Jacky Daydream Read online

  I was quite a small child but I was really too big to squat on the back of a bike, so after a few weeks Biddy trusted me to walk to school and back by myself.

  ‘You must look both ways every time you cross a road, do you hear me?’ said Biddy.

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘There’s a traffic lady at the Park Road crossroads – she’ll show you across.’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘You do know the way by now, don’t you, Jac?’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘And you won’t ever talk to any strange men?’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, no, Mummy.’

  ‘And absolutely no daydreaming!’

  ‘Yes, Mummy. No, Mummy,’ I said. No daydreaming! It was as if she was telling me to stop breathing.

  It wasn’t that unusual to let young children walk to school by themselves in those days. Children in the country would think nothing of walking three or four miles. I liked my half-hour’s walk through the quiet suburban streets. I’d make up stories inside my head or talk to imaginary friends. If people started looking at me strangely, I’d realize I was muttering to myself. I soon perfected a mask expression while inside I was up to all sorts. I already knew I wanted to be a writer. Sometimes I’d pretend to be grown up and a famous author and I’d interview myself. Nowadays it still feels faintly unreal when I’m being interviewed, as if I’m still making it up.

  The walk back from school was much more worrying. I met up with more children wandering home from their own schools. They were mostly in little gangs. I was on my own. There was one boy in particular who really scared me. He went to the school my mother had spurned. Francis wasn’t a rough boy, quite the contrary – he came from a wealthy bohemian family who lived in a huge Victorian house at the bottom of Kingston Hill. Biddy knew the family and turned her nose up at them because the children had tousled hair and colourful crumpled clothes and scuffed sandals. I liked the way they looked, especially Rachel, the thin little girl with a gentle face and spindly plaits.

  Francis wasn’t gentle though. He glared at me every day, clenching his fists. I scurried out of his way as quickly as possible. Sometimes he’d chase after me, thumping me on my back if he got close enough. I’d arrive home shaky and tearful. I didn’t want to tell Biddy. She might go to find Francis and tell him off, and any fool knew that that would make him really out to get me.

  I pretended I had a stomach ache instead. I had a dodgy stomach at the best of times, and had bad bilious attacks every couple of months, so Biddy took me at my word. Sometimes she’d let me climb on her lap and she’d rub my tummy and I’d feel a lot better – though I had nightmares about Francis at night.

  Then one day Francis caught hold of me, said a surprisingly rude word, and then punched me hard in the tummy. I had a real stomach ache now. It hurt a lot. My eyes watered but I was determined not to cry in front of him. I just stood there, staring straight back at him. He didn’t punch me again. He ducked his head and shuffled off. Rachel looked at me anxiously, her face white. She looked as if she was trying not to cry too.

  The next day they were standing waiting for me on the corner. I felt sick with fear, but as I got nearer, I saw Francis wasn’t glaring. Rachel was smiling timidly. She held out a crumpled bag of home-made fudge.

  ‘These are for you,’ she said.

  I took the bag. I had a piece of fudge. I offered the bag back to them. They took a piece too. We stood, teeth clamped shut with fudge. Then we swallowed and nodded goodbye. They went down the hill, I went up the hill. We weren’t exactly friends now, but we were no longer enemies. Francis never punched me again.

  I found it hard to make school friends the first few days at Latchmere. I wandered around the playground by myself and crept inside the main door and leaned against the radiators, breathing shallowly because the whole corridor smelled of sour milk. We were all given a small bottle of milk each morning. I hated milk, but you had to drink it right down to the bottom or else you got into serious trouble and were lectured about the starving children in Africa. Then the milk monitor collected all the silver tops up and stored them in huge sacks in a cupboard. They stayed there for months before anyone came to collect them.

  The head teacher’s office was nearby, and the secretaries’ office too. There were two secretaries, the Misses Crow, a pair of stout sisters. They both had hearts of gold, but one was sharp and one was sweet and you knew exactly which one to make for if you’d fallen over and needed a bandage.

  Miss Stanbridge, the head, was another stout spinster. She bustled past once or twice while I was drooping by the radiator, my expression probably as sour as the milk. Children weren’t supposed to be indoors at play times but she didn’t chase me outside. She patted me on the head in a kindly fashion, as if I was a little stray dog, and then marched off purposefully in her great black lace-ups.

  My form teacher was lovely, dear Mrs Horsley. She wore hand-crocheted jumpers and dirndl skirts and was passionate about country dancing. She was a brilliant storyteller and very kind to all the children in her class, though some of the naughtier boys got a light slap on the backs of their legs if they fidgeted or argued. All teachers hit children then. If you were really really bad, you got the cane in front of everyone, but this rarely happened, especially in the Infants.

  Mrs Horsley saw I needed to make friends. I think she had a quiet word with two girls in my class, Hilary and Jane, because they decided to take me under their wing. This was very kind of them but I found them a little oppressive. They were tall, gangly, bespectacled girls, very earnest and upright. They played Mothers and Fathers and wanted me to be the baby. They’d whisper to me in their own voices to be naughty, and then they’d sigh and suck their teeth and go ‘Bad Baby!’ and act putting me to bed in disgrace.

  This got incredibly boring play time after play time. But then one of the boys started playing with us too – Michael, my first boyfriend. He was a cheery boy with slicked-down hair, rosy cheeks and a big smile. His mother dressed him in sensible long corduroy trousers in the winter. Most of the boys then wore ugly grey short trousers that ended an inch or so above their scabby knees. Sometimes their horrible baggy white underpants showed below their trouser hems, a total turn-off. Michael had much more style. I liked him – and he seemed to like me.

  ‘What are you girls playing?’ he said, circling us with interest.

  ‘We’re playing Mothers and Fathers,’ said Jane. ‘I’m the mother.’

  ‘Then I’ll be the father,’ said Michael.

  ‘You can’t be. I’m the father. I’m tallest,’ said Hilary.

  ‘Maybe you can be another baby, like Jacky,’ said Jane.

  ‘I don’t want to be a baby,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll be a monkey, OK?’

  He made screechy monkey noises, waddling around and scratching himself.

  I giggled.

  ‘You’re Micky the Monkey,’ I said. ‘You’re my monkey.’

  Mothers and Fathers became much more interesting after that. Sometimes we gave Hilary and Jane the slip and played Baby and Monkey games by ourselves.

  It was great having a boyfriend. I didn’t really have a proper girlfriend for a while. I knew who I liked the most: Ann, a beautiful child with big brown eyes and long curly hair. She was the youngest of four and had that glossy confidence that comes when you’re the family favourite. She wore very frilly white knickers that showed beneath her short flouncy frocks whenever she twirled round. Any other girl would have been teased unmercifully about such fancy underwear, but no one ever picked on Ann. She went to ballet classes and sometimes wore her angora ballet bolero to school.

  I wanted an angora bolero too, but Biddy wouldn’t knit me one because she said the fluff got everywhere and made a mess. I longed to do ballet, but Biddy was against that idea too. She said she’d have to make costumes for me and she didn’t have the time or the patience. Ga’s hands were twisted with arthritis now an