1953 in My Father’s House VII

The Jive and the Tote

Carole came to tea. Mrs Ash and Fay decided that we would have it out in the summerhouse – if the children were to make a mess, then not in the house. A card table and three folding chairs were set up in the middle of the empty space, the table covered with a tablecloth to hide the green baize. The summerhouse had no heating. With its plates, serviettes, tea set, mix of tiny cucumber sandwiches and cakes, the tea table looked both formal and out-of-place in the bare-floored site of our wrestling practices; with its naked central light bulb, stacked-up deck chairs, old golf sets and wooden box of croquet mallets against the walls.

I felt some trepidation as to what our guest would make of the setting. Marco had been persuaded by Fay to change his shirt and sweater, which had not gone down well. Change – for a girl! At the point at which Carole arrived, he had taken the croquet balls out of the box and was racing them down a side of the room.

Carole was exquisitely pretty. Like a perfect grown-up in miniature. She had auburn hair, green eyes, a heart-shaped face, fine bone structure that would have won my mother’s approval. The tiniest waist. Just perfect.

Marco stopped rolling the balls and contemplated her in an enthusiastic way, which brought me back unpleasantly to my fuzz-ball hair and stocky figure – both of which I tried mostly to forget.

Having been brought through the garden by Fay, who then made her retreat, Carole stood at the door to the summerhouse contemplating the scene within. The small square table in its surrounding emptiness, and her two companions for the afternoon.

‘It’s like a film set in here,’ she remarked. She gave a high, tinkering laugh. There was relish in it, a readiness to enjoy, which I immediately liked. I was even ready to forgive her her good looks, if Marco didn’t go silly over them.

With a swift gesture, she threw off her blue cape with its velvet collar and matching muff, and handed them to him. He promptly deposited them on the stack of dusty deck-chairs. She picked them up, looked about her, then carefully draped them over one of the chairs at the tea-table. Marco shrugged his shoulders. I could tell he was undecided what he thought of her.

Back in South Africa I used to play with cardboard puppets with my sister. Those books of little cut-out dolls, supplied with multiple outfits with tabs you could cut out (sometimes colour in) and dress up your dolls in.

My sister was four years younger than me and sensibly, in this, took my lead – if in few other ways. Born not long before my parents split up, raised solely by my mother, she was my mother’s darling. I often felt rivalrous and despairing, but not when we were dressing these paper dolls.

Oh, hours upon hours upon happy hours we spent. Making up stories, giving these cardboard models whole outrageous lives. And imagining our lives, too, our futures. My sister told me that she was going to have a hundred children and together we thought up names for them all. It was an exhaustive business. The paper models morphed into us. I had all manner of adventures for us which I laid out to my sister in the balmy afternoons after lunch in Cape Town, while our mother had her ‘siesta’ and we too were meant to be resting. And our older brother, away at a preparatory boarding school, was being bullied and learning to hold his own.

When Carole took off her cape I thought of those cardboard dolls. Every one of the outfits my sister and I had cut out and imbued with life would have looked exquisite on her. In real life, here in our summer house on a blisteringly cold January afternoon, she was wearing clothes like in a picture book or film, not ones I’d so far encountered on anyone I’d had anything to do with. A body-hugging mauve sweater under which you could just see the shape of budding breasts – breasts, she was only my age! A little gold belt at her waist. And an embroidered skirt which floated out, revealing layers of stiff petticoats with pink and blue laced borders.

‘It’s the American style,’ she advised us, as Marco and I gawped. She laughed again. ‘I’m Carole. You must be Jo and Marco. Your father is a sweetie,’ she said to us, as if he was Marco’s, too. Perhaps she assumed he was? She might be my age, but she had a sophistication I couldn’t dream off. She seemed to be taking everything in her stride. ‘Come on, the food looks scrumptious, shall we tuck in?’ And when Fay returned soon with a pot of tea, Carole said, oh so worldly, ‘Shall I be mother or would you like to be, Jo?’

It was hard to look past her appearance, to concentrate on what she was saying. Or perhaps it was that none of her opening gambits were ones which we could pick up on. She chatted about the Synagogue her family went to, her circle of friends in the Youth Group there, how she’d been paired with a boy she didn’t like in a dancing-on-ice competition – she seemed very keen on ice-skating. She asked Marco if he skated and when he said he didn’t, she said it was a pity, otherwise he could have been her partner. And she laughed again.

Marco ate through many sandwiches and cakes. I’d roller-skated in South Africa before I’d fallen off a horse on a slippery pass on Table Mountain and had had a year in that horrible brace. I remembered the fun roller-skating had been.

‘I’d like to try ice-skating,’ I offered. ‘Perhaps we could go next holidays?’

‘Why not,’ she said. ‘There is nothing like it. And you can meet my friends.’

I was less certain about that. I liked it, though, that she was willing. I was beginning to feel a bit more relaxed. By now we’d finished tea. Carole got up from the table and jumped around. ‘It’s so cold in here,’ she said. ‘And such a strange place to have tea. Let’s go into the house, have you got a room we can talk in?’

‘I’m not sure?’ I turned to Marco for help.

He looked at me and shook his head. We were at an impasse. It was cold. Marco’s eyes caught the croquet balls he’d abandoned. ‘Why don’t we put on our coats and play croquet outside?’ he suggested. ‘It must be about as cold in here as outside, anyway.’

Carole looked down at her patent shoes with their buckles and straps. ‘It’s a bit muddy outside, isn’t it?’ At this Marco took one of the balls and rolled it the length of the room.

We stood around at a loss. I was desperate to think of something, desperate for the fizz in Carole to not now evaporate. I wasn’t making any progress.

‘I know. Why don’t we dance to keep warm?’ she suggested. ‘Have you got a gramophone we could bring out here?’

Oh dear, there were so many things I was going to have to speak to my father about. He was going to have to be educated about what visiting girls needed.

I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’

‘Do you know how to jive?’ she asked. Neither Marco nor I did.

‘Do you want me to teach you?’

‘If you want,’ said Marco.

We pushed the table, with the empty tea things on it, to the side. Carole hummed the tunes she remembered and taught us to jive. We took it in turns to partner her. I didn’t feel a bit left out. I could tell Marco was enjoying himself, he was a natural dancer, and once we picked up the steps – which after all weren’t that much more difficult than wrestling – we whirled around the room, twisting under the arches of each other’s arms, while Carole hummed the beat.

Marco in his jeans, white shirt (he’d thrown off his pullover), his blue-green eyes glinting, his fair hair flying in all directions; me in my rather ordinary bottle-green pleated skirt, V-neck sweater, and electrified fuzz-ball of hair. Carole leading us, auburn curls bouncing on her shoulders, her flared skirt and countless petticoats making Catherine Wheels as she moved. She was quite splendid.

Still, when her father came for her, she seemed disappointingly keen to leave. Later on I leant that she’d told him that she’d been frozen in the summerhouse; she thought it an odd set-up, and that if we were to meet again it would need to be in their house.

Questioned by me when we were in our adjoining beds that night, Marco agreed that Carole was very pretty.

‘Stunning,’ I declared.

Yes, okay, stunning,’ he agreed. ‘But.’

“But, what?’

He just said, ‘You have her as a friend, Jo, if you want to.’

‘Oh?’ I was disappointed, but I was also relieved that he hadn’t been smitten, after all. I thought, he’s not into girls yet, and when he is, maybe it won’t be Carole’s type he’ll go for. I wondered if he thought she was a bit of a princess. Or that her chat was girl’s chat, and uninteresting. But I was drawn to her. And though she and I seemed to have led very different lives, I somehow guessed that beneath her prettiness, her being such a ‘female’ in a way I wasn’t ready to be yet – and perhaps this is why I sensed it – existed a whole other aspect to her, a freer, less sophisticated spirit who’d be up for all manner of adventures. Carole was my first chance of a girl-friend in England. She remained a friend well into my adulthood. I couldn’t wait to go ice-skating with her. Clearly, though, she wasn’t going to visit No. 55 again until the circumstances were more propitious!

*

Plumpton races, where we went the following day, on the other hand, became an enduring and fully-shared pleasure of Marco’s and mine. We were conscious that it was our last day. Marco took it in his stride, I was anxious about what laid ahead. Marco was not actually going to his school till the Wednesday. He was established there and seemed to like it. It was different for him. Early the next morning he would take the train to London to spend two days with his mother before travelling on. He had two more full days!

My father said I was to put tomorrow out of my head. ‘It is a lesson worth learning, Jo,’ he said. ‘Tomorrows usually look after themselves if you let them.’

The day was the first clear one for a while. No wind and no rain, and even a glimpse of blue sky now and then. Because there had been much rain the fields around the course were mud baths to drive our cars onto and walk through. All three of us – and anyone else with sense – were in Wellington boots. Squelch, squelch, squelch.

The hills of the Downs were close by. You felt you could reach out and touch them. They weren’t Table Mountain, yet I grew to love, even to become addicted, to their soft rises and falls. All my life subsequently on returning from holiday, or merely from a day in London, the first sighting of their contours with outlines of the windmills Jack and Jill high on the ridge, and further along the ‘V’ of trees on the escarpment planted for Queen Victoria, provides me a shot of adrenalin: a deep, satisfying pleasure.

I was breathing all this in when we got out of the car: the winter landscape, the tracery of the trees with their bare branches, the white dots of sheep in the fields on the ridge. My father and Marco, though, were keen to stake a place by putting down our waterproof sheet and blanket. They were divvying up the packed lunch. Before I knew it, my arms were piled high with plastic plates, cutlery, cushions and goodness knows what all else. People everywhere, children, dogs.

We had Mooney with us for the first part. She was a beautifully behaved, gentle dog. I loved her soft hot tongue, abrasive but careful, exploring the titbits I was allowed to offer her after we had eaten. My father was very strict about that. He always gave her the apple core after he had eaten an apple. For a long time this worried me. I imagined the pips growing into small trees inside her. My father told me many times there was nothing to worry about, but I couldn’t quite convince myself. I thought he should have given her a nicer, juicy sliver of apple. Why should she only have the core!

After an early lunch– a makeshift affair with thick sandwiches, pork pies, hard-boiled eggs, with little paper cones for the salt, milky coffee from a thermos and biscuits – we packed the hamper and Mooney back into the car. She was to guard it for us. We’d eaten fast, partly because, although it wasn’t as cold as it had been, after about ten minutes sitting down you were wanting to get up and be on the move. And partly because, as my father and Marco assured me: now the fun begins!

The fun was betting at the tote. My father allotted Marco and I a certain amount to spend on the betting. I think it was ten shillings. And then he would put our bets on for us since we were under age. He would also bet for himself. Though he loved watching the horses race, he wasn’t a betting man especially. Whatever he won he divided between us. I was cautious about my bets, sticking to something like odds, or placed to win, whereas Marco would throw away as much as he had on one horse he got the right ‘stiff’ from. He would wander around, listening to the betting talk, picking up tips.

My favourite part was going to the ring, watching these magnificent beasts be walked around by their trainers, and trying to ape the language of the betters, trying to assess from any arcane sign – the length of a neck, the gait, the friskiness or control, even the movement of a tail, the shape of the jaw, the set of the teeth – which one was likely to be a winner that day. I would hold hands with my father. The three of us would confer like weathered horse-racing folk, or so I told myself. Then the rush to put on our bets. Then a discussion about where to position ourselves for the beginning of the race. Then a run round the outside of the track for an advantageous place to see the final laps. Sometimes we managed three different places and caught a view of the middle of the race, too.

I remember the excitement that first time, and many times after that, of experiencing the horses come thundering past. The steam from their breath, the jockeys riding high on the horses, the earth flying up as they passed, the shouts of the crowds for each ones’ favourite. I jumped and jumped and shouted and bellowed until I was hoarse. Then, if we’d had a lucky break, a saunter to the tote for our winnings. Divvying them out.

And barely any time before it seemed we were back at the ring watching the next lot. Heaven! I could have gone on and on. But Mooney was probably getting cold in the car, and my father wanted to get out before the squash of all the cars after the last race. So, we left one race early, with a promise that we would return.

In Cape Town, on the last evening before my brother went back to boarding-school, my mother would take us all in the car to see the evening lights come on in the city. We lived out in the suburbs of Claremont. My brother sat in the front of our old Chevrolet and, as a treat on this special night, he could use his foot to dip the headlights for our mother as we drove.

Here in England I’d had my first experience of horse racing. A perfect last day. The three of us had supper at home. My father told us to pack, take a bath and go to bed early.

In bed, Marco and I spoke for a long time in the dark. He told me about his family, the fluctuating fortunes of his grandfather who’d been a theatre manager, lost a lot of money, made it up on the next venture, then lost more. His mother had been an actress for a while but things hadn’t gone well for her either, and she was now a saleswoman for a cosmetic firm. I asked him if he wanted to be an actor. He said it was ‘in the blood’, he loved amateur dramatics at his school but for a job he would probably have to go for something steadier. He seemed very thoughtful.

Then I suggested that, as our wrestling had lost some if its draw since our fight with the gang had had the desired effect, perhaps we could put on a play in the Easter holidays.

‘What, just the two of us?’

‘We could ask Margaret to join us?’ I decided not to mention Carole. She probably wouldn’t want to, anyway.

He considered the prospect. After a while he said, ‘We could act Toad of Toad Hall. We’d have to get hold of a mask, though, if I were to play Toad.’

‘Is he the main part?’

‘Yes?’

‘What would I be?’

‘We’ve lots of time to think about it. Yes, I think it is quite a good idea.’

‘I could direct,’ I offered.

‘No, Jo. I’ll be doing that.’

‘As well as playing the main part?’

‘Of course. I come from the theatrical family, remember.’

‘And you think I’ll have enough to do?’

‘You’ll have plenty to do. For one thing, getting your father to agree to let us use the sitting room. For another, asking him to help us get an audience. We’d need people to watch the play.’

It was a bargain.

On fresh air, with my throat still hurting from all that shouting, and the galloping of the hooves still ringing in my ears, I went to sleep. I was neither thinking back to my stoep in Cape Town, or forward to what lay ahead. I could hear Marco already asleep in the adjoining bed. I was going to miss him. And to think that only a few weeks before I’d thought it the most terrible news to be told I’d be sharing with a boy!