by Jane Davis
'Quiet back there!' the secretary called from behind her toughened glass screen, glaring. Laura's head dipped forwards, showing off her neck and the fine, downy hairs that had strayed from the band that was holding them in place. Her shoulders shook slightly, a tell-tale sign that she was hiding her face so that the secretary couldn't see that she was laughing. I could see down the back of her loose-fitting collar to the dark hollow between her wing-bones. I focused on this to take my mind off my bladder. Minutes passed and we shuffled forward.
'Sorry I'm late, miss,' she recited perfectly pleasantly, but without a hint of apology in her voice. 'Laura Albury, Year 2, Form B, Miss Simpson.' I could hear her smiling as she spoke and admired her easy-going manner.
'Laura Albury,' the secretary repeated, looking down the register. 'This is the second time you've been late this month. I don't want to see you in this queue again.'
'No, miss,' she agreed wholeheartedly.
'Laura Albury, Laura Albury, Laura Albury,' I was practising when she turned around and, away from the glare of the school secretary, stuck her tongue out at me, before moving away to the right. I was not the sort of boy that girls stuck their tongues out at. That was when I wet myself.
Chapter Fifteen
Laura was not vain for vanity's sake, but her mother had drummed into her from the word go that she wasn't a particularly bright child and that what she had going for her were her looks and her manners. She was groomed to make the most of both.
'Say thank you, Laura. Your looks will open doors for you, mark my words. But think of all the doors that will open if you're beautiful and charming.'
'Thank you, Mummy.'
'You're my little treasure.' And she was rewarded with a kiss on her forehead.
Sadly, her sister Faye lacked the looks, the manners and the desire to please, but she was more intelligent, witty and sharper.
'Faye came top of her year again, Mummy,' Laura announced.
'Well, she's always been my clever girl.' Her mother was not dismissive of Faye's achievements but expectations were high. The fact was that she didn't need to try as hard as others and her teachers were frustrated by the apparent ease with which she breezed through school. They expected her to demonstrate a bit more effort. It was not uncommon for her to be given top grades but still be told to try harder. No one expected anything of Laura academically, but she was never short of praise when she did well.
Both sisters envied each other. Who doesn't want to be loved by everyone they meet? Who wouldn't prefer to be more than just a pretty face? These labels, like my birth-name, affected the girls. Laura didn't stretch herself at school, believing that the future for her would be secondary modern followed by a secretarial course, a white wedding and babies. Faye shied away from the limelight and seemed to almost deliberately make herself ugly.
Mrs Albury counted on Laura's looks attracting the right kind of man from the right kind of background who could provide a good future for her. In her naivety, she didn't seem to realize that those looks would attract all kinds of men. There is no doubt that Laura was used to being admired from an early age – and that she lapped up the attention, particularly attention of the male variety. It was how she looked for approval.
'Laura,' her mother said as she made her stand on a kitchen chair so that she could let down the hem of her skirt, 'I want you to wear this dress when your Uncle Colin and Aunty Barbara come over on Saturday evening. You can stay up a bit later than usual so that you can say hello. I think you'll look lovely with your hair in bunches and that pink ribbon we bought you. What do you think, Faye?' She turned to face the empty space where her younger daughter had been standing in the doorway. 'Faye! You're next. I need to look at the length of your dress too! Where's she got to?'
Laura would often be rewarded with an invitation to sit on a lap, which her mother didn't object to, or a small gift of pocket money or chocolate, which her mother actively encouraged her to accept.
'Oh, isn't that kind, Laura! What do you say?' Mrs Albury would prompt her to accept the coins.
'Thank you very much.'
'Good girl!' She would then instruct, 'Now, why don't you go and put that in your piggy bank now so that you don't lose it. Then you can come back and kiss everyone goodnight.'
Adults, both men and women, were tactile with Laura and she reciprocated. She was lucky. No one took advantage of her trusting disposition. But what a dangerous lesson to teach a child!
Outwardly, you would not have known that she had a confidence problem. Inwardly, she worried that she would never amount to much and became a grabber of opportunities, without really judging what was right for her. As she grew older, she worried that her luck would run out when her looks ran out. She believed that she only had until the age of thirty to get her life in order, and then it would all be over. Again, this idea was planted by her mother, who blamed her daughters for the loss of her own hourglass figure, conveniently forgetting that there were a number of years between the time when the girls were born and her own thirtieth birthday. When her parents had finished shamelessly showing Laura off, it was her sister she confided in and shared her small rewards with. Faye was not encouraged to dress up and meet her parents' visitors. Faye was denied similar opportunities to shine but I suspect that she would have hated being asked to perform. From the safety of their bedroom or sitting at the top of the stairs peering through the banisters, she listened to the raucous laughter and raised voices, punctuated by snippets of Elvis and Lonnie Donegan.
I remember how my own parents once asked me to recite some poetry that I had learned for school to one of their friends. I found it so embarrassing that I deliberately fluffed a couple of lines to avoid being asked again. It worked a treat. The last thing that parents want to show their friends is that the son they have been boasting about cannot remember words in the right order.
'I wouldn't have had anything decent to wear even if I had wanted to join in,' Faye complained as the sisters retold the stories of life in the Albury household.
Laura's recollection differed. 'Oh, come on, Faye!' She brushed this aside. 'I helped make my clothes out of things that Mum was ready to throw out. It's not like I had anything new and you missed out.'
'They were new to you. I always had to make do with your hand-me-downs.'
I suspect that there was truth in both sides of the story, but there is no doubt that the two sisters were treated very differently.
Laura was one of those rare people who was happy with her lot in life. And if she woke up occasionally feeling slightly out of sorts, she would put on her best dress and take a walk into town. It wouldn't be long before she would attract some admiring glances, and she fed off them like a flower turning towards the light. When I was with her I was alternately proud and embarrassed by the attention she attracted. Depending on my mood I would find myself grinning compulsively or glaring at the whistling wolves. Once, I felt the need to ask, 'Do you really like all this attention? Wouldn't you be happier to blend into the background?'
She replied, a little hurt, even a little shocked that I hadn't realized, 'But this is all I have and by the time I'm thirty it will be gone.'
'Oh, come on!' I almost took this as a joke.
'You don't have to worry about that sort of thing. It's not the same for men.'
No matter how much I protested, she wouldn't be pacified. It made me furious when I discovered that not only was she serious, but it was her mother who had taught her to think that way. What could she have become given the right encouragement? Laura was so much more than just a pretty face. It's a crying shame that she didn't know it.
Chapter Sixteen
As a boy, I expected that I would have to adore Laura from afar, but this idea was quickly quashed. I had no idea what qualities Laura recognized in me at that first meeting or if she simply treated everyone the same. I would seek her out among the sea of faces in the school assembly hall where we gathered daily for morning prayer. It was known more co
mmonly as 'morning mumblings', because we would set ourselves the challenge of getting through an entire prayer without saying a single recognizable word. Knowing what was to come, an invitation from the headmaster to stand and say the Lord's Prayer was enough to cause an epidemic of giggles. Laura always found some way of acknowledging me without drawing attention to herself. It became clear that she had perfected her winking and discreet tongue-sticking-out routine. When I attempted it, I just looked as if I had something in my eye.
If I spotted her in the school playground, I would have been far too nervous to approach a group of girls, but she greeted me with a wave.
'Who are you waving at?' one of her friends asked, sensing a whiff of scandal.
'That's my friend Pete,' she replied simply, killing it dead. There was never any of that sniggering you got from some groups of girls when one of them has waved to a boy as a joke to show him up.
When we passed each other in a corridor, it was our custom to address each other by our full names, even though I was usually plain Pete.
'Hello, Peter Churcher.'
'Hello, Laura Albury.'
You could never have accused Laura of being plain.
Walking home, she would turn round and wait once she knew I was there. One day she called after me and asked me to wait for her, and I knew that the balance had shifted. If nothing else, it seemed that we were going to be proper friends.
'I thought you'd never stop.' She was panting heavily, and put her hand on my shoulder to catch her breath. 'Didn't you hear me? I've been calling after you for ages.'
I wasn't used to being touched and I was literally frozen to the spot.
'Thank you!' She interpreted my body language as a sign of someone being considerate. 'I'm never going to make the netball team at this rate.' The vibrations of her laughter ran down her arm and passed through me like an electric shock, and I woke from my stupor.
'Race you to the end of the road.'
'No! I can't run any more! You'd beat me.'
'Do you think I'd ask you otherwise?'
'You're a rotter, Pete Churcher, that's what you are. A rotter.'
'What is a rotter? Is it like a Rottweiler?'
'Depends what a Rottweiler is.'
'A dog the size of a pony with even bigger teeth.'
'You're making that up. Never heard of it. It's like that time you told me that they're going to send a man to the moon. No, you're a rotter, as in rotten, mean, nasty. Look it up in that dictionary of yours.' Coming from the mouth of Laura, any adjective sounded like a compliment to my ears.
There is no doubt that knowing the prettiest girl in the school does wonders for your reputation, both with the boys and the girls. Because of her, I was finally someone.
'Was that Laura Albury I saw you walking to school with?'
'Yes.'
'How do you know her?'
'You're Pete, aren't you? I'm one of Laura's friends, Cathy.'
'Hello, Cathy.'
'She says you're probably the nicest boy she knows.'
If life at home was dreary, I was happy at school. Our family life was largely unaffected by what went on in the outside world. My father's life ran to a routine timetable, punctuated by small rituals. A daily paper with his breakfast of porridge and tea. A pipe in his favourite armchair on return from work. Dinner on the table at six sharp. The rented television set was switched on once a day to warm up five minutes before the start of the Nine O'Clock News on BBC1. (We were always a BBC household – my father never converted to ITV.)
'Where's my shirt for tomorrow?' my father would demand as soon as the News was over.
'All ready for you, starched and ironed just the way you like it.' My mother would run to fetch it for him as willingly as a trainee trying to impress a new boss at work, but she was rarely rewarded with praise or even a mere thank you.
He would inspect it and only when he had assured himself that it was satisfactory would he carry it upstairs and arrange it on a wooden hanger, adjusting the collar and shoulders as carefully as if he was actually dressing himself for work. He was a man of the if-a-job's- worth-doing-it's-worth-doing-properly school of thought. My mother lived in fear of accidentally forgetting something that she should have done, and her fear was so great that it actually stopped her from doing anything other than wait on him hand and foot. The four walls of the house marked the confines of her world. The more tragedies she heard about on the Nine O'Clock News – the Great Train Robbery, the assassination of President Kennedy – the more nervous she became and the happier she was to keep it that way.
School was my one distraction. And then the eleven-plus changed everything. I almost considered deliberately failing in the hope that I would be kept back a year, but I dreaded the thought of letting my parents down. Having put their single egg in one basket, expectations were high and I was constantly reminded of the sacrifices they had made for me. Besides, I had a certain acceptance of the inevitable. Even if it wasn't this year, I couldn't stall for ever.
When I left St Winifred's for grammar school in 1963, it was in the knowledge that there would be no more waves, no more walks, no more exchange of confidences and, quite possibly, no more Laura Albury. She still had a year to go and I doubted that there would be any shortage of boys queuing up to carry her bags for her. I was right. Whenever I saw her again, she was never alone. Always friendly to a fault, but never alone.
'Hello, Peter Churcher,' she would say with that same bright smile, but that had been our way of talking when it was just the two of us.
'Hello, Laura.' I couldn't bring myself to join in.
Even if I could have found the courage to ask her out, we were too young to be dating, but too old to be childhood friends. If I hadn't deliberately engineered our meetings, there was no way that I would have seen her at all.
Imagine how I felt when I saw a card in the newsagent's looking for a boy for the early-morning paper round that included her road. It was the perfect excuse to cycle past her house every day. If I left her road until last, there was a good chance that I would see Laura as she walked the family's Labrador, Barney, before school. The girls took it in turns, so I was soon on nodding terms with Faye, her shyness eliminating the need for much in the way of conversation. If there was an ambassador for the Albury family, it was Laura.
Not wanting to look too obvious, I sometimes pretended that I hadn't seen her.
'Pete!' she called after me as I sailed past. I looked back to see her broad smile and her wave. I took my time turning round and cycled back as casually as possible.
'You just rode right past Barney and me.' She smiled. 'We might think you're deliberately ignoring us.'
'I didn't see you. You were hidden behind the cars.'
'I could see you just fine.'
'I must have been higher up on my bike.'
'Rotter!' She laughed. 'Have you got time to go my way to school?'
I pretended to look at my watch to check if she would be disappointed. 'I should be just about all right.'
'I know how you hate being late. I'll just let Barney back in.'
After school, I occasionally changed my route home to cycle by St Winifred's and see if I could spot her. Pretending to have been on an errand, I would stop and we would walk home just as we used to. I don't know why I found it impossible to say, 'I thought I'd come and walk you home, just like the old days.' It was the same when I bumped into her at the weekends. Instead of saying 'Would you like an ice cream?' the words that would actually tumble out of my mouth were, 'I was about to get an ice cream. Shall I get you one while I'm at it?'
She'd start to search for her purse, saying, 'Hang on, I know I've got enough money here somewhere.'
'I've just got my paper-round money,' I would say, feeling extravagant. 'You get them next time.'
Although the end result might have been the same, Laura complained years later that I had never once told her how I felt about her. It's possible that by making our meetings appea
r to be accidental, I just didn't make her feel special enough.
Chapter Seventeen
When I discuss relationships with other people, they tell me you never love the second or third time around as passionately as you do the first. How, after being hurt, you learn to put up defences, your own invisible force field. Not consciously perhaps. Not even obviously. But they are there, nonetheless. How would I know? I have only ever been in love once. Although you may not think that I was lucky in love, I know that I was fortunate enough to fall in love with the right girl and that my love lasted for the best part of forty years. How many people can claim that?
I am currently working on a divorce case for an undeniably beautiful client – let's call her Michelle. When she walked into my book-lined office in a well-cut suit and high heels, hair smoothed back tightly from her face and a shade of pink lipstick just on the right side of good taste, I thought she lit up the room. Then I began to notice her hard edges. Gradually, I am beginning to think she looks more and more like a stick-insect in drag.
'Where do we start?' she asked, straight down to business.
When I suggested that she told me everything she thought was relevant, I got rather more than I bargained for. She told me how in her teens she had been very insecure and that this expressed itself as jealousy. She imagined that her boyfriend – let's call him Brendan – had a bit of a roving eye. She thought that when he was with her, his eyes should have been on her only. In her mind, he had already betrayed her. She did what she thought every girl had to do to keep her man happy, and a bit more besides. As she gave little pieces of herself away, his confidence grew. She became the needy one, looking for reassurance that he loved her at every opportunity, but his replies were never enough. One day, looking for a stronger reaction, she went as far as accusing him of having the hots for another girl, a friend of his family. A month later she sees them kissing. He denies it. She won't let it rest. Two weeks down the line she discovers them in bed together. Brendan says, 'You drove me away. Before you mentioned her, I didn't even know who she was.' Michelle is adamant. She had always known that one day he would cheat on her.
