Queenie Read online

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. When she’d finished rubbing at me, I tried to nestle up to her the way I’d done in the train, but she sat me down properly on my own chair.

  ‘Careful – you’ll spill it again!’ she said.

  That was my mum for you, always blowing hot and cold. I saw her hot on the train, her face lipstick-red all over, her embrace like fire – and now I saw her freezing cold with snow in her hair and icicle fingernails. She was tapping those nails on her cup, fiddling with the paper from the sugar cube, crossing and uncrossing her legs, all of a fidget. Maybe she was scared too.

  We needed Nan to calm us both down, but she wasn’t there. I trailed off to spend a penny and sat there on the toilet, praying to Nan as if she were God.

  ‘Dear Nan, please let it be all right. Please don’t let the doctors do scary things to me. Please let the nurses be kind. Please don’t let the other children be horrid to me. Oh, please let me get better quick, and you get better too, so we can both come back home together.’

  ‘Elsie? What are you doing in there?’ Mum called, rapping on the door. ‘You haven’t locked yourself in, have you?’

  I looked at the lock on the door and seriously wondered about keeping it bolted for ever. I could creep out every night and eat stale buns from the refreshment room and run up and down the empty platforms for exercise, and then scuttle back at dawn and lock myself away again . . .

  ‘Elsie! Come out this instant!’ Mum commanded.

  I unlocked the door and shuffled out sheepishly. We went to wait at the bus stop outside the station. We waited and waited. Mum kept consulting the gold wristwatch Uncle Stanley had given her.

  ‘Don’t say we’ve missed the bally thing!’ she said – but at last we saw the single-decker red bus looming in the distance.

  ‘At last!’ said Mum. ‘This hospital’s at the back of beyond. I’m sure Doctor Malory’s sent you there on purpose, just to make life more difficult.’

  We got on the bus and I stared anxiously out of the dirty window, looking for some large ugly Nissen hut like poor Nan’s sanatorium. The bus hurtled down narrow country lanes for what seemed like hours.

  ‘We must have gone past it,’ said Mum, consulting her watch again. ‘Hey, conductor! I thought you were going to tell us when we got near Miltree Hospital.’

  ‘So I will, duck, when we get there. In another ten minutes,’ he sang out cheerily.

  ‘Duck!’ Mum muttered. ‘Does he think I’m some daft old biddy? I’ll give him duck!’

  When the conductor announced the hospital at last, Mum swept past him haughtily, tugging at me to do the same. My leg had gone funny after all the sitting down. I stumbled and dropped my suitcase. It burst open, and my new pyjamas and underwear and Albert Trunk and the button box came flying out all over the deck.

  ‘Whoops!’ said the conductor, bending down and helping me. ‘Don’t want you to lose your frillies!’ He flapped my terrible knickers in the air and half the bus sniggered. I was scarlet by the time I’d retrieved all my treasures and shot off the bus.

  ‘Do you have to show me up?’ said Mum, giving me a little shake. She looked around at the trees and hedges. ‘I think that bally fool has turfed us out at the wrong stop. There’s no sign of any hospital.’

  There weren’t even any proper pavements. We walked along the narrow strip of grass, Mum having to pick her way on tiptoe because she didn’t want her high heels sinking into the mud. She peered over the hedge and then stopped.

  ‘Hell’s fire, is that it?’ she said. ‘I think it must be.’

  I was too little to see over the top. ‘Does it look horrid, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it’s like a blooming palace,’ said Mum. ‘It’s huge – and there’s gardens all over – and, oh my Lord, a fountain! Here, breathe on me, Elsie. I wouldn’t mind getting your lurgie if I can stay here too!’

  I bounced up and down, but I had to wait until I came to a gap in the hedge before I could see for myself. It truly was like a palace in a fairy tale, a huge soft-grey mansion with a turret and towers, set in beautiful formal gardens.

  ‘Oh Mum!’ I said. Then, ‘It can’t be the hospital!’

  ‘No, you’re right, it can’t be,’ said Mum – but when we got a little nearer we both saw the sign: MILTREE ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL. ‘Oh my! Doctor Malory’s turned up trumps after all.’

  I was still scared stiff, but when the hospital was in full view before us, I stared at it in awe. I furnished it with red carpets and gold chairs and twinkling chandeliers. All the patients had four-poster beds in private rooms with little maids. My bedroom would be up in the tower. Maybe I would let my hair grow like Rapunzel, and I’d wear beautiful pink and blue and white silk princess dresses every day and my cat pyjamas at night . . .

  I pretended all the way along the drive and up the big stone steps – but the moment we stepped inside the big arched door I was slapped back to the real world with a vengeance. There was a horrible hospital smell of strong disinfectant, and no carpet, red or otherwise – just miles of polished brown wooden floor that made our shoes squeak horribly in the silence. The walls were painted cream and green, just like school, and there were no private rooms at all, just stark signs to all the different wards.

  ‘Which ward will I be in, Mum?’ I whispered.

  ‘How on earth should I know?’ she said.

  There was a big reception desk to one side of the vast hallway but no one was sitting behind it.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Mum called into the air, but no one came. ‘Oh well, we’ll have to find out for ourselves.’ She took my hand. ‘Come on, Elsie.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re allowed,’ I whimpered, peering around fearfully. ‘Shouldn’t we wait till someone comes?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, there isn’t anyone! Come on, I’ve got to get all the way home again. I can’t hang around here, waiting.’

  Mum set off up the corridor while I struggled along beside her. We turned a corner and were suddenly in a big bleak ward with rows of beds, all with green coverlets and pale patients.

  ‘It’s just like Nan’s sanatorium,’ I said. ‘Oh Mum, I don’t like it!’

  ‘Stop whining, Elsie, it’s getting on my nerves,’ said Mum, peering around for an empty bed.

  A nurse with a complicated white hat and a blue dress came bustling out of a side room and stared at us in astonishment. ‘Whatever are you doing here? You’re not allowed on this ward!’ she said. ‘You must leave immediately.’

  ‘See!’ I said, tugging at Mum’s arm.

  ‘But we’ve been told to come here,’ she said, standing her ground.

  ‘We only have visiting hours at the weekend, from two till four – and even then we don’t allow children, except in special circumstances,’ said the nurse crisply.

  ‘This is Elsie,’ said Mum, giving me a little shake. ‘She’s going to be a patient. The doctor sent us here.’

  ‘We don’t admit patients now. It’s nearly five o’clock! You’ll have to bring her back tomorrow at two, the proper time.’

  ‘If you think I’m taking the kid all the way home on the bus, the train and the tram and then trailing her back here tomorrow, you’ve got another think coming,’ said Mum. ‘Who do you think you are, Mrs Hitler?’

  There was a little snort of shocked laughter from the nearest bed.

  The nurse flushed. ‘You can’t leave her here. This is the women’s ward, as should be obvious. The children’s wards are in the annexe. You have to go out and round the back. But they won’t admit her, not at this time,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Mum, and she marched us away.

  ‘What a bossy little madam!’ she muttered. ‘It’s the same old story – give them a uniform and they think they’re it. Well, I’m not letting some jumped-up queen-of-the-bedpans tell me what to do.’

  ‘Oh Mum. Can’t we come back tomorrow?’

  ‘No, of course we can’t. I haven’t got enough for the train fare all over ag