Queenie Read online

  ‘Well, stop it,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ I said. ‘Ouch, it really, really hurts.’

  ‘Then stop marching about and sit down, you silly fool,’ said Mum.

  ‘I think I really wrenched it playing hopscotch,’ I said. I rubbed my leg gingerly. ‘I can hardly bear to walk. Maybe I’ve broken it!’ I was warming to this theme. I’d always wanted a limb in plaster. People wrote little messages all over the hard white surface and made a big fuss of you. I stomped harder with my bad leg, trying to make it worse.

  ‘Do pack it in, Elsie,’ said Mum. ‘I’ve got enough on my hands without you playing silly beggars too. If I don’t get another job, we’ll be in Queer Street, I’m telling you.’

  ‘My leg!’

  ‘You’re just putting it on to get attention.’

  ‘No I’m not. Mrs Brownlow saw and asked me what was wrong with it,’ I said.

  ‘Mrs Brownlow? That nosy old cow! What have you been saying to her? You didn’t tell her about Nanny, did you?’ Mum asked, suddenly giving me her full attention.

  ‘No, I didn’t. Well . . .’

  ‘Elsie!’ said Mum, catching hold of me.

  ‘I didn’t say about the TB, I swear I didn’t. I said Nan had women’s troubles,’ I said, wriggling.

  Mum stared and then burst out laughing. ‘Good for you,’ she said.

  She stayed in a good mood after that. We played Beauty Parlours when she had finished her ironing. She let me brush her hair after she’d washed it, and then buff her nails – her toes as well as her fingers.

  ‘You’re so pretty, Mum,’ I said enviously.

  ‘I just know how to give Nature a little helping hand,’ said Mum smugly.

  She let me stay up with her all evening, singing along to the music on the Light Programme. I did my best to be useful, making her cups of tea and running for a fresh box of matches and emptying her ashtray.

  ‘You’re a good little soul really,’ said Mum, giving me a pat. ‘Maybe we’ll get on together OK, you and me.’

  ‘You bet,’ I said, but my chest went tight again. ‘Mum, Nan is going to come home, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes! For pity’s sake, you’re like a broken record,’ said Mum.

  ‘And if my leg’s really bad tomorrow, can I stay off school?’ I asked.

  ‘No you can’t, so stop going on about it. Now go to bed.’

  I could try wheedling with Nan, but there was no point arguing with Mum.

  She sent me off to school extra early the next day, because she wanted the flat to herself to prepare for her job interview. I stumped along the road, exaggerating my limp. I pretended to be a pirate with a wooden leg. I hunched my left shoulder because I had a parrot perching there, pecking my ear affectionately and crooning, ‘Pieces of eight! Who’s a pretty girl? I’m Polly Parrot and I love Elsie.’

  Then I caught sight of myself in a shop window and blushed because I looked such a fool. I stepped out properly, marching left, right, left, right, but I’d got into such a limping habit it was more like left, hobble, left, hobble.

  I hoped at the very least to get out of doing PT today. It was now my absolutely worst lesson. I hated it even more than mental arithmetic. I wasn’t bad at PT – I could run quite fast, limp or no limp, and I could do all the silly arms-stretch, knees-bend exercises, and I could catch a ball neatly and throw it high in the air with one deft flick of my wrist. It was my new knickers that were the problem. We were supposed to wear regulation navy school knickers with elastic legs. I didn’t have the right knickers.

  ‘I’m not wasting my money on hideous school bloomers!’ Mum had told me.

  She’d bought me a pack of three from the market. They were pink, pale blue and lilac, with a white lace frill at the back.

  I was pleased at first and thought they were pretty, but when I took my tunic off at school, all the children collapsed, laughing and pointing. I had a new nickname now: Frilly Bum.

  I tried to find the old navy knickers I’d had ever since the Infants, but Nan had already cut them up for dusters. I begged Mum to buy me more proper knickers, but she refused. She was adamant, particularly after Miss Roberts sent a polite letter asking if Elsie could wear school underwear on PT days in future.

  ‘No, our Elsie blooming well can’t!’ said Mum. ‘She can’t tell me how to clothe my child. It’s none of her business. I don’t tell her what kind of knickers to wear!’

  I was terrified she might say something of the sort to dear dignified Miss Roberts. At home I kept quiet about the Frilly Bum teasing. Nan might have understood and tried to save up for a proper pair of knickers – but she wasn’t here now.

  I decided I couldn’t face another day of giggles and cat-calling. I wouldn’t go to school at all today! I hadn’t had the opportunity to bunk off school before because Nan nearly always walked there with me, then went to the shops on her way home. But now I could run straight past the school gate. I could go all the way into town and look round the big shops. I could look at the filmstar photos outside the Odeon and make up the story of the film. I could go to the park and play I was in the countryside. I could go paddling in the duck pond and pretend it was the seaside.

  My heart soared. I skipped down the road in my boy’s shoes, my limp vanishing. I didn’t go over the crossroads and join the little troop of mothers and children hurrying down the road to Millfield Juniors. I turned quickly up Burnley Avenue, heading for freedom.

  A big Rover car was turning into our doctor’s surgery at the end. It was Dr Malory himself, smiling at me and waving me past. Then he suddenly wound down his window.

  ‘Hey, you’re the little Kettle girl, aren’t you?’

  I froze. He was still smiling but I was sure I was in trouble. I wanted to run, but he was out of the car now.

  ‘Hang on a minute! It’s Evie, isn’t it?’

  ‘Elsie,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Oh yes. And your grandma’s in the sanatorium now. They wrote to notify me,’ said Dr Malory, in his great booming posh voice. He might as well have been shouting through a megaphone. I didn’t know what to do. Everyone could hear, and yet I couldn’t shut him up or contradict him, because he was a doctor.

  ‘Have you been to visit her? How’s she getting on?’ he asked.

  I had been trying hard not to think of Nan too much because it made me want to cry. I could already feel my eyes burning and my throat tickling. ‘She’s all right,’ I said quietly, my head down.

  Perhaps Dr Malory was more sensitive than he seemed, because he patted me gently on the head.

  ‘Now listen, Elsie. I sent a message to your mother that you two, and anyone else who lives in your house, must come and have a chest X-ray and a little skin test, to make sure you haven’t contracted tuberculosis too. I dictated the letter to my secretary the moment I heard about your grandma. Hasn’t your mother mentioned a letter?’

  I shook my head anxiously. Mum didn’t always bother to read the letters that came when she was home. If they looked official, she was likely to toss them straight in the bin.

  ‘Well, it’s very important. TB can be very contagious. Now, you be a good girl and remind your mother, otherwise I’ll have to inform the authorities.’

  The word authorities was like a blow to the stomach. I didn’t know who they were, but they sounded frightening. I saw men in black uniforms and jackboots marching to our house and arresting everyone.

  ‘You’ll make sure you’ll do that, Elsie?’ said Dr Malory.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I muttered.

  He suddenly focused on me, looking at my clothes. He saw the school badge Nan had sewn onto my cut-down navy jacket – I didn’t have a proper blazer either. ‘You go to Millfield Juniors, don’t you? So why aren’t you going to school?’ he asked.

  My heart hammered behind my telltale badge. I couldn’t possibly admit that I was intent on playing truant. He’d maybe send for those authorities straight away. I had to find an excuse – any excuse.

&nbs