I Think I Love You (10 page)

And then, from one of the other bedrooms, a voice began to carol: “I’m. Just. A.” The notes climbed, and as they reached the top, a second voice joined in from the bathroom. Absentminded voices, as of singers happily busy with something else, clipping on an earring in front of the mirror; no more than a musical doodle, really. Lesley and Judith, too, were getting ready to go out, for an orgiastic evening with the civil engineer. And into the doodle there cut a third voice, well out of tune: “Will whoever is singing that bloody song please stop it right now!”

Bill stood there in horror, listening to Ruth as if he’d never heard her shout before—as if he hardly knew her. “I can take almost anything. I can manage Brotherhood of Man. I can manage Terry Jacks and his ‘Seasons in the Sun,’ I can even manage Demis Roussos, if you buy me a kebab. But I will not sit in my own flat and listen to David bloody Cassidy, thank you very much. Thank you.”

This was followed, of course, by peals of delighted laughter from the other girls, thrilled to have discovered a sore spot in their fellow lodger. Bill, however, did not laugh. He saw no comedy in Ruth’s outburst against David. He looked into the future, and covered his eyes.

A
ll right, have I got:

1. high coloring that is prone to stubborn spots
   
2. delicate pale skin that flushes easily
   
3. sallow skin with greasy patches or
   
4. none of the above?”
   

We were in the Kardomah, just off the market square, drinking frothy coffee that they served in Pyrex cups and saucers. We didn’t like the coffee much, but we thought it was American so we swallowed it down. The coffee came scalding hot and burned the back of your throat, then it got cold and scummy without ever being nice to drink. The Kardomah was the coolest café in town, in our opinion. All the flashiest motorbikes were parked out front. Service was slow and the ashtrays got emptied only every other day, but there was a pinball machine next to the door and plastic flowers in a vase on the tables. Coffee was expensive, but Sharon and I could make two cups and a
shared toasted teacake last most of the afternoon. You just had to avoid the waitress’s eye, that’s all. That Saturday, the place was packed and we could hardly hear ourselves talk with the noise of the steam machine clearing its throat every few seconds.

We were wearing our ponchos over pointy-collared shirts and cord flares. Mine was brown-and-cream honeycomb, knitted by Mamgu, and I had a crocheted cap, with a two-tone appliquéd flower in lighter chocolate, which I had reluctantly removed to come indoors. I also wore a brown velvet choker, which was a bit tight, but I believed it to be an elegant accessory, plus it added length to my neck. (My neck was one of my weak points.) Sharon was sitting opposite me in a red poncho with a long white fringe and a big smiley David badge on the front. She was reading aloud from the multiple-choice quiz on the Beauty Dos and Don’ts page.

“Well, what d’you reckon, Pet? What skin type am I, then?”

“None of the above,” I said cautiously.

“You’re a b, definitely,” she said circling the answer.

That week it was Gillian’s birthday and we were all in town shopping for presents. We had left Olga and Angela rummaging grimly through the sale bin in Boots. Privately, I was determined that my present would be the best. I thought I had hit the jackpot with the purchase of a Mary Quant blue eye-shadow kit. The color palette went from the pale, almost duck-egg blue of Gillian’s own eyes to a gorgeous rich indigo. In its lacquered black case with the Mary Quant logo, the kit was a thing of giddy beauty and part of the giddiness came from thinking how much it cost. More than I had spent on Christmas presents for both my parents, a concept that made me slightly ill, but I was so excited by the idea of Gillian’s surprise and gratitude that any expense was worth it.

Even when she wasn’t with us, Gillian filled our conversation. She belonged to a type of girl who must always have existed, but that didn’t make her any less fascinating. Gillian’s returning a smock top to Dorothy Perkins because the embroidery on the bust had unraveled was more riveting than any of the rest of us going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. An entire afternoon could be whiled away speculating on whether she was getting back with Stuart. Gillian and Stuart had more
breakups than Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They were our personal film stars.

“Hey, Susan Dey. Deydreamer? Wakey-wakey. Are we doing this quiz or not?” Sharon tapped the red Formica tabletop with a teaspoon to get my attention.

“Don’t mention
her
name, please,” I protested.

“Susan Dey, lucky bitch,” hissed Sharon without malice, or not much.

Every group needs a common enemy. For Cassidy fans, it was Susan Dey, the actress who played David’s sister in
The Partridge Family
. I wouldn’t say we hated Susan Dey exactly. I was just annoyed because I wanted to be her, and there couldn’t be two of us, plus she was insultingly pretty and—this really was the final straw—clearly a sweet person. In magazine interviews, Susan always denied there was anything going on between her and David. Although she was working with David every single day, she claimed not to be affected the least little bit by the charms that had worked on half the girls on Earth.

Sharon and me, we had our suspicions, but we preferred to give Susan the benefit of the doubt. The alternative was too upsetting to think about. We spent quite a lot of time studying pictures of her and, although we never said it aloud, I think that we would have conceded that, in a straight contest, David might prefer Susan’s stunning Californian beauty to two Welsh chicks who had to be in bed by eight thirty.

It wasn’t just Susan Dey, mind. Any other women in David’s life were a source of anguished speculation. Last August, our magazine had this photo of a really slim pretty girl with short brown hair who was wearing a bikini and sitting next to him by a swimming pool. The caption said: “David relaxing with a friend.”

What friend?
What kind of friend?
The girl made me sick with jealousy. Her name was Beverly Wilshire. I couldn’t rest easy until the September issue when the mag ran another photo of the same girl, this time wearing a man’s shirt and jeans. Turns out she wasn’t called Beverly Wilshire after all. That was the name of the hotel where David was staying! She was Jan Freeman, who was David’s stand-in on the set of
The Partridge Family
. So that was okay, you know. Never thought he’d like a girl with such short hair, anyway.

“Listen to this, then.” Sharon was pressing on with the Beauty Dos and Don’ts, swiftly circling the answers as her pen moved down the page.

One of the things I loved about Sharon was how definite things were for her, how it didn’t seem to occur to her that the world was bewildering or scary in any way. We were forever doing these multiple choices that were supposed to reveal how to make yourself prettier or more attractive or to pinpoint your personality type. Boys weren’t sitting there doing quizzes about what they could do to make us fancy them, were they? But we carried on doing the quizzes anyway. I suppose we were so hungry for clues about how to grow up and be desirable.

Sharon always ringed the answer she felt was right. Fearlessly told the truth about herself. Me, I stared at a, b, c and d for ages, then tried to sneak a look at the upside-down answers at the bottom of the page. Always weighing up which choices would prove that I was the best kind of girl to be, and then going back to change my answers if I didn’t come out as the right personality type. When I finally made a choice, even if it was the right one, I wondered where the others would have led.

Tell you the really chronic thing, I even cheated at multiple choices when I was by myself. Pretending to be better than you really were to other people seemed normal, but trying to kid yourself was weird. I felt furtive and ashamed, just like the time I copied most of Olga’s answers when she sat next to me during a physics test and, by a complete fluke, I got a better mark than her and she knew what I’d done, but she never said a word. Just took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose in a really disappointed way. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. How can I put this? The fact was other girls seemed real to me in a way I didn’t feel real to myself. I felt as though I was still making myself up in a hurry, improvising from minute to minute. But the funny thing was, I didn’t mind feeling scared and unfinished when I was with Sharon: she was strong and definite enough for the both of us.

My thoughts were disturbed by a loud squawk: “Oh, you’re not gonna believe it, Petra. Listen to this: ‘You scored eight to thirteen. You are very casual with your looks!’ ” Sharon laughed and took a bite of teacake before passing the last bit to me. The currants were burned and tasted like coal, but I was starving.

“Sha, stop reading, will you? It’s bringing me out in a rash.”

“Hang on. Here’s a good bit now. It says, ‘Even if you feel you are the plainest, most problem-plagued girl in the world, these days there’s no excuse—it’s easy to create a new image for yourself because it’s character and tequi—’ ”

“Technique.”

“—technique that really matter.”

Sharon always asked me about words. I did words and she did pictures, that was our deal. She slapped the mag down. The dirty tea things from the previous customers were still on the table and an open packet of sugar scattered over a wide area. “What’s technique when it’s at home?”

I dipped a finger in the froth of the cold coffee, then rolled it in the spilled sugar and slowly licked it clean.

“Mm. The way you do something. Like you drawing a picture or me playing the cello. Good technique is holding the bow right and sitting up properly. Bad technique is slouching, using only a bit of the bow, playing all tense and hunched up. Basically, if you’ve got good technique you get a richer sound.”

Resonance
. I remembered the word Miss Fairfax had taught me. When the cello resonates it sounds as beautiful as a forest, if forests could give up their secrets.

Sharon nodded. “You got to play for that Princess Margaret, ’aven’t you?”

“After we get back from seeing David. Got to plan our outfits for the White City first. Think I’m gonna wear my cords and my cream top under my brown bomber jacket. What d’you reckon?”

I was an expert when it came to dodging inquiries about the cello. I loved my instrument as much as I hated talking about it. I wanted to talk about things that made me feel the same as the others. Let me tell you, a cello is not a good instrument if you want to be invisible. Stick to the flute is my advice. The standard response to me carrying the cello was “How you gonna get that violin under your chin?” Not funny after the twentieth time; not that funny the first time. Then, I was lugging my big case onto the school bus a few weeks before and a boy on the backseat stood up and shouted: “Oi, skinny, give us a tune on yer banjo.”

Since then, I’d stopped taking the cello home and kept it behind the upright piano in the small music-practice room at school. My mother and Miss Fairfax both thought I was practicing for the Princess Margaret concert every break and every lunchtime, and I wanted to, I really wanted to, but I couldn’t take the risk of leaving my friends. They might wonder where I was. Worse still, the worry that couldn’t be admitted, not even to myself, was they might not miss me at all—and I would come back one day to find my place was taken. Like a room where they’ve removed a chair and rearranged the furniture so you don’t know the chair was ever there. Karen Jones had been vanished overnight like a lamp no one liked anymore. The other day in PE, Karen had to be partners with Susan Smell. It was a warning and maybe an omen. Plus, I didn’t want Gillian to see me as Miss Hoity Toity up-herself classical music.

Impress Princess Margaret or Gillian Edwards? It was no contest.

“You two finished by any chance?” The waitress stood by our table with a hand on her hip.

“Still going strong,” said Sharon. She had poured the cold tea from the previous customers’ pot into her empty cup and she raised it with a cheery grin toward the waitress, who stalked away.

“That woman’s got a face like a smacked arse.”

“
Shar-rrron.
”

“She has. Just cos we’re too poor to have proper food. If you have gammon and chips they let you be. Spend a lot on Gillian, did you?”

“Not really. Not much to play with after buying the concert ticket.”

My foot touched the carrier bag under the table and I got a jolt of pleasure thinking about its precious cargo. I was positive that the classy Mary Quant eye-shadow kit would soon change my life for the better. In my head, I was already foreseeing various heart-warming scenes. Gillian ushering the other girls into her legendary bedroom on her birthday. “Have you seen what
Petra
got me?”

Gillian receiving admiring comments for her makeup on Saturday night at the Starlight disco. “Yes, it’s indigo, actually, from the Mary Quant eye-shadow palette that
Petra
gave me for my birthday. It was recommended in
Jackie
.”