by Anne Fine
‘Anything you want.’
‘Right then,’ I said. ‘I want you to clean up that little pile of dog mess, straight away.’
Crusher’s all right. He went pale, and he didn’t look at all pleased. But he went and did it. Straight away.
(And all you softies can come back now. It’s all over.)
4
You Don’t Look Very Poorly
You don’t exactly ask to get sick, do you? I mean, you don’t go round inviting germs and viruses to move in and do their worst to your body You don’t actually apply for trembling legs and feeling shivery, and a head that’s had a miniature steel band practising for a carnival in it all night.
And if you should happen to mention to your own mother that you feel absolutely terrible, you would expect a bit of sympathy, wouldn’t you?
I wouldn’t. Not any more.
‘You don’t look very poorly.’
That’s what she said. And she said it suspiciously, too, as if I was one of those people who’s always making excuses to stay off school and spend the day wrapped in a downie on the sofa watching Teletubbies and Playschool and Lunch with Andy and Patsy.
‘Well, I feel absolutely rotten.’
‘You don’t look it.’
‘I’m sorry!’ I snapped. (I was getting pretty cross.) ‘Sorry I can’t manage a bright-green face for you! Or purple spots on my belly! Or all my hair falling out! But I feel rotten just the same!’
And I burst into tears.
(Now that’s not like me.)
‘Now that’s not like you,’ said Mum, sounding sympathetic at last. ‘You must be a little bit off today.’
‘I am not off,’ I snarled through my tears. ‘I’m not leftover milk. Or rotten fish.’
‘There, there,’ Mum soothed. ‘Don’t fret, Minna. Don’t get upset. You just hop straight back up those stairs like a good poppet, and in a minute I’ll bring something nice up on a tray, and you can have a quiet day in bed with Mum looking after you until you feel better.’
That was a bit more like it, as I think you’ll agree. So I stopped snivelling and went back to bed. I didn’t exactly hop straight back up those stairs because I was feeling so crummy and weak I could barely drag myself up hanging on to the bannisters; but I got up somehow, and put on my dressing-gown and buttoned it right up to the top to keep my chest warm, and plumped up my pillows so I could sit comfortably, and switched on my little plastic frog reading lamp, and folded my hands in my lap, and I waited.
And I waited.
And I waited.
(In case you’re wondering, I was waiting for Mum to bring me up something nice on a tray and look after me until I felt better.)
She never came.
Oh, I’m sure that she meant to come. I’m sure she had every intention of coming. Fm sure it wasn’t her fault the milkman came and needed paying, and it took time to work out what she owed because he’d been away for two weeks on his holiday in Torremolinos.
And I’m sure it wasn’t Mum’s fault that he took the opportunity to park his crate of bottles down on the doorstep and tell her all about the way some sneaky people always bagged the best pool-loungers by creeping down at dead of night and dropping their swimming towels over them; and how his wife’s knees burned and peeled but none of the rest of her, even though all of her was out in the sun for the same amount of time; and how his daughter Meryl came home to her job at the Halifax with a broken heart because of some fellow called Miguel Angel Arqueso Perez de Vega, who danced like a fury but turned out to be engaged to a Spanish girl working in Barcelona.
Oh, it wasn’t Mum’s fault that she had to listen to all that before she could get away to bring me up something nice on a tray and look after me until I was better. But I could hear them talking clearly enough on the doorstep. And I don’t actually recall hearing her say firmly but politely: ‘Excuse me, Mr Hooper, but Minna’s in bed feeling terrible, and I must get back upstairs, so I’ll listen to all the rest tomorrow.’ I heard quite a bit, but I didn’t hear that.
As soon as the milkman had chinked off next door, I thought I heard Mum making for the bottom of the stairs. But she never got there.
‘YeeeeooooowwwwwwaaaaaAAAAAAAAA AAEEEEEEWWW!’
You guessed it. Crummy Dummy woke up.
And I suppose it wasn’t Mum’s fault that Crummy Dummy needed her nappy changing. And that there weren’t any dry ones because we don’t have a tumble-drier and it had been raining for three solid days. And Crusher Maggot had forgotten to pick up a packet of disposable nappies before he went off to Sheffield for a few days to help the sister of a mate change flats.
So Mum decided the simplest thing would be to park Crummy Dummy in the playpen where little accidents don’t matter. It wasn’t her fault it took forever to drag it out of the cupboard because Crusher had dumped some great heavy lump of car innards right in front of it. Or that she had to fetch the damp nappies off the line and drape them over the rack in the kitchen.
And I suppose it’s understandable that while she was shaking out the damp nappies, she should glance out of the window at the grey skies and think about nipping down to the launderette with the rest of the washing and handing it to Mrs Hajee to do in the machines, since it really didn’t look as if it would ever stop raining.
So I suppose it does make sense that the very next thing I heard on my quiet day in bed was Mum bellowing up the stairs:
‘Minna! Minna! Look after the baby for a few minutes, will you, while I nip down to the launderette? She’s perfectly happy in her playpen with her toys. Just come down if she starts to squawk.’
Fine. Lovely. Sure. Here am I, feeling really terrible and looking forward to something nice on a tray and being looked after until I feel better, and suddenly I’m looking after the baby! Fine. Lovely. Sure.
To be quite fair to Mum, she didn’t stay out any longer than was absolutely necessary. There was the launderette, of course. And then she had to get the disposable nappies or Crummy Dummy would have had to spend the whole morning sitting on her cold bottom in the playpen, waiting for the ones in the kitchen to dry. And while she was in the supermarket she did pick up bread, and a quarter of sliced ham, and a few oranges and a couple of other things, making too many to get through the quick check-out. And there were really long queues at all the others because it was pension-day morning. And she did just pop into the newsagent’s on her way home as well. And, yes, she did stop on the corner for a second, but that was just to be polite to the Lollipop Lady who told her that, whatever it was I’d got, there was a lot of it about, and Mum ought to be really careful or she’d come down with it as well.
And then she came straight home. She says she was out for no more than five minutes at the very most. But I’ve a watch, so I know better.
Then, at last, she came up to my room. She had Crummy Dummy tucked under one arm, all bare bottom and wriggles, and she was carrying a tray really high in the air, practically above her head, so Crummy Dummy couldn’t upset it with all her flailing arms and legs. It was so high I couldn’t see what was on it from the bed.
‘I don’t know how these nurses do it,’ said Mum. ‘They should have medals pinned on their chests, not watches.’
I looked at mine. It was exactly half past ten. (I fell sick at 8.23.)
‘If you were a nurse,’ I said, ‘you would have got the sack two hours ago.’
‘I’d like to see you do any better,’ she snapped back, sharpish.
‘I bet I would,’ I told her. ‘I bet if you were sick, it wouldn’t take me two whole hours to bring you something nice on a tray.’
‘I should wait till you see what there is on the tray before you start grumbling,’ Mum warned. And then she lowered it on to the bed in front of me.
And there was a cup of very milky coffee with bubbles on top in my favourite fat china bear mug, and a huge orange cut into the thinnest possible circular slices, just how I like it when I want to nibble at the peel as well. And a chocolate-bisc
uit bar and the latest Beano and Dandy, and a pack of twenty brand-new fine-tipped felt pens.
I felt dead guilty for being so grumpy.
‘I’m sorry I said you’d get the sack as a nurse.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Mum answered cheerfully. She flipped Crummy Dummy over and put a nappy on her before there was trouble and even more laundry. ‘It’s a well-known fact that it’s even harder to be a good patient than a good nurse.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Certainly.’
And then, with Crummy Dummy safe at last, Mum sat down on my bed and took a break.
I thought about what she said quite a lot while I was getting better. As I sipped my coffee, and nibbled my orange circles, and read my Beano, and made my chocolate biscuit last as long as I could while I was drawing with my brand-new felt pens, I wondered what sort of patient Mum would make. She isn’t famous in this house for longsuffering meekness or sunny patience.
And I wondered what sort of nurse I’d make – sensitive, deft, unflappable, efficient…
‘I’d no idea I would find out so soon.
It was only two days later, on Saturday morning, that Mum leaned over the bannisters and called down:
‘Minna, I feel just awful. Awful.’
‘You don’t look very poorly’
(I didn’t mean it that way. It just popped out.)
You’d have thought I was trying to suggest she was faking.
‘I may not look it, but I am,’ she snapped. ‘I feel as if I’ve been left out all night in the rain, and my bones have gone soggy, and hundreds of spiteful little men with steel boots are holding a stamping competition in my brain.’
Personally, even without the Lollipop Lady saying there was a lot of it about, I would have recognized the symptoms at once.
I was determined to show Mum what proper nursing ought to be.
‘You go straight back to bed,’ I ordered. ‘I’ll take care of you, and everything else. You tuck yourself in comfortably, and I’ll bring up something nice on a tray.’
Mum swayed a little against the bannisters. She did look pale.
‘You are an angel, Minna,’ she said faintly. And wrapping her shiny black skull-and-crossbones dressing gown more closely around her stringvest nightie, she staggered back into the bedroom.
I don’t have to tell you about my plan, do I? You’ll already have guessed. Yes, I was going to rush back into the kitchen and spread a tray with lovely, tempting treats for an invalid’s breakfast – treats like a cup of tea made just the way Mum really likes it, golden-pale, not that thick, murky, dark sludge favoured by Crusher. (He says Mum’s tea is too weak to crawl out of the pot.)
And I was going to pick a tiny posy of flowers from my half of the garden, and arrange them in one of the pretty china egg cups.
And I was going to bring the tray up without delay.
Guess what went wrong first. No, don’t bother. ‘I’ll tell you. First, I locked myself out. Honestly. Me, Minna. The only one in the house who never does it. I did it. I was so keen to get my tray arranged that I stepped out of the back door into the garden to find the flowers without checking the latch.
Clunk!
The moment I heard the door close behind me, I realized. I could have kicked myself in the shins. I picked my way around to the front, just on the off-chance that the front door was unlocked. But I knew it wouldn’t be, and of course it wasn’t.
I stood there, thinking. I had two choices. I could ring the doorbell and drag poor, shaking, deathly-pale Mum from her bed of sickness and down the stairs to let me in; or I could slip next door to old Mrs Pitopoulos, ring her bell instead, and ask to borrow the spare key to our house she keeps for emergencies in an old cocoa tin under her sink.
I knew which a good nurse would do. I went next door and rang the bell.
No answer.
I rang again.
Still no answer.
Suddenly I noticed a faint scrabbling overhead. I looked up, and there was Mrs Pitopoulos in her quilted dressing-gown, fighting the stiff window-catch with her arthritic fingers.
She couldn’t budge it, so she just beckoned me inside the house.
I tried the front door. It was locked. I went round the back, and that door opened. I picked my way through the furry sea of all her pet cats rubbing their arched backs against my legs, so pleased to see me, and went upstairs.
Mrs Pitopoulos was sitting on the edge of her bed. Her face looked like a wrinkled sack, and her wig was all crooked.
‘You look very poorly,’ I told her.
I couldn’t help it. It just popped out.
‘Oh, Minna,’ she said. ‘I feel terrible, terrible. My legs are rubber, and there are red-hot nails in my head.’
‘I’ve had that,’ I said. ‘Mum’s got it now. The Lollipop Lady says that there’s lots of it about.’
When she heard this, Mrs Pitopoulos began to look distinctly better. Maybe when you’re that age and you get sick, you think whatever it is has come to get you. At any rate, she tugged her wig round on her head, and even the wrinkles seemed to flatten out a bit.
‘Minna,’ she said. ‘Would you do me a great favour, and feed my hungry cats?’
‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Have you had anything this morning?’
‘Oh, I’m not hungry,’ Mrs Pitopoulos declared. But then she cocked her head on one side, and wondered about it. And then she added:
‘Maybe I do feel just a little bit peckish. Yesterday my sister brought me all these lovely things: new-laid brown speckled eggs and home-made bread and a tiny pot of fresh strawberry jam. But what I’d really like is…’ (Her eyes were gleaming, and she looked miles better.) ‘What I’d really like is a bowl of Heinz tomato soup with bits of white bread floating on the top.’
Even I can cook that.
And so I did. And fed her cats. And she was so pleased when I brought the soup up to her on a tray that she pressed on me all the little gifts her sister had brought round the day before: the new-laid brown speckled eggs and home-made bread and tiny pot of fresh strawberry jam – oh, and the door key of course.
Mum was astonished when I brought the tray up. I thought she must have been asleep. She looked as if she had been dozing. She heaved herself upright against the pillows, and I laid the tray down on her knees.
‘Minna!’ she cried. ‘Oh, how lovely! Look at the flowers!’
You’d think someone who claims to like flowers so much would take a little bit more care with her half of the garden, wouldn’t you?
‘Wait till you’ve tasted the food,’ I said.
I could tell that she didn’t really feel much like eating. But she was determined not to hurt my feelings, so she reached out and took one of the strips of hot buttered toast made from the home-made bread.
She nibbled the crust politely.
‘Delicious,’ she said. And then, ‘Mmmm. Delicious.’
She couldn’t help dipping the next strip of toast into the new-laid brown speckled soft-boiled egg.
‘Mmmm!’ she cried. ‘This is wonderful.’
After the egg was eaten, she still had two strips of toast left. She spread one with the fresh strawberry jam, and off she went again.
‘Mmmm! Marvellous!’
She went into raptures over the golden-pale tea. I reckoned poor old Crusher would have a battle getting her back on the thick, murky, dark sludge when he came home. And then she leaned back against the pillows, smiling.
She looked a lot better.
‘I’ll bring you some more, if you’d like it,’ I offered.
‘You are the very best nurse,’ Mum declared. ‘You managed all this, and so quickly too!’
Now I was sure she’d been dozing. I’d taken ages. ‘You’re the very best patient,’ I returned the compliment. ‘You don’t notice what’s going on, or how long it takes!’
‘Silly,’ she said, and snuggled back under the bedcovers.
I think she must have thought I was
joking.
5
Crusher Maggot’s (Stately) Home
Early one Saturday morning, some old man we’d never even seen before came round to our house asking for Mr Pollard.
Mum answered the door in her nightie. (I wish she wouldn’t.)
‘Who?’ she asked, slouching against the door frame.
‘Mr Pollard,’ repeated the old man. ‘Mr Harold Pollard.’
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ Mum said. ‘He certainly doesn’t live here.’
‘Sure?’
‘Certain,’ said Mum.
‘Pity.’ The old man shrugged. Lifting the carrier bag in his hand, he added: ‘Because this is definitely the address he wrote on the stub of the ticket that won this bottle of whisky in the pub raffle.’
‘Oh!’ Mum clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Harold Pollard! Of course! Yes, this is the right house.’
She put out her hand to take the whisky. But the old man had turned away.
‘Don’t try that one on me!’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘I might be old, but I’m not senile. It’s only five seconds since you were telling me you’d never heard of Harold Pollard.’
‘I have, though,’ Mum insisted. ‘It’s just that, for the moment, I completely forgot whose name it is.’
But the old man was already halfway down the path, clutching the carrier bag to his chest and mumbling crossly to himself about the dishonesty of some people round here.
Mum turned on me. She was ratty.
‘Now that’s your fault!’ She stamped her foot. ‘Who was it went and called him Crusher Maggot so often that I forgot his real name? I blame you for this, Minna!’
‘He’s your boyfriend, not mine,’ I defended myself. ‘You ought to remember his name. He’ll blame you.’
He did, too. He went pale as a maggot after he heard the terrible news, and went on all the rest of the morning about how he must have spent thousands of pounds on raffle tickets in his time, and never won so much as a stuffed furry monkey, and now that he’d finally won a whole bottle of whisky, Mum had as good as poured it down the sink.