‘Hello, little girl. What’s your name?’ he said, starting to haul something heavy from the box.
‘Jacqueline, sir,’ I said.
Oh, we were so polite in the fifties. I practically bobbed a curtsey.
‘You seem a very sensible little girl, Jacqueline,’ said George Cansdale. ‘Shall we show the other children just how sensible you are?’
He was still hauling what looked like enormous skeins of khaki wool from the box. Loop after loop. Coil after coil. A snake! An enormous brown snake, with a mean head and a forked tongue flicking in and out.
There was a great gasp, a collective series of Beano-comic exclamations: ‘Aah!’ ‘Ugh!’ ‘Eek!’
I was so shocked I couldn’t even scream. I couldn’t back away because I had Biddy and hundreds of children pressing hard against me.
‘You’re not scared of snakes, are you, Jacqueline?’ said George Cansdale.
I bared my teeth in a sickly grin.
‘Shall we show the other children how sensible you are?’ he said, reaching towards me, his arms full of writhing snake.
He wound it round and round and round my neck like a loathsome live scarf.
‘There! Look how brave Jacqueline is,’ said George Cansdale.
The children oohed and aahed at me. I stood still, the head of the snake an inch away, its tongue going flicker flicker flicker in my face.
‘There! Nothing to be frightened of, is there, Jacqueline?’ said George Cansdale.
I was way past fright. Any second now I was going to wet myself. Mercifully, George Cansdale unwound the snake coil by coil until I was free at last. Biddy gave me a tug and tunnelled us through the crowd to the ladies’ toilets.
‘Why did you let him put that horrible slimy snake round you?’ Biddy said, dabbing anxiously at the velvet collar on my coat.
‘It wasn’t slimy, it was warm,’ I said, shuddering. ‘Oh, Mum, it felt awful.’
‘Well, you should have said something, not stood there looking gormless,’ said Biddy, but she gave me a quick hug nevertheless.
That should have been enough excitement for one day, but Biddy was determined to get her money’s worth. We went to a kind of Mind Body Spirit section and had our bumps read by a shy man in spectacles still wearing a shabby brown demob suit. I’m surprised Biddy went for this, because his nervous fingers probed deep into our perms as he felt for significant bumps on our heads, wrecking our hairdos. Perhaps she was at a crisis point with Uncle Ron and wanted to see what fate had in store for her.
The Bump Man seemed disconcerted by Biddy’s head.
‘You’re a real Peter Pan,’ he said.
This pleased her no end, because she thought this meant she looked young for her age – which she did. He fumbled about in her curls, pressing and prodding, as if her head was a musical instrument and might start playing a tune. He said she was very bright and very determined. Then he ran out of steam and decided to do a bit of handwriting interpretation instead, maybe to reassure her she was getting her money’s worth.
Biddy smiled happily. She always took great pride in her beautiful handwriting. The rare times she wrote a letter she always drafted it first and then copied it all out exquisitely in pen. The Bump Man admired her handwriting and said she was exceptionally neat and meticulous, which wasn’t really straining his psychic powers.
Then it was my turn. I wrote my own much shakier signature. We were being mucked about at school. Every year the new teacher had different ideas about handwriting. I was currently in a class where we were all forced to write in very sloping copperplate with blotchy dipping pens and brown school ink. My natural handwriting was little and stood upright, so I was struggling. The Bump Man said my personality was still forming. He felt my head too, not so nervous of me, kneading it as if it was an awkward lump of dough. He asked me various silly questions and I muttered answers in monosyllables.
‘She’s very shy,’ said the Bump Man. ‘What do you like doing best, dear?’
‘Reading,’ I whispered.
‘Mm. Yes. You’re very dreamy.’
‘You’re telling me!’ said Biddy. ‘I sometimes think she’s not all there. What do you think she’ll be when she grows up?’
‘Oh, a teacher, definitely,’ he said.
I was bitterly disappointed. I so so so wanted to be a writer. If I couldn’t ever get anything published, I wanted to be a hairdresser and create beautiful long hairstyles all day. I didn’t want to be a teacher. In the 1950s most teachers in primary school were in their forties and fifties, even sixties. Many of the women had their grey hair scraped back in buns. They all wore sensible flat laced shoes. When they sat down, their long-legged pink directoire knickers showed unless they kept their knees clamped together. I didn’t want to look like a teacher.
I was glad to see the back of the Bump Man. To cheer me up Biddy took me to the Book Corner. There, sitting on a chair, was the famous children’s writer Pamela Brown. We knew it was her because she had a placard saying so right above her head. She looked incredibly smart and glamorous, the exact opposite of a frumpy teacher. She was dressed all in black, wearing a beautifully cut black tailored suit, a tiny black feathery hat on her soft curls, and high-heeled black suede shoes. She wore a string of pearls round her neck, one last elegant touch.
She was sitting bolt upright on her chair, staring straight ahead. I know now the poor woman must have been dying of embarrassment, stuck there all alone, waiting for someone, anyone, to approach her, but to me then she seemed like a queen on her throne. I just wanted to gaze at her reverently.
Biddy had other ideas. She prodded me in the back.
‘Go and say hello to her then!’ she said.
‘I can’t!’ I mouthed.
‘Yes you can! It’s Pamela Brown. You know, you like her books.’
Of course I knew.
‘So tell her you like them,’ said Biddy.
I was almost as frightened of Pamela Brown as I was of George Cansdale, but at least she was unlikely to produce a snake from her handbag and wrap it round my neck.
‘Hello,’ I whispered, approaching her.
‘Hello,’ said Pamela Brown.
She seemed a little at a loss for words too but she smiled at me very sweetly.
‘I like your books,’ I confided.
‘I’m so pleased,’ she said.
We smiled some more and then I backed away, both of us sighing with relief.
* * *
Who’s got a worst enemy called Moyra who had a gigantic snake called Crusher for a pet?
* * *
It’s Verity in The Cat Mummy.
Do you have any pets? My best friend Sophie has got four kittens called Sporty, Scary, Baby and Posh. My second-best friend Laura has a golden Labrador dog called Dustbin. My sort-of-boyfriend Aaron has got a dog too, a black mongrel called Liquorice Allsorts, though he gets called Licky for short. My worst enemy Moyra has got a boa constrictor snake called Crusher. Well, she says she has. I’ve never been to her house so I don’t know if she’s telling fibs.
I’ve got a very sweet-natured elderly ginger and white cat called Whisky. I wouldn’t mind a kitten and I’d love a dog – but I would hate to have any kind of snake as a pet!
23
More Books!
I DON’T APOLOGIZE for another chapter about books (and it’s a long one too). This is a book about books. I wouldn’t be a writer now if I hadn’t been a reader.
I’ve told you about my two favourite books, Nancy and Plum and Adventures with Rosalind, but I’m afraid you can’t read them for yourself because they’re long out of print. I’ve mentioned Enid Blyton and Eve Garnett and Pamela Brown, but I think my favourite popular contemporary author was Noel Streatfeild.
Her most famous book is Ballet Shoes, a lovely story about three adopted sisters, Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil, who attend a stage school. Pauline wants to be an actress, Petrova aches to be an airline pilot and Posy is already a brilliant ballet
dancer. I wanted to be a ballet dancer too. I loved dancing and could pick up little routines quite quickly. I had read enough books about girls longing to be dancers to realize that I had ballet dancer’s feet. My second toe is longer than my big toe, which means I could go up on my points more easily, and I have very high arches. I was sure this was a genuine sign that I could be a Belle of the Ballet. I wanted most of all to be a writer, of course, but I didn’t see why I couldn’t be a ballet dancer too. Ann Taylor did ballet. Mandy did ballet.
‘Well, you’re not doing ballet,’ said Biddy. ‘I’m not tackling those costumes. It would be a bally nightmare.’ She chuckled at her own bad joke.
Biddy had done ballet herself as a small child. She was little and cute with curly hair so she’d been chosen to be in all the concerts, as a fairy, a kitten, a rabbit . . . Ga had made all her costumes.
‘We can’t ask her to make your costumes now her arthritis is so bad,’ Biddy said firmly. ‘You wouldn’t like ballet anyway. You wouldn’t be any good at it. I wasn’t.’
So I never got to try. I practised valiantly by myself for a while. I had a pair of pale pink pull-on bedroom slippers and I pretended these were proper ballet shoes. When Biddy and Harry were at work, I hummed the ‘Sugar Plum Fairy’ tune and pranced up and down our flat, whirling and twirling round the table and the television, pirouetting down the hall, executing a daring leap up onto Biddy’s bed and then sweeping a deep ballerina curtsey to myself in her dressing-table mirror. Perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t have an audition.
I picked up a lot of tips from Ballet Shoes but most of all I liked it for all the realistic little details of girl life. It was written in the 1930s so it was already dated when I read it twenty years later. I puzzled over the Fossil sisters’ poverty when they lived in a huge house on the Cromwell Road and had a cook and a nanny, but I loved it that they were such real girls. They quarrelled and larked around and worried about things. I felt they were my sisters. I sighed over Pauline becoming swollen-headed when she had her first big part in a play; I suffered agonies with Petrova, forced into acting when she felt such a fool on stage and longed to be with Mr Simpson fixing cars in his garage; I envied Posy as she glided through life, showing off and being insufferably cute. I knew how important it was for the girls to have a smart black velvet frock for their auditions. I loved the necklaces they got for a Christmas present from Great-uncle Matthew. I longed to go too on their seaside holiday to Pevensey. I knew without being told that it was definitely a cut above Clacton.
Noel Streatfeild was a prolific writer, and so I went backwards and forwards to the library, determined to read everything she’d ever written. I owned Ballet Shoes. It was one of the early Puffin books, with a bright green cover and Ruth Gervis’s pleasing pictures of the three girls in ballet dresses on the front. Those illustrations seemed so much part of the whole book (Ruth Gervis was Noel Streatfeild’s sister) that the modern un-illustrated versions all seem to have an important part lacking. But at least Ballet Shoes is still in print. Most of Noel Streatfeild’s books have long since disappeared from bookshops and libraries.
I loved White Boots and Tennis Shoes and Curtain Up. I was given Wintle’s Wonders as a summer holiday present. I remember clutching it to my chest so happily the edges poked me through my thin cotton dress. It was an agreeably chunky book, which meant it might last me several days.
Noel Streatfeild edited a very upmarket magazine for children called the Elizabethan, which I subscribed to. Enid Blyton had a magazine too, Sunny Stories, but that was very much for younger children. I had to struggle hard with some of the uplifting erudite articles in the Elizabethan, which was strange because Noel’s books were wonderfully easy to read.
She wrote some fascinating volumes of autobiography, and one biography of her favourite children’s writer, E. Nesbit.
I loved E. Nesbit too. Biddy gave me The Story of the Treasure Seekers when I was seven. It was my first classic but it wasn’t too difficult for me as it was written in the first person. You were meant to guess which one of the Bastable children was the narrator. It seemed pretty obvious to me that it was Oswald. I didn’t realize this was all part of the joke. Now I think The Story of the Treasure Seekers is a very warm and witty book, and it makes me crack up laughing, but as a seven-year-old I took it very seriously indeed. It seemed perfectly possible to me that the children might find a fortune. I failed to understand that Albert’s uncle frequently helped them out. I had no idea that if you added several spoonfuls of sugar to sherry, it would taste disgusting. I’d had a sip of Ga’s Harvey’s Bristol Cream at Christmas and thought it was even worse than Gongon’s black treacle medicine. I thought the taste would be improved with a liberal sprinkling of sugar too.
I wished there were more Bastable girls. I liked Alice a lot, and I felt sorry for poor po-faced Dora, especially when she wept and told Oswald she tried so hard to keep her brothers and sister in order because their dying mother had asked her to look after the family. There were occasional Edwardian references that I didn’t understand. I sniggered at the boys wearing garments called knickerbockers. But E. Nesbit’s writing style was so lively and child-friendly, and the children seemed so real that I felt I was a token Treasure Seeker too, especially as they lived in Lewisham.
I loved The Railway Children too, and was particularly fond of Bobbie. I liked it that Mother was a writer and whenever she sold a story, there were buns for tea. (I copied this idea many years later whenever I sold a story to a publisher!) There was a special children’s serial of The Railway Children on television – not the lovely film starring Jenny Agutter, this was many years earlier than that.
I sat in front of our new television set, spellbound. At the end of each episode the television announcer said a few words. She was called Jennifer, a smiley, wavy-haired girl who was only about twelve. She told all the child viewers about a Railway Children art competition.
‘All you have to do is illustrate your favourite scene,’ she said, smiling straight at me, cross-legged on the living-room floor in Cumberland House.
‘Mummy, can I do some painting?’ I said.
I had to ask permission because Biddy wasn’t keen on me having my painting water on the dining table and went through an elaborate performance of covering it over with newpapers, and rolling my sleeves right up to my elbows so my cuffs wouldn’t get smudged with wet watercolour.
‘Of course you’re not doing any painting now. You’re due for bed in ten minutes,’ said Biddy.
She believed in Early Nights, even though I’d often lie awake for hours.
‘But it’s for a competition on the television,’ I said. ‘Please!’
Biddy considered. I was quite good at painting for my age. Most of the children in the Infants were still at the big-blob combined-head-and-body stage, with stick arms and legs, the sky a blue stripe at the top of the page and the grass a green stripe at the bottom. I’d copied so many pictures out of my books that I had a slightly more sophisticated style, and I liked giving all my faces elaborate features. I was a dab hand at long eyelashes, though I was sometimes too enthusiastic, so my people looked as if two tarantulas had crawled onto each face.
‘Have a go then,’ said Biddy, relenting.
I was still having a go when Harry came home from work wanting his tea.
‘You’ll have to wait for once,’ said Biddy. ‘Jac’s painting.’
I dabbled my paintbrush and daubed proudly. I was on my third attempt. I’d tried hard to draw a train for my first picture, but I couldn’t work out what they looked like. I didn’t have any books with trains in them. I’d seen the little blue Thomas The Tank Engine books in W. H. Smith’s, but I didn’t fancy them as a girly read.
I made a determined attempt at a train, painting it emerald-green, but it looked like a giant caterpillar. I took another piece of paper and tried to draw the train head-on, but I couldn’t work out where the wheels went, and I’d used up so much green paint already there was
just a dab left in my Reeves paintbox.
‘Blow the train,’ I muttered. I drew Bobbie and Phyllis and Peter instead, frantically waving red flannel petticoats. I drew them as if I was the train, rapidly approaching them. Their faces reflected this, their mouths crimson Os as they screamed.
I got a bit carried away with the high drama of it all, sloshing on the paint so vigorously that it started to run and I had to blot it up hurriedly with my cuddle hankie. The finished painting was a little wrinkly but I still felt it was quite good.
‘Put your name and address on the back carefully,’ said Biddy. ‘And put your age.’
I did as I was told and she sent it off to the television studio at Alexandra Palace the next day.
I won in my age category! It was the only time I won anything as a child. They didn’t send my painting back, which was a pity, but they sent a Rowney drawing pad as a prize. I’ve felt very fond of The Railway Children ever since.
I’d read my way through most of the girly children’s classics before I was ten. Woolworths used to stock garishly produced, badly printed children’s classics for 2s 6d, a third of the price of most modern books. I read Little Women over and over again, loving Jo, the tomboy harem-scarem sister who read voraciously and was desperate to be a writer. I also had a soft spot for Beth because she was shy and liked playing with dolls. I loved What Katy Did and felt desperately sorry for poor little Elsie, the middle child who wasn’t in on Katy and Clover’s secrets. I wasn’t so interested in Katy after she fell off the swing and endured her long illness. I couldn’t stomach saintly Cousin Helen. I enjoyed the Christmas chapter the most, and the detailed descriptions of all the presents.
I read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, thrilled to read about irritable, spoiled children for a change, totally understanding why they behaved badly. I liked A Little Princess even more. I found Sara Crewe a magical character. I particularly loved the part at the beginning where she finds her doll Emily and there’s a detailed description of her trunk of clothes. I shivered in the attic with Sara after her fortune changed, and found the scenes with Becky and Ermengarde very touching. I was charmed that Sara made a pet out of Melchisedec – though if a real rat had scampered across the carpet in my bedroom, I’d have screamed my head off.
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