Lucky Bunny (9780062202512)

by Dawson, Jill

  She gets cut off then, as a tap on the door is followed by it opening a little, and a curly haired ginger man stands there, a great hulking man with a ginger beard, and a stupid smile on his face. The Ed Psych. He shakes Sister Catherine’s hand and they chat for a moment or two—the usual stuff about the shocking rise of juvenile delinquents since the war—as if I’m not in the room. Then he turns to me with a big phony smile and says:

  “So this is the young troublesome missy herself, is it? Well, let’s get started then, shall we?” and he leads me to the recreation room where the lingering smell of pineapple upside-down cake makes my stomach rumble. He has lots of papers, and a timer with a dial that he turns once and sets on the table. Stella passes the window to the room on her way to gardening duty outside, and sticks her tongue out at me, annoyed, I know, because she’s not being tested. She then turns her back to the window and lifts up her skirt, pressing her bum in her navy blue knickers against the window, hoping that the Ed Psych will turn round, and I blurt out a laugh so loud that I’m sure he will, but the stupid giant just frowns and pushes a piece of paper towards me, and says I’m to “give it my best shot.”

  “Sister Catherine tells me you’re quite a puzzle to them all, Queenie. Quite the most troublesome girl they’ve ever had . . . but then you’re clearly such a clever one, too. She says you’re good at maths, but to Sister Grey it seems like a lucky guess most of the time, because she says when she asks you, you can never show your workings. You know, how you got the answer. So to them it seems like a fluke, or that you might be copying. Do you know what a fluke is, Queenie?”

  “A fluke. Like being lucky, you mean?”

  He pushes the paper again towards me, and the pen, and stands up, heading towards the window. The line of girls in their navy hats that look like flying saucers on their heads are aiming towards the allotments, carrying their trowels. Stella’s skirt is shorter than the rest—the waistband rolled over twice to achieve this, her bigger-than-average backside fanning out the pleats even further. I can always pick her out from the rest. Him, too. Old Giant Ginger Beard is studying her.

  So I begin writing on the paper he’s pushed at me, and when he asks me questions I answer them, each one, just saying whatever comes into my head, and not trying to be cheeky. The room seems to be getting smaller, or somehow all the air has been sucked from it, and I watch him closely, noticing strange things about him. He’s fiddling with his tie, tugging it from side to side and stretching out his neck, trying to loosen it. His eyes keep going to the window. His palm, when he puts it down on the wooden table, leaves a sweaty print. And his breath is coming out short, as if he’s been running.

  “Now I’m going to show you some pictures, Queenie, and point at a word, and I’d like you to say which picture most fits which word.”

  He shows me some dumb pictures, badly drawn, and some written words. Incision. I choose a knife, of course. Inspiration. I point to a picture of a woman diving into a pool.

  “That one? You’re sure? What about the man painting—don’t you think that might be . . . inspiration?”

  “You said I could say what I wanted. Now you’re telling me. That picture’s a man. And I’m a girl, and so I was thinking of myself. I think diving. When I dive into something, I feel ‘inspired.’ ”

  “So. What do you think ‘inspired’ means then, Queenie?”

  “Um. Like you really want to do something. Like you just think of it one day. Like you’re a genius because you like dream something up which isn’t real yet . . .” I pause, waiting for him to tear his attention back from the window and the girls in the garden outside. “ . . . sir.”

  He turns back to face me, really slowly, and I struggle not to laugh.

  “Quite. OK, let’s go on then, shall we? I’m going to say a series of numbers and I want you to repeat them back to me, in exactly the order I say them. Shall we start with five digits? Here goes . . .”

  I get his attention eventually. I drag his attention back from watching outside. I repeat the numbers back to him, and then he reverses the order and I repeat them back again. This startles him. He coughs and sits up straighter in his chair. He adds ten more numbers to the list, making a great show of writing them down and covering them with his sweaty arm (his sleeves rolled up now, like we’re in a fight or something), and he reads them out to me carefully and I say them back to him and then he checks his own list.

  “Hmm,” he says, turning to face me at last.

  So he adds ten more numbers, writing them down on another bit of paper and then he reads those out kind of quickly, gabbling, like he doesn’t want me to hear properly, and I repeat those ones back to him as well. He stares at the paper in front of him as I do it, holding it close to his chest so I can’t read what he’s written.

  “Queenie, do you have something like a mirror under the table? Are you reading the numbers?”

  “We’re not allowed mirrors, sir.”

  “Can you see the numbers through the paper, is that it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you have an accomplice? Is there a girl outside somehow reading you the answers?”

  He swivels round quickly to look into the garden, but it’s green and still and full of trees. No skimpy navy skirts, or hats, or fat backsides and thighs in sight. He writes something on his notes in handwriting, which even from here I can see is ugly: the letters all cramped and forced.

  “Hah!” He seems thoroughly annoyed and agitated, and pushes his chair back so hard that it tips up on the carpet as he stands up.

  “Can I go now, sir?” I ask.

  “Yes, yes, I suppose so. Go back to Sister Catherine. I’ve other girls to see.”

  He watches me as I leave the room. I know he does: I feel his eyes on the back of my head. My head, though, I’m thinking. My collar. My hair. Not my backside, my short skirt, not like Stella. I’m beginning to understand other ways to do it, the ways it might work for me. To do that thing Stella talks about. Wrap a man around your little finger.

  So then a few weeks later I have a moment of inspiration. It comes on a day in early summer when the window cleaner leaves his ladder up against the first-floor window—our bedroom—and I whisper it to Stella that night, and I can tell she’s annoyed she didn’t think of it first, because she swears she’s already escaped once, from another Approved School and she’s an Old Hand at it and done it loads of times. I’m not sure I believe her. Anyway, I know what’s really getting her goat is that it’s me who thought of it first, because she likes to know more than me on every subject. She loves teasing me because I haven’t even done it with a boy yet and I Know Nothing Whatsoever about men and I didn’t even know that if you squeeze a boy’s willy long enough this squirty stuff comes out, which you have to admit sounds too disgusting to be real and not something you’d think up yourself, unless someone puts the thought into your head. (Then once it’s in there it’s hard to budge it.)

  My plan is to climb out of the bedroom window and down to the gardens and then just leg it. All day I’m beside myself with nerves in case the window cleaner remembers where he’s left his ladder, or anyone else sees it and moves it. At teatime I take one last peep from the dining room window, and the feet of the ladder show it’s still there. We’ve no belongings to take with us, no money, just a few saved-up cigarette ends, and we’ll have to go in our school uniforms because the clothes we came in with were “filthy” according to the nuns, and full of lice or something and got destroyed.

  That bedtime we wait in our dorm until wobbling Sister Grey has trembled through her last check on us, and we pretend to be asleep with our nighties on over our skirts and blouses. Valerie and Margaret are asleep, but two of the other girls are awake and stare wide out at us as we both strip the nightdresses off in the dim light and put our outdoor shoes on without socks. Then Stella wedges open the window and I gingerly stick one leg out.

>   “Quick quick! Don’t mess about, Queenie.”

  It’s scary not being able to see too clearly; just a little light trickling from the moon as I grasp the grey wood of the ladder and step backwards down it, Stella’s shoes almost on my hands as she hurries to follow me. It’s a cool evening, but nice, not damp, not icy, just fresh.

  Soon we’re on the ground and pelting through the garden to the allotments, the ground all soggy. We’re stepping on all the fresh rows of things—the lettuces—and collapsing the poles, but there’s no one around, and unbelievably, no one has looked back from the house towards us, no light went on, and we’re sure no one has seen us. Then Stella tries the door of a greenhouse, darts into it, and, panting, pulls me in there with her. It smells lovely: warm glass and grass and tomatoes and sort of fresh cat piss. (I know that’s not a lovely smell, but you’ve got to understand—I’ve been in an old-coats-and-pudding-smelling place for so long that I can’t get enough of this outdoor smell: fresh and green and alive.) We huddle in the corner, panting, gasping, and giggling. It was that easy!

  Stella says we should eat some tomatoes to keep us going, so we do, feeling for the fruits in the dark, biting into the fat balls until the seeds spill out over our tongues, and then when we feel sure that no one saw us leave, that no one opened the door to the house, we creep out again and leg it over the rest of the garden and scramble over the hedges towards the main road. The hedges are high and we have to throw ourselves at them. I can feel my face getting scratched and my arms, too, but Stella’s giggling beside me keeps me going.

  And then we’re over the other side and blinking, staring at the soft grey track in front of us. It seems to be a hedge-lined road. Stella says she knows exactly where we are, and how to get down to London. I’ll have to trust her, she says, and I wonder—but privately, I don’t say it aloud—whether I do, or should, or should ever trust anyone except myself.

  We walk for about a mile. Stella says it’s a shame we’re in uniform, but never mind, some men love that. Stella is full of mysterious comments like that. The things she tells me about men are so unlikely that they make me goggle-eyed. I wonder whether she exaggerates her stories just to see how far she can go. “Your face!” she loves to say. The squirty story was bad enough, but on our long, dark walk together she tells me the dirtiest, most revolting thing. It was this man she used to see, who paid her good money not to let him do it to her, but just to go to the toilet on her chest. And not even a number one, either: a number two!

  “No! You’re making that one up! That’s like—well, it’s just the sort of thing the nuns say, like men are sort of worse than animals. Anyhow, I don’t even think an animal would do that.”

  “You think you’re so bleedin’ clever, Queenie Dove.”

  “I am clever, too! I just—you know, I don’t think any fella would do that.”

  “They would, too, and worse . . .” she says, darkly.

  We walk further, smoking the Capstan fag-ends we brought, one at a time, sharing one between us to eke them out, and then I need to relieve myself, and crouch down near a hedge at the edge of the road. Something moves, rushing out just at the moment when I hoik up my skirt, and it makes me jump up and squeal. Stella screeches with laughter and says it was just a rabbit. Suddenly there’s the rumble of an approaching engine and car lights. A lorry. A Bedford lorry, we make out, as it comes closer.

  Before I can say anything, or run to hide, Stella sticks out her thumb and wiggles her bum right in the beam of the headlights and the lorry jerks to a halt, brakes screaming, shuddering to a lunatic stop.

  Somebody leans out of an open window; we can barely see him in the moonlight, just the red lit end of his cigarette, and he opens the door and grunts something that sounds like “get in.”

  It’s high up in there and warm and there’s a little photograph dangling from the rearview mirror of Rita Hayworth, in this long black dress and wearing only one black glove. The lorry smells of fat men and beer breath.

  “Too young for a wine gum are ya, girls?” the geezer says, offering Stella the packet. His voice is squeezed out, like he can barely breathe.

  We both take one, and chew thoughtfully.

  It’s clear to us both what he’s after, and after five minutes of driving Stella says she’ll go with him if he takes us all the way to South London, because she’s got family there and knows we’ll be allowed to stay, no questions asked. He keeps looking for a lay-by, a place to pull over and stop, and tapping on the steering wheel with his hand and sweating.

  I’m petrified by now. Stella’s confidence is amazing to me. When he pulls over and she nips round the back of the lorry with him—it has a sort of flat bed in the back—I can hardly breathe, I’m so scared for her. Sitting high up, staring into the dark, wondering if I dare nick one out of his packet of Player’s and settling for another black wine gum instead. When she comes back I stare and stare at her but she looks exactly the same. He starts singing after that. What if he picks on me next? How long before he expects me to do it, too?

  Stella keeps him talking, but sure enough, as we get closer to London, he starts sweating again and nodding towards me and saying, “What about her then, little Girl Guide, is she a virgin?” So Stella gets him on a promise and says I’ll do it with him in the toilets at the first petrol station we want dropping at, in London. I nearly scream when she says this. I’m sitting nearest the door and I almost open it there and then, flop out onto the road, and let the next lorry flatten me. Stella is sandwiched between me and him and she pinches me, the part of my leg she can reach, and shoves me in the ribs, and keeps talking. Not talking dirty though, like he wants her to. She keeps changing the subject. Even in the state I’m in I can tell that Stella is clever at this, and that I could learn a lot from her. She seems to know that she mustn’t crank him up any more than he already is, like not shaking a bottle of pop. He might just explode then and there and skid us off the road.

  So we come to the petrol station and yellow lights flood over us and he pulls the lorry in. He gets out and opens the door on my side, grabs my arm, and points me towards the toilet. He follows me and he mutters in my ear, “Right, Little Miss Chesty, get ya tits out.”

  But Stella screams, “Leg it!” and kicks him in the back of his knee from behind, which makes his leg slightly buckle, and as he does, I manage it—snatch my wrist from his hand and yank away from him, shouting, “You filthy dirty pig! Your willy smells!”—and he’s startled by me shouting and probably by what I’m shouting, which doesn’t sound much like a grown girl but like the sort of thing a child of six would say, and he doesn’t want people to look at us so he dumps my arm and I run hell for leather, after Stella, just following her to wherever it is she’s going; and a pale light is opening up, and it’s so good to be back near houses and buildings and smoky fires and buses. When I catch her we laugh hysterically, we double up and our ribs ache; we have to crouch behind some bins. We’re laughing so hard we make the bin lids shake as we lean against them; they rattle like cymbals at the end of a big show, and that’s what it was, I’m thinking: a really top-dollar performance.

  We ended up staying with some Aunt Maggie of Stella’s in South London for two weeks. Maggie had mostly raised Stella, it turned out, after Stella had time after time run away from home, from a stepfather who was always “after” her and who farmed her out to his friends for a price. Maggie was a hoister, too, and was on nodding terms with Gloria, and other Green Bottles, who I began to realize were pretty famous all over London—definitely the best at what they did. So I took pride in telling this Maggie that my dad had taken up with one. Probably the first time I ever spoke with any pride about Annie.

  My mistake was to go back to Lauriston Road. Of course I’d hoped to see Bobby, though that was stupid, because Bobby was far away. I told myself he might have escaped, too, and, of course, no one would have told me. And I wanted to see Dad, too, and Gloria
, and my baby sister, although Gracie was more of a toddler by then, not a baby, and a half sister if you want to be persnickety.

  The police get wind of it right away and that’s how I was caught. I ended up back in a police cell, screaming and yelling, while they got a welfare officer to come and fetch me. It was a month after my fifteenth birthday. I must have looked a sight—hair unwashed, strange clothes that Stella’s Aunt Maggie hoisted for me that didn’t fit: a pair of dark slacks and a ribbed turtleneck sweater that really drowned me. I saw what they were filling out on the form about me. This screw wrote down that I had “mental health problems.”

  That did it. Those words. That was the first time when I had one of my rages. The power of it, of how it roared in me, this anger, scared me, too, if the truth be told, as I sat in that cell, nursing it, feeling it grow and grow like a dark monster inside me. He left me in this police cell on my own, all night, just occasionally lifting up the hatch to peek at me, and I felt this monster swell, until it took up the entire cell with me. When the officer came back in the morning with my cup of tea I flew at him. Chucked the slop bucket at him; he ducked, then I picked up my tea and threw that, too. Right in his face. I’ll show you! Mental health problems. I’m not Moll, I thought, just sitting here and taking it.

  Of course, all it did was to make everything harder. Another visit to the juvenile court. “Beyond parental control,” was the verdict, for both me and Stella. And I got a proper sentence then, not a country house Approved School but a place for young offenders. Two long years. No cigarettes. Toilet-cleaning duties. Lights out at half past eight. Keeping your cell spotless and fighting with your cellmate, who was the most slovenly old boiler you’d ever come across. No proper knives and forks, just a spoon. Sitting on your stool, staring at the wall so that you could save up your library book because you only got one a week, and if you let yourself, you’d gobble that up in a day. Watched all the time through the little spy hole. Cleaning out your chamber pot and nearly chucking up when you swill it into the slops bucket. Stella got sent to Aylesbury and I didn’t see her for those two years, not until I was released.