Jacky Daydream Read online

  I was put on a trolley and given a ride to the operating theatre. I’d hoped Rosalind might be allowed to go with me, but she was left behind on my bed. I tried to imagine she was running after me, jumping up onto the trolley, swinging her legs and laughing. Then we were in this new eerie room full of alien beings in masks and gowns. One of them held me down while another put an evil-smelling rubber mask over my face. I struggled and they told me to calm down like a good sensible girl and start counting, one, two, three . . . It seemed the maddest time in the world to start an arithmetic lesson but I obediently mumbled, ‘Four, five, six . . .’

  And then I was asleep, and when I woke up, I was back in my bed with Rosalind tucked up beside me, and a raw pain at the back of my throat.

  They let each child have ice cream for the first meal after their operation. Ice cream was an enormous treat then. You had ice cream with jelly at birthday parties and you might be allowed an ice-cream cone once or twice on your summer holiday, but that was your lot. The hospital ice cream was meagre, a slither of Wall’s vanilla, but I swallowed it down eagerly, in spite of the pain.

  I had a little parcel from home too. Biddy might not be allowed to see me but she sent me a Margaret Tarrant card every morning, and there was a present too, a little book of Toy Tales with big printing and lots of pictures. It was a bit babyish when I could cope with hundreds of pages of Adventures with Rosalind, but I knew it was the thought that counted. I was surprised that none of the other children got presents or cards or letters. Everyone thought it must be my birthday. They said I was very lucky and my mum and dad must love me very much.

  * * *

  I don’t think any of my fictional girls has to have her tonsils out in my books. However, there are a few hospital scenes, some very dramatic and sad. There are also more routine visits. Which of my characters ends up in hospital with a broken arm?

  * * *

  I wonder if you picked Mandy from Bad Girls? She does hurt her arm and end up in hospital, but it’s just a bad sprain. But Em in Clean Break breaks her arm running after her beloved stepfather.

  ‘Em, darling! It’s all right, I’m here. Does your arm hurt really badly?’ said Dad. ‘The nurse has just come, pet, they’re ready to plaster you up.’

  I clung to Dad, scared that it might be very painful. It did hurt when they gently but firmly straightened my arm out.

  ‘There we go. We’ll have you right as rain in no time,’ said the young doctor, smiling at me. ‘There’s no complications. It’s a nice clean break.’

  I winced at those two words.

  People often ask me if any of the characters in my books are real. Mostly I make it all up, but just occasionally it’s fun to write about someone I really know. I’ve always said I don’t put myself in my books but the novelist Jenna Williams in Clean Break is very similar to me. Nick’s drawn her looking exactly like me too – apart from one tiny detail. I wonder if anyone can spot what it is?

  15

  Pretend Friends

  JUNIOR SCHOOL WAS very different from the Infants. I was still at Latchmere, in an adjacent but identical red-brick building, the classrooms built round a quadrangle of grass. They were mostly the same children in my class but somehow I wasn’t the same. I wasn’t little Jacky-no-friends, the odd girl. I was suddenly inexplicably popular, with the girls, with the boys, even with the teachers.

  I wasn’t the new girl any more. She was a girl called Cherry, an exotic name in those days of Susans and Elizabeths and Janes. She was nicknamed Cherry Blossom Boot Polish and mildly teased. We became friendly because she lived a few streets away and we walked to school together.

  I was sad to miss out on my imaginary conversations on the way to school, but it was companionable having Cherry to walk back home with. We’d take our time. We’d run up the old air-raid shelter in Park Road and slide right down. We’d climb little trees on the bombsite and walk along the planks crossing the trenches where new houses were being built. We’d visit the sweetshop on the way home and buy sherbet fountains and gob stoppers and my favourite flying saucers, cheap pastel papery sweets that exploded in your mouth into sharp lemony powder.

  I’d occasionally go home with Cherry. Her mother was sometimes out, as she worked as a hospital almoner. They had a big piano in the living room. The whole family was musical. Cherry played the recorder and the violin. Her parents were keen amateur Gilbert and Sullivan performers.

  ‘Gilbert and Sullivan!’ said Biddy, sniffing.

  She had a job now too, but it was just part time in a cake shop. Cherry’s mum tried to be friendly with my mum, but Biddy wasn’t having any. She felt they put on airs and considered themselves a cut above us. I wasn’t allowed to invite Cherry back. I wasn’t allowed to have anyone in to play, not unless Biddy was there. She didn’t get home till quarter to six now, but I had a key to let myself in.

  Lots of the children in my class had similar keys. They wore them on strings round their necks under their vests. People called them latchkey kids. I thought I was a latchkey kid but Biddy soon put me right.

  ‘You’re not a latchkey kid! As if I’d let you go out with a grubby piece of string round your neck! You have a proper real leather shoulder purse for your key!’

  I had to wear the purse slung across my chest. It banged against my hip when I ran and it was always a worry when I had to take it off for PT but I had to put up with it.

  I didn’t mind letting myself in at all, though there was always an anxious moment reaching and trying to turn the key in the stiff lock, jiggling it this way and that before it would turn. But then I was in and the flat was mine. It wasn’t empty. It was full of my imaginary friends.

  I wasn’t allowed to cook anything on the stove in case I burned myself, but I could help myself to bread and jam or chocolate biscuits or a hunk of cheese and a tomato – sometimes all three snacks if I was particularly starving. Then I was free to play with my friends. Sometimes they were book friends. I had a new favourite book now, Nancy and Plum by Betty MacDonald. Nancy was a shy, dreamy girl of ten with long red plaits, Plum was a bold, adventurous little girl of eight with stubby fair plaits. They were orphans, badly treated by horrible Mrs Monday, but they ran away and were eventually adopted by a gentle kindly farmer and his wife.

  I read Nancy and Plum over and over again. I loved the parts where they imagined elaborate dolls for their Christmas presents or discussed their favourite books with the library lady. Nancy and Plum became my secret best friends and we played together all over the flat. Whenever I went on a bus or a coach ride, Nancy and Plum came too. They weren’t cramped up on the bus with me, they ran along outside, jumping over hedges, running across roofs, leaping over rivers, always keeping up with me.

  When Nancy and Plum were having a well-earned rest, I’d play with some of my own characters. I didn’t always make them up entirely. I had a gift book of poetry called A Book of the Seasons with Eve Garnett illustrations. I thought her wispy-haired, delicate little children quite wonderful. I’d trace them carefully, talking to each child, giving her a name, encouraging her to talk back to me. There were three children standing in a country churchyard who were my particular favourites, especially the biggest girl with long hair, but I also loved a little girl with untidy short hair and a checked frock and plimsolls, sitting in a gutter by the gasworks.

  Eve Garnett drew her children in so many different settings. I loved the drawings of children in window seats. This seemed a delightful idea, though I’d have got vertigo if I’d tried to perch on a seat in our living-room window, looking down on the very busy main road outside. I loved the Garnett bedrooms too, especially the little truckle beds with patchwork quilts. I copied these quilts for my own pictures and carefully coloured in each tiny patch.

  I’d sometimes play with my dolls, my big dolls or my little doll’s house dolls – but perhaps the best games of all were with my paper dolls. I don’t mean the conventional dolls you buy in a book, with dresses with little white tags for