‘Well, stop it,’ she said.
‘I can’t help it,’ I said. ‘Ouch, it really, really hurts.’
‘Then stop marching about and sit down, you silly fool,’ said Mum.
‘I think I really wrenched it playing hopscotch,’ I said. I rubbed my leg gingerly. ‘I can hardly bear to walk. Maybe I’ve broken it!’ I was warming to this theme. I’d always wanted a limb in plaster. People wrote little messages all over the hard white surface and made a big fuss of you. I stomped harder with my bad leg, trying to make it worse.
‘Do pack it in, Elsie,’ said Mum. ‘I’ve got enough on my hands without you playing silly beggars too. If I don’t get another job, we’ll be in Queer Street, I’m telling you.’
‘My leg!’
‘You’re just putting it on to get attention.’
‘No I’m not. Mrs Brownlow saw and asked me what was wrong with it,’ I said.
‘Mrs Brownlow? That nosy old cow! What have you been saying to her? You didn’t tell her about Nanny, did you?’ Mum asked, suddenly giving me her full attention.
‘No, I didn’t. Well . . .’
‘Elsie!’ said Mum, catching hold of me.
‘I didn’t say about the TB, I swear I didn’t. I said Nan had women’s troubles,’ I said, wriggling.
Mum stared and then burst out laughing. ‘Good for you,’ she said.
She stayed in a good mood after that. We played Beauty Parlours when she had finished her ironing. She let me brush her hair after she’d washed it, and then buff her nails – her toes as well as her fingers.
‘You’re so pretty, Mum,’ I said enviously.
‘I just know how to give Nature a little helping hand,’ said Mum smugly.
She let me stay up with her all evening, singing along to the music on the Light Programme. I did my best to be useful, making her cups of tea and running for a fresh box of matches and emptying her ashtray.
‘You’re a good little soul really,’ said Mum, giving me a pat. ‘Maybe we’ll get on together OK, you and me.’
‘You bet,’ I said, but my chest went tight again. ‘Mum, Nan is going to come home, isn’t she?’
‘Yes! For pity’s sake, you’re like a broken record,’ said Mum.
‘And if my leg’s really bad tomorrow, can I stay off school?’ I asked.
‘No you can’t, so stop going on about it. Now go to bed.’
I could try wheedling with Nan, but there was no point arguing with Mum.
She sent me off to school extra early the next day, because she wanted the flat to herself to prepare for her job interview. I stumped along the road, exaggerating my limp. I pretended to be a pirate with a wooden leg. I hunched my left shoulder because I had a parrot perching there, pecking my ear affectionately and crooning, ‘Pieces of eight! Who’s a pretty girl? I’m Polly Parrot and I love Elsie.’
Then I caught sight of myself in a shop window and blushed because I looked such a fool. I stepped out properly, marching left, right, left, right, but I’d got into such a limping habit it was more like left, hobble, left, hobble.
I hoped at the very least to get out of doing PT today. It was now my absolutely worst lesson. I hated it even more than mental arithmetic. I wasn’t bad at PT – I could run quite fast, limp or no limp, and I could do all the silly arms-stretch, knees-bend exercises, and I could catch a ball neatly and throw it high in the air with one deft flick of my wrist. It was my new knickers that were the problem. We were supposed to wear regulation navy school knickers with elastic legs. I didn’t have the right knickers.
‘I’m not wasting my money on hideous school bloomers!’ Mum had told me.
She’d bought me a pack of three from the market. They were pink, pale blue and lilac, with a white lace frill at the back.
I was pleased at first and thought they were pretty, but when I took my tunic off at school, all the children collapsed, laughing and pointing. I had a new nickname now: Frilly Bum.
I tried to find the old navy knickers I’d had ever since the Infants, but Nan had already cut them up for dusters. I begged Mum to buy me more proper knickers, but she refused. She was adamant, particularly after Miss Roberts sent a polite letter asking if Elsie could wear school underwear on PT days in future.
‘No, our Elsie blooming well can’t!’ said Mum. ‘She can’t tell me how to clothe my child. It’s none of her business. I don’t tell her what kind of knickers to wear!’
I was terrified she might say something of the sort to dear dignified Miss Roberts. At home I kept quiet about the Frilly Bum teasing. Nan might have understood and tried to save up for a proper pair of knickers – but she wasn’t here now.
I decided I couldn’t face another day of giggles and cat-calling. I wouldn’t go to school at all today! I hadn’t had the opportunity to bunk off school before because Nan nearly always walked there with me, then went to the shops on her way home. But now I could run straight past the school gate. I could go all the way into town and look round the big shops. I could look at the filmstar photos outside the Odeon and make up the story of the film. I could go to the park and play I was in the countryside. I could go paddling in the duck pond and pretend it was the seaside.
My heart soared. I skipped down the road in my boy’s shoes, my limp vanishing. I didn’t go over the crossroads and join the little troop of mothers and children hurrying down the road to Millfield Juniors. I turned quickly up Burnley Avenue, heading for freedom.
A big Rover car was turning into our doctor’s surgery at the end. It was Dr Malory himself, smiling at me and waving me past. Then he suddenly wound down his window.
‘Hey, you’re the little Kettle girl, aren’t you?’
I froze. He was still smiling but I was sure I was in trouble. I wanted to run, but he was out of the car now.
‘Hang on a minute! It’s Evie, isn’t it?’
‘Elsie,’ I mumbled.
‘Oh yes. And your grandma’s in the sanatorium now. They wrote to notify me,’ said Dr Malory, in his great booming posh voice. He might as well have been shouting through a megaphone. I didn’t know what to do. Everyone could hear, and yet I couldn’t shut him up or contradict him, because he was a doctor.
‘Have you been to visit her? How’s she getting on?’ he asked.
I had been trying hard not to think of Nan too much because it made me want to cry. I could already feel my eyes burning and my throat tickling. ‘She’s all right,’ I said quietly, my head down.
Perhaps Dr Malory was more sensitive than he seemed, because he patted me gently on the head.
‘Now listen, Elsie. I sent a message to your mother that you two, and anyone else who lives in your house, must come and have a chest X-ray and a little skin test, to make sure you haven’t contracted tuberculosis too. I dictated the letter to my secretary the moment I heard about your grandma. Hasn’t your mother mentioned a letter?’
I shook my head anxiously. Mum didn’t always bother to read the letters that came when she was home. If they looked official, she was likely to toss them straight in the bin.
‘Well, it’s very important. TB can be very contagious. Now, you be a good girl and remind your mother, otherwise I’ll have to inform the authorities.’
The word authorities was like a blow to the stomach. I didn’t know who they were, but they sounded frightening. I saw men in black uniforms and jackboots marching to our house and arresting everyone.
‘You’ll make sure you’ll do that, Elsie?’ said Dr Malory.
‘Yes, sir,’ I muttered.
He suddenly focused on me, looking at my clothes. He saw the school badge Nan had sewn onto my cut-down navy jacket – I didn’t have a proper blazer either. ‘You go to Millfield Juniors, don’t you? So why aren’t you going to school?’ he asked.
My heart hammered behind my telltale badge. I couldn’t possibly admit that I was intent on playing truant. He’d maybe send for those authorities straight away. I had to find an excuse – any excuse.
&nbs
p; ‘Please, sir, I’m going to the d—’ I started gabbling like an idiot. I managed to gulp back the word doctor’s before I said it. I repeated the ‘d’ again, as if I had a stammer. Where could I be going? The dancing school? The draper’s? The doll shop? Then it came to me.
‘The dentist’s,’ I said, tapping my teeth.
‘Oh dear! Well, I hope it doesn’t hurt too much. Off you go then – and tell your mother to bring you along to my surgery tomorrow.’
‘OH, FOR PITY’S sake, Elsie,’ Mum exploded. ‘Why did you have to go hanging round the blooming doctor’s? What were you doing there anyway?’
‘I – I got a bit lost on the way to school,’ I stammered.
‘What are you – a halfwit? You were in a daydream, weren’t you, playing some baby game and muttering away to yourself like a loony!’ said Mum.
I nodded meekly, glad that she was giving me such a good alibi. She’d get even crosser if she knew I’d bunked off school all day. It hadn’t been worth it. I’d been so worried about Dr Malory and the authorities that I hadn’t enjoyed a single moment. In the end, I didn’t dare go round the shops because my wretched school uniform was so noticeable. I’d lurked in the park all day instead.
I was very bad at mental arithmetic, but even I knew there were only seven hours between nine and four. There had seemed to be seventy-seven hours in this day. I nearly wore out the soles of my boy’s shoes trailing miserably round and round the park. I went on the swings until I saw the attendant hobbling towards me. He was famous for having been wounded in the war – he had lost a leg. He seemed to have permanently lost his temper too, and was forever yelling at children.
I ran away quick and hid in the bushes. I watched him stumping along, worrying that my own limp might get as bad. I crouched in the bushes until I got cramp, and then I trudged right to the other side of the park and hung about by the duck pond. I was so hungry by now I helped myself to a couple of crusts the ducks had ignored. I was thirsty too, but I drew the line at duck-pond water. I did paddle for a little while because my feet were rubbed sore inside my shoes, but the pond was as cold as ice and I stepped on a tin can and cut my foot. It was only a little cut, but it bled and I worried about that too.
I sat on a park bench waggling my foot in the air, and an old man in a greasy raincoat came and sat beside me. He offered me his hankie for a bandage, but there was something furtive about him and he was sitting much too close to me, so I grabbed my shoes, stuffed my feet inside, and ran for it.
By the time I eventually dared go home I was exhausted. Mum was out after all that. I ate five slices of bread and jam, one after the other, drank two glasses of orange squash, and then curled up on Nan’s chair and went to sleep.
Mum came home at six, equally dispirited. She kicked off her high heels and smoked two cigarettes in succession, tapping the ash impatiently. There was no point asking her if she’d got the job. It was obvious she hadn’t.
We had Spam and chips for tea, which I usually enjoyed, but I already had my five slices of bread churning around in my stomach. I knew I had to tell Mum about Dr Malory.
I only screwed up the courage to do it at bedtime. Mum was furious, as I’d expected.
‘It’s not my fault, Mum,’ I whined. ‘I’m just passing on the message.’
‘Well, you’ve passed it on. Now button your lip about it,’ she snapped. ‘Off to bed.’
I hovered. Whenever Mum told me off like that I imagined the big maroon buttons on Nan’s winter coat. I saw them sewn along my top lip and firmly attached to little slits in my bottom lip. I knew how important it was to keep them in place. But somehow tonight I couldn’t stop them unbuttoning of their own accord.
‘So can I stay off school tomorrow or will we go after?’ I said.
‘What? Go where?’
‘To the doctor’s,’ I said, wondering if Mum had been listening after all. Sometimes I’d talk to her for half an hour and she’d say yes and no in the right places, but then stare at me blankly when I asked a final question, clearly not having heard a word.
‘We’re not going to the doctor’s tomorrow or any time soon. In fact, I don’t think we’ll see Doctor Malory ever again, because he’s such an old nosy parker,’ said Mum.
‘But he said—’
‘I don’t care what he said.’
‘We have to have these tests and get our X-rays.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with us! We’re not coughing, are we?’
‘No, but—’
‘And we’re not tired out and getting all scraggy like Nanny, are we? Well, I’m not – and you’ve always been skinny, so it doesn’t count.’
‘But why can’t we have the tests? We’ll pass them and everything will be all right.’
‘Oh no it won’t, Miss Clever Clogs. As soon as anyone gets wind of us going for chest X-rays, they’ll guess – and then they’ll act like we’ve got the plague. The mums at that school of yours will fuss about you being a carrier and won’t want their kiddies playing with you.’
They didn’t play with me anyway, but it didn’t seem the right time to point this out to Mum.
‘And I’ll never ever get a job, because they’ll think I’ll infect all the other girls. And if I don’t work, how are we going to pay the rent, because if I tell all the other tenants your nanny’s got TB and they’ve all got to be tested, they’ll snitch on us to the landlord and we’ll be kicked out into the gutter.’
‘They’ll kick us?’ I said, so worried I couldn’t get my wits together.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake, I don’t mean literally. Stop gawping at me like a bally goldfish, you’re driving me insane. Go to bed!’
I went to bed, and after a very long time snuffling into Albert Trunk I went to sleep – but then I started dreaming. Dr Malory loomed in front of an army of authorities, and they were seizing hold of me and kicking me along the gutter like footballs while they chanted the two terrible initials, ‘TB! TB! TB!’ over and over again.
‘Elsie! For God’s sake, wake up! You’re screaming! You’ll wake the whole blooming house!’ said Mum, shaking me.
I clung round her neck, breathing in her sweet powdery smell. ‘Oh Mum, don’t let them take me away,’ I sobbed.
‘Don’t be so daft. No one’s taking you anywhere,’ she said, but she slipped into my bed and cuddled me close. ‘There now, calm down. It’s all right, Mummy’s here.’
‘Oh Mum, it was so awful!’
‘It was just a silly dream.’ Mum stroked my hair and pulled me onto her lap so we were lying like spoons. ‘So you didn’t want to be parted from your old mum in this dream of yours?’ she said. ‘Why was that?’
‘Because – because I love you,’ I said.
‘I thought you were a right old nanny’s girl,’ said Mum.
I was. I loved Nan a hundred times more than I loved Mum, but for once I was wise enough not to say this out loud. I just nestled against Mum’s soft silky petticoat, and I think she went on holding me tight long after we were both asleep.
She was gentler than usual when we got up in the morning.
‘I’ve been thinking, Elsie – maybe we will pop along to silly old fusspot Malory. We’ll take his test and get our chests X-rayed to stop him kicking up a fuss. But we won’t tell the O’Henrys upstairs or Miss Godden, or that weird Mike in the attic flat. Dr Malory’s not necessarily going to know they live in the house with us. He’ll have hundreds of patients. I’m sure he won’t know where most of them live. I’ll come and meet you after school – but don’t you breathe a word about it, OK?’
I felt very relieved, though now I worried about this X-ray and test. I knew an X-ray was a photo of your insides, but I didn’t know whether it would hurt or not, and I didn’t want to show my frilly knickers to anyone else. I went to school, thankful that we didn’t have PT on a Tuesday.
‘Where did you get to yesterday, Elsie?’ Miss Roberts asked.
‘Oh, I had to go to the dentist’s, miss,’ I said, not
quite looking her in the eye.
‘You were at the dentist’s all day?’
‘Yes, miss. I had to have lots and lots of fillings,’ I said.
‘It must have hurt dreadfully,’ said Miss Roberts.
‘Oh yes, it did,’ I agreed.
‘But at least you’ve got it all over now. You won’t have to go to the dentist’s again for a very long time, will you, Elsie?’ she said.
‘No, miss,’ I said, daring a quick glance.
Her eyebrows were raised quizzically. Did she know? I slid away to my desk and sat there, heart banging. She didn’t need to warn me not to bunk off again. I’d sooner do PT all day long than hang about that park again.
School wasn’t too much of a trial. In English we had to write about our favourite hobby. I didn’t really have a hobby. I was sure knitting scarves didn’t count. I pretended I did ballet lessons instead. I’d picked up quite a lot of terminology reading ‘Belle of the Ballet’ so avidly. I wrote about practising the five positions and doing pliés with my back straight. I imagined little authentic details, saying I loved to dance on my points even though it rubbed my toes and made them ache.
Miss Roberts marked our English books at lunch time and handed them out in the last lesson before home time.
‘Well done, everyone. What an interesting selection of hobbies! I thought I’d get some of you to read your compositions out loud. They’re very entertaining and it might inspire some of you to take up a new hobby.’
She picked Andrew Clegg, which didn’t surprise anyone, because Andrew was the class swot and always came first. Andrew’s hobby was experimenting with his chemistry set. He read his composition earnestly, his glasses gleaming, rattling off all the chemical names with the greatest of ease.
Then Madeleine Keyes was asked to read out her composition about bird-watching. She had her own little pair of binoculars and had ticked off every entry in her I-Spy Book of Common Garden Birds. Everyone got the giggles when she talked about great tits and little tits, and Miss Roberts sighed and shook her head at us.