Man at the Helm (25 page)

The Sycamore Estate was a better place for us to live and a relief. On the estate we were unremarkable and nothing to worry about. Plus we were latchkey kids, though we had no actual keys on string round our necks because we never actually locked the door, but, essentially, no one was at home when we got in from school and that was the important factor.

It would be wrong of me, though, not to mention that, however nice it felt being unremarkable, actually having no money was very bad indeed and caused an immediate and ongoing drop in standards, which in turn resulted in a dip in self-esteem for me because it turned out I hated having dirty hair and sitting in the launderette and being hungry.

The new house was fragile and, in spite of being relatively new, bits of it came away, things broke and didn’t get fixed. Handles, knobs, doors and windows slipped, cracked and came off in your hand. It was cold to the touch and damp in parts, and even though there was so little of it, we couldn’t keep it clean or tidy or warm and the hoover band snapped.

The laundry situation in the new house made previous difficulties seem charming. In the early days of the Sycamore Estate – there being nowhere to hang washing to dry (no boot room, not enough garden for a line and no space whatsoever) – we’d take bin bags full of wet washing to the launderette in an old Silver Cross pram, put a pound’s worth of 10ps in, leave it tumbling and more often than not return to find the building locked up. When that happened we’d have to dash back the next morning
before school for our pants and stuff. Then, one day, to make matters simpler, the washing machine made a grinding noise and conked out and we stopped worrying about it so much and just wore our clothes longer between washes. Being deliberately grubby seeming so much better than the worry of having nothing to wear. Ditto when the hot water tank became temperamental and our baths were lukewarm or we’d got no soap left, we just had fewer baths. I used to wear a pom-pom hat to hide my grubby hair, which made it worse but hid it. My sister used Batiste dry shampoo when she could get hold of it and bit the bullet when she couldn’t and washed her hair under the cold kitchen tap. It doesn’t sound so awful, but my sister and I were just getting to an age.

In addition to the launderette, the ponies (now an inconvenient mile away) had to be attended to and the shopping had to be done in dribs and drabs, and then the cooking and eating without the luxury of a big kitchen full of helpful old ingredients and no Miss Woods across the road with a tab. We couldn’t remember how things had got done before, but we were sure they had. We concluded that our mother must have done a lot more than we’d realized. And now she was at work from 7 till 7 and was not to be disturbed after that with anything more than light conversation and good news, nothing got done without us doing it. And we didn’t.

Our pets had to be got rid of. Our mother begged us to understand it was imperative. The rabbits, the guinea pigs, the cats and Honey the poodle had to be re-homed. We couldn’t accommodate them any more. We had no space, no money and no time, she said. She didn’t count Debbie, thank God. I think I’d have run away if she had.

‘This is the first sensible decision I have ever made and I’m sorry it’s a very sad one,’ she said.

She stood in front of us in our new hallway and said, ‘I beg you to understand,’ and when my sister’s face went bright red and crumpled and her mouth let out a creaking noise, our mother began to shout. I think she’d planned to shout all along. It was the kind of situation whereby some shouting is essential.

‘Do you think I’m happy about this?’ she shouted. ‘Do you think my heart isn’t breaking?’ etc.

We had to accept it and our poor, newly sensible mother had to get the pets into boxes and make the trips (rodents first, then felines and then Honey) and take them to wherever you take pets that you’ve finished with that are still perfectly fit and well.

Very soon after that day, we received a circular from the Guides and Brownies inviting us to an open evening with talks, displays and assorted snacks. The letter said that if we were considering joining we
must
come along to hear about the organization and all the adventures and activities on offer, as they were looking for new recruits and had second-hand uniforms available.

The Brownies and Guides letter coincided with a low point. Our father, who didn’t exist for us except for occasional awkward little visits, was suddenly all over the newspapers in reports of redundancies and family feuding and factory closures. We’d lost our pets – a thing too awful to think about – and, however devastated we felt about it, we never discussed it and pretended it hadn’t happened. Our mother was never at home unless it was after work and then she’d be too exhausted to speak. Our one remaining pet, Debbie, couldn’t make it upstairs. There was no God, according to my sister, and only idiots believed such nonsense. And most of the time, my sister was angry or worried. There was no hot water and the front door had warped in its frame to such an extent that the postman plopped the bills through the gap. And Little Jack’s stammer was getting so bad, I
dreaded him speaking. The Brownies finally contacting us should have been a good thing; instead it felt like a cruel joke.

Then, on top of all that, the telly broke. We turned it on and off and twiddled the knobs. There was no picture, only a yellowy haze and lines going up. The sound was still working, so we knew it wasn’t anything to do with the plug. So we sat down and listened, hoping to hear something jolly that might cheer us after the Brownie letter. Nothing jolly came on. Just the news that Chi Chi, the giant panda at London zoo, had died.

I woke up one day with a peculiar feeling. As if someone or something was lying on top of me and I couldn’t budge the weight. There was nothing there, but I couldn’t shift it even so. Eventually I got out of bed and sluggishly went about my business with the weight in front of me – it was like walking into a strong wind. I told my sister about the heavy weight and, telling her about it, I must’ve started crying. She said, ‘Don’t worry, Lizzie, we all have that feeling from time to time. Just totally ignore it.’

I did my utmost to ignore it and fend it off. On the way to school I bought a packet of Cherry Tunes with my dinner money, thinking them better for morale than my usual ten No. 6. But they didn’t help for long, and at school the feeling crept back and tears began trickling down my cheeks. Though apart from the sluggishness, I really felt quite normal and not upset.

My teacher, Miss Munroe, was annoyed about it. Mrs Clarke wouldn’t have been. But we didn’t have Mrs Clarke any more, we had Miss Munroe.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I just feel sluggish, as if I have a heavy weight bearing down on me.’

‘There must be something more than feeling “sluggish”,’ said Miss Munroe, squinting at me.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, wiping my eyes.

‘There must be,’ she said.

And this awkward conversation went on for a few minutes.

‘Well,’ said Miss Munroe, ‘I suggest you go and wait in the girls’ cloakroom until either you stop crying, or you work out what’s wrong.’

I was in the girls’ cloakroom all morning. Miss Munroe sent Melody Longlady in just before playtime to see how things were going.

‘Miss Munroe wants to know if you’re still crying?’ asked Melody.

I looked in the cloakroom mirror. ‘Yes,’ I said.

Melody made a sympathetic face, a flat smile with sad, blinking eyes.

And then I asked Melody if she might be able to cry as well. But she didn’t think she could cry. I only asked because, when she’d given me the sympathetic smile, it really looked as if she might have been about to cry. But apparently she hadn’t.

At playtime, a few girls looked in on me. Some were very kind. Later, Melody came in again and told me I was to go and see the headmistress. I knocked on her door and she said, ‘Come in.’

She asked me what I’d come to see her about. I said I thought it was because I was crying.

‘What are you crying about?’ she asked, and looked up from her desk like a doctor.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘There must be something. No one cries for no reason,’ she said.

I apologized and said I was fine, and that actually I thought it was quite funny and a bit embarrassing that I’d been crying for so long. But nothing I said offered a pleasing explanation and she seemed to be as annoyed as Miss Munroe.

‘Look, Lizzie,’ she said, ‘can you please just tell me why you are crying, so I can get on with the important things I need to be doing? Hmmm?’

‘I’m not really crying exactly, tears are coming out, that’s all. Maybe I have an allergy,’ I said.

I went back to the cloakroom for the rest of the day and read a book, which I had to keep wiping.

Then, at home, I stopped, and when our mother got home later she told me that the school had phoned the Snowdrop Laundry and asked her to make contact. Which was all she needed on top of all the chaos. Our mother had phoned the school in the late afternoon and spoken to the headmistress.

‘What did she say?’ I asked, mortified.

‘She said you’d been upset all day and wouldn’t tell them why,’ our mother said, annoyed.

‘I wasn’t upset,’ I said, ‘I told them I wasn’t.’

And the conversation went on like that. I won’t bore you with it. I gave our mother the whole story, starting at the beginning with the heavy weight.

‘I woke up with a great weight on me,’ I said.

‘Oh, the weight,’ said our mother, suddenly understanding. ‘It’s the pig.’

‘The pig?’ I said.

‘It’s about a pig kind of weight, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is, a young one,’ I said, ‘a young pig.’

‘The pig arrives when one’s feeling fed up. He turns up first thing in the morning and pins you to the bed.’

‘Why?’ I said.

‘To make you think, to make you cry and make you see,’ she said, ‘and when he visits, he’s just trying to help. You must make him welcome and he’ll soon be gone.’

‘Why is it a pig?’ I asked.

‘A pig is so much preferable to an anonymous bag of corn, don’t you think?’

Our mother explained her encounters with the pig and the ways in which the pig had helped her and she said she was extremely proud of the way I’d handled the pig.

Anyway, the pig has visited only once since then. And when it did, I made it welcome and carried it around until it trotted back to its sty.

The next day, after the crying, our mother said I could have the day off school to recover from the pig’s visit and have a day with her on the van. It was a nice mix of excellent, revolting and annoying.

I had to share the front seat with Deano the van boy, who smelled of sour milk and had a painful spot on his neck. Our mother never closed her sliding van door, neither did Deano, and they careered around town half in and half out.

They ran here and there clutching roller towels, dashed into yards, garages and pubs, and nipped in the back entrances of shops, cinemas, clubs and offices, with rollers, mats and tea towels. They spoke politely to traffic wardens and other van people. They fixed dodgy towel dispensers and pulled their jumpers over their faces for the smelliest calls. And they sang with the radio and ate cheese cobs and swigged pop from the bottle. Our mother was marvellous. I’d never seen her like it. So busy and efficient and engaged.

At the White Horse Deano was chased by a dog and at the Black Dog our mother was chased by a horse. Later, the cook at the Granary tearooms gave me a Scotch egg when I nipped in with the towels. And it went on like that until, at the Fish & Quart, a woman told our mother that the Snowdrop depot would like her to get in touch immediately, and the bubble burst.

We went to a phone box. Our mother rang and spoke to Mr Holt. He’d heard she was carrying a young passenger (me) and wanted an explanation.

‘It’s my daughter Lizzie,’ our mother said. ‘Eleven and a half … She’s had the day off … She’s not ill, she’s just miserable … All right … Yes, all right, I will … Yes. I will. I understand, yes,’ she said, and hung up.

I had to wait out the rest of the route in Brucciani’s in Church Gate (right near Green’s, the jewellers, where the Longlady twins had got their ears pierced) and drink frothy hot chocolate and eat buns and read my book until they finished and picked me up. Back at the depot, we were greeted at the gate by Miss Kellogg, who said she’d help Deano with the unloading and so forth and that I should keep a low profile. Our mother was to go straight to Mr Holt’s office.

Driving home, I asked how it had gone with Mr Holt.

‘He’s nothing but a miserable old bastard,’ said our mother.

‘Did he tell you off?’ I asked.

‘Of course he did. God, I hate that man,’ she said, ‘he’s a bloody nightmare.’

It occurred to me then that Mr Holt might go on the Man List, but on reflection I decided the line between love and hate was on this occasion just too thick, and I didn’t even raise it for discussion.

However much of a nightmare Mr Holt was and however annoyingly my day on the van had ended, I felt better. Better about the pig and better about everything else too. Better about our mother being gone from the house all those hours and our clothes being smelly. The Snowdrop Laundry had cheered me up and I couldn’t wait until Little Jack and my sister had their turn on the van and could see and feel better for themselves.

At some point after that, Gloxinia died and was sold for parts to a man who fixed up old Mercedes and for weeks afterwards people would say, ‘Where’s that lovely old Merc of yours?’ and our mother would say, ‘She lives on.’

Our mother had to buy a new car. It had to be cheap but reliable and she took advice from Miss Kellogg, the deputy at Snowdrop (known as Deputy Dawg). Miss Kellogg knew a man who sold used but reliable family vehicles and we ended up with a Hillman Husky from Ray’s Reliables, which was certainly cheap but turned out not to be very reliable and caused no end of trouble on the roads, stalling and not steering true when our mother pressed the brakes etc.