I Think I Love You

I Think I Love You

There’s a poster of David Cassidy on my bedroom wall, between a white MFI wardrobe and a bookshelf with blue-spined Mallory Towers and my mum’s copies of The Chalet School. A pack of Dr White’s Number One’s is on my bed, and a girl wrapped in the pink candlewick bedspread is clutching her belly. Of course, I remember; nineteen-seventy-three. She’s me – almost thirteen and wallowing in the misery of her first period, and the isolation of a friendless child.

David is as gorgeous as he ever was.

‘You haven’t changed at all. I still think about you,’ I tell him. She doesn’t hear me, absorbed in her cramping pain. I am who I am now because of her. But, Christ, what an unattractive child she-I was. And if I tell her, if I save her from herself? There’s too much to lose. Her future and my past can’t be untangled; I’m just relieved to be back.

‘Did I embarrass you?’

David’s look seems wistful, far away. I used to imagine he was thinking about me.

‘I enjoy…enjoyed our conversations,’ he says. To him it’s still happening; I’m the interloper here.

We used to talk all the while. It was mostly trivial stuff; what happened at school, who fell out and who made up. Whether a pair of red flared trousers suited me and whether he liked my hair straight or flicked. Sometimes, though, we talked about the things I wanted to do when I was older, like ride a motorbike or appear on the cover of Jackie magazine. None of which I achieved. Conversations with a childish edge when I was a burgeoning teenager. I haven’t spoken to him face-to-face for forty-five years - we have some catching up to do.

‘You were kind to me. You never laughed at the stupid things I did or said to you.’

‘I guess I did some pretty stupid things, too, you know.’

‘You died too young.’

Twenty-first November 2017, a date etched on my brain. He was sixty-seven. I was fifty-seven. The gap between us no longer so wide. His laughter crinkles his almond-shaped eyes.

‘Yeah, I’m in denial about that one.’

‘You’re definitely dead,’ I say. One of the things I remember too well.

#

And another. I’d lain on my bed after school. We’d only talked, no petting or anything, although I’d thought about him touching my breasts that I flashed at him with half-shy slyness, still puppy fat and pink pimples for nipples. I said that I’d see him when he came to England on tour. I would save all my pocket money for tickets, and our love would be consummated then. Jerry Lee Lewis had just divorced his cousin Myra, who’d been thirteen when they married, so I assumed David could take me back to America with him and everything would be legal there. He’d buy me a princess-cut diamond ring on Fifth Avenue, just to show he meant it. I was so ashamed when he saw the blood staining my bed, convinced my wicked thoughts had brought it on as a punishment.

Mum heard my agonised wail and dashed up the stairs, then delved into her bedroom closet when she saw the problem.

‘Don’t sit down, Janice; you’ll make it worse. Here, go to the bathroom and put this on.’

She handed me two safety pins and a sanitary towel about an inch thick and ten inches long; as discreet as a brick in a jeweller’s shop window.

‘You’re a woman now, Janice. But this is between us. Not something you talk to your dad about.’

‘Mum, it hurts.’

‘I’ll get you an aspirin. And being a woman does hurt, love; you’ll get used to that.’

#

‘You were the first man to see me naked,’ I tell David.

‘Mrs Davis?’

I’m back in a room that isn’t mine. The posters on the wall tell me not to abuse the staff or drink the water from the taps above a small metal sink. I don’t understand how I got here, or why they want so much blood.

There’s no doubt the doctor thinks I’m loopy. He asked me the date and who’s on the throne, both of which, I told him, he’d know perfectly well if he read the papers. I have a fifty-pence piece in my purse with the queen’s head on, so he’s not fooling me with that one. But there’s a picture on the wall of Charles and Camilla, opening a new hospital wing. It says King Charles under it, and I don’t remember that, at all.

‘Just tell me if I’m going mad,’ I say, but I’m looking at my toes, which are cold without my slippers.

He says that he needs to do more tests before there’s a diagnosis, but he entered the room at a significant point in the conversation with David. Perhaps, he adds, we should get social services and my family involved. I’m uncertain whether I’m included in the ‘we.’ Keith won’t want to do anything. He’ll stick me in a don’t-care-home and let some twenty-year-old with blue plastic gloves dose me with pills and strip wash me.

‘I was seventeen,’ I tell David. ‘Far too young to have a child. And it’s still Miss Davis.’

He nods, then says he’s going to keep me in for observation for a day or two. In case I black out again.

I wonder why David is wearing Crocs. Focus on the poster, Janice.

#

It’s February 1978, and I’m pregnant.

Well, I’d said it aloud for the first time after chasing it around my head for hours. Jason was sitting on my bed in front of the poster I refused to take down, even though my friends said it wasn’t groovy, and Les McKeown was better looking. David’s expression remained unchanged. About nine weeks, the doctor thought, as nothing was showing yet. I’d missed two periods, and I couldn’t keep my breakfast cereal down. Mum had suspected and taken me to the doctor. I still hadn’t told my dad.

I’d met Jason at work, at Radio Rentals, when I was sixteen; didn’t think much of him at first. Always skiving off to the stockroom for a smoke. Then one afternoon he’d patted my bottom and said I was cute. That’s when I noticed he had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, and he could have been on the telly if it weren’t for the acne. He was the first boy to chat me up. On our second date, he’d taken me to his nan’s seventieth birthday party. I’d worn a dress from Chelsea Girl, brown with orange flowers, and he let me hand plates of cheese and pineapple on sticks around. And he’d paid back five-bob that he owed me too, saying I could have the rest when we went to the pictures, only, I’d have to pay for our tickets. We were going steady, and I had a dream of a knee-length white dress and a veil.

His bottom lip dropped, and he stared at me.

‘You stupid little bint.’

He thought I was on the pill, he said, and he didn’t want a sprog.

There was a lot more, about my fat thighs and how he’d won a quid in a bet by shagging me, and I’d been so bloody easy. And his laugh was coarse when I said we could get a flat from the council if we got on the list straightaway.

‘I’m not marrying you.’

Jason hadn’t reckoned with my dad; a courteous, quiet man until you crossed him

My bedroom never used to be this warm, but I’m glad to be here. It’s safe. I had a fall, they say. It’s why I keep dozing.

The books on my shelf are now Agatha Christies and one by James Herriot in hardback, that dad thought I’d like. There are stickers on my wardrobe door, covering the hearts and arrows I’d drawn in red felt pen and hadn’t wanted Jason to see. David’s poster has faded where the dappled light through my bedroom curtains catches it first thing in the morning. I’d taped up one corner where Jason ripped it.

She is here again, when I want to talk to David alone, packing her clothes into a suitcase. I have to remind myself of the danger of letting her hear. But she’s taking no notice of me as she throws six-inch platform heels into a bag. It’s the day I-she and Jason move into the one-bedroom flat above a tobacconist on the high street. Her belly is swollen, and her lank blonde hair needs cutting. The council turned us down, but Jason’s mum knew someone who was renting a furnished place cheap, and my mum gave me the linen and towels she’d been saving in a bottom drawer. I’ll be nanny, she’d said, grandma sounds so old when you’re forty-two.

‘I named my son after you,’ I tell David. ‘Well, Keith from The Partridge Family. If I’d called him David, everyone would have guessed I was still in love with you.’

‘Your mother was great, Janice, supportive. Like my stepmom - never judged me, even when I was drunk on stage. She tried to get me sober.’

David stayed behind when we moved - it wasn’t appropriate, he’d said, to come between us. His hair is still chestnut brown, curling over his shirt collar, and I run my fingers around his lips.

‘It was always you,’ I say. The doctor told me it’s twenty-twenty-five. I’m sixty-four and David is still twenty-two, but it feels so right.

#

We’d celebrated the Queen’s silver jubilee with a party in the street and everyone joining in, making jam-filled cakes and strawberry trifles and singing the national anthem. It was after I’d taken my ‘O’ Levels; the last of the nonchalant, innocent summers. I’d decided on the name Elizabeth, as a reminder of those days, convinced I would have a daughter.

Mum was holding my hand when the nurse gave me gas and air. I squeezed so hard she flinched, but she wouldn’t let go - David was right about the strength of a mother’s love. Jason was outside with Dad, chain-smoking Player’s Navy Cut he’d nicked from the shop below the flat, blaming a couple of kids who’d gone in for cans of Tab. He was always hanging out with the shop owner, saying the flat was too small and cluttered.

‘Push, Janice; one more push.’

‘It hurts, Mum.’

Her look said I told you so, but her hand said you can do this, Janice. And I gulped, greedy for air as he forced his way out, fists flailing, wail evidence of his strong lungs.

Seven-pound-eight, my beautiful doe-eyed boy laid in my arms. The cord was severed, but the tie remained, tethering him to my heart.

Jason came in and glanced at us.

‘Keith Moon’s died,’ he said.

He thought our baby’s name was a fitting tribute.

#

‘Jason stayed till Keith was two months old. Said he couldn’t stand the noise and went back to live with his mum and dad,’ I say to David. It was a relief. I didn’t want my baby smothered by the cloying stench of cigarettes. Not that Jason ever picked him up and cuddled him.

Mum had chosen a lace-edged wedding dress for me, one that would cover my still-rounded figure, and a maroon-red velvet suit for herself. We’d have a wedding breakfast at the Dog and Duck. But it was me that had rebelled, not Jason. I said I wouldn’t marry him to stop the neighbours gossiping, not just so she and dad could save face. She’d flushed but never said a word. I couldn’t tell her it was David’s face I’d seen, his lips I’d probed when Jason had lain on top of me, fumbling.

We gave up the flat, and I went back to live in my old bedroom; a cot beside my bed draped in the cream woollen blankets mum had knitted. She looked after Keith so I could go to work. Jason changed jobs and moved away, but he sent a cheque every month. I had my dad to thank for that.

‘We used to dance around the kitchen when he was little.’ The squeeze of David’s hand says he understands and that he also regrets what is lost.

Mum and dad had a Ferguson radiogram, and I’d play the LPs bought with my pocket money when I was a teenager. Keith would giggle when I swung him in my arms. I loved his blond curls, although sometimes I pictured them chestnut brown.

‘Jason never wanted to know Keith. Then, when he got married and had a proper family, his parents weren’t interested in their first grandchild either. Poor little boy.’

We were always so close; he didn’t need a dad, so when he asked questions, I told him his dad had died. I thought it was kinder than saying he didn’t want you. And when he found out, he slammed his bedroom door in my face and turned his radio up, so he didn’t hear me, please, Keith, please…

‘You did well by him, Janice. Keith knows that.’

David nods in agreement. It’s my daughter-in-law, Vanessa. How kind of her to drop in, but I wish she’d phoned first – not seen me like this in my nightdress. I like her a lot. She acted as a bridge between me and Keith; insisted I went to their wedding last year. But I didn’t sit at the top table; we’re not that healed. Yes, last year, I’m sure. She even came with me to buy a maroon-red velvet suit. It was the Queen’s ninetieth birthday, and there was bunting in the street, and we sang God Save the Queen. They said I could bring a plus one, but David was on tour and, anyway, we hadn’t spoken for so long. And then he’d died. Not last year. I forget so much, but I know when and how he died, and how I felt so hollow without him there.

Vanessa’s the same age as my son, so they’re unlikely to have children now. I would have liked a grandchild. Another grandchild, one I can get to know, before it’s too late.

‘I never really knew my daughter,’ David says. ‘I was married to Meryl, but it wasn’t going well. And I played around. Messed up, got a girl pregnant.’

‘It happens. I understand,’ I say. I want to comfort him. He looks so young. Another reminder of the vulnerability of youth.

Keith was still at college when he told me his girlfriend was expecting. Anger roiled inside me, and I yelled at him.

‘I told my son he’d ruined his life, having a child so young. Said it was irresponsible, and he’d let me down. I should have supported him. Should have been a proper mother to him, like mine was.’

He’d said, so I guess I ruined yours then. Thanks a lot. I could have torn my tongue out.

The girl decided she didn’t want the baby, but she wouldn’t have an abortion. She put it up for adoption and didn’t give Keith an option to be a dad. He didn’t talk to me much after that. It was my fault for not giving him a father; he said I was a rubbish mother, and he ripped at a corner of my heart, tried to loosen the cord.

Vanessa is squeezing my arm; I’m gripping her hand to stop my fists flailing, tiny fists and so much pain.

‘I want my son. Please, I want my son.’

I’m shaking, and Vanessa has her arms around me. Now I can feel another pair of arms. I’m gasping for breath between the noisy gulps of anguish in my throat.

‘It’s okay, Mum.’ He’s shushing me like a child. Saying it was all forgiven long ago, and don’t I remember? ‘We both said stupid things we didn’t mean.’

It’s what you do, my mum had said, fight to protect them. Want them to have the best of everything and then fight with them and mess it up.

David is nodding. ‘Your mother wanted to see you get married. But she never stopped being your mom, even when you hurt her.’

My breathing slows. He’s always right.

‘I’m losing my mind, Keith. Keep getting muddled. Please don’t put me in a home.’

He’s smiling at me. Not cruel and mocking like the last glimpse I had of Jason, but with the same loving need I saw in those childish doe-eyes. A need I feel reflecting in mine. I’ve missed my son.

‘Remember how we had a special song, Mum? We used to dance to it in the kitchen. A David Cassidy song,’ he says.

We’re swinging, around and around, and the beat of the music is playing in my head - the words as clear as the day I pulled the poster from my Jackie magazine and stuck it to the wall above my bed. Keith is giggling as the room swirls. He’s running towards me, arms outstretched, blood oozing from a scraped knee. Mummy, Mummy, I need you. Waving as he stands, proud in his first suit beside the shiny stretched limo on prom night. He’s huddled in my arms when Mum dies. Kissing me on the cheek as he boards the express train to Sheffield University. A smiling facade for his graduation photo, hiding his pain. His face glowing, he’s holding Vanessa’s hand and saying I do, wearing happiness in every stitch of his tail suit. He’s carrying words of comfort and tea in my favourite porcelain mug the first time I got ill. We have been through so much.

David is fading, like a poster aged by the morning sun. All I see is my oh-so precious boy.

‘I Think I Love You,’ I say.

The End