The Girls from See Saw Lane (4 page)

It had gone all quiet inside the bedroom, so Mum laid flat on the floor and peered under the door. ‘I can't see her,' she said to me. ‘Do you think she's all right?'

‘She sounded all right just now,' I said.

All the noise had woken Clark up and he came out of his bedroom, stepped over Mum, and went downstairs.

‘Clark, go and tell your Aunty Brenda to come over,' said Mum. ‘She'll know what to do. Dottie, you stay here and listen.'

There was nothing to listen to, so I went into Clark's room. His Dennis the Menace clock said it was 9.15. Mary was going to kill me if I was late.  

Mum came back upstairs: ‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘Your Aunty Brenda will be here soon.'

‘I hope so,' I said. ‘Mary will be round soon, and I need to get dressed.'

‘Where are you going?' said Mum.

‘Saturday morning pictures.'

‘That's nice.' 

Clark returned all red-faced and out of breath and suggested we kicked the door down. Actually, I thought that was a pretty good idea, but Mum said if Clark went anywhere near the door, he wouldn't be able to sit down for a month.

Just then Aunty Brenda came running up the stairs.

‘Thank goodness you're here, Brenda!' said Mum. ‘Perhaps you can talk some sense into her.'

‘I'll do my best,' said Aunty Brenda, and she put her ear to the door.

‘Dottie, get your Aunty Brenda a cup of tea.'

I went downstairs, put the kettle on and sat down at the kitchen table. Clark was shovelling cornflakes into his mouth as if he hadn't eaten for a year.

I made the tea and went back upstairs. Aunty Brenda was halfway through the tale of the Baxter baby's sticky-out ears and the judge's marrows when Rita started screaming that her career was in ruins and why couldn't Mum have married someone taller. Mum said that Dad
was
taller when she'd married him, but he'd shrunk.

Rita said she was going to stay in there forever, and fade away, and that we'd all be sorry. Well, I reckoned I was the only one that would be sorry, because dead bodies smell after a bit, and I had to sleep in there.

Mum and Aunty Brenda were just about to resort to kicking down the door themselves when Dad set fire to the garden shed.

At the start of every New Year, my dad gives up smoking. At that point, he was two days into his hundredth attempt, and he'd gone down the shed for what my mum calls ‘a sneaky one', but he'd fallen asleep, and the cigarette had dropped onto a pile of newspapers that I'd been saving in the hope that one day Mum would let me have a hamster like Mary's.

Anyway, Dad came rushing into the house screaming ‘Maureen! Call the fire brigade! The shed's on fire!'

Aunty Brenda started screaming ‘Women and children first', which was most of us, and Clark started turning his bedroom upside down looking for his camera. He takes action pictures whenever he can.

Mum ran next door to phone for the fire brigade, as next door was the only house in the street that had a phone, and Aunty Brenda shouted to Rita that the shed was on fire. Rita said: ‘Nice try.' So Aunty Brenda hurled herself against the door, just as Rita decided to come out. They both went flying back into the room, and Rita nearly knocked herself out on the corner of the dressing table. Clark took a picture.

‘Quick, Dottie! Get your mum!' screamed Aunty Brenda.

I ran downstairs. Mum and Dad were running between the kitchen sink and the shed with bowls of water.

‘Aunty Brenda's nearly knocked Rita out,' I said, running beside them.

‘She's done what?' said Mum.

‘She pushed open the door just as Rita was coming out and Rita hit her head on the chest of drawers.'

My dad looked ever so odd, his face was all black from the smoke, which made his eyes look really white. He looked a bit like a panda.

Mum dropped the bowl she was carrying and ran back indoors.

The shed looked great, just like bonfire night, only better. Clark was getting some terrific pictures. He had climbed the apple tree to get an aerial view.

I went back upstairs. Rita was sitting propped up against the dressing table, looking a bit white, and Mum was dabbing her face with a wet cloth.

‘For goodness sake, Dottie,' said Mum, looking up. ‘Isn't it time you were out of those pyjamas?' The question was so unfair I couldn't think of an answer.

‘Maureen!' shouted Dad from downstairs. ‘Are you sure you phoned the fire brigade? The apple tree's alight now!'

‘What a shame,' said Aunty Brenda. ‘You've had some lovely apples off that tree.'

‘Clark's in the apple tree,' I said, rummaging in the drawer for a clean pair of knickers.

‘They were Worcester's,' said Mum. ‘Clark's WHERE?' she screamed.

‘In the apple tree,' I said. ‘Taking pictures.'

‘MY BABY!' shrieked Mum, dropping Rita's head on the floor.

She ran down the stairs and nearly bumped into Clark who was running up them.

‘You're supposed to be in the apple tree!' yelled Mum, shaking him.

‘But it's on fire!' said Clark, looking at Mum as if she'd gone mad.

Mum flopped down on the stairs and burst out crying. Aunty Brenda put her arm around her. ‘What we need is a nice cup of tea,' she said, taking Mum into the kitchen.  ‘Dottie, be nice to your sister.'

I didn't feel a bit like being nice to my sister. The last thing in the world I felt like was being was nice to my sister. All I wanted to do was get dressed. Was that such a lot to ask?

I went into the bedroom. Everywhere was a mess. Rita was sitting on the bed looking pretty miserable. I thought I'd better try and be nice.

‘Perhaps you could go to a country where they don't mind short models,' I said.

‘What country?'

‘I don't know, Japan or somewhere like that.'

‘You don't know what you're talking about, you stupid child!'

So much for being ‘nice to your sister'.  I wish I hadn't bothered.

‘Have you got my new scarf?' I asked.

‘What would I want with your grotty scarf?' she said, gazing at herself in the mirror. She swept her hair up at the back and turned sideways: ‘Do you think I look like Audrey Hepburn?'

‘No, you look like Rita Perks.'

‘But with my hair pushed up at the back like this, don't you think I look a bit like Audrey Hepburn?'

‘No, I don't,' I said, groping under the bed for my lost scarf.

‘You don't know anything,' she said. ‘I don't know why I bothered asking you.'  And she flounced off to the bathroom.

There was just no pleasing Rita that morning. I found my scarf under the bed and also a sherbet fountain that I'd thought Clark had pinched. Just then Mary came into the bedroom.

‘The fire brigade's here,' she said. ‘It only took them two squirts to put the shed out. Are you ready?'

‘Just about.'

The shed looked a mess, so did the apple tree, but Mum looked a lot happier. She and Aunty Brenda were handing out cups of tea to the firemen. Dad looked a bit fed up, but then I suppose he would; if he hadn't been having a ‘sneaky' one, he wouldn't have burnt the shed down.  

‘Perhaps now he really
will
give up smoking,' said Mary.

‘I hope so,' I said, but I had my doubts.

We said goodbye to Mum and Aunty Brenda, leaving Clark interviewing the firemen and Rita moping on her bed.

Mary and I got a shilling a week pocket money, sixpence for the pictures and sixpence for sweets. We always went to the same sweet shop before going into the pictures. The woman who owned the shop was a bit strange; she always had her coat on, even in the summer when it was really hot, and she sniffed a lot. Me and Mary loved it in there. It was always packed with kids who took ages to choose their sweets. The woman behind the counter used to huff and puff and suck her cheeks in like she'd just bitten into a lemon. ‘There's other people waiting, you know,' she'd grumble. ‘You're not the only one in the shop.' Then she'd bully and nudge them towards making a decision like a collie dog with a load of sheep. But she was wasting her breath, because when you only had a few pennies to spend on sweets, you weren't going to be hurried. On the shelves behind her were rows and rows of jars full of pear drops, rhubarb and custards, sherbet lemons, bull's eyes, Pontefract cakes and humbugs, and on the counter were boxes of penny sweets. Black Jacks, Davy Crockett bars, flying saucers, liquorice laces and penny chews. Once we had chosen what we wanted, we went into the Regent Cinema and screamed and yelled at Ming the Merciless. We sat there glued to the screen, sticking our fingers into bags of lemonade powder so that when we came out it looked as if we were on forty fags a day.

When I got home, Mum was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea.

‘Him and his ciggies,' she said, shaking her head.

‘Where's Rita?'

‘She's having a little lie down in the front room,' she said quietly.

‘Is she okay now?'

‘She's fine,' said Mum. ‘She's decided to be an actress instead.'

‘Shouldn't be too difficult,' I said, smiling.

‘
N
othing is going to change
,' said Mary.

‘Yes it will,' I said. ‘We won't go to school on the same bus and I will have to sit next to someone I don't know and I won't have a best friend anymore.'

‘We'll always be best friends, you dope.'

I could feel my eyes filling with tears and I didn't want to cry, because I was really proud that Mary had passed the exam and I didn't want her to feel guilty about going to the grammar school. ‘Everything will change,' I whispered.

‘No it won't,' said Mary. ‘I'm not going.'

‘What?'

‘I'm not going.'

‘But you have to go, you passed the exam.'

‘It's not law, you know. There isn't some law that says, all ye who pass the eleven-plus must, on pain of death or worse, go to the bloody grammar school.'

I started to giggle: ‘You're really not going?'

‘I'm really not going.'

‘But why?'

‘Because I don't want to. It's not part of my life's plan to spend the next hundred years going to school and being told what to do and when to do it. Going to grammar school won't make the slightest bit of difference to me being an artist. In fact it might make it harder because there'll be more homework.'

This was a lot of information for me to take in all at once.

‘You've got a life's plan?' I asked.

‘Everyone should have one, otherwise you will end up making loads of mistakes.'

‘Does that mean I need one?'

‘No, you're part of mine. I'll make sure you're okay.'

‘Don't your mum and dad mind you not going to the grammar school?'

‘Not really. They know that I'm going to be an artist, and once I make my mind up about something, I don't usually change it.'

Mary never failed to amaze me. I could just imagine me saying to my mum, ‘Oh, by the way, I passed the eleven-plus, but I've decided not to go to the grammar school, is that okay with you, Mum?'

‘I think Mum was a
bit
miffed,' said Mary, ‘because she would have liked to have shown off to Lady Muck who lives down the road.'

‘Lady Muck?'

‘Yeah, you know, the one with the mock-Tudor front door.'

‘And the funny husband?'

‘That's the one. Well, according to her, her daughter Penelope is the most miraculous thing since the virgin birth, and she‘s always going on about how clever she is and how pretty she is, blah, blah, blah. Anyway she failed the exam, so my mum would have liked to have bragged about me.'

‘Well she can still brag about you can't she, because you passed?'

‘Lady Muck wouldn't believe it if I wasn't prancing round in the poncy uniform.'

‘You do make me laugh, Mary Pickles.'

‘I'm so glad, Dottie Perks.'

I
remember
the day Mary told me that she had fallen in love for the first time. It was on my eleventh birthday. My Aunty Brenda had bought me a
Bunty
annual. I had the
Bunty
comic delivered to my house every Tuesday and as soon as I heard it fall through the letter box, I ran downstairs before anyone else could pick it up. ‘As if,' said my sister Rita, ‘anyone else would want it.' 

I showed it to Mary when I got to the bus stop and she burst out laughing.

‘What?' I said, staring at her.

‘I can't believe you're still reading that stuff.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘It's kids' stuff, Dottie,' she said, screwing up her nose as if she had a bad smell under it.

‘But I like it.'

‘Well it's time you
stopped
liking it.'

‘Why?'

‘I've grown up, Dottie.'

‘What, in two weeks?'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘I‘m talking about two weeks ago when you borrowed my
Bunty
comic.'

She decided to ignore that and went on talking.

‘So what's in it that you like so much?'

‘I like “The Four Marys” and…' 

‘“The Four Marys”?' she screamed.

‘And “The Dancing Life of Moira Kent”.'

‘“The Dancing Life of Moira Kent”!'

I was pretty confused now. ‘Why are you repeating everything I'm saying?'

‘Because I can't believe you're saying it.'

 ‘Well, if you don't think I should be reading
Bunty
, what
should
I be reading?'

‘Romance,' said Mary, smiling.

‘Romance!' I said. ‘Why would I want to read about romance?' My sister Rita was fifteen and there was enough romance floating around our house without me joining in.

‘Because I've fallen in love.'

‘Let me get this straight,' I said. ‘
You've
fallen in love and
I've
got to stop reading
Bunty
?'

‘It's time you grew up.
I've
grown up, and so should you.'

‘But
I
haven't fallen in love, Mary, and I don't
want
to, well not till I've read my new
Bunty
annual anyway.'

‘Okay,' said Mary ‘You can finish the book.'

‘Thanks,' I said, grinning.

Just then the bus came round the corner, Mary and I ran up the stairs and plonked ourselves down at the front.

‘Who have you fallen in love with then?' I asked, stuffing the offending book into my satchel before Mary suggested that I throw it out of the window.

‘Elton Briggs,' she said. ‘Who else would I be in love with?'

‘Elton's not the only boy in the class, is he?' I said.

‘But he's the best looking,' she said, ‘and the most popular.'

Up until that point, I had never known Mary to care much about looks or popularity, it was one of the things I really liked about her, but now she had fallen in love with Elton Briggs, who although popular, wasn't always a very nice boy.

I suppose Elton
was
quite good-looking and the other boys seemed to look up to him. He was taller than most of them and he was good at things like running and football. They used to hang around him, just like the girls hung round Mary.

I had always felt a bit sorry for Elton, because his dad died when he was only nine years old. He had been called out of the classroom and then he was off school for a while. There were a lot of rumours going round. People kept asking Ralph, but when they did, Ralph sloped off with his hands in his pockets and wouldn't say anything. After a couple of days our teacher told us what had happened and asked us to be kind to Elton when he came back but not to crowd him with questions. Louise Morgan, who always seemed to have something wrong with her, went hysterical and had to be taken to the sick room.

When Elton did come back, we all tried to be extra especially kind to him, except Dominic Roberts who didn't know the meaning of the word. But Elton acted as though nothing had happened. I for one wasn't convinced, and neither was Mary, because sometimes he just stared out of the window when he should have been writing or paying attention, and Mrs Roberts our teacher never told him off. Maybe it was that vulnerable side that Mary saw, too, and not the big act that he always put on.

‘I really, really love him, Dottie,' said Mary that day on the bus. ‘One day I am going to marry him and we are going to travel round the world and have a fabulous life together.'

I didn't really know much about love, but it kind of made sense to me that you would probably fall in love with someone because they were nice to you and shared their sweets with you and things like that, but Elton wasn't that nice to Mary. He wasn't that nice to me either, but I wasn't the one who'd fallen in love with him so it didn't matter.

After Mary fell in love with Elton everything changed. We stopped playing exciting games and all we did was follow Elton and Ralph around the playground. Sometimes Elton paid attention to Mary and they would walk around holding hands or he'd chase her round the field; at those times Ralph Bennett and I were sort of thrown together, which was pretty embarrassing to begin with, but over time we got more comfortable with each other and we would sit on the school field talking. I learned that he'd known Elton all his life. They were born in the same hospital only days apart and the two mums had kept in touch, so they had sort of grown up together. Neither of them had brothers or sisters. Ralph was a tall, awkward-looking boy and whatever time of day it was, he looked as if he'd just fallen out of bed. 

‘Do you think Elton really likes Mary?' I asked him one day when we were sitting on the field.

‘I dunno,' he said.

‘But does he talk about Mary?'

‘All Elton talks about is football and music. Perhaps if Mary had a number on her back he might take more notice of her.'

‘You can be quite funny sometimes, Ralph Bennett.'

Ralph went bright red.

‘It's not true love, then?' I said.

Ralph laughed. ‘They're a bit young for that, don't you think?'

I thought so too, but Mary was smitten.

Sometimes Elton would completely ignore Mary and walk around the field holding Valerie Colahan's hand, or lean against the climbing frame, laughing out loud at something Beverly Johnson said, and you just knew it was all an act, because Beverly Johnson couldn't be funny if her life depended on it, added to the fact that she had the sense of humour of a gnat, and all this was done in sight of Mary.

At those times, Mary would sit with me and Ralph, looking sad and upset, and to make it worse, Ralph would then stop talking and I wouldn't know how to make things better for either of them. One day when the three of us were sitting together in silence, Mary suddenly said: ‘You know what you ought to ask your mother to get you for Christmas, Ralph Bennett?'

‘What?' said Ralph, looking startled.

‘A tongue,' said Mary.

I thought that was a mean thing to say and I knew Mary wasn't a mean person. She was just feeling bad. Suddenly a football hit Ralph on the back of his head, a crowd of kids started laughing and one of them shouted, ‘Ahh, did I hurt your little ginger bonce?'

Suddenly, Elton came racing across the field. He ran up to the boy and pushed him to the ground. ‘What did you say to him?' he snarled.

The boy looked terrified. ‘Nothing, Elton,' he said.

The other boys had backed away.

‘I asked you what you said.' He was glaring down at the frightened boy.

‘I just asked him if he was okay.'

Elton looked at us. ‘What did he say?'

‘Something about his ginger bonce,' said Mary.

‘Leave it,' said Ralph, ‘I'm okay.'

Elton pulled the boy up off the ground. ‘Don't you ever say anything like that to my friend again, do you hear me?'

‘I won't, Elton,' said the boy.

‘Now beat it.'

The boy didn't move.

‘What?' said Elton.

‘Can I have my ball back?'

‘What do
you
think?' said Elton, smirking.

‘But I only just got it for my birthday, my dad'll kill me.' The boy looked as if he was about to cry.

Elton kicked the ball hard across the field.

‘Thanks, Elton,' said the boy, looking relieved, and ran off after the ball.

‘Are you all right, mate?' said Elton, sitting down next to Ralph.

Ralph was rubbing his head. ‘I'll live,' he said.

‘I've had more fights over your flippin' hair than I've had hot dinners,' said Elton and we all fell about laughing.

That same year someone put a Valentine's card in my desk. It had a big heart on the front surrounded by little cupids holding garlands of flowers and inside was a little poem and whoever had sent it had written: ‘From your secret sweetheart.' All the girls had been really impressed when I found it. At first, I thought it was someone playing a mean trick on me, and Mary, who hadn't received a card at all that year, said it was probably someone's idea of a bad joke. I wasn't the sort of girl who got Valentine's cards, so I pretended I didn't care about the card at all. I stuffed it in my satchel and never had it on display. I still had it in my special memory box under my bed though. I had always hoped that it had come from Ralph.

Perhaps that was the day that I first fell in love, a little.