by Louise Voss
‘Hello baby brother-or-sister,’ I mouthed against her, pressing my cheek firmly down in the hope of feeling a kick.
‘No, I’ll probably just meet you there. I want to take the car so I can go to the library afterwards. I hope Wayne will be better by then – his flu’s been dragging on for weeks. The vet came again yesterday.’
I nodded sympathetically, still buried under the apron, although I was somewhat scared of Wayne. Wayne was Betsey’s father: five foot five, with a seven foot arm span and an impressive beard, and he did not much approve of my friendship with his daughter. Having him lying feebly on the straw in the next cage was considerably less nerve-racking than having him swinging along the fence which separated us, yelling at me, as he usually did.
‘Are you making scones? Can I have one?’ I emerged back out into the warm scented kitchen, cheeks flushed and hair coming adrift from the bobble securing my ponytail. Mum adjusted it for me, and stroked my face.
‘Yes, darling. I made them for you. Get the jam out of the larder please, and we’ll have one together.’
The twenty-third had dawned clear and cold. A coach, with long droopy wing mirrors like Dennis Healey’s eyebrows, wheezed up to the school gates at 8.45, and we were allowed in, jostling and sniggering at the novelty of being on board, able to smell that distinctive school-trip smell of petrol and plastic, to run our hands over the scratchy softness of the tartan seat backs and to stake our places by the great big windows, all the better to make faces out of. While most of my classmates piled towards the back, satchels and lunch boxes bumping along the seats, I, without hesitation, took the prime position at the front nearest the driver.
The driver was a tiny little man, no bigger than most of us nine-year olds. He had an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear, like a badge of proof that despite his size, he was old enough to be in charge of this large vehicle.
I’d felt so bursting with pride that my feet barely seemed to touch the steps as I ascended. This was my day. Darrell Hawkes tried to pinch me as he went past, but I stuck my nose in the air and ignored him. Whereas we were all togged up in macs and anoraks and duffel coats, Darrell wore nothing warmer than a t-shirt which bore a peeling decal reading, ‘If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?’ His nose dripped like a faulty tap, he really did eat worms – I’d seen him do it - and he already had a criminal record for shoplifting. Everybody hated him.
My friend Esther climbed on last, late as usual. ‘Can I sit with you?’
I hesitated. I had been entertaining a swottish hope that Mrs. Meades would ask that question, so that I could fill her in with more details of my intimate knowledge of the primates we were about to visit. But Mrs. Meades had already settled herself across the aisle, her register sticking out of the top of her big plastic shopping bag, and her legendary enormous furry boots filling up the entire space between her seat and the back of the driver’s booth. People stopped in the street and stared at those boots when she wore them. They were luxuriantly, opulently furry, like two well-groomed Persian cats. The whole effect was of a strange hybrid, half-teacher, half-yeti; something that might have escaped from a zoo in a Roald Dahl book.
‘OK,’ I’d said to Esther, who scrambled up on to the seat next to me and opened her lunchbox, pulling out a packet of Skips.
‘Want some?’
‘Yes please. Are you looking forward to seeing the orang-utans?’
Esther shrugged. ‘Yeah. Though I’d rather see the elephants. Orannatans are boring.’
I felt as if she had just insulted my family, and so when she proffered the Skips, I took a much bigger handful than was strictly polite. The truth was, whilst acting like some kind of junior primate specialist, I had somewhat played down the closeness of my actual relationship with Betsey. I’d instinctively felt, even from a young age, that it might make me a target for ridicule to my classmates. Any form of difference was frowned upon amongst the pupils of Linley Road Junior School. You could be viciously prodded in the playground for not knowing all the words to ‘The Big Ship Sails On The Ally-Ally O’; or for wearing glasses, as I’d discovered to my cost on the day that I first got mine. I’d been in the first year then, and so mortified that I had actually walked into the classroom backwards.
So, regardless of how proud I was of my enduring friendship with an orang-utan, I was also aware that if I overplayed it, it could be a potentially ostracizable offence, on a par with poor Rosemary Thatcher’s burns.
Rosemary was in 3R. The day before she joined the school, all the teachers had had a quiet word with their classes, telling us that we were to be nice to her. That a terrible fire which had started in a chip pan in her house, when she was little, had left her with some scars. I had imagined that these would be long white scars like the ones found on pantomime villains and picture-book bank robbers, but the scars on Rosemary’s face weren’t like that. Her whole face was a red weal, with twisty pink bits around her eyes, nose and mouth. She looked as if she had been dropped into a pot of boiling water, and my stomach shrank and contracted every time I saw her. I was consumed with the urge to befriend her , but every time I saw her sitting alone on a bench, the one furthest away from the portable goalpost in the playground where the big boys congregated, I just couldn’t think what I could possibly say to her. Her aloof distance scared me as much as her boiled cheeks.
So although most of my fellow third years knew that I went to the zoo a lot because my mum worked there, none of them really had the whole picture, not even Esther. I had decided it was time to change all that. I hugged myself in anticipation of the awe on their faces when they saw me walk amongst the orang-utans issuing commands, like a lion-tamer subduing the mighty beasts in a circus ring. Well, if I was lucky, Betsey would give me a cuddle. 3Y would be so impressed that not even Darrell Hawkes would think about ever teasing me about it. I prayed Betsey would be generous with her affections and not having an off day.
The coach pulled away, the tiny little driver swinging the immense steering wheel around and narrowly avoiding a row of parked cars as he eased his way out onto the main road. He clicked on a radio, and speakers filled the interior with a high, breathy, squeaky woman’s voice – I later found it was Fern Kinney, singing “Together We Are Beautiful”. He sang along, only about two octaves lower and out of tune. You walked into my life, he growled, and together we are beautiful! Oh, so beautiful!, his fag dropping ash onto his stay-press trousers as we barrelled along the ring road. His legs were so skinny that the trousers seemed all crease and nothing else.
I didn’t speak much to Esther after that She ate the remainder of her Skips, and I gazed out of the window unseeing, dreaming of the moment of glory when I was to be the only one allowed inside Betsey’s cage, and my classmates would realise that I was the special one, the lucky one, the chosen one.
On arrival at the zoo, we traipsed in a straggly crocodile towards the orang-utan enclosure, my hot dry hand resting in Esther’s Skip-sticky one, Mrs. Meades’ boots stroking each other as she strode noiselessly in the lead.
Mum was already there, a white lab coat straining at the buttons across her bump. ‘There’s your mum.’ Esther was finally beginning to sound impressed. And not before time, I thought.
With only a tiny cursory wave of acknowledgement to me, Mum led us all around the outside of the enclosure, pointing out the orang-utans’ habitat, discussing their diets and exercise preferences, and touching on their mating rituals. Darrell Hawkins of course sniggered uncontrollably at the mere mention of the word ‘mating’, but my mother was a trouper, and took no notice.
‘That’s Wayne over there,’ I said in a loud stage whisper to Esther, unable to control myself any longer. ‘He’s had the flu, but he’s better now. He’s Betsey’s dad.’
Mum half-smiled, half-frowned at me to be quiet. Then she gathered us all around her, and announced; ‘OK, children, we’re going inside now. There’s rather a lot of you, so please try and be quiet so you don’t o
verwhelm or frighten them.’
We filed inside the big stable-like building, thick glass separating us from the orang-utans. Wayne was still wandering around outside, but Pru and Maisie, Betsey’s sisters, were loping about, occasionally sitting down and tearing off a leaf to nibble, their long legs folding beneath them like collapsible pushchairs. There was no sign of Betsey.
I shot a look at Mum. Where is she? Mum pointed at the sleeping quarters and raised her eyebrows, but I shook my head back. I didn’t think Betsey could be in there; she rarely slept during the day. A faint uneasy feeling began to creep over me. Mr. Jenkins, the zookeeper, wouldn’t allow me inside their house unless it was just Betsey and I together - the other ones weren’t nearly so friendly with me.
Mr. Jenkins appeared in the doorway, his shiny pate and buck teeth gleaming under the spotlights of the enclosure. Like Mrs. Meades and her boots, he resembled some sort of composite from the natural world – half egg, half chipmunk. He smiled goofily at Mrs. Meades, perhaps recognising a kindred spirit, but she didn’t notice, as she had got a small faecal-stained piece of straw snarled up in the fur of one of her boots, and was clearly trying to work out how to extract it without touching it. Then Mr. Jenkins spotted me – largely because I was waving frantically at him – and beckoned me over. My chest puffed up with pride, and I pushed my way through the group and over to his side.
‘Hello, young Emma,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry love, but Betsey’s a bit under the weather today. She’s coming down with that flu that’s going around.’
‘Where is she?’ I was torn between concern for Betsey, a sense of crushing disappointment, and enjoyment of my classmates’ curious faces.
‘She’s in bed, love. Best leave her alone – ‘
Just then, I saw Betsey’s skinny red arm stretch out from her straw boudoir, followed by a pair of bleary eyes as she cautiously began to emerge.
‘There she is, Mr. Jenkins! Oh, please can I go and see her? Please, just for a minute?’ Hopping anxiously from foot to foot, I turned around to appeal to Mum. ‘Mummy, please?’
Mum made a ‘leave me out of it’ face. By now my class were riveted, and I was desperate. This would be my only opportunity. I rushed up to the glass and knocked on it, waving madly across at Betsey. It was true, she didn’t look well. Her eyes had a sorry, dead appearance, and her hair was lacklustre. She grinned faintly at me, but it was nothing that anyone else would’ve noticed. Then she sat down and listlessly picked a few fleas off her thigh.
Mr. Jenkins frowned sympathetically at me. ‘I’m sorry, Emma, but the answer’s no. She’s been in a very bad mood all morning, and I’m getting the vet over to take a look at her later. You don’t feel much like playing when you’re poorly now, do you? Same with Betsey. Pop back in again next week, and I expect she’ll be right as rain again.’
Next week! Next week was no good. Next week, my entire class wouldn’t be watching as I demonstrated my Dr. Doolittlesque empathy with our closest animal relatives. I burst into tears. My class began to titter awkwardly, and Darrell Hawkes chanted, sotto voce, ‘Em-ma Victor loves the monkeys, Em-ma Victor loves the monkeys...’. He started to lope in a circle around me, his bare goose-pimpled arms hanging down in bracket shapes in front of him, making chimpanzee noises and occasionally beating his puny chest. Mrs. Meades gave him a clip round the ear, but the damage was done. What I had most feared had come to pass: I was now an object of ridicule.
Mum led me outside by the elbow and told me to pull myself together, I was making a big fuss about nothing and embarrassing myself. She gave me a cuddle, though, and made me blow my nose, but it didn’t make any difference.
When we got on the coach to go home again, Esther went and sat near the back with Julia Pidgeon. Julia, unfortunately, lived up to her name, with a fat stomach, skinny legs, and the worst pigeon-toes I’d ever seen, and I knew that Esther didn’t even like her that much. They both played tenor recorder in our recorder group, and there was always a lot of argy-bargy going on around the trembling skeleton of their reluctantly-shared music stand.
Perilously close to tears again, I wandered further on down the aisle in search of a seat, but they were all taken except one empty one next to Rosemary Thatcher.
‘Hello,’ I said nervously, thinking that at least now I’d be able to talk to her properly. I slid in next to her, still sniffing, but feeling a little bit better. Perhaps Rosemary Thatcher would be my new best friend – the tragedy and romance of her marred beauty and otherness had always been far more appealing to me than boring old Esther. The most exotic thing about Esther was her frilly ankle socks. ‘Can I sit here?’
Rosemary muttered something which I couldn’t hear, and looked away.
‘They’re really brilliant, aren’t they, orang-utans? Did you know that they can swing distances of up to thirty feet? I wish I could do that, don’t you?’
Rosemary turned back to me, her disfigured face impassive, staring at me out of her slits of eyes. ‘Go away, Emma Victor,’ she said. ‘You’re weird.’
Getting up without a word, I fled down to the front of the coach again, curled up in a window seat in the five row oasis of emptiness between Mrs. Meades and the first lot of children, and wept hot, silent, bitter tears all the way back to Acton.
Betsey didn’t want me. Esther didn’t want me. Even Rosemary didn’t want me. All the magic was gone; forever, I thought. And when the baby arrived, I knew it would be much, much worse.
Chapter 14
But, of course, I was wrong. However strong my love for Betsey had been, it wasn’t a patch on how I felt for Stella, from the moment I first saw her.
Betsey had died a few weeks after that fateful zoo trip, carried off by the same flu her father had contracted. I’d been utterly grief-stricken for days and, despite completing a terrific project for Mrs. Meades - a sort of posthumous biography of Betsey - my classmates remained unimpressed. I’d thought my life was over - until the first time Mum picked me up from school accompanied by Stella in her pram. All the girls in my class coochy-cooed over her so rapturously that, by association, I began to feel special again. My next project was entitled ‘My Little Sister’, in which I showed everyone photographs of Stella in the bath; and even Rosemary Thatcher managed a smile at the sight of her.
And now here we were, nineteen years later, my little sister and I, on a wintry Sunday afternoon. It was the weekend after our row and, even though we’d made up, there was still a tension between us. The peace was a fragile gossamer one, flimsy with hidden truths and unspoken secrets.
I looked across at her as she talked without listening, kneeling on the floor, her hair snaking across her face and her long fingers flicking over the pages of a large illustrated book. I tried to remember the sight of her lying pinkly in that pram at the school gates, but found that I was having trouble imagining a time when Stella couldn’t talk. It was funny, I thought, how the people you loved could drive you so far around the bend.
The wind was howling with such volume around the window frames that Stella had to raise her voice to be heard above it, which irritated me even more, since I was trying to finish Temples of Delight. She was browsing through a book of 80's fashions for a project she was doing at college; wittering inanely and endlessly in the way she only ever did with me, and had been doing since she was two years old. It still wound me up – it was like being trapped underneath a waterfall.
‘I sometimes think,’ she said dreamily, ‘of all the clothes I've ever made, in my whole life; from dolls’ clothes to those awful naff things I made in primary school; you know, poncey blouses and that time I tried to make jeans, and that weird holey jumper that actually looked really punk, do you remember the one? I just wonder if one day someone will try and track them all down for a complete retrospective of my career – wouldn’t that be hilarious?’
I tsked at her. ‘Dream on, Stella. I don’t think anyone’s ever going to exhibit the dresses that Vivienne Westwood made for her teddy when she was si
x, so I’d imagine you’ll be safe.’
Stella flicked through the pages until something caught her eye. ‘Ooh, look, it’s those belts. Suzanne and I were talking about them the other day - do you remember them, Em; sort of canvas webbing, they came in lots of different colours and the buckle end always dangled down, and on men they were supposed to be like penis extensions. Look.’
I ignored the stretched-out book being thrust under my nose. ‘Stella, I’m trying to read. Leave me alone.’
Stella was getting annoyed too. ‘I just wanted to know if you’d ever had one, that’s all.’
‘No.’
‘Did you have any legwarmers then?’
‘Yes, I had legwarmers. Pink ones.’
‘Suze and I were watching Fame re-runs on cable other night, it was so crap I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that they were actually supposed to be talented: I could play the viola better than that skinny bird; and they're all so ugly!’
‘She played the cello, not the viola; get your facts right. I'm going to finish my book - in peace.’
I marched out of the room, picking Temples of Delight off the arm of the sofa on my way. I’d always secretly thought that the cellist from Fame, all eyes and cheekbones and long delicate fingers, was absolutely the most beautiful woman ever, and had yearned to look like her. But remembering back I supposed that her character, Julie, had been a bit wet really. Funny how people's ideas of beauty changed, I thought as I flopped down onto my bed. Stella was right, none of them would really be considered that gorgeous these days: not that dopey Bruno with his big soppy eyes, or cheesily hard Leroy and his shiny pecs, even that little black girl, the main one. Irene Cara. She was cute, but there’d been a whole gaggle of that type of girl on TV in the early ‘80s: the blind one in the Lionel Ritchie video, Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, the female cast of Cosbys. However much they said ‘80s fashions were back in again, you still didn't see that shaggy permed winsome look any more. Thankfully.