Eighteenth Birthday Blues

Another excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund"

Tuesday 12^th April 1977

It was my 18^th birthday two days ago.

I think an 18^th birthday is quite important. Ashley’s, for example, in December, was quite a highlight.

Ashley’s parents gave her a car. It is a tiny Fiat, and it looks a bit like a hamster. It is really small and fat. It is so small that her mother had it tied up in a pink ribbon! Ashley’s mother also gave her driving lessons in their Daimler, so that Ashley just had to take a test and then passed it straight away. So her driving classes cost almost no money at all. Sometimes I was even in the Daimler when she was taking lessons and I can tell you I also learned a lot. Ashley’s mother shouted at her all the time, enough for me to learn everything as well, in the back seat.

This car benefits me too of course. We drive everywhere in it. I think I’m in it almost as much as she is. For example, Ashley picks me up in it to go to school and she brings me home in it; I just have to give her half the petrol money. We feel really independent and exclusive in this car. We just come out of school and everyone else has to go and wait for the bus and there we are, our car. It’s right there.

And of course we drive everywhere else in it when we have a free moment. Because we mostly have the same waitress shifts at the Deeping Coach and Horses, we also have the same free time slots. So we just do everything together, like driving to Cambridge to go shopping, or driving to Nottingham to go to plays.

The car is very loud and doesn’t go very fast (although Ashley drives as fast as possible I think) but it does look so funny – short and fat – that we have given it a name. It is called Orson, after Orson Welles.

We say things like, “Oh, Orson needs some petrol,” or “Gosh, Orson’s making a lot of noise today. What can be wrong with him?” “Oh dear, Orson’s got to the garage today. We’ll have to pick him later”. That’s a bit of a pain, when Orson is incapacitated. Then we are back to the trudge, trudge, of the school bus. It makes a difference, I can tell you!

Ashley and I also do tap classes together now. Yu Lin has been doing tap classes for ages and in breaks she teaches me steps. I hadn’t been able to take a dance class for a long time. But Yu Lin taught me the all the tap Time Steps, from the Single to the Quadruple and I can do them all now. So Ashley and I decided we would take a tap class together. And I can actually pay for them myself now, thanks to my Deeping Coach and Horses earnings.

We do tap on Thursdays and after that we do something called The Plan. And The Plan works like this.

I should tell you that Ashley and I are completely off that thing that we used to be into a couple of years ago with Stacey. I mean we are in the Upper Sixth now. With Stacey, it was all about getting high, being on drugs, listening to Pink Floyd and the like, dressing up in jeans and cheesecloth skirts and tops, going shopping in Cambridge and being all studenty. Well at some point I said to Ashley, actually I don’t like that scene, I want to be smart. Not that I ever took any drugs anyway! And Ashley said, do you know what, I went along with that with Stacey, but actually I want to be smart too.

So now, Ashley and I are all into geometric haircuts, pencil skirts and blouses, tights and high-heeled shoes. We have gone really chic. We are done with all that cheesecloth and jeans stuff and darkened rooms and Deep Purple LP’s and gazing into Salvador Dali posters. And we are really into theatres, and the RSC, and literature and poems, like those of Verlaine and Rimbaud, and Roger McGough and the Liverpool poets.

Plus, we decided we needed at least one Sugar Daddy just like Yu Lin has with Simon Lyons. So that’s The Plan. We are fed up with lousy boyfriends with no money.

After tap on Thursdays, we get dressed up in our pencil skirts and blouses, and we put on a lot of make-up. And then we go down to the George Hotel (the one that served me my Martini when I didn’t try to commit suicide, except they can’t recognise me now, because I’m not in school uniform and I’m all made-up, plus I’ve got a geometric haircut) and we sit in the Lounge and we order coffee with cream. And we smoke cigarettes and look really smart because we are on the lookout for Sugar Daddies. There are always lots of businessmen in the George Lounge and there we are, right there, offering ourselves as Sugar Babies. They can come right up to us and offer to be our Sugar Daddies but so far we have had no success! And I can report, we look terrific.

We talk to each other of course, about all sorts of things, and we pose a lot, and we stand up and go to the toilet a lot, so that the businessmen can observe us walking along in our pencil skirts and high heels, but so far it just doesn’t seem to have had the desired effect. Because not one lousy businessman has yet approached us and offered to be a Sugar Daddy.

It is a bit disappointing, but we are persevering. And it is a very nice Thursday evening occupation, going to a dance class and then getting all tarted up to have a sophisticated evening in a posh bar. The only disadvantage is that the combination of strong coffee and heavy cream with several cigarettes often makes me feel a little sick.

A businessman-type customer at the Deeping Coach and Horses (where we are not intentionally posing) told Ashley that she looked just like Judy Garland and me that I looked just like Liza Minelli. While this is interesting, it is not strictly in the interest of The Plan, which is to actually get a businessman or two to spend money on us and drive us around in Ferraris.

But anyway, in the meantime, it was approaching my 18^th birthday. And of course I knew I wasn’t going to get an Orson like Ashley. I would be happy to get five quid! My parents are poor, of course, they are not famous ex-footballers or owners of the only supermarket in Deeping St. Paul. But despite that, my Dad said to me, about a week before my 18^th birthday, that he would like to get me a present.

Well, I was really surprised. Because, you might have noticed, we have not had presents, either Christmas or birthday, for quite a while. So I was very touched. And my Dad said, he would like to take me into Stamford to look at the present he had found for me, to ask me if I would like it.

So a week before my birthday, Dad drove me into Stamford on the Saturday afternoon, and we parked up at the top of the High Street. I was very excited. And then he said he wanted to take me to the little tea-shop where he sometimes goes on a Saturday all by himself. It is a great little tea-shop where you can order tea and scones and it was really nice going there with my Dad, just the two of us. Actually we just had tea without the scones, but it is a great atmosphere. And Dad told me that just right in the jewellers’ next door, he had seen something which might make quite a very nice 18^th birthday present for me.

Well as you can imagine, I was very impressed. This would be the first time for ages that I had received a birthday present and it has also been a long time since I have received any pocket money (when I started waitressing my parents had decided I didn’t need pocket money any more). And so this was all a bit new. Even when I had asked my Dad if he could help me with driving lessons, like Ashley’s parents did, Mum and Dad had told me that now I was earning my own money waitressing, I should pay for my driving lessons by myself.

After the tea, we went out of the shop and just turned into the jeweller’s shop next door. We stood outside and looked in the window. And there it was. What my Dad wanted to buy me for my 18^th birthday.

“You see that Lizzie?” Dad said. “That gold pendant with the pearl. And the ear-rings.”

And of course I did! They were right in the middle of the window. A gold neckchain with a gold pendant and pearl. And matching gold and pearl pendant ear-rings. They were beautiful. I couldn’t believe my Dad wanted to give me such an expensive birthday present.

“They’re beautiful, Dad,” I said.

“They are, aren’t they,” Dad replied. “The thing is, Lizzie, the whole thing would cost thirty pounds.”

“Yes,” I said. I suppose I was already starting to doubt that he was going to spend thirty pounds. I know that sometimes I earn almost twenty pounds a week at the Deeping Coach and Horses, but I know from Sheila and Moira, the other waitresses, who have children, that thirty pounds is a whole week’s wages for supporting a family. My twenty pounds of course goes into a savings’ account for university, and also for buying school uniform and shoes and the like.

I turned round. “I know you can’t afford thirty pounds, Dad.”

“Oh no Lizzie,” apparently Dad wasn’t letting it go at that. “I’ll tell you what. I’ve got twenty-five pounds. I’ll spend twenty-five pounds on this present. If you give me five pounds from your earnings, I can afford to buy it.”

There was something that went through me, some kind of cold feeling that said, there’s something not quite right here. A feeling that said, if he’s only got twenty-five pounds, then let him buy me a different present, one for twenty-five pounds. And another one that said, sometimes he buys his medals (he is a medal collector) just for twenty-five pounds. And there was also another feeling, one that said, if I refuse to give him five pounds, there will be a problem. And it is not that I am too mean to give him five pounds towards my own 18^th birthday present, it is just that I find it strange.

And now I just didn’t want the gold pendant and ear-rings with the pearls any more.

But I heard my voice say, “OK.” It was a bit stumbly.

And Dad said, “OK. Well let’s go in and buy them then.”

I had to work in the Deeping Coach and Horses on my birthday, at lunchtime. It was a Sunday, unfortunately. So I had to ask Dad to drive me. And he said, OK. And just about 10.30 I got into the car. I had got out of going to church because I was working, and everybody else had gone, but so far, nobody had wished me Happy Birthday yet. I was guessing it was because no one had really had time, what with going off early to church and all. And I hadn’t even yet seen the present from Dad, the one I’d contributed five pounds myself for.

Anyway, I got all made up for work and then I got into the car, and Dad was already in it. And as soon as I got in, he turned round to me, looking disgusted, and said, “You look like a whore.” Just like that. I mean, I had some rouge on and some lipstick, and some mascara, that was it. And he went, “You look like a whore.”

I didn’t look like a whore. I mean just because Ashley and I had spent some time in the George looking for Sugar Daddies didn’t mean I was a whore. Plus, it was my birthday. I wanted to cry. It didn’t have to be an Ashley birthday. There didn’t have to be an Orson. But I hadn’t even been given the present that I had partially paid for myself. And I don’t think that just because you’re wearing a bit of lipstick and rouge that you necessarily look like a whore.

So I just stared ahead and said, “It’s my birthday today. By the way.”

And Dad said, “No it’s not. Your birthday’s next week.” And he put the car into gear and drove off!

Well! I think I know when my birthday is! Excuse me! Up to now it has always been April 10^th! So I stuck to my guns and said, “No it’s not, Dad, my birthday’s today. I’m 18 today.”

Dad drove on for a bit in silence. After a while he said, “Are you sure?”