SteeringWheelWinter2022 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 13
STEERING Wheel
And in Barry’s case it was probably the
latter. It was a dodgy company that took
peoples’ investments and then when it got
into trouble, closed and opened up under a
new name.
My sister Helen had always half fancied
Barry but he never had an eye for her. Not
one little bit and that really annoyed her.
Any man who every came into our house
always took a shine to Helen, she was tall
and leggy, she had long shiny hair.
They never really noticed me apart from
Barry. On the day he came to sell my
parents a policy, a policy they never bought
actually, having wasted a lot of his time, he
saw me and seemed to like me. I made
very thin tomato sandwiches with finely
chopped onion in them and put parsley on
the plate. “Oh, all keen to impress,” Helen
said scornfully. I felt my cheeks go scarlet.
“Well if so, they HAVE impressed me very
much,” Barry said with one of his smiles.
Helen said afterwards he was very obvious,
like a cheap aftershave. But that was only
because he didn’t bother with her. He
bothered with me though. Rang me up
the next day to go to the pictures. And we
never looked back since. Well. That’s not
EXACTLY true. We never looked back for a
long time.
We went to the cinema, and for drinks, and
to a ballad concert, and for a weekend to a
hotel in the Sunny South East. And he said it
would be much dearer if we had two single
rooms and I said, go on then we’ll share a
room, and it all worked out fine.
So those were great days altogether and
Barry couldn’t have been nicer. Lovely little
Dee he called me. Everyone else called me
Deirdre but Barry called me Dee. He even
gave me a locket with “Barry loves Dee”
written on the inside. I have a picture of him
in it, just as he looked then. Look at it! Isn’t
he handsome? He hasn’t changed much, a
bit plumper I suppose, but of course so am
I, and maybe a little less hair now. Not that
he’d thank anyone for making a joke about
it. Men are very sensitive about such things.
Helen showed me a cushion one day in a
shop saying “Balding men make better
lovers”. I didn’t buy it.
“You’re afraid of him Deirdre, you’re afraid
of his bad temper,” she said to me. At the
top of her voice in front of the whole shop!
I didn’t know where to put myself. Helen
can be very cruel. Of course I should make
allowances; she IS married to that dull poor
eejit Pat. Pat, who had nothing ever to talk
about except his DIY. Helen pretends to be
delighted with him and the ludicrous tool
shed he has in the garden.
And Mam and Dad keep up the fiction that
Pat is the most reliable son-in-law in the
World. I suppose they just do it to cheer
Helen up. She must know how much she
compromised by marrying him. She used
to a real goer, she could have had anyone
way back. Not my Barry of course, he told
me that he never even saw HER that first
day he came to the house.
Barry told me confidentially that some of
his friends said Helen was a very easy girl,
anybody’s in fact. I didn’t see how this could
be so, but why would he say it if he hadn’t
heard it.
Eddie met this girl in the bank where he
worked. It was Moya this and Moya that all
day every day. But of course she lived with
her parents and Eddie lived at home and
they had no money for a place of their own.
So there was no going forward on that one.
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