The Saturday Girls

by Elizabeth Woodcraft

  Mrs Weston smiled and started to walk away. Sylvie hovered.

  ‘I haven’t seen you for a little while, Linda. Why don’t you come and see me sometime, as they say in the movies?’

  My stomach clenched. I smiled stupidly.

  ‘You don’t have to take Mansell out, come round for a cup of tea. You know, I sometimes feel the need to reimmerse myself in the outside world, and you’re just the girl to do it.’ She paused. ‘With the help of Rat, Trap and Dapper.’

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  ‘And I owe you sixpence.’

  She’d remembered. ‘Do you?’ I said, carelessly.

  ‘Anyway, chicken,’ she said, ‘do come. I want to know about that lovely Valentine card. Did you find out who sent it?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. What about yours?’

  ‘Who knows? Will you come?’

  ‘I’ll try. I don’t know how much time I’m going to have, though, because I’m – I’m trying to get a job,’ I said wildly.

  ‘A job! Oh, Linda!’ She frowned. ‘You’re not leaving school, are you?’ She seemed genuinely concerned.

  ‘No such luck,’ I said. ‘I want to get a Saturday job. And other times too, possibly.’

  ‘Well, that’s exciting. You see, we have so much to talk about! And I love those trews on you,’ she said. ‘They’re rather French. Come when you can.’

  She blew me a kiss and walked over to where her mum stood waiting. Mrs Weston waved her hand limply in my direction, and they disappeared.

  *

  Despite the really embarrassing election posters in the windows and the clumsy wooden loudspeaker contraption roped onto the roof, it was comforting to see our car pull up. ‘Judith’s come to relieve you,’ Mum said. ‘Bring your pad with you, she’s got her own.’

  Mum and I drove to the Committee Rooms for our ward. It was basically Ron Bales’ front room. Five or six people with their coats on stood looking at the Bales’ dining table, which was covered with pages of the electoral roll. The columns were marked with an intricate pattern of blue, red and orange crayon. The colours indicated the party allegiance of the people who had answered their doors to the Labour Party canvassers and said who they were going to vote for.

  Ron Bales was a big man who always had a pencil or a cigarette tucked behind his ear. As we arrived he was saying loudly, ‘Although many people have been canvassed – and thank you, Joanne and Gordon, for your sterling work . . . oh, and Vera, too, welcome,’ he added as he noticed my mum, ‘and those people assured everyone that they intended to vote Labour, the numbers that our poll checkers have collected – thanks to all involved – indicate that not many have actually got off their backsides to do it. Everyone available is needed to go knocking up. Get those voters out. They know they want to. The pretty ones’ – he looked across at me – ‘get to stay behind and continue the all-important job of checking numbers against addresses, which is therefore what I shall be doing. And Linda, you can help me with that.’ We all laughed.

  He was handing out lists of addresses, matching people who had cars with those who had red rosettes, when Dad appeared. ‘The man himself!’ Ron boomed. ‘And if you’ve come here looking for a cup of tea, there’s no time. It’s all going very well, but you and Vera should go out with the loudspeaker.’

  I cringed. The loudspeaker again.

  ‘Come on, Vera,’ Dad said. ‘Duty calls.’ There was a smattering of applause as they left.

  Half past six was the time when people who had gone straight home from work to have their tea might start thinking about coming out to vote. That’s when it began to rain. People came into the Committee Rooms from the polling stations, shrugging the rain off their macs, with half-empty sheets of numbers.

  Ron looked through the net curtains to the street. ‘Well, there goes Harry’s seat.’

  Mrs Bales said, ‘Ron!’ and looked over at me.

  ‘Political reality is a hard lesson to learn,’ Ron said to the room in general. ‘The sooner you do, the better.’

  The atmosphere was damp and depressed. Nobody even asked for a cup of tea. Every now and then Dad’s voice sounded outside in the street, ‘Vote Labour, vote Piper’. People who hadn’t been sent to knock up looked out of the window, gazing at the sky.

  Ron said, ‘This is why I don’t believe in God, because if he exists he’s obviously a Conservative.’

  His wife looked at him, then looked at me.

  ‘Well, I suppose it could be worse,’ he said. ‘It could be snowing.’

  People laughed.

  *

  I was stretching across the table, over the spread of pages from the electoral roll, trying to find the number 3468 when Ray came in. For a moment I forgot that he lived here and I looked at him in surprise. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything embarrassing.

  ‘Watcha,’ he said to me. ‘Nice trews.’

  It sounded sarcastic. ‘They’re French,’ I said brazenly. I didn’t think he could seriously be making derogatory comments about my trousers, given his own taste in jumpers. But I had liked him once, and in fact, as he stood there in their front room in the midst of all the old Labour Party people, he looked like Little Joe from Bonanza. Quite nice. I couldn’t continue the lie. ‘French-ish,’ I said. ‘Almost French.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Ray, we need someone to go knocking up in the flats,’ his mum said.

  ‘I’ve only come in for my cigs,’ he said.

  ‘Take this list.’

  ‘That’s what you get for smoking,’ I murmured.

  ‘Do you want to come with me, Frenchy, and make sure I don’t smoke while I’m talking?’ he said to me.

  ‘Linda’s doing important work here,’ Mrs Bales said. ‘Get going.’

  I was sorry about that.

  At nine o’clock, after the polls had closed, Mum and Dad went to the Count – Mum dolled up with lipstick and powder that always made her smell so nice, and Dad in his big overcoat, his trilby tipped over his left eye. Mum said if we promised not to kill each other, Judith and I could stay downstairs till they got back. She put pillows and a blanket on the settee and we burrowed down in our pyjamas, head to toe, to wait for the result.

  It was midnight and the fire had burnt down to grey ash when the sound of the key in the lock woke me up. I nudged Judith with my foot.

  ‘Who’s for a cup of celebration tea?’ Dad called as he and Mum hung up their coats in the hall.

  Judith and I cheered.

  ‘Oh, Harry, it’s late,’ Mum said.

  ‘Mum!’ Judith and I moaned.

  ‘Just this once,’ Dad said.

  Mum went into the kitchen and Dad laid two extra pieces of coal on the fire and put his finger to his lips so that Mum didn’t know.

  The fire licked in the grate as we sat with cups of tea and a digestive biscuit and Dad told us the numbers – he’d got 1,791 votes to the Conservative’s 1,308.

  He took two spoons from the cutlery set in the sideboard drawer and began to play them, which he normally only did at Christmas, clicking them on his thigh, swaying from side to side, going ‘Ha–cha!’ and Judith and I got up and danced in our pyjamas in front of the fire. After five minutes Mum said, ‘It’s one o’clock!’ and we had to go to bed.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sylvie’s story

  I HAD DECIDED I WASN’T GOING back to Sylvie’s. It was all so embarrassing and difficult, and having to be so careful not to upset her. But there was something about her, the things she said, the way she listened to me as if what I said was important. I’d never met anyone like her before.

  A week later it was raining when I got home from school and I had forgotten my key. Judith was playing hockey. Sandra was of course at work. There was nowhere to go. And I quite missed seeing Mansell. So I left my school bag under an old sheet in our shed and went down to the Crescent.

  The house looked grey and cold in the rain. I huddled under the narrow strip of concrete over the door
that was meant to be a porch, and knocked. Again I had to wait. I looked down at the daffodils in the small square of earth beside me and realised they were plastic.

  The door opened the merest crack.

  Sylvie’s face peeped through.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice was a croak. She was holding a brown matted cardigan tightly at her throat.

  She stared at me, then began to close the door.

  ‘Sylvie!’ I said. ‘It’s me! Linda.’

  ‘Linda? Oh, Linda.’ Her face relaxed. ‘Linda, hello.’ She opened the door and peered out behind me. ‘Come in,’ she said, and I stepped inside. ‘I thought you were the never-never man.’

  ‘In a school beret?’ I said.

  Quietly she closed the door. ‘We are a little behind in our payments.’ She looked down. ‘I’m afraid you find me rather déshabillé. I was just having a lie-down.’ A faded petticoat hung limply under the washed-out cardigan. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘I forgot my key and I’m locked out of our house.’ Suddenly I felt very sorry for myself.

  ‘Oh, chicken,’ she said, ‘and you’re soaked! Let’s have a cup of tea. We can cheer each other up and listen to some music.’

  I wiped my feet and looked over at Mansell’s empty pram beside the stairs.

  ‘Mansell was having a sleep next to me.’ She cocked her head towards the stairs and murmured, ‘He’s still dozing. You go into the kitchen and put on the kettle. I’ll nip up and change into something less comfortable. Then we’ll both feel better.’

  When she came back downstairs she was wearing a pink sloppy mohair jumper over a tight skirt that showed her knees. She was carrying Mansell on her hip, and looked like an advert for a loving mum with a baby who drinks Carnation milk.

  ‘Don’t you think he’s handsome?’

  Mansell gazed at Sylvie as if she was the only person in the world. I put the cups and the teapot on the table.

  ‘So we won,’ I said, picking a milk bottle out of the bucket and looking round for something to catch the drips.

  ‘What did we win?’

  ‘The election. My dad got in.’

  ‘Election?’ She thought for a moment. ‘Your dad?’ She wiped dribble from the baby’s chin with her finger and handed me a muslin nappy.

  ‘Yes, you voted for my dad. Well, you said you did.’

  ‘Was that your dad? The Labour candidate? What was his name? Piper.’

  ‘Harry Piper.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course we voted for him. And he won? Linda, that’s wonderful. I’m even more honoured to have you here. We should really be drinking champagne.’

  ‘My mum would go mad.’ I stopped abruptly. I’d used the word ‘mad’. I shook my head. Sylvie didn’t seem to notice. ‘When I’ve poured the tea we can clink our cups.’

  ‘Very sensible.’ She sounded as if she’d prefer champagne. ‘No wonder you’re a political animal. You obviously imbibed Labour politics with your mother’s milk.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I muttered, embarrassed at the thought. ‘I worked a lot of it out for myself.’

  ‘I’m sure you did. I’m not criticising,’ she said. ‘It’s just that there’s not a lot of political debate on this estate.’

  ‘There is in our house,’ I said. ‘All the time. Breakfast, dinner and tea.’ I knew our house was different: my dad stood for the council, we took the Daily Herald, though now it was the Sun, and the Sunday Citizen, we had books everywhere in the house and a set of Arthur Mee’s Encyclopaedias. Judith and I went to the High School. We would stay on and take exams . . . We were so different.

  ‘How lucky you are.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So your dad’s a Labour councillor. That’s fantastic.’

  ‘It’s not that good.’ I knew it was good, but I didn’t want to boast. And often talking about it just made me feel even more of an outsider.

  ‘Don’t be afraid of being different,’ Sylvie said. ‘It will stand you in good stead.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said reluctantly. ‘You take a lot of sugar, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, three,’ she said. ‘Don’t look like that! How many do you have?’

  ‘I stopped taking sugar years ago,’ I said proudly, ‘because . . .’ Suddenly I felt stupid.

  ‘Because what? Are you diabetic?’

  ‘No. Because I thought it was . . . more sophisticated not to take it.’

  Sylvie laughed. ‘Don’t hang your head, chicken, that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re twelve.’

  ‘I was eleven,’ I said.

  ‘Eleven! That’s impressive. Well, I was twelve when I started playing poker. I thought that was a very sophisticated thing to do.’

  ‘Poker!’ Poker was gambling. Poker was . . . bad. ‘I don’t play cards,’ I said.

  ‘One day I’ll teach you how to play poker,’ she said. ‘But you’d better watch out. It can get you into big trouble. Let’s listen to some music,’ she said. ‘You hold Mansell. I’ll bring the tea.’

  Mansell was warm and heavy in my arms. I kissed the top of his head; it smelt of baby soap. Sylvie picked up the two cups and led the way into the living room. She put the cups on the sideboard and slid a Frank Sinatra LP onto the turntable.

  I took a breath. ‘Will you tell me about Mansell’s dad?’

  Sylvie’s face didn’t change. ‘Are you really interested? Or are you just after the gossip?’

  ‘I know the gossip,’ I said. ‘I’d like to know the real story.’ It sounded clumsy and intrusive as I said it. ‘But you don’t have to tell me. Only if you want to.’

  She picked up the LP cover and stared at it. ‘What is the gossip?’

  ‘Oh, you know. That – that you don’t know . . . who he is, I mean, that you don’t want people to know. That, that perhaps he’s someone famous!’ I added.

  ‘That last one I think you’ve made up for yourself.’ She dropped into an armchair.

  ‘He could be,’ I said. ‘Mansell could be Tommy Steele’s love child.’

  She laughed. ‘He wasn’t famous. He was . . . American. Let’s say.’

  ‘Where did you meet him? Did you meet him in this country?’

  ‘I met him, I met him . . . We should drink our tea.’

  I didn’t want her to change the subject. ‘Did you know him for long before, before –’

  ‘Before Mansell? I suppose it depends what you mean by long. I probably hadn’t known him long enough.’ She went to the sideboard, picked up the two cups of tea and handed one to me.

  ‘Were you going out with him? Were you engaged?’ Suddenly I wanted it to be an ordinary story – they’d been in love, they were planning a wedding and they got carried away. Then she realised she didn’t want to marry him and he didn’t want to marry her and that was all there was to it. I didn’t want it to be dramatic. I didn’t want him to be a soldier, a fighter. I didn’t want him to be a hero. A dead hero. ‘Is he still alive?’ I said.

  She gave a short, exasperated laugh. ‘I’m sure he is.’

  ‘Is he in America?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. Do you really want to talk about this? It’s quite a boring story. Why don’t we talk about something else? Your future career, or the film that’s on at the Select at the moment? With Julie Christie in. What’s it called?’

  ‘You mean Darling. I’d rather hear about – what’s his name?’

  She laughed. ‘We could play cards. I know, why don’t we make today the day I teach you to play poker?’

  ‘In here?’

  ‘Or in the kitchen.’

  ‘You can teach me one day, but tell me your story now. Why won’t you? It’s Mansell’s story too.’ Was I whining?

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know why I’m so reluctant to tell you.’ She tugged a loose thread on the armchair.

  ‘I won’t tell anyone else.’

  ‘Won’t you?’

  I thought about it. I wou
ld want to tell Sandra. I would really want to tell Sandra. I might tell my mum, if it was a sad story. I looked at her.

  ‘Well, it was, in fact, playing cards that caused my . . . downfall.’

  ‘Cards?’

  ‘At a casino.’ The music had stopped. The room was silent apart from the low whirring of the electric fire.

  ‘What were you doing at a casino? Were you working there?’

  ‘Em, no, not then. I did work in a casino once, but not then. I met him when I was on holiday.’

  ‘With your mum?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did happen to your dad?’

  ‘Questions, questions. My dad died. In the war. So my mum says. They didn’t get married, though he loved her with all his heart. But that makes me a bastard too, as my Uncle Peter would say. It must run in the family.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being a . . . bastard.’ It was hard to say the word; it was so harsh and ugly, as well as being a swear word. Mansell was asleep trustingly in my arms. It seemed wrong to use a word like that to describe him. It seemed wrong to think of Sylvie like that, or to call her a tart, like the husband and wife from the flats did when they went past the shop. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s not Mansell’s fault. Anyone can make a mistake.’

  ‘I wish everyone thought like that.’ She laughed. ‘Life would be a lot simpler.’

  ‘It’s what my mum says,’ I said.

  ‘Your mum sounds so nice.’

  ‘To other people. I think she’d kill me if I came home pregnant.’

  ‘She only makes you think that so you don’t do it. But if you did, I’m sure she’d be all right.’

  I wasn’t going to take any bets on that. ‘What do you wear to a casino?’

  ‘A very pertinent question. Where do I start? Well, are you sitting comfortably?’ Sylvie looked out of the window.

  *

  We were staying in a boarding house in Great Yarmouth, me and my friend Janet. It was her auntie’s boarding house. We’d just finished our secretarial courses, and Janet’s auntie had said we could come up for a few days’ holiday as a treat. And then, when we arrived, there were two Americans staying there too – one for each of us, Janet said. But mine was nicer. He was tough and good-looking, like Humphrey Bogart. He had green eyes and a low laugh that burst out when someone said something funny.