Another Girl

Sitting on a bench in the shadow of the war memorial, Sarah pulled her mac tight against the early evening breeze and lit another cigarette. She had been waiting half an hour now, and there was still no sign of Bill. She thought about giving up and going home, but the idea of one more night in her room playing her 45s so quietly that her father wouldn't get annoyed seemed worse than being stood up. At least on Fridays he went to the Legion so she could increase the volume enough to hear the words.
But this was a dreary Tuesday night, and her father would be sitting up at the kitchen table like always, listening to the World Service news and rolling his cigarettes one after another, lining them up like little soldiers, a regiment to be consigned to the flames at five minute intervals. So she sat out by the cenotaph, smoking her own shop-bought fags and waiting for Bill.
What made it worse was the fact that she didn't even know where he was taking her; If she had, she could have gone there and waited for him. She checked her watch and mentally crossed off another activity from the list of possibilities. Half past seven - Too late for the main feature at The Imperial. That left the danceclub or the coffee bar at the church hall. The excitement was positively underwhelming. Not for the first time, she wondered if she really belonged with Bill. They had been together for so long now that it just seemed like a habit instead of a relationship. She knew that the films weren't real; She was no Doris Day, and Bill wouldn't pass for Rock Hudson even at a distance in the dead of night, but shouldn't there be more than this? Wasn't there a world where people lived real lives, full of excitement and passion, aspiring to something more than a job at the plant? Sometimes, she could almost feel it, reaching out to her, drawing her to the gateway. Every Saturday, when she got paid and the plant let out at lunchtime, she would head straight to Woollies and then rush home with three or four fragile plastic discs under her coat, hidden away from her father who would want to double her keep if he found out how much of her wages went on records. Smuggling the precious 45s and long players up to her room, she would pull the tiny record player out from beneath her bed, feeling the static tingle in her fingers as she opened the lurid red leatherette case. It was the greatest sadness of her life that she had to wait a whole six days before she could move the volume dial up beyond two, but even so, she would drop the needle into the groove and roll onto her back, lying with her head next to the speaker, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling as she strained to listen to the latest tune. Sometimes, if it was an LP, she would gaze at the cover and imagine the faces smiling at her, singing the songs just for her. She read the song titles over and over, reciting them like magic words; Help, The Night Before, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away... They were more than songs, more than words; They were a key to another place.
"Penny for 'em?"
Sarah jumped, startled out of her thoughts by the voice behind her. She craned her neck to see who it was and groaned inwardly when she recognised the intruder.
"Hello Cynthia."
Cynthia Wilson smiled and tottered around to join her on the bench, dropping heavily beside her and letting out a belch and a drunken giggle.
"Whoops a daisie. Y'alright duck? You were well away then. Your fag's burnt down to the cork. Got another?"
Sarah looked at the filter which she still held, forgotten, then tossed it into the gutter and took out a new pack. Cynthia watched with great interest as she lit one, then beamed at her as she passed the pack across.
"Ta love. So what were you thinking about then? Must have been good - I shouted you from across the road and you didn't budge."
"I'm not sure. Just daydreaming about music."
She shrugged, then held out a hand for her cigarettes, which Cynthia was about to slip into her handbag. Cyn smiled and handed them over with a sheepish grin..
"Sorry, forget my head next. You really like that stuff don't you? I don't know how you tell them apart. That Freddy and the Peacemakers fella looks just like Buddy Holly to me."
Sarah winced at the mistake, but she knew there was no point correcting her; Cyn had always been the same, ever since they had been in infants school together. She wasn't stupid, just scatterbrained, far more interested in her own happiness than anything else going on around her. They had been the best of friends up until Sarah got into the Grammar School and Cyn didn't, and they had gradually drifted into different worlds in the six years since. Sarah occasionally saw her about town, usually from a distance, and she sometimes wondered if their paths would have continued along similar lines if she hadn't done so well on her eleven plus. Seeing the stain on Cynthia's blouse, the clumsily re-applied lipstick and the cigarette burn on her far too short skirt, she gave silent thanks that she had done so well.
Cynthia waved a hand in front of her face.
"You're off again!"
"Sorry. I'm just really tired. I was up half the night listening to the new Beatles LP."
"Now there's a bloke I could go for, that John Lemon. I know a girl who worked in the Cavern for a while and she says she went into the dressing room by mistake one night while he was in there. The sort of mistake any woman would make if she had the chance, right? Apparently, he's got the biggest John Thomas you've ever seen!"
Sarah turned crimson at the thought of her greatest idol in the altogether. She wasn't the sort of girl Cyn had turned out to be, but it wasn't exactly the first time she had pictured it.
"Oh my God! What did she do?"
Cynthia leered.
"She didn't do anything, but he turned round to her and said, have yer come to change the barrel, or d'yer just want a look at the pump?"
The two girls erupted into gales of laughter, and for a moment or two, they were almost best friends again. Then Cynthia straightened up and smoothed out her blouse, ran her fingers through her peroxide-brittle hair and sighed, looking up at the cenotaph standing stark against the darkening sky.
"It's a shame, what happened. People just change. They leave, move away, start new lives, you know?"
Sarah nodded soberly, thinking of how true that was, how one test result had dictated the course of their lives. She naturally assumed that Cyn was talking about them.
"That doesn't have to be the end of things though, does it?" she asked.
"No, but you wind up on different sides of the world, it gets harder and harder to get in touch, to apologise. You live your life, seeing where it's all going wrong, seeing what your old friends are up to, and you can't get it back on track. You can't get back to where you used to be. And then one day, on your own doorstep, it ends. No more second chances."
She smiled ruefully, took a final drag on her cigarette, then held it up to watch the line of orange burn down to the filter.
"I know what people think of me. What you think of me."
Sarah started to protest, but Cynthia shushed her with a wave of her hand and carried on.
"Don't pretend that you don't; I know you too well for that. You pity me, and you wonder how I could have wound up like this. You wonder what it would take to put you in my place, and it scares you that it might be so easy. But it's not so bad, being me. All the choices you make for the best possible reasons, all the decisions that are forced on you by other people... You just have to try and live with them the best you can. This world wants to grind us all down, force us all into little boxes with our names on - Mother, Father, Soldier, Slag. But names aren't who we are or what we are. I'm not proud of some of the things I've done or some of the men I've been with, but it's alright. Whatever gets you through the night. Remember that Sarah. You might think you understand it now, but give it a few years and it will start to make a whole new kind of sense."
She flicked the fag butt into the gutter, then stood up and pulled the hem of her skirt down to somewhere approaching modesty. She placed a hand on Sarah's shoulder and squeezed it gently. "Take care love. I'll see you later."
Then she turned away and tottered off across the road on her wobbly heels, weaving slightly as she made her way through the saloon doors of The Feathers, off to look for someone to buy her a nightcap. Sara sat in stunned silence, watching her go, then just staring at the empty street until Bill finally turned up. He was an hour late, full of beer and apologies, but for once, Sarah couldn't bring herself to blame him. For now, it was enough that he was there.

Notes