Becoming Nancy

by Terry Ronald

  Maxie stared into my face and nodded his head again, slowly, as if he understood.

  ‘I know I’m good-looking,’ he went on. ‘I know why they look.’

  ‘You do have very nice eyes,’ I said earnestly. ‘That’s probably why they look.’

  Maxie leaned back, balancing on the two back legs of his blue plastic chair.

  ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But I reckon I’ve got a fairly big knob for my age. I think it’s more likely that they’re looking at that.’

  And he chuckled quietly.

  ‘Long as they don’t touch me, they can look all they like.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said nervously.

  Then I felt myself blush, and harden slightly, so I adjusted my script accordingly.

  ‘Why did you do that earlier, the holding-hands thing?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you know what it’s like for me at this school?’

  Maxie looked slightly embarrassed.

  ‘It’s only actin’,’ he said, and he winked at me. ‘Why d’you give a shit what those other kids think, anyway, David? They’re fuckin’ wankers.’

  ‘You don’t have to put up with it day after day,’ I said.

  ‘I s’pose,’ he said.

  Then he screwed up his face for a moment and said, ‘Shall we walk ’ome together? Frances said you live on Chesterfield Street; I can get a bus from there.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but … kids might see us.’

  He laughed.

  ‘There you go again, so fuckin’ what? You’re a weird one, you are, David. I do like you, though. You make me laugh.’

  ‘I aim to please,’ I smiled, getting up and hoping against hope that the semi-protuberance in my pants might subside sometime soon.

  And off we went.

  What I really couldn’t fathom was, why me? Why would someone of his social standing within the school want to chum up with someone with my reputation – the class clown, the class fairy, the boy who only hung around with girls from the sixth form and his own sister? Maxie didn’t seem bothered about any of this – he was entirely unfazed, and I think that is why I felt myself fall for him. There, I said it. I fell for him. I’d fucking fallen for him and I didn’t care. If that made me a one hundred per cent, fully fledged homosexual then I actually didn’t care.

  During the rest of the week I could see that even Frances was coming round to Maxie’s evident charms, and the three of us would wander the ten-minute route down the hill from school towards Lordship Lane each afternoon after rehearsals, gossiping and laughing about Sonia Barker’s atrocious acting, or little Oliver’s unfortunate speech impediment. On Wednesday evening, which was particularly clement, we bought a bag of chips between us from Elvis’ fish bar, and then we walked down Chesterfield Street and perched on the swirly black iron railings outside my nan’s house.

  ‘I live right there,’ I’d said, brazenly putting one hand on Maxie’s shoulder, and pointing at number twenty-two with the other. ‘That’s my sister Chrissy in the white trilby and the boob tube, having a ruck with her boyfriend outside, in the front garden.’

  Frances laughed.

  ‘As per!’ she said.

  ‘It’s nice, your gaff,’ Maxie said. ‘We live in a little house, modern. Me dad’s always fuckin’ moving with work, so we never stay anywhere for more than about two years. It gets on my wick. I’d love to live in a big old house like yours, though.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. I could scarcely take my eyes off him when he was talking, to be honest. It was like I was hypnotized or something.

  ‘I live in the flats,’ Frances interjected urgently, almost shouting. ‘Don’t I, David.’

  But I didn’t answer her; instead I said to Maxie, ‘You’ll have to come for your tea one night, maybe this week.’

  And I heard Frances huff and kiss her teeth. Whether she realized how I felt about Maxie, I wasn’t sure, but I did catch her looking at me in a bizarre, unearthly way as we waved him on to the 185 bus at the bottom of my road that night, just as it was getting dark.

  ‘Has he ever mentioned a girlfriend to you or anything?’ I said to Frances as we ambled towards her flats afterwards.

  ‘No, why?’ she said. ‘Do you fancy your chances?’

  Then she caterwauled a raucous laugh and shoved me playfully into the doorway of the dry-cleaners. Maybe she does realize, I thought.

  Then yesterday – Friday – Frances went to the dentist at two thirty with suspected junior-onset gingivitis, so she didn’t walk home with us. Maxie had slung his school blazer over his shoulder and was kicking an empty Fresca can down Lordship Lane as we reached the bottom of Chesterfield Street, and he looked slightly gloomy.

  ‘I’ve missed quite a lot of footy practice this week,’ he said as we reached the bus stop, and he booted the now semi-crushed can clean across the main road. ‘Mr Lord isn’t happy.’

  ‘I know what you mean, Maxie,’ I agreed. ‘I’ve not done any homework or any sort of revision since I met … since the play started, I mean, and I’ve really, really let my “two new words a day” rule slide as well.’

  Maxie looked mystified, and he leaned against the bus stop.

  ‘What the fuck is the “two new words a day” rule?’

  I felt myself redden.

  ‘Well … I like to find and learn the meanings of two new words a day,’ I muttered, ‘and then use them in sentences on the following day. I’ve done it since I was twelve.’

  Maxie still looked confused.

  ‘I don’t do it at the weekends, you know, only in the week,’ I said, as if that might sound slightly less mental. ‘Like, up until a month ago I didn’t even know what libidinous meant, or prurient.’

  ‘Really? And what do they mean?’ Maxie asked.

  ‘Well, they’re both something to do with the expression of sexual desire,’ I said, rather too persuasively.

  And I suddenly hoped that an approaching Ford Granada might mount the pavement and knock me down stone dead. Maxie stared at me for a moment, then he smiled and put his hand on my arm.

  ‘You’re a fuckin’ geek, David,’ he said. ‘But a very funny geek. Sweet.’

  Sweet? What did he mean, sweet? Suddenly I spotted a 185 bus coming, which Maxie was bound to jump on if I didn’t do something about it fast. I took the bull by the proverbial horns.

  ‘Why don’t you come for tea at mine now,’ I spouted. ‘My mum won’t mind and we can listen to Blondie.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to, I …’

  ‘OK! I’ll just have to ring my mum.’

  ‘OK!’

  ‘Right!’

  He was lying face down across the beanbag in my bedroom when I came upstairs with two cups of Mellow Birds and a packet of Rich Tea. I felt my heart somersault in my chest.

  ‘Do you fancy her?’ Maxie looked up and asked, as he pawed through my albums. ‘Debbie Harry?’

  I told him I wasn’t sure, and then I went over to my music centre and put on a cassette of something I’d recorded off the radio the day before: it was the brand-new Police song, ‘Message in a Bottle’.

  ‘Do you think Sting is good-looking, then?’ he asked.

  ‘I guess,’ I said. ‘I think you look a bit like Sting, apart from the hazel eyes – have people told you that?’

  ‘No,’ Maxie said. ‘But I like it that you did. Is Frances your bird?’

  Jesus, he’s inquisitive.

  ‘Oh God, no. She’s nobody’s bird. She’s just my best friend. I haven’t got a bird. Well, Abigail Henson wanked me off in here the other day, but I don’t particularly want to go out with her.’

  Maxie’s face was a comic portrait: mouth open, eyes bulging.

  ‘She wanked you off?’ he gasped, and he sat bolt upright.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fuck! Did you like it?’

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I would have if it had been somebody e
lse.’

  His eyes narrowed.

  ‘Who?’

  I didn’t dare tell, so I said, ‘Debbie Harry, perhaps.’

  We both laughed raucously, rocking back and forth on the cream and brown carpet-tiled floor of my bedroom.

  ‘Or Sting,’ Maxie suddenly suggested.

  And we both stopped laughing; staring at one another for a moment, silently – just as the record started to fade and disc jockey Dave Lee Travis began yabbering over the end of the song. Then the tape cut off and I said, ‘Tea will be ready in a flash. We’re having Findus Crispy Pancakes.’

  I remember I’d sounded a bit like the Queen Mother when I said that, aside from the fact that she would almost certainly not have been having Findus Crispy Pancakes for her tea. Maxie nodded.

  ‘That sounds very good,’ he said.

  When the bottle smashes on the floor of the bar I almost have a coronary. I’ve been so lost in my fucking daydream, I don’t know where I am for a moment.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Denise snaps, and I realize suddenly that it’s me who’s dropped the bottle – Guinness all over the place.

  ‘Dolly Daydream you are tonight, Dave,’ she laughs. ‘Well, you can bloody well tidy that up yourself, and do the glasses. I’m going home to watch Police 5. I do love me Shaw Taylor.’

  Denise gathers up her Rothmans and the long black cardigan she wears over absolutely everything, and heads for the bar hatch.

  ‘Keep ’em peeled!’ she says, waving her fingers.

  And when I look back, I realize that the dance hall has virtually emptied without me even noticing. I didn’t even see my mum and Aunt Val leave.

  As I pop the final load into the glass-washer, Marty comes up from the cellar and reminds me that the prawn cocktail crisps are dwindling and to get another box down.

  Heading to the storeroom, I can hear Marty and my dad chatting at the now deserted bar.

  ‘Do you fancy some afters, Eddie?’ Marty says. ‘Scotch?’

  ‘Nah, I’ve got an early airport run tomorrow,’ says Eddie. ‘But are we going sea fishing next weekend or what, Mart? You can bring your little lad if you like; David won’t wanna go.’

  No. You’re perfectly correct there, Father dear, I reflect as I unlock the large storeroom cupboard. The last time I went sea fishing with you was at Littlehampton when I was eleven. I got a clump around the head, I recall, for aiding the liberation of a large floundering cod back into the sea, and then I knelt on the worms and got another clump – plus I ruined my best Wranglers.

  ‘Yeah, that’ll be good, Eddie!’ I hear Marty say. ‘I’ll look forward to that. See yous later.’

  I stretch up to the top of the cupboard to reach the box of prawn crisps. I have a theory that prawn cocktail crisps are tremendously common, and I have to say, that theory is often borne out by a few of the people I witness purchasing them at the Lordship Lane Working Men’s Club. To my mind, ready salted or cheese and onion are far more acceptable as a fried-potato seasoning, but that’s just me. I stand on tiptoe to reach the box, and I’m suddenly aware of a presence behind me; and then there’s a hand on my stomach, below my exposed navel, fingertips brushing my pubic hair. It’s gone as quick as it landed there.

  ‘Look at you, you dirty little sod, showing all your belly off!’

  I whirl around, dropping the crisp box, to face a grinning Marty.

  ‘Fuck off, Marty!’

  I half laugh in shock, pulling my face away from his, sharply.

  ‘Don’t worry, darlin’,’ he smirks. ‘I’m not gonna kiss ya. I’d fuck you, if I didn’t ’ave to look at you, but I wouldn’t kiss ya!’

  Marty evidently finds himself hysterical and roars with laughter at his own disgusting wisecrack.

  ‘You stupid bastard, I nearly had a heart attack,’ I say, yanking my shirt back down. ‘You can sort the fucking crisps out yourself now.’

  I push past him angrily, and head for the coat rack. Marty looks slightly remorseful.

  ‘Sorry if I made you jump, mate,’ he says as I collect my bomber. ‘Your wages are on the desk.’

  At home, and tucked up in bed, I have Debbie on the headphones.

  ‘Darlin’, darlin’, darlin’ … I can’t wait to see you,

  Your picture ain’t enough,

  I can’t wait to touch you … in the flesh!’

  I reflect on Marty and his crude remarks, and for a moment I’m horribly aroused; so I turn my thoughts to Maxie, and swiftly he washes through me like morphine. Maxie! You’re the one I can’t wait to see. Ten minutes later, though, as I tug at my cock, I’m nowhere near a climax, so my mind drifts back to Marty. I don’t want it to, but it just does. I think about him touching me in the stockroom … in the showers, maybe … oh fuck … it’s then that I come.

  Seven

  Top Hat and Tales

  Mum and Aunt Val have cut out the pattern for my First Act Nancy frock, and it’s spread out all over the lounge floor.

  ‘If your father sees me doing this, I’ll be mincemeat,’ Mum says, hacking her way through a carpet of emerald cheesecloth with her best pinking shears. ‘I do hope he doesn’t decide to come back from fishing earlier than he said.’

  ‘Oh, let ’im shove it up his arse; he’ll ’ave to get over it sooner or later,’ Aunt Val interjects helpfully. ‘Now, David, do you want a nice nipped-in waist? I would if I were you, and not too flared, skirt-wise, else you’ll end up looking hippy. Your mother’s bought a dirndl pattern, but to be honest, I’d ’ave said that was more your Lady von Trapp than Nancy, meself.’

  ‘Just shut up and let me get on, Val,’ Mum snaps, crawling around the floor with a tape measure and a mouthful of pins. ‘I’ll be ’ere all night otherwise.’

  Aunt Val looks at me and rolls her eyes.

  ‘She’s like a mad thing once she’s got them scissors in ’er hand,’ she says.

  Mum and Val’s banter was the stuff of legends as far as I was concerned. They often bickered, yes, but there was love behind every slur, and woe betide anybody else that joined in on either side: they’d more often than not end up doing battle with the pair of them. Different, they were indeed: Mum was a true English rose, an almost ridiculously beautiful woman with a gentle soul, who was kind, pliant and, sometimes, just a little bit nervy – though this was probably due to being on the receiving end of Eddie’s yelling for the last fifteen or so years, poor cow. She did on occasion, however, demonstrate a ferocious stubborn streak, and if she was of that mind, even Eddie couldn’t win a battle, let alone us kids. Valerie, on the flip side, was very unlikely to hide her light under a bushel in any given situation. Like my nan, she spoke as she found, and I had seen grown men reduced to near whimpering wrecks after receiving only a small slice of the rough end of her tongue. Aunt Val was my fashion icon. I’d almost wet myself with glee pawing through snaps of her taken during the sixties, in which she’d be wearing white leather miniskirts and Chelsea boots, or skin-tight embroidered lemon organza with matching satin-covered slingbacks. She’d be sitting, invariably, on the bonnet of an Austin Healey with some handsome boy, or posing outside the GPO Tower where she’d worked. It all looked so much more glamorous back then; perhaps it was the black and white. Val’s dark features and beehive hairdo would always put me in mind of Sophia Loren or Gina Lollobrigida, while Mum was more of a Jean Simmons or Liz Taylor type. And I loved nothing more than sitting with them on Saturday nights, listening to tales of when they’d go dancing in the hall above the Co-op down Rye Lane, before me and Chrissy were born.

  ‘They were a couple of bastards,’ Nan would chip in while sipping her barley wine. ‘Specially your mother. All the lads were after her, and she wasn’t as fussy as she might ’ave been.’

  ‘I’d have to fight all the bloody horny Teddy boys off while she just stood there lookin’ pretty,’ Aunt Val told me one night. ‘She was a bloody nightmare, your mum.’

  ‘It’s not my fault I was stunningly beautiful,’ Mum retorted. ‘T
hey all wanted my virginity, that was the thing, David.’

  ‘Well, little did they know that ship had long since sailed,’ Aunt Val said. ‘It was halfway to China by then.’

  And we’d all howled with laughter.

  ‘Right!’ Mum says triumphantly and finally, holding the freshly cut-out dress shape up against me. ‘That’s gonna be fantastic. You’ll be the greatest Nancy ever in this, David.’

  Who could doubt it?

  ‘And with that nice-looking chap playing opposite you, I think you’re gonna knock ’em dead,’ Aunt Val adds. ‘What’s his name again?’

  ‘Maxie,’ I say dreamily.

  ‘Very good-looking boy,’ Aunt Val says. ‘I see him sittin’ outside with you the other night, David; ’e’ll break a few hearts, won’t he, Kath?’

  ‘He certainly will,’ Mum agrees. ‘He was over here a few times this week, wasn’t he, Dave?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  I’m giving nothing away.

  ‘In fact, I think it was three nights on the trot he had his tea with us this week, wasn’t it, Dave?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  It’s true – Maxie and I have been even more indivisible this last week. In fact, every time I turn around, there he is, beaming sunshine at me and dragging me off to rehearse our lines alone: it’s been virtual rapture, to my mind. He’d even, yet again, daringly ducked out of after-school football practice so he could come over to my house and run lines. That had not gone down especially well with Mr Lord, who finally put his hoof down and gave Maxie an ultimatum.

  ‘One more missed practice, Maxie, and you’ll have to choose between the play and the team,’ he’d warned in a sing-song tone, as Maxie and I turned up ten minutes late for technical boring on Wednesday. ‘We don’t want that, now, do we?’

  And then he’d scowled at me as I sat down, with a glare that quite plainly said: I know you’re to blame for this, Starr. I didn’t give a shit, though. Maxie had confided in me that if push actually had come to shove, he’d have chosen the play over a stupid football team any day; but just to keep Bob Lord sweet, he’d agreed to turn up for all scheduled footy practice in the future. Frances – who’s supposed to be my friend – said she too is getting pretty sick of seeing Maxie and me huddled together in corners, hashing out our banter, but, as I pointed out to the daft mare, Maxie and I have a lot of scenes together and I feel very strongly that I need to submerge myself utterly into the role bestowed upon me.