10

The invitation did not come until the following spring. Frances had by that time been over to my house on several occasions and had thoroughly charmed my father, who pronounced her ‘spirited’.

‘She’s a very confident young lady,’ was mother’s verdict, delivered in a tone of voice to leave me in no doubt that confidence was not necessarily something to aspire to.

Frances made her offer at the end of the last lesson on a Friday afternoon as we were sorting out our books for the weekend’s homework.

‘Are you doing anything tomorrow?’

‘No,’ I said, hope fluttering.

‘Do you want to come over, then? We could go to the woods with Growth, or just hang around at home.’

‘Will your family be there?’

‘Probably, worse luck. Still, you’ll have to meet them sooner or later. Don’t take any notice of my dad. He’ll try and be funny all the time – don’t laugh at his jokes. Rad is bound to be out, but he wouldn’t bother us anyway. Auntie Mim’s deaf so you won’t be able to talk to her; she stays up in her room mostly. Mum’s the only one who matters really – and she’s completely normal, so that’s okay.’

So it was that on Saturday afternoon father drove me for only the second time to the house in Balmoral Road. He had instructed me to telephone him when I was ready to be picked up and had given me 10p to leave in payment for the call.

‘Don’t wait,’ I said ungraciously as I slammed the car door, and then I stood on the doorstep making shooing gestures until he finally took the hint and the car crawled off at a snail’s pace until the front door opened to admit me.

‘Hello, come in, GET DOWN GROWTH.’ Frances turned on the brown and white Jack Russell who was yapping and dancing around her ankles and springing up at me, his teeth bared. I kept my hands in my pockets. On his left side was a lump the size of a golf ball. ‘He’s in a vile temper today. I think he’s getting a cauliflower ear.’

The passageway in which we were standing was long and narrow with a black and white tiled floor and an uncarpeted staircase leading up to a landing and more stairs above. The walls had been stripped to reveal patches of flaky paint and plaster and stubborn little flecks of wallpaper like cornflakes.

‘Are you in the middle of decorating?’ I asked.

Frances, silencing Growth with a dog biscuit, looked puzzled. ‘No. Why?’

‘Oh nothing,’ I said, blushing, as she ushered me into the front room with the words ‘This is my mum.’

My blush hadn’t even had time to recede when it flared right up again. Frances’ mother was in the middle of the room, ironing, surrounded by piles of neatly folded laundry. Shirts and blouses were draped over chair-backs and on hangers hooked over the mantelpiece. The windows and mirrors were fogged with steam. A pile of socks tucked into themselves in little balls lay like horse droppings on the carpet. Apart from the tiniest pair of lacy black knickers, the ‘completely normal’ Mrs Radley was naked. This was my first real encounter with bare breasts and I flinched as if from the glare of headlamps.

‘Oh Mum, you could have put some clothes on,’ Frances remonstrated. ‘I told you Abigail was coming any minute.’

‘Nonsense – we’re all girls. Abigail doesn’t mind, do you?’

‘No,’ I squeaked, my eyes watering with the effort of not staring.

‘There you are. I’m very pleased to meet you, Abigail. Please call me Lexi.’ She leaned across the ironing board and shook my hand, her breasts trembling at the movement. I had never realised they could be so mobile. Hugging my mother, who was in any case flat-chested, with her formidable armour of elastic and mesh girdles and nylon lace petticoats, was rather like clashing with a trussed fowl.

‘Come on,’ said Frances impatiently, ‘let’s go upstairs.’

‘Take this lot with you,’ Lexi ordered, pointing to the piles of laundry. Frances looked at me and raised her eyes to heaven. As if in reply there came a loud crash from above our heads followed by swearing and the sound of heavy furniture scraping against wood.

‘LIFT, DON’T DRAG!’ Lexi bellowed at the ceiling as we swung swags of shirts over our shoulders and gathered up folded sheets and towels, still warm and smelling of the garden.

On the first landing two single beds were standing upended against the banisters, wedged firmly in place by a double bed which was on its side half in and half out of a doorway. A man’s head and shoulders appeared over the edge of the headboard. I was relieved to see that he was clothed. ‘Keep out of the way, you girls. On second thoughts, Frances, why don’t you two take hold of this end and try and lift it past that leg.’

‘What’s going on?’ Frances demanded. ‘What are you doing with my bed?’

‘We’re swapping your single ones for our double, what does it look like?’

‘Why?’

‘Because your mother keeps complaining that I wake her up when I come in from work.’

‘So I get the double all to myself?’ asked Frances suspiciously.

‘Yes. If we can get it out of this doorway.’

‘Where’s Rad?’

‘Up in his room, working.’

‘You’ve knocked a bit of the paint off here,’ came another man’s voice from the far side of the bed.

‘Oh, hello Uncle Bill,’ said Frances to the voice, relieving me of the ironing and dumping the lot, not very neatly, on the bathroom floor.

After some more grunting and straining from the bedroom the double bed jerked back a couple of feet, taking with it a sizeable strip of wood from the doorframe. Frances squeezed through the gap and trotted up the next flight of stairs with me in pursuit. ‘That was my dad,’ she said.

‘Don’t bother to introduce us,’ he called out after us. ‘I’m just the odd-job man.’

The second landing was lit by a skylight and was even smaller than the first. On the three sides not occupied by the stairs were closed doors. ‘That’s Auntie Mim’s room.’ Frances pointed at one, then gave a sharp rap at the second and flung it open without waiting for a reply. ‘And this,’ she said, as if showing off some interesting new acquisition at a zoo, ‘is Rad.’

A boy of about fourteen was sitting at a desk with his back to us. He turned round, scowling at Frances before turning back to his work. He had thick, dark hair which fell, unruly and unbrushed, into his eyes, which were so dark it was hard to tell where the iris ended and the pupil began.

‘Handsome, isn’t he?’ said Frances with some pride.

He certainly was, though as an only child at an all-girls’ school I was no connoisseur of male beauty. I gave a nervous laugh which could have meant yes or no and concentrated on holding down another blush. Apart from bookshelves, the walls of his room were bare, in some places down to the brickwork. On the desk in a cone of light from an angle-poise lamp were a pile of books with intriguing titles: Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, The Myth of Sisyphus.

‘Rad’s an atheist,’ she whispered, confidentially, as we made our way downstairs. ‘We all are actually, except for Mum. She doesn’t believe in anything, but she’s very spiritual. Does your mum believe in God?’

I thought for a moment. She believed in going to church: more than that I couldn’t say.

To avoid being drafted into any more laundry work or furniture removals we took Growth for a walk in the woods. He went berserk at the sight of the lead, whirling around in tight circles at our feet and then slinging himself skywards, eyes rolling. Frances was trying to teach him to jump up and retrieve a Bonio from between her teeth, a trick which nearly cost her her nose, and left the lower half of her face dripping with slobber.

‘Yuk, nearly there,’ she said, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, as Growth tossed back his third biscuit, crunching and gagging at the same time.

He dragged us all the way to the entrance to the woods, a roll of fat bulging over his choke chain as he strained against the lead. No sooner was it unclipped than he shot off into the bushes and was out of sight in seconds.

‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,’ Frances intoned, kicking through the bluebells. We had just read the poem in English comprehension. Imagine you are the poet. Write a story to explain how you came to be in the woods, and where you are going. In mine the poet was a lowly woodcutter returning to his family on Christmas Eve with a bundle of twigs for the fire. Frances’ version had a wandering minstrel, the only survivor of a happy band of actors who had been savaged by wolves; there were several subplots, and the story was accompanied by a family tree.

It took hours to locate Growth. He had cantered right out of the woods to the playing fields beyond and disgraced himself by interrupting a football game, capering after the ball and finally lifting his leg against a pile of coats behind the goalpost. Frances retrieved him by whistling urgently from the edge of the pitch.

‘Oy, I hope you’re going to pay to get this coat cleaned,’ called one of the players furiously. ‘That’s suede that is.’

Frances clipped the dog’s lead back on and, having judged that the man was too far away to give chase, took off for the woods at a sprint with Growth flying along at her heels and me, terrified, puffing along behind. We didn’t stop until we reached the front door, gasping with laughter and the stitch, while the culprit began his tail-chasing and leaping routine at our feet. The exercise, far from tiring him out, seemed to have stirred him into a greater frenzy. Frances unleashed him in the hall and he skittered into the living room and wedged himself under the gas fire which was fortunately unlit. Mrs Radley, by this time decently clad in a floor-length housecoat, was lying on the couch watching a black and white film. Frances had told me once that she used to be a child actress and I could well believe it.

‘Fish popped in a moment ago and said he’d have the hose on later if you girls want to go round and be squirted,’ she called after us, as if this was the most normal suggestion in the world.

Frances screwed her face up in disgust. ‘No way.’ Apparently frisking around next door’s garden under the sprinkler on sunny days was something she had used to enjoy at the age of four or so – a tradition Fish had heard about and was eager to uphold in spite of the passing years. Lexi could see no harm in it, but for Mr Radley it was another mark against the man.

Upstairs the furniture removals had concluded successfully with only a few dents and scars to the doorframes and wallpaper. The double bed had been dropped like a raft in the middle of Frances’ room in a sea of clutter – books, singles, games, jigsaws, odd shoes, clothes, paper, pens. Her dressing table was similarly crowded with trinkets and china and letter racks bristling with more paper, and every drawer was open an inch or so more than the one above, like a flight of steps.

Frances gathered up an armful of junk and, without sorting it, opened her wardrobe and stuffed it on to a pile of still more junk, which was beginning to teeter as she slammed the door and locked it. From inside came the pitter patter of rubble sliding down and coming to rest against the door.

‘There, that’s tidied,’ said Frances, flinging herself down on the bed and extending her arms and legs, starfish style, to test its dimensions. ‘Oh this is great.’

Privately I was shocked at her calm acceptance of the household’s new sleeping arrangements. It seemed obvious to me that her parents’ move into single beds was just the prelude to divorce. Even my parents who, heaven knew, were cool enough towards each other most of the time, still shared a double bed.

From a white chipboard unit beside her Frances produced her journal and offered to read me some extracts.

Dear Beatrice [I had already learned to my relief that Beatrice was not in fact a cousin or special friend but a device, borrowed from Anne Frank, to make the entries seem more personal.]

There was a good-looking boy in Saint Michael’s uniform at the bus stop today so I decided to follow him home. I got on his bus, a 194 which I’ve never been on before, and pretty soon I was completely lost. He didn’t get off for ages and I was beginning to think it was another stupid idea of mine when he rang the bell. I had plenty of time to study the back of his neck on the bus, which was a bit sort of greasy, his neck not the bus, so I’m not quite as keen as I thought I was. Anyway I followed him at a distance and now know where he lives, though I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. Nothing, probably. I was really late home – luckily everyone else was still out. Fish was up a ladder next door putting criss-cross strips on their windows. He saw me and said ‘You’re late, been in detention, heh heh?’ and started to come down so I shot indoors. Growth went mad when he saw me and started throwing himself up against the back door so I had to take him out for a run. I didn’t want to pass Fish again so we went out the back and over the fence. I was starving when I got back and the fridge was bare so I ate a whole carton of glacé cherries out of the larder. Quite nice, though they must have been years old – I don’t think anyone here has made a cake or anything like that in my lifetime. Tried a Bonio but it was disgusting.

I could see Frances was getting into the swing of this. She would roll around the bed, laughing and wheezing at her own exploits. Her laugh was so theatrical, so preposterous, that I couldn’t help joining in and soon we were half-way to hysterics. Encouraged by this gratifying response, Frances rattled through a few more entries, occasionally straying into dangerous terrain and having to improvise on the hoof.

March 16th

Dear Beatrice

Mum made me wear her new walking boots to school today as she is going off on a ‘ramble’ with Lawrence this weekend and wants them broken in. They are pretty uncomfortable. Dr Peel caught me clumping down the corridor in them and said I’d be sent home to change if I wore them again. Honestly! It doesn’t say anything about not wearing walking boots in the school rules. It says ‘sensible brown shoes’ which they are. Abigail was wearing her hair in a bun today. It didn’t really … er, blah blah blah … Got our reports today. For Maths Mrs Taylor put ‘Frances has consolidated her position at the bottom of the class.’ Ha ha. Dad will love that. Abigail’s was brilliant as usual … er, blah blah blah. Limped half the way home then took the boots off and walked the rest of the way in my socks – or rather Rad’s socks, as they turned out to be on closer inspection.

Dinner was late. Frances and I were dragooned into preparing vegetables: mountains of sprouts, carrots and so many potatoes that they filled a roasting tin all of their own and my peeling hand developed a wet blister. Frances’ method of preparing carrots consisted of removing the woody ends and then hewing them into unmanageable chunks like jumbo-sized batteries and tossing them unwashed into a saucepan. There appeared to be enough food for twenty. The chicken itself was the size of our Christmas turkey. I was like Gulliver in Brobdingnag. It was all so different from home, where everything was small and dainty and nicely presented and then cut into tiny pieces and chewed twenty-eight times.

By eight thirty, when red juice was still leaking out of the chicken cavity into the surrounding lake of hot oil, and the potatoes were still waxy white and hard as new soap bars I began to worry that my parents would be wondering where I was. I crept into the front room where Lexi was curled up, still in her housecoat, reading Vogue.

‘May I use your telephone, please? I’ve got to ring my father and tell him what time to pick me up.’

‘Pick you up? I thought you were staying the night. Why don’t you tell him you’re staying, then he won’t have to come out. Hmm? I used to spend every weekend with my girlfriend, Ruthie, when I was young.’

‘Oh no … I … they’re expecting me back.’ My first thought was that my parents might not be able to do without me, but presently plenty of other admissible excuses came to mind. ‘I haven’t got my nightie.’

‘Frances will lend you something.’ There was something indefatigable about Lexi that made opposition pointless.

‘Well, thank you. I’ll just ring and ask permission.’

‘Stay the night?’ mother echoed. ‘Whatever for?’

‘For fun.’

There was a silence while she turned this idea over. ‘I don’t see why not, I suppose.’ Her one condition was that I let father drive over with my night-clothes and toothbrush, which rather defeated Lexi’s object of saving him the journey. ‘And don’t forget to strip the bed in the morning. It’s very important,’ were her final words.