I couldn’t help being excited. This is like a postcard of a winter scene in Yorkshire. There is even some snow on the top of Grimbottom Peak. And I shivered as I thought about Fang up there. Raising his fictitious children as fictitious puppies.
Winter of Love
AS THE SKY DARKENED and we bumped past isolated farms and little hamlets, we arrived at the bus stop in Heckmondwhite just as the street lamps were lighting. In my Dother Hall brochure it says, “Heckmondwhite has its own ‘zany’ cosmopolitan atmosphere.”
I don’t know that most people would call a village green and a post office and a pub called The Blind Pig “zany.” Unless you counted the knitted flags over the village hall.
I bet the Dobbinses, my substitute parents, have got something to do with that.
Maybe I should just nip quickly over to the pub and see my fun-sized friend, Ruby, and my four-legged mate Matilda, her bulldog? I could give her the lipstick I’ve bought her. Not Matilda, Ruby. Dogs don’t wear makeup. But what they do wear is the little ballet tutu I have got for her from Pets Party shop. I hope it will go round her waist. She is quite porky in the middle.
And anyway, even if Rubes is out I could leave the presents with her older brother, Alex. Alex the dream boy. Alex with his long limbs and his longish thick chestnut hair. And his two eyes. And his back and front . . . and everything. And we could chat about performing arts. He’s gone off to Liverpool to do drama there and I could chat about my performance plans. Maybe tell him about my Labradad idea.
Maybe not. I want him to think of me as an attractive thespian.
Yes, I will pop to see Ruby. And whilst I am popping about maybe Alex, her very gorgeous brother, will pop up and that will be poptastic and I will say, “What a surprise, Alex, I was just popping by to . . .”
“Lullah! Lullah, yoo-hoo, it’s me!!!! And the twins!!!”
Dibdobs. In her Brown Owl uniform, coming toward me. No, not just coming toward me. Skipping toward me.
The twins were wearing knitted yellow knicker bockers.
I bet Mr. Dobbins (Harold) knitted them at one of his “inner woman” groups. Harold goes to a men’s group and they try to find their hidden feminine side.
Uuuumph. She almost crushed me to death with her bosom and her badges. And her new whistle. As I have said before, I am sure Dibdobs has got a “hugging” badge. She’s got badges for everything else, moth conservation, vole watching, pond life, etc.
I couldn’t actually see anything when she was hugging me, but I could feel hugging going on around my knee area as well.
That would be the twins, Max and Sam.
They love my knees.
Probably because that is as far up as their toddler arms can hug.
I don’t get a lot of hugging at home.
My little brother, Connor, likes kicking mostly. I hugged him when I left and he said, “Don’t be so gay.” Grandma does a lot of patting. But quite often she’s off target with that and thinks she is patting me when actually it’s the cushion next to me.
Dibdobs was talking really loudly and quickly like she does. She’s so keen on everything.
It’s nice really. Just odd.
“Oh, Lullah, it’s sooooooo lovely to have you back. I’ve missed you. We’ve all missed you. Haven’t we, boys?”
The boys stood there blinking from underneath their pudding basin haircuts.
And sucking their dodies.
They don’t get any less odd.
Dibdobs said, “The boys have made something for you. Haven’t you, boys?”
She adores the twins. She thinks they are covering up their cleverness. She thinks they are like tiny little brain surgeons in tiny twits’ clothing.
Max and Sam blinked at me. And kept on sucking.
Then Max (or Sam) took his dodie out and said, “Sjuuuuge one for ooo.”
I said, “Oh, well, that’s nice, I . . .”
Dibdobs said, “Tell Lullah what you’ve made for her.”
Sam said, “Sjuuuuge.”
Dibdobs started slightly losing her rag. “Yes, yes, it is quite big . . . but TELL Lullah what it is.”
Sam blinked and looked a bit cross, like he had suddenly realized he had a Brown Owl for a mother. He put his hands on his hips and stamped his foot and said, “SJJJJUUUUGE.”
And Max shouted, “BOGIES!!!”
Dibdobs went even redder.
She bent down so she could look them both in the eyes and said sternly, “Now, that is a silly, silly word that big boys don’t say anymore.”
Max and Sam blinked together and smiled. Great Jumping Jehovah, they look like sock animals when they smile.
Dibdobs took their hands and we all walked back to the house. She was chatting on sixteen to the dozen. But I could still hear Max and Sam softly singing, “Bogie, bogie, bogie, bogie, bogie.”
Dibdobs said, “Harold is so looking forward to seeing you. He’s out tonight with the interknitting group. After the success of the communal skipping rope, you know, the skipathon when the whole village skipped?”
Oh yes, I remembered that.
She was chattering on.
“Well, he’s got big plans for knitting the village together for Christmas. Won’t that be fun?”
I don’t know what to say to that because she hugged me again and my mouth was in her muffler.
When we got back to Dandelion Cottage the twins’ present turned out to be some bits of feather stuck into a potato.
Max said, “Fevver man for ooo.”
Lovely.
Also there was a postcard addressed to me care of the Dobbinses. It was from Honey! It just said:
Dear Tallulah,
Something WEALLY exciting has happened!!!! See you when I get there on Wednesday and tell you all about it!!!
Honey xxx
It didn’t really say “weally” on the postcard, but I could hear her voice in my head.
I wonder what she means?
Maybe she’s got five boyfriends now?!
I took my luggage (and “Fevver man”) up into my room while Dibdobs went to make some tea.
So here I am back in my old squirrel room. Sitting on my wooden bed with the squirrel carved into the bedhead. With my feather potato. I’ve brought back my squirrel slippers, the ones that Dibdobs gave me when I first came. She said they were to make me feel at home.
Which they would have done, had my home been in an oak tree.
I put the squirrel slippers into the bed for company. Well, one looks like a squirrel and the other one looks like a hamster. My brother, Connor, set fire to one of the tail bits so it’s just a stump.
I looked around at the familiar carved wooden wardrobe (acorn theme) and the wooden dressing table (with the carved squirrel legs) and the wooden, well, everything really. You name it, if it was in the room, it was wooden.
But wood was OK. Everything was OK.
I put my case on the bed and started to unpack. Georgia and her Ace Gang helped me choose cool things to suit my shape. Like dark tights and bright little skirts. And hats. The Ace Gang said I needed to de-emphasize my bad bits (nobbly knees) and emphasize my good bits (catty eyes and nice swishy black hair). Georgia said to distract boys from my knee area I should swish my hair almost constantly. (Although not to fiddle with my fringe, because she personally thought that was a killing offense.)
I hung all my stuff in the wooden wardrobe.
I even have a special underwear drawer. With bras in it. Oh yes!
Yes, I now officially wear corker holders.
And what’s more, I have corkers to put in them!!
I’ve got the tiniest corker appliances you can get (30A), but I have high hopes for a growth spurt when I start tap-dancing my way to the top of the showbiz ladder. Not that I can tap-dance, but I could do something on the ladder, I’m sure. It’s just a question of finding it and not falling off the ladder in the meantime. Even though you can’t see the ladder.
Ooh, it will be so nice to see litt
le Vaisey again and her Cheeky bottom and all my new arty mates.
I’m putting my new shiny, fruity performance-art notebook under my pillow for when I come up with more whizzo creative projects. I can’t wait to see Dr. Lightowler’s face when she has to hand me my golden slippers of applause!
She doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. It was after I did my “owl-laying-an-egg” mime in her class. I think she took against me then.
Maybe she thought I was pretending to be her because she looks like an owl. She said I was silly and shouldn’t be at Dother Hall.
But Dr. Owly is in for a surprise when she gets to see how unsilly I can be.
I’m going to put my corker-measuring tape measure in my corker-holder drawer, next to my corker holders.
I wonder if my corkers have grown since I last measured them?
I did a sneaky measuring in the lavatory on the train, which is only about three hours ago, but growing could happen any time, couldn’t it?
It could happen the minute after you took the corker-measuring tape measure away.
Anyway, I am not going to risk doing a measure. It would be just my luck for the lunatic twins to come barging in.
Last term, unfortunately I tried my method in front of the window. And Cain Hinchcliff was out there in the undergrowth, snogging some village girl, and he’d seen me, seen me doing my method. He’d seen me rubbing my corkers with my hiking socks on my hands.
To make them grow.
My corkers, not the socks.
The socks were huge.
Best not to think about it.
I shivered at the memory.
Still, that was all in the past.
Dibdobs shouted up, “Tea’s ready! Boys! Tallulah! Split splat!!!”
I shook my hair and gave it a bit of a va-va-voom.
When I opened my door, there they were. The twins. Blinking and sucking on their dodies. As if they knew that I had nearly measured my corkers.
Perhaps they have a corker-sensing gene.
Perhaps all boys do.
What a horrific thought.
After tea (local eggs and a local sausage), I said, “I’m just going to pop to The Blind Pig to see Ruby and then we might pop and visit the owlets.”
I’ve entered the “popping zone” again. I like it. It’s very me.
As I went out the door Dibdobs said, “Put this hat on in case of rain. It’s my camping hat.”
I said, “I’ll be all ri—”
But she was ramming the waterproof hat on my head, completely squashing my va-va-voomed hair. I’d have to not take it off now in case of hat hair.
Dobbins said, “Oooooh, look at you!! You’re gorgeous. You’ve grown! Oooohhhhh.”
And she hugged me again.
And so did the boys.
It’s very hard to walk when you’ve got three people doing hugging.
Was it going to happen every time I went out?
Maybe the right thing to do was to hug them back and then they would let me go.
But that made it worse.
Dibdobs started hugging more tightly and I think she might have been crying.
I got away at last by saying, “Bye then!!!”
I was only going three feet across the green. What if we went on a school trip?
The sign (a pig in dark glasses with a white stick) was creaking in the cold wind.
I remembered last sitting here.
On the wall next to the pub.
With Alex.
Dreamy Alex.
He’d looked at me and smiled his smile. It was the best moment of my life so far. We were so close. I wanted to say so much. I wanted my eyes to speak the words I couldn’t say. (Which actually might have been a bit of a surprise to both of us if they had done.)
So I had said to him, “My knees are too far up.”
Why?
Why would you say that?
And then he had wanted to look at my knees to see how far up they were, and the whole thing had gone wrong, leaving him thinking I was just a stupid little kid. With out-of-control legs.
Well, I will not be saying that sort of thing to him again.
In fact I’m going to make a “normal” list in my performance-art notebook.
Topics that a normal person would talk about.
Topics that are not knee-based.
Like theater.
Yes, yes, I will tell him about the plays I have seen.
Well, actually I haven’t seen any plays.
Books, then. Yes, books.
I could say, “That Dickens writes a lot, doesn’t he?” Ruby came bursting out of the pub door.
“I saw you through the winder. Ullo ullo. It’s me!!! And Matilda!!!”
Matilda was barking and throwing herself at me, jumping up. Well, sort of. She was just thudding against my calves to be fair. Her bulldoggy face looks like she is doing a turned-down squashy smile all the time. Maybe she is.
Ruby was laughing and her pigtails were jiggling about like ears underneath her hat.
She was still yelling, “Ullo ullo!!!”
It was so nice to see her little freckly face and gappy teeth.
She was skipping around me and shouting, “She’s back, she’s back!!! Matilda, show Loobylullah how tha can die for England!”
Matilda stopped leaping and lay on her back with her stumpy bow legs in the air.
Ruby said, “Do your Irish dancing over her. She likes that. Go on. I’ll do the singing. ‘Hiddly diddly diddly. Hiddly diddly diddly.’”
As she was bobbing around she said, “You should see the owlets! Shall we go for a wander now? You’ll not believe it. They’ve got right fat. Come on, come on.”
As she went skipping off, I said, “Should you tell your dad where you’re going? Or . . . or . . . Alex?”
She shouted back, “He’s not in. He’s forming a heavy metal band in Ormskirk.”
What?
I caught up with her crossing the green.
I said, “Alex has formed a heavy metal band in Ormskirk? But—”
She said, “Not Alex, tha barm pot. Alex has gone off t’college. Me dad. You should see him in his band stuff. He’s got these right tight leather trousers. It’s horrible, and sometimes he can’t get them off. Or walk up stairs in them.”
As we went down by the side of the sheep field, I said, “I didn’t even know your dad could play a guitar.”
“Believe me—he can’t—but he can shout bloody loud and he’s got his own Viking helmet. It’s a tribute band.”
I said, “What to? Vikings?”
And she said, “No, it’s a tribute band to pies. They’re called ‘The Iron Pies.’”
I hope I never have to see them.
So no Alex around then.
I sighed.
No Mr. Darcy to look at and try out my new boy skills on.
As we walked along I said, “Rubes, do you think my knees have got less nobblier?”
Ruby stopped hopping and looked at them. Then she bent down and knocked my knee with her fist. Quite hard. I said, “Owww.”
She said, “Aye, I think they av a bit.”
Then she looked up at me.
“I tell thee what, that corker rubbing has worked a bit too. Tha looks like you’ve got two walnuts down your jumper. You haven’t, have you?”
I tried not to smirk. Walnuts now but maybe coconuts soon.
We were passing by the back of the Dobbinses’ house. It seemed so familiar to be back here, but so much had changed. I was a woman now with womanly bits. And womanly bits’ holders. In various colors.
Ruby said, “Ay up, what did tha mean in your letter? You know, you said you would tell me abaht Charlie when you saw me. Yes, you thought he thought you were a long lanky twit and that, didn’t you?”
I said, “Er, Ruby. No, I didn’t think he thought I was a long lanky twit, actually. I’m not a long lanky tw—”
At which point I caught my head a glancing blow on a low-lying branch.
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Ruby tried not to laugh. I rubbed my head as we walked on through the dark woods and crouched a bit.
Ruby said, “Go on then.”
I wasn’t her plaything. I was a sensitive human being. I said, “I think you’re too young . . . I don’t think you’d understand.”
She said, “Well, I understood about Ben, when you said kissing him were like having a little bat trapped in your mouth.”
She was going on, toddling around in front of me.
“Some boys are so useless at snogging. I don’t know why they don’t practice before they come bothering you. They could practice on . . . balloons or, or potatoes or a . . . melon or summat.”
Balloons? There was a whole world of snogging I knew nothing about and Ruby was only eleven.
Actually, it was making me feel sad thinking about Charlie. I’d really liked him. He made me laugh. And I thought he sort of liked me.
We were at the barn by now. I wanted to make sure that Connie had gone off. I said to Rube, “I don’t want my head pecked off by an enormous angry barn owl. It’s not even as though she would peck it off at once and get it over and done with. I saw her eat a mouse, head first, bit by bit. Till only its tail was hanging out of her beak.”
So Ruby crept off and opened the barn door while I crouched behind a bush.
I noticed Matilda sat down behind me. Clearly she didn’t want her head pecked off either.
Ruby came back skipping and said, “They’re on their own, come in!!!”
I went into the barn and when my eyes adjusted to the dark I could see them. Little Ruby and Little Lullah. Our little owlets.
Little owlets? They were HUGE! We spent an hour with the furry freaks. They can flutter about now, although they do crash into the walls. And they swooped down onto our hats. I think they love us and think we are their stupid friends who don’t even know how to fly. Well, maybe I can’t fly but I don’t poo myself all the time. I said to Ruby, “Look, they are pooing while they are eating.”
Ruby said, “Ah know, sometimes you can see little mouse claws in the poo pellets.”
It was getting cold and late, so Ruby put them back on their hay pile. I didn’t want to handle them in case I was involved in a poo situation. But they were so sweet and they fluffed their feathers up to make themselves look bigger. And did head swiveling, to show off how far they could swivel. I feel proud of them.
Withering Tights with Bonus Material Page 19
