Dustbin Baby (13 page)

The Dustbin Baby.

There's one more place.

I have a Travelcard. I can journey on from Waterloo.

Or I can go home to Marion.

I'm no good at making decisions. When I first went to live with Marion I couldn't even choose what I wanted for tea. You didn't get a choice at Fairleigh. You just got your baked beans or your scrambled eggs – splat – on your plastic platter. You got iced buns afterwards on a Friday, for a treat, pink ones with jam or white ones with currants or yellow ones with a cherry on top but I was such a slow eater they'd mostly all gone by the time I'd cleared my platter. You had to finish all your main course. It was one of the rules. Sometimes I got a big girl called Julie to eat mine for me, surreptitiously shovelling forkfuls from my plate as well as hers, but then she got friendly with an anorexic girl who paid her twenty pence a plate so Julie concentrated on helping her out instead.

I don't need to go on a nostalgic trip back to Fairleigh. I lived there five years, longer than I've ever lived anywhere else. I didn't even go away any place in the holidays, apart from one sad summer camp for children with special needs, where I mostly helped the helpers.

Marion and I are going on holiday this summer. Italy. Five days doing all the culture and history and art stuff, but then five days by the sea for me.

‘It's only fair. It's your holiday as much as mine,' she said.

She
is
fair, even though she's so fussy. It's getting so late. What am I going to do if she's phoned Cathy or Hannah and they tell her I wasn't at school? I wish I was at Cathy's or Hannah's now. I mostly feel so
ordinary
with them. We have a laugh together and a moan about the teachers and a sigh about boys and a wail about our hair/spots/figures. We might talk about what we want to happen in our lives but we never talk about who we are or where we come from.

They're the friends I've always longed for. I had friends at Fairleigh but they were odd friends, sad girls, bad girls, mad girls – like me. That's why we got sent there. It's a school for vulnerable girls: girls constantly in trouble; girls with special needs; girls with learning difficulties; girls in distress. We were all lumped together and dressed alike in our blue-and-white checked dresses and blue blazers. We were all given identical teddy bears with blue knitted jerseys to take to bed at night.

During the day we were put into very small classes so we could have individual attention. I didn't
want
attention. I wanted to hide inside myself and keep out of trouble. There were quite a few Down's girls at the school like Esme back at Big Mo's. I made friends with a very kind Down's girl in my year, called Poppy. She loved sweets. She bought a lollipop every day from the school tuckshop.

‘I'm Lollipoppy,' she'd chortle, over and over, sounding so funny and daft she got me giggling too.

I wanted to sit beside Poppy in classes and do colouring with her big wax crayons. She had special alphabet pictures. I thought how peaceful it would be to colour in ‘A is for Apple, B is for Baby, C is for Cat', but I had to do sums and science and stories. I didn't know how to add up or experiment or invent so I was useless at first. I thought it was because I was simply thick. I didn't realize it was because I'd been in and out of so many schools I'd missed out on learning all the really basic stuff.

They did their best to remedy this at Fairleigh. After a term or two I felt as if someone had stuck a pair of strong spectacles on my nose. I could see straight at last. It wasn't comfortable. I preferred seeing inside my own head. There wasn't time to daydream now. I had to think, to work things out, to come up with answers.

Maths and Science and Technology stayed a struggle but I liked English and I
loved
History. Miss Bean made it fun. She was older than the other teachers and she looked a sight in terrible hand-knitted jumpers in pastel colours, baby blue and pale pink and insipid lilac. We all called her the Beanie Baby – but not to her face.

No-one dared be naughty in Miss Bean's class. She was much stricter than the other teachers. She nagged me something rotten. ‘
Try
, April!',
‘Come
along,
think
', ‘No this isn't good enough, you can do better than that'. But sometimes she could make things magic. Especially History.

We did the Romans and she let us take the sheets off our beds to wrap round us like togas. We had a Roman feast with wine (Ribena) and all sorts of sweetmeats (Miss Bean provided home-made fudge and toffee and coconut ice, plus an extra lollipop to keep Poppy happy). We made our own special model of the Colosseum (she showed us photos of it from her summer holiday in Rome) with tiny cardboard Romans and wild animals and Christian martyrs. I felt a pang seeing these little cardboard figures, remembering poor Bluebell, Rose, Daffodil and Violet, but I quickly entered into the spirit of the thing. I fashioned some especially ferocious wild animals and then cut out a champion gladiator with a gilt-sprayed toothpick sword in his clenched fist.

‘Well
done
, April!' cried Miss Bean.

I really came into my own when we did the Victorians. I settled down happily to making an elaborate Victorian villa out of a big cardboard box and a stack of cornflake packets, copying the details from the pictures in the Victorian history books in the library – but some of the slower girls got everything mixed up and wanted another toga party with wine.

‘No, no, that was the Romans. They lived hundreds and hundreds of years before the Victorians,' said Miss Bean.

They still couldn't get it. It was all History to
them
. The Victorians were every bit as ancient as the Romans.

‘I'll tell you what we'll do,' said Miss Bean. ‘We'll all do our family trees and then you'll see that your very own great-great-great grandmothers were Victorians.'

I kept very still. I didn't join in the silly jokes about family trees and Great-Auntie Oak and Grandpa Maple. I didn't even pick up my pen. I sat with my hands clasped in my lap, my nails digging into my palms.

Miss Bean bobbed around the class in her baby-blue jumper, giving advice here and there. She printed ‘Mummy' and ‘Daddy' in pencil on Poppy's piece of paper and Poppy traced over the top with red wax crayon, her tongue sticking right out with the effort of keeping to the lines.

Miss Bean looked over in my direction. ‘Come on, April. Get cracking.'

I sat tight.

She came over to me, frowning. ‘April! What's the matter with you this morning? Get started!'

‘I don't want to.'

‘What did you say?'

‘I said I don't want to,' I repeated very loudly.

The whole class put down their pens and watched, mouths open.

‘I don't care what you want. You'll do as you're told in my classroom,' said Miss Bean. She tapped my blank page. ‘Get started this instant, April.'

‘You can't make me, you stupid old fat Beanie Baby!' I shouted.

Everyone sat stunned. Even I wasn't quite sure I'd really said it.

‘I don't allow that sort of rudeness in my classroom,' said Miss Bean. ‘Go outside and stand in the corridor.'

I stumbled down the rows of desks to the door. I wondered whether to make a run for it once I was outside. But there were no really foolproof hiding places in the school. I'd tried the toilets and the games cupboard and the boiler room but I'd always been discovered. There was outside – but I had scarcely been out of the grounds since I'd arrived and the whole idea of outside seemed as alien as Mars. So I stood miserably in the corridor, waiting for the end of the lesson.

Hours and hours and hours seemed to go by. My own words echoed in my head. ‘You can't make me.' But this was Miss Bean and she probably had many unpleasant ways of making me do anything she wanted. I imagined increasingly outlandish tortures, most of them incorporating the sharp and very whippy cane on show in the Victorian project display.

The girls came out at long last, staring at me in awe. Then Miss Bean beckoned to me from the doorway.

‘Come into the classroom, April.'

Once we were inside she shut the door.

‘I don't want you to speak to me in that tone of voice ever again,' she said gravely. ‘Please apologize for your rudeness.'

‘I'm sorry, Miss Bean,' I mumbled.

She nodded. Then she said something amazing. ‘Now it's
my
turn to apologize to you. I feel I made a mistake asking you to compile your family tree. There may be all sorts of reasons why this is not a good idea. I should have thought first before I suggested it. I'm sorry, April. I hope you will accept my apology.'

‘Yes, Miss Bean! I didn't mean to call you names. Well, I did, but it was just because I felt so weird when I couldn't fill anything in. I haven't
got
any family.'

My voice started to wobble. Miss Bean's face went blurry as I started to cry. Once I started I couldn't stop. I howled and howled. Miss Bean patted me on the shoulder, murmuring, ‘There, there.' She offered me a little folded wad of tissue and I blotted my face as best I could.

‘Better now?' she said softly. ‘You run along to your next lesson then, dear.'

I ran. I was so tear-stained that everyone was sympathetic, convinced Miss Bean had been furious. I didn't tell anyone what had really happened. It seemed private between us.

15

MISS BEAN AND
I were friends after that. Not
friends
friends. She was still very much Miss Ultra-Strict-Schoolteacher but she would give me the glimmer of a smile every so often in class and if I hung back she'd chat to me. Sometimes she'd pick out a book for me or give me a postcard of a painting. Then one Saturday while we were still studying the Victorians she turned up at the school and told me she was taking me out for the day.

‘If you'd like that, April,' she said.

I wasn't too sure that first time. I was still a little scared of her and I thought it would probably be boring to be stuck with her all day. I liked the way she taught History but I didn't fancy a History lesson all day long.

It wasn't like that at all. She
did
take me to the Victoria and Albert Museum but she made it great fun, and she took me to the shop afterwards and bought me a tiny bear dressed up as Queen Victoria. We went to the café too which seemed very grand and grown up. She said I could choose whatever I wanted.

‘
Whatever?
' I said, staring at the wonderful cakes and puddings.

I couldn't choose between the chocolate gâteau or strawberries and cream, but she let me have both, though she insisted I have a little salad first. Miss Bean had wine with her meal which surprised me. I wondered if she might start acting drunk like Daddy, but she sipped her way through two glasses with no obvious effect.

I thought we'd catch the train straight back to school now we'd marched all round the museum but Miss Bean suggested a little look round the shops first. She took me to Harrods. I felt as if I'd entered a fairy-tale palace. I tiptoed round, awestruck. The food hall was particularly astonishing, especially the chocolates. Miss Bean let me choose one of the white cream chocolates. She laughed at the expression on my face when I bit into it.

‘Good?'

‘Wondrous!'

‘Have just one more. And I will too. Blow my boring old diet!'

She patted her large tummy. She was wearing her favourite pink jumper which made her look
like
a giant marshmallow but I didn't care. I
liked
her.

She took me out a lot after that. She usually drove us out into the country and we went for long walks. She told me about the trees and the birds and the wild flowers. I didn't always listen. I liked to think my own thoughts and wonder where we might go for afternoon tea. I pretended we were related and this was a normal weekend visit. She didn't seem the granny type and clearly she couldn't be my
mother
, so I turned her into my eccentric great-aunt.

The girls at Fairleigh teased me when they found out about the Saturday outings. Someone said Miss Bean might be after me and I'd better watch out. I hissed in Gina's most menacing tones that they'd better shut up or I'd sort them out. They left me alone after that.

Miss Bean was getting near retiring age. I suppose I should have realized. It came as a shock the summer term I was in Year Seven when she said she'd be leaving in July. I didn't know what to say. I screwed up my face to stop myself bursting into tears.

‘Are you going to miss my History lessons that much, April?' she asked jokingly.

‘I'm going to miss
you
,' I blurted out.

Miss Bean pulled her own face. ‘Well . . . I could always come and visit you. We could still go out at weekends if – if you'd like to.'