My Secret Diary (11 page)

Jill said yes. I didn't blame her. I'd have said
yes too if I'd been second on the register. Everyone
said yes. I was stuck standing there, the girl who'd
said no.

I held my head high and clenched my fists,
telling myself I didn't care. But my heart was
banging
boom-boom-boom
inside my chest and I
knew I was trembling. It all seemed a ridiculous
fuss about nothing and blatantly unfair as she'd
said attendance at Motspur Park was voluntary. As
if it made any difference to anyone whether I was
there or not. She kept glancing in my direction,
acting as if I'd deliberately tried to poison the entire
athletics team.

I didn't really believe her remarks about never
amounting to anything – and to be fair, I don't
think she really meant it. She was just furious,
worried that all the other girls would follow my
example and she'd be left looking a fool without
any girls cheering on her wretched team.

She was right about one thing though. I don't
think I
do
have any team spirit. I never identified
with school. I never felt proud of my uniform. I
never sniffled when we sang the school hymn at
the end of term. I never cheered with genuine
enthusiasm. I loved my special friends, I liked some
of the teachers, but Coombe as an institution meant
nothing to me.

Coombe's lovely now. Maybe it was lovely for all
the other pupils back in 1960. I was just the odd
one out.

Miss French thought I was the most bone-idle,
lazy girl at Coombe. I wasn't at all. I walked
to school every day, a good two- or three-mile hike
from our flats in Kingston all the way over to New
Malden. If I'd spent my week's bus fare on a
paperback or Woolworths notebook I'd walk all the
way home again too.

Sometimes I walked with Sue next door,
sometimes I walked with another Susan, a girl from
Kingsnympton, the council estate up the hill. I liked
both Sues. I could have a cosy chat with Sue next
door about our dancing class and a moan about our
mums. I knew the other Sue less well, but she was
interesting, telling me all about the feuds and gangs
and punch-ups on the Kingsnympton estate. She
also passed her
Bunty
comic on to me every week.
I considered myself way beyond the
Bunty
stage
but it wouldn't have been polite to say so – and I
was happy to read anything.

I think I liked the walk to school most, though,
when I was on my own. I'd always been a very
dreamy girl and yet nowadays there was very little
opportunity to dream. I was supposed to stay on
red alert, listening and concentrating at school, and
then in the evenings I had to struggle through my
homework before rushing out to go dancing or to
the pictures.

But if I walked to school on my own I could
daydream for nearly an hour as I marched along
in my Clarks clodhoppers, swinging my satchel.
Sometimes I made up stories. Sometimes I
pretended I was being interviewed by a journalist:
'I'm simply bowled over by your first novel,
Jacqueline. I've never encountered such
remarkable talent in one so young,' etc., etc.!
Sometimes I peered at the houses all around me
and imagined the people inside and the lives they
were living. The first half of the journey was much
the most interesting because I stepped from one
world into quite another.

Cumberland House was a small 1950s council
estate, three six-storey blocks of flats. It was
quite genteel as council estates go. A window
would get broken once in a while or someone used
the lift as a toilet, but mostly we were a timid,
law-abiding tribe, though still relatively poor.
Biddy and Harry had only just got a car and a
telephone. We still didn't have a washing machine
or a fridge and owned just a very small black
and white television. We went for a holiday
once a year but we hardly ever went out as a
family otherwise.

We had the special treat on Sundays of a shared
bottle of Tizer and a Wall's family block of
raspberry ripple ice cream after our roast chicken.
This was High Living as far as we were concerned.
The flat was still furnished with the dark utility
table and chairs and sideboard bought just after
the war, with a gloomy brown sofa and two chairs
filling up the rest of the room. We weren't allowed
to sit on the sofa because it would disturb Biddy's
complicated arrangement of decorative cushions.
She sat in one chair, Harry in the other, while I
perched on an unpleasant brown leatherette pouffe.

We didn't have a garden to relax in but we
did
have a balcony. Biddy didn't go in for tubs of
flowers or window boxes as she said that plants
would shed their leaves and make a mess – but
she let me have a hammock slung precariously
from one end of the balcony to the other. I'd begged
for a hammock for my birthday, thinking it would
be romantic to swing idly while reading a book,
just like all the girls in Victorian storybooks. I
hadn't bargained on the fact that swinging, idly
or otherwise, made me feel queasy, and if I wasn't
cautious enough the hammock would go
clonk
against the side of the concrete balcony and give
my hip a nasty bruise.

But once I'd walked out of the flats, crossed the
very noisy main road and passed the pub opposite,
I stepped into George Road, which could have been
on a different planet. It was a private road, part of
the Coombe estate, the very poshest part
of Kingston where celebrities lived in enormous
houses and played on the exclusive golf course. I
wasn't so keen on the modern houses, palatial
though they were. I liked the enormous Victorian
houses, some now turned into private schools. I'd
imagine myself back in time, living there, the
bookish daughter of the house,
not
the grubby
scullery maid.

Then I'd turn down a smaller road and reach
my favourite house. I describe it in a June entry
in my diary:

Down the Drive there are some absolutely beautiful
houses with enormous gardens – my favourite has
a great big pond, almost a lake, with willows all
around and a little waterfall leading onto a much
smaller pool surrounded by bluebells. There is a
fence and hedge all round so you can only see bits
at a time. At the moment their rhododendron bushes
are all in bloom, a lovely crimson.

I found out that this beautiful house,
Kingfishers, had once been part of the John
Galsworthy estate. I didn't read his Forsyte Saga
books until they were serialized on television in the
late sixties. It was enough just knowing that the
house had once been owned by a
writer
.

I wrote a lamentably bad poem about the house:

KINGFISHERS
I peer through the bamboo leaves;
No privet hedges here.
The sweet pea on the trellis weaves;
Bees, satisfied, appear.

The gabled house stands proudly
Embraced by tender creeper.
Only a chaffinch, singing loudly,
Ignoring me, the peeper.

Small curious paths brazenly wind
Beneath the silver birches,
Scattered round, to the garden's rind.
Peace here, as in churches.

A feathery aged willow protects
The quiet unruffled lake.
A tiny woodsy island injects
Itself, obstinately opaque.

The water trickles, filters through
To a secret mossy pond,
Springtimely fringed by bells of blue
And the fern's lacy frond.

Oh house, generations-long secure
With your cosy ingle-nooks.
Your magic easily did procure
John Galsworthy and his books.

Would that I might live here too,
Free from cares and danger;
So easy, Jeevesy. Troubles few;
But I am just a stranger.

As I trudged on through the less exciting
suburban streets of New Malden I'd daydream
about being a famous best-selling author one day
– and maybe
I'd
live in a house like Kingfishers.

Dream on, little Jacky Daydream! I live in a
beautiful house now and I wouldn't want to swap
it with anyone, but my lovely home looks like a
little cottage compared to Kingfishers.

I was clearly exercising my imagination as well
as my legs as I walked to school. I also went
dancing at least twice a week, sometimes more. Not
ballet
dancing, though I'd have loved to learn.
When I was little I longed to wear a neat black
practice dress, a pink angora bolero and pale pink
ballet shoes like some of the girls at my primary
school. Biddy thought ballet a waste of time
and didn't want to get lumbered with making
my costumes.

She sent me to old-time dancing classes instead,
mainly because they were held just down the road
on a Saturday morning and I could go with Sue.
There were fourteen or so other pupils, all girls.
We paired up, and because I was a little taller than
Sue I had to be the boy. I'm
still
better at being
the boy at dancing and have to fight not to take
the lead and steer my partner around the floor!

We didn't have to wear special outfits like ballet
dancers. We didn't even have to wear special shoes,
though lots of the girls wore silver or sparkly
strappy dance sandals. I longed to have a pair, but
had to make do with boring black patent. Perhaps
that's why nowadays I have such a weakness for
silver or sparkly shoes!

Sue and I went dancing together for years. I
started to feel I was getting too old for it – and we
weren't really progressing. We'd got our bronze and
silver and gold medals but we were never going to
be real competition standard. I skipped dancing
class the first two Saturdays in January, but on the
sixteenth I wrote:

For once I went Old Time dancing with Sue. I quite
enjoyed myself although I prefer Friday night
dancing.
[Of course I did – it was ballroom, and
there were boys].
I wasn't the oldest for once because
Sandra came
[the girl who lent me
Peyton Place
].
We danced the Quadrilles and it was ever such good
fun. Also we did the Maxina which I enjoy doing
as it is so unusual
.

I can't for the life of me remember how to do
the quadrilles or the maxina now. I can vaguely
remember old-time favourites like the valeta and
the Boston two-step, and I still get tempted to whirl
about the room whenever I hear a Viennese waltz
– my feet go forward-side-together-back-behind-front
of their own accord.

Mr Crichton, the old-time teacher, threw a party
for all his dancing students at the end of January.

It was very good fun and I had a lovely time, but
not as good as last Saturday!
[I'd been to a party.
I'll be writing about it later in a chapter on boys.]
We had some good novelty dances and some ballet
shows that Sandra was in. Then all these lifeboat
men in raincoats and sou'westers came in through
the door pulling a rope and singing 'Yo heave ho'.
Then into the hall on the end of the rope was pulled
a man on a potty reading a newspaper. Everyone
was so amazed they just stood open-mouthed. Guess
what! Sue and I won the Maxina competition and
got a lovely gold medal each!

I wore this gold medal the next Saturday when
I went dancing.

We did a good square dance called the Caledonians.
Next week we are all taking sandwiches and staying
on in the afternoon to train for the Kingston dancing
competition to be held at the Coronation Hall.

The following Saturday

We did the Quadrilles; I love the music to that. We
had a picnic lunch there, and then had another
hour's dancing, this time competition work. We had
some exercises to do, and next week we've got to bring
old sheets to put on the ground as we're going to do
exercises on the ground. It's going to be jolly indecent
raising stockinged legs in front of Mr Crichton!

Saturday 20 February

Went dancing. We learnt some new dances, but not
very nice ones. When it was time for the Beginners
to go home and for us to have our picnic lunches
this gorgeous boy and an enormous Afghan hound
came and collected one of the little girls. Naturally,
I went up and stroked the hound, then stared up
into the boy's face and smiled. Am impatiently
waiting for next week to come. We had a good chat
eating our lunch in the cloakroom gathered round
the oil stove on old benches. Sandra, who is 15 in
July so nearest in age to me, told us she had three
brothers. 'How old?' came a chorus. 'All younger
than me,' Sandra replied. 'Ooh!' came
disappointedly from the chorus. Afterwards we had
to do some horrible exercises lying on the floor. We
all had terrible giggles!

Saturday 27 February

When I woke up I thought it was Friday like I do
every Saturday and tried to force myself out of my
lovely warm nest. Then the gorgeous realisation
swept over me and I was able to go back to sleep.
I went dancing. Sandra, Christine, Wendy, Sue
and I had a good chat. The dog turned up again
to collect the little girl but with a middle-aged man
instead of its other owner. Honestly, the exercises
were so funny. Doing bicycles was bad enough, but
when we had to lie on our tummies and just
balance on our hands and the tips of our toes, and
also when we had to raise both our chest and our
legs off the floor so that we were curved, and only
lying on our waists; well, we were just prostrate
with giggles. Sandra told me that her hair was
not naturally curly. I was amazed as it looks
so pretty. I must try putting mine up in
rollers. Also she said she goes to a co-ed school,
and learns typing as well as ordinary lessons. Isn't
she lucky!

Saturday 5 March

Lay in, and then got dressed in white jumper and
pink and mauve mohair skirt and went dancing.
We learnt a new square dance called the Tango
Quadrilles. Now we know four: the Quadrilles, the
Lancers, the Caledonians and now the Tango
Quadrilles. The middle-aged man turned up with
the dog again. Sue didn't stay the third hour. She
might have let me know beforehand. After we'd
eaten our picnic lunches we chattered a while, and
then really slogged away at the Filed Waltz, Valeta
Latchford and the Military Two Step. The
competition is in a month's time! Mr C was giving
us all butterflies when he told us about the strict
rules. As Sue wasn't there I had to dance with Mr
C. Honestly, such a fuss about a little thing like a
salute. Mr C had us all in front of him, and finally
we could do it as 'snappy' as he wished. My poor
arm aches now.

Saturday 12 March

I went dancing with Sue this morning. Sandra has
had her hair cut, it looks nice, but I preferred it
long and curly, it made her look more pretty. We
had our picnics and then slogged for another hour
at the Lola Tango, Fyle, and the Premia. Ga and
Gongon said they would like to come and watch me
at the competition on 2 April. I cannot think of
an excuse to prevent them coming without making
them feel hurt, but I shall be very embarrassed,
especially if I am knocked out the first round. (It
sounds like boxing!)

Saturday 26 March

I dressed in my new sprigged violet cotton skirt,
and Mum's mauve Spring coat and went to
Kingston with Carol and Cherry. Then I went
dancing. We slogged and slogged (the competition
is next week) and then Mr C played my new record
on his record player for me. At our picnic lunch Sue
and I talked to Sandra a lot. Then another hour of
slogging – and it was time to go home.