The Girls from See Saw Lane (17 page)

M
ary's life
more or less mirrored mine and I couldn't avoid seeing her pretty much every day. We were both still working at Woolworths and, according to Mum, Mary was still living at home

All this meant that we still had to travel the same routes, we still had to see one another at work and, sometimes, when I was walking along the pavement towards home, I'd look up and there would be Mary coming the other way.

It was awful. It was really awful.

When I saw her I was so full of anger that part of me wanted to go up to her and shake her and hit her and hurt her to give her a tiny taste of how much she had hurt me. I hated her sometimes, I really did. She'd taken something I knew I loved, not because she wanted it, but just because she could. She'd taken away my future. I should have been the one carrying Ralph's baby, I should've been the one planning a future with him. He should have been mine!

But there was another part of me that, even while I was hating her, still loved Mary. She had been my best friend for most of my life. She knew me better than anyone else in the world and I missed her so badly.

When we saw one another in the street, either she would turn around and walk away from me, or she'd pretend to drop something, or turn her face away, anything to avoid having to look at me or talk to me or so much as catch my eye. I was the same. If I saw her before she saw me, I'd go the other way. I didn't want to have to speak to her. I didn't want to look at the lump that was forming beneath her clothes.

It was more difficult at work. On the days when we were busy it wasn't so bad, but on quiet days it was hard to avoid one another completely. Once, when I was in the stockroom looking for a box of pocket mirrors to restock the shelves, I saw Mary come in. She looked around but couldn't see me because I was crouching down. She came in and shut the door and I heard her sit down and sigh, and then she started to cry, quietly. I held my breath and didn't move and I listened to her sobbing and I felt as if my heart was breaking. And at the same time I wanted to go over to her and slap her face and say: ‘Shut up! It's your own fault you're in this mess!' I squeezed my hands tightly together and dug the nails of one into the fleshy part of the other to try to stop myself from screaming at her. The other part of me wanted to put my arms around her and promise her that everything was going to be all right.

After a few minutes the door opened from the outside and Sally called out ‘Mary, are you all right?' and Mary made a sort of hiccupping noise and replied ‘Yes, fine, I'm just coming.'

I counted to forty after she'd left before I went back into the shop with the box in my arms. I walked straight past her and did not look at her puffy face or the blotchiness around her eyes. How could I say anything to Mary when I couldn't sort my own feelings out, when I couldn't tell the difference between love and hate, when I was so mired in grief for the future that Mary had stolen from me?

One Saturday lunchtime when I had nothing to do – I never had anything to do any more – I walked down to the cafe, and I sat in a seat by the window and watched the drops of rain chasing each other down the windowpane.

‘Is anyone sitting here?'

I turned and there was Elton. He looked tired and awkward, but I couldn't be bothered to ask if he was okay. So I just shrugged. He pulled out the chair and sat down. He hunched over the table and made a big performance of stirring sugar into his coffee then he pushed a plate towards me and said: ‘Do you fancy a chip?'

I gave him a little smile and took one and dipped it into the puddle of ketchup on the side of his plate.

‘Ralph's desperate about you,' Elton said. I didn't answer. I ate another chip. Water was dripping off Elton's leather jacket on to the top of the table and he smelled very strongly of aftershave. ‘He's eaten up with guilt.'

‘That's hardly my problem, is it?'

‘No,' Elton said. ‘It's not. But I thought you ought to know.'

‘I don't care.'

I ate another chip.

‘He was out of his mind at that party, you know.'

I didn't respond.

‘I've never seen him so drunk. He didn't know what he was doing.'

‘He's an idiot, then.'

‘Yeah, but…' Elton sighed. He took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and began to play with it, turning it over and over between his fingers. ‘You ought to talk to him, Dottie.'

‘No,' I said.

‘Just give him a chance to explain.'

‘No.'

‘I think… I think I am partly to blame for what happened,' he said, taking another chip and blowing on it. ‘Mary wanted to know what I was doing all the time. I told her I didn't want to go steady but she kept acting as if we
were.
I was fed up with it. I wanted to have fun at my party, and Gemma's fun.'

‘Is that the girl you came into the cafe with?'

‘I shouldn't have done that, I suppose.'

‘You hurt her,' I said, ‘you kept hurting her.'

‘Yeah, well, I didn't mean to, so it doesn't count.'

‘Are you going out with Gemma?' I said, glaring at him.

Elton shook his head. ‘Look, Dottie,' he said, ‘I'm not going out with anyone. I don't want to do the going steady thing, that's what Mary didn't understand. I mean I told her often enough, but she saw you and Ralph and wanted the same, but I'm not Ralph. I want to make a go of my music. Mary was fun to be with, at least she used to be, but I don't want to be tied down to anyone. Is that such a crime?'

The cafe had started to fill up. Elton and I sat miserably, sharing the bowl of chips. I was aware of sounds around us. The hiss of the frothy coffee machine and the ding of the cash register. Someone had put a Billy Fury record on the jukebox, all familiar sounds from a million years ago when we were happy.

‘He's working at the cake factory,' said Elton suddenly. ‘He had to give up his apprenticeship. They need the money.'

I couldn't take any more. I pushed back my chair and stood up. I fastened the buttons on my coat with shaking fingers.

‘At least give me a message to give him,' Elton said.

I picked up my bag and hooked the strap over my shoulder.

‘You can tell him I hope it was worth it,' I said. And then I walked out of the cafe.

M
ary had grown so
big that she couldn't do her job properly and she left Woolworths at the beginning of October. I thought this would make things better, but in a weird way it made things much worse. However much I had made it my daily business to ignore her, I had known she was there. I could see she was all right. Seeing her every day had been a pain, but it was a pain I'd grown used to, like a sore tooth that you can't help poking with your tongue. Not seeing her and not knowing how she was doing was like losing her all over again.

It was Wednesday and my day off. I lay in bed with no plans. It was windy outside and the rain was batting the windowpane. If Mary had been around we would have gone down to the seafront. We loved watching the sea when it was wild and crazy. We didn't mind when it sprayed over the promenade soaking us, it was something we had never grown out of. But there was no Mary to share things with any more; I couldn't even remember the last time I had been to the record shop and bought a record. I did try once, but hadn't even got as far as the counter before walking back out.

I decided to go for a walk anyway, because I knew that I would drive myself mad if I stayed in again. I got washed and dressed. I opened the drawer to get my scarf and there were the letters, Ralph's letters to me, a great bundle of them, all of them unopened. They had come regularly, every week, for the past three months. I didn't want to read what he had written. There was nothing he could say that would justify what he had done or make me feel any better about it. I went downstairs, picked up my coat from the hook in the hallway and went into the kitchen.

‘You're never going out in this, are you?' said Mum, reaching for the kettle and filling it with water.

‘Thought I'd blow a few cobwebs away,' I said, smiling at her.

Just then Aunty Brenda came bustling through the back door, she was drenched through and her hair was sticking to her forehead. She took off her coat, leaving a puddle of water on the kitchen floor, and then she proceeded to rub her glasses on the sleeve of her jumper.

‘They ought to invent windscreen wipers for people who wear glasses,' she said. ‘I nearly walked into a lamp post just now. You're never going out in this, Dottie?'

‘She needs to blow away a few cobwebs,' said Mum.

‘She'll blow away more than that,' said Aunty Brenda. ‘Is that kettle boiled?'

‘Nearly there,' said Mum.

Aunty Brenda hung her coat up on the back of the door. ‘Our Carol's still in bed,' she said. ‘Reckons she's got the flu. Funny how she only gets the flu when it's raining.'

‘I'm off then,' I said.

‘Aren't you going to have some breakfast?' said Mum.

‘I'll get something when I'm out.'

‘You should eat something,' said Aunty Brenda, shovelling two heaped teaspoons of sugar into her tea. ‘There's nothing of you. You used to be quite podgy, but you're turning to skin and bone. It's not good for the system, losing all that weight, it'll play havoc with your bowels, you mark my words.'

‘I think her bowels will be all right, Brenda,' said Mum, winking at me.

The rain stung my face as I walked through the estate and the wind took my breath away. I cut across the park. I wished I'd worn boots, as my shoes were sinking into the soggy grass. The duck pond was wild and splashy, water flopped up onto the path that ran around the edge and the wind moaned through the trees.

I walked on through Kemp Town. There weren't many people around, certainly no one who was just walking for the hell of it like I was. Most of them were scurrying between shops or sheltering in doorways. I walked on down to the seafront and leant on the railings. The sea was strangely calm, not as wild as I had expected. In fact it looked as if it was biding its time and at any minute it would do something stupendous. The seafront was almost deserted, there was just a lone figure huddled up on a bench in the shelter. It was Mary.

I didn't even think about it. I walked across and sat down beside her. Tears started running down her cheeks, mirroring the rain running down the sides of the shelter. We sat, side by side, staring out over the sea. And then very softly, so softly I could barely hear her, she said, ‘Dottie.' I closed my eyes and said, ‘Mary,' again she said, ‘Dottie.'

I reached across and held her hand and whispered, ‘Mary.' She glanced at me and then her fingers closed gently around mine. It felt like a coming home. I could feel the bitterness that had rendered me numb all these months melting away. I didn‘t know what the future held, or how I was going to deal with what had happened, but in that moment, on that bench, I didn't care. We had found each other again. Me and my friend Mary Pickles.

D
ear Diary
,

My life has gone completely down the drain but Dottie has forgiven me (again) so maybe now I will find a way to cope, because Dottie will be there with me.

I don't deserve her friendship but I will try to make it up to her.

I will. I really will.

Mary bloody Bennett (best friend of Dottie Perks)

Aged eighteen.

I
t was
late November and Mary and Ralph were still living separately and neither of them seemed in any hurry to change the arrangement. This made things easier for me because it meant I could go round to Mary's, just as I always had done. If it wasn't for Mary's huge stomach, things were pretty much as they always had been. Me and Mary would go up to her room and sit on the bed and I'd tell her about work and she'd tell me about her brothers and the snooty looks she got from some of the women on the estate and we'd laugh almost like we used to laugh in the old days, except that it wasn't the old days, was it?

I think Mary would have been quite happy to have the baby and carry on living in her room. Her dad, on the other hand, had had enough of the situation.

‘Me and your mum might not have had much money,' he'd said, ‘but at least we lived under the same roof. Get yourself down the council and tell them you're having a baby and you need somewhere to bring it home to.'

On my next afternoon off me and Mary headed for the council offices. It was a grim-looking building, all concrete and bars over the windows like they were trying to keep people out. We went through a big door into a reception area. Wet footprints were smeared all over the lino and the place had an institutional kind of smell, like a school or a hospital.

‘Where are we supposed to go?' Mary asked in a very quiet voice.

‘I'm not sure, let's ask
her
,' I said, nodding towards a girl sitting behind a glass partition filing her nails.

‘Excuse me,' Mary began tentatively.

‘Repairs, complaints, housing or rents?' said the girl, without looking up. She turned her hand over and blew on the ends of her fingers.

‘Pardon?' 

The girl gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘Repairs, complaints, housing or rents?'

‘I'm not sure,' said Mary.

‘Well, I can't direct you to the relevant office if I don't know what you want, can I?' 

‘She wants somewhere to live,' I said.

‘Housing,' said the girl. ‘Third door down on the left.'

‘Blimey, who rattled her cage?' said Mary.

We found the right door and went in and immediately wished we hadn't. The room was full of kids and they all seemed to be screaming or crying or running round. Big metal radiators blasted out heat beneath the tall windows. It was hot as anything and there was a steaming smell of nappies. Long wooden benches were filled with people who looked as if they had been there for weeks and lines of people queued in front of a glass partition that ran the length of the room.

‘I want to go,' said Mary. 

‘We're here now,' I said. ‘So we might as well stay.' 

I couldn't imagine that it would be any less hectic at any other time and I really didn't want to come back if we didn't have to. We chose the shortest queue and stood behind a very fat woman who was holding a baby who was in desperate need of a hankie. She also had a toddler hanging off her skirt. I tried to keep Mary's attention off the baby because it was so ugly and snotty that I thought it would put her off the idea of being a mother even more. The baby yawned and rubbed its face with its fists smearing snot everywhere. It was even making me feel a bit sick. Every so often the person at the front of the queue would move away and we'd all shuffle forward a few paces. Two chubby little girls who were chasing one another kept bumping into us. I told Mary to sit down and that I'd save her place, but she didn't want to leave me. I didn't blame her. I thought we were the only two normal people in the place. Then I thought we were two naïve young girls, and one of us was pregnant and married to someone she didn't love and the other was heart-broken. There wasn't much that was normal about us either.

Eventually the woman in front of us reached the front of the queue and straight away she started shouting at the boy sitting behind the counter. He only looked about the same age as Mary and me. He had spots around his chin and soft downy hair under his ears. He fidgeted with his collar and listened patiently to the woman.

‘If you don't give us a bigger house I'm going to the papers, we'll see what they've got to say about it,' she said, jabbing her finger at the boy's face. 

He looked down at the packet of papers in front of him on the desk.

‘Madam,' he said politely, ‘you already have a four-bedroomed house, we do not have any houses with more than four bedrooms on our stock.'

‘I might have a four-bedroomed house, sonny,' she said, ‘but I've got eight bleeding kids and my old man is havin' to forgo his conjugal rights because our Gloria's havin' to share our bedroom. I ask you: is that right and proper?' 

She said this so loudly that the rest of the room suddenly went quiet. There were murmured mumblings of support from the benches.

‘I'm sorry about your predicament,' said the boy. ‘But…'

‘Oh, are you now? Well, you don't look sorry. How would you like it if you weren't getting your oats cos you had our Gloria in the room?'

‘This is better than the pictures,' Mary whispered.

‘Shush,' I said.

‘You are coming between a man and his rights!' the woman went on.

The boy sighed deeply and shuffled his papers. ‘Madam, I can only reiterate what I have already said and that is that we cannot offer you alternative accommodation that is any larger than the house you already occupy. There aren't any.'

The woman suddenly turned round. ‘Get off me bleedin' skirt!' she shouted at the toddler. ‘It'll be round me arse in a minute!' 

Then she put her face closer to the window until she was nearly touching the glass. ‘So what do you suggest I do then, clever dick?' she asked the boy.

‘Get rid of four of the kids?' Mary suggested.

‘Shush!'

‘The only advice I can offer,' said the boy, ‘is that you put your concerns in writing and send it to our head office.'

The woman snorted. ‘I've a good mind to bring our Gloria down here and let
you
find her somewhere to sleep.'

‘If you did that, madam, we would have to inform the NSPCC.'

‘You can inform who you bloody well like, you spotty little runt. Who do you think you are, anyway? I've got knickers older than you.'

Beside me, Mary was shaking with laughter.

The boy went visibly pale at the thought of the woman's knickers. ‘I'm sure you have, madam,' he said with the utmost politeness. ‘Now, if you have finished, there are other people who are waiting to be seen.'

‘Well, you haven't seen the last of me!' said the woman, hitching the baby further up her ample breast till it was nearly hanging over her shoulder. Dragging the toddler behind her, she stalked out of the room. The baby watched us over her shoulder as she made her exit. It had the saddest, bluest eyes I had ever seen.

The boy was by now sweating profusely. He took a drink of water from the glass at his side, and one of his colleagues, a short man with a moustache, came over and patted his shoulder and said something in his ear. It was probably some sort of pep talk. I bet they all dreaded getting that woman at their window.

Mary and I stepped forward and both gave him our sweetest smiles and he relaxed a little.

‘Can I help you?' he croaked.

‘I need a council house,' said Mary. Then she added: ‘Please.'

‘Right. How many children?'

 ‘Sorry?' 

‘How many children do you have?'

‘I haven't got any,' said Mary, holding up her hands to show they were empty.

‘Dependants?'

‘Sorry?' said Mary again.

‘Do you have anyone who depends on you for accommodation?'

‘I don't think so,' said Mary ‘Do I, Dottie?'

‘Only the baby,' I said.

‘So you
do
have a child?' said the boy. ‘How old?'

‘Eight months.' 

‘You have an eight-month-old baby?'

‘Well, I haven't actually got it yet.' 

The boy put his pen down. He looked very close to tears.

‘I don't want to appear rude,' he said, ‘but to say that you are confusing me is an understatement.'

‘Sorry,' said Mary. She gave him an apologetic smile.

‘Let's start again, shall we?' said the boy.

‘Do we have to?' 

‘We have to,' said the boy. ‘Now think carefully before you answer. Do you have any children?' 

‘No.'

‘So you do
not
have an eight-month-old baby?'

‘Of course I have,' said Mary ‘Otherwise I wouldn't need a council house, would I?'

The boy turned to me with a look of deep despair on his face.

‘She's pregnant,' I said. ‘Eight months.' 

‘Bingo!!!' he said.

‘So I need to get a council house to bring the baby home to.'

‘Are you a single mother?' 

‘No, I'm not,' said Mary, looking offended. 

‘They were done at the Town Hall,' I said.

‘Okay, I just need a few details. Firstly can I have your name?'

‘Mary Pickles,' said Mary. The boy started to write it down.

‘Bennett,' I said.

‘What?' said Mary.

‘Your name's Mary Bennett.'

Mary gave a sigh. ‘Bennett,' she said.

‘
A
re you sure
?'

‘Of course I'm sure.' 

‘Father's name?'

‘George.'

‘It's Ralph, Mary,' I said.

‘He asked my father's name.' 

‘I think he means the baby's father.' 

‘That's right. So it's not George?' The boy's pen hovered over the page as if he was reluctant to write anything down.

‘No, it's Ralph.'

‘It
is
Ralph,' I said.

‘So can I have a council house then?' said Mary.

‘I'm afraid not,' said the boy.

‘Why not?' 

‘Because you don't qualify for a house, you don't have enough points.'

‘What sort of points?' I said.

‘You get points per child, points for dependants, points for a disability…'

‘So she can't have a house then?' I said.

‘She can't have a house, no, but she does qualify for a flat,' he said. He was quite good-looking when he smiled. We both smiled back at him.

‘A flat would be nice, Mary,' I said.

‘We'll take it,' said Mary

‘Oh, that it was as simple as that,' said the boy. ‘I'm afraid you have to go on a waiting list and when a flat comes available we will inform you.'

‘How long's that going to take?' 

‘How long have you got?' said a lone voice from the benches.

‘And you will need to fill in a form. Here you are,' he said, giving Mary a wodge of papers. ‘Just pop it into this office when you're ready and we will go from there.'

‘Okay,' said Mary. ‘Thanks very much.'

We were just about to walk away from the counter when Mary, who was born with a faulty valve between her brain and her mouth, said, ‘Doesn't it do your head in, working here?'

‘Every day,' he said mournfully, ‘every day.'