Becoming Nancy

by Terry Ronald

  ‘I can’t face it today, though, David,’ he said with quiet pain in his eyes. ‘I can’t face school with Mr Lord looking at me, and the other kids. There must have been other mums and dads there when all that shit kicked off at parents’ evening last night: they will have told their kids … those kids will tell other kids … do you see what I’m saying?’

  I nodded in simultaneous realization and horror.

  ‘I guess I do,’ I said. ‘So you are running away?’

  ‘No, silly,’ he smiled. ‘Well … not quite running away.’

  And he put his hand on my shoulder, causing my breath to quicken.

  ‘But I think we ought to get away for a day, together, to see if we can fix all this. Just us.’

  ‘What, and not go to school?’

  ‘No, fuck school,’ Maxie said. ‘Let’s go up west and fuck everybody else off. Come on! We can get a Red Bus Rover and go wherever we want. Let’s just do it, David!’

  I thought about it for a moment as I stared into his perfectly open face: at his uneven smile, and his pleading eyes. It did sound violently romantic, I have to say: the two of us – fugitives from school, from our parents, from the world – just to be together for one day … perhaps our very last! It was at once both spectacularly defiant and dangerously passionate. I decided I would do it.

  ‘I need to get changed out of my uniform,’ I told him. ‘But I can’t let Chrissy see me or she’ll cotton on something’s up, so you just wait out here, all right? I’ll be ten minutes.’

  He nodded keenly and I dashed up to my room, three stairs at a time, to change into something that more befitted the sheer unadulterated drama of it all.

  Of course, when Maxie and me got to the end of Chesterfield Street, there stood Frances Bassey, hands on hips, outside Wallis’. She didn’t look best pleased, as well she mightn’t: with all that had gone on in the past eighteen hours, I’d completely forgotten that I’d promised to meet her there. She was banging her heel against the wall and pouting, her hair combed out into a huge Afro, and she looked quite beautiful: livid, but beautiful, nonetheless.

  ‘You’re late!’ she sniped. ‘Eight forty-five, you said, and what’s Maxie doing here? Don’t tell me he stayed over at yours?’ Her mouth dropped open in pseudo-shock, and she leaned back against the window of the supermarket.

  ‘No, of course he didn’t stay over, you dozy tart,’ I said. ‘After what happened the other week Eddie would have a shit fit! Don’t be so soft. Maxie turned up this morning, and we’re not going to school today.’

  Maxie nodded firmly in concurrence.

  ‘We’re getting a Red Bus Rover,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean, you’re not going to school?’ Frances said with no small amount of intrigue. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, linking arms with her and semi-dragging her along Lordship Lane towards the bus stop. ‘Let me first fill you in on last night’s lovely little episode …’

  And off we trailed along the main road, with me giving a perhaps slightly over-theatrical description of the previous night’s tumultuous events. Frances was practically hyperventilating by the time I’d finished, as was I.

  ‘Oh, Christ! No wonder you don’t wanna go to school – that’s fucking awful,’ she cried. ‘Bob fucking Lord! What a wanker! What a knob!’

  And then she came over all pensive for a few seconds.

  ‘Right,’ she suddenly said, waving a finger at me as we crossed Matham Road. ‘First thing Monday you boys have to go and see Mr McClarnon. He can help you, surely: tell you what to do next. He might even be able to get you back into the play, Maxie, don’t you reckon?’

  Maxie shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I don’t think my mother is going to let me back into any school play, Frances,’ he said. ‘Not after what Mr Lord said.’

  Frances stopped suddenly and looked at us both, wide-eyed.

  ‘But surely he can’t just get away with saying those things to your parents, Maxie,’ she said in disbelief. ‘It’s just pure bloody evil!’

  ‘It is evil,’ I agreed, ‘but it’s also true up to a point, I suppose, and that’s why you, my dear Fran, have to go into school today and report back to us all that’s going on … everything that’s being said about us … like a spy. The spy who loved me!’

  Frances looked me up and down, her brow deeply furrowed. Then she prodded me, hard, in the ribs.

  ‘Come out, bwoy!’ she said. ‘It’ll be da spy who slapped you upside de head if you’re not careful. I’m not playin’ flippin’ James Bond for no one, and I’m not going into school today now anyway! I’m getting a damn Red Bus Rover wiv yous two batty boys – see it deh?’

  And she relinked arms with me, and then in turn with Maxie, and hauled us along the street towards an approaching 176 bus headed for Trafalgar Square.

  ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘I’m in the sixth form and I can pretty much do as I please, timetable-wise, so I’m coming with you, and that’s all there bloody well is to it!’

  We headed first for Carnaby Street, and by the time we got there – at around ten thirty – shopkeepers and traders were busy dragging up their shutters and erecting rails and racks of alluring shirts, hats, shoes, scarves and garish costume jewellery outside their shops. Frances, typically, was famished, only having had a bag of dry roasted peanuts for breakfast, and decided that egg and chips were mandatory before she could even contemplate venturing any further.

  ‘Who has cash?’ she demanded and she held her hand out flat.

  ‘Well, I’ve only got a fiver for the whole day,’ Maxie said as we headed into what looked like the most reasonably priced greasy spoon. It was then that I made my dramatic declaration.

  ‘I have funds,’ I said.

  ‘Groovy,’ Frances beamed. ‘How much?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said as we shuffled into a brown-leather-seated booth at the back of the café. ‘But it’s bloody heavy!’

  And I went about emptying the contents of my school satchel, which was wholly bereft of books, biros and the like, but at least a good quarter-full of glittering fifty-pence pieces.

  ‘Jesus!’ Maxie said as I poured a large pile of them out on to the gravy-spotted yellow Formica table. ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘Shhhh! I nicked them out of Eddie’s bottle. He won’t notice, he’s got loads – he fiddles it out of the fruit machine at the club and shares it with my boss, Marty.’

  I had felt the teensiest paroxysm of guilt as I’d half emptied the coin-filled sawn-off whisky bottle out on to the lounge carpet, and then scooped up handfuls of fifty-pence pieces and jammed them into my satchel before dashing to rejoin Maxie outside my front door earlier this morning – but it was just the teensiest. Not enough to actually stop me!

  Frances spread the money out on the table with the flat of her hand and started counting it into piles of ten coins – five pounds in a pile.

  ‘There’s got to be fifty-odd quid here,’ she said, eyes all globular. ‘Possibly more.’

  I, meanwhile, was chewing my lip.

  ‘Do you think I’m perfectly awful for thieving?’ I said.

  But Frances had started to giggle, so she clearly didn’t, and she continued totting up the plunder while Maxie kept watch to make sure no prying eyes were upon us.

  ‘Sixty-eight quid,’ she concluded seriously. ‘Sixty-eight fucking quid! We can have an absolutely out-of-this-world day out on that, boys. What shall we do first?’

  What we did first, once we’d wolfed down our rather unsatisfying fry-ups, was head along Carnaby Street, weaving in and out of the shops and indoor markets, trying on all the garments and attire we could lay our eager little paws on. I donned mohair jumpers and skinny suits, winkle-pickers and pork-pie hats, while Maxie tried on a Gary Numan-style plastic jumpsuit and a bright-pink trilby. Frances stumbled upon a hippy store, which stank of patchouli oil and where everything but the shop cat was tie-dyed to within an inch of its life. She came
out of the curtained dressing area at one point wearing the most beastly grey and dirty-peach maxi-frock, and we all squealed in astonished hilarity as she stomped around the store farcically, until the owner made her take it off and shooed us away down the street. After that, we happened upon the Badge Shop, which was in a dingy basement and according to Frances was where Mr McClarnon found all his political badges and buttons. I, however, bought a nice little Blondie badge there, and another with Agnetha and Anni-Frid from Abba on it, singing in blue catsuits and sticking their bottoms out. Maxie bought a sew-on patch with ‘The Jam’ on it, and Frances bought two badges: one which she said was a surprise gift for me, and one with a cartoon of a smiling Rasta smoking a huge spliff. We paid, of course, in fifty-pence pieces.

  When we wandered through a little park in Soho later in the afternoon, a group of about ten or twelve French kids our age were listening to a noisy radio, and so we went and sat with them, drinking Fresca and eating the latkes we’d bought at Gaby’s Deli in the Charing Cross Road. These kids seemed so much cooler than the ones at our school: smoking Gauloises in their chic, coloured denim jackets and punky slogan-emblazoned T-shirts. One quite stunning boy wore the most incredible Debbie Harry shirt, and I was sick with jealousy. Maybe Maxie and I should run away to Paris – it must surely be better there, I thought.

  Anyway, after five or so minutes chatting and laughing with a couple of extraordinarily glamorous girls from Biarritz, I noticed two boys amongst the group – perhaps a year or two older than me, but no more than that – sitting with their arms unashamedly about one another. I clocked them for a while, transfixed, as one played with the other’s thick dark curls, and then touched his lips tenderly. I found myself smiling, and then almost teary with joy. How unabashed and wondrous these boys were to me. Clearly in love, they didn’t give two fucks what anyone else in the park, or indeed the world at large, thought. When they eventually kissed, sweetly, and then smiled so knowingly at one another, my tears spilled over with the beauty of it, and I had to wipe my eyes before anyone noticed. I turned and looked towards Maxie, and sure enough he, too, was mesmerized by the pair. But on Maxie’s face I saw something unreservedly different, something I really hadn’t wanted to see at all, and it was quite plain. It was a look of trepidation – fear, even. Then he moved over, nearer to me on the grass, and put his hand on mine, smiling. It was a trifle half-hearted, I suppose, but the thought was there, so I grinned back, and even chanced a little wink.

  ‘We’ve not even talked about any of this, really, have we?’ I said quietly to him, and he looked straight at me.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Well, we’ve been so busy enjoying ourselves we’ve forgotten why the hell we’ve cut school and done a bunk in the first place.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We’ve still got to go back home and face all that other shit. We probably won’t even be able to speak to one another tomorrow – even my mum said I should keep away from you. You’re not in the play any more; it’s just a fucking disaster from start to finish.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, looking down. ‘But I don’t want to talk about it, or think about it, David. It’s all too bloody much. One minute I’m this normal kid who plays football and likes acting, and the next I’m branded a fucking queer in front of the whole school and me mum and dad. I can’t take it.’

  I didn’t really know what to say, so I glanced over at Frances, who was at that point flirting, rather disgracefully, with the beautiful French boy in the Debbie Harry T-shirt. Then I turned back to Maxie.

  ‘We’ll have to go home soon,’ I said miserably, ‘and we’ll probably be in even deeper shit now we’ve bunked off school.’

  ‘I know,’ Maxie said. ‘I suppose it’s been worth it, though, hasn’t it?’

  I semi-shrugged, and then he smiled at me and said, ‘You’re worth it, David.’

  He rummaged around in his pocket and dragged out a folded-up page from a magazine.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said, and he handed it me. ‘I tore it out of a free magazine in one of the shops in Carnaby Street.’

  I read aloud from the crumpled page.

  ‘“Scandals Discotheque, Oxford Street. Friday night, 9 p.m. – 2 a.m. DJ Big Phil, plus cabaret.”’

  And there was a printed drawing of two men with moustaches dancing underneath a disco ball, with a pink triangle at the top. I stared at Maxie, somewhat bemused. What on earth was he showing me this leaflet for?

  ‘We should go,’ he said eagerly.

  ‘What – to this? But it’s late tonight.’

  ‘We’ve got money,’ Maxie reasoned. ‘Why not? We’re already in the shit. Might as well be hung for a sheep an’ all that.’

  My mouth fell open and I must have looked fairly ridiculous because Maxie suddenly grabbed me roughly and shook me by the shoulders.

  ‘Come on!’ he said. ‘Where’s your fuckin’ renegade spirit?’

  ‘I think it’s in the cupboard under the stairs at home,’ I laughed. ‘Do you think we’d get in? Surely we wouldn’t.’

  ‘We can try,’ he said.

  I looked hard into Maxie’s eyes. They were dazzling and effervescent, and I was all of a sudden both gripped and heartened by his unexpected rally to the call.

  ‘All right,’ I nodded. ‘All fucking right, we’ll give it a go.’

  ‘Give what a go?’ Frances asked, brusquely abandoning the pretty French kid and leaning over.

  She snatched the magazine page from me.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ she shouted, scanning it. ‘No way! I’ve got to go home soon.’

  Maxie snatched the page back.

  ‘Well, we’ll see that you get on the bus OK, Frances,’ he said. ‘We’re going, though!’

  ‘You’re insane!’ Frances snorted. ‘Your parents will fucking murder you if you go to this and stay out till all hours. You’ll just be making things ten times worse.’

  ‘They can’t get any worse, Fran,’ I said. ‘We’ll be fine. We need to go – just to see if … well, we just need to go.’

  It was getting on for dusk by then, and folk were shutting up shop and pouring out of their offices into the crisp autumn evening all around the little park. Some of the French kids had got little squat bottles of beer, and they gave some to Maxie, Frances and me. Frances even had a crack at one of their cigarettes, but she hacked and coughed half to death on the first taste of it, and all the kids laughed at her. Then the handsome boy with the Debbie Harry shirt spoke to her softly, in his sensual native tongue.

  ‘Vous êtes une belle princesse noire,’ he said. ‘Je voudrais vraiment vous baiser.’

  Frances grinned toothily at the boy and touched his face, ever so gently, as Maxie and I looked on, somewhat bemused.

  ‘Dans vos rêves, connard,’ she said. ‘I came top in French, you know.’

  And then all the French kids laughed at him instead.

  Just after that, The Pretenders came on the radio – one of Frances’s favourites, and mine, so we started singing along, no doubt livened up by the beer. The French kids knew all the words as well and they joined in with us, singing across the park rowdily with the radio blasting.

  ‘Kid what changed your mood?

  You’ve gone all sad, so I feel sad too

  I think I know some things we never outgrow

  You think it’s wrong – I can tell you do

  How can I explain, when you don’t want me to?’

  We bundled Frances on to the 176 bus on Oxford Street at about six o’clock; she didn’t look too thrilled about it, but what could she do?

  ‘I can’t stay out much past teatime,’ she said as the bus approached. ‘My mum’d have kittens. I wish I could – cos I think somebody needs to keep an eye on you two – but I can’t, so please be careful if you go to this club, and get a bloody taxi home; you’ve got the money.’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ Maxie saluted as she hopped aboard.

  And she waved sadly as the conductor sha
rply yanked the bell cord twice before the bus pulled away, leaving Maxie and me to head off in search of a decent hamburger and a bottle of Coke. After we’d eaten, and then wandered around a bit more, we ventured into some public loos near Argyll Street to wash our hands and faces, then we changed into the shirts we’d bought in Carnaby Street – they’d make us look distinctly older and therefore augment, considerably, our chances of getting into the Scandals discotheque. Maxie had bought a plain black shirt, which made him look exceedingly sexy and mature, whereas I had plumped for something blousy in a purply sort of colour that I felt was dead sophisticated and definitely something somebody over the age of twenty-one might be seen to wear. After that we were pretty much ready, I suppose, but by that stage, shoulder aching, I had started to regret not having popped to a bank at some point during the day to change all those weighty fifty-pence pieces from the heist into a lighter denomination. Still, at least we had money, and we were all set to disco.

  Seventeen

  Love Story – without the Cancer

  Outside the club’s tiny entrance, though, which was in a side road off Oxford Street, Maxie didn’t seem quite as cocky as he had earlier.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said, peering at the forbiddingly drawn thick blue velvet curtain inside the club’s doorway. ‘It looks quite quiet, doesn’t it? What time is it?’

  ‘It’s twenty past nine,’ I said, glancing at my Timex. ‘It’s definitely open but I’ve only seen one or two people go in. Perhaps we’re too early, and there’s no sign above the door, is there?’

  Maxie shook his head.

  ‘People must just know,’ he suggested.

  Then, after another five or ten minutes of us standing on the kerb like lemons, he suddenly took a bold step towards the door and poked his head through the curtain. Traffic whizzed and buzzed about me, and it was getting quite chilly – I wasn’t sure how much longer I wanted to stand there if we weren’t going to at least try getting in.

  ‘What’s it like?’ I asked as Maxie reappeared, but he was none the wiser.