The Insides of Banana Skins

Chapter 1, October 1966: Sukey

Sukey knew it. When she thought about it, she knew it was over. But Rick said nothing. They still saw each other, slept together, too.

He came to dinner on the Saturday he and his friend Paul moved into their new flat, but he didn’t stay, told her he must go home, there was so much to do the next day.

‘OK,’ she said, wanting more and not knowing how to ask for it. She watched from the front step as he walked away. He’d call in a few days, she was sure. He’d promised to tell her when their phone was installed.

It was Sunday, just over a week later, and Sukey knew that Rick wouldn’t be ringing her or coming over that weekend. Looking through the window at the damp, grey, lonely London street, she felt strange, absent, as if she was hollow. She wondered why she had to depend on another person for how she felt.

The first time Sukey slept with Rick, they hadn’t had sex. There’d been a fight, a small fight in the bar and Sukey had left with Rick, who’d won. That had been in early May. Sukey was then a student at an arts college set in the Devon countryside where introductory courses in music, painting and drama were taught. Somehow in her last year at school she’d decided she wanted to be an actress. Rick worked in the nearby town. They came to the Saturday night dances at the college, these local men, lured by tales of young girls, no rules, beatnik freedom.

After the fight, after the two of them had left the bar together, Sukey unlocked her room and let him in. He sat on the bed, leant back on his elbows, looking at her from under his fringe of dark hair. Sukey stood at the window, saying nothing, trembling slightly.

‘Come and sit down,’ he said and she obeyed. He put his arm round her and started to kiss her. She kissed him back, let him unbutton her blouse, but when he groaned, saying he wanted her, she gently pushed him away. At first, he ignored her, holding her tightly. She struggled and he released her.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ he whispered, pulling his wallet out of his pocket. ‘You’ll be OK; I’ve got what’s needed.’ He took a small packet out of the wallet and held it up.

‘No,’ Sukey said and moved away. He frowned.

‘I can’t,’ she said, not knowing how to tell him she was only sixteen, still a virgin.

He looked at her, sighed. ‘Why didn’t you say before?’ he asked.

‘How could I?’ she said, almost crying.

He nodded, he understood. ‘OK. But could I sleep here, with you? Will that be all right?’

Sukey swallowed, nodded. It was all right. They lay in bed and he talked, telling her about the girlfriend he’d had for four years who’d left him for his best friend in December, just before he turned twenty-one. He told her how much he’d loved this girl. How hurt he’d been.

‘But I’m getting over it. I’ve applied to University, going up to London in September,’ he said.

‘I’m going to London, too, when this course is over,’ she told him.

‘To another college?’

‘No, a year out, to decide what I really want to do.’ She thought it sounded grown-up as she said it.

The next time he slept with her, she’d already decided that they would have sex. Although the thought of it made her feel quite strangely breathless, it was something she knew she wanted to do. She wanted to know what it was like and she wanted to be the same as the other students at this odd college she’d stumbled into.

Sukey had arrived the previous September by train, and a mini-bus had picked her up from the station along with several other students, all of them sophisticated and experienced, Sukey thought. Shy and awkward, she was almost completely silent, both then and in the following days. Her clothes were wrong, the way she thought and felt was wrong. She didn’t know about drugs, could drink only a glass or two of alcohol before she felt ill, had nothing to say that would interest anyone. She sat with the others and practised smoking their cigarettes until one of them told her that she should buy her own. She listened and watched and sometimes she began to feel that she might fit in, given time. She learned to drink and what to do with dope and even LSD. And now it was just having sex that would make her the same as the others.

So she whispered: ‘Rick, you can, you know, if you want to.’

‘You sure, really sure?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘yes.’

Even so, before he penetrated her for the first time he asked again: ‘Are you sure?’

It was, she believed, the most remarkable thing to have ever happened to her. It was not so much the act itself as the fact that it had happened; a man’s body had entered hers. At the same time, while it was intensely intimate, she’d not known what Rick was feeling as he came or even what she was supposed to feel. She spent all the next day thinking about it and when she opened her door that evening, he was there.

All through the summer term, she slept with Rick, several times a week. He talked of the holiday he was planning, a trip to Greece with Paul, his new best friend. They were renovating a van to take them there and to live in. They were looking for a third person to travel with to make the costs lower.

Sukey waited. She waited for Rick to ask her to come to Greece. She waited for Rick to tell her that he loved her. She knew she loved him; of course she did. She loved being in bed with him, sometimes waking in the night to find him wanting her again. She loved the way he paid for her when they went out drinking. She loved the way he discussed music and books and films, taking seriously what she had to say. She loved the way he talked about London and what he would do there; he and Paul were planning to find a place together. She loved the way her took her hand when they walked back to her room after an evening out.

Now Sukey was sharing a North London flat with Tessa, who she knew from boarding school. Not too far away lived her two best friends from college; Jaz, who was now a student at a big London drama school, and Kitty, who said she no longer wanted to be an actress and worked in a pub. But for Sukey being in London meant being near Rick. The day she’d first moved in with Tessa, Sukey had written to him giving her address, and eventually a reply came. It was only after he’d been in London for ten days that he came to see her; and stayed the night.

Ten days, Sukey thought, he waited ten days. And now it’s been over a week and he hasn’t even telephoned. She lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling and wished she were someone else; someone with confidence who could say witty things; someone who made an impact on others; someone solid and real. Little tears trickled down the sides of Sukey’s face and she gulped slightly, not wanting to make too much noise.

‘Sundays are so sad,’ she whispered. As she closed her eyes, she could feel the tears hot against the lids. And the image of Ellen dying on the last Sunday of her last term at the Devon college made her turn on her side and curl herself into a tight ball.

It was July and it had rained relentlessly for nearly a week. It was the last concert of the year given by the music students and while they were playing a requiem, their conductor, Ellen, lay down and died. Sukey, there with Rick, saw the baton rise above Ellen’s head. This was followed by her squirming fall as she collapsed. Edwin, the head of music, moved across, bent and took the baton, allowing the concert to continue. Someone placed a blanket over the woman where she lay.

Afterwards they all stood about in the entrance to the auditorium. Edwin came out, his white head bowed. The talking subsided and he spoke. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Ellen is dead.’ Sukey felt sick and turned to Rick, who shrugged. He didn’t stay with her that night, her last at the college; they made love and he left soon after.

When she woke in the morning, she stood watching the rain falling slow and flat. She was bereft. In a few hours she, and all the other students, would be leaving. The year was over; her first at learning how to be an adult and it had ended with Ellen’s public death and cold wetness instead of warm summer.

She stood at her window, watching the weather, feeling desperately sad, thinking of Ellen, whom she’d seen nearly every day: a short, brisk, grey-haired figure eating in the cafeteria, walking between the college buildings, stopping to talk earnestly to one of the students; familiar, pleasant, round-bodied and alive. This sadness was not because Ellen was dead; Sukey had rarely spoken to her, had not been close to her. It was the death itself, its drama and timing, coming when the last college term was over and a requiem was playing, that lodged in Sukey’s thinking, a motif of ending and of desolation that would not go away. Ellen’s death was overwhelming because Sukey was already in mourning, regretting that her short time at the college was now over and feeling confusion and uncertainty about Rick. She wished she could have the time when she’d first met him back again and be able to do it differently.

Sukey uncurled herself and sat up. She could hear Tessa in the small kitchen that was next to her room; the clink of crockery and the gush of water from the tap, the scritch of a gas ring being lit. Making tea, Sukey thought, and she closed her eyes, thinking of spending the rest of this Sunday in the shabby flat with her boring friend. All weekend, starting on Friday night, she’d stayed in waiting for Rick to phone her.

From the kitchen came Tessa’s tuneless voice singing the refrain from an early Beatles song: ‘She loves me, yeah, yeah, she loves me, yeah, yeah.’ The kettle started to whistle as Tessa’s voice rose and Sukey decided. She needed to know what Rick wanted. Standing up and stretching, she went to peer in the mirror above the chest of drawers. She cleaned her face with cold cream on a piece of cotton wool, applied fresh eye-shadow and mascara, brushed her hair, put on shoes and wrapped herself in her cloak. Taking her bag, she ran down the stairs, looking up to say ‘goodbye’ when she heard Tessa clumping out of the kitchen into the hallway. She banged out of the front door and almost ran to the tube station. The cold, wet streets were empty. When she emerged, two slow, rattling trains later, the rain was heavier and darkness had arrived.

Rick opened the door, raised surprised eyebrows and gave a questioning smile. Sukey smiled back, following him into the kitchen where they sat and drank tea.

‘I must get on with putting the hessian on my walls,’ Rick said.

‘Hessian?’

‘He thinks it’ll look good, make the place posh.’ Paul shook his head. ‘He wants me to help, I’ve said no.’

‘I’ll help,‘ said Sukey.

‘No,’ said Rick.

‘I want to,’ Sukey put down her cup and looked at him. He shrugged.

It wasn’t easy, first cutting the hessian with a pair of big strong scissors, then spreading the glue and finally pressing it against the wall until it stuck.

‘It’s looking great,’ said Rick several hours later, as they smoothed the last edge into place. He looked at his watch. ‘You’ve missed the last tube.’

‘Can I stay?’ Sukey whispered, feeling a pulse throbbing in her forehead.

‘You’ll have to,’ Rick said, ‘too far to walk.’

‘You don’t want me here, do you?’ Sukey asked. ‘You don’t want me anymore.’

Rick sank down onto the mattress, folding himself up, as if wanting to disappear. He looked down, wrapping his arms round his body.

‘Well?’ Sukey said, scared, feeling her heart pumping.

‘It’s late.’

‘Is it over?’

He sighed, rubbed his forehead. ‘The thing is, Sukey, it’s… well, we’ve had a great time, haven’t we?’ He paused, pursed his lips, blew out air. ‘But it’s not the love story of a lifetime is it? Not for either of us.’

As he said it Sukey wasn’t sure if it was true for her or not. She felt a yearning loss, but for what she wasn’t sure. She was aware of panic, the like of which she’d never before experienced. She was overwhelmed by knowing that it was over, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that she could do about it. Part of her wanted to scream and yell, wanted to make Rick tell her that they were still going to be together. She was breathless. She wanted Rick: he didn’t want her. And that she could not change. She shook her head, letting pain gradually take her over. She sat on the one chair in the room and started to cry.

‘I’m so sad,’ she said.

‘I am, too. Always sad when a relationship ends.’

‘Yes,’ said Sukey, thinking, for me it was a first love, for him just a little affair, a filling-in-time sort of affair. She gulped, let the crying take her over. He stood, came and put his hand on her head.

‘Don’t,’ she gasped. ‘Sympathy makes me worse.’ She was almost laughing as well as crying.

‘Ah, Sukey,’ he said and sighed. She gave in to the crying for a little while. She heard the clunk of Rick’s shoes landing on the floor as he took them off. She looked up, knowing that her eyes were swollen, her face red and wet. She sniffed loudly.

‘Whatever happens we’ll always remember each other, won’t we Sukey?’

She nodded. Her face and head were so full of grief she couldn’t speak.

‘Let’s go to bed now,’ he said. ‘D’you want first turn at the bathroom?’

She shook her head and watched him leaving the room. She sat for a time wondering if she could move. When he came back, he started to undress and his body gradually became naked. The last time, she thought. With an effort she rose, moving slowly. It was as if she had the flu. She wondered how long it would be before she recovered.

When she returned, he was lying under the bedclothes. The light was off and he’d lit a candle. She turned her back to undress.

She lay next to him and he put his arm over her and nuzzled into her neck. His hand moved to her breast and she felt his erect penis pressing against her leg.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Let’s make love,’ he whispered. Sukey lay, trying to understand.

‘To say goodbye in the nicest way,’ Rick murmured.

‘No,’ said Sukey, ‘no.’ She turned away, lay trembling in a sad, confused ball. Finally she heard Rick sigh, felt him turn and the room became dark as he blew out the candle. With relief, she let herself cry again, noiselessly, despairingly.

During the night the hessian unpeeled and fell off the wall. It sounded like giant zips being slowly opened and woke them both. Sukey and Rick lay side by side on their backs. Sukey started to laugh and then stopped as Rick’s fingers clasped hers in a strong grip, making her cry, and she let the tears out silently so he couldn’t hear.

As soon as the alarm went, Rick jumped up. He pulled on jeans and went to examine the heap of stiff gluey material, the remains of last night’s hard work, part of the process of turning this dark basement flat into a home. Sukey half sat up, leaning against the wall behind the mattress and watched him. She wondered if he’d say anything, and breathed in deeply to stop the tears coming. She must get up, dress in yesterday’s clothes and go to work. Her head ached, her eyes were sore and gritty, her body limp and sad. She wondered how to cope with this new stage in her life, this unfamiliar unpleasant feeling.

‘It should work,’ Rick said. ‘I’ll get stronger glue. Don’t want to waste this stuff. I spent a lot on it.’ He carefully lifted the pieces of hessian and laid them on the floor by the window, pulling them flat. He stood up. ‘Tea?’ He asked.

‘Yes please.’

‘Bacon sam’ich?’

Sukey shook her head. How could he think of food and be so cheerful? She wanted to pull the bedclothes over her head, curl up into a ball and refuse to go. She thought about becoming hysterical and demanding to be looked after, cared for, loved. But that was not her way.

‘Right, said Rick, gathering up the rest of his clothes, ‘you’d better hurry if you want the bathroom. Paul’ll be up soon. I won’t be long.’ He left the room and Sukey breathed out deeply, aware that she was alone for the first time since it had happened. She opened her jaw wide in a silent scream and then bent over, sobbing and gasping for air, but she did it quietly and with control. This was something she needed to do; she needed this small piece of time to let the pain accumulate, so that she could accommodate it, understand it. She could feel it in her chest, a tight balloon round her heart, real physical breathtaking agony. Part of her was outside herself, watching; part of her was saying: Sukey’s dealing with her first real boyfriend no longer wanting her. In fact, he never loved her, she knows that now.

Rick was back holding a mug of tea. ‘Sukey,’ he said and she looked up, closing her mouth and swallowing in an effort to stop misery from flooding out and overwhelming her. If Rick understood how sad she was, he’d try to comfort her and that would be unbearable.

‘Sukey,’ Rick said again, concern showing in his frown and the caressing tone he used.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, forcing a smile, hiding her hurt from him. She wanted him to think that she’d soon be over it and on to the next one. He put the mug on the floor beside the mattress and stood, looking at her. She continued her smile.

‘We’ll be great mates,’ he said, ‘I always enjoyed being with you.’

‘Yes,’ Sukey nodded, using one arm to hold the sheet over her breasts as she reached for the tea. Suddenly it seemed odd to be naked in Rick’s bedroom.

Later as she was dressing, she heard him talking to Paul in the kitchen. There was a burst of laughter. Sukey almost screamed with anger. Why should she just go? Why make it easy for him?

She stood by the mattress, wanting revenge. Where were the scissors that they’d used last night? She saw them on the mantelpiece, took them, held them heavily, went to the hessian lying on the floor. She knew what she should do: wield the scissors, cut the material into tiny sticky pieces. She closed her eyes; saw herself doing it, saw herself stamping on the remains of the thick material, saw Rick coming in, looking puzzled, saw herself screaming at him, telling him how she felt. She opened her eyes, looked at the scissors, dropped them.

She wrapped her cloak round her, went into the hall, called: ‘Bye,’ and let herself out, closing the door gently behind her. She climbed the area steps and stood on the cold, wet pavement catching her breath. There were raindrops on her eyelashes and she thought about all those months ago, her last days at college, Ellen dying, the desolation she’d felt at the ending of that year and how the very public death had forced into focus the way she’d been starting to feel. Now the ending was complete. She should have broken with Rick on the day of the concert, made everything belonging to that time finish at once. But still, in spite of this understanding, Sukey hesitated. She turned to look down at the basement flat. Then she shook her head, sighed and walked off into the grey London drizzle.

(Many years later Sukey told a friend about Ellen. The friend thought it most strange that the concert had continued while Ellen lay dying. This surprised Sukey, she’d never considered this odd, though she’d thought about it often. For her, dramatic though it had been, the death as the requiem continued had never been an event in itself but was a symbol that gave shape and meaning to that unsettling time in her life when she was trying to learn how to be an adult.)

Chapter 2, February 1967: Minnie

The bag with the money in it was gone. Minnie stood watching as the bus rattled away up the long road. She could see its lights in the wet grey dusk, the indicator winking as it drew in to the next stop. A swish of rain, provoked by a passing car, hit her legs, soaking her shoes and her long skirt. Still staring, she blinked, squished her eyes together to see better: the bus was pulling out, continuing on. She imagined hearing the impatient ding as the conductor rang the bell, leaning out from his platform, wanting the driver to go faster, wanting to be home. Even if she ran, she could not catch up. The bus was gone, the bag was gone, all that money was gone.

Giving a deep jagged sigh, she peered round wanting to find somewhere to sit down. There was nowhere: no bench at this bus stop. She looked down at the wet pull of her skirt, tucked her arms round herself and, scarcely watching for cars, crossed the road, heading for home.

When she arrived she was shivering and she stood in the porch fumbling with cold fingers for her key in her shabby cracked leather purse with its long fraying strap that she wore over her shoulder and at an angle across her body. It went everywhere with her and held, as well as her key, little bits of money, her tobacco, papers and lighter, the end of a broken comb, a nugget of dope wrapped in silver foil and pressed down into the back pocket. But it was too small for all those notes; those months of saved notes now probably passing through Finsbury Park in a plastic supermarket bag, its handles flapping on the top deck of the bus, or scrunched up under a seat. Unless someone had already found it, opened it, widening their eyes on seeing the contents, then running down the stairs and off the bus as it soon as it stopped, holding the bag tight and close to them before any one else claimed it, or stole it. Minnie felt her mouth turn down at the corners and start to tremble as she imagined her bag and its fate. She pulled out the key and stuck it fiercely into the lock.

In the hallway, it was dark and quiet. John and Bridie who lived downstairs had probably put their children to bed and gone out drinking. The place smelt of stale cooked vegetables and damp clothes overlaid with the sweet-dry aroma of dope being smoked. Slowly she climbed the stairs and went into the kitchen. Kitty and Dennis were sitting at the table and Malc was lying on the floor looking uncomfortable, his head, neck and shoulders pressed against the wall, his knees bent, a joint in his hand. The light from the two candles flickered as Minnie closed the door and leant against it.

‘Want some tea?’ asked Kitty, raising the pot with its knitted cosy, taking a heavy drag on her cigarette. Kitty was the flat’s official tenant. She worked in the pub up the road, never drank, didn’t take drugs of any kind. She just stole money and fags and slept with other people’s husbands, of whom Dennis was one.

Minnie shook her head, went to sit next to Malc. He passed her the joint and Minnie took it. She watched her hand as it reached out; it was trembling. She took a puff, pulled the thick smoke down into her lungs. As she breathed out, she said: ‘I left the money on the bus.’

‘What money?’ asked Kitty, her voice even more rasping than normal.

‘The dealing money, the India money, the acid money, the trip money, whatever you want to call it. My money,’ Minnie said and the reality of her loss pulled her head down almost onto her lap. She felt the dampness of her hair against her cheeks. ‘What’s Ted going to say?’ she almost whispered.

‘Get onto them,’ Dennis said. ‘London Transport Lost Property.’

Minnie sat up, pushed her back and shoulders against the wall. ‘And say what? I was bringing home the money I’d made dealing and forgot it when I got off the bus. Should I say that?’

‘You don’t have to tell them how you got the money. Just that you’ve lost it.’ Dennis went to the fridge, peering into its contents for another bottle of beer, which he found and opened. Minnie watched his plump lips as they sucked from the top of the bottle. He sat down again and reached for one of Kitty’s cigarettes. Dennis was forty, had a wife in Battersea, four live children and another two, the youngest two, who were dead: identical twin girls, one had survived to three months, the other six. And since then, Dennis said, his wife had been slightly mad. Minnie hated his fleshy presence in the flat, his pale, disapproving, voyeur’s eyes, his whining South London accent. He made her feel fastidious, vulnerable, as if she didn’t belong. But then, maybe she didn’t. Maybe none of them did. Except for Kitty.

Pink, fat Kitty, who kept the place almost clean and occasionally took the washing to the laundrette, thought she was making the place homely with cushions and stolen flowers. She filled the place with as many people as she could fit in, so that now in the second bedroom there were five of them sharing the space and paying some rent, whatever Kitty persuaded them they could afford. Dennis paid the most for his half of the big bedroom room where he slept with Kitty. And she made them use candles to save on bills and charged them for food, serving big vegetable stews with bread and marge. ‘I could do with a couple of nice big pork chops,’ Dennis had said once and Kitty replied: ‘I’m not stopping you visiting the butcher.’

Kitty is why she’d lost all her money, thought Minnie. She’d left the gradually increasing pile in the safe at the alternative health food shop where she worked. It had been agreed. They all knew what Minnie was doing and no one had minded. She’d sold to them too, the others who worked there, the casuals, the managers, those like her who were more or less regular. They all wanted dope and most also bought acid when she could get it. She was not a regular dealer, just saving for a special occasion, the trip to India with Ted. The money had stayed in the safe because she didn’t want it at home for Kitty to take, and she didn’t want to put it in a bank in case they asked questions. And now, just when she had enough, when she’d more or less booked the plane tickets and had been going to pay for them, it had gone. She’d brought the money home because tomorrow was her day off. She planned not to let it out of her sight, put it under the mattress when she slept and then in the morning take it to the travel agency. Instead, she’d sat on the bus, leaning back with her eyes closed, tired from work, from too much dope and not enough sleep. She put the bag down when she paid her fare and forgot to pick it up when she opened her eyes and jumped up, seeing that the bus was almost at her stop.

Malc passed her the joint again and as she took