Becky Bananas

by Jean Ure

  “She can’t manage on her own.” That’s what he said. So he went back off to Yorkshire and I don’t know when was the last time that Zoë saw him. I feel really sorry for her. That’s why I let her share Uncle Eddy. I wouldn’t let just anyone. Mostly I would like to keep him all to myself.

  If Uncle Eddy got married and had children I would probably be jealous of them. That is another reason I don’t want him to do it. And maybe he won’t because me and Sarah have discussed it and we think that perhaps he is gay. Elinor Hodges, at school, says we didn’t ought to talk about things like that. Not at our age. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t, there’s nothing wrong with it. Being gay, I mean. Mum has lots of friends who are.

  I expect she’d tell me if I asked her, she’s always told me everything, like about babies and everything, long before we did it at school, but I’m scared to ask in case she laughs and says “No! What on earth made you think that?” She might tell me that Uncle Eddy has a million beautiful girlfriends, scattered all over the globe, and then my dream would be shattered.

  My dream is that when I grow up he will ask me if I would like to go and live with him in a flat overlooking Hyde Park. Of course I know it is not very likely to happen, but that is my secret dream.

  What Uncle Eddy does is, he makes me feel brave. I think I am quite wimpish, actually. Not like Zoë. She is brave. I can’t imagine Zoë ever being scared of anything.

  Or Sarah, although Sarah as far as I know does not have anything to be scared of. She is lucky. Some people just are.

  It is when I am on my own sometimes that I get frightened. I have these thoughts, and they scare me. But when Uncle Eddy is here, I feel like – like I could do anything! Like there is absolutely no reason to be frightened. Because while he is here you just know that nothing bad could ever happen. He is that sort of person.

  They are my golden days, when Uncle Eddy is here. He comes whenever he can but quite often he is away on location. Being a TV cameraman means that he has to go all over the world, like at the moment he is in Africa.

  I wish he was here! But I know that he can’t be. When you are away filming you cannot simply drop everything and come running back home. It is not like an ordinary job where you can just say to your secretary, “Tell them that I am out of the office” or “I will deal with it later”. If Uncle Eddy is not there, then there is nobody to work the camera and the programme cannot be made.

  It is no good wishing that I could have golden days all the time. I am lucky to have any at all. I know this.

  I probably shouldn’t have thought of Uncle Eddy. It is silly thinking of things that upset you.

  I will think of some more favourites.

  No, I won’t! I will think about when I was little.

  5. Bow Bells

  You were born in London, within the sound

  of Bow bells.

  I am a true Cockney! Like Gran. The only way you can call yourself a Cockney is if you are born within the sound of the Bow bells.

  Mum always tells people that she is one, but she isn’t because she wasn’t born there. She was born in Manchester, when Gran and Granddad were on tour. And Uncle Eddy was born on the Isle of Wight. I am the only one – apart from Gran – who is a real, true, actual Cockney!

  I said this to Mum once and she laughed and told me not to be so pedantic. When I asked her what pedantic meant she said, “Boringly sticking to the absolute truth.” Well! I thought that was what you were supposed to do. But Mum insists that “For all intents and purposes I am a Cockney”, and that is what she tells people when they come to interview her for magazines, etc.

  Uncle Eddy is more Cockney than Mum because he didn’t go to drama school and get rid of his accent. He still talks what Mum calls “gorblimey”. She is always mimicking him, and pulling his leg, but Uncle Eddy doesn’t mind. I wish I could talk Cockney like he does! I probably would have done if Mum had let me, but she always used to keep on about how I had to speak properly.

  I don’t see that speaking like Mum does, is any more proper than the way Uncle Eddy speaks. Uncle Eddy thinks it’s a joke.

  “Gotta talk nice,” he says; and then he winks at me behind Mum’s back.

  Uncle Eddy calls me his little Cockney sparrow (only the way he says it, it sounds more like “me liddle Cockney sparrer”) and he’s taught me all this rhyming slang. Sarah and me sometimes use it when we want to mystify people. Like Sarah might say, “I’ll be on the dog, Saturday morning,” and I’ll know she’s going to ring me. Or I might tell her that Mum’s meeting me after school to go and buy me some Daisy Roots, and everyone will look at me as if I’ve gone mad, but Sarah will nod and say, “Doc Marten’s?”

  Oh, and one time when Mrs Rowe was collecting money for something, Sarah couldn’t find her purse and she cried, “Some rotten tea leaf has gone and nicked it! All my bread has gone!”

  It was really funny because Mrs Rowe didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about. She doesn’t understand any Cockney slang.

  Once when we walked into the classroom there was this simply terrific stink coming from outside, and Sarah said, “Cor, wot a pen!” and Mrs Rowe said, “Please don’t use expressions like that, Sarah. It’s not very becoming.” And Sarah said, “But there is a pen! It’s horrible!” and Mrs Rowe looked all round and said, “Indeed? Point it out to me. I observe no pens of any description.”

  She thought Sarah was talking about fountain pens!

  This is some of the Cockney slang that Uncle Eddy has taught me:

  When I was little and Gran used to talk about having a nice cup of Rosie, I never knew why she called it that. Like with titfer. She would say, “Nasty cold wind out there. Not going out without me titfer.” So I always knew that Rosie was tea and titfer was hat, but it wasn’t until Uncle Eddy explained that it was rhyming slang that I really understood.

  There is another one he told me which is a naughty one. When Uncle Eddy needs to go to the toilet he says, “I gotta have a gypsy’s.” That is short for “gypsy’s fiddle” and it means … piddle! I would love to say that to Mrs Rowe!!!

  I wish I were bold enough. I don’t have any bottle at all. But Sarah does! I think I shall suggest it to her. If I dared her, she would do it.

  Bottle is also Cockney slang. It is short for bottle and glass. I don’t know what it is supposed to rhyme with but when Uncle Eddy says that someone has no bottle he doesn’t mean what I used to think he meant when I was small.

  He means that they’re not very brave. Like me. I hate myself sometimes for being so bottle-less. Like when I have to have injections and I cry. That is an example of not having any bottle.

  Uncle Eddy says that he is scared of injections. He quite often has to have them when he goes abroad. He says, “They frighten the living daylights out of me!” But I think he is only saying it to be kind. I am such a crybaby!

  I haven’t always been. I remember Gran had to take me to the hospital once because I fell off my bike and cut my hand and had to have stitches, and all the time they were stitching me I just, like, ground my teeth and never made a sound. Gran was ever so proud of me! She said I was brave as ninepence (ninepence is to do with olden-times money) and that I deserved to have a special treat and “something nice for tea” so she bought this beautiful pink cake with pink icing and we ate it in the kitchen with Violet and Bobby.

  I’ll always remember Gran’s cake with pink icing. Cakes with pink icing mean you have bottle. I wouldn’t have any cakes with pink icing now. And I don’t think Gran would call me brave as ninepence. Gran would be ashamed of me.

  Gran had a really hard life. I know this because Mum told me so. But Gran faced up to things. She wouldn’t have cried just because people kept sticking needles in her. And I bet Uncle Eddy doesn’t, either. He’s not really frightened of injections. Uncle Eddy isn’t frightened of anything! He just says it to make me feel better. And to try and make me be brave.

  But I can’t be brave! I’ve tried and tried a
nd I can’t. I hate it! My body is getting to be like a pincushion, all sore and covered in holes. If they keep on like this, my blood will start leaking!

  I don’t want to think about things like that.

  I’m not going to think about things like that! I’m only going to think about things that make me happy.

  6. My Gran

  For the first few years of your life you lived in

  Samuel Street, in Bethnal Green.

  We lived with my Gran and Uncle Eddy in Gran’s house where Mum and Uncle Eddy were brought up. The house was very little and old. It was squashed in the middle of a row of other little, old houses, all the same.

  Downstairs there was a front room and a back room and a kitchen. Mum used to complain that it was dark and poky. Some people in the street had knocked down the wall between the front room and the back room to make one large room. Mum wanted Gran to do it in her house, but Gran wouldn’t. She said, “Lose all me privacy that way.”

  She had a piano in the front room which she called “a Joanna”. I don’t know why she called it that. Maybe Joanna is also Cockney slang. If you called a piano a pianner then it would rhyme, so maybe that is it.

  Gran said that the Joanna was mine and I could play on it, but I wasn’t ever very good.

  Later I went to Mrs Dearborn and did it properly, scales and things, but Mrs Dearborn said that although I was musical I would never make a pianist. But that was all right because I didn’t want to be a pianist, I wanted to be a dancer. Ever since I was tiny I have wanted to be a dancer. Being twelve is my immediate goal, but being a dancer is my Big Ambition.

  Sometimes people expect me to want to be an actress, because of Mum, but I don’t think I would like that. For one thing I wouldn’t like having to learn lines. Learning steps is different: you learn with your feet. When I have done a step once, I can remember it. With lines you have to go over and over them. Mum is always grumbling about it.

  And then for another thing there is resting, which means being out of work sometimes for months or even years. I think with dancing that wouldn’t happen so much because if you were in a dance company you would be dancing all the time.

  Of course I realise you might not be lucky enough to get into a dance company and then you would have to do something ordinary, like working in a shop or being a waitress, but that is what Mum would call “thinking negatively”. Thinking negatively is a bad thing to do. So I am not going to do it. I am only going to think positive things, such as going to Wonderland.

  Remembering is a positive thing. Mum couldn’t say that was negative. She is always taking out the photograph albums and all her press cuttings. That is what I am doing, except that I am doing it in my mind. I am remembering Gran’s house.

  Upstairs there were three bedrooms and a teeny tiny bathroom without any toilet. The toilet was downstairs in the yard. It was spooky going out there at night so when I was little I used to have something that Gran called a jerry, but which most people call a potty.

  I asked Gran once why she called it a jerry and she said because that was what her gran had called it, but then she stopped to think and she said it was probably because in the First World War people had referred to the Germans as “Jerries” and the German helmets had looked a bit like potties.

  So now that is what I always call them. If I ever have a baby I will not put her on the potty, I will put her on the jerry. I think that potty is a silly and childish word. All it means is a little pot. It is baby talk!

  Another word Gran used to use for it was “po”, which I thought was rude until Mum explained that it was simply the French word for pot. The French pronounce pot as po! But I still think that po sounds vulgar.

  It is strange how many different expressions there are for such a small and insignificant object.

  Like all those words for lavatory. There is Ladies & Gents, with the little signs.

  There is WC (which stands for water closet).

  There is bog (which Uncle Eddy sometimes says).

  There is karzy (which he also sometimes says and which I don’t know how to spell).

  There is loo, though this is really just the French word for water. L’eau. Loo is how it got to be said in this country. In Edinburgh, in the olden days, when people used to empty their chamber pots out of their bedroom windows, they used to shout “Gardy loo!” to warn the passers-by.

  They really meant “Gardez l’eau”. Watch out for the water! Mademoiselle LeClerq told us this at school.

  Gran’s toilet got a bit pongy sometimes, because of the damp and being outside. Also, it used to have spiders in there.

  All the rooms in Gran’s house were absolutely tiny, even the big back bedroom where Mum and me slept. Uncle Eddy used to sleep at the front and Gran had the littlest one of all. Gran’s bedroom was like a cupboard but Gran said that she was old and didn’t need much space.

  “Not like a growing lad.”

  That was Uncle Eddy! It is odd to think that when I was born he was only –

  I am not very good at sums. Mum is thirty-three. And I am eleven. That means that when I was born Mum was twenty-two. And Uncle Eddy is seven years younger than Mum, so he was …

  Fifteen! I can hardly believe it. That is the same age as Sarah’s brother.

  I loved it at Gran’s. Outside in the yard she had a row of giant toadstools that Granddad had made for her. I think they were made from cement. Or stone, or something. They were painted bright red with big white spots and I used to spend hours trying to jump from one to another without falling off.

  Kitty used to jump with me.

  At night when I went to bed she would come and sleep with me, all curled up on the pillow, right next to my head.

  When the trains went past you could see the lights from the carriages flickering on the wall. I asked Mum where the trains were going and she said they were going to Stratford and Bow. I thought it sounded incredibly romantic. I was only very little, then. I didn’t realise that Stratford and Bow were just up the road.

  There was a sweet shop on the corner of Samuel Street. It was owned by a lady called Mrs Platt who had a big bosom. Once I went in there with Stacy Kitchin who lived next door and we stole things. I stole a bar of chocolate and Stacey stole a packet of crisps. We did it while Mrs Platt was serving someone. She never knew.

  I don’t think she did. She never said anything about it. But quite soon after that she put up this notice saying, “Only two school children in the shop at any one time”, so maybe she did after all.

  I feel really bad about it now.

  Mrs Platt is someone else it would be nice if I could say sorry to.

  I don’t know why we stole things. I suppose we thought it would be exciting. It must have been Stacey’s idea; she was always the one that had the ideas. I just followed. Mum never liked me playing with Stacey. She said she was a bad influence. She never liked having to live with Gran, either. She loved Gran, but she didn’t like having to live with her.

  It was because we didn’t have enough money to buy a home of our own. Mum didn’t work very much in those days. Not on television. Sometimes in the theatre, and sometimes she had to go away on tour and then she used to leave me with Gran. I didn’t mind. I loved being with Gran! Mum said she spoilt me, but she didn’t. She was quite strict. For example, she wouldn’t ever let me use bad language or stay out late.

  We used to play in the street, me and Stacey and some other kids that lived on the block. Once when Gran came to call me in I ran off and hid and she got really mad. She stood on the front doorstep and yelled, “Becky Banaras! You come here this instant or I’ll tan your hide!”

  I think to tan your hide means to wallop someone, but Gran never did that. She just used to slap my legs and tell me I was a “little bleeder”.

  When I am on This is Your Life it will be too late for Gran. But I will think about her! She said to me before she died, “When you have loved someone, they are with you always.” And I do believe this to be
true because sometimes I can feel Gran with me even now.

  I hear her saying things to me, such as, “You just pull your finger out, my girl!” if I’m being lazy, for example. Or if I wake up in the night feeling a bit wimpish and scared she’ll whisper, “Don’t you worry, my lovey! You hang on in there. It’ll all come right in the end.” And that makes me feel stronger and gives me some bottle.

  It is strange to reflect that if I had had a dad the same as other people, I might never have gone to live with Gran. I loved my Gran so much! I wish she hadn’t died. I know that everybody has to, sooner or later, but when it happens it is so sad to know that you can never see the person again. Not until you die yourself, and then you will meet in the afterlife and it will be as if no time at all has passed, as if it was just yesterday.

  This at least is what I believe.

  7. Reflections

  Your parents got married when they were students,

  but you never met your dad.

  I’ve never even met him. My own dad! He and Mum stopped being in love with each other before I was born. I think that is so sad, when people stop being in love with each other. Gran used to say, “I warned them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

  The problem was that they got married when they were too young. That is what Gran used to say. They were students together at drama school and they were only nineteen. But Mum says she doesn’t regret a moment of it. She says that it was wonderful while it lasted. She says that young love is the most passionate and the most romantic kind that there is. I wonder if I shall ever experience it???