Folly's Child

by Janet Tanner

‘There’s nothing on the radio. I want to get a book.’

  ‘Well hurry up and leave us alone.’

  ‘Oh, chérie, don’t be so hard on her!’ Louise said, still pounding away at what she considered to be her fat legs. Louise was French and luscious, as every male in the district between the ages of fourteen and eighty-four would testify – most from wishful thinking but quite a number from experience. Louise was what was known as an ‘ exchange student’; at home in Nîmes she was training to be an English teacher and she was doing a year’s exchange as part of her course, teaching French conversation at the local grammar school. She and Paula, who was in the sixth form, had struck up a close relationship; when Louise was not occupied in tantalising and inflaming some poor young man she and Paula were always together, drinking endless cups of espresso coffee to the accompaniment of Elvis and Cliff and Tommy Steele on the juke-box in the Black Cat Coffee Bar, haring about on Louise’s smart little Lambretta scooter, or simply spending an evening painting one another’s toenails, plucking one another’s eyebrows and generally trying to make themselves even more fatally attractive to the opposite sex, which, without doubt, they already were.

  ‘You are not kind to your little seester!’ Louise said reprovingly. ‘Don’t stand in the doorway, Sally, come in. Come in quickly or the smell of smoke will go downstairs, will it not?’

  ‘Oh no!’ Paula wailed. ‘ If Mum finds out I’ve been smoking she’ll kill me. Don’t you dare tell her either, Sally, or I’ll kill you!’

  ‘Of course I won’t tell. But she’s bound to smell the smoke anyway.’

  ‘She won’t. It’s going up the chimney. And if you stay you’re not to tell her what we’re talking about either. Go on. Louise, you were telling me about Roger Clarke. Is he a fast worker? Everybody says he is.’

  Louise giggled, ‘’ee theenks ’ee is. But I could teach ’im a thing or two. All he wants to do is to get his hand inside my blouse or up my skirt, but if I gave him the chance to do anything more he’d be so scared he’d wet his pants.’

  ‘You wouldn’t let him though, would you?’

  ‘I might. And then again I might not.’ Louise gave her thigh one more enthusiastic pummel, then sat up. ‘There – that ees better. Do you want a go with this theeng, Paula?’

  ‘No, it’s made your legs go all red.’

  ‘That will soon go. And it’s better than being fat. But then, you are not fat, are you, Paula?’ She gazed enviously at Paula’s long legs, slim and shapely in the skin-tight pedal pushers. ‘ What about you, Sally? Do you want to try?’

  ‘Don’t encourage her,’ Paula warned.

  ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t Sally look nice too?’ She turned to Sally, who was kneeling in the corner beside her bookcase, trying to make herself unobtrusive. ‘Come on, Sally, let me look at you. You ’ave fat legs like me. We big girls must stick together.’

  Sally was unsure whether to be pleased that Louise was including her or annoyed that she had called her fat. She wasn’t fat, but then neither was Louise, so perhaps it was all right.

  She slipped out of her cotton skirt and the enormously full paper nylon petticoat she wore beneath it. It lay like a great wounded butterfly on the rug. Then she sat on the bed, trying not to wince as Louise rubbed cream into her thighs and pounded at them enthusiastically.

  ‘What are you wearing to the youth club dance on Saturday night, Louise?’ Paula asked, stubbing out her cigarette and concealing the end in an empty lozenge tin she used as an ashtray.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know …’

  The older girls drifted off into one of their exclusive conversations and Sally bit her lip against the rasp of Louise’s massager and wished desperately that she could go to the youth club dance too. Not only would it make her feel almost as grown up as Paula and Louise, but Pete Jackson, with whom Sally was hopelessly in love, was certain to be there.

  Pete was in her form at school and whenever she looked at him little quivers she could not identify started deep inside her. Sometimes she thought from the way he seemed to watch her that he might like her too but he had never said anything and Sally was beginning to be afraid he never would. But if they were to meet away from school, out of uniform, no longer under the watchful eye of the masters and mistresses in their chalk-marked black gowns, then maybe it would be different.

  ‘Do you think Mum would let me come too?’ she asked.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Paula said quickly.

  ‘There is someone you fancy?’ Louise asked perceptively, and when Sally blushed she turned to Paula. ‘Oh, we could tell your mother we will look after her. Then she would let her go, no?’

  ‘No!’ Paula protested. Most of her life, it seemed to her, she had been hampered by having to look after Sally and she had no intention of having her Saturday evening’s fun spoiled. There was a boy she fancied herself – Jeff Freeman – and she was busy laying plans to entice him away from his steady girlfriend. The presence of her kid sister would inhibit her horribly. ‘She hasn’t got anything to wear anyway’, she continued scathingly.

  ‘Then I shall lend her something of mine. We are about the same size, no? I shall make her so beautiful no boy will be able to resist.’ She ran the massager up the inside of Sally’s thigh again but suddenly it did not hurt any more. As the rim brushed her groin Sally felt a sharp sweet pleasure which seemed to shoot up inside her on silken cords to that deep core where the trickles of excitement played every time-she thought of Pete. As Louise moved away she experienced a powerful urge to grab the massager and tug it close to her secret places again but she did not dare. She just lay thinking how wonderful it would be if she could actually make Pete notice her. It had always seemed such an impossible dream, but with Louise talking about it so matter-of-factly it seemed almost a fait accompli.

  Much to Paula’s annoyance Louise persuaded Gwen Bristow to allow Sally to go to the dance. Sally was triumphant, but by the time Saturday came she was almost sick with excitement and apprehension.

  Oh, if only she looked more like Paula! she thought longingly. If only she could lose her puppy fat and get her hair done at a proper salon instead of having it cut by Ivy Tucker who lived down the road and who did hairdressing for pin money. But it wasn’t easy to lose puppy fat when Mum fed her on stodgy good home cooking – stews with dumplings and meat pies with pastry crusts and steamed sponge puddings, and there was no money to spare for proper hairdressing salons. Sally knew her mother had trouble making ends meet on the nine pounds ten shillings a week that her father brought home from his job as an electrician’s mate and she didn’t have the heart to plead for luxuries she knew they could not afford as Paula did. Too often she had seen her mother frowning with anxiety as she divided the contents of her father’s wage packet up between the jars labelled ‘ Rent’ and ‘Electric’ and ‘ Coal Money’, too often at the end of the week she had watched her count out the pennies for a pound of sausages only to be able to buy just a half-pound, two for her father, one each for Paula and Sally, and only the scrapings of the pan to go with her own potatoes.

  ‘When I grow up I’ll make sure I’ve always got enough money for a whole pound of sausages and eggs to go with them,’ Sally thought, but she never said anything. She did not want to add to her mother’s troubles.

  At four o’clock Louise arrived on her scooter and parked it outside the Bristow’s council house. The house was semi-detached, which put them on a higher social level than the people who lived in the long uniform ranks, a pleasant, gravel-faced house which had been built after the war and which had a good sized garden back and front, three bedrooms, a bathroom – and an outside toilet, coal house and glory hole. Sally loved the house. Before moving into it the family had lived with Sally’s grandparents and it had been very cramped. Their grandparents had made the lounge into a bedroom so that Grandad didn’t have to do the stairs with his bad legs and a bedroom had been turned into a sitting room and furnished with a table, chairs and sideboard that her parents h
ad acquired when they got married though they had no house to put it in. When Paula and Sally played records on the wind-up gramophone in the sitting room Grandad banged on the ceiling with his stick to warn them to be quieter.

  After this the council house seemed the height of luxury to Sally. She kept rabbits in a hutch in the back garden behind the rows of cabbages and the clump of rhubarb and did not mind at all that in winter she had to wash at night in a bowl set on a sheet of brown paper in front of the living room fire because there was no heater in the bathroom.

  Louise was carrying a large bag which she had managed to balance on the handlebars of her scooter. Paula and Sally took her straight up to their bedroom.

  ‘Thees is the dress I bring for you,’ she announced, pulling it out of its tissue paper and spreading it, slightly creased, on the bed. ‘You like it?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Sally gasped. It was a beautiful dress, white seersucker dotted with small mauve flowers. It had a deep ‘sweetheart’ neckline, little puffed sleeves and a full skirt gathered into three tiers.

  Next out of the bag came a paper nylon petticoat with many more layers of frothy rainbow-coloured net than the one Sally carefully washed in sugar water after each wearing, and then, to Sally’s delight, a saucy little white basque, boned and trimmed with lace.

  ‘She can’t possibly wear that!’ Paula exclaimed, scandalised. ‘She’s much too young – and it will never fit her, anyway.’

  ‘Of course it will. It fits me. And with this dress she needs a tiny waist. Why can’t she wear it?’

  ‘You could have lent it to me,’ Paula said, peeved.

  ‘No, it is for Sally. Please try it on, Sally.’

  Sally held her breath as Louise fastened the multitude of little hooks and eyes and tried not to notice the little roll of fat that squeezed out above and below it.

  ‘Now the petticoat.’ It rustled satisfyingly. ‘And the dress … well, what do you think, Sally?’

  Sally tipped the dressing table mirror to get a view first of her top half, then her lower.

  ‘It’s lovely – but what about shoes? Mine are clumsy and awful.’

  Louise dived into her carrier bag again. ‘ Voila!’ she said, producing a pair of strappy white sandals.

  Sally squeezed her feet into them and surveyed her image again. Unbelievable! Just wait until Pete saw her! He was certain to ask her to dance when she looked like this!

  ‘Now – your hair,’ Louise said matter-of-factly. ‘We will make it wet and put it in rags. It will be dry by the time we leave for the dance.’

  Sure enough, it was. When the rags came out the mass of frizz made Sally screech with horror but when Louise had teased it a hide with her Mason Pearson brush and a long tail comb Sally saw that the usually severe schoolgirlish cut had been transformed into a mop of pretty curls.

  Paula and Louise were looking lovely too – Paula in a little white top with a boat shaped neck and a bright turquoise circular skirt, Louise in a figure hugging number which left none of her curves to the imagination – but for the first time in her life Sally felt she could compete with them on equal terms.

  ‘Be sure to come straight home after the dance. And make sure you stay together,’ Grace warned.

  Paula pursed her lips and tossed her head, looking annoyed. But Sally scarcely noticed.

  By nine-thirty the dance was in full swing. As it was a special fund-raising dance instead of the regularly fortnightly hop, a three-piece band had been brought in to replace the usual stack of gramophone records and there was ‘real food’ – fishpaste sandwiches, sausage rolls and cheese and pineapple on sticks – which the ‘committee’ had spent the entire afternoon preparing.

  Paula and Louise had been nominated to sell the raffle tickets and did a round of the hall, flirting outrageously and telling all the boys the tickets were ‘ sixpence each or two shillings a strip’. Naturally most of the boys opted for ‘the strip’ and each time the innuendo was made the girls pretended it was terribly witty and original, if a little naughty, just as they did when they were asked for the twentieth time if perhaps they might be the prize.

  Selling the tickets gave Paula an opportunity to make her play for Jeff Freeman. She waited for Jean, his girlfriend, to go to the Ladies, and then pounced, flirting madly and manoeuvring him into bartering with her that he would buy two whole strips if she would have a dance with him. Then without the slightest compunction she thrust her basin of money and book of tickets into Sally’s lap and let him drag her, protesting theatrically, onto the dance floor. When Jean returned from the Ladies there was no sign of either of them, for at the end of the dance they had slipped unnoticed out of one of the wide-open fire exits and around the back of the hall where only courting couples went.

  Half an hour later they were still missing. When she finished selling the remaining tickets Sally looked around for them, realised what had happened and went back to sit on one of the hard upright chairs which lined the hall. She was feeling wretched. For her, the evening had not turned out at all as she had hoped. Several boys had asked her to dance but she had refused them all, afraid she might miss her chance with Pete, but he seemed not to have noticed her at all in spite of Louise’s dress. Once she had thought he was corning in her direction and her heart had begun to pump with excitement but he had walked straight past, heading for the bar that was selling soft drinks only (with a crate of beer hidden under the counter for the benefit of the band). Tears pricked her eyes and she stared hard at the floor.

  ‘Wanna dance?’ a voice enquired and Sally, looked up to see a boy in a velvet-collared jacket, drainpipes and crepe-soled shoes standing in front of her, a lick of greasy hair falling across a face shiny with perspiration.

  ‘No thank you,’ she started to say, then caught sight of Pete – dancing with someone else. Her heart dropped like a stone and somehow she got to her feet. The boy grabbed her hand with his sweaty one. She danced in a haze of misery, scarcely noticing when the music changed from vibrant rock-and-roll to ‘the creep’ and when the lights were lowered and he pulled her close she couldn’t be bothered to protest though she was revolted by the smell of beer on his breath (where had he got it?) mingling with strong body odours. The teddy-boy seemed to take her listlessness for acquiescence. His hands strayed down to a spot just below the first frill on her skirt and he pushed his hips against hers so that she could clearly feel the bulge between his legs.

  Suddenly it was all to much for Sally. She grabbed his hands and removed them from her bottom. Then she turned and fled from the dance floor, pushing her way between the smooching couples and heading for the Ladies, a box of a room with pegs lining two walls, a flyblown mirror over a grubby cracked china sink and two cubicles. Ignoring the girls who were primping in front of the mirror she ran to the cubicles and dived inside one, slamming the door after her and leaning against it. What a disaster! If only she could just go home, hide away and never have to see anyone again – but she had promised to stick with Paula and there would be all kinds of awkward questions and recriminations if she arrived home alone.

  High heels pattered across the cloakroom floor and someone pushed at the toilet door.

  ‘Damn,’ said a voice outside. ‘They’re both occupied.’

  ‘Never mind, they won’t be long.’

  ‘I haven’t got long. If I don’t get back and find Jeff soon it’ll be time for my last bus and I can’t go without seeing him. He is supposed to be my boyfriend, after all.’

  ‘Supposed to be. Some boyfriend if you ask me!’

  Sally stood motionless. She had recognised the voices – Jean, Jeff’s girl and her friend, Peggy.

  ‘I wouldn’t stand for it if I were you,’ Peggy was saying indignantly. ‘I wouldn’t let him treat me like that.’

  ‘It’s not his fault. It’s that Paula Bristow – Lady Muck herself. Who does she think she is?’ Jean’s voice was rising; she sounded tearful.

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, Jean. He’s not worth it. No
r is she. She’s a fast cat. She’ll let the boys do what they like. That’s why they flock round her. You ask my brother. The things he could tell you about her would make your hair curl. She’s got no pride. She just doesn’t care.’

  Sally began to quiver with anger. Forgetting her own misery and embarrassment she threw open the door. ‘That’s my sister you’re talking about!’

  For a moment the two girls stared at her, shocked, then Peggy recovered herself. ‘ It’s true, anyway,’ she said defiantly. ‘And you’re as bad as she is! You’ll let any boy paw you too. I saw you just now with Gary. His hands were all over you!’

  ‘You’re just jealous!’ Sally cried, her face scarlet. She pushed past the girls and marched over the the wastepaper bin beneath the sink. It was full of used cloakroom tickets, torn paper towel, bits of face-powdery cotton wool and the shavings of eyebrow pencils. She picked it up, went back to the two girls and dumped it unceremoniously over Peggy’s head. Then she ran from the cloakroom, down the narrow dark passage and out into the night.

  The sound of merriment emanating from the hall jangled her nerves, the sight of the courting couples pressed against the wall was enough to bring her to the edge of tears again. What an evening! Bad enough that Pete didn’t want her. But to overhear Jean and Peggy saying those things about Paula was somehow almost worse, for in her heart Sally knew they were not far removed from the truth.

  For the first time in her life she felt as if the veil had been stripped from her idol and she was looking at the real person who hid away inside a beautiful body, seeing her through the eyes of others who had no family love for her to colour what they saw. Paula was a flirt. She did think she was a little bit better than everyone else. And she was prepared to go to any lengths to get what she wanted – and almost always succeeded.

  ‘Oh sugar!’ Sally said. And therein the darkness, with half an hour to wait before she could even start looking for Paula with a view to going home, she began to cry.