The Lies Between Us

They drift away from the bar, finding seats when the group who have been sitting in the corner for hours decide it’s home time. I look around for Ed. He’s been served by someone else, and is now at the end of the bar talking to his friends. He doesn’t look my way, and I get on with serving, cleaning, washing up, collecting empties. I’m surprised to see him in here. The Prince Albert is on the main road out of town, about a mile or so from the centre. It serves office and shop workers at lunchtimes and locals in the evenings; with its fading seventies décor and keg beer it isn’t the kind of place you’d go out of your way for. I glance at him again out of the corner of my eye, not wanting him to see me looking. Anyway, he probably doesn’t remember me, as it’s a few weeks since that party, or if he does he isn’t interested in picking up where we left off. Maybe Steve will have told him who I am, and when I think of that, and how my mother was so ‘obvious’ that night, I wonder if I even want him to recognise me.

When the bell is rung and eventually the punters begin drifting off, I look despairingly at the mess that remains; far more than the usual half hour’s close will see to. The landlord sees my face.

‘Go on. You get off,’ he says. ‘You look dead on your feet.’

I started an hour earlier than everyone else, and the only time I’ve stopped was for toilet breaks, so I don’t think anyone can accuse me of skiving. My coat and bag are in the room at the back, and while I fetch them I decide that I will go and say hello to Ed, because why the hell not? I’ve got nothing to lose but pride. But when I come back through he’s gone, and I’m disappointed, kicking myself for not going over before.

Outside the air is still balmy; it’s hard to think that soon all the leaves will fall and winter will set in. Maybe that’s why there are still people hanging around, chatting and laughing; no one wants to go home to bed; they want to make the most of this Indian summer. I have to squeeze past a large group standing right by the door, but as I start the walk home I feel a hand catch my arm.

‘Hi, wait, I thought it was you.’

Ed’s there with his two mates, who immediately stop talking to look me up and down, but Ed says goodbye to them and thanks for something or other, and with more glances at me and big grins pasted on their faces they saunter off together.

‘I was going to come and say hello, but then you disappeared,’ Ed says.

‘You were with your friends, I didn’t want to interrupt.’

‘Nice work,’ he says, ‘with the Snakebite.’

I grin. ‘Yeah. I made sure of it.’

There’s a slight pause, when neither of us seems to know what to say next. A bus rumbles by. I could have caught that one, as far as the park. Although generally I like to walk, tonight my feet hurt. I’m about to say I should go when Ed asks if there are any fish and chip shops nearby.

‘There is one, yes, not far.’

‘Don’t suppose you fancy some as well?’

I can just picture them now, fat, greasy chips and white, flaky fish, and a hollow feeling drops into my stomach. I always feel hungry when I’m on my period.

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

‘Right. Lead the way then.’

I point in the opposite direction from home, towards town. ‘There’s a place along here.’ I giggle. ‘Sorry, no pun intended. They do the best chips.’

Ed is tall and his stride is long, and I find myself quickening my normal pace. ‘What were you doing in the Albert?’ I ask him. ‘It’s a bit of a dive.’

‘I don’t mind dives,’ he says. ‘But only if they have good beer. Pity that’s my local.’

‘Your local? Does Steve live round here?’

‘No, I’m not staying with him now, I moved into a flat, at the weekend. The two lads I was with, they’re from work, they helped me move a few things in this evening. I bought some second-hand stuff and hired a van to shift it all in one go.’

He tells me what he bought, and what a job they had getting some of it up the narrow stairs to his flat, and I like listening to him, to his northern voice with its abrupt endings and the t just a sound in the back of the throat. When we reach the chip shop we get served quickly because it’s empty, about to close, then we turn back the way we came, picking chips and bits of fish out of polystyrene trays, licking the grease off our fingers.

‘You were right,’ Ed says. ‘About the chips.’

My feet are really hurting now, and I say there are some benches a bit further along, where we could sit down and eat, and Ed says, yes, sure.

The benches are in some gardens, planted on the site of the old Co-op, which burnt down a few years ago; I remember seeing the orange glow in the sky from my bedroom window, the fire was that fierce. Behind the benches is a flower bed, whose leggy plants are still flowering. I recognise them, chrysanthemums, my father’s favourite and one of the few plants I know the name of. Their dank and earthy scent is in the air, and makes me think of a story by D.H. Lawrence, about the accidental death of a miner: Odour of Chrysanthemums. We read it in English, and I liked it so much I went on to read all his novels.

That’s the one thing I really regret, that C in English. It should have been an A. Then I would have already escaped.

We sit down, under a lamp post that casts a circle of brightness around us, and eat hungrily at first, not saying much. I start to wonder if my parents will worry that I’m not home, but then think that my mother is just as likely to be out of it, having drunk herself into one of her deep sleeps, and my father will probably assume I’ve gone off somewhere with a friend, forgetting that most of my friends have gone away to university. Except for Louise, who works in a bank and is all loved up with Tom, about to move into a flat with him. I don’t see much of her these days.

Every now and then my father says he ought to come and pick me up after work, but I tell him I’m all right and that Jon the barman walks me home. Which he does – some nights. I never say to my father that I don’t like climbing into a car with him when he smells of whisky, and when I think he might be over the limit. There’s no way of telling when that might be; if my mother is in one of her drinking moods my father usually has a few too, keeping her company. I think that way he can pretend my mother has it under control.

‘How’s your new job going?’ I ask Ed.

‘Okay. Hard work. I’d forgotten what it’s like, being new boy.’

‘What kind of stories do you cover? I mean, I suppose you don’t just do any old thing.’

‘In Cambridge I was a court reporter,’ he says. ‘But now I’m doing more investigative stuff, stories that are in the public interest, that kind of thing. At the moment I’m following the row about the new bypass they’re planning. Have you heard about that?’

‘A bit, yes. My dad goes on about it. He’s all in favour of it because it would bring traffic right by his salesrooms.’

‘You might have read one of my articles, without knowing it’s me.’

I shake my head. ‘My parents don’t buy the Echo. My mother says it’s too provincial. But then she reads the Daily Mail so her opinion doesn’t really count for much.’

‘Provincial is a dirty word to some,’ he says. ‘But a local paper needs to carry local news. De facto. Anyway, if you buy it yourself you’ll see my name there, most days.’

‘Ah – well, you’ll have to tell me your proper name then.’ I lick grease off my fingers. ‘I guess they don’t just put, by Ed?’

He winces. ‘Shot myself in the foot there, didn’t I? All right. But first an explanation.’ He gulps down a piece of fish. ‘My parents are called Rhona and Ralph. They decided we boys should all have a name beginning with R. So, there’s Robert, Richard, Raymond and … then they ran out of decent names. I’m Rupert.’

‘Rupert?’ Apart from anything else the name doesn’t go with the flat, northern vowels.

‘Yeah. Like the bear. Rupert Edwards – hence, Ed. Or Eddie the Teddy as my “friends” at school used to shout.’ I snort with laughter. ‘And no, you don’t have permission to call me that.’

He eats the last few chips and screws up the wrapper. ‘Your name’s unusual. I don’t know any other Evas.’

‘My mother named me after one of her favourite film stars. Eva Marie Saint.’

‘Never heard of her, but I like the name.’ He pauses. ‘So you still live at home? You said your parents don’t buy the Echo.’

I stare at him; I’ve almost forgotten that he doesn’t really know who I am.

‘I can’t afford to move out. I don’t earn enough.’

‘That’s your only job, at the pub?’

‘Yes, part-time.’

‘Right.’

I’m going to have to tell him. ‘I only just left school. I failed my A-levels – well, didn’t get the grades I needed for university. So I’m doing resits and hope to go next year.’ I see by his eyes that he’s registering my age, looking surprised; I know I look older than nineteen. ‘I’ll have to find something that pays more, soon. I want to move out, find a flat, if I can.’

‘It’s expensive,’ he says. ‘It costs more than you think.’

‘What’s yours like?’

‘Okay. Monochrome. Everything’s black and white. Apart from the bedroom, which for some weird reason has got shiny wallpaper and looks like the inside of a spaceship. But it’ll do. It’s not for long.’

When I’ve finished my fish and chips we look round for a bin, then leave the gardens.

‘I’ll walk you home,’ Ed says. I tell him there’s no need, but he insists, and to be truthful the streets seem lonely now, at nearly midnight. There’s a sinking feeling in my stomach when I realise what he’s about to find out, but I don’t know how to tell him so decide to just let it happen. As we walk along Park Vale I wonder if he will recognise the house. After all, he’s only been there once, as far as I know. But when we get near, when we come to a slow halt outside my house – unlit, a dark block of shadow against the inky-black sky – his mouth drops open.

‘This is your house? Your parents’ house?’

I nod, hoping he won’t think I’ve deliberately done this. I picture the little film show going on in his head: my mother drunkenly dancing; my mother close up to him, practically pinning him against the wall; the things he said to me right at the start. Word is… Steve thinks she must be a bit desperate.

Ed groans, and plunges his head into his hands. He stands very still, staring down at the pavement, then breathes in, breathes out, and looks back at me.

‘Sorry doesn’t go anywhere near, does it? That must have been … what I said, it was so offensive.’ He shakes his head. ‘How come you’re here? I’d have thought you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.’

I fiddle with a loose thread on the cuff of my jacket. ‘Listen, Ed, it’s what everyone thinks, that’s what you said. Including me. Although I guess, up to now, I’ve only ever thought of it as flirting – embarrassing, drunken flirting. Now …’ I shrug. ‘I’m not sure what I think. Maybe she does have affairs, sleep around, whatever you want to call it. She’s never worked, always been home, she’d have the opportunity, wouldn’t she?’

I glance behind, and see an open window at my parents’ bedroom, and possibly someone moving away from the window, just as I look up. I had spoken softly, but in the quiet of the night my voice seemed too loud. As Ed begins to answer I put one finger on my lips, and he lowers his voice.

‘But you don’t want to listen to gossip. People always exaggerate, make things up. Just because it’s what people think doesn’t make it true.’

‘No. But you listened.’

He gives a slight nod – yes.

‘And the way she behaves, it doesn’t matter what the truth is. The damage is done.’

‘Seems as though she doesn’t really care too much what people think.’

I shake my head. ‘I meant the damage to my father.’

He frowns, and remembering that Steve works for my father I panic at the thought I might be making things worse with my blabbing. ‘Look, this is just between you and me. Please don’t talk to Steve about it. He can think what he likes, but I don’t want my family being this week’s hot topic.’

‘Of course, of course I won’t.’

‘Thanks. I do trust you, Ed, which is weird because I hardly know you.’

He gives me a long, slow smile, which does two things to me, right at the same time; first it makes my stomach flip over with pure pleasure, and second it makes me feel intensely self-conscious, wiping out any thoughts of what to say next. Nervously I lick my lips, and hear myself say,

‘Well I’m going in now. Thanks for the fish and chips.’

‘You’re welcome. Maybe I’ll see you in the Albert – if I can bring myself to drink the beer.’

‘Right. Maybe,’ I say, as nonchalantly as I can manage. As he turns to go I put my hand on his arm. ‘I just worked it out,’ I say. ‘Who you remind me of.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. It’s one of those old pop stars, can’t remember the name, my mother has all his records. You look just like him. You’ve even sort of got a quiff.’

He laughs, then pats my hand, and walks away. I could kick myself. Why the hell did I say that?

Kathleen

1963

There’s always an ‘if’, isn’t there? But some ‘ifs’ seem more crucial than others.

If I hadn’t been so ill with measles just before the Eleven Plus.

If my parents hadn’t accepted my fail so readily.

If they’d insisted on my retaking it, or some special dispensation for my condition.

But no, you didn’t do that then; you took what came to you and got on with it, or the neighbours would think you were getting above yourself.

I wasn’t a really clever child, but I do think that if my head hadn’t felt like it was stuffed with cotton-wool I would have passed that exam. And maybe then life would have taken a totally different path.

My mother always said that I was lucky to have been at Page Road, as though I should have been grateful for the chance to learn to type. Unlike some secondary moderns, Page Road offered a few City and Guilds courses, for the boys in metalwork or woodwork, the girls in shorthand and typing. So when we left, most of us walked straight into a job.

In June 1963, at the age of fifteen, I walked through those school gates for the last time, having acquired a grand total of just two CSEs (in English and housecraft) and my City and Guilds. The following Monday I joined the typing pool of Harrison & Sons, an engineering firm. On that first day I was so sick with nerves I couldn’t eat breakfast, but I was excited too. I’d be a working girl, not a schoolgirl, I’d have my own money to buy what I wanted, and I’d be able to wear my own clothes and not that disgusting bottle-green uniform, with its skirt all shiny from sitting on hard, wooden chairs.

The expectation was that I’d stay at Harrison’s until I married and had kids. That was what my mother did, working in one of the shoe factories until she had me and my brother, John. ‘I couldn’t see any point messing about, looking for other jobs,’ she’d once told me. ‘I was happy there so I stayed put.’

At that point the idea of marriage was a very remote one – a desirable but far-off state that I might one day find myself in. Of course I’d had boyfriends; for most of us at school acquiring boys had been more important than acquiring qualifications. The one had brought kudos and immediate gratification; the other seemed unnecessary, promising us work that we were all expected to give up at the first sign of babies. Still, when I thought about marriage it seemed to have no connection with those boys, the shy, awkward ones or the brash, loud ones, all of whom seemed to laugh like braying hyenas. I couldn’t quite see how I was going to bridge that gap, but I did believe that somehow it would happen.

My first day at Harrison’s was spent trying hard to absorb a million facts, all the routines and procedures – where to find this, where to find that, which stationery to use for which purpose, who was who and how to find them and then how to address them, or not – until my head was clogged with facts like an overstuffed suitcase. I was shown round by the Personnel Manageress, a brisk, scary woman with a beehive hairdo. She said that I’d be working mainly for the draughtsmen, typing up the specs for their drawings, and that sometimes I would have to go down to their department to fetch last-minute jobs and alterations. We stopped off on our little tour to look down on the drawing room from a windowed corridor above, where twenty or so men sat in rows at their boards. One or two of them glanced up, and one put his thumb up and grinned. I gave a faint smile back. The idea of walking in there and asking for anything was terrifying.

The factory itself was huge, but the offices and drawing department were all huddled together at the front of the building, so I thought I’d find my way round all right. In the typing pool there were about nine of us, and one girl was assigned to look after me. She was called Mary, and I took to her straightaway. She had vivid green eyes and a gutsy laugh.

At first I was quite timid and hardly dared speak to anyone apart from Mary, let alone ask for anything I might need. When I had to go down to the drawing room it was all I could do to say what I’d come for. But gradually, as the weeks went by, I got to know the men and started to chat back to them. They relished having us girls come along to relieve the boredom, and it was all just a bit of fun, they weren’t rude or dirty… well, except for the odd one or two, and I tried to avoid them. I hated being made to blush, and then hearing them laugh when I went out.

I tried hard to save money, which is what my dad said I should do – for a rainy day, he said. But it wasn’t easy when every Saturday all I wanted to spend my money on was records and clothes, the only two things I was really interested in then. Beatlemania had swept the country (pushing out singers like my idol, Billy Fury, who I still adored) and fashion had hit the High Street. It was as if I’d been half-asleep, as if my life had just properly woken up and I could see my sedate twinsets and tweedy A-line skirts for what they were: staid and deeply boring. I even began to think I looked worryingly like my mother. So now, on Saturdays, I went shopping with Mary, who I’d become good friends with. There was a new shop in town called Lewis Separates, where you could try things on without the assistant looking down her nose at you. Everything in there was so new and fresh, it was as though colour had been thrown down from the sky and landed right here on our High Street. I can still picture some of the things I bought: a lilac dress and matching coat; a tight houndstooth skirt that came above the knee and which I could only take small steps in; a cherry-coloured blouse with a ruffled collar, which I wore over a pair of black ski pants that my mother denounced as ‘unfeminine’. I kept going back, and what I couldn’t afford to buy I eyed up for making. Then I would get cheap material and Butterick Patterns off the market and run things up on my mother’s old sewing machine. It was mostly shift-dresses, which were so easy to make. With each one the hems rose a little further above the knee, and the skirts got a little tighter. To complete the look I learnt how to backcomb my hair into a blonde bouffant, and experimented with make-up. I piled it on – heaps of mascara, thick black eyeliner and pale, glossy lips – until my father muttered that I looked like a panda and my mother said I was showing them up. I didn’t really care about that. I was sixteen now, and turning heads. I had my mother’s eyes (baby-blue), my father’s full lips and a swing to my hips that I practised at home.

It worked, the look I’d perfected. I got chatted up at work, or at the dances Mary and I went to, and was asked for dates quite often, some of which I accepted – to films, or to a milk bar, or maybe a walk in the park on a Sunday. It was all very tame, and I didn’t find any of the boys especially interesting. So I didn’t go for long with anyone; I was always looking for the next conquest.

Months passed like this. By Christmas, Mary was engaged to one of the engineers on the shop floor, who she’d had her eye on for some time. She said she was sure he was ‘Mr Right’ and that all she wanted to do was leave work and have children. Some people thought it was too quick and there were rumours about her being pregnant, but no bump appeared. I hoped she wouldn’t have babies yet; I thought I’d be lost without her at work.

In January 1964 a new junior manager started at Harrison’s. His name was Rick Boutell and his family had moved to Harborough from London, which gave him an air of cosmopolitan glamour. Not only that – he was achingly good-looking. He had thick, glossed hair swept up in a quiff and cheekbones a girl would die for. At a distance he could have passed for Billy Fury; that on its own was enough to get my pulse racing. He was twenty-one, and had what others called ‘experience’, which raised the glamour factor. Even his name sounded like a pop star’s; Rick Boutell. He was a far cry from the other men at work, and suddenly all my light-hearted flirting had found a serious target. But not an easy one.

Unlike the other men, Rick didn’t seem to notice me much, although I tried to catch his eye. In the canteen I would give him a little smile if he glanced my way. And if we happened to pass in the corridor I’d say ‘Hello!’ brightly, but not slow down at all, as though I was far too busy to stand and chat. I made sure to emphasise that little sway to my hips that I knew men liked. All of this had worked a treat before, but all I got from Rick was an amused stare or a quizzical look. It was as if he could see straight through my little ploys and was laughing at me. Mary said not to bother about him, that he was rumoured to be having an affair with a married woman, that he was a ‘bit of a one’. I wasn’t sure I believed this, but it only made me more determined.

Things went on like this for some weeks until finally I had to accept that he just wasn’t interested in a sixteen-year-old girl. I’d been asked out by someone else, someone more my own age. I was thinking about it, and had stopped trying to get Rick to notice me. Two days later, as I was coming out of the ladies’, I saw him loitering by the window, looking out at a sudden flurry of snow. It was late February. He turned as he heard the door.

‘Looks cold out there,’ he said, tilting his head towards the window. I said yes, it did. ‘So… I think maybe you’d like to go for a drink sometime?’ he went on, with such casual cheek it took my breath away. I just stared at him, feeling my face grow hot. He grinned. ‘It hasn’t gone unnoticed, you see. Your interest. Only I was waiting.’

I blinked, thinking maybe this was how they behaved in London; this was how you did it when you had ‘experience’.

‘Waiting for what?’

‘Until I was free, of course. I don’t like two-timing.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Better be getting back. What do you think then? Tomorrow at eight? I’ll meet you outside Boots in town.’

I was used to being called for, so that my dad could give them the once over. And I wasn’t used to it being assumed I’d say yes.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll meet you tomorrow.’

I didn’t tell my parents, partly because of him not coming to the house, partly because I didn’t want to contaminate the nervous, fizzing excitement inside me with their inevitable questions. As far as they were concerned I was meeting a girlfriend and going to the cinema.

He was there at Boots before me and took me to the Fox and Hounds. I didn’t tell him I’d never been in a pub without my parents, and I wondered if he thought I was older than I was. I was so nervous I could hardly speak, hardly think what to say. Luckily he talked enough for both of us so I just sat and listened until a couple of Cherry Bs had loosened my tongue. But as the evening went on my heart began to sink when I realised what a gulf there was between us. Every topic of conversation seemed to show me up as naïve and ignorant. Like music. He was into jazz and blues and Bob Dylan, and thought the Beatles were a one-hit wonder. And films. I said I liked watching all the old black-and-whites on TV, and he looked scornful. ‘My all-time favourite’s Rebel Without a Cause,’ he said, and then that James Dean was his hero. I didn’t tell him I’d barely heard of the film, or James Dean.