Sylvie’s story
I HAD DECIDED I WASN’T GOING back to Sylvie’s. It was all so embarrassing and difficult, and having to be so careful not to upset her. But there was something about her, the things she said, the way she listened to me as if what I said was important. I’d never met anyone like her before.
A week later it was raining when I got home from school and I had forgotten my key. Judith was playing hockey. Sandra was of course at work. There was nowhere to go. And I quite missed seeing Mansell. So I left my school bag under an old sheet in our shed and went down to the Crescent.
The house looked grey and cold in the rain. I huddled under the narrow strip of concrete over the door that was meant to be a porch, and knocked. Again I had to wait. I looked down at the daffodils in the small square of earth beside me and realised they were plastic.
The door opened the merest crack.
Sylvie’s face peeped through.
‘Hello?’ Her voice was a croak. She was holding a brown matted cardigan tightly at her throat.
She stared at me, then began to close the door.
‘Sylvie!’ I said. ‘It’s me! Linda.’
‘Linda? Oh, Linda.’ Her face relaxed. ‘Linda, hello.’ She opened the door and peered out behind me. ‘Come in,’ she said, and I stepped inside. ‘I thought you were the never-never man.’
‘In a school beret?’ I said.
Quietly she closed the door. ‘We are a little behind in our payments.’ She looked down. ‘I’m afraid you find me rather déshabillé. I was just having a lie-down.’ A faded petticoat hung limply under the washed-out cardigan. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said doubtfully.
‘I forgot my key and I’m locked out of our house.’ Suddenly I felt very sorry for myself.
‘Oh, chicken,’ she said, ‘and you’re soaked! Let’s have a cup of tea. We can cheer each other up and listen to some music.’
I wiped my feet and looked over at Mansell’s empty pram beside the stairs.
‘Mansell was having a sleep next to me.’ She cocked her head towards the stairs and murmured, ‘He’s still dozing. You go into the kitchen and put on the kettle. I’ll nip up and change into something less comfortable. Then we’ll both feel better.’
When she came back downstairs she was wearing a pink sloppy mohair jumper over a tight skirt that showed her knees. She was carrying Mansell on her hip, and looked like an advert for a loving mum with a baby who drinks Carnation milk.
‘Don’t you think he’s handsome?’
Mansell gazed at Sylvie as if she was the only person in the world. I put the cups and the teapot on the table.
‘So we won,’ I said, picking a milk bottle out of the bucket and looking round for something to catch the drips.
‘What did we win?’
‘The election. My dad got in.’
‘Election?’ She thought for a moment. ‘Your dad?’ She wiped dribble from the baby’s chin with her finger and handed me a muslin nappy.
‘Yes, you voted for my dad. Well, you said you did.’
‘Was that your dad? The Labour candidate? What was his name? Piper.’
‘Harry Piper.’
‘Yes, yes, of course we voted for him. And he won? Linda, that’s wonderful. I’m even more honoured to have you here. We should really be drinking champagne.’
‘My mum would go mad.’ I stopped abruptly. I’d used the word ‘mad’. I shook my head. Sylvie didn’t seem to notice. ‘When I’ve poured the tea we can clink our cups.’
‘Very sensible.’ She sounded as if she’d prefer champagne. ‘No wonder you’re a political animal. You obviously imbibed Labour politics with your mother’s milk.’
‘Maybe,’ I muttered, embarrassed at the thought. ‘I worked a lot of it out for myself.’
‘I’m sure you did. I’m not criticising,’ she said. ‘It’s just that there’s not a lot of political debate on this estate.’
‘There is in our house,’ I said. ‘All the time. Breakfast, dinner and tea.’ I knew our house was different: my dad stood for the council, we took the Daily Herald, though now it was the Sun, and the Sunday Citizen, we had books everywhere in the house and a set of Arthur Mee’s Encyclopaedias. Judith and I went to the High School. We would stay on and take exams . . . We were so different.
‘How lucky you are.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So your dad’s a Labour councillor. That’s fantastic.’
‘It’s not that good.’ I knew it was good, but I didn’t want to boast. And often talking about it just made me feel even more of an outsider.
‘Don’t be afraid of being different,’ Sylvie said. ‘It will stand you in good stead.’
‘Maybe,’ I said reluctantly. ‘You take a lot of sugar, don’t you?’
‘Well, three,’ she said. ‘Don’t look like that! How many do you have?’
‘I stopped taking sugar years ago,’ I said proudly, ‘because . . .’ Suddenly I felt stupid.
‘Because what? Are you diabetic?’
‘No. Because I thought it was . . . more sophisticated not to take it.’
Sylvie laughed. ‘Don’t hang your head, chicken, that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re twelve.’
‘I was eleven,’ I said.
‘Eleven! That’s impressive. Well, I was twelve when I started playing poker. I thought that was a very sophisticated thing to do.’
‘Poker!’ Poker was gambling. Poker was . . . bad. ‘I don’t play cards,’ I said.
‘One day I’ll teach you how to play poker,’ she said. ‘But you’d better watch out. It can get you into big trouble. Let’s listen to some music,’ she said. ‘You hold Mansell. I’ll bring the tea.’
Mansell was warm and heavy in my arms. I kissed the top of his head; it smelt of baby soap. Sylvie picked up the two cups and led the way into the living room. She put the cups on the sideboard and slid a Frank Sinatra LP onto the turntable.
I took a breath. ‘Will you tell me about Mansell’s dad?’
Sylvie’s face didn’t change. ‘Are you really interested? Or are you just after the gossip?’
‘I know the gossip,’ I said. ‘I’d like to know the real story.’ It sounded clumsy and intrusive as I said it. ‘But you don’t have to tell me. Only if you want to.’
She picked up the LP cover and stared at it. ‘What is the gossip?’
‘Oh, you know. That – that you don’t know . . . who he is, I mean, that you don’t want people to know. That, that perhaps he’s someone famous!’ I added.
‘That last one I think you’ve made up for yourself.’ She dropped into an armchair.
‘He could be,’ I said. ‘Mansell could be Tommy Steele’s love child.’
She laughed. ‘He wasn’t famous. He was . . . American. Let’s say.’
‘Where did you meet him? Did you meet him in this country?’
‘I met him, I met him . . . We should drink our tea.’
I didn’t want her to change the subject. ‘Did you know him for long before, before –’
‘Before Mansell? I suppose it depends what you mean by long. I probably hadn’t known him long enough.’ She went to the sideboard, picked up the two cups of tea and handed one to me.
‘Were you going out with him? Were you engaged?’ Suddenly I wanted it to be an ordinary story – they’d been in love, they were planning a wedding and they got carried away. Then she realised she didn’t want to marry him and he didn’t want to marry her and that was all there was to it. I didn’t want it to be dramatic. I didn’t want him to be a soldier, a fighter. I didn’t want him to be a hero. A dead hero. ‘Is he still alive?’ I said.
She gave a short, exasperated laugh. ‘I’m sure he is.’
‘Is he in America?’
‘Not as far as I know. Do you really want to talk about this? It’s quite a boring story. Why don’t we talk about something else? Your future career, or the film that’s on at the Select at the moment? With Julie Christie in. What’s it called?’
‘You mean Darling. I’d rather hear about – what’s his name?’
She laughed. ‘We could play cards. I know, why don’t we make today the day I teach you to play poker?’
‘In here?’
‘Or in the kitchen.’
‘You can teach me one day, but tell me your story now. Why won’t you? It’s Mansell’s story too.’ Was I whining?
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know why I’m so reluctant to tell you.’ She tugged a loose thread on the armchair.
‘I won’t tell anyone else.’
‘Won’t you?’
I thought about it. I would want to tell Sandra. I would really want to tell Sandra. I might tell my mum, if it was a sad story. I looked at her.
‘Well, it was, in fact, playing cards that caused my . . . downfall.’
‘Cards?’
‘At a casino.’ The music had stopped. The room was silent apart from the low whirring of the electric fire.
‘What were you doing at a casino? Were you working there?’
‘Em, no, not then. I did work in a casino once, but not then. I met him when I was on holiday.’
‘With your mum?’
‘No.’
‘What did happen to your dad?’
‘Questions, questions. My dad died. In the war. So my mum says. They didn’t get married, though he loved her with all his heart. But that makes me a bastard too, as my Uncle Peter would say. It must run in the family.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with being a . . . bastard.’ It was hard to say the word; it was so harsh and ugly, as well as being a swear word. Mansell was asleep trustingly in my arms. It seemed wrong to use a word like that to describe him. It seemed wrong to think of Sylvie like that, or to call her a tart, like the husband and wife from the flats did when they went past the shop. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s not Mansell’s fault. Anyone can make a mistake.’
‘I wish everyone thought like that.’ She laughed. ‘Life would be a lot simpler.’
‘It’s what my mum says,’ I said.
‘Your mum sounds so nice.’
‘To other people. I think she’d kill me if I came home pregnant.’
‘She only makes you think that so you don’t do it. But if you did, I’m sure she’d be all right.’
I wasn’t going to take any bets on that. ‘What do you wear to a casino?’
‘A very pertinent question. Where do I start? Well, are you sitting comfortably?’ Sylvie looked out of the window.
*
We were staying in a boarding house in Great Yarmouth, me and my friend Janet. It was her auntie’s boarding house. We’d just finished our secretarial courses, and Janet’s auntie had said we could come up for a few days’ holiday as a treat. And then, when we arrived, there were two Americans staying there too – one for each of us, Janet said. But mine was nicer. He was tough and good-looking, like Humphrey Bogart. He had green eyes and a low laugh that burst out when someone said something funny.
I don’t really remember the other one. Short and fat, probably. Very different, anyway.
They were airmen, stationed at a base in Norfolk, I don’t remember the name. We were only staying for a few days, till the weekend, so we had to work fast. There was a dance in the ballroom in town, and in order to make sure the Americans went to it, Janet said, ‘Why don’t we make a leaflet!’ So we did. The leaflet said, Dance! Saturday! Be there or be square!! and Janet illustrated it with a girl in a skirt with lots of petticoats and a boy in a shirt with rolled-up sleeves, jiving together.
It was pretty amateurish, but she said we had to have something. We couldn’t ask them in person – that would have been too brazen. My job was to put it under the door of the airmen’s room. But my airman opened the door as I was bending down. I felt so stupid, kneeling there, wearing a top that gaped at the neck.
‘Well, hi there,’ he said. His voice was smooth, like a film star. ‘Or should I say, “Low there”?’ He put his hand out to help me up. I remember thinking what a warm, dry hand it was. I stood up, dusting my knees, throwing looks at the rug on the lino, as if I’d been walking along the landing quite innocently and the rug had tripped me up on the polished floor. ‘And what’s this?’ He bent down and picked up the leaflet.
‘I don’t know, what is it?’ I twisted my head round and squinted at the piece of paper as if I’d never seen it before. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘look at that! It’s for the dance at the ballroom in town tonight. Are you going?’
‘Are you?’
‘Oh, yes, we’re going. My friend and I. My friend, Janet. I’m Sylvia . . . Sylvie, by the way. We’re going.’ Suddenly I decided to call myself Sylvie – it just sounded so . . . so much more mysterious. And I suppose, in a way, I wanted to be mysterious.
He grinned. ‘We’ll probably see you there,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we could have a dance.’
The American way he said ‘dance’ made me shiver. ‘Yes, perhaps we could,’ I said, and I turned on my heel, glaring at the rug as I went.
Janet and I spent the afternoon pinning our hair into curls and drawing lines up the backs of our legs. Janet had to sit on a pile of cushions all afternoon, on top of her skirt, trying to press out the creases. I hung my dress by the window to blow out the wrinkles. We couldn’t use the iron – we didn’t want Janet’s auntie asking questions. She was a bit square. She wouldn’t have approved.
So, off we went to the dance, looking around the dance floor, but we didn’t see anyone we recognised. So we danced together, all sorts of dances – modern, some skiffle, even a bit of Tommy Steele – not in person, in case you’re wondering. This was mostly jazzy, and songs from the war. There were people of all ages there, it wasn’t just youngsters. There were waltzes, and the cha-cha-cha.
*
‘Did he know how to do those?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, because he wasn’t there – not at first. Neither of them was there. Janet and I were quite downhearted, and I began to think I should have stayed in Braintree with Kenny.’
‘Who’s Kenny?’
‘He was my boyfriend. He wanted to marry me, and I wasn’t sure, so Janet had said this would be a good time to think about it, on my own, calmly.’
‘Why did you have to think about it?’ I said. ‘Didn’t you know whether you loved him or not? If you had to think about it, it sounds like you didn’t.’
‘I’m afraid things aren’t always that black and white, Linda. Marriage isn’t just about love. And love doesn’t inevitably lead to marriage.’ She looked at Mansell. ‘But anyway, I wasn’t at home with Kenny. I was in Great Yarmouth, and I danced with a few country lads before I looked up in the middle of a foxtrot and saw the Yanks standing at the door, gazing round the room like two strangers in paradise.
‘I apologised to my partner, I pretended I’d hurt my foot – which I had really, since he kept stepping on it – and I limped away. Of course, I stopped limping when I got to the edge of the dance floor. And I put on my smile and I walked round to greet them.
‘ “And don’t you look good enough to eat?” he said.
‘I knew I was looking nice. My hair was behaving itself, and my dress was simple but pretty, blue cotton with a yellow and blue pattern, a few petticoats underneath to make the skirt stick out, and I’d picked a flower from a display on the front as we walked to the hall, and I’d put it behind my ear.’
‘What was his name?’
‘His name. Well, I didn’t know his name at that point.’ She stretched. ‘We’ll do some more next time. And now I will put on a record to make you swoon. Johnny Mathis.’
‘Perhaps I should leave now.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t make that face. You’ll like it when you listen properly. But yes, you put Mansell down, and I’ll switch on the hi-fi. It’ll take a little while to warm up.’
*
‘But that’s rubbish,’ Sandra said dismissively. We were upstairs on their landing, folding the washing, holding the ends of the sheets, moving backwards and forwards, making neat squares, almost dancing. It was a way of making up for our argument. She’d rung and asked if I wanted to have a good time. It was sorting laundry. She’d done the ringing and I was helping with the folding.
‘Why is it rubbish?’ Their sheets were pink, slithery Bri-nylon.
‘For a start, when do people go to secretarial college? They go when they leave school, when they’re fifteen or sixteen. Not when they’re twenty-six or thirty-six, or however old she is.’
‘They might do.’
‘Yeah, that would look good, wouldn’t it? “Take a letter, Miss Smith.” “Ooh, sorry, I can’t pick up my pencil, I’ve got rheumatism.” ’
‘Twenty-six isn’t that old. Do you think she’s lying?’
‘My mum says she lies to the doctors about when she’s feeling well or ill, so no one knows what’s going on.’ Sandra put a folded sheet over the banister. ‘And who’s this Janet? I’ve never heard of her.’
‘It’s her friend. She probably hasn’t heard of your friend Halina.’
Sandra grunted.
‘Well, I don’t care,’ I said. I paused. Did I care? She was so much older than me, and lovely and sad that actually, no, it didn’t matter to me. ‘She’s like a film star, like Audrey Hepburn or someone, talking about her last film,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it’s true, perhaps it’s not. It’s a story. I just want to know what happens in the story. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. The stories don’t hurt anyone.’
‘You’re the one who’s always going on about telling the truth.’
‘That’s my mum.’ I paused. ‘Well, I suppose I think the truth is a good thing a lot of the time, but people don’t always tell the truth. Danny lies to you all the time.’
‘Oh, don’t start that again.’ She lifted up the pile of folded laundry. ‘Nobody believes anything Danny says. If they do, they’re stupid.’
‘And I like Sylvie.’ Sandra looked at me. ‘She’s different. She says interesting things.’
‘That’s nice.’ Sandra’s mouth turned down.
‘And you’re at work all the time. I have to talk to someone!’
‘And you want to know who the dad is, don’t you?’
‘Not really.’ But I was just being contrary. I was intrigued. Hearing the story of how they met was romantic. I wanted to find out as much as I could. I picked up the end of a trailing pillow case and followed Sandra downstairs. To find out would mean I’d have to keep going round there. But my mum would approve of that.