I Think of You: Stories Read Online Free PDF

know.
    Meanwhile, at break, I wandered around the cold playground, yearning for my sunny school in Cairo, and soon I learned to smuggle myself into first lunch, where I would quickly bolt down shepherd’s pie and prunes and custard, then slink off to the library. There, hidden in a corner, holding on to a hot radiator uninterrupted by cold blasts of air or reality, I communed with Catherine Earnshaw or pursued prophetic visions of myself emerging, age thirty, a seductress complete with slinky black dress and long cigarette holder, a score of tall, square-jawed men at my feet.
    At sports time, however, I was not so lucky. I clambered nimbly enough up and down ladders in the gym but we often had to go out onto the playing fields for games of hockey. Why hockey? I asked. Why not tennis or handball? No. Hockey was the school game and that was what we played. The weather was cold and gray and damp. The cold made my bones chatter, the gray depressed me, and the damp made my hair curl. The hockey sticks terrorized me. I had visions of them striking my ankles, my legs, bare and goosefleshed in my gym slip. I lurked on the sidelines, shivering and protecting my legs with my hockey stick. There was no escape. And it was too cold to dream.
    My parents were satisfied. I could not admit failure or disappoint them by telling them I was miserable at school, so I dwelled on the treasures in the library and my achievements in the English lessons with a smattering of information onfilms we watched in history and geography. The rest, when questioned, came under the broad heading “Okay.”
    As a mark of approval, I was given a tiny Phonotrix tape recorder with which I taped songs from Top of the Pops and Juke Box Jury. I taped them through the microphone and the sound I got was terrible, but I could hear through the distortion and I played “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “As Tears Go By” incessantly.
    Music was magic to me, and every day as I walked home from the bus stop I would peer through the net curtains at the jukebox gleaming against the wall in the corner café. It was a dark, different world in there; there were square tables with plastic covers checkered in green and white. On each table were plastic pots of salt, pepper, mustard, and tomato ketchup. At the tables sat silent old men in cloth caps and jackets and shirts with no ties. One day I pushed open the door. There was a single chime and I walked in.
    My heart was pounding and I couldn’t see very clearly at first. The counter at the far end floated in a haze. I walked up. A large man in a striped apron stood behind it. I put a shilling on the counter and asked for a cup of tea. He pushed sixpence and a cup of tea back at me. I carried them over to a table in the corner and sat down. When I had got my breath back I stood up again and walked over to the jukebox and studied the titles. Here I was on familiar ground. I put in my other shilling and selected three records. I didn’t drink my tea. It was strong and white and not like the tea I was used to at home. But I was happy. When the songs were over I walked out and went
    home. I never told anyone about my adventure. But every three days, when I had saved one and six from my pocket money, I stopped on the way home at the corner café, bought tea I never drank, and played the jukebox. The Beatles, the Stones, the Animals, Peter and Gordon, Cilla Black, the Swinging Blue Jeans, the Dave Clark Five. I played them all. And for the duration of three songs I was happy and brilliantly alive.
    My secret bursts of life at the corner café sustained me, but at school things got steadily worse. The atmosphere in English was becoming intolerable and I could hardly believe my own stupidity at math and science. My hiding place in the library was discovered and I was often yanked out and deposited in the middle of the playground. My legs got knocked with the hockey sticks. The white girls lived their lives and the colored girls lived