My Policeman (3 page)

We ate in the front room, and Sylvie’s mother’s budgerigar provided a constant background tweep. There were plastic
chairs
with steel legs and a wipe-clean dining table with no cloth. Sylvie’s mother was wearing an orangey shade of lipstick, and from where I was sitting I could smell the lavender cleaning fluid on her hands. She was extremely overweight, which was strange, because all I ever saw her eat were salad leaves and cucumber slices, and all I ever saw her drink was black coffee. Despite this apparent self-denial, her features seemed lost somewhere in the swollen flesh of her face, and her bosom was enormous and always propped up on display, like an oversized, well-whipped meringue in a baker’s window. When I knew I shouldn’t spend any more time looking at Tom, who was sitting next to his mother, I would fix my eyes on Mrs Burgess’s cushiony cleavage. I knew I shouldn’t really look there, either, but it was better than being caught with my eyes wandering all over her son. I was convinced I could feel the heat rising from him; his naked forearm rested on the table, and it seemed to me that his flesh was warming the entire room. And I could smell him (I wasn’t just imagining this, Patrick): he smelled – do you remember? – he smelled of hair oil, of course – Vitalis, it would have been then – and of pine-scented talc, which I later learned he dashed liberally beneath his arms every morning before pulling on his shirt. At that time, as you’ll recall, men like Tom’s father did not approve of talc. It’s different now, of course. When I go to the Co-op in Peacehaven and pass all the young boys, their hair so closely resembling Tom’s as it once was – slicked with oil and teased into impossible shapes – I’m overwhelmed by the fabricated scent of their perfume. They smell like new furniture, those boys. But Tom didn’t smell like that. He smelled exciting, because, back then, men who covered their own sweat with talc were rather suspect, which was very interesting to me.
And
you got the best of both worlds, you see: the fresh odour of the talc, but if you were close enough, the warm, muddy smell of skin beneath.

When we’d finished our sandwiches, Mrs Burgess brought through the tinned peaches on pink dishes. We ate in silence. Then Tom wiped the sweet juice from his lips and announced, ‘I went down the conscription office today. To volunteer. That way I get to choose what I do.’ He pushed his dish away and looked his father in the face. ‘I start next week.’

After giving a brief nod, Mr Burgess stood up and held out his hand. Tom also stood, and clasped his father’s fingers. I wondered if they’d ever shaken hands before. It didn’t look like something they did often. There was a firm shake and then they both glanced around the room as if wondering what to do next.

‘He always has to outdo me,’ Sylvie hissed in my ear.

‘What’ll you be doing?’ asked Mr Burgess, still standing, blinking at his son.

Tom cleared his throat. ‘Catering Corps.’

The two men stared at one another and Sylvie let out a giggle.

Mr Burgess suddenly sat down.

‘This is news, isn’t it? Shall we have a drink, Jack?’ Mrs Burgess’s voice was high, and I thought I heard a little crack in it as she pushed back her chair. ‘We need a drink, don’t we? For news like this.’ As she stood, she knocked the remains of her black coffee over the table. It spread across the white plastic and dripped on to the rug below.

‘Clumsy cow,’ muttered Mr Burgess.

Sylvie let out another giggle.

Tom, who seemed to have been standing in a trance, his arm still slightly outstretched where he’d shaken his father’s
hand
, moved towards his mother. ‘I’ll get a cloth,’ he said, touching her shoulder.

After Tom had left the room, Mrs Burgess looked around the table, taking in each of our faces. ‘Whatever will we do now?’ she said. Her voice was so quiet that I wondered if anyone else had heard her speak. Certainly no one responded for a few moments. But then Mr Burgess sighed and said, ‘Catering Corps isn’t exactly the Somme, Beryl.’

Mrs Burgess gave a sob and followed her son out of the room.

Tom’s father said nothing. The budgie tweeped and tweeped as we waited for Tom’s return. I could hear him talking in a hushed voice in the kitchen, and I imagined his mother weeping in his arms, devastated, as I was, that he was leaving.

Sylvie kicked my chair, but instead of looking at her, I fixed Mr Burgess with a stare and said, ‘Even soldiers have to eat, though, don’t they?’ I kept my voice steady and neutral. Later on, this was what I did when a child answered me back in class, or when Tom told me it was your turn, Patrick, at the weekend. ‘I’m sure Tom will make a good chef.’

Mr Burgess gave a tight laugh before pushing back his chair and hollering towards the kitchen door: ‘For God’s sake, where’s that drink?’

Tom came back in, holding two beer bottles. His father snatched one, held it up to Tom’s face and said, ‘Well done for upsetting your mother.’ Then he left the room, but instead of going into the kitchen and comforting Mrs Burgess, as I thought he might, I heard the front door slam.

‘Did you hear what Marion said?’ squawked Sylvie, snatching the other bottle from Tom and rolling it between her hands.

‘That’s mine,’ said Tom, grabbing it back from her.

‘Marion said you’ll make a good chef.’

With a deft flick of his wrist, Tom released the air from the bottle and tossed the metal cap and the opener aside. He took a glass from the top of the sideboard and carefully poured himself half a pint of thick brown ale. ‘Well,’ he said, holding the drink before his face and inspecting it before taking a couple of gulps, ‘she’s right.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked directly at me. ‘I’m glad there’s someone with some sense in this house,’ he said, with a broad smile. ‘Wasn’t I going to teach you to swim?’

That night, I wrote in my hard-backed black notebook:
His smile is like a harvest moon. Mysterious. Full of promises
. I was very pleased with those words, I remember. And every evening after that, I would fill my notebook with my longing for Tom.
Dear Tom
, I wrote. Or sometimes
Dearest Tom
, or even
Darling Tom
; but I didn’t allow myself that indulgence too often; mostly, the pleasure of seeing his name appear in characters wrought by my hand was enough. Back then I was easy to please. Because when you’re in love with someone for the first time, their name is enough. Just seeing my hand form Tom’s name was enough. Almost.

I would describe the day’s events in ludicrous detail, complete with azure eyes and crimson skies. I don’t think I ever wrote about his body, although it was obviously this that impressed me the most; I expect I wrote about the nobility of his nose (which is actually rather flat and squashed-looking) and the deep bass of his voice. So you see, Patrick, I was typical. So typical.

For almost three years, I wrote out all my longing for Tom, and I looked forward to the day when he would come home and teach me to swim.

Does this infatuation seem faintly ludicrous to you, Patrick?
Perhaps
not. I suspect that you know about desire, about the way it grows when it’s denied, better than anyone. Every time Tom was home on leave I seemed to miss him, and I wonder now if I did this deliberately. Was waiting for his return, forgoing the sight of the real Tom, and instead writing about him in my notebook, a way of loving him more?

During Tom’s absence I did have some thoughts about getting myself a career. I remember I had an interview with Miss Monkton, the Deputy Head, towards the end of my time at the grammar, when I was about to sit my exams, and she asked me what my plans for the future were. They were quite keen on girls having plans for the future, although I knew, even then, this was all a pipe-dream that only stood up inside the walls of the school. Outside, plans fell apart, especially for girls. Miss Monkton had rather wild hair, for those days: a mass of tight curls, specked with silver. I felt sure she smoked, because her skin was the colour of well-brewed tea and her lips, which frequently curled into an ironic smile, had that dry tightness about them. In Miss Monkton’s office, I announced that I would like to become a teacher. It was the only thing I could think of at the time; it sounded better than saying I’d like to become a secretary, but it didn’t seem completely absurd, unlike, say, becoming a novelist or an actress, both of which I’d privately imagined myself being.

I don’t think I’ve admitted that to anyone before.

Anyway, Miss Monkton twisted her pen so the cap clicked and said, ‘And what’s made you reach this conclusion?’

I thought about it. I couldn’t very well say,
I don’t know what else I could do
. Or,
It doesn’t look like I’ll be getting hitched, does it?

‘I like school, miss.’ As I spoke the words, I realised they
were
true. I liked the regular bells, the cleaned blackboards, the dusty desks full of secrets, the long corridors crammed with girls, the turpentine reek of the art class, the sound of the library catalogue spinning through my fingers. And I suddenly imagined myself at the front of a classroom, in a smart tweed skirt and a neat chignon, winning the respect and affection of my pupils with my firm but fair methods. I had no conception, then, of how bossy I would become, or how teaching would change my life. You often called me bossy, and you were right; teaching drills it into you. It’s you or them, you see. You have to make a stand. I learned that early on.

Miss Monkton gave one of her curled smiles. ‘It’s rather different,’ she said, ‘from the other side of the desk.’ She paused, put her pen down and turned to the window so she was no longer facing me. ‘I don’t want to dampen your ambitions, Taylor. But teaching requires enormous dedication and considerable backbone. It’s not that you’re not a decent student. But I would have thought something office-based would be more your line. Something a little quieter, perhaps?’

I stared at the trail of milk on top of her cooling cup of tea. Apart from that cup, her desk was completely empty.

‘What, for example,’ she continued, turning back towards me with a quick look at the clock above the door, ‘do your parents think of the idea? Are they prepared to support you through this venture?’

I hadn’t mentioned any of this to Mum and Dad. They could hardly believe I’d got in to the grammar in the first place; at the news, my father had complained about the cost of the uniform, and my mother had sat on the sofa, put her head in her hands and cried. I’d been pleased at first, assuming she was moved to tears by her pride in my achievement, but when she wouldn’t stop I’d asked her what was wrong and
she’d
said, ‘It’ll all be different now. This will take you away from us.’ And then, most nights, they complained that I spent too long studying in my bedroom, rather than talking to them.

I looked at Miss Monkton. ‘They’re right behind me,’ I announced.

WHEN I LOOK
over the fields to the sea, on these autumn days when the grass moves in the wind and the waves sound like excited breath, I remember that I once felt intense and secret things, just like you, Patrick. I hope you will understand that, and I hope you can forgive it.

Spring 1957. Having finished his National Service, Tom was still away, training to become a policeman. I often thought with excitement of him joining the force. It seemed such a brave,
grown-up
thing to do. I didn’t know anyone else who’d do such a thing. At home, the police were rather suspect – not the enemy, exactly, but an unknown quantity. I knew that as a policeman Tom would have a different life to our parents, one that was more daring, more powerful.

I was attending teacher training college in Chichester but still saw Sylvie quite a bit, even though she was becoming more involved with Roy. Once she asked me to go with her to the roller rink, but when I got there she turned up with Roy and another boy called Tony, who worked with Roy at the garage. Tony didn’t seem to be able to speak much. Not to me, anyway. Occasionally he’d shout a comment to Roy as we skated round, but Roy didn’t always look back. That was because his eyes were caught up with Sylvie’s. It was like they couldn’t look anywhere else, not even where they were going.
Tony
didn’t hold my arm as we skated round, and I managed to get ahead of him several times. As I skated I thought of the smile Tom had given me the day he’d announced he was joining the Catering Corps, how his top lip had disappeared above his teeth and his eyes had slanted. When we stopped for a Coke, Tony didn’t smile at me. He asked me when I was leaving school, and I said, ‘Never – I’m going to be a teacher,’ and he looked at the door like he wanted to skate right through it.

One sunny afternoon not long after that, Sylvie and I went to Preston Park and sat on the bench beneath the elms, which were lovely and rustly, and she announced her engagement to Roy. ‘We’re very happy,’ she declared, with a secretive little smile. I asked her if Roy had taken advantage of her, but she shook her head and there was that smile again.

For a long time we just watched the people going by with their dogs and their children in the sunshine. Some of them had cones from the Rotunda. Neither Sylvie nor I had money for ice cream and Sylvie was still silent, so I asked her: ‘How far have you gone, then?’