Summer of Love Read online

  I’d been here before, of course. Dawn and Jenny and I often came to browse, or to ask Paula or whoever was serving, to play the record we liked most at the time so that we could go into the booths and listen over and over again. We rarely bought anything because we couldn’t afford it. To work here, to be paid to work here, to get a staff discount off any record I liked, would be heaven …

  ‘Paula! At last!’ A plump, balding man appeared from behind the counter, his voice raised above Paul McCartney screaming at Jo-Jo to get back. ‘And this must be your little friend.’

  ‘Clemmie Long, yes,’ Paula yelled back. ‘I’ll leave her with you. Linda and Jane look like they need a hand.’

  She pushed her way behind the counter, leaving me and Mr Smithson facing one another. I very much hoped we weren’t going to have the interview in the middle of the shop, bawling at each other like a pair of fishwives.

  ‘Come into a booth!’ Mr Smithson shouted. ‘It’s quieter in there!’

  Thrusting through the crowded shop, I followed him into one of the glass fronted listening booths, wobbling unsteadily on my mum’s sandals.

  He closed the door, instantly shutting out the babble of the shop. The booths could comfortably hold four people, and had a sort of dark red perforated egg-box material cladding the ceiling, floor, and walls to act as insulation. There were a couple of little bucket seats and speakers protruding above our heads. It was silent, claustrophobic, and very, very warm: almost like being trapped underwater but without the water.

  Mr Smithson was sweating even more than I was. He had damp patches all over his yellow nylon shirt, his face was beaded, and even the top of his bald head glistened.

  ‘Sorry about this but I don’t have an office as such. As you can see, we’re very busy. Saturdays are even worse. Paula says you’re a clever girl and I’m short staffed. Ever worked in a shop before?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, but –’

  ‘Not to worry. You’ll soon learn. Handled money?’

  ‘No, but then –’

  ‘As long as it goes into the till and not into your pocket that’s all I need to know!’ Mr Smithson suddenly roared with laughter, the sound bouncing back at us both from the padded walls.

  ‘Oh, I’m honest and –’

  ‘Course you are,’ Mr Smithson mopped his face with a damp hankie. ‘And Paula says you’re off to university which means you’re as bright as a button. Start Saturday. Half past eight ’til half past five.’

  ‘You mean – I’ve got the job?’

  ‘Of course you’ve got the job,’ Mr Smithson laughed again, dabbing at his upper lip.

  ‘Er – thank you … Really? I mean … um – you want me to start this Saturday?’

  ‘This Saturday or not at all, I’m afraid, my dear. I need someone as soon as possible, and if you can’t start then, then I’ll have to advertise …‘

  I groaned inwardly. There were five days to go to the first RE exam, and I’d done no revision at all … Today was out because of getting ready to meet Lewis and now I’d be working on Saturday and – I shook my head. ‘No, please – I’d love to take the job and this Saturday will be fine. Thank you so much …’

  Mr Smithson beamed. ‘Good-oh. We’ll show you the ropes on Saturday, although I’m sure you’ll soon pick everything up, a clever girl like you. Oh, goodness me, I nearly forgot the most important bit. Three pounds ten shillings do you to start?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes. That’ll be loads – I mean – yes, thank you …’

  ‘Of course, we’ll look at increasing it to four pounds later, if you’re any good – now I must get back to my counter …’

  He held out his hand. ‘Welcome to Sheldon Busby’s, my dear.’

  I shook his hand, which was very hot and slippery, in a total daze. Three pounds ten! I’d never had so much money in my entire life. I could put a thirty shillings a week away in my post office savings account for university and still afford to buy clothes and make-up and …

  We shot out into the shop, and the noise and the heat swamped me from head to toe. The Who had taken over from The Beatles and were flooding Sheldon Busby’s with the manic strains of ‘Pinball Wizard’. Paula grinned at me from behind the counter and gave me a thumbs up in triumph over the customers’ heads. I beamed back and staggered out of the shop into Reading’s scorchingly hot streets, hardly able to believe that it had been that easy.

  As I travelled back to Ashcote on the bus, my head was still reeling from the events of the last twenty-four hours: yesterday I was simply a schoolgirl bogged down by exams, today I’d not only got a job and money, but also, if he turned up of course, a boyfriend …

  By half-past six, having not been able to eat any tea and having, been quizzed relentlessly by Mum and Dad about whether I was ill or not, I’d hidden my bicycle behind one of Honeydew’s sheds and was pacing up and down the lane outside the main gates.

  I felt like a criminal. I’d rushed out of the house telling Mum and Dad that I was off to Jenny’s to tell her about my success at Sheldon Busby’s and to do my RE revision. I’d never been untruthful before. I’d never needed to be. But I knew they wouldn’t let me go out with Lewis Coleman-Beck. Even if they had approved, they’d have wanted to meet him first, and quiz him about his family, and they’d have wanted to know where we were going and what time we’d be back. And they’d definitely think he was far too old for me – and anyway, they certainly wouldn’t let me go out with anyone at all until the A-levels were over.

  It had been awful enough as it was. Both Mum and Dad had been pleased that I’d got the job at Sheldon Busby’s but had voiced real concern over how much it was going to interfere with my exams.

  ‘Surely you could wait a couple of weeks, love?’ Dad had said, mopping up his gravy with a slice of bread. ‘You’ve got your strawberry picking money for the time being – and working all day in a shop is going to make you very tired. Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until the exams are over?’

  I’d explained that Mr Smithson wouldn’t hold the job open and that I’d make sure I did extra revision to make up for Saturday, which was why I was going to Jenny’s so that we could test each other. Then Mum had asked why I’d had a bath and washed my hair in the middle of the afternoon; why I was wearing so much make-up; and why had I dressed up in my best jeans and my silver flip-flops and the black chiffon shirt with the silver stars that tied at the waist, just to go to Jenny’s.

  I’d blushed and muttered about being really, really hot and dirty when I got back from Reading and needing to freshen up, and the make-up – heavy black eyeliner, loads of mascara, and the palest shimmery beige lipstick – was some that Paula had lent me which I was trying out because I’d need to wear it for work. It was almost unbearable when they’d both smiled fondly and believed me.

  Honeydew’s fields were still filled with fruit pickers; it was a hot, motionless evening, with the sun brazen in a dark blue sky. As I skulked in the shadows of the hawthorn hedge in case anyone saw me and reported straight back to Mum and Dad, I felt more sick than I’d ever felt in my life.

  Lewis Coleman-Beck simply wasn’t going to turn up. I knew he wasn’t. And if he did – what were we going to do? What on earth would we have in common? What would we talk about? What if he wanted to kiss me? It was an awful admission, but at seventeen I’d never kissed a boy – not properly – before. The pursed-lipped pecks and near-misses during youth club games of Postman’s Knock certainly hadn’t given me the sort of experience someone like Lewis Coleman-Beck would expect …

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘Don’t let him know how naive you are. Act all cool and sophisticated. Like Paula.’

  The clock on the village church chimed seven in the distance. That was it. He wasn’t coming. All my bravado melted away and I wanted to cry. I turned to grab my bike and go home before anyone saw my tears or witnessed my humiliation at being stood up.

  ‘Clemmie, hi. Oh, you look lovely. Sorry if I’ve ke
pt you – have you been waiting long?’

  Lewis was pulling open Honeydew’s big wrought iron gates, smiling at me. His jeans were still faded and his T-shirt was white. His dark hair fell glossily towards his eyes. I looked at him and my heart did a sort of back-flip and my legs wobbled alarmingly. I tried to speak but my tongue had glued itself to the roof of my mouth.

  I swallowed. ‘Er – oh, no … not at all … I’ve just got here …’

  He grinned at me. ‘You should have come up to the house if you didn’t want me to meet you at yours. I realised that earlier – it was very rude of me not to suggest it. There was no need to wait out here. Jess and Henry would have been only too pleased to meet you.’

  I smiled weakly. Jess and Henry – his godparents – Mr and Mrs Hawton-Ledley who were regarded in Ashcote as the lord and lady of the manor, who more or less owned the village, who held summer fetes and Christmas parties as token gestures to the hoi-polloi, who bestowed their favours on the peasants like passing royalty. Oh yes, they’d have welcomed me with open arms!

  I smiled again, not knowing what to say to him. It had been so easy to chat yesterday morning – tonight was a different matter entirely when I was nervous and gauche and totally tongue-tied.

  He walked across to me and kissed my cheek. He smelled faintly of sunshine and clean skin and lemon shampoo. ‘You really do look fantastic. That’s a fabulous shirt. It really suits you. With your beautiful hair you look like a real hippie star child.’

  I still said nothing. Was I supposed to graciously accept the compliment or tell the truth about the shirt’s Oxfam origins? To be honest, I could do neither coherently because I was trembling from head to toe simply because he’d brushed his lips against my face. I just gave what I hoped was a cheerful grin of thanks, although my lips didn’t seem to move much.

  ‘I do have a bit of a confession to make.’ He held out his hand. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, but you weren’t really looking forward to going for a drink, were you?’

  I ignored his hand. I knew that if I held his hand he’d feel me trembling and know.

  I managed to find something that resembled my voice. ‘No, of course not. I don’t mind not going to the pub at all.’ If only he knew just how relieved I was about that. ‘Why? Oh – don’t you want to see me tonight? Have you changed your mind? I mean, I can go home now, of course …’

  ‘Hey!’ He laughed down at me. ‘Of course I want to see you – I’ve been looking forward to it all day – it’s just that something’s come up tonight that I can’t put off and I thought you might find it interesting.’

  My beam spread from ear-to-ear. He still wanted to see me! So much for being cool and sophisticated!

  ‘OK– it – um – sounds intriguing.’

  ‘You might find it a bit boring. I hope not, of course it depends what things you like doing, and I am really sorry about this not being a proper date. I promise that next time we’ll go into the village and have a drink at the pub or maybe you’d like to go to the cinema? I’d really like to see Midnight Cowboy, wouldn’t you? Or we could go for a meal?’

  Next time! He’d actually said there was going to be a next time! I wanted to turn cartwheels of sheer joy.

  Oh, I’d love to do all those things, and especially with Lewis. I’d never done any of them before. It’d be like a real date. My first real date!

  ‘OK,’ I said feeling far more confident, ‘I’ll hold you to that.’

  Goodness, Paula would be so proud of me!

  He fell into step beside me as we walked round the outskirts of Honey’s massive boundary hedgerow, not seeming to mind too much that I hadn’t held his hand. I wanted to! I wanted to hold his hand and cling on to it forever! But I couldn’t – I couldn’t hold his hand and shake like a leaf because then he’d know that he was my first boyfriend, and even worse, he’d know how I felt about him – and all the teenage magazines I’d read said the worst possible crime was letting a boy know you were keen.

  ‘There’s one thing I have to ask you before we plan any future dates though,’ Lewis’s eyes were suddenly serious. ‘What about the boy you swore to love for ever and ever? Won’t he object to you seeing me?’

  Uh? I frowned. Which boy? I’d never sworn to love anyone for ever and ever and – oh! I remembered my RE textbook and the declaration of devotion scribbled all over it. ‘Nick Rayner is history,’ I said, remembering being really impressed by a similar phrase that Paula had once used. ‘He’s just a boy from the village. I – er – don’t see him any more. He’s not my boyfriend.’

  Well, at least that wasn’t a lie …

  ‘Good,’ Lewis grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘You don’t know how glad I am to hear it. So, have you been cloistered with those doom and gloom boys, Jeremiah and Isaiah, all day? Because if you have, you have my utmost admiration. I loathed studying.’

  ‘What? Oh – er – yes …’ I didn’t want anyone to know that I hadn’t actually started my RE revision. Especially not Lewis. He might become all grown-up and suggest we deferred our date until after the exams were over. I quickly changed the subject. ‘And I also got a Saturday job.’

  ‘Really? Good for you. Where?’

  So I told him about Sheldon Busby’s, and he said he knew it and it was a great place, and we chatted about music and money and exams and life in general – and before I realised it my heart had stopped hammering and my palms had stopped sweating and I was really, really enjoying myself.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked as we approached the back of Honeydew’s mellow-bricked farmhouse, remembering the teenage mags’ advice that you should always appear interested in your boyfriend and ask him questions, too. Sadly it sounded like an interrogation. ‘What have you been doing today?’

  ‘Working on this project which is supposed to become my career. It’s what I want you to see,’ Lewis said, opening the gate in the tall hawthorn hedge, and standing back to let me through first. ‘It’s the reason I’m staying here. My parents have at last given up all hope of me doing what they want me to do, so they thought that if I stayed with Jess and Henry and actually tried to do something that I enjoyed and made a success of it, I may not be such a disappointment to them.’

  I grinned to myself. Parents, it seemed, were parents the world over.

  ‘Um –’ I stopped as we scrunched along Honeydew’s wide gravelled paths. ‘I know this sounds odd, but I’d really rather not meet your – um – godparents – at least, not tonight.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound odd at all,’ Lewis said easily. ‘Although I’m sure they’d love you – but I know what it’s like being given the third degree. There’ll be plenty of time to meet them later. To be honest, although they’re sweethearts; they’re a bit old-fashioned and they take their responsibilities as godparents really seriously so think they have to keep an eye on me. Luckily, I’m not living in the main house. They’ve given me one of the labourer’s cottages in the yard.’

  My heart started hammering again. He lived on his own. And he was taking me to his cottage. And I didn’t know if I could trust him or not, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t trust myself.

  He laughed. ‘My intentions are strictly honourable.’

  I blushed. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean … it’s just – oh, I’m just being silly. Go on, tell me about this project – er – career.’

  ‘I’ll do better than that – I’ll show you. It’s in here.’

  We’d passed the labourers’ cottages and had reached one of the massive Dutch barns that were dotted around the Honeydew yard.

  ‘After you,’ Lewis gave a mock bow. ‘Now you can see what it is I hope to do with my life …’

  I stepped inside. It was cool and quite dark, and to start with all I could see were towering straw bales and stacked pallets of empty punnets. As my eyes became more used to the half-light I could make out some odd shapes at the far end, and then the lights flicked on and there seemed to be a crowd of people round a sort of stage,
and then –

  ‘Oh!’ I looked up at him, my eyes shining. ‘Oh, wow!’

  I was speechless. It was like being Alice in Wonderland and discovering Santa’s Grotto and Aladdin’s Cave all rolled into one right here in Ashcote.

  Lewis was beaming almost as broadly as I was. ‘I thought, when you told me about your job in Sheldon Busby’s, that we might just be on the same wavelength. Come and meet the others.’

  I followed him across the barn towards the makeshift stage at the far end: a stage banked with towering stacks of black amplifiers and crisscrossed with a tangle of electrical wires and cables; a stage illuminated by coloured spotlights which glinted off microphone stands and sparkled on a huge gleaming silver drum kit and two very ornate electric guitars.

  The four boys messing about with the musical instruments on the stage all turned and grinned at me and said hello.

  ‘This is Clemmie,’ Lewis said proudly. ‘I’m sure you’ll all be delighted to meet her at last seeing as I’ve talked about nothing or no one else since yesterday.’

  I sort of grinned back in a jaw-dropped way. They were gorgeous! All of them! None quite so gorgeous as Lewis, of course, but very, very nearly.

  ‘Meet Solstice,’ Lewis’s voice was filled with laughter. ‘Berkshire’s answer to The Moody Blues, The Hollies, and The Beach Boys – with a bit of originality thrown in – all rolled into one talented package. Close harmonies a speciality, but we’re not averse to a few ballads or a bit of raunchy rock either. Jez there is our Svengali: he’s our manager, accountant, roadie, electrician, sound and lighting expert, and he also drives the van. Vin’s the drummer, Gus is our main vocalist, Berry’s on lead guitar – and of course, there’s the star of the show, me – vocals and the second greatest bass guitarist in the entire world after Bill Wyman.’

  Giggling, I punched him playfully and he winked at me. My heart rocketed up into the stratosphere.

  The other boys grinned a lot more and said hi and yeah, it’s great to meet you at last and he’s driven us mad by talking about you every spare minute and you’re even more beautiful than he said you were – and I was in total heaven. Jenny and Dawn simply wouldn’t believe it – and as for Paula – well!