by Jean Ure
What she mostly keeps on about is me. At least, that’s what she kept on about while I was there. All about my manners and my language and how I hadn’t got any decent clothes and look at my hair, it was just a mess, and “How am I supposed to take her anywhere?”
And Grandy just sat there and grunted, and puffed on his pipe, and you could tell he didn’t really want to be bothered. Or maybe he didn’t think I was quite as bad as Nan made out.
I thought at first I would never survive. I worried all the time about Mum and Dad and how they were managing without me and whether Mum was still crying and whether Dad was flying off the handle. And then at the weekend they telephoned me. I spoke to Mum first. She was still a bit tearful but she also giggled quite a lot as well.
She said, “Guess what? You’ll never guess! We’ve gone back to school! Me and your dad … we’re going to parenting lessons. Learning how to be good parents.”
She said that Cat had called round, and when she’d heard what had happened she’d arranged for Mum and Dad to take these classes.
“They’re ever so good,” said Mum. “I’m really learning how to do things properly.”
And then Dad came on and said, “How about that, then? Your mum and dad doing lessons! We’ll be different people, Mand, when you come home. You won’t recognise us! We’ll be model parents, we will.”
I told this to Nan and she just sniffed and said, “That’ll be the day.” But then she added that any improvement had to be better than none.
After that, I began to feel a little less despairing and to believe that perhaps Nan really might let me go back home sometime. I still said my prayer with the special bit added, but now I only said it twice a day, once when I woke up and once before I went to sleep. I thought that if Mum and Dad were learning how to be model parents, perhaps I ought to make a bit of an effort to be a model granddaughter so Nan wouldn’t be ashamed of me any more.
So I tried. I really, really tried! But Nan wasn’t in the least bit grateful. Like, for instance, when we went shopping I said to her, “I’d better check your shopping list. Make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.” That’s all I said, just trying to look after her, like I do with Mum. She nearly jumped down my throat!
She said, “What do you mean, check my shopping list, you bossy little madam? I’ll check my own shopping list, thank you very much! I don’t need your assistance. I haven’t gone senile yet, you know.”
Then another time I caught her doing sardines on toast for Grandy’s tea. Sardines on toast! At the end of a hard day’s work, guarding the bank! I knew I had to warn her. I said, “You really ought to give him a proper man’s meal, Nan. They don’t like just having bits of stuff on toast.”
Whew! If I hadn’t have had this really thick skin, her eyes would have bored through me like lasers. I’d have had all holes.
She said, “Are you presuming to tell me how to feed my own husband?”
She really didn’t like me trying to help her, so after that I thought I’d help Grandy, instead. But even he didn’t seem to appreciate it. Like one Saturday we went into town together and he was going to get some paint for doing the inside of the house and he actually bought three different colours. He got this goldy colour for the ceilings and green for the windows and white for making little lines round things. He said that Nan had chosen them.
“She likes the place to look nice.”
I was horrified. I said, “But Grandy, it’s ever so much more expensive using all those different colours! It’s really wasteful. You ought to stick to just one. It works out far cheaper. And if you went down the market you might even find a bargain!”
That’s what Dad did last year. He staggered home with simply gallons of paint that nobody wanted on account of it being a strange sort of orangey-browny colour. (A bit like sick, really.) So far he hadn’t actually got around to using it, but he reckoned there was enough there to do the whole place with. And the colour wasn’t actually too bad. I quite liked it, myself. I thought it was cheerful. Mum agreed. She said it was “eyecatching”. But when I told Grandy about it he just chuckled and said, “Yes, I’ve heard about our Barry’s orange paint. Your Nan would have a fit if I came home with something like that.”
I said, “But think of the money you’d save!”
Grandy said, “Young lady, if your Nan wants her house painted three different colours, I think that’s her business, don’t you?”
You can’t help people if they don’t want to be helped. Another time when we went into town Grandy said he’d just got to nip in and place “a bob or two each way” on a horse. I don’t know what a bob is, whether it’s a lot of money or a little, but I remembered Dad going into the betting shop and spending all Mum’s housekeeping money, and so I grabbed hold of Grandy’s arm and said, “Grandy! No!”
Grandy looked at me in surprise. He said, “No what?” I said, “Don’t go in there, Grandy! You’ll only regret it! You’ll spend all the housekeeping!”
Grandy didn’t freeze me out like Nan had, but he did sound sort of … irritable. He said, “Good heavens, child! I’ve been having a little flutter once a month ever since I got married. I’m not going to stop now!”
It’s odd that even though Nan and Grandy don’t seem in the least bit worried about money, not really, I mean they don’t fly into a panic when brown envelopes land on the mat and they’ve never once had their telephone cut off, they don’t ever seem to do anything. They’ll never suddenly jump up and say, “Let’s have fun!” the way we do at home. They’re like two stodgy dumplings, sitting in a stew.
One day when Nan was wondering what to give Grandy for his tea – “And kindly don’t tell me that he needs a man’s meal!”—I said, “P’raps we could go out somewhere.” Nan said, “Out? Out where?” I said, “Anywhere! We could go for an Indian meal.”
Nan shuddered and said, “No, thank you! You won’t catch me eating that muck.” She said that she and Grandy didn’t care for Indian food: “It doesn’t agree with us.”
So then I said, “Chinese?” and Nan said, “Chinese gives me a headache. Besides, you never know what they put in there.”
“Burgers?” I said. But Nan said burgers weren’t proper food and in any case, what did we want to go out for?
“It’s a sheer waste of money. You can eat far better staying at home.”
I said, “Yes, but it’s not nearly as much fun!”
Nan just snorted and said, “There’s more to life than just having fun. That’s a lesson we all have to learn.”
I didn’t actually say it, ‘cos I knew she’d tell me it was impertinence, but what I actually thought, inside my head, was, “I hope it’s not what Mum and Dad are learning.”
Mum and Dad and me always had fun. No matter what. Even if the house was falling down and we hadn’t got any money and sometimes Mum cried and sometimes Dad yelled, we always, sooner or later, had a kiss and a cuddle and a bit of a laugh.
I think that is what life is all about.
This next chapter is going to be the very last one! It will be Chapter Number Eight, and I think that is enough for anybody. It must be extremely exhausting for Cat’s mum, typing it all out. *
I’m glad Cat’s pleased with it, though, ‘cos I’ve worked really hard. Really hard. I mean, I’ve been sat here doing this tape every night, almost, when I could have been watching telly or wall painting or even reading a book. (Ha ha! That’ll be the day.) But anything rather than just talk talk talk all the time. It wears you out, talking does.
I wish I could just do everything in pictures!
* Note from Cat’s mum: Not at all! I’m quite enjoying it.
One day when I had been at Nan’s for a fortnight, Grandy came home from work and said, “Guess what? There’s a chum of yours staying just across the way.”
I couldn’t think what he was talking about. I don’t have any chums. Not since my friend Janis got moved. I really miss Janis. We used to have ever such fun together.
Grandy said, “Someone who goes to your school,” and my stomach fell plop! right down into my shoes.
“If it’s Tracey Bigg,” I said, “I hate her. She’s my worst enemy.”
Nan tutted and said, “Hate is a very extravagant word, my girl.”
I said, “She deserves it. She’s evil.”
Nan opened her mouth to start on at me but Grandy got in first. He said, “Well, it’s not Tracey Bigg, it’s a boy called Oliver Pratt.”
I said, “Oliver?”
“Now I suppose you’ll tell us he’s evil,” said Nan.
“Oliver’s all right,” I said. “He’s just a bit of a wimp.”
“Well, he says you’re his friend,” said Grandy. “He’s staying with his nan, same as you are, while his mum’s at work.”
It turned out that Oliver’s nan lived in Soper Street, just up the road from Nan and Grandy. She’d been moved out to Arthur’s Mill same time they had. But just ‘cos our nans happened to live on the same horrible estate didn’t make us friends!
“I said he could drop by,” said Grandy. “Tomorrow morning, after breakfast. That all right?”
It didn’t really matter whether it was or not. When grown ups go and arrange things for you, you’re expected to just meekly do what they say and not make any sort of fuss. ‘Cos if you do make a fuss, then heavens! You should hear them carry on.
So that’s how I got lumbered with Oliver. Only actually, as it happened, it wasn’t so bad.
I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I mean, for one thing, Oliver reminded me of school, which is something I’d rather not have to think about during holiday time. For another, he’s not exactly the brightest. Janis might have been in a wheelchair, but she was really smart. We had fun together! But poor old Oliver, he’s—well! Not always quite with it.
So I woke up next morning thinking “Oh, drear” and gazing glumly into my cornflakes expecting the worst, and it just goes to show that sometimes things can turn out better than expected.
We spent that first day making up rhymes about Tracey Bigg. I told Oliver my one … and then he said that he’d got one, too. One that he’d made up all by himself.
I said, “That’s great, Oliver! That’s really ace.”
You have to encourage him. It wouldn’t have been kind to point out that a) his rhyme was an insult to pigs and b) not strictly speaking true, since Tracey Bigg is just BIG rather than fat.
Although I hate, loathe and utterly detest her, I think you should be honest about these things.
Here are some of the other rhymes we made up.
Actually, I sang a word that is ruder than “jolly” but I am thinking of Cat’s mum and remembering that she doesn’t like bad language and so I am trying to be polite. *
Here is another one that Oliver made up.
This is another one.
He’s got this thing about animals. He wanted to do one about her being a hippopotamus but he couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with it.
This is one that I did.
She does pick her nose and eat it. I’ve seen her doing it. She’s disgusting!
Someone once told me that if you keep picking your nose, your head will cave in.
Ha! That would be something.
Next day I went round to Oliver’s place. Well, Oliver’s nan’s. He’d got something he wanted to show me. It was this bit of garden his nan had given him. Just this little patch right at the end. He’d had it since he was eight years old, and it was all full of flowers, just like my bedroom wall except that these were real – and it was Oliver who’d planted them!
What was totally and utterly amazing was that he knew all their names. I’d say, “What’s this pink one?” and he’d say, “That’s an anemone.” And then I’d say, “What’s the blue one?” and he’d say, “That’s a delphinium.”
He probably couldn’t spell them (neither can I!) but he knew all there is to know about them, like what sort of soil they grow in and when you have to plant them and whether they’re the kind that come up every year or the kind that die out.
Being really interested in flowers myself, because of the garden that I am one day going to have, I learnt as much as I could and tried to store it all inside my head. What I did was I drew pictures of all the flowers that Oliver had grown and put their names by them.
I bet Tracey Bigg doesn’t know half as much as Oliver! I bet she doesn’t know anything. I think Oliver’s really clever, being able to grow all those flowers and remember their names. Nobody helped him. He did it all on his own. I thought to myself that I would tell Cat about Oliver’s flower garden when we went back to school. She’d be dead impressed! It’s almost as good as writing a book.
Maybe as good. In a different way.
Oliver was only staying with his nan for three weeks. After that, he and his mum and dad were off to Ireland to live in a caravan for a bit. I would love to stay in a caravan! I think it would be really neat.
You would have little beds one on top of the other, and little tables that folded away when you didn’t want to use them, and a little stove for cooking on, and a little teeny bathroom with a shower.
Everything would be lovely and warm and cosy and if you met someone you didn’t like, such as for example Tracey Bigg, you would simply drive on to somewhere else.
Oliver said that the caravan he and his mum and dad stay in in Ireland isn’t the sort that you could drive places in. It is in a caravan park and cemented to the ground.
I don’t care. It would still be fun!
I felt a bit miserable when Oliver went off to Ireland. I suppose I’d sort of got used to having him around. He promised he’d send me a postcard with an Irish stamp on it, and he did! It’s lovely. On the front there’s this picture of a little funny creature that Nan said was called a leprechaun and on the back he’d written a message:
It wasn’t much of a message, I suppose, but it gave me a happy feeling, especially as nobody had ever sent me a postcard before. Also I know that it is very difficult for Oliver to pick up a pen and write real words. I expect his mum and dad had to help him. He is a worse speller even than me!
He is also funny – he makes me laugh when he does his Tracey Bigg rhymes! – but a bit pathetic, as well, so from now on I am going to look after him. We have vowed that we will stay together, and when Tracey Bigg or the Murdo gang start their nonsense I will stick up for us. Oliver has said that he will stick up for us, as well, but I don’t think it would be wise to rely on him. But that is all right! I can do it for both of us.
I won’t mind so much about going back to school now that Oliver and me have decided to be friends. It’s not so bad if you have someone to go round with. You can share things and have secrets and tell each other jokes. And we can sit together in class and choose each other for partners. And it won’t matter if people jeer and sneer and say we’re no-hopers, ‘cos there’ll be two of us.
Anyway, we’re not! Oliver has his flower bed, and I have written a book!
Well, nearly. When I’ve finished this chapter I will have.
Once a week while I was at Nan’s, Mum and Dad rang me to report how they were getting on at their classes. They were ever so excited about it! Mum said, “We’re coming along a treat, Mandy! The teacher said that being willing to learn is half the battle.”
Dad said, “We’ll be reformed characters. You’ll see!”
Nan still wouldn’t let them come and visit me. She said that they had got to learn how to stand on their own two feet, and that it would only unsettle me. She said, “You’re doing very nicely. I don’t want them coming and setting you back again.”
Wow! It was news to me that I was doing very nicely. I’d thought I was just one big pain in the you-know-what.
Then one day Auntie Liz rang up and I listened at the door while Nan was speaking to her.
I know you’re not supposed to eavesdrop but I wanted to hear if Nan talked about me, which she did, so I reckon that made it OK. If people
are going to talk about you then I think it’s only fair you should be able to listen to what they’re saying. That’s what I think.
Anyway, this is what I heard Nan say. She said, “As a matter of fact, her manners have improved by leaps and bounds since she’s been with us. She’s quite a different child, you’d hardly know her.”
Next Auntie Liz said something that I couldn’t hear, and then Nan said, “I don’t think you’d need have any worries. She’s not a bad girl at heart. I’m really quite proud of her.”
Help! Faint!
That weekend, Uncle Allan and Auntie Liz came to visit, and they brought Jade with them. Jade remembered me! She was ever so happy to see me, she cried, “Mandy, Mandy!” and came running over for a cuddle. I remembered my manners and talked dead posh, just like the Queen and was as good as good can be. They let me take Jade into the garden and we played skipping games and hopping games and I didn’t use gutter language once!
When they went home that evening Auntie Liz said, “Well, Mandy! We’ll have to see about getting you down to visit us some time.”
I never ever thought she’d let me go to Croydon again. It didn’t exactly make up for being away from Mum and Dad, but it did give me this lovely warm feeling of being approved of.
Yah boo and sucks to Tracey Bigg! I bet she hasn’t got a little cousin like Jade.
I was so grateful to Nan for telling Auntie Liz nice things about me that I thought I really ought to start making more of an effort to be helpful to her, and I racked my brains thinking what I could do. She wouldn’t let me check her shopping lists or make suggestions about what to give Grandy for his tea. But there had to be something!