‘Who tried to kill her?’ He looked deadly serious.
‘No one tried to kill her, she cut herself on a vase she dropped and I had to get the doctor because she was bleeding so badly.’
‘Cor, how much blood was there? Can I see it?’ He looked as if he really expected me to have saved it just to show him.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s all cleaned up now anyway.’
‘I bet it was just like Dracula killing everyone and getting blood everywhere and then he drinks it all up.....I want to drink it all up – I’m a vampire.’ He started hunching his back and prancing around the kitchen like Quasimodo, making Dracula noises. I couldn’t believe it. Little monster.
‘Go and tell Scott I can’t see him and find out when he’ll be back,’ I snapped, getting a bit fed-up with collars and cuffs and button holes.
Scott hadn’t been sure how long they’d be away this time. We hadn’t really had chance to discuss it on the way home, and what with everything else going on this morning… I hoped he knew by now as I didn’t want to spend ages wondering. I’d enough stress already.
‘Give me some money then and I’ll go.’ Jasper held his hand out smiling.
‘No!’ I slammed the iron down and he jumped.
‘Everyone pays Simon to do stuff, so why can’t I get paid?’ He looked sullenly at me.
He was right, Simon always managed to get his palm crossed with silver when asked to do anything. I usually had to keep begging him and then, just when my patience was about to snap, he would agree to do a chore provided he got paid...by which time, if it was shopping for a meal, I had to give in because I needed him to go before Mum got back from work, and I had to have food ready for when she walked in. Little swine knew it, too.
Jasper was normally happy to do chores and never asked for anything so I wondered why the sudden demand for money.
‘What’s the money for?’ I asked him, putting the last shirt on a hanger.
‘I’m going to buy some football boots, just like Georgie Best’s got.’ He looked dreamy as he said it. ‘Mum said if I want them I have to save for them and I only get thruppence a week for pocket money, and Simon said I had to ask for money if you wanted me to do stuff for you, so how much?’
‘I’ll give you sixpence, but only this once because it’s important, but don’t ever ask me again, and you can tell Simon that I shall be telling Dad about his little racket, so he can forget getting any more out of me!’ I raised my voice. ‘I have to earn my money doing work AND pay for all my own stuff. I don’t get pocket money, and I don’t see why I should pay anyone to do things for Mum either.’
I closed the ironing board with a clatter and slammed the hot iron on the draining board with a bang.
Jasper looked sheepish and shuffled, ‘Sorry Renza, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘I’m not cross at you, don’t worry. Wait while I get my purse.’ I smiled at him, and patted his blond head. He was harmless, and such a smiler I could never be cross with him for long.
Simon on the other hand…
Renza’s Diary
June 30th 1968 – later the same day
Jasper handed me a note from Scott later that afternoon telling me he wasn’t sure how long they’d be in Scotland, but he would see me when he got back and he hoped Mum would be all right. He’d got dates for the cruise, somewhere in the Mediterranean lasting for about ten days he thought. He wished I could go with him. He’d signed it ‘All My Love xxxx’
Fat chance, I thought as I read it for the millionth time. Four kisses must mean something, and ‘All My Love’ was good, I told myself. I would love to go on a cruise, somewhere romantic, with long sunny days, warm balmy nights.
‘Make sure you put salt in the potatoes,’ Mum shouted, breaking into my daydreams. ‘I know you and your salt-free nonsense. I’m not eating anything I can’t taste.’
I’d been up and down the stairs to her all day taking orders for this or that to be done, taking her coffee and reporting on what I had been up to since the last time I’d been summoned. My legs were killing me and I was totally fed-up with being at her beck and call all the time. I just wished she’d go to sleep and not wake up!
I’d already done the potatoes and made the rest of the dinner.
‘All under control Mum,’ I yelled back from the bottom of the stairs.
‘No need to shout, I’m not deaf!’ Loss of blood hadn’t affected her voice.
I went down the garden to get some mint for the potatoes and saw Donald Digby sitting in a deck chair doing something with a transistor radio; it looked as if he was repairing it. He looked up as I bent to pick the mint near the fence.
‘Heard your mum tried to kill herself this morning, Mum told me. Said your mum found out about your dad having an affair.’
‘What?’ I stood up horrified. ‘Your mum said what?’
‘Yeah she heard it in the village. Your dad’s been gone a long time now and Mum heard he’d got some foreign bird and run off with her, and your mum cut her wrists when she found out.’ He put the radio down and stood up, moving towards the fence.
‘Well, you can tell your mum and the bush telegraph that my dad has not run off with anyone, he’s working in Germany as you well know, and we are all going over soon. And as for cutting her wrists, Mum caught a crystal vase with her arms and it smashed.’
I wanted to smash his sniggering face in.
‘Yeah, well you would say that wouldn’t you, but Mum and Peg heard it from someone in the chemist who heard the doctor telling Mr Blackmore she wasn’t going to be in to work, and that you’d saved her life.’
His face was all twisted and horrid and I really felt I wanted to do him a physical mischief.
Donald was up close now and he reached across the fence and grabbed my left hand and gave it a nasty twist backwards. I yelled out in pain and he grabbed my other hand and twisted that at the same time. I thought I’d faint.
‘Ouch, stop it, what are you doing that for?’ I cried, sure he’d broken my fingers and my wrist. My eyes were filling with tears and the more I tried to get away from his grip, the tighter he held me and twisted.
‘Think you’re all so posh and better than us, you stupid cow,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘You’re the village tart, Mum says, showing it all off for everyone to see.’
‘Get lost, Donald, and let go of me or I’ll get Mum to call the police.’ I couldn’t think what else to say. The pain was unbearable.
‘Suicide is a crime, your mum will go to prison if it gets out what she tried to do,’ he threatened, ‘so you won’t be telling anyone.’
‘What’s wrong with you? You’re always trying to hurt me, you little shit.’ I struggled, and eventually he let go of one wrist but as I tried to get my other one free, he grabbed it and started to give me a Chinese burn. I yelled at the top of my voice.
‘Hey! You, leave my Donald alone, you little hussy.’ Mrs Digby opened their sitting room window and stuck her head out. ‘Not content with flaunting yourself all over that long-haired lot next door, you’re interfering with my Donald as well.’ She looked puce with rage.
‘Interfering with your Donald – you must be joking!’ I cried rubbing my wrists now that he’d let go.
Donald stood back from me looking suitably shocked at being interfered with; big wide-eyes appealing to his mummy. I could just imagine him saying something like, ‘Mummy make her stop, I don’t like it,’ or some such rubbish!
I glared at him and he gave me a look of triumph as Mr Digby came round the side of their house. ‘You, get away from my son, you little tramp.’
Tears filled my eyes and with a huge lump in my throat I just shook my head, and turned and ran back inside, the mint left on the path where it had fallen.
‘What the hell is going on down there?’ Attila the Hun shouted from upstairs as I closed the back door. ‘You flirting with that drip next door now?’
I leaned against the kitchen door, tears streaming down
my face.
Please, Scott, come and take me away from this place and these bloody people. Please.
Stella’s Diary
July 1st 1968
‘So, what are you going to do?’ Vix, my best friend, stared at me. ‘Are you going to tell Mike you can’t go to Cornwall? Seriously, Stella – look at you. What if this happens while you’re away?’
It was late afternoon and I was in bed. At home. My lovely, scruffy, untidy, animal-filled, happy home. My refuge.
I really loved my bedroom – all sunflower yellow walls and curtains and buttercream paintwork. Like sunshine. Actually, outside it was quite dark and raining gentle summer rain. The transistor radio on my bedside cabinet was playing softly. The Alan Price Set ‘Please Don’t Stop the Carnival’. I loved that song. It painted such vivid pictures. It was all very cosy.
I’d had a really bad attack at work and had fainted in the office. I’d been sent first to the on-site medical centre, and then driven home by one of the lady chauffeurs in one of the huge shiny limousines the Atomic used for visiting dignitaries. Doubled-up in pain on the back seat I’d totally failed to appreciate the sheer luxuriousness of my transport – but I did manage to say a big thank you to the lovely lady driver who had helped me indoors and then rushed off, presumably before I could be sick on her pristine navy uniform.
Our next-door-neighbour had run across to the school to tell my mum, Dr Kingston had been sent for, and visited, and prescribed Aspro, a hot water bottle and bed-rest until the spasms passed. My mum, having arrived home from school just in time to listen to Dr Kingston, then see her out of the front door, had poo-pooed the Aspro idea and had given me two Feminax tablets instead.
Luckily you didn’t need a doctor’s prescription for Feminax. You could buy them over the counter at the chemist and they contained morphine and I’d taken them for years when my periods were really bad. They not only killed the pain within minutes but had me flying high as a kite.
‘Far better than Aspro,’ Mum had said, straightening the eiderdown, making sure my hot water bottle wasn’t too hot, and that I had a glass of Lucozade and a pile of books to hand. ‘I’m not sure Dr Kingston knows what she’s doing with you, Stell. I’ll be glad when you get the appointment at the Churchill. Are you ok, love? Need anything else?’
‘No, thanks Mum. I’ll just rest. And if Vix comes round please tell her to come up. Even if I’m asleep.’
‘Of course,’ Mum smiled kindly at me. ‘And don’t worry, love. You’ll soon be better.’
Now Vix, who was very pretty, tall and slim, with Cilla Black hair, and with her acid-green shift dress barely covering her bottom, was perched on the end of my bed, accompanied by one of our dogs and two of the cats. Vix and I had met on the first day at infants school and had been best friends ever since. We told each other everything and I trusted her with my life.
I shrugged. ‘I’m playing it all by ear at the moment. I mean, Patsy has booked it all anyway, and I don’t have to make up my mind for another few weeks. I’ve got some money saved but I’m not paying it until I know I can go. And if I get a hospital appointment, then – ‘
‘Shut up!’ Vix laughed. ‘We both know that’s not what I meant. Well, it was sort of – because one, I think you’re mad to be going away with people you don’t really like, and two, I reckon if you were ill on holiday Mike and the other two would just leave you to it, and three, how dare Patsy make arrangements for your holiday without even asking you, and four, Mike was even worse for conveniently forgetting to mention it – but, actually, I was really meaning the bed-sharing thing.’
‘Oh, God – I’m not thinking about that. I can’t think about it. Not now. Probably not ever.’
Vix sighed. ‘Do you love Mike?’
‘Yes, of course I do… well, you know – I think I do… Oh, I don’t know… I like him loads, and I’d hate it if he wasn’t around – but…’
‘There shouldn’t even be a but,’ Vix said primly. ‘If you love someone you just know – there’s no ifs and buts. Like me and Jeff. We just know. We’ve always known. Anyway, you could do so much better than Mike. He’s…’
‘Boring, unreliable, selfish and self-obsessed,’ I finished with a grin. ‘I know. So you keep saying. He loves you too.’
‘Well, he’s not my choice – and I’m not going to interfere – but I still think he’s a bit of a weasel and you could do so much better. Anyway, if you go off on this holiday, and if you’re thinking of having sex again then you’ll have to get yourself on the pill – can you imagine the disaster of being pregnant with Mike’s baby?’
‘Bloody hell!’ I snorted with horrified laughter. ‘That’s never going to happen – not in a million years – I’m never having sex again! And I thought you were supposed to be cheering me up.’
Vix was on the pill. As soon as it became available the previous year, Vix had gone to Dr Kingston. Of course, being an old fuddy-duddy and “you’re not a married woman” type doctor, Dr Kingston had refused to prescribe it, so we’d caught the train to Reading and gone to the Brook Advisory Centre.
Vix had said it was the mature and sensible thing to do. I’d simply sat in the waiting room, surrounded by girls – and some boys – all of whom looked years younger than me, and read the posters on the walls and hoped I’d never have to decide about contraception or sex or anything else in that line ever.
And after the fiasco in the caravan, nothing had so far changed my mind.
I snuggled further under the eiderdown. ‘The thing is, I reckon, that if I met someone, and fell madly, crazily, deliriously in love at first sight – I mean, all trumpets and confetti and celestial choirs love at first sight – then I’d actually want to make love with them, and it would be sensational, and everything else in the relationship would just fall into place.’
Vix peered at me. ‘And you’re away with the fairies! How many Feminax have you taken? That sort of thing only happens in your stories – it never, ever happens in real life.’
‘No…’ I sighed drowsily, ‘but wouldn’t it be fabulous if it did…?’
Renza’s Diary
July 2nd 1968
Narnia’s Children’s van was not in the car park behind the shops when I looked this morning and it was still not there at lunchtime. Jasper had been round to their flat twice to see if they had returned and had bumped into a girl letting herself in with a key. After asking her if she wanted to play football, and apparently being told where to shove the football, he got the message and came back to tell me.
‘I dunno who she is, she was horrid to me, so I don’t like her,’ he told me when I cross-examined him for about the tenth time, trying to glean more information from him. Trouble is, he soon caught on and started to embellish the story each time he told it.
‘She’s a famous singer and she’s married to Scott,’ was his parting shot as he sped out of the garden where I was hanging washing. His instincts are good; he knew I was about to clout him.
I strained to see if the girl was on the balcony but there was no sign of her. I spent the whole morning worrying about who she was. Perhaps it was ‘The Bitch,’ perhaps she wasn’t history after-all. Scott told me he had a girlfriend back in Jersey, Marion, whom he’d dumped soon after he set eyes on me, and he said she had taken it badly and made all sorts of threats, so I couldn’t help wondering if she had come over to ‘do me a mischief’, which apparently she promised to do if she ever came across me. Mo told me on the quiet that Scott had been engaged to Marion. Oh cripes, I hope it wasn’t her. Surely he’d have told me she was coming.
Mum was up and about and not in a good frame of mind. She wanted me to go with her to town and get some new shoes and some stockings to take to Germany. She wasn’t sure what the choice might be like over there, or if there was even a shoe shop anywhere near where we’d be living, so to be safe she wanted to get some whilst she had the chance. Nan was going to keep an eye on the kids.
I was over the moon at the thought
of shopping with her. It normally ended up in a row.
We went out for the bus at noon and joined quite a long queue, all of whom knew Mum, and greeted her as we walked up. I just got the evil eye. I guess it was my purple mini dress and long white lace-up boots, judging from the looks I got, and the various sniggers I heard. Mum had gone on and on about me wearing boots in the middle of summer, but according to Marjorie Proops’s newspaper column, everyone was wearing them. Some girls had mums like mine and so the ‘Problem Page’ was full of girls asking for advice about parents, and rows over clothes. Mum only gave in because she was worried we’d miss the bus.
I stood to one side whilst Mum and some of her old school chums chatted about this and that, and now and again I caught one of them glaring at me disapprovingly. I pretended not to notice, besides my feet were getting very hot inside my boots and I really needed to scratch my heel. Pride would not allow me to have a go at it though. Besides, I daren’t bend over in case I showed the tops of my stockings. It was bad enough trying to keep my suspenders from showing. I really wanted to see if they had some tights for sale in the shoe shop. I’d seen some in the paper; they are going to be the next big thing, doing away with having to wear stockings and suspenders they say, so I want to see if I can buy some if they are not too dear. I’ve not told Mum in case she thinks they are too tarty.
Old Ma Lee was chatting to Mum and throwing her hands up in the air every now and then as she told her some story or other. I hadn’t been listening but I could see some of the other ladies in the queue giggling on the sly, so I moved a little closer to eavesdrop.
Old Ma Lee was one of the local Gypsies whose family had been in the village over a hundred years and Mum knew her really well, having been classmates with some of Ma’s grandchildren at school. The old Gypsy was in her usual long black skirt, men’s army boots with a black trilby hat on her head, grey shawl draped over her shoulders held in place with a huge red semi-precious stone given to her by her grandmother, so she’d told us once before. Ma had a huge wicker basket over her arm and a blue and white gingham table-cloth covering the contents of the basket.
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