Private - Keep Out!

by Gwen Grant

  Anyway, I couldn’t go back to Fancy Nancy because she wouldn’t have me. ‘I’m surprised you can afford to pick and choose,’ our Mam said to her, and Fancy Nancy said, ‘I’d rather sweep roads than teach her any more,’ and our Mam said, ‘If that’s the way you feel, there’s no more to be said.’

  I said to our Mam, ‘What shall I do now Miss Nancy won’t have me?’ and our Mam said, ‘I suppose we shall have to try and get some other poor soul to take you on.’ Sometimes I don’t think our Mam is altogether on my side.

  So she took me to this new teacher, Miss Brown. Ruby Brown her name is. I said to her, ‘That’s a funny name,’ and she said, ‘Why? I don’t think it’s funny,’ and I said, ‘Well, rubies are red, not brown,’ and she sighed and said, ‘Who was your last teacher?’ and when I said, ‘Fancy Nancy … er, sorry, Miss Nancy,’ she looked at me and said, ‘I hope you’re going to behave yourself,’ and I said of course I was.

  Miss Brown is tall and thin with brown curly hair and she works in the same shop as our Lucy’s going to work at. She sells frocks. She’ll be in charge of our Lucy, who I feel very sorry for. I wouldn’t like to work with Miss Brown. I don’t even want to go to her dancing class, but our Mam says I’ve got to, so that’s that. Miss Brown always seems to be looking at you, just like a proper teacher. She doesn’t have her lessons in her Mam’s front room. She has a room over the wallpaper shop for her lessons. It’s freezing in there as well, but our Mam says at the prices she charges she can’t afford to have it heated. One thing with Miss Brown, you have to dance, because if you stood still for a second you’d get that cold you’d never move again.

  So, we started. By the time we’d finished I could hardly move. I’m sure Miss Brown thinks all my bones are sewn together in a lot of little bits and pieces instead of being all in one line. She kept saying, ‘Now, bend it here,’ and wanting me to bend one of those bits of my legs that don’t bend. I said to her, ‘They don’t bend,’ and she said, ‘They will by the time I’ve finished.’

  When I went to dancing class tonight, Miss Brown said she wanted me to pretend I was a leaf and float about in the air and everything. So I did for about fourteen hours and then I laid down on the floor and she came up and said to me, ‘And what do you think you’re doing?’ and I said, ‘I’m being a leaf,’ and she said, ‘You don’t look much like a leaf to me. To me, you look as if you’re just lying on the floor,’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m lying on the floor because I’ve just fallen off a tree,’ and she said, ‘Get up! Get up, you horrible little child,’ and I thought, huh!

  So then I had to be a tree and I shouted, ‘TIMBER,’ and fell down and bashed a lot of little leaves who were still floating about in the air, and they all started crying.

  Miss Brown nearly went mad. She got hold of me and I was glad it was only my wrist and not my neck she had in her hands and she said, ‘If you cannot behave yourself, child, then I shall have to tell your mother that I will not have you in my class. Not at all. Do you understand?’ I said, ‘Right, Miss. Sorry, Miss,’ and she said, ‘Right. Now go and be a river. You surely can’t get up to any harm being a river,’ and I said, ‘But you said be a tree, Miss,’ and she said, ‘Just go away,’ and so I went and started being a river.

  I had to lay on the floor and roll about pretending to be moving and that. That was pretty horrible and I was glad to get home. Then I got into trouble because our Mam took one look at me and she said, ‘And what have you been doing in those clothes?’ and I said, ‘I’ve been being a river,’ and she went, ‘Tut, tut! I don’t know. I suppose you were a dirty river, were you?’ and started laughing. But I didn’t think it was funny at all.

  4

  ‘Why are there spots on my face?’

  I know I was dirty when I got home from dancing class last night, thanks to Miss Brown, who I don’t think I’m going to like very much and who I don’t think is going to like me very much either, but when I got up this morning and looked in the mirror I thought, that’s funny, I don’t look very clean, and I knew I couldn’t be that dirty because we always have to have a wash at night before we go to bed. I know I didn’t exactly have a wash last night but I splashed some water on my face and I thought, I shouldn’t look brown.

  Anyway, I had another wash and that isn’t like me at all. In fact, our Mam shouted through to the kitchen, ‘You’re never actually getting washed, are you?’ and I said, ‘I won’t come clean, Mam.’ She said, ‘Don’t be daft. Get a move on else you’ll be late for school,’ although why that should bother anybody I don’t know. Personally, I couldn’t care if I was so late for school it was finished for the day by the time I got there, but still.

  Anyway, in the end, our Mam came into the kitchen and she took one look at me and went, ‘Aaaagh!’ (just like in the comics) and said, ‘You’re covered in spots,’ and I thought, oh, I don’t feel very well, although I’d felt all right up till then. Of course, nothing would suit but that our Lucy and Rose came rushing in. ‘Spotty! Spotty!’ they started shouting and I burst into tears. Just like that, and then the nicest thing that ever happened to me in my life happened then. Our Mam clouted them for making me cry when I was poorly. It was worth every spot I ever had and I’m not kidding. Anyway, I said, ‘I don’t feel very well,’ and our Mam said, ‘Come on, let’s have you back to bed.’ I’d just settled down and was reading all the comics which had only come that very morning (I don’t usually get to see them till all the big ones have read them, and by that time they’re practically in tatters) when Old Flo came up the stairs.

  I can say here and now that if I’d known our Mam was going to call Old Flo in, I’d have pasted my face with flour like our Lucy does when she goes out at night and thinks our Mam hasn’t seen her. She looks just like a ghost although she thinks she looks beautiful. I would have done anything rather than let our Mam see my spots if I’d known she was going to have Old Flo in.

  Anyway, Old Flo leant over me and that practically gave me double chicken pox in itself because she leans over you and breathes all over you and makes you feel ill and then she prods and pokes at you until you feel like a pin cushion. She has these long thin fingers and it doesn’t half hurt when she sticks them in you.

  ‘Ho yes,’ she says. ‘Definitely chicken spots,’ and I thought, oh, ugh! because they don’t last as long as some of the other spotty things you get and you have to get up sooner as well. ‘No need to get the doctor in,’ Old Flo says. ‘Get her up in the morning and let her lay on the sofa. Give her plenty to drink and don’t worry if she won’t eat for a day or two,’ and I stared at Flo and thought, what are you trying to do? Ruin everything? The whole world and everything? Because when anyone’s ill at our house, they get treated like a queen – or a king if you’re a boy, of course.

  You get fruit for a start. Now, that’s something we never normally see at all, only in the shop windows, that is. Then, you get extra comics and everybody in the street sends round a sweet or an old comic or something. Everybody comes to see you as well and best of all, for all the time you’re poorly nobody gets to hit you. None of our lads or Rose and Lucy, that is. Not even any of the kids in the street are supposed to hit you when you’re poorly and if they do, your brothers and sisters hit them, which is just about the only time brothers and sisters are of any use at all.

  And here was Old Flo, telling our Mam all these lies about how I wasn’t hardly poorly at all. I thought, I’m not having this, so I laid back and went, ‘Oooooooooooo-hhhhhhhhh. Ooooooooo-hhhhhhhhh. I feel terrible,’ and our Mam went white and said, ‘Oh, Flo,’ and Flo looked at me and said, ‘Castor oil. That’s what she wants. Castor oil,’ and then I saw her wink at our Mam and our Mam said, ‘Right then,’ and I had to have a great big spoon of castor oil. I did feel ill then, properly.

  Some grown-ups spoil the whole world, they do.

  Anyway, it was all right for most of the day and then something really terrible happened and I was frightened half out of my life. The rent man called.
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  Our Mam locked all the doors (there’s only two of them but she locked them both) and she drew the curtains and she said, ‘Now, you be very quiet, because the rent man’s coming and I haven’t got the money to pay him today,’ and I felt all shaky inside and scared. I said, ‘What’ll happen if you don’t pay the rent, Mam?’ and she said, ‘Oh, nothing will happen,’ but I knew it would.

  The women talk about it all the time and sometimes when you get up in the morning, a whole family will have gone away. They call this a moonlight flit because they go in the dead of night when there’s nobody around to see them. My Mam always says, ‘Those poor people. No roof over their heads and them with all those little kids as well,’ and it’s always been a very scary thing for me, that one night I would wake up and be put on a barrow and wheeled away and we’d have no roof over our heads either.

  So, we were sat there and I hardly dared breathe at all. In fact, I could feel my face getting redder and redder and our Mam suddenly said, ‘Here. You’re not to stop breathing altogether, you daft thing,’ and slapped me on the back and I was going, ‘Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!’ and everything because then I couldn’t get my breath. Our Mam said, ‘I don’t know whatever I’m going to do with you. You always take things to extremes,’ and she shook her head and then suddenly went dead still and I did too. I was scared half to death.

  ‘Is that him?’ I said, and our Mam went, ‘Ssshhhh!’ I fell back on the cushions and wondered what our lads and Rose and Lucy and our Dad would do when they got home and found they hadn’t a roof over their heads any more.

  The rent man knocked on the door and everything went quiet. And then I heard him shout to Mrs Elston, ‘Is Missis in?’ and Mrs Elston said, ‘No. She’s gone shopping,’ and the rent man said, ‘That’s a likely story, I don’t think,’ and he started banging and thumping on the door ever so hard. I was nearly dying inside. My heart was going like mad and I said to our Mam, ‘Mam, I think my heart’s going to burst,’ and she just hugged me and put a finger over my lips.

  ‘I know you’re in there,’ this man was shouting. ‘Open this door. I want my rent,’ and then I heard our Dad’s voice, ‘And you shall have it, fellow-me-lad,’ he said and then the next thing we heard was all this shouting as the rent man ran down the passage at the side of our house and then I started crying and then I think I was really ill because they had to get the proper doctor in.

  He was very nice and felt my forehead, and his hands were all cool. He was talking very quiet to our Mam and she was standing twisting her apron in her fingers. Then everything went black and I was poorly for a long time.

  The only good thing about me being ill was that I got to sleep in a bed of my own. I don’t know where our Lucy and Rose slept but all the time I was poorly, I slept in that big bed all on my own. Our Mam slept with me some of the time. She said this morning, ‘Well, I never thought I’d ever wish you were getting up to mischief again.’

  Of course, when I did get in bother this afternoon and I reminded her of that, she just said, ‘I ought to have known better then, didn’t I?’ and she slapped my legs just as hard as she ever used to. ‘I thought I was poorly?’ I said and she said, ‘You were, but I can see that you’re all better now.’

  ‘Is that us back to normal, then?’ I asked her and she said, ‘Yes, I’m sorry to say it is.’

  All I did this afternoon was try on our Lucy’s best frock.

  You should have heard her when she came upstairs. ‘Oh!’ – scream, scream – ‘I’m going out in that tonight’ – scream, scream – ‘I do think, Mother,’ (Mother! You can tell she’s leaving school soon, can’t you?) ‘I do think Mother, that you could keep this horrible monster from wearing my clothes.’ And our Mam came upstairs and looked at the tiny, tiny little tear in the hem of the skirt where I’d accidentally trodden on it, and I’m not kidding, you would have needed a magnifying glass to see it. She said, ‘You leave our Lucy’s clothes alone now,’ and I said, ‘But I was only trying it on,’ and our Mam says, ‘Never mind. Just you leave them alone.’ Then our Lucy said, ‘Anyway, I want you to go to the shop for me,’ and I said, ‘What did your last slave die of?’ and our Mam went gasp, gasp, and put her hand over her mouth and rushed out of the room. I said to our Lucy, ‘See. You’ve even made our Mam sick.’ ‘I have not,’ our Lucy said. ‘She was laughing, and I’m sure I don’t know what there is to laugh about,’ and she hit me. I started bawling and our Mam shouted up the stairs, ‘For goodness sake, you two, pack it in. I should have thought you’d more sense, our Lucy, than to make a little girl cry,’ and our Lucy said, ‘I’ll murder you one of these days, I’m not kidding.’

  So I went rushing down the stairs and said to our Mam, ‘Our Lucy says she’s going to murder me,’ and then our Lucy didn’t half get a telling off. Oh, I really enjoyed that! So why it was me that got sent to bed early, I don’t know. There’s no justice in this world, at all, ever.

  I says to our Mam, ‘Why have I got to go to bed?’ and she says, ‘Because you’ve caused enough trouble in one day to last me for a year and because I want some peace and quiet.’ And what gets me is that I don’t even do anything in the first place. It’s all their fault but I get the blame.

  So, anyway, I’m lying here writing this and the candle’s flickering like mad and I think I’ll pack away now and have a puppet show on the wall.

  I’d only just started my puppet show when our Rose came upstairs to get ready to go out. She has to do everything our Lucy does. She’s getting to stay out pretty late these days too. I think so, anyway. So she put this skirt on. It was a black taffeta skirt. I say ‘was’ because it isn’t any more. She was standing there holding it at the waist and she started twirling round. Round and round she went and the skirt flared right out and the flame on the candle caught it and there was a nasty little sound like a mad pussy cat spitting. Then our Rose was standing in the middle of a sheet of flame.

  I never even thought about what to do. I remembered a film I’d seen at the pictures where this man wrapped a rug around this woman who was on fire, so I jumped out of bed and grabbed our Mam’s patchwork quilt and threw it round our Rose. I could see her face in the light of the fire and she had her mouth open as if she was shouting but I couldn’t hear anything at all. Not a single sound. The quilt covered all our Rose’s skirt and they fell on the floor and I jumped up and down on them to make sure the fire was right out.

  Then our Rose must have found her voice, which didn’t surprise me, because I’ve never known her be quiet for so long at a time, and she started screaming blue murder. Everybody rushed upstairs and our Mam and Dad are in the doorway staring at our Rose standing there with thick black smoke rising up all round her.

  She wasn’t hurt at all, though, because she hadn’t fastened the skirt so when I threw the quilt around it, it dropped straight to the floor. Anyway, we all had another jump on the quilt, and our Mam said, ‘Shush, shush,’ to our Rose. Our Rose stopped screaming which pleased everybody for about six streets around and our Mam said to her, ‘Are you hurt?’ and our Rose said, ‘No,’ and then our Mam dropped in a big heap on the floor. Our Dad sighed and said, ‘If ever a man suffered!’ and picked her up and laid her on the bed and brushed her hair back from her face and said, ‘There, there, my little love,’ and slushy things like that. Then our Rose and Lucy said they’d see to her, and they fetched Mrs Elston from next door and she brought some smelling salts and Granny Bates and, of course, Old Flo, and between them they got our Mam sat up on the bed and then she burst into tears and I started crying, because I always do when our Mam cries. Then – yuk, yuk, yuk – our Rose threw her arms round me and said, ‘Oh, you brave little girl,’ and then she told everybody what I’d done and I was trying to get away from her. ‘Gerrof me,’ I said at last and she dropped me as if I were a slug crept out from under a stone.

  ‘You might be brave,’ she said, ‘but you’re horrible,’ and I said, ‘Oh yes, very nice. Save you from a fiery death and that’s all the thanks
I get,’ and our Rose bit her fingernails and looked at me as if she’d like to strangle me.

  Anyway, it all ended very nicely for everyone but me, I should like to add. Our Dad took our Mam for a drink and Mrs Elston and Granny Bates and Old Flo thought they might as well go too, seeing as how they’d had such a terrible shock. Our Rose and Lucy went out and that left me still in bed with our Pete and Tone downstairs. I don’t reckon much to that at all and I still don’t see why I couldn’t go for a nice drink because after all, I had a shock as well, didn’t I?

  All our Dad would say when I asked if I could go was that his last wish on earth would be that every man and woman in the land should have some place to go where they don’t let kids in. After all I’ve done for them, as well.

  They’re never grateful, grown-ups, no matter what you do.

  5

  ‘Did God make Gloria Hottentot as well?’

  I’ve decided to forgive our Mam and Dad for being so ungrateful, as when I got up this morning, Whit Sunday, I had a new candy-striped dress, a pair of black patent leather shoes with a strap and a button to fasten them with, new white ankle socks and a new pink and white ribbon in squares.

  The whole day would have been lovely if they’d have let me stop off Sunday School, but when I asked, you’d have thought I wanted to fly in an aeroplane or something. ‘Of course you’ve got to go to Sunday School,’ our Mam said. ‘You’re a little heathen, as it is.’

  ‘You don’t go,’ I said, and our Mam said, ‘Ah, I might not go now, but I had to when I was a little girl like you.’ When I grow up, I won’t force my children to go to Sunday School at all. If they want to go, and I bet they don’t, then they can go, but if they don’t, then they can stay at home with me.