The Generation Game

by Sophie Duffy

  ‘Wink!’

  No-one hears me screaming. There’s too much noise going on. I sprint from my room, leap down the stairs three at a time and am outside, out on the street in my pyjamas, running to her house when a fireman grabs hold of me.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ he says. ‘It’s hot in there.’

  And as I find myself on the floor, the scene of the street party, the tug of war that Wink judged, there are familiar arms helping me up again.

  ‘It’s alright... ’ Bob coughs ‘... Captain got her out.’

  Thank God for the Fire Captain! He must’ve rescued her in a fireman’s lift, down a ladder, out of that blackening fire. I love the Fire Captain. I want to kiss him and thank him but Bob is leading me away from the fire crew, taking me round the corner, where there is indeed an ambulance parked up, a dirty old lady sitting inside with a blanket wrapped round her as if she hadn’t got hot enough inside her burning house, an oxygen mask over her face. And a parrot perched on her shoulder.

  Captain got her out.

  So Wink’s chance of a lifetime goes up in flames though somewhere there could be a recording of her and Bob unless it has been taped over by someone in the Corporation. All she has left is a charred photo of Larry with his arm around her. Otherwise it could all too easily have been a dream. It could never have happened.

  But I have proof of it. I have the tiger which I offer to give back to her but she won’t have it. So, he goes everywhere with me.

  Bob offers her something too. ‘Come and stay with us, Wink. Stay as long as you like.’ So that’s what she does. She stays as long as she likes. In fact she never leaves.

  ‘Just don’t go playing with matches,’ he has the nerve to say that first evening. ‘Next time there’s a power cut, use a torch.’

  And this time she does have her walking stick to hand.

  2006

  Fran is back to check on us. Does she pay every new mother this much attention or am I in the maternity equivalent of the Slow Readers? She whisks you away, ordering me to get my head down. Do I look that hideous? That old?

  So I am actually alone, completely alone, when the doctor tells me. The young doctor with the proficient hands. Pianist’s hands. Surgeon’s hands. Hands that can suture and examine and deftly poke and prod. A simple wedding band shines on the appropriate finger and I want to ask her if she has children because for some reason I need to know that she understands. That she can realistically put herself in my shoes (well, in my Totes Toasties).

  “Are you sure you don’t want your husband here?” she asks. I swat that idea away. “Alright, then,” she says. “I’ve got the results of the blood test. I hurried them along because I know what agony waiting can be.”

  (She does! She does understand!)

  “Thank you,” I say politely but, from the grim expression on her face, somehow I don’t think I’ll be thanking her in a minute.

  “It’s her heart,” she says.

  Her heart. My beating heart.

  Chapter Eleven: 1980

  Blind Date

  I am right about Auntie Sheila. That Saturday evening she does switch on her television set instead of going and doing something less boring instead. And there he is. The man who was once almost a significant part of her life. The almost-man: Bob. Acting the buffoon in front of the nation. But it is her Bob. My Bob. And watching him do that tango, she imagines it is her in his arms, not the dummy.

  So, a week after the fire, when Wink has filled Helena’s old wardrobe with a new set of nylon clothes from Newton Abbot market and Captain is once again beginning to pass comment, Sheila turns up at the shop. She is allegedly after a Western Morning News and a packet of Extra Strong Mints but really I know she wants to see Bob. And, as her luck would have it, there he is, propping up the counter.

  ‘Sheila!’ he says, genuinely thrilled to see her again. ‘You look well.’

  Yes, Sheila does look well. A slick haircut and a slim line body that makes Bob straighten his spine and pull in his stomach.

  Linda is out, on the road, flogging stationery, and so Bob makes Sheila a cup of tea. One cup of tea leads to another and before you know it Sheila is once again ensconced back in our lives, rolling up her sleeves and lending a helping hand.

  Two years on and the situation is largely the same. At school, I’ve crawled my way to the top stream but one. Cheryl continues to shine above me but has the good grace never to mention it. We are still best friends but can’t spend as much time together in the way that we’d like, memorising the pop lyrics in Smash Hits and crimping each other’s hair, as we have revision for our mocks. (If only the events of the Industrial Revolution would stick in my brain as firmly as the words to Ant Music.)

  At home, it’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t live with Bob and Wink and Andy and Captain. Linda is still on the scene though since her promotion to area manager she’s on the road even more than ever. Over the next decade she will become one of those women inspired by Margaret Thatcher and Alexis Carrington into wearing power suits with shoulder pads that Captain could roost on. But, for the time being, she settles for Lady Di ruffs and flicky hair. In fact, Linda is so keen on Lady Di, hoping fervently for the engagement to be officially announced, that she uses ‘Princess’ as her CB handle. She’s become obsessed with her CB radio and whiles away the hours motoring all over the south west, imagining she is in Convoy. Driving, for Linda, is now a greater pleasure than ever.

  One Saturday evening, Auntie Sheila asks us all round to a dinner party. Bernie, who is still behaving himself, will be there. Terry (T-J), who still lives at home, might or might not be there, depending on his ‘plans’ (primitive plans involving pints and pubs and mates). Toni, on the other hand, is still in Hampstead, working her way up through the rank and file of the estate agents and has bought herself ‘a nice little flat’ in Belsize Park where she sometimes has her mother to stay so they can ‘take in a show’. I remember my trip to London where I barely got above ground level and feel overwhelmed briefly by jealousy. Toni may not have become a member of Pan’s People but she does have her own flat in London and can take her mother to see Evita, when I have to make do yet again with taking Wink to the pantomime at the Princess Theatre.

  At the last minute Linda has a crisis at work and calls Bob from the office to say she can’t make it. So there is a spare chair at the table which T-J is persuaded to fill before going down town. Unfortunately the spare chair is situated next to mine and so I am not looking forward to the meal although Auntie Sheila has pushed the boat out and done steak and chips followed by Arctic Roll. I am even allowed half a glass of Chianti as I am fifteen and well-and-truly a teenager and should be given the opportunity to learn how to handle alcohol in a responsible manner. (Little do they know I’ve already learnt the hard way.)

  T-J and Bernie have lager, as wine is for wimps. Wink joins them but Bob risks being branded a lesser man as this is favourable to Auntie Sheila necking back the entire bottle of Chianti (bar my measly half a glass) all on her own. He obviously hasn’t managed to blank the whole sorry David-Essex-Hold-Me-Close fiasco. Unfortunately this isn’t the only bottle of Chianti; it turns out there’s a whole cellar full of the stuff thanks to Auntie Sheila’s wine club.

  The evening drags by and I have to sit listening to T-J chew his steak that could still possibly be breathing it’s so rare. (I must’ve been a vegetarian in a former life.) Auntie Sheila has tried. She’s got out the best dinner service and cut glass and has painstakingly polished the cutlery. She’s even concertina-ed the napkins into fans which impresses Wink no end though T-J leaves his on the table in preference for his sleeve. I wonder how anyone as sophisticated as Auntie Sheila could have brought up a philistine like him. But then I look at Bernie chewing his medium-rare with his mouth open.

  The conversation isn’t flowing as freely as either the wine or the lager. Auntie Sheila does her best to kick start things.

  ‘How’s Linda?’ she asks Bob through grit
ted teeth.

  ‘Oh, you know, busy,’ says Bob.

  ‘Poor Bob,’ says Auntie Sheila as if he’s announced that Linda has run off with one of the paperboys. She puts her hand over his hand and leaves it there. Bob looks at it, as if it might spontaneously combust. Bernie takes a slug of his lager, and undoes the button of his Farah slacks, oblivious to his wife’s treachery. After gallons of Italian vino, Auntie Sheila’s skills as a hostess (and wife) have gone awry.

  T-J, meanwhile, is also untuned to the radar of his mother’s attentions. He’s spent the first half of the meal looking at his watch and the second half looking at my chest. My chest has grown somewhat since I last saw him (hurrah!) and it is finally dawning on him that I am well-and-truly a teenager now. He even attempts to make conversation with me. But what is more surprising is that his sudden interest is not unappealing. I find myself talking in a strange voice and feeling strange things. The draw of the pub is too great, however, and as soon as T-J has finished his last shovelful of Arctic Roll, he is splashing Brut all over and heading for the door, shrugging into his leather jacket and shouting a cursory see you later over his shoulder, which it has to be said is quite a nice shoulder.

  ‘He’s thinking about moving up to London, you know, to stay with Toni,’ Sheila says as the front door bangs. ‘There’s a chance of a job working in her office. Delivery boy or something.’

  ‘He’s hardly a boy,’ Wink points out. (She’s noticed too.)

  ‘He’s only twenty-four,’ says Sheila.

  ‘He’s a bloody sponger,’ says Bernie.

  ‘We should be encouraging him then, shouldn’t we?’

  And with that note on parental guidance, Auntie Sheila swans off to fetch the cheese and biscuits, leaving an awkward silence in the candle-lit dining room which no-one has the heart to fill. I could, if I tried, but I am too busy thinking of T-J. Terry, of the Chinese burns and obnoxious friends. Terry of the pools and bar billiards. Terry, who is moving away to stay with his sister who can take him to see Evita (not that he’d thank her). Terry (T-J), who – after half a measly glass of Chianti – I quite fancy.

  Midway through the after dinner mints the door bell chimes. It is Linda – who’s been heavy-handed with the make-up and over-generous with the cleavage – carrying a bottle of Blue Nun that Auntie Sheila winces at, being a wine connoisseur.

  ‘It’s all they had in the off-licence,’ says Linda, flushing as red as T-J’s sirloin, on the verge of battering her smug hostess over the head with the embarrassing bottle. It is clear that for whatever reason Linda has decided to turn up at this point in the evening, it would’ve been better all round if she’d gone straight home from work, put on a little Manhattan Transfer and had a bath.

  Linda is jealous, that is the reason. But she is in good company as Sheila is jealous too. Bernie, oblivious to the heavy emotion at large in the room, skulks off to watch the snooker. Wink skulks off with him, being partial to men in black tie. Bob is left with Sheila and Linda all to himself. But he is also left feeling bemused. He can’t understand anyone committing the sin of jealousy over him. There is no use for me here, other than Peace Maker, but I’m not in the mood for negotiations. I am quite possibly infatuated with someone I shouldn’t be.

  ‘I need the loo,’ I announce. No-one hears me despite the silence hovering over the dinner table.

  I take the opportunity to have a quick snoop around upstairs. Toni’s bedroom, where I used to be a dummy for her friends’ crude make-up skills, has been preserved like a museum piece: Room of a 1970s Teenager. Pink shagpile, pink woodchip, a huge paper lampshade swelling from an Artexed ceiling painted with clouds. A pair of pink ballet shoes hanging by their pink ribbons from her bedknobs-and-broomstick bed frame. Her ballet exam certificates framed along one wall. A tutu strung up from the picture rail. And I bet if I were to look in her wardrobe I’d find her Pan’s People floaty nightie doing a ghostly dance.

  I don’t dare go in Sheila and Bernie’s room but I make myself peek inside their son’s, which I am fully expecting to look like a crime scene ripe with forensic evidence. But I am shocked. Despite the obligatory Athena tennis girl on his wall (the one who forgot to put on her knickers), I see a room where everything is in its place. There are no dirty socks strewn on the floor. No mouldy mugs or crisp packets scattered about. The bed is made. The carpet hoovered. It even smells pleasant. A mixture of soap and toothpaste and Shake ‘n’ Vac. The type of room Lucas might’ve kept though he would have had more books and refrained from displaying pictures of naked lady bottoms on his walls. Maybe Auntie Sheila is responsible for this meticulousness, though somehow I doubt it – these days, although she can find the time for napkin origami when the occasion requires it, she is too busy to uphold her former housekeeping standards. Maybe I’ve underestimated T-J. Maybe he’s never let me set foot in his room all these years because he knows what a slob I am. Maybe it is remembering Lucas that makes me soften towards the boy who used to call me Porkchops.

  Being in T-J’s bedroom reveals how very little I know about him but, even without this glimpse into his private world, I know two things which really should be all I need:

  1. He is twenty-four.

  2. He is leaving for London.

  However, there’s been no-one of any note since Raymond. Christopher Bennett is just a bad memory though he can still be found in our shop in the early mornings. Lucas is just a speck of stardust. And I am well-and-truly a teenager with hormones – to quote Helena – ‘on the blink’.

  When I arrive back downstairs, Bob is bundling Linda and her cleavage back into her Dannimac and Wink is shouting at Terry Griffiths to get a move on. It is clearly time to go before we outstay our welcome.

  Bernie has dragged himself away from the snooker and stands next to his wife who forces a smile as she sees us out, her new hairdo a little dishevelled. While Bob shepherds Linda and Wink into the night, I linger on the doorstep, dragging my heels (flat heels, unlike Helena as I don’t want to add any extra inches to my height). I’m not exactly relishing the drive home in the company of this threesome. Sheila pecks me on the cheek and disappears into the kitchen. Bernie and I remain, static on the threshold, listening to his wife lobbing her best china into the dishwasher. Then he looks at me. I feel awkward but I don’t know why.

  ‘Do you miss her?’ he asks, out of the blue.

  ‘Who?’ I say but I know exactly who he means. I want him to say her name. I never hear her name anymore. It is as if she’s never existed.

  ‘Your… mother,’ he says. ‘Helena.’

  ‘Why should I miss her?’ I ask, defiantly. ‘When I have such a loving family.’

  We stand and look at my family displaying their love on Bernie’s driveway: Bob and Linda and Wink, the three of them battling it out over who is going to drive the Maxi, my argument faltering a tad.

  ‘Honestly, I’m fine.’ I assure him. ‘But thanks for asking Uncle Bernie.’

  And he gives me a wink, one of the special ones from the collection he keeps for his Toni.

  Lying in bed that night, the Cavalier shuns me. Maybe he knows my heart lies elsewhere. I think about what I told Bernie. I am fine. But I’m not sure if that is because of my new passion or whether I am in actual fact ‘fine’. And I let myself think of my mother. She is a real person, someone Bernie has known in every sense of the word. A living breathing woman, not a figment of my imagination as I sometimes wonder these days. Because why wouldn’t I wonder? It has been so long. And would a real mother do what she did? A few short letters and a handful of birthday cards?

  Christmas comes and goes without a word from Helena, surprise, surprise, elusive as Father Christmas. It is a new year: 1981. Unfortunately it begins with me making a mockery of my mocks. I do alright in both English Language and English Literature, seeing as I’ve been an active member of the library all these years (though I am rather heavily influenced by the photo stories in Jackie). But as for the rest, maths makes me feel faint-hearted
, despite all that practice in the shop when I’ve had to roll up my sleeves and lend a helping hand. All I know for sure about geography is that Canada is a long way away across the ocean. I should never have chosen art because my skills have never progressed much beyond colouring in pixie cuffs. French is double Dutch. And as for history, I seem to confuse fact with fiction.

  But all my efforts pale into insignificance a few weeks later, on a cold February morning, when there is a genuinely historical event: Charles and Diana announce their engagement. When asked in an interview when the marriage is likely to take place, Charles says sometime at the end of July. But I know the date before it is decided. I just know it will be July the 29th. My sixteenth birthday.

  While Diana, four years my senior, moves into Clarence House and prepares to marry her prince, I remain in my bedroom, revising and singing along to Madness. As the blossom falls off the trees and the first baby gulls begin their slow, tortuous flying lessons, we are nearly there. The next few months will be a trial to be endured but I know that whatever happens, however many O-levels I do or do not get, there are the long summer holidays, my sixteenth birthday and a royal wedding to look forward to at the end of it. But the biggest surprise of all is that we will not be enjoying this latest royal milestone in Torquay. Bob has arranged with Sheila for us to go and stay with Toni in her flat in Belsize Park. We will all be witnesses to prove that this is not just a fairytale wedding, a thing of fiction. It is real.