A Little Help from my Friend

I met Joy on my first day of secretarial college. We were in a big lecture theatre for induction. I was sitting there listening to every word, itching to get my pen out and take notes. This was a new start for me, so I didn’t want to come across too swotty. At school, I was a bit of an outsider. I wasn’t part of the in crowd, I rarely got invited to parties. I wasn’t part of the netball or hockey lot. New start, be cool, I told myself. My problem was I didn’t know what cool was, only what it was not – me. Then there it was, cool personified, sitting right next to me. She wasn’t listening to a word that was being said. She was taking off her baseball boot and scratching her itchy toes. Joy didn’t wear socks!

Induction over, everybody got up to go. Joy asked,

‘Where do we have to go?’

‘Room 201, Mrs Ritchie for typing.’

My swottiness paid off. I had noticed we were in the same group. I started telling her about our timetable for the day and how we would begin properly on Wednesday. She just rolled her eyes and asked what school I had been at, and if I had a boyfriend. St John’s, I told her, and no.

She had been at St Saviour’s, and she was kind of seeing two guys. I was awestruck. I listened attentively. She had a long-term boyfriend, but this other guy was irresistible. You know. I didn’t, I had one very chaste experience which I had ended to start my student life. I felt bad about it, but I didn’t want a schoolboy boyfriend. Such was my sixteen-year-old thinking. Joy’s passions and attractions were alien to me. I think I was immature rather than a cold fish. Difficult for me to judge. Joy was everything I was not and in that moment everything I wanted to be.

Although we shared a similar Catholic school education, we couldn’t have been more different. She was the indulged baby of the family. I was slap bang in the middle of a huge family. I wasn’t old enough to have an opinion, but I was old enough to be sent for if one of my little brothers had problems at school. I learnt invisibility at home and practised it at school. I learnt to suck up the unfairness and keep my head down.

Joy was a head-up girl. When she walked into a room, people noticed. She was pretty, but there was something else, she was confident, carefree and a little self-absorbed? I don’t know. For me, she had what I lacked: self-confidence. What did she see in me? Again, I don’t know, but I am glad there was something.

I soon realised we shared a sense of humour and a similar attitude to the course. Allbeit for entirely different reasons. Neither of us took the course very seriously. Joy because she had covered most of it before. Me, because it didn’t come easily, and I had made a mistake, so it was hard for me to care. At least I had access to a typewriter for job applications.

Being in Joy’s company was a revelation for me. By default, I learnt not to take life so seriously, not to be so literal. I learnt to let go and have fun. And to think, what do I want to do? Not what I should do. I learnt about music, that Joe Cocker’s version of Lennon and McCartney, With a Little Help from My Friends was the best. Joy loved music. I listened to Top of the Pops. Everybody did. With Joy, I listened to all kinds of music. We spent much of our time in Groucho’s, the second-hand record shop. We went to parties in scummy student flats. One of which we eventually shared. We saw bands at the university union. Technically, you need to be a university student or a guest of one, but this was never a problem for Joy. Being underage wasn’t either. Make-up and a smile fixed that.

Our friendship was secondary to the love of Joy’s young life, her steady boyfriend. Theirs was a tempestuous affair. On, off, on, she found it very romantic and intense.

Joy and her boyfriend had a massive fallout. On Saturday night, she went out with me, and he went out with his mates. Such was their relationship that they each went to the place the other frequented with their friends. The places that they normally would never go.

He’d been to the Sands, a big disco by the seaside. Not his thing. He and his mates borrowed a rowing boat and took it out to sea. One guy went overboard. Joy’s boyfriend dived in and pushed him towards the boat, where the others pulled him aboard. The guy was saved, but a large wave dragged her boyfriend under and away from the boat, and the next wave further away. He drowned. Just a teenager.

Joy was broken. Her parents took her home for a while. She insisted on moving back into the flat too soon. When would have been the right time?

She was in the anger stage of her grief. She was fine one moment, the next in a total rage. I was completely ill-equipped to deal with my poor grieving friend. I retreated into a quiet, dazed calm, spouting off second-hand platitudes. I didn’t understand how I could help. Her parents took her home.

For years, we kept in touch. Joy was a great letter writer. She moved to London and then to the United States. I got married and had kids. She moved back in the late 1990s and came to visit. We were out of kilter. I, with my family, and Joy, with her itchy feet. Our lives had taken different paths, but I will always be grateful for the time we were companions on the road.