Lying Together by Gaynor Arnold Page A

clear eyes. She was a wonderful child to dress, never spilled her drinks, never played in the muck, sat nicely on the grass in the back garden and arranged her dolls in rows, or read a book. She was a real prodigy with reading, went through all Clifford’s classics by the time she was eleven. ‘That girl’s got a future ahead of her,’ I’d say. ‘She’s exceptional.’
    They tried to bring her down to their level, of course. The rowdy element I mean – the Bates boys, Brenda Morris and the like – common kids. That’s the trouble with living in a mixed area like this. Clifford could never see it. ‘Live and let live,’ he’d say. That would have been all very well, if the rowdy element had let us live how we wanted to. They’d sit on our front wall and suck horrible sherbet-dabs from that cheap shop over the bridge, yelling out names to everyone who passed. I started to find flat grey plasters of chewing gum all over Geraldine’s knickers and I knew they’d put them there. No respect for property, those kids. God knows what sort of behaviour they’d get away with, day in and day out. I told Geraldine to keep away, to play with Sandra Smith instead.
    Sandra was a really nice child. She lived in The Avenue. That’s where we should have been if Clifford had had more go in him. There was a house going cheap there when we were first married. But Clifford was always frightened to take a chance. He said Coldstream Terrace would see us out and why did we need a great semi-detached place like that? It makes me mad to think of that now. It was before the prices went silly and we could have had it easily. Then I wouldn’t have had Sylvia Smith patronizing me with her coffee mornings and jumble sales. I’d have been there throwing my own house open to cardboard boxes and piles of National Geographic. After all, what’s Malcolm Smith but a jumped-up salesman working out of his front room? The office Sylvia calls it, but who has a sideboard, a dining table and eight straight-backed chairs in their office?
    But Geraldine was a contrary little madam. She dug in her heels every time Sandra invited her, whining, complaining, not wanting to go. ‘I suppose you prefer those awful Bates boys?’ I said.
    â€˜Yes,’ she said. ‘I do! I bloody do!’ She almost spat at me. I wasn’t having that. I had to shake her. Hard.
    â€˜That girl’s got a temper,’ I told Clifford, but he wouldn’t have it.
    â€˜Leave her alone, Theresa,’ he said. ‘All your questions – you make things worse.’ It was easy for Clifford – it’s easy for a man to shrug off responsibility. He used to go in the garden so he wouldn’t be there when she came home late from school, so I had to be the one to ask her where she’d been. I could see his back bent over the marigolds, saying, ‘I’m on your side, chicken.’
    I had plans for St Bridget’s when Geraldine was eleven. A good school, strong on discipline, and a nice bottle-green uniform. ‘The nuns’ll have none of your nonsense,’ I told her. ‘You won’t be able to try your tricks with them.’ Clifford went so far as to raise himself out of his armchair on this one. Said I’d done nothing but complain about the nuns all my life and now I was proposing putting Geraldine through the same process. Well, I’ve lapsed, I admit, but the discipline never did me any harm. The thought of Sister Mary-Margaret still frightens me to death.
    It was no go, though. Clifford and Geraldine got together, had a strategy all worked out. Said Sandra Smith and Everybody was going to Marston Road Comp and what brilliant results all the pupils got. ‘Oxford and Cambridge,’ said Clifford. ‘You’d like that. Theresa.’
    So she went. But my first instincts were right. I’d seen those kids lolling about in town –