bumper and flumped on the ground. The taxi swerved to a halt.
We waited in silence as the taxi driver, followed by members of the Buckleigh family, got out and beheld the deceased dog.Mrs Buckleigh could be heard wailing. Mrs Bubb came running out of the house. Someone told the taxi driver it wasn’t his fault, and it took forever for the whole drama to be played out while we waited in agony. I was certain the dog had yapped beyond the time of death, but George was so emotional he weed in the bushes and some of it sprayed out and hit my dress. I never did find out what Stinker had meant – not for a good few years, anyway.
21
I left school when I was fourteen, along with everyone else in my year. Miss Prosser told my mother I could go to the High School, and Gracie was all for it, despite the fees. But I didn’t want to go. I went to Griffens with her instead, and stayed there five years making dresses and coats and mending trousers. I wanted nothing to change: just me and Gracie, beavering away together, listening to the gossip as people came in, putting the kettle on the little range at the back at mid-morning, going to the pictures with Mo on Saturdays.
As the years went by I almost forgot about Celia. She came to me in dreams sometimes – or rather, her brother came to me. I was often in James’s bedroom and James would walk in and find me there. Then he would take me in his arms and tell me he had been watching me for years and had always loved me. I usually looked far more pretty: hair more like Celia’s, clothes like Betty Grable, and an accent just like I imagined his to be. I was not so foolish as to be unaware that James fulfilled a function for me. In the absence of any romance in Woodside, with my failure to be aroused by the clumping, neolithic clodhoppers that posed as young men, I needed a man to stand in for my burgeoningfantasies. I couldn’t substitute film stars, like Mo and the other girls. I had never understood hero-worship in any of its forms. Mo cutting out a picture and pinning it on the wall or keeping it in her diary seemed senseless to me. Was she ever going to meet Bing Crosby? Was he ever going to get on a boat and a train and a number 38 bus and get off at Woodside and say, ‘Hey, Mo, darling! Let’s go round the world together, honey!’ No, he wasn’t. It was no good dreaming about it, because I could tell her right away it wasn’t going to happen. And she knew it. Yet she still drooled over his films and touched his photographs and practically wet herself when he came on the wireless.
James, however, lived in Buckleigh House – at least, I understood he did. It was highly unlikely that he would ever push me up against a tree and kiss me, but it wasn’t outside the realms of possibility, like Bing. And it was that tiny loophole of possibility that made him so intriguing.
As with all things we long for, sooner or later, if they are remotely within the realms of possibility, we find ourselves giving fate a little helping hand. And so it was that in the summer when I was seventeen, when my fantasies about James had reached a peak of obsession, I found that I walked past Buckleigh House on several occasions for no reason whatsoever , and took furtive sidelong glances through the tall iron gates. I even found myself walking past Celia’s school when I was in town, haplessly imagining that of the hundreds of inmates I might see Celia spill over the pavement in one of the little green-clad gangs.
In the end it was in Cheltenham that I saw her. I had just come out of The Daffodil after seeing King Kong a second time through. Mo had gone after the first showing because she wanted to buy some stockings. I emerged into the glaring light of day and was shielding my eyes on the pavement, when Celia spotted me.
‘Joy! Heavens! It is you!’
‘Celia!’
‘Joy, this is my friend Dee. Were you just in there? What did you think?’
‘Oh … it was lovely.’ I couldn’t take my
We waited in silence as the taxi driver, followed by members of the Buckleigh family, got out and beheld the deceased dog.Mrs Buckleigh could be heard wailing. Mrs Bubb came running out of the house. Someone told the taxi driver it wasn’t his fault, and it took forever for the whole drama to be played out while we waited in agony. I was certain the dog had yapped beyond the time of death, but George was so emotional he weed in the bushes and some of it sprayed out and hit my dress. I never did find out what Stinker had meant – not for a good few years, anyway.
21
I left school when I was fourteen, along with everyone else in my year. Miss Prosser told my mother I could go to the High School, and Gracie was all for it, despite the fees. But I didn’t want to go. I went to Griffens with her instead, and stayed there five years making dresses and coats and mending trousers. I wanted nothing to change: just me and Gracie, beavering away together, listening to the gossip as people came in, putting the kettle on the little range at the back at mid-morning, going to the pictures with Mo on Saturdays.
As the years went by I almost forgot about Celia. She came to me in dreams sometimes – or rather, her brother came to me. I was often in James’s bedroom and James would walk in and find me there. Then he would take me in his arms and tell me he had been watching me for years and had always loved me. I usually looked far more pretty: hair more like Celia’s, clothes like Betty Grable, and an accent just like I imagined his to be. I was not so foolish as to be unaware that James fulfilled a function for me. In the absence of any romance in Woodside, with my failure to be aroused by the clumping, neolithic clodhoppers that posed as young men, I needed a man to stand in for my burgeoningfantasies. I couldn’t substitute film stars, like Mo and the other girls. I had never understood hero-worship in any of its forms. Mo cutting out a picture and pinning it on the wall or keeping it in her diary seemed senseless to me. Was she ever going to meet Bing Crosby? Was he ever going to get on a boat and a train and a number 38 bus and get off at Woodside and say, ‘Hey, Mo, darling! Let’s go round the world together, honey!’ No, he wasn’t. It was no good dreaming about it, because I could tell her right away it wasn’t going to happen. And she knew it. Yet she still drooled over his films and touched his photographs and practically wet herself when he came on the wireless.
James, however, lived in Buckleigh House – at least, I understood he did. It was highly unlikely that he would ever push me up against a tree and kiss me, but it wasn’t outside the realms of possibility, like Bing. And it was that tiny loophole of possibility that made him so intriguing.
As with all things we long for, sooner or later, if they are remotely within the realms of possibility, we find ourselves giving fate a little helping hand. And so it was that in the summer when I was seventeen, when my fantasies about James had reached a peak of obsession, I found that I walked past Buckleigh House on several occasions for no reason whatsoever , and took furtive sidelong glances through the tall iron gates. I even found myself walking past Celia’s school when I was in town, haplessly imagining that of the hundreds of inmates I might see Celia spill over the pavement in one of the little green-clad gangs.
In the end it was in Cheltenham that I saw her. I had just come out of The Daffodil after seeing King Kong a second time through. Mo had gone after the first showing because she wanted to buy some stockings. I emerged into the glaring light of day and was shielding my eyes on the pavement, when Celia spotted me.
‘Joy! Heavens! It is you!’
‘Celia!’
‘Joy, this is my friend Dee. Were you just in there? What did you think?’
‘Oh … it was lovely.’ I couldn’t take my
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