Barry Walsh - The Pimlico Kid

‘Oh Josie,’ says Sarah.

Josie’s eyes fill with tears. ‘Blinking leg … goes to sleep on me.’

Sarah looks at me, expecting me to take action. This makes knowing what to do even harder. Josie doesn’t look as if she wants to be helped up, and touching a girl isn’t so straightforward any more.

Sarah kneels down. ‘Come on Josie, let’s get up.’ She strokes her hair.

Josie doesn’t move and covers her face with her hands. Sarah shrugs and looks to me again.

My cowboy hero, Audie Murphy, would simply lift her in his arms. I don’t know why I always think of Audie in difficult situations because it only highlights everything that I’m not up to doing: punch the baddie; dive into deep water; lift girls off the floor. Anyway, Josie is probably as heavy as I am. Faced with her tears and Sarah’s expectations, I look away to hide my confusion. Then it comes to me: I’ll give her my ‘Norman Wisdom’. This may not be the place for the elbows-out rolling walk or his famous trip, of which I’m especially proud, but I lie beside Josie and prop my head on one hand – a horizontal version of the way Norman leans on walls and other, less solid, objects. I give her the high-pitched voice. ‘Now Mrs, up we get, can’t lie here all day, got an appointment in that nice big car over there.’ Her fingers part and she peeps through to see Norman’s yawning grin and his eyes going up into his head. Her shoulders start shaking.

Sarah frowns before realizing that Josie is chuckling. I roll onto my back, exaggerating Norman’s laughter. Sarah joins in and I feel a little guilty at how much more her laughter means to me than Josie’s. With Sarah’s help, she gets up. From her frock’s short sleeve she pulls out a hanky to dab her eyes and wipe away some tear-snot.

Mr Richards calls over to say it’s OK to sit in the car but only in the back, and not to make a mess as he’s just ‘brushed out’. The girls get in and sit back on the deep bench seat. They pat the space between them for me to sit there too. Mr Richards closes the door and soon has the car rocking gently as he polishes the bonnet. In the carpeted hush, we talk in whispers and before long we fall silent, breathing in the heady mix of car wax and Windolene – and when I squeeze the seat’s soft leather, it releases a faint smell of cigars. Josie puts one hand through the looped strap and waves with the other like the Queen. Then she touches the gleaming ashtray in the door and snatches back her hand when she sees her fingerprints on the chrome.

‘Oops, sorry.’

Sarah smiles and gets up to wipe the ashtray with the hem of her frock.

Mr Richards has moved into the road on Sarah’s side. He squats lower to polish the door and we catch him making a cross-eyed face. We smile but he doesn’t smile back because he had done it only for Sarah. The vertical wrinkle between his eyebrows deepens and he stands up.

‘Blimey, this is smashing,’ says Josie. ‘Fancy being driven in one of these wherever you want to go. He’s got a great job your dad. Will he give us ride?’

Sarah shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so. He’s only taken Mum out a few times, on his way to work.’

Christine and Shirley arrive. Josie’s proud tap on the window is too loud and Mr Richard’s face goes into full frown. The girls wave but don’t stop.

Josie clambers out. ‘Thanks Sarah, see ya.’ Christine and Shirley carry on, shoving each other playfully, unconcerned whether Josie follows or not. She limps after them but stops briefly to wave at us with little shakes of her upright hand that only we can see. Sarah waves back. Josie resumes her struggle to catch up. Then something about the girls’ cruel giggling, their turned backs and their sound legs gets me to my feet. I jump out of the car. ‘Wait a minute, can’t you!’

They stop, glaring, but they wait with eyebrows raised and cheeks sucked in. When Josie reaches them, they set off, arm-in-arm, and as quickly as they can. Once again, Josie struggles to keep up.

I get back in the car. Sarah reaches across me to pull the door shut and I catch what she feels for Josie in her fading smile. I’d give anything for her to feel like this about me.

‘I like Josie,’ she says.

‘Me too.’ This is true, although I wouldn’t normally say so.

‘It was nice what you did for her.’

‘Well, they could see she was trying to catch up.’

‘Yes, but I meant when you rolled on the ground to make her laugh.’

‘Oh.’

‘It was kind.’ She’s talking about me! Silence. My turn to speak, but I can’t. ‘She’s got lovely blue eyes, Josie, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Like yours.’

Bloody hell Billy, say something! There’s so much I’d like to tell her but my words stick, like too many people trying to get through a door at once. I eventually mumble something about Josie’s trip to the holy place for her face, and how it’s important to have faith.

‘Really?’

‘You know, praying a lot … Josie asked me if I’d say a prayer for her.’

‘And will you?’

I hesitate. ‘Yes, I will.’

‘That’s nice of you, Billy.’

I have never felt nicer.

Her father appears again, polishing the door on the nearside. This time his smile is for both of us, but he doesn’t mean it.

‘I’d love to have a car, to be a chauffeur, like your dad … to drive all the time.’

‘Where would you go?’

‘Oh, all over, everywhere.’

She leans closer. ‘Would you take me with you?’

A weird fluttering fills my chest. Something has changed, like the moment in cowboy films when the hero and heroine first notice each other. I can see her face so clearly: the little mole beside her nose and the tiny bleached hairs above her lips. I’m not sure what to say but I know what I want to do: for the first time in my life, I want to kiss someone.

‘Well?’ she says.

‘Oh yes, yes, I’d take you.’

‘Where?’

‘Well, to Cumberland … maybe. It’s a long way. We’d have to take food and things for the journey.’

Her face comes closer. ‘What’s it like?’

‘It’s smashing. Near my Aunt’s, there’s a big river where we fish for trout, but we only ever catch eels. There are caves in the riverbank, where my cousin smokes a tuppenny loose. My aunt has a Morris Minor and drives us to the Lake District where there are huge mountains and er … lakes. In Carlisle Castle, one dungeon has a licking stone.’

‘A what?’

‘It’s a curvy-shaped bit of wall made smooth by prisoners licking water that seeped through from the moat. And we go to the seaside at Silloth, where there are huge sand dunes to jump from, and the best ice cream: it’s Italian. And there’s a funfair with flick-ball machines; if you get three balls in the holes, you get one cigarette. And my aunt never stops baking, there are always cakes and different kinds of tart at teatime, and lemon curd, although they call it lemon cheese up there. Her kitchen table is as big as our kitchen.’

I’m out of breath. She’s looking at me and I want to tell her more to keep her looking.

‘Sounds wonderful.’ She puts a hand on mine. ‘Shall we go then, one day?’

I have to swallow to start breathing again. ‘Yes.’ Then, instead of telling her how I feel, all I manage is, ‘It does rain a lot though. And we never get brown like you do in Somerset.’

‘Would you take me to Somerset too?’

‘Oh I would, yes.’

‘Then I could show you our village, Lower Sinton. My Nan runs the post office but it’s not like the one here; it sells sweets and food and newspapers. There are haystacks in the fields where hares hide, but I’ve never seen them. The man next door has ponies and we get free rides. In a cottage on the edge of the village there’s an old woman called Miss Walthough. She looks a bit like a witch but she isn’t, although she does know about potions for curing sick animals, and she grows the best raspberries for miles around. We’ve also got a river; it runs across the fields behind Nan’s garden. There are all kinds of beautiful stones in it and you can wade across, except in winter when it’s too deep.’