by Jean Ure
What with Pip being so brainy, and Petal being so gorgeous, I sometimes wonder what it leaves for me. Maybe I shall have to cultivate a nice nature – like Dad. Dad never snaps or snarls. He never loses his temper. He’s never mean. He’s over at the stove right now, all bundled up in his blue woolly dressing gown, fixing a breakfast which only two of us will eat. ie, him and me!
From the way he’s stirring it, I would guess that he’s doing porridge. Dad’s a great one for porridge. He makes it very rich and creamy and serves it up with milk and sugar. Yum yum! I love Dad’s porridge. Mum won’t eat it because she’s in too much of a hurry. She’ll just have black coffee. Petal won’t eat it because she can’t be bothered. She’ll probably have a glass of milk and a banana. Pip, needless to say, won’t touch it. He says it’s all grey and slimy and reminds him of snot. Dad still tries to tempt him. I don’t know why he bothers; Pip’s a lost cause. Foodwise, that is. All he ever wants is two slices of toast, lightly browned with the crusts cut off (he won’t eat crusts) and smeared with marge. Butter makes him sick; and marmalade, of course, being orange, is a shade of red and therefore taboo.
Dad and I finish off the porridge between us, sharing the cream from the top of the milk. We’re still eating when Mum yells at Pip that it’s time to go. She drops him off at school every morning; me and Petal have to take the bus. We don’t really mind. It gives Petal the opportunity to show off her legs before Mrs Jacklin gets hold of her, and it gives me the chance to finish off my maths homework. Even, if I’m lucky, to pick someone’s brains. Esther McGuffin, for instance, who gets on two stops before us and truly is a genius. She is very good-natured and never minds if I copy. The way I see it, it is not proper cheating as I always make sure to copy some of it wrong and have never ever got more than a C+. (On the days I don’t copy I mostly get a D.)
At the school gates I meet up with Saffy. We’re in Year 7. Bottom of the pile. Petal flashes past us, showing all of her legs, and most of her bum, in a crowd of Year 9s. Year 9s are incredibly arrogant! I can see why Auntie Megan doesn’t care for them.
On a typical school day, I would say that nothing very much occurs. Of interest, that is. It just jogs on, in the same old way. One time, I remember, a girl in our class, Annie Goldstone, went and fainted in morning assembly and had to be carried out. That caused some excitement. Oh, and another time a boy called Nathan Corrie, also in our class, fell through the roof of the science lab right on top of Mr Gifford, one of our science teachers. Then there was Sophie Sutton, and her nosebleed. She bled buckets! All over her desk, all over the floor. But these sort of events are very few and far between. They don’t happen every day, or even, alas, every week. Mostly it is just the daily slog. The best you can hope for is Nathan Corrie being told to leave the room. But that is no big deal!
In spite of all this, me and Saffy do quite like school. We are neither of us specially brilliant at anything, and we are not the type of people to be chosen first for games teams or voted form captain or asked to join the Inner Circle, but we bumble along quite happily in our own way.
The Inner Circle is a gang of four girls, led by Dani Morris, who consider themselves to be the crème de la crème (as Auntie Megan would say). They are the ones who get invited to all the parties. The ones who decide what is in and what is out. Like for instance when they came to school wearing ribbed tights and all the rest of us had to start wearing ribbed tights, ‘cos otherwise we would have been just too uncool for words, until suddenly, without any warning, they went back to ordinary ones again and threw us into confusion.
I personally wouldn’t want to be a member of the Inner Circle with the eyes of all the world upon me. I would be too self-conscious!
“We will just be us,” says Saffy.
Really, what else can you be? It is no use thinking you can turn yourself into someone completely different. I know, because I have tried it. Lots of times! These are just some of the things I have attempted to be:
Bright and breezy, exuding confidence from every pore. “Hey! Wow! Way to go!”
Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.
Loud and laddish. Smutty jokes and long snorty cackles at anything even faintly suggestive.
Total disaster. I boil up like a beetroot even just thinking of it.
Creepy crawly. In other words, humble.
Even worse. I just oozed humility. All I can say is YUCK.
Eager beaver sports freak. Madly playing football in the playground every break. Dragging myself to school at half-past seven to practise netball in the freezing cold.
Bore bore BORE! I quickly gave up on that one. It wouldn’t have worked anyway.
None of them worked. None of these things that I have tried. When I thought I was being bright and breezy, I just came across as obnoxious so that people kept saying things like, “Who do you think you are, all of a sudden?” They don’t say that to Dani Morris, and she is just about as obnoxious as can be. But she can get away with it, and I can’t!
This is the point that I am making. Like when I went through my oozy phase. All I did was just smile at Kevin Williams and he instantly stretched his lips into this hideous grimace and made his eyes go crossed. Why did he do it??? He wouldn’t have done it to Petal! If Petal had smiled at him, he would most likely have gone to jelly. But Kevin Williams is a friend of Nathan Corrie, so I should have known better. Nathan Corrie behaves like something that has just crawled out of the primeval slime.
However. To return to this typical day that I am talking about. Here are me and Saffy, sat together in our little cosy corner at the back of the class, and there at the front is Ms Glazer, our maths teacher. She’s collecting up our maths homework from yesterday and handing back the stuff we did last week. She’s given me a D+. Not bad! I mean, considering I did it all on my own. At least it’s better than D-, but Ms Glazer doesn’t seem to see it that way. At the bottom, in fierce red ink, she’s written: Jenny, I really would like there to be some improvement during the course of this term. D+ is an improvement! What’s she going on about? I happen to have this mental block, where figures just don’t mean anything to me. Sometimes I seriously think that an essential part of my brain is missing. I have tried putting this point of view to Ms Glazer, but all she says in reply is, “Nonsense! There is nothing whatsoever wrong with your brain. Application is what is lacking.”
Dad is the only one who ever sympathises with me. Mum, in her ruthless high-flying way, agrees with Ms Glazer.
“Anyone can do anything if they just set their mind to it.”
That is RUBBISH. Can a one-legged man run a mile in a minute? I think not! (I wish I had thought to say this to Mum. I’d like to know how she would have wriggled out of that.)
To make up for my D+ in maths, I get an A in biology. It’s for my drawing of the rabbit’s reproductive system. I am rather proud of my rabbit’s reproductive system. I have filled in all the organs in different colours – bright reds and greens and purples – so that it looks like one of those modern paintings that make people like Dad go, “Call that art?” I try showing it to Saffy but she takes one look and shrieks, “That’s disgusting! Take it away!” She says it makes her feel sick. She says anything to do with reproduction makes her feel sick. She is a very sensitive sort of person.
All through the lesson I keep shooting little glances at my brilliant artwork. It occurs to me that the rabbit’s reproductive system, in colour, would make a fascinating and appropriate design for certain types of garment. Those smock things, for instance, that people wear when they are pregnant. It would be a fashion statement!
I get quite excited by this and wonder if perhaps I should go to art school and become a famous clothes designer. Why not? I can do it! Already I have visions of being interviewed on television.
“Jenny Jo Penny, the fashion designer…”
I would put in the Jo, being my middle name, as I think Jenny Penny is just too naff for words. There would be the Jenny Jo Penny collection and all the big Hollyw
ood stars would come to me for their outfits. I would be a designer label! And I wouldn’t ever use fur or animal skin. I would be known for not using it.
“Jenny Jo Penny, the animal-friendly fashion designer…”
Hurrah! I’ve found something to aim at.
But wait! The last lesson of the day is art, with Mr Pickering. We are doing still life, and Mr Pickering has tastefully arranged a few bits of fruit for us to draw. In my new artistic mode I decide that just copying is not very imaginative. I mean if you just want to copy you might as well use a camera. A true artist will interpret. So what I do, I ever so slightly alter the shape of things and then splosh on the brightest colours I can find. Blue, orange, purple, like I did with the rabbit stuff. These will be my trademark!
I’m sitting there, waiting for Mr Pickering to come and comment, and feeling distinctly pleased with myself, when Saffy leans over to have a look. She gives this loud squawk and shrieks, “Ugh! It looks like—”
I am not going to say what she thinks it looks like. It is too vulgar. I am surprised that she knows about such things, although she does have two brothers, both older than she is, which perhaps would account for it. All the same, it was quite uncalled for. (Especially as it made me go all hot and red.)
What Mr Pickering says is not so vulgar, but it is certainly what I would call deflating. I am not going to repeat it. It makes me instantly droop and give up all ideas about going to art school. It is terrible to have so little confidence! But between them, Saffy and Mr Pickering have utterly demolished me.
Get home from school to find the house empty. Mum and Petal not yet back, Dad has gone off to pick up Pip. Help myself to some cold pasta and slump in front of the television till Dad and Pip arrive. Dad at once bustles out to the kitchen to prepare some food, while Pip settles down to his homework. I hardly had any homework when I was ten, but Pip has stacks of it. This is because he goes to this special school that Mum and Dad pay for, and where they are all expected to work like crazy and pass exams so that they can win scholarships to even more special schools and pass more exams and go to university and become nuclear physicists. Or whatever. Me and Petal just used to go up the road to the local Juniors. Nobody cared whether we passed our exams and became nuclear physicists. But Mum says Pip is gifted and it would be a crime not to encourage him. She is probably right. I am not complaining, since I don’t seem to be gifted in any way whatsoever. Not even artistically, in spite of getting an A for my rabbit’s reproductive system
At five o’clock Dad goes off to Giorgio’s for the evening, leaving a big bowl of macaroni cheese for us to dig into. I help myself to a sizeable dollop and go back to the television. Pip is still doing his homework. Petal comes waltzing in, snatches a mouthful of macaroni cheese and rushes upstairs to her bedroom, where she spends most of the evening telephoning her friends. Every half hour or so she wafts back down to grab an apple or a glass of milk. I hear her discussing some party that she is going to at the weekend. Her main concern seems to be whether a certain boy is likely to be there, and if so, who will he be there with?
“Please not that awful tart from Year 10!”
If it’s the awful tart from Year 10, Petal will just die. Why, is what I want to know? But it is no use asking her. She has already gone wailing back up the stairs.
“What will I do? What will I do?”
Fascinating stuff! I sometimes think that Petal and I inhabit different worlds.
We all do actually. Me and Petal and Pip. There’s Pip obsessed with work, and Petal obsessed with boys, and me very soon to become obsessed with fat. We never talk about our obsessions. We never really talk about anything. We are part of the same family and live under the same roof and I think we all love one another; but we never actually communicate.
Mum gets in at quarter to nine. She gives me and Pip a quick peck on the cheek – “All right, poppets? Everything OK?” – pours herself a glass of wine and disappears upstairs to soak in the bath. Pip packs up his homework, makes himself a lettuce sandwich and takes himself off to bed. Just like that! Without being told. It doesn’t strike me as quite normal, for a ten year old, but that is Pip for you. He has the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Obviously nobody is going to eat Dad’s macaroni cheese, so I decide I’d better polish it off to stop Dad from being upset. I then finish off my homework, watch a bit more telly, eat a bag of crisps and go upstairs.
At eleven o’clock Dad comes home from work and calls out to see if anyone’s awake and wants a nightcap. I am, and I do! So Dad makes two mugs of foaming hot chocolate and we drink them together, with Dad sitting on the edge of my bed. I love these private moments that I have with Dad! I tell him all about school, about my A for biology and my D+ for maths, and Dad tells me all about Giorgio’s, about the customers who’ve been in and the food that he’s cooked. The only thing that slightly spoils it is when he says goodnight. He says, “Night night, Plumpkin! Sleep tight.”
He seems to be calling me Plumpkin all the time now. I pull up the duvet and fall asleep, only to dream, for some reason, of whales. Big beached blubbery whales. I wonder what Petal dreams of? Boys, probably.
That was how it was when I was twelve. I’m fourteen now, but nothing very much has changed. Dad still cooks, Mum is still high-powered, Petal still casts her spell over the male population, Pip still does oceans of homework. The only thing is, I no longer dream about whales. That has got to be an improvement!
This is how it came about.
IT WAS SAFFY who suggested we should go to acting classes. I was quite surprised as she had never shown any inclination that way. Just the opposite! Once at infant school she was chosen to be an angel in the nativity play, a sweet little red-headed, pointy-nosed angel, all dressed up in a white nightie with a halo on her head and dear little wings sprouting out of her back. Guess what? She tripped over her nightie, forgot her line – she only had the one – and ran off the stage, blubbing. Oh, dear! It is something she will never manage to live down. She gets quite huffy about it.
“I was six,” she says, if ever I chance, just casually, to bring it into the conversation. Which I only do if I feel for some reason she needs putting in her place.
When she is in a really huffy mood she will waspishly remind me that I didn’t get chosen to be anything at all, let alone an angel, which you would have thought I might have done, having fair hair and blue eyes and looking, if I may say so, far more angelic than Saffy. In my opinion, she would have been better cast as a sheep. (Then she wouldn’t have had a nightie to trip over, ha ha!)
The only reason I didn’t get chosen was that I caught chicken pox. If I hadn’t had chicken pox, I bet I’d have been an angel all right! And I bet I wouldn’t have tripped over my nightie and forgotten my line, either. Saffy has absolutely no right to crow. It is hardly a person’s fault if a person gets struck down by illness.
I have said this to her many times, but all she says in reply is, “You picked yourself.”
What she means is, I scratched my spots. She says that is why I wasn’t chosen.
“It was a nativity play, not a horror show!”
It’s true I did make a bit of a mess of myself. Petal, who had chicken pox at the same time as me, didn’t even scrape off one tiny little crust. Even at the age of eight, Petal obviously knew the value of a smooth, unblemished skin. But it is all vanity! What do I care? In any case, as Saffy always hastens to assure me – feeling guilty, no doubt, at her cruel jibe – “It hardly shows at all these days. Honestly! Just one little dent in the middle of your chin… it’s really cute!”
Huh! It doesn’t alter the fact that she had her chance as an angel and she muffed it. It is no use getting ratty with me! What I didn’t understand was why she should want to go to acting classes, all of a sudden.
I put this to her, and earnestly Saffy explained it wasn’t so much the acting she was interested in, though she reckoned by now she could manage to say the odd line or two without bursting i
nto tears. What it was, she said, was boys.
“Ah,” I said. “Aha!”
“Precisely,” said Saffy.
She giggled, and so did I.
“You think it would be a good way to meet them?”
“I do,” said Saffy.
In that case, I was all for it! Meeting boys, in that second term of Year 7, had become very important, not to say crucial. We had to meet boys! There were lots of boys in our class at school, of course, but we had already met them. We met them every day, and we didn’t think much of them. Well, I mean! Kevin Williams and Nathan Corrie. Pur-lease! Not that they were all primeval swamp creatures, but even those that hadn’t crawled out of the mud seemed to come from distant planets. Trying to suss them out was like trying to fathom the workings of an alien mind. Were they plant life? Or were they animal? They probably thought the same about us. But you have to get to grips with them sooner or later because otherwise, for goodness’ sake, the human race would just die out!
I didn’t say this to Saffy, knowing her sensitivity on certain subjects, eg, the rabbit’s reproductive system. I just agreed with her that meeting boys was an essential part of our education, and one which at the moment was being sadly neglected.
“I don’t know how Petal got going,” I said. “She just seemed to do it automatically.”
Saffy said that Petal was a natural.
“People like you and me have to work at it.”
“And you honestly truly think,” I said, “that drama school would be a good place to start?”
Saffy said yes, it would be brilliant! She sounded really keen. At drama school, she said, we would meet boys who were creative and sensitive, and gorgeous with it. All the things that the swamp creatures weren’t. It’s true! You look at a boy like Nathan Corrie and you think, “Is this life as we know it?”