Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles

by Sabine Durrant

  ‘Not so good,’ she said. ‘Not so good.’

  I put on a concerned expression. Mrs Benning has long been a ‘sleeping partner’, but since she went into a nursing home two years ago has done a lot more sleeping than anticipated.

  ‘Oh!’ It was about then that Mother let out a little cry. ‘Look!’ She raised her hand as if to wave and then thought better of it. A tall man in a dark suit was walking past the window. ‘The man with the “matching set”!’

  ‘The matching set?’ I said, momentarily confused.

  ‘You know,’ she said. ‘The credit note?’

  ‘The credit note that your mother so kindly spent on your Lejaby Fantasie matching 34B and Medium,’ added Mrs Pritchard, with a small note of reproof.

  There are times when I think I am close to sluggish in the speed of my responses, when I despair of my ability ever to grab the moment with the alacrity of, say, Julie. On the other hand, there are times when I amaze even myself.

  This was one of those.

  ‘Oh!’ I cried. ‘But I must thank him. I must thank him right now.’ And I charged out of the shop before anyone could say anything. All I could think was that here was a man who had shown my mother kindness, who we knew was single and who was, if the suit was anything to go by, in regular employment.

  ‘Excuse me!’ I shouted after him. He’d reached the corner, but he paused, looking round uncertainly. I panted up. ‘Sorry.’ I was still out of breath. ‘Sorry. Hang on. Phew. My name’s Constance and I’m wearing your bra. And –’ I had yanked a bit of strap out of my T-shirt but I stopped, registering the alarm on his face. ‘No. No. That came out wrong. I mean… I just wanted to thank you for –’

  ‘For what?’ His eyes were darting about in panic, his whole body poised for departure.

  ‘For the Fantasy…’

  ‘Good. Good,’ he said carefully, edging away, as if uncertain of my sanity.

  ‘No. No. Stop. The credit note. The shop!’ I had his attention and pointed back to Pritchard & Benning, outside of which Mother and Mrs Pritchard were now standing, looking after us.

  ‘The shop?’ he said, still uncertainly, but less wary now.

  ‘Do you remember? A few weeks ago? The credit note?’

  ‘The credit note?’

  ‘You know. The matching set you bought for your fiancée, “big on top, tiny down below”, the fiancée that then broke it off…’

  ‘Oh. The credit note’ He looked sad. ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘It was so very kind. My mother, a widow, has had such a tough time recently. And an act of generosity like yours… well… it made her week. Her month! But, of course, being the sweet person she is she spent it on me. On my bosoms. I mean, she bought me a bra! And, well, I just wanted to thank you. And I know that she’d like to thank you herself. So, I mean, if you had a minute and could spare the time just to return to the shop so that she could do that, well…’

  He looked at me as if he still thought I was barking, but then looked again down the road to where Mother was standing, her hands held at her tiny waist, her rosebud mouth twisting, the light playing with her shiny dark hair. She looked gamine and beautiful.

  He nodded – as I’ve said before, Mother does have that effect – and followed me.

  Mother looked less unsure and more cross when we reached her. She said, ‘Constance!’ but I jumped in quickly.

  ‘Mother, we wanted to thank Mr – Sorry, I don’t know your name –’

  ‘Savonaire.’ The man and I both looked at Mother after she’d spoken. She added quickly, ‘It was on the credit note.’

  He smiled. ‘Victor Savonaire,’ he said, and put out his hand for both of us to shake it.

  I heard myself breathe rather than say, ‘You’re French.’

  (It was the way he’d pronounced Victor that clinched it.)

  ‘My mother,’ he said. ‘So, half French, yes. But born and brought up in London, so a bit of a swizz, I’m afraid.’ Until then I hadn’t been sure about his looks. He was slim and tall, not thin, but his face was bony. He had nice eyes but rather too prominent eye sockets. And something odd was going on on the top of his head. There was pale-brown hair, tufting upwards as if gelled, but not as much as there should have been. Someone was hiding something. Still, HALF FRENCH! You could forgive some follicular fudging for that!

  Mother began asking whether he was feeling, er, better since their last meeting. He looked down at the pavement and kicked the dust about with his shiny shoes as he answered. His voice was very posh, but faltering.

  Mother said, ‘I was worried, as I remarked to you at the time, that our choice of lingerie had not been appropriate, that it might have made the situation worse.’

  He said, ‘No, no. I mean, rather, yes, but no. It was more that she was already confused and a gift of that nature reminded, or rather not reminded but… ‘And he trailed away.

  I looked from one to the other of them. Mother had on her sick-child expression. I could see she was just longing to get out the Calpol and wrap him in her duvet on the sofa. And he – well, I don’t know. But he didn’t have to stand there talking to her, did he?

  I could see Mrs Pritchard peering out at us over Mother’s shoulder. And then a taxi drew up and a couple of women carrying the kind of logoed handbags that look like miniature suitcases got out and started tottering towards the shop.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mother. ‘It was charming to meet you and, once again, thank you for your act of generosity’ She smiled and turned and, following the women with the mini luggage, went back into the shop.

  Victor Savonaire continued to stand there for a second, looking dazed. At the time, I assumed it was bewilderment at Mother’s beauty, though as I sit here writing, it strikes me that maybe it was the churning up of Valentine’s Day memories, the one minute walking along the pavement, the next forced into an intimate conversation, that threw him. But it doesn’t matter. If I was deluded, so be it. It gave me confidence to do what I did next and confidence, as I’m beginning to see, is what matters in life.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘OK. Well, thank you, or rather thank you for thanking me, and for…’

  ‘Come to tea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On Saturday. Come to tea.’

  His mouth dropped open and one of his hands shot to the top of his head, where the fingers twiddled vaguely for a moment before falling to scratch behind his ears.

  I fired out our address. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘We would so like to thank you. I’ll make a cake.’

  He ummed and ahhed but finally, hesitantly, said he would. I wrote our address down on the back of his hand. Then we said goodbye and I went back into the shop.

  Mother was in and out of the fitting room with armfuls of small boxes, dancing attendance on one of the women from the taxi, and could only look at me suspiciously. Then Mrs Pritchard sent me out for some teabags. And then there was a flood of second-wind shoppers (customers buying bras to go with the outfits they’d bought in the morning), so it wasn’t until much later in the afternoon that I had to ‘fess up. I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest. I’d had time to prepare a tiny little embellishment to make it sound more plausible. I told her he’d said, ‘It would be nice to meet again in more auspicious circumstances,’ and that I’d felt it would have been rude not to arrange something after that. Her brown eyes widened. I said, ‘And so tea seemed the most harmless, don’t you think?’

  ‘Er.’ She laughed, more in shock than anything. ‘You really invited him to tea, Connie?’

  ‘Yup.’

  She laughed again. Actually, I don’t think she believed me yet. ‘When again?’

  ‘Saturday’

  ‘And how does he know where we live?’

  ‘I told him.’

  ‘And, Connie –’ She was standing with her hands on her hips. ‘What about your job at the chemist’s?’

  I’d forgotten that. But it didn’t throw me. ‘Well,’ I said boldly, ‘I suppose you’ll have to
entertain him until I get there.’

  I’m in bed – exhausted. It’s been a busy day for an ill person. I only have one more thing to recount and that’s that I did manage to speak to Julie before I came to bed. Her mum, who answered the phone, said I could talk to her as long as I was quick and didn’t ask too many questions. ‘She’d like to hear your voice, I’m sure,’ she said.

  Julie came on and said something in a tiny whisper which I decoded as ‘hello’.

  ‘Is it glandular fever?’ I said.

  ‘Tonsillitis,’ she whispered. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘What a relief.’ I added lots of sympathetic things and then, ‘So we’re doing brilliantly on the anti-Uncle Bert campaign.’

  She uttered a painful high squeaking noise which I took for encouragement.

  ‘Yes. And well done you for last Sunday. Don’t know what you did, but it worked.’

  She gave another squeak.

  ‘Though I’ve had to be quite busy since. Marie puked up all over him and I think that really put him off. And now I’m hard at work finding Mother another man.’ And then I told her all about Victor Savonaire.

  She gave a terrible strangulated laugh which turned into a cough. I think she croaked ‘Leakey The Chemist?’ But then her Mum took the phone off her.

  ‘That’s enough for tonight, Connie,’ she said. ‘I’m sure she’ll be back next week. You can catch up with each other then. Thanks for ringing.’

  So that’s that. I’m on my own for now. And I’m not doing too badly.

  PS Isn’t Savonaire a heavenly name? Like posh soap.

  Saturday 8 March

  The chemist’s, out the back, 11 a.m.

  I got up really, really early and I’ve been frantically busy ever since. Full of hope and expectation. And other more confused emotions, of which more later.

  I’ve left the house all ready. There is a cake, plump and sweet, sitting in the ice-cream carton we use as a tin in the kitchen. I dusted it with sugar, so it would look like the kind of cake they have in French patisseries. (Julie and I spent a lot of time in French patisseries on the day trip to Boulogne.) There are cucumber sandwiches – Victor Savonaire definitely looks like a cucumber-sandwich man – under cling film in the fridge. And there is a tray ready-laid, complete with teapot, cups and milk jug (the one Marie decorated with kangaroos at one of those do-it-yourself pottery places. Or I think they’re kangaroos. They might be cows).

  When I showed Mother what I’d done she said, ‘Monange.’ She was a bit distracted because Marie and Cyril were fighting over the plastic dinosaur that came in a new packet of corn pops. I hope she remembers to sieve the sugar.

  I walked to work feeling very organized and bossy, omnipotent like a Roman emperor, or the matriarch of some large ungainly family, like in the Mafia or something. I was unbeatable. I keep thinking how impressed Julie will be with me.

  I was brought down to earth before I got to the chemist’s, because I met William in front of the station. He was waiting for his brother and he seemed to be in a bad mood.

  ‘Where’re you off to?’ I said. ‘Football? Away match in some hellhole end of the universe?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said, scowling. He had a little scrap of loo roll stuck just below his ear. ‘No, Kevin wants to go on the march today. You know, in the park?’

  I did know. I’d seen it on the news – there’s been bombing in the last few days; a lot of buildings blown up, some casualties – but Victor Savonaire had put it out of my mind.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said, noticing that William looked quite handsome now his hair was growing out a little bit. Mind you, it needed a wash.

  ‘No, it’s not.’ He rubbed his hand across his nose (not attractive). ‘We’re away at Arsenal. I want to go to that. And what’s the point of marching? What difference will we make? It’s all happening too far away. It’s nothing to do with us. It’s pointless.’

  I was still thinking about that when I arrived at the shop. John Leakey was behind the counter, looking cross.

  ‘So your mum’s boyfriend’s happy?’ he said when he saw me.

  I didn’t immediately grasp what he meant. I must have just stared at him blankly.

  ‘A show of might and all that.’ He gestured to a new poster in the window. It was advertising the march in the park. ‘Troublemaking, I’m afraid. Some of us feel it’s not a good thing seeing innocent people die. Let alone the knock-on effect on merchandising or whatever it was.’ His beetle-brows seemed to meet in the middle.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Awful.’ But I didn’t really mean it. I was thinking how magnificent some people look when they’re angry.

  He stared at me. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, it is.’ He gave his head a little shake and then said, ‘Right. Sorry. Connie, can you and Gail manage this morning? I’ve got Sanjay, the locum, coming in. I’m off to –’

  ‘The march?’ I said, gesturing to the poster.

  He nodded. ‘Yup. Sorry. I just think it’s important to make a stand. You know, when you believe in something strongly’

  I nodded. ‘Of course.’ I got my overall on and picked up the price gun.

  But I couldn’t concentrate. I’d forgotten about the war. I’d been so determined to watch the news and follow it. And I haven’t, really. Not a lot. My own life has taken over. It’s all begun to seem such a long way away – like William said – and nothing to do with me. Also, worst of all, I did see the news last night and I did see the bombs go off, but I’d been too busy worrying about Victor Savonaire’s cake to think any more about it.

  After a while I said, ‘Mr Leakey, I mean John?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think you’re so good to go on the march. I think you’re magnifi–remarkable, really You know, to care and to notice and…’

  He didn’t look up from his accounts. ‘You have to make a stand.’

  ‘Even if it doesn’t make a difference? Even if it isn’t the right thing? I mean, how do you know whether a war is a good thing or a bad thing?’

  He looked up now. ‘That, Connie, you have to work out for yourself. You mustn’t listen to me, or your mum’s boy friend. You have to work it out for yourself. It’s that simple.’

  ‘I know’ I priced a few more toothpaste tubes and then stopped again. I wanted to tell him something –something really awful – and I was worried that if I did he wouldn’t like me any more. But I also knew that he would listen. There is something so understanding about him. He takes you seriously, even if you’re only fourteen.

  ‘Mr Leakey? John? You know last night, the bombing? I saw it, and the houses being destroyed, and I knew there were real people in the houses who were being killed, but it’s only now, talking to you, that I sort of realize they are people like you and me. They didn’t seem –’ Could I tell him? ‘They didn’t seem as real somehow. Do you know what I mean?’

  He’d been working on the other side of the counter to me, but when I said this he came round and leant against the shelves just by me. ‘That’s very honest of you.’ He considered for a while. ‘It’s very easy to feel that. It’s like watching a film. It can even be exciting. That’s why war is a dangerous thing. It’s desensitizing. It becomes something other than it is, which is everyday and brutal.’

  I nodded, but I didn’t look up. I felt shy suddenly because he was so close. He took my hand and squeezed it. His grasp felt firm and warm. His breath smelt of tea and mints. He said, ‘Connie, at sixteen, you have to start listening to other people and drawing your own conclusions. Don’t just follow the crowd, or me.’

  ‘At sixt–’ I began. I looked up and then remembered. Our eyes met. His lashes are so long you’d think they’d get tangled. I felt this weird tight feeling in my stomach, like butterflies and nausea muddled up, the feeling you get at the back of your throat when you’ve been running fast, or cycling, but it wasn’t in my throat, it was further down in the depths of my chest, like everything was taut.

  I laughed to cover my e
mbarrassment and said, ‘Anyway, the good news is he’s not her boyfriend any more.’

  ‘Who isn’t?’ He had returned to the till as if nothing had happened.

  ‘My mum’s boyfriend isn’t my mum’s boyfriend any more.’

  He looked up from the roll of receipts he’d been studying and laughed. ‘That’s good, then, isn’t it? Because we don’t like him, do we?’

  I laughed too. He was back on the other side of the counter, but for a moment there, it was him and me against the world. ‘No,’ I said, ‘we don’t.’

  Chemist’s counter, 4 p.m.

  The time is dragging really slowly. Sanjay, a studious lad straight out of college, is keeping himself to himself out the back. The only time we talk is when I say, ‘Nurofen!’, holding up a box, and he nods. When it’s busy Gail tends to get quite flustered. But when it’s quiet she taps the stool next to her and says, ‘Come and perch yourself down here.’ Today she wanted to know how I was getting on with my ‘BF’, whether things were OK between us now. I forgave the ‘BF’ –it’s her attempt to sound streetwise even if her street does lead to some jolly-hockey-sticks school of the fifties. I told her everything between me and my ‘BF’ was hunky-dory.

  I asked after her mother, who is ‘bearing up’ in hospital, we sold some whitening toothpaste, and then she said, ‘And your young man, all well there?’

  ‘What young man?’ I answered.

  ‘The one on the bike, who spends the whole of Saturday afternoon cycling up and down outside the shop, pretending not to look in.’

  ‘He doesn’t!’ I looked out of the window, but the street was empty.

  ‘He does,’ she said in a sing-song voice. ‘Though I haven’t seen him yet today’

  ‘That’s because he’s gone to the march.’

  ‘Told you so!’ She thought she’d caught me out.

  ‘He’s not my young man,’ I insisted. ‘He’s just a friend. I don’t even –’