Queenie (10 page)

I couldn’t keep up the pretence any more.

‘Nan!’ I wailed, and I keeled over onto the cold lino and howled, my inflamed wrist tucked into my armpit. I cried for a very long time, until my whole face was slippery with tears and snot, and I’d made my new sweet necklace uncomfortably sticky. I fell asleep in a little sodden ball and didn’t wake up until I heard Mum coming in the front door.

‘WELL, EVERY CLOUD
has a silver lining,’ said Mum as we rattled along in the train. ‘Imagine me, personal secretary to a managing director!’

I stared out at the little gardens flashing past. Two boys stood on top of an air-raid shelter, pointing. I wasn’t stupid: I knew they were simply pointing at the train and then making a note of the number – two harmless little train spotters – but it felt as if they were pointing straight at me.

There goes germy Elsie with her TB!
they might be writing.
Keep clear of her!

‘I’d really only gone for the receptionist’s job – any girl with a pretty face can do that – but Mr Perkins asked about my typing and shorthand,’ said Mum.

A large collie dog barked at the train. He barked right at me, and I had to hold tight to Snow White and Sooty and Marmalade, who hissed and squirmed in my arms. They’d wriggled out of a crack in my suitcase and were trying to comfort me. I gave them each a special stroke.

‘Stop dabbing your hands about – you look gormless,’ said Mum. ‘Yes, I was a bit worried when I had to take dictation. I haven’t done shorthand since I was at school and I was never that good at it, to be honest – but I looked him straight in the eye and said I was a bit rusty because I’d been pursuing a career on the stage, and he was ever so understanding.’

We passed a school and I could see all the heads of the children sitting at their desks. Some of them looked out at me. ‘Did you hear about Elsie Kettle?’ they whispered. ‘She’s got TB!’

I thought about my own school. Maybe they’d found out already.

‘We always knew Elsie Kettle was dirty,’ Marilyn and Susan said in chorus.

‘Just think, I nearly made friends with her!’ said Laura.

‘Poor little Elsie, I hope I haven’t caught her
horrid
germs,’ said Miss Roberts, washing her angora cardie just in case it was contaminated.

I gave a little moan.

‘Yes, I think he rather liked the idea – said he’d always been very partial to theatre-going. He asked which plays I’d appeared in. I had to be a little vague – I doubt he’s ever been to the Saucebox Follies! Though I don’t know – there was a naughty twinkle in his eye for all he was so gentlemanly in his pinstripe suit. Elsie . . . ? Oh Elsie!’

She’d seen the tears rolling down my cheeks.

‘Cheer up, you silly sausage. You’re going to be fine. They’ll make you better in hospital. All you have to do is lie in bed and rest. Sounds good to me!’

I carried on crying. I was scared she’d get cross, but she cuddled me in close and stroked my hair with her long cool fingers.

‘There now, little bunny,’ she murmured.

She used to call me Bunny when I was very little and had a hood on my jacket with furry rabbit ears. I nestled against her and she didn’t even tell me off when my nose dribbled onto her smart suit.

‘What’s up with the little moppet?’ the woman opposite asked. ‘She’s going to hospital, you say?’

I felt Mum stiffen.

‘Yes, she’s hurt her knee,’ she said quickly.

The woman launched into a long and harrowing
account
of her son’s stay in hospital when he was a little boy.

‘Starved him, they did. Just gave him a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy for his dinner. I ask you, is that food fit for a growing lad? I should send your little girl in with a big tuck box or she’ll fade away altogether. She’s thin as a pin already!’

‘She’s naturally petite,’ said Mum, a little huffily. ‘There now, Elsie. Have a little rest, dear.’ She cradled me closer.

The woman started talking again but Mum hushed her. ‘Do you mind? I’d like her to have a little nap,’ she said firmly.

I wasn’t the slightest bit sleepy because I’d napped for a couple of hours that afternoon, but I shut my eyes and snuggled up to Mum. She was so different to Nan, who said herself she was all string and bones. Mum was soft yet firm, like a cushion, though her bosom and tummy were taut and I could feel the elastic ridges of her underwear. I knew for a fact that Mum’s knickers were even frillier than mine, but they didn’t look at all silly on her.

The train made a comforting
diddly-dum, diddly-dum
noise, over and over again. When it slowed down and stopped at each station, there were the same sounds too: slamming doors and whistle-blowing, and then judders and wheezes as the engine blew out
steam
. Perhaps we weren’t going in a straight line at all. Perhaps we were on a gigantic circular track, like a toy train, and we’d be going round and round for ever, never arriving.

But suddenly Mum gave me a push and stood up, grabbing my suitcase. ‘Come on, Elsie, we get off here!’ she hissed.

‘Good luck, dear!’ called the woman. ‘Chin up!’

I tucked my chin down into my coat and stumbled off the train. Mum was quizzing the porter and looking annoyed.

‘For pity’s sake, the bus goes every hour, and would you believe it, we’ve just missed one!’ she said. ‘We’ll get you there by midnight at this rate – and then I’ve got to make the whole wretched journey back again! Come on, we’d better have a cup of tea.’

We went into the refreshment room at the station. I still wasn’t hungry even though I hadn’t eaten my lunch. Mum bought me a tuppenny iced bun, but I just licked the white topping off and then played cigars with the bun while Mum sipped her tea and crunched on a custard cream.

It wasn’t very cold in the room but I seemed to be shivering. My teeth clanked against my glass of lemon barley water.

‘Stop that,’ Mum said.

I tucked my teeth behind my lips, which made
drinking
difficult. A long dribble of lemon barley spurted down my coat.

‘Your good coat!’ said Mum – as if I had a whole wardrobe of
other
coats. She spat on the edge of her hankie and rubbed my coat vigorously so that I juddered up and down inside it. ‘Honestly, I can’t take you anywhere without you showing me up.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. When she’d finished rubbing at me, I tried to nestle up to her the way I’d done in the train, but she sat me down properly on my own chair.

‘Careful – you’ll spill it again!’ she said.

That was my mum for you, always blowing hot and cold. I saw her hot on the train, her face lipstick-red all over, her embrace like fire – and now I saw her freezing cold with snow in her hair and icicle fingernails. She was tapping those nails on her cup, fiddling with the paper from the sugar cube, crossing and uncrossing her legs, all of a fidget. Maybe she was scared too.

We needed Nan to calm us both down, but she wasn’t there. I trailed off to spend a penny and sat there on the toilet, praying to Nan as if she were God.

‘Dear Nan, please let it be all right. Please don’t let the doctors do scary things to me. Please let the nurses be kind. Please don’t let the other children be horrid to me. Oh, please let me get better quick, and
you
get better too, so we can both come back home together.’

‘Elsie? What are you
doing
in there?’ Mum called, rapping on the door. ‘You haven’t locked yourself in, have you?’

I looked at the lock on the door and seriously wondered about keeping it bolted for ever. I could creep out every night and eat stale buns from the refreshment room and run up and down the empty platforms for exercise, and then scuttle back at dawn and lock myself away again . . .

‘Elsie! Come out this instant!’ Mum commanded.

I unlocked the door and shuffled out sheepishly. We went to wait at the bus stop outside the station. We waited and waited. Mum kept consulting the gold wristwatch Uncle Stanley had given her.

‘Don’t say we’ve missed the bally thing!’ she said – but at last we saw the single-decker red bus looming in the distance.

‘At last!’ said Mum. ‘This hospital’s at the back of beyond. I’m sure Doctor Malory’s sent you there on purpose, just to make life more difficult.’

We got on the bus and I stared anxiously out of the dirty window, looking for some large ugly Nissen hut like poor Nan’s sanatorium. The bus hurtled down narrow country lanes for what seemed like hours.

‘We must have gone past it,’ said Mum, consulting
her
watch again. ‘Hey, conductor! I thought you were going to tell us when we got near Miltree Hospital.’

‘So I will, duck, when we get there. In another ten minutes,’ he sang out cheerily.

‘Duck!’ Mum muttered. ‘Does he think I’m some daft old biddy? I’ll give him duck!’

When the conductor announced the hospital at last, Mum swept past him haughtily, tugging at me to do the same. My leg had gone funny after all the sitting down. I stumbled and dropped my suitcase. It burst open, and my new pyjamas and underwear and Albert Trunk and the button box came flying out all over the deck.

‘Whoops!’ said the conductor, bending down and helping me. ‘Don’t want you to lose your frillies!’ He flapped my terrible knickers in the air and half the bus sniggered. I was scarlet by the time I’d retrieved all my treasures and shot off the bus.

‘Do you
have
to show me up?’ said Mum, giving me a little shake. She looked around at the trees and hedges. ‘I think that bally fool has turfed us out at the wrong stop. There’s no sign of any hospital.’

There weren’t even any proper pavements. We walked along the narrow strip of grass, Mum having to pick her way on tiptoe because she didn’t want her high heels sinking into the mud. She peered over the hedge and then stopped.

‘Hell’s fire, is
that
it?’ she said. ‘I think it must be.’

I was too little to see over the top. ‘Does it look horrid, Mum?’ I asked.

‘No, it’s like a blooming palace,’ said Mum. ‘It’s
huge
– and there’s gardens all over – and, oh my Lord, a fountain! Here, breathe on me, Elsie. I wouldn’t mind getting your lurgie if I can stay here too!’

I bounced up and down, but I had to wait until I came to a gap in the hedge before I could see for myself. It truly
was
like a palace in a fairy tale, a huge soft-grey mansion with a turret and towers, set in beautiful formal gardens.

‘Oh Mum!’ I said. Then, ‘It
can’t
be the hospital!’

‘No, you’re right, it can’t be,’ said Mum – but when we got a little nearer we both saw the sign:
MILTREE ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL
. ‘Oh my! Doctor Malory’s turned up trumps after all.’

I was still scared stiff, but when the hospital was in full view before us, I stared at it in awe. I furnished it with red carpets and gold chairs and twinkling chandeliers. All the patients had four-poster beds in private rooms with little maids.
My
bedroom would be up in the tower. Maybe I would let my hair grow like Rapunzel, and I’d wear beautiful pink and blue and white silk princess dresses every day and my cat pyjamas at night . . .

I pretended all the way along the drive and up the
big
stone steps – but the moment we stepped inside the big arched door I was slapped back to the real world with a vengeance. There was a horrible hospital smell of strong disinfectant, and no carpet, red or otherwise – just miles of polished brown wooden floor that made our shoes squeak horribly in the silence. The walls were painted cream and green, just like school, and there were no private rooms at all, just stark signs to all the different wards.

‘Which ward will I be in, Mum?’ I whispered.

‘How on earth should I know?’ she said.

There was a big reception desk to one side of the vast hallway but no one was sitting behind it.

‘Excuse me?’ Mum called into the air, but no one came. ‘Oh well, we’ll have to find out for ourselves.’ She took my hand. ‘Come on, Elsie.’

‘I don’t think we’re allowed,’ I whimpered, peering around fearfully. ‘Shouldn’t we wait till someone comes?’

‘Don’t be daft, there isn’t anyone! Come on, I’ve got to get all the way home again. I can’t hang around here, waiting.’

Mum set off up the corridor while I struggled along beside her. We turned a corner and were suddenly in a big bleak ward with rows of beds, all with green coverlets and pale patients.

‘It’s just like Nan’s sanatorium,’ I said. ‘Oh Mum, I don’t like it!’

‘Stop whining, Elsie, it’s getting on my nerves,’ said Mum, peering around for an empty bed.

A nurse with a complicated white hat and a blue dress came bustling out of a side room and stared at us in astonishment. ‘Whatever are you doing here? You’re not allowed on this ward!’ she said. ‘You must leave immediately.’

‘See!’ I said, tugging at Mum’s arm.

‘But we’ve been told to come here,’ she said, standing her ground.

‘We only have visiting hours at the weekend, from two till four – and even then we don’t allow children, except in special circumstances,’ said the nurse crisply.