Private - Keep Out!

by Gwen Grant

  ‘You want to learn about God, don’t you?’ our Lucy said, and I said, ‘Why?’ and she said, ‘Did you hear that, Mam?’ and our Mam said, ‘That’s what I mean, she’s a little heathen. Not knowing about God’s like not knowing about sweets.’

  ‘But I can see sweets,’ I said. ‘I can’t see God.’ ‘You don’t have to see him,’ our Mam said, and I could see she was starting to get mad. She always does when she starts talking about God. ‘If I can’t see him,’ I said, ‘then how do I know he’s there?’

  ‘She got the slipper at school for doing that,’ our Rose said. I really hate her. ‘For doing what?’ our Mam asked. ‘For telling the teacher that if she couldn’t see Rome, then how did she know it was in Italy.’ ‘The slipper!’ our Mam said. ‘Sounds to me as if she needs more than the slipper. You’d better go this afternoon as well,’ she said, staring at me very hard.

  ‘Oh Mam,’ I said. ‘What if I say I do believe in God then? Do I still have to go this afternoon?’ But all she would say was, ‘We’ll see,’ and I know what that means, it means I’ll be going to Sunday School again this afternoon.

  So I went to Sunday School this morning and I’m glad I did after all as it was very interesting. We all got there and rushed in, like we do usually. Then they sent us all out again and we had to go in one at a time, just like they do usually as well, and they said things like, ‘Naow, children. Let us go in quietly. After all,’ (heavy breathing) ‘we mustn’t forget it’s the House of the Lord, must we?’

  So, when we got inside and we’d sat down, they started telling us all about being sunbeams, as usual, and we sang about being sunbeams, as usual. Anyway, it was when we’d got the sunbeams out of the way at Sunday School that it started to get interesting. Little Alf Smart stands up and starts waving his hand around. ‘Please, Miss,’ he says, and he’s hopping about from one foot to the other. ‘Please, Miss,’ and the brown-haired teacher with the brown hair-ribbon says, ‘Now, Alfred, sit down until Mr Greybroom has finished telling you about the wondrous works of Jesus.’

  Mr Greybroom, who is really the brown hair-ribbon teacher’s Dad, glared down at poor little Alf and says, ‘Come, come. Is it too much to expect a little peace and quiet?’ and I thought, he’s not going to get much peace and quiet this morning. So Alf sits down and then, in the middle of all that peace and quiet, there was this noise like running water, which of course it was, because poor little Alf had wet his pants.

  Well, all I can say is that if Mr Greybroom and brown hair-ribbon are getting to go to heaven, then I hope I’m not. That Mr Greybroom went over to Alf and he shouted, ‘What have you done, boy?’ and poor little Alf says, ‘Please sir, I tried to tell you, sir, and now I’ve wet me pants and what’s our Mam going to say?’ and he starts crying.

  His big sister, Jezabel, was across in the other group, with the big girls and I could see her looking over. That’s why when Mr Greybroom grabbed hold of poor little Alf’s arm and started shaking him and shouting, ‘You filthy boy,’ I thought, oho! There’s going to be trouble now, and there was. I wouldn’t have missed going to Sunday School for anything.

  Their Jezabel came rushing over and she yelled at Mr Greybroom, ‘’Ere, what you doing with our Alf?’ and Mr Greybroom went white and dropped his hand and then he said, ‘My good girl, return to your seat immediately,’ and Jezabel said, ‘I’m going to fetch my Dad up to you, I am. You’ve made our Alf cry, you have.’ And their Alf was sobbing buckets. The brown hair-ribbon said to Jezabel, ‘I think you ought to calm yourself and return to my sister’s class,’ and Jezabel said, ‘Tek off,’ and she picked up poor little Alf and carried him out of the hall.

  There was a long wet trail behind him.

  When they’d gone, it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop and Mr Greybroom said, ‘I think that’ll be all for today, children. You may go now,’ and I said, ‘Oh, Mr Greybroom, we’ve only just come. Do we really have to go home now?’ Because I wanted to be there when Alf Smart’s Dad got up to the Sunday School. But Mr Greybroom saw right through me and he said, ‘I might have expected it of you,’ and brown hair-ribbon went all hoity-toity and said, ‘After all we’ve done for you.’ I said, ‘What have you ever done for me, then?’ and she said, ‘We give up every Sunday to come here and teach you lot.’

  So I stuck my tongue out at her and said I thought she was wasting her time and she said, ‘Evidently. In your case, anyway.’

  Anyway, we were all turfed out and the door was locked as if there were a fire somewhere. They didn’t do it a minute before time either, because we could see Alf’s Mam come roaring up the street like a steam roller. She’s a big woman, Alf’s Mam, and she’s got a fist like a piece of ham, our Mam says.

  So, we all hung around and Alf’s Mam banged on the Sunday School door and she was crying. I couldn’t understand that at all, so when I got home I asked our Mam about it, and our Mam said, ‘Well, would you believe it. I don’t know. You can’t even send them to church without trouble of one kind or another,’ and she went about looking all fed-up for the rest of the morning. There’s no working out grown-ups, no matter which way you try it.

  This afternoon, at the other Sunday School, they were telling us about being a peacemaker. That means when you see trouble, you should try and stop it. So I said, ‘Like this morning?’ and the teacher said, ‘Why, what happened this morning?’ and came and sat at the side of me for a bit. I don’t mind him. He’s not bad. At least he listens to you and doesn’t go on about God all the time. So I told him about poor little Alf and Alf was sat there and he started sniffling and by the time I’d finished, he was crying again. And before I could say a thing, their Jezabel came through from the other class, again, and thumped me. I said to her, ‘What did you do that for?’ and she said, ‘’Cos you made him cry, that’s why.’ So I started hitting her, didn’t I, and it was just like hitting the side of our house. She never budged.

  So, this Sunday School teacher, he starts shouting, ‘Girls, girls. Stop that, at once,’ and I was that busy kicking Jezabel Smart, who is the most horrible girl I know, that when the teacher got in front of her, I kicked his leg by mistake. By, you should have seen him hop round that room.

  He looked at me, when he’d finished hopping that is, and he said, ‘You look as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, you do.’ I said, ‘Nobody hits me and gets away with it,’ and he said, ‘What have I just been teaching you?’ and nobody answered. They were all too busy laughing, that’s why, rotten kids. ‘Come on,’ he shouts, ‘get your heads out of those hankies and tell me. What have I just been telling you about?’ and somebody at the back said, ‘Being a peacemaker, Sir,’ and he said, ‘Shout that, so’s everyone can hear. Particularly the front row,’ and glared at me. I said to him, ‘No good looking at me like that, Sir. Weren’t my fault,’ and he said, ‘No, it never is, is it?’ and I thought, ‘Blooming heck. School all week and this on Sunday.’ I felt really fed up, and when I grow up I’m never going to go to Sunday School again as long as I live.

  Of course, Gloria Hottentot has to get up, doesn’t she? Her with her yellow hair and pink frock. She stands there and hangs her head down so that she can look up at Sir and she says, ‘Oooooh, pleath Thir,’ (she’s short-tongued, our Mam says. I said, ‘How can she be short-tongued, Mam, when she’s got the biggest mouth in school,’ and our Mam said it hadn’t got nothing to do with that, so I don’t know). Anyway, she says, ‘Pleath, Thir, I’ll tell ethrybothy what you were telling uth abouth, Thir,’ and she smiles at him and I know for a fact that she spends about fifty hours every night smiling with her fingers stuck in her cheeks so that she’ll get dimples. Anyway, she’s got them and they’re horrible, but as she’s horrible as well, they match each other a treat.

  Anyway, Sir says, ‘Very well, dear’ – yuk, yuk, yuk – ‘you tell us,’ and she stands there and tells us all practically word for word what he’d said and Jezabel’s standing there looking as if she’d like to kill me and I’m standing there
wondering if they’ll miss me at home when I’m dead and gone, which I shall be after Jezabel’s finished with me. I think I’ll go down fighting like they did in the war, but it doesn’t make me feel any happier and I wish I’d kept my big mouth shut. I never meant to make poor little Alf cry but their Jezabel always says, ‘I don’t care what you meant. All I know is what you did,’ and then thumps you.

  By the time that horrible Gloria Hottentot (that’s not her real name – Hottentot. Somebody christened her that. I think the Hottentots live in Africa or somewhere. Anyway, I think G.H. looks like them), yes, that Gloria’s finished talking and smiling and twisting round on her horrible little pink shoes – yuk, yuk, yuk – Sir pats her on the head and says, ‘Well done, dear,’ and everybody pretends they’re going to be sick and Sir starts shouting again. I don’t know about angels and that, but it seems to me we could do with some of them down here to take Sunday School. I think they’d be a lot more useful than flying around heaven playing those fiddles, or whatever they play.

  Anyway, I thought, well, seeing as how I’m in church anyway, I’ll ask for a miracle because it says in the Bible that if you ask then it shall be given. So I stood there and I shut my eyes. (You can’t pray with your eyes wide open and I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s so that you can’t see God if He comes down and listens to you.) I said, ‘Dear God,’ and then I thought, I wonder if that’s right, but whichever way I tried it, I kept coming back to that, so I said, ‘Dear God. Please will you strike Jezabel Smart down dead before the end of Sunday School. Thank you very much,’ and I opened my eyes and stared at Jezabel and she stared back at me and then I suddenly thought, I wonder if God knows who she is? He might not be able to find her with all these people about, so I closed my eyes again and said, ‘She’s the one with the black hair.’ Then there was this terrible noise.

  I thought, ‘I’ll always believe in God now,’ and started thanking him because I thought it was Jezabel being struck down dead. But when I opened my eyes, it wasn’t. It was something ever so much better. It was little Alf. He’d wet his pants again and it had gone all over Gloria Hottentot’s white socks and little pink shoes and she was going mad. She must have been because she hit little Alf and then Alf’s Jezabel nearly went spare. What a carry on. Anyway, Jezabel forgot all about me, but she didn’t forget about Gloria.

  The teacher had to take her home and Jezabel walked right behind them all the way and she kept shouting, ‘You can’t hold his hand for ever,’ and, ‘I’ll get you, don’t you worry,’ and all you could hear from Gloria the Gobstopper was her shoes squelching as she walked.

  I could change my mind about Sunday School. It’s not been a bad day at all today.

  6

  ‘Where did our Pete find this tiger?’

  I think It’s just as well I went to Sunday School yesterday because I got run over today. See what I mean about Guardian Angels though, don’t you? I mean, where was mine at the time, that’s what I’d like to know?

  I’m lying on the sofa writing this. Our Mam says I’ve aged her ten years in a day. I don’t know why they always get on at me. It’s not my fault. I was just crossing the road and this motor-bike ran over me. So I laid there and this lad jumped off and he’s shouting, ‘Oh! Oh! What have I done? What have I done?’ and I looked up at him and I said, ‘You’ve blooming well run over me, that’s what you’ve done,’ and I sat up and then I opened my mouth and started yelling because there was all blood down my legs and it was dripping off my hands and when I touched my face that was bleeding as well.

  Our Mam came rushing out of the house like a reindeer, and she picks me up and rushes back with me and lays me on the sofa and before you can move, the kitchen’s full of everybody in the street. I bet you can’t guess who were at the front of the queue though? Yes, that’s right. Old Flo and Granny Bates and Mrs Elston. Mrs Elston says, ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ and Old Flo says to her, ‘If you’re going to be sick, you go off home and be sick in your own house, my girl,’ and Mrs Elston screwed up her mouth and said, ‘Well, it’s passed off now,’ and she stayed.

  Old Flo and Granny Bates were ever so nice. Old Flo got a big basin of water and she bathed all my legs and arms and all my face. It hurt like mad, but what I was really crying for was because my new Whit Sunday frock had a tear in it. Our Mam says, ‘Shush, shush, my little lass,’ and she starts blinking her eyes very fast and I thought, ‘Oh, she’s going to cry,’ so I started crying, which I always do when our Mam cries because I can’t help it. And then, Old Flo says to our Mam, ‘There, there, now. Look, Gran’s got you a nice cup of tea,’ and our Mam kept saying, ‘I don’t want no tea. Fetch a doctor,’ and Old Flo says, ‘We’ve sent for him but there’s nothing broken. She’ll be all right,’ and I thought, there she goes again. She’ll ask me to get up and mend the fire next, but she didn’t.

  Anyway, when the doctor came, it was all over, bar the shouting, and our Dad was doing plenty of that because that young lad on the bike couldn’t drive and he’d borrowed the bike from his mate and there were bobbies outside and everything. What a carry on.

  The nice doctor came, the one with the cool hands, and he looked at me and then at our Mam and he said, ‘How many children have you got?’ Our Mam said, ‘Six,’ and he said, ‘I thought it was six. Why is it always this one that gets into bother?’ and our Mam smiled at him, just a little smile, and then she says, ‘She’s been more trouble than the other five put together and that’s a fact.’ I thought, ‘What a thing to say,’ and I felt really fed up, so I started crying again, and then our Mam hugged me and said, ‘But I wouldn’t part with her for a five-pound note.’ So then I stopped crying and felt a lot better.

  The doctor gave me some medicine and I fell asleep. I’ve only just woken up again. All our lads and our Lucy and Rose bought me sweets and some comics and our Dad even gave me some grapes, which I gave to Mam, but she made me eat them, which I’m glad about because they were ever so good.

  Our Mam says my new frock will mend just like new again. Old Flo and Granny Bates have been sat in the kitchen all day and every time they think I can hear what they’re talking about, one of them looks over at me and says, ‘Now shush, my little lass,’ and I have to close my eyes again and pretend to be asleep. I shall be glad when I can get up. I don’t like being in bed and I’ve been on this sofa all day.

  I was glad when our Pete got home tonight. He’d brought a rabbit home from the farm with him. It’s a real big one. I thought it was still alive and I said to him, ‘Can I hold it?’ and he said, ‘All right’ and when he gave it me, it was dead. I screamed my head off and our Mam said, ‘You’d think you’d have more sense at your age,’ and our Pete said, ‘Well, I’ll bring her a kitten tomorrow. The farm cat’s just had a litter.’ So our Mam said, ‘That’s all right then.’ But I thought, I don’t want a kitten. It might scratch our Prince. Prince is our dog and I love him. But then, nobody ever asks me what I want because I’m only a child.

  Our Mam looked at the rabbit and she said, ‘That’ll make a nice stew,’ and I said to her, ‘I don’t want none, Mam,’ and she said, ‘Don’t you be so foolish, my lass. You’re having some whether you want it or not,’ and I thought, when I grow up, I shall never eat anything I don’t want in all my life.

  So, that poor little rabbit had to be made into a stew and our Pete said, ‘Well, it might as well go into a stew, mightn’t it, ’cos it couldn’t run about and play any more, could it?’ And I said to him, ‘Did you kill it?’ and he said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Well, how did it get to be dead then?’ and he said, ‘It died of old age, my old love,’ and I said, ‘Oh, well, that’s different then. I’ll eat some if it died of old age.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was standing there, in the middle of this field, and I sees this rabbit coming towards me.’ He looked at me to see if I was listening properly because he likes you to listen properly, our Pete, and not just keep saying, ‘Yes, yes,’ and not listen at all. ‘Go on,’ I said, �
�I’m listening,’ and he went on, ‘And I watched it and I thought, by, there’s something queer about that rabbit and then I saw what it was.’

  ‘What was it?’ I asked, and he said, ‘I don’t rightly know if I should tell you,’ and I shouted, ‘Maaaaammmmm,’ and he said, ‘Oh, all right then. So, I sees what’s wrong with it. It’s walking on a pair of crutches.’ I looked at him and he looked at me and he said, ‘Well, do you want me to go on?’ and I said, ‘I think so,’ and he went on, ‘Well, there it is, on these crutches, and it got right up to my feet and I heard it say, “Oh, by gum, I can’t step over them hills,” and it fell over backwards, with its paws in the air. So I picked it up and I says to it, “Are you all right?” and it says, “Nay lad, I’m not, and I were just on way to Post Office for me pension as well.”’

  So, I looked at our Pete and he looked at me and he said, ‘What do you reckon to that?’ and I said, ‘I reckon I’m not as daft as I look,’ and he laughed and said, ‘Well, anyway, I’ll bring you that kitten tomorrow.’

  So now I’m going to get a kitten I don’t want and every time it widdles on the floor, everybody will shout at me and say, ‘It’s your kitten. You should clean up after it,’ and I’ll spend all my entire life knee-deep in disinfectant and floor cloths and newspaper just like I did with our Prince. But I love our Prince and I never minded doing it for him. I don’t feel like doing it for a kitten though.

  We had rabbit stew and dumplings for dinner and I kept seeing that poor old rabbit with its paws in the air talking to our Pete. Our Mam nearly went mad with our Pete. ‘Why won’t you eat it?’ she said, and I told her about it going to collect its pension on crutches and she started laughing and then she said to our Pete, ‘You’ll have to buy her something from the shop,’ and he said, ‘I’ve only got enough money for the pictures, Mam,’ and she said, ‘You should have thought of that before you tormented her,’ and he moaned and groaned until in the end I said, ‘Oh, I feel like my stew now, Mam,’ and she brought it out of the oven and said to our Pete, ‘And you may think yourself very lucky, my lad,’ and our Pete actually patted my head – yuk, yuk, yuk. Next time, I won’t eat it and then he’ll have to spend his picture money. They’re all scraping up money to go out with tonight, and because I’m downstairs I have to lie here and watch them get ready. First our Pete and then our Tone. Our Pete put so much brilliantine on his hair I said to him, ‘If ever you fell on your head, you’d slide down the street,’ and he said I’d more rattle than an empty tin can. ‘Empty tin cans don’t rattle,’ I said. ‘They do when you kick them,’ he said and glared at me. So I thought I’d better keep quiet for a bit.