by Sue Townsend
“Oh, they’re well practised,” she said, rebuffing the compliment. “We’ve been waiting for our new roof for five years.”
“Oh dear,” said Charles. “Er, have you tried fund-raising?”
“Yes,” said Mrs Strickland, bitterly. “We raised enough money to buy three dozen plastic buckets.”
Harry said in a piercing whisper, “Dad, I gotta’ havva’ wee.”
Charles said to Mrs Strickland, “Where, er, does one take him?”
“Across there,” said Mrs Strickland, pointing to the playground where rain was rapidly filling the potholes. “He’ll need this.”
She reached inside her office door and handed Harry an umbrella, decorated with the vapidly grinning face of Postman Pat.
“No inside lavatories?” said Charles in astonishment.
“No,” said Mrs Strickland.
They watched Harry struggling to open the umbrella before dashing through the rain towards a grim outbuilding where the lavatories were housed. Charles had offered to accompany his son, but Harry had shouted, “Don’t show me up, our Dad.”
Charles went into the headmistress’s office and filled in a form registering Harry at Marigold Street Junior School. He was pleased to be told by Mrs Strickland that Harry qualified for free school dinners. When Harry had handed the dripping umbrella back to Mrs Strickland and she had replaced it in the umbrella stand inside her office, she led them along to Harry’s classroom.
“Your teacher is Mr Newman,” she said to Harry.
They reached Mr Newman’s classroom and Mrs Strickland knocked and walked in. Nobody saw or heard them enter. The children in the classroom were laughing too loudly at Mr Newman, who was doing a deadly accurate impression of the headmistress. Even Charles, whose acquaintance with Mrs Strickland was brief, could see that Mr Newman was an excellent mimic. He’d captured the jutting jaw, the brusque tones and the stooping posture perfectly. Only when the children fell quiet did Mr Newman turn and see his visitors.
“Ah!” he said to Mrs Strickland. “You caught me doing my Quasimodo impression: we’re doing French literature this morning.”
“French literature!” snapped Mrs Strickland. “Those children have yet to learn any English literature.”
“That’s because we haven’t got any books,” said Mr Newman. “I’m having to photocopy pages out of my own books at my own expense.”
He bent down and shook Harry’s hand, saying, “I’m Mr Newman, your new teacher, and you’re Harry, aren’t you? Charmaine, look after Harry for today, will you?”
A plump little girl in gaudy bermuda shorts and a Terminator Two tee-shirt came to the front of the class and pulled Harry away from his father and towards a vacant chair next to her own.
“He’s a free school dinner child!” announced Mrs Strickland, loudly. Mr Newman said quietly, “They’re all free school dinner children; he’s among friends.”
Charles waved to Harry and left with Mrs Strickland. As they wove a path through the buckets in the corridor, Charles said, “So, you’re short of books, are you?”
“And paper and pencils and glue and paint and gym equipment and cutlery for the dining room and staff,” said Mrs Strickland. “But apart from all that we’re a very well equipped school.” She added, “Our parents are very supportive, but they haven’t any money. There is a limit to how many raffle tickets they can buy and car boot sales they can attend. These are not the leafy suburbs, Mr Teck.”
Charles agreed; leaves were very thin on the ground on the Flowers Estate even in autumn, he suspected.
∨ The Queen and I ∧
MAY
∨ The Queen and I ∧
23
PEAS IN A POD
It was May Day. Charles shouted to Diana: “Darling, close your eyes. I’ve got a surprise.”
Diana, who hadn’t yet opened her eyes it was only 6.30 in the morning, for goodness’ sake turned over in bed and faced the door. Charles came out of the bathroom and approached the bedside.
“Open your eyes.”
She opened one eye, then the other. He looked the same as ever, perhaps his hair was sleeker than usual…Then Charles turned his back and Diana gasped in dismay. He had a pony tail, only a very tiny one as yet, but even so…A bright red towelling band held his hair together at the nape of his neck. His ears were more prominent than ever.
“You look fab, darling.”
“Truly?”
“Yah, fabbo.”
“D’you think Mummy will like it?” Charles’s face wrinkled into worry.
“Dunno. Your pa won’t.”
“But you do?”
“It’s fabuloso.”
“The beetroot is through and we’ve got our first blackbird sitting on its eggs.”
“Fabulous.”
Diana was getting used to these early morning gardening reports. He was up every morning at six, clumping around the garden in his Wellingtons. She had tried to show interest, but gracious…She dreaded the autumn when he apparently expected her to preserve and pickle. He had asked her to start collecting empty jars, anticipating a glut of home grown produce. She got out of bed and reached for her silk robe.
“I’m so happy; are you?” he asked.
“Fabulously,” she lied.
“I mean,” said Charles, “it proves that the garden is ecologically sound. Blackbirds won’t…”
They heard Shadow crying through the party wall, followed by the creak of the bed springs as his mother got out of bed to give him his bottle of tea. Before going into the bathroom, Diana asked, “Charles, I need to have my hair done. Could I have some money?”
Charles said, “But I was planning to buy a bag of bonemeal this week.”
Through the wall Sharon shouted: “I’ll cut your ‘air for you, Di. I used to be ‘prentissed to an ‘airdresser. Come round at ten.”
Charles said, “The sound insulation in these houses is appalling. It’s well, non-existent.”
Through the other party wall Diana and Charles heard Wilf Toby say to his wife, “I ‘ope Diana won’t have ‘er ‘air cut too short.”
They heard the Tobys’ headboard bang against the wall as Violet said, “Oh shut your prattle,” and turned over in bed.
Then they went downstairs and searched the cupboards for something to have for breakfast. Like the rest of their family in Hell Close they were sailing close to the wind financially. Indeed, they were dangerously near to being shipwrecked on the cruel rock of state benefits. Charles had filled in two sets of claim forms. Both times they had been returned with a covering letter explaining that they had been ‘incorrectly completed’.
When the second form had arrived back, Diana had said: “But I thought you were good at sums and English and stuff like that.”
Charles had thrown the letter across the kitchen and shouted, “But they’re not written in bloody English, are they? They’re in officialese, and the sums are impossible?”
He sat down at the kitchen table to try again, but the computations were beyond him. What he did work out was that they could not claim Housing Benefit until their Income Support was known; and they could not claim Income Support until their Housing Benefit was assessed. And then there was Family Credit, which they were yet to benefit from, but which seemed to be included in the total sum. Charles was reminded of Alice in Wonderland as he struggled to make sense of it all. Like her, he was adrift in a surreal landscape. He received letters asking him to telephone but when he did nobody answered. He wrote letters but got no reply. There was nothing he could do but to return the third set of forms and wait for the state to give him the benefits it had promised. Meanwhile they lived precariously. They bartered and borrowed and owed fifty-three pounds, eighty-one pence to Victor Berryman, Food-U-R owner and philanthropist.
The milkman knocked at the door for his money. Diana looked around the kitchen and snatched a set of Wedgewood eggcups from the shelf. Charles followed her, carrying a silver apostle spoon. “Ask him for a dozen
eggs,” he said, pushing the spoon into her free hand.
Barry, the milkman, stood on the step keeping his eyes on his milk float. When the door opened he saw, with a sinking heart, that he was not going to be paid in cash, again.
Later that day, Charles was tying his broad bean canes together in the front garden, when Beverley Threadgold passed by, pushing her baby niece in an old high sprung perambulator. She was wearing a black PVC mini skirt, white high heels and a red blouson jacket. Her legs were blue with cold. Charles felt his stomach churn. He lost control of the canes and they fell to the ground with a clatter.
“Want some help?” asked Beverley.
Charles nodded, and Beverley came into the garden and helped him to gather the canes together. When Charles had arranged them wigwam fashion, Beverley held them together at the top and waited until Charles had tied them secure with green twine. She smells of cheap scent and cigarettes, thought Charles. I should find her repugnant. He cast around for something to say, anything would do. He must delay the moment of parting.
“When are we next in court?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well when it was.
“Nex’ week,” said Beverley. “I’m dreadin’ it.”
He noticed that four of her back teeth were missing. He wanted to kiss her mouth. The sun came out and her split ends sparkled; he wanted to stroke her hair. She lit a cigarette and he, a vociferous anti-smoker, wanted to inhale her breath. It was madness, but he suspected that he had fallen in love with Beverley Threadgold. Either that or he was suffering from a virus that was affecting his brain or at least his judgement. She was not only a commoner, she was common. As she started to move off Charles tried another delaying tactic. “What an absolutely splendid-looking baby!” he said.
But baby Leslie was not, in truth, an attractive child. She lay on her back and sucked angrily on a large pink dummy and the pale blue eyes that stared up at the sky over Hell Close seemed old, like those of an old man disappointed by life. A rancid smell emanated from her. Her tiny clothes were not entirely clean. Beverley adjusted a fluorescent pink cellular blanket around Leslie’s shoulders and took her foot off the brake of the pram.
Charles gabbled, “Hasn’t taken long to get to court, has it, our case?”
‘Our’ what a precious word it was, signifying something shared with Beverley Threadgold!
“It’s ‘cos it’s you,” said Beverley. “They want you out of the way, don’t they?”
“Do they?” said Charles.
“Yeah,” said Beverley. “In the nick, where you can’t do no harm.”
“Oh, but I won’t go to prison,” said Charles. And he laughed at the absurdity of the notion. After all, he was innocent. And this was still Britain, not some lawless banana republic ruled by a despot in sunglasses.
“They don’t want you goin’ round trying to get your mum back on the throne.”
“But it’s the last thing I’d do,” protested Charles. “I’ve never been so happy. I am, at this moment, Beverley, deliriously happy.”
Beverley dragged heavily on the last millimetre of her cigarette and then threw the burning filter into the gutter, where it joined many others. She looked at Charles’s grey flannels and blazer and said: “Warren Deacon’s sellin’ shell suits for ten pounds a throw, you ought to get one for your gardening. He’s got some trainers an’ all.”
Charles hung on to her every word. If Beverley advised it then he would find Warren Deacon, hunt him down and demand a shell suit whatever it was. The baby started to cry and Beverley said, “Ta-ra then,” and carried on down the Close. Charles noticed the blue veins behind her knees, he wanted to lick them. He was in love with Beverley Threadgold! He wanted to weep and to sing, to laugh and to shout. He watched her as she went through the barrier, he saw her spit with contemptuous accuracy at Chief Inspector Holyland’s feet. What a woman!
Diana knocked on the window and mimed drinking out of a cup. Charles pretended not to know what she meant, forcing her to come to the front door and ask, “Tea, darling?”
Charles said irritably, “No, I’m sick of bloody tea. It’s coming out of my effing pores.”
Diana said nothing, but her lip trembled and her eyes filled with water. Why was he being so horrid to her? She had done her best to make their frightful little house comfortable. She had learnt to cook his horrible macrobiotic food. She coped with the boys. She was even prepared to accept his silly pigtail. She had no fun. She never went out. She couldn’t afford batteries for her radio, consequently she had no idea what records were in the charts. There was absolutely nothing to dress up for. Sharon had butchered her hair. She needed a professional manicure and pedicure. If she wasn’t careful she would end up looking like Beverley Threadgold and then Charles would go right off her.
“Are you building wigwams for the boys?” she asked, coming out and touching the bean canes. Charles gave her a look of such withering contempt that she went back inside. She had cleaned the house and washed and ironed; the boys were out somewhere, there was nothing else to do. The only thing she had to look forward to was Charles’s trial. She went upstairs and looked inside her wardrobe. What would she wear? She sorted through her clothes and selected shoes and a bag and was instantly comforted. When she was a little girl she had loved dressing-up games. She closed the wardrobe door and made a mental note to save her serious black suit for the last day of the trial after all, Charles could go to prison.
Diana re-opened the wardrobe door. What should she wear for prison visiting?
∨ The Queen and I ∧
24
MECHANICALS
Spiggy was lying on Anne’s floor in a pool of water at midnight. Anne was mopping up around him. She was wearing green Wellingtons, jeans and a lumberjack’s shirt. Her thick, blonde hair had escaped from the clutch of a tortoiseshell clip and cascaded down her back. Both of them were wet and dishevelled.
Anne had turned on the washing machine, gone out to visit her grandmother and returned to find the kitchen tiles floating in three inches of water. Spiggy had been sent for.
Anne asked: “What did I do wrong?”
“Your hose is come loose,” said Spiggy, making an effort to sound the ‘h’. “Tha’s all it is, but you done good! Ain’t many women ‘oo can plumb a washer in.”
“Thanks,” said Anne, pleased with the compliment. “I must get my own tool set,” she said.
“Ain’t yer ‘usband got one?” asked Spiggy.
“I separated from my husband two years ago,” said Anne.
“Did you?” said Spiggy.
Anne was astonished, surely everyone in the English-speaking world knew her business, didn’t they? Anne squeezed the mop into a galvanised bucket and asked, “Don’t you read the newspapers, Spiggy?”
“No point,” said Spiggy. “I can’t read.”
Anne said, “Do you watch television, or listen to the radio?”
“No,” said Spiggy. “They do my ‘ead in.”
How refreshing it was to talk to somebody who had no preconceptions about her! Spiggy tightened the hose, then together they screwed the back plate onto the washer and pushed it in place under the formica worktop.
“Right,” said Spiggy, “Owt else you need fixin’?”
“No,” said Anne. “Anyway, it’s very late.” Spiggy didn’t take the hint. He sat down at the small kitchen table.
“I’m separated from my wife,” he said, suddenly feeling sorry for himself. “Perhaps we can have a drink at the club one night, play a few games of pool?”
Spiggy put his arm on Anne’s shoulder, but it was not a sexual move. It was the chummy gesture of one separated washing machine mechanic to another. Anne considered his proposition and Spiggy imagined making an entrance at the Working Men’s Club with Princess Anne on his arm. That’d teach his mates to sneer about his size and shape. A lot of women liked small, fat men. Look at Bob Hoskins; he’d done all right.
Anne moved out from under Spiggy’s dolphin-like arm and re
filled his glass with Carlsberg. She glanced at herself in the mirror. Should she cut her hair? She’d had the same style for years. Wasn’t it time for a change? Especially now, when she was at rock bottom: a single parent living in a council house, being wooed by a small, fat man at midnight.
“Yes, why not, Spiggs?” she said, surprising herself. “I’ll get a babysitter.” Spiggy could hardly believe his luck. He’d get a film for his camera and ask one of his mates to photograph him and Princess Anne chinking glasses together in celebration. He’d get the photo framed and give one to his mother. She’d be proud of him at last. He’d buy a new shirt; he had a tie somewhere. He wouldn’t make the mistake he made with most women: lunging at their bra straps on the first date, playing them his dirty joke cassette in the car. He’d go easy with her. She was a lady.
Reluctantly, he got to his feet. He rearranged his overalls around his crotch. He had acquired a van. It stood at the kerb outside. An amateur sign-writer had written, “L.A. SPIGGS, HIGH CLASS CARPET FITER” on the side. The previous owner was British Telecom, it stated in the log-book. This was the only legal document in his possession. He had no driving licence, insurance or road tax. He preferred to take his chance and, anyway, where was he going to get the money? I mean, after he’d forked out for the van? Legality was expensive and so was petrol.
“Right, I’m off,” Spiggy said. “Gotta get my beauty sleep.”
Women liked you to make them laugh, he’d heard. Anne saw him to the door and shook his hand on the doorstep. She had to bend slightly to do so. But Spiggy felt ten feet tall as he slammed the door of his little yellow van and sped out of the Close with his exhaust pipe popping. Anne wondered if she should have told Spiggy that ‘Fitter’ was spelt with two t’s.
The noise made by Spiggy’s van woke Prince Philip and he began to whimper. The Queen cradled him in her arms. She would send for the doctor in the morning.
∨ The Queen and I ∧
