Games People Play (7 page)

‘How will I ever find a husband if I can’t go out?’ I wailed.

‘Well,’ my mother said, in Croatian, ‘it serve you right for getting yourself knocked up by that useless butcher’s boy, doesn’t it now?’

‘That useless butcher’s boy’ was Paul Tyler, son and heir of Tyler’s Butchers in Dagenham, eighteen at the time, spotty and very complaining. He hated working in a butcher’s shop but his father insisted that he would only inherit the empire by starting at the bloody sawdust and fake parsley of the shop floor, and working his way up to the filets mignons later. Ivan has never even met his father, and says he never want to. I don’t blame him, really. All I remember is the acne and bad moods, those awful StayPress slacks and the Adam’s apple which look like it belong on a giant.

We met in 1959 when Paul began to chat me up each time I go in for the family mince. Before long he is pressing me up against closed gates in back alleys, sucking lingering raw meat kisses from my smudged lips. I kept it a secret but the truth was I had never been kissed before. Sweet seventeen, and I thought it was quite nice, but I couldn’t help visualizing the big fat ox tongue in Tyler’s window. And besides, Paul’s Essex accent was so difficult for me to understand that kissing – the Universal Language of Love – was easier than talking.

We had sex within a month, in the shed on Paul’s dad’s allotment, squashed in between an upside-down wheelbarrow and a black plastic tray of purple sprouting potatoes. I was left with a spider’s web draped on my beehive, blood on my pantygirdle, and an Unwanted Pregnancy: a tumbling ball of cells which was to become Ivan. My relationship with Paul Tyler did not last long – he ran off to join the Navy the day after I told him he was going to be a daddy, and I haven’t seen him since.

By the time Ivan started infant school, I was still at the factory, but Sandra Goodrich had changed her name, been photographed barefoot, and released her first single. When it flopped, I was happy. I wanted Sandie to come back to Ford’s, shod and sorry, so that I would no longer have to suffer such torments of jealousy. But it was not to be. Sandie shoots to Number One with ‘Always Something There to Remind Me’, which she follows up with a string of top ten singles, churning them out like they were shiny Cortinas rolling off the assembly line.

‘That could have been me!’ I wailed when Sandie was voted Best New Singer of 1964. I remember wailing a lot at that time. Ivan was behaving badly at school, and had taken to opening his bowels on the floor at home, and I must spend hours on my knees with a knife and gritted teeth, scraping poo from between the floorboards. It was not how I imagined my life.

When Sandie came back to Ford’s the next year for a visit, to see how her old mates were getting on, I locked myself in the Ladies’ toilet and cried and swore with my father’s handed-down Croatian swear words.

That’s why I was missing from the group photograph in the local paper, a blurry shot of all the girls in Sandie’s department clustered adoringly around their former colleague.

‘It should have been
me
,’ I cried when I read in the papers that Sandie got to go to a party at Princess Margaret’s place, when I was yet again stuck at home.

That time, Ivan had mumps – not that it would have made any difference if he’d been healthy – it was still Sandie, not me, hobnobbing with royalty.

In the long evening hours after I’d scraped poo and tucked Ivan up in bed, I would sit silently in the living room dreaming and plotting possible means of escape.

But even this I couldn’t do in peace, as I no longer had a room of my own: Ivan slept on a fold-out bed in the corner of my childhood bedroom, in the place formerly occupied by my precious gramophone. I’d had to sell that years before, to buy a cot and a pram.

Frequently, I wished that my mama and papa had made me do what many other parents in those days did: insist that I give the baby up for adoption. I could have gone away for a couple of months, perhaps pretend I had gone back to Croatia to stay with relatives, and returned with nothing more to show for my silly foolishness than a lot of baggy skin on my tummy and a problematical pelvic floor.

My parents thought I was watching TV with them every night – when I wasn’t scraping poo, of course –but had no idea that in my head I was twirling on stage in a sequinned minidress, Number One in the hit parade, Sandie Shaw left behind, an unpopular nobody unable to struggle out from behind the shadow of my talent and glamour...

One rare night Mama and Papa (Mr and Mrs K, to their English friends) were out at a neighbour’s drinks party (I am
not
invited. People take pity on my poor suffering parents, who work so hard to establish themselves in the community, and then have to put up with the illegitimate grandson – but they have no sympathy for me, the brazen hussy), and I was listening to the wireless as loudly as I could without waking Ivan, who never slept good. I thought of the music filtering through the flimsy walls of our terrace, and it was my own small act of rebellion. I made myself a large Campari and soda, put on my best dress – cherry gingham, with a ribbon under the bust – and lit a cigarette, jiving around the living room to the sounds of Les Swingle Singers, tears of rage and frustration beginning to roll down my cheeks. I was on my third big drink, liking the fact that the red of the Campari nicely matched with my outfit, when there was a knock at the front door.

I wiped my face and went to answer it. It was a man, older than me and balding, but not that old, and quite modish. He was clutching a bottle of something, which he pushed towards me.

‘Not too late, am I?’ he said, smiling and showing teeth which were crooked, but not unattractively so. If he’d bitten into an apple, it would have left Dracula-style puncture marks. I guessed he was in his early thirties. He stepped inside the hallway and held out his hand. ‘We haven’t met before, have we? I’m Ted Anderson.’

I was more than a bit tipsy from the three drinks, and I didn’t know what to say. At first I thought he must be friend of my parents who had decided to call round unannounced. ‘Gordana Korolija,’ I said, transferring the bottle into my armpit to shake his hand. ‘Do come in.’

I liked him immediately for not saying ‘Eh? Come again?’ as did most people when I spoke my name. Ted Anderson followed me into the front room, where he stopped, with a slightly confusedness. ‘Where is everyone, then?’ he said.

‘My parents are out, I’m afraid,’ I replied in my best English accent, putting my shoulders up straight and sticking out my breasts in their tight bodice. The broderie anglaise along the low neckline of the dress tickled and itched, and I resisted the temptation to stick my hand down the front of it and scratch. ‘What may I get you to drink?’

Ted laughed, and winked at my bosom. ‘Oh, like that, is it? Parents go out, you decide to have a party – you’re a one, aren’t you? I’m not as late as I thought then, if no one else is here yet.’

He wiggled on the spot in time to the music on the radio, elbows bent into his sides, digging the toe of one pointy, expensive-looking shoe into the carpet. I watched, wanting so much to have someone to dance with that I almost cried.

‘No one else?’ I asked.

He looked a little impatient now. ‘Well, you don’t normally have a party with only one guest, do you? I’ll have a gin and tonic water, love, ta.’

Suddenly I realized what had happened. He was supposed to be at the same party my parents were at, four doors down, but he’d heard the music floating through the window and simply got the wrong address. I opened my mouth to correct his mistake, but I was so longing for company that the thought of him leaving sent me almost into a panic. I noticed that his suit was very well cut, and his watch gold. He might not be very good looking, but I was pretty sure he was rich. You could just tell. I liked him. Perhaps it was my loneliness and desperation for change, but at that point I decided it was more than likely, were he not already taken, that I would marry him.

‘Lemon and ice?’ I asked in a high little voice, even though I knew my parents’ kitchen contained neither of those things, nor indeed any gin or tonic water.

He nodded, taking a cigarette from a silver case in his inside pocket and lighting it, still twisting his hips on the carpet as he inhaled. Grabbing my handbag on the way, I ran into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, breathing heavily. I quickly took out my compact, checked that my mascara hadn’t run, and reapplied my lipstick.

I took one of Papa’s bottles of ale from the fridge.

‘Sorry,’ I said, carrying it back into the front room. ‘We have run out of gin. I can offer you this, or a Campari, or some…’ I spotted the bottle he’d brought ‘…wine?’

‘Ale’ll do me, thanks,’ he said, stretching out his arm for the bottle and neatly taking its cap off, having produced a Swiss army knife from his trouser pocket for the purpose. ‘Are you expecting many?’

For one brief moment I thought he was asking if I was expecting many children, or was pregnant with twins or something, and I was angry at the personal nature of the comment. ‘No! Just – Oh, I see. No. In fact....’ I blushed. ‘I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding.’ I would have to be truthful. ‘This is not the party, actually. I think you want the Murrays at number twelve, they’re having people round tonight. I thought you were friend of my parents…Sorry.’

I looked down at the carpet. Ted laughed, in a lovely free sort of way. He took a swig from his bottle, then he tipped my chin up towards him with his spare hand.

‘You’re a pretty girl, Gordana. How old are you?’

‘Twenty-three,’ I said, ashamed that I was a spinster.

I studied his face; it was sharp, thin-lipped, and he had great black shadows beneath his eyes – but his eyes were brown and soft, like a dog’s. He had wrinkles on his forehead, and too much of it was exposed by the thinning hair. When he let go of my chin, I could still feel the press of his warm fingers against my skin.

He looked at my party outfit. ‘Are you going to this party, then?’

I shook my head. ‘No invitation for me.’

Ted laughed again. He looked quite sexy when he laughed – not like Paul Tyler, who’d laughed with discomfort, like there was something sharp stuck in his throat. I decided I would like the experience an older man could offer. Not to mention the cash. Paul had never given me anything – hadn’t even offered to buy me new stockings when he laddered one with his clumsy fingers in his hurry-hurry to pull up my skirt.

‘Are you married?’ I blurted, brave with alcohol and the easiness of his laugh.

‘No. Are you?’ he replied, moving closer to me. He didn’t smell of entrails either, like Paul did. Which was also a plus.

‘No—’ I stopped. I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell him about Ivan, not yet. Not when Fate had brought him to me like this.

‘You’ve got a strange accent, as well as a funny name. Where are you from?’

‘Yugoslavia.’

‘So, since you’re all dressed up with nowhere to go, how about coming to a dance with me tonight?’ He said it with such a natural confidence, no stammering or blowing smoke in my face or staring at a spot on the floor, like Paul would have done.

‘I would love to!’ I cried, instantly forgetting all about the child asleep upstairs. I couldn’t believe that this was the first time in five whole years anybody had asked me out.

Ted looked at his watch, sticking his wrist right out of his sleeve like he was punching an invisible person.

‘Right, let’s go then. I was thinking of heading down the Roxy anyhow. This drinks party sounded a bit of a bore, to be honest. I only said I’d go because Cliff Murray – I work with him – tells me his daughter’s a bit of all right. But now I’ve met
you
. . .’ He tailed off, with one of his eyebrows raised up high.

I blushed again, so very delighted. ‘Janice Murray has nothing special,’ I said, although I had always been envious of Janice’s willowy figure and high-and-mighty expression. Privately I suspected that Ted would have loved her. Tough luck, Janice! I said to myself smugly. I actually gathered up my keys and handbag, fetched my cardigan from the back of one of the dining chairs, and was all ready to go. When I finally remembered, that remembering hit me hard with its sudden, cruel reality. I put my hand over my mouth. ‘Oh! I can’t. I can’t come out with you tonight.’

Ted didn’t look disappointed enough, in my opinion. He lit another cigarette.‘Why not, then? Jealous boyfriend? Parents going to call the police if you go out?’

I closed my eyes, the crushing weight of all of this responsibility ripping through my body like a labour pain. I thought perhaps maybe not to tell him and leave the house anyway, but the potential humiliation of being found out later was too great. Ivan was bound to wake up and yell about something or another.

‘I have a kid. He’s asleep upstairs. Ivan. Five years old.’

Ted just laughed again. ‘Had you forgotten?’

‘No, of course not!’ I said, crossly. ‘I just ...Oh, it does not matter. Here, here is your wine back. Number twelve. Janice Murray is the person with the nose in the air, you won’t miss her. Have a good time. It was nice to meet you. I’m sorry for any inconvenience.’ I was practically pushing him towards the front door, thrusting his bottle back at him, determined not to let him see the fresh tears which were springing up fast.

Ted turned and put his hands on my shoulders – not in a perverted way, but in a kind way which made it unavoidable that the tears spill down my face. ‘Poor kid,’ he said. ‘You, I mean, not the baby. Where’s the father?’

‘Gone,’ I said, not meeting his eyes, feeling his hands almost burning into my shoulders. ‘Didn’t want to know.’

‘His loss,’ Ted said. ‘I like you. Do you reckon your mother would babysit one evening, and we can go dancing then?’

‘She might, I suppose.’ I gave a sob. I was so tempted to bury my face in his jacket that I felt pulled like a magnet towards him. He’s a stranger, I tell myself. Don’t be so forward. But it felt natural. And he’d told me he liked me! Paul Tyler never said anything with nearly so much affection.