‘Don’t apologise,’ I told him. ‘Please don’tapologise. But maybe you do need to say it. Maybe you do need to tell someone.’
‘It was Dad,’ he whispered, nodding slowly. ‘Dad got her pregnant. But they made me say it was me.’
FIFTEEN
JULIE STURGESS (BY ROB)
We moved from Cardiff in 1971 – a move that was as unexpected as it was sudden.
I was six and had no understanding whatsoever of why we were moving. I have a vague recollection that Dad had lost his job as school caretaker, but I may have learned that later on. In retrospect I can take a pretty good guess at why that was, but at the time it was a surprise. One day we were living our lives and the next we were loading belongings into a Transit van, Margate-bound.
I was happy to move, so I didn’t think too much about why. I thought the whole adventure was exciting. I’d been having a hard time at school anyway, being bullied for being taller than everyone else (yes, even at six, I was tall) for being what the meaner boys liked to call abeanpole.
Mum said it was a ‘fresh new start for all of us’ and that sounded pretty good to me. I was even happier when I discovered that our fresh new start would take place in a town with a funfair, mile-long beaches and a seafront of shimmering amusement arcades.
My father’s new job was as caretaker out at the Hornby factory, and I remember that was a subject of conversation between my parents. Snippets of those conversations bubbled up years later when I saw a school psychologist – stuff about how it wassaferthan working in a school.
Anyway, at six, I thought Dad working for Hornby was great news. I imagined him playing with Hornby stuff all day, and at Christmas he got staff discount on trains, Scalextric and more.
The Sturgesses were our first neighbours, and Julie and I hit it off instantly. Our gardens ran side by side and as we were still small enough to fit though the gaps in the rotten wooden fence, keeping us apart was pretty much impossible.
Mum didn’t like Julie coming to ours – something I didn’t understand until much later – but going to Julie’s suited me anyway. Life at the Sturgesses’ felt far more relaxed – the undercurrents somehow less emotionally charged. As both Julie and I were only children, we became like brother and sister.
It was Christmas ’72 when Dad bought Julie the doll – we’d been in Margate less than a year. Coming from Dad, who was stingy even with his own, a gift that wasn’t a heavily discounted Hornby product was a shockingly generous gesture.
I was considered an oversensitivemummy’sboyby then, something my father was openly concerned about, so my own Christmas gifts were unrelentingly masculine. I got guns and soldier outfits and train sets. I got chemistry sets and Airfix kits that were beyond my capabilities to stick together.
So when he gave Julie that doll I felt unreasonably jealous. Chrissy had hair that you could brush and clothes with tiny buttons you could undo. And when you pulled the string she spoke! I got to know the order of Chrissie’s replies and, aged seven, would lie in bed beneath the covers, pulling the string, pretending she was my friend.
‘Are you ready for bed?’ I’d ask her.
I don’t think so.
‘Do you want to play a game then?’
Why not?
‘Hide and seek or shops?’
I’ll tell you tomorrow.
‘Don’t tell Dad that Julie lended you me, will you?’
I’ll never tell.
The Action Man was intended as my own virile alternative to the Chrissie doll, but to Dad’s dismay Julie and I swapped them back and forth all the time.
Julie liked Action Man’s muscular chest and Eagle Eyes, while I liked my secret night-time chats with Chrissie.
Was Dad concerned I would turn out gay? Could someone so twisted actually see that as a concern? Perhaps. Probably. Almost certainly.
But he needn't have worried anyway: I liked girls. It was just that I liked them so much more than boys I wanted girls as my friends, too. Boys were inexplicably cruel aliens. They stamped on worms and pulled the wings from butterflies. They taunted Welsh beanpoles like myself endlessly. Girls, specifically Julie Sturgess, were far nicer to hang out with. So yeah, a mummy’s boy, a massive beanpole girly boy, that was me.
‘Will you get out from under my feet?’ my mother would say twenty times a day.
But if you hung around Mum you might get a sugar sandwich, or the chance to lick out the cake bowl, or even – if the positions of the stars were just right and Mum was in a good mood – the first of the scones from the oven. Beside the swish of Mum’s skirt was where I felt happiest, where I felt safest, while Dad’s lap made me inexplicably queasy.
Children understand nothing. Children understand everything.
