One Small Step

Back to the Sixties

Twelve-year-old Maisie didn’t like the way her sister behaved in the weeks leading up to her wedding. As soon as Linda and Dave had set the date, Linda started saying that she couldn’t wait to leave home, and she went on and on about how much she hated the old-fashioned house. She kept saying, “It’s nineteen sixty-eight, for goodness’ sake!”

Maisie had no idea why the exact year was so important.

One evening, in the sitting-room, Linda said, “I bought a coffee-table today. It’s all glass, even the legs. Totally see-through. They’re keeping it in the shop for us ’ til after the wedding.” “That’s nice, love,” their mum said. “Why on earth don’t you get one?” Linda asked. “There’s nowhere to put anything in this crazy room.” “We don’t drink coffee,” Dad said. “That’s not the point!” said Linda, rather too forcefully.

In her mini-dress, low white slingbacks and enormous false eyelashes, Linda looked as if she didn’t belong in the dark, old-fashioned room. Dave, when he arrived in a blue velvet suit, also looked like a creature from another world. His hair was even longer than Linda’s.

Dave was known as Dave the Rave, although Maisie wasn’t sure why – possibly something to do with liking parties. She didn’t think Mum and Dad knew his nickname.

When Linda and Dave had left for their evening at the disco, Dad asked, “Have they found anywhere to live yet?” Mum said, “I don’t think so.” “They’d better get a move I’d hate to think of the invisible coffee-table being homeless.”

Mum and Dad thought that, at eighteen, Linda was too young to get married. She’d been going out with Dave for only six months, and they’d suggested she wait for a couple of years, but there’d been no stopping her.

Now she was moaning all the time about living at home, Maisie wondered if she was marrying Dave the Rave just to get away and have a house of her own.

With only a fortnight to go, Linda and Dave found a two-up, two-down to rent. Linda was thrilled. Over chicken casserole, eaten at the kitchen table, she said, “And you know the best thing? It’s got a bathroom. It’ll be totally fab. I’ll never have to go through that awful rigmarole, ever again.” She gestured to the kitchen sink. “Or have to go out there.” She nodded to the door.

Beyond it, in the yard, the lavatory stood in its own little building. Linda glared at her parents.

“This must be one of the last houses in Earlsheaton with a wash-kitchen. Why won’t you get a bathroom?”

“We’re perfectly content with a washon.

She WONDERED if Linda was getting MARRIED to have a HOUSE of her own

kitchen, Linda,” said Mum.

“I’m sorry it’s caused you such distress all these years,” said Dad, who didn’t sound sorry at all.

There was a lot more of that sort of thing in the final few days before the wedding, and it didn’t sit well with Maisie, at all. Mum and Dad had done so much to help with the preparations, and spent quite a lot of money, and it was a nasty way to repay them.

“You’re being really rude,” Maisie said, as she and Linda did the shopping in Dewsbury market, three days before the wedding. Maisie loved the market, which was the biggest one for miles around. “You’re always mithering on about how old-fashioned they are.”

“Oh, I know I am,” said Linda. “But it’s their own fault. They drive me mad. And you know what makes me madder than anything?” She stopped at a hardware stall. “Mum’s put some of this daft stuff on the list.” She pointed to the baskets of rectangular white stones and yellow stones, all about the size of a bar of Fairy soap. “It’s nuts. People don’t chalk their steps anymore.”

“Well, some still do, Linda, otherwise no one would be selling scourer and donkey stones.”

“Not many,” said Linda. “And if they do, it’s just a stripe at the edge, not the whole works, like Mum does. It’s dying out – and quite right, too. What a waste of time! And she complains about it – that’s the really crazy thing. ‘Oooh, my poor back!’ every single week. She makes herself suffer for something that’s just totally pointless. Who cares what steps look like?”

On their walk back up the steep hill from town, and through Earlsheaton to their house, Maisie looked at the steps of the houses they passed and saw that Linda was sort of right. Not that many even had their edges chalked with white scourer stone. A few were white, though, and a few had the front edges done in yellow donkey stone, or ruddle, as some folk called it. A very few

had a broad white stripe, and the extreme edge in yellow.

When they reached home, Maisie realised that their steps were the most decorated of any she had seen so far. The white chalk went around all the edges, not just along the fronts, and each edge was finished with a neat line of donkey stone – and their mum had done the windowsills, too.

Maisie had only seen one other chalked windowsill on their walk.

Linda had bought her own wedding dress and she refused to show it to anyone, which made Maisie nervous. She was nervous about the whole wedding, as she didn’t trust Linda to behave herself. Now her sister was being so rude, she might do or say something really awful.

Maisie needn’t have worried, though. Linda’s wedding turned out to be a very jolly occasion, and Linda didn’t do or say anything untoward. The church was packed with relatives, and hordes of Linda and Dave’s friends – and with so many of their trendy friends there Linda didn’t look strange in her very, very short dress and shoulder-length veil.

“Gracious, Linda – you’ve a mini-veil as well as a mini-dress,” Mum said.

Maisie did overhear one of her aunts say, “No stockings! Bare-legged at her own wedding. I’d never thought to see the like!” But apart from that, there was no scandal.

Maisie loved being a bridesmaid, and Linda and Dave looked extremely happy together. Perhaps she wasn’t marrying him just because she was fed up of the wash-kitchen, after all.

That evening, it was odd being without Linda.

“I hope they’ll be all right,” said Mum. “I wish young David had a better job, and I wish our Linda had wanted to stay on at school.”

She had left as soon as she could, and got a job in the biscuit factory.

They were drinking tea in the kitchen. Maisie wished that Linda were there, saying that she hated the scrubbed pine table, and that the Johnson’s Golden Dawn teacups were horrible old things. “I’ll miss the lass,” said Dad. “Aye, we’ll all miss her,” said Mum.

“I won’t miss the bump-bump-thump music, though,” said Dad, who was devoted to what he still called The Third Programme.

“I expect Maisie will be starting with all that soon,” Mum said.

Maisie wasn’t interested in pop music yet, but in the coming days she did miss the sound of Linda’s Dansette floating out of her bedroom.

It was only a short walk down Ossett Lane to Linda’s new house, though, and she soon invited Maisie and her parents to visit.

“Linda!” Maisie exclaimed. “You’ve got a television!”

Mum worried about how they could afford all this modern stuff

“Naturally,” Linda said. Although some weeks later she admitted to Maisie that it was on HP.

What Linda most wanted to show them all was the bathroom. It was a wonderful pale pink, and caused painful stabs of envy in Maisie’s heart.

Her aunts and uncles had bathrooms. Her schoolfriends had bathrooms – it wasn’t as if she had never seen sanitary ware before – but this was her own sister, now the proud mistress of a bathroom! Suddenly, the idea of having her usual stand-up wash at the kitchen sink that night seemed deeply unappealing.

“It’s very nice, love,” said Mum, as the whole family crowded into the room to admire it.

There was a long shelf, crammed full of various beautifying products.

“Ooh,” Maisie said, seeing the glass jar full of pink, yellow and blue cottonwool balls. She gave an even louder “Ooh” when she saw the plastic swan. It was big and white, and in the hollow body between its elegant curved wings there were wrapped bath-cubes that looked like tiny little presents.

“I just don’t know how they’re managing to afford it all, on their wages,” said Mum, once they were back home again, and sitting at the kitchen table with the Golden Dawn set and some Kunzle cakes.

In the weeks after the wedding Maisie enjoyed walking down Ossett Lane on her own, to visit Linda.

She always had amazing new things to show her. Linda and Dave bought a purple sofa, and a lamp with something in it called “lava” that moved up and down in a very peculiar way as the lamp heated up. They got a white chair with a bright orange seat, that Linda said was “space age”, and Linda kept buying more and more new clothes and shoes.

Then one Sunday, when Linda and Dave came to lunch, Linda gave Maisie a bath-cube swan with a silver-painted beak and a pink satin bow around its neck, and it wasn’t even Christmas.

“Oh, Linda – it’s beautiful! I wanted one so much. Thank you!” Maisie said.

“And what, pray, is our Maisie going to do with that?” asked Mum, with some amusement.

“She can keep it until you have a bathroom put it in – or until she leaves home because you won’t get one.”

Linda still seemed happy that day, but shortly afterwards Maisie noticed that she sometimes seemed a little downcast, and sometimes she even looked worried. Then suddenly Dave was at home at lot, which was odd, because he finished work quite late. And, even more strangely, the television set had vanished.

One afternoon, sitting at Linda’s kitchen table, Maisie noticed that Linda didn’t have her false eyelashes on.

“They’re a faff. I couldn’t be bothered,” she said.

This wasn’t like Linda, at all.

“Is anything the matter?” Maisie asked, concerned.

Linda didn’t reply for a little while, and then she said, “It’s Dave. He’s lost his job. We’ve spent a lot of money since we moved in, so things are just a bit tricky.”

Then she stared down at the red Formica table-top, and added, all in a rush, “It would be a real help if I could come home just for a little while, but I don’t feel as if I can ask. Not after all those things I said.”

“Oh, Linda – of course you can ask,” Maisie said. “They’re always saying how much they miss you.”

Linda raised her head. She looked so anxious. “Do you really think they miss me? Really?”

“I know they do,” Maisie said.

Maisie worried about her for over a week. Linda had sworn her to secrecy, and it was so hard not to say anything to Mum and Dad.

Eventually, though, Linda arrived on the chalked doorstep, before Dad was home from work.

“We’re in trouble,” she said. “We’ve got behind with the rent, and we’re being evicted on Monday. I’m really sorry, Mum, but do you think we could live here, until we get back on our feet? Dave’s parents haven’t got room for us.”

“Oh love, of course you can,” said Mum. “Just as long as you don’t keep saying how much you hate everything.”

“I swear on my life that I won’t say a single word,” Linda said, looking thoroughly chastened.

“I gather that it’s not just being short of the rent,” Mum said, that night. “I believe there’s a bit of debt, too.”

“It’s not exactly startling news, is it, with the way those two were carrying on?” Dad said.

“It’s not, love, no. I think they’ll be more sensible now, though.”

“Hmmm,” Dad said. He turned the Third Programme on and retreated behind the Evening Post.

Maisie looked around their sittingroom, at the pink-and-green striped wallpaper and the old tiled fireplace and the sofa with its chintz roses, and at her mum’s collection of china ornaments on top of the dark, ornate carved sideboard.

In pride of place, right in the middle, was her plastic swan. Maisie had put it there, and after a double-take and raised eyebrows, her mum had allowed it to stay. Seeing the swan gave Maisie an idea. She didn’t want to start behaving like Linda, but perhaps just this once…

“Mum, Dad – if Linda and Dave are coming, well, you know – couldn’t we? I mean, Dave won’t ever have lived in a house with a wash-kitchen. He’ll think

She put her bathcube swan right in the middle in pride of place

it’s weird. Can’t we get a bathroom?”

Her father lowered his newspaper. “Do you know, that’s not a bad idea. I think I was only so set against it because our Linda went on so much, but she did have a point. I quite fancy one now.”

“It would be nice, wouldn’t it? Yes, all right. I think it’s time – time to splash out, perhaps.” Mum was good at funny remarks. Maisie giggled.

“And while we’re on the subject of splashing out,” Dad said, “they say there’ll be men landing on the moon soon, and it’s going to be on the television. If there’s a better reason for buying a set, I don’t know what it is.” Maisie stared at him in amazement. “Gracious! Television!” exclaimed Mum. “Whatever next? We’ll end up all with-it and groovy!”

“No, we won’t go that far. There’s a lot of the modern world I’d rather keep the door closed against – but I think a bath and a telly would add a bit of pleasure to our lives.”

So, soon after Linda and Dave moved into Linda’s old bedroom, a beautiful blue bathroom was installed in the spare room next door.

Linda was true to her word, and didn’t say a single critical thing about the house. Dave eventually found another job, but in the meantime he had taken up evening classes, with a view to getting the qualifications he’d missed out on at school.

“I always thought that boy had a brain somewhere under all that hair,” said Dad.

What was more surprising was that Linda took up evening classes, too.

“Maybe I was a bit hasty about giving up on school so soon,” she said. “I think I can do better than the biscuit factory.”

There was another unexpected occurrence, just before Linda and Dave found a new place and moved out. One Friday evening Mum was about to scour and line the steps, ready for the weekend. Maisie saw her heading out with a bucket of water and the stones, and jumped up.

“I’ll do that, Mum,” she said, thinking of her mum’s bad back.

Linda also jumped up. “No, I’ll do it. I think it’s my turn now,” she said.

And she did. Maisie’s sister washed the steps and lined them all the way around the edges, with both white stone, and yellow donkey stone. And she did the windowsills, too.

“Life is full of little surprises, Maisie,” Mum said, “but I never thought I’d ever see that.”

Maisie moved the swan to the blue bathroom, but she didn’t use the bath-cubes. They were too pretty to destroy. She was going to keep her swan for ever, even if bath-cube swans went completely out of fashion.