Fruit and Nutcase (12 page)

When I come back Mum’s yanked out all Dad’s nails and the floorboard’s gleaming bright yellow like a fried egg yolk. It hits you the minute you get to the top of the stairs. It kind of YELLS at you.

“Nobody could miss seeing
that,”
says Mum, proudly.

But guess what?

You’ve got it! Dad misses it.

Actually, he goes and puts his foot right in it.

So now we have yellow blobs all along the landing.

My family!

Next thing I know it’s morning and I have to go to school again, and I’ve still got my black eye and Tracey Bigg’s still doing her stupid song and dance act, but I don’t take any notice. Oliver’s in the corner of the playground crying ‘cos Billy
Murdo’s gang’s duffed him up, so I go over and talk to him and try to put a bit of stuffing into him.

I say, “What’s the problem?” and he goes,
“Blub – hic – sniffle –
Billy
– blub – hic –
hurt
– sniffle –
me.” I feel sorry for him ‘cos he’s ever so harmless and they just pick on him all the time. They
torment
him. They’re real bullies. There just isn’t any way poor old Oliver can get back at them. He’s just not that sort of person. I mean, if Tracey Bigg and her mob tried to duff me up I’d give them what for, I can tell you. I’d knee them and crunch them and use Kung Fu like on the telly.

I certainly wouldn’t go into a corner and blub. But Oliver is ever so pathetic and weedy. I guess he just can’t help it.

People that beat up on weeds are despicable.

It’s the last day of term and tomorrow everyone except me and Oliver and a couple of others are going off to summer camp so for a treat Cat takes me and Oliver on a special trip, just the two of us.
We get on the tube and go to Mile End, where there’s this museum that’s a real old Victorian school. Cat says, “It’ll show you what it would have been like to be Victorian children.”

Oliver and me look at each other and giggle. I don’t quite know why we giggle. Maybe it’s just the excitement of being out of school, on our own, with Cat. If it was an ordinary school trip I’d be expecting to be a bit bored. I mean, a
museum.
All full of dead stuff, and things from the past. I’m not interested in the past! But as we’re with Cat I think maybe it might be fun, ‘cos I can’t imagine Cat ever doing anything that’s boring.

Oliver says to me, “When’s Victorian?” and I’m not sure. I say, “Oh! About … a hundred years ago.” And I’m right! Cat says that Queen Victoria died in 1901. I know more history than I thought!

The museum isn’t a bit like I think it’s going to be. I think it’s going to be very large and gloomy with glass cases full of dead stuff, but all it is, it’s just this old grungy building with nothing in it, except when you go up the stairs you suddenly find yourself in a schoolroom, with all desks and benches, just like it would
have been in Victorian times. There’s even a teacher, wearing a white frilly blouse and a long black skirt with her hair pulled into a bun. She’s standing at a blackboard with this long stick that Cat says is called a pointer.

There’s other children there besides us. They’re all sitting down, waiting for the class to begin, so me and Oliver sit at the back, next to each other, in this funny sort of desk that’s like two desks joined together.

It’s really ancient, you can tell. The wood’s all worn and stained, and there’s loads of names and initials carved into the top.

Cat whispers, “Imagine! Some of these were done by children over a hundred years ago.”

It makes me feel a bit shivery when I think about a girl the same age as me sitting where I’m sitting, resting her elbows on the desk lid just like I am,
a hundred years ago.
She’d have sat there never guessing that one day I’d be in her seat, trying to picture what she was like. I look at the names and initials and think that she could have been Eliza, or Jane, or “SW” or Grace. She’d be dead by now, of course. She’d have had her life. I’ve still got all mine to come!

I think it’s good, sometimes, to remember about people from the past and wonder what they would have been like. The answer is—just the same as us, only different!

Not different
inside
themselves; just outside. I expect Eliza or Jane or whatever she was called would have understood about Tracey Bigg and how she gets on my nerves. She might even have had her own Tracey Bigg. Except she probably wouldn’t have been called Tracey, because I don’t think people were. Not in those days. She’d have been called … Henrietta. Henrietta Bigg! And Eliza Small. And they’d have made up rude and revolting rhymes about each other just like me and Tracey.

Well, that’s what I like to imagine.

When everyone’s sitting at their desks, the teacher announces that the first lesson is going to begin. Oliver looks at me, and I can see that he’s a bit apprehensive. Oliver’s not very good at lessons. Nor am I, usually, but today, surprise surprise, I turn out to be THE STAR!

The first lesson’s arithmetic. We all have to sit with straight backs and chant our tables, right through to twelve.

I know them all! And my voice is the L.O.U.D.E.S.T!

The next lesson is writing, with pen and ink. The old desks have inkwells with real ink in them, and the teacher gives us all a wooden pen with a funny scratchy nib and a sheet of something called blotting paper. The blotting paper’s thick and white and it blots the ink so’s it doesn’t smudge.

The teacher writes the letters of the alphabet on the board in beautiful curly shapes and we all have to copy them. Cat says the shapes are “copperplate” and they’re the way Victorian children had to write.

The idea is to do them without any splotches or mess. I do mine really well! Not a single splotch! When we’ve copied all the letters off the board
we have to write our names in the same sort of writing. This is mine:

The teacher says mine is the best! She even hands it round for people to look at. And then she gives me a gold star and writes 10/10 in red ink. So I feel really pleased and think that things are looking up, what with me winning a prize in the talent competition and now getting a gold star for writing my name in copperplate. It’s a pity Oliver can’t get one, too, but his copperplate is all blotched and drippy.

Cat says it doesn’t matter. She says the idea was that we should enjoy ourselves, and in any case I don’t think Oliver really minds all that much. When Cat asks him if he’s had a good time he gives her this big goofy grin and says yes, he’d like to go to a Victorian school every day “and sit next to Mandy in a big desk”.

He’s so funny, Oliver is. I quite like him really, I suppose. He can’t help being a weed.

When we get back to school Cat says she’s got something for me, and it’s all the pages of my life story that her mum has typed out! She gets me to read bits of it and I’m really surprised at some of
the long words I’d used. Without even realising!

The only trouble is, some of them are so long I can’t read them. Imagine! Not being able to read your own life story!

I’m really worried about this. I ask Cat if she thinks I’m that
word.
The one her mum said.
Dys-
something. The one that means you get your letters muddled up. But Cat says she doesn’t think I am. She says, “Just a bit slow at getting the hang of it.” Before I can stop myself I say, “Just a bit
slow”
Cat gets really cross. She does what my nan calls “bristling”.

She says, “No, I do
not
mean ‘just a bit slow’. You’re a bright girl, Mandy. Why do you keep putting yourself down all the time?”

I tell her that I don’t
all
of the time. Just some of the time. And I don’t want to grow up with everyone still sneering and jeering at me ‘cos I can’t read!

Cat promises me that this won’t happen. She tells me about her brother, who was just like me when he was my age, but one day, quite suddenly, bingo! He discovered he could do it.

“And now he’s at college, training to be a teacher.”

I don’t mean to be rude but I can’t help pulling a
face when she says this ‘cos a teacher is just about the last thing I’d want to be. Imagine having to teach someone like Tracey Bigg! So Cat asks me what I’d like to be, and I say maybe an actress or someone that does funny voices and makes people laugh. And then I tell her that what I’d really like would be to go to an acting school, if only I had the money. I say, “Maybe after my book’s published I will have. Maybe it will make my fortune.”

Cat looks a bit anxious when I say this. She explains to me that it is not easy for anyone to get a book published. She says, “It will still be a wonderful achievement whether it’s published or not. But I don’t want to give you false hopes. I’d hate you to be disappointed.”

I won’t be disappointed! I can tell the difference between what’s real and what’s just pretend. It’s a game I play. “When my book is published.” I know it won’t be
really.
Probably not. But I can dream, can’t I?

After school’s broken up and we’ve all been set free I go and meet Mum from Bunjy’s and show her my copperplate. Mum says the copperplate is beautiful. And then she looks at the blotting paper, which the teacher said I could
bring with me, and she takes out her mirror and shows me how you can read the writing that’s on it.