes me though.'

‘Well that's nice, isn't it?'

‘
Nice
. I want more than
nice
.'

‘Yea, well you would.'

Mary laughed. ‘Patience has never been my strong point.'

‘He likes you and that's a beginning.'

‘It might be the beginning but it's not going to be the bloody end.'

I smiled. ‘So how did you leave it?'

‘He said he'd see me at the club on Saturday.' 

‘He'd see you?'

‘Well he said he'd be there. Probably. If nothing else came up.'

I thought that was typical of Elton. Instead of making a concrete date, he'd made sure he left all his options open. I wondered how many girls he'd said he'd ‘see' at the club.

‘Doesn't sound like much of an offer to me,' I said, gently.

‘It's not, is it?'

‘What's more important to you, Mary, art school or Elton?'

‘That's the bloody problem. They're both important to me.'

‘Well I think you need to make up your mind, girl.'

‘What about you and Ralph?' said Mary, changing the subject, just like she always did when she didn't want to talk about something. ‘You seemed to be getting pretty cosy.'

‘He walked me home,' I said.

‘And?' said Mary.

‘And nothing,' I said.

‘I know you, Dottie Perks, you can't fool me. What else happened?'

‘He kissed me,' I said shyly.

‘That's it,' said Mary, going all dramatic, ‘the beginning of the end, you might just as well go down the council and put your name on the housing list.'

‘He only kissed me,' I said, giggling.

‘You‘ll be sorry, mark my words.'

I looked at Mary Pickles, my very best friend in the whole world, and I knew that if I could be with Ralph, then I would never be sorry.

‘Come on!' said Mary. ‘Hurry up. We need to get to the record shop before it closes.'

I stood up, hung my work overall back on the hanger, put it in my locker and then I took Mary's arm and we went out of the cloakroom and clattered down the concrete steps that led to the staff door of Woollies. I offered Mary a piece of cherry-flavoured bubblegum and she took it. I didn't know what I could do to stop her hankering after Elton.  

Mary pursed her lips and concentrated on making a bubble. She went cross-eyed watching it, which made me laugh, and then it burst all over her face. She picked at the bits and put them back in her mouth. 

As it was payday, we went straight to the record shop, which stayed open late so the shop girls could spend their wages. Mary bought
Sweets for my Sweet
by The Searchers and I bought
She Loves You
by The Beatles. ‘Fancy going down the cafe tonight?' I said as we walked back through the estate. There were loads of kids running around chasing one another and the dogs were chasing the kids and it was all very, very noisy. We had to keep swerving to avoid bumping into children hurtling along the pavements on home-made go-carts. In the gardens, washing hung flat on the lines and babies cried in their prams. The ants were swarming, the air was full of them, and you could smell the fat from all the chip pans in all the kitchens.

‘Maybe,' said Mary.

We got to the top of the twitten and stopped and Mary said: ‘I'll call for you at eight and we can decide what to do.'

I picked some leaves off the privet hedge that was growing beside the railings.

Mary stepped forward and kicked a ball back to two small boys wearing just shorts who had come running into the alley. Then she jumped up onto the railings and sat there swinging her legs and chewing her gum.

‘You really do like Ralph, don‘t you?'

She was staring at the ground, or her shoes, I wasn't sure which. Suddenly she looked up.

‘You won't forget me, will you?'

‘How could I forget you, you daft thing.'

‘I'll call for you at eight,' said Mary.

‘Okay.'

‘You never know,' said Mary, sliding backwards off the railings and hanging on by her legs, ‘they might both be down the cafe.'

And suddenly I felt sick and happy and excited all at once. I ran down the twitten calling to Mary as I went.

‘Mary.'

‘Dottie.'

‘Mary.'

‘Dottie.'

     

When I got home I went straight into the front room to play my new record on the radiogram that was built into the sideboard.

‘What rubbish have you brought home this week?' said Dad who was sitting in his armchair reading the paper and smoking.

‘
She Loves You
,' I said, ‘by The Beatles.' 

‘You're not putting that on while I'm in the room,' he said.

‘Yes she can!' shouted Mum from the kitchen. ‘Dottie is a contributing member of this family and she has as much right to play her record on that radiogram as anyone else in this house, and I'd like to remind you that it was my wages that bought that radiogram, not yours.'

Blimey, I only wanted to listen to a record and it was turning into world war three. I bet Mary was in her very own bedroom playing her record on her very own Dansette record player that she'd got for her birthday, without a care in the world. Lucky Mary.

‘Got a new record?" Mum asked coming into the front room. I was kneeling down, blowing dust off the head of the arm of the record player. I loved the smell inside the cabinet; it was a smell of furniture polish and felt and rubber. I loved the noise the record player made when it was turned on, and I loved stacking the records and watching them drop and spin. Everything about it was exciting.

‘The new Beatles one.' 

‘I quite like George Harrison,' said Mum. ‘He used to look a bit like him,' she said, nodding over at Dad.

‘I never looked like that pansy,' he said without taking his eyes of the paper.

‘You might not have had the haircut,' she said, ‘but you had his smouldering eyes.'

Dad looked up and smiled at her and it suddenly occurred to me that they actually liked each other.

‘I can still smoulder when I want to, Maureen,' he said, winking at her.

‘Oh my God, stop, please! I'll play it another time,' I said. ‘I have to get changed, me and Mary are going down the cafe.'

‘Aren't you having your tea first?' asked Mum.

‘What is it?' 

‘Goulash.' 

Mum had recently discovered that one of her distant relations twelve thousand times removed had been Polish and had decided that we should experience some Polish culture in a culinary way.

‘Don't worry,' I said. ‘I'll get something down the cafe.'

‘Make sure it's something nourishing,' said Mum.

I wasn't sure about it being nourishing, but there was a good chance it would be English. I went up to my bedroom and Rita's Prince of Wales check miniskirt was on the floor, so I picked it up and put it on. I was pleased to find that it was really quite loose on me now. I turned round and round in front of the mirror. I had definitely lost weight since leaving school. Mary said it was because I'd stopped eating all those stodgy school dinners. She was probably right because every lunch time I used to eat a big dinner followed by spotted dick or jam roly-poly pudding with custard, then when I got home Mum would feed me again. Now I just had a sandwich at lunchtime and as little of Mum's concoctions as I could get away with. Maybe with ‘Tantalising Tawny' on my head and less fat on my body I might actually start resembling someone who looked reasonably normal. I began rummaging through the rest of Rita's things. I put on one of her Playtex bras and then put a pink sweater over the top. The effect was amazing. I looked a bit like Rita, like a woman. The clothes didn't just make me feel different, they made me walk differently and stand differently too.

By the time I got downstairs Mary was waiting for me.

‘Wow!' she said. ‘Look at you. Miss Glamour-puss! You look nice, Dottie. Is that Rita's skirt?'

‘Don't tell her!' I said. ‘Please, please don't tell her.'