Stranger in Paradise

by stan graham

  Of course I had to buy a bowl and the food for it as well as a piece of plastic seaweed and a plastic sunken pirates ship to give it a bit of entertainment. Otherwise it would have just swam round and round in circles, bored out of it’s fishy skull, poor dear. They say that goldfish have practically no memory. I just hope that’s true because otherwise I hate to think of that poor little creature just going round and round, it’s life would have been hell.

  It all had to come out of the housekeeping; I never got any extra despite having another mouth to fit. Still it didn’t eat much. Somehow Arthur managed to find a piece of carrot which he hid in his hand and pretended to scoop the poor fish; whom Peter had named Jeremy after some politician, up and eat it. Jane was in tears until Peter pointed out that Jeremy was still swimming about in his bowl.

  Peter was always a sharp one it wasn’t easy to pull the wool over his eyes but Arthur did have a wicked sense of humour at times. He grew to like Jeremy though and would sit and watch it swimming round and round for hours. Very restful he claimed. I just thought it was boring. Of course the children soon tired of it and everything fell to me to look after it. One day I found it just floating on the top so I just flushed it down the lavatory. Jane the sentimental one was in tears when I told them after school and said she had wanted to bury it, but Peter just shrugged his shoulders and continued reading his comic.

  I thought it was very funny myself at the time.

  You know I did miss that fish. Reminded me of myself going round and round in circles all the time and finally getting nowhere. Thoreau had it right most men do lead lives of quiet desperation.

  I just didn’t realise how bloody bad it was.

  As for Peter, like most boys he was a completely callous little bugger at that age.

  ***********

  SUMMER.

  Chapter 4. JUNE.

  Life can be such a burden without Arthur. For all his faults I still miss him. It’s the boredom that gets me. Day after day waiting for something, anything to happen, but nothing ever does. I have never bothered with people much; Arthur was always enough company for me. I could talk to him about the neighbours, and my little everyday worries.

  I often suspected that he never really used to listen but if I checked he could always quote me word for word, having him there was like having a sounding board to bounce ideas off. I suppose I could get a dog or cat, which would be just as useful and less trouble.

  Arthur wouldn't let us keep another animal, he said that he couldn’t face the thought of another death in the family after the goldfish, you got too attached to them, besides he said they tied you down and you had to make arrangements if you wanted to go on holiday. I suppose he was right but it would have been nice having a bit of company after the children left home, to help pass the long days while Arthur was at work. First Jane going to that university up in Newcastle.

  "Couldn't you get far enough away" I said when she told me she had been accepted.

  Then Peter, of course boys are not nearly as much homebodies as girls and I expected him to want to leave home but I think my two got their sex mixed up. Jane was always a tomboy, tormenting Peter but protecting him from the other boys. ‘He’s my brother and I’m the only one allowed to tell him what to do or hit him,’ she would say. When Jane had finished and got her degree I thought she might be too high and mighty for the likes of us but no, apart from insisting she bought a place of her own she was still one of us.

  Peter had done his 'A' levels and then started work so he left the house with Arthur in the morning. A real homebody, he stayed at home until he was nearly thirty, we thought we were stuck with him for good when he suddenly announced that he was getting married.

  My! Were we surprised! None of us, not even Jane had known that he was going out with a girl.

  “Well you certainly kept that quiet,” I said.

  Indeed Arthur had confided in me more than once that he thought Peter might be, you know a bit different, but no he turned up with this girl that worked with him and said they were getting married the following week and would we come.

  Of course we immediately realised she must be pregnant, especially when he said it would be a Register Office wedding. I barely had time to get myself a wedding outfit and send Arthur’s suit to the dry-cleaners. It was a lovely sunny day, Peter was very smartly dressed and his bride Laura looked radiant. I was really proud of my son.

  Strangely enough we had to wait nearly two years for our first grandchild.

  Arthur said ‘He must be shooting blanks,’ so crude.

  Arthur and I had planned to come down to the south coast on his retirement and had all sorts of ideas to amuse ourselves. He was going to get an allotment and I was going to do some fancy cooking like what you see on the television. Gateau's and Carrot cakes. Of course there’s no point in that now.

  Arthur’s mum, bless her was a really sweet old lady but she couldn’t cook for toffee. She tried her best but her rock cakes really were rock hard and her jam tarts were unspeakable but she was so proud of them.

  “My Arthur never leaves one of them he likes them so much,” she would boast.

  We went there for Sunday dinner every week, when she would serve up soggy sprouts with tasteless chicken and potatoes, swimming in Oxo gravy. Arthur used to eat it very quickly and his mum would say, see how Arthur loves my cooking he can't wait to finish it. The truth, so Arthur told me, was that he ate quickly so that he wouldn't have to see what he was eating. My what a sense of humour Arthur had. Anything would have pleased him after that culinary upbringing.

  We planned that we would have days out together to the seaside and holidays visiting the children. Arthur had collected brochures from all over the country of places we could go to. We had planned that we would take coach trips to stately homes and even go to London occasionally. Its not the same when you are on your own.

  We never even realised that his heart was dodgy. "Fit as a butchers dog he always used to say," when I used to tell him to take things easier. Well it serves him right. Life can get desperate though when one is on ones own.

  I have sent Peter a birthday card with a £20 note inside to buy himself something. I never know what to buy them nowadays. He never bothers to thank me or even acknowledge that he has got it, I think it is really bad manners not to do this but there is no changing the younger generation is there? They aren’t like our generation, where you got a clip round the ear if you weren’t polite. I blame Arthur he always was soft on the boy. Anyway Jane always phones to tell me that he has got it.

  They have invented this new thing called ageism. It means discrimination against old people. Apparently the bosses have to give old people jobs if they want one and it’s against the law to refuse them. What a good idea. I told Mrs M at the shop but she said they already employed old people, as nobody else would do the jobs there for nothing.

  I was ten when my father came home from the war. It was about this time of the year. There had been a knock on the door and Mum had told me to open it. There stood a strange man with a big sack over his shoulder. I had fled inside and told mum “There is a strange man at the door.” She told him to come in and introduced him as my father. There was no hugs or kisses; we were all strangers to each other. I offered him my hand and he formally took it and we shook hands. Now my mother was to be shared between the two of us. He had been away for six years and although they must have met during that period I had no recollection of it. We never really bonded and when a while later he had absconded, abandoning mother and me for a second time I wasn’t bothered.

  My best friend at the time was June Piper. A blue eyed blond girl in my class who lived in a posh house in Arcadia Avenue, two streets away from me so we used to walk to and from school together. The first time I called her mother invited me in to wait while June got ready. They had carpets on all the floors, not like us where we had a green oilcloth patterned with flowers. In the kitchen where I waited while she ate her breakfast there was a mod
ern electric cooker that her dad had got from the Electrical Store where he worked. “We are getting a Television Set on Hire Purchase as soon as the store gets them in,” she told me. “Are you getting one?”

  “Don’t think so,” I replied.

  “No well I don’t think they sell them to just anyone, you have to have a credit rating.”

  “My dad’s got one of them but he reckons that Television is just a flash in the pan and that the man from Radio Rentals says that the wireless still has a good few years left in it.”

  Despite these occasional spats we remained good friends joining the Brownies together and later the Girl Guides. We went to Summer Camp together and always managed to wangle to share the same tent. Miss Atkins the leader said we were good for each other, that June smoothed my edges and that I gave June a sense of purpose.

  To show how good June was she once came round to my house while my mum was out and helped me clean the kitchen. We worked for about two hours getting everything clean and when Mum came home she gave me a telling off and told me never to invite that girl in the house again. June said she was just ungrateful and that she was sorry that I had a mum like that.

  Another time June got a new mackintosh and her mother gave me her old one. It was as good as new and she could have sold it for a pound or got five shillings for it at Uncle’s but she chose to let me have it saying my need was greater than hers.

  I started to wear it all the time even when it was not raining until June told some of our friends that she had given it to me. That took the gloss off of it and I never wore it again. I asked mum to take it to Uncle’s and he gave her five shillings for it, which I gave to June telling her what I had done with it. She took the money and run off calling me names. We never spoke to each other for ages after that even changing our seats in class. Of course we made up eventually, we only really had each other, but both our parents had told us that we were not welcome at each other’s homes.

  When we were thirteen June got her first bra. She said that was because she was sexually mature. My mum said that I was too small to need one but after two weeks of whining she capitulated and allowed me to go with her to the Co-op where I was able to get a small white bra. I felt really grown up then.

  When we next went out together sporting our new brassieres we met some boys from school and Billy Marshall sang ‘June is busting out all over’ when he saw her. I couldn’t help thinking it was funny and had a job restraining my sniggers until he asked me if Boots were doing al right for cotton wool. June fled home in tears. She made me swear with her that we would never ever get married. I remember that she got her own back in later years by marrying Billy Marshall. Poor lad I never thought that he deserved that.

  We dated boys a few times and when I was fourteen I kissed Mickey Mitchell, my first real kiss, he stuck his tongue in my mouth, he said it was called French Kissing and that everybody did it. I was not so sure though and I told him I didn't like it. He had taken me to the Century Picture House, what used to be termed a flea pit in them far off days. We saw some musical or other, I think it was The Student Prince, although I couldn’t swear to it as I kept missing bits when Mickey kissed me. I told him to wait until later as I especially wanted to see the film.

  He bought me a carton of ice cream with a wooden spoon, during the interval so I knew he was serious and I thought of letting him touch my breasts but decided to save that excitement for another day. We went out altogether for three weeks when June told me she had seen him kissing a ginger haired girl called Virginia Molton. June said she had a reputation for being easy and that all the boys were after her. I asked Mickey about it but he denied it all and said June was making it up. June said that he would say that wouldn’t he.

  When I left school at fifteen I got a job working behind the sweet counter at Woolworth’s. We were told that we could eat the occasional sweet but we were not to make a meal of it.

  June got herself a job in an office of the Midland Building Society so she thought herself a cut above the rest of us. It turned out that she was just making the tea and running errands like posting the letters while I was dealing with members of the public from day one. We still met and went to the cinema and dances together although I was warned not to call for her as her mother had still not forgiven me for pawning that raincoat all those years ago.

  I met Arthur at the Palais where I had gone with two friends from work, Elsie Wood and Denise Together. We had arranged to meet June there. She said she liked going with me, as it was better for picking up boys if one of us was pretty and the other wasn’t. Arthur was there with some friends and June fancied one of them. They wore smart suits and trilby hats; this was just before the Teddy Boy era. I remember thinking he looked like Richard Attenborough in Brighton Rock. He asked me to dance and that was it I fell for him. We met regularly at the Four Aces cafe on a Sunday afternoon before going to the pictures and then out for the evening. I heard that June was going out regular with his friend Jimmy Jones and wondered if we could make up a foursome but she was never keen.

  I didn’t see much of her after that until she came to see me at Woolworth’s one afternoon and said she had something to tell me. This was just after her nineteenth birthday. I hadn’t realised she was even seeing Billy Marshall.

  Arthur and I had been courting for three years and had talked about getting engaged. He was halfway through his National Service and had got a posting as a cook stationed in Aldershot so I saw less of him although he always came home at weekends if he could get leave.

  Apparently Billy Marshall had avoided National Service somehow by claiming deafness in one ear. Well the upshot of our meeting was that she told me she was three weeks overdue.

  “What can I do?” she wailed.

  I never even knew they were going out together as we had drifted apart in recent years. “What was it like doing it? “ I asked.

  “It wasn’t worth getting pregnant for that’s for sure, my dad will kill me.”

  “Nothing for it you will have to tell your mother first and get her to break it to him.” I replied unsympathetically. “He will make him marry you.”

  It was a big comedown for Miss High and Mighty let me tell you.

  According to a mutual friend, Jill Bennett, June’s mother had tried to blame me for leading her astray and June hadn’t had the courage to put her right. It’s a good job that my back is broad.

  Everything was organised as quickly as possible and the wedding took place four weeks later at the end of July before it became too obvious, she just looked plump. The wedding was held at the local church and the bride wore white, or so I was told. I wasn’t invited, the rule that I was not to enter their house had never been rescinded. Her dad got drunk and caused a rumpus with Billy’s dad; accused him of not bringing Billy up properly. Billy’s dad said it was their fault not teaching their daughter to keep her legs closed. There was a right upset with both families taking sides.

  I never saw her again it seems that Billy was offered a job down south with a council flat to go with it and they moved without even saying goodbye. I heard that they had gone to live in Folkestone and plucked up my nerve to visit her mother to ask for June’s address but she refused to answer the door.

  My! Tempus Fagin as we say in my crossword puzzles. That reminds me I must pop into Smith’s and see if this month’s Puzzle magazine is out yet. Here am I daydreaming about the past.

  I am lucky I went into Smith’s and there it was on display, a new shiny copy of the Puzzler. Of course I snapped it up and went home. I must remember to pace myself this time. Last month I had it finished after the first week. Well it can get very boring here.

  The postman has just delivered my Gas and Electric bills. They are so high these days, £72.84p for the Electric and £34.67p for the Gas. Luckily I pay by Direct Debit so I never have to worry about paying them as the money is taken directly out of my account at the bank and I get a refund every year.

  Arthur was totally opposed to
the idea of anyone taking money out of his account except himself. I think if it saves you the trouble of going to the bank and drawing the money out and then sending it off to them then it’s a good idea, especially as one gets a discount for using direct debit. One doesn’t want to keep being bothered by these things. Arthur always made sure the bills were paid on time and that I never had to worry about them.

  In another month I will have to stop taking my bus trips to the seaside, another one of life’s little pleasures deprived of. The buses are already getting filled up with tourists. They ought to reserve spaces for us local residents. The other week I had to let the bus go past because it was full, standing room only. I can't be doing with that at my age. The young people are quite good, they often offer a seat but you can't depend on it.

  They have just had the Annual Town Festival over a period of four days, Thursday through to Sunday. There were Jugglers and a Tightrope Walker. Clowns, and Face painting for the children. The town’s Silver Band played every day in the Victoria Park, I went twice and listened to the music.