Williamstown, Australia 2022

I am lying face down on the massage table while the masseur digs her bony and uncompromising elbow into the writer’s knots that lurk in my shoulders. No aromatherapy candles for this type of massage but there is always a playlist and as I try not to yelp as she hits a particularly snaggly knot, a song begins…

You sheltered me from harmKept me warm, kept me warmYou gave my life to meSet me free, set me freeThe finest years I ever knewWere all the years I had with you…

 

Dingley 1975

I am sixteen  and my heart is breaking, shattering into tiny pieces at my feet as I stand in the loungeroom of Jane’s parents’ home, watching as Jane and the love of my life engage in a passionate and lengthy kiss in a darkened corner.

That should be me… but it isn’t.

On the stereo in the room behind me, Bread continues…

Is there someone you know
Your loving them so
But taking them all for granted?
You may lose them one day
Someone takes them away
And they don’t hear the words you long to say

I attend an all girls private school. My parents had inconsiderately chosen to live close to the school to ‘save on the travel’. Little were they to know that decision was the biggest impediment to my social life. You just didn’t get to meet boys riding a bicycle compared to the hotbed of opportunities to be found on the red rattlers that plied the Frankston line.

The socially awkward and embarrassing fourth-form dancing lessons with the boys from our brother school came and went and I enjoyed a brief taste of young love with Brad, whose parents also lived close to the school. He would dink me on the cross bar of his bicycle for our innocent liaisons. But at the end of that school year he left school to join the army and apart from a few half hearted letters the relationship fizzled.

But then came fifth form and THE SCHOOL PLAY. This was it… the one event that brought the two schools together. Male persons in their grey uniforms turned up for auditions and HE walked into my life. Chris was everything a girl dreamed of… tall, dark, devastatingly handsome and he could sing and act and… and… he was cast as the male lead and I as the romantic love interest.

The leading players formed a gang, a sort of latter-day bohemian clique, an anti-gang to the surfies in their panel vans. It was all about red carnations and the (underage) consumption of sparkling alcohol, loosely described as champagne. We roamed the streets of Mentone being poetic and dramatic… My poor parents!

And I fell wildly, passionately and unrequitedly in love with HIM. Even as the romantic lead in the play I didn’t end up with him but I lived in hope.

The centre of our social universe was Dingley. Two of the more socially sophisticated girls had cool parents who let them throw parties and for this particular party I dressed carefully. My best green cord maxi skirt, the wide collared silk shirt, the green eyeshadow… and copious applications of Tweed perfume. Tonight would be the night. Only it wasn’t.

Something had slipped my notice, some growing attraction between Jane and Chris.

You taught me how to love
What it’s of, what it’s of
You never said too much

As I watched the tangled limbs of Jane and Chris, a little part of me died. I swallowed the last of the disgustingly warm and bubbleless drink and turned away as the last strains of Everything I Own played on the stereo.

I would give anything I own
I’d give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again
Just to touch you once again

As another song of that era noted, I learned the truth at seventeen that love is meant for beauty queens… but that’s another story!

 

StereoStory#692

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Alison Stuart writes historical fiction and short stories set in England and Australia and across different periods of history. She is best known for The Postmistress and The Goldminer's Sister, stories set in the Victorian goldfields in the 1870s. She also writes historical mysteries as A.M. Stuart: her popular Harriet Gordon mystery series is set in Singapore in 1910. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and a geriatric cat. In a past life Alison worked as a lawyer across a variety of disciplines including the military and emergency services. She has lived in Africa and Singapore and, when circumstances permit, travels extensively - all for research of course!