Chosen

I am in Devon visiting family, and today I met, as I often do when in these parts, with my two oldest friends; after breakfast with my mother, all of ninety nine years old tomorrow, I took the path down into the village and met the friend I have known ( with some gap years) from when we both arrived in Exmouth grammar school in 1966, to Miss Tamblin’s tutor group, still little girls at eleven years old, in our navy blue tunics , school ties , and berets.

We had tea sitting outside the village shop, and talked in a leisurely way of our recent lives, of schooldays too, and of the art teachers we both remembered with affection. After a couple of satisfying hours together I left to catch the train into the city to meet M who I remember as a five year old in Mrs Freeman’s infants class at Lady Seawards School in the village of Clyst St George . My oldest friend, we went to play at each others homes throughout our primary school years ; we were the golden girls in the top class of Mrs Beavis’s classroom; thence to grammar school, to which we travelled backwards and forwards in the bus together for seven years, though we made separate friends at school being in different tutor groups.

But during the holidays we’d hang out together , bored in the country; went to girl guides , and then sea rangers.

Left school to go our separate ways ( I to be an au pair in Germany and she to the Channel Islands) ending up the next year at the same educational institution : Portsmouth Polytechnic, studying history, sharing student flats …..

I don’t know how much either of them remember or were aware of the following story, but being with such old friends, and back in Devon, reminds me of that charmed time when we were lucky enough to spend two years in the sixth form studying only the three subjects we loved best, with not a care in the world ; the grammar school having morphed into a huge comprehensive school where prefects were a thing of the past and we inhabited a sixth form block quite separate from the rest of the school where we hung out in the common room playing Uriah Heep records and drinking instant coffee and feeling cool.

I wrote this a good few years ago when I lived in a tall Georgian house in Bandon.

Chosen

Unusual for me to be ironing at all. Yet here I stand, in a room at the top of the house, ironing the fine cotton sheets I keep for visitors. I do like ironing. It’s dreamy, my thoughts can soar where they will, or just be let go , my attention resting undisturbed in the repetitive motion of the iron, the wonderfully clean, homely smell of newly smoothed cloth.

It is so pleasing to fold the pillowcases, and the flat sheets, letting my hands run over the warm cloth, Such satisfaction as the neat pile of linen grows on the chair.

I am barely aware of the music emanating from my bedroom next door. I had left the radio on. It is just a soporific background to my labours, until the strains of Fleetwood Mac bring me alert, my whole being remembering the moment when a tall blonde-haired boy had walked across to me at the Sixth Form Leavers Disco, drawing me into his arms to dance to the enchanted music of ‘Albatross.’

It was for me a pivotal moment.

As I am pulled back to that time, I recall the utter joy of being chosen, in front of all my friends. I was so proud, so completely in the bliss of realising that the connection, verging on obsession, that I had felt for months, was mutually felt.

I had been yearning to dance because it was my favourite song at that time. It still seems to me very beautiful. It was a complete surprise that he chose to come and dance with me. I hardly knew him; had just longed to be his girlfriend.

All the possibilities of life surged before me , encapsulated in the fearful thrill of that dance. Of my dream coming true. My first taste of the power of thought to create reality.

Held close,my head on his shoulder, I danced, consciously savouring the experience in its complete perfection. So innocent I was, vulnerable, completely in love with this long haired, fair-skinned giant. He had appeared at our school, in the year below mine, a few months before, amongst rumours of heroin use, and stories of a girlfriend’s suicide. He seemed to come from another more sophisticated, although murky social scene. We were all a bit awed by his apparent worldliness.

He had the most amazingly wide and open smile.Very pale skin,and startlingly blonde shoulder-length hair parted in the middle. He wore loon pants, laced up with a leather thong, and sloppy white tee shirts. He stooped a little, so tall he was amongst his peers.

I noticed him going about the school, and got in the habit of making notes in my timetable of when our paths crossed, as we walked between classrooms. Soon we were smiling at each other, and then saying hello. I really don’t know who initiated the beginning gestures. I know I had no confidence in my power to attract so iconic a boyfriend, so made the most of the smiles and greetings, without expecting more. But of course more is always what you want in the end. In my head he was such an unsuitable person for me to fall for, as I was at that time being a very uptight born again Christian. Yet I could not get him out of my heart.

Probably I wanted him to become a Christian too. I was always trying to change people even then. Innocent of the dangers of setting such a course.

Such a ‘good’ girl I was trying to be.

I sigh now at my smug virtue, which gave me so little opportunity for wild abandon. I’ve made up for it since.

But nothing again was ever as magnificent as that few minutes on the dance floor with my beloved .

I smell singeing cloth, and absently pull the iron away from the scorched sheet. I am smiling with remembrance, endowed anew with the glow of having been chosen, all those many years ago.

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