The Saturday Girls

by Elizabeth Woodcraft

  ‘Listen to this.’ Carefully she moved the arm of the record player and put the needle down on the disc. It was ‘Mack the Knife’.

  ‘OK,’ I said optimistically, but he was singing it as if it was ‘Hello Dolly’.

  I looked at a heap of paperbacks on the floor in the corner. ‘Do you read?’ I said. Instantly I regretted the question. It sounded as if I was surprised, as if I thought she must be stupid.

  But Sylvia simply said, ‘Yes, that’s my library.’ She laughed.

  ‘Why don’t you have shelves?’

  ‘Because my mother said we needed a pram for the baby.’

  According to Louis Armstrong, Mack Heath was back in town. Sylvia threw herself into an armchair, picked up her cup of tea and tapped her foot to the music.

  I perched on the edge of the other armchair. The room was heating up. I wanted to take my coat off, but I didn’t want her to think I was stopping.

  ‘Have you heard this before?’

  ‘Yes, my sister Judith likes this kind of music. But she’s older than me and a bit of a beatnik. Though they do play it on the Aldermaston.’

  ‘The Aldermaston march?’ she said. ‘Do you go on the Aldermaston march?’

  ‘I’ve been going for years,’ I said nonchalantly. Two years. The jazz bands played as they marched, or sometimes when we stopped for dinner. People even danced sometimes.

  ‘Doesn’t that rhythm stir you on, and keep you going?’ Sylvia said.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said. I would think about that later.

  ‘Your Ban the Bomb badge really is serious, then?’ Sylvia put her head on one side and looked at me and the badge.

  ‘Yes.’ I wished it was the expensive one, to show how serious I was, but that was at home, pinned to my suede.

  ‘And you believe in it? And you really do go on the march?’

  ‘Yes!’ I didn’t know why she was asking me. ‘I would have gone earlier, but my mum wouldn’t let us go when we were young because she didn’t want people saying she’d indoctrinated us.’

  Sylvia nodded. ‘I know several people who go. I wonder if you know them?’

  ‘It’s quite a big march, thousands of people.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s true. And you march for the whole four days?’

  ‘The CND group usually go up for one or two days, in a coach. Sometimes on Good Friday to Aldermaston and then we go up to London on Easter Monday. Next year I’ll go for the whole march. But however much you do, it’s still important.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you still get blisters.’

  ‘Oh, Linda.’ She laughed. ‘So you’re quite a political person?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘How does that work at school? Which school do you go to?’

  ‘The High School.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you passed the eleven-plus.’ She sounded surprised. ‘So what does the High School think about your politics?’

  ‘I was told not to wear my CND badge on school premises,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a bit much.’

  I liked her for saying that. Mum had said what did I expect? I shouldn’t have worn it in the first place.

  ‘I should think they’d be pleased that their girls were thinking about important political issues,’ she said.

  ‘They don’t seem to. I mean, no one in my form talks about it.’

  ‘Would you like it if they did?’

  ‘I’d be surprised. They’re all so posh.’

  ‘Some posh people think about politics.’

  I looked at her. Was she laughing at me? Her face was serious. ‘I don’t know. I don’t talk to them very much. I don’t think they want to talk to me, the council estate girl.’

  ‘Don’t put yourself down,’ Sylvia said. ‘I think you’ve got a lot to offer.’

  I smiled. No one had ever said anything like that to me before. It was a nice feeling. Even if it was Sylvia.

  The song ended and Sylvia jumped up. ‘What shall we have now? How about a little Frank Sinatra?’

  ‘I thought he was quite tall.’

  ‘That’s very good, Linda, but actually I think he isn’t the tallest person in the world.’ She slid a disc out of its cover and put it on the turntable and Frank Sinatra began to sing ‘Fly Me to the Moon’.

  The fact she’d got my joke made me feel better. For a few minutes I forgot the smell of the room and the feeling of shabby sadness in the house.

  Sylvia watched my eyes gazing round the room. ‘Now that I’m back home my new project is to make this room look better,’ she said. ‘Do you think that’s a good plan?’

  I was jolted back into her life. ‘How?’ I said.

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘You’d have to do quite a bit,’ I said. Her face fell. I was being rude. ‘But probably,’ I added quickly, ‘if you got some bits of wood you could make shelves. Or even cardboard boxes, from the shop, for the books. And if you tidied up a bit and put a picture or two on the wall . . .’

  Sylvia laughed. ‘I like a girl with ideas,’ she said. ‘Are you the person who designs the rooms in your house?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No one is. They just happen. Or they happened ages ago. We haven’t had a new carpet for years.’ Had I said too much? Giving away our family shame? My shame. ‘Sandra said you call yourself Sylvie.’

  ‘Do you mean Mrs Brady’s daughter?’

  ‘She’s my best friend. We’ve been friends since I was three years old.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘And I do, yes, I do call myself Sylvie. I think it’s prettier. It’s almost French, you know, like Sylvie Vartan.’

  ‘That’s what I said!’ I was pleased. ‘So should I call you Sylvie?’

  ‘If you like. Yes, please. That would be nice.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘I’d better go now. I have to help my mum make the tea.’

  ‘And you’re taking Mansell out tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m picking him up from the shop at quarter past two.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s all right? You seem to have rather a lot on your plate – politics, designing rooms – and I’m sure you have homework.’

  ‘Well, I’m not really a designing person, and I don’t do as much homework as I should,’ I said. Why was I telling her so much? ‘But it’s OK.’

  ‘And will you bring him back here?’ she said. ‘It’s been lovely talking to you. We can think about your ideas for the room and listen to some more Louis Armstrong.’

  ‘So you don’t really want me to come back.’

  She laughed. ‘You can bring your own records if you like.’

  ‘We haven’t got a record player,’ I said, sadly.

  ‘All right, well, you can choose from mine.’

  I wasn’t optimistic.

  *

  ‘So how was the baby boy wonder?’ Sandra was ringing me at teatime.

  ‘He was fine.’ I settled myself on the stairs. ‘I had to take him back to their house, actually. Sylvie was there.’

  ‘So now you’ve seen her too! What did you say to her?’

  ‘We had a cup of tea. Which I made.’

  ‘Ooh, get you. So who’s the father?’

  ‘Give me a chance. I hardly know her yet,’ I said.

  ‘So what do you think?’ She lowered her voice. Their phone was in the hall, like ours, so her mum was probably listening from the kitchen. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘I don’t know. She had maroon slippers on. And she likes Louis Armstrong.’

  ‘There you are.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. They’re really poor, though. Their house is cold and smells like, like –’ I stopped. I was going to say ‘like our outside toilet’, but it would sound wrong. I didn’t mean their house smelt like a toilet, but like somewhere damp and outside with no fire to heat it. Sandra would know what it meant. Their outside toilet smelt like that too. But she might take it the wrong way. I realised I felt protective of Sylvie. ‘You kn
ow, cold. Just cold.’

  I put the phone down. Mum and Dad were in the kitchen, talking, Mum cutting bread, Dad opening a tin of beans. I went back into the living room. Judith, wearing a big sloppy jumper, was lying on the settee with her legs over the arm, reading Woman’s Own. The fire was burning in the grate with the coal scuttle beside. Our rust-coloured three-piece suite was old and faded but it was comfortable. Hanging on one wall was a painting of Heybridge Basin, the small fishing village near Maldon where my dad came from. There was a mirror on another. The new green-and-silver-striped curtains at the French windows brushed the floor and met in the middle, even if they didn’t ripple. The central light had a lampshade that matched the curtains. On the sideboard was a bowl of oranges. Even the threadbare patch in the middle of the carpet looked homely by comparison with the Westons’ house.

  On either side of the fireplace were the oak bookcases that Mum and Dad had got when they married, just after the war. They were in the Utility style, and were filled with books, including Mum’s favourites, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, and Dad’s, by Ezra Pound and Walt Whitman. On the bottom shelf were their copies of Shakespeare’s Collected Works, side by side. Dad’s was maroon, leather-bound. His mother had given it to him for his twenty-first birthday present. The cover of Mum’s was navy-blue cardboard. She’d bought it with her first week’s wages, in the war. When Judith and I were young we each took one copy, staggering under the weight, as we put on productions of The Tempest and Much Ado About Nothing in the living room, wrapped round with sheets, tea towels and Mum’s belts, proclaiming loudly with all the wrong inflections and pronunciations.

  The books on the shelves were comforting and friendly, even the books about Hiroshima and Apartheid which I read from time to time and which reassured me that I was right when people responded angrily to my arguments about why I didn’t eat South African oranges and why I wanted to ban the bomb.

  I sniffed. All I could smell was our house, Dad’s cigarettes and Lux soap flakes.

  But even if we weren’t as poor as Sylvie and Mrs Weston, we were still poor. And I needed more clothes. If I wasn’t careful I’d look like Sylvie, everything mismatched and odd. I wouldn’t be able to go to the Orpheus or the Corn Exchange. You couldn’t be a mod if you didn’t have style. ‘I’ve got to get a proper job that pays proper money,’ I said aloud.

  Judith was studying an article illustrated by a photograph of a worried-looking woman talking to someone in a white coat. ‘Well, get one.’

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ I said. On Saturdays Judith worked in the greengrocer’s on the parade. ‘And you don’t need as much money as me. You and your beatnik mates never go out, and you never buy any clothes.’

  ‘Clothes aren’t everything. My friends and I drink beer. That doesn’t come free.’

  ‘You’re too young.’

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘I don’t drink beer.’

  ‘That’s not what I was talking about. Listen to this letter.’ She was reading the Mary Grant problem page.

  ‘ “My boyfriend and I have never had full intercourse, although we have engaged in heavy petting. My boyfriend says that I cannot get pregnant this way, even if we are not wearing clothes and he lies very close to me when he finishes.” Is that what happened to your friend down the road?’

  ‘First of all, she’s not my friend. And second of all, I only met her today, and funnily enough, we didn’t talk about it. Why do you care what happened? I thought you believed in free love – you’re the beatnik, not me.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not a man. It’s the men who believe in it. Girls don’t usually get off free.’ It sounded as if she’d given it more thought than I had.

  *

  Mum called us into the kitchen. Dad had gone upstairs to change. Judith took the tablecloth and cutlery from the drawer to lay the table in the front room. I had to watch the toast while Mum tipped the beans into a saucepan.

  ‘I hear you met Sylvia today,’ Mum said.

  ‘Word gets around!’ I said. ‘Anyway, she calls herself Sylvie.’

  ‘How was she?’

  ‘All right. Their house is a worse dump than ours.’

  ‘As long as it’s clean, you don’t need to worry.’ She looked at my face. ‘But if you think it’s not clean, you could always lend them a hand in that department.’

  ‘I’m not sure they can afford a hoover,’ I said. I turned the toast.

  CHAPTER 4

  Power

  I HADN’T SEEN SYLVIE SINCE THAT first day, weeks before. I hadn’t gone back, there had been no need. I’d gone to the shop on the Friday so Mrs Weston could pay me and I left Mansell there. But now we had a day off school and Mum had somehow arranged more baby-watching for me.

  Mansell and I walked to the Main Road and then across into the Avenues, looking at the big houses of all the people who voted Conservative. These were not council houses, and at election time they all had Conservative Party posters in their windows. Then we walked back onto the estate and without thinking I wheeled the pram into the Crescent.

  Sylvie was sitting on the wall outside their house. Today she looked completely different. Her hair was pulled back into a smooth French pleat and she was wearing a simple red jumper and blue skirt. She looked like an ordinary person. Two women I vaguely recognised from further down the Crescent were walking towards her. I slowed down. ‘Oh dear, Mansell,’ I whispered, ‘we’re going to have to make polite conversation. You’re going to have to look sweet. Which you do, of course.’ The women were staring at Sylvie and then, instead of smiling and stopping for a chat, they very pointedly crossed over to the other side of the road.

  I looked at them and back to Sylvie. If she had noticed, she gave no sign.

  ‘Hello!’ I said loudly, in a cheerful voice.

  ‘Linda!’ Sylvie said, glancing at the women. ‘Am I glad to see you! Bring him in.’

  I wheeled the pram into the hall and lifted Mansell out and tucked him onto my hip.

  ‘What was all that about?’ I said, gesturing out into the street.

  ‘Oh, some people think there are rules to live by, and they get frightened if the rules are broken.’

  ‘Is this about Mansell?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Well, me really. But you’re not worried , are you?’

  I frowned and shook my head.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t be,’ Sylvie said. ‘Now, come into the living room!’

  The living room was different. ‘You inspired me,’ she said. The fire was already on and the standard lamp had a pink bulb which gave out a soft glow. Two faded cotton bedspreads were draped over the armchairs so that at least they matched.

  ‘But I didn’t say any of this,’ I said.

  ‘I could see it in your eyes,’ Sylvie said, dramatically.

  I looked at the books, which were now lined up smartly on the floor against the wall. ‘That’s the library,’ she said. ‘For very short people.’

  ‘I didn’t know Mansell could read.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. He’s very bookish.’

  We both laughed. Mansell blinked.

  ‘So what do you think of my efforts?’ she said.

  ‘It looks . . . nice.’

  The records had been tidied into a neat pile on the sideboard. Next to them was a sketch of a jug of flowers.

  ‘And you got a picture too,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a birthday card.’

  ‘Is it your birthday?’

  ‘No, that’s a card from me to my mother. I got it for her this morning. Her birthday was last week, but of course I forgot. You don’t think much about happy returns of the day when you’re doped up in a locked ward.’ She looked at me and I wondered if she was trying to shock me. ‘And anyway, there’s not much of a selection of cards over there, and you can’t get stamps, even if you promise to take all your medicine like a good girl.’

  I said nothing. This was what I had been afraid of from the beginning, a discuss
ion about madness. I held Mansell tight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That’s what they call an inappropriate topic of conversation, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it’s not really a conversation because I don’t know what to say back.’

  ‘That’s honest,’ she said. ‘I don’t get a lot of honesty. People usually say what they think I want to hear.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how to do that,’ I said. ‘I don’t know you well enough.’

  ‘They say things like how well I am today, how lovely I look.’

  ‘Oh, I could do that,’ I said. ‘I like your skirt.’ We laughed again. This was better. ‘So if you were in – in hospital last week, does that mean you didn’t send any Valentine cards?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I didn’t, Linda. Did you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘So you’re a romantic as well as a political animal!’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘And who was the lucky boy?’

  I explained the situation about Ray from down the road, that I had really liked him when I was thirteen but that was ages ago. But currently there was no one else, no one whose address I knew. I told her about Tap, being so stylish and working in The Boutique and about my caramel nylon mac. ‘But Sandra sent a card to him,’ I said. ‘Sandra sent two – well, three. Two to Danny, one funny and one loving, as well as the one to Tap.’

  Sylvie frowned. ‘I don’t understand. I thought you liked Tap.’

  ‘Sandra wants to keep Danny guessing but still interested.’

  ‘Who is this Danny?’ Sylvie said. ‘Why does she like him so much?’

  ‘Danny.’ I sighed. ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘I love a good story,’ she said.

  I tried to remember what I’d written in my diary. ‘The first time we met Danny Mulroney was one Saturday morning in the record department of the Co-op. It was in the summer holidays, not long after we’d started going down the Orpheus. Sandra was still at school then.

  ‘We were at the counter and Sandra was asking the woman in the orange nylon overall if they had Roy Orbison’s latest single, when someone wearing a navy-blue Crombie overcoat and a bluebeat hat came out of one of the booths, shouting at us, “No, no, you don’t want to listen to that rubbish, listen to this, listen to this!” He leaned over the counter and moved the arm of the record player back to the beginning of a 45 already on the turntable. The woman stared at him. “Turn it up!” he said. Slowly she turned the volume knob and then stood with folded arms as we listened to ‘Madness’ by Prince Buster. The man rocked round the counter to the ska beat, his head nodding back and forth like a chicken. When the record finished, Sandra asked the assistant to put it on again. After we’d listened to it twice, Sandra said, “Yeah, thanks,” and we left the shop. We had to go home for dinner.