The Generation Game (8 page)

Now I can go back round to play with Toni. Only things have changed here too. Toni is too old to play ponies anymore. Instead she likes to lock the door of her bedroom and
practise make-up skills with her friends from the Grammar. I am allowed into this inner sanctuary not because I am one of the Chosen Few but because they like to practise on me. I am a living,
breathing Girl’s World. I go home with glittery eye shadow and red cheeks that takes all Mother’s elbow grease to scrub off (and a layer of my skin).

I don’t
have
to go to Auntie Sheila’s on a Saturday morning anymore but I like being in her house with all those teenagers hanging around. I don’t even especially mind
Terry and his longhaired mates who congregate in Bernie’s double garage (that never houses any of his cars). They meet there, allegedly to play darts and bar billiards but really to smoke and
swear and snigger about Birds. Sometimes, if they are a man down, they let me join in with a tournament just so as I will make them look good.

But I prefer to spend my time watching Toni and her more refined friends who pretend to be Pan’s People from
Top of the Pops
, wearing floaty nighties and leaping across
Sheila’s sitting room in practised formations with whimsical expressions on their faces. I like being there, amongst the bustling chaos that was once Sheila’s pristine show home. I like
being there because then I can forget I don’t have Lucas anymore.

Though of course I do have Wink.

Wink, remember, is Bob’s neighbour. She lives on her own, two doors down from the shop. Her husband, Mr Gracie, died a long time ago. There is a picture of him in a
polished silver frame on top of her black and white television set. She catches me looking at him one day.

‘You’re not to worry, duck,’ she says. ‘I’m not lonely. I’ve got my Captain.’

She points her stick over at her parrot, perched on top of the telly, her three prized possessions together.

‘And don’t forget Bruce,’ I remind her.

‘No, dear,’ she says. ‘How could I forget Bruce?’

Wink has a slightly unhealthy addiction to a new game show on the BBC hosted by Bruce Forsyth and the lovely Anthea Redfern (our very own local girl made good). It is a Family Show and I always
watch it with Wink on a Saturday evening. Usually Mother and Bob come over too and we have a fish and chip supper on our laps in Wink’s front room.

Wink’s front room stinks of bird pee but you soon get used to it. At first I wanted to be sick as soon as I got through the door. The only way I could eat my supper was to smother it in
vinegar and ketchup to help block up my senses.

‘It’s not Wink’s fault,’ Mother said, the first time, as Wink struggled off to the kitchen to make us a cup of tea. ‘She can’t get about like she used to.
Cleaning is tricky.’

We ducked, as Captain – to prove her point – swooped overhead and splatted the television screen, covering Frank Bough’s face with war paint.

Now, I can hardly smell Captain. I am too busy playing with him, trying to teach him new phrases such as ‘Nice to see you, to see you, nice.’ It isn’t easy. He prefers to stick
to his tried and tested ones like ‘Up The Gulls’ and ‘Keep your hair on.’

‘Give him time,’ says Wink. ‘He’s got to be in the mood.’

Now, coming over the road for a fish and chip supper and
The Generation Game
is part of our Saturday routine. I even start to look forward to it. I feel a warmth towards Wink that started
when she knitted the scarf for Lucas and grew when she sat in the church with her gammy leg in the aisle, tears sliding down her overly-rouged cheeks (perhaps Toni had been practising on her too).
She is one of those people that you can’t help liking despite the smell of her place. She is a survivor who has survived on her tough sweetness so that although she is widowed and disabled,
she manages to get by quite nicely thank you very much. Even Helena takes a shine to Wink. It is an unlikely friendship as Wink is neither stylish nor able to go shopping at any given opportunity
but she is kind to Helena in a way that possibly puts her in mind of her mother (though as a judge’s wife she probably wouldn’t have been too pleased with the comparison as Wink has a
criminal record for a breach of the peace that she will tell me about one day when I am old enough. I hope Wink lives to see me old enough as this disease of hers can be a Bugger).

You don’t really notice the differences in Wink because they happen so slowly. But if you were to think about it, you’d realise that Wink is doing less. That she’s started to
get Mother or Bob to put on the kettle or do bits of shopping.

Wink gets me to do jobs too.

‘Cover up Captain,’ she tells me one Saturday. ‘It’s nearly time for Bruce.’

So I reach up with the travel rug and smother Captain in darkness. We all know what will happen if I don’t. As soon as Bruce appears and strikes up
Life is the Name of the Game
,
there are feathers everywhere and squawking like the cries of a newborn that can’t be ignored. Captain doesn’t share Wink’s love of Bruce. He is most probably jealous.

Tonight it is just Wink, Bob and me (and Captain, Bruce and Anthea). Helena has gone out with Auntie Sheila to the pictures to see
The Poseidon Adventure
after an early evening supper at
the (ironically named) Berni Inn. By the time Bob brings in the fish and chips all plated up, Anthea has already given us a twirl and the contestants are spinning plates to the audience’s
hilarity. Wink and I are in stitches as the plates come crashing to the ground. The programme whizzes by in its usual fashion and before long we are sitting with huge expectation for the finale of
the show.

‘I’d love to be one of them contestants, Philippa,’ Wink says. ‘What I wouldn’t give to be sat at that conveyor belt.’

And I have to agree. It is the height of sophistication – the music, the tension, the wonderful electrical goods that seem to come from an ideal home of the future. But while we shout out
the names of the objects we have committed to memory – ‘Fondue set! Vanity case! Picnic hamper!’ – I have this niggling feeling that shakes the sparkle off the excitement
and turns it to dust.

Will I ever live in an ideal home?

What is an ideal home?

I thought it was Sheila and Bernie’s but it turns out that their supposedly stable foundations have been built on nothing but sand.

I am old enough to walk home from school on my own now. Sometimes I imagine Lucas beside me as I trudge the familiar route, laden with my satchel and shoe-bag. But mostly I
simply relish the freedom after a day cooped up with my new teacher Miss Turnbull. The shop bell always rings in the same half-hearted way as I fall in the door, looking like an unmade bed in my
rucked-up uniform. And there is Mother, as smart as a smoothed counterpane. An expression of surprise on her face as if she’s forgotten she ever had a daughter.

Today Mother isn’t there. Bob is assisted by Auntie Sheila who says she has rolled her sleeves up to lend a helping hand – which is two clichés packed into one sentence which
would impress Miss Mothball, who is keen on clichés and encourages us to use one at every given opportunity as they are a great time saver. (She is not a fan of imagination.)

‘Where’s Mother?’ I ask.

Sheila does a shifty double-take to Bob who turns and fiddles with the boxes of Panini stickers.

‘She’s nipped out, sweetheart,’ Sheila says, cheerily.

‘Where?’

‘Down the town.’

‘Who with?’ (But I already know who with. I just know.)

‘A gentleman,’ she says.

‘A gentleman?’

‘A man from Canada. He’s on his holidays.’

Canada. I know about Canada. It is a big splodge of pink in Lucas’ Atlas that Auntie Nina left me, along with his Book of Flags. So I also know that the Canadian flag is red and white with
a big leaf on it. And I know that the Canadian policemen ride horses and wear comedy trousers. There are also grizzly bears and racoons and Red Indians and maple syrup and lots of mountains and
gigantic lakes and the biggest waterfall that makes a roar so mighty you can’t hear yourself think. Why would someone leave a country like that to come on their holidays to Torbay? (Even if
we do have palm trees and Agatha Christie.)

‘Is it the very tall man?’ I ask, to be sure. ‘The one who smokes the French cigarettes?’

‘I suppose he is quite tall,’ says Bob, turning back and straightening up to his full five foot nine and a half inches. ‘And yes, he seems to think he’s Sacha Distel.
He’s not even a French Canadian. His family come from Torbay, he reckons.’

As I thought. I know this Canadian. I saw him for the first time a few days ago, coming into the shop to buy a postcard to send the folks back home in Labrador. Tall and dark and handsome, he
gave my mother a smile that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Bob has been trying for two years to give her a smile like that but they come out all wrong. Mother has no idea that Bob is in love
with her. Or at least she pretends she has no idea. Bob would walk to the ends of the earth and back again for Mother, but she won’t even let him walk her along the seafront in case people
get the wrong idea. That is exactly the idea Bob has in mind but Mother can’t see it. Even though he took us in when we were homeless yet again, even though he looks after me and teaches me
football, even though he loves Mother with every single thrown-together part of him, she can’t see it. All she can see is his bald patch and baggy cardigans. All she can see is that Bob is
Bob and that is that. Their partnership will never be any more than a shop dance.

And now there is the Canadian. And Auntie Sheila.

‘Cheer up, Philippa,’ Auntie Sheila says now. ‘Have an Orange Maid on me. You look all hot and bothered.’

She plunges her arm into the freezer and produces my favourite lolly so that I am glad she and Mother are friends again. But my hopes for Bob being my new dad have gone down the Swanney (one of
Wink’s favourite phrases – maybe I should try sticking it in one of my stories, see what Miss Mothball makes of that).

The Canadian was supposed to stay in Torquay for three days but he has extended his holiday for three weeks. He’s come to do some family research on behalf of his mother
who lives in another Torbay, on the eastern tip of the island of Newfoundland (next stop the British Isles). She wants him to try and find a connection somewhere. In that time my mother has seen
him every day and has discovered much information about him all of which she recounts to Bob and Sheila (and me from my stakeout behind the door).

The Canadian is called Orville Tupper and whereas I expected him to be a farmer or a mounted policeman, he is in actual fact a male model who has moved from his island and crossed the Gulf of St
Lawrence to tread the long, long road to Fame and Fortune in the big city of Toronto. It has been a tricky road, full of the Bumps of Knock-back and the Potholes of Disappointment so that Orville
Tupper has not yet become the sort of model who poses mysteriously and makes women swoon, but Auntie Sheila is impressed, nonetheless.

‘Ooh, what’s he done?’ she asks, positively glowing at the prospect of some glamour in her life.

‘An advert or something,’ Helena says, dismissively.

But Sheila won’t let this drop. ‘What for?’ she asks. ‘What for?’

‘Vicks Sinex,’Helena says, though I could be mistaken, as she murmurs this rather too quietly for me to hear from behind the door and at that moment the shop bell pings.

I come out from the back and join Bob and Sheila behind the counter. All three of us stand there looking at Orville Tupper, dressed in his cream suit and panama.

‘Good morning.’ He nods at his reception committee, before briefly forcing himself to pick me out for his special attention, like the Queen: ‘How’s it going,
kid?’

He calls me ‘kid’ when he is trying to impress Helena but really he can’t remember my name. He doesn’t wait for my answer, turning to my mother instead.

‘Ready, Helena?’ he asks, holding out his muscley arm for her, as if she is suddenly incapable of walking, which possibly she is in those new six inch heels of hers (where
does
she get the money from?).

Mother puffs out her smoke, reapplies her lipstick and says in her finest English accent, ‘Yes, Orville, ready.’ And she accepts his arm.

‘Let’s vamoose,’ he says. Then he adds: ‘See ya, kid.’ But he isn’t looking at me when he says this. There is only one person he is interested in. My
mother.

‘Philippa,’ I whisper. ‘My name is Philippa.’

But it is too late; they are gone.

In spite of the pharmaceutical turn down his career path, Orville does take care of his appearance – unlike Bob who thinks waving a comb at his hair and buttoning up his
cardy is all that is required of male grooming.

But seeing Orville Tupper swagger into his shop every morning and every evening makes Bob take a good long look at himself in the bathroom mirror. He goes up to Exeter on half-day closing and
forks out on a leather jacket and that very night starts growing sideburns. He should’ve looked a bit longer in that mirror because now he has the appearance of a dodgy private detective
– and there are plenty of them on the television, in all shapes and sizes. But there is no-one quite as unkempt or kind-hearted as Bob. Not that it matters; Helena only has eyes for
Orville.

So Bob turns his attention to Sheila, waiting patiently in the wings.

Sheila is only too happy to accept Bob’s attention as it has been quite some considerable time since Bernie has thrown any her way. She has never forgotten what it is to be a woman and
always dresses accordingly in frocks and skirts and blouses – the finest St Michael’s has to offer. This is partly what attracted Mother to Sheila, though of course Sheila is not in
Nina’s league as far as Style is concerned. But Sheila is the best of Torquay women of distinction. And Sheila is the best Bob can aspire to. They form a new partnership of sorts.
Companionship with a twist of romance, enough to make them both feel they are real. That they will not blow away on a gust of wind.

Over the next fortnight, while Helena and Orville go-a-courting (where exactly, I have no idea, for they never ask me to go along with them as I am somewhat of a passion-killer), Bob and Sheila
muddle along, slightly gauche, slightly clumsy, completely alive again (and a hideous embarrassment to Toni and Terry who can’t bear to think of their mother as having the same surging
hormones as them). Until the Welsh woman from the antique shop in St Mary’s church turns up at the newsagents as Bob puts Sheila’s cup of tea on the counter where she is pricing up the
sandcastle flags. (Lucas would have loved a packet of those.)