Come to think of it, maybe Jimmy Doohan might know who I am! Though I don’t see him as being the sort of guy that’s easily impressed. I’m not impressed cos I’m used to it; and Katie isn’t, either, cos she’s known me since Infants, so she’s used to it too. She can remember a time when both Mum and Dad had been out of work—pardon me, I mean resting—for so long that I almost couldn’t go to school because my one and only pair of shoes had sprung a leak. I had to stuff them with newspaper! Not very glamorous.
“I’m glad my dad doesn’t have to work odd hours,” said Katie, as we reached the safety of my room and could chat without fear of little sharp Ellie ears picking everything up. “I like that he comes home the same time every night. Ellie’d probably say that’s really boring of me, but I don’t care! Sometimes I like boring.”
I said, “Mm. Me too.” Unlike Ellie, I have no ambitions to go into show business.
“Do you think we are boring?” said Katie.
It was one of my secret fears. But I wasn’t about to confess it. “We’re just us,” I said. “Like Ellie is just Ellie. And she’s way too young to have a boyfriend! How can you have a boyfriend at her age?”
I didn’t even have a boyfriend at my age. Nor did Katie. We’d been out with boys; we weren’t totally sad. But there’s a difference between occasionally going out and having an actual boyfriend. Ellie was so…there was a word. I couldn’t think what it was. Precocious! That was it. Acting like she was far older than she really was.
Maybe me and Katie acted like we were far younger than we really were? Thirteen years old and no boyfriends. Soon we would be fourteen. And still no boyfriends!
We were good girls, me and Katie. All the teachers liked us; and on the whole we liked them. We did all our homework, we passed all our exams. We actually enjoyed learning stuff. God, this was seriously weird! There had to be something wrong with us. Why couldn’t we just do normal things the same as everybody else? Skipping homework, bunking off school, going to parties, getting drunk. Having boyfriends.
“Ten years old,” said Katie. She shook her head. “What were we doing when we were ten years old?”
“Dunno,” I said. “Can’t remember.”
“We weren’t still playing with dolls, were we?” Katie sounded suddenly anxious. “Please say we weren’t playing with dolls!”
“No! Of course we weren’t. We were—”
“What? We were what?”
“Well, we weren’t painting our nails green and wearing black lippy,” I said. “And we certainly weren’t going up to town with boys!”
There was a pause; then we both sighed, in unison.
“We’re starting to sound like my dad,” Katie said.
Hang on a minute! Katie’s dad is old. But I mean really old. Like he’s even talking of retiring. We looked at each other, stricken.
“No, but I mean,” said Katie, “really! London is a dangerous place for a ten-year-old.”
“With or without a boyfriend.” Who in any case wasn’t any older than she was. You couldn’t call a ten-year old a boyfriend. It was ridiculous! “Have a biccy,” I said. I didn’t want to think about it any more. My precocious little sister, always getting in ahead of me. Always doing things first. And being allowed to get away with it! It wasn’t that I was jealous of Ellie; it really wasn’t. But I guess sometimes I did envy her.
That night, squashed up in my not terribly big bed with Katie, I lay awake thinking of the boy who looked like Jimmy Doohan.
He wasn’t there on Saturday morning when we wandered past the building site on our way to the shopping centre. He still wasn’t there when we came back. He wasn’t there later on, when we went for a walk. A walk! Dad was very bemused.
“Walk?” he said, as we stampeded past him in our eagerness to get out. “You’re going for a walk?”
Honestly! As if we’d lost the use of our legs. Just cos he goes everywhere by car.
“We need air!” yelped Katie.
“And exercise,” I said, looking rather pointedly at Dad, who instantly pulled his stomach in. There is a reason he’d been chosen for the beer commercial!
“Yes, right, fine,” said Dad. “A walk in the park…admirable!” He held open the front door, elaborately ushering us out. “Off you go!”
So off we went, though in totally the wrong direction for the park. Up the road, past the new flats, round the block, all the way back—still nothing! The older man was there, poking about at the brickwork; but not a sign of Jimmy Doohan. The red-haired boy appeared, carrying a bucket. We didn’t care about him. We wanted Jimmy Doohan! Where had he gone???
We didn’t admit to each other that we were looking for him. That would have been too gross!
“I wonder if they work on Sundays?” I said.
“Might go to church,” said Katie. “You know, if he’s Catholic…if he’s Irish.”
“But shops open on Sundays.” People still worked in shops.
Katie said, “Mm…” And then, “We’re visiting my nan tomorrow.” Like that had anything to do with it. But I knew what she was thinking. I could come and walk past the building site all by myself!
Which I did. I told Mum I was going to the newsagent to buy a magazine. I might just as well not have bothered, cos even the older man wasn’t there. This was starting to become a bit scary. Suppose the boys had just been helping out for that one day? I couldn’t bear it! Already I was getting obsessed. I kept remembering the way he’d smiled. A little bit shy. A little bit…uncertain, like he wasn’t quite sure it was the thing to do. Unlike the rude winking boy, who obviously thought far too much of himself. I didn’t care if I never saw him again. But Jimmy…he was even better-looking than the real Jimmy. And he’d smiled at me. At me!
Why hadn’t I smiled back? Why hadn’t I? Because I was too stupid and turned in on myself. Unless maybe I’d smiled without knowing it? Like sometimes you do, automatically. I really hoped I had!
Monday morning, Dad drove me in to school, which meant we whizzed past the flats so fast they were practically just a blur. But Monday afternoon…He was there! He smiled at me again, and this time I did smile back. I suspect my face looked like the setting sun, but I did manage to smile.
And again on Tuesday. Morning and afternoon. And on Wednesday, and on Thursday. It was like he was keeping a watch out, making sure he was at the front of the house so he wouldn’t miss me. Then on Friday I was late, cos of choir practice. I thought at first he wasn’t there, and my heart just, like, plummeted. And then suddenly he appeared, racing down a ramp from a van on to the pavement with his wheelbarrow, zonk! Right into me. Well, actually I just managed to skip into the gutter, which was a pity in some ways cos otherwise he might have run me over and then help, help, I would have needed picking up and it could have been really slushy and romantic! Even as it was, it was quite romantic. First off, he dropped the wheelbarrow, looking absolutely stricken. Then I said, “Oops!” (which on reflection is a silly thing to say, but I didn’t have time to choose my words) and he said, “Sorry! Very sorry! I hurt?”
Not Irish. Some kind of foreign.
I mumbled that I was fine, and he said again, “Very sorry! I not look where I go.” I assured him that I was OK (unfortunately!) but he still seemed anxious.
“I really not hurt you?”