Writing On the Wall Page 5

  You can’t go on saying no all the time.

  “I’ll have a gin and orange,” I said, casual. Never had one before in my life of course. God, I thought. What if that bloke on the door could see me now?

  He was back in a flash with this drink in a small glass. “Get it down you and let’s dance,” he said.

  I got it down me. Not bad. My eyes watered a bit.

  “Come on then, girl,” he said. He grabbed my hand and next thing I knew, we were dancing.

  He was a good dancer. I think. Or maybe it was the gin. That gin and the two I had later. They’d’ve made a good dancer out of a one-legged kangaroo. I won’t say I was stoned. Just floating about, kind of. All the lights spinning around twice as fast as we were. I think I fell over once, or almost. He caught hold of me and set me up again like a skittle. Gave me a little push, and I started pogoing again.

  And that was another thing. The music. I never liked it very loud. Hurt my ears, made me nervy. Now, sound doesn’t come louder than in the Music Mill. They’ve got amplifiers there would make your average disco sound like a budgie chirping in the next room. But I didn’t mind. I liked it. I even loved it. Usually I feel like the noise is trying to do a break-and-enter job on my skull. Now, thanks to the gin(s), I felt that it was already in there, somehow. No use fighting it. Just had to let myself go with it.

  Once or twice I saw Connie, dancing with Gary. She waved to me. After a while I stopped seeing her.

  When we weren’t dancing we sat in one of the boxes the caryatids were holding up. It was great up there, like being up in the clouds, looking down on a mad world. This boy naturally wanted something back for all those gins and that, but when I didn’t want to, he didn’t push it. We talked a bit. He seemed to live for the Music Mill; no job, slept all day and came to the Mill at night. Knew all the groups. He was some kind of squatter he said; he wasn’t from London. I could’ve told that from his accent. I’m good on voices. He was from Manchester.

  After a time – a long time – I had to go to the toilet. It wasn’t very nice in there and I didn’t hang about, but when I came out I couldn’t spot him. He’d gone from the box and I couldn’t see him anywhere about, though I walked all round the hall looking. Not that I specially wanted him, for himself; he’d just got to be a sort of habit. Anyway he’d gone.

  Someone else was in our box, so I went and leaned against the railing above the dance floor. I wished Kev was with me. I still felt a bit floaty from the gins. I watched the dancing while the music throbbed in my head like the time I had flu so bad I got. delirious. I got ever such a funny idea while I stood there, watching all the jumping and jigging going on below. I thought if those caryatids just bent forward a bit, the boxes on their heads would get thrown down onto the dancers, like in The Phantom of the Opera when the chandelier falls down and crushes the people underneath. . . . Then I had another funny idea. The music was so loud, you might not have heard the crashes and screams, not if you hadn’t been watching. . . . I looked round at the caryatids. They looked like big white devils. I gave a shiver and turned away.

  I think the gin was wearing off. Maybe that’s why I started thinking of home and what Mum and Dad would be doing and what they’d say when I got back. I said before I don’t think ahead much. I just let things happen. But once I get started, I can’t stop.

  It must be getting late . . .

  What was I thinking about, coming here in the first place? It wasn’t even a Friday or Saturday – I’d got school tomorrow! I must be crazy, hanging about this club or whatever it was – I wasn’t even enjoying myself any more. Dad’d have my head on a plate the minute I got in the door.

  Suddenly I got all panicky. I wanted to leave, now, right away. I looked round wildly for Connie. Had she gone off without me? Would she do that? Karen would, like a shot, if there was a boy in the picture. I didn’t know about Connie.

  I ran down the stairs to the dance-floor. They’d dimmed the lights till you couldn’t see anything clearly, they just had these spotlights on the band. . . . I looked for ages, straining my eyes, but I couldn’t see her. What if she’d really gone? She had all the money and – I remembered with a nasty shock – my return tube ticket. What’d I do if I couldn’t find her?

  I went out into the lobby, cursing her under my breath, telling her what I thought of her. And there she was, playing snooker with Gary.

  Well, I pinned a grin on and went up to her.

  “Con, I think we ought to go.”

  Of course I thought she’d stall a bit, now she’d found a boy. Who wouldn’t? I might myself. But she didn’t. She looked at her watch and said, “God, you’re right! It’s after one o’clock!”

  Panic? I hadn’t known what it meant till she said that.

  “One o’clock?” I almost shrieked. “You got to be joking!”

  She showed me the watch. There it was in red glowing figures, 01.10. I wished I could crawl under that snooker table and die.

  “How’ll we get home? Con! How’ll we get home?”

  She didn’t seem fussed at all. She laid down the cue and turned to Gary.

  “You got a car?”

  He shook his head.

  She smiled at him. “Not to worry, we’ll manage. Come on, Tracy.”

  She just walked off. Gary ran after her, through into the next lobby where all the pinball gambling machines were flashing like mad.

  “Here, hang about! I don’t know where you live!”

  Without stopping she threw back at him, cool as you please, “You don’t have to.”

  “But I want to!”

  “I’ll be around. Anyway I’m only sixteen. I’m not meant to be in here really.”

  That stopped him short, but only for a minute. As we went out the swing-doors into the open, he came rushing after us.

  “No readmission!” Connie sang out, just before he let go the door. He stopped again and stood there, staring after us as we walked away into the dark.

  “Didn’t you like him?” I asked, although I was in such a state by now I didn’t really care.

  “Yes, he’s okay. Nice talker. Not grabby.”

  “So why did you run off like that?” She was striding along fast, with me having to run to keep up with her.

  “He was good enough company for an evening but he’s nothing special.”

  This seemed to me a bit funny. Unnatural. I mean, for a girl who wasn’t going with someone already . . . you’d think she’d want him to phone her. But I couldn’t bother about that now. It was after one o’clock in the morning. Mother of God! I thought, What’ll I do? And that was praying, not swearing.

  “What’ll we do, Con?”

  “Well, I know what I’m going to do,” she said, still cool. “I’m going to sleep in King’s Cross station, and go home on the first tube in the morning.”

  I nearly dropped.

  “Sleep in a station? All night? What’ll your dad say?”

  “Nothing. I done it before. He don’t mind.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  She shrugged. “Don’t then.”

  I suddenly started to cry. It just came over me. Connie came back to where I was stuck in the street there, blubbing.

  “What’s up?” she asked, quite kindly really.

  “Maybe your dad won’t mind, but mine’ll bloody well murder me!”

  She gave me her hanky and said, “Okay. Blow your nose while I think.” She stood there looking into the road. There was still a lot of cars going past. I guessed what she was thinking.

  “And I’m not thumbing a lift neither, so don’t suggest that! This time of night, anything could happen!”

  She put her arm round my shoulder. “Look, Tracy,” she said, “you know what you better do. Call your dad. If he’s like you say, he’ll be waiting up. Dead worried most like. Ask him to come and get you.”

  My first thought was, I couldn’t! But my second was, What else can I do? Maybe he’d be relieved to hear from me, maybe they’d be
en so worried they’d forgiven me for what happened at supper. . . . Even if not, what could I do? I wasn’t staying out all night in some station; I didn’t dare.

  I swallowed. “Okay. Give me Sp for the phone.”

  I found a phone box and dialled our number. Dad answered after the first half-ring.

  “Tracy?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At Camden Town station.”

  “Are you alone there?”

  “No, I’m with Connie.”

  “Stay still. Don’t speak with nobody. I am coming now.”

  Connie stayed with me till Dad came, but she wouldn’t come back with us. As the car drove up and I said, “Here he is!” she just gave my arm a friendly squeeze and said, “Good luck. I’m off,” and walked quickly away. I called her, but she didn’t turn. Weird. Maybe she liked sleeping in the station.

  I didn’t have time to wonder about it because Dad had thrown open the door of the car and there was nothing for it but to get in.

  We drove as far as the beginning of Westway before he said one word. I looked at his profile. All the ballooniness of his nose and lips was drawn together in lumpy ridges from his scowl. I was trembling. He’d never hit me. Well, once he did – just once, when I’d really scared him with my temper. But his words could sting worse than slaps. Now, even his silence hurt. So much that in the end I said:

  “We didn’t do anything bad. Just went to a sort of disco hall. It’s not a bad place.”

  Dead silence.

  “I was just so fed up. You don’t know how much I wanted to go on that trip.”

  “When you are too old to have such tempers,” he said. “When you are more mature. Then you can travel. Travel is a wonderful thing. One must not take it for granted. In Poland the government keeps the people’s passports. They cannot go abroad to see other countries unless the government allows. If we lived in Poland, you would realise that foreign travel is a privilege. Too good to waste on silly bad-tempered children.”

  What could I say. Incredible-shrinking-man time again. I just curled up in my seat and stared out of the window. I was shivering.

  Dad glanced at me. “You’re cold,” he said accusingly. “Why you go out at night without your jacket? Is stupid.” He turned the heater on. “Your mother has been crying all evening,” he said. “Herself she blames. What did she do to blame herself for? Why should she cry? I’m asking you.”

  I knew that that was one of those questions that doesn’t expect an answer, but I answered it. “She put my supper on the floor,” I said. “I’m not a dog.”

  “You acted worse than a dog,” he said. “For being a mother and punishing you for your nastiness, she must blame herself? Let the ones who don’t care, blame themselves. Let the ones who don’t punish, blame themselves.”

  I thought of Connie’s parents. “Dad, what would you have done if I’d stopped out all night?” I asked.

  He gave me a look then. “You are sixteen,” he said. “If you were fourteen, or fifteen, and you stay out all night, perhaps I take my belt off. But you are sixteen. You are nearly a woman. You stay out all night, that means you think you are grown up and can do what you like. You don’t accept my authority. I have no way to control you. You are too old to beat, not old enough to leave home. To say the true, I don’t know what I would do. It is hard to be a father. Don’t make it harder.”

  I’d thought I was in his hands, but think how I felt when he turned round and put himself in mine! What could I do except say, “Well, I thought of it – but then I decided not to.” I didn’t add that I’d been dead scared of the idea of spending the night sitting up in King’s Cross station.

  Dad said, “Good. I sent your mother to bed. In the morning, I want you should apologise to her. Will you do that?”

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t say anything else till we got home. He parked the car and we sat for a moment in the darkness after he turned off the headlamps.

  “Dad.”

  “What?”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “Don’t thank me for that, Tracy. I was glad you had sense to phone and ask. I would always come. I told you.”

  “Dad—”

  “What now?”

  “Is there no way – no way at all – that you would change your mind about the trip?”

  “You choose a bad moment to ask me.”

  “Is there, though?”

  After a long pause, he sighed. “Tracy. I don’t like your friends. I’m sorry.”

  “Is that the main thing?”

  “It is one thing.”

  It didn’t seem to be a thing I could do anything about. I just crept upstairs. I was shivering all over. Mary was fast asleep of course. My bed was turned down. I threw off my clothes and crawled in, expecting the icy sheets. The most lovely heat spread all over me. I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Mum had taken her electric blanket, that Dad gave her for Christmas, off their bed and put it in mine. Now why would she do that? Had she done it out of love, or just to make me feel lousy, after I’d made her cry the whole night? If she had, it worked. But not for long because I fell asleep.

  6 · Michael

  No prizes for guessing how I felt about getting up for school, what seemed like two hours later. I even had a hangover. I suppose that’s what it was. Headache and that. Mouth all horrible. Never again. (That was all I knew!)

  Mum pulled me up somehow. She didn’t say a word about last night. I remembered I promised Dad though, so I said, before I’d had time to think about not wanting to, “Sorry.” She sort of went “Hmp”. Then she said, “Put on a clean blouse. Wash your neck first.” Wash my neck! I ask you! As if I was ten years old. Of course I got the message. I’d acted ten years old. Okay. Fair enough. I shut my mouth and washed my neck. Mary was still asleep. Her job in Woolies doesn’t start till nine-thirty so she doesn’t move till nine. I was glad. Fewer questions, the better.

  Lily was wide awake though. Isn’t she always?

  “Where did you go bouncing off to last night?”

  There was only her and me at breakfast. Sean was helping in the shop while he was looking for a new job. Vlady of course has a steady job with British Oxygen (“Bock” we call it.) They give him time off to go on studying. He hadn’t gone to work yet, but he eats early and then studies in his room. I was glad he wasn’t there to ask questions. As it was just Lily and me (Mum was out hanging washing) I was able to give her a good answer.

  “I went out dancing. And drinking. And smoking. And I picked up a boy – two in fact. And I came home at two a.m. And I’ve got a hangover. So now you know.” I went on eating my sugar-puffs.

  She just gaped at me. Of course she thought I was making it up.

  “Liar!” she said. But she wasn’t quite sure. I didn’t say another word.

  For once I was dying to get to school. I wanted to see Connie. Would she turn up? Well, she did, and looking none the worse for her night in the station. She was her school-self again, all nice and clean, blazer and flat heels like the rest of us, eyes looking smaller without the black, hair brushed down instead of up. She’s like two people. I think that’s how she wants to be.

  “How was it?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  “No, honest – tell me. Where’d you sleep?”

  “On a bench.”

  “Do they let you?”

  “They don’t stop you. Lots of people do it. People waiting for early trains and that.”

  “But what if someone came up and started with you? I’ve heard there’s gangs, just on the lookout for young girls—”

  “There’s always a couple of coppers there to keep an eye on things. Nobody tries it on with me anyway. Not when I’m in my gear, they don’t.”

  “What time d’you get home?”

  “About five-thirty, six. Time to have a bath and change and have something to eat.”

  “And your mum and dad didn’t say a word?
”

  “Mum asked where I’d been. Dad was asleep. He don’t get up early.”

  “She doesn’t mind?” It seemed crazy to me, not like a real mother.

  “I told you. She trusts me.”

  I thought of what Dad had said – “I wouldn’t know what to do.” Some kids I heard of left home altogether, they just bunked off and never came back. Maybe Connie’s parents were just glad she didn’t do that.

  “Maybe they think, if they get mad, you’ll leave home for good,” I said.

  “I would, too,” she said.

  “How could you? What would you live on?”

  She smiled. She had this very sweet, innocent face, round and rosy, like a baby’s, but there was something about her mouth – a little bit crooked when she smiled.

  “It’s not hard to live away from home,” she said. “Lots of kids do it. You get in on a squat somewhere. You work when you got to. Some of ’em con a bit, or go on the rob, but I wouldn’t do that, that’s not my style. I don’t mind work. Just not for too long at one thing, that’s all. There’s Social Security, too, if things get too tough. Oh, you won’t starve if you leave home.”

  “You sound as if you’re planning to.”

  “I’ve thought about it. There’s nothing to keep me at home.”

  “Don’t you – you know – like your parents?”

  She lifted one shoulder again, that way she has. She was keeping something back, I could see.

  We were standing in the playground. Suddenly up rushed Darryl.

  “Hi!” he yelled. “Hallo, girls!” He was all lit up, even more than yesterday. “Guess what? I’ve got a job after school! Butcher’s boy, me! Saturdays all day and all. By the time we leave for Holland I’ll have earned enough to buy myself a two-man tent!”

  “I thought you was borrowing your brother’s?”

  “That old thing! It’s dropping to bits. No, I seen one at the sports centre. Nylon, light as a feather, built-in ground-sheet, fly-netting, extra rain-cover, aluminium poles that fold up short. . . . Special offer! My dad’s giving me a little portable stove for my birthday and all. Listen, you two got to be nice to me from now on, and whoever’s the nicest, gets to share my two-man tent!”