by Jean Ure
I don’t think Mum is immoral. I think that is a horrid thing to say. I think it is just that she is not very good at being married.
Elinor Hodges says lots of things are immoral. Music. Videos. Dancing. Kissing your boyfriend (if you have one). Sarah is right and I shouldn’t take any notice of her.
I am not going to think about people like Elinor Hodges. I am trying to remember about the past.
And, of course, plan for the future!
9. My Cat Kitty
When your mum got married again, you left
Bethnal Green and moved to a different part
of London.
When Mum got married to Alan, we came to live in Kensington. “Out West,” Uncle Eddy calls it. It is nice out West and Alan was a nice dad (just for a short time). The house that we live in is a nice house. The garden is a nice garden. Everything is nice.
The house is very tall and thin, with attics that are real rooms that you can sleep in and a basement where there is a kitchen.
It has a garden with a wall round it, with spoke things stuck in the top so that the cats can’t get out into the road and be run over.
There isn’t any grass because it is not that sort of garden. Instead there are paving stones and lots of little trees, and plants growing in tubs.
I asked Mum if we could have Gran’s toadstools when Gran died but Mum said there wasn’t room for them. What she really meant was that she didn’t like them. She never liked Gran’s toadstools. She said they were as bad as garden gnomes.
I don’t know what the matter is with garden gnomes! I think they are fun. I would like to have a pond with fish in it and gnomes sitting all around, smoking their little pipes and sitting in garden chairs underneath the toadstools. When I suggested this to Mum, she shuddered. She said, “Darling, don’t be so vulgar!”
What is vulgar about it, I would like to know?
Mum says that Uncle Eddy is vulgar when he talks about needing a gypsy’s or going to the bog. But Uncle Eddy just grins and makes a gesture with two of his fingers which is really vulgar. I know this for a fact because Sarah once did it to Elinor Hodges and Mrs Rowe saw her and nearly had a fit. I don’t think Sarah realised that it is as terribly rude as it is.
It is funny how many things are rude that you don’t know are rude until someone tells you off about them. Like once when I was little I saw this word written on a wall and I said it to Mum and she flew into the most furious rage and said that if ever she heard me say it again she would box my ears. She said that that was what came of having to live in Bethnal Green and let me mix with people like Stacey Kitchin.
That was ever so unfair. It wasn’t Stacey’s fault. She couldn’t have said the word because she didn’t even know how to read properly. She was still on her first reader when I was into real books. I wonder what has happened to Stacey?
She could be one of my guests!
I think nowadays that we have quite a lot of money. Mum has been in Ask Auntie for six years!!! It is shown in loads of other countries, including America, and when it is shown in other countries Mum gets a cheque. A big cheque if it’s for America. When she gets a big cheque we go out and celebrate.
Last time she had one she took us to tea in a specially posh hotel in Piccadilly and I ate squishy cakes and buns with pink icing. Danny made a mess of everything as usual, dropping crumbs all over the floor. He is really too young to go to posh hotels. He doesn’t know how to behave.
Mum said if he didn’t learn better manners he wouldn’t be able to come again.
It is nice having lots of money as it means we can buy clothes and go on holidays, which we never could before. It also means that I can have my own bedroom and can go to ballet classes with Miss Runcie. I adore Miss Runcie! When I am famous and on This is Your Life I will tell everyone that it is because of her.
And also of course because of Violet.
We are very lucky to have so much money as it is much better than worrying all the time how the bills are to be paid. It is terrible, I think, to see people begging in the street because they have nowhere to live, especially if there is a child or a dog with them. I get upset when there is a child or a dog, thinking of them being cold and hungry. So I am very grateful that Mum is a success and I can go to Oakfield and learn ballet with Miss Runcie. I am definitely not complaining, but I still can’t help remembering how it was when we lived with Gran.
I wish that Gran was here! I wish I could see her again, just once. I would far rather have Gran than new clothes and holidays. If I had a choice, that is. I would have my gran every time!
And Kitty.
I would have Kitty, as well. Bella and Bimbo are beautiful, but they are too superior to be cuddled. And they are Mum’s cats. Kitty was mine. Well, she was Gran’s really, but Gran always said she loved me best. I wanted to take her with us when we moved but Mum said it wouldn’t be fair. She said that Kitty had lived with Gran all her life and she was too old to start again somewhere else.
She said, “She’s seventeen, darling. It’s a great age for a cat. She wouldn’t be happy, in a new place.”
I thought Mum was just making excuses. I thought she didn’t want her because she had lost all her teeth and because she dribbled and sometimes bits of her fur came out. But Mum was right. When Gran died, Kitty missed her terribly. She came to live with us and she slept on my bed, but she pined. She wanted so much to be with Gran!
I hope Gran is right and that when you die you meet all the people who have gone before you. I would like to think of Kitty being with Gran again.
I cried oceans when Kitty died. Even more than when Gran did. I think it was because with Gran I knew that she wanted to go and be with Granddad, and so I knew that she was happy. But with Kitty, I couldn’t be sure. Do animals meet up with their people or is it just for human beings? Heaven, I mean. If it’s just for human beings, then where do the animals go?
I kept thinking of poor Kitty all on her own, without either me or Gran. I kept thinking how lost and lonely she would be, and I couldn’t sleep for crying.
Mum got really worried. She said, “I knew we should have left her at the vet’s instead of bringing her back home.”
It was me that begged for Kitty to be brought home. I wanted her still to be with us. So Uncle Eddy came round and he took up one of the paving stones in the back garden and dug a hole and we made a proper little grave for her. Mum wrapped her in her favourite pink blanket and I kissed her goodbye and Uncle Eddy wrote “Kitty, a much loved cat. Aged 18 years 7 months” on the paving stone and painted some pawprints.
And then I cried and cried and couldn’t stop, and that was when Mum went out and bought Bella and Bimbo, in the hope that they would comfort me.
I suppose they did, in a way. Kittens are very amusing and delightful, so that you cannot ignore them. Bimbo used to climb up the curtains, and Bella ate Mum’s house plants. It was really funny! You would pass her on the stairs carrying bits of plant in her mouth.
One year she climbed into the Christmas tree and tried to sit at the top of it as if she was a Christmas cat.
Mum was cross, because she fell off and ruined all the decorations. She said, “That cat! I’ll have its guts for garters!”
But she didn’t mean it. Mum loves her cats. I love them, too, but I still think about Kitty.
10. New School!
After you left Bethnal Green, you started at
a new school.
It felt quite peculiar when I first went to Oakfield. Where I went in Bethnal Green, with Stacey Kitchin, there were boys. At Oakfield there are only girls. Mum said she thought this was a good thing. She said, “Boys would only distract you.”
Uncle Eddy winks and says, “What she means is, boys distracted her!”
Mum had heaps of boyfriends when she was young. She was always having battles with Gran because Gran thought some of her boyfriends were unsuitable and because Mum used to defy her by staying out later than she should have done.
> I wonder if I will ever have a boyfriend? Uncle Eddy says, “You bet you will! Dozens of ’em!” But sometimes I am not sure.
Sarah has one. Sort of. He is a friend of her brother Barney. He is fourteen and very handsome, or so Sarah says. I have never seen him. She has only met him twice, once at her brother’s party and once when she went to their school’s sports day with her mum. But at least it is a start.
I have never even met a boy. Not properly. Sarah says if I didn’t spend so much time at ballet classes I could get out and about and do other things and that way, perhaps, I would extend my social life, but all I want is to become a dancer!
It is quite posh at Oakfield Manor. Lots of the people there have parents who are seriously rich. Mum and Uncle Eddy sometimes have arguments about it. Uncle Eddy says Mum is a class traitor and should be ashamed of herself. For sending me to a posh school, he means. He says it sort of jokingly, but at the same time I think he is a little bit serious.
Mum always retorts that she doesn’t want a daughter of hers going to a dump like she had to go to, and then Uncle Eddy says that she hasn’t done so badly for someone who went to a dump, and Mum says, “No, but I’ve had to fight every inch of the way. I want to give my kids all the advantages that I never had.” She says that if Uncle Eddy had kids, he would feel the same.
I don’t know whether he would. He is very fierce about that sort of thing. Politics, and that.
On the other hand, when he came to see me and Zoë one time, and afterwards I was telling him about Zoë’s mum being really poor and how it didn’t seem fair that some people had simply loads of money while others had none, he told me not to worry myself too much about it because it was “just the way of the world”.
I said that I didn’t worry all the time, only just now and again when I was with someone like Zoë and it made me think about things, and he said, “Don’t think too much. Just concentrate on being happy.” I said, “But you think.” And then I asked him whether he really believed that it was wrong for me to go to Oakfield and be privileged, which is what he once told Mum that I was, and he looked sort of … stricken. I think that’s the word. And he put both his arms round me and hugged me really hard and said, “Little Becky, you grab all the privileges you can.”
So maybe it’s all right. Even if it isn’t, there is nothing I can do about it. You have to go to the schools that you are told to go to. And I would hate to leave Oakfield now!
This is partly because I am used to it and partly because of Sarah. We have been best friends almost since that first moment in the playground when she called me Becky Bananas. That is a long time! Other people quarrel and stop being friends, but Sarah and I don’t like quarrelling. Sarah’s mum and dad do it all night long, from the minute her dad gets in to the minute they fall asleep. Sometimes they do it right round till morning. Sarah has heard them. She finds it quite upsetting and that is why she never does it herself. She just laughs if people try to quarrel with her.
I don’t quarrel, because of not having any bottle. If I’d got bottle I’d have said something to Elinor Hodges for calling my mum immoral. That is a hateful thing to say about someone’s mum. I bet Sarah would have said something. She wouldn’t have quarrelled, but she would have said something. I wish that I had!
I like going to Oakfield. I even like wearing the uniform, which some people think is naff.
It is bright red, and I think that is far more interesting than brown or navy, which is what most schools have. I like the little waistcoats, as well; I think they are cute. I even like the Latin motto on our blazer pockets.
It means, through hard work to the stars. The stars are what I am aiming for! But it is true that you have to work hard to reach them.
Doing ballet is very hard work. I can’t wait to get back to it! Every day that I’m not taking class is a day lost from my life. Miss Runcie says, “Don’t worry, you’re still young and flexible. You’ll catch up.” But soon I will be twelve, and twelve is not young! Not for ballet.
I can’t afford to waste any more time. I must go back to class immediately.
It is no use thinking about ballet just at the moment. I am thinking about Oakfield now. I am thinking about what a good school it is and how lucky I am to go there. That is what I am thinking about.
We do lots of interesting things at Oakfield. School plays, for instance. And carol concerts, where we raise money for charity. We all get to vote which charity we’re going to do it for. Sometimes it’s children, sometimes it’s animals, sometimes it’s for people that are starving. There was a picture in the school magazine last Christmas of Elinor Hodges presenting the cheque. She only got chosen because she had less order marks than anyone else. In fact she didn’t have any at all, which is because she never does anything wrong. Sarah says it’s sickening, but I suppose she can’t help it. It’s just the way she is.
Sarah gets order marks for being cheeky and answering back. (A bit like Mum!) I get order marks for being what Sarah calls “daffy”. By this she means that I sometimes daydream instead of paying attention so that when I am asked questions I haven’t any idea what the teacher has been asking me, and as a result I give these really silly dumb replies. And then I get given order marks!
What I daydream about, mostly, is being on stage with Darcey. She might be dancing Princess Aurora, for example, and I will be dancing the Lilac Fairy.
Or she will be Swanhilda and I will be one of her Friends.
Or maybe we will be in Sylphides together.
Those are the sort of things I dream about.
Per ardua ad astra! Nothing that is worth getting is got easily. That is what Uncle Eddy says.
11. I Meet a Famous Author
(and Write a Book)
Something quite exciting happened to you in Oakfield.
Yes! We had a Book Week and I met this
famous author.
Last year, it was. We had this Book Week. A person came from a publisher’s to tell us all about how books were made and an author came to tell us how she writes her stories, and at the end of the week we all dressed up as Characters from Literature and did a quiz. I got two prizes! One was for dressing up as Pocahontas (I would really like to have dressed up as Posy, from Ballet Shoes, but I didn’t think anyone would recognise me) and the other was for coming second in the quiz. I was given two book tokens and I spent them on a book about Darcey!!!
When I got the prize for being Pocahontas I heard Greta Lundquist whisper to Susie Smith, “You know why they gave it to her?” and I saw Susie nod. They weren’t being nasty, or anything. I mean, they didn’t know that I could hear. But I wondered if that was what everyone else was thinking and if I really had only been given the prize because of people feeling sorry for me.
I don’t want people to feel sorry for me! It is horrid when you think that they are looking at you and thinking things.
I would like to ask Sarah if she thinks things, but I am too much of a coward. Zoë is the only person I can talk to about it. She is the only one who understands. And Zoë agrees with me. We do not want people to feel sorry for us.
Except ourselves, because sometimes you can’t help it, though I try hard not to. I think that self-pity is a negative emotion. It doesn’t lead to anything positive but just to tears, which makes you feel worse.
The author who came to our Book Week was a lady called Jane Rue. There are some of her books in the library but I had never read any before she came. Then we did one in class and it was quite funny so that I was looking forward to the visit, though some people groaned and said that it would be a dead bore.
Susie said, “An author. Yuck!” and screwed up her nose.
Someone else said, “I’d rather do maths!” Other people got fussed in case she wanted us to write things, but Mrs Rowe said all she was going to do was talk to us and tell us about her books, and then we would be expected to ask questions. So Elinor Hodges immediately went away and prepared a huge long list that would have taken a
bout ten days if she’d asked all of them.
Before Jane Rue came, we speculated what she would look like. Sarah said she would be old, because authors were always old. Andrea Francis thought she would be rich and arrive in a Rolls-Royce. I didn’t know what to expect, never having seen an author before, but I thought she would probably be very smart with high heels and a handbag and maybe wearing a fur coat, though hopefully not a real one.
I was so amazed when she came walking into the hall behind Mrs Rowe and Mrs Rowe introduced her! I couldn’t believe that she was an author! She just looked completely ordinary, like a person that you might meet anywhere. She was older than Mum but not old, like Gran was old. She didn’t have grey hair. And she wasn’t dressed in the least bit smartly, just in jeans and a sweater, without a fur of any kind. She didn’t have a handbag, either – or high heels! All she had was a huge big shoulder bag containing lots of books.
She dumped all the books on a table, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Susie pulling faces. Susie doesn’t go for books. She reckons they’re dinosaur material. But I quite like reading, and so I was interested. Had this author really written so many?
She had! She had written dozens. I couldn’t imagine where she would get all her ideas from, but she said that that was what she was going to tell us.
She said that she started writing when she was little because she was very shy and couldn’t make any friends. So that was why she started writing. She made up her own friends and put them into books.