CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Teenage Romance

To my mother, the ultimate in elegant attire was the combination of a red, V-necked jumper and a white, pleated skirt. It looked, she said, rich. As far as I was concerned, the pleated skirt was the most hideous garment ever to be invented and only the very tall and the very slender could get away with wearing it. Once, to my extreme dismay, she bought a length of cream serge and commissioned a dressmaker to run up a skirt which, as I had feared, had the effect of shortening my legs while making the rest of me look as wide as a house. When it was washed, all the pleats would fall out and have to be pressed back in again in what was a tedious and time-consuming operation. There are no words to describe my loathing of that cream serge skirt and I was very thankful when, after successive washings, it shrank. But such was her determination that I should have one, she kept a continual eye out whenever she went shopping and eventually, to my disgust, found one. This new skirt, at least, was permanently pleated and because the material was lighter, it didn’t hang from the hips in such a bunched-up, unflattering way. She knitted a jumper, in a rather pleasant shade of orangy-red and when I tried it on, together with the skirt, I admitted, grudgingly, that the effect wasn’t too bad.
Wearing the new jumper and skirt, I decided to walk to Gillian’s house to seek her much-valued opinion and as I stepped outside, who should I see standing in next door’s garden, chatting to Miss Richards and Mrs. Andrews and looking, with his wind-ruffled hair, so utterly, so heart-breakingly handsome that I could have fallen at his feet in adoration, but Mr. Sherwood. I flushed a vivid red and to hide my confusion pretended to examine one of the Anemone japonicas which grew in profusion inside our small front garden.
‘Don’t they grow up quickly these days,’ remarked Miss Richards, looking at me approvingly.
My heart swelled from sheer joy. For the first time, Mr. Sherwood had seen me out of my silly, childish school uniform and Miss Richards thought I looked grown up! I flew to Gillian’s on wings of ecstasy.
In the fifties, teenage fashion had not yet come into its own. We tended to wear more or less what our elders wore and it was not really until the sixties and the advent of the miniskirt that we were finally able to dress differently from our parents. I had bought myself a basic pattern comprising a fitted bodice and gathered skirt from which I made several dresses; I varied them by changing the length of the sleeves or altering the neckline and I trimmed them with ric-rac braid or broderie anglaise lace. I loved fashion drawing and was inspired by famous designers, such as Dior, who favoured long, wide skirts and tightly fitted bodices with impossibly tiny waists. Dress pattern sizes differed from those of today; busts were smaller then, as were waistlines. To achieve the tiny waist you had to wear a wide, elastic belt around your middle and it was so uncomfortable and constricting that breathing was almost impossible. Petticoats - or underskirts as the Cornish called them - were always worn under the full skirts and when a fabric called paper nylon came on the scene, it was de rigueur to wear a petticoat made from it so that your skirt would stick out more. After a couple of washes, this fabric would become limp so that you had to rinse it in a sugar solution in order to restore the crispness. I can also recall buying lengths of imitation whalebone from Woolworth’s which were sold specifically for making into hoops to be incorporated into petticoats. The more you could get your skirt to stick out, the better!

My mother’s guests one summer included a family who had a son a couple of years or so older than I was and it very soon became apparent that he fancied me. Although he had no physical defects as such, his mannerisms and habits seemed to deviate from the normal behaviour of boys of his age and it was almost as though he were an ageing man inhabiting a young man’s body. Normally, I was highly flattered if I suspected that a boy liked me and would encourage him unashamedly but this boy, David, made my flesh creep. At mealtimes I had to assist my mother by waiting on the guests and one evening, when I was helping to clear the tables after dinner, he came up to me and whispered:
‘I can tell you like me because you always make sure I get a bigger portion than anyone else.’
I flamed with indignation. It wasn’t true! And anyway, my mother dished the food on to the plates, not I. I decided that I definitely didn’t like this boy and determined to keep out of his way. When their holiday came to its end and the family was preparing to depart, to my consternation he asked if he could be allowed to stay on for a few days. No sooner had they departed, than David approached my mother to ask if he could take me to the cinema. What a cheek not to have asked me first! I thought that she might have refused consent on account of the fact that he was older than I was, but she merely told him to ask me. I faced a dilemma: I was nervous of this boy and I didn’t want to go out with him yet my mother seemed almost to approve of him. If I turned him down, would he take my refusal as mere girlish shyness and continue to pester me? He seemed very keen, so it was highly likely. Perhaps it was better to go out with him and get it over and done with. After all, I only had to keep my distance and he couldn’t get up to much in the cinema. So I agreed.
I felt very self-conscious walking into the cinema with a boy. He paid for the tickets but to my disappointment didn’t offer to buy any sweets; I was so nervous and unsure of myself that I needed some sort of distraction to give myself countenance. After we’d settled ourselves in our seats and I’d squeezed myself into the furthest corner of mine, I tried to concentrate on the screen. David was making gulping noises every time he swallowed and after a while it really began to get on my nerves; also, I could hear him shifting about, gradually edging closer to me. Glancing sideways, I saw with alarm that his arm was stretched across the back of my seat and that his hand was almost touching my shoulder. I cringed as the inevitable happened and he put his arm around me; his breathing was loud and the gulping noises worse than ever. He smelt of onions and I suspected that he’d been scoffing a pasty, as I’d seen him doing before, from the nearby Cornish Pasty Shop. No wonder he hadn’t wanted any sweets! He tried to draw me towards him but I shrank away.
‘You’re not very friendly, are you?’ he whispered.
We remained in that uncomfortable position until the end of the film, of which I have absolutely no recollection, and was, for once, glad that I was under orders to come straight home afterwards. He tried to hold my hand as we made our way back to Clare Terrace but I kept both hands fastenened firmly on my bag and was silent and unresponsive. If I had disliked David before, I disliked him more than ever now. At last, his stay came to an end and I was so relieved that I was almost friendly to him when he came to say good-bye. He asked if he could write to me and I replied, airily, that he could if he wanted to. After all, I didn’t have to reply, did I? But he must have taken this as encouragement because, without warning, he suddenly leant towards me, put his hands on my shoulders and bent down to kiss me. At the last moment, I turned my face and his wet kiss landed on my cheek. With that, I scuttled off to the safety of my room while he, crestfallen, walked away. Afterwards, he did write to me but I never replied.

That summer, I was going to Brixham to stay with my cousin Stephanie and I was full of excitement at the prospect. My mother had bought me a new dress and an outfit consisting of a pair of white shorts and a long, sleeveless top which was made from cotton printed with horizontal stripes of red and yellow. This outfit flattered my figure and made me look taller and I was gratified when, the first time I wore it, boys looked at me and workmen whistled. But for the train journey, my mother insisted that I wore my school summer uniform. Travelling alone, I would be much safer like that, she said. Our summer uniform consisted of a very plain, shirtwaisted, cotton dress which, worn with the regulation white ankle-socks, made me look ridiculously childish and the thought of having to be met by my cousin attired in such a manner filled me with dismay. I raged and pleaded alternately, but she wouldn’t relent. When we reached Falmouth Station on the afternoon of my departure and she bought my ticket, I realised that it wasn’t concern for my safety that had made her insist on my wearing my school dress but the fact that it made me look young enough to pass for a child and thus travel half-fare. I was mortified.
Auntie Lal and Stephanie were waiting for me at Newton Abbot Station and the first thing my cousin said was:
‘Is that your school uniform?’
I replied, shamefacedly, that it was and Auntie Lal said my mother was very sensible to make me wear it. You never knew what sort of dirty old men were hanging around on trains these days. I was consumed with envy when I saw Stephanie because she had achieved, with seemingly very little effort, the much sought-after Brigitte Bardot look; She had the blonde fringe, the pout, everything. Compared to me, she looked sophisticated and mature. We were awkward with each other at first but by the time we had reached Brixham, the old sense of comradeship had returned and we began to make plans for our time together. The next morning, I put on my new shorts and top but Auntie Lal told Stephanie she wasn’t allowed to wear hers and that she must put on a nice skirt instead. We set off down the street but we hadn’t gone very far when my cousin said:
‘Hang on a sec - I’ve just got to pop in here for a moment.’
With that, she dived into the bus station and disappeared into the ladies’. A few minutes later she emerged and my jaw dropped from sheer astonishment. Gone was the ‘nice skirt’ and in its place were the briefest white shorts I had ever seen. They accentuated her long, suntanned legs in a manner which was unashamedly provocative and if this effect were not enough to make everyone stare, she had knotted her modest blouse in such a way that that her brown midriff was completely exposed. Also, she had accentuated the luscious pout with a generous application of pale pink lipstick and outlined her eyes with smoky black kohl. The transformation was startling and I was both shocked and envious; if only I were as daring!
‘What would your mum say?’ I gasped.
‘Oh, she won’t find out. She never does. She’s been paying for me to have elocution lessons for ages and she’s no idea that I’ve never been - not even once. She sends me off looking all sweet and demure but she doesn’t know I always keep a change of clothes in my bag.’
Stephanie asked me if I’d ever been kissed by a boy and I had to confess that no, I hadn’t. I told her that a boy had tried to but that he was creepy and I hadn’t fancied him.
‘Oh well,’ she said, nonchalantly, ‘not to worry. We’ll soon pick up some decent boys.’
I was alarmed yet, at the same time, thrilled. What would my mother say, I wondered, with a slight stab of anxiety. Still, she was miles away and she wouldn’t know what I was getting up to here in Brixham. We found some decent boys very quickly, just as Stephanie had predicted. They were both on holiday in the area with their families and after the briefest of introductions and the minimum of preamble we found ourselves lying in the arms of our respective swains on a grassy slope overlooking the beach. Mine was a rather good-looking boy, tall and fair-haired, and I didn’t protest when he began to kiss me. The kisses were very dry and not at all ecstatic and I suspected that he was as inexperienced as I was. All the same, we whiled away a very pleasant morning.
‘Aren’t we going to see them again?’ I asked my cousin as we made our way back to the town.
‘Not bloody likely!’ she exclaimed. ‘There are loads of boys to meet yet. We don’t want to get stuck with those drips.’
I was rather sorry because I had quite liked my drip.
My time in Brixham flew by in a delightful succession of flirtations with numerous boys. One afternoon, we were walking along a country lane when we heard a fire-engine speeding towards us. As it rounded a bend and the driver spotted us, the vehicle screeched to a halt and the firemen who had been hanging on to sides leapt down into the road and we all spent a very pleasant five minutes or so sitting on the grass verge chatting and flirting outrageously. We were rather sorry when they said they’d better go because they had a fire to put out. When we told Auntie Lal about our escapade with the firemen she was outraged and said it was a disgrace: the Fire Service was paid to put out fires, not go pestering young girls. She’d a good mind to ring the Fire Station and lodge a complaint.
Whenever we took ourselves to the beach we would often see a very handsome youth, in the company of an older man, sunbathing at the water’s edge. There was an air of mystery about the couple and so we decided that he must be a foreign prince and the older man his bodyguard. We took to following them and spying on them from the clifftop and although we did our utmost to attract the attention of the handsome youth, he took no notice of us at all. We invented romantic stories about him and the more he ignored us, the more our ardour increased. The bodyguard was very attentive and doubtless discouraged his charge from associating with strangers: he was, after all, of noble birth and it would be unseemly for him to fraternize with any old riff-raff. So we had to be content with worshipping from a distance. A more enlightened observer would have taken it for granted that the couple was, of course, gay, but we, in our youthful ignorance, knew nothing of such things.
We didn’t quite know what to do with ourselves when it rained and we were confined to the house. Once, Auntie Lal gave us some ironing to do and she was horrified when she discovered that I’d ironed Uncle Albie’s handkerchiefs into triangles instead of squares. Since we weren’t to be trusted with the ironing, she told us to stay in the kitchen while she went to the shops so that we could keep an eye on the oven in which were baking two fatless sponges she’d knocked up. When they were done, we had instuctions to take them out of the oven, let them cool for a few seconds, then remove them carefully from their tins. They’d be nicely cooled by the time she returned, she said, and then we could help interlay the sponges with a filling of clotted cream. The attention we devoted to the supervision of the baking of Auntie Lal’s sponges was commendable. They were removed from the oven, light and risen to perfection, at the optimum moment. With the utmost care, we prised them cleanly from their respective tins and placed them on a wire rack to cool. When Auntie Lal still hadn’t returned, and seeing that the sponges were now completely cold, we decided to surprise her by doing the filling and final presentation ourselves. Slowly and meticulously we spooned an even, but extravagant, layer of cream onto the bottom sponge then carefully placed the other on top; lastly, in what was a most professional-looking finishing touch, we sieved a dusting of icing sugar over it.
It looked mouth-wateringly, tantalizingly delectable.
‘Well,’ remarked Stephanie, with her usual sagacity, ‘since we’re going to have it for tea, it wouldn’t do any harm to cut a couple of thin slices just to see if it’s all right.’
The sponge tasted as divine as it looked. Devonshire clotted cream is not so rich or sickly as Cornish cream and the combination of this with the light, melting texture of Auntie Lal’s fatless sponge was sheer perfection. After we’d consumed with unladylike rapidity the first two pieces, Stephanie said we may as well help ourselves to another couple. After all, it wouldn’t make much difference now that we’d already cut into the sponge. By the time we’d finished our third slices, the sponge was considerably attenuated.
‘Well,’ said Stephanie, philosophically, as she cheerfully cut two more slices, ‘may as well be hanged for sheep as for lambs!’
When Auntie Lal returned home and saw on the plate the last, remaining sliver of cream sponge, Stephanie received the full force of her wrath and we were sent upstairs in disgrace.
One sunny afternoon, we were lying on a grassy clifftop watching the mysterious foreign prince and his devoted bodyguard on the beach below when we saw a boy sitting not very far away from us looking in our direction. I took out my handbag mirror to check my face ( I had become very vain ) and Stephanie said:
‘Go on! I dare you - shine the mirror into his face!’
Obediently, I caught the sun in the mirror and flashed it into the eyes of the boy. He smiled, got up and came over to us. He was a very nice boy and both of us took an immediate fancy to him. He told us that his name was Norman and that he lived in Wales. After chatting for a while, we decided to go for a walk along the cliffs; at that point, neither Stephanie or I knew which one of us Norman fancied. We came to a stile and while I was attempting to scramble over it, I stubbed by big toe and it began to bleed. With great gallantry, Norman suddenly scooped me up in his arms and lifted me over the stile. Stephanie was annoyed and whispered that I’d done it on purpose. That evening, the three of us sat on a seat overlooking the sea and Norman began kissing me.
‘Put some effort into it, can’t you!’ chided Stephanie, the experienced.
I put some effort into it and found, to my surprise, that I rather enjoyed being kissed by Norman.
We were late home that night and Stephanie’s older brother, Tony, had been sent out to see where we’d got to. Because it was dark, we didn’t see him until he was almost upon us and when we did, I quickly extricated myself from Norman’s arm, which was around my waist, and told him to run, quickly.
‘Who was that?’ demanded Tony, looking very big and menacing as he loomed out of the shadows.
‘Him?’ said Stephanie, innocently, ‘Oh, that’s only Norman.’
‘Norman!’ bellowed Tony, after the fleeing figure. ‘I’ll give him bloody Norman!’
When we got home, Tony told his mother that we’d been hanging about with some boy called Norman.
‘Boys called Norman are common!’ declared Auntie Lal, disapprovingly, and sent us straight to bed.
I never saw him again. My holiday in Brixham was coming to its end and a couple of days later I resigned myself to the ignominy of having to put on my school dress in front of my cousin and caught the train back to Falmouth.
I’d only been home for a very short while when the neighbour’s nephew, Nigel, who had just arrived on his annual visit, knocked on our door. I could tell from his look of surprise that he thought I’d matured a great deal in the last year and I was gratified. He asked me if I’d like to go out but I decided to play hard-to-get and said I’d think about it. Firstly, I had to go round to Jenny’s to tell her all about my holiday. Her parents had sold their house in Penryn and they now lived not very far from Clare Terrace. When I reached Jenny’s house, I found Wendy there, too. I told the girls about my escapades and I think they weren’t inclined to believe me until, glancing out of the window, they saw Nigel who, predictably, had followed me.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Jenny, surprised.
‘Oh, nobody much,’ I replied, airily. ‘Just some boy.’
Jenny told me later that after I’d gone, Wendy had said, wistfully:
‘You and I will never get boyfriends.’
To which Jenny had muttered, under her breath: ‘You speak for yourself!’
Nigel grew daily more keen and wherever I went, there he was, too. It was all very flattering and I didn’t exactly discourage him then, one evening, his ardour overcame him and he pinned me against the side wall of our house and began to kiss me. At that moment, Fred from Fred’s Stores happened to be passing and the next time my mother went into his shop he remarked:
‘I see your daughter’s started propping up walls now.’
I was reprimanded in no uncertain terms for my indecorous behaviour and warned not to be seen carrying on like that again. Fred, I decided, was a mean old sneak and I determined never to patronize his shop again. Meanwhile, Nigel grew more ardent and began to pester me so much that it got on my nerves; there were, after all, things I wanted to get on with and he was taking up too much of my precious time.
‘Would you do something for me?’ he asked one day.
‘What?’ I replied, cautiously; there was something about the tone of his voice that put me instantly on my guard.
‘This!’ he said, thrusting an open pocket dictionary into my hand. I stared at it, perplexed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want you do do that word there with me.’
I looked at the word he was pointing at. Intercourse it said.
I was shocked at his audacity. As if I would contemplate doing such a thing! There was not a single girl of my acquaintance who didn’t know that the worst thing you could do was to have sexual relations with a boy. If you did, you were ruined for life and no decent boy would ever touch you afterwards. My mother referred to it as ‘denying the man you marry of his natural right’. Even more of a deterrent was the risk of pregnancy; the very word struck fear in our hearts and if, by some terrible and vengeful act of fate, the unthinkable should happen, there would be no way out but suicide. Besides, if a boy really liked you, he would respect you and not jeopardize your reputation by making such demands. And what a curious way to proposition a girl! Was that how it was done, with the aid of a pocket dictionary? I hardly thought so and after my anger and indignation had abated, I realised that, despite his bragging, his arrogant strut and his air of assurance, poor Nigel had had, most probably, no experience with girls at all; before me, he’d most likely never even kissed a girl. I felt nothing for him now, except contempt, and determined that he was an acquaintance not worthy of further cultivation: in other words, I gave him the boot.

It was apparent by the end of that summer that my mother’s enthusiasm for the bed, breakfast and evening meal business had begun to wane because, I think, she was finding that it involved too much work. Throughout her marriage, apart from her brief spell of service as a Wren during the War, she had never had any kind of employment and, indeed, was very scathing of mothers who went out to work. She maintained that it was very bad for a child to come home to an empty house and boasted that she’d always been there for Jean and me. This was not strictly true; most afternoons, she took to her bed and was often still asleep when we came home from school. As we grew older and more aware, my sister and I began to wonder what our mother did all day. She had never been houseproud and the amount of time she devoted to housework was by no means excessive. She had developed a routine which seemed very strange to us because it was so unlike the behaviour of our friends’ mothers. She would go to bed in the small hours after having spent the evening reading or knitting and get up very late, always in a foul temper, and spend a long time over her breakfast. She had the Daily Telegraph delivered each morning and after she’d read it she would settle down to what she considered the serious business of doing the crossword. The Daily Telegraph was sacred and woe betide anyone who dared lay a finger on it before she’d looked at it; once, in my youthful innocence, I committed the irredeemable sin of filling in the crossword with nonsense words and was punished with what I considered to be most unwarranted severity. When she went out, it was generally to the shops or the library; due to her voracious appetite for reading, she got through several books a week. She had no friends and Auntie Frances was the only person she ever visited.
Our parents had moved house so many times during our lives that Jean and I weren’t at all surprised when they put Clare House on the market and went off on frequent property-hunting forays. We found these excursions boring and time-wasting because our mother always wanted to view impressive-looking dwellings which were obviously way beyond our modest means. I think she did this purely to boast and justify her much-uttered words:
‘We nearly bought that house!’
Although we were used both to the inability of our parents to settle anywhere for any length of time and our mother’s impractical money-making schemes, when they announced that they were going to buy a shop and start a greengrocery business we were astonished. A shop! Well, that would be a novelty. But what about our mother? We couldn’t imagine her being a shopkeeper. For a start, you had to be friendly and polite to people and she’d be bound to fall out with someone or other before very long. And what about our father? He’d never had any experience in retail trade and as for keeping accounts and paying bills we knew from the frequent rows concerning the subject that he was absolutely hopeless. Even though we thought they were quite mad, it might be fun, just the same, to own a shop.
While we were in the throes of packing up prior to the move, Jean and I discovered in one of the inner attics a bag containing bundles of letters tied up with ribbon. Intrigued, I pulled an envelope from one of the bundles and took out the letter which was inside it.
‘It’s a love letter from him to her!’ I exclaimed as I ran my eye down the page of neat handwriting.
Gleefully, we tipped the bag on to the floor and began to riffle through the contents.
‘Look at this! He actually wrote her a poem!’
Convulsed with giggles, I read out the lines of verse to my sister:
One night as I stood by my window
My thoughts flew over to you
To where my true love lay sleeping
I wished I could be there, too.
‘Blimey!’ I marvelled. ‘Can you believe he actually wrote that to her?’
When I read out the final lines, which alluded to the reprimand of a passing bird bearing witness to the lover’s yearning, we both collapsed with laughter:
Naughty to wish you were with your love
When your love is tucked up in bed!
It semed to us quite incredible that there had once been a time when our parents had loved each other. Neither of us had ever seen them exchange an affectionate gesture or a kind word and over the years the sheer force of our mother’s jealous rage had demolished and cowed our father to the extent that we didn’t expect him to regard her with anything other than bitterness. She continued to hurl at him accusations concerning the affair of Judy in the woodshed and the incident seemed, in her mind, to have festered with the passing of time so that the allegations were now nothing less than fantastic. He had been in the habit of popping into a nearby pub every now and again but that modest pleasure was brought to an abrupt cessation when she became convinced that he was carrying on with the barmaid. He was accused, too, of ogling a woman who was often seen sashaying around the neighbourhood in very brief shorts. She had strikingly red hair of extraordinary length; it hung down her back well below her waist , covering the shorts and giving the startling impression, from behind, that she had nothing on. It was a spectacle enough to make anyone - man or woman - look twice.
Our new home was in Killigrew Road, a long, steep, busy thoroughfare which carries traffic from the centre of Falmouth to the main road. There were several shops in the vicinity: a chemist’s, a couple of butchers, a post office, general stores and a funny, old-fashioned draper’s which displayed in its windows underwear which looked, to Jean and me, as if it belonged to some bygone age. Whenever Ethel came to Falmouth she would make a bee-line for that shop because it was, according to her, the only retailer in the entire country which still had in stock the long, elasticated at the knee, pink, satin bloomers she had always worn; similarly, she had managed to find the only hairdressser in the whole of London who knew how to do the marcel waves, long gone out of fashion, which she had always favoured.
Although we were able to take possession of the house, the shop below was occupied by a tenant and there were still a few weks to go before the lease expired. Jean and I were highly amused when we discovered that our new home was, in fact, the town’s registry office!
I had recently acquired a small, rather antiquated, accordion and when a newly married couple emerged from below I would hang out of the upstairs window and give a wheezy rendering of Here Comes the Bride. Passers-by would look up in astonishment and I don’t think my musical abilities were very much appreciated by the newly-weds.
In fact, it was the accordion which brought about the abrupt termination of my adoration of Mr. Sherwood. We were learning German carols and I’d taken it to school so that I could accompany the class in a rendering of Tannenbaüm . Although I had devoted much time to practicing the tune, I was so nervous when I stood up before the class and began to play that I kept running out of air and instead of a pleasing melody, the only sounds I was able to produce were painfully stringent discords. The girls could barely contain their laughter and as I struggled to regain control of my accordion, I heard a distinct titter from Mr. Sherwood who was sitting at his desk directly behind me. He was laughing at me! Overcome by confusion and shame, my cheeks aflame, I returned to my desk.
‘Well done, Margaret! Thank you very much.’
Mr. Sherwood was hardly able to disguise the laughter in his voice and it was at that moment that my idol came crashing down. I sought revenge and found it by giving him a new name: Das Ding ( the Thing ) and drawing malicious caricatures of him and cartoon strips depicting ludicrous adventures in which he was the protagonist. Later, I gave them to Penny and she still has them, to this day.

That Christmas, my social diary was full and because I had been invited to so many parties, my mother gave in to my pleadings and bought me a new dress. It was made of a soft woollen fabric in a flattering shade of dark olive green and I thought it quite the best dress I had ever owned. At the first of the parties a boy I hadn’t met before attached himself to me and stayed by my side for the duration. When he sat down, he pulled me on to his lap and I blushed both with pleasure and bashfulness. My new conquest, John, was tall and dark and I thought that he was very nice-looking but when it was time to go home he didn’t try to kiss me, as I’d hoped, or asked if I would go out with him, as I’d expected. I was disappointed but quickly put him out of my mind because Stephanie was coming with her parents to stay with us for Christmas and I was too excited to think about anything else.
When I saw my cousin it was evident that she now made no attempt to conceal from her mother the fact that she wore make-up. I looked at her black-rimmed eyes with envy and promptly ran to the chemist’s at the top of Killigrew Road to buy a black eye pencil so that I could achieve the same effect.
‘Take that muck off your eyes at once!’ ordered my mother. ‘It makes you look common!’
On Christmas Eve an envelope addressed to me was delivered and when I opened it I found that it was a Christmas card from John.
‘You’ll have to send him one in return,’ said Stephanie, after I’d told her about our meeting at the party. ‘He obviously expects you to otherwise he wouldn’t have written his address.’
I set about drawing and painting a card and when I’d found an envelope, my cousin and I went off to deliver it.
‘Don’t just put it through the letterbox,’ she commanded, ‘ring the doorbell and hand it to him personally!’
‘But what if he’s not in?’
‘Just do it!’
To my relief and pleasure, John himself opened the door and, blushing, I handed him the card. He seemed flattered and impressed that I’d taken the trouble to draw him a card and I wasn’t too surprised when he asked me if I’d like to go out with him. Christmas Day that year was one of the best I’d ever spent because not only had I the company of my cousin but also a date with a boy I really liked to look forward to. Stephanie and I had an intimate discussion about boys that evening as we sat over the remains of the turkey ( intended for lunch the following day ) and recklessly pulled off big chunks of breast.
On my first date with John, we walked around Falmouth, hand-in-hand. When he saw me home, my mother was lurking in the door waiting for me and so I assumed that was the reason he didn’t kiss me goodnight.
‘I hope you’re behaving yourself with that boy!’ she said as I came through the door.
At school the next day, a girl from my class told me I had better watch out because John had been going out with another girl before he met me and she wasn’t too happy about our liaison. I knew the girl in question but I’d never had a great deal to do with her as she was an odd sort of girl, one of those who aren’t terribly popular. She was quite nice-looking, tall with a well-developed figure, but she went about wearing an enigmatic smile which had the effect of half-closing her eyelids, giving her the appearance of a somnolent owl. When I bumped into her in the playground, I asked her if she minded me going out with her ex-boyfriend and although she said no, she had finished with him, I could sense that she did mind and when she asked me what I thought of him I decided that it would be unwise to let her know that I liked him and instead told her that I thought he was a bit of a drip. She wasted no time imparting to John this information so that the next time I saw him, he was full of sulks and I had to convince him that although I had called him a drip, I hadn’t meant it. Our dates consisted of nothing more exciting than strolling around Falmouth hand-in-hand and still there were no good-night kisses; I was beginning to think that John was a bit strange and I rather regretted spurning the attentions of another boy, with the unusual name of Gibson, whom I liked. He was a little younger than I was but he had impeccable manners and certainly knew how to treat a girl. Once, he invited me to tea at a rather smart establishment in Falmouth to which I’d never been. He bought me a cake which, with the exception of Auntie Lal’s divine Devon cream sponge, was quite the most exquisite piece of confectionery I’d ever tasted, consisting of layers of the lightest, melt-in-the-mouth pastry, real cream and pineapple. If only John would take me out to tea!
One chilly, damp evening, after our usual, aimless stroll around Falmouth, we ended up sitting in a shelter on the seafront. John had his arm around me and I sensed from the quickening of his breath that he was about to do something he hadn’t had the courage to attempt before. Was he at last going to kiss me? He held me closer and suddenly I felt a fumbling somewhere in the region of my left armpit. The breathing grew louder, the fumbling more urgent and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ceased. We got up from the seat and made our way home, hardly speaking a word.
The next time I saw John, he seemed to be very distracted about something and when I asked what the matter was he told me he’d received an anonymous letter in which unpleasant things were written about him and various mutual friends and acquaintances; on the other hand, the letter was full of praise for me. I asked to look at it but he only allowed me the briefest glimpse. It was obvious to me that it was the handiwork of his ex-girlfriend but although I told him this, he remained unconvinced and even suggested that I, myself, had sent it. Clearly, the letter had been written to give the impression that I was the author and I was offended that John should consider, even for a moment, that I was capable of doing something so silly and childish. The writer of the letter had not covered her tracks very well and it didn’t require a great deal of detective work to ascertain that the Owl, as I now called her, was the culprit. She lived not very far from Auntie Frances and so I was acquainted with their mutual neighbours. She had always been a strange girl, they told me, who never seemed to have many friends and appeared to prefer the company of children much younger than herself. Not long after this incident I received an anonymous letter myself. The writer, purporting to be male, said that he’d seen me in our shop and that he would like to get to know me and suggested a time and a meeting place. This letter was followed very soon afterwards by another and as I was convinced that they were, yet again, the work of the Owl, I decided to tackle her the next time I saw her. She denied having sent any anonymous letters at all but it was clear to me that she was lying; nevertheless, there were no more letters after that.
I had gone right off John! There was, I told myself, something very strange about him, something decidedly creepy. These sentiments were confirmed the next time I bumped into him on my way home from school when, to my astonishment, he suddenly leant over and snatched my diary from my open satchel. Ignoring my protests of indignation, he turned on his heel and hurried away. What, I wondered, could he possibly want with a pocket diary which contained nothing but silly schoolgirl nonsense and certainly nothing incriminating about him?
I was so outraged by his unwarranted behaviour that I decided, with my friend Gillian for moral support, to go to his house the following afternoon to demand the return of my property; I had the idea that I might tell his mother what had happened if he refused. But he must have seen me coming because, when I rang the doorbell, the door was instantly opened by him and, without a word of explanation or apology, he thrust my diary into my hand.
Our romance having come to an acrimonious end, I determined never to speak to John again. Several years later, when I was in my early twenties and doing a post-graduate teaching year at Bristol, he turned up again, quite out of the blue, when I was at home for the Easter vacation.
‘There’s a young man called John here to see you!’ shouted my father from the shop.
Wondering which of the many Johns of my acquaintance it could be, I left what I was doing and opened the door. When I saw who it was, I could barely contain my astonishment. He had matured a good deal and his manners were charming; he asked if I’d like to go for a drive and since I had nothing better to do, I readily agreed. We went to the north coast, parked on a cliff ledge and chatted. He seemed not to want to know what I’d been up to during the years since we’d last seen each other and wanted to talk only about himself. He was engaged, he told me, and was going to get married when the college course he was attending had ended. He confessed that due to his lack of experience, the physical side of his marriage might suffer; in the same breath he told me that his college would be holding a May ball and asked if I would like to go. I could, he said, spend the night at his place. I replied that I’d think about it although I had no intention of accepting his invitation. After all, I’d been a student at one of the most famous art colleges in London where, in the sixties, everything was happening. I should hardly be interested in travelling all the way from Bristol to attend a student function at some obscure Plymouth college. It was not until later that day it dawned on me what John had been trying to ask me: he wanted someone to relieve him of his virginity before his marriage and he had chosen me. I was so angry and so offended that I wanted to tell him exactly what I thought of him but when I’d calmed down I realised that it would be better to forget about it. Some time later, in passing, I saw him again; I glared at him and he glared back at me. I pitied the poor girl who eventually married him.

Like other girls of my age, my moods fluctuated wildly between periods of soaring elation and unaccountable gloom. My youthful breast surged with passionate yearnings and my head was filled with romantic dreams but, so far, fulfillment had eluded me and I was beginning to fear that I would never meet someone with whom I could have close relationship. I longed for affection and naïvely imagined I would find it if only I could meet the right kind of boy but, to date, all my friendships with members of the opposite sex had ended in disappointment and disillusionment. Was I destined never to find the love of my life?

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