Queenie Read online

  ‘I don’t want a decent man,’ I said defiantly. ‘I’ll stay at home with Nan.’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ said Mum. ‘Are you living in Cloud Cuckoo Land, Elsie? Your nanny’s very poorly, you know that. She’s not always going to be around.’

  ‘Yes she is. I know she’ll get better and she’ll look after me.’

  ‘But if she doesn’t, I’ll be looking after you, and you need to get yourself sorted. I have a feeling Mr Perkins and I might be together in the future—’

  ‘I knew he was your boyfriend!’

  ‘You be quiet. You mustn’t say anything to anyone just now, because Mr Perkins is a highly respected married man with a family. Now the thing is, I haven’t told him all the facts about my family. He thinks I’m a little younger than I really am. It’ll be a shock to him knowing I’ve got a great lolloping schoolgirl daughter – especially one who’s poorly. He has a horror of anything unhealthy. So you have to get completely better, do you understand? Stop playing silly beggars and falling out of bed, do you hear me?’

  Mum came to visit me that Sunday too. I stared at her agitatedly as she clip-clopped along the veranda. I already had a visitor – my dear Nurse Gabriel. She’d brought in a ball of pink angora wool and a pair of knitting needles, and was trying to show me how to follow a pattern for a simple bolero. I’d managed a couple of rows, but as Mum approached my needles jerked and I dropped half my stitches.

  ‘Mum! What are you doing here? It’s Sunday,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve come to see how you are, you silly sausage. Checking you haven’t broken any more limbs overnight,’ said Mum. She sat down heavily on the edge of my bed, flicking her hair back over her shoulders, peering at Nurse Gabriel. ‘And who’s this?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s Nurse Gabriel, Mum. You know,’ I hissed, embarrassed.

  ‘You’re one of Elsie’s nurses?’

  Nurse Gabriel smiled politely. ‘I used to be. I’m on the men’s ward now. How do you do, Miss Kettle.’

  ‘So what are you doing here now?’ said Mum. She sounded rude and I blushed, but Nurse Gabriel kept smiling.

  ‘Oh, Elsie and I have become old friends,’ she said. ‘Here, Elsie, let me pick those stitches up for you.’

  ‘It’s a waste of time you teaching our Elsie to knit,’ said Mum. ‘She’s got two left hands, this one. And now two blooming limpy legs.’ She stuck her own shapely bare legs out at an angle. She’d drawn eyebrow pencil up the back of each leg to look like stockings.

  ‘Elsie will have lots of physio. She won’t necessarily have any kind of a limp,’ said Nurse Gabriel smoothly. ‘Here, Elsie. Show your mum how nicely you can knit a row.’

  She gave me the knitting, each dropped stitch carefully retrieved. I tried hard to impress Mum, but it was a losing battle.

  Mum sneezed. ‘Oh Gawd, it’s that fluffy wool. It always gets right up my nose,’ she said, delving around in her bag for a hankie.

  I sniffed deeply, loving the powdery smell of her handbag. I saw a glimpse of a picture postcard in amongst the compacts and combs.

  ‘Oh, let me see your card!’ I said, thinking it might be from Nan.

  ‘No! Get off. It’s a personal card from Mr Perkins,’ Mum said. She gave Nurse Gabriel a sharp look. ‘He’s my employer. He owns Perkins Ballpoint Pens. He’s on his holidays in Bournemouth.’

  So that was why Mum was free this particular Sunday. I hoped she would shut up about Mr Perkins to Nurse Gabriel. I especially hoped she wouldn’t say that he was her boyfriend, not when he had a Mrs Perkins and little Perkins children too.

  I hoped Mr Perkins wasn’t on a very long holiday. If Mum started coming on Sundays on a regular basis, then maybe Nurse Gabriel would stop coming, and that would be dreadful.

  But Mr Perkins came back, and was obviously more demanding of Mum’s company because she didn’t come for ages after that. I persevered with my angora bolero, but Mum was right – I truly couldn’t get the knack of knitting. Nurse Gabriel frequently had to unpick all the rows I’d done in the week because I’d dropped so many stitches. I couldn’t make the rows lie smooth and even. They puckered up terribly, and my hands grew hot and damp as I knitted, so that the pink wool started to turn grey. In the end Nurse Gabriel took pity on me. She took the wool and needles away with her – and brought back a finished fluffy bolero within a fortnight.

  ‘Oh Nurse Gabriel, I love it! And I love you!’ I said, flinging my arms around her neck.

  I wore my bolero every day after that. It looked a little odd with my cat pyjamas, but it suited my baby-dolls beautifully. I found I took after Mum, and angora wool made me sneeze, but I didn’t mind a bit. It felt weird to be divided into two very different halves – my top delightfully adorned in my heavenly pink bolero and fancy pyjama top, and my bottom so horribly encased in splint and plaster.

  The splint stayed on, of course, but after six weeks the plaster came off. They took it off with a little saw, which was frightening, because I was scared they might get carried away and saw my leg in half while they were at it.

  It didn’t look like my leg when it was freed. It was an ugly white matchstick that looked as if it might snap at any moment. I was introduced to Miss Westlake, the physiotherapist. She was very bouncy, her salmon-pink arms rippling with muscles. She had a very big chest, almost as impressive as Mum’s.

  ‘Now then, little Miss Kettle, let’s get cracking on that silly old leg,’ she said, flexing her frightening arms.

  I couldn’t get up to see if I could walk on it because my other leg in its splint still needed complete bed rest. I had to lie flat on my back while Miss Westlake massaged my matchstick and then made me push down hard into her cupped hands with my limp foot.

  ‘It hurts,’ I said.

  ‘Good, it’s meant to hurt,’ she said. I had to keep pushing while she pummelled, until the sweat was standing out on my forehead, making my fringe sticky.

  I’d never been so glad to see the back of someone in all my life. To my horror, she came back the next day, and the next, and the next.

  ‘We’ll get that leg sorted if it kills me,’ said Miss Westlake, attacking it with renewed vigour.

  ‘You’re going to have a super-leg by the time she’s finished with you,’ said Martin. ‘The rest of you will stay all thin and weedy, but that leg will get bigger and bigger and bigger. It’ll grow twice the size of the other one, with a calf muscle like a beach ball, and you’ll hop all over the place, boing, boing, boing. You’ll be so good at high jump, Elsie. You’ll jump over houses and trees and church steeples and take right off into the sky, and people will stare up at you, shading their eyes, and go “There goes Super-leg!”’

  ‘Ha ha, very funny,’ I groaned as Miss Westlake commanded me to push harder.

  ‘You watch your lip, young Martin,’ she said, kneading my calf as if it were a lump of dough. ‘It will be your turn next.’

  ‘I haven’t broken my leg,’ said Martin.

  ‘How long have you been here? I think your brace is due to come off soon,’ said Miss Westlake.

  We all stared at Martin. We all knew that our braces and splints and plasters would come off one day. We knew that Martin had been on Blyton Ward longer than anyone. But it still seemed incredible that he was actually going to be released from his terrible frame soon.

  ‘You lucky thing, Martin,’ said Gillian.

  ‘Yeah, hurray for me!’ he said. ‘Just you watch me, you lot. They’ll take off my brace and I’ll stride off, just like a cowboy.’

  They took Martin away to have his Jones spinal frame removed. We waited for him to come striding back along the veranda, but when he appeared he was still in his bed, his legs stretched wide apart as if he were still attached to his brutal frame.

  ‘What’s the matter, Martin? Why aren’t you walking?’ asked Gillian.

  Martin didn’t answer. He stared up at the ceiling, ignoring her.

  ‘He’ll be walking soon,’ said Nurse Smith. ‘Mr Dobbin’s goi