Tuesday 28th March 1978: Kizzy’s Room: Later that day
Kizzy found it filed with her records. The Eastfield Lower 5th B Form Photo. Mounted on a card. Seventeen girls in matching skirts, arranged in rows like a floral firing squad. Miss Rowbotham stood in the middle, hands clasped, her mouth set in its usual polite bemusement about being responsible for the delightful specimens of womanhood around her.
Kizzy smoothed the photo of a discarded sock. It secured it to her wardrobe door with Sellotape beside a poster for Bowie’s ‘Alladin Sane.’ She stepped back and nodded, satisfied. She then held up a set of brass-tipped darts.
“This,” she said, “is how we sort out your love life.”
Robbie squinted at the line-up. The girls were familiar with that hazy, back-to-school after the summer holiday look. Smile too wide. Ankles awkwardly crossed. Some had blinked.
“I’m not sure if randomly targeting girls with darts qualifies as romance,” he muttered.
“Please. You’ve tried natural selection. It takes too long. We’ve a few weeks to set you up with someone before the summer term, and then you’ll be off again for three months. This is Art. Science. Strategy.”
“First throw,” she said, handing him a dart.
Robbie hesitated. “What if I hit Miss Rowbotham?”
Kizzy shrugged. “Then you deserve everything that follows.”
“They look pretty grim, some of them,” he said.
He recognised a few faces. He could name a couple.
“Some of them look,” he struggled to find the word, “Moody. Are they usually that grumpy? You’re about the only one who looks like you’re laughing.”
“On their period, most likely,” Kizzy said.
Robbie pretended not to hear. He spotted another girl who appeared to be smirking.
“Is that Momo? She looks like she will collapse with laughter”.
Kizzy takes Robbie over for a closer look at the top of the picture. “Sadly, it’s impossible to make out, but there’s a bra hanging from the flag pole.”
Kizzy is right. It’s impossible to see. But he believed her. Kizzy and Momo were best friends and had been up to mischief since they’d learnt to ride a bike.
Robbie noticed something else. In the background, there was a girl looking out at them through the window.
“Oh, yes”, Kizzy noticed for the first time. She had an idea who it was, too.
“Suzi. Third Year. Always up to mischief. Probably getting ideas from us. We’d been in the bell tower before assembly, knowing that the form photos were being taken. We must think bigger next time, like Miss Murch’s bloomers!”
“OK,” Robbie decided. He was up for this. These teeth were to be seen, and this mouth was to be put to work.
He stood well back. He was about to aim when Kizzy stood on her toes from behind and covered his eyes.
“Oh, that’s impossible. I’ll hit Bowie.”
“OK, so, use your other hand.”
Robbie was OK with this. He’d probably hit the photo, and there’d be an element of chance—the girls’ faces were fairly closely bunched together.
He was on the verge of throwing the first dart when Kizzy had another thought. “Not Momo. She’d not appreciate the attention. You’ve known her forever, so she’s more like a sister.”
Finally, having his chance, Robbie hurled the dart with some skill. It whizzed through the air and thudded into the laminated photo. It hit the school building. No score. Try again.
The second dart ended up in the grass. Maybe a grasshopper had got it in the head. Closer inspection showed that it hadn’t hit anyone’s feet either. Perhaps this approach with the darts wasn’t so good after all.
Third time lucky.
First row, third from the left. A glancing hit, but definite contact.
“Celia Noble,” Kizzy declared. “Strong start. Ballerina legs. Wears too much lip gloss. In Art, she gets more paint on her clothes than paper. Has a dog. Her older brother is a Captain in the Army. I’ve never met him; I’m told he’s a bit of all right but old.”
“How old is old?” Robbie wondered.
“21,” Kizzy said.
“Yes, that’s old, old,” said Robbie, and after a moment’s thought. “Anthony Noble. He was my dorm prefect in my first year. Had his head put down a toilet during a dorm raid.”
“Well, it didn’t put him off the Army,” Kizzy, the all-knowing, replied as she wrote down Cecelia ‘Cece’ Noble as No.1 on her hit list.
“So you’re playing cupid?” Robbie asked.
“I prefer ‘Director of Emotional Strategy,’” she said, grinning. “Des! Like Desmond Morris without the comb-over.
Robbie went in search of their copy of Manwatching. He sat on the edge of his sister’s bed. He stared at the Form Photo and the Desmond Morris oeuvre on human behaviour. If he could choose, and if attraction is initial what you see, then there were girls here he ‘fancied’. What if a dart never hit them?
“Targets. Strategy,” he said. “Love a campaign.”
“Rules,” Kizzy announced. “Rules of engagement. Rules of behaviour.”
Robbie looked concerned. He let his sister continue.
“One, you must talk to her—words, not grunts. And listen. For every word from your sweet mouth, at least seven will come from hers. One to seven. Got that?”
Yes, seven to one.”
“No, that’s exactly what you’re like at the moment. Or worse. I heard you with Fenella. You were seventy to one, she never got a word in edgeways: They’re not interested in public school antics, punishments, rugby game scores against Ampleforth, your mock O’level grades, underage drinking or the ‘home clothes’ you keep hidden in your bottom drawer should you decide to ‘escape over the wall.’
Robbie isn’t about to agree or disagree. He preferred to turn to Des. There were many lines he could pick out right now. Still, the one that had the most resonance was this: “The exchange of information will typically involve a search for common attitudes and shared likes and dislikes,” he reads to Kizzy.
“How can she know what I like or dislike if I don’t say anything?”
“Are you looking for a soul mate or sex partner?”
“Kizzy! You can’t put it like that!”
“‘Soul mate’, your ‘forever girl’, of ‘fuck buddy’ ?”
“Your language is sordid!”
“We need to know what the goal is here.”
“Can I have both?”
“Not in three weeks, not with the right girl. Three months, maybe.”
“I don’t have three months.”
“You have the rest of your life.”
“Should I be taking notes?” Robbie asks. Kizzy thinks this idea is good, but doesn’t press him on it.
Kizzy isn’t about to let go of this. Suppose they don’t know what Robbie is after; she doesn’t know how to direct his enthusiasm. She continues.
“Intimacy there” (She points at his head), or “Or intimacy, there” (and she points between his legs), which prompts Robbie to cover his bits.
Robbie is conflicted. Kizzy knows it. He feels as if he has a choice. He shakes his head. She hasn’t got it right.
“All of it. Here, there, everywhere.”
“That is a tall order.”
Kizzy grabs the Manwatching manual to see what Robbie has been reading and if she can make better sense of it. She doesn’t get far before she holds the book up.
“Look, you can’t go round kissing your way through a form photo and still expect someone to fall in love with you. It doesn’t work like that.”
“I’m just seeing who I click with.”
“No, you’re not. You’re trying to get lucky and be tragic about it when it doesn’t turn into Romeo and Juliet. Make a choice.”
“I want both: a real connection and the… y’know.
“Course you do. You want a soul mate and a shag. Big ask for someone who only just got his brace off. You’ve read Manwatching like a car maintenance manual, but it doesn’t tell you what to feel. You have to decide that bit yourself.”
“I can’t, that’s why we’re doing the darts. I will follow what the darts tell me to do and see how far it goes.”
“Robbie. Some girls will kiss you and forget it. She’ll talk to you for three hours and never touch you; it’ll mean more. But you can’t keep throwing darts hoping one’ll stick and magically turn into your girlfriend. Figure out what you’re after. A song? A warm body? Or someone who sees you properly. Because if you don’t choose, you’ll end up with none.
“Where were we? Two, eye contact.” Kizzy says, getting back to the task at hand. “No looking at her left ear, or worse, checking out her boobs when you think she’s not looking or ogling her bum when she’s heading for the bathroom. Hold eye contact, but not in a creepy way. You must look like you’re interested but not too keen.”
“Not too keen. Eye contact.” Robbie makes a mental note.
“And try to remember what she’s saying!”
Robbie’s mind has wandered, and Kizzy has to grab his chin to get him to focus. “And finally. Yes. A kiss! Which is as far as it goes. You’re halfway there if you like kissing each other, and she doesn’t have bad breath or taste like an ashtray.
“Halfway to what?”
“Halfway to the rest of it!” But halfway is far enough, at least for this implausible scenario,” she adds, waving a hand at her wardrobe, now replete with a form photo stabbed in a few places with dart holes.
Spring was in the air. So was madness.
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