The Generation Game (16 page)

‘He’s thinking about moving up to London, you know, to stay with Toni,’ Sheila says as the front door bangs. ‘There’s a chance of a job working in her office.
Delivery boy or something.’

‘He’s hardly a boy,’ Wink points out. (She’s noticed too.)

‘He’s only twenty-four,’ says Sheila.

‘He’s a bloody sponger,’ says Bernie.

‘We should be encouraging him then, shouldn’t we?’

And with that note on parental guidance, Auntie Sheila swans off to fetch the cheese and biscuits, leaving an awkward silence in the candle-lit dining room which no-one has the heart to fill. I
could, if I tried, but I am too busy thinking of T-J. Terry, of the Chinese burns and obnoxious friends. Terry of the pools and bar billiards. Terry, who is moving away to stay with his sister who
can take him to see
Evita
(not that he’d thank her). Terry (T-J), who – after half a measly glass of Chianti – I quite fancy.

Midway through the after dinner mints the door bell chimes. It is Linda – who’s been heavy-handed with the make-up and over-generous with the cleavage – carrying a bottle of
Blue Nun that Auntie Sheila winces at, being a wine connoisseur.

‘It’s all they had in the off-licence,’ says Linda, flushing as red as T-J’s sirloin, on the verge of battering her smug hostess over the head with the embarrassing
bottle. It is clear that for whatever reason Linda has decided to turn up at this point in the evening, it would’ve been better all round if she’d gone straight home from work, put on a
little Manhattan Transfer and had a bath.

Linda is jealous, that is the reason. But she is in good company as Sheila is jealous too. Bernie, oblivious to the heavy emotion at large in the room, skulks off to watch the snooker. Wink
skulks off with him, being partial to men in black tie. Bob is left with Sheila and Linda all to himself. But he is also left feeling bemused. He can’t understand anyone committing the sin of
jealousy over him. There is no use for me here, other than Peace Maker, but I’m not in the mood for negotiations. I am quite possibly infatuated with someone I shouldn’t be.

‘I need the loo,’ I announce. No-one hears me despite the silence hovering over the dinner table.

I take the opportunity to have a quick snoop around upstairs. Toni’s bedroom, where I used to be a dummy for her friends’ crude make-up skills, has been preserved like a museum
piece: Room of a 1970s Teenager. Pink shagpile, pink woodchip, a huge paper lampshade swelling from an Artexed ceiling painted with clouds. A pair of pink ballet shoes hanging by their pink ribbons
from her bedknobs-and-broomstick bed frame. Her ballet exam certificates framed along one wall. A tutu strung up from the picture rail. And I bet if I were to look in her wardrobe I’d find
her Pan’s People floaty nightie doing a ghostly dance.

I don’t dare go in Sheila and Bernie’s room but I make myself peek inside their son’s, which I am fully expecting to look like a crime scene ripe with forensic evidence. But I
am shocked. Despite the obligatory Athena tennis girl on his wall (the one who forgot to put on her knickers), I see a room where everything is in its place. There are no dirty socks strewn on the
floor. No mouldy mugs or crisp packets scattered about. The bed is made. The carpet hoovered. It even smells pleasant. A mixture of soap and toothpaste and Shake ‘n’ Vac. The type of
room Lucas might’ve kept though he would have had more books and refrained from displaying pictures of naked lady bottoms on his walls. Maybe Auntie Sheila is responsible for this
meticulousness, though somehow I doubt it – these days, although she can find the time for napkin origami when the occasion requires it, she is too busy to uphold her former housekeeping
standards. Maybe I’ve underestimated T-J. Maybe he’s never let me set foot in his room all these years because he knows what a slob I am. Maybe it is remembering Lucas that makes me
soften towards the boy who used to call me Porkchops.

Being in T-J’s bedroom reveals how very little I know about him but, even without this glimpse into his private world, I know two things which really should be all I need:

1. He is twenty-four.

2. He is leaving for London.

However, there’s been no-one of any note since Raymond. Christopher Bennett is just a bad memory though he can still be found in our shop in the early mornings. Lucas is just a speck of stardust. And I am well-and-truly a teenager with hormones
– to quote Helena – ‘on the blink’.

When I arrive back downstairs, Bob is bundling Linda and her cleavage back into her Dannimac and Wink is shouting at Terry Griffiths to get a move on. It is clearly time to go before we outstay
our welcome.

Bernie has dragged himself away from the snooker and stands next to his wife who forces a smile as she sees us out, her new hairdo a little dishevelled. While Bob shepherds Linda and Wink into
the night, I linger on the doorstep, dragging my heels (flat heels, unlike Helena as I don’t want to add any extra inches to my height). I’m not exactly relishing the drive home in the
company of this threesome. Sheila pecks me on the cheek and disappears into the kitchen. Bernie and I remain, static on the threshold, listening to his wife lobbing her best china into the
dishwasher. Then he looks at me. I feel awkward but I don’t know why.

‘Do you miss her?’ he asks, out of the blue.

‘Who?’ I say but I know exactly who he means. I want him to say her name. I never hear her name anymore. It is as if she’s never existed.

‘Your… mother,’ he says. ‘Helena.’

‘Why should I miss her?’ I ask, defiantly. ‘When I have such a loving family.’

We stand and look at my family displaying their love on Bernie’s driveway: Bob and Linda and Wink, the three of them battling it out over who is going to drive the Maxi, my argument
faltering a tad.

‘Honestly, I’m fine.’ I assure him. ‘But thanks for asking Uncle Bernie.’

And he gives me a wink, one of the special ones from the collection he keeps for his Toni.

Lying in bed that night, the Cavalier shuns me. Maybe he knows my heart lies elsewhere. I think about what I told Bernie. I
am
fine. But I’m not sure if that is
because of my new passion or whether I am in actual fact ‘fine’. And I let myself think of my mother. She is a real person, someone Bernie has known in every sense of the word. A living
breathing woman, not a figment of my imagination as I sometimes wonder these days. Because why wouldn’t I wonder? It has been so long. And would a real mother do what she did? A few short
letters and a handful of birthday cards?

Christmas comes and goes without a word from Helena, surprise, surprise, elusive as Father Christmas. It is a new year: 1981. Unfortunately it begins with me making a mockery
of my mocks. I do alright in both English Language and English Literature, seeing as I’ve been an active member of the library all these years (though I am rather heavily influenced by the
photo stories in
Jackie
). But as for the rest, maths makes me feel faint-hearted, despite all that practice in the shop when I’ve had to roll up my sleeves and lend a helping hand. All
I know for sure about geography is that Canada is a long way away across the ocean. I should never have chosen art because my skills have never progressed much beyond colouring in pixie cuffs.
French is double Dutch. And as for history, I seem to confuse fact with fiction.

But all my efforts pale into insignificance a few weeks later, on a cold February morning, when there is a genuinely historical event: Charles and Diana announce their
engagement. When asked in an interview when the marriage is likely to take place, Charles says sometime at the end of July. But I know the date before it is decided. I just know it will be July the
29th. My sixteenth birthday.

While Diana, four years my senior, moves into Clarence House and prepares to marry her prince, I remain in my bedroom, revising and singing along to Madness. As the blossom falls off the trees
and the first baby gulls begin their slow, tortuous flying lessons, we are nearly there. The next few months will be a trial to be endured but I know that whatever happens, however many O-levels I
do or do not get, there are the long summer holidays, my sixteenth birthday and a royal wedding to look forward to at the end of it. But the biggest surprise of all is that we will not be enjoying
this latest royal milestone in Torquay. Bob has arranged with Sheila for us to go and stay with Toni in her flat in Belsize Park. We will all be witnesses to prove that this is not just a fairytale
wedding, a thing of fiction. It is real.

Two days before I am sixteen we leave in convoy. The excitement for Linda is only tempered by the fact Sheila doesn’t have a CB radio in the Volvo estate that she’s
banned Bernie from driving. Instead we have to communicate by hand gestures and flashing lights.

The M4 whizzes by, not as fast as Linda would like as Sheila takes road safety seriously (she is a Volvo owner after all). But once we hit London, Linda is in control and makes sure we enjoy a
longer stretch of the North Circular than we did the last time. Cheryl and I count how many Union Jacks we can see lining the roads and flapping from tower blocks. We give up after a while as it is
clear that the numbers are far too overwhelming to even contemplate. The whole of London is wedding crazy.

And I don’t know why but I have a feeling this will all end in tears. Something holds me back from completely enjoying myself, from completely letting go into the arms of the holiday
spirit. Maybe it is just because Wink has been left behind with Patty and Lugsy. They’ll have to make do with the colour television in the living room to witness Saturday’s
nuptials.

Maybe that is all it is. Wink.

Toni isn’t as house proud as her mother or as obsessive-compulsively tidy as her brother. While T-J keeps the living room, bathroom and his bedroom army-clean and
orderly, Toni can’t even manage her own room which looks like it has been burgled. Sheila is on the verge of phoning the police when Toni has to put her right. So while the rest of us have a
cup of tea and some ginger cake, Sheila dons her rubber gloves (metaphorically as Toni doesn’t own a pair of Marigold’s) and gets the bedroom ship-shape, to her daughter’s
exasperation.

‘Mother!’

‘Well, you can’t possibly expect Bob and Linda to sleep in here with your discarded smalls all over the mucky carpet,’ Sheila points out.

‘What about T-J’s room?’

‘It’s far too small to offer to guests. Bernie and I will have to go in there.’

‘Really, Mother,’ says Toni. ‘It’s ‘bijou’.’

I’m not sure how Bernie will cope with the box size of his nightly surroundings, but Cheryl and I will get along fine, in the lounge, on put-you-ups. As for T and T, they’ll be
staying with friends nearby so everyone has a bed for the night and some notion of privacy, though the flat is a cheap conversion with partition walls that could be blown over by the big bad wolf
if he tried hard enough. (I am of course too old now for such imaginings. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that after tomorrow’s fairy tale, that will be it. My childhood over.)

We decide to give the fireworks in Hyde Park a miss so that we can better conserve our energy for the big day. The plan is for Toni to order an Indian takeaway (poor Wink,
missing out on this culinary adventure), then an early night. We need as much sleep as we can forage, as we are to leave the flat at the crack of dawn to hunt out the perfect spot on the procession
route, where we can stand and cheer and wave our flags.

Toni is packing her overnight bag, waiting for Terry to escort her to their friends’ flat as she has a fear of being mugged since the riots. As the grown-ups tuck into a bottle of brandy,
I prick up my ears like a cat as a key goes in the lock. I am horrified to find my stomach contracting in emotion of one kind or another all because I know that in two seconds time I’ll be
seeing Terry/T-J/Whatever-he-is-now-called. Oh dear.

‘Wotcha,’ he says, stumbling through the door, slightly coy, everybody witnessing his mother’s passionate embraces.

‘Terry, love,’ she croons. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine, Mum.’ He backs away a little and then manages to throw a half-smile in the direction of his dad who says: ‘Alright, son?’

The three of them have reverted to their Brummie roots, though Toni, who went to the Grammar, speaks almost as well as the bride-to-be, Diana. (Not that the Grammar had that effect on me. My
accent defies categorisation, a result of my mixed ‘parenting’, presumably.)

T-J has now found his feet, saying hello to Cheryl, asking how she’s done in her exams. This is astonishing! He’s always thought my friends to be nothing but stupid kids. And now he
is talking to Cheryl (who’s also reverted to her Solihull upbringing) like he cares about what she is saying. I think I might possibly be experiencing the grip of the green-eyed monster that
so often digs its talons into Sheila. But I soon realise that T-J is just being polite. I soon realise that he looks at me in a completely different way. Straight in the face. I am his equal (in as
far as that’s possible for a man of twenty-five and a teenager of sixteen-minus-a-day). I am no longer a school girl in his eyes. I am Philippa. And he fancies me, I just know it!

He leaves me alone with these romantic musings to go and pack his overnight bag. The rest of the occupants of Toni’s lounge hum away at their conversations. I catch the odd word…
spicy… carriage… sandwiches… shop… brandy… but what I am thinking is far more important. It is the only thought in the world of any worth. And my extreme
happiness is only tainted by the knowledge that Terry is now packing a bag to go and sleep around the corner, instead of under the same roof as me.

But there is some consolation. As he goes out the door, he slips me a piece of paper. I clutch it tightly without anyone seeing and smuggle it into the coffin of a bathroom, feeling like a
glamorous Russian spy from a Bond film. On the piece of paper, in T-J’s un-joined-up hand, it says:

Some might say you can’t read an awful lot into this. But I manage to. I am quite possibly going to die with longing.