Playing with the Grown-ups (5 page)

Evie sighed with exasperation.

'There is NO gang, Imogen,' she said.

Evie and Veronica proceeded to spend the next forty minutes pointing at Kitty, and howling 'Pink ladies!' or taking her glasses,
and throwing them in the pond where they floated on a light layer of scum. She discovered a sad social truth that day. Court
jesters jest, they don't come up with the ideas.

'Please don't do that,' Kitty yelped.

'No one's going to notice,' her mother said. 'He can watch over you, protect you.'

'Honestly, it's fine.' Kitty saw Evie look over slyly. 'I'll put him on my pinboard later. Then he can watch over everyone.'
She smiled.

'That's a lovely idea,' her mother said.

Everyone thought she was odd: she felt it.

Madonna knew what it was like. She understood. Perhaps she could adopt me and I could be her back-up dancer, Kitty thought.
Her brain filled with scenes of transatlantic glamour.

'Are you eating, Kitty?' Mr Ridgeley the biology master sounded concerned.

The class was silent. She thought about it. No, for once she was not consumed by the thought of food. Kitty gave what she
thought was a pathos-filled face, the face of a hungry urchin.

'No. I haven't been very hungry.' Her voice wobbled in the warmth of his concern.

'I meant, are you chewing gum? The chewing of gum is not permitted in my lab. Your nutritional habits are not my concern.
They are the territory of matron. Now, spit it out, please.'

Kitty gave him an injured look and spat out her Bub-blicious in the bin. If Madonna had heard I wasn't eating, she thought,
SHE would have cooked me a Philly cheese steak, and after eating and giggling, we would have broken out into an impromptu
rendition of 'Holiday', followed by shopping for ra-ra skirts on Broadway.

Bestemama and Bestepapa came to take her out on Saturday after games. She sat by the gates keeping watch for the old regal
BMW.

Ibsen howled with excitement when he saw her, his jowls swaying from left to right, his tongue lolling like a madman's. Kitty
dived into the car on top of him.

'Have you spoken to Mummy?' It fell out of her mouth automatically.

Bestepapa made a bitter peppery noise.

'No, darling, we haven't. Do you remember that we decided it was probably better to let her get settled in New York, and speak
to her when everything is a bit clearer?' Smiling at her, Bestemama's face became a mask of reassurance. Kitty preferred Bestepapa's
grimace.

They went to a little hotel in the town, and she ordered a Coke. It tasted forbidden and ambrosial.

'Is the food at your prison FILTHY?' Bestepapa smeared a scone with jam, and passed it to her.

'Filthy. You'd hate it. Greasy fried eggs, baked beans, lumpy cardboard porridge and gammon and pineapple.'

'Dis-gusting. Can you smuggle in contraband?'

'I baked you a belated birthday cake, polenta and lemon.' Bestemama handed Kitty a tin with roses on it.

After tea, up on the top of the hill above the town, they surveyed the sea of green, fields filled with water from the recent
rains. Ibsen pulled on his lead looking longingly at the sheep. Kitty pretended they were just visiting, and for a moment
she appreciated everything around her, the damp air, the cathedral that rose below, mothers and fathers walking with their
families.

'It is beautiful here,' Bestemama said.

'It is, but not beautiful like Hay,' Kitty replied grudgingly.

'We could kidnap her, or pretend she has appendicitis,' Bestepapa said as they pulled into the driveway of Dour-field.

'Enough, you silly man. We'll see her very soon.' Bestemama held Kitty tightly as she kissed her goodbye, filling her nose
with rosewater and Pond's cold cream.

'Don't let the buggers get you down!' Bestepapa shouted as they drove off into the fog that had descended.

'Uh yuck, why can't your family give you chocolate cake for your birthday like everyone else?' Evie gave Bestema-ma's cake
a sneer, the Goss boys pouting from her T-shirt.

'Lemon cake is delicious, try it.' Kitty proffered a slice.

Evie took a bite and spat it out on the floor.

'Rank,' she said. 'On MY birthday my mother orders a cake from Fortnum & Mason, a chocolate one, which everyone likes. Oh
well, not everyone can have a mother as perfect as mine, and I suppose yours is pretty, which makes up for a lot. Funny, you
don't look anything like her, do you? Your sister does. Maybe you're adopted.'

At the end of each day they had to put their knickers in a big open basket that sat, till morning, in the comer of the room.
Kitty sincerely hoped that she did not start her period at school, where everyone would know before she could even tell her
mother. She knew she wasn't being paranoid either; she had already heard the Chinese whispers. 'Laura Hall's started, she's
had it since she was nine and she's got double D boobs.' Laura Hall's knickers lay, a scarlet announcement in the basket amongst
their childish whites.

Even going to the loo was a potential minefield. She could not linger for hours with a book like she did at home. She had
to run in furtively whilst the others were doing prep, because Evie was legend for standing on the cistern in the adjacent
stall, peering over the wall and taking photographs of people unawares, which she then passed round the school. Kitty had
seen a few of these gory documentations. Small heads bowed in concentration, innocently minding their own business. She sat
there rigid with fear, listening intently to every suspicious footfall outside. Her eyes round and raised to the horrible
open roof of the stall, in case of an ambush. This was a recipe for terrible constipation and frayed nerves.

'One, two, three, bog flush!' She heard Veronica, her voice high, quivering with pack excitement.

'You've got to be joking. Get off me.' Kitty aimed a kick, and made contact with a soft stomach.

'She's going to be a difficult one, Evie. Come on, pull.'

'Stop it,' Imogen murmured across the room from the safety of her bed, voice muffled by sleep.

Kitty was outraged. Bog flushing was what they did to pasty first formers, too thin and weak to protest. Like a lynch mob
in the night, they came, Evie and Veronica, with their omnipresent third wheel Susanna, carting the victim from the privacy
of sleep, across the hall, into the bathroom, until turned upside down like a corkscrew, the girl was plunged unceremoniously
into the lavatory bowl, as it was flushed over her head. They called it 'christening'.

She was not going to be bog flushed.

'What the hell are you doing?' she asked as they carried her across the darkened room.

'You think you're so perfect. You're so prissy, with your little books you read before you go to sleep, and your posh voice.
We're going to show you that you're not so perfect after all.' Veronica's doughy hand clung to her ankle.

'I don't think I'm perfect, you stupid bitch. My voice is the same as your voice. I don't even want to be here.'

'Exactly,' Veronica said.

She let them carry her like a plank of wood into the bathroom. She struggled a little bit to lull them into complacency. Then,
as they made an awkward procession into the stall, Kitty began to fight. She scratched Veronica in the eye, and kicked her
legs out like an Olympic swimmer. Susanna had her in a headlock, and Kitty bit her freckled arm as hard as she could.

'You animal!' Susanna said, dropping her against the porcelain.

Kitty did the things she was taught not to do as a toddler. She bit, she scratched, she kicked, she spat. She wanted to kill
all three of them.

'This isn't fun any more,' Evie said. She stood back panting. 'You're being a psycho. Stop it.' Kitty stood up and she laughed.

'If you ever try to do that to me again, I'll curse you. That Indian man on my pinboard is a dark master. He can curse you
by just thinking your names. I'll make sure he has them. We can start now . . .' She took a deep breath and whispered dramatically,
'I call on you, Master Swami, I call on your forces of darkness, your servants of the night . . .' She began to incant the
words of her mother's chanting tapes, and rolled her eyes far back into her head as though she were in a trance.

'Bhutayan, Narayan . . . Jhoti Krishna Govinda, Hare Hare . . .'

All three of them stood stock still. The powers of serendipity were on her side, as the wind chose to shriek at that moment,
high, like a widow's keen. They all jumped. Veronica pissed on the floor.

Kitty stopped chanting and gave them a thorough searching look.

'Goodnight. Sweet dreams.'

She swished out, pretending that she was wearing not a teddy bear nightdress, but robes of velvet, midnight blue.

'Is that my Magpie?' Her mother's voice was giggly, far away. 'I'm calling you from a car phone in a limousine; imagine that!
So as you're standing in Wheaton, I'm zipping around Fifth Avenue. Isn't that funny?'

'Ish.' Kitty scowled at her reflection in the window.

'Darling, let's not waste our precious phone call being grumpy. Tell me about school. Are you having the best time? NO, take
a right here please, that's it, 740.'

'Where are you going?'

'To meet a gallery owner for lunch. Can you believe I've already sold four paintings, and I've been offered a show too - I've
never worked more in my life. You might even have a rich mummy soon. It's so inspiring and alive here. Until the new house
is ready we're staying in a hotel. The Mark, it's called. Violet thinks she's Eloise, and she and Sam have pancakes and maple
syrup for breakfast every day. What do you have?'

'Alpen,' Kitty said grudgingly.

'That's nice. I've made lots of friends; people keep throwing parties for me, it's very jolly. What parallel lives we're leading,
you and I, both new girls at school.'

She couldn't remember anything she wanted to tell her mother, and though she had written a careful list of all those things,
highlighted in order of importance, it was left on her locker in the dorm, and she knew if she ran to get it, three minutes
would be gone. Kitty heard New York in the background, the sirens and traffic, a taunting steady whine.

'I can't think of anything to say,' she said.

'That's all right, I'll talk for both of us, and when you remember, you can write me a letter.'

'It's not the same.'

'I know, but what can we do? You could send me a psychic message, I'll get that. Have you seen Bestepapa and Bestemama?'

'Yes, they took me out for tea.'

'Well, would you mind not telling them anything about me, darling? I don't need them poking their noses into my life any more.
Did they ask about me?'

'No,' Kitty said.

'Kitty,' she'd say, 'your mother's on the phone from New York, she HAS to speak to you, it's urgent.' She would get out of
bed, and she could tell her mother everything that she'd forgotten, and they would laugh.

The page of thought became black with words, and Kitty struggled to keep her eyes open, but sleep came, the message returned
to sender.

'I love you with great alacrity; you are the best mother in the world.'

Mrs Phelan flicked her eyes over the letter dismissively. This was part of the Saturday night ritual at Dourfield. Letter
home, shoes polished, then the tuck shop. Which wasn't a shop, just a shelf of sweets in Matron's office.

'Very good. Shoes?' Kitty showed her the loafers she had polished.

'Perfect. One pound for you, the tuck shop's open.'

Her mother didn't send letters by post. Kitty got letters from Federal Express in big white and purple envelopes. Marina's
writing was very big, and four sentences took up one page. 'Please don't be homesick, there is no point. Be "home well". There
is nothing to miss here, life is very boring, and everything keeps breaking; the central heating, the telephone, and my heart.
That is a joke! I had a boyfriend who lives in California, and I went to stay. You would like it there. It is hot, and we
had picnics on the beach. He is not my boyfriend any more because he still loves his old wife, who is not old, but ex. Isn't
it good we have God, so we don't need men? Imagine what life would be like if we didn't have GOD? I love you, Mummy.'