A smile-wrecker, but it doesn’t stop her smiling. When she does, she raises a hand to stop you seeing the birthmark’s flat weight tugging at her face. She would look ashamed if her eyes dropped at the same time, but they resist and look straight at you.
‘How’s your breathing?’
‘Pardon?’
She’s talking before I’m listening. Her face no longer shocks, but it takes time not to notice.
‘Your breathing.’
‘Oh, fine.’
She’s asking about my asthma. At primary school, it had often meant having to stay in the classroom at playtime. Josie would be there too, with her bronchitis. While I wheezed, she coughed, which made her face go red and her birthmark turn dark blue. Those who stayed in, with anything from a sty to a broken arm, had Josie for company. Even when she wasn’t ill, she preferred being inside to loneliness in a crowded playground. In class, she sat at the front to one side with her birthmark close to the wall, so that when she turned around the rest of us saw only clear skin. She was always the last to leave the room.
Being asthmatic has set me apart and gets me quite a bit of sympathy. When I get one of my ‘attacks’, there are small white pills to take and vapour to breathe from an asthma pump. These help my breathing but they’ve also become props for my role as ‘plucky Billy’, an image I try to portray with subtle references – at least I think they’re subtle – to what I manage to do in spite of being out of breath so often. Truth is that on the days when my breathing is OK, I’m no different to any other kid. Josie doesn’t have ‘good days’. Aunt Winnie says that, like Josie’s disabilities, asthma is my cross. It’s also a bit of a crutch.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘Oh, just waiting. Christine and Shirley are going over the park this afternoon; I might go too.’ She pats the tiles next to her. ‘Want to sit here for a bit?’
I don’t think so. Being seen talking to any girl guarantees piss-taking from mates, even though we talk a lot about girls and, especially, tits. Some even claim they’ve done more than talk about them, but clam up when asked for detail. However, no one talks about Josie, even though she’s well endowed in the chest department.
If I don’t sit down, I’ll hurt her feelings. Most kids find it easy to say no to Josie, or to leave her company when there’s something better on offer, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I sit down where she beckons me, on her good side.
‘Where did you go on holiday? Scotland, wasn’t it?’
‘No, Carlisle. It’s in England.’ This has sounded harsh. ‘But it is near Scotland. What about you?’
‘We’re going to Ireland again in a couple of weeks. Mum says we might visit some holy place where sick people get cured, and this,’ she flicks a hand up to her face, ‘might …’
‘Oh … that would be great.’
‘Yes, but it only works for a few people. You have to have faith you see, really believe that Jesus will help you.’
‘Oh.’
I try to imagine her face without the purple stain, and whether she would be pretty. She does have the shiniest dark hair and Mum says that the skin on the clear side of her face is beautiful. Josie’s blue eyes can be fierce while she waits for people to take in her birthmark, but sparkling and kind once they have.
‘I hope it works.’ I say.
‘Thanks. Mum thinks that saying prayers helps, the more the better.’
‘I see.’ No, I don’t.
Her head drops. ‘Will you say one for me Billy? For my new face?’
‘What, now?’
‘Oh no, whenever you …’
She looks at me full-on and I’m reminded of what is at stake. So, yes, I will say a prayer for her new face, as well as for the end of my asthma, for Arsenal to win the League and for a Charles Atlas physique.
‘OK Josie.’
‘Thanks Billy.’
She leans closer. As I look into her eyes her face blurs and I see no blemish. She sits back, wraps her arms around her knees and stares at the ground.
‘Josie Costello and Billy Driscoll, what are you two up to then?’
Sarah Richards has a neat accent that turns most of her ‘rs’ into ‘rrrs’. Rooksy once said that she sounded like the country yokels who sing the TV advert for cider: Oh Coates comes up from Somerset, where the cider apples grow.
She told him it was better than sounding like a Cockney. Then she sang the real song, as she called it, which ends with, ‘because we loves it so’. Fair enough. Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner ends with: ‘’Cos I love London so’.
Sarah’s question has pleased Josie and I think that she meant it to.
‘We were just chatting,’ says Josie. True but not what I’d have said; chatting is what girls do. Sarah sits down and gives Josie’s knee a little squeeze. Josie covers Sarah’s hand with her own. If she could have a new face, I think she’d choose one like Sarah’s.
Sarah Richards came to Pimlico two years ago when her dad, a chauffeur, followed his employers up from Somerset. His large black Humber looked strangely out of place, like it could be visiting Sarah’s house for a funeral or something. There were no more than half a dozen cars in her street and even fewer in ours. Mr Richards is forever washing and polishing the car outside his house and looks askance when the elderly cars and vans of his neighbours pass by.
At first, Sarah was the skinny new girl who sat in front of me in my last year at primary school. However, in the final term, things changed. Not that she had changed much – she was already pretty – but I was finding her more likeable. I observed her more closely, noticing things, like the way she wore ribbons in her hair when most girls thought them babyish, and how she never waited after school for friends to walk home with, but that others waited for her. Soon I was thinking about her a lot and even guessing, the night before, which of her dresses she’d wear the next day. My favourite had thin blue and white stripes with piping at the neck. I’d stare at her back, at the straight seam between her shoulders, and admire the way she held herself square to line up with it. And whenever she pushed up her hair to reveal the back of her neck, the hairs would stand up on the back of mine.
I even played a game in which seeing her face by getting her to turn around in class was worth twice seeing it elsewhere. One way was to answer the teacher’s questions. My hand was usually first up. Christine Cassidy and Shirley da Costa, my rivals for being top of the class, would scowl from their front-row desks. But Sarah would swivel round, head-on-hand, without taking her elbow off the desk and give me a smile that said, Go on then, clever clogs, tell ’em. And I did, although seeing her face sometimes made me forget the question and there would be jeering.
When there were no questions to answer, I’d stare at her back, willing her, like Svengali, to turn around. On the only occasion it seemed to work, she grinned as if to say, OK, just this once.
Then came the11-plus exam and the traumatic move to an all-boys grammar school. Sarah surprised Christine Cassidy and Shirley da Costa by passing the exam too and joining them at the local girls’ grammar school.
Even in my new uniform, I no longer felt special. At my new school, everyone was clever and almost everyone was bigger than me. In my form room I sat behind a fat kid with body odour. In my darker moments I’d superimpose Sarah’s slender blue and white dress on his black blazer, dreaming of her swivel and smile. Thankfully he never turned around when I put my hand up as he was too busy waving his own. He, too, had also been top of his class at primary school.
I saw little of Sarah during my first year and this was just as well. She was maturing fast, while I wasn’t.