| Louise
by Karen Smith
My darling Louise, you were not always like this, so tortured by
your emotions. Seemingly distraught one day and deliriously happy the
next. You were such a carefree, placid child, but now it seems that the
teenage years have brought you such pain. And all because of love.
As a young girl, you sat on the kerbstone outside our house and the boys
would all go past and say, ‘Come and play with us Louise.’
‘Could we ride your bike Louise?’
Then, years later, when you grew breasts and long legs and your hair curled
down your back, the boys would pass you in the street and shout, ‘Louise,
please let us take you for a drink.’ ‘Please come to the dance
with us, Louise.’ ‘Go on, Louise, give us a kiss.’
And you would run back in the house to me, pouting indignantly, arms folded,
and say ‘I am having nothing to do with boys! They always seem to
want something from me. Not one of them ever asks me what I want to do
today, or what I want from my life. They are more interested in what is
going on down my blouse than what is happening between my ears! I am sure
I will never find a man who is worthy of my time or attention, let alone
my heart.’
But that was before you fell in love with Daniel Watson, your teacher.
Oh yes, I know all about it Louise. I could tell right from the start.
You are so like me it would have been impossible for you to hide it. He
came to the school and you changed, almost overnight. You started wearing
lip gloss and mascara and borrowing that expensive perfume of mine without
asking.
I know that he has shown an incredible interest in you and that you fell
for him because he was so enthusiastic about all of the literature and
poetry that you love so much. He has opened your eyes and ears to a world
of beautiful words and, in doing so, has found his way into your heart
and soul. I cannot blame you for falling in love with him.
But he is engaged Louise and he is very much in love with his fiancée.
I heard him talking in the pub the other night to Bill, the landlord.
Daniel is hoping to marry soon. So, please my darling, keep a little of
your heart back, please do not give it all to him so freely and please
remember that this hurt will not last, there will be others. I know, because
I have been there myself.
I am sure you will find it hard to comprehend that your mother, who undoubtedly
seems so ancient and dried up to you now, is capable of great feeling
and passion and was once so in love with someone that she believed she
could not go on if she could not have him. Oh, I am not talking about
your great brute of a father who shot through when you were five years
old. I am not even talking about your wonderful stepfather who has saved
our lives and who loves us both so dearly now. I am talking about a boy
called James Anderson.
I don’t think I have ever told you about my first, great love. It
was 1979. I was sixteen years old, the same as you are now, and he wast
wenty. Much too old for me, or so my mother said. He was the brother of
my best friend, Sally, and I simply adored him. He had light brown hair
that curled into the nape of his neck, incredible hazel flecked eyes and
an endearing, lopsided smile.
I would go round to their house as much as possible, under the pretence
of listening to a new record that Sally had picked up from Top Tracks
in town, or needing help with homework, but really I was hoping that James
would be there. He seemed to have so much time for me, often asking what
I thought of his clothes before he went out to meet his friends, or had
I seen that new movie that was on at The Odeon in town? He was the first
person in my life to not treat me like a little kid and, for that reason
alone, I afforded him God like status.
One evening, Sally and I had been having difficulty with some maths homework,
equations probably knowing me. While Sally went to the kitchen to get
us juice and Bourbon Creams to feed out failing brains, James looked up
from his motorbike magazine and said ‘Come on, give me a look, I
was quite good at maths.’
So, I sat next to him on the sofa, taking great delight in the fact that
our thighs were touching and I could feel the heat of him through my jeans.
Sally returned with the goodies and said ‘Oh, you’re not getting
him to help you are you? He failed his O Level Maths!’ Just then,
her mother called her from upstairs and, be still my beating heart, she
left us alone.
James did his best to try and help me with the maths problem, but I wasn’t
taking in a word of it. I was too busy thinking about how wonderful he
smelt and how hot it was in the room all of a sudden. When his fingers
brushed the back of my hand (was it really accidental?) I thought I would
explode into little stars and just float away.
‘You know, you have extraordinary eyes Gillian,’ he suddenly
said.
My heart threatened to beat right out of my chest. ‘Thank you, I
think they are a bit close together,’ was all I could whisper as
Sally burst back into the room.
‘Mothers!’ she exasperated. ‘It’s only a few clothes
on the floor; it’s nothing to get that stressed over. Now, has my
stupid brother helped at all?’ And the moment was gone. But certainly
not forgotten. Not by me anyway.
I relived that moment with James in my head nightly and it fed my passion
for him. I kept imagining what might have happened if Sally hadn’t
come back in when she did, would James have kissed me or would we have
just continued to stare at each other? I was so certain that we would
soon be an item that I turned down three other boys in a month when they
asked me out. Next to James, they all seemed so immature.
Unfortunately though, it transpired that the moment was not to be repeated.
Although James often smiled at me and asked how I was, we never seemed
to be in the room alone again and he was often out with friends.
Then one April Tuesday I went round to Sally’s as normal and there
was a girl I hadn’t seen before sitting on their sofa. She was at
least nineteen, she was dark, she was beautiful, and she was James’
girlfriend. My heart was broken. When he came downstairs to greet her,
sat next to her on the sofa and kissed her cheek, I believed I would be
sick right there and then; I was in such an emotional turmoil. I made
excuses to Sally that I wasn’t well and went home to the sanctuary
of my room to cry, great heaving sobs that racked through my body. Mum
came up and held me to her; she didn’t even ask what had happened.
She just knew. Mothers do, I guess.
Amazingly, although I would never have believed it in the middle of all
those tears, I did get over James Anderson. I believe he is now married
with three children. Although not to that girl on the sofa, so I took
some comfort in the fact that she didn’t get him either.
I went on to love again, eventually. But I am not too old to remember
the immense pain of first love, especially if it is unrequited. That is
why I say to you now, my darling Louise, I know that at the moment Daniel
seems like the whole world and everything in it to you, that you probably
wake up thinking of his smile and relieve over and over the way he spoke
to you in class or if you felt the touch of his hand (accidentally?) on
yours. But he loves someone else my love, to him you are still a child.
A bright, beautiful child, with a real gift for English, but a child nonetheless.
So why not do what I did? One day go somewhere that’s special to
you (I chose the top of Newbank Hill, where the cherry blossom carpets
the ground every May), think of him, drink in everything about him and
how he has awakened you to love, then blow him a kiss on the breeze and
let him go. And remember that around the corner or even in your classroom
among your peers, there is another love waiting for you and this time
that love will be returned.
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