by Patience Mackarness
Several boys from the Grammar School down the road are loitering as I come out of the school gates. Their shirts are untucked, their ties askew. I give them one of my looks. A boy makes a soft jeering sound as I start walking, clack-clack of my court shoes on the pavement, giggles from the girls coming through the gates behind me.
There’s litter everywhere, cigarette ends and sweet wrappers, patches of old chewing-gum stuck to the pavingstones. I suppose my train will be late again. The newspapers report on industrial action across the country – this week it’s the miners and street cleaners on strike – and ask, Whatever happened to the wartime spirit?
Strange to think those boys are only a couple of years younger than Duncan was in 1940. Duncan tall in his new uniform, buttons and belt-buckle like gold.
A girl’s walking ahead of me. Her name is Amanda and she’s in my fourth-year history class. The other girls call her Mandy. She stayed behind one day and told me she loved history, “especially the Tudors”. I told her I’d written my thesis on Catherine Parr. In her first report, I wrote Amanda has a real flair for the subject. She will find that perseverance and hard work bring their own rewards. But lately she’s grown careless, distracted. I’ve seen it happen before, when girls are fourteen or fifteen. It’s a terrible waste.
Amanda and I catch the same train every day, except when there’s a staff meeting or I have to supervise a detention. One day she came over to where I was sitting and asked me which Oxford college was the best for history. I said, “Balliol and Magdalen, but regrettably neither admits women, yet.” I told her I’d been at St Hilda’s, she asked what that was like. I said it was a fine college, and I’d been happy there. Happy wasn’t the right word really, not with the War still on and Duncan gone, but I couldn’t expect Amanda to understand that. I was busy, and interested. People said, You’re lucky to have a passion for your subject.
I realise it’s been months since Amanda asked me about Oxford, or history, or anything.
She goes into the newsagent’s on the corner of Eldon Street. I suppose she’ll buy sweets, maybe a bottle of fizzy lemonade or cola. They call it pop, like that awful music they all listen to now.
In the War, we didn’t have many sweets. And afterwards, there was rationing for years. Girls like Amanda can’t imagine what that was like, dull food, no treats, no new clothes. But we understood duty and discipline.
There’s a hat lying on the pavement by the zebra crossing. Grey felt, with the school’s silver badge. Minerva the Roman goddess of wisdom, and the school motto Knowledge is no longer a fountain sealed. I pick the hat up and drop it into my bag. That someone let it fall, not noticing or not caring, makes anger burn in my throat.
When Duncan came back from Egypt, his first and last leave, he brought me a necklace. It wasn’t one I would have chosen for myself, it was an enamelled collar with pendant turquoises and garnets, but I put it on and he said I looked like Cleopatra. Something rose from the soles of my feet, tingling and fizzing. I think it was happiness.
Amanda comes out of the newsagent’s, just in front of me. Her school blazer and grey skirt are fairly neat but her hat is misshapen. I believe some girls squash theirs on purpose, though surely Amanda wouldn’t do anything so stupid? There’s no badge. Disgraceful. Disgraceful is what I wrote on her latest homework, which was shocking, so full of errors that I think she must have scrawled it on the train.
The Egyptian necklace is at the bottom of my bag. I wore it this morning because today would have been Duncan’s fiftieth birthday, but passing a group of older girls in the corridor, I heard one of them hiss, That necklace is ridiculous. Another murmured something that sounded like my name.
As Amanda walks, she opens up a Sherbet Fountain, a sun-yellow tube with a straw made of licorice. Before the War, my sisters and I would suck the straws extra hard so the sherbet would go up our noses and make us sneeze and giggle. I could buy one now, to see if it tastes the same, but I know it won’t. And a member of staff mustn’t be seen going into a sweetshop. Amanda shouldn’t be eating in public either, not when she’s in uniform and representing the school. I pick up my pace, meaning to remonstrate with her, but she hears the sharp clack of my feet and speeds up.
I’m out of breath by the time I reach the station. Amanda’s joined a group of girls on the platform. They’re showing each other magazines, with photographs of boys who look like girls, and grown men in pink flared trousers with sequins. One girl’s holding a transistor radio that spews shrill music, Ba-aby, you drive me cra-azy. I’d say something to her but she’s from a different school, so I give her one of my looks instead.
The first train arrives and the girls crowd on shoving and hooting, leaving only Amanda and me to wait for the next one. Just as the train’s pulling away, the girl with the radio leans out of the window, looks straight at me, and says, Bitter old spinster.
I need to believe Amanda didn’t hear, but her face is scarlet, there’s a smear of sherbet on her lips and a sweet waft of licorice from her fallen-open mouth. I draw myself up parade-straight and snap, You do NOT do that when you’re in uniform! and see her face crumple like a little girl’s.
Patience Mackarness (she/her) lives and writes in idyllic seclusion in Brittany, with regular hectic but rewarding interludes featuring small grandchildren in England. She writes flash, short stories, creative nonfiction and hybrid pieces. Links to her published work can be found at https://patiencemackarness.wordpress.com. This story was inspired by an incident in Portsmouth in 1972, and written in a SmokeLong workshop.
