Fruit and Nutcase

by Jean Ure

  So now we have yellow blobs all along the landing.

  My family!

  Next thing I know it’s morning and I have to go to school again, and I’ve still got my black eye and Tracey Bigg’s still doing her stupid song and dance act, but I don’t take any notice. Oliver’s in the corner of the playground crying ‘cos Billy Murdo’s gang’s duffed him up, so I go over and talk to him and try to put a bit of stuffing into him.

  I say, “What’s the problem?” and he goes, “Blub – hic – sniffle – Billy – blub – hic – hurt – sniffle – me.” I feel sorry for him ‘cos he’s ever so harmless and they just pick on him all the time. They torment him. They’re real bullies. There just isn’t any way poor old Oliver can get back at them. He’s just not that sort of person. I mean, if Tracey Bigg and her mob tried to duff me up I’d give them what for, I can tell you. I’d knee them and crunch them and use Kung Fu like on the telly.

  I certainly wouldn’t go into a corner and blub. But Oliver is ever so pathetic and weedy. I guess he just can’t help it.

  People that beat up on weeds are despicable.

  It’s the last day of term and tomorrow everyone except me and Oliver and a couple of others are going off to summer camp so for a treat Cat takes me and Oliver on a special trip, just the two of us. We get on the tube and go to Mile End, where there’s this museum that’s a real old Victorian school. Cat says, “It’ll show you what it would have been like to be Victorian children.”

  Oliver and me look at each other and giggle. I don’t quite know why we giggle. Maybe it’s just the excitement of being out of school, on our own, with Cat. If it was an ordinary school trip I’d be expecting to be a bit bored. I mean, a museum. All full of dead stuff, and things from the past. I’m not interested in the past! But as we’re with Cat I think maybe it might be fun, ‘cos I can’t imagine Cat ever doing anything that’s boring.

  Oliver says to me, “When’s Victorian?” and I’m not sure. I say, “Oh! About … a hundred years ago.” And I’m right! Cat says that Queen Victoria died in 1901. I know more history than I thought!

  The museum isn’t a bit like I think it’s going to be. I think it’s going to be very large and gloomy with glass cases full of dead stuff, but all it is, it’s just this old grungy building with nothing in it, except when you go up the stairs you suddenly find yourself in a schoolroom, with all desks and benches, just like it would have been in Victorian times. There’s even a teacher, wearing a white frilly blouse and a long black skirt with her hair pulled into a bun. She’s standing at a blackboard with this long stick that Cat says is called a pointer.

  There’s other children there besides us. They’re all sitting down, waiting for the class to begin, so me and Oliver sit at the back, next to each other, in this funny sort of desk that’s like two desks joined together.

  It’s really ancient, you can tell. The wood’s all worn and stained, and there’s loads of names and initials carved into the top.

  Cat whispers, “Imagine! Some of these were done by children over a hundred years ago.”

  It makes me feel a bit shivery when I think about a girl the same age as me sitting where I’m sitting, resting her elbows on the desk lid just like I am, a hundred years ago. She’d have sat there never guessing that one day I’d be in her seat, trying to picture what she was like. I look at the names and initials and think that she could have been Eliza, or Jane, or “SW” or Grace. She’d be dead by now, of course. She’d have had her life. I’ve still got all mine to come!

  I think it’s good, sometimes, to remember about people from the past and wonder what they would have been like. The answer is—just the same as us, only different!

  Not different inside themselves; just outside. I expect Eliza or Jane or whatever she was called would have understood about Tracey Bigg and how she gets on my nerves. She might even have had her own Tracey Bigg. Except she probably wouldn’t have been called Tracey, because I don’t think people were. Not in those days. She’d have been called … Henrietta. Henrietta Bigg! And Eliza Small. And they’d have made up rude and revolting rhymes about each other just like me and Tracey.

  Well, that’s what I like to imagine.

  When everyone’s sitting at their desks, the teacher announces that the first lesson is going to begin. Oliver looks at me, and I can see that he’s a bit apprehensive. Oliver’s not very good at lessons. Nor am I, usually, but today, surprise surprise, I turn out to be THE STAR!

  The first lesson’s arithmetic. We all have to sit with straight backs and chant our tables, right through to twelve.

  I know them all! And my voice is the L.O.U.D.E.S.T!

  The next lesson is writing, with pen and ink. The old desks have inkwells with real ink in them, and the teacher gives us all a wooden pen with a funny scratchy nib and a sheet of something called blotting paper. The blotting paper’s thick and white and it blots the ink so’s it doesn’t smudge.

  The teacher writes the letters of the alphabet on the board in beautiful curly shapes and we all have to copy them. Cat says the shapes are “copperplate” and they’re the way Victorian children had to write.

  The idea is to do them without any splotches or mess. I do mine really well! Not a single splotch! When we’ve copied all the letters off the board we have to write our names in the same sort of writing. This is mine:

  The teacher says mine is the best! She even hands it round for people to look at. And then she gives me a gold star and writes 10/10 in red ink. So I feel really pleased and think that things are looking up, what with me winning a prize in the talent competition and now getting a gold star for writing my name in copperplate. It’s a pity Oliver can’t get one, too, but his copperplate is all blotched and drippy.

  Cat says it doesn’t matter. She says the idea was that we should enjoy ourselves, and in any case I don’t think Oliver really minds all that much. When Cat asks him if he’s had a good time he gives her this big goofy grin and says yes, he’d like to go to a Victorian school every day “and sit next to Mandy in a big desk”.

  He’s so funny, Oliver is. I quite like him really, I suppose. He can’t help being a weed.

  When we get back to school Cat says she’s got something for me, and it’s all the pages of my life story that her mum has typed out! She gets me to read bits of it and I’m really surprised at some of the long words I’d used. Without even realising!

  The only trouble is, some of them are so long I can’t read them. Imagine! Not being able to read your own life story!

  I’m really worried about this. I ask Cat if she thinks I’m that word. The one her mum said. Dys-something. The one that means you get your letters muddled up. But Cat says she doesn’t think I am. She says, “Just a bit slow at getting the hang of it.” Before I can stop myself I say, “Just a bit slow” Cat gets really cross. She does what my nan calls “bristling”.

  She says, “No, I do not mean ‘just a bit slow’. You’re a bright girl, Mandy. Why do you keep putting yourself down all the time?”

  I tell her that I don’t all of the time. Just some of the time. And I don’t want to grow up with everyone still sneering and jeering at me ‘cos I can’t read!

  Cat promises me that this won’t happen. She tells me about her brother, who was just like me when he was my age, but one day, quite suddenly, bingo! He discovered he could do it.

  “And now he’s at college, training to be a teacher.”

  I don’t mean to be rude but I can’t help pulling a face when she says this ‘cos a teacher is just about the last thing I’d want to be. Imagine having to teach someone like Tracey Bigg! So Cat asks me what I’d like to be, and I say maybe an actress or someone that does funny voices and makes people laugh. And then I tell her that what I’d really like would be to go to an acting school, if only I had the money. I say, “Maybe after my book’s published I will have. Maybe it will make my fortune.”

  Cat looks a bit anxious when I say this. She explains to me that it is not easy
for anyone to get a book published. She says, “It will still be a wonderful achievement whether it’s published or not. But I don’t want to give you false hopes. I’d hate you to be disappointed.”

  I won’t be disappointed! I can tell the difference between what’s real and what’s just pretend. It’s a game I play. “When my book is published.” I know it won’t be really. Probably not. But I can dream, can’t I?

  After school’s broken up and we’ve all been set free I go and meet Mum from Bunjy’s and show her my copperplate. Mum says the copperplate is beautiful. And then she looks at the blotting paper, which the teacher said I could bring with me, and she takes out her mirror and shows me how you can read the writing that’s on it.

  Like a secret code!

  When we get home old Misery’s on the prowl. She’s found a dob of yellow paint on the hall floor and she wants to know how it got there. Mum says, “Oh, dear, it must have dropped off the brush when I leaned over the banisters,” and old Misery does her bits and pieces.

  What’s her problem??? We’ve got loads of dobs on the upstairs landing! Brightens the place up, if you ask me.

  So we get upstairs and go into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, and you’ll never believe it, the kitchen cabinet’s fallen off the wall again and half the cups and saucers are smashed.

  Oh, and the telephone’s been cut off. It turns out it’s been cut off for days and we never even realised.

  As Mum says, trying to look on the bright side, “It just goes to show how much we need it.”

  This is the story of my life. Tape no 2. To be continued…

  Soon I’m going to have filled up another tape. That will be the third one! I can’t believe I’ve found so much to say. I thought at first my life was completely empty, but now I see that quite a lot of things have been going on in it. It’s only when you stop and think about it that you realise.

  Something I haven’t said anything about is when I was little. This is partly because I can’t remember very much and partly because I think probably it would be quite boring. I don’t want my book to be boring! This is the trouble with some of the books that Miss Foster reads to us at school. Right at the beginning they’re a drag because you don’t know what’s happening or who the people are; and then just as you’re starting to get into the story and thinking maybe this book is not so bad after all, you come to another draggy bit that makes you yawn and fidget and feel you never want to go near a book again ever, as long as you live.

  I am trying very hard not to have draggy bits. That’s why I’ve started my story when I’m old enough to talk and have opinions, and haven’t bothered going back to babyhood. Babies are lovely but not very interesting in books, I don’t think. What babies are best at is doing things.

  I expect I must have done all those things when I was a baby, but who wants to read about it? Not me!

  So all I’m going to say is that I was born in the hospital and that for the first few years of my life we lived with Nan and Crandy in Soper Street, which is just round the corner from where we are now. I don’t think Mum liked living with Nan. Nan used to nag her and tell her what to do and what not to do, like for instance whenever I cried she would tell Mum “Not to go running! Let her get on with it.” But my mum is a big softie. She couldn’t bear the thought of me lying there crying so she didn’t take any notice of Nan. She used to cuddle me all the time. I think this is right. When I have triplets—two lots!—I will cuddle them. You bet!

  Cuddling is what babies are for.

  When I was about three, Nan and Crandy’s house was knocked down. The whole street was knocked down and all the people, well, most of the people, were sent to live on this new estate way out at the end of the tube line. It’s called Arthur’s Mill, because once upon a time, before they went and built houses all over it, it was owned by a man called Arthur who had a farm arid a windmill. It sounds lovely but in fact it is rather ugly and boring.

  Nan likes it because she says it’s a step up. From Soper Street, I suppose she means. She reckons it’s dead superior, living on a new estate! But it is grey and dreary and it is UGLY. Not like Linden Close!

  Anyway, Mum and Dad came to live in Bundy Street and that is where we have been ever since. And I have been at the same school, which is Spring Street Primary. And that is the story of my life up to the time I started writing this book!

  Oh, I almost forgot: when I was five I had the chicken pox and got all covered in spots some of which I picked.

  Also there is a photograph of me with my front teeth missing.

  Thank goodness I grew some new ones!

  I can’t remember where I left off. I think it was the end of term, the day we broke up.

  Yes, it was! I’ve just gone back and listened.

  Everyone except me and Oliver had gone off to camp and I was stuck in London. Not that I’d have wanted to go to their rotten camp even if I could. Crammed in a barn with Tracey Bigg for two weeks? Ugh! No, thank you!

  Just because it was school holidays didn’t mean Mum could stay off work. She still had to go into Bunjy’s and sell bread every day, like Dad still had to clean windows.

  We discussed what to do about me, and I said that I’d be all right on my own. I don’t mind being on my own! I quite like it, as a matter of fact. The one thing I begged Mum not to do was send me to my nan’s.

  I said, “Please, Mum! Please don’t make me go away!”

  I mean, partly it was ‘cos I didn’t want to leave Mum and Dad. I just didn’t see how they would be able to manage without me. And partly it was ‘cos I really really hate going to Nan’s. I hate the way she picks on me and the way she grumbles all the time about Mum and Dad being rotten parents.

  There was only one place I would have liked to go, and that was Croydon, to stay with Uncle Allan and Auntie Liz, but they wouldn’t have me any more. I went there once and it was ever so lovely, only something really terrible happened: Auntie Liz sent me home in disgrace. I’d only been there a couple of weeks and she said she didn’t want me in the house any more on account of my language. “Language of the gutter,” she called it. She said, “We got out of London to avoid all that. I don’t want my little Princess being contaminated.”

  Mum was really hurt and I felt ever so ashamed. I didn’t know I spoke the language of the gutter. Dad just laughed. He said that Allan and Liz had become “proper toffee-nosed twits” since they’d moved to Croydon.

  But when I stopped and thought about it I could see what Auntie Liz meant ‘cos it’s really really nice in Linden Close, where they live. There’s no mess or rubbish or burnt-out cars. There’s no rude words sprayed on the walls. Nobody has punch-ups or gets drunk.

  “Dead boring,” says my dad. But I don’t think it’s boring! I think it’s lovely. And I can understand why Auntie Liz doesn’t want me to contaminate her little Princess.

  The little Princess is my cousin Jade. I wish I had a beautiful name like Jade! It’s a pity her surname is Small, as Jade Small doesn’t sound very good, but maybe when she grows up she will marry a man called something grand such as Fairfax or Winstanley. These, I think, are very aristocratic.

  Jade probably will marry someone aristocratic as she is extremely pretty, with dark curly hair and bright blue eyes. She is only four at the moment but already I can imagine how she will be when she is grown up.

  I know it sounds truly yucky her mum and dad calling her their little Princess, but she is so beautiful that I can forgive them. Normally I wouldn’t! Normally I would make vomiting noises.

  But Jade is special, and everyone adores her.

  I wish I hadn’t upset Auntie Liz by using bad language! I mean, it was just, like, stuff we say all the time in the playground. The sort of stuff you don’t even think about. But Auntie Liz moved to Croydon to get away from all that.

  I wish she’d give me a second chance! But I don’t think she will. Whenever she takes Jade to visit Nan and Grandy she always checks first that I’m not going to be the
re. She calls me “that child”. I’ve heard her. I was at Nan’s once and she rang up and I could hear her voice on the telephone. She said, “We’d like to come and see you next Sunday, Mum, but I wouldn’t want to bring Jade if that child was going to be there.”

  Nan says she’s quite right. She thinks I’m a real bad influence. Maybe when my book is published and I’ve made a lot of money and we can live in a nice house they will change their minds. I do hope so because I really love Jade! She is so funny and clever and sweet, and she’s my only cousin in the whole wide world. I would be miserable if they never let me see her again.

  But at the moment they don’t want me anywhere near her in case I suddenly without thinking say something crude and vulgar, so Mum knew it wouldn’t be any use asking if I could go to Croydon to stay. (Dad said he wouldn’t let me in any case. “After they insulted us? No way! My Mand’s worth a dozen of that little ponced-up miss.” My dad always sticks up for me.)

  I told Mum that I would be just fine on my own. I said, “I’ve been on my own before and I didn’t burn the house down.” Mum is more likely to burn the house down than I am!

  Mum said, “Yes, but that was only for a few days.”

  See, it wasn’t as if she just didn’t bother. It wasn’t like she just walked out and left me. She was really worried. She said, “You’ll be here every day, all by yourself. What will you find to do all the time?”

  I said that I would get on with my recording for Cat, and do some wall painting, and clean the flat and do the shopping and the ironing and lay the table ready for Dad’s tea.

  “And on Saturdays we can have fun ‘cos there won’t be any work for you to do … I’ll have done it all!”

  Mum liked that idea. She got quite excited and started planning all the things we could do on Saturday afternoons as a family. She said, “We’ll all go to places together. Think of some places where you’d like to go!”