Wendy Perriam
The Eighth Wonder of the World
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2013
This collection © 2013 Hearst Magazines UK (The National Magazine Company Limited)
Copyright © Wendy Perriam.
‘Away-Day’ © 2004, ‘The Eighth Wonder of the World’ © 2004, ‘Angelfish’ © 2001,
‘Moving’ © 2006, ‘Thin Skin’ © 2006
The right of Wendy Perriam to be identified as the author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act of 1988.
ISBN: 978-1-905563-80-7
Published by Hearst Magazines UK (The National Magazine Company Limited), 72 Broadwick Street, London W1F 9EP
All rights reserved.
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Away-Day
W
ith difficulty, Miss Feltham alighted from the train, negotiating the wide black void between the step and the platform. In her day, the step had been lower, just as the trains had been cleaner and quieter. She had spent most of the journey listening to one-sided conversations. The man opposite had made seven phone-calls between Charing Cross and Ashford. By now, she felt she knew him: his sinus trouble, his mother in Crouch End, his planned trip to Marbella, his dislike of nylon shirts. She smiled as he hurried past her on the platform, but he didn’t seem to see her. He was on the phone again.
Emerging from the station, she walked down towards the sea. She couldn’t smell it yet, only the reek of frying onions. Perhaps it was foolish to have come on a bank holiday. With her slow, unsteady progress she was a hindrance to other people - young couples walking entwined, practically devouring each other in public; families with push-chairs or toddlers darting all over the place.
“Hello,” she imagined saying. “Yes, reasonably well, thank you. Lovely weather, isn’t it?”
A little too hot, in truth. The sun smirked at her lisle stockings and chunky cardigan. Still, best to be prepared.
Suddenly she stopped. She could see it now - valiant blue and vast, stretching away, away, to France. (They should never have built the Tunnel. England was an island and she for one was proud of the fact.)
How busy and eager the waves were, pounding in, swishing back, up and back, up and back, all day, all night, all day. No empty hours, no silence.
The promenade was lined with stalls selling ice-cream and souvenirs. One was just a makeshift booth, manned by a tiny, gnarled old fellow dressed in a shiny blazer and a lopsided red bow-tie. Beside him was a hand-crayoned sign: “I’ll guess your age. Price 50p. If I’m wrong, even by a year, you win a prize.” She hesitated. 50p would buy a cup of tea, or pay for the hire of a deck-chair. But people were always saying she looked much younger than her years. It would be nice to win a prize …
She joined the queue. There were two young girls - teenagers most probably, although it was so hard to tell these days. They wore skimpy tops that showed their stomachs, and peculiar clumpy shoes. Behind them stood a middle-aged couple in matching baseball caps.
“Yes, dead right!” she heard the girls exclaim. “However did you know?”
“Practice,” smiled the little man.
He
was no spring chicken. Not as old as her, of course - no one was as old as her - but wrinkled like a walnut shell, with bowed shoulders and thinning grey hair.
The middle-aged couple turned away, sour-faced. “You said I
don’t
look forty-eight, Clive” the woman snapped.
“How was I to know?” her husband muttered. “Flaming waste of money, if you ask me.”
Her turn now. She handed over the coins and the wizened little man fixed her with an unwavering stare, as if his eyes could penetrate her skull, her very soul. No man had ever gazed at her like that before, and as time passed - whole minutes, it seemed - she felt a blush suffuse her, spreading even to the soles of her feet. Finally he scribbled something on his notepad and covered it with his thumb. “And how old
are
you?” he asked.
He was cheating, obviously. Whatever age she told him, he would pretend that’s what he’d guessed. “Ninety-one,” she retorted in a defiant tone.
His eyes widened. “Good gracious! I was
miles
out.” He removed his thumb from the pad and showed her the figure he had written: seventy-four.
Astounding. Thirteen years gone at a stroke. She was a youngster in her seventies again. She still lived in the cottage; still had all four dogs; still dug the garden, mowed the lawn.
“And here’s your prize.” The man ducked below the table top to pick up a small silvery object - a key-ring with a tiny globe attached.
She closed her fingers round it; the whole world in her hand. She had never travelled (impossible with dogs) but now she was abroad at last - a tropical sun blazing down, and a group of dark-skinned men in turbans strolling past.
In a happy daze she set off towards the pier. On the beach, scores of bodies were stretched out on towels, exposing naked flesh. Some of the women had even removed their tops, and lay face-up, revealing their breasts. When
she
was a girl, she’d been encased in layers of clothing: liberty bodice, woollen vest, starched white petticoats, voluminous pink bloomers that came up above the waist and down below the knee. She unbuttoned her cardigan and slowly took it off, smiling with pleasure as warm air caressed her arms.
Postcards, she thought. She must send a sea-view to all her friends. ‘Having a lovely time. Wish you were here.’ If she was only seventy-four, they would still be at their old addresses, not in coffins in the cemetery. And there would be money in her Post Office account, not yet swallowed up by Eldon Court.
At the pier, she paid her entrance fee, staring down at the cracks between the boards, thrilled to see the long glistening lines of water. Sea beneath her and all around her, rippling and white-flecked. She was on a boat, cruising from tropical island to tropical island, the band playing a romantic waltz, the chef preparing a five-course banquet.
Yes, she could do with something to eat. Before setting off this morning she’d had only a cup of tea and an osborne biscuit. (Breakfast was served later on bank holidays, and sometimes didn’t arrive at all.)
“Would you mind if I joined you?” she asked a heavy-jowled man, wearing what appeared to be his vest. It was the only empty seat.
He shook his head, unable to speak with a mouth full of chips. He was eating them from a small white plastic tray, dunking each in ketchup before cramming it into his mouth with barely a pause before the next one.
She was about to order soup and a roll, then changed her mind. “A portion of chips, please, dear,” she told the waitress. At Eldon Court it was always boiled or mashed.
The waitress returned with an identical tray, piled with luscious fat chips. Excitedly, she prodded one with the plastic fork, spearing the white floury flesh beneath the golden coating. She reached for the ketchup container - a plump red plastic tomato with a nozzle at the top - and squeezed out her initials, two Fs. She had been christened Freda after her father, Frederick, although he had never liked her much.
She bit into a chip, relishing the glorious greasy taste. Glancing up, she caught sight of the blue expanse again, sparkling outside the windows of the café. Where was their next port of call - Miami? Honolulu?
She span out the chips as long as she could. The man had finished eating and was flicking through the
Daily Mirror
. There were bristly dark hairs on the backs of his hands, a tiny clump sprouting on each finger. She was cruising with her gentleman friend. At any moment he would speak to her, suggest they took a stroll on deck.
“Yes, I’d love to,” she fluttered, rising to her feet. (She pocketed the plastic fork as a souvenir - although she would have to hide it in her bedside drawer. Anything you left about was stolen.)
Outside, she feasted on the colours: pink whorls of candyfloss, purple flowers splashed across a man’s Hawaiian shirt, gold and scarlet cockerels on the children’s roundabout. At Eldon Court everything was beige.
Her nose twitched with a clash of smells: hot doughnuts, shellfish, vinegar. And there was a cacophony of sounds as well: the jaunty carousel music vying with the thudding beat booming from a neon-lit arcade.
She reached the end of the pier and stood gazing out to infinity, watching a blue-sailed yacht tacking in the wind. As a child she had lived in Walsall, where the sea was just a word. But now the world had become a playground with no work, no rules, no Matron. Everyone was carefree - swimming, boating, water-skiing. And, looking back towards the town, she could see the lights of a fun-fair. She imagined whooshing down the helter-skelter, shrieking with excitement; soaring in a swingboat higher than the sun.
On the hill beyond were dozens of hotels, their icing-sugar whiteness belying the dirty weekends they had witnessed in the past. She remembered her friend Maisie stealing away for a seaside “honeymoon” with her young man, Arthur Wainwright. Maisie had bought a Woolworth’s ring, which she was careful to display while Arthur booked them in as Mr and Mrs Smith.
She had never had a young man, or a ring; never been plucked from naïve spinsterhood and turned into adventurous Mrs Smith.
Dawdling back along the pier, she came upon a kiosk selling rock. Sticks of every size and colour were arrayed beguilingly, each imprinted with tiny red letters that lasted until the final lick. If rock had different names inside - not Brighton or Bournemouth or Blackpool, but “youth” and “health” and “friendship” - then might those things last longer?
She ambled on to the next kiosk and studied the pictures of the ice-creams: Mivvis, Magnums, Oyster Shells, Cornettos. In her day it had been plain vanilla and you ate it at the table from a dish.
“Yes, can I help you, love?”
“A tutti frutti, please.” She liked the name - exotic again - and the intriguing little fruity pieces nestling in the rich smoothness of the ice-cream. She didn’t eat the last inch of the cornet, but wrapped it in her handkerchief and put it in her bag. Another souvenir.
The bag was an encumbrance. Dare she leave it somewhere? Then she could take her shoes and stockings off and paddle in the sea.
She found a ladies’ lavatory, gloomy-dark and smelly after the bracing glare outside. Sitting on the toilet seat, she unfastened her suspenders and removed her lace-up shoes. It took some time - even at seventy-four she had arthritis - but it was worth the effort. A wonderful sensation: bare feet on hot sand.
Picking her way through the sun-worshippers, she ventured to the sea’s edge. A wavelet frilled across her crooked toes, joltingly cold. A child ran past, splashing her unknowingly. She laughed to feel the water against her legs. Her limbs had been confined so long, they’d gone grey-pale, like grubs, but now they were untrammelled, exposed to light and air. With every step, she lost another decade. Sixty-four; fifty-four; a slip of a thing in her twenties; a little girl of ten. She stooped to pick up a shell, and put it in her pocket. Hidden treasure. And when she found a discarded pail, still serviceable despite its missing handle, it gave her an idea: now she could make sand pies.
Having lowered herself cautiously to a sitting position, she scrabbled up some damp sand with her fingers, packed it into the pail and pressed it down. Her father smiled in approval. ‘Clever girl!’ he said, as she turned out a perfect pie and placed the shell on top as the finishing touch. ‘Is that for Daddy?’
“Yes,” she whispered, feeling his strong arms around her, his cheek rough against her own.
She made another pie, and another; turned out a whole batch. With every one she felt more independent. Now she had food in the larder, money in the bank - and company, it seemed. Half a dozen children had gathered to watch, and were staring at her wonderingly.
She closed her eyes. Not that she was tired - you didn’t get tired at seventy-four - but a nap would be delightful. Naps were difficult at Eldon Court; someone was always barging in, to give you pills you didn’t want.
When she woke, the children had gone. There were fewer people altogether, and the sun was less cocksure. Her back ached and she had cramp in her legs. The holiday was over - time to catch her train.
Reluctantly she hauled herself to her feet and returned to the ladies’ toilet, where her bag was still hanging on the hook behind the door. Not bothering to put on her stockings, she wriggled her bare feet into the shoes. The nurses would be cross: her feet were sandy and she’d spilt ice-cream down her dress. Nor had she told them where she was. You weren’t supposed to go out on your own, so she had slipped away when nobody was looking. She hated being cooped up in Eldon Gaol.