Something Beginning With

A

Ambition

My best friend’s nine-year-old cousin can’t decide whether she wants to be an astronaut or Prime Minister. When I was young, I used to want to be either beautiful or a farmer’s wife. I couldn’t be both because if I was beautiful, then there was no way I would settle for just a farmer. I would be good enough for my very own sugar daddy. I knew what a sugar daddy was before I had heard of an engineer or a chartered surveyor.

See Attitude, Bosses, Colin, Firefighting, Promotion, Ultimatum

Ants

I was sitting in a park during my lunch hour when an ant crawled over my leg. I squashed it with my thumb and flicked its body with my fingers. Then carried on eating my sandwiches. Ants have not always left me so cold. I must have been about eleven when I found an ant colony in our garden. You have never seen anything so marvellous. It was like watching algebra in action. The worker ants were walking in straight lines everywhere and seemed to know exactly where they were going.

But then I remembered something I’d learnt at school and drew a line with my black felt tip right across their path. It threw them into confusion. They wouldn’t cross it even though it was just a drawing.

I told my father this at lunchtime. He said that we should respect ants for their innate civilisation. They even milked aphids, he said, in the same way we milk cows. He went on and on about how clever ants were in a way he never talked about me. After lunch, I boiled a kettle and poured the hot water over the colony. I sat there and watch the ants die. My eyes hurt from where I squeezed them together to make the tears come. At supper, neither my father nor I said anything to each other. I was worried he might ask me why.

See Dogs, Engagement Ring, Jealousy, Outcast, Revenge, Tornados

Attitude

I work as a secretary in the media. The company I work for specialises in writing and producing technical newsletters for small to medium-sized industrial businesses. Working in the media is something I don’t always talk about because some people seem to think I’m showing off. This is something I would never do, but it’s hard when all everybody wants to know is what it’s like to have such an exciting job. Maybe this is why people in the media tend to stick together. But then again the strange thing I have noticed is when they’re together, the only thing they talk about is what they are GOING to do – and not what they DO do. It seems they are all just filling in time before they become writers, or film directors, or actors, or painters. It makes me feel dull for enjoying my job because there is absolutely nothing else I can imagine myself doing.

See Dreams, Impostor Syndrome, Wobbling

B

Baked Beans

My grandmother on my mother’s side was a young girl in Liverpool during the war. She can still remember the night the Heinz factory was bombed and how for days afterwards the city smelt of cooked baked beans. It made them even hungrier than they were already.

Her mother – my great-grandmother – once spotted an unexploded bomb caught in a tree near their house. For hours she ran around getting people out of their houses and down to the shelter where my grandmother was hiding. My great-grandmother wheeled the sick down, helped mothers with little children and reassured the elderly.

She must have saved many, many lives that night, so I can’t blame my grandmother for still being annoyed, years later, that they didn’t give her mother a medal for her bravery. Instead, they gave it to the lady who was in charge of making the tea.

See God, Mystery Tours, Noddy

Best Friends

At the age of twenty-five, my best friend Sally has become the mistress of a millionaire called Colin. This is not something that normally happens in our town. Just in films. She has given up her job, her nights out with the girls and living in her studio flat. Because Colin has set her up in a flat near his office, she has taken a lodger to pay the mortgage on her own flat. And all without a backward glance. Recently she spent five hours trying to find a dressmaker who was prepared to pick her jeans apart by hand and re-sew them so the tight seams would make no marks on her skin when Colin pulled them down. We are no longer such good friends. She says she can’t bear the way I look at her these days.

See Danger, Friends, Influences, Ultimatum, Yields, Zzzz

Blackbirds, Robins and Nightingales

Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between how you sound in your head and how other people seem to hear you.

For instance, I have noticed that I can make what I think is a perfectly pleasant comment but it can still cause offence. I do not mean to have a sharp tongue; it is just the way the words come out.

Perhaps it is because I have such low self-esteem and do not think as much of myself as someone like Sally, for instance.

Personally, though, I blame the nuns. At the convent school I went to, we were split into three groups for singing. There were the Nightingales who could sing beautifully, the Blackbirds who were all right, and the Robins who were what Mother Superior called ‘orally challenged’. I was one of only three Robins in the whole school, although I had a cold at auditions so it wasn’t really fair.

The Robins were hardly ever allowed to sing in public and particularly not if the song was anything to do with God. We had to mouth along instead, which got very boring, and sometimes it was hard to keep the words in. Once, an unidentified Robin joined in with an especially loud and lively hymn, one we all loved.

In the middle of our Lord stamping out the harvest, Mother Superior held out her hand for silence.

‘Hark!’ she said, raising her other hand to her ear. ‘I can hear a Robin singing.’ Everyone looked at me.

That moment has always stayed with me. One of the things I hate most about myself is the way I blush in public even though I’m not necessarily to blame. It is the same feeling that makes you itch every time anyone talks about fleas.

See Captains, God, Outcast, Voices

Blood

It used to be a craze at school to scratch the initials of your boyfriend into your arm with a compass and squeeze the skin until the blood came up. Then you’d rub ink over the graze so you were tattooed for life. Luckily it rarely worked.

Once I was doing it with Sally, but as neither of us had a boyfriend at the time, we just dug the compass randomly into each other’s arms. It made me think of the time I punctured my aunt’s favourite leather sofa one Christmas with the screwdriver from the toy carpentry set I’d got from Santa. I did that again and again too.

It was Sally’s idea to mix the blood drops together. She kept flicking her cigarette lighter and we sang ‘Kumbaya’ as we did it to make it seem more meaningful. Sally said that we were sisters now and nothing could separate us, not even a boy.

See Codes, Mars Bars, Vendetta, Yields, Zzzz

Bosses

The only trouble with my job is the bosses. My current one is possibly the worst I have ever had. He is called Brian. He is from Yorkshire and has a short bristly beard which he is always fondling and if I don’t manage to look away, I can sometimes see his little tongue hanging out, all red and glistening.

Brian won’t leave me alone. He seems to think we have a special relationship. He’s always telling me that I mustn’t mind if he teases me, that he does it to everyone he’s fond of. ‘It means you’re one of the family, Ver,’ he says, putting his arm round me.

It’s funny though that while Brian is always standing too close to me, when it comes to work he likes to dictate his typing for me into a machine, rather than face to face. He’ll leave little messages for me which means I have to hear them twice. Once he said into the machine: ‘Good morning Verity, you’re looking very nice today,’ so I called across, ‘Thank you, Brian,’ and he told me off for spoiling his dictation. He said he’d have to start again now. I left the room and when I eventually listened to his tape I noticed that this time he didn’t say I looked nice.

Another time he dictated a rude joke to me. A man in an office asked to borrow another man’s Dictaphone. The other man said no, he couldn’t. He should use his finger to dial like everyone else.

I listened to this through my headphones with a stony face because I knew Brian was watching me, hoping I would blush.

See Ambition, Zero

Boxing

I didn’t tell Brian that Sally and I had started going to a Boxercise class at the local sports centre. It would only have turned him on.

I wasn’t very good at first. The instructor was American, a big man with a ponytail he was too old for. He followed me over to the punch bag and shouted out loudly that I was too much of a girl to box. He said it was because I was English and had been brought up to be polite. ‘Who would you like that punch bag to be?’ he asked. ‘Who really pisses you off?’

I couldn’t think of anyone. I wouldn’t really want to hurt Brian, even. Anyway, I told the instructor that I was half Irish. On my mother’s side. He said in that case I definitely had to hit harder. Harder, harder, harder. Eventually, I swung at it so hard that I kept on spinning even though I’d thrown my punch. The instructor clapped me on the back and called me a champ. He even started to sing ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’.

Sally and I couldn’t stop laughing afterwards. When we went for a drink, I noticed that we didn’t hang back as we sometimes do at the bar. We made sure we got served straight away and then we took the best seats in the pub. When a man came to talk to us, Sally didn’t flirt and throw her hair over her shoulder. She told him straight to go away. That she wanted to talk to her friend. ‘You gave it hell, Verity,’ she kept on saying, toasting me with her beer. ‘You gave it hell.’ The next day, I walked sharper, straighter. As if I wasn’t a girl at all.

See Gossip, Lesbians, Moustache, Weight

Breasts

Last week I was on my way home from work, walking past the wine bar, when a handsome Australian stopped me. He was dressed in a business suit, aged about thirty, very tanned, broad. He asked whether I’d have a drink with him. He said he was only in town for a couple of days, didn’t know London very well, and was lonely. I weighed up my options – drinks and a few laughs with him versus a microwaved meal in front of EastEnders.

When he ordered the bottle of wine, however, he asked for three glasses. Then his friend joined us. He was Australian too, but not tanned, not broad, aged around fifty. I didn’t know you could get boring Aussies with glasses, hairy ears and skinny bodies, but you can.

They talked together a lot of the time about intercomputer networking, html, broadband versus bluewave, although every so often Peter, the young one, would look at me and wink. I suppose he meant to include me but I was beginning to wonder why I was there. Then Peter went to the toilet, and after we’d sat there in silence for a bit, the other man leant across the table and asked me how much. His breath smelt of pear drops, I remember, and all the time I was thinking how much what? How much wine? How much time?

And then I realised.

I was running down the street, my face red, when Peter caught up with me. He grabbed my arm. I was shouting no, no, but weakly, so he turned me towards him and we kissed then. You know how sometimes when you kiss someone your tongues intertwine and you feel what’s like an electric shock racing through your body. As if your kiss has connected two wires between you but all the resulting fizzles, crackles and sparks are going on between your legs, not in your mouth. That’s what happened then. That’s why I agreed to go back to his hotel with him.

He touched my breasts a lot.

It is something I am sensitive about. You see, my breasts are very big. People can sometimes be cruel and shout out things about them in the street. I hated them when I was growing up. I used to wear a too-tight swimming costume under my clothes to hold them down so no one would notice them. It used to make going to the toilet exhausting because I’d have to take everything off. Plus at school we used to have these very short doors in the ladies so I had to hold up all my clothes at waist height with one hand so no one could see.

Of course, I wasn’t a virgin when I made love to Peter, but it was the first time anyone had touched my breasts like that. As if they weren’t dirty, weren’t something to be ashamed about. It seemed to mean something.

We had breakfast together in the morning and he kissed me goodbye. There in the restaurant, like we were a proper married couple or something.

When I got into work, I didn’t tell anyone. People kept saying how quiet I was. I went to the loo after a bit, and when I pulled down my knickers I could smell Peter. That’s when I started to cry.

I haven’t heard from him since. It was my first time with a stranger like that. I hope it will be my last. I thought Colin was going to be a one-night-stand for Sally at first. I get angry with Sally sometimes that she doesn’t seem to feel the same guilt I feel about Peter.

See Colin, True Romance

C

Captains

This is how Sally and I first became friends.

Like the singing, in my head I am completely coordinated as far as sports are concerned. Now I am an adult I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, but I still like to lie in bed imagining how I can catch ball after ball in hands that open and caress rather than sting painfully. My legs find such a sweet rhythm as I run the 800 metres that I almost levitate off the ground, able to go on and on and on as I race past all the other runners.

In reality, I became the school expert at the rain-dance I created in the hope that games would be cancelled. It wasn’t just the humiliation. It was the way your legs would get so cold on the hockey pitch, the skin red and blue and sharp with pain.

Sally walked in once just as I was jumping up and down in the deserted shower rooms, hands on top of my head, elbows flapping. I was chanting ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, rain, rain, rain.’

She took one look and left. I thought she might have been smiling but I’d been too embarrassed to look closely. Neither of us said anything.

One hour later we were standing at the edge of the sports field in the perfect sunshine. Sally was at the front by the games teacher as she was always one of the team captains. I was standing at the back so I wouldn’t have to keep getting out of the way when the other, more popular, girls were picked for the teams.

I thought it was a joke when Sally chose me before anyone else. I didn’t want to go up at first but everyone kept prodding me. Sally always picked me first after that.

I never asked her why, even afterwards when we took a vow to tell each other everything. I always hoped it was because Sally was the one person who could look into my head and see those sweet catches I made in my dreams. How perfect everything was there.

See Blackbirds, Robins and Nightingales, Kindness, Vendetta, X-ray Vision

Codes

S all yan dI u se dt owrit eletter si ncod ebu twhe nyo utak ei ta sseriousl ya stha tyo uhav et ohav esomethin gt osa y. N othin gi swors etha ngoin gt oth etroubl eo funcoverin ga s ecre tan dfindin gnothin gther e. T hat’ swhe nw estarte dshopliftin g. W e’ dwrit elist so fwha twe’ dtake ni nou rcod e. I t hin ktha twa swh yw ewer eneve rcaugh t. I fpeopl ecan’ tunderstan dyo u, t he yten dt omak eyo uinvisibl e. T he ydon’ tbothe rwit hyo u.

See Friends, Indecent Exposure, Woolworths, Yields, Zzzz

Colin

I am starting to get suspicious about Colin. Maybe it’s a hangover after my escapade with Peter, but I worry about the way he seems to treat Sally so casually.

Sally says that as long as he pays the bills and keeps her happy, she doesn’t mind if he is the mad axe-man. She says his attitude is a relief.

‘I’m blossoming,’ she says, and so she is. I try to be happy for her but when I walk up and down the road where Sally says Colin lives with his wife and family, I see no sign of him. I can’t smell Colin in the air. Also, he is spending more and more time with Sally in what she calls their ‘love nest’. ‘Isn’t his wife jealous?’ I ask.

‘If Colin doesn’t mind, who cares?’ Sally says, and I must admit it seems a little bit odd that it’s me who does.

See Best Friends, Foreheads, Love Calculators, Stalking, Youth

Crème Caramel

Sally has a friend who can suck up a whole crème caramel from a plate in one go. I have seen her do it. She stands over the table, with her hands behind her back, and then she hoovers it up in one go without leaving a drop either on the plate or round her lips.

Sally herself can fit thirty-eight Maltesers into her mouth at once. She has to stuff them round her lips and in the spaces at the back of her jaw. It is not a very attractive trick, especially when she has to spit them all out again. But then neither is the crème caramel suckingup, but at parties, people always ask to see them. It makes Sally and her friend the centre of attention, and the rest of us feel jealous.

Unfortunately I don’t like either Maltesers or crème caramel and the one trick I do know is very complicated, involving three packs of cards. Could this be where I am going wrong?

See Captains, Underwear, Wobbling

D

Daisies

My mother told me once that I was not sweet enough to be called after a flower. Something useful, yes, but not a flower. Her name was Rose and I thought if I also had a pretty name then I’d look more like her.

I called myself Daisy in secret and would talk about myself in the third person. ‘Daisy’s nearly ready for bed now,’ or ‘Look how pretty Daisy looks in the mirror.’ It made me feel like I belonged. But then one day I blurted out something about wanting to be called Daisy and everyone laughed.

‘It sounds more like a cow,’ said my father, smiling fondly at my mother.

See Ants, Names, True Romance, Zest

Danger

Sally will always be my only real friend although I hope she never finds that out. She is so popular, she would probably think it was funny.

When we were growing up, our families were very different. Her parents used to go to the pub and drink sweet liqueurs that made her mother giggle. They were also what my parents called ‘Sunday drivers’, which meant they went on outings. If I was lucky, they’d take me with them sometimes. Sally’s mother called us ‘the girls’, which I liked because it made me seem like a second daughter. As if Sally and I were interchangeable.

Once, we all went to a fete in the country and watched a local girl being crowned the Rose Queen. She sat giggling on a throne, holding a bunch of roses and surrounded by Rose Princes. These princes were all spotty and fat. The dishy boys were too busy throwing grass over the Rose Princesses to look at the Queen. The minute they’d put the crown on her, she’d become too much for them although we couldn’t see why she’d been picked in the first place.

Sally and I soon got bored because no one was throwing grass over us, so we went to look round. We found a bridge that was very crowded so we joined the throng going over it. When we reached the middle, we suddenly heard the cracking and splitting of wood and the bridge gave way.

Later the man who owned the house and gardens came out and said that the trouble was that the bridge didn’t lead anywhere, just to a shut gate, so what had happened was that people were coming straight back at the same time as others were crossing and that meant there was too much weight in the middle for the bridge to hold. Considering the danger we’d all come through, he was surprisingly unsympathetic. It was the last time he was holding the fete in his grounds, he said, because he didn’t understand why the public were all so keen to go over a bridge that went nowhere. And now he’d have to have the bridge mended, which was going to cost money he didn’t have.

I read about an experiment that made men go over a very dangerous bridge and when they got to the other side, they were shown photographs of women. All the men found the women more attractive than they would have done if they had not had such an exciting experience. However, Sally and I both agreed that when the Rose Queen came to wish us well in the Red Cross Tent she was so ugly, we still wondered why she had been crowned.

Sally has always taken me places, shown me the way to behave, what to do. Sometimes I wonder if this is why she likes me. Sometimes I wonder if the places she takes me too are always the best places to go.

See Best Friends, Worst Case Scenario

Dogs

The chairman of our company has a Dalmatian dog called Jupiter. When he brings it into work, we have to take it in turns to walk it at lunchtime. He seems to think it is a treat for us, and makes jokes about how many girlfriends his dog has. It does make you wonder what he thinks we are.

Susan, the receptionist, once told me that she had taken a call from his French au pair. This girl was in tears because she had broken the vacuum cleaner when she was outside, hoovering the lawn. Susan told her to take the vacuum cleaner inside and pretend it had never happened, but the girl kept crying, saying how much trouble she’d get into if the chairman’s wife came back and found anything left on the grass.

Perhaps the wife was getting her revenge. I am always hearing stories about au pairs getting off with their bosses. The chairman is good-looking enough. I have often smiled at him on the stairs or when we meet in the office, but I’m not sure he even notices me. He always calls me Veronica and laughs in this coughing little way when he sees me.