Half-truths & White Lies (8 page)

I recognized a kindred spirit. A person for whom the
most important person in her life had been absent
for most of it, who had lived with the thoughts of what
might have been.

'When I was a child,' I told her, 'no one was prepared
to tell me what had happened, so they just said he was
lost.' I went on to tell her about my childhood misunderstanding
and my change of name.

'You shouldn't have stopped looking for him.' She
smiled. 'I never have. Occasionally I see him, too. It was
him on the beach that day. I'm absolutely sure of it.'

Laura Albury. I wish I could tell you exactly when I first
met her, but I can certainly remember how it happened.
If I had known at the time how important that meeting
was, I would have written down the date. Instead, I just
wrote her name repeatedly in the margins of exercise
books.

At St Winifred's School, it was the rule that anyone
who had arrived late had to go and report to the
secretary's office immediately. Ironically, they would
have to queue there until the secretary had time to deal
with them, making them even later for the start of
lessons and resulting in an unreasonably severe ticking
off in front of classmates. This may well have been a
deliberate ploy, to make us understand what it is like to
be kept waiting by someone who seems to have no
respect for the value of your time. If it was, it was lost on
us.

Laura and I had both run from the school gates to the
double doors of the main school entrance, arriving at
much the same time. I was nervous at the thought of
being late, a blot on my otherwise immaculate record.
We collided as we both stretched our arms out to push
the doors inwards. A flash of white-blonde hair and
Laura dazzled me with one of her trademark smiles.

'You first.' I gestured, an automatic response given the
circumstances, despite my growing need to use the toilet
adding to the urgency of the situation. I was left holding
the door, blinking rapidly, as if her image had been
burned into my retina and I could see that mesmerizing
smile with every single blink.

It was several seconds later that I joined her in the
queue.

'I thought you'd done a bunk,' she turned round to
say, still smiling.

'And miss all this?' I mumbled, feeling myself redden.
I was not the sort of boy that girls talked to, especially
very pretty blonde girls. I wasn't equipped with the
small talk or the repertoire of witty replies that seemed
to be called for.

'Quiet back there!' the secretary called from behind
her toughened glass screen, glaring. Laura's head dipped
forwards, showing off her neck and the fine, downy
hairs that had strayed from the band that was holding
them in place. Her shoulders shook slightly, a tell-tale
sign that she was hiding her face so that the secretary
couldn't see that she was laughing. I could see down the
back of her loose-fitting collar to the dark hollow
between her wing-bones. I focused on this to take my
mind off my bladder. Minutes passed and we shuffled
forward.

'Sorry I'm late, miss,' she recited perfectly pleasantly,
but without a hint of apology in her voice. 'Laura
Albury, Year 2, Form B, Miss Simpson.' I could hear her
smiling as she spoke and admired her easy-going
manner.

'Laura Albury,' the secretary repeated, looking down
the register. 'This is the second time you've been late this
month. I don't want to see you in this queue again.'

'No, miss,' she agreed wholeheartedly.

'Laura Albury, Laura Albury, Laura Albury,' I was
practising when she turned around and, away from the
glare of the school secretary, stuck her tongue out at me,
before moving away to the right. I was not the sort of
boy that girls stuck their tongues out at. That was when
I wet myself.

Laura was not vain for vanity's sake, but her mother had
drummed into her from the word go that she wasn't a
particularly bright child and that what she had going for
her were her looks and her manners. She was groomed
to make the most of both.

'Say thank you, Laura. Your looks will open doors for
you, mark my words. But think of all the doors that will
open if you're beautiful
and
charming.'

'Thank you, Mummy.'

'You're my little treasure.' And she was rewarded with
a kiss on her forehead.

Sadly, her sister Faye lacked the looks, the manners
and the desire to please, but she was more intelligent,
witty and sharper.

'Faye came top of her year again, Mummy,' Laura
announced.

'Well, she's always been my clever girl.' Her mother
was not dismissive of Faye's achievements but expectations
were high. The fact was that she didn't need to try
as hard as others and her teachers were frustrated by the
apparent ease with which she breezed through school.
They expected her to demonstrate a bit more effort. It
was not uncommon for her to be given top grades but
still be told to try harder. No one expected anything of
Laura academically, but she was never short of praise
when she did well.

Both sisters envied each other. Who doesn't want to
be loved by everyone they meet? Who wouldn't prefer
to be more than just a pretty face? These labels, like my
birth-name, affected the girls. Laura didn't stretch herself
at school, believing that the future for her would be
secondary modern followed by a secretarial course, a
white wedding and babies. Faye shied away from the
limelight and seemed to almost deliberately make
herself ugly.

Mrs Albury counted on Laura's looks attracting the
right kind of man from the right kind of background
who could provide a good future for her. In her naivety,
she didn't seem to realize that those looks would attract
all kinds of men. There is no doubt that Laura was used
to being admired from an early age – and that she
lapped up the attention, particularly attention of the
male variety. It was how she looked for approval.

'Laura,' her mother said as she made her stand on a
kitchen chair so that she could let down the hem of her
skirt, 'I want you to wear this dress when your Uncle
Colin and Aunty Barbara come over on Saturday
evening. You can stay up a bit later than usual so that
you can say hello. I think you'll look lovely with your
hair in bunches and that pink ribbon we bought you.
What do you think, Faye?' She turned to face the empty
space where her younger daughter had been standing in
the doorway. 'Faye! You're next. I need to look at the
length of your dress too! Where's she got to?'

Laura would often be rewarded with an invitation to
sit on a lap, which her mother didn't object to, or a
small gift of pocket money or chocolate, which her
mother actively encouraged her to accept.

'Oh, isn't that kind, Laura! What do you say?' Mrs
Albury would prompt her to accept the coins.

'Thank you very much.'

'Good girl!' She would then instruct, 'Now, why don't
you go and put that in your piggy bank now so that
you don't lose it. Then you can come back and kiss
everyone goodnight.'

Adults, both men and women, were tactile with Laura
and she reciprocated. She was lucky. No one took
advantage of her trusting disposition. But what a
dangerous lesson to teach a child!

Outwardly, you would not have known that she had
a confidence problem. Inwardly, she worried that she
would never amount to much and became a grabber of
opportunities, without really judging what was right for
her. As she grew older, she worried that her luck would
run out when her looks ran out. She believed that she
only had until the age of thirty to get her life in order,
and then it would all be over. Again, this idea was
planted by her mother, who blamed her daughters for
the loss of her own hourglass figure, conveniently forgetting
that there were a number of years between the
time when the girls were born and her own thirtieth
birthday. When her parents had finished shamelessly
showing Laura off, it was her sister she confided in and
shared her small rewards with. Faye was not encouraged
to dress up and meet her parents' visitors. Faye was
denied similar opportunities to shine but I suspect that
she would have hated being asked to perform. From the
safety of their bedroom or sitting at the top of the stairs
peering through the banisters, she listened to the
raucous laughter and raised voices, punctuated by
snippets of Elvis and Lonnie Donegan.

I remember how my own parents once asked me to
recite some poetry that I had learned for school to one of
their friends. I found it so embarrassing that I deliberately
fluffed a couple of lines to avoid being asked again. It
worked a treat. The last thing that parents want to show
their friends is that the son they have been boasting about
cannot remember words in the right order.

'I wouldn't have had anything decent to wear even if
I had wanted to join in,' Faye complained as the sisters
retold the stories of life in the Albury household.

Laura's recollection differed. 'Oh, come on, Faye!' She
brushed this aside. 'I helped make my clothes out of
things that Mum was ready to throw out. It's not like I
had anything new and you missed out.'

'They were new to you. I always had to make do with
your hand-me-downs.'

I suspect that there was truth in both sides of the
story, but there is no doubt that the two sisters were
treated very differently.

Laura was one of those rare people who was happy
with her lot in life. And if she woke up occasionally feeling
slightly out of sorts, she would put on her best dress
and take a walk into town. It wouldn't be long before
she would attract some admiring glances, and she fed
off them like a flower turning towards the light. When I
was with her I was alternately proud and embarrassed
by the attention she attracted. Depending on my mood
I would find myself grinning compulsively or glaring at
the whistling wolves. Once, I felt the need to ask, 'Do
you really like all this attention? Wouldn't you be
happier to blend into the background?'

She replied, a little hurt, even a little shocked that I
hadn't realized, 'But this is all I have and by the time I'm
thirty it will be gone.'

'Oh, come on!' I almost took this as a joke.

'You don't have to worry about that sort of thing. It's
not the same for men.'

No matter how much I protested, she wouldn't be
pacified. It made me furious when I discovered that not
only was she serious, but it was her mother who had
taught her to think that way. What could she have
become given the right encouragement? Laura was so
much more than just a pretty face. It's a crying shame
that she didn't know it.

As a boy, I expected that I would have to adore Laura
from afar, but this idea was quickly quashed. I had no
idea what qualities Laura recognized in me at that first
meeting or if she simply treated everyone the same. I
would seek her out among the sea of faces in the school
assembly hall where we gathered daily for morning
prayer. It was known more commonly as 'morning
mumblings', because we would set ourselves the
challenge of getting through an entire prayer without
saying a single recognizable word. Knowing what was to
come, an invitation from the headmaster to stand and
say the Lord's Prayer was enough to cause an epidemic
of giggles. Laura always found some way of acknowledging
me without drawing attention to herself. It became
clear that she had perfected her winking and discreet
tongue-sticking-out routine. When I attempted it, I just
looked as if I had something in my eye.

If I spotted her in the school playground, I would
have been far too nervous to approach a group of girls,
but she greeted me with a wave.

'Who are you waving at?' one of her friends asked,
sensing a whiff of scandal.

'That's my friend Pete,' she replied simply, killing it
dead. There was never any of that sniggering you got
from some groups of girls when one of them has waved
to a boy as a joke to show him up.

When we passed each other in a corridor, it was our
custom to address each other by our full names, even
though I was usually plain Pete.

'Hello, Peter Churcher.'

'Hello, Laura Albury.'

You could never have accused Laura of being plain.

Walking home, she would turn round and wait once
she knew I was there. One day she called after me and
asked me to wait for her, and I knew that the balance
had shifted. If nothing else, it seemed that we were
going to be proper friends.

'I thought you'd never stop.' She was panting heavily,
and put her hand on my shoulder to catch her breath.
'Didn't you hear me? I've been calling after you for ages.'

I wasn't used to being touched and I was literally
frozen to the spot.

'Thank you!' She interpreted my body language as a
sign of someone being considerate. 'I'm never going to
make the netball team at this rate.' The vibrations of her
laughter ran down her arm and passed through me like
an electric shock, and I woke from my stupor.

'Race you to the end of the road.'

'No! I can't run any more! You'd beat me.'

'Do you think I'd ask you otherwise?'

'You're a rotter, Pete Churcher, that's what you are. A
rotter.'

'What is a rotter? Is it like a Rottweiler?'

'Depends what a Rottweiler is.'

'A dog the size of a pony with even bigger teeth.'

'You're making that up. Never heard of it. It's like that
time you told me that they're going to send a man to the
moon. No, you're a rotter, as in rotten, mean, nasty.
Look it up in that dictionary of yours.' Coming from the
mouth of Laura, any adjective sounded like a compliment
to my ears.

There is no doubt that knowing the prettiest girl in
the school does wonders for your reputation, both with
the boys and the girls. Because of her, I was finally
someone.

'Was that Laura Albury I saw you walking to school
with?'

'Yes.'

'How do you know her?'

'You're Pete, aren't you? I'm one of Laura's friends,
Cathy.'

'Hello, Cathy.'

'She says you're probably the nicest boy she knows.'

If life at home was dreary, I was happy at school. Our
family life was largely unaffected by what went on in the
outside world. My father's life ran to a routine
timetable, punctuated by small rituals. A daily paper
with his breakfast of porridge and tea. A pipe in his
favourite armchair on return from work. Dinner on the
table at six sharp. The rented television set was switched
on once a day to warm up five minutes before the start
of the
Nine O'Clock News
on BBC1. (We were always a
BBC household – my father never converted to ITV.)

'Where's my shirt for tomorrow?' my father would
demand as soon as the
News
was over.

'All ready for you, starched and ironed just the way
you like it.' My mother would run to fetch it for him as
willingly as a trainee trying to impress a new boss at
work, but she was rarely rewarded with praise or even a
mere thank you.

He would inspect it and only when he had assured
himself that it was satisfactory would he carry it upstairs
and arrange it on a wooden hanger, adjusting the
collar and shoulders as carefully as if he was actually
dressing himself for work. He was a man of the if-a-job's-
worth-doing-it's-worth-doing-properly school of
thought. My mother lived in fear of accidentally forgetting
something that she should have done, and her fear
was so great that it actually stopped her from doing anything
other than wait on him hand and foot. The four
walls of the house marked the confines of her world.
The more tragedies she heard about on the
Nine O'Clock
News
– the Great Train Robbery, the assassination of
President Kennedy – the more nervous she became and
the happier she was to keep it that way.

School was my one distraction. And then the eleven-plus
changed everything. I almost considered
deliberately failing in the hope that I would be kept
back a year, but I dreaded the thought of letting my
parents down. Having put their single egg in one basket,
expectations were high and I was constantly reminded
of the sacrifices they had made for me. Besides, I had a
certain acceptance of the inevitable. Even if it wasn't this
year, I couldn't stall for ever.

When I left St Winifred's for grammar school in 1963,
it was in the knowledge that there would be no more
waves, no more walks, no more exchange of confidences
and, quite possibly, no more Laura Albury. She
still had a year to go and I doubted that there would be
any shortage of boys queuing up to carry her bags for
her. I was right. Whenever I saw her again, she was never
alone. Always friendly to a fault, but never alone.

'Hello, Peter Churcher,' she would say with that same
bright smile, but that had been our way of talking when
it was just the two of us.

'Hello, Laura.' I couldn't bring myself to join in.

Even if I could have found the courage to ask her out,
we were too young to be dating, but too old to be childhood
friends. If I hadn't deliberately engineered our
meetings, there was no way that I would have seen her
at all.

Imagine how I felt when I saw a card in the
newsagent's looking for a boy for the early-morning
paper round that included her road. It was the perfect
excuse to cycle past her house every day. If I left her road
until last, there was a good chance that I would see
Laura as she walked the family's Labrador, Barney,
before school. The girls took it in turns, so I was soon
on nodding terms with Faye, her shyness eliminating
the need for much in the way of conversation. If there
was an ambassador for the Albury family, it was Laura.

Not wanting to look too obvious, I sometimes pretended
that I hadn't seen her.

'Pete!' she called after me as I sailed past. I looked
back to see her broad smile and her wave. I took my
time turning round and cycled back as casually as
possible.

'You just rode right past Barney and me.' She smiled.
'We might think you're deliberately ignoring us.'

'I didn't see you. You were hidden behind the cars.'

'I could see you just fine.'

'I must have been higher up on my bike.'

'Rotter!' She laughed. 'Have you got time to go my
way to school?'

I pretended to look at my watch to check if she would
be disappointed. 'I should be just about all right.'

'I know how you hate being late. I'll just let Barney
back in.'

After school, I occasionally changed my route home
to cycle by St Winifred's and see if I could spot her.
Pretending to have been on an errand, I would stop and
we would walk home just as we used to. I don't know
why I found it impossible to say, 'I thought I'd come
and walk you home, just like the old days.' It was the
same when I bumped into her at the weekends. Instead
of saying 'Would you like an ice cream?' the words that
would actually tumble out of my mouth were, 'I was
about to get an ice cream. Shall I get you one while I'm
at it?'

She'd start to search for her purse, saying, 'Hang
on, I know I've got enough money here somewhere.'

'I've just got my paper-round money,' I would say,
feeling extravagant. 'You get them next time.'

Although the end result might have been the same,
Laura complained years later that I had never once told
her how I felt about her. It's possible that by making our
meetings appear to be accidental, I just didn't make her
feel special enough.