Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [31]
“I dunt spose we can hev the boy gorn off to the grammar rag arsed,” she said sorrowfully. “Thas a good job some on us hev put somethun away for a rainy day insteada spendun it all on newfangled contraptions.”
And she turned and smiled at George with implacable sweetness.
Also in the year 1956, a rockabilly American singer called Carl Perkins released a song called “Blue Suede Shoes.” Being a song about fashionable footwear, it left the people of Norfolk largely unmoved. As did “Hound Dog,” by Elvis “the Pelvis” Presley. However, in Norwich, two so-called coffee bars played the songsincessantly on their jukeboxes, and in full sight of passersby, black men from the nearby American air base jived with white girls. The police were summoned.
A film called Rock Around the Clock, featuring a fat-faced man called Bill Haley, who had a curl pasted onto his forehead and a band called the Comets, provoked young people to get out of their seats and dance in the aisles of the Norwich Odeon. The police were summoned.
That summer, six Teddy boys and their girlfriends appeared on the seafront at Cromer. The young men wore jackets — lavender, powder-blue, and pink, with black velvet collars — that hung to their knees. Their black trousers were tight on their skinny legs, and they wore suede shoes with thick soles. They sported Elvis hair, Brylcreemed into waves that met and slumped onto their foreheads, and long sideburns. Their girls wore tight sweaters over brassieres like the noses of jet aircraft, and loose skirts. They were surrounded by curious locals and photographed eating chips by the Eastern Daily Press. (The photo was published above the characteristically witty caption The Teddy Boys’ Picnic.) The police were summoned. The Teds were arrested on suspicion of Causing Excitement and put on the next train back to London.
Politicians and bishops and newspaper editorials thundered dire warnings about the pernicious effects of that latest vile import from America, rock ’n’ roll.
It would also be the subject of Lieutenant Colonel Bloxham’s stern address to Clem’s first Newgate School assembly, in September.
The salesman at the school outfitters (it might have been Mr. Treacle himself, considering the slithery sweetness of his manner) got the measure of Ruth and Clem as soon as they entered the premises. He’d had a good many Scholarship boys through the doors that summer. Ruth was wearing her best clothes and spoke in her best Miss Selcott voice, but he smelled the anxiety coming off her, sharp as ammonia. When Clem was kitted out and staring, appalled, at his reflection in the full-length mirror, Treacle coughed behind his freckled hand.
“If I may suggest, Modom?”
Ruth blushed at him. Her head was full of panicky arithmetic, knowing exactly what was in her purse. And the price of the leather satchels.
“Boys,” Treacle said, “have the regrettable habit of growing. Especially at this particular age. They can’t help it, of course. One minute they are four foot six; the next they are five foot two. You purchase a pair of shoes, size seven, and by the time you get home, his feet are size nine. What is one to do?”
Ruth waited fearfully for enlightenment.
“I normally recommend buying larger sizes, Modom. A blazer of this quality is a considerable investment, after all. It would be not unreasonable to expect it to last two years.” He considered Ruth’s tired footwear. “Or even three. The cap is probably fine. In my experience, boys’ heads grow more slowly than the rest of ’em.”
Clem’s soul iced up. The cap was the worst thing imaginable. It was, like the stupid blazer, a pukey shade of green. It had a stupid button sort of a thing on the crown, from which four lines of gold braid descended, north, east, south, and west. Above the cap’s blunt peak, the embroidered badge — something like a dragon peering through a bunch of flowers — looked like a target a Nazi sniper might aim at. If only. Given the choice, Clem would have preferred his brains splattered over the mirror rather than be seen wearing the bleddy thing on the estate.