I read the beginning of Jane Eyre too. Biddy had a little red leatherette copy in the bookcase. I fingered my way through many of these books, but they were mostly dull choices for a child. Jane Eyre was in very small print, uncomfortable to read, but I found the first page so riveting I carried on and on. I was there with Jane on the window seat, staring out at the rain. I felt a thrill of recognition when she described poring over the illustrations in Bewick’s History of British Birds. I trembled when her cousins tormented her. I was horrified when Jane’s aunt had the servants haul her off to the terrifying Red Room. I shivered with Jane when she was sent to the freezing cold Lowood boarding school. I burned with humiliation when she was forced to stand in disgrace with the slate saying LIAR! around her neck. I wanted to be friends with clever odd Helen Burns too. I wanted to clasp her in my arms when she was sick and dying.
I read those first few chapters again and again – and Jane joined my increasingly large cast of imaginary friends.
* * *
Which girl in my books has Jane Eyre for her imaginary friend?
* * *
It’s Prue in Love Lessons.
For years and years I’d had a private pretend friend, an interesting and imaginative girl my own age called Jane. She started when I read the first few chapters of Jane Eyre. She stepped straight out of the pages and into my head. She no longer led her own Victorian life with her horrible aunt and cousins. She shared my life with my demented father.
Jane was better than a real sister. She wasn’t babyish and boring like Grace. We discussed books and pored over pictures and painted watercolours together, and we talked endlessly about everything.
I didn’t base the character of Prue on myself, even though we shared an imaginary friend and both had odd fathers. I was quite good at art, like Prue, and I was also fond of an interesting Polish art teacher at secondary school – but I didn’t fall in love with him!
24
Television and Radio
HOW MANY TELEVISION channels can you watch on your set at home? How many channels do you think there were when I was a child? One! The dear old BBC – and in those days children’s television lasted one hour, from five to six. That was your lot.
I watched Muffin the Mule, a shaky little puppet who trotted across the top of a piano, strings very visible. He nodded and shook his head and did a camp little hoof-prance while his minder, Annette Mills, sang, ‘We love Muffin, Muffin the Mule. Dear old Muffin, playing the fool. We love Muffin – everybody sing, WE LOVE MUFFIN THE MULE.’
Children’s television was not sophisticated in those days.
Annette Mills’s speciality was performing with puppets. She also did a little weekly show with Prudence Kitten. I adored Prudence. She was a black cat glove puppet, ultra girly, who wore flouncy frocks and pinafores. You couldn’t get colour television in those days so I always had to guess the colour of Prudence’s frocks. She had her own little kitchen and bustled around baking cakes and making cups of tea, especially when her best friend Primrose was coming on a visit.
There was another puppet on children’s television called Mr Turnip, an odd little man with a turnip head. He was best buddies with a real man called Humphrey Lestocq. No one could spell his name so viewers were encouraged to call him H.L. when he appeared on his television programme, Whirligig.
There was a slapstick comedian specially for children called Mr Pastry, a doddery old man who kept tripping over and making lots of mess. Comedians on adult television weren’t necessarily more inspiring, though Biddy and Harry and I laughed at Arthur Askey, especially when he did his ‘Busy Bee’ song (don’t ask!), and Harry had a soft spot for Benny Hill.
Television went wildly upmarket and downmarket, in those days. There was The Brains Trust, with its bombastic introductory music and its little quote from Alexander Pope: ‘To speak his thought is every human’s right.’ Even panel games were treated very seriously. We watched What’s My Line? every week, hosted by Eamonn Andrews (chatty Irishman), with Lady Isobel Barnett (posh dark-haired lady), Barbara Kelly (lively Canadian blonde), David Nixon (bald magician) and Gilbert Harding (grumpy intellectual). Eamonn and David and Gilbert wore full evening dress with bow ties; Lady Isobel and Barbara wore long dresses with straps and sweetheart necklines.
Some of the children’s programmes were posh classy affairs too. Huw Wheldon had a talent show for children called All Your Own. He seldom chose showy little singers and dancers with ringlets and toothy grins. Huw Wheldon specialized in pale spectacled geeky children with high-pitched voices who played the cello or collected stamps. There was once a glorious troupe of strange children who acted out a mad chess game, singing at the end, ‘Ro, ro, rolio, tumpty tumpty tum. Now the battle’s over, we’ll have lots of fun!’
ITV started up when I was about eight but Biddy fought not to have it. She said it was common. Maybe we simply couldn’t afford a new television set. Everyone at school was talking about all the new programmes, especially Wagon Train.
‘Silly cowboy rubbish,’ said Biddy, sniffing.
Then she weakened, or maybe Harry forked out so he could watch his horse-racing on the new channel. We had a brand-new television with a fourteen-inch screen – and ITV. I still wasn’t able to join in the Wagon Train discussions at school. We watched one episode and Biddy poured scorn on it. It wasn’t just silly cowboys, it was sentimental. Biddy said it made her want to throw up.
I was sometimes allowed to watch cowboys on children’s television: the Lone Ranger with his trusty friend Tonto – or was that his horse? No, that was Silver. You saw him rearing up at the start of the show, the masked Lone Ranger waving on his back. I didn’t like cowboys particularly, I just liked the part where they moseyed into town and stomped bowlegged into the saloon bar. I longed to be one of the naughty ladies who ran the saloon. I loved their flouncy ruffled skirts and their fancy high-heeled cowboy boots. There was also Davy Crockett with his furry hat. For a while every small boy wanted one of those hats with a weird tail hanging down the back. They all hid round corners and fired at each other with their toy Davy Crockett guns. He had his own theme tune: ‘Davy – Daveee Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.’
This was always requested on Children’s Favourites on a Saturday morning, which was on the radio. Practically every child in the country listened to Uncle Mac and the selection for each Saturday. He rarely played the current favourites in the Hit Parade. These were special children’s songs, played over and over again throughout the fifties. The lyrics themselves were repetitious:
How much is that doggy in the window?
(Woof, woof!)
The one with the waggly tail.
How much is that doggy in the window?
(Woof, woof!)
I do hope that doggy’s for sale.
How about:
There’s a tiny house
(There’s a tiny house)
By a tiny stream,
(By a tiny stream,)
Where a lovely lass
(Where a lovely lass)
Had a lovely dream,
(Had a lovely dream,)
And her dream came true
Quite unexpectedly
In Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen
Bogen by the Sea.
That was sung with great gusto by Max Bygraves, who recorded any number of comedy songs. I was very fond of his ‘Pink Toothbrush’ song, which always made me laugh.
Best of all was ‘Nellie the Elephant’ – by Mandy Miller! Mandy had made records before. They were dire – even I had to admit it, though I still loved playing them on our wind-up gramophone. We owned very few records. Harry liked Mantovani, and we had the soundtrack to South Pacific, and the Mandy recordings. Mandy’s best effort so far had been singing, ‘Oh let the world be full of sunshine, for Mummy, for Daddy and for me.’ She didn’t always stay in tune either. But she really came into her own when she made ‘Nellie the Elephant’. It was a sweet, funny song with a proper story and she
sang it beautifully, putting her heart and soul into it, going, ‘Trumpety trump trump trump!’ with great emphasis and expression.
* * *
Which of my characters gets to appear in a Children of Courage documentary on television?
* * *
It’s Elsa in The Bed and Breakfast Star.
My news interview was repeated later in the year in a special compilation programme called Children of Courage. And I got to do another interview with a nice blonde lady with big teeth, and Mum spent some of Mack’s betting money on a beautiful new outfit from the Flowerfields Shopping Centre for my special telly appearance.
I’ve been on television lots of times now. I’m especially proud that I’ve got a gold Blue Peter badge! I think my favourite time was when The South Bank Show did a documentary about me. They didn’t just interview me – my daughter Emma’s on the programme too, and my dear friend Anne, and there’s even a glimpse of my best secondary school friend Chris. Paterson, the jeweller who makes all my wonderful rings, says on the programme that ‘Jacky’s rock ’n’ roll!’ I loved that bit.
I’ve also been on Desert Island Discs on the radio, which was great fun. My first choice of music was . . . ‘Nellie the Elephant’!
25
Teachers
THE HEAD OF Latchmere Juniors was a man called Mr Pearson. I have a photo of me standing next to him but I don’t think I ever spoke more than a couple of sentences to him. We weren’t frightened of him though. He seemed a quiet, kind, gentle man, though every now and then he caned one of the boys in Prayers. I always shut my eyes when this happened. Mr Pearson didn’t seem to have much stomach for corporal punishment either, and got it over and done with as briskly as possible.
He spoke earnestly in Prayers, often telling us inspirational true-life stories (like the ones on the back of my Girl comic). He had a particular passion for Shackleton and told us such vivid stories about his long trek across the ice that we shivered even in the height of summer.
Mr Pearson was a chess fanatic too and insisted that every child in the Juniors be taught how to play. There was a special chess club, and children were always to be found sitting cross-legged in the playground around a chessboard. I learned to play too but I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t have a mathematical mind that could plan ahead. I couldn’t apply my mind to plotting potential chess moves. I’d think castle and knight and I’d be off in a daydream, galloping the little wooden knight through imaginary forests to an enchanted castle. My king would be in check before I knew where I was.
Mr Pearson took us for a lesson when we were in the top class, our equivalent of Year Six. He taught us codes – how to invent them and how to crack them. I was better at this. I knew the shape of words, the rhythm of a sentence, and often worked by instinct rather than patient analysis. I should have taken up writing in code. Years later I stupidly confided all sorts of secret things to my diary. Biddy read it and hit the roof – and the floor – and all four walls.
Our form teachers taught us English and arithmetic and PT. We had a special teacher, Miss Audric, who taught us scripture, music and nature study. Most of the teachers were eccentric. Miss Audric was the all-time Queen of Quirkiness. She had bright carrot-coloured hair wound in plaits round her head. On sunny summer days she’d sit in the grass quadrangle, undo her hair and brush it out so that it fell in an orange curtain way past her waist. Then she’d plait it all up again, playing Rapunzel. She wore woollen suits, hand-crocheted, in extraordinary bright colours – emerald green, purple, electric blue. She played the violin and the piano and all different kinds of recorder. She winced when we had difficulty piping our way accurately through ‘Little Bird’. She was someone else who believed she had a personal hotline to Jesus. She told us stories about him as if he was a dear friend of hers. We almost believed she’d nipped on a bus to visit her pal when he was sharing out the loaves and fishes and raising Lazarus from the dead.
I always had problems with Jesus’ miracles. I could believe them, but didn’t see how they worked. I thought of those five loaves and two small fishes. I thought of five sandwich loaves. What kind of fish would you find in the sea of Galilee? Cod? If Jesus was holy enough to spread this simple feast around five thousand hungry people, why didn’t he pull out all the stops and provide chips to go with the fish, and maybe mushy peas too, and some butter to go on the bread? Then I had problems with Lazarus, resurrected from the tomb, smelling so bad that all the disciples had to put their sleeves over their noses so they didn’t breathe in his decaying stench. What happened next? Did poor Lazarus have to trail around Palestine with his reek all around him, shunned by everyone? Did he look like the Living Dead from Zombie-land, creatures in an American horror comic I wasn’t supposed to read?
I really wanted to know the answers to these and a host of other biblical questions, but I had enough sense not to ask Miss Audric. She was very strict and could quell you with one of her looks. If you got the giggles during one of her squawky violin solos, then Woe Betide You.
Miss Audric had a mad dog that thought it was a wolf. Whenever she took it for walks in Richmond Park, it made a beeline for the deer. The herd scattered as it raced up, teeth bared. Even the mightiest stag would trot off in terror. Miss Audric’s dog could probably see off a herd of elephants, let alone timid deer. She brought it to school occasionally and we were all scared stiff of it. I can’t remember what it was really called but we all nicknamed it Fang.
Miss Audric decided to take us on a walk in Richmond Park for our nature study lesson. She rounded us all up – more than forty of us – made us form a crocodile, then marched us out of the school and up to the park. This was a brisk half-hour walk in itself. Many of us were flagging by the time we got to the park gates. Still, it was a sunny day and we went whooping and swooping into the ferny wilderness of Richmond Park, dodging around the ancient oak trees.
Miss Audric didn’t stop us. We were all escapees from school now. It was time to go back for the next lesson but Miss Audric didn’t care. She strode out in her conker-coloured lace-ups and we skipped after her.
We went past the witch’s pond, further into the park than I’d ever been with Harry, up and over the steep hill, across the flat plain where the deer grazed. Miss Audric lectured us on the differences between red deer and fallow deer and taught us about antler formation. Some of the boys raised their arms and pretended to be stags, locking antlers. We were all getting a bit restless now.
‘Miss Audric, it’s getting very late,’ Cherry interrupted nervously.
She learned the violin and was Miss Audric’s favourite.
‘Well, we can all go scurrying straight back to school – or we can fill our lungs with this fine fresh air and finish our lovely walk,’ said Miss Audric. ‘Hands up who wants to keep on walking!’
We were all tired out by this time but none of us was brave enough to keep our hands down. We waved in the air and feigned enthusiasm and we walked on . . . and on . . . and on, all the way to Pen Ponds. We couldn’t help perking up then because the two vast ponds shone blue in the sunlight. They had bright yellow sand at the edge, just like the seaside. Seagulls circled overhead and ducks and swans bobbed up and down on little waves.
Miss Audric sat regally on a bench, taking off her shoes and her lisle stockings. She undid them decorously, manipulating her suspenders through her crocheted skirt, but it still seemed very bold of her. We kept giving her long pale feet little sideways glances. Miss Audric wriggled her toes, perfectly content.
We begged to go paddling.
‘Just get your tootsies wet – and no splashing!’ she commanded.
The girls teetered at the edge, obediently only ankle-deep. The boys plunged in up to their scabby knees, holding their trousers up to their groin. There was a lot of splashing.
‘Behave yourselves!’ Miss Audric bellowed, but she still didn’t sound cross.
It was as if we were in a fairytale place and Miss Audric was turning into an unlikely
wood nymph. She let down her long hair and stretched out in the sunshine. She closed her eyes. She wasn’t falling asleep, was she? It was getting very very late. We wouldn’t be back for the end of afternoon school at this rate.
Cherry cleared her throat. ‘What’s the time, Miss Audric?’ she said loudly.
We peered at Miss Audric nervously, as if she might turn into a wolf and yell Dinner time! She did look annoyed to be woken from her nap, but when she consulted her watch, she seemed a little startled.
‘Shoes and socks on, lickety-spit,’ she said, rolling up her stockings and fitting them carefully over her feet and up her long pale legs. She didn’t seem to mind not having a towel to dry herself. We all had to cope without one too, though it was horrible squeezing soaking wet sandy feet into tight socks and shoes.
‘Right, back through the park, quick march!’ said Miss Audric.
We weren’t up to marching now. We could barely crawl. Our wet socks rubbed our feet raw. We were all limping with blisters before we got to the park gates. Miss Audric kept checking her watch now, urging us to hurry up.
‘I can’t hurry!’
‘I’m tired!’
‘My feet are so sore.’
‘I want to go to the toilet.’
‘I want to sit down.’
‘Yes, let’s all sit down for a bit, Miss Audric, please.’
‘No sitting! We’ve got to walk – fast! I tell you what, we’ll sing.’ Miss Audric threw back her head. ‘I love to go a-wandering – come on, join in, all of you!’
Jacky Daydream Page 13
