‘And I’ll write to Nan and tell her all about it,’ I said.
I wrote her a really long letter, recounting almost everything I said and the Queen said – though I left out the part about Prince Charles’s Coronation because it didn’t seem tactful.
I made Nan a picture too. I drew our beds all along the veranda, with me sitting up in the middle in my bolero talking to the Queen. I gave Her Majesty a crown instead of her lilac hat to make it clear to Nan who she was.
‘That’s a really lovely picture, Elsie,’ said Nurse Gabriel.
‘I’ll draw you one too if you like – but this picture’s for my nan,’ I said.
‘Of course it is,’ she agreed.
‘I need Mum to come so she can give it to her,’ I said. My voice went a bit wobbly. ‘Do you think she’ll come next week, Nurse Gabriel?’
‘I hope so.’
‘I wish Nan could have my letter right now,’ I said, sniffing.
‘I’ll post it for you, sweetheart,’ said Nurse Gabriel. ‘I’ll put it in a nice white envelope.’
‘My nan’s name is Violet Kettle— Oooh!’ I wailed. ‘I don’t know her address at the sanatorium.’
‘That’s all right. I’ll find out the right address. Don’t worry. Hand it over, sweetheart.’
‘You are so lovely to me, Nurse Gabriel. I’ll always love Nan most, but you’re definitely my second-best person in the whole world,’ I said.
I was so glad I had Nurse Gabriel because I kept losing everyone else. Nan was in the sanatorium, Mum had disappeared – and now Martin was gone too. He couldn’t walk really properly yet, but he could shuffle along using his crutch. Sometimes he stood on both legs and aimed his crutch at everyone, pretending it was a machine gun. They said he had to have a lot more physiotherapy, but he could live at home now.
His mum and dad came to collect him. Nurse Bryant helped him put on his outdoor clothes. His jersey sleeves were much too short and his trousers showed a lot of bare leg.
‘Oh darling, I didn’t realize just how much you’ve grown,’ said Martin’s mum, starting to cry.
‘We’d better get you some long trousers, old chap,’ said Martin’s dad.
‘Really? That would be so wizard,’ said Martin. ‘Can we go now?’
‘Say goodbye to all your friends, dear,’ said his mum.
‘Goodbye,’ said Martin, giving a lordly wave.
‘Martin! Say goodbye nicely.’
So he hobbled round to each of us.
‘Cheerio,’ he said to Angus. ‘Don’t let all these soppy girls get you down.’
‘Ta-ta, small fry,’ he said to Babette and Maureen.
‘Toodle-oo,’ he said to Rita.
‘See you later, Miss Kiss,’ he said to Gillian.
I waited. He went to his locker. He was meant to have cleared it, but he still had a whole pile of Eagle comics.
‘You can have this lot, Gobface,’ he said.
‘What did you call her, Martin?’ asked his mum.
But I knew Martin meant it kindly, and I took the comics from him gratefully.
Little Michael was crying because he looked up to Martin so. Martin didn’t say anything at all to him, but he gave him a quick hug.
Then he stumped hurriedly down the veranda. It looked as if he were trying hard not to cry himself.
I needed Queenie badly that night. She was missing Martin too, clearly puzzled by the empty bed, stripped down to a bare mattress. She circled it twice, and then jumped up beside me for reassurance.
‘I know, Queenie. It’s weird, isn’t it? I never thought I’d miss old Farty Marty, but I do,’ I whispered. ‘Still, we should be pleased. He got better. I’m going to be better one day.’
My broken leg was fully healed and I could waggle my toes and tense my calves at Miss Westlake’s command, though my poorly leg was still a wizened dead thing in its hateful splint. Sometimes at meal times I took my knife and played cutting it off at the hip. I didn’t press hard, it was just pretend, but it felt as if I’d really left my useless leg behind in the bed. I’d jump down and hop about the ward like a lopsided frog, free at last.
Martin’s bed didn’t stay empty for more than a couple of days. A big girl called Ann came to join us. She was only a year older than Gillian, but she wore lipstick and had a proper lady’s figure under her nightie. She had long thick wavy hair that she set in pin curls at night. She looked very pretty, even when her head was all over metal grips. I saw she walked with a bad limp when she went to the bathroom the first night – she utterly refused to use a potty.
‘I’m not weeing with all these kids watching me!’ she said firmly.
I admired her enormously and hoped she might be my friend, but it was clear she looked down on me. The only one of us she talked to was Gillian – and in a day they were best friends.
‘What do you want to be friends with her for?’ said Rita when Ann was wheeled off to have her surgery in the main hospital. She had to have an operation because her limp was so bad.
‘I think she’s really, really nice,’ said Gillian, smacking her lips together and then pouting. Ann had let her borrow her lipstick.
‘But you’re my best friend.’
‘I can be best friends with both of you, silly,’ said Gillian.
Rita didn’t look convinced – with good reason. When Ann came back from the main hospital, in plaster instead of a splint, she was very distressed, especially when she couldn’t sit up properly to fix her make-up or do her hair.
‘Can’t you do it for me?’ she asked Nurse Smith.
‘I should cocoa!’ she said. ‘I’ve got my hands full as it is. And you shouldn’t be wearing make-up and having a perm at your age! You’re still only a little girl.’
Ann called Nurse Smith a very rude word indeed. Nurse Bryant was more sympathetic, and did try to pin Ann’s curls into place that night, but she wasn’t very good at it.
‘You’re doing it all wrong,’ said Ann ungratefully.
‘I’ll do it! I know exactly how to do it. I’m going to be a hairdresser when I’m grown up,’ said Gillian. ‘Nurse Bryant, if you’d please push my bed right up close to Ann’s, then I can reach over and pin it up for her. Go on, there’s a darling.’
‘Girls girls girls! I’m here to nurse, not play Musical Chairs with the furniture!’ said Nurse Bryant – but she pushed the beds right up close even so.
Gillian did Ann’s hair for her that night, and combed it out beautifully in the morning.
‘Do my hair, Gillian,’ Rita begged.
‘Don’t be daft, Rita. Yours is just a kiddy’s bob cut. It just needs a quick brush. You can do it yourself,’ said Gillian.
In a few days Ann had learned to hitch herself upright gingerly and do her own hair, but she begged to keep her bed pulled right up close to Gillian’s. The nurses separated them whenever Sister Baker came on a round of inspection, but they were allowed to stay squashed up together at all other times. They lay whispering and giggling all day long.
Rita tried to join in, but she was too far away to hear properly.
‘Besides, we’re talking private big girls’ stuff,’ said Gillian. ‘You don’t know about film stars and fashion.’
‘Or boys,’ said Ann, and they both started giggling again.
‘I do so know,’ Rita lied, and then started crying.
She was so miserable that Nurse Bryant tried pushing my bed next to hers when we were out on the veranda.
‘There! You two can keep each other company,’ she said.
I didn’t really fancy keeping Rita company at all, but I did try to be friendly to her. I even told her a private Queenie story as a very special favour.
‘Did you know Queenie came padding very quietly up to my bed last night, and when I reached out to stroke her, I felt these strange fluttery, feathery things coming out of her back,’ I started.
‘What?’ said Rita. ‘Had she been catching birds again?’
‘Well, I wondered th
at at first, but then the moon suddenly came out behind the clouds, and it was like Queenie was in an eerie spotlight and I saw she had grown wings, Rita – wonderful white wings to match her white fur.’
‘She never!’
‘Oh yes she did! I watched in wonder, and she flapped those wings, and they grew bigger and bigger, and then she purred to me, “Come for a ride on my back, Elsie. We’ll fly into the night sky, right up to the moon and stars.”’
‘What?’ Rita repeated. ‘Piffle! Cats can’t fly. They can’t talk either. You’re barmy, Elsie Kettle. Just shut up. I’m sick of you and your silly stories.’
It was obvious we were never going to get along. When Babette went home, a new girl called Moira took her place. She was a funny little girl with bright red curls. She had a silver bracelet with fantastic dinky charms dangling from each link. The best one was of the Queen’s Coronation coach. You could tug at the top with your fingernail so that the roof lifted up on a tiny hinge, showing a minute silver Queen sitting inside.
‘We’ve met the Queen, Moira,’ I said. ‘I had a long conversation with her and she told me all about her coach.’
‘You fibber,’ said Moira.
‘No, it’s true – really, cross my heart. Tell her it’s true,’ I said, and everyone confirmed it.
‘I’ll let you hold my Coronation coach if you let me try on your bracelet,’ I bargained, but Moira said she wasn’t allowed to take it off her wrist.
It had to be removed when she went to have her operation, and Moira cried, though the nurses promised to look after it and keep it safe for her.
‘I want my bracelet!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll tell my mum of you. Give me back my bracelet!’
‘Oh dear, what a little spitfire!’ said Nurse Smith.
Nurse Bryant tried harder, and gave Moira a cuddle.
‘There now, darling, don’t take on so. You’ll be back in the ward in no time, wearing your pretty bracelet. You can’t wear it while you have your operation though. It’s against the rules.’
‘I don’t want an operation,’ Moira sobbed.
‘Yes you do. You want us to make your poor old neck better, don’t you?’
Moira didn’t have TB like the rest of us. She had a wry neck, so that her head poked to one side. Moira didn’t seem to care. She was still screaming for her bracelet when she was wheeled away.
When she came back, she was in plaster. I felt really sorry for her then. All the charm bracelets in the world couldn’t make up for being stuck there like a mummy, unable to sit up or take notice. They put her next to Angus so that he could encourage her, but Moira didn’t feel like talking to him.
Rita was just starting to be allowed up. She shuffled over to Moira’s bed and chatted to her every day. It was very boring chat, a drippy monologue about her mummy and her daddy and her baby sister and Harry and Billy. I thought they were baby brothers, but it turned out Harry was a hamster and Billy was a budgie.
Moira didn’t say much, and I was sure she thought Rita as boring as I did – but when her own mum and dad came visiting, she announced that Rita was her friend.
‘See!’ said Rita, nodding at me.
Moira still didn’t let her borrow her bracelet though.
Our beds were rearranged all over again. Rita was put next to Moira, Maureen was tucked up beside Michael, Gillian and Ann stayed side by side, and I got to be next to Angus.
‘You can tell me stories all you want, Elsie,’ said Angus in his quiet Scottish burr.
So that was when a whole new series of stories started, just for Angus and me. I made them up each night for our own private consumption. We climbed up on Queenie when it was dark and circled the moon.
‘We’ll land there, on Moon Mountain,’ I said.
‘We’ll need special spacesuits and heavy lead shoes, because the moon hasn’t got any gravity,’ said Angus.
‘What’s gravity?’
‘No gravity means there’s no Earth’s pull – that’s what it says in The Boys’ Book of Space. You can’t stay on the ground, you just bounce around in the air,’ he said. ‘Boing boing boing.’
‘Well, we go boing boing boing, all over the moon, the three of us. It’ll be like jumping on the biggest mattress in the world. And when we get hungry, we’ll break off a piece of moon rock and nibble on it. It’s cold, like an ice lolly, but when we’ve sucked it inside, it’s all freezing and tingly like lemonade powder. Then, when we’re tired of bouncing on the moon, we jump back on Queenie and she flies us to one of the other planets.’
I wasn’t sure what they were, but Angus had read his space book and filled me in on the details. I especially liked the sound of Saturn, with the rings running right round it.
‘They’ll be just like a gigantic slide at a fun fair,’ I said. ‘We’ll sit on one and push off, and go whizzing round at top speed – wheeee wheeee!’
‘Wheeee wheeee,’ said Angus.
‘For goodness’ sake, how old are you – three?’ said Gillian. ‘What’s all this boring wee wee rubbish?’
‘They’re just silly little twerps,’ said Ann.
‘Who cares what they think,’ I said to Angus. ‘Now, we’ve slid all the way back to Earth – and Queenie’s ready for another adventure. “Climb on my back, dear twerpy ones,” she purrs. We’re still a little chilly from the icy planets, but her fur is lovely and warm. She’s like a great big hot-water bottle, but we’re still a bit shivery all the same. “I think I’d better take you somewhere warm,” she says, and she leaps up in the air and we fly right over the sea. The sun starts to get very hot, almost burning, but we’re OK in our pyjamas. I’ve got new cat pyjamas, much better than Rita’s, and you can have tartan pyjamas seeing as you’re Scottish. We see all this dense green land underneath us, with immensely tall trees, and we hear the strangest animal noises – a lot of roaring and birds calling and monkeys chattering. Come on, Angus – be all the animals in the jungle.’
Angus joined in obligingly, extra loud to annoy Gillian and Ann.
‘That’s right, and now we hear another noise – it echoes right through the trees.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Arh-arh-arh-arh-arh-aaarh!’
‘Tarzan!’ Angus whooped delightedly. ‘Oh, let me be Tarzan!’
‘OK, you’re Tarzan, but I’m not that soppy Jane. I’m Elsie the lion tamer – all the lions and tigers and leopards just circle me lovingly, wanting to be stroked, and Queenie’s queen of all the big cats, and they all bow down to her. They hold a big feast for us.’
‘What sort of feast? Lions and tigers and leopards eat zebras and wildebeests,’ said Angus.
‘They make us a special vegetarian feast – lots of fruit from the trees, and nuts and birds’ eggs, with creamy milk for Queenie, and then, when the moon comes up, Queenie stands there glowing white, and all the big cats throw back their heads and roar . . .’
Angus roared so loudly that Nurse Bryant came running, convinced he was urgently yelling for help.
Angus’s mum and dad started to bring me sweets and little toys on Saturdays.
‘You’ve been so kind to our wee boy. He thinks the world of you,’ said his mum.
I’d almost given up on my mum – but she suddenly appeared one Saturday, her hair longer and lovelier than ever. She was wearing a powder-blue costume, the jacket very low cut at the front so that you could see the pink lace of her petticoat. The skirt had a big split at the back. I thought she’d had an accident and said straight away, ‘Mum, you’ve torn your skirt! Look – it’s showing all your leg.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Elsie, don’t be so thick. It’s supposed to be like that. It’s French tailoring, absolutely tip top – see the fit?’ She smoothed the material that stretched tautly over her round hips. ‘Anyway, what a way to say hello! Aren’t you pleased to see your mummy after all this time?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ I said. She was acting as if it were my fault she hadn’t visited for ages.
‘I’ve been very, very busy. I’ve had a promot
ion! I’ve even done a little travelling abroad!’ Mum said proudly. ‘One trip to Paris and another to Amsterdam, seeing if their stationery shops wanted to stock Perkins Pens. I flew there, Elsie!’
I stared at her, for one mad moment imagining that she’d grown powder-blue wings to match her costume and flapped her way across the Channel. Then common sense took over. ‘You went on a plane, Mum? Weren’t you frightened?’
‘You bet I was. Absolutely terrified. I clutched Perky’s arm so hard he had bruises all over it the next day.’
‘Perky?’
‘Oh, it’s just my little nickname for Mr Perkins,’ said Mum, giggling.
He was definitely an uncle now.
‘In fact, I’ll be going on another trip with Perky soon – a really, really big one. Guess where, Elsie!’ said Mum.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, guess, I said. I’ll give you a clue . . .Think maple leaves! Think Mounties!’
I stared at her blankly.
‘Oh Elsie! Your brain’s addled because you’ve been in hospital so long,’ she said impatiently. She lowered her voice and hissed, ‘I’m going to Canada!’
‘Canada!’ I declared, astonished.
‘Yes, only keep your voice down. You mustn’t tell anyone. It’s all very hush-hush. I’m going with Perky, see. He wants to open up a new factory there – start a new line. He’s going global!’ Mum giggled. ‘And so am I!’
‘Is Mrs Perkins going too?’
‘No, that’s the whole point. I’ll be Mrs Perkins in all but name once we’re out there,’ said Mum.
‘What does Nan say?’ I asked. Nan usually said a great deal when Mum went off with anyone.
‘What sort of fool do you think I am? I’ve not told her. I haven’t seen her. I told you, she’s too poorly for visitors. Poor Nanny,’ said Mum, but she didn’t look too sad. ‘Don’t pull that silly face, Elsie. Nanny’s an old, old lady and I don’t think she can get better now, not with her lungs all over TB.’
‘She will get better, she will!’ I said, tears dribbling down my cheeks.