Jacky Daydream Page 7

  I was quite a small child but I was really too big to squat on the back of a bike, so after a few weeks Biddy trusted me to walk to school and back by myself.

  ‘You must look both ways every time you cross a road, do you hear me?’ said Biddy.

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘There’s a traffic lady at the Park Road crossroads – she’ll show you across.’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘You do know the way by now, don’t you, Jac?’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘And you won’t ever talk to any strange men?’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, no, Mummy.’

  ‘And absolutely no daydreaming!’

  ‘Yes, Mummy. No, Mummy,’ I said. No daydreaming! It was as if she was telling me to stop breathing.

  It wasn’t that unusual to let young children walk to school by themselves in those days. Children in the country would think nothing of walking three or four miles. I liked my half-hour’s walk through the quiet suburban streets. I’d make up stories inside my head or talk to imaginary friends. If people started looking at me strangely, I’d realize I was muttering to myself. I soon perfected a mask expression while inside I was up to all sorts. I already knew I wanted to be a writer. Sometimes I’d pretend to be grown up and a famous author and I’d interview myself. Nowadays it still feels faintly unreal when I’m being interviewed, as if I’m still making it up.

  The walk back from school was much more worrying. I met up with more children wandering home from their own schools. They were mostly in little gangs. I was on my own. There was one boy in particular who really scared me. He went to the school my mother had spurned. Francis wasn’t a rough boy, quite the contrary – he came from a wealthy bohemian family who lived in a huge Victorian house at the bottom of Kingston Hill. Biddy knew the family and turned her nose up at them because the children had tousled hair and colourful crumpled clothes and scuffed sandals. I liked the way they looked, especially Rachel, the thin little girl with a gentle face and spindly plaits.

  Francis wasn’t gentle though. He glared at me every day, clenching his fists. I scurried out of his way as quickly as possible. Sometimes he’d chase after me, thumping me on my back if he got close enough. I’d arrive home shaky and tearful. I didn’t want to tell Biddy. She might go to find Francis and tell him off, and any fool knew that that would make him really out to get me.

  I pretended I had a stomach ache instead. I had a dodgy stomach at the best of times, and had bad bilious attacks every couple of months, so Biddy took me at my word. Sometimes she’d let me climb on her lap and she’d rub my tummy and I’d feel a lot better – though I had nightmares about Francis at night.

  Then one day Francis caught hold of me, said a surprisingly rude word, and then punched me hard in the tummy. I had a real stomach ache now. It hurt a lot. My eyes watered but I was determined not to cry in front of him. I just stood there, staring straight back at him. He didn’t punch me again. He ducked his head and shuffled off. Rachel looked at me anxiously, her face white. She looked as if she was trying not to cry too.

  The next day they were standing waiting for me on the corner. I felt sick with fear, but as I got nearer, I saw Francis wasn’t glaring. Rachel was smiling timidly. She held out a crumpled bag of home-made fudge.

  ‘These are for you,’ she said.

  I took the bag. I had a piece of fudge. I offered the bag back to them. They took a piece too. We stood, teeth clamped shut with fudge. Then we swallowed and nodded goodbye. They went down the hill, I went up the hill. We weren’t exactly friends now, but we were no longer enemies. Francis never punched me again.

  I found it hard to make school friends the first few days at Latchmere. I wandered around the playground by myself and crept inside the main door and leaned against the radiators, breathing shallowly because the whole corridor smelled of sour milk. We were all given a small bottle of milk each morning. I hated milk, but you had to drink it right down to the bottom or else you got into serious trouble and were lectured about the starving children in Africa. Then the milk monitor collected all the silver tops up and stored them in huge sacks in a cupboard. They stayed there for months before anyone came to collect them.

  The head teacher’s office was nearby, and the secretaries’ office too. There were two secretaries, the Misses Crow, a pair of stout sisters. They both had hearts of gold, but one was sharp and one was sweet and you knew exactly which one to make for if you’d fallen over and needed a bandage.

  Miss Stanbridge, the head, was another stout spinster. She bustled past once or twice while I was drooping by the radiator, my expression probably as sour as the milk. Children weren’t supposed to be indoors at play times but she didn’t chase me outside. She patted me on the head in a kindly fashion, as if I was a little stray dog, and then marched off purposefully in her great black lace-ups.

  My form teacher was lovely, dear Mrs Horsley. She wore hand-crocheted jumpers and dirndl skirts and was passionate about country dancing. She was a brilliant storyteller and very kind to all the children in her class, though some of the naughtier boys got a light slap on the backs of their legs if they fidgeted or argued. All teachers hit children then. If you were really really bad, you got the cane in front of everyone, but this rarely happened, especially in the Infants.

  Mrs Horsley saw I needed to make friends. I think she had a quiet word with two girls in my class, Hilary and Jane, because they decided to take me under their wing. This was very kind of them but I found them a little oppressive. They were tall, gangly, bespectacled girls, very earnest and upright. They played Mothers and Fathers and wanted me to be the baby. They’d whisper to me in their own voices to be naughty, and then they’d sigh and suck their teeth and go ‘Bad Baby!’ and act putting me to bed in disgrace.

  This got incredibly boring play time after play time. But then one of the boys started playing with us too – Michael, my first boyfriend. He was a cheery boy with slicked-down hair, rosy cheeks and a big smile. His mother dressed him in sensible long corduroy trousers in the winter. Most of the boys then wore ugly grey short trousers that ended an inch or so above their scabby knees. Sometimes their horrible baggy white underpants showed below their trouser hems, a total turn-off. Michael had much more style. I liked him – and he seemed to like me.

  ‘What are you girls playing?’ he said, circling us with interest.

  ‘We’re playing Mothers and Fathers,’ said Jane. ‘I’m the mother.’

  ‘Then I’ll be the father,’ said Michael.

  ‘You can’t be. I’m the father. I’m tallest,’ said Hilary.

  ‘Maybe you can be another baby, like Jacky,’ said Jane.

  ‘I don’t want to be a baby,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll be a monkey, OK?’

  He made screechy monkey noises, waddling around and scratching himself.

  I giggled.

  ‘You’re Micky the Monkey,’ I said. ‘You’re my monkey.’

  Mothers and Fathers became much more interesting after that. Sometimes we gave Hilary and Jane the slip and played Baby and Monkey games by ourselves.

  It was great having a boyfriend. I didn’t really have a proper girlfriend for a while. I knew who I liked the most: Ann, a beautiful child with big brown eyes and long curly hair. She was the youngest of four and had that glossy confidence that comes when you’re the family favourite. She wore very frilly white knickers that showed beneath her short flouncy frocks whenever she twirled round. Any other girl would have been teased unmercifully about such fancy underwear, but no one ever picked on Ann. She went to ballet classes and sometimes wore her angora ballet bolero to school.

  I wanted an angora bolero too, but Biddy wouldn’t knit me one because she said the fluff got everywhere and made a mess. I longed to do ballet, but Biddy was against that idea too. She said she’d have to make costumes for me and she didn’t have the time or the patience. Ga’s hands were twisted with arthritis now an
d she couldn’t take on any costume-making either.

  At the end of the first term at Latchmere there was a Christmas concert. Ann wore a white ballet frock with a real sticking-out skirt, and white ballet shoes and a white satin ribbon tying up her ponytail. She did a snowflake dance without one wobble, the star of the show.

  I was proud of her, and a little wistful, but I didn’t feel jealous. The only time I felt a real stab of envy was a couple of years later in the Juniors when our teacher decided to give out prizes at the end of term. There were four prizes, one for English, one for arithmetic, one for handicraft and one for sport. I knew I had no chance winning a sport prize. I was the child picked last for any team because I couldn’t ever catch a ball. (I was extremely short-sighted but this wasn’t discovered until I was ten, so maybe I simply couldn’t see the ball.) I certainly wouldn’t win a handicraft prize because my cross-stitch purses unravelled and my raffia baskets keeled over lopsidedly. I was a hopeless candidate for arithmetic because I couldn’t add up or subtract accurately and was a total duffer when it came to problems. However, I was good at English. Very good. I wrote longer stories than anyone else. I was good at reading aloud. I was often picked to read a story to the class if the teacher was called away from the classroom.

  I so hoped I’d get chosen for the English prize. I didn’t get it. Ann did. It was a book, The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair by Enid Blyton. I wished wished wished I’d won that book.

  I was almost Ann’s best friend at that time. We played pretend games together at lunch time, wonderful rich imaginary adventures. Our favourite was playing that we had a tree house right at the top of a huge oak. It took several minutes of energetic ‘climbing’ before we were safe in our house each play time. That tree stood so tall and sturdy in my imagination that I actually looked for it in the playground when my daughter started going to Latchmere herself years later.

  I furnished our imaginary tree house lavishly. We had a library and an art alcove and a tray for our pretend picnics. Ann went along with this, suggesting stuff herself. It was such a joy playing with someone who could invent too. I still fancied myself as the chief instigator of our imaginary games though. I was the girl with the vivid imagination, the girl who was always scribbling stories, the girl who always had her head in a book, the girl who was best at English.

  But now Ann was that girl, not me.

  I went up to Ann and managed to say, ‘Well done!’ I asked if I could have a look at her book. She showed it to me proudly. We both stroked the nameplate stuck in the front with the word Prize embossed in italic letters and then Ann’s name written in bright blue ink.

  Ann grinned, still very excited, but a little embarrassed too.

  ‘Clever me!’ she said.

  She said it lightly, sending herself up. I knew she wasn’t being serious. But when I told Biddy and Harry about the prize that Ann had won, I twisted the tale a little.

  ‘So the teacher picked Ann instead of you?’ said Biddy.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose she was ever so pleased?’

  ‘Oh yes, she kept going, Clever me, clever me.’

  ‘What a nasty little show-off!’ said Biddy.

  ‘Clever me’ became a catchphrase in our family after that. I always felt a stab of guilt, because I knew I’d been unfair to Ann.

  * * *

  In one of my books the main girl dreads walking home from school by herself because three girls tease her very spitefully. Which book is it?

  * * *

  It’s Bad Girls and it’s poor Mandy who’s getting picked on.

  They were going to get me.

  I saw them the moment I turned the corner. They were halfway down, waiting near the bus stop. Melanie, Sarah and Kim. Kim, the worst one of all.

  I didn’t know what to do. I took a step forward, my sandal sticking to the pavement.

  They were nudging each other. They’d spotted me.

  I couldn’t see that far, even with my glasses, but I knew Kim would have that great big smile on her face.

  I stood still. I looked over my shoulder. Perhaps I could run back to school? I’d hung around for ages already. Maybe they’d locked the playground gates? But perhaps one of the teachers would still be there? I could pretend I had a stomach ache or something and then maybe I’d get a lift in their car?

  I’m very glad I didn’t encounter a girl like Kim at Latchmere. Goodness knows how I’d have dealt with her. It’s so horrible when you’re being bullied. I wanted to write about that particularly mean name-calling teasing that girls are so good at. I’ve had so many moving letters since from children who have experienced something similar. I’m always so touched if they feel Bad Girls has helped them cope.

  14

  Hospital

  I WASN’T A particularly robust child. I had my famous bilious attacks, brought on by excitement, anxiety, fatty meat, whatever. Biddy was brisk on such occasions, perhaps thinking I was sick out of sheer cussedness.

  ‘You always pick your moments!’ she said, exasperated.

  Certainly I chose the only time they left me with Miss Parker at Lewisham to throw up over myself, my bed, the carpet and most of poor Miss Parker. I was frequently sick the first night of a holiday. I was once sick the last two days of a foreign holiday on a coach driving all the way back from the Costa Brava. It was hell for me throwing up repeatedly into carrier bags. It must have been pretty terrible for my fellow passengers too.

  Most children are sick once or twice and that’s it. I was a little drama queen, being sick at least twenty times over twenty-four hours. I’d not be able to eat or do anything but lie on a sofa with a book sipping Lucozade the next day.

  I also had head colds that dragged on for weeks. I’d sniffle and snort unattractively and then start coughing like a sea-lion. Biddy’s remedy was Vick, a smelly menthol ointment in a dark blue jar. She ladled it onto my chest so that my vests and nighties reeked of it, and worst of all, she rubbed it all round my sore nose, even up it, so that my eyes streamed. It felt revolting and it meant I couldn’t snuffle into my cuddle hankie at night. I couldn’t even suck my thumb: my nose was so sealed with Vick and snot that I had to breathe through my mouth.

  I’d just be getting better, only coughing when I ran fast, when I’d start to feel that ominous prickling in my nose and the whole cycle would start all over.

  Biddy took me to the doctor. He peered down my throat.

  ‘Good God, she’s got tonsils the size of plums! We’ll whip them out – and her adenoids too – then she’ll be right as rain.’

  It was the fashion to remove children’s tonsils in those days. You didn’t argue about it. I was booked in at Kingston hospital for a week. Biddy was to take me there, just five minutes walk down Kingston Hill. She was told when to come and collect me, but there was to be no visiting at all during the week.

  ‘We find it unsettles the children if they have visits from their parents,’ the matron said firmly.

  You certainly didn’t argue with matrons. It seems so sad now that little children were delivered into this scary place, dragged off by strangers to have bits snipped out of them, and then left alone without a cuddle for days. At least I was six, old enough to understand what was going on.

  It was quite exciting at first, almost like Christmas or a holiday. Biddy bought me a new Viyella nightie, white with little roses, and because she knew it was pointless trying to part me from my cuddle hankie, she bought me a new snow-white cotton handkerchief specially for the hospital.

  She also bought me a brand-new doll. I’d only ever had dolls for Christmas or birthday before so I couldn’t believe my luck. She was a beautiful blonde doll with silky plaits and a soft smiley face. She had a red checked frock, white socks and red shoes. I knew at once she had to be called Rosalind.

  My favourite children’s book at that time was a wonderfully imaginative fantasy story called Adventures with Rosalind by Charlotte Austen. It was about a little boy called Kenneth who
was given an amazing picture book with a blonde little girl on the front. She steps out of the picture and takes Kenneth on many magical adventures in different lands. Rosalind was a courageous and cheerful little girl, an ideal friend for adventures. I hoped my Rosalind doll would be the perfect companion for me during my big hospital adventure.

  I was in a ward with ten or twelve other children. It was comforting because we were all in this new weird scary world together. I chatted shyly with Muriel, the little girl in the next bed, and let her hold and admire Rosalind. We pulled faces at each other when we had our first trayful of hospital food. We giggled at the antics of the boys in the beds opposite.

  It was the nights that were the worst. The ward seemed to grow enormously. It was so dark I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. There was a little pool of light right up at one end where the night nurse sat at her desk, but there was no way of telling whether she’d be cross or not if she knew I was awake.

  I mislaid my new cuddle hankie. The night nurse must have heard me scrabbling around feeling for it. She stood up and walked down the dark ward towards me, her sensible shoes squeaking on the polished floor. I lay still, my heart thudding. She came and shone her torch right in my face but I squeezed my eyes shut, huddled in a ball, pretending to be fast asleep. She hovered over me, but eventually turned and squeaked back down the ward again. I didn’t dare carry on searching for my hankie. I clutched Rosalind tight instead and rubbed my nose against her checked skirt.

  I wasn’t allowed any breakfast the day of my operation. I wasn’t even allowed to keep my new Viyella nightie on. I had to wear a strange operation gown, which was only half a nightie, with no proper back to it whatsoever, so that my bottom showed if I turned round. I was worried I might need to go to the toilet. I didn’t want the boys laughing at me.