Dead to Me

by Lesley Pearse

  A glance in the washbasin mirror showed her she had black ink all down the back of her white blouse and her gymslip; as she had moved her plaits, it was now all down her front too.

  Madeline’s desk was right behind Verity’s, so she knew it was Madeline who had dipped them in the inkwell. It was the last straw, and this time she knew she must act or be bullied for evermore.

  She waited by the school door, just hidden from view, too angry to be scared. She could hear Madeline inside crowing with delight at what she’d done. ‘I hope her blonde hair will turn green with it,’ she sniggered. ‘I just wish I’d dripped it on top of her head.’

  As Madeline came through the door, Verity pounced on her. She didn’t care if she got hurt, she just wanted to give this horrible girl a taste of her own medicine. She caught Madeline by her shoulder and spun her round so she was facing her, then punched her straight in the nose with her fist. The girl’s nose seemed to explode, blood spurting out in all directions.

  ‘Not so funny now, is it?’ Verity screamed at her. ‘With luck your nose is broken, and you’ll be ugly as well as nasty.’

  Having expected Madeline to respond with extreme violence, it was a real surprise to see the girl just holding her nose and crying. But just in case this was a tactic intended to disarm, Verity didn’t back away but punched her in the stomach for good measure. ‘You’ve tormented me from my first day here and I’d done nothing to you,’ she ranted. ‘So how do you like being hurt and humiliated? Not nice, is it?’

  The punch in the stomach had Madeline doubling up in pain and Verity noticed to her shock that none of her acolytes, the girls who had helped bully her, were stepping in to help their leader.

  ‘Where are your chums now?’ Verity asked as, one by one, the girls were stepping away. ‘Did you get them in your power by bullying them too? Go on back into class and snivel to Miss Ranger. Doesn’t look like you’ll get any sympathy out here.’

  Verity walked away then, fully expecting someone to come after her, but no one did. When she looked back, Madeline was still hunched over by the school door, and all the other girls were grouped together talking, well away from her.

  For the first time in weeks Verity had something to smile about.

  Verity went back to school on Monday in trepidation. However well she had dealt with Madeline on Friday, she knew that over the weekend the girl could have talked her chums round to supporting her. She could also have gone to Miss Ranger and claimed she was the victim of an unprovoked attack.

  But as she walked through the school gate into the playground, Susan Wallace came straight up to her. Verity had noticed this one girl more than anyone else in the class because she was clever, top of the class, also rather beautiful with shiny black hair and lovely dark almond-shaped eyes, giving her a rather glamorous air.

  ‘You were very brave on Friday,’ she said. ‘So brave I felt ashamed I hadn’t stepped in to help you before.’

  Verity had observed that although Susan seemed to get on with her classmates she wasn’t particularly pally with anyone.

  ‘It wasn’t brave, I just lost my temper,’ Verity said. ‘I expect she’ll get me back in some way.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Susan smiled. ‘Like most bullies she’s a coward; now she knows you can fight back, she’ll be scared. When I first met her she used to call me names all the time – mostly Chinky or Ping Pong, on account of my eyes. I slammed her desk lid down on her head one day. And then sat on it for a few minutes. She screamed like a banshee, but it did the trick, she never called me names after that. She always picks on someone who has something different – with me my eyes, and you, the way you speak. Two girls have left school because of her.’

  Verity was amused by how Susan had dealt with Madeline, and she was touched this girl was trying to make things better for her. ‘I’ve got no intention of leaving, not till I’m fourteen,’ she said.

  Susan put her arm through Verity’s as they walked across the playground. ‘What are you going to do when you leave school?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m waiting for some divine revelation from on high,’ Verity replied.

  Susan giggled. ‘You’re cleverer than most of the girls here,’ she said. ‘I noticed how good you were at Mental Arithmetic, impressive.’

  ‘At my old school we had tests twice a week, our teacher would fire out the sums and God help anyone who was slow in answering. But I like all Maths, it’s challenging. I liked Science too, but we don’t have that here.’

  ‘Do girls need that?’ Susan asked.

  ‘I don’t see why girls only get to do subjects that are good for wives and mothers,’ Verity said. ‘Look what happened during the war! Women had to take over all the jobs men used to do, and they did them well. So many men didn’t come back that we still need more engineers, scientists and doctors. There isn’t any real reason why a girl couldn’t be as good as a man at most jobs. If she had the right training –’

  The bell ringing for class ended the conversation abruptly.

  Verity was relieved to see Madeline wasn’t at school that day. She wasn’t hauled out of class to see the headmistress, as she’d half expected, and all the other girls in the class were pleasant to her. Verity was asked to read out an essay she’d written about her four favourite books. Miss Ranger said she’d written with such passion it would make the whole class want to read them.

  Everyone clapped when she’d finished, and suddenly Lee Manor School didn’t look so bad and even moving to this area didn’t seem so tragic. She hadn’t ever got any praise at Oak Lodge School back in Belsize Park – and even if she had, she doubted the girls there would have smiled at her as if she was some kind of heroine, the way they were doing here.

  Madeline was away from school for three days and when she finally came back, sticking plaster across her nose, Verity was delighted to see she looked nervous. But Verity was in a forgiving mood, so she went up to her and asked how she was.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Madeline said, keeping her eyes down as if half expecting another punch.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, and I hope your nose isn’t too sore,’ Verity said. ‘Now shall we put this behind us and pretend we’ve just met for the first time?’

  ‘Okay,’ Madeline said in a small voice.

  Verity held out her hand. ‘Hello, I’m Verity Wood, and I’m pleased to meet you. What’s your name?’

  Madeline took the hand and shook it weakly. ‘Madeline Grant, and welcome to Lee Manor,’ she said.

  Verity smiled. ‘Thank you, Madeline. I trust there is no bullying here at this school? I can’t abide it.’

  School became a kind of refuge from home life. Since hitting Madeline she’d found the other girls were eager to befriend her, and though she found most of them to be empty-headed and rather dull, it was comforting to be sought out. All the other girls, Susan included, had South London accents and so now and again someone teased her about the way she spoke. Verity didn’t mind being teased, but she did try to modify her way of speaking so she didn’t stand out so much.

  Susan had become a true friend; she had a sharp mind, a wonderful sense of humour and an interesting family. Going home with her, Verity found that beyond the end of Leahurst Road, going towards Lee, there were rather beautiful tree-lined streets with big houses and lovely gardens. Susan lived in one of these roads, Handen Road, by the Church of the Good Shepherd. Her father was an accountant and her mother painted. She also had two brothers and a younger sister.

  Not far from Susan’s home there was also a majestic library in what had once been the manor house. The gardens of the house, complete with a large duck pond and the River Quaggy running through them, were now a pretty park called Manor House Gardens.

  Going to the library gave Verity the perfect excuse on Saturday afternoons to meet Susan. They would both quickly find a book and then, if it wasn’t raining, they’d go into the park. There always seemed so much to talk about that a couple of hours flew by, and it made S
unday spent with Mother and Aunt Hazel more bearable.

  Verity loved hearing about Susan’s home life. It sounded warm, chaotic and full of laughter.

  ‘Father often says, “Accountants are supposed to have pristine well-organized homes, obedient docile children and a pretty wife who dances attendance on her husband.” It makes us all laugh, including him,’ Susan giggled. ‘Mother is usually smeared with paint, she’s a terrible cook and housekeeper. Ben is always playing the piano very loudly, he has ambitions to play in a big swing band. John collects creatures – caterpillars, grass snakes, mice and anything else he can find. He wants to be a vet. Then Cissie, that’s short for Cecelia, she wants to be a ballerina. She’s not very good at ballet, just as I wasn’t. But unlike me, she thinks she is.’

  Verity hadn’t been invited there yet. And in a way she hoped she never would be, because she might be expected to reciprocate, and taking anyone home to Weardale Road would be so very embarrassing. She dealt with the very real possibility she might have to invite her friend one day by exaggerating her mother and her aunt’s deficiencies with humour.

  ‘Mother sits around all day sighing and talking about all she’s lost, the chandeliers, the velvet curtains, our housekeeper, Georgian silver. Aunt Hazel shrieks at her to shut up and tells her to get down to the butcher’s and get a bit of scrag end for our tea.’

  Verity had been deliberately vague about the reasons why they came to live with Aunt Hazel. She had said her father skipped off, leaving them in financial difficulties, but not that he was on the run for embezzlement. She had already made her mind up that, if this should come out, she’d pretend she hadn’t known. Police had called at Aunt Hazel’s twice since they had moved there, but so far they hadn’t caught Archie. The last time they came, the police said they believed he had left the country, and Mother said she thought he’d only come back to Daleham Gardens the night his crime was discovered in order to get his passport.

  Late one evening Verity was in bed but she’d left the door open, because it was a hot night, and she heard her aunt and her mother talking about the missing money.

  ‘I don’t think he was the kind to hoard cash,’ Cynthia said. ‘He’d be too frightened of me finding it. So he must have been putting it into another bank account, perhaps in a false name, because it certainly wasn’t in our household account.’

  ‘I told you as soon as you met him he was tricky, but you scoffed at that,’ Aunt Hazel said, and Verity could imagine her aunt crossing her arms across her chest and doing the sucking lemons thing she did with her mouth in disapproval. ‘But then you were a tricky customer yourself, always looking for the main chance. You two deserved one another.’

  ‘How can you say such a thing about me? It isn’t true,’ Cynthia bleated.

  ‘Come off it, Cynny, you were scheming at the age of five, making out you were practically royalty. Anyway, I reckon Archie had been planning for a long time to take this money and run out on you,’ she went on, her voice sharp with malice. ‘I bet he had some fast floozy in tow too.’

  Cynthia burst into tears at that and Hazel went on to tell her she’d got to pull herself together, get a job and rebuild her life.

  Verity thought her aunt talked a lot of sense, even if she was mean and grumpy. She said if Cynthia was bringing in a wage they could get decorators in to smarten the house up, and a new carpet on the stairs. She pointed out that she hadn’t had any housekeeping money from her for two weeks now, so Cynthia had better sell something if she wanted to stay.

  In October Verity would be fourteen, and her aunt had said Chiesmans would give her a trial day with a view to taking her on. They had made an appointment for Cynthia to be interviewed too but she hadn’t turned up for it, claiming she was ill. Verity could sense her aunt’s utter frustration; she’d pointed out that when winter came, her sister had better not think she was going to sit by a blazing fire all day, as she wouldn’t allow it to be lit until she got home from work.

  Verity didn’t understand her mother at all. If she wanted to get on her sister’s good side, all she needed to do was show her appreciation at being taken in by making Hazel more comfortable. Cooking, cleaning and doing the washing was all that was needed, and surely Mother was bored stiff doing nothing all day.

  Hazel had screamed out the other day that Cynthia was a parasite – and it was true, she was. Verity had located a pawnshop in Lewisham and suggested it was time to go and sell something else to give Hazel some money, but so far her mother had refused. She still squeezed past the big trunk of her clothes in the bedroom, as if believing that any day someone would rescue her from this shabby little house and put her back in the surroundings where she felt she belonged.

  Verity had told Susan a little of the situation, though in a comic manner, with her spoiled mother and mean-spirited aunt squabbling all the time. But it was hard to make jokes about it when the reality of it was so bleak. Verity was quite sure Susan didn’t go home from school to clear the unwashed breakfast things still in the sink, to prepare the dinner for her family and to clean the house. But Verity felt she had to, for fear Hazel would throw them out.

  Hazel got nastier and nastier about keeping them for nothing – to the point when, finally, she bought just one chop for herself for Sunday dinner and nothing for her sister or Verity.

  ‘I am not feeding you for nothing any more,’ she spat at her sister. ‘What makes you think you have the right to live off me? Have you no pride? And what sort of message is this giving Verity? Is she going to grow up thinking the world owes her a living too?’

  The smell of Aunt Hazel’s pork chop cooking made Verity’s stomach contract with hunger, but all there was left in the cupboard was one tin of sardines. She spread them on four slices of toast to share with her mother, and as they ate them Verity insisted that they sell something.

  ‘We can take the silver pheasant and the Bond Street cutlery up to Blackheath to a shop I’ve seen,’ she said. ‘It isn’t a pawnshop, but they buy silver – it says in the window. I think we’ll get a better price there. We can go when I get home from school.’

  ‘I can’t possibly go,’ her mother said stubbornly. ‘You will have to do it.’

  Verity tried pleading that she was too scared to go alone. When that didn’t work, she refused to go.

  ‘Then we won’t eat,’ her mother replied, without even looking at her. ‘Miss Parsons told you what to do. I can’t see why you are being such a baby about it.’

  ‘Why can’t you behave like a grown-up?’ Verity retorted. ‘You are supposed to look after me, not the other way round.’

  But her mother didn’t relent. She just sat there at the kitchen table staring into space, oblivious to her daughter crying, or the fact that there was nothing left in the house to eat.

  That evening Verity went up to her room and lay on her bed, beyond crying now but wishing she had someone she could confide in. She thought about Ruby a great deal and wondered if Maggie Tyrell had written to her and passed on Verity’s new address. Maybe she should go back to Maggie and ask? She thought she ought to write to Miss Parsons too. But with nothing cheerful to tell her, was there any point?

  The next morning, as Verity was leaving the house for school, Aunt Hazel thrust a package at her. ‘Take this sandwich for your lunch. I kept a few bits in my room,’ she said by way of explaining where it had come from. ‘I know you don’t want to take the things to sell. But I’ll get some time off work, if you like, and come with you.’

  Verity was astounded that her aunt understood how she felt, and that she’d made her a sandwich. She had already decided she had to go to the shop alone anyway. But it was good to know she had an ally; that made her feel much braver.

  ‘No, you don’t need to take time off. I can do it,’ she said.

  ‘You are a good girl,’ Aunt Hazel said. ‘I wish I could say you are a credit to your mother. But however you managed to turn out so well, it had nothing to do with her. You can put the things in that wh
eeled shopping basket of mine, they are far too heavy to carry all the way to Blackheath.’

  When Verity got home from school the house was silent, her mother was fast asleep on her bed. It was tempting to wake her up and try to plead for her to come to the jewellery shop, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to persuade her. As she stood there looking down on her sleeping mother, she observed how Cynthia had stopped making an effort with her appearance.

  Her hair resembled an untidy bird’s nest, hastily put up without taking any care. She had a food stain on the front of her sleeveless striped cotton dress and her bare legs looked mottled, like hairy sausages. Even without getting close she smelled of stale sweat, and yet this was a woman who had once been very particular.

  To see her like this was more alarming than her refusal to help sell some goods, or her not trying to get a job, as it suggested she’d given up all together. Verity wished there was something she could do or say that might give her mother the will to start again.

  But getting some money was the priority for now, so Verity dug out the wheeled shopping basket from under the stairs and loaded the silver pheasant and the cutlery set into it. She stuffed a couple of towels down around them so they wouldn’t rattle and couldn’t be seen.

  As she walked up Lee Park to Blackheath, the hill seemed extra steep and it was so hot she felt sick. She knew it was mostly nerves, not just from the heat but because she’d passed men hanging around in groups on Lee High Road, and she was afraid they might suspect she had something valuable with her and come after her. Back in Hampstead she hadn’t really been aware of the Depression, which was mentioned on the news so often, but here in Lewisham it was very obvious with so many men out of work. She guessed their wives and families often went hungry.

  She had gone to bed hungry last night for the first time ever, and it was horrible. It had made her think of Ruby and how hungry she’d been the day she bought her the pie. She could understand now why Ruby had to steal – in fact, if she was really hungry and didn’t have these things to sell, she would too.