by Sophie Duffy
Until. The door again. And this time it is. T-J. Looking ever-so-slightly-worse-for-wear but looking right at me. I feel like everyone in the room must know but actually they are all too involved with reminiscing, with cake, with brandy, with reunions, with plans, with sunstroke. Yes, poor old Cheryl has had to go to bed early. But it is alright, the party doesn’t have to end. There is now a bedroom going spare and she can lie down in it without impeding our celebrations. The spare bedroom is a result of the other surprise of the day: Linda has booked her and Bob into a five star hotel using her well-earned commission. After an hour or so they disappear, leaving a bemused Clive to make his own arrangements.
‘Well, nobody told me,’ says Linda who hates surprises, being a control freak. ‘I’m not wasting the hotel room.’
Bob agrees and shepherds his fiancée out of the flat before she changes her mind, the prospect of a five star massage overwhelming any fears he might have of impending marriage.
So, poor over-heated Cheryl has T-J’s tiny room as Sheila can’t stand another night cooped up in such close quarters with Bernie. Especially as she won’t get an ounce of sleep fretting over the latest engagement. They move into Toni’s room. And I’ll be on my own in the living room. Only that leaves Clive. No-one seems to have a problem with him sleeping on Cheryl’s vacated put-you-up, alone in the living room, with me. They obviously trust him because he’s in the navy and a respected citizen. But surely that is exactly why they should be worried. Surely I will be too much for him to resist after all those weeks at sea. Why can’t they see this? Do they think I am a child after all? Does no-one care about my virtue?
Yes. Someone does. T-J. Though whether he cares about me or whether he is getting a touch of the green-eyed monster himself, I can only guess at. T-J decides against going back with Toni to her mates, much to her annoyance.
‘You’ll never forgive yourself if I get mugged,’ she says coldly to her brother.
So Clive steps in like a gent (or an opportunist, depending on which way you look at it) and offers to walk her to her friends’ place round the corner. And that gives T-J his chance.
But before he grabs it, the telephone rings. I sense that no-one else in the flat is in the mood for phone calls and so I answer it.
‘Hello, Philippa,’ a tiny voice says.
No, it isn’t Helena’s voice, crackling down the Atlantic airwaves. It is my Wink.
‘Happy Birthday, duck.’
And I tell her about our day and she says she spotted me on the telly which I am sure is a complete fabrication. Apart from the fact there were over half a million people out there today on those legendary Streets of London, Wink’s eyesight is by no means capable of picking out one individual.
‘Why did Cheryl have a tea towel on her head?’ she asks, surprising me yet again.
We chat on for a while, T-J mooching round the lounge, picking up napkins and sweeping up cake crumbs. I want to marry him (sorry Lucas).
Just as I am wondering why Wink is telling me about Andy’s latest mouse cull, she suddenly comes out with the one thing she’s been holding back. The one piece of information I’ve also been trying to keep at bay all day. Helena hasn’t forgotten my birthday. Sixteen is important in her eyes too.
‘She sent you a card.’
Silence.
‘Shall I open it for you? Or do you want to wait?’
I could easily wait. I am an expert in that area. But for once, I feel life pressing its urgency on me. I am sixteen. I want to live a life that is more than waiting.
‘Yes, open it.’
I can visualise Wink with the letter opener, hear her slice the envelope. I can smell Helena’s perfume-mixed-with-smoke coming off the airmail paper inside. I can touch her beautiful school girl handwriting.
‘Well, it’s short and to the point.’
She describes the picture on the front, a clapboarded house with a white picket fence and a big maple tree out the front, a Canadian Waltonesque scene that is quite perverse coming from Helena. Maybe subconsciously she is telling me something, though I can’t for the life of me imagine what.
Wink continues to read out the message that has been inscribed on the inside:
Dear Philippa,
Happy birthday. I wish I had a photo so I could see you all grown up. I know I’ve been hopeless but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you the way I should. One day I hope you will understand. Give Bob and Wink a kiss from me. And have a big one for yourself.
I hope to see you soon.
All my love
Helena x
Neither of us can think of much to say after that so she tells me to keep my pecker up (another skill of mine) and then she is gone, back to her world of sleeping pills and pain killers and parrots that go squawk in the night.
Meanwhile everyone bar T-J has gone to bed, leaving it to me to check on Cheryl. For all we know she could be dead and we are supposed to be looking after her. I feel her forehead which seems to have cooled down thanks to the frozen peas. Then I shut the window, blocking out the London traffic and alcohol-related activities.
Talking of which, I’ve only managed a couple of glasses of Asti and T-J has somehow completely sobered up.
‘Do you want to go in the bathroom first?’ he asks when I am back in the living room, sending a charge of sexual tension through my body, stronger than anything I felt with Raymond and the shared bottle of Coke. Stronger and more serious because now I am virtually a grown-up.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
Though I don’t need to thank him. I don’t need to be grateful to him for what is about to happen. If anything it should be the other way round. I am, after all, offering him a priceless gift for nothing. Though actually, in return, he’ll give me something that is quite precious. He’ll give me his undivided attention, his experience, a tenderness I’ve only read about in Wink’s growing collection of Danielle Steel’s. He’ll give me a private kiss, unwatched by the nation, that is far from chaste, far from embarrassed and that will move me into unchartered territory, land that is as undiscovered as my father’s route out of the Amazon. Terry will give me the chance to succeed where Cheryl has failed. The chance to shine.
Oh dear.
2006
“Would you like someone to talk to? Your husband perhaps? Or your mother?”
She has no idea, this young doctor with the hands. And all I can think about right now is how I can make her feel better, stop the tears crowding her eyes. She’ll never make it if she doesn’t toughen up.
“Maybe you’ve got a leaflet or something. That might help. I do know something about heart problems but there’s always more to learn.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she says. “I’ll get back to you soon.”
And she leaves us, blowing her nose because she understands a mother’s worry.
Yes, I know a bit about heart break. But I have no idea how they can be mended. Am I up to this? On my own?
Here comes Fran. “Your husband’s here. Shall I show him in?”
I feel a surge of maternal power, heating up my blood, my milk. Boiling up my bones. Sterilising all the feelings I’ve ever had for him. All the good ones and even most of the bad ones. So I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about anything except you. I am wiped clean of him and I WILL NOT LET HIM HURT YOU.
“Tell him to get lost.”
“You really should be with someone,” she insists.
She doesn’t get it, does she? I’ve got you. What more could I possibly want?
“We’re fine,” I tell her. “Just fine.”
I am horrified to find myself crying. I can’t hear it or feel it but I must be doing it on autopilot because, when I reach up to my face, there is the wet, soggy evidence.
“Please, Philippa. Talk to me.” Fran looks kindly at me. I look at you, lying there in my arms, checking you’re still breathing, the way I used to do all those years ago, creeping up on tiptoes and kneeling down beside a pale, still boy, curled
up like a caterpillar on the sofa. Watching for the rise and fall while he watched Valerie Singleton.
Oh dear.
Chapter Twelve: 1981
Bullseye
Over the next few weeks I catch myself smiling at odd moments. At home I can be doing something simple – going down the stairs, running a bath, squeezing my spots – when an image of a shoulder, or a look, will float into view. At school, drinking coffee in the sixth form common room, reading from a Shakespeare text, sketching a bowl of flowers, watching a slideshow on the rise of the Third Reich in a darkened classroom, or hanging around the hockey net, fat and heavy with protective gear, my head will float off to that other place of love and lust and passion.
I’ve made it through to the other side of my O-levels with a cunning combination of wits, blagging and short-term memory. To my great relief, I get the two predicted A grades in my English exams. But the big surprise is the other results: Bs in Art and History and Cs in all the rest. Not bad for Philippa who started off her school life dumbfounded in the Slow Readers. Who would have thought she’d become Grammar School Philippa, Sixth Form Philippa, Hopefully-University-But-More-Likely-Polytechnic Philippa? And after that, well… there is a whole world out there.
One day after school, as the conkers are falling from the tree outside the shop and the palms on the seafront brace themselves for stormy times ahead, I make my way to the Bone Yard. I tell Lucas about T-J. I tell him that I’m not especially bothered I don’t see him very often. I was wrong about being in love with him. I was wrong about wanting to marry him. I want to be independent like Jane Eyre or Princess Leia (who both have hair as ridiculous as mine). Now I am a sixth former, I am encouraged to think for myself. I spend a lot of time thinking for myself and have come to the conclusion that I don’t need a man – surprising, perhaps, given my role models: Auntie Sheila always chasing Bob when she has a Bernie of her own, Wink drooling over Bruce Forsyth, Helena following Orville Tupper across the ocean without so much as a backward glance. But what about all those other women who’ve influenced me over the years? All those spinsters like Miss Parry, the librarian and Miss Mills, the visionary teacher who’d pushed Christopher Bennett and me through the Eleven Plus. I’ll never forget their battle cry.
I don’t feel the need to cling to T-J because I know now that there will be other men in my life. If I want them. If I can be bothered.
‘You were the first,’ I tell Lucas. ‘And the most special.’
I don’t tell him everything about T-J who was also the first in another way. I certainly don’t tell him about Christopher Bennett who has also had his small part to play; that would be admitting to treachery of the highest order. I can’t tell him these things because, really, Lucas is still just seven-years-old. But I am sixteen. I am growing up.
Looking at Lucas’ grave, I realise it has been a decade since he left me. Ten years that I’ve had to make do with talking to a headstone. And that knowledge somehow justifies my need to be close to another human being. To T-J. To Christopher Bennett who got me drunk again, only this time on Merrydown. To Clive, back on leave, and with a girl in every port (including Torquay). And now, although I am not in a particular hurry, I am looking around for the next one – though they aren’t exactly beating down my door, queuing up round the block, or doing any other clichéd nonsense in response to my newly-discovered feminine wiles. (I spurn clichés now I am a free thinker and like to push my imagination to its limits.) But I am not a sex maniac. I am not a tart or a slut. I am simply alive.
While I am being something of a free spirit, Cheryl is more conventional and has managed to get herself a steadier boyfriend, Doug, from Torquay Tech. He is doing something science-y for his A-levels so I have little in common with him, as I like to think of myself as the artistic sort. However, he has a car and is happy for me to tag along with him and Cheryl at the weekends as this means he can pair me off with his best mate, Nathan, a fellow scientist who can do the Rubik’s cube in less than a minute. I put up with Nathan and he puts up with me, though we are anything but a pair. Despite having completely separate interests, we enjoy philosophical debates in the back of Doug’s Mini as well as chips and chocolate.
Today we are on our way back from a drive to Brixham and have had plenty of time to indulge in our latest topic for debate, which is less philosophical than usual, revolving round the question: Who shot JR?
Despite being an avid Dallas fan thanks to Wink’s encouragement, my heart isn’t in it tonight. We are supposed to be heading back to Cheryl’s to watch the long-awaited episode which will at last reveal the culprit. But I am tired and have eaten too much chocolate and too many sweets.
‘Can you drop me home first, Doug?’ I ask. ‘I’ve got homework to finish.’
Seeing as I always have homework to finish they don’t question my excuse, just moan at me for not being as organised as them.
‘That’s what I’m trying to do now,’ I say, a little curtly and immediately feel guilty. It isn’t their fault I’m having an off day.
Everything goes quiet. I’ve spoilt our camaraderie. Popped our bubble of friendship. Doug switches on Radio 3 and we pretend to listen appreciatively to Bach or Beethoven or whoever it is until at last we reach Bob’s News.
‘Enjoy the programme, I force myself to say. You’d better tell me all about it tomorrow.’
I get out the car. They each stare at me through the steamed-up windows. I stand for a second looking back at their cloudy faces as they drive off and have a bad feeling that I should’ve gone with them. There might not be many more times like this.
Cheryl has been put on the Pill by her mother in consultation with the doctor at the family planning clinic (is there really such a thing?). Cheryl’s mother is the sensible, practical sort of mother that Helena could never have aspired to be (or Bob). All those hormones make Cheryl gain quite a bit of weight so she now looks as voluptuous as Marilyn Monroe. I too am piling on the pounds but that has more to do with the amount of chips and chocolate consumed in the back of Doug’s Mini. And I, it has to be said, look nothing like a Hollywood legend. I will never be on an Athena poster with my dress blowing up all around me – or playing tennis without knickers for that matter. But I have reached the point where I don’t especially care. I have power at my fingertips. I have knowledge in my heart and in my brain. I have the whole wide world at my feet.
Unfortunately by the time the conkers outside have all been secreted by squirrels and little boys and the Christmas lights are twinkling all over Torquay town, I have to rethink those bold statements. For I have used my power without thought for its consequences. I have buried my knowledge in the chambers of my heart and the craters of my brain. I have put my foot through the crack in the bottom of the world and slipped through it.
I am Stupid Philippa. I am Fat Philippa. I am Pregnant Philippa.
Oh bugger.
The worst of it is I don’t know exactly how pregnant I am. What clues I have (a lost waistline, no morning sickness, forgotten dates) don’t help me whatsoever in trying to pin down a particular time or place. Not that there have been that many times or that many places but there has been a certain amount of carelessness by all parties concerned. And surely it only takes the once. However many times I examine the finer details of the last few months, I am no clearer. I have no evidence. But instinct tells me what I can’t possibly know for sure.
Where do I go from here? I don’t have a vigilant mother like Cheryl’s watching over me (I wouldn’t be in this position if I did). Nobody has a clue. Who shall I tell? I feel like a child again. Seven-years-old again. I don’t know anything. I don’t know my own body, my own mind. I am being invaded by an unwelcome task force, an invisible but overwhelming alien presence. I want to jump in the sea and swim and swim and swim across the bay, into the Channel and out into the wilds of the Atlantic, until I can swim no more. Or until I can find my mother. For surely this is how Helena must have felt when she discovered I was tumbling a
round inside her. Frightened. Confused. And it shouldn’t have happened to her; somehow she got hold of a coil – according to Wink in her X-rated version of the Birds and the Bees. Helena told her once that I was born clutching it in my hand. Wink said you could never rely on contraception because that would be to underestimate the power of nature. The only safe way was to keep your legs crossed at all times. Well, I didn’t do that. And now I am just like Helena. Poor Helena. Finally I know how she felt. Alone. No-one to turn to. Her father was a judge, remember… and her own mother was dying. She only had me.
I resort to crying. A flood I can’t hold back however hard I bite my lip and dig my nails in my palms. I am crying for Helena. I am crying for Philippa. I am crying for this poor baby who can’t possibly be real. But, according to the chemist somewhere on the other side of Torquay, most-definitely-one-hundred-percent is real and can no longer be ignored.
You would think it would be Wink or Bob that I turn to in the end, when I realise I can’t do this alone. After all, they love me no matter what. But somehow I can’t. Bob is happily engaged and caught up in his future life with Wonder Woman. Wink is going steadily downhill and even poor old Andy can be too much for her lap these days, and Captain too loud. There is the possibility of Linda or Auntie Sheila, but if I confide in one, the other will be offended. So I make my way down to the library one lunch time, on a day when I know my Tudor queen will be there. Miss Parry takes one look at me as I sidle up to the desk and whisks me off to a store room stuffed with books that almost distracts me from my mission impossible for a moment.
She sits me down on a chair, gives me a glass of water and I am back in the school library, the smell of polish and the feet of mini storm-troopers marching out to play. But I am not a little girl. I am most definitely not seven-years-old. I am a woman and I have to take responsibility. So I tell Miss Parry my barely-concealed secret and she doesn’t tut or chide. She pats my hand and says, ‘dear, dear’. I’ve done my part and from now on she seizes control, handing it over to doctors and teachers and finally to Bob who looks like he’s discovered the world isn’t the place he thought it was. Which, of course, is true for all of us at some point in our lives.
