Harriet Strikes Again

by Jean Ure

  “I said you’d very generously decided to let people keep whatever they dug up. Honestly,” said Harriet, “you’ve got your hole. What more do you want?”

  Next day they laid their lino and bought their plastic sheeting. Harriet was still lost in wonderment at her own brilliance. Without her they would never have had a hole!

  “All it takes is a bit of brain power,” she said.

  That night, Stinky’s dad walked down the garden to tip some vegetable peelings on the compost heap and fell feet first into the hole.

  The following day, he stood guard over Harriet and Stinky while they filled the hole in again.

  By tea time, Harriet and Stinky ached in every bone in their bodies and the hole was no longer there.

  Harriet’s mum had stopped her pocket money for the second week running and Goody-goody Giles was due to arrive first thing Sunday morning.

  “You and your brilliant ideas,” said Stinky.

  “I like that! Whose idea was it to dig a hole in the first place?”

  “Yours,” said Stinky.

  “Humph!” said Harriet.

  Dragging herself wearily home, Harriet bumped into Red-head.

  “Hey, you know that Ancient Remain?” said Red-head. “Guess what? My mum took it down the antique shop and they gave us fifteen pounds for it!”

  Life, thought Harriet, could be very bitter at times.

  HELP THE AGED

  One day in class Mrs Middleton said, “Tell me! How many of you ever travel by bus?”

  Most people put their hands up.

  “How many of you have ever travelled on a bus when it was full?”

  A few of the hands went down.

  “How many of you have ever given up your seat to an elderly person?”

  A bit of wavering, eyes flickering sideways to see how other people were going to respond, then one by one the hands began to droop and fall until in the end not one single hand was still up.

  “Hm!” said Mrs Middleton. “So how many of you would consider giving up your seat to an elderly person? If you happened to see an elderly person standing?”

  Alison Leary’s hand promptly shot into the air, straight and stiff like a flag pole. It was followed immediately by Snobby Clark’s and then, rather more slowly, by Wendy Williams’, Salim Khan’s and one or two of the others.

  Harriet sat frowning, trying to decide. Would she give up her seat to an elderly person? She might – but, then again, she might not. It would depend what the elderly person looked like. If she looked frail and fragile, then Harriet probably would. But if she looked like Miss Dunc up the road, then Harriet most definitely would not. Miss Dunc was short and stout and bristly, and totally disagreeable. Miss Dunc would deserve to stand.

  In any case, if she put her hand up now it would seem as though she were just copying Alison Leary. Harriet folded her arms and stared defiantly straight ahead.

  “Well!” said Mrs Middleton. “I’m glad to see that at least a few of you still know the meaning of good manners.”

  Alison’s hand quivered self-righteously. Full of virtue, was Alison.

  “What about the rest of you? Joseph! You’re looking very militant. Why wouldn’t you give up your seat?”

  Joseph, better known as Hake-face, said that he reckoned he’d got just as much right to sit down as anybody else.

  “I’d have paid my fare same as what they’d done.”

  “Yeah.” Stinky Allport nodded. “I don’t see why people should get special treatment just ’cause they’re old.”

  “Specially when they’re crabby,” said Hake-face. “Always keeping on at you and telling you not to do things.”

  “Like, I was on this bus the other day,” said Stinky, “and there was this old woman had a go at me just for breathing. It’s all I was doing, just breathing. She said I was doing it down her neck, like I was doing it on purpose. Said it was creating a draught.”

  “I had this one said I trod on her foot deliberate,” said Hake-face. “Said young people today didn’t have no respect.”

  “I don’t think old people have got respect,” said Stinky. “They seem to reckon just ’cause you’re young they can abuse you as much as they like.”

  “Well, all right, we’ve heard from the boys,” said Mrs Middleton. “What about one of the girls? Harriet! Why the big scowl?”

  The big scowl was for Alison Leary and her friend Snobby Clark, smugly sitting side by side with their haloes all polished and shining. Harriet bet no old person had ever told them off for creating draughts or treading on feet. Those two never did anything wrong.

  “Come on, Harriet!” said Mrs Middleton. “Let’s hear your views on the subject.”

  “What I think –” Harriet scraped her throat. “– is that if it was a nice old person I’d give them my seat, and if it was a cross old person I wouldn’t.”

  Alison sniggered, as if Harriet had said something stupid. But other people nodded, and murmured their agreement.

  “Yeah! If it was a nice old person.”

  “Not if it was a cross one.”

  “How can one tell?” wondered Mrs Middleton. “Can one tell just by looking?”

  Harriet thought of Miss Dunc and decided that you probably could.

  “If they look miserable” she pulled down the corners of her mouth.

  “Yeah, like sometimes they smile at you and other times they look at you like you’re some kind of mess, or something.”

  “Like they want to stamp on you.”

  “So you don’t think,” said Mrs Middleton, “that when people get old they deserve to have allowances made for them?”

  The class considered the proposition.

  “No,” said Hake-face.

  “Not if they’re nasty,” said Harriet.

  “Ought to have allowances made for us, being young,” said Stinky.

  “Oh, you do!” said Mrs Middleton. “I assure you, you do!”

  Stinky smirked, not quite certain how to take this.

  “I think,” said Mrs Middleton, “that I should like us all to consider how it might feel, to be old … to run out of energy, to have aches and pains, to be a bit stiff, a bit deaf, maybe not see too well. I think it might do some of us good. I know you probably can’t imagine it at the moment, but you’re all going to be old yourselves one day. Perhaps you might like to project yourselves into the future and think what you’ll be like in sixty years’ time.”

  Stinky jumped up and began to shuffle about the room, groaning loudly as he did.

  “Exactly!” said Mrs Middleton. “Just think of that, when you’re sitting on a bus and see old people standing. One of these days, it might be you!”

  Harriet enjoyed the sort of game where you had to use your imagination and pretend to be someone different. She played the being-old game in the playground all through break along with Stinky and Hake-face and Wendy Williams. Then she played it again when she got home.

  Old people, she thought, sometimes had trouble with their teeth which meant they had to slurp their food. Harriet slurped, gustily.

  “Harriet!” cried her mum. “For heaven’s sake! Keep your mouth closed when you’re eating.”

  “I can’t,” said Harriet, dribbling a strawberry yoghurt all down her front. “I’m doing a project for school.”

  “A project on eating disgustingly?”

  “Project on old people,” said Harriet. “I’m eating like an old person.”

  “Rubbish!” snapped Mum. “When did you ever see your gran eat with her mouth open?”

  Never, was the answer to that. Harriet’s gran was very small and neat and trim. She wouldn’t dream of dribbling yoghurt down herself.

  “How old is Gran?” said Harriet.

  “Sixty,” said Mum.

  “I’m being eighty,” said Harriet.

  After tea, she went upstairs to be eighty in her bedroom. What was it Mrs Middleton had said? “How it might feel to be old … to run out of energy, to have aches and
pains, to be a bit stiff, a bit deaf, maybe not see too well.”

  It wasn’t going to be easy, but Harriet enjoyed a challenge. “Run out of energy.” All right! She would jump up and down one hundred times on the spot. That should run her out of energy.

  Harriet jumped. One! Two! Three! Four! She managed to get as far as ninety-two before her mum’s voice came yelling up the stairs.

  “Harriet! Stop that! You’ll bring the ceiling down.”

  Really, her mum wasn’t any help! This was a serious experiment. Harriet sank on to the bed, panting, to work out ‘aches and pains.’

  How could you give yourself aches and pains? Harriet thought about it. An idea came to her. She took her pencil sharpener out of her bag. The pencil sharpener was in the shape of a frog – all angles and pointy bits. Then she took off one of her shoes and stuffed the pencil sharpener right down into the toe. Then she put her foot back into the shoe and trod across the room.

  Ow! Ooo! Ouch! That was pain, all right. Nobody could walk far with a pencil sharpener in her shoe.

  She didn’t know what to do about aches. In the end she pulled her long woolly school scarf out of a drawer and wound it round her middle as tight as it would go; so tight she could hardly breathe. It wasn’t quite an ache and it wasn’t quite a pain, but maybe it was what old people felt like when they had difficulty breathing. Mrs Middleton hadn’t mentioned that one.

  What was next? “A bit stiff.” Hmm …

  A ruler! A plastic ruler stuck through the tight scarf, making the tight scarf even tighter and the whole of Harriet’s right side as stiff as a board. She couldn’t bend up, she couldn’t bend down, she couldn’t bend sideways. You couldn’t get much stiffer than that.

  “A bit deaf” was easy: Harriet simply helped herself to two of Mum’s cotton wool balls from the bathroom and stuffed them in her ears.

  “Maybe not see too well.” That was easy, too: one of Mum’s gauzy scarves (borrowed from Mum’s dressing table drawer) tied around her eyes. Now all she could see were faint shapes in the darkness, and the only sounds she could hear were muffled. Just like an old person!

  All she needed was a walking stick. Where could she find a walking stick?

  I know! thought Harriet. One of Dad’s garden canes.

  Stiff and aching, half blind and almost deaf, Harriet felt her way along the landing and hobbled down the stairs. The frog pencil sharpener dug into her foot, the plastic ruler jabbed her in the ribs. At the bottom of the stairs, she bumped into someone coming the other way.

  “What are you doing?” shrieked Lynn.

  “I’m being an old person,” said Harriet.

  “You look pathetic!”

  Old people quite often looked pathetic. They were either thin as sticks or fat as bubbles or else completely shapeless. Harriet could have stuffed some pillows down her sweater and been a fat one. Fat people waddled. Harriet waddled. Down the hall, out through the kitchen, into the garden, down the –

  “Ouch!” yelled Harriet, tripping over an unseen obstacle and banging her head against something hard.

  She tore off Mum’s gauzy scarf and saw Fat Cat leaping away with his tail in the air.

  “You did that on purpose!” bawled Harriet.

  Next morning, Harriet limped her way in to school. She had a big red blister on one of her toes plus some very sore ribs where the ruler had jabbed at her. She also had a large ugly lump on the side of her head and a painful purple graze on one of her knees.

  If this was how it felt to be an old person, then Harriet could quite understand how old people were sometimes a bit grumpy. In future she would go out of her way to be kind and considerate and do all that she could to help them.

  Harriet spent the whole of Saturday morning trying to help old people. It wasn’t always easy since some of them didn’t seem to want to be helped. One old man became quite angry when Harriet attempted to drag him across to the other side of the road. He claimed he hadn’t wanted to go there, but if that were the case, why had he been dillying about at the kerb? Harriet made allowances for him: he was obviously confused. It wasn’t his fault if he couldn’t remember where he wanted to go.

  Another old person screamed that Harriet was trying to mug her – all because Harriet had offered to carry her shopping bag! And an elderly couple threatened to “call the police immediately if you don’t go away and leave us alone”. Harriet had only wanted to help load their shopping into the boot of their car for them.

  Poor old people, with their aches and pains! They shouldn’t have to do these things. But some old people, as Harriet was discovering, could be very stubborn.

  She had just about decided to give up and go home when she saw a sweet old lady with snow white hair tottering towards her.

  The sweet old lady was wearing a blue dress and bedroom slippers. (Bedroom slippers? In the street?)

  “Little girl,” said the old lady, “I wonder if you could spare a penny? I’ve been out since early morning. I would so love a cup of tea.”

  “You can’t buy a cup of tea for a penny,” said Harriet.

  The old lady’s face crumpled. She held out her hands, piteously.

  “Then what am I to do?”

  Harriet looked at the bedroom slippers. They were wet and dirty, as if the old lady had been treading in puddles.

  “Haven’t you got anywhere to go?” said Harriet.

  “Nowhere!” A tear rolled down the old lady’s cheek. “My daughter threw me out. She said I was a nuisance.”

  Harriet’s heart swelled. How cruel people were!

  “Would you like to come home with me?” she said. “I could give you a cup of tea.”

  “Could I stay with you?” said the old lady.

  “Well–” Harriet hesitated. “I’d have to ask my mum about that. But I could give you some tea.”

  Harriet and the old lady walked home together. They went in the back way, through the kitchen door.

  “You wait here,” said Harriet. “I’ll go and see where my mum is.”

  In the hall she met Lynn on her way out through the front.

  “Dad’s gone off to the football,” said Lynn, “and Mum’s in the lounge talking to Miss Fanshawe.”

  “Oh!” Harriet knew Miss Fanshawe. She had once run a lucky dip for her at a church fete.

  “You’re not to go in there,” said Lynn. “They don’t want to be disturbed. Miss Fanshawe’s very upset about something.”

  Yes, and she might get even more upset if she saw Harriet. Harriet had just remembered that there had been a little bit of a muddle over the lucky dip and Miss Fanshawe hadn’t been very happy with her. It might be best if Harriet stayed away.

  She went back to the kitchen and found that the sweet old lady had opened the refrigerator and taken out a big bowl of trifle that Harriet’s mum had made specially for tomorrow, when Auntie Eileen and Uncle Roger were coming. The sweet old lady had trifle all round her mouth, over her fingers and down the front of the blue dress.

  “Um –” said Harriet.

  “This is very poor trifle,” said the sweet old lady. She said it quite crossly. “There doesn’t seem to be any sherry in it.”

  The old lady tossed what was left of the trifle into the sink. “Where’s my cup of tea?”

  “I’ll put the kettle on,” said Harriet.

  “Earl Grey,” said the old lady.

  “Pardon?” said Harriet.

  “I only drink Earl Grey.”

  Poor muddled old lady, thought Harriet. How could you drink a person? Harriet took out a mug and placed a Tetley tea bag in it.

  “Why isn’t the heating on?” said the poor muddled old lady. “I’m cold! I’ll catch my death! Go and get me a cardigan.”

  Harriet scuttled to obey. You had to make allowances when people were old.

  When she came back, with one of Lynn’s cardigans (Lynn surely wouldn’t mind, if it was helping a poor old lady?) the fridge was open again and a puddle of spilt milk lay across the floor
.

  “I want something to eat,” said the old lady. “What have you got that I can eat?”

  “Um … bread and butter?” said Harriet. “Biscuits? Cornflakes? Bag of crisps?”

  The old lady didn’t want any of those things. She wanted a decent meal, she said. Nobody ever gave her a decent meal.

  “There’s cake,” said Harriet.

  Grudgingly, the old lady accepted a slice of Mum’s best fruit cake. Harriet made the tea and put it on the table.

  “What’s that?” said the old lady. “That’s not Earl Grey!”

  “It’s all we’ve got,” said Harriet.

  “Well, I can’t drink it. I only drink Earl Grey. And I can’t eat this cake!” The old lady suddenly spat the cake out, all over the table. “Don’t you have anything decent in this house?”

  Pressing her lips tightly together, Harriet wiped the cake off the table with the kitchen sponge. The old lady had picked up Lynn’s cardigan and was staring at it, fretfully.

  “Man-made fibre! I can’t wear man-made fibre!” She flung the cardigan across the room. “Cheap and nasty! I only wear wool.”

  “That cardigan belongs to my sister,” said Harriet.

  “Then your sister has very poor taste, that’s all I can say. I really don’t know why you invited me here if you can’t look after me properly. When you ask a guest into your house, it is only common courtesy to offer her the best. Now I want to use the bathroom. Kindly direct me to the bathroom.”

  Harriet led the old lady upstairs. The old lady seemed sprightly enough. She didn’t appear to have any aches or pains and she certainly wasn’t blind or deaf, so there really wasn’t any excuse for such unpleasant behaviour.

  “I’ll wait for you down in the hall,” said Harriet.

  Maybe she could smuggle the old lady back out before Mum discovered her. She was beginning to think that perhaps she had made a bit of a mistake, bringing her back for tea. But what was she to do with her? You couldn’t just abandon an old lady on the streets, especially not an old lady in bedroom slippers.