The Adoption (36 page)

I was dragged to the headmaster for that and put into detention for a fortnight. So what? I prefer it to being at home. I don’t care. For their wedding anniversary last autumn, I saved and saved and bought my mother,
my mother
, a pair of fluffy bath towels with big blowsy blue and purple flowers on them. I watched her face as she opened the box and lifted them out. She looked as staggered as if there was a cobra coiled in the tissue paper.

‘What are these, Lucilla?’ she asked, her mouth as tight as a cat’s arse.

I thought it was obvious but I told her anyway. ‘Towels. Bath towels. Don’t you like them?’

‘Oh, Lucilla, you must see that they are dreadfully vulgar. Bath towels should be plain, a plain colour, white or cream.’

You’d have thought I’d have got used to it by now – but no. In my head I added up how many mornings, the icy chill invading my bones, the dawn opening up in the sky like a headache, I had slogged round with that back-breaking sack of papers to scrimp for that gift. I vowed it would be my last present to them. I am full of ‘won’ts’ these days. They have been incubating for some years and now clutches of them hatch out daily. I won’t play piano. I won’t wear dresses. I won’t eat fat. I won’t stay indoors. I won’t be a lady, whatever that is. I have two pairs of drainpipe jeans that I wear in strict rotation, and a jumper that nearly covers my knees. I’ve decided to be a beatnik. My hair’s grown a bit, and I backcomb it so that it sits like a beehive above my head. I adore my record player. I am constantly saving up to buy records. At three shillings and sixpence they are expensive, but oh so worth it. I am a fan of the Beatles, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger. And Adam Faith is to die for. Jazz makes me wild, Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball. Father took me to the Royal Festival Hall to see Oscar Peterson play piano, which was amazing. I went to
West Side Story
, as well, three times. It was on at the Odeon in Muswell Hill. I’ve put the poster up in my room. It’s red with big black letters printed on it. I lie in bed and pretend that I’m Natalie Wood starring as Maria, singing ‘Tonight’. And I
do
feel pretty.

I had all but stopped going to the temperance meetings when our eyes met across a crowded room – Tony’s and mine. I preferred to stay home and listen to my records. But they nagged me incessantly about the summer dance until, as much for a bit of peace as anything else, I said that I’d go. What I would be wearing became the hot topic of debate over the next week. I knew that I would have to go in a dress, that trousers would not do. My mother might believe bath towels with a garden of flowers printed on them are garish and common, but when it comes to posh frocks it is she who excels in the vulgar and not I. All my protests accomplished was a compromise
on
colour. Vanquished were the girly pinks. It would be blue or turquoise if I preferred.

I conjured the mental image of a cotton shift. But what my mother ran up on the sewing machine was a creation made of tulle and net, more suited to an extrovert fairy than a tomboy. It was turquoise, maxi-length, empire style, with a high neck stitched with gold sequins, and what felt like wings hanging from the drooping sleeves. Turquoise silk shoes to match, and enormous clip-on earrings that looked as if I had gleaming turquoise beetles fastened to my ears, and I was ready to go. My mother swept my hair up into a knot that kept unravelling. Even while it was happening I knew I was making a lifetime memory. As a toothless old hag of eighty I’ll still be indulging in it, like a box of Mackintosh’s Carnival Assortment. My production of
West Side Story
screening any time I want. I settle back to enjoy.

I am perched on a chair sipping flat lemonade, waiting to be asked to dance. I am catatonic and in need of a blood transfusion to wake me up. The hall has been cleared and decorated with paper streamers. At one end is the refreshments table. At the other end is my father, the chairman, in charge of the record player. Mostly he selects waltzes. The boys are lined up opposite us. They look timid as they muster the nerve to request a dance. You’ll be pleased to know that I am not exclusively a wallflower. I have been asked twice so far, once by a boy called Christopher, who had a stutter and was so short he could hardly raise his head above the shelf of my small breasts. The second time with a tall, gangly youth whose ears waggled when he talked, and whose sweaty hands were pasted to me.

I am perspiring under the layers of my dress. I can still feel the cold sausage roll I have just swallowed moving like a bullet down my gullet. I want to go home. Scamp is not at all well. He was sick earlier in the evening. He is struggling to keep food down. I keep telling them to take him to the vet, but I think I shall have to do it. Across a forest of
couples
gliding to the one two three rhythm of a Strauss waltz, I notice a young man leaning indolently against the wall. I study him with interest, blond hair with a suggestion of light brown at the roots, fair complexion and a dashing scar across one cheek – until I realise that he is also studying me. The second before I drop my gaze, I feel his pastel-blue eyes sweeping over my ridiculous dress. Perhaps he thinks if he keeps tabs on me all evening I will eventually flap my wings, lift out of my seat and swoop around the ceiling. I try to glance about me casually, but my treacherous cheeks torch.

The music stops. Couples thank each other politely and make their way back to their respective positions to gossip about their partners. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the blond boy push off the wall. He is moving vaguely in my direction, but definitely in no hurry. Scouting for competition, I realise that I am not the only one who has been distracted by his striking good looks. A girl in a mauve two-piece on my right sits so far forwards on her seat that I think she may tumble off it onto the parquet floor. To my left, a much bolder play for his attention is under way. This hussy rises with a provocative wiggle, one hand on her bony hips, the other fussing with a paste necklace that glitters over her full bosom.

Accepting that I am outnumbered and outdone, I gather up my wings, bend from the waist and closet my pink face. He is talking now to the girl with the generous bosoms. ‘Isn’t this simply super?’ she says in a refined voice – glaringly contrived. ‘Have you tried the nonalcoholic punch? Gosh, it really is most refreshing. Oh look, I’ve finished mine.’

I’ve tried it and it’s filthy stuff, I reflect with a grimace. It is dense, with chunks of floury apples and segments of pithy oranges, and has the consistency of syrup that does not slake a thirst, but engenders one. She continues to give her admirer the cue to rush off and top up her glass, but he might be bolted down so ineffective are her clumsy hints.
‘I
don’t actually like it myself,’ he comments lazily. His voice is smooth as swan’s down and seems to purr in his chest. ‘Far too sweet.’

My father is babbling about taking your partners for the next waltz. ‘Oh, I do love to dance the waltz,’ gushes the girl, breasts aquiver. If she is not careful they will bounce out of her low-cut bodice like emancipated jellies.

‘Do you?’ I look up and see that the young man is smiling, not at her but at me, down at my lowered head draped in turquoise tulle. He turns his back on Miss Plenty and extends a hand for me to take. ‘Hello. My name’s Henry.’

‘I’m Lu– Lucilla …’ I choke on the admittance.

‘Would you like to dance with me?’

I am thrown by his direct gaze, the blue eyes resting unfaltering on mine, the invitation delivered with just a trace of impudence.

‘I am not very good at dancing,’ I admit, my head ducking beneath my plumage.

‘Oh neither am I. That doesn’t matter. So long as we have fun,’ he counters lightly.

The first strains of the waltz vibrate on air that smacks of mildew. I set my lemonade on the floor, nudge the cup under my chair and get up hesitantly, treading on the overlong hem of my dress and falling. Instantly, his hands are there restoring my balance. His grip is sure and strong. He leads me onto the floor. He places one hand on the small of my back and with the other searches for my palm. Our fingers interlock. We do not spin and twirl gracefully about the floor, nor are we on fire pirouetting like Maria and Tony. My damned dress is constantly getting underfoot and threatening to topple me over. So, necessarily, our dance is made up of staccato steps, me pulling my hand from his intermittently to, oh so unladylike, hitch up my skirt.

‘I hate this dress,’ I hiss and he chuckles. ‘Go on, be honest with me. I look like a hideous turquoise moth.’

‘No such thing,’ comes his gentlemanly reply. ‘You look very … very turquoise … and feminine.’

I trip and lurch into him and we burst out laughing. ‘Sorry,’ I say, breathlessly, through my hilarity.

‘I like it. Do it again,’ he flirts. And I do, shamelessly staging overbalancing so he can catch me up in his arms again.

‘I’m not, you know.’

‘Not what?’ he asks. He is taller than me, a comfortable height without dwarfing me so that I have to raise my voice.

‘I’m not very feminine,’ I own honestly. I inspect his face, sensitive to his reaction. ‘Mostly I wear trousers,’ I blurt out preparing to stomp off, rejected for being so butch.

‘I think women in trousers are sexy.’ Now he is whispering, and I hastily survey the hall to see if anyone has overheard his outrageous comment. But they seem blithely unaware of the flagrant flirtation we are enjoying, as he staggers around the floor with me. My father keeps glaring over at us, his face all of a scowl. Henry is either oblivious to his condemnation or unperturbed by it. He pulls me against his manly physique, and I feel the delectable hardness of it between yards and yards of tulle.

‘So are your parents here? Are they members of the Temperance Society?’ I glance about wondering if we are also earning their disapprobation.

‘Nah. A friend asked me if I wanted to tag along. Thought it might be a laugh.’

‘And is it?’

‘Oh yes.’ His eyes spark. ‘That and a great deal more,’ he adds suggestively. I thrill to his words.

‘What about your parents?’

‘I’m afraid so. Actually my father’s the chairman,’ I disclose angling my head subtly to indicate my fuming father.

‘Oops!’ Our eyes lock and our shoulders quake with repressed mirth.

‘You look European. Swedish or German or something?’

‘Sorry to disillusion you but I’m English to the core.’

‘I don’t mind. How … how did you get that scar?’ I ask, breathing fast with all the exercise.

He leans over me and speaks into my ear, so that I can feel the flickering candle of his breath. ‘I fell out of my pram.’ This time when I pile into him I hear something rip. ‘Oh dear,’ he says and we abandon ourselves to another fit of childish hysteria. Heads turn at our raucous behaviour. I catch my father’s horseshoe smile clanging to the floor.

‘Are you lying – about the pram I mean?’ The knot at the back of my hair gives up the ghost of sophistication, and tresses tumble down about my face.

‘Better,’ he says, approvingly. ‘I’m telling the truth. If I’m lying let lightning strike me dead.’

‘No, don’t,’ I remonstrate. ‘That would be too awful.’

He gives a slow, sly grin. ‘I slammed my cheek on one of steel knobs that hinge the canopy to the buggy,’ he elucidates. ‘Split it open. Why? Does it revolt you, my scar face?’

I crane my neck up to his ear. ‘I find it …
très
,
très
erotic,’ I say huskily, drunk on daring.

The waltz is ending. On the dying note he says, ‘Come out with me next Friday. I’ll take you to the pictures.’

‘All right,’ I agree. ‘I’ll have to check with my parents, but all right.’ I give him my address and we arrange a time. For the remainder of the evening, I am an electric fire, all my bars lit up.

The memory I review next has a bitter flavour to it – my parents’ less than enthusiastic reception of this would-be beau, Henry Ryan.

‘He looks foreign,’ Mother says sourly as we wait for him to collect
me
. ‘German. Two world wars I’ve lived through.’ Her eyes fill with mawkish sentiment. Then pouncing, she asks, ‘Is he German?’

‘No!’ I retort emphatically. Then on a quarrelsome whim, I add, ‘And so what if he was? There’s nothing wrong with being German. I should think they’re jolly nice people. Mr Beirmann who runs the café on the corner is anyhow. Besides, the war was years ago, and I rather imagine that the Germans think we British are pigs for what we did to them.’

My mother gapes, ready to have me tried for treason.

‘Don’t you dare speak to your mother like that,’ my father trumpets in a rare show of marital effrontery. ‘You can’t begin to understand what we lived through.’ I raise my eyes rudely to the ceiling, as my astounded father raises his eyebrows in synchronicity. Then his eyes narrow and he licks a speck of spit from the corner of his mouth. ‘If you ask me he took liberties when you danced with him. He was far too close, pushing himself against you. It was nothing short of lewd.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, we were only dancing. Everyone else was doing the same,’ I dispute, with the brand of teenage belligerence that is a flashpoint to adults.

‘No they were not!’ my father booms. ‘They certainly were not!’

Fearing my date may be forbidden, which would be unthinkable, I adjust my attitude quickly. ‘It was only that I kept tripping over my dress. It’s too long. I think the hem needs redoing. He caught me to stop me falling and hurting myself.’ Sewing. My mother grabs the lifeline and her breathing slows, just as well, because she has been hyperventilating. I smile guilelessly. ‘Look,’ I continue, sensing if not a window of opportunity certainly a diamond pane, ‘Henry’s as English as you or I. He’s from Bowes Park.’ Relief brings colour flooding back into my mother’s pale complexion. But my father retains an air of suspicion, as if I am about to date a rapist. Privately, I muse that Henry could come from Timbuktu for all I care.

‘I’m only going to the pictures and I’ll be back by ten thirty. Promise. What harm can there be?’

My father studies his watch, as if it is a stopwatch and he is already counting down the seconds to my return.