by Sandy Taylor
Daddy was in the hospital for a long time and I missed him. Me and Brenda would go down to the church and light a candle for him. The candles were next to a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Me and Brenda loved the Blessed Virgin Mary. She wore a beautiful blue dress that came down to her feet, a long white veil and she was holding her hands out to us and smiling. It beat looking up at Jesus hanging on a cross with blood dripping down his head. I preferred Jesus when he was all tucked up in the manger. Not that I didn’t love Him and I really did feel sorry for Him hanging there, but if it was a toss-up between Him and his mum, me and Brenda always opted for his mum.
You were supposed to put money in the slot before you took a candle but I thought that God would understand and not mind. Holy God knew everything and he would know that we didn’t have any pennies, because we were bloody skint. I prayed to St Jude to make my daddy better because he was the patron saint of lost causes and I thought if anyone could help, he could. I knew that Daddy was a lost cause because Aunty Vera said he was. I asked St Jude to please make my daddy better so that he could be like other daddies and go to work and buy a fur coat for Mum. I wanted my daddy to come home but I wanted a different daddy. Not like Monica’s daddy though, because Monica’s daddy was really grumpy and he shouted a lot. He had red hair like Monica’s and he had a red beard too. He smoked roll-ups and Monica said that one day he caught his beard on fire and her mum had to throw a teapot full of tea over him to put it out. That made us giggle.
Me and Monica giggled about her dad a lot but I think that Monica’s dad was a bit of a bully. I think that Monica was afraid of her dad but I never asked her about it, just like she never asked me about my dad.
I loved Monica. She was the kindest girl that I had ever met and she never minded that we had to take Brenda everywhere with us. She was lovely to Brenda and she looked out for her the same way that I did. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend.
* * *
Apparently we lived in a slum, at least that’s what the letter from the council said. Mum read the letter out to us. It said that as part of the slum-clearance programme they would be demolishing Carlton Hill and we would be moving to the new council estate on the edge of Brighton. In other words, they were going to flatten our house. Mum was all for it but Dad wasn’t happy.
‘I like it where I am,’ he said. ‘I like being close to the sea.’
‘Well, you’ll be close to the Downs instead,’ snapped Mum.
‘It won’t be the same.’
‘And thank God it won’t, Pat! The walls won’t be running with damp. The girls’ bedroom ceiling won’t be covered in mould. Thank God it won’t be the same!’
Ever since Brenda had started school Daddy had spent a lot of time walking along the seafront on his own. He missed us both, I know he did, but the sea seemed to make him happy.
‘The Downs are nice, Daddy,’ I said. ‘We can go up there every day after school and look at the dirty old sheep.’
‘Of course we can, my love,’ he said.
Mum folded the letter and put it in the kitchen drawer. ‘Unless of course you want to wait until they pull the house down around your head.’
‘You have a sharp tongue, Kate.’
‘Is it any wonder? We are being given a chance, Pat. The girls are being given a chance and I, for one, am going to grab it with both hands. I want my girls to have a better life than the one they’ve got here. I will stand and cheer the day they knock this rat-infested street down.’
‘There haven’t been any rats around here for ages,’ said Dad.
‘That’s because they’ve got better taste in houses than we have. They probably packed their cases weeks ago.’
That made Daddy laugh and soon all four of us were laughing. It was lovely.
‘OK, Kate, you win. We’ll all move to the posh new house and we’ll have a wonderful life up there on the Downs.’
Mum smiled at him. ‘Thank you, love.’
‘Where is our new house, Mum?’ asked Brenda.
Mum took the letter out of the drawer and read it again. ‘They have allocated a house for us at 15, See Saw Lane.’
Me and Brenda jumped around the kitchen shouting, ‘See Saw Lane, See Saw Lane, we’re going to live in See Saw Lane!’
Then Mum and Dad joined in and I thought my heart would burst with happiness.
Nine
When I first learned that we were moving away I felt sad. I mean, I was excited about moving to the new house and I wouldn’t miss the old one but I would miss Monica, who lived up the road. Then Monica’s mum and dad got the same letter that we did, telling them that they too lived in a slum and they were going to move to the same estate as us.
School started again a week after we moved to See Saw Lane. We weren’t going to the local one just up the road, we were going to the Catholic school and that meant we had to go on the tram. Daddy wanted to come with us but Mum said no because he got too emotional and showed us all up. Besides which, she only had enough tram fare for the two of us. Mum wasn’t happy about us having to go to the Catholic school when there was a perfectly good school just round the corner that we could walk to. The reason we had to go there was because when Mum had married Dad, she had to promise the priest that she would bring us up in the Roman Catholic faith and, as my dad pointed out, a promise to a priest is like a promise to God. Aunty Marge said that it was a mixed marriage and Aunty Vera said it was doomed.
I think that, given half a chance, Mum wouldn’t have thought twice about breaking her promise to the priest and I have to say I didn’t blame her. According to the Catholic Church, when my dad died he would go straight to Heaven and get his own wings and a harp, while my mum would be left hanging around outside the gates without a hope in hell of getting in and not a harp in sight. I didn’t think that was very fair. Both Monica’s parents were Roman Catholic so her mum wouldn’t have to hang around outside the Pearly Gates. Not only that, but it meant that we would both be going to the same school. We were highly delighted.
Our new school was called The Sacred Heart Convent and we didn’t have normal teachers, we had nuns. They were dressed all in black and they walked along the school corridors looking down at the floor, with their veils floating behind them. Some of the nuns were nice and smiley but some of them were cross and grumpy. Monica said that she didn’t know what they had to be grumpy about, seeing as how they were actually married to God. She said given what God had gone through, getting nailed to the cross and everything, the last thing he needed to come home to was a miserable wife.
Unluckily for us our teacher was one of the grumpy ones. Her name was Sister Concepta Aquinas, which was a hell of a name to be lumbered with but as she was so mean, we thought it served her right. She used to call us Little Barbarians. ‘What Little Barbarian has dropped paper on the floor?’ she would yell across the classroom. She had a long ruler that she would use to whack kids across their knuckles if they didn’t know their catechism. Me and Monica always made sure we knew it off by heart. The whole class would have to chant it every morning.
‘Who made you?’
‘God made me.’
‘Why did God make you?’
‘God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.’
Half the time we didn’t know what the hell we were going on about but it kept us in Aquinas’s good books.
Brenda’s teacher was lovely. Her name was Sister Mary Benedict and she looked just like a film star. Brenda loved her and that made me happy. Monica said that at least God would have one decent wife to come home to, which might make up for being saddled with old Aquinas.
There were lots of things in the Catholic religion that were hard to understand. For instance, if a baby died before it was baptised it went to a place called Limbo. I couldn’t understand that because it wasn’t the baby’s fault it wasn’t baptised. It would have been too young to pour water over its own head, wouldn’t it? S
o it didn’t seem very fair. There were lots of things we couldn’t get our heads round but Daddy said we must just have faith and not question anything. Mum said it was a load of old cobblers and we should question everything. Life became very confusing.
Me and Monica joined the choir, which was even more of a mystery because all the hymns were in Latin. We didn’t have a clue what we were singing about but we didn’t mind because it all sounded so lovely. We sang in church every Sunday morning. When it was time to receive Holy Communion, we all trooped down the centre aisle together and everyone was looking at us and me and Monica felt very important. Brenda was too little to join the choir, so after Mass we would meet her and Daddy in the park. We’d play on the swings and the slide then we’d go home and eat a lovely dinner that Mummy had made for us. I loved Sundays.
I always hoped that Jack would be in the park, but he never was. I told Monica about him.
‘You like a boy?’
‘He’s not any old boy, Monica. He’s special.’
‘What sort of special?’
I rubbed the bridge of my nose and thought. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ I said. ‘It’s just a feeling I get when I look at him. A bubbly kind of feeling in my tummy.’
‘Like a bilious attack?’
‘Not like a bilious attack, Monica. Why would it feel like a bilious attack?’
‘That’s what a bilious attack feels like, sort of bubbly and then you throw up.’
‘Jack doesn’t make me want to throw up.’
‘What does he make you feel like then?’
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. ‘It’s a bit like the Holy Trinity, hard to understand.’
‘The Holy Trinity’s not hard to understand,’ said Monica, mimicking old Aquinas. ‘It’s three people rolled into one. What’s hard about that? You Little Barbarian!’
Monica made me laugh.
‘Well, I’m going to marry him when I grow up, so there.’
‘Then I wish you well and hope you both have a fine life together.’
‘Thank you for your kind wishes, Monica Maltby.’
‘You are very welcome, Maureen O’Connell,’ said Monica, crossing her eyes and making me giggle.
‘I am though,’ I said.
‘You are what?’
‘I am going to marry Jack.’
‘And who is going to have the pleasure of breaking this happy news to the lucky boy?’
‘I shall tell him myself when I’m sixteen.’
‘Well, that should come as a pleasant surprise to him. Let’s hope he hasn’t met someone else while you’re waiting to grow up.’
‘He won’t.’
‘Won’t he?’
‘No, because we are destined to be together.’
‘Imagine that,’ said Monica.
The first thing I did when I came home from school every day was to climb the tree to see if Jack was in the garden. I loved watching him. I loved the way his hair curled over the back of his collar and the way he scratched the soft place behind his ear. I liked listening to his voice when he was pretending to be one of the tin soldiers. I could happily stay in the tree all day and never get bored or hungry or want to go for a pee, I just liked watching Jack. I would settle down on a branch and peep through the leaves. Daddy said that soon the leaves would be gone and my secret place would be discovered. I hadn’t thought of that.
‘What on earth will I do then, Daddy?’
‘What on earth will she do then?’ said Brenda.
‘I shall make a spy hole in the fence,’ said Daddy, smiling.
‘You are the best daddy in the whole wide world,’ I said, hugging him.
‘And you are the best little girl,’ he said, ruffling my hair.
‘What about me?’ said Brenda.
‘And you are my best little girl too.’
‘You can’t have two best little girls.’
‘Of course I can, for I have enough love for the pair of you.’
‘And Mummy?’ said Brenda.
‘And Mummy,’ he said.
I liked it best when Jack was on his own – I didn’t like sharing him. I didn’t like it when Nelson was there, with his brown hair and his brown jumper. One day my foot slipped on a branch and I nearly fell out of the tree. I must have made a noise because Nelson looked up and saw me. He dug Jack in the ribs and whispered something in his ear.
Jack looked up at the tree. ‘You, girl,’ he shouted, ‘show yourself!’
‘Yes, show yourself!’ yelled Nelson.
Bloody hell! I started pulling my dress out of my navy drawers. I didn’t want Jack to see my knickers. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were my Sunday best but they were my everyday ones and they had holes in them. I decided to show myself. I parted the branches and peered down at them.
‘Are you spying on us, girl?’ demanded Jack.
‘No!’ My stupid voice came out like a squeak.
‘Speak up,’ said Jack. ‘Can’t hear you.’
‘Can’t hear you,’ echoed Nelson.
Jack whispered something in Nelson’s ear. ‘You know what happens to spies when they’re caught?’ he yelled up at me.
I cleared my throat. ‘I’m not a spy!’ I shouted.
‘What are you then,’ said Jack. ‘A nosy parker?’
‘A nosy parker?’ echoed Nelson.
Bloody cheek, what right did he have to call me a nosy parker? ‘It’s a free country!’ I yelled. ‘And this is my tree so I can do what I like in it.’
‘Brave words,’ said Jack, grinning.
I grinned back at him. He was beautiful. I could look at him all day and I was right about his eyes, they were as blue as his jumper. I wished his stupid friend would go home.
‘So how come I haven’t seen you at school?’ asked Jack.
‘I go to the Sacred Heart Convent.’
‘Taught by the penguins, eh?’
‘Penguins?’
‘Well, that’s what they look like.’
‘Oh, the nuns. I suppose they do look a bit like penguins.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Maureen O’Connell, what’s yours?’ I said, even though I already knew.
‘That’s for me to know and for you to find out,’ he said, grinning.
‘But I just told you mine.’
‘How do I know you’re not a spy?’
‘How do I know you’re not an idiot?’
‘He’s not an idiot,’ said Nelson.
‘Who’s asking you?’
Nelson didn’t answer.
‘Well, I know your first name’s Jack,’ I said.
‘Ah, so you are a spy.’
‘No, I’ve just got good hearing.’
Jack was laughing. ‘My name’s Jack Forrest.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Jack Forrest.’
‘Likewise, Maureen O’Connell.’
‘What about him?’ I nodded towards Nelson.
‘Ask him yourself.’
‘Well, I know he’s named after a famous admiral. What’s the next bit?’
I could tell that Nelson wasn’t sure whether to tell me or not, then Jack said, ‘Go on, tell her.’
Nelson muttered something I couldn’t hear.
‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Perks!’ he shouted.
‘Pleased to meet you, Nelson Perks.’
Nelson glared at me.
‘Got any brothers?’ said Jack.
‘Just a younger sister.’
‘Pity,’ said Jack.
‘Yes, pity,’ said Nelson.
I stared hard at Nelson. ‘Do you copy everything he says?’
Even from up in the tree I could see that Nelson looked embarrassed. He stared down at the ground and started scuffing his shoes in the mud.
‘No,’ he said quietly.
‘Well, you give a good impression of it.’
Jack started laughing. It made me feel brave.
‘Haven’t you got a mind of your own?’
/> Nelson glared at me. ‘You’re just a stupid girl.’
‘I’d rather be a stupid girl than a parrot.’
‘I’m going home,’ said Nelson and stomped off up the garden.
‘You’ve upset my friend,’ said Jack, making a poor-me face. ‘I’ve got no one to play with now.’
‘I expect you’ll survive,’ I said and I jumped down out of the tree and ran up the garden.
I was grinning when I came in the back door.
Daddy was stirring something on the cooker. ‘You look like the cat that’s just had the cream,’ he said.
‘He spoke to me, Daddy!’
‘Now who would that be?’
Brenda was sitting at the table. ‘Was it the boy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he your boyfriend now?’
‘Not yet, but he will be one day. And we will get married and live happily ever after.’
‘Just like Cinderella?’
‘Exactly like Cinderella.’
‘Can I be your bridesmaid, Maureen?’
‘Course you can.’
‘And what will I be?’ said Daddy.
‘You can be my bridesmaid as well,’ I said, grinning.
‘No, I will walk you down the aisle, my darling girl, and it will be the proudest day of my life.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise,’ said my dad.
All of a sudden I didn’t feel happy any more.
Daddy sat down beside me. ‘What’s wrong, my love?’
‘I was mean to Nelson.’
‘Who’s Nelson?’
‘Jack’s friend. I was mean to him.’
‘Did you make him cry?’ said Brenda.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘That’s good then,’ said Brenda.
‘Why were you mean to him?’ said Daddy.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Don’t know.’
