Friendship values

We moved to a small Hertfordshire village, no more than three or four days before the end of the summer term, and to my mother’s surprise my brother and I both begged to be immediately allowed to go to the school which was immediately across the road from our brand new bungalow – I think we feared an entire summer holiday without knowing anyone, or maybe we wanted to get on with our new lives as soon as possible.

There were only three classes and, aged seven, I was sent to the middle one and told to sit at the end of a bench on which sat three girls, across a long trestle table from another four; with one accord they all turned to look at me, with one accord they all said “Cooo – ain’t she ugly!!!” At playtime, I stood alone, ignored and miserable (but pretending not to be) until Brenda came up and said “would you like to play with me?” – a gesture of friendship I never forgot.

She lived at the deepest, roughest reach of the council estate and during the next five weeks I occasionally went to call for her; we played in the street and she was always accompanied by (and responsible for) one, two or three of her seven younger siblings. In the sixth week her mother answered the door “Brenda’s not in” she said, clearly cross and, I sensed, lying, since where else would Brenda be at that time of day so, puzzled, I went home and told my mother “Brenda’s not playing but I don’t know why.”

“Because,” she answered “I told her mother I didn’t want you playing with her – you should be mixing with better people than that.” Admittedly, some ten years later, Brenda was frequently to be found in the pub wearing high heels, a white fur coat and nothing else at all – but I still don’t think my mother was right to interfere.

Action and reaction

Sanctuary lasted only as long as it took me to open my eyes, momentarily closed in relief as I shut the back door behind me. Through the inner door of the kitchen, across the narrow hall and through my open bedroom door, I saw that he had followed and was watching me, grey-jacketed elbows akimbo, blue striped shirt exposed, red face close to the glass as, eyes shaded, he peered in. Instinctively I ran and pulled the door shut to blot him out, then a silent shriek at my stupidity sent me back to turn the key in the door, by which time he’d moved to the adjoining window.

As he ran round the outside of the bungalow I closed the inner doors, my brother’s bedroom, the bathroom whose dimpled glass I knew he wouldn’t be able to see through (but was unprepared for the shock of my own open-mouthed, tear and mucus-stained face in the mirror), the lounge and my parents’ bedroom until I stood in the dark hall, hearing his raised voice at the back door above the blood-rushing heartbeat in my head.

He shouted to me for several minutes but what I presume was shame at my eventual capitulation has blotted out what exactly he said, how he eventually persuaded me to return to the kitchen, to unlock the door, to go back across the road with him to the place which, having reached the end of my endurance, I had run from, probably less than half an hour previously. Neither is the precise timescale of what happened next very clear, but as well as the awe with which I was greeted I remember that after delivering a lecture about the unacceptability of bullying he made the entire school, including me and the sharp-fingered tormentor behind me, sit in silence with hands on heads for a five full minutes.