Walking Alone

by Carolyn McCrae

  “Oxford, though I’m moving to Cambridge soon.”

  “Fed up with Olly and Crisp always bumming off you?” Again Linda was pleased to exclude Holly from the conversation by talking about people she did not know. Holly, however, was not about to let Carl go.

  “What do you do there? You’re too old to be a student.”

  “I lecture.”

  “Wow! I’m impressed!” What do you lecture in?”

  “History.”

  “Wow! I’m doing History. It’s one of the courses I can do that I’ve covered a lot of back home.”

  Linda wished Holly would stop saying ‘Wow’ all the time but she was happy as it seemed to be annoying Carl as well.

  Carl had managed to deal with the crush he knew Linda had had on him for years, but this pushy American friend of hers was not so easy to ignore. He turned to Pat. “I’d better go now. I’ll call. Thanks for tea, smashing as usual!” And he was gone.

  “Wow!”

  “Oh shut up!”

  It was the first time a bad word had been spoken between them.

  And it had to be over Carl.

  Through the summer they spent most of the time together listening to records, trying on each other’s clothes, talking about their lives, their hopes, their fears and making a bond between them that would not be broken for years.

  When the school year began they found themselves, thanks to some string pulling by Jeff, in the same class for their final year before A levels and university.

  Linda was enthusiastic. “It’ll be great, I’ve only been at this school a year, we’ve been living in London for years and everyone already had their friends when I came. Pick my subjects and it’ll be a doddle.”

  Holly helped Linda as much as Linda helped Holly, the competition between them generally genuinely friendly.

  They spent the year working together, sharing each other’s clothes, reading the same books, watching the same films. They found they were alike in so many ways but Pat and Jeff saw the differences. Whether it was because of the life she had led or traits inherited from her parents, Holly was more independent, harder and more self-contained than Linda.

  “That girl’s not happy.” Pat had said one evening as she and Jeff watched Holly walk back down the garden to her home. “She puts a brave face on it but she’s lonely and she’s frightened. If she and Linda hadn’t made friends I hate to think what would have happened to her.”

  Through the year they discovered there were things they didn’t like about each other. Holly thought Linda could sometimes be rather bossy, determined that her approach to something was always the best way and Linda grew to be aware of Holly’s black moods. There were times when Holly seemed to act as though they didn’t know each other at all.

  In the long hours they discovered that, although they disagreed on topics ranging from the merits of the current top of the hit parade to whether American television was better than English, they agreed on more important things like the war in Vietnam, religion and sex.

  “Have you? You know. Have you ever?” Linda hadn’t necessarily expected an answer, she wasn’t sure she would have answered honestly if Holly had asked her the same question.

  “Yeah. Once. At camp before we came here. It wasn’t great really. We’d all been drinking and this guy, I don’t think I ever knew his name, Scott or Snot or something like that.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Well, it was hot and he was all clammy, his stomach stuck to mine and it hurt when he moved, like someone pinching me.”

  “No, silly, what did it feel like?”

  “I guess I wasn’t really ready, it hurt for a bit and then it just felt like, I can’t think how to describe it, like it should have felt nicer.”

  “Not so great then?”

  “Don’t know what all the fuss is about.”

  Through the year it became obvious that if they were going to continue to be friends they must keep off the subject of Carl. Linda thought she had ownership rights on him and she didn’t like the way Holly was getting to know so much about him. Whenever he came up in conversation, which had been quite often in the early days, they argued, Linda always warning Holly not to venture into her territory ‘I like you Holly but keep your claws out of Carl’, with Holly responding that Linda didn’t own Carl. ‘I like you too Linda, but if push comes to shove I’ll probably do what I want’.

  Usually, after several minutes of silence, they would get back to work.

  The day before they were to find out the results of their A level exams Linda was sitting on the grass in the back garden, leaning against the white wicker chair. Her eyes were screwed up against the bright sunlight as she tried to read to take her mind off what was going to happen the next day. Tomorrow. Results day. Tomorrow she would find out whether all her years of education had been worth it, especially this last year when she and Holly had worked so hard. She had escaped into the garden as the house was full. Crispin and Oliver, had come back home from Oxford ‘to celebrate’ they said. She’d asked them what they’d do if she didn’t get the right grades and they’d laughed, saying success was a certainty. They’d put money on it.

  But what if she didn’t? What would she do if she didn’t get the grades for her first choice university?

  ‘What do you want to do Sociology for?’ they had asked her with the teasing tone they reserved for their young sister ‘It’s not a proper subject.’

  They hadn’t listened to her argument that she had to find a subject she liked the sound of that no one else in the family had already done. It was difficult being the last and least academic in a clever family. ‘It would be so awful to compete with you all. I don’t want to do that. I want to do something new, something that’s mine, learn things that I can tell you all that you didn’t already know.’ She thought she had persuaded them, but it was a popular course and she needed good grades to get in. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if she failed and she had to go somewhere else to do something normal; or worse, if Holly got the grades and she didn’t.

  She wanted them both to do well so they could do the same course and share the adventure of being away from home.

  Linda’s thoughts were rudely interrupted. “Hi. You reading?”

  “Hi Holly. Not really. Worrying about tomorrow, grades, the rest of my life. You know, silly things like that.”

  “What time are we supposed to be in school?”

  “9.”

  “It’ll all be over by 10.”

  “We’ll have said goodbye to everyone, found out whether the last 14 years have done their job. Know what we’ll be doing for the next 40.”

  “An important day. What are you going to wear?”

  “Nice to know you’ve got your priorities right.”

  “Yeah right! At home everyone dresses up for the last day at school. We hire stretch limos, escorts, you know, make a real thing of our last day before College. Lets do that. Go formal. Everyone else’ll be in jeans. Let’s be different.”

  “Posh frocks! Brilliant!”

  “How’ll we get there?”

  “Olly and Crisp’ll be chauffeurs, they’re up for the celebration party they think will be inevitable. They won’t mind and matching red sports cars would be so neat.”

  “Wow! No one will forget us!”

  The day that Holly Eccleston and Linda Forster arrived for their A level results in off the shoulder evening dresses, made up to the nines and escorted by two good looking young men with red sports cars became something of a legend in the school.

  It even made the papers. The local newspaper had sent a reporter to capture the happy smiles of successful pretty pupils and the tears of the less attractive ones. The editor was very happy with the photographs of Holly and Linda.

  They loved the headline when they saw it. Star Pupils. They each bought several copies of the paper, cutting out the photographs and sending them to everyone they thought might be interested.

  “2 As and a B. I
can’t believe it. All that work was worth it!” Linda had done as well as she had hoped.

  “3 Bs I can’t believe it either.”

  “Brilliant!” Oliver and Crispin hugged and kissed them both and any other girl they came across.

  After a few minutes they had said their thanks to their teachers and their goodbyes to their schooldays.

  Crispin handed Holly into the front seat of his car and sprinted round to settle into the driving seat. “I can drive a little faster now it doesn’t matter if your hair gets all messed up.”

  Holly smiled, took the pins out shook her hair out, “That’s better, can we get some air into it?”

  Crispin took that as the OK to drive the long way home. He turned out of the school gates and headed towards the sea front, three miles of road that would have little traffic on it at this time of day. He put his foot down and they sped down the promenade. He pulled over to turn around at the end of the road where the concrete gave way to sand. Putting his arm on the back of the seat to help him reverse he touched Holly’s bare shoulder.

  The tide was in, the sun was out and the moment demanded that he kissed her.

  He only pulled away from her when he heard the stern voice of a uniformed nanny telling off the giggling young boys in her charge.

  “Sorry.” He was embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why not? It was nice, you’re a great kisser and no harm done.” Holly leaned back against the leather seat “Nice as that was we’d better get back. They’ll be wondering where we’ve got to.”

  It didn’t seem to matter one way or another to Holly whether he ever kissed her again. But it did to Crispin.

  From that moment it mattered a great deal.

  The champagne was flowing and the celebration party was in full swing when they returned.

  “Somehow with it all depending on exams it seems so special.” Mary spoke proudly to Pat and Jeff. “Back home you know before you take the final tests what grades you’ll get, it’s all done on course assessments. I don’t know how you’ve stood the tension of going through this with three children.”

  “Four if you include Carl. I trust them to do as well as they can, and if they are disappointed we always know they’ve done their best.”

  “Lovely philosophy but likely only to work when you know your kids are real clever.”

  “Come on you two, fill up your glasses and congratulate these two geniuses.” Oliver and Crispin were doing the rounds with the bottles.

  “Is this a private party or can anyone join in?” A voice from the French windows interrupted them.

  “Carl! Magic!” Linda ran over, all thoughts of elegance gone as she flung her arms round Carl’s neck.

  “I wasn’t going to miss the celebrations was I? You look good enough to eat! And you too Holly.”

  There followed what they always remembered as one of the best parties ever. ‘You can have whatever music you want and as loud as you like’ had been Jeff’s rash promise, one he regretted for four hours.

  Matt and Mary’s reward for Holly, that she could spend two weeks with Linda and her brothers in Oxford, had rather longer reaching consequences.

  After the party the Ecclestons sat around the kitchen table at number 16, Holly had come home to replace her long evening dress with jeans ready to go out for the evening with Linda and the boys but Mary had stopped her rushing out of the door, telling her to sit down at the kitchen table where her father was waiting, his hands firmly wrapped around a mug of coffee.

  “Why have neither of you asked me about it?” Mary asked her husband and daughter. “What is wrong with you both? You’re so tied up in your own worlds you don’t think do you? I can understand you, Holly, you’ve had all that work to do and all your exams but Matt, what have you been doing? What have you been so wrapped up in that you haven’t even thought to ask me?”

  Matt and Holly sat looking at Mary wondering what she was talking about.

  “My contract. It was for a year. You’re making all these plans. You haven’t once asked what’s happening? You’ve left it all up to me, like you always have, like you always do.”

  Matt said nothing. He didn’t rise to the bait. He let Holly answer her Mother.

  “But…” Holly couldn’t find the words to describe her sense of panic. “I don’t want to go back! I won’t know what to do. I’ve got a place at University here. I can’t go back!”

  Matt had time to think and had decided that an argument was the best way to divert attention from either of them asking what he had actually been doing in the year they had been in England. “I told you months ago to go for an extension, don’t blame me if you didn’t get it.”

  He nearly managed to disguise how important it was to him that they stayed, but Mary knew him too well. “Why do you want to stay so badly?” She closed her eyes, pursed her lips and gently shook her head, a signal that Holly knew meant they were going to argue and she should leave.

  “Well I don’t care what you two do I’m staying here. I’ll live with Linda, at least her bloody parents talk to each other without always bloody arguing!” She stormed out of the kitchen.

  Matt had had time to recover himself “Holly needs some stability, you’ve messed up her education once it wouldn’t be fair to do that again.”

  Mary did not point out the obvious fact that it was Matt who had engineered the move the previous year. “I’m asking why you want to stay so much.” She wanted the real reason, but somehow knew she wasn’t going to get it.

  “I like it here.” He knew it sounded a very limp and unconvincing answer. “I like the people and I like the place. I like that Holly’s happy. I like that you’re happy and not so tired when you get back from work.”

  “Well it’s lucky I got offered the extension then isn’t it. But you’ll have to find a job. I don’t earn as much here as in the States, we’re nearly through our savings. I don’t know what you’ve been doing all this time, you certainly haven’t been earning anything.”

  The argument that followed was a familiar one.

  Mary would explain why they needed more money than she earned; Matt would go on the defensive explaining how he had tried to get jobs, it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t, what did she want him to do? Clean the streets? Be a garbage collector? There never was an answer.

  Certainly he never gave one.

  “I’m going to the pub. At least I have friends there, blokes I can talk to, have a laugh with. No chance of a laugh here.”

  Matt had spent a lot of time in the pub through the year.

  He had started by sitting at a table in a corner watching people, just as he had in the hotel bars in Austria a couple of years before. After a few weeks he had realised that if he got to the pub at opening time, when he was the only customer, he could talk to Glenda the barmaid.

  She told him a lot about the people in the town and, thanks to the continuing gossip in the newspapers about the attempted rape and drowning, it was quite natural that they would talk about the household at Sandhey.

  It was Glenda who first introduced him to a young man who also seemed interested in Max Fischer and the Donaldsons.

  They soon found they had a great deal in common.

  Chapter Five

  The twins had been given instructions by Pat and Jeff to use those two weeks in Oxford in the summer of 1971 to show the girls something of what their lives as students would be like. They took this to mean that their job was to get them used to spending most of their time in pubs.

  “Funny how Americans don’t know how to act in pubs.” Oliver began to explain a game he and Crispin played. Spot All the Things Americans Do Wrong in Pubs.

  “SATA DWIP we call it.”

  “They ask for a pint of your finest ale.”

  “They sit down at a table and expect to be served.”

  “They call the spotty youth behind the bar Landlord.”

  “They want ice in their whisky.”

  “They expe
ct a tab and get shirty when asked to pay for each round as they buy it.”

  “Hang on,” Holly tried to speak up for her fellow countrymen “I don’t do any of those things.”

  “But you’re not really American any more.” It was meant as a compliment.

  “It’s a pity you’re not coming up to Oxford, all this local knowledge will be wasted.” Crispin commented as they left the ninth pub in their first night’s tour of the city.

  “Leicester’s not that far away. You’ll come to visit won’t you?” Crispin made sure he was always alongside Holly, always being careful to walk on the outside of the pavement whilst keeping up a running commentary about the buildings they passed in the short distances between the many pubs they visited on that first night.

  Linda was having such a good time she didn’t notice. But Oliver did.

  As they moved from pub to pub they collected friends and acquaintances but Crispin still stuck to Holly. At closing time a large group went back to the twins’ flat and the rest of the night was spent talking and drinking coffee.

  “Is it always like this?” Holly asked Crispin as they stood in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil as it was beginning to get light. “Like what?” He leant over and lazily flicked some of her hair out of her eyes.

  “You know. Booze and talk and no-one getting any sleep.”

  “Well we’ve solved all the world’s problems haven’t we?”

  “ I do think Gerry’s ideas about Russia are a bit far-fetched. I mean ..”

  “I don’t think you were supposed to take him seriously.”

  “I suppose not. He seemed very upset about people playing cricket in pyjamas with a white ball so I don’t suppose you can take too much about what he says seriously!”

  “But that is serious! That is the end of life as we know it!”

  He intercepted her hand as it aimed a mock punch in his direction and, holding onto it, pulled her towards him and kissed her.

  She hadn’t thought of Crispin in that way at all. The kiss as he had been turning the car around on the promenade had been a one-off, it had just seemed the right thing to do at the time. This second kiss was different. She let herself enjoy it. Perhaps it was the way he gently held the back of her neck with his hand, and the way his head had to bend down for their lips to meet, but her overwhelming feeling wasn’t of desire it was of being looked after, being safe and secure. She was just relaxing into him when he was pulled away.