Something Beginning With. Sarah Salway

‘Sunday drivers’, which meant they went on outings. If I was lucky, they’d take me with them sometimes. Sally’s mother called us ‘the girls’, which I liked because it made me seem like a second daughter. As if Sally and I were interchangeable.

      Once, we all went to a fete in the country and watched a local girl being crowned the Rose Queen. She sat giggling on a throne, holding a bunch of roses and surrounded by Rose Princes. These princes were all spotty and fat. The dishy boys were too busy throwing grass over the Rose Princesses to look at the Queen. The minute they’d put the crown on her, she’d become too much for them although we couldn’t see why she’d been picked in the first place.

      Sally and I soon got bored because no one was throwing grass over us, so we went to look round. We found a bridge that was very crowded so we joined the throng going over it. When we reached the middle, we suddenly heard the cracking and splitting of wood and the bridge gave way.

      Later the man who owned the house and gardens came out and said that the trouble was that the bridge didn’t lead anywhere, just to a shut gate, so what had happened was that people were coming straight back at the same time as others were crossing and that meant there was too much weight in the middle for the bridge to hold. Considering the danger we’d all come through, he was surprisingly unsympathetic. It was the last time he was holding the fete in his grounds, he said, because he didn’t understand why the public were all so keen to go over a bridge that went nowhere. And now he’d have to have the bridge mended, which was going to cost money he didn’t have.

      I read about an experiment that made men go over a very dangerous bridge and when they got to the other side, they were shown photographs of women. All the men found the women more attractive than they would have done if they had not had such an exciting experience. However, Sally and I both agreed that when the Rose Queen came to wish us well in the Red Cross Tent she was so ugly, we still wondered why she had been crowned.

      Sally has always taken me places, shown me the way to behave, what to do. Sometimes I wonder if this is why she likes me. Sometimes I wonder if the places she takes me too are always the best places to go.

      See Best Friends, Worst Case Scenario

      Dogs

      The chairman of our company has a Dalmatian dog called Jupiter. When he brings it into work, we have to take it in turns to walk it at lunchtime. He seems to think it is a treat for us, and makes jokes about how many girlfriends his dog has. It does make you wonder what he thinks we are.

      Susan, the receptionist, once told me that she had taken a call from his French au pair. This girl was in tears because she had broken the vacuum cleaner when she was outside, hoovering the lawn. Susan told her to take the vacuum cleaner inside and pretend it had never happened, but the girl kept crying, saying how much trouble she’d get into if the chairman’s wife came back and found anything left on the grass.

      Perhaps the wife was getting her revenge. I am always hearing stories about au pairs getting off with their bosses. The chairman is good-looking enough. I have often smiled at him on the stairs or when we meet in the office, but I’m not sure he even notices me. He always calls me Veronica and laughs in this coughing little way when he sees me.

      I remember reading about a jilted girlfriend once who got her own back on her boyfriend by letting herself into his flat when he was away and planting grass seed all over the carpet. She went in every morning of his holiday and watered it. I would have loved to have seen his face when he opened the door.

      I always used to want a dog. I would imagine waking up nearly every morning and hearing one barking for me downstairs. Once I picked a particularly beautiful leaf and kept it in a glass bowl as a pet until I got bored with it. I do realise how pathetic this seems now, but at the time I really loved that leaf.

      See Ambition, Revenge, Tornados

      Doors

      Apparently, it is impossible to have an advertisement in Britain that features a shut door. This is because so many children were locked in their bedrooms as a punishment and now, even as adults, they automatically start to panic when the door isn’t open. Even just an inch makes things better.

      There were times when my mother used to tell me to stay in my bedroom. It wasn’t cruel, she just wanted a break from looking after me. I’d have as many books as I wanted, treats to eat. I’d make myself a nest up there.

      I’d keep the door shut then. Close out the rest of the world. Keep it all safe.

      See Houses, Noddy, Property, Velvet, Yellow

      Dreams

      Sally once went out with a man who liked to record her dreams in a diary. She had to break off with him because she got too exhausted. She’d be awake all night trying to think of interesting things for him to write about.

      See Codes, Mistaken Identity, Utopia

       E

      Ears

      I like to stick cotton-wool buds in my ears and turn them round, pushing harder and harder. I crave the satisfaction it brings. Sometimes even when I have friends round, all I can think of is that round plastic jar of baby buds until I have to go into my bedroom and clean my ears. It’s like an itch. Once I twisted too hard and my head filled with a howling pain. I vowed then never to do it again. Until the next time.

      There was a boy at school called Stewart Simmons. One day he was swinging on his chair during Geography when the teacher called him to attention. He was taken by surprise, and as he fell, the compass he was holding pierced right through his eardrum. He screamed.

      Three years later, when I joined the class, the other children were still talking about the loudness of that scream. When we were fifteen, I went out with Stewart Simmons and felt the reflected glory from his fame. He would still scream in the playground for money.

      The trouble was that Stewart was boring when he wasn’t making a noise. He wanted to be a lorry driver and sometimes when we were lying together on his bed, he’d be able to name the type of lorry that went past the window just from the sound of its tyres. He seemed to feel this was particularly clever as he was still deaf in one ear from the compass incident.

      See Captains, The Fens, Sounds

      Elephant’s Egg

      When we went to London Zoo for my eighth birthday, I fell in love with the elephants. I wanted to move in with them and be the little elephant who never strayed from her mother’s side. I wanted people to say how sweet I was, and take pictures of me, and have my father wrap his trunk around me, swishing the flies off or sprinkling water over me to wash my back.

      The following year, the day before my birthday, I asked to go and see the elephants again. My mother got cross and said money didn’t grow on trees, but when I got back from school that afternoon, there was a message from the Zoo. Apparently the elephant at London Zoo had laid an egg especially for me and my family to eat. It was going to come on my birthday.

      The only trouble was that the zookeeper left it on our doorstep during the only two minutes in the day that I stopped watching for him. I took it into the kitchen where my mother was waiting to cook it. She was cross with me for not keeping a proper look-out because it meant she couldn’t thank the keeper for bringing it all that way.

      This happened every year until I was fifteen. I never managed to catch the zookeeper. My mother never managed to thank him.

      An elephant’s egg is not like an ordinary egg. The white tastes like mashed potato, and the yolk is never runny, being a bit like a large round sausage. I’ve had sausage and mashed potatoes many times since, but never anything as good as those elephant’s eggs.