The Girls from See Saw Lane (11 page)

R
alph
and I followed a public footpath up through the Downs. It was really high up there and green and it seemed a million miles from anywhere. You felt like you could do anything you wanted to do, be anyone, go anywhere. Once we'd reached the top of the Devil's Dyke we could see for miles in all directions. The South Downs snaked away to either side of us, the whole of England was stretched out behind us and in front was Brighton and the sea, brilliant in the early autumn sunlight. It was really windy up there and the grass was moving, making the fields look as if they were doing some mad kind of dance. Seagulls swooped in the sky, and the leaves of the trees in the distance were showing the very first signs of changing colour for autumn.

I pulled the sleeves of my cardigan down over my fingers. 

‘Imagine living up here,' I said. ‘Imagine seeing this every morning when you looked out of the window.'

‘One day I'll build you a house,' said Ralph. I glanced across at him to see if he was being sarcastic. He was smiling. Ralph didn't know how to be sarcastic, he was just joining in a game.

‘Just a little one,' I said. ‘It doesn't have to be big.'

‘With a porch. Like you see in all those American films.'

‘And a rocking chair…'

‘Two rocking chairs…' 

‘Of course! That's what I meant. Two rocking chairs.'

I smiled up at Ralph to let him know that I was with him in the game and that it didn't have to be just a game. Ralph walked away a few steps and stood gazing out over the cleft in the hillside. It was dotted with rather dirty-looking sheep. I'd pulled my cardigan tighter round me and shivered. The wind was blowing my hair all over my face. I walked a little way until I was standing just behind Ralph.

‘Why do they call it the Devil's Dyke?' I asked.

He was still lost in thought.

‘Ralph?'

‘Sorry,' he said. 

‘The Devil's Dyke. Why do they call it that?'

‘It's an old legend.'

I laughed. ‘Not a scary one, I hope.'

‘My gran used to tell me the story. She said the Devil wanted to flood the Weald but he was disturbed by an old woman putting a lighted candle in her window.'

‘A candle in a window was enough to stop the Devil?'

Ralph laughed at this.

‘It should be called old woman's dyke,' I said. ‘Or candle's dyke. Or tiny-little-light-in-a-window's dyke.'

‘The legend goes on to say that as the Devil escaped across the English Channel, a clod of earth from the dyke fell from his cloven foot and into the sea and that became the Isle of Wight.'

‘My sister Rita's going to the Isle of Wight for her honeymoon,' I said and suddenly we both found this hilariously funny and ended up with tears rolling down our faces.

‘I haven't laughed that much in ages,' said Ralph, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

I stepped closer and slipped my arm through his. He smiled down at me.

‘I'm glad he didn't flood it,' I said, looking out across the swaying fields. ‘Because it's beautiful.'

Very quietly, Ralph said: ‘So are you.'

I laughed. ‘No I'm not.'

‘You are to me.'

‘You need glasses then.'

‘Why are you always putting yourself down?'

I shrugged my shoulders. The truth is that I had never thought of myself as pretty. I mean, I didn't think I was ugly but I wasn't pretty like Mary and Rita, at least no one, up until now, had ever said I was. I was tall, almost as tall as Ralph, but I wasn't tall and willowy, I was kind of solid. Aunty Brenda said I was well-built, which wasn't exactly flattering. I had grey eyes, which I quite liked, and nice thick hair, okay it was a kind of mousy-brown colour but it was shiny and thick. So, to sum up, I was tall, well-built, I had mousy brown hair and grey eyes, and I wouldn't go down in history as one of life's great beauties.

‘You are beautiful to me,' said Ralph, breaking into my thoughts.

I glanced up at him. Ralph was looking at me with a tenderness that I'd never noticed in anyone before. He meant what he said; I knew he did.

I couldn't speak. It was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me, ever. 

Then he said: ‘Will you be my girlfriend, Dottie?'

No,
that
was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I'd love to be your girlfriend.'

Then Ralph took off his jacket and laid it on the grass and I sat on it, holding my knees, and he bought me an ice cream from the van that was parked up on the top, then we just sat quietly holding hands, listening to the sound of the grass blowing in the wind and looking down the dyke towards the little village of Poynings nestling in the valley below us, and I felt like the luckiest, happiest, girl in the world.

T
hat autumn was
the best autumn of my entire life. It was one of those beautiful autumns where the leaves change colour on the trees very slowly and the sunlight is always bright and you can see your breath in the air in the mornings. I noticed everything about that autumn, things that were there before but that I'd never noticed, like the little spider webs caught in the leaves of the privet hedges and the shine on the milk-bottle tops and the way the aeroplanes on the way to Gatwick Airport made stripes in the sky that slowly faded away to nothing.

For the first time since I was a really small child I
liked
getting up in the morning. Before, I'd eke out every last second in bed that I could. I'd hide my head under the sheets and pretend I couldn't hear Mum calling, especially at that time of year when the weather started to turn colder. Not any more! Now I was up before Rita, who always got up early to nab the bathroom first. I had so much energy, I couldn't wait to be washed and dressed and out of the front door and walking up the twitten to meet Mary so that we could walk to the bus stop together.

I saw Ralph at least three times a week, sometimes more than that, and even when I didn't see him, he'd put little notes through the door just saying he missed me and that he'd been thinking about me and if I wasn't ready when he came to the house he'd sit at the kitchen table and Mum would give him a cup of tea. When he could, which wasn't often enough for me, he'd come into Woolworths and take me out at lunchtime. The other girls would tease me, they'd say: ‘Oh here comes lover boy!' but I enjoyed the teasing. As soon as it was my lunch hour, we'd go and sit on a bench and eat our sandwiches and he'd tell me about the funny stuff that had happened to him in the morning and I'd tell him about the mad customers we had.

‘Does Ralph ever talk about me and Elton?' Mary asked one afternoon. We'd finished work and had walked down to the seafront. A brisk wind was blowing in off the sea, and the few people that were about were huddled inside their coats and hats. A woman pushing a pram was having trouble holding onto it as the wind caught under the hood and tried to drag it from her. Down the street an umbrella rolled on its own, spinning round and round. I felt the first drops of icy rain sting against my cheeks. The sea and the sky were both grey and surly.

‘Let's go into the cafe,' I said. I hoped to change the subject when we were inside. But once we'd ordered tea and buns, and sat down at a little table by the window, Mary started up again.

‘I just wondered if Ralph had said anything to you about Elton saying anything about me,' she said, picking the currants out of her bun. I took a big bite of mine. The cafe windows were steamed up. Condensation was running down the inside, mirroring the raindrops that trickled down the outside of the glass. 

I took a deep breath. I looked across the table at Mary. She was staring down at her plate and her shoulders were hunched. She wasn't at all like the cheerful, fun-loving girl I used to know. I was trying so hard not to be annoyed by her constantly going on about Elton, but, if I'm honest, it was beginning to get to me. She went round and round in circles, never going anywhere, never moving on.

‘Why would he, Mary?' I asked as gently as I could. ‘I don't think boys talk about things like we do. They're more direct than girls. You know that, you know what your brothers are like.'

Mary snorted. ‘My brothers are Neanderthals.'

I scraped a bit of icing from the top of the bun with my finger and sucked it off. 

‘What I mean is... I think... Well, if Elton wanted to say something to you, he'd say it to your face. He wouldn't send a message through Ralph and me.'

‘Mmm,' Mary said. ‘Would you ask him? Ask Ralph if Elton's said anything?'

I sighed. I thought maybe it was time to take the bull by the horns. I thought it was time I gave her a little push away from him.

‘Mary, there are plenty of other boys in Brighton apart from Elton, you know.'

‘What would you feel like if you lost Ralph?'

Mary was right. It was easy for me to give out sage advice when I had the boy I loved.

‘Sorry,' I said.

Mary rested her chin on her hand and stared out of the window to the sea.

W
hen I got home
, Mum looked up from the sink where she was peeling carrots.

‘You all right?'

‘Yes,' I said. Then I pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. ‘Actually, no I'm not really. I don't know what to do about Mary.'

‘What's wrong?'

‘She wants to be with Elton and it's not that he doesn't like her, I think he likes her, but he doesn‘t want to go steady with her. He knows she likes him, she makes that pretty obvious, but he's not careful about her feelings, he thinks it's quite okay to walk into the cafe with a girl on his arm even though he knows that Mary might be there.'

‘And it's getting you down?'

‘Yes, because she keeps getting hurt.'

Mum scraped away at a carrot.

‘You can't really do much about it,' she said. ‘It's between Mary and Elton, nothing to do with you.'

‘I know.'

Mum smiled at me. ‘Mary will be all right,' she said. ‘These things have a way of sorting themselves out, you'll see.'

T
he autumn wore on
. A storm blew all the leaves off the trees and made the pavements slippery. People had fires in their back gardens and the air smelled of coal-smoke in the mornings. Our house was freezing cold except for the kitchen and the living room when the fire was lit. Aunty Brenda said it was the same round her house. I noticed her legs were all red and patchy from sitting too close to the fire. It looked as if she had some sort of deadly disease. Dad read something in the paper saying the council was going to put central heating in all their properties and he said about bloody time and if they didn't hurry up it'd be too late and we'd all be frozen to death. Mum rolled her eyes, but I had chilblains on my toes and Clark had a terrible cold. Rita and I took to wearing socks and jumpers to bed at night. The sight of one another wrapped up as if we were going on an Arctic expedition made us laugh.

On bonfire night, Ralph invited me round to his house for a party. I asked Mary if she wanted to come with us and she said she didn't. I thought that was a bit sad as the year before I remembered her running around our back garden holding a blazing Roman candle with her scarf trailing behind her, shrieking at the top of her voice. I wanted the old Mary back, even going out with Ralph wasn't making me feel any better about it, being so unsure about Elton was stopping her enjoying life.

When Ralph came to pick me up, I asked if we could just go round to Mary's to check on her first.

‘I don't know,' said Ralph. ‘My mum and dad are waiting for us to get back before they light the fire.'

‘Please, Ralph,' I said. ‘I'll only be a minute. I'll just knock on the door and make sure she's all right.'

‘And what if she isn't?'

‘I don't know,' I said, miserably.

So we walked up the twitten and I knocked on Mary's door while Ralph hung around out by the hedge. Mary's mum answered. She was looking pretty flustered, but then I expect most people would look flustered if several of their sons were having a jumping jack war in the street and somebody had just set a Catherine wheel off on the front door. I could tell because the paint – which wasn't in the best nick anyway – was now all dramatically scorched in a big circle. 

‘Hello, Mrs Pickles, is Mary in?' I asked.

‘No, dear, she went out earlier,' said Mary's Mum. ‘Have you seen the cat?'

‘No.'

‘Dear God, I fear for that poor animal.'

‘Do you know where she went?'

‘No, dear, she usually hides under the bed.'

‘No, I mean Mary. Do you know where Mary went?'

‘I thought she said she was going to your house,' said Mrs Pickles. 

‘Oh,' I said. ‘Thank you.'

‘If you see her,' said Mrs Pickles, ‘throw a jumper over her and put her in a cardboard box and bring her home.'

Back out on the pavement, Ralph took hold of my hand. ‘She isn't in,' I said.

‘Well you can stop worrying about her now,' he said. ‘She's probably with Elton.'

Actually, that was making me worry even more.

W
hen I got
to Ralph's, I forgot all about Mary. His mum and dad were really friendly. His dad gave me a glass of hot toddy which he said would put hairs on my chest, and his mum gave me a hot dog, and it was a proper hot dog sausage out of a tin in a bread roll with ketchup, like the Americans ate in the films, and then we went out into the garden. Their garden was separated from its neighbours by a wire fence and all the neighbours were out in their gardens too, so it was like being at a very big, outdoor party. Everyone had helped make the bonfire, which was amazing; it had tyres and all sorts on it, and even a guy. Ralph's dad sloshed it with petrol before lighting it and it went up with a great whoosh. Soon it was burning so fiercely that we had to stand back, and when I looked up at Ralph's face it was glowing orange in the light of the fire. He looked down at me and smiled, and squeezed my hand through my glove. We walked down the garden until we were out of sight of the others. It was a clear crisp night and the sky was full of stars, we stood together looking up at them.