The Girls from See Saw Lane (3 page)

‘So if you ever get a leak, Ralph's your man,' said Elton. 

Mary giggled, and Elton grinned at her. ‘You'd never catch me with my head under a sink!' he said.

That's because your head's too big to
fit
under a sink, I thought. I sipped my coffee. It was milky and sweet and delicious.

‘What are
you
doing now, Elton?' Mary asked, holding her cup in both hands and blinking at Elton. There was a tiny, pale moustache of froth on her upper lip.

‘I work in the offices at the cake factory, but it's just a stopgap.'

‘Our Elton's going to be a rock star,' said Ralph.

‘A rock star!' said Mary, her eyes nearly popping out of her head. Some of her coffee slopped over the rim of her cup and went onto the table, but she didn't even notice.

Elton ignored this. He was trying to look cool, but you could tell he was enjoying the attention. 

‘I'm in a band,' he said. ‘We're called Brainless.'

Figures, I thought.

‘I remember when you won that talent show at the Dome,' said Mary.

‘He came third,' I said.

‘Well, you should have won,' said Mary, ‘you were the best one there by a mile.'

Sometimes Mary said things that hurt me. I knew she didn't mean to and I really tried not to mind, but sometimes it was difficult. That day, she seemed to have forgotten that I was in that very same talent show, and I had only entered the contest because Mary wanted to get to know Elton better. As it happened, he was pretty good, but he was beaten into third place by ‘The Betty Bounce Dance Academy' doing a piece called ‘Woodland Frolics' and a fat girl singing ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam.' Personally I thought she would have made a better planet. I got highly commended for singing ‘The Merry Merry Pipes of Pan' unaccompanied.

‘You're right,' said Elton, ‘I should have won. I thought at the time it was a fix.'

‘You were amazing!' said Mary.

‘Thanks,' said Elton. He was relaxing and smiling at Mary now she was telling him how great he was and she was almost fainting with the effort of trying not to show how pleased she was. She kept glancing at me under her fringe to see if I had noticed that he was looking at her. 

‘The band's playing at the Whisky A Go Go on Friday night,' said Ralph. ‘Would you like to come and see them?'

‘We'd love to come,' said Mary. ‘Wouldn't we, Dottie?'

I wanted to see more of Ralph, I knew that, but I knew my mum wouldn't like me going into a nightclub – especially not the Whisky A Go Go. It had a reputation. Things went on in there that were sometimes hinted at in the newspapers. In fact, only a year earlier, the owner of the club murdered his wife. I didn't have to tell her I was going of course, but me and Mum were very close and I didn't like going behind her back.

Ralph noticed my hesitation.

‘You could think about it, Dottie,' he said. ‘You don't have to decide right now.'

‘She doesn't have to think about it,' said Mary. ‘We're going.'

I frowned at her. She pulled a face back at me.

‘Are you mods or rockers?' said Elton, leaning back in his chair so that it balanced precariously on two legs.

‘We're neither,' said Mary.

‘Well, you must be one or the other,' said Elton.

‘Why?' asked Mary.

Elton righted the chair, banging it against the table as is landed back on four legs so that all our coffees slopped onto the saucers.

You could see that Elton was lost for words. ‘Because everyone is,' he mumbled.

‘Well that's the whole trouble,' said Mary. ‘We don't want to be like everyone else. Me and Dottie are individualists.'

This was news to me, but I liked the idea of being an individualist and I was really proud of Mary for saying it instead of trying to impress Elton.

‘What are
you
then?' said Mary.

‘A rocker, of course. You wouldn't catch me dead wearing those poofy mod clothes and riding those pathetic excuses for bikes.'

I looked at Ralph. ‘How about you?'

‘Oh, I can't afford to be either.'

‘He's a rocker in his heart,' said Elton, draping his arm around Ralph's shoulder.

‘I just can't afford the uniform,' said Ralph sticking out his bottom lip and trying to look pathetic. We all laughed, even Elton, which made him look friendlier. ‘So, what clubs do you go to?' said Elton.

‘We don't,' I said, ‘we just come down here to the cafe.'

‘Not very with it then.'

‘We'd sooner be without it, thanks,' said Mary.

‘But you'll try to come to the Whisky on Saturday?'

‘Why not?' said Mary.

‘And you, Dottie?' asked Ralph. ‘Are you ready to branch out?'

‘Of course she is,' said Mary. ‘If anyone is in need of a bit of branching out, it's Dottie.'

‘Good,' said Ralph, smiling at me.

I smiled back and my heart gave a little jump. I felt my cheeks flushing with heat, and had to stare down into my cup, but I couldn't stop the happy feeling bubbling up inside me. 

‘Can anyone smell fish?' asked Elton.

I
'd been
Mary's best friend and she'd been mine since we were both little girls. People used to laugh at us, the big fat kid in the glasses and the tiny little one who looked like butter wouldn't melt. I was usually described as ‘no oil painting' and Mary was so pretty that complete strangers used to come up to her and tweak her cheeks and call her a ‘little angel!'

The differences between us never bothered Mary and me. We never even thought about them. It was like that from the first day we met. 

It was the start of the summer holidays and my dad had given me a handful of coins and sent me off to the rank of shops on the edge of the estate to buy a packet of Woodbines for him. He'd said I could get myself some sweets or a comic with the change. I was jingling the coins in my pocket and skipping a bit and thinking about what to buy with my windfall. I'd just got to the top of the twitten, which is the alleyway that runs between our road and the road that backs onto it, when I saw this girl hanging upside down on the railings. I couldn't actually see her face because it was covered by her skirt; all I could see were two skinny legs and a pair of navy blue knickers.

‘What are you staring at?' she said. I looked around to see who she was talking to and realised that I was the only one there.

‘Are you talking to me?' 

‘Well, I can only see one pair of shoes. Unless you've got a couple of kids on your back.'

‘No, it's just me,' I said.

She suddenly swung down from the bars, and when she was the right way up, I found myself looking into the bluest pair of eyes I had ever seen. I'd lived on See Saw Lane all my life and I'd never seen her before. The girl rubbed the bridge of her nose with her finger and said: ‘I'm Mary Pickles, what's your name?'

‘Dorothy Perks,' I said. ‘My mum named me after Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, but everyone calls me Dottie.'

The girl stared at me and then said, ‘Do you wanna be best friends?'

I'd never had a best friend in my whole life. I'd always been what you'd call a hanger-on. I sort of hung around on the edge, hoping someone would ask me to join in their game, and most of the time they didn't. I prayed every night for a best friend. Well, that and a rocking horse. I had kind of accepted that I would never get a rocking horse, but here was this pretty little girl saying we could be best friends.

‘Yes, please,' I said.

‘What school do you go to?' 

‘Whitehawk,' I said.

‘That's where I'm going,' she said. ‘I expect we'll be in the same class.'

 ‘How old are you?' I asked.

‘Eight and a half " she said, taking two gobstoppers out of her pocket and handing me one. ‘I've only sucked that one a couple of times, it's still got a lot of sucking left in it.'

‘Thanks,' I said, putting it in my mouth. I had a good suck and then said, ‘I haven't seen you round here before.'

‘That's cos we've only just moved here.'

‘Oh.'

‘What's it like?'

‘What, round here?'

‘No, school.'

I didn't know what to say to her. I mean, it was just school, and you had to go there every day whether you wanted to or not.

‘Well?' 

‘It's okay, I suppose.'

‘That bad eh?'

‘I get teased.'

‘Why?'

‘Cos I'm fat.'

‘Well they won't tease you any more, Dottie Perks,' she said, grinning.

‘Won't they?'

‘Not if I've got anything to do with it.'

We smiled at each other, and in that moment it was as if we both knew that something wonderful and special had just happened.

‘I'd better get my dad's fags,' I said.

‘Okay,' she said. ‘See you in a minute.'

I ran over to the shop to get Dad's ciggies and choose my sweets. I had a whole threepence to spend and you could get a lot of sweets for threepence, so I was humming and hawing about what to buy. Black Jacks made your tongue all gooey and black, but gobstoppers lasted for ages. The people in the queue behind me started tutting, but Mr Orme said ‘The child is a paying customer the same as you ladies, and she has every right to choose her purchases carefully.'

 I gave him a big grin and settled on a mixture of Black Jacks and gobstoppers.

‘Could you put them in two bags please,' I said.

‘Certainly, madam,' said Mr Orme, winking at me.

I stuffed Dad's fags in my pocket and walked back to the top of the alley, where Mary was still hanging off the railings.

‘I bought you some sweets,' I said shyly. Mary swung back up and perched herself on the top bar.

‘Thanks,' she said. She dived into the bag, pulled out a Black Jack, and unwrapped it. She concentrated hard on chewing for a bit, then said: ‘Do you want to hang upside down next to me? There's plenty of room if I shift along a bit.'

I looked at the railings and tried to imagine what it would feel like. ‘No, thanks,' I said.

‘Why not?'

‘My legs are too fat, I'd fall off.'

‘You ought to try it.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it's like looking at the world from an upside down sort of place.'

‘I'd just as soon look at it the right way up,' I said.

‘You don't know what you're missing.'

I did a bit of hopscotch on the pavement to change the subject.

‘I'd better go,' I said. ‘My dad will be wanting his ciggies.'

‘I'll call for you later if you like. What number do you live at?'

‘Fifteen See Saw Lane.' 

 ‘I live at number forty six.'

‘See you later,' I said and ran down the twitten. I had a little bubble of excitement in my tummy because suddenly the world seemed brighter and happier and more fun. I was halfway down the alley when I heard Mary calling my name.

‘Dottie!'

I called back: ‘Mary!' and we continued to call to each other until I was at the other end.

‘Dottie!'

‘Mary!'

‘Dottie!'

‘Mary!'

‘Dottie!'

We called to each other for the rest of our lives.

M
ary Pickles didn't
like school. Well, I didn't like it much either. In fact, I didn't know anyone who liked it, except perhaps Betty Baxter who was teacher's pet and ate sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Mary was really good at art but she didn't like the art teacher. Miss Philips brought in some tatty old jug from home, stuck a few weeds in it and told us to draw it, then leant back in her chair and read a magazine and ate sweets that she kept in her drawer. Every November we had to do a painting of bonfire night.

One rainy afternoon I was happily engrossed, using every colour in the paint pots, trying to create something that vaguely resembled a bonfire. I was concentrating really hard on getting just the right mix of colours to shoot up into the night sky.

By the time I had finished it, I thought it wasn't half bad; I might have overdone it on the red paint, but Mary had hogged the orange, so I didn't have much choice.

‘What do you think?' I said, pushing my masterpiece across the desk.

‘How many times have you drawn that exact same picture?' said Mary.

‘What are you talking about?'

‘That picture. How many times have you painted it?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Well, I do,' she said. ‘You've painted it every bloody bonfire night for the last four years.'

‘I suppose I have,' I said, giggling. ‘What have you painted then?'

She pushed her paper across to me.

I stared at the painting and then at Mary. ‘It's a plate of beans on toast,' I said.

‘That's what I had for my tea on bonfire night.'

Well that explained the orange paint. ‘She's going to murder you.'

‘Shouldn't think she even looks at them. I bet that as soon as we leave the room she throws the whole lot in the bin.'

‘Not Betty Baxter's, she sticks hers on the wall.'

‘Betty Baxter can't paint for toffee.'

That really surprised me, because one whole wall in our classroom looked like a Betty Baxter private art collection.

I peered at Mary through my paint-spattered glasses, ‘You're a very strange girl, do you know that?'

‘Oh, I do hope so,' she said, smiling.

And then there was geography, Mary's second favourite subject.

One day after a particularly boring lesson, me and Mary were sitting in our favourite spot, under the big tree on the school field. Mary was in a bad mood.

‘I want to learn about countries,' she said. ‘Not bloody rocks.'

‘What are you on about?'

‘I'm on about bloody rocks, it's all she ever goes on about. Big rocks, little rocks, black rocks, red rocks, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to travel round the world one day, Dottie, and I want to learn more about countries than what bloody rocks they've got.'

I had never really thought much about lessons. I just went into the classroom and did whatever I was told to do, then I forgot all about it. I'd never once thought, Oh, I wish she had taught us about this, or that. I had never met anyone like Mary before. She was still going on.

‘I mean, if I wanted to be some kind of rockologist, then I'd have a head start wouldn't I? And when I wrote my first book about rocks, I'd give her a mention and say I couldn't have done it without her.'

Mary was twisting her hair round and round her fingers. ‘You're gonna get your hair all tangled up doing that,' I said.

‘But I don't want to be a rockologist do I?'

‘What do you want to be then?'

‘A travelling artist.'

‘What's that?'

Mary gave me one of her withering looks. ‘Think about it, Dottie.'

One day Mary put her hand up and said, ‘Miss? When did the Italian civil war start?'

‘That's history, not geography, Mary,' said Miss Flowers. ‘Get back to drawing your rocks.'

Mary leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘I bet if I asked her how many rocks were thrown during the fighting, she'd know down to the last piece of grit.'

You see, Mary knew all about stuff like that, because she went down to the library every Saturday morning. I started going with her and I loved it there. It was only a small library, but it was really nice. It smelt kind of musty and it had a couple of old sofas in the children's bit that you could curl up in and read the books. I always read the Famous Five books. ‘Five on a Treasure Island' and ‘Five get into Trouble' and the Malory Towers books about girls at boarding school. I couldn't imagine sleeping at school instead of going home.

Mary said she'd outgrown the children's section and asked the lady behind the desk if she could borrow some of the grown-up books. The lady said certainly not and batted her away as if she was some sort of annoying little fly.

‘People!' said Mary.

‘Yes, people,' I said, giggling.

‘Shush!' said the lady behind the desk.

M
ary was a really
fast runner and she became sports captain for ‘Campian House'. She also played centre in netball. I couldn't play any kind of sports because of my breathing, so I had to give out the balls and hoops and beanbags then clear up afterwards. That was what the bullying was all about. That and the fact that the medicine I had to take made me a bit on the plump side. All the bullying stopped once Mary became sports captain, because they knew that if they bullied me, Mary wouldn't pick them for the team.

From the moment we met, Mary and I were inseparable; either she was at my house, or I was at hers. There wasn't a lot of space at Mary's house because she had six brothers, but, unlike me, she had her own room. It was only small, but it was all hers. Mary said her brothers were jealous because they were all crammed into two bedrooms. She put a sign on her door that said, ‘Private, GIRLS ONLY', which annoyed them even more.

Mary's mum stayed at home to look after the house and do all the cooking and her dad worked on the bins. I think they spoiled her a bit because she was the only girl, which suited Mary fine.

Her brothers were all older than her. There was Winston, Warren, Wesley, Wayne, and the twins William and Wallace. I got used to the hustle and bustle at Mary's house and was soon just one of the family.

One afternoon, when I was sitting on her bed and Mary was underneath it looking for the snakes and ladders, I said, ‘Why do all your brothers' names begin with W?'

‘Because my dad's a big West Ham supporter,' she said.

‘Why doesn't he support Brighton and Hove Albion?'

‘Because he was brought up in London and all his family are West Ham supporters. I'm sure that game's under here.'

‘How come your name doesn't begin with a W then?' I asked.

‘Got it,' she said, crawling out from under the bed. ‘What did you say?'

‘I said why doesn't your name begin with a W?'

‘Because Dad had always promised Mum that if they ever had a girl then Mum should name her, which was fair enough, as she had to have six boys before she finally got me.' She took the board out of the box and opened it out on the bed. She passed me the red counter and took the yellow one, her favourite colour.

‘Mary's a pretty name though,' I said, ‘better than Dorothy, anyway.'

‘I'm named after the virgin.'

‘What virgin?'

‘The Virgin Mary.' She shook the dice and then threw a six. ‘I start,' she shouted.

‘Why?' I said.

‘Because I threw six.'

‘No, I mean why did she call you after the Virgin Mary? You're not Catholics, are you?'

‘No, it's just that every time Mum got pregnant, she prayed to a saint to have a girl. She'd done all the Church of England ones, so she thought she'd go straight to the top and have a word with the Virgin, because as she said, the Virgin Mary was a mother herself who had never managed to have a girl, so she might be more understanding than saints like Saint Andrew and Saint George, and it paid off, so she called me Mary as a sort of thank you.'

I smiled at her. ‘I think that's a really nice story.'

I threw five and landed on a ladder and nearly got to the top of the board.

W
hen me and
Mary weren't at her house or mine, we would be on Brighton beach. That first summer that we met seemed to go on forever, the sky was always blue and the sun shone for the whole six weeks. We spent every day down on the pebbly beach, skimming stones on the water and paddling in the icy sea. Mary always had a sketch pad with her. She loved to draw the sea, especially when the sky was full of dark clouds and the sea was wild and choppy and racing over the pebbles, thundering into the sea wall and splashing white foam and spray onto the prom. We went to the arcade on the Palace Pier and searched under the slot machines for pennies, then fed them into the sweet machines and filled our pockets with gobstoppers which lasted for hours. When the tide was out, we dug for worms and took them back to the estate to give to Mr Parish, who collected them for his fishing. We bought fish and chips with the money he gave us and sat on the wooden groyne eating them out of the paper with our fingers, washing the grease off in the rock pools. We would go home at the end of the day, two eight-year-olds, hot and tired, Mary as brown as a berry and me covered in freckles.

One day, Mary climbed up onto the groyne and started walking along it.

‘Don't,' I shouted, ‘you might fall off.'

She looked down at me grinning, ‘I might,' she said.

‘Why are you doing it then?'

‘Because I might not, I don't always.' She held her hand out towards me. ‘Come on, give it a try.'

‘It's all slippery,' I said, ‘I'll fall.'

‘Okay you might fall,' she said, ‘but think how great you'll feel if you don't.'

‘I know I'll fall.'

‘No, you don't, that's the exciting bit. What's the point in doing something if you always know how it's going to turn out?'

I stood looking up at her, her hair was blowing across her face and she was grinning. She looked so brave and strong that it made me want to be brave too. It made me want to be just like my friend Mary Pickles.

I was still feeling a bit unsure, but I sat down on the pebbles and took off my sandals. I lined them up neatly, side by side. Mary held out her hand towards me and helped me up onto the groyne. The wood was thick and old. It had been there for centuries, with the tide coming in and out over it. It felt very solid beneath my feet. Very slowly, I stood up, wobbled a bit and then managed to balance. I reached out towards Mary, and she took hold of my hand. She gave me a little smile and squeezed my fingers.

‘Come on then,' she said. Slowly, we started to walk along the wooden structure. I was watching my bare feet, treading very carefully. Once or twice I thought I was going to fall, but I didn't. We balanced all the way down to the water's edge, then jumped down onto the pebbles.

‘You did it,' she said, swinging me round. ‘She did it!' Mary shouted into the wind.

‘I did, didn't I?' I said, grinning.

‘Wanna do it again?' she said.

‘Not on your Nellie,' I replied, walking up the beach laughing.

Mary caught up with me and pulled me down onto the stones, where we lay side by side, staring up at the endless blue sky and listening to the water rattling over the pebbles, then the soft whoosh as the tide dragged them back into the sea.

Mary and I were inseparable. We were like two people living the same life. Whenever I was worried or sad, I would think of something that we had done together and it would always make me smile.

I remembered one particular Saturday morning, the morning Dad burnt down the garden shed. Me and Mary Pickles were about nine at the time.

My sister Rita, who was a pain-in-the-neck teenager, had spent the morning crying because she'd read in
lush
magazine that you had to be 5'10' to be a model and she'd be lucky if she reached 5'4'!

She'd locked herself in the bedroom and no one could get her to come out, which wouldn't have bothered me in the least if it wasn't for the fact that half the bedroom's mine. I was still in my pyjamas and Mary and me were going to Saturday morning pictures that started at eleven o'clock. Last week's episode of
Flash Gordon
ended where Ming the Merciless, the ruler of the planet Mongo, was lowering Flash Gordon down into a vat of boiling oil and we'd been waiting all week to see if he was going to be saved by the forces of good. As it happened, he was saved every week, but as Mary said, this could be the one week when he wasn't, so we had to get there on time. Plus the dreaded Mr Barclay in the ticket office wouldn't let you in if you were late. He said it interfered with the viewing of the kids that had turned up on time. Not that he cared, if you ask me, he hated kids. Anyway, there I was in my pyjamas on the wrong side of the door when I needed to get dressed. Mum was kneeling on the landing trying to persuade Rita to come out.

‘You may not be 5'10',' Mum coaxed through the keyhole, ‘but you're perfectly formed!'

This got no response, so Mum tried again. ‘You nearly won the “most beautiful baby in Brighton” contest in 1948,' she said. ‘That Baxter baby had sticky-out ears – he only won because it was rumoured that the judge might have been the Baxter baby's father, on account of the fact that his ears stuck out as well and he used to give Mrs Baxter marrows off his allotment.'

Still no response. Then Dad came upstairs.

‘What's going on?' he asked. Mum told him and he shouted through the keyhole that modelling was a daft job, and why couldn't she do something useful, like nursing? That certainly got a response from Rita, and she started throwing things around the room. I decided to keep well out of it.

Dad said he was going out to his shed and he went downstairs, mumbling about hysterical women.