It was raining for a spell, but it’s stopped now, and the air seems cleansed and revived as I promenade along Lordship Lane, swinging my mother’s loaf as though it were an Indian club. I’ve been turning things over in my mind for a while and, I must confess, I’m moderately baffled now. What on earth have I been daydreaming about? I seem to have persuaded myself that this apparition … this boy … this … ‘Maxie Boswell’ – a nom de plume if ever I heard one – has captured my heart in some way. It has to be said, thoughts of him, and him alone, have been affecting me all day. I’d been, for instance, scandalized to find, during English lit this afternoon, that I’d recklessly felt-tipped his name across the dust cover of my Cider with Rosie. Fortunately, it being a wipe-clean frontage, I managed to render this imprudent dedication an unsightly red smudge, but it’s not funny. How could I allow myself to even consider the possibility that I could fall in love … be in love with … NO! It just isn’t possible. I’m fairly certain that even thinking along these lines is akin to embarking on some grisly and ceaseless fairground roller-coaster ride, which would without doubt transport me, ultimately, to the certain annihilation of my very soul. Perhaps I’m being a teeny bit dramatic, but it is no small thing I’m contemplating here; and then, of course, there’s the likes of Jason Lancaster and …
‘OY!’
My sister, Chrissy, is standing by the little grocer’s on the other side of the main road, and is hollering at me to come over.
‘All right, bruv?’ she smiles as I reach her. Then she frees a cigarette from the golden trappings of a Benson & Hedges packet, and places it between her lips, immediately staining its filter bright pink with lipstick.
‘OK?’ I say brightly. ‘What you up to?’
‘Just waiting for Abs. She’s gone in the Wimpy for a bender and chips,’ Chrissy says, flicking her hair out of her eyes. ‘You know Squirrel, don’t ya?’
And she gestures towards the boy to the left of her.
‘All right?’ he grins, blowing out smoke.
One might peg them as a fairly odd coupling, Chrissy and her latest boyfriend, Squirrel, as they slouch against the outer wall of the shop, puffing on fags. Chrissy is relatively voluptuous for a fourteen-year-old, and, as we speak, she’s teetering on skyscraper heels and is clad in a tight grey pencil skirt and an even tighter mohair sweater. Her bleached-white hair, still damp from the early evening downpour, is fashioned into a rather severe wedge at the back. At the front, it falls forward over her right eye, affording her a quality of significant and, it has to be said, effortless mystique. That is, until she tosses her head, or flicks the hair away from her face, revealing her wide blue eyes and trademark petulant smirk. It is this particular trait that the boys at her school can’t seem to get enough of – that, coupled with the fact, of course, that Chrissy has the largest breasts in the fourth year.
In stark contrast, Squirrel, as he is known – principally due to his aptitude for concealing stolen goods about his person, usually without detection – is a somewhat weaselly apparition. Our mother, Kath, has suggested on several occasions that Squirrel – real name unknown – appears more than a little undernourished, and would almost certainly profit from a few hearty lunches. And if you ask me, I don’t think Chrissy is entirely sure what she sees in him, but she seems to cherish him nonetheless.
‘I just fuckin’ love the way he dresses,’ she’d told me only this morning over her Ricicles. ‘He’s dead fuckin’ kushdi – don’t you reckon, David?’
I guess he is a rather well-turned-out boy at that. This evening, for instance, Squirrel is sporting a tonic-green three-buttoned box jacket; grey Sta-Prest trousers that seem to give up at the ankle; thick white socks and shiny black tasselled loafers. I’m led to believe that he has aligned himself with the most recent of youth cultures, the growing throng of south London mods: teenagers, and older, in fact, who have embraced and revived the clothes and music of the early sixties youth cult of the same name, though I believe a lot of them now call themselves rude boys. They’re all obsessed with a band called the Specials, and a new film just out, Quadrophenia, which apparently concerns itself with young men without aspiration hurtling around Brighton on scooters, and which looks deadly dull to me. Well, certainly not as good as Abba: The Movie, anyway! Regrettably, a few of these mods, and quite a lot of their skinhead counterparts, appear to be leaning towards light Nazism, despite the fact that most of the bands that supposedly inspire them are racially mixed. Squirrel, however, seems to have little time for politics, and just likes the outfits … and possibly the dance. He eyes me nervously for a moment as Chrissy stubs her cigarette out underfoot; and then he turns to her, earnestly.
‘So going back to what we were talking about earlier,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ Chrissy sighs, rolling her eyes to the heavens, and sparking up another B&H almost immediately.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘would you let me finger you or not?’
My mouth drops open and Chrissy draws heavily on her fresh fag. Then she looks evenly at Squirrel, whose eyes are farcically wide.
‘Not outside the mini-mart, no,’ she says, only marginally irritated.
‘No, obviously not outside the mini-mart,’ Squirrel laughs, ‘but I mean, would you – in theory – let me finger you?’
I turn away, agog. Surely Chrissy has never done anything like that. Not my little sister. She’s not fifteen for two months, for Christ’s sake. She can’t be more sexually qualified than me – can she?
‘Well, what do you wanna do that for?’ Chrissy says, slumping further down the wall. ‘I’ll tell you what you can do, Squirrel, you can buy me a bottle of cider – that’s what you can do.’
‘It’s not the same,’ Squirrel sulks. ‘We’ve been going out three months now; you don’t let me do nothing.’
I pitch forward.
‘Can you not discuss this in front of me, please?’ I shriek.
But Chrissy completely ignores me.
‘We kiss, don’t we?’ she says to him, taking another elongated drag on her fag. ‘I let you feel me tits, didn’t I? Stop fucking moaning, Squirrel, for fuck’s sake!’
And with that my sister’s best pal, Abigail Henson, arrives on the scene clutching a large bag of overly ketchupped chips; Squirrel, mercifully, falls silent.
‘Hi, David,’ Abigail breezes, fluttering seriously made-up eyelids when she spots me. ‘I thought that was you, what a great surprise. Are you coming out with us tonight, then?’
Abigail is two years older than my sister, and, to my mind, a bad influence. She’s still in her school uniform, or at least the remnants thereof. Her white blouse is dragged open across her shoulders to reveal much more of her undergarments than I’d have chosen to see, and her once thigh-covering school skirt has been rolled over so many times at the waist it has become little more than a belt.
‘Where are you all off to?’ I say.
‘We’re going up the Crystal Palace Hotel,’ Abi says, gesturing with a chip. ‘They’ve got some good bands on – you should come.’
‘I’d better not,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to go home and think about stuff. I’ve got a lot to think about tonight.’
Abigail shuffles towards me slightly, and fiddles coyly with the ends of her dark-brown curls.
‘Oh, go on, Dave, I’ve just had a demi-wave specially; besides, thinking is boring,’ she says, as if she’d ever tried it. ‘Come out and have a laugh with us.’
‘Go on,’ Chrissy suddenly interjects. ‘You know Abs fancies you, David. You might get your leg over.’
Well, I’m mortified.
‘I’m sure I never knew any such thing,’ I say, my voice leaping up about an octave.
Squirrel is chortling irksomely behind my sister. Abigail at least has the good grace to blush slightly.
‘Well, you do now,’ Chrissy laughs, ‘so why don’t you come? All you do is sit in your room and listen to Blondie and bloody Abba, you boring fucker. Come out and ’ave a giggle with us.’
‘No. I won’t. Not tonight – sorry.’
Abigail looks vaguely crushed; Chrissy just shakes her head while stubbing out her latest cigarette on the pavement.
‘All right then, I’ll see you back ’ome,’ she says. ‘Abs, let’s go and get changed at mine. I need to put me goin’-out face on.’
And off they go, Squirrel sauntering two paces behind the giggling, chattering girls, head down. I start back along the high street, somewhat bemused. Abigail Henson? But why me? I’d never given her any reason to … so why would she even think that? Me and Abi Henson? Whatever bloody-well next?
I’m distracted, for a moment, by a tempting waft from the Wimpy bar, but I shan’t succumb; there are more critical matters afoot. I’m casting thoughts of l’amour aside for the time being and heading for the paper shop, having spotted a fourth-year boy at school with the new Record Mirror. Debbie Harry is on the front cover: I simply have to own it. Perhaps I’ll read it as soon as I get home, while listening to the twelve-inch version of ‘Sunday Girl’ – perhaps not – I don’t know. I need to do something when I get home to take my mind off all this love and lunacy, that’s for sure. What shall I do this evening?
I settle on masturbation as I’ve not really managed to find occasion for it the last three or four nights, what with one thing and another. My dad stashes smutty magazines beneath an empty fishing-tackle box in his wardrobe: well, I say smutty – it’s Penthouse, Men Only, that type of affair. It’s not really my cup of tea, truth be told. I can get the job done with that type of pornography, yes, but I can never quite grasp why men feel the urge to gawp at dim-looking women playing golf or washing up while naked. I mean, waxing the Cortina just doesn’t strike me as the type of task one would undertake with one’s tits out, to be frank. Some of the sixth-form boys carry much spicier porn: dubious publications featuring men and women – German, I presume, or perhaps Norwegian – performing the most filthy deeds one could ever imagine. It would take me less than a minute to come, armed with this type of literature, despite the off-putting hairstyles so, quite apart from being supreme masturbatory fodder, I consider this type of magazine a real time-saver. And after I’ve done with that, I think I’ll learn, by heart, the words to the entire Voulez-Vous album. It’s the only Abba LP I don’t have down off pat: sociology can go fuck itself, and so can the rest of my ever-accumulating homework. I’m fed up with being goody-bloody-two-shoes. And with that significant decision under my belt, I do a little dance as I pass by the next parade of shops on the main road.
For some reason, I stop outside the French bistro that used to be David Greig’s years ago. I close my eyes for a second and squeeze my left hand shut tight, as if I were holding my grandad’s hand like I used to, right here on this spot, and I try hard to picture his face. He used to come and collect me from our house, my grandad, each Saturday morning.
‘Come on, Melksham,’ he’d shout out from the passage. That was his nickname for me, after the town in Yorkshire where he was born. And we’d be off to Lordship Lane with two big shopping bags: one red, one black. Most of the shops in East Dulwich were different in the late sixties. There was no Mace, or Wallis; there wasn’t even a Wimpy Bar. We’d always come to David Greig’s first – a long shop it was, with fancy glass-covered counters running down both sides. Counters with meats, and huge blocks of cheese, and pies, and pastries – a food hall, I suppose you’d call it. Greig’s had all the old Edwardian fittings, and it was emerald and brown shiny-tiled from top to bottom. Grandad would buy best back bacon, and mature Cheddar, and all the men serving us would wear boaters, and aprons around their waists and down to their shoes. Next to that was the greengrocer’s; that’s still here.
‘A nice cauliflower,’ Grandad would say, ‘and some new potatoes; I don’t need runners, I’m growing my own this year.’
Then we’d get kippers from the fishmonger, and at a quarter past five on a Saturday, after Grandstand, I’d watch Doctor Who while my nan grilled the kippers; Grandad would eat them while he was watching Dad’s Army. We’d get our eggs from Tucker’s the butcher’s, which I thought was odd at the time. Every single week, without fail, the nice man in Tucker’s with the twinkly eyes would ruffle my hair, which was white-blonde when I was little; and one Saturday he gave me a toy – a bendable PG Tips monkey with a shopping basket and a pink hat. I’ve still got it somewhere. If I was very well behaved while we did the shopping, Grandad would get me a comic from Tom’s Newsagent, or a bag of Revels – they were my favourite, apart from the coconut ones. Then he’d hold my hand really tight as we crossed the road, and say, ‘Come on, Melksham! Let’s get home, or we’ll not catch the wrestling.’
Of course, as time went on and I got older, I tended to skip our Saturday-morning shopping more and more in favour of playing out with the other kids, or sitting in my room listening to records – that all seemed far more important. Things change, don’t they? But it seems to me that they just get thornier and more convoluted most of the time, when you don’t always want them to. You have to start making decisions about things that you’d rather shut away in a Tupperware container in the cupboard. When Grandad died a few years ago it was too late to go back to our Saturday shopping excursions, and sometimes, like now, I really, really want to. My grandad and his kippers, his wrestling, and his Kathy Kirby LPs; those days hadn’t been at all thorny or convoluted. It was all unfussy and joyful then – not like now, not like today. Today was a bit like the Big Dipper at Brighton: happy one minute, scared and anxious the next, and all the time feeling like I might be sick. This can’t be what love’s about, can it?
A big drop of rain smacks me straight in the eye and brings me back to the here and now. I’m immobilized, still, in the French bistro’s window. It’s closed tonight, but if I lean right against the dark glass I can just about see the emerald and brown shiny tiles – they’ve kept them. They’re still here. I take a step back and I’m frowning at my reflection: I’m not a bad-looking chap, am I? Not unkind on the eye? I’ve had many a female admirer, after all – just look at Abigail Henson: there’s the proof. I mull on this self-appraisal for several minutes, taking in my slim frame, my grey eyes and pronounced lips, my hair: straight on top, then tumbling about my ears in modest curls. No, I’m not bad-looking for fifteen, nearly sixteen, not bad at all.
‘What’s wrong with me, then?’ I say aloud, glancing round to see if anyone’s within earshot. ‘Why do they all call me bent? Is that what I am if I feel like this? Bent. What the fuck does that even mean?’ I wonder, for a moment, why on earth I cheerily accepted a girl’s role in the school musical, but that’s a mystery as well. It’s like I can’t stop myself. Like I’m asking for it. And now, on top of it all, this Maxie Boswell character. I shouldn’t even be thinking about this. Entertaining thoughts about love! About him.
Once I’ve got my magazine and a bottle of Cresta I head for home. I can hear ‘The Logical Song’ by Supertramp blaring out of the Wimpy Bar and I catch myself humming along.
‘Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned?
I know it sounds absurd.
Please tell me who I am …’
Then I spot Jason Lancaster, alone, puffing on a roll-up outside the working-men’s club that I work in part-time, still in his school uniform. He sees me, too, but turns away at speed, unable to look me in the face. And I know very well why.