The Birthday Party

Rhoda Dunbar

I know the year, 1953, the year our class left school, and I'm sure of the month, February, the month of my birthday. Though the day I'm going to tell about was the birthday party day of someone else.

The school was the academy of a Scottish Highland town. Most of the people in my class belonged to the town and had been together there since they were twelve. The village I lived in was fifteen miles away and people stayed on in the village school till 4th year.

I was my parents' first experience of contact with the academy. The bus home each day left the town shortly after 4 o'clock. If I wanted to stay later they expected to know in detail why. They were not unkind people but I suppose they saw me still as a child, which, looking back on it, in many ways I was.

I was surprised but also pleased to be invited to Ruth's party. My parents were more doubtful, my mother silent, my father probing about the circumstances of Ruth's family. Ruth's parents were divorced, her father was not around. Her mother had a nice house big enough for her to take in lodgers.

I was not prepared for the prejudice of his reaction to what I told him. Put briefly, he ('your father' was the way he put it) didn't want me to go: but - he would trust me to make my own decision! A recipe for several days of turmoil. But when I left for school on the morning of the party they knew that I was going to go, and the time of the bus I would come home on.

I had pocket money saved, enough to buy Ruth a present. At morning break, in the girls' common room, people were chatting about what they'd wear, what make-up, how long it would take them to go home and change.

One of them asked if I'd have time to go home, would my father drive me in - friendly questions. But things I hadn't thought about.

Clearly I couldn't go to the party, not in my school clothes. And there was nothing more suitable at home. But even more clearly, my father, both my parents, must never know I hadn't gone.

Continuing turmoil. How to explain to Ruth? I couldn't face it. At dinnertime I left the school. I had the money I was going to spend on Ruth's present. I don't know now how much it would have been - maybe £1?

But where to go? How to hide?

There was a phrase back then, 'ninepence worth of dark', couples going to 'the pictures' for a bit of privacy. One of the picture houses opened in the early afternoon. I paid for an adult price for fear of being challenged as a truant. If I sat through the programme twice that would get me well on towards bus time. The tension in my stomach slackened and a sweet little flick of hunger followed. I still had some money left, enough for quite a big bar of chocolate. The name of the main film was something like 'The Thing from Another World'. It was about an expedition to some remote rocky treeless place, scientists, all men; except for one young woman, a Doris Day look-alike, there to cook the food. I don't remember the object of the expedition - perhaps it was to find 'The Thing'.

Which could change its squid-like shape and slither under, over, through any barriers the men could construct. When their bullets hit it chunks would be knocked off. But that did not seem to weaken it nor was there any sign of blood. They have no escape route - and their radio has already been shattered by The Thing.

'Doris' goes on bravely cooking in her camp kitchen. The tin-opener has been shattered too, but, resourcefully, she opens tins by splitting them with a little hatchet.

When a monstrous tentacle gropes its way across her chopping block she doesn't hesitate. The Thing is obliged to leave a useful bit of it behind. The scientists pronounce it not animal but entirely vegetable. What to do?

Intrepid Doris cries: you cook it! Boil it, bake it, fry it.

All this seems very silly now; back then it was really scary.

And so were other silly things I had to think about: would anyone recognise me when the lights went up? Should I wait till they went down again before I went to the toilet? I sat through it twice and then some before I could go to get the bus. And the chocolate made me feel slightly sick.

When I got home my mother had the kettle on the stove, my father was listening to the radio. My presence was acknowledged with normal nods and murmurs. My mother poured us cups of tea.

I went up to bed. Back then there was no central heating but it wasn't the chill of the bedroom that caused my uncontrollable shivering.

My bedroom, mine since I was five, was no longer a place of solid walls. The keyhole, the little tiled fireplace, the eighth of an inch between the door and floor, anywhere around the skirting boards - all were potential points of entry. I couldn't get into bed. Anything could be lurking among the wire springs that supported the mattress.

The tentacle on 'Doris Day's' chopping block had the vividness, in my room, of a hallucination. I could see it even when I closed my eyes.

I sat with my back pressed against the corner of the room, watching window, door and fireplace.

I remember no more detail of that night or the days and nights that followed. Except that, unusually, when I went up to bed the next night my pyjamas were wrapped around a hot water bottle.

I know that I continued to go to school though I didn't speak much to anyone; and that for many weeks I couldn't cope with being in our house alone.

I remember also an evening of summer daylight when I realised that the fear had gone: a sudden and complete release as when a deep layer of snow drops suddenly from a roof when the thaw comes.