Obstacles to Young Love

‘Er…not oysters. Miss Malmaison had oysters, and so did two of the girls. Sammy Foster’ll eat anything. I just had steak and chips.’

‘Oh, dear,’ says her mother, falsely bright. ‘I was so hoping to hear details of really local Parisian dishes that I might make.’

Her mother, whose name is Penny – well, it’s Penelope, but nobody ever uses that – is known for good plain cooking. She teaches domestic science and sometimes takes Sunday School at church.

‘I quite thought I might have something new to teach my girls.’

Naomi knows that she has to get away from the question of food. The only food she can think of is the food at the Amalfi, and she hasn’t the wit, in her anxiety, to say that they went to an Italian restaurant. Besides, the food at the Amalfi is a secret between her and her lover.

Inspiration strikes.

‘We went to the Louvre. We saw the Mona Lisa.’

‘Ah,’ says her father. His name is William. He teaches Classics and he’s going bald. There is not necessarily any connection between these two facts. ‘What did you think of her?’

Naomi dredges up something that she has read somewhere.

‘She’s a lot smaller than I expected.’

‘That’s strange,’ says her father. ‘Since you clearly read that somewhere, it’s odd that you should not have expected it.’

‘What?’ She is confused.

‘You haven’t been to Paris, Naomi, so you must have read that.’

His voice is not cruel. His message is devastating, so he would have no need to be cruel, even if he was capable of it. His voice is pained, and that is worse than cruelty to Naomi.

She is free to blush now. All the blushes that she has fought come pouring out. Her cheeks blaze.

‘I met Miss Malmaison in Stead and Simpson’s,’ says her mother quietly.

Naomi is amazed to find that it’s a relief to be found out. She will lie about it no more. In fact, she will never tell another lie in her life, even if she should live to be a hundred. She promises that now in a quick newsflash to God, who does exist after all, it seems.

‘I went to London with Timothy Pickering,’ she says. ‘We had sex together and I love him.’

She bursts into tears. Her mother comes to her and lets her fall into her arms. Her father wishes he was on his boat in the middle of the ocean.

‘We’re engaged,’ sobs Naomi.

She feels as if she is nine, going on thirty-two.

‘I’m so happy,’ she wails.

Her sobs begin to subside.

‘It’s all right,’ she mumbles into her mother’s blouse. ‘We know it’s a sin, and we’ve both apologised to God, but, oh Mum, oh Dad, I’m sorry, but it was so lovely.’

She bursts into tears again. She sobs and sobs. Her nose runs. Her eyes water. Her body shakes.

Her mother, still holding her, looks across at William. Just for a moment there is the old rapport between the two, they both want to laugh but realise that it is not appropriate. Then the shutters come down and her father is paralysed by embarrassment and bewilderment. He can deal with life’s personal crises in the poems of Catullus, but not in the cosy kitchen of L’Ancresse, where the knives and forks and the National Trust mats are on the formica-topped table and the shepherd’s pie will be done to a turn in ten minutes.

In her mother’s eyes there is shock, sadness, love, compassion, fear, pain and – yes, it’s unmistakable even to William – a touch of pride.

Timothy, in goal for Germany against the might of England, at Wembley Stadium, just behind the abattoir, tries to concentrate but can only think of tomorrow. Tomorrow scares him.

Barnes squares the ball to Keegan, who shoots. He scuffs his shot slightly, but Timothy is slow to move and it dribbles just inside his left-hand post. Well, no, there isn’t actually a post. It dribbles just inside the left-hand school blazer.

‘What’s wrong with you today, cabbage-bonce?’ cries Keegan (Tommo). ‘You’re all over the place.’

‘It’s Naomi’s eighteenth tomorrow and I’m scared,’ he admits.

‘Are you really engaged?’

‘Yep.’

It’s Timothy’s ability at sport that has saved him from the mockery that would otherwise be the lot of an awkward, shy only child whose father is a taxidermist and whose mother ran off with a plumber when he was two. Football, cricket, boxing, darts, shove halfpenny, he can do them all. But his engagement is also gaining him a bit of grudging extra respect. The others have all done it with girls, or say they have, but none of them are engaged. They are children. Timothy is a man. He must remember that, and not be scared about tomorrow.

Barnes (Steven Venables) has the ball on the left wing, he tears down the field, he’s a tornado, his trickery and ball control leave three dog turds, an empty bottle of Tizer and a used condom helpless in his wake. He sends in a curling, tempting centre. It hangs in the air. Brooking (Dave Kent) rises gloriously to meet it, remembers how big and heavy the ball is, and hesitates for just a moment. The ball passes within inches of his sweaty forehead. Steven and Tommo shout their derision.

‘Try heading your dad’s oranges,’ yells Tommo. ‘They won’t hurt.’

‘He couldn’t head a tomato,’ cries Steven scornfully. Steven Venables does scorn well.

Dave Kent doesn’t mind their mockery. It washes off him like water off a carrot’s back. Mockery is his lot. Being happy to be mocked is his salvation. Tommo intends to be a gynaecologist because he likes women’s bodies. Steven intends to become a banker because he likes money and is confident enough not to worry about the rhyming slang. Steven oozes confidence. Dave is quite confident too, but only because he knows he’ll never be anything but a greengrocer, and, luckily, he doesn’t want to be anything but a greengrocer.

‘Come on, English swine. You can’t beat me,’ shouts Timothy.

And they can’t. The shots rain in. He dives, sprawls, climbs, hurls himself to left and right, grabs the ball, punches it, tips it round the post (Tommo’s manky blazer). He cannot be beaten.

If he remains unbeaten until they tire of it and go home, everything will go brilliantly tomorrow.

Then Tommo is bearing down on him, getting closer, which way will his shot go? Timothy hesitates for just a second, Tommo twists his heavy but surprisingly lithe body one way, slips the ball the other way. Timothy twists, flings himself towards the ball, touches it but cannot stop it.

‘Goal!’ cries Tommo. He whirls around the waste ground, turns with his arms outstretched towards the fans packed into the great Abattoir Stand in their thousands. ‘King Kev is unstoppable,’ he cries. His suicide is still many years away.

Stupid though he knows it is, Timothy cannot help thinking that failing to save Tommo’s shot is a bad omen for tomorrow.

Sniffy Arkwright is scurrying towards them on his splay feet, which might as well carry a health warning, so unsuitable are they for football. Coningsfield Grammar isn’t nickname territory, by and large, but Sniffy has always been Sniffy and nobody even knows his Christian name. Besides, his voice, hard though he tries to conceal it, reveals with every sentence that he belongs in the world of nicknames and is at Coningsfield Grammar by mistake. He’s sniffing out the possibility of a game, his eagerness to join in setting up waves of instinctive resistance. The fun is over.

‘We’re just going,’ says Timothy.

Sniffy Arkwright isn’t surprised. People are always just going when he approaches. And, since this is what life is like, he doesn’t resent it.

As they walk away, Sniffy following like an exhausted dog, Steven says, ‘It must be awful to be engaged and not be allowed to do it.’

‘Awful,’ echoes Dave, who is much given to echoing.

‘I couldn’t stop myself if I was with Naomi. Christ almighty,’ says Steven.