The Secret Life of Sally Tomato

by Jean Ure

  “Yes, you did,” said Harmony.

  “Oh, well, that’s good,” he said. “You haven’t come to tick me off.”

  We stood there a while, just to keep him company really, until some more people arrived. But all that happened was this woman came up and asked him where the Roald Dahls were. After a bit we got to feeling sorry for him, all bald and threadbare, sitting there trying to look as if he wasn’t really interested in people buying his books. Like he was just there for show, or to pass the time of day or something. So what we did, we both bought one. I bought one called Jampot Jane and Harmony bought one called Mr Munch the Lunch Box Man.

  Mr Twelvetrees said, “You realise these are way too young for you? These are meant for five-year-olds.”

  They just happened to be the cheapest. I mumbled that I couldn’t afford one of the bigger ones.

  Harmony said brightly that she was buying Mr Munch for her little sister. (Who I happen to know is ten years old and some kind of child genius.)

  Mr Twelvetrees seemed resigned. He said, “Ah, well! So be it,” and wrote Best wishes Jason Twelvetrees in his spidery old handwriting inside the covers.

  Just as we were going, a little kid came up to him clutching a Goosebumps which he wanted him to sign. Old Jason Twelvetrees got quite snotty. He snapped, “Now why would you expect me to sign something which I did not write?”

  The little kid looked quite crestfallen. He probably thought one author was the same as any other author. I reckon it wouldn’t have hurt Mr Twelvetrees to sign his Goosebumps for him.

  “What shall we do with these?” I said to Harmony, once we were outside. I meant Jampot Jane and Mr Munch.

  “Keep ’em!” said Harmony. “Signed copies … could be valuable.” And then she confessed that she could have afforded one of the more expensive ones, but that Jason Twelvetrees didn’t really write her sort of book.

  I asked her what her sort of book was and she said that just at the moment she was reading Pride and Prejudice.

  “By Jane Austen,” she said.

  I said, “I know who it’s by!”

  I must be honest, however. With myself, I mean. Sometimes you try to hoodwink yourself. I have to admit that last term I’d never even heard of Jane Austen. Mr Mounsey was giving us a quiz in one of our English lessons, all about books and authors. When he asked if anyone knew who Jane Austen was, old Lucy stuck her hand up and said, “She’s a tennis player.”

  Well, she could have been, for all I knew. Except I didn’t really see why Mr Mounsey would be talking about tennis players in an English lesson.

  I reminded Harmony of this, and she gave a happy cackle. (She was the only one who’d known.)

  “She’s a sex object,” said Harmony.

  “Who? Jane Austen?” I said.

  “No! Dummy!” She biffed me with her Mr Munch book. “Lucy West!”

  “Can’t you be a sex object and know about Jane Austen?” I said.

  Harmony said, “Well, she didn’t!”

  I had this feeling that I was being unloyal. To Lucy, I mean. (I think maybe that word should be disloyal.) I also wasn’t sure that you were supposed to describe girls as sex objects. I said to Harmony, “That’s not very P.C.”

  “So what? I wouldn’t mind being one,” said Harmony.

  I said, “You?” I was kind of, like, a bit gobsmacked to tell the truth. “But you’d have to have a bosom!” I said.

  Harmony sighed and agreed that that was probably true.

  Well, it is! You can’t be a sex object without a bosom. Stands to reason.

  All the same, I was quite surprised.

  Before we said goodbye, Harmony asked me yet again about her poem.

  “Is it nearly finished? I’m dying to read it!”

  I told her I was revising it. I’m a bit worried, now. Now that I know she nurses this secret desire to be a sex object. I might have to re-write it!

  V is for vulgar,

  Which is what I have been.

  Verging occasionally

  On the obscene.

  I am beginning to grow bored of keeping this alphabet. There is obviously something drastically wrong with me. I am doomed to failure. I shall end up as a weird crusty bachelor whom nobody loves. Everyone will shun me and hold me in contempt. I shall be a human version of a cockroach.

  Today I tried to give Lucy her new poem, Poem to Lucy’s Cheek. I said, “It’s different! I’ve revised it.”

  She said, “Piss off, Tomato! I can do without any more so-called poetry, thank you very much.”

  “But you’ll like this version,” I said. “It’s a new one!”

  Lucy screeched, “Go jump in a pool of snot!” Then she snatched the poem out of my hands, screwed it into a ball and hurled it viciously into the road, where it got run over by a bus. I felt very disheartened and wondered to myself, what is the point of going on?

  It was a good poem, too. Fortunately I can still remember it:

  Lucy’s cheek is softly pink,

  Of strawberries it makes me think.

  She has dimples when she beams!

  Of Lucy’s cheek I could write reams.

  But I will only say one thing:

  Let us all to Lucy sing!

  How could she possibly take exception to that? She would have loved it, I know she would! Any girl would. They wouldn’t be able to help it.

  I think I shall post it to her.

  Harmony has given me another phrase: to nurse vipers in your bosom. She said, “It was talking about bosoms that made me think of it.”

  I asked her what it meant, but she said she wasn’t sure as she hadn’t been able to find it in Brewer’s.

  “I think it means harbouring grudges.”

  I am harbouring grudges against Lucy. Throwing my poem under a bus! I am not sure if I can ever forgive her for that.

  W stands for willy,

  Both childish and silly.

  There’s another word, so I have heard,

  Which is really quite a riddle.

  In the U.S. of A., or so they say,

  When people want to piddle,

  Their Johnson is the thing they use.

  A bit of a strange word to choose.

  Poor old Johnson! Who was he?

  Now he’s rude as rude can be.

  This Disgusting Ditty was composed by Harmony. She has rushed through her alphabet at fantastic speed. She asked me if I had done one for W. I said that I hadn’t. I almost said that I wasn’t going to bother. I am doomed to failure and that is all there is to it. I only have three more letters to go and then I might just as well end it all.

  When I say end it, I mean cutting myself off in my prime.

  Here lies Salvatore d’Amato

  Otherwise known as Sally Tomato.

  Couldn’t kiss a girl, no matter how he tried,

  So in the end, he upped and died.

  “I’ve done two,” said Harmony. “You can have one of mine, if you like. It’d be a pity to waste it.”

  Her other one is W for womb.

  W is for womb

  A little room

  Where babies live and grow.

  Etc. Etc. It goes on for about twenty verses. All about babies.

  Babies burping, babies blurting, babies being sick, babies doing things in their nappies. She said I could have that one if I wanted but I said it would take too long to copy out. She said, “I thought you’d probably prefer the willy one. Boys always snigger at the word willy.”

  “I didn’t snigger,” I said.

  Harmony said that was only because I was suffering the pangs of unrequited love.

  “Nothing seems funny when you’re in that state.”

  How would she know? I bet she’s never suffered!

  There is only one small glimmer of hope on the horizon. Emma Crick has invited me to her end-of-term party. She’s invited Harmony, as well.

  “She’s probably only invited me,” said Harmony, “because she wants you to go. She knows we
’re friends. She probably didn’t think you’d go if she hadn’t invited me. She probably fancies you,” she added.

  Can this be true??? Emma Crick was one of the girls who put their hands up when Jason Twelvetrees asked how many people enjoyed reading. Maybe she wasn’t trying to impress the teachers. Maybe it was me!

  The really important thing, however, is that Lucy will be there. She is still the object of my affections in spite of throwing my poem under a bus. And if I cannot get to kiss her at a party, then that is the end. I shall no longer want to go on living.

  Another expression for being dead is, pushing up the daisies.

  X marks the spot

  While Y is for yessssss!

  Z is for zenith –

  The high point, no less!

  I’ve done it, I’ve done it, I’ve kissed a girl! I’m normal! Yippeee!

  Now I don’t have to go out and kill myself, which is just as well as it would have been extremely inconvenient for Mum and Dad. Dad would have had to take time off to attend my funeral and Mum would have had to go out and buy herself a black dress. Also, I expect they might have missed me. My sister wouldn’t, she’d probably have just been glad that I couldn’t get my hands on her foaming face gel any more. But Mum would have cried, and she doesn’t like doing that as it makes her eyes swell up. So it’s all for the best.

  It’s all for the best,

  I’ve passed the test!

  I can’t stop thinking in lines of poetry. I thought of some more just now.

  If I’d bitten the dust,

  Mum would have been fussed.

  Just as well!

  Saved by the bell!

  I’ve kissed until my lips are sore,

  And now I want to do some more!

  My hormones are all fizzing and bubbling. They just can’t believe it! Neither can I. I keep thinking that at any minute I shall wake up.

  This is the way that it happened. On Friday we finished term. On Saturday, which was yesterday, Emma Crick had her party.

  I only went because I’d said I’d go and because in any case I didn’t have anything else to do, but I wasn’t feeling very hopeful. On Wednesday I sent Lucy her poem, Poem to Lucy’s Cheek, Version II. I sent it First Class so I knew by Friday she must have got it for sure. I kept giving her these really meaningful looks, but she never responded. I didn’t like to ask her outright. She might have hit me. She’s only small, but she can pack quite a punch. I once saw her bash Kelvin Clegg so hard she nearly knocked him out. I didn’t want that happening to me.

  By Saturday I thought I’d better start making my Will. I left most everything to Mum and Dad, except for my books, which I left to Harmony. I reckoned she was the only person I knew that would properly appreciate them.

  This is my Will that I wrote:

  This is the Will of Salvatore d’Amato

  hereinafter referred to as I, being the person

  above named in this my Will

  I hereby leave all my property except for my

  books to my parents in loving memory

  I hereby leave all my books to my good friend

  Harmony Hynde

  Signed this day by the said named

  Salvatore d’Amato.

  Immediately I’d done it I had an afterthought so I added this thing called a Codicil, meaning an afterthought to a Will.

  This is a Codicil to the Will of Salvatore d’Amato therein referred to as I, being the person named in the aforesaid Will

  All my Will stays the same except that to my sister Isabella I hereby leave all my underpants.

  I put that in to pay her out for calling me a pervert.

  It’s a pity, in a way, that it never happened. I would have liked to see her face when she heard about the underpants.

  Except of course that I wouldn’t have been able to see as I would have been dead. And now I’m glad that I am not. Life is brilliant! Life is worth living!

  But I think Harmony got it wrong about Emma fancying me. She never gave any signs of it. I think she fancies Bones, speaking personally.

  I also think that Harmony ought to stop putting herself down all the time. I am going to tell her this. What makes her think she was only invited to Emma’s party because Emma wanted me to come? She was obviously invited because she is a good person to have at a party. Anybody, I should think, would want Harmony to come to their party. I would!

  Lucy was there, with Sharleen. Sharleen’s lip curled when she saw me. She said, “Oh, Luce, look what the cat’s brought in!” But Lucy smiled at me, she actually smiled. She said, “Version II was a whole lot better than Version I.” So that was encouraging, for a start.

  Then later, Emma said she’d got this game we’d all got to play. She said she’d played it at her cousin’s party and it was fun. She said what you did, all the girls put blindfolds on and stood in a row, while the boys went outside and came back in one at a time, also wearing blindfolds, and kissed each of the girls in turn.

  A really dim nerd of a boy called Alaric Prosser (which is a pretty dim and nerdy sort of name) wanted to know what the point was. Bones yelled, “If you don’t know, I can’t tell you!” But Emma said what the point was, it was to make a note in your mind which girl you most enjoyed kissing; or if you were a girl, which boy you most enjoyed being kissed by.

  Alaric, in his dumb fashion, said, “How can you tell? If you’re blindfolded?”

  “You count,” said Emma. “Girl no. 1, girl no. 2 … there’s only six of us!”

  Only six!!! Me and Bones looked at each other. Bones said afterwards it was a pity Nasreen Flynn was one of them, as he’d already done her. Harmony wanted to know what happened at the end: “How do you know who was which number?”

  Emma said that at the end all the boys had to line up in the same order as they’d kissed, and all the girls removed their blindfolds. Then we’d know!

  The girls were: Harmony, Nasreen, Emma, Lucy, Sharleen and Carrie Pringle. I didn’t know what order they were going to stand in, but I reckoned I’d know which one was Lucy all right!

  When it came to my turn my hormones were raging so furiously I felt like I was about to burst into flames. Six girls all in one go! Well, almost.

  No. 1 was pretty good. I thought that might be Nasreen. No. 2 was a bit prissy and prunelike. I reckoned that was probably Sharleen. No. 3 was like a piece of dead fish. Carrie Pringle, for sure. No. 4 was OK. No. 5 was so-so. No. 6 –

  No. 6 was bliss! No. 6 was heaven on earth! No. 6 had got to be Lucy!

  Well. When we all lined up and saw who we’d been kissing …

  No. 3 was Lucy! Piece of dead fish. No. 1 was Carrie Pringle. No. 6 was … Harmony!

  Life will never be the same again!!!

  She rang me this morning. My sister screeched, “Salleeeeeeeeeeeeee! Your girlfriend!”

  I think she is. She is my girlfriend!

  We talked about the party. Harmony wanted to know what it had felt like, kissing everyone.

  “Tell me who was good and who wasn’t!”

  I said, “Well, Carrie Pringle was OK. Nasreen was OK. Sharleen was OK. Emma was OK. Lucy was—” I hesitated here. “She was OK,” I said.

  “So nobody was very exciting?” said Harmony.

  “Only one person,” I said. “What about you? Did you find anyone exciting?”

  “Only one person,” said Harmony.

  Then there was this pause. And then I said, “I’ll tell you, if you’ll tell me.”

  So we told each other. And now I’ve had to re-write my poem!

  Poem for Harmony

  Sweet Harmony Hynde,

  I love your mind.

  I love your body, too.

  Your lips

  When we kiss

  Are utter bliss!

  I’m deep in love with you!

  I hope she likes it.

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