‘How dare you come into my classroom ten minutes late!’ he thundered. ‘What have you been doing, you idle lazy gossipy girls?’
I clenched my fists. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ve been doing!’ I shouted back. ‘Christine’s been crying and I’ve been trying to comfort her. You know her mum’s very ill. You know what Christine has to do. How dare you call her lazy and idle!’
The class sat statue-still, mouths open. They stared at me. Nobody ever ever ever answered Mr Branson back. I’d obviously gone mental. They stared at Mr Branson, waiting for him to go to the cupboard and get out his cane. I waited too, trembling.
Mr Branson’s face was purple. He stood still, making little snorty noises with his nose. A long blue vein throbbed on his forehead. Then he took a deep breath.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
I sat. Christine sat. Mr Branson took a new piece of chalk and continued writing on the board.
That was it! He carried on teaching and then left the classroom at the end of the lesson. I breathed out properly, almost collapsing. I couldn’t believe it. I’d shouted at Mr Branson and survived! Perhaps he’d actually felt ashamed, realizing just how hard it was for Christine. But he didn’t do anything to make it easier for her.
We didn’t either. I was allowed to invite Christine for tea one Friday when her older sister was back at home. Christine and I shut ourselves in my bedroom and I showed her all my dolls, even my special secret paper girls. We got out all my art things and made ourselves cardboard badges with a C entwined with a J design, carefully coloured in Derwent crayon. We pinned our badges on solemnly with safety pins. We fingered all the beads in my shell box, holding the crystals to the light and marvelling at the rainbows. We lay on our tummies and drew portraits of each other.
Then we took a sheet of drawing paper and folded it up into squares to make a ‘fortune-teller’. We sat cross-legged, deciding each other’s fortune. We were so absorbed in our play we didn’t want to stop for tea, so Biddy, with unusual tact, brought our meal in to us. We picnicked on banana sandwiches and cream buns and chocolate fingers and Tizer and then lolled against each other, flicking through old Girl comics.
Christine’s father came to collect her very late, past my usual bed time. The adults chatted uncomfortably for a minute or so. The fathers exchanged pleasantries about work. Biddy said something about Christine’s nice manners. Christine’s mother wasn’t even mentioned.
She died the day before we took our eleven plus. Christine came to school red-eyed but resolute. She sat the exam along with all of us – and passed.
* * *
Which character in my books has a mum who has cancer?
* * *
It’s Lola Rose in the book of the same name.
Mum’s fever went down, but she had to stay in hospital a while. Then she was well enough to come home, though she still had to go for her treatment. First the chemotherapy, weeks of it.
All Mum’s beautiful long blonde hair started falling out after the second treatment. It was so scary at first. Kendall and I were cuddled up with her in bed in the morning and when she sat up great long locks of her hair stayed on her pillow.
‘Oh my God,’ Mum gasped. She put her hands to her head, feeling the bald patches. ‘This is just like being in a bloody horror movie!’
I wanted to write truthfully about Victoria and her illness. She calls herself Lady Luck – and I do so hope she will be lucky and get completely better. She means so much to Lola Rose and her little brother Kendall. Still, they also have Auntie Barbara to look after them. I love Auntie Barbara. I wish I had one!
31
Our Gang
CHRISTINE AND I were best friends – but we were also part of a gang. There were our two boyfriends, David and Alan. They were best friends too. David was a freckle-faced, rather solemn boy with brown hair and clothes that my mother would call ‘nobby’. David’s mum had him wearing checked shirts and khaki shorts and baseball boots, clothes we’d consider cool now but were a little odd in the 1950s. Alan wore ordinary grey boy clothes. His sleeves were always rolled up, his collar open, his socks falling down, his sandals scuffed. He had straight fair hair, the sort that has to be smarmed down with water to stop it sticking straight up. He had a cheeky grin and a happy-go-lucky character.
David was my boyfriend; Alan was Christine’s. It was all very convenient – though secretly I preferred Alan to David. One play time Christine talked a little wistfully about David.
‘Do you really like him then?’ I asked.
‘Well, yes. As much as Alan. In fact more. But don’t worry, Jacky, I know he’s your boyfriend. I’d never ever try to take him off you.’
‘Mm. Christine . . . the thing is, I like Alan. More than David. I wish we could swap.’
‘Well . . . can’t we?’
We tried to think of a tactful way of putting it to the boys. We didn’t want to hurt their feelings. We didn’t want them to go off in a huff and take up with two other girls.
‘We can’t tell them,’ I said.
‘Yes we can,’ said Christine.
She was bossier than me and very determined. She caught my hand and pulled me over to the corner of the playground, where Alan and David were swapping cigarette cards with some other boys.
‘Hey, Alan and David, Jacky and I want to talk to you,’ she said.
They sighed and came over, shuffling their footballers and cricketers into separate packs.
Christine put her arms round their shoulders. ‘We like you both very much, but Jacky was just wondering . . .’
‘Christine!’
‘OK, OK, we were wondering, how do you fancy swapping over for a bit? So you can be my boyfriend, David, and Alan, you can be Jacky’s boyfriend.’
We waited, while David looked at Alan and Alan looked at David.
‘Yep. That’s fine,’ said Alan.
‘Fine with me too,’ said David.
Then they went off to bargain for more cigarette cards and Christine and I went off to swap beads, all of us happy.
They weren’t proper boyfriends, of course. We didn’t go out with each other. I didn’t go round to play at David’s or Alan’s and I wouldn’t have dreamed of inviting them for one of Biddy’s cream-bun teas. Our romances were very low key. We sometimes took turns giving each other ‘a film-star kiss’, but it was really just a quick peck. We wrote love letters to each other in class, but they were brief to the point of terseness, though for years I treasured a crumpled piece of paper saying, ‘Dear Jacky, I love you from Alan.’ I was far closer to Christine, to Ann, to Cherry – and to another new friend Eileen.
She wasn’t a new girl but she seemed new in Mr Branson’s class. She’d been away from school for a couple of months in Mr Townsend’s class with a badly broken leg. I remembered her as a curly-haired pixie-faced girl, maybe a little babyish for her age. She came into Mr Branson’s class transformed. She’d grown several inches. Not just upwards. She had a chest!
She was the first girl in our class to wear a real bra. The boys teased her as soon as they found out and twanged her bra at the back, but Eileen managed to slap them away and keep them in their place. She looked so much older than everyone that she had sudden authority. She swished around the playground in her full patterned skirts, her small waist cinched in with an elasticated belt. She had an air of mystery about her, as if she knew all sorts of secrets. Well, she did. She sat in a corner with Christine and me and told us what it was like to have a period. We knew some of this Facts of Life stuff already, but it was interesting to have Eileen telling us practical details.
We must have been a satisfying audience, Christine and I, with our short haircuts and little white socks and Clarks sandals. Eileen elaborated, telling us things that seemed utterly unlikely – and yet maybe people really did this or that? She also told us about some sort of boyfriend she’d met in the summer holidays, Mr Honey. I hope he was complete fantasy.
Eileen had a real boyfriend at scho
ol now, red-haired Robert, a small, eager boy almost as bright as Julian. Robert seemed an unlikely match for this new sexy Eileen in his short trousers and pullovers and black plimsolls, but they seemed a happy couple for all that. Julian came to play with us too, though he didn’t have a girlfriend himself. So this was our gang – Christine, David, Alan, Eileen, Robert, Julian and me.
We started to play together every day. We had our own special club and a badge, and we had to use particular green biros whenever we wrote to each other. We called ourselves the Secret Seven, like the Enid Blyton books, but now we had Eileen with us we didn’t act like Blyton children.
Mr Branson always chivied us when he was on playground duty. We liked to sit huddled together against the wall of the boys’ toilets – not, I suppose, the most attractive location. Mr Branson would kick the soles of our feet in irritation.
‘Come on, you lot, stop flopping there like a bunch of rag dolls. Go and have a run round the playground, get some fresh air into your lungs.’
He’d harangue us until we got up, groaning, and jog-trotted round and round. It wasn’t just Mr Branson who picked on us. All the teachers started trying to get us to separate, even our dear Mr Townsend, suggesting skipping for Christine and Eileen and me, football for the boys. We were puzzled at first. Christine and Eileen and I loathed skipping, and felt we were too old to jump up and down chanting:
‘Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Jews,
Bought his wife a pair of shoes.
When the shoes began to wear,
Nebuchadnezzar began to swear.
When the swear began to stop,
Nebuchadnezzar bought a shop.
When the shop began to sell,
Nebuchadnezzar bought a bell.
When the bell began to ring,
Nebuchadnezzar began to sing,
Do ray me fah so la ti dooooooo!
You had to whirl the skipping rope twice as fast for the last part, doing ‘bumps’ until you tripped. I always tripped as soon as I started bumping because my arms wouldn’t whirl round fast enough, but who cared anyway?
The boys were even less keen on football. They were gentle, dreamy boys who didn’t want to charge round shouting and kicking. Mr Townsend knew this. Why did he suddenly want to break us up and make us start being sporty?
I think the teachers were scared we were growing up too soon. Maybe all this boyfriend/girlfriend stuff alarmed them, though it was all perfectly innocent. Eileen probably unnerved them, with her knowing look and new figure.
We took to huddling right at the very edge of the playground, behind the canteen, hoping that none of the teachers would spot us there, but if they didn’t find us, some bossy form monitor would creep round the corner and pounce on us.
Then I was made a very special monitor – and all our problems were solved.
* * *
In one of my books there’s a girl who talks with a fake American accent and acts much older than she really is. Do you know which book it is?
* * *
It’s Candyfloss.
‘Open your present, Floss. You’re such a slowpoke,’ said Margot.
She meant slowcoach. She’s got this irritating habit of talking in a fake American accent and using silly American expressions. She thinks it makes her sound sophisticated but I think she sounds plain stupid.
I could make a l-o-n-g list of reasons why I can’t stick Margot. She used to be ordinary – in fact I can barely remember her back in the baby classes – but this year she’s making out she’s all grown up. She’s always giggling about boys and sex and pop stars. Judy giggles too. She looks as babyish as me but she’s got an older brother who tells her all these really rude jokes. I don’t understand most of them. I’m not sure Judy does either.
Floss doesn’t like Margot because she’s very worried her friend Rhiannon will go off with her. But by the end of Candyfloss Floss has found a much nicer friend.
32
The Secret!
I WASN’T MADE a form monitor. I was always too dreamy and likely to do something silly. I certainly wasn’t games monitor material. I was never one of the ultra-helpful children made flower monitor or milk monitor. But Mr Branson had a soft spot for little Jacky Daydream/Four Eyes/Sly Boots, even though I’d dared yell at him in class. On the first of December he made me Christmas card monitor.
Our year was the top year, head of the Juniors, so we had various responsibilities. Every Christmas term a shiny scarlet postbox stood in the entrance hall. All the Juniors posted their Christmas cards into its wide slot. It was a big postbox, carefully constructed out of thick cardboard and given a new coat of paint every few years, but it wasn’t big enough to contain everyone’s cards. It was my job as Christmas card monitor to bustle along every morning, unlatch the little brass hinges so that the door at the back swung open, and then empty out all yesterday’s letters.
The head teacher himself, Mr Pearson, showed me where I had to sort and store the letters. There were two doors next to his room. I was familiar with the first door. It lead into a dark storeroom where we kept the sacks of milk-bottle tops, saved and recycled. No one washed the tops so the room reeked of sour milk. I hated any kind of milk, even fresh from the cow. If I was ever sent to the storeroom, I held my cardie sleeve over my nose and tried not to breathe in. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to stand being Christmas card monitor if I had to sort them while being gassed by sour milk fumes.
But Mr Pearson was opening the other door. This was my fourth year in the Juniors and I must have seen that door every day, yet I had no idea what was behind it. It was another storeroom, full of trunks and old desks and blackboards and easels. Mr Pearson patted the biggest flat-topped trunk.
‘Here you are, Jacky, you can sort the cards into forms on this top. Stack them all neatly now. And then on the last day of term you can come with me when I dress up as Santa Claus and you can be my special Christmas elf delivering all the cards,’ he said.
I smiled gratefully, though I didn’t exactly go a bundle on being an elf. I prayed I wouldn’t have to wear a silly costume or false pointy ears.
I went along to collect the posted cards the second morning. There were only a handful, but I took them out carefully, with due ceremony, opened up the storeroom door and started sorting them in sparse piles on top of the trunk. It only took a minute or so. I ran my finger along the brass studs of the trunk. I wondered what was inside. I collected the cards back into a pile, picked them up and then tried edging the lid open. It didn’t budge at first so I thought it must be locked, but when I had one more try with two hands, the lid creaked and then jerked upwards. I lifted it right up and stared awestruck at the contents of the trunk.
Treasure! Gold crowns, silver chains, necklaces, rings, crystal goblets, an entire gold tea-set! I’d read all my Enid Blyton adventure books. What else would you expect to find in an old trunk but buried treasure?
It wasn’t real. The jewels were Rowntrees Fruit Gums, the gold was paint, the silver chocolate wrappers. These were the props from past school plays. I recognized the Three Wise Kings’ crowns, the banquet christening plates from The Sleeping Beauty. I dug a little deeper. My fingers touched fur, slippery silk, soft velvet. It was all the costumes!
I carefully piled all the fake jewellery and cardboard china onto the floor and pulled out robes and capes and ballgowns galore. I held them up against me, wishing there was a mirror. I found a beautiful long crinoline made of rich purple velvet. I slipped it over my head and then twirled round and round, bumping into boxes in the crowded room.
I played being a Victorian lady, festooning myself with jewellery and giving imperious orders to invisible servants – but for once it wasn’t enough to pretend by myself. This find was too marvellous to keep a total secret. I had to share it with Christine.
Back in Mr Branson’s class I hooked her silky hair back behind her ear and whispered what I’d found. She looked sceptical at first. She knew my habit of romancing.
r /> ‘Are you sure you’re not making it up, Jacky?’
‘You come and see too, tomorrow!’
So Christine hovered behind me the next morning while I undid the letter box and clawed out all the Christmas cards. We waited until the hallway was empty – no teachers, no crying children who’d fallen over in the playground, no mothers waiting to speak to Mr Pearson, and definitely no Mr Pearson himself. Then I opened the storeroom door and we scuttled inside.
‘See!’ I said, lifting the lid of the trunk.
‘Oh glory!’ said Christine, fingering the crowns, the necklaces, the purple velvet crinoline. ‘Oh, Jacky, it’s fantastic! This is the best secret ever!’
I let her try on the purple velvet dress. I struggled into a crimson tunic and an ermine-lined cape. I bowed low before her.
‘Might I have the honour of a dance, fair Lady Christine?’
‘Certainly, my Lord Jack,’ said Christine.
We were neither of us quite sure how you did stately dancing, but we twirled a bit and did a lot more bowing and curtseying. Christine climbed up on a chest to pose in a regal fashion, waving a fairy wand. Then she twitched it at the darkest corner, behind a blackboard.
‘There’s a door at the back, look!’
We clambered over the boxes and chests to get to it. I put my hand on the doorknob, hesitating.
‘Maybe it’s Mr Pearson’s secret room. Perhaps he’s in there, cuddled up with Miss Audric!’
We snorted with laughter, clutching each other.
‘Open it, go on,’ said Christine.
I turned the handle and the door opened. We could dimly see stairs going upwards.
‘A secret passage!’ said Christine. ‘Come on, let’s see where it goes.’
Hand in hand, we tiptoed up and up the dark staircase, barely able to catch our breath with the excitement. There was yet another door at the top. We opened it and stepped out into sudden bright daylight. We stood blinking, disorientated, staring at the wooden rail in front of us. There was the hall stage before us, with the school piano – but we were standing way above it now.