In the summer of 1955 Ryan sat for his O Levels. He passed with distinction, hardly surprising as he worked so hard at achieving them. He had long ago decided to apply for an engineering course at a technical college near London. The day he left us was a sad parting. We all clung to him, sobbing to see him go.
‘Leave off, women,’ he said, ‘you’d think I was going to the North Pole! I’ll be back to see you in the holidays.’
‘If you’re like your dad, you won’t,’ said Sheila She was loath to let her son go but knew she must. Ryan was no Andy, clinging to his mum. He couldn’t wait to be out in the man’s world, couldn’t wait to get to Trinity House after his National Service was done and apply for a lighthouse-keeping post. Trinity knew he was going to apply and he’d as good as got the job but Mr Waterman felt it would be a good thing for him to get some more skills under his belt. There was always the rumour that modern equipment would one day make the lighthouse-keepers redundant. Just a rumour as yet but a nagging fear for many who once thought they had a job for life.
Sheila had changed somehow. She seemed sadder and less contented. Everything had changed. I missed the cliffs, the expanses of sea and sky in Cornwall. We lived in Bournemouth now with Sheila’s mum, a nice lady called Ethel Alcott. She was a widow and seemed to enjoy having the house full of people. I could see how Sheila had taken after her mother, the same round, pleasant face and plump, mumsy figure. Except that Ethel had hundreds of wrinkles; her face was like a well-used map of Britain. She was a kindly soul and made me feel just as welcome as if she’d known me all her life and I was a part of the family.
It wasn’t too far to walk from her neat little semi-detached house over to Durley and Alum Chine, along the wooded cliffs with long sandy beaches down below that stretched all the way to Poole Harbour. It was beautiful but also a seaside town with all the attendant summer tourists, men with string vests and knotted hankies on their heads to protect them from the occasional bursts of sunshine, kids yelling and screaming over their buckets and spades and bored-looking mothers yearning for a cup of tea. Beach huts ranged most of the route along the beach at Alum Chine. I hated beach huts and the sort of people who used them. The sea wasn’t meant to be a place for toedabblers. It was a place to be in touch with the elements in all their wildness and beauty. These people came to gawp; they had no real understanding or respect for that mighty watery world out there. They moaned if it wasn’t non-stop sunny for the few miserable moments they chose to come and invade the shores. As if the weather gods cared about them and their pallid, flaccid townie bodies and the sudden fashion to be browned off like a Sunday roast! Anyway, who needed perpetual sunshine? I loved it most when the wind whipped up my hair and almost blew me into the waves; when I was the plaything of the elements yet totally alive, conscious, flowing with it all.
No, it wasn’t the same as walking out in the early mornings from Trinity Cottages and finding oneself right out there on the cliff tops with a quick clamber down to our special little cove. I’d loved the isolation of it all in Cornwall, walking about on my own on the sands with just the sea and the sky and the sound of herring-gulls screaming over the cliffs and wheeling above my head in huge sweeping arcs; it made me feel real and myself, totally centred and at peace. As soon as I was with other people, I felt unreal, not sure who I was, trying to be someone they wanted me to be or imagined me to be.
Sheila wanted to go back to teaching at a college again. I was fifteen now and didn’t need to go to school officially but Dad said he thought I ought to go back and do my O Levels.
‘Oh, Dad, must I go,’ I wailed. ‘Couldn’t I stay and help Ethel look after the house. Get a little job somewhere. Why can’t I?’
‘I don’t want you abandoning your education so early,’ said Dad. ‘Look, it’s only another year and by then I hope to be made up to AK. Maybe we can get a place where we can stay together for a bit. You’ll want to be doing something with yourself some day. I don’t want you blaming me that you aren’t educated enough. I’ve done my best by the boys and I mean to do my best by you, too, Bridie. No, don’t argue and sulk now, it’s for your own good; you’ll thank me for it one day. You’re a bright girl and I don’t want your abilities wasted. You deserve a good education.’
‘Ryan says it’s a waste of time for a girl,’ I said mournfully. ‘He thinks I’ll just be a good housekeeper and wife.’
‘Oh, does he?’ said Dad. He paused and looked at me keenly, making me blush. ‘Oh, does he?’ Dad muttered again and lit his pipe and regarded me with interest. ‘Well, Bridie, take no notice, he’s just a lad and he’s off to his college, then he’ll be off to the Army. That’ll open his eyes, that will. At the moment, he doesn’t understand. He just spouts out narrow-minded stuff like his dad.’
‘I thought you liked Ryan?’ I said in surprise.
‘I do like the lad,’ he replied as he tamped down the tobacco he’d just taken from the lovely pouch I’d bought him. ‘He’s a good, honest, hard-working young fellow. He’s born to be on the Lights, he is and he’ll do well. But he can be very moody and withdrawn. That’s a bad sign. Now you, Bridie, are getting that way too and that’s a danger. I don’t want you to get like that.’
‘I don’t want to be with strangers, Dad,’ I said, nigh on tears. ‘You won’t be. You’ve Sheila and Ethel and Susan to come home to every day. But you need some companions your own age, need to get out of yourself more. You are going to school.’
And that was that.
The funny thing is I really loved school once I got used to it. I found that the other kids were interested in me and my background. There was no Andy there to set them against me or tease me and belittle me. I was almost esteemed. First of all the teachers put me in a lower class because they thought that, having been taught at home, I’d be as dim as a Tok H lamp. I proved them wrong, vindicating Sheila’s wonderful teaching methods. My hand shot up in answer to every question and it was the other kids who struck me as slow, disinterested and dim. I was transferred a week later to a higher class and shone there too. I’d never shone at school in my life and it gave me a real impetus.
Susan was thrilled as she was always outgoing and enjoyed people. She was in her element at her new school and seemed so happy that when Mr Waterman said Trinity had found them a council house in Hull, Sheila wrote back saying she’d rather stay down south till Susan finished at school. (She didn’t exclude me, she said, but she felt my Dad might have other plans some time), Mr Waterman replied that that was fine by him. I got the feeling even then that that marriage was over. A gulf wider than the Atlantic and just as cold separated these two people now. I knew the signs too well.
By the time I’d taken my O Levels, life took a different turn again. I contemplated taking a job, then wondered about doing A levels in the sixth form or college and maybe some sort of catering course. As always, I wasn’t too sure what to do and dithered. Then it turned out Dad got made up to Assistant Keeper quite quickly and put in for a land light. He was always lucky, and there was a post available within the month in Devon, one of the keepers having died. Sheila said that, sorry as she was he was stepping in a dead man’s shoes, it was sheer luck and no mistake to get chosen so fast and had he bribed the Elder Brethren at Trinity House or something? Dad smugly reckoned it was due to his impeccable service in the Navy as well as his time spent here and there as SAK in which he’d learnt the job in no time.
‘Not that you have to be that brainy to learn all that stuff,’ he said, ‘it’s a doddle compared to being in the engine room on a ruddy great destroyer. You just have to like cleaning, cooking and housework.’
Obviously there was more to it than that but in Dad’s eyes, he’d fallen on soft times.
‘Reckon even I could I do it?’ I asked. ‘Bridie, you could do it standing on your head. I’ll dress you as a lad and send you up to Trinity for a job.’
Which I would have loved but Dad laughingly explained, just as Ryan had done, that it wouldn’t do to let a girl live in such close intimacy with two or three men who weren’t related to her. Grace Darling had lived at Longstone all her life with her family, reclusive and glad to avoid the frenzy of interest that had surrounded her heroic act. She had died soon after, poor soul, probably due to the shock of being the centre of attention and having to give away half her hair as souvenirs to Victorian hero-worshippers.
‘Besides which the fellows swear all the time, every other word is effin’ this and that. Not very nice for a young girl, eh?’
‘Maybe I’d teach them better manners if I was there.’
‘Now that would be hard work. It’d just break our hearts not to be blokes and cuss as much as we like all the time.’
‘ Huh! It just shows that men are uncouth beasts,’ I said. I couldn’t imagine Ryan swearing so freely, but who knew? Men seemed to become different creatures when there were no women about to keep an eye on them.
Dad asked me to go for a walk with him along the Chines and we set off in companionable silence.
‘How do you feel about my new post?’ he asked.
‘I’m thrilled, Dad.’ I added. ‘I am coming with you, aren’t I?’
He hesitated just the tiniest bit and I looked at him in alarm.
‘Do you really want to come, Bridie? Start Point is right out in the wilds, right at the end of a headland over the English Channel. It’s miles from anywhere. If you do come, they’ll give me one of the smaller cottages there. That would be nice, of course but, sweetheart, I don’t want to hold you back like this. You’ll be leaving school now and may want to do something else, go somewhere else. I can’t stop you and I wouldn’t want to if you’ve other plans.’
I took a hold of his hands and looked him full in the eye. ‘Dad, I’ve been looking forward to keeping house for you someday. I want to come, of course I do. I can’t stay forever with Ethel and Sheila – it’s a real squash in her little house. I want to come, Dad. I want to come so much!’
He smiled at my earnestness. ‘Then you certainly will – there’ll be plenty of room in the cottage adjoining the Light and you can housekeep for us both and I’ll even pay you a little wage. That’s fair, isn’t it? And a great little housekeeper you are too, thanks to Sheila.’
‘Oh, thanks to Millie as well,’ I said with a grimace.
‘She didn’t teach you anything,’ said Dad scornfully, ‘she just bullied you, I know all about it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Jim told me. Said she often beat you. I’ve not forgiven her for treating you like a servant while I was away and pretending to be all nice when I was home. The two-faced bitch. Only time I see her now is when I pick up the boys to take them for a day out in the holidays. She’s as miserable and sharp as ever. What changed her so? She seemed such a nice kid when I first met her. A pretty kid.’
‘She’s still sort of pretty,’ I said.
‘No, not now,’ sighed Dad. ‘Oh, she’s always smart, always well turned out but she’s got a face to go with her inner landscape; harsh lines, down-turned mouth, angry eyes. She looks mean.’
‘Mean Millie,’ I murmured.
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
Just before Ryan left for college I asked him, ‘Will you come to see us sometimes?’
‘Seems I’ll be busy in my holidays,’ he said, ‘visiting Mum and Susan, visiting Dad up north, visiting you and Joe when you go to Devon. When am I supposed to do all my studying? But I’ll try now and then. No promises though. Maybe I’ll just give you a surprise one day.’
I gave him a curious look. ‘Do you keep your promises?’
He looked down at me from his height – for he had grown even bigger now and towered over me.
‘Listen, Miss Bridie Bosworth, I always keep my promises. And you’d better keep yours.’
‘Why, what have I promised?’ I asked, astonished.
He grinned. ‘That you’ll be my wife, and no one else’s. Mine. You hear?’
‘I hear you, Ryan. But I’ll only accept when you come to me some day and ask me properly. After all, this isn’t exactly the sort of proposal a girl dreams about. I want bended knees and romantic moonlight – that sort of thing.’
‘Well, mebbe I’ll do that,’ he said nodding. He smiled at my worried expression.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ he said. ‘You don’t trust me.’
‘I’m not sure you’re serious,’ I frowned. ‘You can’t be.’
‘When I say a thing, I mean it,’ he replied taking my chin in his hand and tilting my face up. I thought he meant to kiss me and went all funny inside but he didn’t. He let my chin go when he’d contemplated me long enough.
Then he said, ‘Are you still writing to that poncey brother of yours?’
‘So what if I am?’
‘He’s not your real brother.’
‘I know that,’ I said, annoyed as always when this subject arose. ‘You keep on saying that. Why?’
‘Because he fancies you and because I can tell he’s not a good bloke. Just watch him, that’s all. I’ll be watching him for sure.’
It never occurred to me that Jim might fancy me, as Ryan put it. I put this daft idea down to jealousy and a suspicious, misanthropic nature. It was a nice thought though because when someone is jealous of you it means they really care. As for the notion Jim fancied me – it was silly. I certainly didn’t fancy him. I carried on writing to Jim while he was still in the sixth form at St Michael’s Bister and no Ryan was going to tell me I couldn’t. I wasn’t married to him yet. Jim’s letters were chatty, sensible and normal, no sign of any special affection that was not brotherly by nature. He kept asking me to go over and see them when they went back to see Millie in their holidays.
‘You needn’t worry about Mum,’ he said, ‘she’s not going to order you about any more. She’s calmed down a lot. Anyway, you’re sixteen now. Come over and see us as you’re living so near.’
Naturally I ignored this request, so you can imagine my surprise when Jim suddenly turned up during late July in 1957 when he’d finished his A levels. He told me he had great plans for the future. He was soon due for his National Service call-up but didn’t seem too bothered about that. He reckoned he would get out of it somehow.
I was still living with Ethel Alcott, waiting for Trinity to get the cottage at Start Point ready. Jim said he’d come over to Bournemouth for a day or two to see me before going over to his mother’s place. I was pleased to see him, more than I thought I would be. As he stood at the door of Ethel’s little house, I looked up at him in wonder, now a head taller than myself and more handsome by the minute. He was so different to Ryan, his hair fairer and his eyes a deep periwinkle blue like Dad’s.
‘Hi, Sis,’ he said bending down to give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. This was the first time he’d ever shown this much affection and I was warmed by it. It melted a barrier that I had put between us, though quite why I wasn’t sure. It was nothing to do with Ryan and his daft notions, more to do with Mean Millie.
‘Ethel, this is my brother, Jim.’ I introduced him to the old lady who looked up at this fair handsome lad and went all soppy.
‘Sit, down, dear, sit down. I’ll put on the kettle and make us a nice cup of tea. Are you staying over at the Seaview Court? Good place, isn’t it? How long you staying for, then?’
‘Just a couple of days.’
‘Oh, nice. Then you’re off home?’
‘Yes, for a bit. I mean to spend some of the holidays with a friend in London. He’s going to show me the sights.’
‘Ooh, lucky you. I’ve never been to London. Don’t suppose I ever will now.’
She brought out a barrel of chocolate digestives and set it before him, urging him to partake. Jim had a soft charm and a smile that made women run about wanting to please him. Susan, who ever had an eye for the lads, was very taken with him and ran upstairs to change into her new jeans and put on some pink lipstick. I don’t think Sheila even knew Susan had any lipstick. She’d probably nicked it from Woolworths and hid it in her bottom drawer with a few other forbidden items.
However, to Susan’s annoyance, after we’d all had supper, Jim asked me to go out for a stroll and talk. He wanted, he said, to hear about my new life and what I was going to do. She gave me a bit of a dirty look as I put on my coat but I just shrugged and took no notice of her pouts. I vaguely felt that Jim was my property, not hers.
We walked down to the promenade and right along it to the very end, chatting about this and that. The wind was blowing and I kept pushing back my hair from my face as it whipped about me. Jim glanced at me when I did this, smiled and drew me into a more secluded spot. Here we stood and looked out over the sea for a bit, he leaning on the railings gazing at the far horizon.
‘I’ve got such plans, such hopes, Bridie,’ he said. His voice whipped away on the wind as if travelling to those far-off places where his heart seemed to be.
‘What sort of plans?’
He turned and came over to me and sat beside me on a little wooden bench, our backs sheltered by a wall.
‘I want to study law,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I’ve passed all my A levels, hopefully with a few distinctions. I don’t mind hard work. Not at all. The harder the better – I love a challenge. And I’ll sort out the damned call-up if it’s the last thing I do. No way am I wasting my time square-bashing and being bawled at by some uneducated idiot of an NCO. I’ll find a way out of that, you wait and see. It’s the finances, though. Not sure how I’ll do it but I’m damned sure I will somehow. When I want a thing, I want it with passion.’
I was impressed by this speech and looked at him with interest.
‘I wish I could understand this passion to do something,’ I said. ‘I have no idea at all what I want to do. I feel such a dull person compared to you and Ryan. You both know what you want. I don’t really want anything much, to be honest. One minute I want to be content and peaceful and run a home, but then sometimes – just sometimes – I really want to do something daring, break out and try a new life altogether.’
‘You’re not dull, you never will be, Bridie. I don’t think you’re dull at all.’
‘But I am. I’m not clever like you or Ryan.’
‘Ryan? Is that the glum fellow I met in Cornwall?’
‘Yes, but he’s not glum, Jim. He’s … ’I gave it some thought. ‘He’s sort of strong and silent. He’s very deep.’
Jim looked at me thoughtfully. ‘So you still have a thing for him?’
I let my gaze drop for a moment then nodded.
To my amazement, Jim seized my arm in a fierce grip. ‘By God, you do, don’t you? Dammit, he’s a surly brute. What can you see in a fellow like that?’
He was shaking my arm quite violently. I pulled myself away and hit out at him, angry at this outburst. ‘Get off! What is up with you! Look, it’s none of your business who I fancy and none of Ryan’s either. You two get on my nerves. Ryan thinks it’s you who fancies me.’
‘I do more than that.’ His response was as fierce as his look. ‘I love you, Bridie, I always have. You know that.’
‘Oh – you don’t! You can’t! You’re being silly, Jim. Just stop saying such things. I don’t want you to be in love with me. You’re my brother …you’re … you’re Jim.’
‘But I’m not your damned brother, am I?’
His face, usually so sweet and fair, had darkened and he gripped both my arms and turned me towards him. I actually felt a little afraid of him. His eyes looked like Millie’s; their vivid blue piercing and frightening in intensity, filled with the desire to conquer and be in control.
I gave a little scream and broke away and began to run up the promenade. Jim set off after me. Catching up, he caught my arm again.
‘Bridie!’
‘Let go!’ I shouted.
‘Listen to me, damn you! I’m not your brother, d’you hear? I have as much right to you as he does.’
‘You haven’t any rights. Nobody has “rights” over another person! You talk as if I was a mare or a sack of potatoes or something. Let me alone, Jim!’
As I twisted about, I suddenly saw Ryan, walking along the road in our direction. I thought I must be dreaming. But it was him and he came running towards us.
‘Let her go!’ He echoed my words. Jim dropped my arm and we both stared at him in astonishment.
‘Ryan? What …how …what are you doing here?’ I stuttered. ‘Come on a surprise visit,’ he growled, ‘and in fuckin’ good time, it seems.’
He glowered at Jim who stood and stared back at him challengingly. The fair lad and the dark one standing their ground and me – as always – piggy in the middle. I gaped at them both and felt like a heroine in a book. Boring Bridie Bosworth, a heroine in a book.
‘Go back home, Jim Bosworth,’ said Ryan quietly. ‘You got no business here.’
‘I’ll visit my sister, if I like. I’ve more business and more of a claim on her than you,’ Jim retorted with passion.
‘As a brother, maybe. But you aren’t no brother, are you? You’re no relation at all. And she’s my girl, so don’t go sniffing around her – or else.’
‘Or else, what?’
‘You’ll live to regret it.’
‘Oh, yes!’ sneered Jim. ‘You and whose army?’
‘S’cuse me,’ I piped up at this point. ‘Do I get a say in any of all this?’
‘Exactly,’ said Jim, his hands stuffed in his pockets as if afraid he might give Ryan a poke in the eye. ‘What are Bridie’s feelings in this? She says I don’t own her. You don’t own her either, you great oaf.’
Ryan, normally so slow to arouse, lashed out at Jim and sent him sprawling.
‘She’s my girl,’ he said, standing over him, his eyes dark and dangerous, ‘she’s going to marry me. So you keep off.’
‘Oh, Jim, I’m so sorry,’ I wailed and went to try and help him up but he shook off my arm with a petulant gesture and rose. He shot Ryan a look of pure hate. Ryan just stood, arms folded, a certain look of satisfaction on his face.
‘Ryan, you bully!’ I said, ‘I’m not marrying you or anyone, so stop acting like this. Just say you’re sorry to poor Jim.’
‘ “Poor Jim”! Fuck poor Jim!’ snorted Ryan in disgust and, turning on his heel, strode off back to his grandma’s house.
Jim looked at me and dusted himself down.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘you see what I mean? He’s uncivilised and stupid, too. Oh, Bridie, I’m glad you don’t love him. That’s so strange, his turning up like that. But it proved my point. ’
‘What do you mean, I don’t love him?’ I said, glum now as I watched Ryan’s retreating figure. ‘Jim, you’d better not come back to Ethel’s with me. Ryan’s here now and you two are not meant to be together in one room. And I want to see him so much. I’ll come over to the Seaview Court tomorrow to say goodbye before you go on to Broughampton.’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Jim in a huff. ‘Go to your precious Ryan. See if I care.’
But he did care, I knew that now.
Ryan was seated at the table with a cup of tea when I got back. He looked up when I got in, his face expressionless, not returning the sheepish smile I gave him.
‘You asked him over, I suppose,’ was his morose comment.
‘No, I did not. He wrote and said he’d be coming over for a few days. If you’d said you were coming I’d have told him not to bother.’
‘I wanted to surprise you all.’
‘Well, you did that. Why do you hate Jim so much, Ryan? You must stop hating him. He’s my only relation apart from Dad. I don’t count Andy and Millie. I know Jim’s not a real one but we did grow up together.’
‘I’ll hate who I like. I’ve told you, I don’t trust him and certainly not around you. And what was he doing when I came up? Didn’t look like he was being “brotherly” to me. Looked like a lot of other things. Be straight with me, Bridie. I can’t bear it if you’re not. If you’d rather have him, then say so. I agree, I don’t own you. You must decide.’
I sighed. ‘Look, I can take care of myself, Ryan. Jim and I were just squabbling over some silly thing. It was nothing, honestly. You know I love you. You know I do.’ Tears came to my eyes and my voice wobbled.
He rose. Ethel and his mother were busy getting supper in the kitchen and Susan had gone out and wasn’t back yet. He took me quickly in his arms and kissed me, holding me tight against his strong wiry body. I could feel him hardening as he pushed for a moment against my hips and it made such a strong ripple of longing flame up inside me that I wanted to marry him there and then. No one had held me, kissed me like this and it made me gasp. I knew there was no one else in the world for me.
‘You’re my girl, Bridie,’ he said. His hand stroked my cheek with sudden tenderness and I felt myself melt as I stared up at him and saw the look of deep, profound feeling in his brown eyes. So different to Jim’s frightening blue stare. I gave a sudden shiver at the memory.
Ryan pulled me closer.
‘Don’t be afraid of anything,’ he said softly. It was as if he knew and understood what my thoughts were. ‘I’m here; I’ll always be here for you. Keep away from that fellow, Bridie. He’s evil.’