My Secret Diary, Page 2

  We ate a large Sunday roast together too while listening to The Billy Cotton Band Show and Family Favourites on the radio. We particularly enjoyed listening to Hancock's Half Hour as a family, all three of us convulsing with laughter. We watched television together in the evenings. For a long time we only had one television channel so there weren't any arguments about which programme to pick.

  There must have been many ordinary cosy evenings like this:

  Thursday 3 March

  I'm sitting at the table. The time is twenty to eight. 'Life of Bliss' is on the T.V. Daddy has just got in from work. I ask Mummy what happened at her office. Mr Lacy was in a good mood, she replies, and goes back to her newspaper. What are you looking for? Mummy asks Dad. My black pen, he replies, have I got time for a bath before supper? Only an in and out says Mummy. Daddy has his bath. We sit down to our supper of macaroni cheese (one of my favourites). After supper I do my maths homework. Daddy helps, bless him. Then I watch T.V. It is a Somerset Maugham play, and very good. P.S. Mum bought me some sweet white nylon knickers.

  I was still very close to Biddy and struggled hard to please her. I took immense pains to find an original Mother's Day present for her. I went shopping in Kingston with my friends Carol and Cherry, all of us after Mother's Day presents – though we got a little distracted first.

  We first went to Maxwells the record shop, and I bought the record 'A Theme from a Summer Place'. It was lovely. Then we went to Bentalls. First we went to the Yardley make-up, and a very helpful woman sold me my liquefying cleansing cream and Cherry a new lipstick. Then we bought our mothers some cards, and Cherry bought her mother some flowers, and Carol bought her mother some chocs. But I knew what I wanted for my adorable, queer, funny, contemporary mother. A pair of roll-on black panties, a pair of nylons and a good (expensive) black suspender belt.

  I record happily on Sunday: 'Mum was very pleased with her panties, belt and nylons.'

  I tried to please Harry too. I didn't buy him a vest and Y-fronts for Father's Day, thank goodness – but I did make an effort.

  Saturday 4 June

  I bought a card for Father's Day, and some men's talcum and three men's hankies as well.

  Biddy and Harry bought me presents too, sometimes vying with each other, to my advantage: 'Biddy gave me a pound to spend for when I'm going round Kingston with Carol – and then Harry gave me five pounds. For nothing!!!'

  They could be imaginative with gifts. Biddy not only bought me all my clothes, she bought me books and ornaments and make-up. Harry tried hard too. He was away up in Edinburgh for a week on business (I wrote, 'It feels so strange in the flat without Daddy'), but when he came back he had bought lavish presents for both of us:

  Saturday 21 May

  Daddy came back from Scotland today. He gave me a little Scotch doll, a typewriter rubber, a coin bracelet, an expensive bambi brooch, and a little book about Mary, Queen of Scots. He gave Mummy a £5 note.

  Harry could be generous with his time too. That summer of 1960 I had to do a Shakespeare project so he took a day off work and we went to Stratford. It was a good day too. We went round Shakespeare's birthplace and Anne Hathaway's cottage and collected various postcards and leaflets. My project was the most gorgeously illustrated of anyone's. But he mostly kept to himself, out at work on weekdays, still playing tennis at the weekends, and when he was at home he hunched in his armchair, surrounded by piles of Racing Posts and form books. If he wasn't going out he rarely bothered to get dressed, comfortable in our centrally heated flat in pyjamas and dressing gown and bare feet.

  Biddy frequently changed into her dressing gown too and sat watching television, tiny feet tucked up, her Du Maurier cigarettes on one arm of the chair and a bag of her favourite pear drops on the other. As the evening progressed, one or other of them would start nodding and soon they would both be softly snoring. I'd huddle up with my book, happy to be left in peace way past my bed time.

  They never went out in the week but they started going out on Saturday nights with Biddy's friend Ron. They must have been strange evenings, especially as my parents were practically teetotal. Biddy stuck with her bitter lemons. Harry tried a pint of beer occasionally but hated it. One Saturday night he pushed the boat out and had two or three and came home feeling so ill he lay on the kitchen floor, moaning.

  'Well, it's all your own fault, you fool. You were the one who poured the drink down your throat,' said Biddy, poking him with her foot.

  Harry swore at her, still horizontal.

  'Don't you start calling me names! Now get up, you look ridiculous. What if someone walks along the balcony and peers in the kitchen window? They'll think you're dead.'

  'I wish I was,' said Harry, and shut his eyes.

  I don't think he enjoyed those Saturday nights one iota – and yet he agreed to go on a summer holiday that year with Ron and his wife, Grace. I don't know if Harry had any particular secret lady friends at that time – he certainly did later on in his life. I think Biddy and Harry came very close to splitting up when I was fourteen or so. I know Ron had plans to go to Africa and wanted Biddy to go with him. But I was the fly in the ointment, flapping my wings stickily. Biddy wouldn't leave me, so she was stuck too.

  We went out very occasionally on a Sunday afternoon, when we caught the bus to the other end of Kingston and went to tea with my grandparents, Ga and Gongon. The adults played solo and bridge and bickered listlessly and ate Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolates. I ate chocolates too and curled up with my book. If I finished my own book I read one of Ga and Gongon's Sunday school prize books or flipped through their ten volumes of Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia.

  I preferred visiting Ga by myself. I'd go on Wednesday afternoons after school. She'd always have a special tea waiting for me: thinly sliced bread and butter and home-made loganberry jam, tinned peaches and Nestlé's tinned cream, and then a cake – a Peggy Brown lemon meringue tart if Ga had shopped in Surbiton, or a Hemming's Delight (meringue and artificial cream with a glacé cherry) if she had been to Kingston marketplace.

  Ga would chat to me at tea, asking me all about school, taking me ultra seriously. I should have been the one making her tea as her arthritis was really bad now. She had to wear arm splints and wrist supports, and for a week or so before her monthly cortizone injection she could only walk slowly, clearly in great pain. It's so strange realizing that Ga then was younger than me now. She looked like an old lady in her shapeless jersey suits and black buttoned shoes.

  One Wednesday it was pouring with rain and I was sodden by the time I'd walked to Ga's, my hair in rats' tails, my school uniform dripping. Ga gave me a towel for my hair and one of her peachy-pink rayon petticoats to wear while my clothes dried. But when it was time for me to go home they were still soaking wet. I didn't particularly mind but Ga wouldn't hear of me walking the three quarters of an hour home up Kingston Hill in sopping wet clothes. She was sure I'd catch a chill. She insisted I borrow one of her suits. She meant so well I couldn't refuse, though I absolutely died at the thought of walking home in old-lady beige with her long sagging skirt flapping round my ankle socks.

  Ga could no longer make her own clothes because her hands had turned into painful little claws due to her arthritis – but she would press her lips together firmly and make herself sew if it was for me.

  Wednesday 27 January

  After school went up to Ga's. She has made my Chinese costume for the play, and also gave me a lovely broderie anglaise petticoat. Isn't she kind?

  Yes, she was very kind, in little sweet ways. On 14 February I always received a Valentine. That year it was two little blue birds kissing beaks, perching on two red hearts outlined with glitter. There were forget-me-nots and roses sprinkled across the card, and inside a little printed verse and an inked question mark. I knew it wasn't from a boy, although I was supposed to assume it came from a secret admirer. I was pretty certain it was Ga wanting to give me a surprise, sending me a Valentine so I could show it off at school.
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  She was always so reassuring and comforting.

  Wednesday 24 February

  Back to school, worst luck. Going to school all Wolverton Avenue was dug up and there were many workmen standing around and digging under the pavement. Sue at once crossed the road, but I stayed on the left side where they were working and each time they smiled and said hello and how are you, etc. in the friendly way workmen do, I smiled back and said hello, and I feel fine. Afterwards Sue was ever so crabby and said in what I call her 'old maid' voice, 'I saw you smile at all those work men.' Talk about a bloody snob! She makes me MAD at times. I told Ga when I went up there this afternoon after school and she (the darling) said I had a nice little face and naturally they would smile and talk to me, and that it was only polite that I should do the same back.

  Ga was so gentle with me, letting me rant on in a half-baked manner about becoming a pacifist and banning the bomb and being anti-apartheid, while she nodded and smiled. I got tremendously steamed up at the end of term because we were having a party for all the girls at school, with music and non-alcoholic punch.

  'It's not fair!' I said.

  'You can't have real punch at a school party,' she said reasonably.

  'Oh no, I don't mind the non-alcoholic punch part. I don't like proper drink,' I said.

  She looked relieved. 'So what isn't fair?' she asked.

  'We can't have boys! Can you imagine it, just us girls dancing together all evening. That's not a proper party, it's just like dancing school. We're all furious, wanting to take our boyfriends.'

  Ga blinked. 'So, have you got a boyfriend, Jac?'

  'Well . . . no, I haven't, not at the moment. But that's not the point, it's the principle that matters,' I said, determined not to lose face.

  Ga was kind enough not to laugh at me.

  3

  Clothes

  Saturday 2 January

  I went to Bentalls' sale with Mum. We got some smashing bargains so I'm jolly glad I went. First a very full pink and mauve mohair skirt, and to go with it a lovely pink thick-knit Austrian cardigan. We got it for 45 bob, but previously it had been £9.9s!! I also got a good book and a new lipstick. I tried it out this afternoon and wore my new outfit, and I think I looked quite nice. I looked warm, cosy and fashionable, nice and teenager-y, but not looking too grown up.

  I can't believe I once used words like jolly and smashing! I sound like someone out of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books. That pink and mauve mohair skirt and Austrian cardigan sound absolutely hideous too, though I obviously liked them at the time. I didn't actually want to look 'nice and teenager-y'.

  If you wanted to look truly cool in 1960 you dressed like a Beatnik. You had long straight hair (sigh!). You wore black: black polo-neck jumper, black skirt, black stockings, black pointy boots, with a black duffel coat over the top. You were probably roasting to death in all these woolly layers but you looked cool. I'd have given anything to be a Beatnik but it would have looked like fancy dress on a schoolgirl living on a suburban council estate. Beatniks were exotic adults who lived in London and haunted smoky jazz cellars.

  The cool look at school was totally different. Girls backcombed their hair into bouffant styles and then sprayed it until it hardened into a helmet. They cinched in their waists with elasticated belts and stuck out their skirts with nylon petticoats. You could get wonderfully coloured petticoats at Kingston Monday market – pink, blue, even bright yellow, edged with lace. You washed these petticoats in sugar water, which made them stiff. Your skirts bounced as you walked, showing your layers of petticoat. You wobbled when you walked too, in stiletto heels.

  I say 'you'. I didn't have bouffant hair, elasticated belts, flouncy petticoats or stiletto heels.

  'You're not going out looking as Common as Muck,' said Biddy.

  I rather wanted to look as Common as Muck, but I couldn't manage it, even behind Biddy's back. I didn't know how to tease my hair into that amazing bouffant shape. It was either too frizzy or too limp, depending on whether I'd just had another dreaded perm or not.

  I didn't have enough of a waist to cinch, and my petticoats were limp white garments that clung to my legs. I didn't have proper stilettos. My first pair of heels were barely an inch high. They were called Louis heels, squat, stumpy little heels on a slip-on shoe. I was used to straps or laces and I had to walk with my feet stuck out like a ballet dancer to keep them on. They were pale green. 'Eau de nil,' said Biddy. She bought me a silly little clutch purse too, also in eau de nil. I had Biddy's pass-me-down cream swagger coat that year. It draped in an odd way and had weird wide sleeves. I didn't swagger in my coat, I slouched, walking with kipper feet in my silly shoes, clutching the purse.

  'You look so ladylike in that outfit,' said Biddy, smiling approvingly.

  Biddy wasn't alone in wanting her daughter to look ladylike. At school that spring of 1960 we had a visit from the Simplicity paper-pattern people. I'd never sewn a garment in my life apart from a school apron I'd laboured over in needlework, but I certainly knew my way around the Simplicity fashion books. I'd been buying them for years so that I could cut out all the most interesting models and play pretend games with them. It was strange seeing familiar dresses made up, worn by real girls.

  Thursday 17 March

  We missed Latin today! The fashion people, Simplicity, had made up some of their teenage patterns and our girls dressed up in them, and we had a fashion parade. It was quite good, and our girls looked quite different, being all posh, and wearing white gloves, and walking like proper models. (Only they looked a bit daft.) I didn't mind the dresses, but I didn't see one I really liked. Afterwards the lady told us that we should wear bras to define and shape our figures (we already do wear them of course), that we should use deodorants (which I at any rate do), that we should pay attention to our deportment (which I try to do), that we should think carefully whether our lipsticks go with our dresses (which I do) etc., etc.

  Heavens! I might go in for a spot of lipstick coordination but I certainly didn't want to wear ladylike white gloves. The very last thing in the world I wanted to look was ladylike. At least the pink of the mohair skirt wasn't pastel, and the skirt was full enough to bunch out as much as possible. I could hide my lack of waist under the chunky cardigan. I expect the lipstick was pink too. Later on in the sixties make-up changed radically and I'd wear white lipstick and heavy black eye make-up, but in 1960, when I was fourteen, the 'natural' look was still in vogue.

  I wasn't great at putting on make-up. I rubbed powder on my face, smeared lipstick on my lips, brushed black mascara on my lashes and hoped for the best. It didn't help that I wore glasses. I had to take them off when I applied my make-up and consequently couldn't quite see what I was doing.

  I've looked through the photo album covering my teenage years and I can't find a single picture of me wearing my glasses. I hated wearing them. I'm not sure contact lenses were widely available in those days. I'd certainly never heard of them. I was stuck wearing my glasses in school. I couldn't read the blackboard without them. I could barely see the board itself. But out of school I kept them in the clutch bag.

  I had to whip them on quick while waiting at a bus stop so I could stick my hand out for the right number bus, but the moment I was on the bus I'd shove the glasses back in the bag. I spent most of my teenage years walking round in a complete haze, unable to recognize anyone until they were nose to nose with me. I was clearly taking my life in my hands whenever I crossed the road. I was an accident waiting to happen, especially as I made up stories in my head as I walked along and didn't even try to concentrate on where I was going.

  I was in the middle of an imaginary television interview one day going home from school.

  'Do tell us what inspired you to write this wonderful novel, Miss Aitken,' the interviewer asked as I jumped off the bus.

  He never got an answer. I stepped out into the road and walked straight into a car. I was knocked flying, landing with a smack on the tarmac. The interviewer vanis
hed. I vanished too, losing consciousness. I opened my eyes a minute or two later to find a white-faced man down on his knees beside me, clutching my hand.

  'Oh, thank God you're not dead!' he said, nearly in tears.

  I blinked at him. It was almost like one of my own fantasies. When Biddy or Harry were especially impatient with me I'd frequently imagine myself at my last gasp on my deathbed, with them weeping over me, begging my forgiveness.

  'I'm so sorry!' he said. 'It wasn't my fault, you just walked straight in front of me. I braked but I couldn't possibly avoid you. Where do you hurt?'

  'I don't think I actually hurt anywhere,' I said, trying to sit up.

  'No, you shouldn't move! I'd better find a phone box to call an ambulance.'

  'Oh no, I'm fine, really,' I said, getting very worried now.

  I did feel fine, though in a slightly dream-like, unreal way. I staggered to my feet and he rushed to help me.

  'You really shouldn't stand!' he said, though I was upright now. 'Are your legs all right? And your arms?'

  I shook all four of my limbs gingerly. One of my arms was throbbing now, and one of my legs, but I didn't want to upset him further by admitting this.

  'Yes, they're perfectly OK,' I said. 'Well, thank you very much for looking after me. Goodbye.' I started to walk away but he looked appalled.

  'I can't let you just walk off! The very least I can do is take you home to your mother. I want to explain to her what happened.'