Private - Keep Out!

by Gwen Grant

  This woman stares at me and she says, ‘What?’ and I says, ‘Police,’ and she says, ‘Where?’ and I says, ‘Plain clothes,’ and nods my head and winks with my left eye, although I can’t really wink at all as both my eyes shut at the same time, and she suddenly goes, ‘Oh, oh!’ – screech, screech – as well, and she rushes into this house and starts yelling, ‘Cops! Cops!’ at the top of her voice and I thought the end of the world had come. All these people inside the house tried to get out of the door at the same time and they kept getting stuck and all you could see were arms and legs and bits of heads and everything, all waving about but anyway they all got out in the end.

  The street went as quiet as anything. You could have heard a pin drop and then round the corner comes a police car and it’s got all bobbies in it and they jump out and rush into the house.

  Well, they all came out after about five minutes and the nice one, the one with the stripes on his arm, he was playing war with the other bobbies and he was saying, ‘Well, somebody tipped them off. That’s obvious,’ and he was moaning and groaning at them and they were saying, ‘Yes, Sarge. No, Sarge,’ and they all looked fed up to the back teeth.

  Then the nice one sees me and he says, ‘And what are you doing, young lady?’ and I says, ‘Nothing, please sir,’ and he says, ‘You haven’t seen anything, have you?’ and I say, ‘No.’ Then our Dad rushes round the corner and he grabs me and says, ‘Time for bed,’ and I say to him, ‘What do you mean, Dad? It’s only one o’clock,’ and he says, ‘Home!’ And so I went.

  Our house was packed to bursting when I got in and I got another telling off, and if that isn’t rotten then I don’t know what is. All because I was playing at detectives.

  Still, later on, the man who lives in the house round the corner where everybody takes their bets, he knocks on our back door and our Mam says, ‘What does he want? I’m not having him in the house,’ and our Dad says, ‘Now, now,’ and goes to the door. Then this man tells our Dad that I saved him from a police raid or something and he wanted to give me a pound note and our Mam nearly had a fit. ‘We don’t take money in this house,’ she says, all shirty and horrible, and this man says, ‘Well, Missis, I just wanted to give it to her to show how grateful I am.’ Our Mam says, ‘You’d do better shutting down,’ and he says, ‘Why? If the nobs can do it, why can’t we?’ and our Mam wouldn’t say another word.

  So, I don’t know what happened to that pound note. I wanted to take it and I think the man took it back with him, but I’m sure I saw him wink at our Dad and our Dad walked down to the end of the passage with him and he was grinning all over his face when he came in. He stopped grinning when he saw our Mam but all the same, he patted me on the head – yuk, yuk, yuk.

  I said to our Mam, ‘I don’t think I’ll be a detective when I grow up after all,’ and she said, ‘Have you told them yet?’ and I said, ‘Who?’ and she said, ‘The Police,’ and I said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘I should. It’ll take a load off their minds,’ and then she started laughing. Sometimes, I find it hard to work out what families are for.

  9

  ‘Who loves people like Gorilla Face?’

  I fell off a cliff yesterday. So, here I am back on the sofa again in the back kitchen. Our Mam says, ‘I might as well tie that sofa to you, you’re on it that much.’ I don’t seem to go to school very much and everybody says I do things on purpose so I can stay away, but I don’t. Mind you, seeing as how they happen anyway, I’m glad I don’t have to go to school. Life wouldn’t be worth living if you got sick and had to go to school as well. That’s enough to make you sick on its own.

  We were down at the sand quarry yesterday and there are these big cliffs everybody climbs on. There was this lad there called Micky and he had this sheet in his hands and I thought, ‘He’s never going to jump off the cliff,’ and he starts shouting, ‘I’m going to jump off this cliff,’ and nobody took a bit of notice because nobody thought the daft thing would. Anyway, next thing we heard was this yell, ‘G-e-r-o-n-i-m-o!,’ and he jumped. Went down like a bomb and never stopped. ’Course they had to take him to hospital because he broke a leg and an arm.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ his Mam was saying when she got there.

  ‘I saw it on the pictures, Mam,’ he said and then he shut his eyes and he didn’t talk any more.

  His Mam was sat there crying and she had to go to hospital with him. They both had to stay in as well and our Mam said to me, ‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ although I don’t know why it should. All I was doing was looking over the edge and I slipped and slid down the cliff and then, near the bottom, I bounced off one of those bits that stick out. It was right near the bottom, though, so I didn’t get hurt.

  By the time our Joe got to me, I was standing up and brushing myself down and the first thing he does is rattle me. ‘Oh, feel free,’ I said. ‘I fall down a cliff and get up and what do you do? Nearly knock my head off, that’s all.’ He starts shouting I’m a stupid great girl and I had to go home now, and just wait till you get in, and everything. So I marched home and I’m never going to speak to our Joe again as long as I live because he runs in and shouts at our Mam, ‘I’m never going to look after that stupid thing again.’ Our Mam says, ‘Here, here. What’s all this about?’ She looked at me and said, ‘What have you been doing?’ and I said, ‘Nothing, Mam, honest,’ and then our Joe went and told her I’d thrown myself off the cliff.

  ‘I never,’ I said. ‘I slipped,’ and our Joe says, ‘If I have to look after you again, I’ll shove you off,’ and I said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, you needn’t look after me. I can look after myself.’ Our Mam says, ‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’ and then I had to get on the sofa with a cup of hot sweet tea in case I was suffering from shock and wasn’t showing it, and here I am. Our Joe kept shouting and shouting and saying, ‘Her suffering from shock. What about me? I’m the one who should be on that sofa. She’s just one big shock,’ and our Mam told him to get some bread and jam and he did and every time he passed the sofa, he kicked it.

  ‘I hate you,’ he kept saying. ‘Just you wait till you’re better, that’s all,’ and I said to him, ‘If you hit me, I’ll tell our Mam,’ and he said, ‘You won’t then, because you won’t be able to because I’m going to knock all your teeth out.’ Then I started crying and our Mam came in and said to him, ‘What have you done to her?’ and he said, ‘Nothing, Mam, honest,’ and our Mam said she didn’t know why people had kids because they were nothing but a trial and a tribulation. If they’re anything like our Joe, I think they are too and I don’t think people should have kids like our Joe at all … or our Tone and Pete and Lucy and Rose, come to think of it.

  ‘That Lucy will go too far one day,’ our Mam said yesterday. She was going to the pictures and she thinks nobody knows she puts powder and lipstick on. Our Mam kept coming into the kitchen and saying, ‘What’s that smell? You’re not wearing powder, are you, our Lucy?’ and Lucy kept saying, ‘’Course I’m not. Anyway, I can’t smell anything. Can you?’ and I kept shaking my head and saying, ‘No, I can’t smell anything either,’ mainly because our Lucy had said she’d give me twopence if I kept my big mouth shut.

  Anyway, there she is, putting this powder on, and she looks at me and says, ‘Make sure you don’t tell our Mam,’ and gives me twopence and I say, ‘’Course I won’t.’ Then she looks in the mirror and says, ‘I wonder if I dare try a bit of lipstick,’ and I’m sat there watching her and she says, ‘I think I will,’ and she puts this lipstick on, in the house. ‘Well, I’ll be working soon,’ she says when I tell her our Mam’ll have a fit if she catches her, but she hopped out of the back door prettty sharpish when our Mam came into the kitchen again.

  But our Mam rushed after her and shouts, ‘Lucy. Come back a minute. I want you to call in to Granny Bates for me,’ and our Lucy came back and she had this great scarlet mouth. You never saw anything like it and our Mam put her hand over her eyes and said, ‘Give me strength,’ and she got hold of our Lucy by the nec
k and marched her back to the sink in the kitchen and she scrubbed her face with the flannel and some red hot water out of the kettle.

  Our Lucy says to me, ‘Wait till I get you,’ and I said, ‘I never said anything to our Mam.’ I don’t know what she’ll do next, because after our Mam had scrubbed her face clean, she said, ‘I shall only put it on again when I’m outside,’ and our Mam says to her, ‘You do, young lady, and see what happens.’ But she let our Lucy go and started looking in her own handbag for a light pink lipstick, which I know our Lucy won’t wear, not if it gets up and bites her, she won’t.

  After our Lucy had gone out, me and our Mam were sat finding pictures in the fire for a bit and then our Mam looked at me and said, ‘You look all right now. Come on, let’s go over and have a look at Mrs Beamer’s new baby. That’ll be a nice little airing for you.’ So I said, ‘Oh, Mam, do I have to?’ and she said, ‘It’s a brand new baby. All little girls like new babies,’ but I thought, here’s one little girl who doesn’t, but I didn’t like to say anything because our Mam thinks anything little is lovely.

  Personally, I think babies are all right when they’re about four years old and you can talk to them. Till then, ugh!

  Mrs Beamer’s baby was just the same as all the rest. I reckon if you’ve seen one baby, you’ve seen them all.

  It was a very queer looking thing and it had no hair and a bright red face and it yelled all the time I was there. I said to our Mam, ‘Do they always do that?’ but she was holding it and saying, ‘Coochie coo,’ and daft things like that to it. If I were a baby and anybody leant over me and said, ‘Coochie coo,’ I don’t think I’d bother stopping.

  I asked Mrs Beamer if I could hold it and she said, ‘You will be careful, love, won’t you?’ and I said, ‘Oh yes, Mrs Beamer,’ and I had to sit on this big chair and hold it in my arms very tightly. It went redder than ever and our Mam says, ‘Not too tight, you daft thing. Let the poor little mite breathe,’ and I had to sit there as if I were made out of stone because every time I moved either our Mam or Mrs Beamer started telling me to be careful and mind its head.

  I was glad to give it back. I can’t see as they’re a lot of use and they’re always wet through. There was a big wet patch on my frock where I laid that baby. Our Mam said, ‘You’ll be able to take it walks when it’s a bit older,’ and I thought, who wants to take it walks. But I didn’t say anything, because you’re supposed to love babies. I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Boys aren’t supposed to love babies so I don’t know why girls should.

  After I’d sat there like a statue for a bit, our Mam said I could go and play and so I thought I’d walk down to the sand quarry to see if there was anybody there and halfway down the road, who should come up but a gang from one of the other streets. Anyway, this girl, with long black plaits, she walks up to me and hits me straight in the face, so I hit her back and then all these kids start whooping and yelling and they tie me to a lamp post and say they’re Indians, stupid things, and then they say they’re going to burn me at the stake and they start putting all grass and paper and bits of wood round the bottom of the lamp post. Then one of them gets this match out and lights it. All that paper and everything starts burning away and I think, I don’t know about getting burnt to death, I think I’ll choke to death first, because the grass doesn’t burn and there’s clouds of smoke. Anyway, there I was spluttering and yelling and a woman from across the road leans out of her bedroom window and goes ‘Oh, oh!’ – screech, screech – and the next second her head vanishes and her front door flies open and these kids run in all directions, and she unties me and stamps out the fire, and she’s bawling and shouting at these kids and I think, I don’t feel very well.

  Anyway, I’m black from top to bottom with the smoke and this woman takes me home and I’m crying like mad and when our Mam sees me, she makes this woman a cup of tea and says, ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ and then she starts crying and saying, ‘Whatever will they do next?’ Then our Joe rushes in and says, ‘Where is she?’ Our Mam says, ‘You’re supposed to be looking after her,’ and he says, ‘I’ve only just heard about it and I came looking for her straight away.’ Then he says to me, ‘Come on you. You’re coming with me. We’re going to find them kids.’ I say, ‘I hope you bash them, our Joe, because I’ve never been burnt at the stake before,’ and then I have to cry again because I can still smell all that smoke and it was very, very scary.

  So, we roamed all round the streets, our Joe with his pals and me. We saw them in the end and I says to our Joe, ‘She’s the one. That big girl with the plaits,’ and our Joe grabs her and ties her to a lamp post and he says to me, ‘Come on, then, you give her a good hiding,’ and so I bash her as well and I think, ‘I hope she doesn’t live round here because when she’s untied, she’s going to come after me,’ but I don’t let that stop me bashing her there and then. I think perhaps it might be the last chance I get.

  Anyway, this big girl starts yelling blue murder and an enormous woman suddenly comes out of a yard and the big girl starts yelling, ‘Ooh, Mam! Oooh,’ and the big woman stops that quick, I thought she’d fall over. But she didn’t, and our Joe shouts to everybody, ‘Run, run.’ So we did, as fast as we could.

  I’ve a feeling I haven’t seen the last of that girl because I heard her shouting, ‘I’ll get you, Skinny Lizzie. You just wait and see if I don’t.’ So all I can do now is wait and see, like she says.

  Our Mam says, ‘She’d better not lay another finger on you,’ but seeing as how she’s already tried to burn me at the stake, I don’t think anything our Mam says will make much difference to her. Our Dad went round to try and see if he could find her and her family later on, but he couldn’t find out where they lived. I think they must be new round here because I haven’t seen her before but I bet anything you like I’ll be seeing her again before I’m very much older.

  I think I might be a fortune teller when I grow up because when I walked into the playground this morning, there’s this great big fat girl with the long black plaits staring at me as if Christmas comes three times a year and today’s one of those times.

  ‘Well, well,’ she says. ‘Look who’s here.’ Then she comes over to me and my heart’s doing about a million thuds a second and I think my legs are going to give way because, honest, she’s as big as our house and when she gets right up to me she says, ‘I’m going to make mincemeat out of you and they’ll have to take you home on a shovel,’ and I look at her and say, ‘And I bet you think I’m going to stand here and let you, don’t you?’ and she says, ‘Yes, because there’s nothing you can do about it, Skinny.’ And she pushes me and it’s just like being run over by a bus and I pick myself up and I shout, ‘You want to get back to the jungle, Gorilla Face,’ and she goes bright purple and says, ‘Ug! Ug! Ug! I’ll murder you. I’ll flatten you. I’ll kill you.’ And I start running then, because one thing I am, I’m a good runner. I’ve always had to be with our lot.

  Right round the playground she’s about an inch behind me but I can hear her breathing and she starts sounding like the pair of bellows Granny Bates has for making her fire go. I think, well, this is it, when one of the teachers comes out into the yard and rings the bell and old Gorilla Face screeches to a halt and yells, ‘I’ll get you. Just you wait. I’ll get you.’ Then she runs out of the playground. I thought, that’s funny, but then it turns out she doesn’t go to our school at all.

  We have to line up in the playground before we go into school and I can see old Gorilla Face out of the corner of my eye and she’s standing there behind the railings and I think if ever she wore a fur coat, they’d lock her up. Just as we start walking into school though, she shouts, ‘I’ll be here when you come out, Skinny Lizzie,’ and I think the chances of me living long enough to grow up have just about gone altogether.

  She’s not there at dinner-time, though, and I remember her saying, ‘I’ll get you tonight,’ so I says to our Joe, ‘That lass is after me again,’ and he says, ‘I’ll m
eet you at the gate.’ Anyway, comes tea-time and all afternoon I’ve been in trouble because I couldn’t even hear what the teachers were saying, let alone answer their questions, and it’s about one minute to four and this teacher suddenly shouts at me, ‘And you can stay in. You’ve not listened to a word all afternoon.’ I nearly die. Our Joe has his papers to do and if I’m not out of school dead on four then he’ll go without me.

  ‘Please sir,’ I say to him. ‘I’ve got to go home because me Granny’s died,’ and he looks all sorry and says, ‘Oh dear, you poor child, you should have said,’ and he shouts at the class, ‘Why didn’t somebody say?’ and they all stare at me because they know my Granny died years ago, but none of them says anything to the teacher.

  So I get to go home with the rest of the class and there’s our Joe waiting for me at the school gate. So is old Gorilla Face and as soon as she sees me, she starts shouting at me and telling me what I’m going to get and our Joe goes over to her and tells her to take her hook, and she does, but she doesn’t go very far and the last I see of her, she’s still shouting she’s going to get me.

  After tea, our Mam says, ‘Aren’t you going out to play?’ and I say, ‘I’m not bothered,’ and she says, ‘I didn’t ask you if you were bothered. I asked if you were going out to play.’ I say, ‘No,’ and she says, ‘I think you should. It’ll do you good after being cooped up all day.’ ‘I don’t mind being cooped up,’ I tell her, but she says, ‘Well, I do. Here, get your coat on and off you go.’

  I don’t know why she doesn’t just say, ‘Go out to play,’ instead of asking me if I am or not.

  Anyway, I get outside and there’s Gorilla Face, standing on the other side of the road and she says, ‘Right. Now what are you going to do?’ and I think, there’s not a lot I can do, so we have a fight and I go back in with half of my hair missing. Our Mam looks at me and says, ‘What a mess,’ and I say, ‘Yes, but you should see what the other one looks like,’ and then I start crying and our Mam says, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. You’re supposed to be growing up a young lady and you’re ten times worse than our Joe.’