Becoming Nancy Read online

  And with that my sister’s best pal, Abigail Henson, arrives on the scene clutching a large bag of overly ketchupped chips; Squirrel, mercifully, falls silent.

  ‘Hi, David,’ Abigail breezes, fluttering seriously made-up eyelids when she spots me. ‘I thought that was you, what a great surprise. Are you coming out with us tonight, then?’

  Abigail is two years older than my sister, and, to my mind, a bad influence. She’s still in her school uniform, or at least the remnants thereof. Her white blouse is dragged open across her shoulders to reveal much more of her undergarments than I’d have chosen to see, and her once thigh-covering school skirt has been rolled over so many times at the waist it has become little more than a belt.

  ‘Where are you all off to?’ I say.

  ‘We’re going up the Crystal Palace Hotel,’ Abi says, gesturing with a chip. ‘They’ve got some good bands on – you should come.’

  ‘I’d better not,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to go home and think about stuff. I’ve got a lot to think about tonight.’

  Abigail shuffles towards me slightly, and fiddles coyly with the ends of her dark-brown curls.

  ‘Oh, go on, Dave, I’ve just had a demi-wave specially; besides, thinking is boring,’ she says, as if she’d ever tried it. ‘Come out and have a laugh with us.’

  ‘Go on,’ Chrissy suddenly interjects. ‘You know Abs fancies you, David. You might get your leg over.’

  Well, I’m mortified.

  ‘I’m sure I never knew any such thing,’ I say, my voice leaping up about an octave.

  Squirrel is chortling irksomely behind my sister. Abigail at least has the good grace to blush slightly.

  ‘Well, you do now,’ Chrissy laughs, ‘so why don’t you come? All you do is sit in your room and listen to Blondie and bloody Abba, you boring fucker. Come out and ’ave a giggle with us.’

  ‘No. I won’t. Not tonight – sorry.’

  Abigail looks vaguely crushed; Chrissy just shakes her head while stubbing out her latest cigarette on the pavement.

  ‘All right then, I’ll see you back ’ome,’ she says. ‘Abs, let’s go and get changed at mine. I need to put me goin’-out face on.’

  And off they go, Squirrel sauntering two paces behind the giggling, chattering girls, head down. I start back along the high street, somewhat bemused. Abigail Henson? But why me? I’d never given her any reason to … so why would she even think that? Me and Abi Henson? Whatever bloody-well next?

  I’m distracted, for a moment, by a tempting waft from the Wimpy bar, but I shan’t succumb; there are more critical matters afoot. I’m casting thoughts of l’amour aside for the time being and heading for the paper shop, having spotted a fourth-year boy at school with the new Record Mirror. Debbie Harry is on the front cover: I simply have to own it. Perhaps I’ll read it as soon as I get home, while listening to the twelve-inch version of ‘Sunday Girl’ – perhaps not – I don’t know. I need to do something when I get home to take my mind off all this love and lunacy, that’s for sure. What shall I do this evening?

  I settle on masturbation as I’ve not really managed to find occasion for it the last three or four nights, what with one thing and another. My dad stashes smutty magazines beneath an empty fishing-tackle box in his wardrobe: well, I say smutty – it’s Penthouse, Men Only, that type of affair. It’s not really my cup of tea, truth be told. I can get the job done with that type of pornography, yes, but I can never quite grasp why men feel the urge to gawp at dim-looking women playing golf or washing up while naked. I mean, waxing the Cortina just doesn’t strike me as the type of task one would undertake with one’s tits out, to be frank. Some of the sixth-form boys carry much spicier porn: dubious publications featuring men and women – German, I presume, or perhaps Norwegian – performing the most filthy deeds one could ever imagine. It would take me less than a minute to come, armed with this type of literature, despite the off-putting hairstyles so, quite apart from being supreme masturbatory fodder, I consider this type of magazine a real time-saver. And after I’ve done with that, I think I’ll learn, by heart, the words to the entire Voulez-Vous album. It’s the only Abba LP I don’t have down off pat: sociology can go fuck itself, and so can the rest of my ever-accumulating homework. I’m fed up with being goody-bloody-two-shoes. And with that significant decision under my belt, I do a little dance as I pass by the next parade of shops on the main road.

  For some reason, I stop outside the French bistro that used to be David Greig’s years ago. I close my eyes for a second and squeeze my left hand shut tight, as if I were holding my grandad’s hand like I used to, right here on this spot, and I try hard to picture his face. He used to come and collect me from our house, my grandad, each Saturday morning.

  ‘Come on, Melksham,’ he’d shout out from the passage. That was his nickname for me, after the town in Yorkshire where he was born. And we’d be off to Lordship Lane with two big shopping bags: one red, one black. Most of the shops in East Dulwich were different in the late sixties. There was no Mace, or Wallis; there wasn’t even a Wimpy Bar. We’d always come to David Greig’s first – a long shop it was, with fancy glass-covered counters running down both sides. Counters with meats, and huge blocks of cheese, and pies, and pastries – a food hall, I suppose you’d call it. Greig’s had all the old Edwardian fittings, and it was emerald and brown shiny-tiled from top to bottom. Grandad would buy best back bacon, and mature Cheddar, and all the men serving us would wear boaters, and aprons around their waists and down to their shoes. Next to that was the greengrocer’s; that’s still here.

  ‘A nice cauliflower,’ Grandad would say, ‘and some new potatoes; I don’t need runners, I’m growing my own this year.’

  Then we’d get kippers from the fishmonger, and at a quarter past five on a Saturday, after Grandstand, I’d watch Doctor Who while my nan grilled the kippers; Grandad would eat them while he was watching Dad’s Army. We’d get our eggs from Tucker’s the butcher’s, which I thought was odd at the time. Every single week, without fail, the nice man in Tucker’s with the twinkly eyes would ruffle my hair, which was white-blonde when I was little; and one Saturday he gave me a toy – a bendable PG Tips monkey with a shopping basket and a pink hat. I’ve still got it somewhere. If I was very well behaved while we did the shopping, Grandad would get me a comic from Tom’s Newsagent, or a bag of Revels – they were my favourite, apart from the coconut ones. Then he’d hold my hand really tight as we crossed the road, and say, ‘Come on, Melksham! Let’s get home, or we’ll not catch the wrestling.’

  Of course, as time went on and I got older, I tended to skip our Saturday-morning shopping more and more in favour of playing out with the other kids, or sitting in my room listening to records – that all seemed far more important. Things change, don’t they? But it seems to me that they just get thornier and more convoluted most of the time, when you don’t always want them to. You have to start making decisions about things that you’d rather shut away in a Tupperware container in the cupboard. When Grandad died a few years ago it was too late to go back to our Saturday shopping excursions, and sometimes, like now, I really, really want to. My grandad and his kippers, his wrestling, and his Kathy Kirby LPs; those days hadn’t been at all thorny or convoluted. It was all unfussy and joyful then – not like now, not like today. Today was a bit like the Big Dipper at Brighton: happy one minute, scared and anxious the next, and all the time feeling like I might be sick. This can’t be what love’s about, can it?

  A big drop of rain smacks me straight in the eye and brings me back to the here and now. I’m immobilized, still, in the French bistro’s window. It’s closed tonight, but if I lean right against the dark glass I can just about see the emerald and brown shiny tiles – they’ve kept them. They’re still here. I take a step back and I’m frowning at my reflection: I’m not a bad-looking chap, am I? Not unkind on the eye? I’ve had many a female admirer, after all – just look at Abigail Henson: there’s the proof. I mull on this self-appraisal for several
minutes, taking in my slim frame, my grey eyes and pronounced lips, my hair: straight on top, then tumbling about my ears in modest curls. No, I’m not bad-looking for fifteen, nearly sixteen, not bad at all.

  ‘What’s wrong with me, then?’ I say aloud, glancing round to see if anyone’s within earshot. ‘Why do they all call me bent? Is that what I am if I feel like this? Bent. What the fuck does that even mean?’ I wonder, for a moment, why on earth I cheerily accepted a girl’s role in the school musical, but that’s a mystery as well. It’s like I can’t stop myself. Like I’m asking for it. And now, on top of it all, this Maxie Boswell character. I shouldn’t even be thinking about this. Entertaining thoughts about love! About him.

  Once I’ve got my magazine and a bottle of Cresta I head for home. I can hear ‘The Logical Song’ by Supertramp blaring out of the Wimpy Bar and I catch myself humming along.

  ‘Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned?

  I know it sounds absurd.

  Please tell me who I am …’

  Then I spot Jason Lancaster, alone, puffing on a roll-up outside the working-men’s club that I work in part-time, still in his school uniform. He sees me, too, but turns away at speed, unable to look me in the face. And I know very well why.

  Four

  Tossed

  Shutting the front door, and safe in the shelter of number twenty-two Chesterfield Street, I head down the passage to discover mum and my Auntie Val – who lives two doors down with my nan – parked in the lounge with wine and nibbles, screeching the names of old movies at the television.

  ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai!’ roars Aunt Val. ‘A Bridge Too Far! Waterloo Bridge! Waterloo Sunset! Sunset Boulevard!’

  They’re watching Give Us a Clue, but clearly do not have one to give.

  ‘Where have you been, David?’ Mum asks, looking up. ‘You’ve been ages.’

  ‘She asked you to go and buy a loaf, not fucking bake one!’ Aunt Val laughs, jumping up to kiss me. ‘Hello, darlin’!’

  ‘Sorry, Mum, I got waylaid,’ is the best I can come up with, and I hand my mother her ciggies.

  ‘So, did you get a good part in the play then, love? They’d be bloody barmy not to give you one, with your singing voice,’ Aunt Val enthuses.

  Mum jumps up abruptly, knocking over her plate of Twiglets.

  ‘Ooh yes, I forgot to ask earlier. How did it go at the casting today?’

  Both women are now clutching a hand each, beaming at me eagerly.

  ‘I did get a part,’ I smile. ‘I did … it’s a great part … I’m gonna to be playing …’

  A voice booms from the passage, quite unexpectedly.

  ‘Chrissy’s got fucking nail varnish on that new kitchen table. Jesus Christ, look at it! I’ll bloody kill her!’

  Dad strides into the room and inadvertently crushes a batch of Mum’s fugitive Twiglets into the gold and green shagpile beneath his boots.

  ‘Oh bollocks! Who left them there?’

  ‘Shut up, Eddie!’ Aunt Val dismisses him. ‘David’s telling us about his school play.’

  Val, I suspect, is the only living person not afraid of my father. She’d had Eddie’s card marked ever since she and my mother first clapped eyes on him running the waltzers on Peckham Rye funfair in the sixties.

  ‘Never mind the school play,’ Dad hollers. ‘That nail varnish has dried now – I’ll never get it off. She’s left all ’er fuckin’ make-up all over the kitchen – she’s got no respect for anythin’, Kath.’

  Mum puts her hand on Dad’s arm and gives him a gentle – or perhaps nervous – smile.

  ‘Eddie, she’s a teenage girl, that’s all,’ she says.

  ‘It don’t matter how old she is,’ Eddie barks, pulling away from her. ‘I don’t want fuckin’ nail varnish on me new kitchen table.’

  ‘Well, Eddie,’ Aunt Val chimes in, bravely stepping into the breach, ‘I doubt if Kath wants pigeon shit all over her clean sheets while they’re drying, but that’s what she’s got for the last fifteen years, isn’t it?’

  Dad grits his teeth and looks somewhat mental.

  ‘Mind your own business, Valerie, please,’ he says, with a slightly more hushed, but equally menacing tenor. ‘Shouldn’t you be at home, anyway – makin’ up spells or summink?’

  ‘Well,’ Val huffs. ‘All this furore over a dab of Hot Pink on a bit of shitty old smoked glass. Get some Pledge on it, why don’t ya?’

  I make an attempt to back out of the lounge, still carrying a now rather sad-looking Vitbe loaf.

  ‘I’ll fill you in about the school play later,’ I say softly, and to no one in particular – they’re not listening anyway.

  ‘It’s no wonder you’re not fucking married, Val,’ Eddie scoffs as I duck out of the door surreptitiously. ‘Who’d put up with that fucking gob?’

  I head up the stairs towards the relative sanity of my bedroom, leaving the three of them to fight it out, with Una Stubbs and co. still gesticulating madly on the television behind them.

  On the landing I hear more rowdy voices: Chrissy and Abigail are in Chrissy’s bedroom trying on clobber with The Boomtown Rats’ ‘She’s So Modern’ full pelt on the stereo.

  ‘I’d say it was more of a porridge colour, that jacket,’ Abi is remarking to my sister, who is admiring herself from all angles in the mirror on the wardrobe door. ‘Have you got any oatmeal-coloured shoes?’

  ‘Who the fuck has oatmeal-coloured shoes, Abigail?’ my sister snaps in semi-despair.

  Then she spots me at the top of the stairs, and breaks into a smile.

  ‘What do you think, Davey? What should I wear? This one or the …’

  ‘I think you should wear your black and white dogtooth skirt, the black polo neck – or perhaps the halter top if you’re feeling in the mood to show your cleavage off tonight – and the black suede winkle-pickers,’ I suggest, entering her unbearably messy bedroom. ‘That’s what I’d … I mean that’s what I reckon. Where’s Squirrel?’

  Abigail, who is slumped on Chrissy’s unmade bed, licking her middle finger and flicking through last week’s Jackie magazine, rolls her eyes.

  ‘Gone to meet some of his wanky friends,’ she says. ‘You know a lot about women’s fashion, don’t you, David? I’ve noticed that before.’

  ‘He’s got a very good eye for a frock-and-shoe combo,’ my sister agrees. ‘He always knows. I reckon you’ll be a fashion designer one day, Davey.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Then Chrissy strides over to the bed, dragging her friend up by the elbow, and marshalling her towards the door.

  ‘Now, can you take Abs up to your room and play some records or something for twenty minutes please, David. I’ve got to get under the shower and run a flannel over me baps before I go out. I’ve had netball today and I’m a bit tacky.’

  Abigail’s all smiles.

  ‘I’d love to see your room, David,’ she gushes. ‘All your bits and pieces.’

  Chrissy stifles a snigger, and winks at me. There goes my early-evening wank.

  ‘I hope you’re not too embarrassed about what Chrissy said earlier,’ Abi says, plopping herself down on my bed. ‘Do you mind if I do me nails?’

  I shake my head as Abigail unleashes a revolting shade of coral-pink polish from her bag and proceeds to daintily varnish her long manicured fingernails.

  ‘You are a nice-looking chap, David,’ she goes on as I head for my record collection. ‘A lot of the girls think so, even girls my age in the sixth form, but I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend. Have you had one? Don’t you want one, David? You never seem to be that fussed, really – unless Frances Bassey is your girlfriend, and I’ve never seen you two kissing or even holding hands, but you’re always together and so … as I say … Christ, you’ve got a lot of Abba posters.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I have,’ I say, looking around at my scrupulously considered wall design.

  ‘And Debbie Harry,’ Abi says. ‘Do you like blondes?’

  F
or some strange reason I have a transitory vision of Billy Blue Cannon from The High Chaparral – we’d watch that on a weeknight when my grandad babysat, and I was allowed to stay up past nine.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ I agree again.

  And then I study her for a moment. She’s a very pretty girl, is Abigail – even now, sitting under my favourite poster of Kate Bush, Abigail is tremendously pretty. She drops the nail varnish back into her bag and gives me a wink.

  ‘Why don’t you put a record on and get on the bed with me?’ she suddenly suggests.

  Well, I’m knocked for six by her brazenness. What on earth does she think is going to occur?

  ‘I’m just looking for something,’ I all but stutter.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Chrissy’ll be an age yet.’

  I flick through my singles until I come to S for ‘Summer’ and then pop on a twelve-inch while Abigail flaps her hands around violently in an attempt to dry her freshly decorated nails at speed. Out of the blue, something takes hold of me and I move, albeit timidly, towards the bed. Hmm … I’ll show them who’s bloody well bent.

  ‘You know what, Abi?’ I say, sitting down beside her. ‘If you cut your hair a little shorter, and messed it up a bit, and bleached it white, you’d look a bit like Debbie Harry … sort of.’

  ‘Really?’ Abigail squeals jubilantly. ‘Well, perhaps I should do it, then.’

  And with that she swoops forward and secures me in what I take to be a French kiss. Interesting. I close my eyes tight as Donna Summer’s honeyed tones drift languorously out of the one functioning stereo speaker and across the bedroom: ‘Down Deep Inside’, a song in which Donna seductively implies that there might be a place deep inside me that I’m longing to explore – only I’m not entirely sure there is. I’m really not. As it turns out, this record is fairly lengthy – a good six minutes – and I’ve started to wish I’d put on something a little shorter: Blondie’s ‘Hanging on the Telephone’, for instance, which comes in at a bijou two minutes twenty-three. Then at least I could have jumped up and changed the record for a bit of respite – my lips are red raw already. Eventually, though, Abigail comes up for air, and I find myself panting slightly. She clearly takes this as a sign of arousal on my part and goes for gold.