Queenie (7 page)

‘Well, it’s very important. TB can be very contagious. Now, you be a good girl and remind your mother, otherwise I’ll have to inform the authorities.’

The word
authorities
was like a blow to the stomach. I didn’t know who they were, but they
sounded
frightening. I saw men in black uniforms and jackboots marching to our house and arresting everyone.

‘You’ll make sure you’ll do that, Elsie?’ said Dr Malory.

‘Yes, sir,’ I muttered.

He suddenly focused on me, looking at my clothes. He saw the school badge Nan had sewn onto my cut-down navy jacket – I didn’t have a proper blazer either. ‘You go to Millfield Juniors, don’t you? So why aren’t you going to school?’ he asked.

My heart hammered behind my telltale badge. I couldn’t possibly admit that I was intent on playing truant. He’d maybe send for those authorities straight away. I had to find an excuse – any excuse.

‘Please, sir, I’m going to the d—’ I started gabbling like an idiot. I managed to gulp back the word
doctor’s
before I said it. I repeated the ‘d’ again, as if I had a stammer. Where could I be going? The dancing school? The draper’s? The doll shop? Then it came to me.

‘The dentist’s,’ I said, tapping my teeth.

‘Oh dear! Well, I hope it doesn’t hurt too much. Off you go then – and tell your mother to bring you along to my surgery tomorrow.’

‘OH, FOR PITY’S
sake, Elsie,’ Mum exploded. ‘Why did you have to go hanging round the blooming
doctor’s?
What were you doing there anyway?’

‘I – I got a bit lost on the way to school,’ I stammered.

‘What are you – a halfwit? You were in a daydream, weren’t you, playing some baby game and muttering away to yourself like a loony!’ said Mum.

I nodded meekly, glad that she was giving me such a good alibi. She’d get even crosser if she knew I’d
bunked
off school all day. It hadn’t been worth it. I’d been so worried about Dr Malory and the authorities that I hadn’t enjoyed a single moment. In the end, I didn’t dare go round the shops because my wretched school uniform was so noticeable. I’d lurked in the park all day instead.

I was very bad at mental arithmetic, but even I knew there were only seven hours between nine and four. There had seemed to be seventy-seven hours in this day. I nearly wore out the soles of my boy’s shoes trailing miserably round and round the park. I went on the swings until I saw the attendant hobbling towards me. He was famous for having been wounded in the war – he had lost a leg. He seemed to have permanently lost his temper too, and was forever yelling at children.

I ran away quick and hid in the bushes. I watched him stumping along, worrying that my own limp might get as bad. I crouched in the bushes until I got cramp, and then I trudged right to the other side of the park and hung about by the duck pond. I was so hungry by now I helped myself to a couple of crusts the ducks had ignored. I was thirsty too, but I drew the line at duck-pond water. I did paddle for a little while because my feet were rubbed sore inside my shoes, but the pond was as cold as ice and I stepped on a tin can and cut my foot. It was only
a
little cut, but it bled and I worried about that too.

I sat on a park bench waggling my foot in the air, and an old man in a greasy raincoat came and sat beside me. He offered me his hankie for a bandage, but there was something furtive about him and he was sitting much too close to me, so I grabbed my shoes, stuffed my feet inside, and ran for it.

By the time I eventually dared go home I was exhausted. Mum was out after all that. I ate five slices of bread and jam, one after the other, drank two glasses of orange squash, and then curled up on Nan’s chair and went to sleep.

Mum came home at six, equally dispirited. She kicked off her high heels and smoked two cigarettes in succession, tapping the ash impatiently. There was no point asking her if she’d got the job. It was obvious she hadn’t.

We had Spam and chips for tea, which I usually enjoyed, but I already had my five slices of bread churning around in my stomach. I knew I had to tell Mum about Dr Malory.

I only screwed up the courage to do it at bedtime. Mum was furious, as I’d expected.

‘It’s not
my
fault, Mum,’ I whined. ‘I’m just passing on the message.’

‘Well, you’ve passed it on. Now button your lip about it,’ she snapped. ‘Off to bed.’

I hovered. Whenever Mum told me off like that I imagined the big maroon buttons on Nan’s winter coat. I saw them sewn along my top lip and firmly attached to little slits in my bottom lip. I knew how important it was to keep them in place. But somehow tonight I couldn’t stop them unbuttoning of their own accord.

‘So can I stay off school tomorrow or will we go after?’ I said.

‘What? Go where?’

‘To the
doctor’s
,’ I said, wondering if Mum had been listening after all. Sometimes I’d talk to her for half an hour and she’d say yes and no in the right places, but then stare at me blankly when I asked a final question, clearly not having heard a word.

‘We’re not going to the doctor’s tomorrow or any time soon. In fact, I don’t think we’ll see Doctor Malory ever again, because he’s such an old nosy parker,’ said Mum.

‘But he said—’

‘I don’t
care
what he said.’

‘We
have
to have these tests and get our X-rays.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with us! We’re not coughing, are we?’

‘No, but—’

‘And we’re not tired out and getting all scraggy like Nanny, are we? Well, I’m not – and you’ve always been skinny, so it doesn’t count.’

‘But why can’t we have the tests? We’ll pass them and everything will be all right.’

‘Oh no it won’t, Miss Clever Clogs. As soon as anyone gets wind of us going for chest X-rays, they’ll guess – and then they’ll act like we’ve got the plague. The mums at that school of yours will fuss about you being a carrier and won’t want their kiddies playing with you.’

They didn’t play with me anyway, but it didn’t seem the right time to point this out to Mum.

‘And I’ll never ever get a job, because they’ll think I’ll infect all the other girls. And if I don’t work, how are we going to pay the rent, because if I tell all the other tenants your nanny’s got TB and they’ve all got to be tested, they’ll snitch on us to the landlord and we’ll be kicked out into the gutter.’

‘They’ll kick us?’ I said, so worried I couldn’t get my wits together.

‘Oh, for pity’s sake, I don’t mean literally. Stop gawping at me like a bally goldfish, you’re driving me insane. Go to bed!’

I went to bed, and after a very long time snuffling into Albert Trunk I went to sleep – but then I started dreaming. Dr Malory loomed in front of an army of authorities, and they were seizing hold of me and kicking me along the gutter like footballs while they chanted the two terrible initials, ‘
TB! TB! TB!
’ over and over again.

‘Elsie! For God’s sake, wake up! You’re screaming! You’ll wake the whole blooming house!’ said Mum, shaking me.

I clung round her neck, breathing in her sweet powdery smell. ‘Oh Mum, don’t let them take me away,’ I sobbed.

‘Don’t be so daft. No one’s taking you anywhere,’ she said, but she slipped into my bed and cuddled me close. ‘There now, calm down. It’s all right, Mummy’s here.’

‘Oh Mum, it was so awful!’

‘It was just a silly dream.’ Mum stroked my hair and pulled me onto her lap so we were lying like spoons. ‘So you didn’t want to be parted from your old mum in this dream of yours?’ she said. ‘Why was that?’

‘Because – because I love you,’ I said.

‘I thought you were a right old nanny’s girl,’ said Mum.

I
was
. I loved Nan a hundred times more than I loved Mum, but for once I was wise enough not to say this out loud. I just nestled against Mum’s soft silky petticoat, and I think she went on holding me tight long after we were both asleep.

She was gentler than usual when we got up in the morning.

‘I’ve been thinking, Elsie – maybe we
will
pop
along
to silly old fusspot Malory. We’ll take his test and get our chests X-rayed to stop him kicking up a fuss. But we won’t tell the O’Henrys upstairs or Miss Godden, or that weird Mike in the attic flat. Dr Malory’s not necessarily going to know they live in the house with us. He’ll have hundreds of patients. I’m sure he won’t know where most of them live. I’ll come and meet you after school – but don’t you breathe a word about it, OK?’

I felt very relieved, though now I worried about this X-ray and test. I knew an X-ray was a photo of your insides, but I didn’t know whether it would hurt or not, and I didn’t want to show my frilly knickers to anyone else. I went to school, thankful that we didn’t have PT on a Tuesday.

‘Where did you get to yesterday, Elsie?’ Miss Roberts asked.

‘Oh, I had to go to the dentist’s, miss,’ I said, not quite looking her in the eye.

‘You were at the dentist’s all
day
?’

‘Yes, miss. I had to have lots and lots of fillings,’ I said.

‘It must have hurt dreadfully,’ said Miss Roberts.

‘Oh yes, it did,’ I agreed.

‘But at least you’ve got it all over now. You won’t have to go to the dentist’s again for a very long time, will you, Elsie?’ she said.

‘No, miss,’ I said, daring a quick glance.

Her eyebrows were raised quizzically. Did she
know?
I slid away to my desk and sat there, heart banging. She didn’t need to warn me not to bunk off again. I’d sooner do PT all day long than hang about that park again.

School wasn’t too much of a trial. In English we had to write about our favourite hobby. I didn’t really have a hobby. I was sure knitting scarves didn’t count. I pretended I did ballet lessons instead. I’d picked up quite a lot of terminology reading ‘Belle of the Ballet’ so avidly. I wrote about practising the five positions and doing pliés with my back straight. I imagined little authentic details, saying I loved to dance on my points even though it rubbed my toes and made them ache.

Miss Roberts marked our English books at lunch time and handed them out in the last lesson before home time.

‘Well done, everyone. What an interesting selection of hobbies! I thought I’d get some of you to read your compositions out loud. They’re very entertaining and it might inspire some of you to take up a
new
hobby.’

She picked Andrew Clegg, which didn’t surprise anyone, because Andrew was the class swot and always came first. Andrew’s hobby was experimenting
with
his chemistry set. He read his composition earnestly, his glasses gleaming, rattling off all the chemical names with the greatest of ease.

Then Madeleine Keyes was asked to read out her composition about bird-watching. She had her own little pair of binoculars and had ticked off every entry in her I-Spy
Book of Common Garden Birds
. Everyone got the giggles when she talked about great tits and little tits, and Miss Roberts sighed and shook her head at us.

Then she asked Micky Smith to talk about his conjuring – and he actually did a couple of card tricks for us too. He took up quite a lot of time, so when Miss Roberts picked Marilyn, we thought she’d probably be the last before the bell went.

She started off in her affected voice: ‘I have got a rather unusual hobby . . .’ I knew
exactly
what it was: tormenting Elsie Kettle. But apparently her other hobby was cake decorating. She went on and on about icing sugar and buttercream and marzipan, showing off like anything. I wanted to take one of her cream cakes and shove her face in it.

‘Well done, Marilyn,’ said Miss Roberts, glancing at the clock. ‘Now, time for just
one
more composition.’

She’d picked boy, girl, boy, girl, so all the boys sat up expectantly, some of them putting up their hands and mouthing ‘Pick me, miss!’ She didn’t pick any of them. She picked
me
!

‘You read out your composition, Elsie,’ she said, smiling at me.

I stood up and started talking, my hands trembling so much my exercise book wobbled. I could hear Marilyn and Susan behind me whispering, ‘What a load of rubbish!’ before I’d even read the first paragraph. Someone else giggled, and I felt an ink pellet spatter on my neck. I trailed to a halt.

‘Go on, Elsie. It’s very interesting,’ said Miss Roberts.

So I read my whole composition, and gradually the class quietened down. Even Marilyn and Susan listened as I read out my account of dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy at a special Christmas concert (just like Belle).

‘Well done, Elsie, that was really good,’ said Miss Roberts. ‘You must tell me when you’re going to be in another concert. I’d love to come and watch you.’

I smiled at her shyly, almost believing I really
would
be dancing in a concert. The bell went – and Laura came up to me as we were putting our chairs on the table.

‘I never knew you did ballet, Elsie! Which dancing school do you go to?’

‘Oh, it’s . . . it’s Madame Black’s,’ I said, making the name up on the spot.

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said Laura.