Nice Girls Don’t Explode

 

If you could see my face, you might think I looked determined.

It’s my driving face, and it can pass for determination in a pinch.

I observe actresses’ faces on the silver screen, and I marvel at how much they can say with just a look.

I can’t do that, and my friends (enemies?) delight in telling me so.

“What goes on behind that expressionless face of yours, Pickles?”

“Not a lot,” I say with a wry smile that probably doesn’t show.

My father gave me the name. 

I’ve never bothered to ask him why. 

It’s a term of endearment, I guess. 

He always said it with warmth.

“Penelope Pickles, what have you been up to today?” he would say when the train brought him home from the city.

When I was very young, I’d be in bed before he came home, but he always came into my room and asked me about my day. So I’d save up little tidbits to have something of substance to share with him.

“A boy showed me a frog and I didn’t run away.”

“You are brave.”

“No. Not really. I like the boy who showed it to me. He wasn’t being nasty, just sharing his frog.”

Frog sharing was a pleasant pastime back then.

The boy with the frog died somewhere in Belgium.

I wonder if he remembered me?

When I left home and went off to drive an ambulance, my father had been in the army for three months. He could have gotten out of it due to his age, but he pulled a few strings, “Chaps I know will get me in.”

I’m tall, and I looked older than I was; even so, I had to do a lot of talking to get behind the wheel.

“Not a place for a woman,” they said, but as the death toll rose and ambulance drivers died as fast as anyone, they changed their tune.

The experience was exactly what you would think it was — indescribable.

Like everyone who survived that time, I decided to live my life as well as I could.

I earn my own money. I drive my own car, and I dance with whoever I like.

My ‘driving scarf’ was a present from my favourite aunty. My father’s sister is a sort of family’ black sheep’. Of course, that’s not why I like her so much, but it helps.

She got me out of the house from time to time — only a train ride away in the big smoke.

“I’ll stay with Aunt Scarlett in the city for a few days.”

 “Your sister will ruin that girl,” my mother would say, but my father would talk her around, and on the ride to the station, he would warn me about my aunty’s ‘wicked ways.’

“She’s a good person, but there’s also a fair chance that she’ll lead you astray.”

“What sort of ‘astray’ are we talking about?” I’d ask. I genuinely wanted to know what ‘astray’ looked like.

“No need to be too specific. Let’s just say that boys and alcohol might be involved.”

I knew a bit about boys. What they wanted to do. What they wanted to see, but alcohol was a bit of a mystery.

When the cousins and their families came to stay at Christmas, we little ones would hide under the dining table, sneak out, and drain the almost empty glasses. The fluid within tasted terrible, and I wondered what the fuss was about. 

After these raids, we would often fall asleep under the table, huddled together like puppies. It was delicious.

I lost interest in the ‘drinks raid’ the year I sculled a glass with a cigar butt in it.

Father survived the War, but he was not the same. Neither was I.

Everything was different and important people in my life were either completely gone or badly damaged.

Someone had pulled the rug out from underneath us, and I’ll bet that whoever these someones were, they survived the War unscathed. But, unfortunately, it’s the ‘no ones’ who pay the price. 

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