by Jean Ure
Ice Lolly
Jean Ure
For Tamesha Pria
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Also by Jean Ure
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
So this is it; it’s happening. I’m sitting here between Auntie Ellen and Uncle Mark in this room that’s called a chapel, though it isn’t my idea of what a chapel ought to be. Chapels should be beautiful, I think; this is just plain and ordinary. Maybe that is what you get for not believing in God. But you can’t be a hypocrite, just for the sake of a stained-glass window. You can’t say you believe when you don’t. Not however much you would like to. Mum wouldn’t have wanted me to do that. She used to say, “You have to face up to things, Lol.” So that is what I am doing. I am facing up.
We are sitting in the front row, which is reserved for family. But anyone else could have sat here if they’d wanted; I wouldn’t have minded. There’s lots of room, only a few people have come. There’s Stevie, of course. Why isn’t she sitting with us? She is practically family. Far more than Auntie Ellen or Uncle Mark, even if Uncle Mark is Mum’s brother. Mum used to say that Stevie was a rock. Even Uncle Mark agrees that we couldn’t have managed without her. Auntie Ellen just curls her lip and calls her “that dreadful old woman from next door”. She says she looks like a bag lady, meaning someone who lives on the street and carries all her worldly possessions in a plastic bin bag. I think that is such a horrid thing to say.
I know that Stevie dresses kind of weirdly and smells of cat, but I can think of worse things to smell of, and what does it matter how people dress? Today she is wearing her best coat that she got from a charity shop. It is dark purple and reaches to the ground, so that all you can see of her big clumpy boots are the tips, poking out from underneath. Originally the coat had fur round the collar, but Stevie doesn’t approve of fur so she ripped it off and gave it to the cats to play with. Unfortunately, most of the collar came off with it, so I have to admit she does look a bit peculiar, especially as she has put on her see-through plastic rain hat. She told me that she was going to wear her rain hat, specially. She said, “You have to be dressed properly, for church. I wouldn’t want to let you down.”
Generally speaking, Stevie doesn’t give a rap. It’s one of her expressions. She is always shouting it out. “Don’t give a rap!” So I am really touched that she has gone to so much trouble. I think that Mum would be touched too, and agree that Stevie ought to wear her rain hat even though this is only a chapel, and a very plain and boring chapel, and nothing to do with church. And I don’t give a rap if she looks like a bag lady and makes people stare. She was Mum’s friend and Mum loved her.
Apart from Stevie, the only other people are Temeeka’s mum from over the road, and Mr and Mrs Miah from the corner shop, plus some of the people from Mum’s office where she used to work before she got sick. I don’t really know the people from her office, as I was only eight when Mum had to stop working. But they all came and spoke to me while we were waiting to come in, and two of the women kissed me. One of the men is standing up and talking. He’s talking about Mum. I am trying not to listen. I know he’s saying nice things, because that’s what people do, but I am not going to listen. I am squeezing my eyes tight shut and concentrating very hard…I am building a wall, brick by brick, like a fortress. Soon it will be finished and then nothing will be able to reach me. But for the moment there is still this chink, this tiny chink, where things might be able to slip through. I have to keep them out!
Auntie Ellen wasn’t sure that I should be here today. She said why didn’t I stay at Stevie’s until it was over.
“Then we’ll come and fetch you, and take you home.”
She thought that it would be too much for me. She probably thought that I would cry. Well, I haven’t! I haven’t even sniffled. I am frozen, behind my brick wall. Like in an ice house, where in olden days, before they invented refrigerators, they used to store blocks of ice, hidden underground, deep and dark, where the sun could not get at them. The ice never melted. So she doesn’t have to keep shooting those anxious glances at me. Mum never cried, and I am not going to, either.
They haven’t brought Holly and Michael with them, and I am glad about that. They have always disapproved of Mum and me. Well, Holly has. So have Auntie Ellen and Uncle Mark, of course, but they are grown-ups. You have to accept it from grown-ups. But I don’t like being disapproved of by someone that is two years my junior. She is only ten years old! What right does she have to be disapproving?
I stop thinking about Holly and Michael and stare fixedly ahead at what looks like a spider crawling up the wall. Do you get spiders in chapels? I suppose you get them pretty well everywhere. But what would a spider find to live on? It is so cold in here, and bare.
Maybe it isn’t a spider. I wriggle a bit, and Auntie Ellen shoots me one of her glances. The man from Mum’s office is still talking, he is saying something about Mum having a wicked sense of humour.
“She used to keep us all in stitches! I remember, one time…”
I scuttle back inside my ice house. I am safe in here. I think of Mr Pooter in his cardboard carrying-box in the car. How long will it be before I can go to him? He will be so confused, he is not used to being shut away. I wish he could have come in with us! I know it’s what Mum would have wanted. After me and Stevie, Mr Pooter was the person she loved best in all the world. Maybe she even loved him more than she loved Stevie. But they would have been bound to say no if I’d suggested bringing him. Auntie Ellen has already hinted that it would be far better if I gave him to Stevie.
“She’s a cat woman.”
The way she said it, it was like a kind of sneering. Like Stevie is old and dotty and mad. Just because she loves cats! She has devoted her life to them. She has eleven at the moment, all of them rescued. Auntie Ellen, with one of her sniffs that she does, said that “one more wouldn’t make much difference. You can hardly move for cats as it is”. I feel good that I stood up to her. Mum would have approved! She wouldn’t want me and Mr Pooter to be parted from each other. But I know Auntie Ellen only gave way in the end because Uncle Mark told her to. I know she’s not pleased. She really doesn’t care about animals.
The man from Mum’s office has finished talking and is returning to his seat. I wonder about what is going to happen next. I have never been to anything like this before.
I have never been to a funeral before.
There. I have said it. But it’s all right, I am safe in my ice house. I am frozen, I feel nothing.
I am thinking back to when my gran died. I was only three, so I don’t really remember very much, except that Mum was sad and that we lived in a flat somewhere near Oxford and that Dad was still with us. And then later on Mum got sad all over again, only this time she was sad because Dad had started shouting a lot and growing angry. So next thing I remember is Dad going off and not coming back and me and Mum being on our own and moving to London and living next door to Stevie. I was six years old by then. I had to start at a new school, which frightened me, as I had only just got used to my other one. Mum said she was so, so sorry, but begged me to be brave. She said that life was full of changes.
“It’s a bit like books, all divided up into different chapters.”
She said that if Oxford had been Chapter 1, then London was Chapter 2. And then she hugged me and said, “Oh, but Lol, there will be so many
more to come!” Like she thought that was a good thing. But I never wanted any more; I just wanted Chapter 2 to go on for ever. Only nothing ever does. You don’t realise that when you’re just six years old.
Mrs Miah has been standing up and talking about Mum. I feel guilty that I haven’t been listening, but maybe she would understand. Now she has gone back to her seat, and I think perhaps things are almost over. Nobody else has got up to speak, and somewhere off stage they are playing Mum’s song that I chose.
Though the final curtain’s fallen
And we two have had to part
My love still marches onward
To the drumbeat of my heart.
I can feel Auntie Ellen exchanging glances over my head with Uncle Mark. They don’t approve. Auntie Ellen doesn’t think the song is appropriate. She tried really hard to get me to change my mind.
“I’m not saying it has to be a hymn, necessarily, but at least something a bit more – well! Classical, maybe. Isn’t there anything classical that your mum liked?”
Mum liked all sorts of music, but this was the song that she would have wanted. It was one of her big favourites. She used to say it was her inheritance track that she’d inherited from her mum.
“Your gran used to play it all the time after she lost your grandad.”
I know that this is a really sad song, but it was special to Mum, and that makes it special to me. In any case, it was up to me to choose, not Auntie Ellen.
Now everybody is standing up. Uncle Mark stands up, so I do too.
“All right?” He looks down at me, and I nod. We file out, into the cold sunshine. I hold my head very high.
The women from Mum’s office kiss me again before going off to their car. The man who did the talking tells me that it was “a privilege to have known your mother. She was a very special lady”. I look at him stony-faced. Uncle Mark puts his arm round my shoulders and in slightly reproving tones says, “That is something we must always remember.” He thinks I am being ungracious. He doesn’t realise I am in my ice house, frozen like a fish finger.
Stevie comes over. She says, “Well, then!” She won’t kiss me; she never does. I suppose, really, she is quite a gruff kind of person. But I am glad. I don’t want to be kissed or made a fuss of.
Stevie scratches her head, under her plastic rain hat. She has probably got a flea from one of her cats.
“I’ll be going now,” she says.
She turns and stomps off, down the path. Uncle Mark calls after her. “Are you sure you don’t want a lift?” But Stevie just waves a hand and goes clumping on. Uncle Mark shakes his head. He says it’s a long walk for an old woman. “It must be a good mile.”
I tell him that Stevie walks everywhere. “She doesn’t approve of cars.”
“Tough as old boots,” says Auntie Ellen. She’s sneering again. I don’t think she has any right to sneer, after all that Stevie did for me and Mum.
I say goodbye to Temeeka’s mum, who kisses me and says, “Chin up, luvvie!” I say goodbye to Mr and Mrs Miah. Mrs Miah also kisses me, but Mr Miah takes my hand.
“We shall miss you,” he says.
Auntie Ellen is growing impatient. She wants us to get a move on. She says we have a long journey ahead of us and the traffic will be horrendous at this time of day.
I hurry after her to the car. I can see that Mr Miah has something more he would like to say, and I don’t want to seem rude, but I am worried about Mr Pooter. I cram myself into the back seat and pull his carrying box on to my lap. It is an old cardboard one of Stevie’s, a bit crushed and battered. I waggle my finger through one of the air holes and hear a chirrup. I relax. If he’s chirruping, it means he’s happy.
There’s not much room on the back seat as it is piled with boxes. The whole car is crowded out with boxes. We got them from Mr Miah, and me and Stevie spent all yesterday filling them. Auntie Ellen had already warned me that there wouldn’t be room for everything.
“We don’t have much cupboard space, so try to be a bit selective. Just bring what’s most important. Clothes, obviously.”
But clothes are the least important. What’s most important, apart from Mr Pooter, is books. Mum loved her books! I have packed all of them. Every single one. I told Stevie she could have everything that was left over for the local Animal Samaritans. I know that’s what Mum would have wanted.
Auntie Ellen turned a bit pale when she saw how many boxes there were. She said, “Laurel, I told you to be selective!”
I said that I had been. “Most of it’s books.”
“Books?” She almost shrieked it. I wanted to giggle, cos it was like I’d said I’d packed up a load of tarantulas, or something. Imagine being scared of books! She looked across at Uncle Mark and said, “Now what do we do? We don’t have room for all this lot!”
Uncle Mark said that we didn’t have time to start unpacking. “We’ll just have to sort it out the other end.”
Auntie Ellen wanted me to leave some of the boxes behind, but I wouldn’t. So here they all are, and here are me and Mr Pooter, squashed up against them. I wish we could have gone to live with Stevie. I’m sure she wouldn’t have minded Mum’s books, not even if they did have to be kept in heaps on the floor. Stevie isn’t houseproud like Auntie Ellen. But of course they wouldn’t let me. They said it wasn’t a suitable placement, meaning there are cats roaming everywhere and it isn’t hygienic. People are a great deal too bothered about hygiene, if you ask me. Stevie seems to have lived quite happily all these years without being troubled by it. They’d probably have said me and Mum weren’t hygienic, either. We didn’t go in very much for housework. We had more important things to worry about than dust, or cobwebs, or whether there was a rim round the bath – which I now realise there was, since Auntie Ellen remarked on it only this morning, shuddering as she did so. People care about the weirdest things.
I stare out of the window, wondering where we are.
Auntie Ellen says, “I told you the traffic would be bad.” Uncle Mark says it’s no problem. Once we hit the motorway we’ll be all right.
“Assuming there aren’t any hold-ups,” says Auntie Ellen.
I think to myself that Auntie Ellen is one of those people who enjoy looking on the black side. Uncle Mark catches my eye in the driving mirror.
“OK back there?”
I nod, without speaking, and bury my nose in Mr Pooter’s fur. I’ve opened his box so that we can have a cuddle.
“Home in time for tea,” says Uncle Mark.
I force my lips into a smile. He is trying so hard to make me feel wanted, though I am sure I can’t really be. I know Auntie Ellen doesn’t want me. And I don’t suppose Holly does, either. They are only taking me because they feel it’s their duty. I know I ought to be grateful, and I am doing my best, but it is not easy. I would so much rather have gone to live with Stevie!
Mr Pooter sits up and rubs his head against mine. I rub back. Auntie Ellen says, “You make sure that cat doesn’t start jumping about.”
I tell her that Mr Pooter is too old to jump about. Mum had him before she was married. “He’s almost sixteen.”
Auntie Ellen says she doesn’t care. “It’s not safe, having a cat loose in the car.”
I close up one side of the box, so that it looks like he’s shut away. I keep my hand in there, to reassure him. Mr Pooter purrs and dribbles.
“Motorway coming up,” says Uncle Mark. “Home before you know it!”
Up until last week, home was the cottage that I shared with Mum. Old, and crumbly, and tiny as a dolls’ house, with a narrow strip of garden going down to the railway. Now I shall be living on an estate, with hundreds of houses all the same, and everything bright and new. Our cottage was cosy, even if we did have a rim round the bath and cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. Uncle Mark’s house is not cosy. It is too tidy. And too clean.
Uncle Mark looks at me again, in the mirror. “It’s been a while,” he says, “hasn’t it?”
I don’t understa
nd what he means.
“Since you were last with us,” he says.
I say, “Oh.” And then, “Yes.”
“You must have been about Holly’s age. The age she is now.”
The Christmas before last. I was ten and a half. I’m thinking back. Remembering me and Mum, wrapping up presents at the last minute, waiting for Uncle Mark to come and fetch us. I can hear Mum saying that we must be on our best behaviour and not do anything to upset Auntie Ellen.
“It’s very good of her to put up with us.”
I remember being cheeky and telling Mum that she was the one that did all the upsetting. “Arguing about politics and stuff.” And Mum saying that this year she wasn’t going to even mention politics. “And if anyone else does, I shall just keep quiet.”
To which I said, “Ha ha.” But Mum insisted that she meant it. She said it was very bad manners, in someone else’s house. “Though I suppose,” she added, “we shall have to watch the Queen’s speech.” And then she snatched up a cereal bowl and balanced it on her head, like a crown, and posed, all regal, on her chair. “My husband and I…”
Mum was brilliant at being the Queen. She sounded just like her! I give a sudden squawk of laughter. Auntie Ellen springs round.
“What’s the matter?”
Nothing’s the matter. I’m just remembering Mum, being the Queen. I stick my head inside Mr Pooter’s box, to stifle another squawk which is about to burst out of me.
“What’s so funny?” says Uncle Mark.
I can’t tell him; he would think I was being rude. Mum said afterwards that our behaviour was unforgivable. But it was her fault! We were all sitting there on Christmas Day, in front of the television, waiting for the Queen to get going, when Mum leant across and whispered in my ear, “My husband and I…” and I immediately started giggling and couldn’t stop. So then Mum started giggling and she couldn’t stop. We just sat there, helpless, with Auntie Ellen growing more and more offended, which I suppose you can’t really blame her for, what with it being her house, and us being her guests.
