Fruit and Nutcase (10 page)

Dad grinned and said, “Will I get one like that from you, Mandy, when I do your bedroom shelf? Or maybe you’ll let me have a listen to that tape, instead …”

Dead
curious!

He didn’t get around to doing my shelf that afternoon as Mum’s friend Deirdre came over with her husband and her baby. The baby’s name
is Felix. He is really sweet! He has the darlingest smile and these tiny little hands with an amazingly strong grip.

Deirdre said I could hold him if I wanted, so I took him on a guided tour of the room, showing him things and giving them to him to hold, only most of the time he wanted to put them in his mouth!

After we’d been all round the room, I sat with him on my lap, and then I said to Deirdre that I thought maybe his nappy needed changing – it was just this strange feeling that I had! – and so we went into the kitchen and I was right, he’d gone and pooped himself with all the excitement. I suppose to some people it might have seemed a bit yucky and pongy, but he’s only a teeny baby, after all, and it is quite natural, so that it didn’t bother me one little bit. I even helped Deirdre to change him! When we got back to the sitting-room she said to Mum, “Your Mandy is quite a little mother already.”

Mum said, “Yes, I expect she’d like a brother or sister of her own, wouldn’t you, Mand?”

Quickly, because
someone
has to be responsible in this family, I said, “Yes, but only
when my book is published and I have made a lot of money and we can move into a proper house. I think we ought to wait until then, otherwise where would it sleep?”

Everyone seemed to find this rather amusing, I can’t think why, but grown-ups do tend to laugh at the strangest things. Dad said, “Wait until you have a book published? Stone me! We’ll be waiting for ever! How do you expect to write a book when you don’t ever read any?”

“My tapes,” I said. “They’re going to be one.”

Dad said, “Oh! Your tapes.” And then to Deirdre and her husband, whose name is Garry, he said, “She’s making these top-secret tapes that I’m not allowed to listen to.”

Garry said, “Quite right! How can she slag you off if she knows you’re going to be breathing down her neck?”

I said, “I’m not slagging him off! I wouldn’t ever slag my dad off.” And then I looked at Felix, back in his mum’s arms, and I said, “I’m going to have six babies when I grow up.”

Everybody laughed –
again
– except Dad, who said, “You’re a bit young to be thinking of that sort of thing.”

“She can dream,” said Garry.

“The only problem is,” I said, “finding the right man.”

“That’s all our problems,” said Deirdre.

“Boys are just so
grungy
,” I said.

Later in the afternoon we all went down the road to the park, where there was a fair going on. Oliver and his mum were there. Oliver and me waved at each other as we passed. Oliver called out, “Hi, Mandy! I’m having fun!” When we’d gone on a bit Deirdre said, “Who was that strange little chap? He looked like a turnip!”

I said, “That’s very unfair to turnips,” and everyone laughed, but afterwards I felt mean and wished I hadn’t said it. Everyone laughs at Oliver.

Dad had seen a coconut shy. They had all these coconuts wearing politicians’ masks and Dad couldn’t wait to go and throw things at them! We were just making our way over there when Garry caught my arm and said, “Hey, look at that, Mand!” and pointed to where there was this notice announcing:

Mum and Deirdre immediately wanted me to have a go, but I couldn’t think what I could do. (I didn’t know then that I could put on voices or maybe I’d have been the Queen or someone.)

It was Dad who told me to sing a song. He said, “Go on! What about that one Grandy taught you? One about the dustman?” Garry said, “Yeah! Brilliant!” and he and Dad marched me over to the person that was in charge and got him to write my name down on a list and I just didn’t know how to get out of it. I thought perhaps Mum might tell Dad to stop being so daft—I mean
me,
singing!—but she seemed just as keen as he was. She kept saying, “Imagine if you won!”

I was quite nervous when my turn came ‘cos lots of the other kids had been really good and nobody had sung a song like Grandy’s dustman song. But Deirdre said, “Sock it to ‘em, baby!”
and Dad gave me a little push, and before I knew it I was out there, in front of everyone, and this man was introducing me as “Miss Mandy Small, who is going to sing for us.”

This is the song that I sang:

And I did this clumping dance to go with it, which made everyone laugh.

I’d never done the dance before. It just, like came to me all of a sudden, and so I did it.

I don’t expect it’s the sort of song that Cat’s mum would approve of
^*
but people clapped and clapped and guess what? I got third prize!!! It was a CD of Oasis, which was a pity in a way as we don’t have a CD player but Deirdre does, so I gave it to her to keep for me and she said I could go over and play it whenever I liked. So far I’ve played it about fifty times!

After the talent competition Oliver came up to us with his mum and said he thought I should have won first prize, not third. He said he was going to tell everyone at school about it only of course he didn’t, did he? He forgot. And I couldn’t very well go round telling people myself, so Tracey Bigg never got to hear. I’d like to have seen the expression on
her
face if she’d seen me winning a prize!

Anyway, Mum then decided she had to have a go at something so she went to this stall where you had to throw hoops over pegs ‘cos there was a teddy bear she was desperate for. She tried and tried, but she couldn’t get the hoops anywhere near, so in the end Dad said, “Let me have a go,” and he won it for her! A huge great big teddy bear! Mum wanted to give it to me, to make up for the CD that I’d had to give to Deirdre, but
Dad wouldn’t let her. He said, “No way, Sand!” He sounded quite hurt about it. He said, “I got it for
you
.” So Mum kept it and now it sits on her pillow and she calls it Dumpling. I don’t mind about not having it. I’m too old for teddy bears!

We stayed in the park till nearly eight o’clock. We ate burgers and fries and iced donuts, and Garry bought me candy floss, and I saw a girl from school and wondered if she’d heard me singing in the talent competition (which she obviously hadn’t or if she had she never mentioned it). Altogether it was a lovely, lovely day and one that I shall remember for ever. When I am old and grey like Nan I will still be telling my grandchildren about it, about me winning third prize and singing
My Old Man’s a Dustman.
And maybe I will croak my way through it and do the little dance and they will look at me and think, “Poor old Nan! She’s past it.” But I won’t care! ‘Cos I will still have the memory.

When we got home, Deirdre and Garry came in for a cup of coffee and we all sat and watched the telly and I was allowed to stay up till almost midnight. This is something my nan thinks is terrible, a child being allowed to
stay up. But Mum and Dad always let me, if anything exciting is going on. They don’t really mind what time I go to bed. Dad says, “She’s not stupid. She’ll go when she’s tired.” And I do, as a rule, but that night I was having too good a time!

Deirdre wanted to see the floorboard before she left. She knew about it ‘cos of my black eye. She said, “You’d better show me. I don’t want to go falling through it.” But Dad told her it was all right, it was further along the landing, and anyway he’d roped it off.

We all stood, gazing at the floorboard.

“Oh, that’s really classy, that is,” said Garry.

Poor Dad looked quite crestfallen!

Next day was Monday. Ugh! I hate Mondays. Mondays mean
school.

It was the last week before the summer holidays and I begged and begged Mum to let me stay at home. I looked such a sight!

How could I tell Miss Foster I’d fallen through a floorboard? I’d just be so embarrassed! She’d already heard about the kitchen cabinet falling on me and the banisters breaking. Miss Foster doesn’t understand about old houses. She lives in a modern flat. She doesn’t realise that old houses are always a bit crumbly.

But anyway I had to go ‘cos Mum said it would be breaking the law if I didn’t and Mum’s dead scared of breaking the law. She said, “Nobody’s going to laugh at you.”