by Im Griffin
The situation came to a head in our fourth lesson, at the end of September. There had been some kind of incident involving Miranda in each of the previous lessons, and this time she had brought in a letter from her mother, which explained that Miranda was finding needlework difficult, and asked if Mrs Trotter could be more sympathetic towards her.
At registration that morning Miranda and I discussed the pros and cons of presenting Mrs Trotter with the letter. Miranda’s mother had written it with the calm assurance that she could communicate with Mrs Trotter as one sane adult speaking to another. She assumed that Mrs Trotter would respect her wishes as a parent and endeavour to rectify the situation. I sided with this, placing my faith in the rationality of the adult world, but Miranda was less sure. She pointed out that Mrs Trotter was not a sane adult, and that the consequences could be terrible if the letter was taken in the wrong way. Honey Sanka joined in, citing an incident over some substandard thread the week before as an example of Mrs Trotter’s instability (“Where did you get this thread from, Honey? I don’t care if your mother thinks it’s as good as Gutermann, when I say Gutermann I MEAN Gutermann!”), and we departed for the lesson with the issue undecided.
For the first hour or so things seemed to go quite well. I was marooned on a table next to the window with the dodgy machine which everyone avoided because the foot kept falling off, but I knew from previous occasions that it was unwise to continuously request Mrs Trotter’s assistance. Instead I kept my head down in a semblance of diligence and reconciled myself to a session on our Singer at the weekend. Miranda was over on the other side of the room, and from the rhythmic clattering of her machine and her earnest expression it looked as if progress was being made. What was more, it appeared as if Mrs Trotter would not have time to make her routine inspection round the class. The star pupils on the flashy machines were already doing things with bias binding, and she was busy holding forth to them on the merits of a blue or white trim.
The peace was shattered by Honey, who while fumbling with a knot in her cheap thread had accidentally managed to let the foot on her machine slam down, a noise which unfailingly drove Mrs Trotter crazy. She dropped the bias binding she was fondling and strode across the room in search of the rogue foot slammer. En route, she passed by Miranda’s machine, and came to a dumfounded halt.
“What...?” She swayed theatrically, and the class held its breath in anticipation of a major telling-off, or better still, a teacher fainting. Sadly, she righted herself and snatched up Miranda’s sweaty piece of cloth, holding it at arm’s length in her damson talons.
“I have been teaching in this school for thirteen and a half years...and I have never before seen work as appalling as this. NEVER!”
She turned to Miranda and interrogated her Gestapo-style. “Where’s your 1-2-3, 1-2-3? Exactly, you haven’t fastened on! Why is this sewing all over the place? Because you haven’t used the guideline! And WHAT has happened here?”
What had happened there was that Miranda had experienced difficulties with her needle jamming, and had attempted to rectify the problem by twiddling various knobs on her machine. She had inadvertently altered the tension discs, making her sewing alternately baggy and buckled, and although she had then begun unpicking at frantic high speed, there were still a good few inches to go.
Mrs Trotter eventually ground to a dumb-founded halt, and looked down at Miranda in exasperation. “So is there any rational explanation? Well? I’m waiting...”
Miranda saw no alternative but to reach in her bag for the dog-eared missive, now also slightly ink-stained, which she held out tentatively towards Mrs Trotter. “I’ve brought a letter from my mum.”
There was a sharp intake of breath around the classroom. This was an exciting new turn of events. Mrs Trotter took the letter gingerly between her thumb and forefinger and eyed it suspiciously. “I hope there’s a good reason for this.”
People edged forward to get a better look and Mrs Trotter turned furiously upon them. “And the rest of you can get back to work! This is no concern of yours.”
She slit open the letter with a slash of her nails and read down it, lips pursed in concentration. The class was deadly silent.
But then a very strange thing happened. A look that could almost be considered compassionate began to spread across Mrs Trotter’s face, and her fingers unclenched and stroked the air gently. Admittedly it was a slightly forced look, as if her facial muscles were having a hard time of it, but nonetheless, the usual hideous snarl was nowhere to be seen.
Miranda was staring at her machine in terror, and so missed the transformation of Mrs Trotter’s features. The rest of us looked at one another in amazement, wondering what Miranda’s mother could have written to produce such an effect. Mrs Trotter gulped with emotion and shakily found her words.
“Oh Miranda...why didn’t you say so sooner? You’re a bit slow, aren’t you dear? I should have realised...”
A more sensitive individual might have questioned her own abilities as a teacher. However, Mrs Trotter’s interpretation of phrases such as ‘Miranda is finding needlework rather difficult’ and ‘Miranda would appreciate greater assistance’ was that Miranda was a dimwit who couldn’t cope with life in the fast lane of the sewing circle, a useless lemon fit only for table mats and blanket stitch.
From then onwards Mrs Trotter rarely shouted at Miranda, and when she did lose her temper she even apologised afterwards. Instead, she treated Miranda with sugary condescension, praising her most feeble efforts, and rarely making her unpick anything.
The class was in fits, making ‘spazzy’ faces behind Miranda’s back, and enthusing sarcastically about her work.
“What do you think of my pocket then, Vikki?”
“Oh, not bad, not bad. But not as good as Miranda’s.”
I considered this a small price to pay to avoid being shouted at, but Miranda hated the unwelcome attention, and dreaded needlework more than ever.
Chapter 6
Within a few weeks our class had separated out into various little cliques, and the popular girls had firmly established their credentials. They were the ones who spent their lunch hours cutting the split ends out of each other’s hair, swearing profusely, and swapping stories about their romantic antics at Altrincham ice-rink on Saturday afternoons.
“So I was in the toilets with Natalie and she was crying right, because she had a huge love-bite on her neck and her dad was going to kill her...”
Vikki and Trisha were the ring-leaders of this group; they had identical peroxide-drenched hairstyles, school uniforms as trendy as they could get away with, and they even wore blue eyeliner to school. The hangers-on included Katherine Rendell and Anita Chowdry, who were slightly more likeable but extremely two-faced: Vikki and Trisha didn’t need to bother being nice to you, Katherine and Anita had to just to keep their options open.
The next group was the Jewish princesses, most of whom had attended the same primary school. They had identified the rich prep girls worth including in their group, and left it at that. With her long blonde hair and designer outfits Amanda Parker was the obvious choice for chief princess, and it was weird thinking that for two or three days I had been her sidekick.
Remaining was the half of the class which fell outside these two groups, including the more wholesome girls from the prep, and an assortment of individuals who had come on their own from various state primary schools. Within this half the groups were less clearly defined: I suppose that the relatively normal people formed one loose group, and that then there were the social oddments, who didn’t particularly like one another but were forced to stick together because there was no one else left.
Honey was probably the least popular girl in the class. Her catchphrase: ‘Me name’s Jamila, but they call me Honey’, was an endless source of amusement, and she was picked on simply because she was fat and had a distinctive Oldham accent. In the early days I did try talking to her but she was so dopey that it was very hard work: rather
like talking to an elderly relative who is severely deaf and completely disinterested in what you’re saying anyway.
The other misfits were Emily Tate and Louise Evans, who were two of a kind really, big squares with immaculate uniforms, incredibly posh accents, and no sense of humour. However Louise was snivelling and pathetic whereas Emily had clearly been raised by parents who thought she was God’s gift, and never stopped going on about the fact that she was a year younger than everyone else because she had been too clever to stay in primary school any longer, so they didn’t particularly get on.
As far as I was concerned Miranda was unquestionably a member of the ‘relatively normal’ group, but unfortunately she was still an easy target for the class bullies. They called her ‘Sturdy-Gurdy’ and there was no denying that she looked horrendously unfashionable, but the important difference was that whereas Emily Tate spent hours every morning scraping her hair into an immaculate slap-head, Miranda yanked hers into pigtails simply because it was the quickest thing to do and she didn’t give a toss. Similarly her coffin-sized satchel and pink-framed National Health glasses had come to her by default: her mum had chosen them, and Miranda hadn’t cared enough to complain and hurt her feelings.
Looks aside, Miranda attracted unwelcome attention because she was so open and uncontrived. She didn’t really have any concept of being cool, she would just blurt out whatever came into her head, and if this gave her away as completely unsophisticated, then so be it. The classic was when Amanda Parker was boasting about going to Miss Selfridge at the weekend, and Miranda said brightly: “That’s a film isn’t it?” causing the rest of the class to fall around in hysterics.
Another example of a huge faux pas on Miranda’s part occurred during changing for our first swimming lesson. I was watching everyone else out of the corner of my eye, and I quickly worked out that the established etiquette was to modestly pull your swimming costume on beneath your clothes, revealing as little flesh as possible to the outside world. It was completely different from swimming at primary school, where we had all got changed together quite openly, and there had in fact been a rush for a space in the big ‘family changing room’ in preference to the private cubicles, because it was more fun. Things had clearly been the same for Miranda, but unfortunately she didn’t pick up on the new restrictive atmosphere, and simply yanked her clothes off until she was standing there stark naked.
“Ooh Miranda,” Vikki said, wrinkling her nose up. “Put it away can’t you?”
“What?” Miranda looked confused.
“It’s not a strip show you know.”
“Oh.” It suddenly dawned on Miranda that she was the only one not clad simultaneously in skirt, blouse and swimming costume. People averted their eyes and giggled. “Oh, right,” she said again, as she blushed and got into her costume as quickly as possible. It seemed that she would have to learn everything the hard way.
Miranda came in for additional stick during the impressions game. Our class was very fond of doing impressions, and it had become a regular activity during lunchtimes or while awaiting teachers at the beginning of lessons, although impersonating a teacher who was due to walk through the door was clearly a risky business. Various people had chosen their subjects and then polished and embellished their performances: for example Lynn with her sizeable hips and round spectacles was great at doing our Latin teacher, Mrs Bentley. She would wheeze her way across the classroom and collapse gasping onto her desk, before pushing her spectacles repeatedly up her nose and looking round for inspiration as to what she was supposed to be teaching. Delighted participants stuck up their hands and offered useless pieces of advice.
Neither Miranda nor I had the confidence to appropriate a particular character for ourselves, but I generally managed to feel part of things by feeding the ‘teachers’ with appropriately provocative lines. For some reason Miranda’s attempts to follow suit always backfired, and instead she herself became a character to impersonate.
It was not surprising really; Miranda was just such a perfect subject. First there was her characteristic walk: the bent-back shuffle under the weight of her huge bag was generally depicted as a wild stagger, punctuated by frequent collisions with inanimate objects. Then there was her manner of speaking, which alternated between Enid Blytonish gushing enthusiasm and the rather hoity-toity tones she adopted when she felt threatened or hard-done-by. Finally, there was the constant fiddling; Miranda was always chewing her nails or scratching at her eczema, and these were easy traits for the impersonators to exaggerate.
In the early days of the impressions game several people had a stab at doing Miranda, but in the end it was Katherine who made the role her own. Like Miranda, she had long straight hair, and although she usually wore it loose, she would scrape it back into lopsided pigtails, and borrow a pair of glasses from someone, which inevitably caused much hilarity. She and Emma developed a double act with Katherine as Miranda and Emma as Mrs Trotter, recreating episodes from the needlework lessons.
They would generally start off with Katherine sitting at a desk pretending to sew something. She would do the typical flustered Miranda, peering anxiously around the classroom and frantically scratching her hands. Emma would stalk up and down the aisles accompanied by loud booing, and would eventually pounce upon the terrified Katherine, demanding, “And what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Uh-uh, I-I...” Katherine would stammer.
Emma would hold up the imaginary piece of needlework and examine it in horror. “What is this supposed to be?”
“Um, a skirt, Mrs Trotter...”
“Well it’s like no skirt I’ve ever seen! This garment’s hardly fit for use as a dish-cloth!”
The standard list of Trotter-style criticisms would then be thrown at Katherine, usually with a few additions from the audience.
“Can’t you sew in a straight line? Did you do your 1-2-3?
“Tailor’s tacks!” the audience would howl.
“Oh yeah, where are your tailor’s tacks? Don’t tell me you forgot your mummy, daddy, baby!”
Katherine would gaze at the floor and do her famous quivering lip, whereupon the imaginary skirt would be thrust back at her.
“Let me see you sewing now, you miserable lemon.”
Katherine would bend over the machine and Emma would immediately scream. “HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO SLAM THE FOOT?”
Emma would eventually feign sobbing and gasp dramatically through her tears. “But Mrs Trotter – you don’t understand – I’m not like the other girls – I’m a ‘bit slow’ – don’t hit me, please Mrs Trotter – I’ll try, honest I will...”
The show would normally end with them posing lovingly with their arms round one another, to the sound of cheering and sick noises.
Although Vikki and Trisha had their favourite victims, most notably Honey, Emily, Louise and Miranda, no one was entirely safe. It just depended on what mood they were in and whoever happened to catch their eye. I came in for a fair amount of stick myself, not so much for my appearance as for the fact that I did well at all the academic stuff, and was therefore a swot.
On the whole it was quite minor: a bit of name-calling, the odd catty remark, nothing too stressful. Once I found a sticker on my locker, where underneath the JANET PRITCHARD they had added ‘is a frigid swot’, so I removed it and looked up frigid in the dictionary when I got home. My reaction was largely one of relief because it was such a feeble insult to choose; how can an eleven-year old be classed as frigid? They could have gone for something much more personal, ‘wears orthopaedic shoes’ or ‘is completely flat-chested’. I tried not to react to the petty things and generally ensured my acceptance by helping with their homework and massaging their huge egos with insincere compliments. It was fairly nauseating, but it was worth it to keep the peace.
There was only one occasion when they really tried it on with me, and fortunately they caught me in a furious mood on a bad day. For a start, I was wearing the wrong tight
s. At half past six in the morning in the dim glow of a bedside lamp, all pairs of black tights look pretty much the same, but mine most definitely were not. Although many of them were riddled with holes I was hanging onto them in the hope that at some theoretical point in the future I would finally get round to sealing the edges of the holes with nail varnish, permitting years more wear under long skirts or trousers. Then there were the bobbly tights, the cheap ones without lycra that sagged at the crotch or bagged at the knees, and the discoloured ones that weren’t really black at all.
On this particular morning I was aiming for my favourite pair of tights. They had been a birthday present from my Aunty Mary – not the most exciting of gifts, it’s true, but of particularly high quality: long in the leg, gratifyingly constricting in the stomach department, and manufactured from a smooth, silky fabric with plenty of lycra and a seeming inability to ladder. I knew they were clean because I’d hung them on the line myself as one of my many weekend chores, but could I find them? I tossed the entire contents of my tights drawer onto the floor and rummaged frantically, but it was just a sea of holes. In the end I grabbed a pair which looked like my second or at worst third favourites, yanked them on and ran. I was in danger of missing the bus.
I set off at a brisk jog and within a few yards was aware of the crotch of my tights descending rapidly towards my knees. Looking down, I recognised the greenish greyish hue and lumpy finish of THE WORST PAIR OF TIGHTS IN THE WORLD. They had been designed for a pot-bellied, knock-kneed dwarf with a lycra allergy, and if I had any sense I’d have chucked them out years ago. Now I would endure a whole day of tugging at my crotch and picking irritably at the tufty bits.
The next crap thing was associated with the wrong tights, in that I had spent so long selecting them I had forgotten to take any breakfast. I only realised this on the second bus, when Miranda produced her greasy parcel of fried egg sandwiches, or I could have bought a mars bar in Piccadilly.