6. A First Question

THE POETESS Part 6

I was still in the caravan as autumn crawled towards winter and I got my first paid job, at Woolworth’s on the electric counter where I sold batteries and switches and lengths of wire to small boys who were interested in more things than guns and bombs…

But the big thing was I could pay Aunt Mildred (I called her that myself soon enough) for the bottled gas and consequently used the two-burner hob for cooking and the heater (really low) for warmth. It was a cold winter!

The ginger Tom had not been around for days, but the elderly Rosie quite understood why and had even written a short verse about it in which she rhymed old with cold. There had been a light early sprinkling of snow and the old fellow liked the warm. He sometimes came to my door, scratched it so that I would hear it and let him in, then, just to make sure I loved him he would jump onto my lap and purr.

There was a cat back then too, a black one with a permanent smile and fleas.

“I know what I’m going to buy with my first pay-packet,” Rosie told Roy, “I’m going to get some flea powder and de-louse the grinning creature!”

“Why doesn’t its owner do that?” he asked, frowning.

“As far as I can make out he belongs to anyone who’ll let him in and feed him. Aunt Mildred does that, but she says she doesn’t know who he belongs to. It could be anyone round here. He’s a friendly enough old thing and I don’t mind splashing out on flea powder. Then I won’t feel quite so wary when he sits on me!”

“You’re kinder to him than you are to me,” he said ruefully, “I’d love to sit on your lap!”

“You’re too big or I might let you,” she replied, and in the deepest, darkest part of her mind where a layer of crass morality hadn’t quite taken root she really wanted to feel him that close. But she’d had what was considered a good upbringing and that had made her wary of the attention of any boys she might come to like. There were barriers in her brain that needed to be broken down before she’d let him sit on her lap!

“Just a cuddle, then,” he almost begged, and his face was so mournful that she couldn’t resist him.

“I really like you,” he whispered as he moved closer to her and place one hand lightly round her and started to venture up her blouse. “I always have,” he added. Always was a few weeks by then and this was the closest she’d let him get to her with the exception of that first kiss.

“And I like you. I really do, but I must tread carefully,” she said, dislodging his hand before it reached her breast, “Do you know Janine Robinson?”

“That large girl down your aunt’s road?” he asked, not quite sure who she meant.

“Don’t you go calling her large to her face, but yes, that’s who I mean. She kissed and cuddled a boy, and now she’s pregnant. She told me that was what happened so I know that it can happen!”

“You have to do a great deal more than kissing and cuddling,” he said, shocked at her naivety. “There never was a baby conceived by kissing and cuddling!”

“What about Jesus, then, and virgin births?” she asked, “if an angel speaking a word can do it like it did back then, I suppose a little kiss and cuddle might stand a chance.”

“But that’s just an old story,” he laughed, “nobody really believes it! It’s just a nice tale to sing about at Christmas! Before that story arrived on our shores there were other heart-warming tales to cheer the people in the olden days up.”

“Don’t you believe?” she asked, “In Jesus and stuff like that, I mean?”

He frowned. “Some of me does and some of me doesn’t,” he said, “it’s just that I don’t believe that because a story’s old and got its roots firmly in the distant past that there’s got to be truth in it. I mean, I read that some old cove worked out that the dinosaurs lived thousands of years before Adam and Eve and ages before the world was even made!”

“But the whole idea of turning water into wine,” she smiled at him, “I like that!”

“It’s a human dream of getting something you like for nothing, I suppose.”

“Do you like wine, Roy?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had any,” he grinned.

“When my mum and dad were alive they opened a bottle of sherry every Christmas, I think it must have been the same bottle, their Christmas treat, they said, the one they saved for several Christmases and let me have a sip. I thought it was nasty! I wouldn’t thank anyone for making the water in our taps taste like that!”

“I wouldn’t know, Pinkie. I never had any either, not even a sip of sherry. How about a little kiss before I go?”

“Are you going already?”

“Well, that’s what I thought. There are things a lad likes to do, friends to meet, balls to kick around the park with his mates, that kind of thing.”

“And girlfriends? Have you got a girlfriend?”

“Don’t you know, Rosie? Hasn’t it crossed your mind who you might be? And you’re more than the flesh equivalent of a bottle of sherry opened at Christmas and sipped before being put away until next Christmas! I want to be with you all the time and if I can’t be properly with you, more than just single-kissing you, then I prefer to be on the park with my mates.”

“And if I say I’d like you to stay a little bit longer?”

“And be close, like lovers are?”

“I don’t know … I don’t want a baby just yet.”

“An impossible one like Janine Robinson said she was having?”

“She doesn’t tell iies, you know.”

“Maybe not, but also she maybe didn’t tell you the whole truth. I think you should get yourself a bit of sex education. Ask someone who knows. Aunt Mildred does: she’s not married, but she’s had serious boyfriends. She explained some stuff to me, you know, and it made a darned sight more sense than talk of virgin births or even birds and bees!”

“And I can be close to you without risking you-know-what? You know I do like you, Roy, and I want to knowe you better…”

“That would be so easy in this caravan, my dear, so very easy if you’d only lower your guard… but think about it, and I’ll probably see you tomorrow.”

I was so naive in those distant days! I suppose it was a single-sex upbringing at school and on the street where I lived, combined with a dreadful amount of moralising about what a girl should do and what she shouldn’t do if she wanted to keep out of trouble, and when she’s told that a boy might cause her dreadful trouble with his willy, it’s not much good if she has no idea what his willy is…

That was me back then, and the shame of it is, my whole life has been tarnished by it. I suppose my folks had the best for me in their minds when they spread the notion that I’d best steer clear of boys. They both died before they had a chance to tell me to go out into the world and enjoy myself…

I wonder if I actually loved Roy?

© Peter Rogerson 12.03,21

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