And then there was Spikey -- now open to all

Nature abhors a vacuum

Terry writes a true true-love story.

To say my final year at university started off badly would be to lay myself open to accusations of understatement. Just when I should have been limbering up for climbing the almost-last¹ hill to my starting a career, this happened.

I invited my friend Richard² to come up for the weekend. He decided to repay my hospitality by trying to steal my girlfriend. She repaid my trust by allowing him to.

Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash

When I phoned my long-standing friend John³, and told him what had happened, he said he didn’t want to discuss it because he and Richard had become quite close. It occurred to me that if he had been a true friend to Richard he would have told him that his behaviour was unacceptable.

Although I was quite dumbfounded by this apparent lack of empathy or sympathy, I asked if he wanted to meet for a coffee. “What would we talk about?” was his astonishing response.

Thus it came to pass that in the space of a matter of weeks I lost not one, not two, but three friends.⁴ I wonder what Oscar Wilde would have had to say about that?

And then something wonderful happened.

At the time I was living in a complex that was like a hall of residence, though privately owned. I lived in a male-only block; across the way was a female-only block. Every so often I would be walking across the car park or back to my room when I would see a particular girl coming out of or going into the latter. And she would always give me the most radiant smile, the kind of smile that would imbue the dullest and grimmest of days with radiance and light.

I had to know who she was.

As it happened, the girlfriend of a friend of mine lived in that block. I went to see her.

Me: There’s a girl who lives in your block who I would really like to meet, and I was wondering if you knew who she is.

Julie⁵: What does she look like?

Me: She’s quite tall and has long blonde hair.

Julie: That describes half the girls in the block.

Me: The only other thing I can say is that she has a lovely smile.

Julie: Oh, that’s Yvette⁶. Everybody knows Yvette’s smile.

And what a smile it was! I have a photo here of a bunch of people, including Yvette, all smiling. Yet without even knowing which one was Yvette, you would know if you saw the picture. A friend of mine later commented that you can feel her presence in a room even before setting eyes on her. I mention that so you will realise it wasn’t just the lovesick Terry’s completely biased perception: it was objectively true!

Well, to cut a long story short, Julie was able to get me into a situation, under some pretense or other, where I could ask Yvette out. To my amazement, she accepted my invitation.

I had long hair back then, like a Cavalier.

I was her Lovelace. She was my Althea. I wrote poems for her. She was the girl from The Year of the Cat. She was my Spikey.

We made each other laugh.

I came back from a lecture once to discover a note wedged in my door — a note with nothing on it. I knew straight away it was from Yvette. “I didn’t have a pen on me”, she told me later.

On another occasion, we were sitting on the bed when, from the room next door, we could hear too-loud groaning and moaning from the couple next door. I was so embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say. Yvette summed it up in one word: “Charming!”, she said.

Just then there was a knock on my door. “Come in”, I called, glad for the distraction. Two of my friends came in, brandishing a clipboard.

“We’re from the Noise Abatement Society”, explained one of them. “And we’re holding a petition.”

We all laughed, and then went out for a drink, pleased to be in the relative silence of a pub.

Part of the requirement for starting my Post-Graduate Certificate of Education was that I had to spend some time in a school. Yvette worked in a primary (elementary) school, so she arranged for me to work alongside her.

Each day, as we arrived at the school gates, the children would see us and come running over. “Miss! Miss!”, they shouted in their glee.

Once, she had asked the class of five year-olds what happens when it rains. A boy started talking about how they all have to wear wellies. Yvette was chortling away, her eyes aglow. "Isn't it lovely?”, she said to me, beaming.

Well, as George Harrison so rightly put it, all things must pass. As it was time for me to be leaving the university for the last time, it was time for Yvette and me to go our separate ways also.

A year later, I was helping out at my parents’ shop in a market. When I came back from popping out to see someone, my mother said, “Yvette was just here. She said she’ll come back later.”

But she never did, so I haven’t seen her since 1974. I’ve never forgotten her, though, and when I think of her, it is with an enormous amount of affection. I hope she’s had a lovely and fulfilling life. Although we haven’t seen each other in a long time, our friendship is still there, somewhere in the ether. Friendships built on love, trust and respect never really die.

Postscript

In the strange way that things tend to come around again, John contacted me a year or so ago. He wanted to meet up again. “What would we talk about?”, I was tempted to say, but didn’t. I merely asked why he was getting in touch after all these years. He wanted to thank me for introducing him to literature, and because he was trying to make contact with Richard again.

It seems that not all friendships last.

1. “Almost last” because I intended to undertake a one year’s course to acquire a teaching certificate. Later, I would go on to complete an MA in education, but I didn’t know that at the time.

2. Not his real name — but if you’re reading this, Richard, you know who you are.

3. See footnote 2.

4. Or rather, to be precise, people who had identified themselves as my friend.

5. Not her real name.

6. See footnote 5.