“How long have you known about this? Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing a cat home?”
“Because I know you don’t like animals, but this will be a lovely pet for Laraine.”
“Well you”—Mum points her finger right at my nose—“had better take good care of it, and keep it away from me.”
“I will, Mum. I promise.” With that, Schickrys becomes a part of our family.
Schickrys is my personal responsibility and gets all my attention. I feed him, brush him, and play with him. Dad gives me some string to play chase. I run around the house upstairs and downstairs, dragging the string behind me, and followed by the quick attacking paws of the kitten. When Schickrys catches the string, he grabs it with his front paws, chews it, and kicks at it with his hind paws. Silly kitten!
When Schickrys settles down to rest, I check to see where he is to make sure he is okay. He might be sleeping in the corner of the living room or under my bed. If he is in reach, I tenderly stroke the fur along his back, letting him know he is loved.
author with Schickrys, photo courtesy of The News, Portsmouth, England.
Our taking care of the kitten is apparently a newsworthy event, because the Evening News comes to our house to interview Mum and Dad for an article, and the man takes a picture of me with the cat to put in the paper. I become a minor celebrity at school, having appeared in the local newspaper with the Queen Mother’s cat and the royal yacht’s mascot. All sorts of people stop at the house to see and take pictures of the royal cat. Mum tolerates the fuss. She kindly lets people take photographs of the kitten while Schickrys ignores it all.
Mum makes sure Schickrys goes outside into the garden a lot because she doesn’t want him pooping in the house. Schickrys doesn’t stay in the garden; he jumps onto the fence and wanders off, but the clever fellow knows where his home is and always comes back, sometimes meowing and pawing at the back door, sometimes at the front. Mum makes me laugh, though. She makes a big show of ceremoniously opening the front door so the neighbors can see her letting the royal cat into the house, all the while smiling and calling, “Here puss, puss.” But then she herds him through the house and shoos him out the back door again while grumbling something about, “Hairy moggy.” Royal cat or not, he is allowed to roam the neighborhood, just like the domestics.
At bedtime, Schickrys sleeps with me. He cuddles against my chest as I tenderly stroke his fur. “Who’s a handsome boy then?” I whisper to him as he closes his eyes and relaxes, mesmerized by my soft touch and gentle voice. I study him, the striped blacks and browns of his fur, the lighter shades of his underbelly, the petite size of his paws, and the innocence on his face. Life is strange, I think to myself. Things I want I don’t get, and things I cannot even imagine come true. I must be the luckiest girl in England, snuggling with a royal cat every night. What a unique experience, and why me? I fall asleep cuddling Schickrys to my chest, stroking his fur and hypnotized by his throaty purr.
I am snuggled under my bedcovers deep in my dream world when I hear an awful caterwauling. I feel movement on my bed as a terrified feline briskly leaves me to find safety in some corner of the dark room. As I become semiconscious, I grasp that this spine-chilling racket is not some demon in my dreams but something happening in reality. Now awake, I realize the noise emanating from some lower extremity of the house is Dad singing, and despite it being the middle of the night, he is going to entertain Mum, the cat, the walls of the house, and whomever and whatever is within earshot with his lousy singing.
This is not an unusual phenomenon. Dad often goes out to social and navy events with his naval buddies from the Royal Yacht Britannia, and it is a guarantee that they will all have a considerable amount to drink and a buoyant good time.
Dad starts singing a rousing rendition of “Scotland the Brave”:
“Land o’ the high endeavour
Land o’ the shining river
Land o’ my heart forever
Scotland the brave.”
I feel the off-key tones hit and reverberate around the walls of the small house. I bury my head under my pillow, under the bedcovers, trying to dampen the sound made worse by the loud Scots accent and the probability that Dad has lost his false teeth. Again. Poor Schickrys, he must be cowering somewhere under the bed. Poor neighbors, they have to be hearing this too. The neighbors are Irish. I am not sure they will appreciate being wakened in the middle of the night by “Scotland the Brave.” Fully awake now, I lie in my bed wondering how long this disturbance will continue.
Dad stops singing as he thumps his way up the stairs; perhaps his ability to do two things at once is impaired by an inebriated lack of coordination. He can do feet or mouth but not both. I then hear Dad playing peek-a-boo with Mum as he stumbles at the top of the stairs and into their bedroom. I hear, “Shush Ian. Get in tae bed, ye daft eejit!”
I hear some stumbling and thumps from my parents’ room, but eventually the house quiets down and returns to its nighttime tranquility.
“Schickrys, Schickrys,” I call out softly to the kitten, wanting him to leave his hiding place and cuddle with me on the bed. He obliges, and I feel a gentle movement on my bedspread as he lightly steps along my bed until he is next to my pillow. I feel him settle and give him a gentle hug before closing my eyes and drifting back to sleep thinking about my parents. They do make me laugh.
The next morning, I slowly lumber down the stairs, one arduous step at a time, not fully recovered from the previous night’s rude interruption of my sleep. I pull my dressing gown tighter around me and stop at the bottom step to get my bearings. Schickrys’s absence from my bed this morning, together with an odd clattering sound, has brought me downstairs. The noise is coming from the kitchen, a tap-tap, clatter-clatter-clatter sound. I slowly open the kitchen door and see the naughty puss playing with the upper set of my dad’s false teeth. He is chasing them between the chair legs under the kitchen table. The tap-tap of his little paws against the pink-and-white teeth, followed by an attacking dive onto the choppers, causes them in turn to careen across the tiled floor, creating a clatter as they hit the wooden table leg. I bend forward to pick up the teeth but change my mind. Schickrys is having such fun with them that I don’t have the heart to take them away. I look around but don’t see the bottom set of teeth. Oh well. That is Dad’s problem once he wakes up.
I get myself a drink of water and go into the living room, where I flop on the couch to give my body a chance to fully wake up. I relive last night’s entertainment, courtesy of Dad, and find myself laughing. My parents are funny people. Dad is the main instigator, and his jokes are often at Mum’s expense. “Do you know why they cannae find the Loch Ness Monster up in Scotland? Because it’s living in England married to me!”
I happily follow my dad’s lead. We are coconspirators in the plots to get a rise out of Mum with fake bugs, cat poop, and many other corny attempts to score points on her. But Mum is easy prey and invites the teasing with such gems as “Well, we are all out of bread, so we’ll have to have toast for supper.” I find myself shaking my head and smiling to myself. I can definitely say that my parents’ strictness is balanced with congeniality.
I jump off the couch and go upstairs to get dressed. There is a lot to do today. Tonight is an important event for Mum and Dad, and I want to help as much as I can. Because of Dad’s assignment on the yacht, he and Mum get invited to many special events every year hosted by members of the royal family. Dad likes his annual trips to Windsor Castle with the other yotties. Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh or Prince Charles generally host these events. Tonight, Mum and Dad are going to a ball at Buckingham Palace. Fancy my mum and dad getting invited by the Queen to a ball. Who would think, looking at Dad pottering around his garden in shabby overalls, or Mum sitting with her feet up having a cuppa in front of the telly watching her westerns, that they would be invited by royalty to balls and teas at palaces and castles? It sounds like something in a fairy tale and is definitely a long way outs
ide our simple, working-class lifestyle.
I help my mum get into the new dress bought especially for this occasion, and help her do her hair. I am extra helpful when she is getting ready, because I really want her and Dad to have a wonderful time at the ball. Dad is going to drive them up to the palace in London. They leave early so they have plenty of time to get there. Ordinarily, parking in London is very difficult to find. Dad says with a wink that the palace should have plenty of spaces available. I think he is being cheeky with me.
With Mum and Dad out for the night, I am left alone in the house to take care of myself. I have the television, and I have Schickrys, and Mum bought me some sweets as a treat while I watch the Saturday night comedy shows. Not a bad night. Still my mind wanders to what Mum and Dad might be doing: mingling with members of the royal family, drinking champagne, eating little fancy bites, all while the twinkling lights of the chandeliers dance around the ballroom leaving sparkling flashes on the gowns, tuxedos, and uniforms of the prestigious guests, and across the velvet curtains, gold sconces, and historic oil paintings decorating the walls. I wonder if my mum and dad are dancing to the orchestra, some elegant waltz perhaps. I smile. I bet they make a sweet couple among the elite.
The morning after the ball, I am eager to hear all about it, ready to sketch images in my mind of handsome princes and beautiful ladies in ball gowns and the Queen holding court. My mum and dad got back from London in the early hours of the morning, and are sleeping in late. I sit in the living room reading my book, with Schickrys resting on the couch next to me. I am impatient for them to get up and tell me about the ball at Buckingham Palace. Eventually I hear noises from upstairs. Dad is awake first. I hear him come downstairs and go into the kitchen, and then I hear the metallic plonk of the kettle being placed on the stove. Not long after, Mum comes down. With cups of tea in hand, Mum and Dad join me in the living room and tell me about the ball. I soon learn that the night before, my dad earned a unique distinction.
Mum tells the story. “We’re driving to London to attend the ball at Buckingham Palace when the fan belt in your father’s car broke. Again! It’s always breaking . . . remember that time in Scotland?”
“Mum! Forget about Scotland. Tell me about last night!”
“Well, we didn’t think we would make it to the palace.”
Oh no! I think to myself.
“We knocked on the door of a nearby house and ask to use the phone to call a garage, explaining the circumstances, and the homeowners kindly let us use their phone. The RAC came and brought us a new fan belt. We had a long wait.”
“Mum!”
“Well, as Dad was fixing the fan belt, he got oil on his hands and the cuffs of his white uniform shirt. Later that evening at Buckingham Palace, after the Queen had been introduced to her guests, Her Majesty selected someone to have the first dance. As fate would have it, she chose your father. Can you imagine? Out of all the people she could have chosen, she chose him! When the equerry came over to Dad to say that he had been chosen to dance with the Queen, Dad had to say no and explain that he could not dance with the Queen with oil on his hands and cuffs. The honor went to someone else.”
Dad adds his personal touch to the story. “I couldn’t possibly hold the Queen’s white-gloved hand with oil ground into the lines of my hands. Heaven forbid if I got oil on the white royal gloves, and I would have been ashamed for Her Majesty to see the dark stains on my shirt cuffs and for her to think that I don’t maintain my uniform properly.” Dad shakes his head. “I must be the only man who has ever refused to dance with the Queen of England.”
Mum and Dad laugh at the story, but above my father’s smile I can see the disappointment in his eyes. Despite his strictness and harsh rules, and his tendency to give me the belt when I am bad, he is human after all, prone to the same emotions of hurt, disappointment, and sadness we all feel. I empathize with my dad. My heart mirrors his sadness. I know what it is like to want something so much, only to be disappointed when it doesn’t happen. Sometimes laughing about it is good. But sometimes laughing is just a simplistic coping mechanism used to deal with innate sadness. Poor Dad. I wish he could have danced with the Queen.
I remain sitting on the couch in my own world of contemplation, trying to conjure up the picture of Mum and Dad at the ball and Dad declining to dance with the Queen. Schickrys lies beside me, purring as I absently stroke the fur along his back. I find my gaze drawn across the room to a display cabinet and a photograph of the Queen Mum holding Schickrys in a little basket, taken the day she was presented with the kitten. I wonder if the Queen Mum ever thinks of him or wonders how he is doing. I conclude, probably not. She is too busy with her own amazing life.
Next to the photograph is a keepsake china plate with the image of Her Majesty, looking gracious with her crown and jewels. My gaze moves left toward the painting of the Royal Yacht on the wall above the fireplace. The royals had infused a touch of extraordinary into our lives. I think of how exceptional it is to have parents who get invited to Buckingham Palace, and to be sitting here petting a royal cat. I wonder if my future will be extraordinary, if I will ever have exciting tales to tell. Probably not, I tell myself. Probably not.
CHAPTER
SIX
As everyone expects, I pass the national eleven plus exam. I now attend the all-girls grammar school just over the other side of Fratton Bridge. It is the Portsmouth Southern Grammar School for Girls or “PSGSG” as it is known. My education now takes a more serious turn. During the next few years I must decide what subjects to focus my studies on, and what career path I want to take. I am considering becoming a vet because I love animals, so I know I must do well in my science classes—biology, chemistry, and physics. I also want to travel, so my French classes are important. In the background my dance training still hovers as an alternative career path. I secretly want to go to Bush Davies, a theater arts school. I want to dance and sing, and act. I don’t mention it to anyone because I am not sure I am good enough. I don’t want to be laughed at, or to disappoint myself. As I said, it is an alternative option.
I am at the grammar school. It is early afternoon, and I am sitting in school assembly on a bench, up on the balcony with my classmates and teacher. It is the end of the term when awards are presented. As a lower fourth, I am now eligible for a particular award, and I wait nervously wondering if my name will be called. I haven’t said anything to my friends, thinking they will tease me if I say I am hoping for this award. They might even call me a “creep,” the name reserved for teacher’s pets, and others who try and worm their way into people’s good graces. My time at the grammar school has been uneventful. I am quiet in class. I don’t speak up. I don’t stand out. I admit I am shy. Perhaps it would be best if I don’t get any attention after all. Perhaps I won’t win the award.
I look at Mrs. Dudgeon, the headmistress, standing on the stage at the front of the hall. She is standing in her black robe at the lectern, reading from pages of notes she has in front of her. There are hundreds of girls sitting on the lower floor of the hall. They are sitting cross-legged, in rows according to year, from third years up to the sixth formers. Their teachers are sitting on chairs around the perimeter of the hall. From my vantage point on the balcony, I look down and I can see them all.
Mrs. Dudgeon announces that she will now name the girls who have won Deportment Belts. As the lower fourths are the youngest and lowest-ranking students eligible, I know that if my name is not mentioned within the first one or two on the list, I will not get the award.
“From the lower fourth, Laraine Denny.”
What? Mrs. Dudgeon has read my name! Before I can react, there is a burst of movement and applause from around me on the balcony as my classmates cheer and clap. I feel pats on the back. Oh my goodness! I need to get downstairs to the stage. I am on automatic pilot. I have imagined this moment many times. I have rehearsed it in my mind. I know just what to do, where to go. Getting up from the bench, I rush out of the door behind
me, down the stairwell, and reenter the lower floor of the hallway through a back door. I have to walk the entire length of the hall, past the hundreds of girls and teachers with every pair of eyes on me, and me knowing I am blushing bright red at the attention. I walk to the steps at the front of the stage, climb up them to the stage, and approach the headmistress. I shyly receive my deportment belt to the continuing clapping of the entire school and the cheers from my classmates. I thank the headmistress and shake her hand. I make my way back up to my seat on the balcony.
A deportment belt is a special blue cotton-weaved belt to wear around my waist with ribbons dropping down the left side of my uniform skirt to show I am neat and tidy, carry myself well, and am a good example of ideal behavior for the other girls. I was hoping for the honor because as a dancer I have good deportment, I carry myself well, I walk and sit with a straight back, I am attentive to my schoolwork, and I am well mannered. I am the first girl in my year to be awarded such a belt, and when I get back to my classroom, my classmates cheer for me. I am delighted to have accomplished something, put my name on the record for some achievement.
I proudly take the belt home and show it to my mother, who is in a bad mood. I stand in the kitchen listening to the cruel words.
“Och, yer a clatty bitch. Yer rooms never tidy. Yer a mess. Yer no a guid example of anything. Only an eejit would give ye that belt.”
She promptly tells me that I won’t have it long, and that the school will probably take it away from me once they realize I don’t deserve it. Mum says she doesn’t understand why anyone would give it to me.
I am horrified by my mother’s unfathomable meanness. What is wrong with her? My mother’s words tear my self-esteem to the quick and contribute to the gulf developing between us. I go up to my room, where I sit on my bed and inspect the deportment belt. I feel its weave with my fingers. The light blue color will stand out against the navy blue of my school uniform skirt. I am pleased with myself. I am angry with my mum.
Our Grand Finale Page 6