Queenie (28 page)

I HAD LEARNED
not to count on Mum coming. She’d might say she’d see me next week, but that didn’t mean she’d actually turn up. She stayed away the next two weekends too. Nurse Gabriel asked if I’d like to write another letter, but I didn’t want to.

Mum turned up the next week. She came loaded with gifts: a violet soap and talc set, a new blue brush and comb, and a little gilt brooch with the Queen’s head on it.

‘You’ll want to smell nice and keep fresh and tidy
while
you’re stuck here in bed – and I thought you’d like the little brooch. It’s cute, isn’t it? You know who the lady is, don’t you?’

‘It’s the Queen,’ I said. A fresh wave of missing Nan overwhelmed me.

‘What’s up
now
?’ said Mum, looking cross. ‘If you don’t like the brooch, I’ll have it back.’

‘No, I do, I do. It’s just I was remembering – Nan and I were going to the Coronation,’ I said mournfully.

‘Oh dear, yes. And here you are stuck in your beds. Well, I don’t know whether to tell you this, Elsie. It seems a bit mean under the circumstances – but I’m hoping to be able to go myself.’

‘
You’re
going to the Coronation?’ I said.

‘There’s a chance I might be able to watch it in comfort,’ said Mum. ‘Mr Perkins has a very good friend who works in an office ever so near Westminster Abbey. We’re going to watch from his office window. We should have a wonderful view.’

‘You lucky thing,’ I said flatly.

‘Well, you could always try and get better and then you could come too,’ said Mum.

‘I
am
trying, Mum,’ I said.

I asked Nurse Gabriel that night if she thought I had any chance at all of getting better by the Coronation.

‘I’m afraid not, pet,’ she said, taking hold of my hand.

‘When
will
I get better?’

‘Perhaps . . .perhaps by Christmas?’

‘But that’s ages and ages away.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘And I’ve been here ages
already
.’

I knew it was only a couple of months or so, but it felt like a century. It was hard to imagine myself in my old life now. I knew I’d once walked to school and played hopscotch and run down to the shops on errands for Nan, but it seemed like something I’d made up in a story. I’d lift the blanket and peer down at myself. My good leg now seemed just as useless as my bad leg in the splint. I wasn’t sure I’d ever remember how to walk properly again. Perhaps I’d end up in a wheelchair – but then who would push me?

I clutched Queenie in panic that night.

‘Calm down, dear,’ she purred. ‘You must keep on feeding me titbits and then I’ll grow and grow. By Christmas I could grow as big as a tiger, and then you could climb on my great strong back and I’d carry you anywhere you wanted.’

‘Oh Queenie, yes please!’ I said.

I started saving her a good half of each meal until Nurse Patterson caught me feeding her my entire portion of battered cod.

‘What is the
matter
with you, Elsie Kettle? How dare you waste good food like this! You children are given the best of everything to build up your bones and make you fit and strong. What’s the point of us giving you your injections and taking such care of your splints –
yes
, Elsie! – when you wilfully throw your food away,’ she ranted.

‘I’m
not
throwing it away. I’m giving it to Queenie.’

‘And just look at her! She’s not exactly starving, is she? The cook boils a whiting for her every day. She doesn’t
need
your fish. You’ll only make her sick if you give her any extra.’

‘Yes, Nurse Patterson. No, Nurse Patterson. Three bags full, Nurse Patterson,’ I said sullenly – and ended up spending hours by myself, banished to the bathroom.

‘I hear you’ve been in the doghouse again, Elsie,’ said Nurse Gabriel when she came on duty that evening.

‘The
bath
house, Nurse Gabriel,’ I said.

‘You’re a shocker, Elsie. You plague the life out of poor Nurse Patterson. Can’t you try to be a good girl just for the next week?’

‘Why a week?’

‘That’s when our tour of duty finishes. We’ll be off to other wards then.’

‘Nurse Patterson is
leaving
?’ I said, not properly concentrating.

I’d assumed the nurses were permanent, as much part of the hospital as the beds in the ward.

I felt a rush of happiness that we’d be rid of Nurse Patterson at last – and then my stomach turned over at a new and terrible thought.

‘
You
won’t be going, will you, Nurse Gabriel?’ I asked, my throat so dry that my voice came out all croaky.

‘I’m being transferred to one of the men’s wards in the main hospital,’ she said.

‘Oh no! I’ll miss you so!’ I wailed.

‘And I’ll miss you too, Elsie. I’ll miss all of you. But when I’m on nights I’ll pop in and visit during the daytime if you like,’ said Nurse Gabriel. ‘
If
you’re a good girl, Elsie.’

‘I’ll be like a little sunbeam,’ I said, remembering another of Nan’s favourite hymns.

Nurse Gabriel laughed and gently pinched my nose. ‘You’re a caution, you are.’

‘You really
will
come back and visit me when you’re no longer on the ward?’

‘I promise.’ She crossed her fingers and grinned. ‘Cross my fingers and hope to die if I tell a lie.’

Miss Isles suggested we all make farewell cards for the nurses in our art lesson. I spent ages and
ages
on Nurse Gabriel’s card. I drew a picture of me lying in bed waving. Queenie was on the bed too, waving her front paw. I still didn’t have a white crayon, so I couldn’t colour her in, but I did her outline very carefully, making tiny jagged lines to indicate her fluffy fur. I did every little red heart on my baby-doll pyjamas, and then I drew more, in a little trail up to the top of the page, where I draped them over my printed message:
I will miss you so, Nurse Gabriel
.

‘Are they
hearts?
’ said Martin, peering. ‘It’s a goodbye card, not a blessed Valentine, Gobface.’

‘Oh, does it look silly?’ I said, stricken. I didn’t want to embarrass Nurse Gabriel.

‘You shut up, Farty Marty. You’re just being mean because you can’t draw as well as Elsie,’ said Gillian.

I left out the elaborate hearts on Nurse Johnson’s and Nurse Curtis’s cards, though I tried hard with them both because I liked them. I didn’t try at all with Nurse Patterson’s. I drew a pin-girl me and I didn’t give her a smiling face. I was very tempted to write at the top:
Goodbye and good riddance, Nurse Pyjama-stealer
, but in the end I wrote
Sorry
in very tiny letters.

Nurse Patterson was trying hard to be nicey-nice to all of us. She sometimes
sang
as she went about the ward or pushed us up and down the veranda. She
was
going to a maternity home. ‘I shall be nursing all the mums and their lovely little new-born babies,’ she said happily.

Perhaps she had been really worried Sister wouldn’t recommend her to anyone else.

‘I hope she wipes the babies’ bottoms more gently than she wipes ours!’ Angus hissed. He didn’t like her any more than I did. None of us thawed towards her, even though she gave us double sweets her last week and read us a chapter a night from a new story about a silly man called Mr Twiddle. I invented my own Elsie version, renaming him Mr Piddle, and made everyone snort with laughter.

On her last day Nurse Patterson came into the ward carrying a little paper parcel. She came up to my bed. ‘Here, Elsie,’ she said. ‘Look what I found crumpled in a corner on the laundry floor. It must have been there for weeks. I washed and ironed it for you myself.’

I opened the paper parcel and felt the soft pink of my dear cat pyjama top. I looked up at Nurse Patterson. She had gone very pink too.

I wondered what to say. And then I decided to say nothing at all. I just slipped the pyjama top safely under the sheets – and all the little white cats jumped off the pink material and nuzzled against my bare skin.

The nurses all kissed us goodbye on their last day. Nurse Patterson actually had tears in her eyes.

‘I’ll miss you so,’ she said to everyone, though I was absolutely certain she wasn’t going to miss me. I wasn’t going to miss her either. I wouldn’t care if I never saw her again. Still, I was glad she’d found somewhere else to go – I didn’t want to think of her being out of work because of me.

I cared desperately about Nurse Gabriel – but she was as good as her word. She came and visited me on Sunday. Some days she came in her tea break too. Other days she came in specially after night duty. She said she was coming to visit everyone, and she
did
have a little word with each of us – but she always came to sit by
my
bed.

‘She’s
my
special friend,’ I boasted to the others.

‘She only sits by you because you never have any visitors on a Sunday,’ said Martin. ‘She’s sorry for you.’

Mum didn’t come that Sunday.

‘Why
doesn’t
your mum come round?’ Martin asked.

I had my suspicions. I looked like I had a new uncle . . .called Mr Perkins.

‘My mum’s just busy,’ I said.

‘What does your mum do? My dad says she’s such a looker she ought to be in films,’ said Martin.

‘Yes, well, she used to be in show business, but now she’s like this very senior secretary, ever so posh,’ I said.

‘My mum doesn’t think she’s posh. She says she thinks your mum looks very common.’

‘Well, I don’t care what your mum or your dad thinks, so shut your face,’ I said fiercely.

I knew he was just jealous because he’d far sooner have a visit from Nurse Gabriel than his mum and dad. She looked lovely for a start. I hardly recognized her the first time she came, when she wasn’t wearing her funny white nurse’s cap and her blue dress and apron. Her lovely fair hair swung over her ears in a little bob. She kept it from falling in her eyes with a little butterfly hair slide, so she looked sweetly childish. She wore different dresses – candy stripe and polka dot and a flowery one I liked the most, but always on top she wore a fluffy blue angora bolero!

‘I
love
your bolero, Nurse Gabriel,’ I said, shyly stroking her shoulder.

‘I made it myself,’ she said. ‘Can you knit, Elsie?’

‘My nan showed me how to do plain and purl, and I did a scarf for Albert Trunk once,’ I said.

‘Well, maybe you could have a go at a bolero. I could ask Mrs Rhodes to help you,’ said Nurse Gabriel.

Mrs Rhodes was a sort of teacher, like Miss Isles, but she taught us to make things. They were all pretty
useless
things: Michael and Babette and Maureen had to make plaited mats, and Rita and Martin and Gillian and I were labouring over cross-stitch purses. They certainly made
us
cross, especially Martin, who took great exception to being forced to do girlie sewing.

‘What would I want with a flipping purse, anyway?’ he grumbled.

‘It will make a lovely present for your mother,’ said Mrs Rhodes.

I didn’t know about Martin’s mother, but I knew my mum wouldn’t want my big ugly cross-stitch purse. I had tried to pattern it with cross-stitch cats, but they looked very unnerving, like robot animals. I wondered if Nan might like it, even though the seams were very loose and wobbly so it wouldn’t be sensible to store money in it. Maybe she could tuck her hankie inside?

Sometimes I almost forgot that Nan was stuck in the sanatorium. Whenever I dreamed of her she was at home, sitting in her armchair sucking pear drops or fast asleep in bed with her mouth open, her teeth grinning in a glass beside her.

I wondered if she dreamed of me. Maybe we could somehow jump into each other’s dreams? I went to
sleep
thinking of Nan. I dreamed that we walked hand in hand all the way to London – no cough, no limps, the two of striding out, singing ‘God Save the Queen’. When we got there, it was terribly crowded. We were pushed here and jostled there, but Nan kept tight hold of my hand and helped me climb right up some railings. We balanced there, and cheered when the Queen went past in her golden coach pulled by eight grey horses. They all tossed their heads and neighed at us, and then the Queen herself stuck her head out of the window and shouted, ‘Hello, Nan, hello, Elsie! Thank you for coming!’ while the crowd roared.

It was such a wonderful dream I told it to the others at breakfast time, but they laughed at me.

‘You’re absolutely bonkers, Gobface. As if the Queen would ever talk to you!’ said Martin, chortling.

‘It’s so unfair. I’d give anything to see the Queen,’ said Gillian.

‘I wish we could go to London,’ said Rita.

‘
Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? I’ve been to London to visit the Queen
,’ said Michael, making us all laugh.

‘Maybe you
will
see her!’ said Nurse Bryant.

She was the best of the new nurses. She was tall and she had a long, thin, superior face like a camel’s – but she was surprisingly good fun. She liked
playing
little tricks. One day she brought in a whoopee cushion, which made a spectacularly rude noise when you leaned against it. Another day she put a pretend plastic dog poo right in the middle of the ward, which made Nurse Smith squeal.

We all laughed and laughed. Martin in particular adored Nurse Bryant.

We thought it was just one of Nurse Bryant’s elaborate tricks when, on the day of the Coronation, she came bustling into the ward with a big parcel. It was clearly heavy because Nurse Smith had to help her – and Mr Dobbin came too, to supervise as they unpacked.

We all craned our necks, waiting in suspense. When the wrappings were off we could see a square shiny brown box.

‘What
is
it, Nurse Bryant?’ Martin asked, giggling in anticipation.

‘It’s your own little Coronation,’ she told him, grinning. ‘The coach is inside, and all the horses, and the Queen herself in her splendid robes.’

We all blinked at her.

‘Watch out when she takes the lid off,’ Gillian warned, expecting an elaborate jack-in-the-box.