18. A LAST PLACE FOR LOVE

Wallace learns to see Penny in a different light

“What did you think of that then?” asked Penny, squeezing Wallace’s fingers as they walked with a throng of other youngsters out of the darkness of the Odeon and onto the street. She was grinning hugely.

They had been to the children’s Saturday morning programme at the local cinema, a western with triumphant cowboys battling against disconsolate and even dead Indians. It had been Penny’s treat. She had said that she’d stored her pocket money up and wanted to go to the pictures with friends.

“It’s better being with friends rather than on your own, and I know your mum can’t afford it,” she had said, somewhat offensively, thought Wallace, though it was true. He knew that Helen sometimes found it hard to afford everything, sometimes even what others saw as essentials. They didn’t, for instance, have a television set yet even though it seemed that everyone else did. Then as if it was an additional tempter she had said “Innocent can come too, if you can’t bear to be separated from him for a morning.”

That last, intentionally or not, was a barb that cut deep and Wallace didn’t like it. True, he and Innocent were friends, but it was Penny he was obsessed by just as Innocent seemed to be equally keen on Sarah McGivven.

He pulled his hand away. “I don’t think it’s good for us to be entertained by watching a superior force destroying one that has lived peacefully for centuries,” he said.

“But it’s only a film!” protested Penny.

“I know what he means,” put in Innocent, “I’m black, as you may or may not have noticed, and I know just how prejudiced against difference some people can be. I can imagine some of the thickheads I’ve encountered in my life deciding to become an army and go in pursuit of people with skin like mine!”

“But there were Indian heroes in the film!” protested Penny.

“They were only heroes because they were triumphant defending their homes when everything was being stolen from them,” muttered Wallace.

“I know,” said Penny, changing the subject, “I’ve got a good idea what pleases men like you...”

“Men?” sniggered Innocent.

“Well, almost, like I’m almost a woman,” corrected a smiling Penny, and as if to emphasise her point she pushed her chest forwards exaggerating her obvious maturity. This didn’t, to Wallace, seem like the Penny he was so fond of. In the past she’d never made a point of showing off, though he had noticed how she was maturing and rather liked what he saw.

“So what pleases boys like me?” he asked, emphasising the word ‘boys’.

“I’ve seen you chasing each other round at school in the playground, pointing your fingers as if they were guns and shouting bang bang, you’re dead at the tops of your voices. That’s what you like, wars and killing!”

“That was when we were nippers,” complained Innocent.

“At Junior school,” added Wallace. “Just like at Junior school there were rows of you girls doing handstands against the wall with their skirts tucked into your knickers as if the world was going to end if you didn’t!”

“I suppose we’re all growing up,” she grinned, “even me! And do you want to see a special den that I’ve made, a secret place where I … I’ll tell you later!”

“We’re got a secret place too,” murmured Innocent.

Wallace frowned at him. “It’s our secret bunker,” he hissed, “secret!”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” laughed Penny, “come on, lads, men, fellows, whatever you want to be called, “my mysterious den is in the woods down Swanspottle way...”

The two boys stood stock still, leaving her to take a few steps forwards before stopping and frowning back at them.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“It isn’t in a broken down old cottage by any chance, is it?” asked Innocent

She frowned, then smiled again, “not in it, but under it,” she said, hoping to sound mysterious.

“In a dark cellar?” prompted Wallace.

“Where there’s still a pile of coal going to waste, and a folding camp bed?” asked Innocent.

“How did you know about the bed?” stammered Penny, now unsure of herself. “I took it there myself, for my business!” she added boldly.

“What business?” asked Wallace, beginning to fear what she was likely to say, but needing to hear it anyway.

“Where I earn the money that took you to the pictures!” she snapped. “How do you think I got so much? A paper round? Phooey! I’m more adventurous than that: a penny for a little kiss, nothing really, sixpence for a look at my knickers and a whole shilling for a feel of … and what if it is dirty? Money’s what’s important and I make plenty from filthy minded boys who just want to play around!”

“You do that?” gaped Innocent, “use your body as if you were a prostitute?”

“Yeah, yeah, the oldest profession, and the best!” she snapped. “There’s no need for you two to get holier than thou! I’m not doing anything that’s really wrong. Nobody’s taken me up on my ten shilling offer yet! That’s why I’ll need the bed, and I can’t wait!”

“You mean … it?” asked Wallace. “You mean you think doing it with someone you don’t even know is worth only ten shillings?”

“Now, Wallace., don’t be silly,” she protested, “because you can have it for free any time you want. I’m always hinting at it, though you don’t take any notice. You’re special. You have been every since the toffee nosed Miss Hawkesbury noticed how you look at me. It turned me on, you know, made me feel special.”

“I thought you were special,” groaned Wallace, “until now, that is.”

“And you’re using our bunker for dirty stuff,” added Innocent, “our bunker! Our nuclear fall-out shelter where we hope to escape the worst of what the next war will bring with it, as H-bombs fall down all around us and death is everywhere!”

“Nuclear fall-out shelter? What are you waffling about?” demanded Penny, “if there’s going to be another war, and the chances are there will be if you read that history has a nasty habit of repeating itself, then there’s not a shelter on planet Earth that will save you when the world starts burning! And a nasty damp old cellar isn’t the sort of place I’d choose as my last ever home!”

Wallace stared hard at her and suddenly he saw a different girl. She had the same shape, her complexion was still as perfect, her hair as fragrant and her eyes… when he looked into her eyes he saw something he’d never noticed before, a hard selfishness that suddenly seemed to be at one with her recent words.

“And I wouldn’t choose a damp old cellar to be my first place to be in when I was glimpsing Heaven on Earth in the arms of my sweetheart,” said Wallace quietly, “I’d rather be anywhere else, even Hell!”

© Peter Rogerson 14.06.19