Skinny Melon and Me (6 page)

Today we all trailed half-way across London to go for a picnic on Hampstead Heath. On account of Slimey Roland refusing to pollute the environment, we had to go by tube. That meant taking the Central line to Tottenham Court Road, which is 13 stops, and then hanging about for ever waiting for a northern line to Hampstead, which was another seven. What a pathetic way to travel! We must have looked ridiculous. Slimey was wearing a T-shirt and shorts (shorts! With his legs!) and Mum was wearing a horrible sort of boiler suit and looking really dumpy. Definitely middle-age spread. In addition to the shorts, Slime was humping an enormous backpack. You’d have thought he was going on a round-the-world hike. I wore jeans and was the only one who looked half-way normal.

It was a really draggy sort of day because all we did was walk on the Heath and occasionally sit down and eat stuff and then get up again and do more walking and then sit down again to have a drink, and then they wanted to read their Sunday papers, which actually was the best bit because it meant I could go off on my own, which I did, and met this girl throwing sticks for her dog. She let me join in, which was fun. It was a really good dog, a German shepherd, which I would love, but some hopes.

Anyway, after all that we got on the tube and came home again, and what was supposed to be the point of it is what I want to know? If they wanted to go for a walk and sit on the grass and eat things why not just go up the road to the Common? Why trail all the way to Hampstead Heath? Mum says it’s because Slimey used to live there before he married Mum and moved in with us and made my life a misery. Well, she didn’t say that bit. I said that bit. I will never accept him as a second dad.

Dad was supposed to ring me this evening but he must have been too busy. Mum has said I can go and stay with him at half term. A whole week! Hooray!

The food today was pretty horrific, incidentally, for a true carnivore such as myself. Vegetarian sausages, for heaven’s sake! I just munched in glum silence, not saying anything, as I could tell that Mum was really enjoying herself and I didn’t want to spoil things for her,
but she needn’t think I didn’t notice because I most certainly did. And if she thinks I am going to become a cranky veggie, she has another thing coming!

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow because HE is going to be away. He’s going to go and bore some poor little kids at a school in Newcastle, showing them pictures of elves. That means Mum and I will be on our own! Double hooray!

It’s just as well I made things up with Skinny Melon today because it turns out she was 100% right. My worst fears have come true. Mum is going to have a baby.

She broke it to me after tea, just as I was thinking we could settle down to have a lovely evening all to ourselves like we used to before HE came. She said, “I know I should have told you months ago—” and then she didn’t get any further because I said, “Months? You mean it’s been going on for months?” and she admitted that it had. She said that she is going to have it, “Some time in the New Year … on or about St Valentine’s Day.” That is the 14th of February! No wonder she looks bulgy round the middle.

I hate Slimey Roland worse than ever now. Doing this to my mum! I bet it was his stupid idea. He’s all gooey about babies. Mum would never have thought of it for herself. She and Dad were going to have another one once only she decided against it, so if she decided against it with Dad why would she go for it with Slime? She surely can’t want to have a baby that’s going to be all gingery and freckled and look like a fungus?

She kept trying to butter me up. Trying to make me feel better about it. She kept saying things like, “It’ll make us a proper family”, and “It’ll be nice for you to have a brother or sister”. I don’t want a brother or sister! I hate babies! They mess themselves and yell all the
time. They are totally disgusting. And its surname will be Butter and it’ll belong to them, to Mum and him, and I’ll be an outsider.

I’ll never forgive him for this. Never!

I told Skinny Melon this morning that she was right, and she said, “Oh, you’re so lucky! That is totally brilliant. I wish my mum would get married again so that we could have another baby.”

There are times when I think that Skinny is not quite right in the head.

After school we had a rehearsal for the Christmas play and those of us that are angels were taught the angels’ song. We each get to sing one verse on our own and then the chorus all together. Mr Freely came in while we were doing it and said, “My goodness, that is some voice Cherry has!” One or two of the others put their hands to their ears and complained that I was deafening them, but you have to sing loudly if people at the back are going to be able to hear you, and it is a rock nativity, after all. Not the wishy-washy churchy kind. That’s why Miss Burgess chose me, because I have this big voice.

I really enjoy singing. It has made me wonder whether perhaps I ought to try and be a pop star when I’m older. I
know it is an overcrowded profession and that last year I thought I might want to be a judge, but being a pop star would bring deep joy to a great many people’s lives whereas quite often judges do the exact opposite.

Maybe I could be a judge after I’ve finished being a pop star as I don’t think you can be a judge until you are quite old, by which time I would most likely be bored with the other. I once heard someone say that fame could become very wearisome.

Actually, the reason I would like to be a judge is so that I could say to children when their parents are trying
to get divorced, “Do you want them to get divorced?” and if the children said no, then the parents wouldn’t be able to do it.

I’d have said no. I didn’t like Mum and Dad quarrelling but I hate having to live with Slimey Roland and Dad having another wife. What I’d have said is you’ve got to turn the house into flats, one upstairs and one downstairs, and Mum can live in one and Dad can live in the other and I could live in both of them and go upstairs or downstairs as I liked. That, I think, would be perfect.

Or else they could have sold the house and bought two littler ones next door to each other and knocked a hole through the middle. They could be in Southampton so that Dad could still do his new job. They could be in cottages with chimneys and little gardens.

And Dad could go off to work and Mum could stay at home and read her books and they wouldn’t ever have to see each other if they didn’t want, they could even go out with other people, I wouldn’t mind, just so long as they came home at night and were always there.

I said all this to Skinny once and she said that if she had a dad she’d want him to live in the same house as her and her mum and her brother and sister and for them all to be together all of the time. This would be her idea of heaven.

I agree it would be mine if Dad could come back and he and Mum didn’t quarrel.

There’s a boy at school called Timothy Dunbar who lives with his mum during the week and his dad at weekends. He reckons it’s brilliant as his dad spoils him rotten, giving him presents and taking him to places of interest, which he never did when he was at home. But it’s all right for Timothy Dunbar. His dad only lives just a few streets away and his mum hasn’t gone and got married again.

Slimey came back tonight. Worse luck. I was hoping he might have fallen through a crack in the paving stones.

Mouse droppings and jellied eyeballs. Or maybe it was frogspawn. Either way it was disgusting.

Now that Mum has told me about the baby she seems to think it’s OK for her to keep on talking about it. She said to me at teatime, while Slime was upstairs with his elves, “What do you think we should call it? Think of some names!” I said, “There aren’t many names that go with Butter.” I said, “Barbara Butter, Brenda Butter, Belinda Butter,” very heavily sarcastic, but that was the wrong thing as Mum immediately thought it meant that I was interested. She said, “Would you like it to be a girl?” Very quickly, and just as sarcastic, I said, “Bertram Butter, Bruce Butter, Bernard Butter.” All Mum said was, “Bernard’s nice! I like Bernard.”

Bernard Butter? She has to be joking!

Slimey Roland brought me back a china figure from Newcastle. It is a Victorian lady with a crinoline and the crinoline is made of real lace.

Mum says it is valuable and that I must be careful not to break it. It is quite nice, I suppose. I have put it on the top shelf near my bed.

I would much rather have had a dog.

I have found something new to worry about. Suppose Mum dies while she is having this baby? People do die. In olden times they were always dying in childbirth. Even today it could still happen. I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about it. It would be all Slimey’s fault! Why couldn’t he keep out of our lives? Why couldn’t he leave Mum alone? We were perfectly happy without him!

I asked Mum two things when I got in from school and to both of them she said no.

First of all I asked her yet again if I could take sandwiches instead of having school dinner because today it was something quite unspeakable, I mean it looked as if it had been scraped up off the pavement. It is only a question of time before I get terminally poisoned. Mum said, “You can take sandwiches so long
as you’re prepared for them to be vegetarian” which as far as I’m concerned is the same as saying no because I am not going to change my eating habits just to please Slime. What’s being veggie ever done for him? Made him look like a fungus. And anyway, it would mean he’d won and then he’d get all unbearable and triumphant.