What’s it all about, Naaancy?
If the days leading up to invitations being sent out were filled with rumours, then the days after they were received were filled with a heady rush in making sure everything was prepared. New dresses were to be swapped or found or made, make-up was scrounged for or created if you knew how. Of course, the men were all as calm as cucumbers. The most they had to prepare for was lining their stomachs on the night. At least, all the married men were calm enough.
“I heard that lil’ Louie wants to ask Olive to dance,” I could hear the smirk in Nancy’s voice as she flicked through the clothes in my wardrobe, “Oh...oh, when did you get this shirt?!” She squealed, spinning around to show me what she had in her hands.
“At a swap – keep your voice down! He’s probably in his room,” I hissed, slipping off from my bed to float over to my best friend with a grin, “Not Olive Riley?”
“One and the same.”
“Oh...her dad-”
“-his blood will just boil up and he’ll keel over,” She nodded, finishing my sentence. The grin on her face widened, “I honestly can’t wait!”
There’s a few things that astound me about Nancy Laughton: on my first day of school 18 years ago, Nancy Laughton sat down beside me at lunch when no one else would. She remained silent for a minute whilst I chewed on my cheese and pickle sandwich before she rubbed her hand down my arm and then checked the palm of her hand. With a satisfied, toothless grin, she climbed onto the bench, holding her hand aloft as she declared to the rest of the room, “I TOLD YOU IT WOULDN’T COME OFF.” Once she had gotten through Mr. Keller’s bollocking, she explained to me that some of the other kids were too scared to sit beside me. Their mothers had told them to come back clean and they were worried that my blackness would rub off on them, dirtying their new school clothes. From a young age, Nancy could smell bullshit from a mile away and she was never afraid to call it, either.
“Do you reckon she’d say yes?” I asked, taking the hanger from Nancy to put my shirt away as she continued to pull out dress after dress from my cupboard. I found it was always best to try and clean up as you go along in the middle of Hurricane Nancy.
She spun towards me once more, pressing my high-waisted trousers to her body and tutting in despair when they only came to her hips, “Eh...yes. Yes, she will. Have you not heard?! God, I wish you weren’t such a short-arse.”
Another thing about Nancy, is that she seems to be the fountain of all the gossip in Bristol – maybe in the whole of England, actually. There must have been something about her that made everyone gather around and spill their deepest, darkest secrets with her. It was local knowledge that Nancy would know everything – as much as it was local knowledge that if everyone knew your problem, you could trace the source all the way back to Nancy. For some reason, the fact that she had loose lips was never a real problem, though – she still managed to maintain her status as the shoulder the cry on, no matter how many dramas she had caused. Her most egregious was when she was 15, and had somehow found out that our headmaster was sleeping with the school secretary. She did have a claim to fame of telling us that Roy Emerton had died five whole minutes before it was announced on the radio.
“It’s not my fault you’re basically a giant. They’d be hanging off your skinny arse anyway - what have I not heard now?”
“Oh, she fancies the pants off him. Seriously! They all went out to the cinema together to see The Thief of Bagdad and Molly told me Olive insisted she sat beside him.”
“You’re jok-”
My bedroom door creaked open in that moment, with my mother’s round face appearing behind the frame, “Sorry, girls – Nance, are you staying for dinner, pet?”
“No, thanks! If I’m not home to make tea for Harry, I reckon he’d eat his boots. And they’re his last pair, so I’d better not.”
“Husbands for you, eh? What’ll we do with ’em?!” Mum scoffed, shaking her head.
“I know, Mrs Fraser, I know.”
I knew what was coming next.
“You’ll have to see about getting yourself one, Ru. Then you’ll know all about it.”
“Hardly seems worth it if they eat their boots.”
With a tut and another shake of her head, my mother disappeared.
“You think she was listening in?” Nancy asked, wandering over to my desk to now pick through my meagre stash of make-up and jewellery.
“Oh, definitely,” I responded breezily, scooping up the dresses Nancy had picked through to place them all away once again, “You know, my Dad knows how to cook. He taught her how to make the dumplings. She kept burning the bottom of them, and they’re literally boiled in water.”
“Don’t take the right to complain about husbands away from her, Ruth, that’s not fair. Like your mum said, you’ll learn one day – ow!” Nancy huffed, rubbing her elbow as she sat on my bed with my eyeliner held aloft, “Watch it. Could’ve broken the tip of this.”
“Mmm, and what a pity that would be. How is Harry doing, by the way?”
“Same old, same old. The bank are still talking about him getting a role in London,” Nancy murmured, touching the tip of the eyeliner to her tongue before she started to run it up along her leg, failing miserably in her attempt to create her stockings, “You know, I never could get the line straight,” Nancy tutted, slicking her tongue over her fingers so she could wipe out the dark line she had drawn up her creamy white legs.
“That’s because you’re trying to look at it from upside down… let me see,“I asked, taking the eyeliner pencil from her as I gestured for her to stand up straight again. Starting at the back of her ankle, I drew the pencil up slowly along her right calf, “You’ve just got to… see it straight on… You’ve got the rest of the kit for Saturday though, right? Otherwise folk’ll be wondering why the nylons are so white- hey, don’t swat my hand! Do you want this straight or not?”
“Well it’s hardly like I can head out and get a tan now, is it?! I’ve still got half a box left,” Nancy muttered petulantly, “You’re sticking your tongue out again. You look like an old perv when you do that.”
“Look, I’m-I’m doing this for you! You really want to be annoy me right now, or do you just shut up and stay still?”
“Alright, alright!” she grumbled, holding up her hands in protest, “You know, you’re lucky, you don’t have to do this. Your legs look naturally tan.”
My withering glare must have made her quieten up. I sat back into the brown carpet of my bedroom floor and replaced the cap on my pencil, “Right, if this is just for practice, then there’s no point. I’ll put it on for you on Saturday before we go-”
“You’re an angel, Ruth Fraser.”
“-but only if you let me borrow a hair pin.”
“Of course! The mother-of-pearl flower one? I know you-”
“God, no!”
“-love it- what?! I wore that to my wedding!”
I bit into my lip, wrinkling my nose as I tried my hardest to conjure up some reason for my rash response, “It won’t match my dress at all!”
“I thought you hadn’t picked a dress yet?”
“I-I’m going with the green one.”
My withering glare was returned back to me. My attempts at trying to look confused at Nancy’s distrust certainly wasn’t successful.
“Mmm. I think I know which one’ll be good for you. Let’s go – I’ve left my hair pins at Mum’s,” She responded, trying to smudge the eyeliner away from her leg before huffing a defeated sigh and picking up her coat.
“Nancy, you’ve moved out six months-”
“Are you wanting the hair pins or not, Ruth?”
I held my hands up in defeat, getting up to follow Nancy across the road.
As is typical for Sarah Eleanor Fraser, my mother’s head popped around the door of the front room and into the corridor as we headed down the stairs. There was little that could be hidden in this house from my mother. She knew and recognised the sounds of everyone’s footsteps, knew which floorboards creaked and the distinctly different groans on the hinges of each bedroom door. Any time Luis and I tried to find her hiding place for our birthday or Christmas presents was nigh on impossible.
“You’re not off out, are you? Dinner’s getting made.”
I slipped on my shoes and coat, “I’ll just be ten minutes, Mum. I’m just getting something from Nancy’s.”
“Oh! Well, can you ask Linda if she fancies going to the swap on Saturday?”
Nancy’s brows furrowed, “Can’t you just call-”
“I would, but I wouldn’t be able to get off the phone to Jim.”
“Ah…Mum was wondering if Granddad picked up a new girlfriend!”
“Mmm...well-”
“Sarah? Ye’ burnin’ the food.”
“Oh, shit – I’ll speak to you later, girls! Could you not keep an eye on it, Win?!”
“Ye’ told me to get mesel’ out the kitch-”
Nancy weaver her arm with mine as we left the warmth of the house, “You can always have dinner at mine, you know.”
“Are you kidding? She slaved in the kitchen all day, determined to make the dumplings just like my dad. If her food doesn’t kill me, then she will.”
It was always interesting to see the differences in people’s houses. Now that Nancy and her older sister, Kelly, had flown the coop, the Milton household had become a lot quieter. It always had been a quieter home compared to ours, where voices would boom and reverberate around the rooms and something would be on the radio at all times. The Milton’s listened to the radio as well, but it was always at a quieter level. People didn’t seem to congregate and flit around the house – everyone seemed to simply pass by. Of course, none of them had Liz demanding everyone’s attention for half and hour as she performed some play or song she had just made up either. Our house was always alive with some sort of movement or cacophony. This wasn’t to say that the Milton’s house was dead, per say, but it did lose a lot of life in it when Nancy’s dad died.
Gently closing their front door behind me, I kicked off my kitten heels, placing them at the side of the door among the others as Nancy called through, “Mum! Mrs Fraser about the swap on Saturday? She wants to know if you’re going.”
With a sweeping grace, Linda Milton appeared in the doorway, “Of course but...couldn’t she just-”
“Grandpa answers the phone.”
“Oh, no. I’ll have to start putting it out of his reach – are you staying for tea, Ruth, darling? Sarah told me she was cooking something... ’traditional’ tonight?” Through the politeness, it was difficult to tell if the wrinkle in Mrs Milton’s nose was because she was once a victim to my mother’s attempts at cooking Jamaican food, or if it was because it was Jamaican food.
“I’d better not, Mrs Milton, but thanks for the offer-”
“Who’s that?!,” boomed a hacking, phlegmy voice. It took Mr Robert Milton Sr. a moment to clear his throat before he could shout once more,, “Is that my Geraldine?” The creaking of the springs in the couch and the gentle scuffle of slippers on wooden flooring told us he was coming.
Nancy winced and mouthed ‘sorry’ before responding, “No, Grandpa, it’s Nancy. Remember?” she asked, meeting him half way in the front room to get him returned to his seat.
It wasn’t long after Nancy’s dad had died in Norway in 1940, that Robert Sr. was brought back to live with Mrs Milton. He wasn’t able to live by himself at that point, having almost burnt his house down when he left a pot on the stove. Over the years, his memory had gotten worse and worse.
“Nancy?”
“Yeah, Grandpa.”
“You know, I do know a Nancy, but she’s a little girl.”
He was stuck in the past, trying his hardest to remember anything he could.
“That was me, Grandpa.”
Sometimes, something would work it’s way through, though.
“No, no, my Nancy is small. She hardly comes up to my knees. You do look… no, she’s a little girl-”
You’d hear how a memory would suddenly burst through. Sometimes, on the really good days, he’d even recognise Nance and would ask her how she was-
“-always playing with the golliwogs, though.”
He did lack a filter, though.
“Granddad!”
“Yeah...the ones she plays with aren’t as bad as the rest, but mind you, you’ve got to be careful-”
It was always worse when he actually saw me. Suddenly a stream of ’there’s a blackie here’ would thunder through the house. He’d call for his dead wife, demanding to know why she didn’t get help from a good ol’ British girl.
I learned it was best to stay out of his sight.
Linda had already taken over, lacing her arms around her father-in-law’s frail body to get him settled down once more.
Nancy slipped back through into the hallway, closing the door to the front room behind her. For a moment, she hesitated. Her fingers traced along the door handle as she contemplated for a moment, before turning back to me with a smile, “It’s the velvety green dress, right? I think I’ve got just the hairpin. It’ll look so good when you’ve got your hair curled!”
Another thing about Nancy is that she was never good at apologies.