This is our last challenge for 2022 - what a year it's been!
Here is my entry:
THE FIRST TIME EVER I
SAW YOUR FACE
‘Come on, let’s go down to
the fence!’
I didn’t want to get in to
trouble, never had and hopefully never would but somehow, I was pulled to the
fence separating my girls’ only school with the boys’ only school whose grounds
were far down the edge of the school perimeter kept apart by the chain link
fence.
I tagged along with the
other three girls, Mary, Susan and Beth as we quickened our steps, trying to
act ‘cool’ at 15 years old and not look too eager to chat to some boys. A gaggle of spotty, long-haired boys, acne
appearing on some, whiskers sprouting on others, the beginning of a moustache
on others were already hanging around in the dip of the slight hill.
We were hidden from view of
the school, we hoped, the teachers rest room was on the other side of the
building so we felt relatively safe from their prying eyes.
There he was. My stomach flipped, my throat was dry and I
wished I had slicked a smear of Vaseline over my lips – it was supposed to look
sexy according to Mary. Mary who came to
school with subtle eyeshadow, darkened eye lids, flawless skin, no breakout of
spots for her at certain times of the month.
She also wore dangling earrings, not the standard, allowable, gold studs
that all the other girls wore, a bit of a rebel was our Mary.
Blonde curls, green eyes,
not very tall perhaps but it was difficult to tell with us standing in a dip
and the boys posing on the other side on slightly higher ground.
Then he spoke. All these years later I can’t remember what
words were spoken but his image burned in to my brain from behind my
retinas. Oh, my! A deep voice, a sexy
voice, a noticeable Adam’s Apple, not prominent but manly.
My mind said, stop
fidgeting, stand still, uncross your arms from your breasts, take a deep breath
and stick them out a bit more whilst holding in a non-existent tummy. My skirt was already turned up at the waist
band, only once but it was enough to bring the hem up and over my knees by a
good inch or so.
Then we heard the pips go
summoning us back to class. We dashed by
to our respective rooms, tummies rumbling as we hadn’t had chance to eat our
lunches. How on earth was I supposed to
concentrate on maths (not my best subject anyway) when all I could think about
was his face.
I dreamt of him that
night. Friday night, Saturday night,
Sunday night without seeing him. Monday came
as I waited for lunch break, thoughts of our clandestine meetings were
interrupting my concentration on French grammar, us girls and those boys. I was only interested in the one boy. The other faces paled in to insignificance.
The week flew by, I lost
more weight by using up lunch time space to visit. Gradually over the weeks my friends lost
interest in the boys and played netball in the lunch time. Not me.
I had to keep seeing his face.
Six weeks of summer
holidays, home with my mother and brother, Dad was away on board ship for 18
months, some already passed, letters received once a month from this strange
man on flimsy airmail letter papers. I
got a job working as a Saturday girl in the local village shop, that filled in
a good 12 hours once a week.
Somehow the weeks and days
flew by, then I was back travelling to school every day. I sat on the coach trying to calm
myself. Would he be there at lunch
time? Would he remember me? Would he
look the same? My hair was freshly
washed, I pinched some of mum’s perfume and had dabbed a small amount at the base
of my neck and on both wrists. Every now
and then I would take a surreptitious sniff, feeling slightly guilty that I’d
stolen from my mother but hopefully it would be worth it.
Lunch time came. I asked my friends if they were going to
wander down to the edge of the field at lunchtime. They laughed at me. What on earth for, was the surprised
response. It seems they’d all forgotten
our trysts with the boys but then one of them said, they built a brick wall
down there, you won’t be able to see anything or anybody.
Disappointment coursed
through my body. It was all I could do
to smile and say, never mind, shall we play netball instead. I jumped around half-heartedly and still
managed to defend my position and stop several attempted scores from the opposing
team.
I arrived home in the
evening, ate my meal and disappeared in to the dining room to start my
homework. I found it very hard to
concentrate and to keep up a pretence that everything was OK although, in my
family it seemed as though nobody took any notice of me anyway.
All these years later I
still remember the feeling, the image of a face, not the details apart from the
hair and the eyes – I’ve always had a thing for eyes, the gateway to the soul
or the locked door hiding a myriad of secrets.
That feeling, that first
crush, innocent as it was then, has stayed with me on and off throughout my
life, sometimes I wonder what happened to that young man. Did he make something of himself? Did he find true love with somebody? Was he a good father? Maybe he went against the law and ended up in
prison – that wouldn’t have surprised me either.
I will never know but to
this day the first time I saw his face will remain with me, imprinted in my
brain, subject to an abstract scrapbook of nostalgic images, filed away as a
private memory, never to be sullied or dirtied in any way as I don’t know
anything about him. I can’t even
remember his name!
