Recently I was glancing through the list of prize winners in a magazine competition and wondering vaguely whether Mrs Esmé Batson of New Malden was anyone I used to know, when it struck me that it would be fascinating to find out how one’s old school chums had turned out over the years.
Not that I particularly want them all turning up on my doorstep in their mink, rags, Rolls Royces, crash helmets, emerald tiaras and handwoven caftans. But it would be interesting to hear, in one marathon gossip session, what has become of them. I expect we’d be in for some surprises.
Who would have thought for instance, that Molly Huggins, renowned in the lower fifth for her big nostrils and chapped hands, would now be smothered in sequins and tassels and fighting off Latin lovers down in Buenos Aires? Or that a golden girl like Gloria McGillicuddy who always had the best fountain pen and was every teacher’s pet, should end up wearily pushing all those crying babies along the High Street? And as for Dorothy Doomswathe, I just can’t imagine where such a pillar of the local chapel got her material for all those dirty books!
Sometimes scraps of real information do float our way … ‘Guess what? Daphne Dimplerod finally married that ghastly chap in the beret and bicycle clips!’ Or, ‘You’ll never believe it my dear, but June Flatbush has joined a rather intense religious sect and goes around nowadays shouting things out loud on buses!’
Of course they don’t all go berserk in adult life. Some settle down and become good wives, anxious mums or a bit above themselves. But it’s the ones who sink without trace that I wonder about. They can’t all have emigrated or gone to the dogs.
While we’re on the subject of going to the dogs, I can’t help noticing among those that I do keep in touch with that the wild ones of our youth invariably didn’t meet their comeuppance.
The slow and plodding may win the race in The Tortoise and The Hare, and in those magazine stories we used to read in which the girl had to choose between the solid dependable chap next door and the raffish easy-come, easy-go racing driver, old Ploddy won every time. But in real life quite naughty girls end up being photographed in Vogue. And I’ve met at least one daredevil who gambled his way through an entire fortune. And what happened? Someone died and left him another fortune.
It’s all very well for our elders to sit around shaking their heads and saying things like: ‘You mark my words – that one will come to a bad end.’ The trouble is that they don’t – they come to a super end surrounded by lace pillows and adoring old flames while we sit at home watching Match of the Day and having nostalgic thoughts about the romantic past.
Which brings us to old boyfriends – those pulse-quickening symbols of our budding teens. Are they now mowing lawns, running to seed and helping their wives with the washing up? Even that fantastic hazel-eyed lad who used to play the piano like crazy down at the local youth club, and that strange fresh air fiend who preferred canoeing to girls? Does he still paddle his lonely nut-brown way up creek and stream? Or did he finally succumb to a rosy cheeked ravisher in cords, climbing boots and an open-necked Aertex?
What of tall husky Jack, I wonder – that funny endearing boy, the one my father actually liked? While other girls blushed and waved love letters with envelopes marked SWALK, we thought it the height of wit to mark ours VLADIVOSTOK and NIJNINOVGOROD.
Then there was that sweet, if slightly immature lad who kept on telling me how much he respected me. What was he leading up to, I used to wonder? I never did find out. Our relationship wore thin when a friend invited us to a bottle party and his mother laughed and said he’d jolly well have to make do with milk or ink.
Not long ago I did catch sight of one grand passion of my teens – oh those forget-me-not blue eyes, the rich chuckly voice, the dexterous flash of his ping pong bat … He was getting on to a train with his wife – a great carping lump in a droopy coat. Poor love – he’d have done much better with me.
And what about me? Inky Bet who suffered so regularly from neuralgia that for quite a time I was known affectionately by school friends as Old Face Ache – at least I assumed it was said with affection.
Who of my childhood chums, I wonder, would imagine that I’d end up blond – and able to crochet – and married to such a lovely fella?
Alas, it is too late now for reunions. All our old haunts have long since been turned into bingo halls and supermarkets. Our old tradition-and-giggle-steeped-grammar school has gone comprehensive. As for the local boys’ school where all our blazered and satchelled dream boats came swirling out, furtively stuffing their caps in their pockets – even the building seems to have disappeared!
But then you never know – perhaps one day there’ll be a Grand Old Boys And Girls Reunion In The Sky. And if so, my word there’ll be some gasping, nudging and some catching up to do, I can tell you!