Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,123
shop in Hull several years earlier. While we waited for my father to return with Ted, she hung a pair of matching purple paisley curtains at my window.
“No wonder they went of out business,” I said as my mother stood back to admire her handiwork and I surveyed the nightmare of swirls that had become my bedroom walls.
“Don’t be so bloody ungrateful,” she snapped. “There’s children in Africa would kill for a bedroom as nice as this.”
“And as soon as they got it they’d redecorate,” I mumbled as she pushed past me into the hall.
Later that afternoon, Mabel and Frank arrived. It was the first time they’d visited since Christmas. My mother had insisted that they join us to welcome Ted home and help give him the positive new start he needed. As they followed my mother into the kitchen, they both seemed in especially cheerful moods.
“Not planning to chuck that on my trousers, are you, Evelyn?” Frank joked as my mother set the kettle on the cooker to boil.
“I told Frank we should get him a pair of asbestos underpants when he comes over here,” Mabel added, nudging Frank and laughing. “That way, at least his manhood will be safe.”
My mother spun around. “If you don’t mind, Mabel, I’d prefer it if you didn’t make distasteful jokes while you’re in my house. I really don’t want Jesse exposed to that kind of talk. Besides, we should set a better tone for our Ted.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Evelyn,” Mabel scoffed. “Ted’s coming home from prison, not a tour of the Commonwealth with the bloody Queen. I can’t imagine he’ll be shocked by anything Frank or me have got to say…. Or maybe by one thing,” she said, exchanging a brief look with Frank. My mother caught the exchange between them and regarded them with a narrow-eyed frown. “Anyway, Jesse hears far worse than that at school every day.”
“Oh, aye,” Frank said, nodding. “Teenagers these days get up to larks we never even dreamed of when we were young. Don’t they, Jesse, love?”
“I’m going upstairs, I’ve got homework to do,” I said, ignoring Frank and looking instead at my mother and Mabel. “I’ll come down when Uncle Ted gets here.”
I did, in fact, have quite a lot of homework to do—several pages of geometry that Tracey and the Debbies were depending on me to complete so they could copy it before our maths lesson on Monday, and an essay on the War of the Roses for Miss Nutall. Neither of these activities, however, seemed particularly appealing. Instead, I decided to write a letter to Amanda.
It had been several weeks since I’d written to her. After that morning when she showed me the locket that Stan had given her, I hadn’t written to her once; I hadn’t even spoken to her at the bus stop very much. I couldn’t bear to. I had revealed how I felt about her and she had thought me absurd, laughable, repellent. And though she remained friendly enough, just the knowledge that she had been horrified by my effort to kiss her made me shrink away. I longed for that brief period of euphoria when I’d managed to convince myself that Amanda shared my feelings. But I was alone with all my perverted yearnings for another girl. I was confused, bereft, and left without even a fantasy to cling to. This time, in my letter, I couldn’t write out any more of my ridiculous stories; I simply wanted to tell her how I felt.
“Dear Amanda,” I began, “I wish I could send this letter to you. Actually, I wish I could talk to you about how I feel, but if I did you would probably hate me and call me all sorts of horrible names. The thing is, I am really confused about almost everything. The only thing that I am certain of is that I love you. But I know that loving you is wrong and that if anybody found out they would say I was a lesbian. I don’t even know if that is true. I just know that when you kissed me that night after the disco it was the most wonderful moment in my life and if I could stop time, the way they did in a Star Trek episode once, I would stop it at the exact second that we stood next to the village Christmas tree and you kissed me, and I would stay there forever. So I’m glad that you