Jacky Daydream (12 page)

 

It’s
Bad Girls
and it’s poor Mandy who’s getting picked on.

They were going to get me.

I saw them the moment I turned the corner. They were halfway down, waiting near the bus stop. Melanie, Sarah and Kim. Kim, the worst one of all.

I didn’t know what to do. I took a step forward, my sandal sticking to the pavement.

They were nudging each other. They’d spotted me.

I couldn’t see that far, even with my glasses, but I knew Kim would have that great big smile on her face.

I stood still. I looked over my shoulder. Perhaps I could run back to school? I’d hung around for ages already. Maybe they’d locked the playground gates? But perhaps one of the teachers would still be there? I could pretend I had a stomach ache or something and then maybe I’d get a lift in their car?

I’m very glad I didn’t encounter a girl like Kim at Latchmere. Goodness knows how I’d have dealt with her. It’s so horrible when you’re being bullied. I wanted to write about that particularly mean name-calling teasing that girls are so good at. I’ve had so many moving letters since from children who have experienced something similar. I’m always so touched if they feel
Bad Girls
has helped them cope.

14

Hospital

I WASN’T A
particularly robust child. I had my famous bilious attacks, brought on by excitement, anxiety, fatty meat, whatever. Biddy was brisk on such occasions, perhaps thinking I was sick out of sheer cussedness.

‘You always pick your moments!’ she said, exasperated.

Certainly I chose the only time they left me with Miss Parker at Lewisham to throw up over myself, my bed, the carpet and most of poor Miss Parker. I was frequently sick the first night of a holiday. I was once sick the last two days of a foreign holiday on a coach driving all the way back from the Costa Brava. It was hell for me throwing up repeatedly into carrier bags. It must have been pretty terrible for my fellow passengers too.

Most children are sick once or twice and that’s it. I was a little drama queen, being sick at least twenty times over twenty-four hours. I’d not be able to eat or do anything but lie on a sofa with a book sipping Lucozade the next day.

I also had head colds that dragged on for weeks.
I’d
sniffle and snort unattractively and then start coughing like a sea-lion. Biddy’s remedy was Vick, a smelly menthol ointment in a dark blue jar. She ladled it onto my chest so that my vests and nighties reeked of it, and worst of all, she rubbed it all round my sore nose, even
up
it, so that my eyes streamed. It felt revolting and it meant I couldn’t snuffle into my cuddle hankie at night. I couldn’t even suck my thumb: my nose was so sealed with Vick and snot that I had to breathe through my mouth.

I’d just be getting better, only coughing when I ran fast, when I’d start to feel that ominous prickling in my nose and the whole cycle would start all over.

Biddy took me to the doctor. He peered down my throat.

‘Good God, she’s got tonsils the size of plums! We’ll whip them out – and her adenoids too – then she’ll be right as rain.’

It was the fashion to remove children’s tonsils in those days. You didn’t argue about it. I was booked in at Kingston hospital for a week. Biddy was to take me there, just five minutes walk down Kingston Hill. She was told when to come and collect me, but there was to be no visiting at all during the week.

‘We find it unsettles the children if they have visits from their parents,’ the matron said firmly.

You
certainly
didn’t argue with matrons. It seems so sad now that little children were delivered into this scary place, dragged off by strangers to have bits snipped out of them, and then left alone without a cuddle for days. At least I was six, old enough to understand what was going on.

It was quite exciting at first, almost like Christmas or a holiday. Biddy bought me a new Viyella nightie, white with little roses, and because she knew it was pointless trying to part me from my cuddle hankie, she bought me a new snow-white cotton handkerchief specially for the hospital.

She also bought me a brand-new doll. I’d only ever had dolls for Christmas or birthday before so I couldn’t believe my luck. She was a beautiful blonde doll with silky plaits and a soft smiley face. She had a red checked frock, white socks and red shoes. I knew at once she had to be called Rosalind.

My favourite children’s book at that time was a wonderfully imaginative fantasy story called
Adventures with Rosalind
by Charlotte Austen. It was about a little boy called Kenneth who was given an amazing picture book with a blonde little girl on the front. She steps out of the picture and takes Kenneth on many magical adventures in different lands. Rosalind was a courageous and cheerful little girl, an ideal friend for adventures. I hoped my Rosalind doll would be the perfect companion for
me
during my big hospital adventure.

I was in a ward with ten or twelve other children. It was comforting because we were all in this new weird scary world together. I chatted shyly with Muriel, the little girl in the next bed, and let her hold and admire Rosalind. We pulled faces at each other when we had our first trayful of hospital food. We giggled at the antics of the boys in the beds opposite.

It was the nights that were the worst. The ward seemed to grow enormously. It was so dark I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. There was a little pool of light right up at one end where the night nurse sat at her desk, but there was no way of telling whether she’d be cross or not if she knew I was awake.

I mislaid my new cuddle hankie. The night nurse must have heard me scrabbling around feeling for it. She stood up and walked down the dark ward towards me, her sensible shoes squeaking on the polished floor. I lay still, my heart thudding. She came and shone her torch right in my face but I squeezed my eyes shut, huddled in a ball, pretending to be fast asleep. She hovered over me, but eventually turned and squeaked back down the ward again. I didn’t dare carry on searching for my hankie. I clutched Rosalind tight instead and rubbed my nose against her checked skirt.

I wasn’t allowed any breakfast the day of my operation. I wasn’t even allowed to keep my new Viyella nightie on. I had to wear a strange operation gown, which was only
half
a nightie, with no proper back to it whatsoever, so that my bottom showed if I turned round. I was worried I might need to go to the toilet. I didn’t want the boys laughing at me.

I was put on a trolley and given a ride to the operating theatre. I’d hoped Rosalind might be allowed to go with me, but she was left behind on my bed. I tried to imagine she was running after me, jumping up onto the trolley, swinging her legs and laughing. Then we were in this new eerie room full of alien beings in masks and gowns. One of them held me down while another put an evil-smelling rubber mask over my face. I struggled and they told me to calm down like a good sensible girl and start counting, one, two, three . . . It seemed the maddest time in the world to start an arithmetic lesson but I obediently mumbled, ‘Four, five, six . . .’

And then I was asleep, and when I woke up, I was back in my bed with Rosalind tucked up beside me, and a raw pain at the back of my throat.

They let each child have ice cream for the first meal after their operation. Ice cream was an enormous treat then. You had ice cream with jelly
at
birthday parties and you
might
be allowed an ice-cream cone once or twice on your summer holiday, but that was your lot. The hospital ice cream was meagre, a slither of Wall’s vanilla, but I swallowed it down eagerly, in spite of the pain.

I had a little parcel from home too. Biddy might not be allowed to see me but she sent me a Margaret Tarrant card every morning, and there was a present too, a little book of
Toy Tales
with big printing and lots of pictures. It was a bit babyish when I could cope with hundreds of pages of
Adventures with Rosalind
, but I knew it was the thought that counted. I was surprised that none of the other children got presents or cards or letters. Everyone thought it must be my birthday. They said I was very lucky and my mum and dad must love me very much.

I don’t think any of my fictional girls has to have her tonsils out in my books. However, there are a few hospital scenes, some very dramatic and sad. There are also more routine visits. Which of my characters ends up in hospital with a broken arm?

 

I wonder if you picked Mandy from
Bad Girls
? She
does
hurt her arm and end up in hospital, but it’s just a bad sprain. But Em in
Clean Break
breaks her arm running after her beloved stepfather.

‘Em, darling! It’s all right, I’m here. Does your arm hurt really badly?’ said Dad. ‘The nurse has just come, pet, they’re ready to plaster you up.’

I clung to Dad, scared that it might be very painful. It
did
hurt when they gently but firmly straightened my arm out.

‘There we go. We’ll have you right as rain in no time,’ said the young doctor, smiling at me. ‘There’s no complications. It’s a nice clean break.’

I winced at those two words.

People often ask me if any of the characters in my books are real. Mostly I make it all up, but just occasionally it’s fun to write about someone I really know. I’ve always said I don’t put myself in my books but the novelist Jenna Williams in
Clean Break
is very similar to me. Nick’s drawn her looking exactly like me too – apart from one tiny detail. I wonder if anyone can spot what it is?

15

Pretend Friends

JUNIOR SCHOOL WAS
very different from the Infants. I was still at Latchmere, in an adjacent but identical red-brick building, the classrooms built round a quadrangle of grass. They were mostly the same children in my class but somehow
I
wasn’t the same. I wasn’t little Jacky-no-friends, the odd girl. I was suddenly inexplicably popular, with the girls, with the boys, even with the teachers.

I wasn’t the new girl any more. She was a girl called Cherry, an exotic name in those days of Susans and Elizabeths and Janes. She was nicknamed Cherry Blossom Boot Polish and mildly teased. We became friendly because she lived a few streets away and we walked to school together.