Illicit day out
She stood by the blackberry bush that had thrust some of its branches through the chain-link fence at the corner of the playground. She examined a leaf, avoiding the thorns. Her sallow complexion and white arms and legs might prompt one to advise her against too much exposure to direct sunlight. A light breeze blew through her white diaphanous skirt against her spindly legs. Her black singlet contrasted unhealthily with her bare arms and hands that had a slight grey-green tinge. He blond hair hung in plaits resembling backbones. She scrutinised the blackberry leaf as if she were looking at it for the first time. Maybe she was renewing old acquaintances with the foliage around her.
Beryl was weird, but Sophie felt drawn to her. Even the first thing Beryl had said to her was weird.
‘Can you see me? I mean, really see, you know?’
Sophie nodded.
‘That’s all right, then,’ Beryl said.
Beryl said she was a new girl and would be in Sophie’s class. Sophie felt a twinge of excitement. Perhaps she could sit next to Beryl, who was bizarrely beautiful. Sophie had never thought of another girl as beautiful, no matter what weird things she said. Not even her best-est friend Jessica was beautiful. She was just, well, Jessica. Sometimes they held hands when they walked to the ‘wreckery-ation’ ground. Apart from that, Jessica was a friend, who, like Sophie, could never understand why there were no wrecks at the place where they used to play.
Unfortunately, Beryl was told to take the empty place next to Paul Santerre. Paul was the spottiest, smelliest bespectacled boy in class. Sophie’s classmates would dread the prospect of being in a group with Paul, but not Beryl. She seemed oblivious of the odour of three-day underpants and grubby shirt cuffs. Sophie would glance at her new friend, who, in turn, looked back and smiled. She would sit back in her chair, cross her legs under the desk, oblivious to her surroundings.
In fact, Sophie, who was coming up to 11 years old, had a crush on Beryl. The new girl was roughly the same age, but apart from the strange things she said now and again, her gait and attitudes were those of someone ten years older. Sophie wondered what on earth Beryl meant by asking if she could be seen. Finally, the bell rang for first break. Beryl strode to her bramble bush in the corner of the playground. Sophie followed her. They stared at each other for a few seconds, wondering who would be the first to speak.
‘Where d’you come from?’ Sophie asked.
‘Here…there…everywhere…nowhere, really.’
Sophie looked puzzled.
‘Well,’ Beryl began, ‘I just woke up one morning and found myself here. Sometimes I know why. Sometimes I don’t know why.’
At that moment, Jessica burst in. Sophie said hello and was about to introduce her new friend to Jessica.
‘She’s gone,’ Sophie remarked.
‘Who?’ Jessica said.
‘Beryl.’
‘Beryl?’
‘The new girl.’
‘What new girl?’
The bell announced the end of break time.
A week later, Beryl invited Sophie on a day trip to Brighton. Beryl’s parents were not going. She would go on her own by train. Sophie protested that her mummy and daddy would not let her go far away without them. And how could she pay the train fare? Beryl reassured her friend that she could get her ticket. This strange girl with an apparent rebellious nature told Sophie not to breathe a word about their illicit excursion. It would be fun. Sophie would enjoy herself. She had been to Brighton once with mummy and daddy three or four years before. She barely had any recollection of the drive there and back as she had spent most of the time asleep on the back seat. But going by train, Sophie would love that. Beryl painted such a colourful prospect of a day at a seaside town that Sophie needed little persuasion. That was until she started wondering what to tell her parents.
Half-term holiday was coming up. Daddy had circled 10-11 October and written ‘London trip’. Sophie’s grandma would be staying “to look after the girl” while mummy and daddy could spend a little time together, see the sights, take in a show, stay overnight and back the afternoon of the following day. Sophie felt an excited bound in her tummy. She could lie to her grandma. Done. Brighton, here we come.
However, her story would have to be believable, a bit. She would invite Beryl to tea. Mummy and daddy would see the new friend and like her. Everything would work out fine. Brighton. By train. Great cover story for grandma, which would duly passed on to mummy and daddy. Yeah! Brighton! She felt so grown up.
A few days later, Sophie was being ever so helpful laying the tea table. Mummy grew suspicious. She asked her daughter many questions about her new friend. Most of the answers ranged from “I’m not really sure” to “I don’t know”. Sophie put the finishing touches to the tea things: knives perpendicular to the table edge with the cutting edges facing right, teaspoons at exactly 60 degrees on the saucers beside the cups.
Where did Beryl live? She had never invited Sophie to her house. They always met at the wreckery-ation ground or down by the nearby little parade of shops. She assumed that Beryl lived somewhere near the school. What were her parents like? Nearly all of the children at school had a parent or two waiting by the gate at home time. Not Beryl. How old was she? Sophie assumed Beryl was 10 or 11 years old, because that was the average age of the class. She never talked about birthdays or birthday presents. She always seemed to wear the same clothes: the black singlet top, thin, white skirt, maybe a white cardigan with pink rabbit-shaped buttons and, on rainy days, a grey raincoat. Otherwise, Beryl was a blank.
Suddenly, Sophie caught a movement in the corner of her eye. She looked through the back room window and saw Beryl gliding towards the kitchen door. Yes, gliding. It was as if an invisible force were propelling her.
‘Beryl’s here!’ Sophie called out. The friend appeared in the doorway, gave a weak smile and a little hand wave with sheer economy of movement — Beryl’s trademark. Indeed, Sophie had never seen her friend run, jump, or skip. She was just, well, there, on cue. Mummy seemed oblivious to anyone else in the room, except her daughter. They sat down to tea. Mummy did not address a single word to the visitor. She spread butter on bread slices and plopped sugar lumps in her milky tea. Sophie offered their guest some tea. Beryl was offered half a cup of the light brown, milky liquid. Sophie said: ‘Beryl doesn’t really like tea.’
‘What do you want instead?’
‘She wants some water, Mummy.’
Sophie rose from her seat.
‘Where’re you going?’ mummy asked.
‘To the kitchen to get some water for Beryl.’
‘Why?’
‘Beryl doesn’t like tea.’
When Sophie returned with the water, mummy pursed her lips, watching her daughter’s movements.
‘Aren’t you getting a bit old for this kind of thing?’
Sophie looked blank.
‘Imaginary friends and all?’
The daughter was stunned.
‘I mean, when you were five or six, I remember we had to lay an extra place for Janet —’
‘Janice,’ Sophie corrected without knowing why. She blushed, wondering what Beryl must be thinking of this exchange. The rest of the meal continued in silence. When mummy started clearing away the tea things, the two girls quietly left the house.
On their way to the wreckery-ation ground, something that Beryl had said when they first met popped into her head. ‘I just woke up one morning and found myself here. Sometimes I know why. Sometimes I don’t know why.’ As they walked through the gate of the wreckery-ation ground, she called out to Jessica, who was standing atop the very high slide. Jessica waved, slid down and ran over to the newcomers.
‘Look who I’ve brought with me,’ said Sophie.
Jessica glanced over her friend’s shoulders. No one was there.
‘Oh. I expect she’s disappeared. She’s always going off somewhere without saying.’ Before Jessica could comment, Sophie broke out into a run and was calling out to Beryl.
That night, Sophie could hardly sleep for excitement. Brighton! Woooh! From the bus stop to the steps outside Portsmouth Harbour railway station Sophie felt so grown up with her tiny ear studs and little blue plastic handbag with a thin shoulder strap. In the handbag was a ten-shilling note, which was a birthday present. She was supposed put it towards a new bicycle, but since Brighton beckoned the idea of saving up for a bike had vanished.
At first, Sophie was not sure what to ask for until the man behind the ticket window told her she needed a half-day return. Where was Beryl? Sophie went through the barrier where another railway staff member punched her ticket.
‘Four, twenny-five,’ he mumbled.
While she did not understand, she was not going to ask. When you feel grown-up, you don’t want to sound like a silly kid asking silly questions. She could see Beryl two platforms away. She was wearing her grey raincoat, which matched the sky, and black high heels, which did not. They waved to each other. They boarded a train and bounced onto two window seats. They saw the minute hand approach the ‘5’ on the face of the platform clock. An unseen whistle shrilly cut the air. The train sedately glided out of the station. Glomp-glomp…glomp-glomp. This was exciting. The train was empty. The girls were having a lovely time.
Two stops up, a young mother struggled on with a child’s buggy and a sleeping toddler draped over her shoulder. She waved a breathless ‘bye-ee’ to an older woman on the platform. She put the child in the buggy and hastily covered it up with a blanket. A plastic bottle of orange juice fell onto the floor. Sophie picked it up and handed it to the young mother, who smiled a ‘thank you’ and brought herself down heavily on the seat across the aisle. Sophie regained her seat and resumed the excited chatter with her friend. For a second, Sophie felt a twinge of guilt about lying to mummy, daddy and grandma. Brighton! Woooh! A real adventure.
The train passed by three white semi-detached cottages.
‘Ooh! I’d live to live in one of those! They look so cozy! …Wouldn’t you?...I’d watch the trains all day…How far is it to Brighton?...Are we there yet?’
Meanwhile, the young mother discretely looked across to see who Sophie was talking to. To her alarm, she saw no one. Perhaps this chatterbox had a vivid imagination. A piercing scream from the buggy startled the mother and Sophie. The screams grew louder. The mother tried in vain to stopper the child’s mouth with the teat of the orange juice bottle. The child was frightened to the point of hysteria. Its face had gone puce. The little human tugged at the white cellular blanket that had covered it. Its stubby limbs flailed around as if it was trying to fight something off. The mother picked the child up and tried to soothe it, but it struggled like a cat that hates being held. The little one fell silent for a moment as it stared at the seat opposite Sophie. Then it resumed screaming, convulsing with fear. Sophie looked at the bewildered mother and the alarmed child and was beginning to feel frightened herself. Beryl showed no reaction to the upset, noisy thing. She was staring at a herd of cows in a waterlogged field. She did not ask if anything was the matter or if her companion was all right.
The train slowed on the approach to the next stop. The mother, still clasping the baby to her shoulder, grasped one handle of the buggy and wheeled it with difficulty towards the door at the end of the coach. Panicking, she bundled herself out onto the platform. The door closed behind them but the baby’s distress was still audible. Eventually, the commotion subsided. Sophie and Beryl said nothing for a few minutes until Sophie asked what they would do when they got to Brighton. The feeling of real adventure returned.
That afternoon it rained. The girls were stuck in a café and were growing bored. Sophie tried on Beryl’s heels and kept them on. They had felt so grown-up ordered coffee and biscuits all by themselves from a waitress, but the grown-up feeling gave way to feeling a bit silly. Grown-ups would have checked the weather before going out. Daddy would listen to the weather forecast on the radio at breakfast and later make such helpful remarks as “Nice day for a picnic on the Isle of Wight” or “Wet and windy tonight. Better stay in this evening”. Sophie suggested they brave the rain and get the next train home. Beryl said they should wait until the rain stopped. This they did, but it was getting dark. They climbed the hill to the railway station. They did not notice that they were walking faster than the traffic that was tailbacked for traffic lights that grudgingly let only a few vehicles at green. Shops were closing as shutters clattered down. Beryl was quiet. Sophie was feeling apprehensive. What if mummy and daddy had come home unexpectedly early? Would grandma be worried and phone the police?
The train was crowded. The girls had to stand at the end of the coach and stare at the darkness that was dotted with yellow lighting on the road that ran parallel to the line. What a contrast to the excitement of the morning! Sophie made a few observations, stating the obvious. Beryl seemed impervious to any remarks from Sophie, who eventually gave up. An hour into their return journey, the train stopped and practically emptied at somewhere populous and important. At last the footsore girls could sit down. Sophie’s mind filled with the opening lines of scripts about her homecoming. [Concerned and angry] “We were worried sick. Grandma was going to phone the police.” [Surprised and worried] “Where on earth have you been?” [Puzzled] “What ever possessed you to go all the way there?” [Sympathetic] “My goodness, you’re wet through!” [Curious] “You went to Brighton, did you? Did it rain as hard as it did here?” [Furious] “You silly, stupid girl! Anything could have happened to you and we wouldn’t have known a thing about it until it was too —! We’re really angry with you.” And so on, until she stopped her musings when she realised that Beryl had disappeared.
The train decelerated suddenly and stopped in the darkness. Sophie had no idea where they were. She pushed the window down and leaned out. She found herself scanning the other track. She heard the guard clambering out of the last coach. He shone a powerful flashlight as he walked beside the track. The beam fell on what looked like Beryl’s grey raincoat. The guard picked it up, shook it out and folded it up under his arm. He walked back more quickly to the end of the train and got back in. A door slammed. The hard rain had given way to drizzle. The trees and bushes beyond the track loomed like fat and thin sentries guarding secrets and keeping their silence. Sophie felt cold and frightened. The train started up again. Sophie sat and wondered how to explain away Beryl’s heels that she was still wearing. Then she fell asleep.
On the Monday morning after half term holiday, Beryl was absent. Not since their ‘illegal’ excursion had she seen the not-so new girl. At break time, Jessica came bounding up to Sophie, who was standing in the bramble corner of the playground. She missed her strange friend.
‘I called you a few days ago,’ Jessica began, ‘but your mum said you weren’t coming out.’
‘I wasn’t allowed out.’
Sophie told her the story about the trip to Brighton with Beryl and that she had lied to everyone about it.
‘Beryl? Who’s Beryl?’
It was no use explaining who Beryl was. Sophie seemed to be the only person who could see her.
Once back into the routine of school, Sophie though less about Beryl. One evening, Sophie, her mummy and daddy went to grandma’s house to help sort out junk that had accumulated in the old lady’s house over the last four decades. Cardboard boxes of chipped crockery, a canteen of rusting cutlery that had been a wedding present for grandma’s grandma, 1920s dresses that would make the property mistress of the local drama group squeal, and a viewer with slides of the 1935 Jubilee — all were waiting in the hall for collection. Grandma’s eyes fell on one box bursting with 78s.
‘You’re not taking these!’ she warned, seizing a top flap and tearing it.
‘Antiques Road Show job, these,’ daddy said.
‘Oh, no you don’t! Your father loved these. One of them’s got their song on it.’
‘What song’s that?’
‘Keep right on…No…My old man’s a dustman. Lonnie Whathisname…That one that was in the film with him. You know, him, the man in the mattress advert.’
‘You’ve lost me there, Ma.’
The records reminded grandma that it was grandad’s birthday Saturday.
‘He would be…aw…a hundred now.’
‘93.’
‘No, he wouldn’t. Look, he was born in 1886, so that would make him…Take that from 1966. So he was…How old was he when he died?’
They were still arguing about his age on the Saturday, when they went to the cemetery to clean grandad’s grave and put fresh flowers in the pot. Useless at arithmetic herself, Sophie let the elders argue. Her eyes wandered along the rows of gravestones. One stone stood out from the rest. Its epitaph was much shorter than the others. The tombstone consisted of a weeping child angel with the side of her face on her left forearm draped over a stone cube bearing the following inscription:
Taken so young
1941-1952
Saturday evening daddy rummaged in one of the boxes in the hall and drew out reels on cine film. He held them aloft, announcing, ‘Home cinema tonight, featuring…’ He paused to read the label, “Brighton 1950”. ‘We’ve got to see this!’
‘Do we have to?’ mummy said.
‘I bet you were one of the bathing belles!’
‘Tsk! I was only 10 then!’
Minutes later, the film was threaded in the projector and the front room was darkened. The film flickered through the countdown to three, then settled down. A happy gathering on the beach. Smiles and waves. A little girl breaks away from the group.
‘Haw! I remember this!’ mummy laughed. ‘Look at me! That puppy fat! Didn’t we take the neighbours with us that day?’
‘Yes, George and Elsie Thingy — I can’t remember. It’s such a long time ago,’ grandma said.
‘They had a daughter, didn’t they?’
Cut to girl gingerly picking her way through the shingle to the water’s edge. A wave engulfs her lower legs. She turns and runs silently squealing away from the water. Cut to same girl licking an ice cream, of which the top portion comes away from the cone and falls to the ground.
‘I know her from somewhere,’ Sophie said.
‘No, you don’t,’ mummy retorted.
‘No, really, Mummy. I know her.’
‘This is before your time!’
‘That was Elsie’s girl,’ grandma remarked.
‘I know her,’ Sophie insisted. Mummy and grandma ignored her.
‘Very sad about her. What was her name?’ grandma said. ’I don’t really remember. Something with a ‘B’.’
Cut to girl waving at the camera. She says something. The words are enunciated so clearly that Sophie could lipread.
‘You said it was very sad about her,’ mummy added.
‘Yes. She was run over by a train. It was in all the papers. Somewhere near Chichester, they said.’
Sophie watches the lips of the girl on the film. The girl smiles and waves with sheer economy of movement. Sophie froze as she lip-read the girl in the film.
‘Hello, Sophie,’ she said.Start writing here…
