Monday 27th March 1978: Bank Holiday
Robbie made his presence known at the Tennis Club. He didn’t play much tennis—he was rubbish and didn’t want to be shown up by his friends. This was just as well. Others like him were orbiting the courts with rackets and no real intention of playing. They were there to watch each other, not the game.
Robbie settled on a bench and opened his sketchbook. This was practice getting his hand in. Besides, it gave him something to do while others clustered in pairs or drifted into conversation. And he enjoyed it when someone came to look, he’d tilt the page toward them. People were polite. He might ask to draw them if their face appealed to him. They often said yes. He’d draw.
He didn’t know the girl when she approached, but she had the jolie-laid bumptiousness he liked in a person. It said they had character. He could draw a character. Her eyes were dark and slightly slanted, and she looked Eastern European, maybe of Tartar ancestry. Her rich brown hair was bobbed. She wore a denim jacket over a tennis halter top, white shortie shorts, and sandals. He assumed her bag held tennis shoes, as it didn’t strike him that she looked ready to play tennis.
“Hi, I’m Tracey,” she said, “You’re Robbie. I’ve heard all about you.”
This had Robbie intrigued from the get-go. He stood, like the gentleman he wasn’t and invited her to sit with him. It was clear he was drawing. She could see that.
“My old school. Ascham House,” he says, showing a competent but dull sketch of the red brick townhouse across the road. “I started when I was four! Red cap, blazer, shorts, socks around my ankles”
Tracey smiles.
“May I?” Robbie turns to a blank page in his sketchbook and says he’d like to draw her.
Tracey is happy with this. Tennis was the last thing on her mind, in any case.
She sat, legs crossed, arms relaxed, wanting to close one eye to avoid the sun—or raise a hand to block it. Robbie sketched the basic shadows, but saw her squinting, and they swapped places. That didn’t help either. They laughed. Then swapped back.
Drawing her felt like walking a tightrope. Would she see through him? No. Because he knew what he was doing. He changed tack. This couldn’t be a lengthy pose; the way his mother taught, he had minutes. He’d heard about artists who would keep their eye on their subject and let their hand find its way. Not even lifting their hand from the page. He swapped a soft pencil for a pen. The sketch was just the surface—this dance, this testing, this attention. Maybe it wasn’t about the drawing at all. But it was for him. It had to be. He had something to prove. He wasn’t a fake.
“I’m Tracey, by the way,” she said, suddenly self-conscious.
“I’m Robbie. But you know that.”
She is sitting for a portrait sketch. She watches, intrigued as a pencil sketch of her is created. She’d love to talk, but has been told not to.
He enjoyed the process: eye to pencil, pencil to paper. He objectified them; he had to. He could see her looking him over. He couldn’t ask her to keep her eyes still. When it came to their mouths, he had to ask them to stop speaking. Could they feel his eyes on them? Like a light touch. He wondered that, sometimes, as he looked at their lips, or examined their ears, or checked the fall of their neck and peculiarities of their ears. When he spoke, he pulled his lips around his brace, too self-conscious to expose the brace on his teeth.
She liked the drawing and asked for it.
“Do please, I want to show my brother.”
Robbie liked to keep them. He wouldn’t usually tear something from his sketchbook.
“Promise to come round and let me draw you properly. A three-hour sitting.”
He dug out his address book.
‘Tracey McAdam, she said, and gave her number.
Robbie’s heart missed a beat. He’d been flirting with Mike McAdams’ kid sister. This couldn’t end well. Or maybe it would.
“You know Mike and I do not see eye to eye?” Robbie holds up his wrist as evidence of their scrap.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t be close?” She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, and he kissed her back. On the cheek. The French way. Did this mean something? He found that a few girls were doing this. Maybe they were all using meetings and partings to get a little closer.
When he got home, Robbie looked in on Kizzy. He tapped on the door but didn’t wait for her to answer. She was trying something on, her wardrobe door open, the full-length mirror showing her reflection in a Woodstock revival halter top and flares with patches.
“If you think it makes you look older, you’ve failed,” he said.
“It’s for the rugby club disco tonight. ‘Woodstock revival’. Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, that kind of vibe.”
“Mum won’t let you go out like that”.
There was a shout from down the corridor.
“I heard that,” Their Mum cried out, all-knowing but yet never quite there.
Kizzy dug her brother in the ribs. He wasn’t going to spoil her fun.
“I’ll dress for Mum like I’m going to a Christian Disco,” she whispered, “and stash this lot in the garage. Space in your trunk for some hippy-girl clobber?”
“You should come? It’ll be fun. Lots of girls. A few of my friends will be there.”
Robbie thinks not. He points at his teeth.
“Wear a suit, come as Jaws. I could dig out a pair of Rick’s platforms to give you the height.”
Kizzy knows his pain. Feels for him. She tousled his hair.
“You’re a good-looking boy. Someone’ll have you.”
Robbie refuses.
“Brace out tomorrow. Then, Gosforth, beware!” He said.
“Ok, I’ll check out the talent for you then,” Kizzy replied.
“The talent? Next, you’ll be giving me their vital statistics,” Robbie suggested.
“This isn’t Miss World”. Kizzy said.
“But it is ‘Miss Gosforth’?” Robbie suggested.
“In your dreams.”
When she got back, Robbie was keen to learn how the disco had gone. He asked blunt questions.
“Scored?”
Kizzy wasn’t telling, but she was smiling. Her love life wasn’t the challenge; his was.
“Guess who was there?”
Robbie feigned a lack of interest.
“Cece Noble. I’m surprised. I thought she was waiting for a revival of the Debutante’s Ball. She’s dropping out of school, apparently, off to do ballet, so she says”.
Kizzy eyed the door along the landing. She should go in and see Mum. She’d enjoy knowing who was there, too. All the boys. All the girls. All the children of someone she’d been at school with in the day.’
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