“She's a lovely girl that Katy Bush.”
Nana's knitting needles continued their clicketty clack, clicketty clack.
“She was one of your Grandad's favourites.”
Nana was sucking a mint and 'favourites' came out sounding like 'fivers', but it didn’t matter, I could translate Nana speak. She was always sucking a toffee or sipping a cup of tea. She managed to knit at the same time and do the TV Times crossword. I sometimes wondered if she had extra arms hidden in her cardigan that she juggled in and out so quick no-one ever noticed.
Stevie had shuffled right across the floor. His face was so close to the TV screen I was surprised his glasses hadn't melted.
“It means Grandmother.”
I turned to Nana, “What does?”
“Baboushka. That song she's singing. It means Grandmother. In Russian. It was a clue last week.” She tapped the magazine by her side. “Had me flummoxed.”
“Out the way Stevie,” I said. But he didn't budge. Round his head I could just see Kate Bush's arms waving about. I prodded my little brother with my toe and he shifted to one side. I could see her properly now. She didn't look as though she was singing about grandmothers. One minute she was dancing with a big cello thing and the next she was all angry warrior, hands on her hips. She was wearing a chain-mail bikini.
I've seen chain-mail. There was a Medieval Day down at the park with jewellery stalls and hawks and a real blacksmith. There was a man dressed as a knight and you were allowed to touch his armour. Mum said to be careful, like he was a dangerous dog or something. But he just smiled and let me hold the edge of the chain-mail shirt. It was heavy. Really heavy, all those little loops. I said it felt cold, and he said that was why he was wearing a wool shirt underneath.
Kate Bush wasn't wearing a wool shirt, or anything else, under her bikini. I pulled a face at the thought of all that cold metal between your legs.
The sound of the knitting needles stopped.
“I could make you one of them Sally love. I'd whip it up in no time.”
For a second I had a vision of Nana forging metal loops on an anvil, the sleeves of her cardigan pushed up to her elbows.
“I'll pop down to Boyes in the morning and get some wool. I'll rummage out something sparkly with a touch of lurex.”
Stevie sniggered.
“Lurex, I said, our Stevie, lurex.”
She wasn't daft my Nana.
I'd sort of forgotten about it, until Nana turned up the next Thursday to babysit as usual. Her green knitting bag bulged like a fat frog. Poking out of the top, amongst the needles and the end of a tape measure, was a large ball of grey wool. She held it out to me with a sniff.
“This was the best they had. I told them they're missing a trick. They've got to be more adventurous. Young people these days want a bit of pizazz in their knitwear.”
The ball was surprisingly heavy. There was something silvery running through it like thin tinsel.
“That,” Nana said, looking sternly at Stevie, “Is the lurex.”
Kate Bush wasn't on Top of the Pops that week, but Nana said it didn't matter. A bikini was a bikini. She sucked on a mint as she looked me up and down.
“Hope I've bought enough wool,” she said.
It wasn't really wool. The label said 95% acrylic. Nana pointed it out.
“Wool would only shrink,” she said. “And that wouldn't go down right well in Scarborough.”
I stared into the depths of my glass of milk. Oh. Please. No. There was no way. Absolutely no way I was wearing a knitted bikini on the beach at Scarborough.
I glanced over at Stevie. His eyes were fixed on the screen. Olivia Newton John this time. Eleven year old boys are so fickle.
Mum was no help. I told her about it at breakfast the next morning. She was pinning up her hair while eating marmalade on toast. It always amazed me how she could do that and not get all sticky.
“You've got to humour her, Sally love. She's still mourning your granddad. We all are. This is the first year he won't be with us in Scarborough. Just do this for her, please.”
She cleared away my cereal bowl with one hand while reaching for her shoe with the other.
“Anyway,” she added, in the fake cheery voice she used when she was trying to sound convincing.
“You've got a lovely figure. You've nothing to be ashamed of.”
I sometimes wondered if my mum had ever been fourteen. Judging by the photos in the old albums she'd skipped straight from cute curly-haired toddler to Miss Pontin's 1964. And she didn't know that I'd overheard her talking about me to her friend Jean last week “She's got my hair bless,” she'd said “And her dad's figure.”
Nana came round specially when she'd finished it. It was only Tuesday and she'd had to take two buses, but she said she wanted to make sure it fitted before she added the ‘embellishments’.
The grey triangles sat in my hands like lumps of porridge. I swallowed hard, knowing what was coming next.
“Come on then, try it on. I need to check whether it needs any adjusting.”
I slipped the pieces on over my knickers and bra, my fingers fumbling with the thin woolly ties.
“They're only temporary,” Nana said. “I'll put some proper ones on later.”
She made little clucking noises as she tugged at the fabric.
There was no mirror in the living room, but I caught sight of my reflection in the TV screen. There was a lot of pale flesh. And very little else. I looked away and wriggled my shoulders, even through my underwear the yarn was itchy.
“Stay still.”
Nana's voice was muffled as she approached me with a mouth full of pins. I stood frozen as she peered at my body through the bottom of her bifocals. I felt like a voodoo doll. Or a balloon about to be popped.
There was a burst of laughter from the doorway and I span round. One of Nana's pins jabbed into my shoulder.
I shrieked not so much from the pain but from the sight of my brother and his best friend Jonno bent over double, hands over their mouths, wetting themselves at the sight of me.
I grabbed a cushion and threw it at their heads.
They disappeared into the hall but I could hear them cackling.
I wanted to cry. My teeth were clenched so hard together it felt like they might break. I couldn't let Nana see. Mum had said we mustn't upset her. I didn't want to start her off crying too.
She clucked again, her mouth free of pins now.
“It'll be grand,” she said, “Once I've finished with it. Just you see.” She rummaged in her pocket. “Here, have a mint.”
***
I loved going to Scarborough. Whole days spent on the beach. We'd set off first thing with everything we needed for the day, and as soon as Dad had set up the windbreak, that was it. We stayed there 'til teatime. Only torrential rain or a hurricane counted as reasons to pack up and leave. Nana always said “Whatever the weather, there's always the flask.”
It was the one time we were allowed tea. Hot and sweet with lots of sugar, because that was the only way Nana would drink it. It was my favourite taste in the world. Huddled behind the windbreak, wrapped in a towel, my skin pink and prickling from the cold North Sea.
As we passed the plastic cup round Nana and Grandad would tell us about their courting days, when they would cycle fifteen miles to Scarborough and spend the day on the beach. And how Grandad always treated Nana to a cone of chips before the cycle back.
It wouldn't be the same this year without them. Nana decided at the last minute that she wasn't up to it and was staying at Aunty Jen's instead. I couldn't help feeling a bit relieved. No Nana, no chain-mail bikini.
Or at least I thought so. I'd packed my own suitcase, including my navy blue swimming costume and a baggy 'specially for the beach' t-shirt. But Mum was in charge of the beach bag and on the first morning once we were settled on the sand she passed me a horribly familiar bundle of greyness.
“Here you go love. Nana gave me this before we left. Perfect day for it. Get yourself a tan while it lasts.” She was already in her black swimming costume. The one with the plunging neckline and the non-existent back.
It was the hottest day ever. I stayed in my t-shirt and jeans all morning. I was baking, literally, my body was even beginning to smell like bread. Just along the sand from us two women in white bikinis were stretched out on stripy towels. They looked so cool and unbothered by the heat, as if they were used to being somewhere far more exotic. They'd probably start playing with a beach ball any minute, giggling and flicking their long blond hair. I sank deeper inside the oven of my t-shirt.
The sea was doing its very best sparkly thing and the waves looked like the froth on an ice-cream float, fizzling out onto the sand. The water would be freezing but I could imagine how delicious it would feel lapping round my legs. Maybe I could just turn up my jeans and have a paddle.
Dad had been playing football with Stevie. Now he flung himself down on the sand with a big “Ouf!” The usual signal that he was going to have a sleep.
“I want to go in the sea,” said Stevie.
“Not on your own love.” Mum said, without looking up from the pages of her book. “You go in with him, Sally.”
I looked at the sea and the crashing waves. There was no way I could get away with just turning up my jeans and Mum would have a fit if I went got sea water all over my new t-shirt. It was going to have to be the bikini. Once I got in the water I would be OK, I could sink shoulder deep and no-one would be able to see me. I could rinse off this horrible breadiness and feel fresh and human again. But the water was a long way off, the beach a vast expanse that had to be crossed. Mum tugged her sunglasses down her nose and peered over them at me.
“Come on get your new bikini on and get in that sea. It'll do you the world of good.”
“Saa-llee come on!”
Stevie was inching his way backwards down the beach.
I unfurled the grey sludge of the bikini bundle and saw Nana's promised 'embellishments' for the first time. She had lined and edged each triangle with cotton material, blue with tiny white dots. There were new wide straps too made of the same fabric.
I reached for the biggest beach towel and wrapped it round my body before I peeled off my jeans and wriggled into the bikini. It fitted perfectly, no sagging, no itchiness. The cotton was cool against my skin. A piece of paper fluttered to the floor. It must have been wrapped up inside. I picked it up, expecting something inspirational, Nana telling me to “knock 'em dead”, to “make her proud.”
It said 'Handwash only. Rinse after swimming. DO NOT IRON. xxx”
I grinned, picturing Nana blowing kisses as she always did when she said goodbye. And suddenly I could see them, Nana and Grandad as teenagers, splashing each other in the sea. Chasing each other across the sand. Holding hands as they wheeled their bikes along the cliff path to the road.
Standing up I let the towel slip to the floor. The world kept turning, Dad kept snoring, a seagull by the sea wall continued to peck at a discarded chip. Mum looked up and smiled and nodded her head before turning back to her book. The two beautiful women in the white bikinis had gone.
Stevie was already up to his waist in the water, arms windmilling like mad. I raised my arm and waved back.
“That Katy Bush, what was she thinking of, she'll have given herself an awful rash.”
Nana's voice was only in my head but it was as clear as if she'd been sitting by the windbreak with her flask of tea.
Baboushka, I thought. And then, still grinning, I ran. A polka dot warrior queen, across the sand to the sea.
Sarah Dunnakey, 2012
