front of appalling chat shows and glimpses of the Sugar Plum Fairy and obsequious shots of the Royal Family and its corgis and babies, to goggle at old movies and new dance routines and to sit back sucking sweeties while sneering at pop stars and newscasters making fools of themselves at televised parties. The medium had been too strong for them, they had taken to it like aborigines to the bottle. Only her mother had resisted. But her mother, of course, was mad.
Two hours later, as they sat watching an Irish comedian telling jokes that she herself considered quite unsuitable for family viewing, jokes that she hoped were incomprehensible to Celia and her grandparents, the telephone rang: it was her mother, to report that Liz had not telephoned. ‘Maybe she’s waiting to ring later,’ Shirley said feebly, as a tide of rage with Liz, far away in distant London, washed through her: too absorbed in her own life, too selfish even to spend five minutes talking to her own mother.
‘She knows I don’t stay up,’ said Rita Ablewhite.
‘She may ring later,’ repeated Shirley. ‘How was your chicken?’
A short silence ensued. ‘I said, how was your chicken?’ Shirley repeated. She could hear the drone of the television from the sitting-room, the snores of her father-in-law, and her mother’s deliberate silence at the other end of the line. She could have murdered the lot of them, Irish comedian included. ‘Look, I’ve got to go now, I’ve got the kettle on for coffee,’ said Shirley. ‘The chicken was very nice,’ said her mother.
Half an hour later, the telephone went again. It was for Fred, Fred’s Brian.
‘Hello Brian,’ said Shirley, who was feeling marginally more cheerful, having managed to bring out the card-table in the midst of an argument about the relative demerits of the offerings on BBC and ITV.
‘Happy New Year, when it comes.’
‘And to you, Shirley,’ said Brian. ‘I’m not ringing too late, am I? I thought you’d still be up. Is Dad there?’
‘Yes, he is, I’ll get him for you.’ She could hear a lot of background noise, the noise of life. ‘Are you having a party?’
‘No,’ said Brian, ‘we’re not having a party, but I’m at one, I’m at your sister’s.’ He laughed his big, round, comfortable but oddly high-pitched laugh: his inoffensive laugh, defusing the reference to Liz: the soul of tact, as ever, Brian: ‘I’m at Liz’s, Alix would come. Funny world, isn’t it? You’re very good to my Dad, Shirley.’
‘Is it a good party?’
‘It’s a very up-market party. Champagne flows.’
‘How’s Alix?’
‘She’s fine. And Cliff?’
‘Not so bad. I’ll get your Dad, shall I?’
‘Thanks a lot, Shirley. I just thought I’d have a word with him. The silly old bugger still won’t have a telephone installed, you know. Barmy, that’s what he is. That’s what I tell him.’ Brian spoke with affection. She heard its authentic note. Brian could afford to be affectionate, from over a hundred miles away. She went to get Fred, who was overcome with nervous confusion and pleasure. He hated the telephone, it frightened him. ‘That you, Brian? How are you, Brian?’ he shouted. ‘What’s that? What was that?’ Technological alarm deafened him. ‘What was that? You spoke to Barbara? What’s that? Did she really? Happy New Year to you, love to Alix and Sammy. Yes, I’ll tell Dora. What was that? What was that? What?’
Triumphant, he returned to the card-table. ‘That was my Brian,’ he announced, unnecessarily. ‘Fancy that. He had a phone call from our Barbara in Australia. Fancy that. She told him to tell Dora she’d written to Auntie Flo to thank her for the cake She says why don’t I go out there on a visit. And I don’t know that I won’t. You get that, Dora? Barbara’s written to Auntie Flo about the cake.’
And he picked up his hand of cards, and surveyed it with a bewildered distracted satisfaction.
‘Whose turn is it?’ he said.
‘Yours, of course,’ said Mrs Harper, grimly: so grimly that her reply seemed like wit.
‘Sorry all,’ said Fred, and threw away a club.
‘I don’t fancy Australia, myself,’ said Dora. ‘My trick, I think. They say it’s very rough, Australia.’ She gathered in the cards, laid them neatly, criss-cross, upon her last gain.
‘It is a country with opportunities,’ said Steve: and off they went again, with their second-hand opinions, their echoes of overheard conversations, their phrases from advertisements and tabloid newspapers: and yet to Shirley there was perhaps something comfortable, despite all, something reassuring about the hands of cards, the button and matchstick money, the green baize of the table, the predictable, ancient jokes, the cigarette ends in the big red ashtray: there was safety here, of a sort, safety in repetition, safety in familiar faces and frustrations, and warmth of a sort, warmth and communion of a sort, society of a sort: the society she had discovered as a teenager, when she would slip surreptitiously out of the icy silence of Abercorn Avenue, where the clock ticked relentlessly on the kitchen wall, where Liz propped her textbooks against the Peak Freen biscuit tin on the kitchen table, where her mother sat in the front room listening to the radio, cutting up newspapers; she would let herself quietly out of the back door and creep down the passage, past the outside lav, through the back gate, round the corner, and then she would run for it, along Hilldrop Crescent, down The Grove, up Brindleford Drive, and across the main road at the lights to Victoria Street, where Cliff and Steve and their sister Marge lived. Cliff and Steve and Marge were allowed to have friends in. They even had a playroom of their own, an attic under the eaves. A gang of them would meet there, graduating from Meccano and toy farms to risqué games of Dare, illicit cigarettes, speculation about sex. Wildness and safety combined, Shirley had discovered there: they had made her welcome, they called her Shirl. Spirited she was, in those days, and she played one boy off against another, teasing, bold, louche, at times wildly immodest, shocking, provoking, drooping a ciggy from her wide wicked lip, dropping her blouse from bare shoulders, playing cards for forfeits, egging them on to experiment with Ouija, inventing naughty messages from the spirit world: how had she known these things, what models had she copied from films she had never seen, what spirit spoke through her, informing her impatient flesh?
Safety and danger, danger and safety. ‘A bad girl, that Shirley Ablewhite.’ Nobody ever said this, but she half hoped they would. She had longed to be a bad girl in those post-war years, those austerity years. But she couldn’t quite manage it: she remained a nice girl, just this side of safety. A nice girl. A small, suspicious caution held her back: a small caution teased Cliff, teased Steve, teased her friends, kept them on a hook, watching, waiting, to see how far she dared go. She was deceitful, was Shirley: downstairs, with Mr and Mrs Harper, she would be another girl, helpful, quiet, obsequious, prim, in her neat, absurdly old-fashioned blouses and skirts, her hair tied neatly back in bunches. She liked her downstairs self too, she liked the unfamiliar familiarity, the bickerings and grievances, the small change of domestic life.
Cliff and Steve both fancied Shirley. They watched her switch from the attic Shirley to the downstairs Shirley with appalled, enthralled admiration. Her inventiveness astounded them. She was the spirit of subversion. Mr and Mrs Harper thought she was a very nice girl.
Sometimes, after acquisition of a television set in Coronation year, they would all watch television together. Shirley had enjoyed that. Mr and Mrs Harper had sat in their respective armchairs, Marge had sat on a red leather pouffe and she, Steve and Cliff had occupied the two-seater settee of the three-piece suite. Cliff liked to get her in a corner but she liked to sit in the middle. There, by small wrigglings and the exercise of will, she could encourage them both to insert their hands into different parts of her clothing, her body, sometimes simultaneously. Steve’s hand would cup her breast inside her blouse, while Cliff’s would explore her suspenders, her knickers. She learned to control these manoeuvres with great expertise. The Harper parents never noticed, but continued to watch the programmes: What’s My Line, Down You Go, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, Twenty Questions,