Step Back in Time (13 page)

‘You all right, love?’ Penny calls as I come back through the door. ‘You’re home early today, ain’t ya?’

‘Rita let me away early because we were quiet,’ I lie, heading straight through to the kitchen to get a drink. I know it will have to be a Tizer or a Panda Pops or something equally sugary and horrid. Right now, after my encounter with Stu, I could do with a nice chilled glass of Pinot Grigio, but I have to remember I’m only sixteen, and I don’t think Penny is likely to allow that, or even likely to have any in the house for me to drink in any case.

I find her at the kitchen table, hurriedly gathering up the books that cover it. She looks a bit jittery.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask her as I go straight to the fridge and pull open the door. Even worse, I think as I view the contents, only full-sugar Pepsi. Still, the sugar hit might help quell my shakes.

‘Nothing, I was just doing a bit of light reading.’

I stroll over to the table and pick up one of the books.

‘
Accounting for Beginners
?’

‘Yes!’ she says, snatching it back. ‘I just borrowed it from – from the library.’

I pick up another. ‘
Running Your Own Business the Easy Way
.’ I flick open the front cover. ‘But there’s no library ticket in here and it’s virtually brand new.’ I look at Penny again; she’s now flushed bright red. ‘What are you doing?’

She sighs and rolls her eyes. ‘You had to come home early, didn’t you? I was trying to keep it quiet. I’m doing some night school courses, that’s all. That’s where I’ve been going every Monday and Wednesday when I said I was going over to Maggie’s to watch
Coronation Street
with her.’

‘So?’ I say, perching on the edge of the table to take a sip of my Pepsi –
blimey it’s sweet!
‘What’s wrong with that?’

Penny looks surprised. ‘I – I didn’t think you’d understand.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, your mum going back to school when you can’t wait to get away from the place.’ She begins arranging the books into a neat pile now. ‘I didn’t think you’d think I was clever enough to do it, either.’

‘And are you?’ I ask. ‘Clever enough, I mean. How are you getting on?’

Again Penny looks surprised by my question. ‘Very well, actually. And I’m enjoying it too.’

‘Then that’s all that matters. Go for it, I say.’

I wish my own mother had been more proactive in creating a full life for herself before my sisters and I left home. She spent so long travelling the world with my father and his job that she never seemed to do anything for herself, except the Women’s Institute which she threw herself into every time we were based in England for a bit. Maybe if she had made a proper career for herself she’d spend less time trying to meddle in
my
life.

Although right now, hearing my mother’s composed, calm voice trying to control this current mess I’ve found myself in, would actually be very welcome.

Penny, as if sensing this, stands up, walks round to the other side of the table and wraps her arms around me.

‘My girl,’ she says, hugging me tightly. ‘That’s what you are.
My best girl
.’ Then she stands back to look at me. ‘You’re changing, though.’ She looks me over.

‘How do you mean?’ I ask, trying to remain casual, but inside I feel very touched by this stranger’s tender gesture, just when I most needed it.

‘You’re more mature. Like you’ve grown up suddenly. Maybe working in that shop is doing you some good after all.’

‘Yes, maybe it is. So,’ I ask, changing the subject before she has time to consider this apparent change too long, ‘what are you going to do with all these new qualifications when you get them?’

‘Nothing, I expect,’ she says, moving back around the table again. ‘This college stuff is just a bit of fun really, something to pass the time in between my odd shift at the factory and looking after you lot.’

I stare at her. ‘Don’t be daft! You have to do something with what you’ve learnt or else it’s just a waste of time.’

‘Jo-Jo, I’m a widowed mother of four, lucky to be living in the council house whose lease she inherited from her mother because your dad and I chose to live here and look after her. I’m hardly going to wake up one morning and start up my own business, now am I?’

Penny’s widowed? I assumed her marriage had broken down and her husband had left her. My resolve to help her becomes even greater.
 

‘Why not? Plenty of single women run very successful businesses and still cope with having a family. Why not you?’

‘Like who?’ she demands. ‘Name one.’

‘Er…’ Now I’m struggling. My knowledge of seventies women entrepreneurs is fairly limited, to put it mildly.

‘See. There aren’t any.’

‘So why are you doing the course then? You must want to make something more of your life than working at the factory?’

‘Nothing wrong with good honest toil, Jo-Jo, you’d do well to remember that. It was good enough for your grandmother, and great-grandmother, God rest their souls.’

‘But you can break the mould, Pen – Mum,’ I correct myself. ‘You can be the first, and set Sally a good example for the future.’

Penny considers this. ‘Perhaps.’

‘No perhaps, just do it!’

Penny smiles. ‘That’s a good slogan. I like it. Just do it. More people should
just do it
, instead of putting things off and wishing they had.’

‘Yeah,’ I smile. ‘It’s catchy, that’s for sure.’

‘
Just do it
,’ she mutters to herself as she collects up her books from the table. ‘Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll
just do it
in future.’

‘Yes, you do that.’ I sit down at the table with my drink and watch her.

‘But now I have to go and fetch the children from school,’ she says, glancing up at the clock on the wall. ‘I’ll just do that first. Bonnie’s down for a nap – can you listen out for her and I’ll be back in a bit?’

‘Sure,’ I say, pleased at the thought of a few minutes’ peace to collect my thoughts. ‘I may have a nap myself, but I’ll hear Bonnie if she wakes up.’

I listen for the click of the front door as Penny leaves the house. Then I finish off my drink, crushing the can down on the Formica table when I’m done, wishing I could pop down the road for a Starbucks or a Costa. Suddenly all the Pepsi in the world can’t produce enough caffeine to get me through this weird life I’m living right now.

Exhaustion suddenly overwhelms me, so I head upstairs to take a nap.

I fall asleep quickly, and when I wake, for a split second I wonder if it’s all been a really bad dream. But I soon hear the TV droning away downstairs, and Sally and Sean bickering with each other in front of it. So I lie on my bed and look at the ceiling for a few minutes – I find it’s best not to look at the walls otherwise I get a bit freaked out by all the testosterone and bulging biceps.

So what next? It had seemed easier in 1963 when I felt as if I was at least working towards something, helping Ellie win the competition, getting Harry the audition. But here in 1977 I feel like I’m just treading water, not going anywhere or achieving anything. And wasting time is never a comfortable thing for me.

I think about what George said, about Harry and Ellie benefiting from me being there with them in 1963, and how I seemed to have changed their lives for the better. Maybe that’s what I need to do here before I can proceed any further.

But here in 1977 Ellie and Harry are only sixteen and they don’t really know what they want to do with their lives. I think wider: who else? Penny, perhaps? But how can I persuade Penny that there’s more to life than looking after Sally, Sean, and Bonnie? I can’t just magic up something to transform her evening classes into a practical business opportunity that would benefit her and her family.

Or can I?

‘Would you like some popcorn?’ Harry asks as we wait in a long line to buy tickets for
Star Wars
.

‘No, you’re OK. Pen – I mean Mum – cooked for me before I came out.’

I say cooked. She poured water on some Smash potato granules and grilled us some sausages, which might as well have been vegetarian for all the meat they had in them. Although I moan about my nomadic childhood, my mother always made sure we ate right. We always had a proper dinner every night, whatever country we were in. Even if my parents were entertaining clients at some fancy dinner, we’d still be fed properly before we were put to bed, and we almost always had a bedtime story read to us too. Perhaps my mother wasn’t so bad, I think; maybe I’ve just let years of distant memories cloud my judgement of her. Living with Penny, the twins and Bonnie was certainly making me think a lot about my own childhood again. Something I usually avoided.

‘You OK?’ Harry asks. ‘You seem a bit distracted tonight.’ He looks longingly at the machine where fluffy pieces of popcorn are flying around waiting to be dropped into a cone. ‘Do you mind if I get some when we’ve got our tickets? Only I didn’t get any dinner and I’m starving.’

‘No of course not, go for it, and I’m fine, really. Few things on my mind, that’s all.’

We finally reach the booth, and Harry insists on paying for my ticket. We then move across the foyer to another queue for food and drink, and when we reach the front of that one, in addition to his popcorn and my drink, Harry buys a Mars Bar, two Cadbury Flakes, and a Kit Kat.

‘You really are hungry!’ I remark, glancing at his stash as we walk towards the screen together. This is a small cinema in comparison to the multiplexes I’m used to back home; it only has two screens.

‘Yeah, haven’t eaten since that Wimpy at lunchtime; nothing in the house when I got in from work tonight.’

‘Where was your mum?’

‘Out, thank God.’

‘Have you two settled your differences yet?’ I pass my ticket to the usherette who rips it in half.

‘Nah, not really. But I won’t be there much longer anyway. Where do you want to sit?’ Harry asks, looking up at the rows of seats filling fast.

‘Up there will do.’ I point to a couple of seats in the middle rows. ‘Why won’t you be? Living there, I mean.’

‘Mum is moving out to new housing. The council have been after her house for ages and she was holding out like your mum, but they kept pestering her, offering her more and more incentives to move, and finally she’s decided to give in.’

‘Does she want to move?’ I ask, settling into my seat. I look for the cup holder to put my drink in, but quickly realise there isn’t one in the velvet armrest.

‘Nah, she’s lived there all her life, but she’s weak, my mum; the promise of a fitted carpet and a fridge freezer and she’s anyone’s. Your mum’s done well holding out, can’t see anyone moving her. It was your gran’s house originally, wasn’t it?’

I nod. ‘Yes. Harry, has your mum signed anything yet?’ I ask, my brain beginning to race.

‘Don’t think so. Difficult to tell, we only communicate through shouting most of the time these days.’

I feel a pang of sorrow. I’m not sure if it’s for Harry’s problematic relationship with his mum, or for mine with my own mother.

‘Stop her,’ I say urgently, turning towards Harry, my hand on his arm. ‘Just make sure you stop her.’

Harry smiles at me. ‘What’s got into you?’

‘Nothing. I just think your mum would be better staying in her house than moving to some grotty estate, that’s all.’

Harry stares at me now. ‘How do you know it’s a grotty estate? It looks OK in the brochures they’ve sent her. Yes, she’s gonna be a few floors up in the air, but at least she’ll have a view.’

‘It will look OK now; in fact, it will seem great. But in a few years it will be completely run down, with graffiti all over the walls, and gangs doing drugs and —’

‘Now it’s your turn to stop!’ Harry says, holding his hand up in front of my face. ‘You sound like someone that’s been on the drugs, Jo-Jo. How on earth could you know all this?’

I know it because I caught the end of a documentary all about the seventies on TV the other night while I was waiting for a film to start on BBC2.

‘I read something about how all these new estates they’re building might not be such great things in the future,’ I improvise, ‘and how the tower blocks will become like prisons for many, especially the elderly and women living alone.’

Harry still stares at me. But it’s a different kind of stare now; it’s more a fascinated gaze. ‘You might be right, I suppose,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘It’s a lot of people to be living in one place.’

‘Try and put her off if you can?’ I ask him again. ‘Just for a while, anyway.’

‘Why, what are you going to do?’

‘I’m not sure, but I might just have a plan,’ I whisper, as the lights in the cinema suddenly dim. ‘I’ll tell you about it later, after we’ve enjoyed the film.’

‘How do you know you’re gonna like it?’ Harry whispers back, sending a strange shiver of excitement down my spine as I feel his warm breath on my ear. ‘It might be rubbish.’

‘Trust me,’ I say, sounding like George now. ‘We’ll like it.’

I do genuinely enjoy watching
Star Wars
again, especially on the big screen. All the stuff about letting ‘the force be with you’ resonates tonight in a way it’s never done before when I’ve watched it on TV. The audience in the little cinema in Lambeth love it. Although two people behind us do complain at one point that they can’t see because of Harry’s hair, and an usherette has to come along and move them by torchlight during the film, which is a little embarrassing. But apart from that, all goes well.

Harry’s been the perfect date so far; he bought my ticket, provided interesting and thoughtful conversation, and didn’t try to grope me once during the movie. In a way I’m a little disappointed – oh, not by the lack of groping, but I’d half expected a yawn halfway through the film, followed by an arm casually draped around my shoulders. In fact, his behaviour wasn’t really in keeping with a sixteen-year-old boy at all – really, it would have been much more suited to a man twice his age.

As we stroll back home towards our street, again I wonder about him. To look at he’s quite obviously a teenage punk, there’s no doubting that. But I can’t help feeling there’s more to him, that he’s hiding something…

‘Jo-Jo,’ Harry says, suddenly pausing under a street lamp for a moment and turning towards me. ‘We’ve known each other a fair while now, haven’t we?’

‘Yes…’ I reply hesitantly.

Harry takes hold of my hand. ‘Since primary school, when I used to steal your Jelly Tots from your lunch box, and later when you used to come round to my house and listen to my Beatles albums on my old box record player.’

The Beatles again! I feel like they’re following me.
 

‘And we’ve always been friends, haven’t we? Right through secondary school, and even when you started going through your weird peace-loving phase.’

I’m
going through a phase! I think, looking up at Harry’s Mohican. But I just nod.

‘But lately, Jo-Jo, circumstances have conspired to allow me to appreciate what an attractive person you really are.’

I stare at up him. The words coming from his mouth just aren’t matching up with the image that’s standing in front of me. Do sixteen-year-old boys really say this sort of thing? Not any I’ve ever met before.

‘You might not have noticed, but I’m usually not that good when it comes to expressing how I truly feel…’

I don’t know, you’re doing a pretty good job of it right now!
 

‘But if I don’t tell you this now I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance again.’ Harry looks down at me, and there’s something very familiar about the blue eyes that gaze back into mine.

‘Harry?’ I murmur, not seeing his outer shell of teenage angst for a few seconds, but something much deeper. ‘What’s going on here?’

Harry leans in towards me, and for a split second I think we might actually kiss this time, but then I hear Stu’s raucous voice reverberating down the street.

‘Oi, oi! You two again! What you up to this time?’

Harry’s head drops forward and his blue spikes brush my face.

‘Not now!’ he moans under his breath. He drops my hand and turns towards the oncoming gang.

As we’re surrounded by denim, leather, chains and spikes of all varieties from coloured ones formed from hair, to silver ones sewn on to clothes, I’m surprised to see tartan in amongst them.

‘Ellie, what on earth are you doing with
them
?’ I ask, shocked at seeing her little frame tottering along in red patent platforms in the middle of the gang.

‘She’s with me,’ Stu says, grabbing hold of Ellie’s hand. ‘Aint ya?’

Ellie juts out her chest in defiance. ‘Steady, Spike, I only agreed to come out with ya because she was going out with Harry tonight, and it was better than spending the evening at home on me own. Don’t think you own me or nothing.’

I expect Stu to go mental, but instead he just grins. ‘She’s got spirit, this one – I like that in a girl.’ He puts his arm around Ellie and turns his attention to Harry. ‘Harry,’ he says steadily, watching him.

‘All right, Stu,’ Harry replies equally calmly. ‘What’s up?’

‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that?’ Stu smirks, looking down at Harry’s crotch. ‘Been having fun?’

I screw up my face in disdain.

‘What’s wrong with you, little Miss Perfect?’ Stu sneers. ‘Never seen a hard-on before? You should be flattered, it’s for your benefit.’

Harry suddenly lunges at Stu, and before I know what’s happening they’re rolling around on the pavement, lashing out at each other with punches, kicks and whatever else they can hurt each other with.

‘Stop it!’ I cry. ‘Stop it, both of you!’

But either they don’t hear me, or they choose not respond. I look desperately at the other gang members who stand observing this brawl with much amusement.

‘Do something!’ I implore them. ‘You have to stop them or someone will get hurt.’

‘Are you kidding? Most entertainment we’ve had all week,’ one of them says, grinning at me.

‘Ellie,’ I ask, ‘what shall we do?’

‘Let them fight it out, Jo-Jo,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘Seems like the pair of them have been spoiling for this for a while.’

I look down at the two boys, still trying to beat each other to a pulp on the ground. If it wasn’t so serious it would actually look quite funny, because with Harry’s blue hair and Stu’s green, they resemble two birds of paradise scuffling over seed on the pavement. Stu suddenly does some sort of flipping motion and leaps to his feet where he strikes an attacking pose. ‘Jean-Claude Van Damme taught me everything I know,’ he jeers at Harry, who’s still floored.

‘Claude Van who?’ Harry asks, slightly winded, as he lifts himself up off the pavement. ‘More like Van Gogh!’

Stu releases an almighty roar and tries to launch himself full on into Harry with a series of flying kicks and punches. But Harry manages to dodge most of them, leaving Stu red-faced and breathless.

‘Enough now, the pair of you!’ I shout. ‘This is getting you nowhere.’

‘Why should I listen to you, little Miss Gandhi,’ Stu snarls, preparing himself for another onslaught. ‘What do you know? This is how we sort things here.’

‘But it’s not how you sort things where
you
come from, is it, Stu?’ I ask him before he has time to throw any more punches. ‘I know about Jean-Claude Van Damme. I know where he’s from, which means I know where you’re from too.’

Stu swivels around, and for one awful moment I think he’s going to start on me, but he doesn’t. His hands drop down from their attacking pose to hang limply by his side, and all his bravado and venom vanishes. He stands like an empty shell on the side of the pavement, his hollow eyes staring at me.

Harry sees his opportunity to strike back. But I position myself between him and Stu.

‘No, Harry, you mustn’t.’

Harry looks at me in exasperation. ‘Jo-Jo?’

‘Please?’

Harry sighs and nods his agreement.

‘What’s up, Stu, lost ya bottle?’ one of the other punks jeers.

‘Shut up, Knitting Nancy,’ Ellie says, putting him and his silver spikes in his place. ‘Let Jo-Jo deal with this.’

‘I think you should all just let him be,’ I suggest quietly. ‘I’ve seen this before,’ I improvise. ‘He could have concussion if he banged his head in the fight. Stu?’ I go over to him. ‘Are you OK?’

‘How do you know?’ Stu whispers. He looks at me with guarded eyes. ‘How could you possibly know the truth?’

‘Because I’m one of them too,’ I whisper. ‘Look, come back to my house and we can talk about it.’

Harry comes over.

‘What’s going on?’ he asks. ‘Why are you two whispering together? Is there something I should know?’ He looks at me questioningly.

‘No, Harry, it’s nothing. I’m just checking Stu is OK, that’s all.’

‘Shouldn’t you be checking
I’m
OK?’ he asks. He puts his hand to his nose, and for the first time I notice it’s bleeding.

‘Here,’ I reach into my bag and pull out a tissue, ‘let’s all go back to mine and I’ll try and sort
both
of you out.’

Thank goodness I decided to take part in that first aid course we ran last year at the office, I think, as Ellie and I walk the two injured boys back to my house. Although I’m pretty sure it didn’t cover how to treat two seventies punk rockers; one for a nosebleed and the other for extreme shock.