Shutting the front door, and safe in the shelter of number twenty-two Chesterfield Street, I head down the passage to discover mum and my Auntie Val – who lives two doors down with my nan – parked in the lounge with wine and nibbles, screeching the names of old movies at the television.
‘The Bridge on the River Kwai!’ roars Aunt Val. ‘A Bridge Too Far! Waterloo Bridge! Waterloo Sunset! Sunset Boulevard!’
They’re watching Give Us a Clue, but clearly do not have one to give.
‘Where have you been, David?’ Mum asks, looking up. ‘You’ve been ages.’
‘She asked you to go and buy a loaf, not fucking bake one!’ Aunt Val laughs, jumping up to kiss me. ‘Hello, darlin’!’
‘Sorry, Mum, I got waylaid,’ is the best I can come up with, and I hand my mother her ciggies.
‘So, did you get a good part in the play then, love? They’d be bloody barmy not to give you one, with your singing voice,’ Aunt Val enthuses.
Mum jumps up abruptly, knocking over her plate of Twiglets.
‘Ooh yes, I forgot to ask earlier. How did it go at the casting today?’
Both women are now clutching a hand each, beaming at me eagerly.
‘I did get a part,’ I smile. ‘I did … it’s a great part … I’m gonna to be playing …’
A voice booms from the passage, quite unexpectedly.
‘Chrissy’s got fucking nail varnish on that new kitchen table. Jesus Christ, look at it! I’ll bloody kill her!’
Dad strides into the room and inadvertently crushes a batch of Mum’s fugitive Twiglets into the gold and green shagpile beneath his boots.
‘Oh bollocks! Who left them there?’
‘Shut up, Eddie!’ Aunt Val dismisses him. ‘David’s telling us about his school play.’
Val, I suspect, is the only living person not afraid of my father. She’d had Eddie’s card marked ever since she and my mother first clapped eyes on him running the waltzers on Peckham Rye funfair in the sixties.
‘Never mind the school play,’ Dad hollers. ‘That nail varnish has dried now – I’ll never get it off. She’s left all ’er fuckin’ make-up all over the kitchen – she’s got no respect for anythin’, Kath.’
Mum puts her hand on Dad’s arm and gives him a gentle – or perhaps nervous – smile.
‘Eddie, she’s a teenage girl, that’s all,’ she says.
‘It don’t matter how old she is,’ Eddie barks, pulling away from her. ‘I don’t want fuckin’ nail varnish on me new kitchen table.’
‘Well, Eddie,’ Aunt Val chimes in, bravely stepping into the breach, ‘I doubt if Kath wants pigeon shit all over her clean sheets while they’re drying, but that’s what she’s got for the last fifteen years, isn’t it?’
Dad grits his teeth and looks somewhat mental.
‘Mind your own business, Valerie, please,’ he says, with a slightly more hushed, but equally menacing tenor. ‘Shouldn’t you be at home, anyway – makin’ up spells or summink?’
‘Well,’ Val huffs. ‘All this furore over a dab of Hot Pink on a bit of shitty old smoked glass. Get some Pledge on it, why don’t ya?’
I make an attempt to back out of the lounge, still carrying a now rather sad-looking Vitbe loaf.
‘I’ll fill you in about the school play later,’ I say softly, and to no one in particular – they’re not listening anyway.
‘It’s no wonder you’re not fucking married, Val,’ Eddie scoffs as I duck out of the door surreptitiously. ‘Who’d put up with that fucking gob?’
I head up the stairs towards the relative sanity of my bedroom, leaving the three of them to fight it out, with Una Stubbs and co. still gesticulating madly on the television behind them.
On the landing I hear more rowdy voices: Chrissy and Abigail are in Chrissy’s bedroom trying on clobber with The Boomtown Rats’ ‘She’s So Modern’ full pelt on the stereo.
‘I’d say it was more of a porridge colour, that jacket,’ Abi is remarking to my sister, who is admiring herself from all angles in the mirror on the wardrobe door. ‘Have you got any oatmeal-coloured shoes?’
‘Who the fuck has oatmeal-coloured shoes, Abigail?’ my sister snaps in semi-despair.
Then she spots me at the top of the stairs, and breaks into a smile.
‘What do you think, Davey? What should I wear? This one or the …’
‘I think you should wear your black and white dogtooth skirt, the black polo neck – or perhaps the halter top if you’re feeling in the mood to show your cleavage off tonight – and the black suede winkle-pickers,’ I suggest, entering her unbearably messy bedroom. ‘That’s what I’d … I mean that’s what I reckon. Where’s Squirrel?’
Abigail, who is slumped on Chrissy’s unmade bed, licking her middle finger and flicking through last week’s Jackie magazine, rolls her eyes.
‘Gone to meet some of his wanky friends,’ she says. ‘You know a lot about women’s fashion, don’t you, David? I’ve noticed that before.’
‘He’s got a very good eye for a frock-and-shoe combo,’ my sister agrees. ‘He always knows. I reckon you’ll be a fashion designer one day, Davey.’
‘Perhaps.’
Then Chrissy strides over to the bed, dragging her friend up by the elbow, and marshalling her towards the door.
‘Now, can you take Abs up to your room and play some records or something for twenty minutes please, David. I’ve got to get under the shower and run a flannel over me baps before I go out. I’ve had netball today and I’m a bit tacky.’
Abigail’s all smiles.
‘I’d love to see your room, David,’ she gushes. ‘All your bits and pieces.’
Chrissy stifles a snigger, and winks at me. There goes my early-evening wank.
‘I hope you’re not too embarrassed about what Chrissy said earlier,’ Abi says, plopping herself down on my bed. ‘Do you mind if I do me nails?’
I shake my head as Abigail unleashes a revolting shade of coral-pink polish from her bag and proceeds to daintily varnish her long manicured fingernails.
‘You are a nice-looking chap, David,’ she goes on as I head for my record collection. ‘A lot of the girls think so, even girls my age in the sixth form, but I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend. Have you had one? Don’t you want one, David? You never seem to be that fussed, really – unless Frances Bassey is your girlfriend, and I’ve never seen you two kissing or even holding hands, but you’re always together and so … as I say … Christ, you’ve got a lot of Abba posters.’
‘Yes, I suppose I have,’ I say, looking around at my scrupulously considered wall design.
‘And Debbie Harry,’ Abi says. ‘Do you like blondes?’
For some strange reason I have a transitory vision of Billy Blue Cannon from The High Chaparral – we’d watch that on a weeknight when my grandad babysat, and I was allowed to stay up past nine.
‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ I agree again.
And then I study her for a moment. She’s a very pretty girl, is Abigail – even now, sitting under my favourite poster of Kate Bush, Abigail is tremendously pretty. She drops the nail varnish back into her bag and gives me a wink.
‘Why don’t you put a record on and get on the bed with me?’ she suddenly suggests.
Well, I’m knocked for six by her brazenness. What on earth does she think is going to occur?
‘I’m just looking for something,’ I all but stutter.
‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Chrissy’ll be an age yet.’
I flick through my singles until I come to S for ‘Summer’ and then pop on a twelve-inch while Abigail flaps her hands around violently in an attempt to dry her freshly decorated nails at speed. Out of the blue, something takes hold of me and I move, albeit timidly, towards the bed. Hmm … I’ll show them who’s bloody well bent.
‘You know what, Abi?’ I say, sitting down beside her. ‘If you cut your hair a little shorter, and messed it up a bit, and bleached it white, you’d look a bit like Debbie Harry … sort of.’
‘Really?’ Abigail squeals jubilantly. ‘Well, perhaps I should do it, then.’
And with that she swoops forward and secures me in what I take to be a French kiss. Interesting. I close my eyes tight as Donna Summer’s honeyed tones drift languorously out of the one functioning stereo speaker and across the bedroom: ‘Down Deep Inside’, a song in which Donna seductively implies that there might be a place deep inside me that I’m longing to explore – only I’m not entirely sure there is. I’m really not. As it turns out, this record is fairly lengthy – a good six minutes – and I’ve started to wish I’d put on something a little shorter: Blondie’s ‘Hanging on the Telephone’, for instance, which comes in at a bijou two minutes twenty-three. Then at least I could have jumped up and changed the record for a bit of respite – my lips are red raw already. Eventually, though, Abigail comes up for air, and I find myself panting slightly. She clearly takes this as a sign of arousal on my part and goes for gold.
‘Shall I toss you off?’ she suggests, and she gets up and turns the key in the lock on my bedroom door.
When she sits back down again I chew over the proposition at hand for a moment, and I decide, possibly recklessly, that having Abigail take a crack at pleasuring me in the comfort of my own bedroom mightn’t be such a shoddy notion. I mean, if I can handle that, then perhaps the recent trepidation I’ve had surrounding my sexuality might be unfounded after all. Perhaps I could like Abigail in the same way I like Maxie. Why not?
‘Oh, go on then,’ I say before I know it. ‘You’d best be nippy though, Chrissy’ll be out of the shower in a minute.’
So away she goes. There’s a certain amount of fumbling at the outset, as the button on my Lois jeans can be a bit pernickety, but once Abigail negotiates that, things get going at a reasonably fair old pace. I’m pleased to report that my penis is quite credibly stiff – though I am intermittently glancing down at Abi’s discarded Jackie magazine, which, conveniently, has fallen open at a poster page featuring a shirtless Paul Michael Glaser. Just to be on the safe side.
‘You’re quite good at that, Abi,’ I say cheerily, sensing that there might be a result in a minute or two.
‘Shhh!’ she snaps. ‘I’m concentrating.’
So I sit back, watching her salmony pink-painted fingers move up and down my cock – it’s fascinating, to be honest, and, as I say, she’s quite adept: not too hard, not too soft.
‘Have you done this before?’ I grunt.
‘Not really,’ she says, ‘but I secretly spied on someone doing it to my younger brother this summer when we went to our chalet in Leysdown, so I think I know what I’m doing.’
‘Oh!’ I say, intrigued, as she picks up speed. ‘Your younger brother’s in my year – who was wanking him off, then?’
‘My older brother,’ she says. And that’s what takes me over the falls.
When Abigail and Chrissy eventually head off to locate Squirrel, I potter downstairs for a spot of post-coital veal and ham pie and some pop, and I’m not entirely sure how pleased with myself I’m supposed to be. I mean, on the one hand – if you’ll pardon the idiom – I had managed to bring about an agreeable finish to the proceedings upstairs with Abigail, but to be honest, I’m not altogether sure if my heart was really in it, let alone my undivided attention. I don’t think it answered any of my questions at all, if you want the truth. Bollocks! As I walk past the door of the lounge towards the kitchen, Aunt Val grabs me by the sleeve of my T-shirt.
‘Hey, you!’ she says. ‘You’ve still not told your mum and me about the play. You know I’m dying to hear all about it.’
She was, as well. Mum’s younger sister has always pegged me as her golden-haired boy, and I in turn adore her. Along with my mother, my nan and my Aunt Val have been pretty much everything to me ever since I was little – especially after lung cancer had viciously snatched my grandad from us all. Mum relies on Aunt Val too – more, I think, than she knows – chiefly as an ally against my father, who is prone to griping and light bullying at the very best of times, and has a furious temper at the worst. Having her sister in such close proximity has always been, I feel, a safety net for my mum – for all of us, really – and my nan’s house a close-at-hand haven of calm and good cooking.
Mum, it seems, is also on tenterhooks re my starring role in the school production, but Dad’s just lying on the settee with his shirt off, leafing through the Exchange & Mart, when I come into the lounge. At least they’ve all stopped bloody shouting at one another!
‘So,’ Mum says, smiling, ‘who are you playin’ then, love – Bill Sikes? Mr Bumble? I expect you’re too skinny for Mr Bumble, aren’t you? Ooh! The Artful Dodger!’
Everyone is waiting. Even Eddie has glanced up from his paper now. I take a deep breath.
‘Nancy!’ I announce haughtily, and almost certainly ill-advisedly. ‘I’m playing Nancy.’
Silence. Nobody speaks for what seems like a decade, and then Dad says, ‘Oh Jesus fucking H. Christ!’
‘Nancy?’ Mum repeats quietly, as if making completely certain she’s heard correctly.
‘Yeah.’
More silence.
‘Well, I think you’ll be fuckin’ fabulous, darlin’,’ Aunt Val says finally.
Then Mum breaks, and gives me a little smile.
‘Me too!’
‘Thanks!’ I say, quietly relieved. ‘You’ll have to make the costume, Mum. D’you mind?’
‘Course I’ll make it,’ she says. ‘I always do, don’t I? Just let me know the colour scheme. I’ve got some peacock taffeta left over from the frock I made your nan when she won the ladies’ darts trophy the year before last, will that be any good?’
‘I’m not sure Nancy would have worn taffeta, Mum,’ I laugh. ‘Mind you, she was a nineteenth-century singing whore, so I suppose anything’s possible.’
I turn to look at Eddie, who, it has to be said, doesn’t appear best thrilled. Within seconds he’s off the sofa again and bellowing as per.
‘You shouldn’t fucking encourage him, you two,’ he screams at Mum and Val. ‘You’ll turn him into a right little poof! He’ll be a laughing stock. Nancy! Fucking Nancy! Why couldn’t he be bloody Fagin or the other little cunt with the top hat? I blame you, Kath. You took him to see too many fuckin’ Julie Andrews films when he was a kid – that’s his trouble.’
It was always the same with Eddie. Whatever Chrissy and me did wrong, it was always Mum’s fault in the end.
‘Oh, cobblers, Eddie!’ Aunt Val snaps. ‘There’s no girls at his school – someone’s got to play the part, and he’s got the best voice. Take no notice, David.’
But Eddie is on a roll, and they’re off again.
‘Why don’t you mind your own fuckin’ business for once in your life, Val. Is that too much to ask, eh? Is it?’
And it’s time for me to slip quietly away once more.
Up in my pop-star-wallpapered attic bedroom, I turn Debbie up so loud on my headphones I can scarcely hear myself think, let alone my dad’s incensed ranting.
Debbie is singing a song about a man who is evidently sinking, hopelessly, in a sea of love, and I guess I can identify with that. I wilt on to my bed and pick at the woodchip paper that I’ve recently painted turquoise, and gaze up at a photograph of Agnetha and Anni-Frid from Abba that I’ve Blu-Tacked to the ceiling. Suddenly I am standing there in front of them, a warm but forceful wind almost knocking me over. There they are – right there – wearing white jumpsuits and clogs and standing beside a helicopter, as one might were one as famous and as rich as they purportedly are. I look down, and discover that I too am wearing a white jumpsuit, and matching white clogs, and I am now walking towards Agnetha and Anni-Frid who stand, glorious, beneath the rotating blades of the chopper, blonde and auburn hair fluttering in the slipstream. When I reach them they smile at me, but say nothing.
‘It’s all your fault,’ I tell them. ‘I should never have listened to you.’
The girls stand either side of me and take one of my arms apiece, tenderly; and as the din of the helicopter engine subsides, they are humming softly – the first few bars of ‘Chiquitita’ – and I close my eyes. When I open them, I can hear the bongs from News at Ten coming from the lounge downstairs, but no more yelling, thank God; and then, suddenly, I can smell semen. Oh, Christ-on-a-bike: Abigail Henson! What was I fucking thinking?
I finally get undressed and put on my pyjamas, climbing into bed early; I’m dog-tired. Well, it’s been a jam-packed day, what with one thing and another. I mean, I might well have fallen in love with one person, I had a very unexpected sexual skirmish with another, and I got the leading-lady role in the school musical, and just look where that got me! I consider, for a moment, what my grandad might have made of all this, and then my thoughts switch to Dad. I wonder whether his words will forever make me feel this bloody awful, and whether the taunts of Jason Lancaster will always follow me, stinging me – just like they always have.